Mega Rice Project News Today

But disrupting the peatlands comes with devastating, likely irreversible costs for the climate, say environmental experts and activists.

JAKARTA: The Indonesian government will prepare 500,000 hectares of agricultural land for rice production in anticipation of the long drought brought on by the El Nino climate phenomenon.  According to a Presidential Secretariat's Press, Media and Information Bureau (BPMI) statement, Agriculture Minis

The stream that supplied Indah Lestari’s family with fish has dwindled to a trickle since rainforest surrounding her farm was cleared by Indonesian soldiers – leaving behind a barren and eerie landscape that resembles the surface of the moon.

Mongabay seeks to raise interest in and appreciation of wild lands and wildlife, while examining the impact of emerging trends in climate, technology, economics,and finance on conservation and development.

JAKARTA — When Indonesia embarked on its Mega Rice Project in the mid-1990s, it cleared vast swaths of forest for farmland, mostly in the peatlands of Borneo — only to abandon the scheme when it discovered that the carbon-rich peat soil was a poor host for rice cultivation. Fast-forward to the present day, and the […]

JAKARTA — When the Indonesian government announced its food estate program in 2020, it envisioned the establishment of large-scale agricultural plantations across the country. These plantations of crops like rice, cassava and potato were supposed to be the answer to what the government says is an impending global food crisis, and would help feed the […]

<strong>The long read</strong>: Despite the rise of headline-grabbing megafires, fewer fires are burning worldwide now than at any time since antiquity. But this isn’t good news – in banishing fire from sight, we have made its dangers stranger and less predictable

Litterlayer in the fruit agroforest. Photo: ICRAF/University of Palangka Raya/Meine van Noordwijk

Provided Jenny Goldstein, assistant professor of global development, visits West Lombok, Indonesia, to study the role that environmental conservation and development play in terms of governance, data, human health and ecological change. Jenny Goldstein explores Indonesia’s environmental crises March 3, 2021 Power dynamics shape the contours of our lives, influencing just as much the physical environment as the social worlds we inhabit. In the best cases, power is wielded for eq...