Brazil police raid Amazon carbon credit projects exposed by Mongabay
According to the investigators, the group was running land-grabbing and timber laundering crimes in the Amazon for more than a decade and profiting millions of dollars.
Amazon Destruction News
New bill to expand farmlands in the Amazon may derail Brazil’s green efforts
A bill that would reduce the amount of primary forest that landowners in the Brazilian Amazon must preserve may lead to the deforestation of an area twice the size of Rio de Janeiro state.
In Amazon’s tri-border Javari region, teens fall prey to drug gangs’ lure
The rising recruitment has gone hand in hand with an increase in coca production and deforestation in the region, which in some provinces has grown exponentially.
Global markets and their effects on resource exploitation in the Pan Amazon
Investment capital flows when prices are high, but companies scale back investments when they fall. Nonetheless, companies do not often abandon projects once underway; in part, this is a natural…
Top brands buy Amazon carbon credits from suspected timber laundering scam
An analysis of two carbon credit projects in the Brazilian Amazon has found that they may be connected to illegal timber laundering.
Bird populations are mysteriously declining at an Amazon park in Ecuador & beyond
The number of individual birds found at the Yasuní Biosphere Reserve has dropped by half, according to a study published earlier this year.
Extractive industries look at degraded land to avoid further deforestation in the Pan Amazon
Mining and energy companies invest in the Amazon because it is profitable. Opportunities are large because of geology, but development is costly due to the region’s isolation and lack of…
Indigenous leader’s killer is convicted in Brazil, but tensions over land remain
Bar owner João Carlos da Silva was on April 15 sentenced to 18 years in prison for the murder of Indigenous land defender and teacher Ari Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau four years earlier.
New ban threatens traditional fishers in Brazil’s Mato Grosso state
Legislation in effect since Jan. 1 has banned fishing in Mato Grosso state rivers for five years, with heavy opposition from environmental defenders and traditional fishers.
State management and regulation of extractive industries in the Pan Amazon
The extractive industries are strategic components of the economy of all Amazonian countries, but their importance varies greatly. Mineral extraction creates tangible economic benefits for a sovereign state. Converting a…
Goldman Prize honors Brazilian investigation linking JBS & deforestation
Marcel Gomes, the executive secretary at investigative journalism outlet Repórter Brasil, is one of this year’s prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize winners.
Deforestation haunts top Peruvian reserve and its Indigenous communities
A recent report has revealed a spike in deforestation in the buffer zone of one of the world’s best-protected areas, Peru’s Amarakaeri Communal Reserve. Between 2001 and 2023, 19,978 hectares…
Amid record-high fires across the Amazon, Brazil loses primary forests
The number of fires shows no signs of easing as Brazil’s Roraima faces unprecedented blazes, and several Amazonian countries, including Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela, registered record-high outbreaks in the first quarter this year.
A web of front people conceals environmental offenders in the Amazon
A paper trail left by a notorious land grabber reveals how he used relatives and an employee as fronts to evade environmental fines and lawsuits, shedding light on this widespread practice in the Brazilian Amazon.
Brazil boosts protection of Amazon mangroves with new reserves in Pará state
The new extractive reserves allow resident populations to engage in traditional and sustainable extractive practices such as fishing and hunting, while keeping out big businesses, such as commercial aquaculture or logging.
Brazil’s illegal gold trade takes a hammering, but persists underground
Measures throughout 2023 to curb the illegal gold trade in Brazil led to a 20% drop in the country’s exports of the precious metal.
Mining in the Pan Amazon in pursuit of the world’s most precious metal
Gold is universally recognized as a form of money that has retained value over decades, centuries and millennia. Since it is non-corrosive and precious, approximately 95% of the gold mined…
Tropical forest loss puts 2030 zero-deforestation target further out of reach
JAKARTA — The tropics continue to lose primary forest at an alarming rate, with an area of tree cover half the size of Panama disappearing in 2023, new data from…
Amazon prosecutors get sharper impact tool to charge illegal gold dealers
New research from the NGO Conservation Strategy fund, working with federal prosecutors in Brazil, has refined a tool that puts a dollar value on the socioenvironmental costs of illegal gold mining across vital ecosystems in the Amazon.
Mineral commodities: the wealth that generates most impacts in the Pan Amazon | Chapter 5 of “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon”
Mineral extraction is a major cause of contention among the inhabitants of the Pan Amazon. Thousands of families depend on economic activity that originates, directly or indirectly, from the mining…
Lula’s deforestation goals threatened by frustrated environmental agents
In early January, Brazilian environmental agents went on strike, claiming their salaries do not make up for their risky and highly-qualified work, in a threat to Lula's zero deforestation target.
Fanned by El Niño, megafires in Brazil threaten Amazon’s preserved areas
Researchers and protection agencies expected a dry season with more fires in Brazil’s Roraima state at the start of 2024, but the effects of an intense and prolonged El Niño have aggravated the situation.
