This is the second part of a three-part series on underreported issues involving Canadian mining companies and Indigenous peoples or local communities. Read part one and part three. Shrouded in…
Dionicio Colque, 42, has fond memories of growing up on the edge of Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia. It’s the world’s largest salt flat, spanning about 10,500 square kilometers (4,050…
This is the first of a three-part series on underreported issues involving Canadian mining companies and Indigenous peoples or local communities. Read part two and part three. Seven years after…
"Everyone does it." That’s how the representative of a sawmill described the practice of selling fake documents to illegal timber from the Brazilian Amazon as legitimate, a fraud known as…
On Jan. 29, the sky above Mexico City’s Zócalo plaza was filled with the floating figures of giant balloon whales. Hundreds of people from the “Whales or Gas?” coalition protested…
Illegal gold miners have been moving into Amapá in the wake of federal raids on mining hotspots in other parts of the Brazilian Amazon, including the Yanomami and Munduruku Indigenous territories.
A Mongabay investigation that revealed an illegal cattle boom amid a record-high number of killings of Indigenous Guajajara has been cited by Brazilian authorities to remove thousands of head of cattle from the Arariboia Indigenous Territory in the Amazon Rainforest.
One unusual characteristic of Latin American nations is their proclivity to adopt new constitutions that reflect periodic swings in political philosophies. These documents are notable for their length and the…
The large leaves of the aguaje, a tropical palm tree that grows in the peatlands and other seasonal wetland areas in tropical South America, form a rounded crown on its…
As REDD projects around the world face setbacks, restoration projects in the Amazon are flourishing as a means of reviving market confidence in forest-based carbon credits.
This is part three of a series on the operation to evict illegal gold miners from Munduruku Indigenous territories. Read part one, part two and part four and part five.…
BOGOTÁ — In June 2022, Gustavo Petro, a former guerrilla member, was elected as Colombia’s first avowedly leftist president, promising to fight inequality, bring “total peace” to the country, and…
Brazil is facing an alarming surge in forest fires. Last year, the country registered 237,000 fires and over 30.8 million hectares of vegetation were consumed by flames—an area the size of Italy. This represented a 79% increase in…
Global demand for lithium is expected to increase by nearly 500% over the next few decades, as countries invest more in batteries and electric vehicles meant to reduce their carbon…
RISARALDA, Colombia — “Before, anyone who wanted to grow cacao at 1,200 or 1,500 meters [3,900 to 4,900 feet] altitude was considered crazy,” says Orlando Quintero Gonzales, an agronomist in…
Brazil's Supreme Court backed down and withdrew its proposal to open up Indigenous territories to mining and economic activities from a controversial bill that critics say violates the Constitution.
When markets fail to manage the supply of and demand for goods and services, the outcome is referred to as ‘market failure’. There are multiple causes for market failure, but…
In many parts of Brazil, rivers may be losing water to the ground instead of gaining from it. A recent study found that groundwater levels in several regions are lower…
PANCE, Colombia — Ofelia Opocué’s life has been shaped by loss, she says. Twenty-three years ago, the FARC gave her family an ultimatum: leave their fertile land in Toribío, in…
In the early hours of Dec. 22, 2024, fishermen working in the Talara Sea in northern Peru hauled in their nets. But instead of the day's catch, they found oil…
Brazil is home to the world’s greatest diversity of amphibians: Of the more than 8,000 species known worldwide, some 1,200 are found in the country, mainly in the Amazon and…
CHINCHINA, Colombia — “Before, the seasons seemed etched into the calendar, with well-defined periods of drought and rain. Today, the climate has gone completely mad!” says coffee grower Oscar Gomez from…
For members of the Sani Warmi collective in Amazonian Ecuador, the day begins before sunrise. They tend to the chacra — their agroforestry garden — and harvest plantain, yuca, palm…
In the green-fringed inlet of Bahía Málaga, tucked along Colombia’s Pacific coast in the department of Valle del Cauca, Marlin Valencia’s melodic voice drifts among the tangled roots of the…
Brazil’s plans to build ports and roads to help move grains, beef and iron ore from the rainforest echo a development vision that dates back to the military dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s.
Colombia has created a first-of-its-kind territory meant to protect a group of Indigenous people living away from regular contact with the rest of the world. Located in the southern department…
Hidden within the Amazon Rainforest are rare, carbon-rich ecosystems known as peatlands, a type of swamp forest that’s key to combatting climate change through its capacity to absorb and store…
In a part of the world where throughout history only the pure white of snow and ice could be seen, today green moss and grass are emerging. Fish and penguins…
It’s November, springtime in Cancas, a coastal community in northern Peru, and the sea is calm; it only gets rough at the beginning of summer, which in the Southern Hemisphere…
Ever since the Upamayo Dam on Peru’s Lake Chinchaycocha was built in 1932, floods have become a frequent occurrence in the area for several months a year. From January to…
Conservationists first spotted a young male jaguar in 2022 roaming Argentina’s Formosa Nature Reserve. Camera traps later recorded the same individual in a forest tens of kilometers away, within El…
Martín Maceda can still rattle off the exact date of his most memorable fishing encounter. On March 1, 2014, he was 8 kilometers (5 miles) off the north coast of…
