WAIKAS, Brazil — From up above, long, massive, yellowish stains tear apart the green blanket of the Amazon. In the northern part of the Yanomami Indigenous Territory near Brazil’s border with…
Opening up protected areas to mining in the Brazilian Amazon could have an even bigger impact than previously thought, according to a study published in Nature Sustainability earlier this year.…
Artisanal gold mining is driving the global demand for mercury, with 2,058 metric tons of the toxic metal contaminating water, land and air every year, according to a recent report…
The new Brazilian president pledges to protect the Amazon, Indigenous peoples and their lands, ending illegal mining, logging and land grabbing. But he must deal with a largely hostile congress and “not enough” international forest funding.
Lucía lives in Peru, in one of more than 50 indigenous communities along the Putumayo, an Amazonian river that marks the border between Peru and Colombia. She has a banana…
LA PAZ — Mercury, even at room temperature, will slowly transition from its silver liquid state into a dangerous vapor that, when inhaled, can leave a person with permanent brain…
LA PAZ — Gold is Bolivia’s second-biggest export, valued at more than $1 billion annually and employing hundreds of thousands of people in the country. But much of that gold…
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected president of Brazil on Oct. 30 in a close runoff with incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro. But voters of eight out of the 10…
As the rest of the world closely watched Brazil’s presidential election on Oct. 2, the country’s conservative bloc made significant gains in a Congress that it already dominates. This could…
Industrial mining wiped out nearly 2,000 square kilometers, or 770 square miles, of forests in Indonesia between 2000 and 2019. The country is one of four worldwide where direct tropical…
Funding for the research and writing of this series of articles was provided by Amazon Aid Foundation. “We’ve been fighting the government of Suriname for almost 25 years, for recognition…
Brazilians will go to the polls in October to vote in presidential and congressional elections that many consider a critical moment for the fate of the environment in Brazil. Activists…
Crimes associated with illegal logging, mining and other illicit activities in the Brazilian Amazon are being felt in 24 of Brazil’s 27 states, a new report shows.
Forest loss is increasing south of the Orinoco River due to lack of Venezuelan official oversight, a growing Colombian insurgency, fires set to create mining camps, and new agricultural lands cleared to feed miners.
A Brazilian company stands poised to start mining inside an Indigenous territory in the Amazon as soon as October, highlighting the precarious nature of the protections afforded to Indigenous lands…
Coordinated raids by police in Brazil have shed new light on the workings of the illegal mining industry in the Amazon. Federal police carried out three simultaneous raids against the…
Repórter Brasil’s tool points out the federal deputies with the worst socio-environmental performance and shows that the right-wing wave of 2018 strengthened the rural caucus in Congress. Analysts say that the ruralist leanings of the Chamber were already a reality, but the Bolsonaro government unbalanced the political chessboard with the weakening of the Ministry of Environment.
The deforestation sweeping across the Brazilian Amazon is driven largely by industrial agriculture, mining and cattle ranching. But those activities wouldn’t be possible without heavy machinery like bulldozers and tractors,…
From the Scarlet Macaw to the glass frog, Peru is a land of tropical splendors. At least half the country is blanketed by Amazon rainforest. It is one of the…
Since I became an environmental journalist six years ago, my family, friends and acquaintances all labeled me “crazy”. Why? Because they were extremely scared after reading my articles and hearing…
Alexandra Narváez and Alex Lucitante, two young Indigenous leaders from the A’i Cofán community of Sinangoe, located in the Ecuadoran Amazon, have been awarded the 2022 Goldman Environmental Prize for their…
Thirty years ago, Brazil issued a decree officially recognizing the ancestral land of the Yanomami people as an Indigenous territory. The new designation made the area, located deep in the…
Packed into a thatched-roof meeting hall in the village of Urucurituba, deep in the Brazilian Amazon, hundreds of Mura Indigenous people mulled over whether to allow a massive potash mine…
Based on the best scientific data available, the unprecedented Amazon Water Impact Index draws together monitoring and research data to identify the most vulnerable areas of the Brazilian rainforest. According to the index, 20% of the 11,216 Brazilian Amazon microbasins have an impact considered high, very high or extreme; half of these watersheds are affected by hydroelectric plants.
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…
Before Jair Bolsonaro took office as Brazil’s president in 2019, Canadian investment bank Forbes & Manhattan was facing problems with its business activities in the Brazilian Amazon. The situation began…
While trying to put together a review of what happened to Venezuela’s environment in 2021, conservationists ran into a problem. The government publishes virtually no statistics on things like deforestation,…
As thousands of people protested in Brazil’s capital against a “death package” of bills deemed anti-environmental and anti-Indigenous, the lower house of Congress agreed to fast-track one of those bills,…
A Brazilian Federal Police operation dismantled a criminal organization that operates in illegal mining inside Kayapó Indigenous Land, in southern Pará state. The gold is sold abroad to Chimet, an Italian business group specializing in refining gold to make jewellery.
Years of artisanal mining along the Madre de Dios River and its tributaries have left their marks, both seen and unseen. Miners, swarming to the region in a modern-day goldrush,…
