Clean, renewable energy is an important component to the fight against global climate change. Read below on how Brunei aims to add more solar energy to its portfolio. BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN: In the forefront of the country’s renewable energy drive, the Energy Department at the Prime Minister’s Office (EDPMO) is looking...
Taib’s cousin, the logging tycoon and key political figure Hamed Sepawi, has been booted out of the African country Liberia by a presidential decree to halt corrupt and illegal logging. It makes for another blow to the Sarawak potentate’s international reputation, following condemnation this week in the Swiss Parliament. Sepawi’s company Perkapalan...
(GENEVA/ BERN, SWITZERLAND) Twenty MPs file motion to freeze Malaysian potentate’s assets held by Swiss banks; Attorney General urged to declare the family of Sarawak Chief Minister Taib Mahmud a criminal organization. Twenty Swiss MPs have filed a motion in parliament that calls for an immediate freeze of assets held by Swiss...
Already wracked by extensive deforestation and forest degradation, the future looks grim for Borneo’s tropical rainforests, reports a new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Biogeosciences. Combining historical records with field observations and global climate models Tomo’omi Kumagai and Amilcare Porporato of Duke University find that an sharp increase in drought...
A spate of studies highlighted both how little we know about tropical rainforests and the threats to forest biodiversity. In May a report from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) said that wildlife populations in the tropics have declined 61 percent over the past...
Eyes on the Forest (EoF) — an alliance that includes Friends of the Earth (Walhi) Riau, Jikalahari, and WWF-Indonesia — published SMG/APP deforestation and deadly human-tiger conflict as part of its ongoing campaign to highlight conversion of natural forests in Riau province for industrial timber plantations. The report looks specifically at five...
MARUDI: Polls in Malaysia are due to be held before April 2013 when the current government’s five-year term will end. The Malaysian opposition leader and potential future Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim, has recently made a public statement very significant to Sarawak’s indigenous peoples. During a gathering at Marudi, a town on...
Research published in 2012 provided a better understanding of tropical deforestation’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. Two studies — one published in Science and the other published in Nature Climate Change, concluded that while deforestation now accounts for a lower share of global emissions relative to the late 1990s, it still represents roughly 10...
The Eyes on the Forest report [PDF] finds that APRIL and its suppliers cleared at least 140,000 hectares (346,000 acres) of natural forest between 2008 and 2011 in Riau, accounting for 27 percent of all forest loss in the province during the period. Some of the area cleared by APRIL and its...
Penan leaders issue stern warning to loggers. “We will do everything necessary to protect our forests”: Penan leaders from Sarawak’s Middle Baram region (Photo : www.bmf.ch) It could well have been a plot from Joseph Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness. Except that, instead of the African Congo, the clashes between...
