For years, Ruth Alipaz has been fighting against the Chepete-El Bala hydroelectric project. The project involves the construction of two reservoirs that together would flood at least 66,200 hectares (163,500…
Tropical forests harbor around two-thirds of the world’s biodiversity. The Neotropics—comprising Central America, the Caribbean and South America—are home to a third of the world’s known bird species, the highest…
*UPDATE: On March 30, 2021, a press release announced that the Collegiate Court of Circuit in Work and Administration Matters had reversed the decision to suspend activity on Sections 1,…
CASILLAS, Guatemala — Evelin Cante got involved in the protest camp right from the start. Her village isn’t far from the Escobal silver mine in southern Guatemala, and she was…
LUBUMBASHI, Democratic Republic of Congo – Through taxes, in particular the reforestation tax, logging and mining operators in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) must pledge to restore landscapes they…
BARINGO COUNTY, Kenya – Last December in the town of Marigat, in Kenya's central Baringo county, Paul Chepsoi had to excuse himself from a dinner of nyama choma (roasted goat)…
AGUA BONITA CAMP, Colombia – Walking all day through the jungle to visit the encampments of friends and relatives is what Tumni Abtukaru misses the most about life before his…
Our footsteps intermingled with the sounds of rain dripping through the canopy as my eyes examined the surrounding green vegetation, which was usually so vibrant, but was now subdued as…
RIPÁ, Brazil — One muggy morning last December, eight women and their chief drove out of the Indigenous Xavante village of Ripá across a forested savanna in the Brazilian state…
Patricia Gualinga takes a deep breath and pictures herself inside the rainforest in Sarayaku, Ecuador. “It’s hard to describe the smell of such pure air when you’re in the rainforest”,…
During the first conference of the parties to the Escazú Agreement (COP 1) held in April in Santiago, Chile, Indigenous leader Nadino Calapucha asked participants to respect the heart of…
Adiela Jineth Mera Paz wakes up every morning with only one thing on her mind – protecting her land in Puerto Asis, Putumayo, on the Colombia-Ecuador border. However, this is…
The Amazon gets a lot of attention, but there’s another massive forest in South America: the Gran Chaco. This hot, dry forest stretches across Paraguay, Bolivia, and Argentina, covering 87…
Food systems are responsible for 80% of the world’s deforestation, 70% of freshwater use and contribute to 40% of the planet’s land degradation says a recently published report by the…
The revelation that Indigenous people and local communities (IPLCs) receive well below 1% of climate finance, despite reports stressing their role in biodiversity conservation and climate mitigation, is giving rise…
President Joe Biden signed an executive order today aimed at protecting old-growth forests on federal lands across the United States. Federal agencies are directed to define, inventory, and better protect…
Even after more than 1,000 people were arrested last year, protesters in British Columbia, Canada, continue to fight against the logging of the Fairy Creek old-growth forests. Blocking roads and…
Caribou are proudly displayed on Canada's 25-cent coin, but in the wild, their populations are on the verge of annihilation. Carmen Richter from the Saulteau First Nations is working to change that. She's…
Glover’s Reef, part of the Belize Barrier Reef, is one of only four atolls in the Western Hemisphere. The rare, ring-shaped island of coral surrounds a lagoon 45 kilometers (28…
CANELOS, Ecuador — An almost invisible trail snakes through thick buzzing forest leading to a chakra, an ancestral food garden in the Kichwa Cuya community located in Ecuador’s largest province,…
A new investigative report details human rights abuses committed against Indigenous Batwa people between 2019 and 2021 in the Kahuzi-Biega National Park (KBPN) located in eastern Democratic Republic of the…
KATHMANDU -- On the evening of March 27, as residents of the settlement of Kusum Khola, on the fringes of Nepal’s Chitwan National Park, were preparing dinner, they heard footsteps…
“It still rains here,” says Emeterio Hernández Cano, the San Francisco communal land commissioner, at the start of a tour of La Fabriquita, a pine and oak forest of just…
A new report by the Forest Declaration Assessment says that fulfilling the Paris Agreement won’t be possible without acknowledging and supporting the crucial role of Indigenous peoples and local communities’…
Two decades ago, the inhabitants of four communities in the northern Mexican state of Durango put together a proposal: to make sustainable forest management a means of living. Over the…
Human rights, such as those of small-scale fishers, must be included in the global conservation goal to protect 30% of the world's lands and oceans by 2030, say environmentalists, otherwise…
At low tide, on many a craggy corner of Aotearoa New Zealand’s coastline, you can find clusters of large, oval, emerald-and-gold bivalves, encrusted with barnacles and sucked tightly onto the…
KINANDU, Democratic Republic of the Congo - A small group of residents from Kinandu village, 19 kilometers (11 miles) west of Lubumbashi, head into the miombo wooded savanna, decimated by…
In November 2011, when a pregnant beaked whale drifted ashore on New Zealand’s Waiatoto Spit, Ramari Stewart, an Indigenous whale watcher, noticed that the whale looked slightly different to those…
BIKITA, Zimbabwe — Nothing seems to happen at the right time for Maria Mazambara, a communal subsistence farmer in Bikita, one of Zimbabwe's southernmost rural districts. “The seed we get…
