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.
You’re going to hear a lot about Maura Tae, because it represents everything in Indonesia that is right and wrong, and more than anything it is a community literally fighting for its existence
Three new films following EIA investigators undercover around the world have now had their premiere screenings on either National Geographic Channel or Nat Geo Wild in the US, Asia and the UK, and are currently airing for the first time in Australia and New Zealand
These are just the tip of the iceberg in what’s been a highly productive and busy year for EIA, one in which we also played a key role in achieving a groundbreaking agreement on timber trade between the European Union and Indonesia, and kept tabs on supermarket promises to get rid of greenhouse gases in their fridges
I have been in Jakarta this week, on invitation from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), to speak at the Forests Indonesia Conference it was hosting; not usually something to write home about, but something happened during the day that was quite extraordinary
The people of Laos are getting with a raw deal and those with vested interests continue to make deals for huge profits. It’s wrong that a country blessed with the Mekong River, beautiful forests filled with a wide biodiversity and a gentle people whose culture and livelihoods depended on their forests are under threat