Misinformation and blame spread concerning sources of Amazon fires
While conservationists point to the link between environmental deregulation and the Amazon fires, one ruralist farmer claims Brazil’s National Park Service set the blazes.
Land Rights News
Bolsonaro expresses ‘love’ for Amazon as it burns, offers no policy shift
Critics link this year’s Amazon fires, especially in protected forests, to illegal deforesters emboldened by rightist government’s lax enforcement.
Indonesia picks coal and oil heartland as site of new capital city
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s new capital city will sit at the nexus of the country’s coal and oil hubs in eastern Borneo, the president revealed on Aug. 26. President Joko Widodo,…
Forests and forest communities critical to climate change solutions
How we use the planet’s land, including forests, will make a huge difference in determining the path of climate change in the future, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate…
Red flags as Indonesia eyes relocating its capital city to Borneo
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s proposed new capital city on the island of Borneo will be built in just five years and without the need to raze any protected rainforest, a government…
New film reveals at-risk ‘uncontacted’ Awá tribe in Brazilian Amazon
Documentary offers a glimpse of the uncontacted Awá Guajá indigenous group, who live in the highly threatened Araribóia reserve in Brazil’s Maranhão state.
Deforestation drops in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, but risks remain: experts
Satellite imaging detects 9.3 percent decline in deforestation, a reduction totaling 1,163 hectares in the Mata Atlântica biome between 2017 and 2018.
Travelogue: Visiting an indigenous rainforest tribe in Borneo (Insider)
In 2007, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) launched the Heart of Borneo, an initiative that aimed to conserve 22 million hectares (54 million acres) in the transboundary area…
Authorities investigate murder of indigenous leader in Brazilian Amazon
Federal and state investigators are looking into the knifing death of Emyra Wajãpi and the alleged invasion of Wajãpi territory by heavily armed miners.
In Madagascar, villagers oppose plans for a dam that would inundate their land
SAHANIVOTRY COMMUNE, Madagascar — The village of Farihitsara in Madagascar’s central highlands was littered with straw from the rice harvest when Mongabay visited in May. But people weren’t able to…
Yanomami Amazon reserve invaded by 20,000 miners; Bolsonaro fails to act
The anti-indigenous policies of the Bolsonaro government appear to be emboldening well-funded illegal mining operations in Northern Brazil. To date, law enforcement has not stepped in.
On a Philippine island, indigenous groups take the fight to big palm oil
The sandy path from the village of bamboo houses winds down through the coconut palms, which gives way to mangroves growing along the muddy shoreline. The seven elders inspect their…
Amazon REDD+ scheme side-steps land rights to reward small forest producers
Study finds pros and cons in a REDD+ carbon credit scheme in the Brazilian Amazon that rewards small-scale ecosystem service providers in local communities.
Madagascar mine ignites protests, community division
FIANARANTSOA, Madagascar — Last month, a Madagascar court ended a six-week saga for people in the southwestern village of Benetse, near the city of Toliara. Nine members of the community…
An Indonesian forest community grapples with the arrival of the outside world
DOROGOT, Indonesia — Toikot rises as the golden light of dawn begins to shine on the heavy mist that cloaks the rainforest canopy outside his home in Indonesia's Siberut Island.…
Indigenous Iban community defends rainforests, but awaits lands rights recognition
The island of Borneo is renowned by scientists for its biological bounty. From orangutans to pygmy elephants to towering dipterocarp trees, the forests of the world's third largest island are…
Brazil’s Bolsonaro presses anti-indigenous agenda; resistance surges
The president’s coercive methods are meeting with fierce opposition from NGOs, indigenous groups, scientists, Brazil’s Congress, high court and the international community.
