Indonesia’s Mount Merapi volcano spewed avalanches of hot clouds Thursday morning as more than 500 residents were evacuated from its fertile slopes.
Environment
Onrizal Onrizal remembers hearing stories of human-like creatures living in the forest when he was growing up in Sungai Dareh, a town in western Sumatra, Indonesia. Legend had it that the creatures, called orang pendek, or “short people,” by the locals, disappeared from the forest in the 1970s.
The survival of critically endangered wildlife like Sumatran orangutans and tigers and the livelihoods of Indigenous communities might be in jeopardy as the Indonesian government plans to establish large-scale agricultural plantations overlapping with their forests, activists warn.
The Indonesian government is forging ahead with a plan to create huge national food estates in two provinces despite concern from scientists over their viability.
As South-East Asia’s economies have contracted and slowed, there have been serious concerns for food security in the region.
Indonesia is the second largest plastic polluter on the planet after China, releasing hundreds of thousands of tonnes of plastic every year into its rivers and marine environment. Can it meet its ambitious plan to tackle the problem?
“Now, when our economy and workers are hurting so much, the companies making the most from Indonesia’s natural resource wealth should pay their fair share of tax and support our country,” TII’s Danang said in a press release.”
Indonesia’s Environment and Forestry Ministry and the World Bank signed a deal on Friday on the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), which provides an additional opportunity for the government to receive payments in exchange for reducing carbon emissions.
Environmental groups say a legal crackdown against the people and companies behind fires in small plantations has disproportionately fallen on individual farmers.
Indonesia is the world’s largest producer of the gel-containing seaweeds known as hydrocolloid seaweeds. Unlike food seaweeds, produced mainly in China, South Korea, North Korea and Japan, hydrocolloid seaweeds are used to extract gels used in a range of applications, including as a thickener in food processing and as a biomaterial for pharmaceutical applications.
The latest regulation issued by the Environment and Forestry Ministry that allows forests to be converted into farmland to support the government’s food estate programme has sparked concerns of potential massive deforestation, according to the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi).
Indonesian authorities have evacuated hundreds of people living on the volatile Mount Merapi volcano’s fertile slopes on Java island following an increase in volcanic activity.
In the centre of the vast Indonesian archipelago – hundreds of giant lizards roam Rinca Island. The Komodo dragon – or Komodo monitor – is the world’s largest and heaviest lizard. Fossils indicate they have ancient origins dating back millions of years.
Communities living along Indonesia’s Cisadane river have reported seeing a constant stream of COVID-19 medical waste, such as syringes, face masks and hazmat suits, washing up on the banks of the river.
In his speech, Prof. Nasih said that the inauguration was an important step for officials towards completing the mandate until 2025. He hoped that the vice deans and vice directors could carry out the mandate well and bring prosperity to the community.
Indonesia is entering the eighth month of the COVID-19 pandemic. Its myriad of impacts have shifted the focus of local governments to respond to, recover from and prevent the spread of the pandemic, to a certain extent at the expense of progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
