To hear an audio version of this article, listen here: Technology isn’t always a practical solution for Indigenous communities fighting for their land rights. Some technology requires internet access, which…
JAKARTA — An Indonesian court has upheld a landmark 2017 ruling that all plantation data and maps in the country must be made publicly available — a ruling that the…
A project by the EcoVision Lab at ETH Zurich expects to have every quarter of the tropics mapped and classified by carbon stock by the end of the year, providing…
JAKARTA — A litany of loopholes and violations have undercut the Indonesian government’s forest protection policies, allowing oil palm companies to continue obtaining licenses to clear rainforests for plantations, according…
In 2012, researchers described a teensy, aspirin-sized chameleon, Brookesia nana, from a thin slice of rainforest in northern Madagascar. The species, which experts believe is the smallest reptile in the world, grabbed plenty…
JAKARTA — A government review has identified a massive area of forest in Indonesia’s West Papua province that has been earmarked for oil palm plantations but that can still be…
The Kalunga — 39 quilombola communities, the descendants of runaway slaves — have united with international funders to use high-tech georeferencing to catalog their traditional lands and natural resources in Brazil.
In a newly released map, the coastal waters of the eight main Hawaiian islands are alight with color. Blue, turquoise, green, yellow, orange and red tinge the islands’ perimeters, each…
The world’s protected areas are largely a jumble of disjointed refuges, separated from each other by the encroachment of human impacts, a recent study has found. Fewer than 10% of…
JAKARTA — Suppliers to Indonesia’s biggest producer of pulpwood for paper cleared an area of carbon-rich peatland 10 times the size of New York City’s Central Park, in possible violation…
MANILA — When reports came out that the microsatellite Diwata-1 of the Philippines had re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere on April 6, ending its mission, it made headlines for being the…
The Land Portal Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in the Netherlands, recently released what it’s calling “the largest global database of land and property rights projects.” In around a decade…
JAKARTA — A court in Indonesia has ordered the government to publish detailed maps of oil palm plantations in the country’s easternmost Papua region, an area increasingly targeted by the…
MANILA — The European Union and the Philippine government are close to sealing a partnership that will provide free, open and unlimited access to raw Earth observation data to monitor…
Rare plant species are far more likely to go extinct than common species, yet we know surprisingly little about global species abundance. Most efforts to quantify species abundance focus on…
Behind the sand dunes of the Dampier Peninsula, in the far west of the Kimberley region of Australia, the landscape is alive, the air filled with the sound of great…
In a recently published study, Canadian researchers monitored the fine-scale movements of GPS-tagged fishers (Pekania pennanti), a member of the weasel family, across a terrain of over 700 protected areas…
Spanning nearly 3 million hectares (7.4 million acres) along the coast, Ecuador’s Chocó region is known as a biodiversity hotspot with high levels of endemism, among the richest region for…
Commercial agriculture drives some 40 percent of deforestation in the tropics, as suppliers clear forest to plant soy, oil palm, rubber, and cacao or to raise beef cattle. More than…
In mid-May Chile finalized an agreement to publicly share proprietary data from its satellite system for monitoring fishing boats, known as a Vessel Monitoring System. The country will share the…
JAKARTA — Many of the fishing vessels operating in Indonesia’s waters at night do so undetected, masking what could be illegal fishing on a massive scale, according to a new…
Faster and cheaper Surveying and studying coral takes a lot of work. It’s usually done manually, which requires wet suits and air tanks and SCUBA gear and people. But it’s…
Remember that 3-meter (17-foot) pregnant Burmese python recently captured by wildlife authorities in southern Florida? These snakes, invasive to North America and destructive to native wildlife, are cryptic in both…
This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center. DARIÉN GAP, Panama — There is a land at the center of the Americas that is said to remain in…
Sophie Chao is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Sydney, whose work focuses on the impacts of agribusiness on the peoples and environments of the Asia-Pacific and Melanesia…
The big cats of Java haven’t had it easy. First to vanish was the Sunda clouded leopard, a small species that today survives only on Borneo and Sumatra. Next to…
Human-dominated mangroves are far from what is considered an ideal environment for otters. And yet an estuarine island on India’s western coast is home to a thriving population of the…
Researchers and forest managers working to record and reduce the rapid loss of forests are now armed with a new tool to monitor vegetation across the globe. In December 2018,…
Spatial data from satellites are now fine-scale enough to provide land use and vegetation cover information at the level of individual farms. An international team of researchers examined the potential…
CHENNAI, India — In a small fishing hamlet, one of thousands dotting India’s 7,500-kilometer (4,660-mile) coastline, a community leader opens his smartphone and searches his contacts for “Map Saravanan” to…
