Aleta Baun, an Indonesian environmental activist known in her community as Mama Aleta, has a penchant for wearing a colourful scarf on her head, but not for cosmetic reasons.
The 20
th International AIDS Conference concluded today as the first in its history that remembered not just the 39 million people worldwide who have died of AIDS but also those who lost their lives in the crashed MH17 flight carrying six of its delegates, one of whom was the past president of the International AIDS Society (IAS).
As the world’s third-largest democracy heads to the polls next week to elect a new president, environmental activists remain sceptical of the candidates’ commitment to tackle climate change.
Mukhtar Ali is one of the many Pakistanis who are furious at politicians and authorities for failing to provide citizens with a regular supply of electricity during the smouldering summer months.
Comprised of over 17,000 islands that are highly susceptible to rising seas, Indonesia is taking stock of its position as the world’s third leading emitter of greenhouse gases after the United States and China.
The multinational food giant Mars, Inc. unveiled Monday a new set of guidelines aimed at ensuring that its palm oil supply lines are completely traceable and sustainable by next year.
Watching former gangsters and paramilitary leaders proudly reenact scenes from Indonesia’s military-led mass killings of 1965-66 in the Oscar-nominated documentary, “The Act of Killing”, it’s easy to forget the role of outside countries.
Indonesia’s rainforests are facing “legal land grabs”, allege NGOs. Its ancient communities are finding that their ancestral lands are slipping into the hands of foreign companies for oil palm cultivation, as demand for the product grows in Europe, India and China.
In June, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia were enveloped in haze as hundreds of forest fires burned across the island of Sumatra, in the worst pollution crisis to hit Southeast Asia in more than a decade.
Parts of Indonesia, Argentina and Nigeria are among the top 10 most polluted places on the planet, according to a new report by U.S. and European environmental groups.
The Dutch government has formally apologised for the mass killing of Indonesians during colonial occupation which ended in 1949.
U.S. Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel announced Monday that Washington is going forward with a controversial sale of eight attack helicopters to the Indonesian government, despite concerns that the gunships will be used for internal repression.
With a propensity to devour everything in their path and spiral quickly out of control, leaving behind swathes of scorched earth, forest fires are considered a hazard in most parts of the world. In Indonesia, however, fires are the preferred method for clearing large areas of land for massive plantations of commercial crops.
Indonesia's forest fires, a predictable annual ritual, will continue to have serious implications for health and the environment in Southeast Asia unless the government strengthens forest protection, warn environmental groups.
When 45-year-old Kaswati joined an income-generating project in her village in Indonesia’s West Java province in 1999, all she hoped to do was supplement her family’s income at a time of erratic harvests.
Between 2010 and 2012, 868 million people worldwide were deemed hungry by a conservative definition. This figure represents only a small fraction of the world’s population whose health and lives are blighted by malnutrition.
Standing in front of the two-metre concrete wall, barbed wire and corrugated iron fence that surrounds his mosque, Muhammad Iqbal says he feels like a second-class citizen in his own country.
Last October, at the beginning of Indonesia’s rainy season, a 37-year-old farmer named Herinurdin took a leap of faith. Instead of planting corn in his entire 1.3-hectare rainfed farm in the Sukabumi town of West Java, as his family had done for generations, he sowed 1,600 square metres worth of rice instead.
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority country, has found a deterrent to Islamic fundamentalists: they dress conservatively, sport short beards and Islamic caps and emulate the ways of the Prophet Muhammad.
A Third World War is not impossible, but fortunately is rather unlikely. Let us explore why, and what can be done to prevent it.
From her half-built house, Ari Haryani takes a few steps to reach a freshly cemented path that snakes through the narrow, dusty walkways of this resettlement village. The path offers the 36-year-old a route to safety in case the nearby Mount Merapi, Indonesia’s most active volcano, erupts.