Critical minerals drive legalization of mining on Amazon Indigenous lands
Lawmakers in Brazil can scrap a 30-year-old protection to meet global demand for gold and other minerals.
Deforestation News
Beyond deforestation: redesigning how we protect and value tropical forests (analysis)
Heading into COP30, where tropical forests are set to be a central theme, it seemed worth looking today’s trajectories a little further forward and imagine where they might lead. Part…
What might lie ahead for tropical forests (analysis)
Heading into COP30, where tropical forests are set to be a central theme, it seemed worth attempting a thought experiment: to trace today’s trajectories a little further forward and imagine…
Heading into COP, Brazil’s Amazon deforestation rate is falling. What about fires?
As the world’s attention turns toward COP30 in Belém next month, the story of Brazil’s Amazon is shifting—though not quite in a straightforward way. According to the government’s satellite-based monitoring…
Ousted Nepal gov’t cleared easier path for controversial cable cars, documents show
KATHMANDU — Nepal’s outgoing government, toppled by two days of nationwide Gen Z protests, granted national priority status to six commercial cable car projects, according to documents released by the…
Belém faces its social and natural demons as host to COP30
Once a major river city, Belém turned its back on the water, leaving 40% of its urban area vulnerable to floods.
Drax pellet mill wins appeal to raise pollution limits in small Mississippi town
In April 2025, the town of Gloster, Mississippi, population 858, won a significant battle against the giant global wood pellet maker Drax, when the permitting board of the Mississippi Department…
Nickel mining damage near UNESCO site stirs outrage in southern Philippines
MINDANAO, Philippines — A nickel mining project in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao is facing renewed calls for closure after a recent government inspection revealed that strip mining there…
Forest Declaration Assessment reveals a forest paradox
The world’s forests tell two stories at once. Even as chainsaws advance, new trees are rising in their wake. More than 11 million hectares of tropical moist forest—an area roughly…
Deforestation and disease spread as Nicaragua ignores illegal cattle ranching
Illegal cattle ranching has torn through Nicaragua’s rainforests in recent years, supplying a growing international market for meat despite calls for better oversight of the industry. Now, the country is…
Heat surges put preserved Amazon areas at high risk, study says
Intact forests struggle to escape climate degradation, exposing new impacts coming from increasingly warming temperatures.
A closer look at Peru’s Amazon reveals new mining trends, deforestation
For years, gold mining has been one of Peru’s most pressing environmental challenges, with illegal operations clearing the Amazon Rainforest and polluting rivers with chemicals. The industry continues to grow,…
Deforestation for soy continues in Brazilian Cerrado despite EUDR looming
Agricultural producers in Brazil’s Cerrado savanna continue to clear land for soy, which puts them in breach of the European Union’s upcoming antideforestation law, or EUDR, a new investigation shows.…
New cluster of Tapanuli orangutans discovered in Sumatra peat swamp
CENTRAL TAPANULI, Indonesia — Since it was first described by scientists in 2017, the Tapanuli orangutan, one of the world’s rarest great apes, was believed to live only in the…
Indigenous monitoring project helps protect isolated peoples in Colombia’s Amazon
In Colombia’s Amazon, two communities have worked for more than a decade to guard their territory and to protect the right of other Indigenous peoples to remain isolated. The community…
Nickel mining threatens Raja Ampat ecosystems, communities & conservation: Report
JAKARTA — In a new report, marine activists are demanding restoration efforts from nickel miners and the Indonesian government for affected areas of Raja Ampat while also urging authorities to…
Putumayo’s women guardians defend land and culture amid Colombia’s deforestation
The Sibundoy Valley in Putumayo, southwestern Colombia, is an ancestral territory inhabited by two sister ethnic groups: the Kamëntšá and the Inga, descendants of the Peruvian Incas. It is also…
In Indonesia’s Mentawai Islands, youths blend ancestral and world faiths to protect forests
Off the western coast of Sumatra, the Mentawai Islands rise from the Indian Ocean in a patchwork of emerald forests and winding rivers. The canopy shelters endemic macaques and gibbons,…
Copper rush pushes Vale to ramp up mining near Amazonian protected areas
The metal needed in electric cars and solar panels comes with a high cost for Amazonian communities.