Reforestation and restoration: Two ways to make the Pan Amazon greener
One of the benefits of agroforestry and plantation forestry is the ability of tree crops to capture and store carbon in their above-ground biomass. Although they must be renovated (cut…
Reconciling conservation agriculture and agroforestry for sustainability
There are three fundamental rules of financial planning: (1) save continuously, (2) invest in a diversified portfolio of assets and (3) exercise patience via a long-term strategy. This common-sense advice…
Land irrigation as an obstacle to agricultural intensification in Mato Grosso
The agro-industrial farms of Mato Grosso are among the most efficient on the planet; they benefit from abundant rainfall and a long rainy season, which allows them to plant and…
What is most convenient in land distribution?
The creation of protected areas and Indigenous reserves offers the best hope for conserving the biodiversity of the Amazon; however, the management of the human modified landscapes will determine whether…
In the Amazon, what happens to undesignated public lands?
Undesignated public land One of the objectives of the ZEE process was to assist the nations of the Pan Amazon to allocate their public lands among different constituencies and stakeholder…
Study points to which Amazon regions could reach tipping point & dry up
Scientists warn that 10% of the Amazon has a high risk of being converted into a drier and degraded ecosystem by 2050, while 47% has a moderate transitional risk.
Ecuador, Colombia and the Guiana Shield join the planning of sustainable land use
Ecuador The territorial planning framework in Ecuador is known as the Plan de Desarrollo y Ordenamiento Territorial (PDOT). It is one component in an ambitious effort to articulate a Plan…
Megafires are spreading in the Amazon — and they are here to stay
“When I see the rainforest burning, I know what I’m really seeing is Amazonia dying. I see that fire and, as a scientist, I know how much that hectare will…
Low implementation of land use maps in Andean countries affects conservation outcomes and agricultural productivity
Land-use maps and their explicit recommendations are most relevant on pioneer landscapes that are in the flux of change. Recommendations can provide sound information and support an expanding agricultural production…
Land use planning helps advance conservation in Brazil
Regulating land tenure is not the only power available to the state for influencing how people use land. Land-use planning and land-use zoning are two closely related mechanisms that Pan…
Special series
Forest Trackers
- Narco airstrips beset Indigenous communities in Peruvian Amazon
- 15 illegal narco-trafficking airstrips found near Peru Indigenous communities
- Satellite data show bursts of deforestation continue in Indonesian national park
- Fires rip through Indigenous territories in Brazilian Amazon
Oceans
- Scientists, Māori experts uncover new insights into rare spade-toothed whale
- Coral reefs could survive climate change, but in altered state, study says
- Conservationists see progress for swordfish, problems for sharks at Atlantic fisheries summit
- As tidal power rides a wave of clean energy optimism, pitfalls persist
Amazon Conservation
- ‘World’s largest’ carbon credit deal in the Amazon faces bumpy road ahead
- New conservation model calls for protecting Amazon for its archaeological riches
- Brazil dredges Amazon rivers to ease drought isolation, raising environmental concerns
- ‘We need white men on our side to save the Amazon from destruction,’ 92-year-old Indigenous Chief Raoni says
Land rights and extractives
- Should mining companies consider no-go zones where isolated Indigenous peoples live? (Commentary)
- Brazil sets a date to remove illegal miners from Munduruku land, more details await
- Peruvian logger loses FSC label after latest clash with isolated Mashco Piro
- A national park and its rangers in Bolivia endure persisting road construction, illegal mining
Endangered Environmentalists
- Environmental journalist in Cambodia shot and killed by suspected logger
- Vietnam sentences yet another energy expert over renewables research
- Mother Nature Cambodia activists sentenced to prison — again
- Mongabay video screening at Chile’s Supreme Court expected to help landmark verdict in Brazil
Indonesia's Forest Guardians
- On a Borneo mountainside, Indigenous Dayak women hold fire and defend forest
- Fenced in by Sulawesi national park, Indigenous women make forestry breakout
- In Borneo, the ‘Power of Mama’ fight Indonesia’s wildfires with all-woman crew
- Pioneer agroforester Ermi, 73, rolls back the years in Indonesia’s Gorontalo
Conservation Effectiveness
- How effective is the EU’s marquee policy to reduce the illegal timber trade?
- How sharing and learning from failures can transform conservation (commentary)
- Is planting trees as good for the Earth as everyone says?
- Failure in conservation projects: Everyone experiences it, few record it
Southeast Asian infrastructure
- An ‘ocean grab’ for a property megaproject leaves Jakarta fishers grounded
- Study: Indonesia’s new capital city threatens stable proboscis monkey population
- Indonesia’s new capital ‘won’t sacrifice the environment’: Q&A with Nusantara’s Myrna Asnawati Safitri
- Small farmers in limbo as Cambodia wavers on Tonle Sap conservation rules
