JAKARTA — Excavators have begun clearing land in the Indonesian region of Papua in what’s been described as the largest deforestation undertaking in the world. A total of 2 million…
Two years since global policymakers agreed on the concept of protecting 30% of the world’s land and waters by 2030, there’s still little clarity on how achieving this goal will…
KALINGA, Philippines — On the mountainsides flanking the mighty Chico River in the northern Philippines’ Kalinga province, residents of once tight-knit villages have drifted apart in recent years. Hearty greetings…
U.S. government agencies responsible for handing out conservation grants overseas still aren’t doing enough to protect human rights, according to an internal review. The review was commissioned by the U.S.…
SOUTH COTABATO, Philippines — On a sunny Wednesday in August, police officer Loreto Malon and a subordinate were riding their motorcycles in the mountain mining village of Ned on their…
Reports show it failed (or sabotaged) airspace control and food deliveries to the Indigenous people, who suffer from malnutrition as a result of mercury contamination from illegal mining.
During the second week of October 2023, in northern Chile’s Coquimbo, Yasna Silva used social media to ask for help. She and her entire family had been sued by the…
In 2022, the government of Tanzania began forcibly evicting thousands of Indigenous Maasai from 1,500 square kilometers, nearly 600 square miles, of their ancestral land to make way for elite…
The Indigenous Semai tribe in Malaysia have achieved a significant legal victory in their long-running battle to protect their ancestral land from the impacts of a hydroelectric dam project. The…
Ten years ago, four Indigenous Asháninka environmental defenders were murdered in the forests near their community of Saweto in Peru’s Amazon Ucayali region. In 2023, a court in Pucallpa found…
Experts say the outlook for the next months is even worse, putting researchers on alert for the possibility of Amazon’s worst drought ever.
PHNOM PENH — Carbon credit certifying agency Verra announced on Sept. 10 that it has lifted the suspension of the Southern Cardamom REDD+ project in Cambodia following a roughly 14-month review…
In January 2023, two men mysteriously disappear after speaking out against pollution from a controversial iron ore mine in Michoacán, Mexico. The following March, climate change protesters in Austria and…
YAQUI VALLEY, Mexico — In June, residents of communities along the Yaqui River found various dead tilapia, carp and catfish floating on the banks of the river. According to Guadalupe…
Weeks before Category 5 Tropical Cyclone Harold loomed over the Vanuatu islands in 2020, Indigenous ni-Vanuatu people received nature’s warning call. Locals secured their thatched roofs and baked taro and…
Following regulatory changes and heavier enforcement of the gold trade, the Amazonian municipality of Itaituba, notorious as Brazil’s illegal gold capital, is struggling to deal with the new restrictions.
In a defining moment for the rights of Indigenous peoples in Peru, 37 land titles were secured in the Amazon in record time, from June 2023 to May 2024. This…
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,…
River levels in parts of the Brazilian Amazon are even lower than in 2023, when the region experienced its worst drought.
STUNG TRENG, Cambodia — Rain poured down in torrential sheets as Ouk Mao guided reporters through the winding dirt tracks that were, in August, rutted with deep trenches of mud and…
The Forest Stewardship Council has suspended its certification of a controversial logging company in the Peruvian Amazon accused of encroaching on the traditional territory of the Mashco Piro, an Indigenous group…
That amounts to 1.5 metric tons of the precious metal in 2023, sourced from wildcat mines known as garimpos, which have a long history of illegality and opaqueness.
Fire outbreaks are setting records all over Brazil, with flames burning the Amazon, the Cerrado, the Pantanal and the São Paulo state.
SIPAHUTAR, Indonesia — On the Indonesian island of Sumatra lives a man named Efron Simanjuntak. With a stern face and thick, graying mustache, he roams the forests near the village…
With the past 10 years, the hottest on record, and four days in July the hottest ever recorded, the climate emergency is coming ever more into focus. Directly linked to…
As he carves through dense jungle foliage with a sharpened sickle, 65-year-old Eliezer Mendez Díaz scours for building materials. He plans to make a sacred altar for the Maya rain…
In 2004, nomadic herders in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert faced a daunting prospect. One of the world’s largest copper-gold mines, Oyu Tolgoi, was settling in, and herder communities were being forced…
Ucayali Basin and the Camisea Megacampo Further south in Peru, the Ucayali Basin occupies a broad stretch of the Andean foothills and adjacent piedmont. It is a foreland basin located…
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…
Local and Indigenous communities in Suriname are speaking out about a new carbon credit trading scheme that they say the government pushed through without consulting them. They’re worried they’ve been…
It’s been a little over a decade since China launched its Belt and Road Initiative, a global program to improve relations with Latin America and other developing regions through trillions…
Ida Auris Arango remembers the day in 2023 when she stumbled upon the Andean cat and its young on the mountainside. While shepherding her alpacas, she heard her dog barking…
