Every two seconds, across the world, an area the size of a football field is clear cut by illegal loggers.” This was the opening statement of a new report launched last week in Washington DC by the World Bank. 'Justice for Forests: Improving criminal justice efforts to combat illegal logging'
Campaigns Director Julian Newman catches up with Ali Jambi – aka Tham Hai Lee, Jambi Lee, Jenggo, Hap Ali – who went from Indonesian timber smuggler to wealthy Singaporean businessman
We had spent two days walking through lush, verdant forest – the last ancestral forests of Muara Tae. The close, varied greens teeming with life could not have stood in greater contrast to the landscape that now stood in front of us. A monochrome, muddy yellow broken only by piles of dead, drying vegetation.
In Bangkok this week for the annual INTERPOL meeting on environmental crime, we took the opportunity to host a panel discussion at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand, highlighting the many forms environmental crime takes in the region and then turning the spotlight on the hot issue of rosewood
South Africa has seen an uncontrollable wave of poaching of rhinos for their horns, believed to be the panacea for all manner of ailments (without a shred scientific proof) in the Far East yet, staggeringly, in some quarters the argument is still made that a legal trade in horn is the answer to this appalling situation
It can be a long week/month/year/decade when you’re constantly confronted with bad news and the terrible things that we are doing to life on this planet. It can often seem like a never-ending uphill battle. And, well, that’s what it is, but every now and again you get some news that gives you a glimmer of hope