JAKARTA — Prosecutors in Indonesia have arrested a prominent economist in an ongoing investigation into why the world’s top producer of palm oil is suffering a domestic shortage of cooking…
Trade in endangered species online is an increasingly popular avenue for traders and traffickers. A recent review, published in the journal Oryx, highlights a related trend: lesser-known species that have…
Smelters and manufacturers that use coltan, tin and tungsten in cars, mobile devices and other electronics can't be sure the minerals have been extracted without using children or forced…
JAKARTA — The office of the Indonesian ombudsman says it has found indications of maladministration in the government’s decision to revoke hundreds of logging, plantation and mining permits across the…
California Attorney General Rob Bonta has announced that his department will be undertaking a first-of-its-kind investigation to determine the role that the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries have played in…
JAKARTA — A court in Jakarta has rejected a lawsuit by a remote island community against a gold-mining operation that overlaps onto their villages, in a ruling deemed “problematic” by…
JAKARTA — Indonesian coal mining company Bayan Resources has challenged the government's decision to revoke its permits and effectively shrink its concession area. The legal challenge is the latest in…
How do you justify tearing down the world’s greatest rainforest for agribusiness? Pretend it’s not a rainforest. That appears to be the thinking behind a bill introduced into Brazil’s lower…
Legal restrictions meant to protect Brazil’s Indigenous territories from outside threats are failing to deter illegal deforestation and cattle ranching, fueling fears for the safety of uncontacted and isolated Indigenous…
Activists and an opposition lawmaker in the Malaysian state of Pahang have demanded government accountability after reports that just 5% of forest reserves cleared to make way for plantations have…
Known only by his identity code, ID#35 was the last individual of a doomed subpopulation of freshwater Irrawaddy dolphins (Orcaella brevirostris). He was the sole occupant of a deep pool…
MAKOKOU, Gabon — In August 2020, the Massaha community in northeastern Gabon made a formal request to the government to declassify a logging concession allocated to a Chinese company, Transport…
SUMENEP, Indonesia — A coal barge that ran aground in the sea off the Indonesian island of Java remains stuck there, having already spilled much of its cargo and disrupting…
Myanmar’s military-led regime exported more than $190 million worth of timber in 2021, including to countries with active sanctions on the country’s state-controlled timber monopoly, according to a recent report…
Papua New Guinea’s environment minister has imposed a moratorium on new voluntary carbon credit schemes to give the government time to create a regulatory framework for future and existing deals.…
Amid lockdowns, travel restrictions and wet market closures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, wildlife traders shifted their business online. A trade once dominated by face-to-face interactions now sees sellers and…
Over the past 20 years, more than $1 billion has been spent on orangutan conservation. Yet all three species of orangutan are currently classified as critically endangered and continue to…
In early February, wildlife rangers in the remote northern forests of West Africa’s Republic of Benin became some of the most recent victims of the Sahel’s long-running Islamist insurgency when…
The central coast of Peru is cleaning up after a catastrophe due to a large oil spill on Jan. 15, 2022. The environmental emergency occurred after a pipe ruptured between…
“We are hopeful, we never gave up on our goal, to get our house back,” says Heber do Prado Carneiro. He and his wife, Vanessa Honorato, are Caiçaras, members of…
In November 2018, Earthsight published an in-depth investigation in collaboration with Mongabay into the Tanah Merah oil palm project in Papua, on the Indonesian half of the island of New…
As thousands of people protested in Brazil’s capital against a “death package” of bills deemed anti-environmental and anti-Indigenous, the lower house of Congress agreed to fast-track one of those bills,…
Lazarus Nwobegai, who holds a government permit to harvest timber around Mount Cameroon National Park, knows perfectly well it's illegal to hunt the chimpanzees and other threatened primates that live…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s former fisheries minister has had his jail sentence for corruption slashed by nearly half after an appeals court ruled that he had “done good work” while in…
NATUNA, Indonesia — A fishing vessel seized by authorities in Indonesia for a zoning violation was doing more than just fishing out of bounds, local fishers allege: it may have…
MALANG, Indonesia — It was a January day in Malang, a city on the island of Java, and restaurateur Bobby was surprised to find the officers from the municipal public…
In January 2019, authorities in Uganda intercepted a shipment of nearly 4 tons of elephant ivory and pangolin scales on its way to the capital, Kampala, from the neighboring Democratic…
Since October 2020, Thailand's national parks authority has demolished or ordered the demolition of more than 20 luxury mansions, resorts and tourist hotels illegally built in national parks throughout the…
Years of artisanal mining along the Madre de Dios River and its tributaries have left their marks, both seen and unseen. Miners, swarming to the region in a modern-day goldrush,…
ABUJA, Nigeria — On Feb. 3, the Trinity Spirit, a floating production, storage and offloading vessel, caught fire off the coast of Nigeria. Seven of 10 crew members were killed.…
