A paper trail left by a notorious land grabber reveals how he used relatives and an employee as fronts to evade environmental fines and lawsuits, shedding light on this widespread practice in the Brazilian Amazon.
This story is published as part of the Global Indigenous Affairs Desk, an Indigenous-led collaboration between Grist, High Country News, ICT, Mongabay Native News Online and APTN. When around 70,000…
Measures throughout 2023 to curb the illegal gold trade in Brazil led to a 20% drop in the country’s exports of the precious metal.
The World Bank’s independent watchdog, the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO), has finalized its investigation into a complaint filed five years ago, alleging grave human rights violations by communities living near…
New research from the NGO Conservation Strategy fund, working with federal prosecutors in Brazil, has refined a tool that puts a dollar value on the socioenvironmental costs of illegal gold mining across vital ecosystems in the Amazon.
RAJA AMPAT, Indonesia — Tucked in the curve of a bay in Indonesia’s Raja Ampat archipelago, a floating structure appears like the tip of an iceberg. Below the surface, it’s…
JAKARTA — Indonesia is developing a satellite constellation to beef up monitoring of its marine and fisheries resources with the maiden launch of a nanosatellite scheduled this July. That inaugural…
JAKARTA — Indonesia and Spain have signed an agreement on accrediting Indonesian migrant deckhands, as part of efforts to beef up protection against modern slavery aboard fishing vessels. Under the…
NKOTENG, Cameroon — At the Cameroon Sugar Corporation (Société Sucriere du Cameroun, SOSUCAM), the year 2023 came to a close on a grim note: the death of a man named…
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.
JAKARTA — An Indonesian palm oil company that dropped a lawsuit against a fire expert whose testimony led to its being fined is suing a second time, in what observers…
In 2015, independent journalist Clare Rewcastle Brown revealed that $700 million had appeared in the personal bank account of Malaysia’s then-prime minster, Najib Razak. The money had come from the…
Drenched up to his thighs, while crouching at the end of our small boat as it cuts through a dizzying collection of waves, our boat captain lifts his hands and…
Southeast Asia is home to the third-largest expanse of tropical rainforest in the world, making it a pivotal region for global efforts to address the biodiversity crisis and climate change.…
SASIMWANI, Kenya — On a cold November afternoon, Esther Norparua and two of her daughters sat on the ground outside her homestead facing the forest. Dark clouds gathered, but the…
While attending a recent United Nations forum, Toto, a Lao environmental activist, had an opportunity to meet with a U.N. special rapporteur in person. In the end, he decided not…
LIMBUNG, Indonesia — Tall brush has taken over the land that Sarijan farmed for decades here on the island of Borneo. At the height of Indonesia’s 2019 wildfire crisis, the…
Canadian mining company Belo Sun has filed a lawsuit against community leaders and environmental rights groups for allegedly invading and occupying company-owned land, in a case the defendants are calling…
Kichwa leader Quinto Inuma Alvarado, president the Santa Rosillo de Yanayacu community, was murdered last Wednesday, November 29, in the San Martín region of the Peruvian Amazon. The crime took…
One of the world’s largest palm oil companies appears to have overseen a network of companies responsible for deforestation of tens of thousands of hectares, according to a new investigation…
In recent years, labor issues on industrial fishing vessels have received increased attention, commanding headlines in prominent media outlets. Terrible working and living conditions — even forced labor — are…
Indigenous forest guardian Paulo Paulino Guajajara was killed in November 2019 in the Brazilian Amazon. Mongabay’s Karla Mendes, who interviewed Paulo nine months before his death, returned to the Arariboia Indigenous Territory in August 2023 to talk with his family and the other guardian who survived the attack, Laércio Guajajara, and shine a light on a case that still hasn’t gone to trial after four years.
JAKARTA — Indonesian fisheries authorities have welcomed as “better than nothing” a new policy by neighboring Singapore that should in theory help stem the smuggling of lobster larvae out of…
Among the 3,500 inmates in the overcrowded Munzenze prison in Goma, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, are five farmers from the town of Kitshanga. In November 2022, they were…
Conservationists have for the first time adopted a crime analysis strategy developed for urban policing and applied it to assess the effectiveness of counterpoaching measures to protect the critically endangered…
When it comes to dirty money, countries like Switzerland, Panama and Spain’s Canary Islands have earned a reputation as good hiding spots. They’re rife with shell companies and laundered profits.…
Indonesia’s is the world’s top palm oil producer, but the industry has long been associated with environmental ills such as deforestation and habitat destruction, with oil palm plantation expansion accounting…
CHITWAN, Nepal — When Hemanta Malla Thakuri, former deputy inspector-general of the Nepal Police, started training the country’s frontline wildlife crime investigators last year, he realized they operated similarly to…
Some of Switzerland’s largest pension funds have placed French logistics giant Bolloré SE on a blacklist. The Swiss Association for Responsible Investments (SVVK-ASIR) decided its members should no longer invest…
The Philippines has gained the grim distinction of being Asia's deadliest country for land and environmental defenders, with 281 deaths over the past decade, roughly one-third of which were linked…