JAKARTA — Indonesia has made strides in developing its plantation industry, catapulting the country into the world’s largest producer of palm oil. Its sprawling plantations produce more than half of…
The town of San José del Fragua is just over an hour's drive from Florencia, the capital of the department of Caquetá, in southern Colombia. On one side of the…
JAMBI, Indonesia — The lunchtime rush is well underway as customers file into a lively Padang-style restaurant here in the city of Jambi on Indonesia’s Sumatra Island. A clutch of…
JAKARTA — Illegal oil palm plantations spanning an area one and a half times the size of London have been amnestied under an Indonesian government program that critics say incentivizes…
Officials are struggling to keep up with an increasing wave of deforestation in one of Guatemala’s largest protected areas, where squatters are clearing the rainforest to make room for settlements,…
Cameroon cocoa growers plant fruit trees to slow forest conversion Cocoa farmers in part of Cameroon’s Centre region have begun planting fruit trees alongside their cocoa trees. Agroforestry promoters hope…
Brazil’s Cerrado may not be a household name like the neighboring Amazon Rainforest, but this vast savanna biome is even more threatened and fragmented. A new study now shows there’s…
Between 2019 and 2021, swarms of desert locusts̨ swept across the Horn of Africa and East Africa. In response, the worst-affected countries, Kenya and Ethiopia, sprayed millions of hectares of…
JAKARTA — The combination of weak antigraft policies, lack of transparency, revolving-door politics, and the prevalence of politically exposed persons within companies makes Indonesia’s palm oil industry highly prone to…
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — After 14 years in Madagascar, it was the last straw for Graine de Vie, a Belgian NGO dedicated to reforestation. In October, 50,000 saplings in the Ambohitantely…
COLOMBO — Sri Lanka’s animal-human conflicts are on the rise with increasing crop raids, but a recent request from a Chinese company requesting 100,00 toque macaques from Sri Lanka has…
KORK THLORK, Cambodia — Vorn Keo, perched on the edge of a green wooden boat, navigates through the flooded forest of Tonle Sap Lake and across the boundary into a…
JAKARTA — When Indonesia embarked on its Mega Rice Project in the mid-1990s, it cleared vast swaths of forest for farmland, mostly in the peatlands of Borneo — only to…
SANTA CATARINA, BRASIL — A serene orange hue cuts across the horizon with the first rays of sunlight as dawn breaks in the mountainous countryside of Brazil’s second-most southerly state,…
The European Union is one step closer to adopting landmark regulations that hold companies accountable for ensuring their products don’t contribute to deforestation. A new law, passed with an overwhelming…
MINDANAO, Philippines — For about two decades now, members of the B’laan ethnic group have combed the forest-clad slopes of Mount Matutum from September to January, seeking out the beans…
Farmer and agronomist Roberto Rodríguez first taught the farmers of Lejanías they weren’t poor. Once they learned this critical lesson, they relied on themselves, their neighbors and nature to thrive sustainably.
Jacobo, a Mennonite farmer who preferred only his fist name be used, had just begun to explain why he left Belize to settle in the Peruvian town of Tiruntá when…
More than 7% of all mountain forests have been destroyed during the past two decades, according to a new study published in the journal One Earth. Using high-resolution satellite data…
JAKARTA — When the Indonesian government announced its food estate program in 2020, it envisioned the establishment of large-scale agricultural plantations across the country. These plantations of crops like rice,…
*This report was carried out as part of a journalistic partnership between Mongabay Latam and La Barra Espaciadora de Ecuador. On Aug. 10, 2009, in the community of Los Reyes, Sandra…
JAKARTA — A new study has shown that farmers who aren’t traditionally perceived as having the most social and cultural power in their community can be more effective at convincing…
At the start of the 2000s, the search for a “miracle” biofuel led to a stubby Latin American tree. But jatropha’s boom went bust when high yields and big eco benefits failed to materialize. Now some say it’s set for a return.
Life goes at its own pace in the town of Chihuahua, where the modern mixes with Mennonite traditions. To one side, horse-drawn carts pull up at a plot of land…
Salinity intrusion triggered by different factors, including sea-level rise, commercial shrimp cultivation and a decrease in water flow from transboundary rivers upstream, has directly affected agriculture in the southern coastal…
When it comes to environmental destruction in Brazil, the world’s focus tends to be on the deforestation and burning of the Amazon. Yet the Cerrado, the second-largest Brazilian biome, at…
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…
In the first half of the 20th century, Mennonite communities fled Europe for South America and, over the intervening decades, established large colonies in Latin American countries such as Mexico,…
KISUMU, Kenya — It is a little past 5 p.m. at the lakeside city of Kisumu, in the western part of Kenya. An hour later, the sun sets over the…
