Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. For more than two decades, professors Bambang Hero Saharjo and Basuki Wasis of the Bogor Institute of Agriculture have stood where science meets power, testifying against companies accused of torching forests and draining peatlands. Their measurements of ash and carbon and their calculations of hectares lost have given judges a way to translate ecological ruin into the dry language of liability. For that service to the public, they have been repaid with lawsuits, harassment and danger, reports Rendy Tisna for Mongabay Indonesia. Last October, a court in Bogor, south of Jakarta, offered a rare reversal: it dismissed a civil suit brought by PT Kalimantan Lestari Mandiri, a palm oil firm once fined for fires that scorched more than 800 hectares (nearly 2,000 acres) of Borneo peat. The company had sought billions of rupiah in damages from the very experts whose testimony helped convict it years earlier. The judges ruled for the scientists. “Hopefully this will set a good precedent to protect environmental defenders,” Bambang told Mongabay Indonesia after the verdict. It was the fourth such case he has endured. Each time, the aim has been less to win than to exhaust — one more strategic lawsuit against public participation, designed to make truth-telling unbearably costly. “If we keep getting sued like this,” he warned, “the environment will become increasingly neglected.” Their victory was cheered by activists and the environment minister alike, who called…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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