Residents of a landless worker’s settlement in Anapu, Pará state in Brazil’s Amazon region, accuse the Federal Government of favoring large landowners, land grabbers and corporations at the expense of poor and landless peasants.
Pedro Brancalion is used to the roar of chainsaws. For years, he’s heard loggers tearing down rainforest giants in the Brazilian Amazon, and listened as ancient trees were toppled and…
BRASÍLIA, Brazil — In the first day of his third mandate as Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, issued measures to protect the Amazon and Indigenous people, acts highly celebrated…
How can improving access to doctors and nurses for an Indigenous community in Borneo better protect the region’s fast-depleting rainforest and wildlife? A new app developed by nonprofit organization Health…
Dom Roque Paloschi, president of the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) and archbishop of Porto Velho in the state of Roraima, Brazil, has been under attack because he denounced Indigenous people’s rights violations. In 2021, 355 attacks against Indigenous people were reported in Brazil — the most since 2013, according to a CIMI report.
The protected swathes of primary Amazon Rainforest in the Paru State Forest in the north of Brazil became the fifth-most deforested conservation unit in October, official data show. Illegal land-grabbing…
ALTO ACARÁ, Brazil — “The right of those who used to live here to access the cemetery is in the [Brazilian] Constitution. … The cemetery is a sacred place,” sociologist…
Six months ago, more than 100 Indigenous people from five different ethnic groups entered the Itaquaí River, close to the city of Atalaia do Norte, in the Javari Valley, in…
With its towering natural walls, Sumidero Canyon National Park is one of the main tourist attractions in Chiapas state in southern Mexico. Protecting mostly dry tropical forest — one of…
Agriculture is gradually killing forests, and yet up to half of tropical forestland in Africa, Latin America and Asia cleared for agriculture remains idle, according to research published in the…
ALTO ACARÁ, Brazil — In November 2021, I went to Pará state, in the Brazilian Amazon, to investigate claims of land grabbing in traditional territories, leveled against one of Brazil's…
ALTO ACARÁ, Brazil — With trembling hands, Raimundo Serrão lights candles for his grandmother at the Livramento Cemetery's cross on the Day of the Dead because he couldn't find her…
JAKARTA — Fully protecting Indonesia’s remaining peatlands and mangroves is the key to achieving the government’s goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the decade — and…
FLORES — One of Guatemala’s most under-threat protected areas may face future oil and gas development, as lawmakers consider whether to expand extractive activities in the region and the construction…
UCAYALI, Peru — Mennonites, an ultra-conservative religious group, are illegally converting pristine forests in the Peruvian Amazon into agricultural land. They are not only threatening biodiversity but also encroaching on Indigenous…
Annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon dropped 11.27% compared with the prior year, official data show. But the government of President Bolsonaro still accounts for the most Amazon destruction in…
At the recently concluded COP27 climate summit in Egypt, 14 major agricultural commodity companies, including Cargill, ADM and JBS, released a plan to end deforestation associated with the production of…
Josefa Mería has lived in the Peruvian city of Moyobamba, where the Andes meet the Amazon rainforest, for more than 30 years. Even in this humid tropical climate, she remembers…
JAKARTA — Commitments by palm oil producers in Southeast Asia not to deforest, clear peatlands, or use exploitative practices have helped the industry significantly reduce tropical forest loss. But many…
Orangutans, like most of the world’s great apes, are struggling. Their numbers continue to drop as their habitat disappears, or they’re killed by humans for food, out of fear or…
Opening up protected areas to mining in the Brazilian Amazon could have an even bigger impact than previously thought, according to a study published in Nature Sustainability earlier this year.…
Artisanal gold mining is driving the global demand for mercury, with 2,058 metric tons of the toxic metal contaminating water, land and air every year, according to a recent report…
The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 caught Costa Rica’s Cabécar Indigenous communities at a precarious time. Amid the species-rich forests of the Talamanca Cabécar Indigenous territory, climate change had already begun…
This year’s Amazon fire season was milder than the previous two years, but there were still nearly 1,000 major fires, many of them in recently cleared areas in the Brazilian…
When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva takes office at the start of 2023 as president of Brazil, his third term in the post, he faces the difficult task of making…
SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt — The first big news of the COP27 climate conference was a forest promise: UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a 26-nation partnership to conserve woodland…
The world’s three forest giants — Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) — have signed a joint statement calling for the negotiation of new payment mechanisms to…
The new Brazilian president pledges to protect the Amazon, Indigenous peoples and their lands, ending illegal mining, logging and land grabbing. But he must deal with a largely hostile congress and “not enough” international forest funding.
Palm oil production is leaving a deep mark on the rivers and forests of Latin America. Between 2010 and 2021, at least 298 cases were opened against 170 palm oil…
BRUSSELS — Indonesia's timber industry is known for having the only legality system in the world that's robust enough to be recognized by the European Union. And now, the country…
