JAKARTA — Indonesian prosecutors have charged a top trade ministry official and three palm oil executives in connection with a scarcity of cooking oil that has driven up protest and…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s former fisheries minister has had his jail sentence for corruption slashed by nearly half after an appeals court ruled that he had “done good work” while in…
LAGOS — Nigeria has for years failed to hold wildlife traffickers and poachers accountable for their crimes, despite federal and state laws that criminalize the killing and trading of protected…
KISANGANI, Congo — A major European logging firm may have illegally converted more than a dozen of its timber concessions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo into so-called conservation…
For four days last November, Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands, was on fire. Four people died during violent riots, and the city’s Chinatown was torched, leaving hundreds homeless.…
The trafficking of illicit timber has hit the forested, tropical countries around the Mekong River Delta hard in recent years. Regulations and laws in places like the European Union and…
Earlier this month, six young activists associated with advocacy group Mother Nature Cambodia were released on bail after spending up to 14 months in prison. Although nominally at liberty, their…
SAN IGNACIO DE VELASCO, Bolivia — On Feb. 12, 2021, Bolivian conservationists joyfully celebrated the creation of the Bajo Paraguá Municipal Protected Area. Located in the municipality of San Ignacio…
PEKANBARU, Riau — Anti-corruption investigators in Indonesia’s palm oil heartland have arrested a local official for allegedly taking bribes from a palm oil company in exchange for extending its business…
This article is part of a journalistic collaboration between Mongabay Latam and El Deber, a Bolivian news source. On Feb. 15, three days after the creation of Bajo Paraguá…
The loss of forest in an island province in Papua New Guinea (PNG) surged in August, according to satellite data. The target of these forays is likely timber, at least…
A palm oil executive was secretly filmed describing the payment of bribes to public officials in exchange for logging permits and access to land in Papua New Guinea, in a…
As deforestation and the violation of Indigenous land rights continue to be an ever-present part of the global supply chain, many consumers (and even investors) are calling for transparency on…
JAKARTA — An Indonesian court has sentenced disgraced former fisheries minister Edhy Prabowo to five years in jail in relation to a controversial policy to resume exports of lobster larvae.…
GORONTALO, Indonesia — Merlin Tahir says she doesn’t like to dwell on how much money her family lost after they were forced in 2014 to give up their land for…
U.S. and European banks are invested in oil extraction that threatens the Amazon biome, and their environmental and social risk (ESR) policies aren’t strong enough to prevent its worst impacts,…
Ricardo Salles publicly sided with suspected illegal loggers following a record timber seizure, but claims his interference in the police operation wasn’t a crime
A week after Brazil’s Lower House of Congress approved a bill that exempts environmental impact assessments and licensing for development projects, Brazil’s environment minister, Ricardo Salles, has been named in a probe for alleged illegal exports of Amazon timber, following a Federal Supreme Court ruling on May 19.
Beginning along Honduras’s northeastern coastline and stretching south into its dense interior rainforests lies the Río Plátano Biosphere. Named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982, the Río Plátano is…
An unprecedented lawsuit by an Indigenous group that was once nearly wiped out seeks $8.2 million in damages for continued invasions and destruction of their territory
At least two top Indigenous leaders in Brazil, Sônia Guajajara and Almir Suruí, were recently summoned for questioning by the federal police over allegations of slander against the government of President Jair Bolsonaro.
“It started when some people from the government came around the community telling us that we were illegally occupying the land,” Chhae Kimsrour said in June 2020. “I’ve lived here…
The Amazônia Minada reporting project has revealed 1,265 pending requests to mine in Indigenous territories in Brazil, including restricted lands that are home to isolated tribes.
Scattered in the countryside around the municipalities of Itaituba and Jacareacanga in Brazil’s Pará state, gold mining operations run by the family of a notorious convicted enslaver have have subjected…
Between April and November last year, the government of the Brazilian state of Bahia authorized agribusinesses to collect nearly 2 billion liters (528 million gallons) of water a day.
Manaus, the capital of Brazil’s state of Amazonas, has gained worldwide notoriety for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, first for the collapse of its hospital system in April 2020…
Update: The five activists were released on February 8 after they "signed an agreement not to enter restricted areas without permission," as Reuters reported. On Friday afternoon Kratie provincial environment…
The Roraima state bill legalizing garimpo prospecting, if signed into law by the governor, could put the Yanomami reserve and other Indigenous territories at greater risk of invasion and COVID-19 infection.
This article was co-produced with The Gecko Project. JAKARTA — Indigenous people in Indonesia’s easternmost Papua province are protesting against a company that’s preparing to raze their ancestral forest for…
JAKARTA — A controversial new law that makes sweeping cuts to environmental regulations may also pave the way for greater corruption in Indonesia’s forestry sector, academics have warned. An analysis…
Over the course of 2020, Mongabay published more than 5,200 stories, which collectively had on-site readership of 140 million pageviews. The reach of this content was further amplified by readership…
In Indonesia, the year 2020 has been marked by a number of events and decisions with significant, and likely long-lasting, environmental impacts. Here, we review five of the key stories…