Fire, cattle, cocaine: Deforestation spikes in Guatemalan national park
A patrol of eleven men is hiking along a rough jungle trail spotted with the blackened foliage of several small brush fires. Nearby trees, smoke-stained at their bottoms but still…
Dam in Ethiopia has wiped out indigenous livelihoods, report finds
Scientists call it flood-retreat agriculture. As a swollen river blankets a dry plain and then recedes, it replenishes the thin soil with enough nutrients to sprout grass for cattle and…
Brazil guts environmental agencies, clears way for unchecked deforestation
The Brazilian government’s environmental agency, IBAMA, has so far this year imposed the lowest number of fines for illegal deforestation in at least 11 years, while the country’s other leading…
Brazil’s Congress reverses Bolsonaro, restores Funai’s land demarcation powers
Brazil’s National Congress has overturned changes set by far-right President Jair Bolsonaro that transferred the decision-making power of indigenous reserves demarcation to the Ministry of Agriculture. The move gives that…
The Sateré-Mawé move to reclaim Amazon ancestral lands from invaders
The indigenous group is re-occupying its ancestral lands on Brazil’s Mariaquã River, but an outsider is trying to appropriate those lands by likely fraudulent means, inviting conflict.
‘We come from the earth’: Q&A with Goldman Prize winner Alfred Brownell
Following the end of its civil war in the summer of 2003, Liberia became a test case for how foreign investment in extracting natural resources could quickly improve people’s lives.…
Altered forests threaten sustainability of subsistence hunting
The way humans have changed the forests of Central and South America may be making it impossible for subsistence hunters to continue their way of life, according to two conservation…
Former Brazilian enviro ministers blast Bolsonaro environmental assaults
Eight past environmental ministers assail policies. Amazon Fund and 334 Brazilian parks at risk; sweeping illegal deforestation amnesties head to approval.
‘Resisting to exist’: Indigenous women unite against Brazil’s far-right president
Indigenous women have a long leadership tradition in the Amazon and across Brazil, but perhaps never more so than since the election of Jair Bolsonaro, whose policies they oppose.
As Indonesia mulls moving the capital, indigenous groups fear another land grab
JAKARTA — In the wake of Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s announcement that he intends to move the nation’s capital from Jakarta, some have expressed concerns that the plan could result…
On the island of Java, a social forestry scheme creates jobs at home
KALIBIRU, Indonesia — For years, Parjan hoped his community might one day gain title to the Menoreh Hills. The green valley northwest of the Javan city of Yogyakarta was tilled…
UK supermarkets implicated in Amazon deforestation supply chain: report
Sainsbury’s, Asda, Morrisons and Lidl accused of buying corned beef sourced from Brazilian supplier JBS, a firm notorious for large-scale corruption and Amazon deforestation.
Wariness over Indonesian president’s vow to get tough on land disputes
JAKARTA — In the space of a few days, Indonesian President Joko Widodo has vowed to side with local communities in their disputes over land with large companies — yet…
Pressure mounts on EU to curb Brazilian deforestation, human rights abuses
A new report urges the EU — a major Brazilian trading partner — to pressure the Bolsonaro government to end its regressive indigenous and environmental policies.
’Unprecedented’ loss of biodiversity threatens humanity, report finds
Life on this planet, in all its wide diversity, is disappearing more quickly now than it has at any time in human history, and some 1 million species of plants…
Special series
Forest Trackers
- 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
- Fires rip through Indigenous territories in Brazilian Amazon
Oceans
- Global tracking study reveals marine megafauna hotspots lie largely unprotected
- First-ever assessment highlights threats to Atlantic cold-water corals
- Major coral loss in Vietnam’s first marine protected area: Study
- When heat waves hit, clownfish shrink to survive, study finds
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
- Indigenous Amazonians win landmark ruling against mercury pollution in Colombia
- Indigenous Bajo suffer child deaths & toxic sludge amid green energy push
- ‘Colombia’s Amazon peoples provide solutions’: Interview with José Homero Mutumbajoy
- Should mining companies consider no-go zones where isolated Indigenous peoples live? (Commentary)
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
