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.

Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), which manages $828 billion worth of funds, released its annual report for 2015 today, revealing that six palm oil companies, four pulp and paper companies, and one coal company were dropped from its investment portfolio. Lars Løvold, director of the NGO Rainforest Foundation Norway, said that the GPFG’s actions show that companies involved in deforestation risk being cut off from international investment.

A toolkit, named the HCS Approach, has been developed by a group of organisations with the aim of identifying High Carbon Stock (HCS) forests. The toolkit was endorsed last week by major NGOs and plantation companies in Singapore including Golden Agri Resources, APP, Wilmar, Greenpeace, WWF, RAN, Unilever and The Forest Trust. The toolkit is seen as a crucial element in developing sustainable plantations and the companies involved will now begin the steps towards implementation in the field. HCS sits alongside HCV