In October 2006, I was supposed to be starting my dissertation research on tropical reforestation in Indonesia. Instead, I found myself in the forests of Tanjung Puting National Park in Central Kalimantan helping locals to fight fires with brooms, backpack pumps, and hoses connected to hand-dug water wells. It was an ‘all hands-on deck’ moment for the local NGO I was working with then — Friends of Nature, People and Forests (FNPF) — including Basuki Santoso, FNPF’s Kalimantan program manager, alongside Adut and Isam, who were teenagers at the time. On our first night of firefighting, we slept in the forest on a raised platform that would later become part of a field station. I was awoken in the middle of the night by a sun bear rifling through our makeshift kitchen about 20 feet away. I sat frozen, watching this wild animal who was fleeing the fires while everyone else slept soundly. It was a surreal and humbling moment. Twenty years ago, these severe forest and peatland fires were due to a dangerous combination of El Niño-induced drought, slash-and-burn agriculture and other land clearing, and the grass-fire cycle. Much of Southeast Asia was left choking on the haze, and that was a weak El Niño year. Firefighting in Indonesia often requires resourcefulness as well as resilience and fortitude. Image courtesy of Basuki Santoso. History keeps repeating itself, and it’s hard to watch. Experts say we are now facing a Super El Niño. For the past three months, millions of…This article was originally published on Mongabay

The world has spent a decade trying to put a price on nature. Forests have become carbon sinks, while wetlands are increasingly described as natural infrastructure. Biodiversity is also being drawn into financial markets. Governments and investors have poured billions into carbon markets and conservation finance, including green bonds. Around them, a financial system is emerging on the assumption that intact ecosystems can generate enough economic value to protect them. A more destructive economy has been putting a price on nature for much longer. It makes money by extracting and selling it. Land grabbing, illegal logging, illicit gold mining and wildlife trafficking are usually treated as environmental offenses, so responsibility falls to park rangers, customs officials and specialized police. That view badly underestimates what is happening. In a new paper for the Brookings Institution, we argue that environmental crimes are a serious drag on both sustainable development and climate action. They damage ecosystems and weaken the institutions charged with governing them. They also drain revenue from legitimate companies and public coffers. Enforcement alone will not solve a problem that runs through trade, finance and local political economies. An IBAMA agent participates in a raid on an illegal logging and mining operation within an Indigenous reserve. Image courtesy of IBAMA. Global criminal economy No one knows exactly how large this economy has become. A widely cited estimate puts annual proceeds at between $110 billion and $281 billion, but the true figure is probably far higher, perhaps in the trillions. What makes the business…This article was originally published on Mongabay