The rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has remained near a six-year low despite a surge in the number of fires burning in Earth’s largest rainforest, according to data…
PARACAS, Peru — As the sun set over Paracas Bay on April 7, 2023, a beachside hotel flashed with the lights of an electronic music party. Seen from afar, the…
AGUÁN VALLEY, Honduras — In the years after 2018, during periods when the threats subsided and the paramilitary gunmen didn’t show up, nights in the village of Panamá were peaceful.…
YAQUI VALLEY, Mexico – More than a decade after a court ruling that an aqueduct violated the Yaqui tribe’s rights, the Mexican government has done nothing in response, say locals.…
Ryan Killackey, who passed away on October 4, 2024 at the age of 46, was a tireless defender of the natural world, a voice for Indigenous peoples, and a documentarian…
The Brazilian state of Pará has agreed to sell millions of carbon credits to multinational corporations, including Amazon, Bayer and Walmart Foundation, but many challenges loom.
Global collagen and meat industries are continuing to foster rampant deforestation and contribute to the rights violations of Indigenous communities in Paraguay’s Gran Chaco, one of South America’s last climate-critical…
Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Amazonian lowlands were home to several hundred ethnic groups living in tens of thousands of villages with a population estimated at between four…
Every Sunday, Hermindo Vies wakes up early and travels by river from his village, Asunción de Quiquibey, in Bolivia’s Beni department, to the nearest major town to sell his produce.…
PAPANTLA, Veracruz, México — Juan Gerónimo Simbrón, a traditional healer, walks through the tropical forest surrounding his house until he reaches a 100-year-old fig tree. Among the roots, he sets…
At just six years old, Nemonte Nenquimo understood that there were two worlds. The first one was where her oko (a big house where she lived in the rainforest) existed.…
One reason it is possible to be optimistic about the future of the Pan Amazon is that none of the countries must deal with an impending demographic explosion. This was…
Researchers in Brazil are lobbying to register archaeological sites as national monuments, which would confer a new layer of protection status to parts of the rainforest.
About a quarter of Ecuador’s gold exports from small-scale mining in 2023 originated from just three companies: Rockgolden, Rocadorada and Soul Metals. Their exports of $268 million in gold just…
In February this year, a jaguar walked onto Wagner Durán’s family ranch, located near Tortuguero National Park in Costa Rica, and, in an unusual event, killed a calf. This area…
Esmeralda Albañez used to be afraid of the sea. Just thinking about it would conjure up images of darkness, of how deep and unknown it was to her. Coming from…
The environmental risks of dredging include ecosystem disruption, increased erosion, water contamination, and harm to aquatic species such as manatees and river dolphins.
A decade ago, the overfishing of sea cucumber (Isostichopus badionotus) was the center of controversy in Celestún, a small community in the state of Yucatán, Mexico. Extraction of the coveted…
The corals of the Marietas Islands, a pair of small islands in Mexico’s Pacific Ocean, have survived record-high temperatures and uncontrolled tourism triggered by the sudden international fame of “the…
In 2019, the world watched in horror as images of the Amazon rainforest ablaze flooded the news. Over 70,000 wildfires raged uncontrollably, killing wildlife, filling hospitals with patients struggling to…
The proposed reconstruction of Brazil’s BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) highway (Figure 1) needs a new environmental impact assessment (EIA). No rational decision can be made on going ahead with this project…
Indigenous leaders gathered at New York Climate Week to call on global leaders to address the unprecedented drought and wildfire crisis in the Amazon Rainforest.
Military police in Brazil last week killed an Indigenous Guarani Kaiowá man and wounded several others during altercations over contested land, which the communities have been trying to take formal…
MAXAKALI INDIGENOUS LAND, Brazil — Instead of cattle, the Indigenous. And nothing else changes in the landscape as soon as one crosses the sign announcing the entrance to the Maxakali…
Infrastructure investments, agricultural production systems, land speculation and the exploitation of mineral resources have all been identified as drivers of deforestation and hydrological degradation in the Pan Amazon. These forces…
MEXICO CITY — A mining company trying to launch a controversial phosphate project in Mexican waters has won a lawsuit against the country claiming officials wrongfully rejected its environmental permits,…
On September 14, Brazil’s National Department of Transportation Infrastructure (DNIT) submitted to the Federal Regional Court of the 1st Region (TRF1) a consultancy report that DNIT had contracted from Engespro…
Permits granted for the construction of an industrial mining project in northern Colombia are raising concerns among residents and conservationists, who say they might lose their food and drinking water…
Plastic waste is a global problem, and the food sector is one of its main drivers. It only takes a quick visit to a supermarket to realize this: With the…
A pioneering law under attack The world’s governments have long acknowledged the need to halt and reverse the loss of the planet’s precious forests, not least because of the contribution…
A new report links Brazil's top meatpackers — JBS, Marfrig and Minerva — to widespread deforestation across the Pantanal, Amazon and Cerrado; of five farms investigated between October 2023 and February 2024, 86% of the destruction occurred in the Pantanal.
During a field trip in May 2023 to the Cubatão mangroves in the Brazilian state of São Paulo, a cluster of white flowers puzzled biologists Geraldo Eysink and Edmar Hatamura.…
