The government in Ecuador is looking for ways to keep open a controversial oil block in the Amazon Rainforest, defying the results of a referendum to close the operation due…
The agrarian reform process in Peru began in 1964. Originally a cautious effort targeting the more egregious examples of peasant exploitation, it was dramatically expanded by a left-wing military government…
JAKARTA — The construction of Indonesia’s new capital city on the island of Borneo may destabilize the current stable population of endangered proboscis monkeys, a study has warned. President Joko…
The conservation group African Parks says it has contracted the law firm Omnia Strategy LLP to investigate allegations of human rights abuses at Odzala-Kokoua National Park in the Republic of…
Regularizing land tenure on landscapes where private property predominates is more challenging than on landscapes occupied by communal landholdings. In part, this is due to their greater number, but the…
Dr. Sakib Burza says his fondest memories are climbing the majestic pine trees in the Kashmir Valley where he spent most of his childhood with his family. On a normal…
U.S. sanctions imposed in 2022 against Nicaragua’s mining industry were supposed to help combat a bloody wave of human rights abuses against local communities. But several years later, some aspects…
Brazil’s “Transversal Environmental Agenda,” released on 25 January 2024, contains many good things for the government to be doing, but it misses the opportunity to implant what a transversal agenda…
As Sarawak’s top officials plan three new hydropower dams, seemingly eager to export more electricity, some Indigenous residents of the Malaysian Bornean state are urging officials to slow down development…
JAKARTA — A conservation task force trying to help an Indonesian mine operator minimize its impact on the Tapanuli orangutan, the world’s most threatened great ape, says it was the…
The political movement that brought Evo Morales to power incorporated a latent conflict between highland and lowland Indigenous communities. The lowland nations are intent on recuperating their ancestral territories, which…
The liana is an opportunistic plant, a vine that, in the right conditions, can smother a tree as it hitches a ride up to the top of the forest canopy.…
Scientists have described three new frog species that dwell exclusively in the spiky leaves of pandan trees in Madagascar's eastern rainforests. Lead researcher Hugh Gabriel, from the Technical University of…
A new study has for the first time identified the most common tree species in the tropical forests of Africa, the Amazon and Southeast Asia — and their similarities have…
Throughout history, philosophers have told us that in order to best prepare for the future, we should look to the past. Wisdom, knowledge and new perspectives can often emerge out…
Bolivia was a leader in the agrarian reform movement in South America. A defining moment in its modern history was the national revolution of 1952, which started as an uprising…
The 2022 documentary “The Territory” won an Emmy award this January, shining a light on the Uru-eu-wau-wau Indigenous people and the invasions, conflicts and threats from land grabbers in their territory in the Brazilian Amazon from 2018 to 2021.
The need to fast-track the regularização of smallholder titles motivated the Terra Legal programme, which sent teams of surveyors to selected municipalities to accelerate the process for landholdings established prior…
The third pillar of the institutional mission of the Instituto Nacional de Colonização y Reforma Agraria (INCRA) encompasses both administrative and legal aspects of land tenure and, as such, is…
Last week, Indigenous leaders from around the world joined business leaders and politicians for the World Economic Forum's 2024 Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. While much of the discussion on…
Ecuador’s new free trade agreement with China is getting backlash from critics worried about public health risks and potential damage to the environment. The agreement, which was signed last May…
In the latest episode of Mongabay Sessions, Romi Castagnino, associate video producer at Mongabay, talks with director Emi Kondo about her wildlife documentary, Jaguar Spirit: An Awakening Journey. This documentary…
An unprecedented time-series study in the basin of the Tapajós River, a major tributary of the Amazon, assesses the level of degradation of small rivers threatened by agribusiness expansion.
Rural real estate markets in the Pan Amazon are regulated by institutions that are a legacy of the agrarian reform movements that played a prominent role in domestic politics during…
Possible plans to develop large-scale agriculture in Suriname have sparked backlash from Indigenous communities, conservation groups and some members of parliament, who are concerned about deforestation of the Amazon and…
The adage ‘possession is nine-tenths of the law’ is not legally true, but the concept reigns supreme on frontier landscapes in the Pan Amazon. Land grabbers and peasant pioneers share…
Humanity’s footprint in Ecuador now covers more than 30% of the country’s total area, at the expense of coastal ecosystems, the Andes, and forests across the country. But it’s the…
In December, Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto announced that it was set to spend $6.2 billion on mining the rich, high-grade iron ore deposits of eastern Guinea’s Simandou Mountains, with…
From September to November 2023 Manaus, a city located in the relatively intact forest area in the central part of Brazilian Amazonia, was surprised to find itself under a dense…
The Atlantic Forest, located along Brazil’s southern coast, has been in dire straits for decades, with expanding cities and agriculture leaving only a small fraction of the forest standing today.…