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…
Osvalinda Alves Pereira is the first Brazilian to win the prestigious Edelstam Prize. As a civil rights defender, and at great risk to herself, Osvalinda is resisting criminals illegally harvesting Amazon timber.
Timber linked to one of Russia’s largest illegal logging scandals has entered the E.U. despite rules meant to tackle the illicit trade, according to a new report. The report, titled…
JAKARTA — Two major pulp and paper producers associated with widespread deforestation and land conflicts in Indonesia may also have skimped on $168 million in taxes through a web of…
Rising across remote stretches of southeast Cambodia, the Cardamom Mountains harbor dense tropical rainforest, much of it native growth carpeting the range’s wet slopes. Due to its remoteness, the vast…
JAKARTA — The arrest of Indonesia’s fisheries minister on bribery charges has prompted a freeze on exports of lobster larvae, but a top official has indicated this is unlikely to…
JAKARTA — Authorities in Indonesia have arrested the country’s fisheries minister on charges of corruption related to a controversial policy to resume exports of baby lobsters. Agents from the Corruption…
On November 5, 2015 an iron ore mine tailings dam owned by Samarco, a joint venture of Vale and BHP Billiton, two of the world’s largest mining firms, collapsed in Mariana, Brazil. Life along Rio Doce has not been the same since.
JAKARTA — Already facing a pandemic, a corruption scandal, and the revocation of its environmental permit, an embattled coal-fired power plant on the Indonesian island of Java faces a new…
In June, three environmental defenders from the remote island of Nende celebrated their acquittal from arson charges, along with the many supporters who had attended their trial. But the later…
JAKARTA — A corruption scandal now unfurling in Indonesian Borneo is shedding light on how high-level bribery in infrastructure projects poses long-term threats to the community and the environment. The…
In April, Brazil’s environment minister urged Pres. Bolsonaro to “run the cattle,” using the nation’s focus on COVID-19 as a diversion to dismantle environmental rule of law; some new executive acts appear to do just that.
17 former Brazilian Finance ministers and Central Bank presidents reject Jair Bolsonaro’s environmental policies, urging end to Amazon deforestation and adoption of economic policies addressing climate change.
JAKARTA — Activists have called on the Indonesian authorities to probe the finances of the Korindo Group, a privately owned conglomerate, in the wake of an investigation that exposed a $22…
(Baca dalam Bahasa Indonesia.) Part 1: ‘Maybe they didn’t expect us to find it’ In April 2019, an Indonesian delegate stepped onto the stage at a conference hosted by Interpol,…
IJARE, Nigeria — The silver blade slides through the log laid over a metal bed beneath the sawmill machine. When the careful routine ends, one of the two operators pulls…
The land rights of quilombos — communities of runaway slave descendants —are assured by Brazil’s Constitution; but those rights are now largely disregarded by agribusiness and Bolsonaro.
Brazil’s environmental agency IBAMA has stepped up efforts to fight environmental crimes during the COVID-19 crisis. But the fate of these operations is now uncertain, following the firing of IBAMA’s enforcement director.
BINTUNI BAY, Indonesia — Residents of this part of the island of New Guinea have long known they live atop a coal deposit. Some local people recall hearing traditional stories…
U.S. President Donald Trump’s most senior intelligence official, Richard Grenell, came under scrutiny last month after it emerged he had carried out work for sanctioned Moldovan oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc. Mongabay…
JAKARTA — A court in Indonesia has convicted a former official and a contractor for their roles in a corruption case centered on a $5.3 million road project in Papua…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. KOKOE, Indonesia — For years, this eastern Indonesian village of fishermen and seaweed farmers simmered with anger over the pollution of its…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. A new company has begun clearing rainforest in an area of Indonesia’s easternmost Papua province earmarked to become the world’s largest oil…
The peatlands of the Congo Basin are home to more than just massive carbon stocks and some of our closest — and most threatened — relatives in the animal kingdom,…
Attacks on indigenous Kaiowá communities in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul at the start of the year have highlighted a long-running campaign of persecution and growing violence against the group.
The murder of Sister Dorothy in 2005, and resulting international outrage, helped curb violence in Brazil for a time, but crimes against landless peasants and activists are on the rise.
Nearly 4,000 requests have been submitted for mining-related activities on 31 indigenous reserves and 17 protected areas in Brazil, according to recently obtained data from the nongovernmental Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA) and the National Mining Agency.
The construction of the controversial Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in the Brazilian Amazon is the narrative engine that drives Sequestrada, the first full-length film by U.S. cinematographer and sociologist Sabrina McCormick.
DURBAN, South Africa — Lee White was appointed minister of water and forests, the sea and the environment, in charge of sustainable development objectives and the land use planning for…
