For conservationists, it is often a case of two steps forward, one step back. Compare the upturn in fortune for the forests of Borneo with the depressing tale of state government intervention in Mato Grosso, central Brazil.
Since 1996 Borneo has been haemorrhaging 2 million hectares of forest a year to loggers, forest fires and plantations; only half its original forest remains. On 12 January the island’s three governments – those of Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia – agreed at a summit hosted by the Philippines to conserve 22 million hectares of rainforest in the “heart of Borneo”, the last large…
