Concession to extract timber from 148,000 hectares in upper Baram was granted despite repeated objections from local communities.

Main photo: Communities like Long Tungan are working hard to find a way to protect their lands and save some of the most valuable carbon and biodiversity stocks we have left. Photo courtesy of The Borneo Project.

• Lawmakers in Indonesia want to question pulp and paper company PT Arara Abadi about its dispute with an Indigenous community in Sumatra that resulted in a member of the community being jailed on dubious charges.
• The company has held the concession to the land since 1996, but the Sakai Indigenous tribe have lived and farmed there since 1830, and claim ancestral rights to the area.

The Yunnan-based company has been criticised as secretive as some question whether it is equipped to run such a project

Main photo: The entrance to Namjin village seen on March 6 (Photo- Chan Thar/ Myanmar Now)

One day in late 2018, residents of Namjin, Kachin state, noticed drones fixed with cameras buzzing above their usually quiet village. Then word spread that some people from China were visiting an area nearby.

(MENAFN - The Conversation) The world's fourth-highest emitter of greenhouse gases , Indonesia, is heavily reliant on coal to generate electricity. Its coal-fired power plants produce a third of the country's emissions.

To minimise its future greenhouse gas emissions, Indonesia is gearing up to develop its vast renewable energy resources - including solar, wind, and geothermal.

Indonesia also aims to meet its future energy demand, which is set to grow another 80% by 2030 .

The steering team of the Ghana Gold Expo has issued a press briefing that the premiere issue of the Ghana Gold Report 2020 will be released on June 15, 2020.

The steering team is led by Dr Steven Blessing Ackah and MP for Takoradi, Kwabena Okyere Darko Mensah.

Fires have spread across the majority of the landscape in Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Fires of this number are not uncommon at this time of year in Africa. During the agricultural season of clearing field and planting new ones, farmers set fire to the remains of old crop fields to rid them of the leftover grasses and scrub.

Last year the world lost some 119,000 square kilometers (45,946 square miles) of tree cover – an area the size of Nicaragua – according to satellite data collated by the University of Maryland (UMD) released today by World Resources Institute (WRI). Almost a third of that loss – or an area the size of Switzerland – came from primary humid tropical forests, which house most of the planet’s plant and animal species and play an important role in climate regulation.

The LAND-at-scale programme got a great response to the second call for ideas. The programme received 25 new ideas from 19 different countries. Support continues for enhancing land governance and tenure security. This is evident in the response and effort from embassies, NGOs and knowledge institutes.

Current LAND-at-scale portfolio status

In October 2019, approval was given to 13 promising ideas. LAND-at-scale has been working closely with embassies, knowledge institutes and NGOs to transform these ideas into land governance projects.

Communities in biodiverse Tanintharyi Region are spurning big, top-down projects and seeking recognition for their own approach to conservation.

From its forested borderlands in the east, to vast mangrove forests and hundreds of island ecosystems in the Andaman Sea to the west, Tanintharyi Region is a bastion of nature and biodiversity. The region is home to one of the largest remaining expanses of intact low-elevation evergreen forest in Southeast Asia, a stronghold for endangered and endemic species including tigers, tapirs and pangolins.

Environment rangers and community members patrolled the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary 511 times within the first four months of the year and prevented 399 forest crimes in four provinces.

Ministry of Environment secretary of state and spokesman Neth Pheaktra said on Thursday that a report on the management and protection at Prey Lang showed that 32 cases of logging and land clearing had been sent to the courts for legal action.

In 42 cases involving nearly 100 people, cease and desist contracts had been signed.

The world will never be the same after COVID-19. Social behaviors have permanently changed as have consumer patterns. Trends in international trade have shifted, as have investment priorities. After two months in lockdown, nations must restart their economies in an environment that has changed drastically.

The silver lining is that it revealed the weaknesses in our institutions and our economies. As we rebuild, we must do so with an intent to reinvent, especially for us in the Philippines. We must work to make the nation stronger, more resilient and self-sufficient.

This year, as the world celebrates World Earth Day on the 22nd April 2020, Fairtrade Africa is highlighting its stakeholder collaboration towards climate action.