SÃO PAULO — On Tuesday, Brazil’s Lower House of Congress overwhelmingly voted and approved a bill to restrict the legal recognition of Indigenous territories throughout the country. Among many changes,…
The Amazon, home to the largest tropical forest on the planet, is an irreplaceable natural asset with enormous biodiversity and a critically important component in global carbon and water cycles.…
The borders between the countries that make up the South American trading bloc Mercosur (or Mercosul in Brazil) have an economic life of their own, where different characters subsist. An…
Bunge, Cargill, COFCO, Amaggi, ADM do Brasil, Viterra and General Mills bought soy and corn in an area where “grain laundering” is admitted by producers and civil servants.
PASURUAN, Indonesia — Indonesia is one of the world’s largest producers of food commodities, but until recently this archipelago of 270 million people produced relatively little avocado. Julianto Effendi is…
A Mongabay investigation into land-grabbing in the Brazilian Amazon has led to the suspension of the sustainability certificate of the country's second top palm oil exporter, as shown in email correspondence…
“Please tell me how I can make companies obey the law,” the official said. He was exasperated by the companies whose oil palm plantations saturated the subdistrict he headed in…
Overproduction of cash crops, vast monocultures of chemical-dependent grains and massive animal agriculture operations are putting major stress not just on U.S. farmland — where they’re contributing to soil erosion,…
Last year, farmer protests erupted throughout the Netherlands, riding a wave of rural anger at government plans to drastically halve nitrogen emissions by downsizing and closing farms. This quickly swept…
In Sumatra, villagers occupied an oil palm plantation and set tires on fire; in the Bangka-Belitung Islands, they filled the local parliament building demanding action; in Borneo, paramilitary police were…
Insetting is a nature-based climate solution used by brands that rely on agriculture to reduce carbon emissions in their supply chains. Critics say self-monitoring and verification may be weak.
When the palm oil industry began growing rapidly in Indonesia in the 1980s, the government developed a scheme aimed at ensuring communities would benefit. To gain subsidized funding, companies routinely…
The new director of the U.S. National Agroforestry Center (NAC) received her doctorate in plant physiological ecology/ecosystem ecology and a Master's in forest science from Yale University, and joined the…
Brazil’s use of pesticides has spiked in recent years, growing by over 300,000 tonnes since 2010, according to experts. A recent report, published by the NGO Operação Amazônia Nativa (OPAN)…
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…
The tobacco supply chain has harmful consequences for forests, oceans and the climate, and also for farmers and their families who produce the crop — all to an extent that is not yet fully known.
Among the ambitious commitments made at COP27 were plans for a methane monitoring satellite system that would improve tracking in the energy sector where the majority of global greenhouse gas…
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…
TIBATI, Cameroon – In Mbanti-Mbang village, Joseph Adamou and his family are living in fear. Living in the Tibati district located nearly 1,400 kilometres (870 miles) north of Cameroon’s capital…
Likely the world’s most popular garment, jeans use huge amounts of water to grow irrigated cotton, a major factor in destroying the Aral Sea. Today, the industry, though making sustainability pledges, still does much harm.
Soy cultivation and cattle ranching are two of the biggest drivers of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. But instead of clearing more forest area for farmland, what if soy was…
Logging near Cameroon national park raises red flags over permits YAOUNDE — Agroindustrial company Cameroun Vert S.A., or Camvert, is again clearing forest near Campo Ma'an National Park, raising questions…
Brazilian soybean producers have been highly successful in using genome technology to benefit their crops, with huge economic and environmental gains, a new paper highlights. Currently, the growers are using…
BANTRY BAY, Ireland – Claire O'Sullivan runs her small family firm, Wild Atlantic Seaweed Ireland, out of her house a short walk from Bantry Bay on the country’s southwestern coast.…
Marked by a fine for illegal deforestation, Agro Xavante, an initiative created with the blessing of president Bolsonaro, moves ahead with leasing public lands and a failure to conduct prior consultation with the local population.
JAKARTA — Sustainability commitments and greater scrutiny of supply chains is helping bring down deforestation rates associated with palm oil in Indonesia, a new analysis suggests. The country is the…
A Mongabay investigation into palm oil contamination in the Brazilian Amazon has helped federal prosecutors to obtain a court decision this week to scrutinize the environmental impacts of pesticides used…
JAKARTA — Less than a quarter of companies producing or sourcing palm oil from Indonesia have forest-related policies in line with best practices, a new report says. The report, by…
Tropical deforestation is predominantly driven by agriculture, but vast tracts of cleared forest do not become productive land. That’s according to a global review of tropical deforestation published in Science.…
