Hungary waived environmental regulations protecting native forests from logging, showing the increasingly extreme steps the government is willing to take to prepare for next winter’s energy shortages.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban's cabinet, citing the effects of the war in neighbouring Ukraine, loosened regulations on logging to meet increased demand for firewood as a result of surging gas and electricity prices.

Satellite images show there were 6,803 fires in the Amazon during July, a rise of 28% compared with same month last year. It might get worse in September as predicted by the Science Director of Brazil's Amazon Environmental Research Institute. President Jair Bolsonaro, who previously encouraged agricultural and mining activities in the Amazon, banned starting fires in the region in early July under pressure from internal investors.

Indonesia’s environment ministry will file civil lawsuits against five companies in connection with fires that razed their concessions last year. Fire season in 2019 burned an area half the size of Belgium and released double the amount of carbon dioxide as the fires in the Amazon. Officials say they are preparing both civil lawsuits — seeking fines against the pulpwood and oil palm firms blamed for the fires — and criminal charges. However, a spate of recent cases suggests the government will have a hard time getting the money, with only a tiny fraction paid out of the $231 million awarded from nine companies in similar lawsuits.

Indonesia is facing its worst annual fire season since the tragedy of 2015. Close to 700 hotspots have been identified in fire-prone regions in Sumatra, Kalimantan and the Riau islands.

Fires are raging at a record rate in Brazil's Amazon rainforest, and scientists warn that it could strike a devastating blow to the fight against climate change. According to INPE, more than 1½ soccer fields of Amazon rainforest are being destroyed every minute of every day and the fires are burning at the highest rate. Environmental activists and organisations accuse Brazil's president -Jair Bolsonaro of relaxing environmental controls in the country and encouraging deforestation.

A report by WRI shows ongoing deforestation in an oil palm concession in Papua, Indonesia, operated by a subsidiary of South Korea’s POSCO Daewoo. The company has responded by saying its operations in Papua are legal and fully permitted.
Concerns over deforestation by POSCO Daewoo have prompted other companies to say they will not allow its palm oil into their supply chains. These include big-name brands such as Clorox, Colgate Palmolive, IKEA, L’Oreal, Mars and Unilever. POSCO Daewoo has issued a temporary moratorium on land clearing in its Papua concession and hired a consultant to advise it on how to proceed with its operations there.

Global Forest Watch, in partnership with the Jane Goodall Institute and Vizzuality, launched Forest Watcher in September. This is a mobile app that allows users to monitor and report on forest change with real-time forest change data of GFW straight from a mobile device. It directs users to the latest deforestation and fire alerts in their area, and provides the ability to prioritize and collect evidence about what they discover. The app is open source and free to download and use.

One subsidiary of Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (April), Riau Andalan Pulp and Paper (Rapp), has constructed a 3km canal through thick peatland on the island of Pedang, Indonesia, which has led to the suspension of their partnership with WWF and Greenpeace. The canal is built for draining peatland for pulp plantations, which is against both the company’s sustainability standards, and also government regulations. However, the president and director of Rapp insisted the action is legal based on a plan approved by the Indonesian government back in 2013, which was before the catastrophic fires of 2015.

President of Indonesia signed into law on Dec. 1, a new crucial regulation on peatland management, intending to call time on untrammelled commercial development of the archipelago’s vast peat swamp zones, which have been widely drained and dried by the palm oil and paper industries. The new regulation was praised by some observers as previously peatland development was only mandated by presidential guidelines. However, environmental pressure groups said that the new regulation may continue to trigger fires and the collapse of peat ecosystems. Greenpeace and Wetlands International say the government has not done enough to move on from destructive land use.

Researchers from Harvard and Columbia universities in the US estimated there were more than 90,000 early deaths in Indonesia in areas closest to haze-belching fires, and several thousand more in neighbouring Singapore and Malaysia. The new estimate, reached using a complex analytical model by combining satellite data with models of health impacts from smoke exposure and readings from pollution monitoring stations, is far higher than the previous official death toll given by authorities of just 19 deaths in Indonesia. It triggered calls for action to tackle the “killer haze”.

According to NASA’s Amazon fire forecast, the Amazon basin is now facing driest season due to the reduced rainfall during the wet season, which means the wildfire from July to October is at the highest risk. The forecast model is developed by scientists at the University of California (UC-Irvine) in 2011, which links sea surface temperatures and fire activity. Now scientists at NASA and UC-Irvine have been working with officials of South American and scientists to make them aware of these data and their implications.

President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo’s plan to ban new palm oil permits is being supported by Indonesia’s forestry ministry. The ban, announced in April, has spared 851,000 hectares of land from conversion with 61 proposals from palm oil companies being rejected. The rapid expansion of palm oil plays a key part in deforestation across the country and was also a prime cause of the fire and haze crisis in 2015.

Indonesia’s anti-graft commission said government agencies have agreed on a plan to combat corruption in the forestry industry that costs the state billions of dollars in lost revenue and is behind fires that pollute Southeast Asia. The plan leans heavily on technology to build an accurate picture of where illegal deforestation and conversion of peatland into farmland is occurring, using Landsat satellites, drones and LIDAR pulsed laser-based mapping.

According to the World Bank, forest fires in Indonesia last year caused the country at least $16 billion economic losses, which is equivalent to 1.9 percent of its GDP. The haze caused by the fire blanketed Singapore, parts of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand in September and October, which was cleared by the rainy season in early November. Many of the fires were set by smallholders and companies to clear land for agriculture, especially palm oil, which makes it difficult for Indonesian authorities to respond to the fires.

Regarding the choking haze in Indonesia, 23 companies have been punished by Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya, while over 33 plantation companies are being investigated. The Singaporean government said it plans to take action against firms linked to haze-causing fires.

Singapore’s National Environment Agency served Asia Pulp & Paper and four other companies with legal notice under the Transboundary Haze Pollution Act, because fires burning in the companies’ concessions in Indonesia. The air pollutant index in Singapore hit “hazardous” levels last week, and schools shut down. The haze even is harming relations between the two countries, with Singapore and also Malaysia.