AGUÁN VALLEY, Honduras — In the years after 2018, during periods when the threats subsided and the paramilitary gunmen didn’t show up, nights in the village of Panamá were peaceful.…
The announcement of tin and coltan deposits potentially worth tens of billions of dollars “discovered” beneath a forest reserve has taken Burundi by storm, raising questions about its veracity and…
JAKARTA — Consumers in the U.S. might be unknowingly exposed to palm oil products that come from deforestation, despite major consumer goods producers there adopting zero-deforestation pledges. That’s because these…
JAKARTA — Residents of Indonesia’s South Sumatra province have filed a lawsuit against three pulpwood companies for a toxic haze that they blame on repeated burning in their concessions. The…
In January 2023, the federal government of the United States issued landmark decisions affecting two controversial projects to exploit mineral resources on public lands. One was an industrial-scale copper mine,…
Suzano, the world’s largest exporter of eucalyptus pulp, vigorously promotes an environmentally and socially responsible agenda: promising to slash carbon emissions, reduce poverty, and restore fragmented natural vegetation in its…
With a final round of negotiations on a global plastics treaty set to take place later this year in Busan, South Korea, an autopsy is premature, especially with the dynamics…
Underlying parables of biblical metaphors are often only dimly remembered. The name Babel comes from the Hebrew “to confuse,” בָּלַל (bālal). The tower so ridiculed was an affront to Yahweh.…
Every day, decisions are made worldwide that generate substantial profits but cause severe environmental harm. This degradation affects everyone, including the decision-makers themselves. Business is not immune to externalities: climate…
On Sept. 11, 2022, Olivia Bisa Tirko received a call from a forest guard who informed her of an oil spill in the territory of the Chapra Nation in the…
Protesters in the northwest Mexican state of Sonora are blocking the country’s largest mining company, Grupo México, from withdrawing water, in an ongoing standoff against the company and state police.…
That common sense is anything but common is a truism. Professors of economics often invoke common sense to explain resource allocation. The fungibility problem is exemplary. This esoteric term comes…
JAKARTA — Allegations of illegal activity and land-grabbing against Indonesia’s second-largest palm oil company continue to mount as a new report reveals the firm’s violations appear to be more extensive…
After winning a historic lawsuit, nine victims of paramilitary violence in Colombia have finally obtained justice, 17 years after they filed cases against the banana company Chiquita Brands International for…
This is the first of a two-part Mongabay series about hydropower dams in the Cardamom Mountains. Read Part Two. PURSAT/KOH KONG, Cambodia — Rumbling south down a rutted dirt track…
In 2023, Socfin hired a consultancy to investigate longstanding allegations of human rights violations and environmental damage raised by communities living around the Belgian transnational company’s oil palm and rubber…
JUCHITÁN, Mexico – Indigenous farmers from southern Mexico angry over landscape damage and poor consultations associated with a massive wind power project have had their day in court in France,…
Vale SA Brazil’s second most valuable company is also the fifth largest global mining corporation. In 2022, it was as ranked by the Refinitiv ESG framework as best in its…
Raids to remove these cattle herds are logistically challenging, involving long distances, many personnel, life threats and even traps left in the middle of dirt roads.
A new report by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) reveals how illegal cattle raised in the Apyterewa Indigenous Territory were laundered into the supply chains of two of Brazil’s largest…
Tech giants are joining forces and having a go at the beleaguered voluntary carbon market. In an attempt to offset their greenhouse gas emissions, or at least a part of…
Although new mines use state-of-the-art technology, the industry also has a legacy of ageing containment dams at older mines, particularly shuttered mines that no longer generate revenues to finance improvements…
JERICÓ, Colombia — Argirio Tobón Tamayo tugs down the top branch of a coffee tree covered in waxy green leaves, bending it back to reveal coffee cherries in shades of…
The irreversible impacts caused by mineral extraction and the financial liabilities imposed by legal systems in the advanced economies have forced companies to embrace environmental management as a core component…
JAKARTA — Calls are mounting for global financiers to cut ties with Adaro, one of Indonesia’s biggest coal companies, as the miner shows no sign of moving away from the…
Economic metaphors can be ironic, unexpectedly so. The 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the 1992 UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) established a “multilateral mechanism for benefit-sharing from…
Panama is still trying to understand the extent of the violence that took place during the massive, nationwide protests last year. Groups from all corners of the country, from teacher…
This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network. LUBUMBASHI, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) — On Oct. 13, 2023, on National Road 39, a police…
When the machines and men came to bury toxic sludge on a property near her house in the Mexican state of Tabasco, Lorenza Castro Castro at first thought it was…
The biomass energy industry centered in the U.S. Southeast is now seeking expansion to California, with U.K. wood pellet maker Drax joining a state-funded nonprofit to increase pellet exports to Asia — a plan forest advocates oppose.
Streets lie deserted. Gardens have overgrown homes. Doors and windows are bricked up. The Bebedouro neighborhood in Maceió, in Brazil’s northeastern coastal state of Alagoas, is a shadow of its…
As dawn began to break in the Peruvian Amazon on March 5, an oil slick spread across the Puinahua River in the district of the same name, engulfing clumps of…
