Right after the monsoon spell, the coastlines of India’s western states, from Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Goa to Karnataka, are lined with dark, sticky balls. These are tarballs, a “seasonal phenomena”…
Refinery prakalp, yei Kokanat ho, kara virodh virodh, kara virodha.(The refinery project that’s arriving in Konkan, let’s oppose, let’s oppose.) This was the festive chant ringing door-to-door across villages in…
Over the past seven years, Takali Tamuk, a farmer and agro-entrepreneur from Pasighat in the East Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh, has attended several outreach programmes on oil palm cultivation.…
Kerala was the first Indian state to launch large-scale oil palm cultivation in 1971. The south Indian state is now planning to boost its palm oil plantation and production. India…
Vanlaldika, a temporary forest guard in Dampa Tiger Reserve, one of the last remaining tiger habitats in Mizoram, has been cultivating oil palm for the past seven years. Vanlaldika, hails…
Purnima Meher, a 76-year-old resident, dodges big black lumps on the sand. She then stands by the mangroves on the shore of Mahim village in Maharashtra, looking at a stranded…
India, which is the world’s largest consumer and importer of palm oil, has the potential to produce it with socio-economic benefits without threatening natural landscapes, a latest study has said.…
Every year, India, one of the biggest consumers of palm oil in the world, imports billions of rupees worth of this commodity. Over the past few years though, it has…
Lucio Tena, 64, has been growing coconuts on his 20-hectare (49-acre) farm in General Nakar, in the southeast Asian country of Philippines, for more than four decades. But the situation…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Paskalina called to me by waving her hand and asked me to come to her house in a whisper. It was my…
The island of Sulawesi in Indonesia that’s home to a unique array of primates found nowhere else on Earth is at the risk of disappearing due to rapid deforestation, a…
Newly published research has linked the spread of oil palm and rubber plantations across a watershed area of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island to worsening floods in the region. The analysis, published in…
Palm oil finds a way into the lives of Indians, every day. From toothpaste, soap and moisturiser to ice cream, milk powder and chocolate. From margarine to cake and from…
The blowout at an oil well near Baghjan village in Assam took a turn yesterday (June 9) with a major fire outbreak at the well. For almost two weeks, the…
While India should prioritise health and economic recovery in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis, there will also be an opportunity for clean energy transition as part of coping strategies…
The oil palm processing industry has become the biggest threat to the iconic and endangered proboscis monkeys of Indonesian Borneo, a new study has found. The study, published in the…
Aerial images taken last month in the southern part of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island show wildfires burning through peat forests and producing clouds of toxic smoke. The fires are deliberately set…
A bite of chocolate may be your guilty pleasure but have you looked at the ingredients on your chocolate bar? Often hidden in the small print is palm oil, an…
Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer of palm oil, is anticipating a boost in exports of the commodity to China, taking advantage of an opportunity opened up by the escalating trade…
For a country like India, where high levels of air pollution in cities is slowly turning into a national emergency, large scale adoption of electric vehicles powered by renewable power…