Biodiversity loss due to land use change could be highly underestimated: Study
A survey of Colombian birdlife, which evolved over more than a decade into the world’s largest-ever ornithological study, has found that clearing forests to create new pastures is causing as…
Peru considers stripping protections for Indigenous people and their territories
Peru is on the verge of rolling back several longstanding protections for Indigenous people and their territories, critics warn. Several bills working their way through Congress would loosen restrictions for…
IUCN downgrades guiña threat status, prompting conservation warning
The guiña, a small cat species found only in Chile and northern Argentina, has just been reclassified as of least concern by the IUCN. Until recently it was listed as…
Amazon countries use variety of legal tools to fight environmental crime
All the Pan Amazon nations have legal systems based on Civil (Napoleonic) Law, where courts follow rules established by ‘codes’, which are statutory rulebooks that describe specific infractions and their…
A cacao rush drives ‘alarming’ deforestation in Liberia
A rush to plant cacao in southeastern Liberia is destroying large tracts of rainforest. According to satellite data as well as interviews with local environmental advocates and government officials, the…
MPs across Latin America unite to stop fossil fuels in the Amazon
BOGOTÁ, Colombia and SÃO PAULO, Brazil — On Oct. 7 in Brazil’s National Congress in Brasília, lawmakers, Indigenous leaders and civil society representatives gathered to present a global parliamentary investigation…
New road in Peruvian Amazon sparks fear of invasion among Indigenous Shawi
Shawi Nation leaders ask if the road is a mere gateway for mining companies set to enter their territory.
RSPO sparks NGO outrage for dismissing complaint over alleged ‘shadow companies’
JAKARTA — A major palm oil producer linked through supplier-reported mill lists to global brands like General Mills and PepsiCo has escaped sanction for allegedly concealing a web of “shadow…
Protected areas hit hard as Mekong countries’ forest cover shrank in 2024
BANGKOK — The Mekong countries of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam lost a combined area of tree cover of nearly a million hectares in 2024, or an area almost…
In the Guyana Shield, the fight against deforestation is not ambitious enough
The three Guiana Shield countries do not suffer from high deforestation levels, which should render their commitments to eradicate deforestation more credible. Nonetheless, some government officials continue to promote conventional…
There’s far less land available for reforestation than we think, study finds
Josep “Pep” Canadell, executive director of the Global Carbon Project, says he believes countries large and small need to think twice before pledging to collectively plant billions of trees as…
Just as Raja Ampat fetches UNESCO Biosphere Reserve title, nickel mining looms
JAKARTA — Even as UNESCO hails Raja Ampat as a global conservation model, nickel mining threatens to carve up its forests and coral reefs. On Sept. 27, UNESCO designated 26…
Indonesia aims to redraw UNESCO site boundaries to allow geothermal projects
JAKARTA — Indonesia is seeking to redraw the boundaries of a UNESCO World Heritage rainforest to pave the way for geothermal projects — part of its renewable energy push but…
Special series
Forest Trackers
- Satellite data show burst of deforestation in Myanmar rare earth mining hotspots
- 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
Oceans
- Norway’s proposal to double krill harvests raises tension at Antarctic conservation summit
- Nickel mining threatens Raja Ampat ecosystems, communities & conservation: Report
- Post-Blob, California’s kelp crisis isn’t going away
- Global tracking study reveals marine megafauna hotspots lie largely unprotected
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
- Lithium mining may threaten a precious resource — water: Voices from the land (commentary)
- Indigenous guardians successfully keep extractives out of Ecuador’s Amazon forests
- Amid Venezuela’s illegal gold heist are armed groups, gangs & elites, report says
- Indigenous women in Peru use technology to protect Amazon forests
Endangered Environmentalists
- Environmental & rights activists flee and hide as M23 captures DRC’s cities
- 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
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
