Belém faces its social and natural demons as host to COP30
Once a major river city, Belém turned its back on the water, leaving 40% of its urban area vulnerable to floods.
Population News
Amid challenges, Nepal plans its latest tiger & rhino counts
KATHMANDU — After delays, Nepal is set to conduct its tiger survey and rhino count starting between December and March next year. The Department of National Parks and…
Park guardians or destroyers? Study dissects 2 narratives of DRC’s Indigenous Batwa
Long celebrated by some NGOs and Indigenous rights activists as the guardians of the forest, the Batwa of South Kivu had lived inside what is now Kahuzi-Biega National Park (KBNP)…
US funding shortfall halts Nepal’s rhino census, sparks debate over methods
KATHMANDU — In March 2021, dozens of elephants marched through the grasslands and sal (Shorea robusta) forests of Chitwan National Park, their riders armed with GPS devices and notebooks, searching…
The Pan Amazon as a hotspot of cultural diversity
The Amazon is renowned for its cultural diversity, particularly the ethnic diversity of its Indigenous nations, but also the cultural traditions of numerous other distinctive groups that have migrated into…
Collective action, civil disobedience and blockades in the Amazon
The Pan Amazon has a legacy of both violent and non-violent protest that dates from the onset of European colonization, through the Brazilian Empire and the Andean Republics of the…
Conservation and the rise of corporations in the Pan Amazon
The constituency for the conservation of the Pan Amazon is broad-based and diverse. Academics and civil society organizations have been successful in framing conservation of the Amazon as an issue…
The particularities of the migratory movement in Venezuela, the Guianas and Suriname
The modern history of internal migration in Colombia began in a manner that was not unlike the processes organized by the governments in Brazil and the other Andean countries in…
Armed conflict, not Batwa people, at heart of Grauer’s gorillas’ past decline in DRC park
A new study has concluded that the decline in Grauer’s gorillas in a sector of their main stronghold in the Democratic Republic of Congo was the result of the impacts…
Peru’s modern history of migration and settlement
Policies designed to occupy and populate the Peruvian Amazon began about seventy years ago with the construction of a trunk highway connecting Pucallpa on the Ucayali River with Lima. Named…
Bolivia’s internal colonization and its March to the East
In the middle decades of the twentieth century, Bolivian society was profoundly traumatized by the Chaco War and the loss of about thirty per cent of its national territory; before…
Evolution of the Pan Amazon in the post-Jesuit era
Because of their privileged status as a transnational religious institution and their allegiance to the pope, the Jesuits enjoyed considerable autonomy from both the Spanish and Portuguese crowns. This status…
As Nepal counts its snow leopards, even the best estimate is still a guess
KATHMANDU — Scientists and government officials have embarked on the uphill task of coming up with a number, or even just a range, for the population of snow leopards in…
Impacts and legacies of migration across the Pan Amazon
Most of the Pan Amazonian population consists of immigrants or their descendants. They arrived over centuries, motivated by historical events that moulded their self-identity. This diverse assemblage of people represents…
Rural-urban migration across the Amazon Basin
Rural-to-urban migration is a worldwide phenomenon and the Amazon is no exception. Nonetheless, a very large proportion of its immigrants are small farmers who originally came from the High Andes…
Indigenous communities in the Amazon fight for full recognition
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…
The people who make up the Pan-Amazonian melting pot: regional demographics
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…
CHAPTER 6. Culture and demographics defines the Pan Amazon’s present
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…
What drives and halts tropical deforestation? Analyzing 24 years of data
With the climate crisis in full swing, world leaders have made pledges to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030. In a new meta-analysis, researchers synthesized the findings of 320…
Can community payments with no strings attached benefit biodiversity?
Hundreds of millions of people around the world live in spots considered critical for the protection of wildlife. More than three-quarters of these populations exist in less-industrialized countries, where poverty…
Human migration to Nepal’s tiger capital adds to conservation challenges
KATHMANDU — The B.P. Koirala Memorial Cancer Hospital in Nepal’s central Bharatpur city, Chitwan District, bustles as patients, most of them from the country’s northern hilly areas, line up for…
Changing circumstances turn ‘sustainable communities’ into deforestation drivers: Study
Subsistence communities, those who live off the forest and lead largely sustainable lifestyles, can actually become drivers of forest loss and degradation under certain circumstances, according to a new study.…
Fears for academic freedom as Indonesia doubles down on scientists’ ban
JAKARTA — Indonesian academics have called out the government for banning five foreign scientists after they questioned official claims of an increase in the country’s orangutan population, warning that the…
Cattle boom in Brazil’s Acre spells doom for Amazon rainforest, activists warn
With about 80% of its forests still untouched, Acre is one of Brazil’s least-deforested Amazonian states. Bordered by Peru on the west, it represents just 1.7% of Brazil’s huge land…
When North America locked down, birds filled the gap left by people
An analysis of bird sightings in Canada and the U.S. showed that many North American species, from mighty eagles to diminutive hummingbirds, gained ground during COVID-19 lockdowns as humans sheltered…
As populations grow, how will thirsty cities survive their drier futures?
Water-sensitive urban design (WSUD), a holistic sustainable approach to water management, could give the world’s cities a viable means of dealing with the climatic shocks ahead. Cape Town and Singapore point the way.
Building back Miami’s Biscayne Bay: Do natural solutions hold hope?
MIAMI — Along the Miami shoreline, luxury high-rises and condominiums run parallel to Biscayne Bay, one of South Florida’s most biodiverse ecosystems, characterized by its once abundant coral reefs, seagrass…
Deforestation intensifies in northern DRC protected areas
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) contains the bulk of Africa’s humid rainforest. But forests that were once dense, impenetrable and continuous are increasingly fractured by deforestation. New satellite…
Corals are struggling, but they’re too abundant to go extinct, study says
A new study that counted half a trillion coral colonies between Indonesia and French Polynesia found that most corals are not in imminent danger of being wiped off the planet. Desolate reefs…
David Attenborough’s ‘witness statement’ for the planet (commentary)
David Attenborough’s latest nature documentary on Netflix may be his greatest yet. Apparently stung by criticism about the false impressions his documentaries have provided on the state of our natural…
The best news of 2020? Humanity may never hit the 10 billion mark
While watching 2020 unfold has been like watching someone set themself on fire with a bucket of bacon grease and a firecracker, one morning I stumbled on something that made…
Population and consumption: challenges we can win (commentary)
We have come to realize that the origins of the coronavirus pandemic are directly related to how we treat the environment. The harmful acts of eating wild animals, denuding forests,…
Special series
Forest Trackers
- Satellite data show burst of deforestation in Myanmar rare earth mining hotspots
- 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
Oceans
- Scientists call for stronger action to save Indonesia’s vanishing seagrass meadows
- Antarctic conservation summit closes with stalemate on MPAs & krill fishing rules
- Norway’s proposal to double krill harvests raises tension at Antarctic conservation summit
- Nickel mining threatens Raja Ampat ecosystems, communities & conservation: Report
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
- Lithium mining may threaten a precious resource — water: Voices from the land (commentary)
- Indigenous guardians successfully keep extractives out of Ecuador’s Amazon forests
- Amid Venezuela’s illegal gold heist are armed groups, gangs & elites, report says
- Indigenous women in Peru use technology to protect Amazon forests
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
