Insights: WRI's Blog

New analysis reveals that since 2000, more than 8 percent of the world’s Intact Forest Landscapes (IFLs) have been degraded—an area measuring 104 million hectares, or three times the size of Germany. In other words, human activities disturbed 20,000 hectares of pristine forest every day for the past 13 years.

Today, in Jakarta, WRI, DigitalGlobe, the Indonesian government, Google, Esri, and a host of other partners launched Global Forest Watch Fires, an online platform for monitoring and responding to forest and land fires in Southeast Asia.

It features near real-time satellite images from DigitalGlobe, fire alerts from NASA, a text messaging alert system, mapping of burn scars from Google Earth Engine, wind direction and air quality data, land-use and concession maps, and much more.

New analysis published in Nature Climate Change shows that Indonesia is losing primary forest at a staggering rate. The country now has the highest rate of loss in tropical primary forests in the world, overtaking Brazil. Primary tropical forests are the most carbon- and biodiversity-rich type of forest ecosystem.

Indonesia and Singapore have been bracing themselves in recent weeks as warnings that this year's dry season would likely herald a severe spike in forest fires in Sumatra, with toxic haze across the region.

A new initiative from WRI and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) aims to shed light on how oil palm concessions affect forests.

Global Forest Watch Commodities (GFW-Commodities) combines the RSPO’s maps of certified sustainable palm oil production sites with global forest data—information that can empower companies to manage their forests and supply chains more sustainably.

GIS maps are one of the most accurate ways to share geographic data. For local communities in Indonesia, it can be an invaluable tool to stake out traditional boundaries and resolve land conflicts with governments.

WRI's Forest and Landscapes in Indonesia project reveals four ways GIS mapping can empower forest communities in Indonesia.

As the struggle continues to protect forests around the world, REDD+ implementers should look to cultivate and strengthen institutions and mechanisms of accountability.

Though REDD+ includes an international accountability mechanism, case studies in Brazil and Indonesia, where civil society participated in and challenged land-use decisions, demonstrate that this will probably be insufficient for achieving REDD+ goals.

Stopping recurring fires and protecting Indonesia’s communities, businesses, and forests requires a proactive plan to prevent future fires, or at least greatly reduce their intensity.

As part of our ongoing Indonesia forest fires series, WRI’s researchers have used data from the Global Forest Watch platform along with preliminary on-the-ground research to analyze Indonesia’s forest fires and haze problem.

More than 70 percent of Samarinda’s land (the capital of Indonesia’s East Kalimantan province) is allocated to mining concessions, and little information is provided to citizens on companies’ compliance to safety and environmental health rules.

In the hopes of preventing mining fatalities, the Mining Advocacy Network (JATAM), a group of Indonesian NGOs and community organizations, requested information from the Indonesian government to determine what companies were doing to mitigate mines’ environmental and health impacts. This process prompted the STRIPE project, which will focus on building strong civil society coalitions to advocate for corporate disclosure of information.

In Indonesia, dramatic satellite images of heavy smoke plumes show the large amount of pollutants being discharged to the atmosphere. The fires are extensive in areas with deep peat soils, suggesting high volumes of carbon are being released, contributing to climate change.

Global Forest Watch shows that some of the largest fires are on fully developed plantations, despite the fact that many of these companies are committed to eliminating fire in their management practices. The persistence of the fires—and the intensity with which they have returned—raises important questions.