According to a recent report, mining companies currently have claims on 11 percent of all intact rainforests left in the world, meaning 590,000 square kilometers (227,800 square miles) of pristine…
Gold mine owners have polluted a river in Brazil’s Tapajós basin and placed a price on the heads of resisting Munduruku leaders. A federal raid in May failed to stem the conflict.
QUITO, Ecuador - Nearly 100 indigenous women of the Ecuadorian Amazon spent five days protesting outside the country’s Presidential Palace last week. They were demanding a meeting with President Lenin…
PUYO, Ecuador – About 350 Indigenous women from across the Ecuadorian Amazon gathered here yesterday to celebrate International Women’s Day, and, they say, to fight back against a system that…
The Norwegian mining giant has denied a new toxic spill in Brazil at its Alunorte aluminum refining facility, but admits to a “clandestine pipeline to discharge untreated effluent.”
A recent study finds that when parks and reserves don’t do a good job of safeguarding the forest they contain, they’re more likely to be stripped of their status as…
As Venezuela sinks into chaos and violence, Pres. Maduro rushes to salvage its sinking economy by selling off the nation’s natural legacy in the Orinoco Mining Arc – analysis.
Venezuela has proposed the Arco Minero and Petro cryptocurrency, backed by the nation’s oil and mineral wealth, as solutions to its economic crisis. Critics say it won’t work.
Visit by Pope Francis to Peru brought needed attention to Amazon deforestation and indigenous suffering due to illegal mining, but will the pontiff’s words be a game changer?
Pope Francis will visit one of the Peruvian Amazon’s most threatened regions today, where the leader of the Catholic Church is expected to address escalating deforestation and uncertainty about indigenous…
Experts say 2017 Brazilian wildfires were caused not principally by drought, but mostly set by people, and worsened by human-caused forest degradation. Agency budget cuts worsened the crisis.
In 2016, President Maduro declared the Arco Minero; today thousands of indigenous people are being impacted by a mining boom that endangers their lives and culture.
In 2018, expect more Amazon assaults by the Temer administration, as indigenous and environmental resistance builds, with court rulings and October elections adding uncertainty.
President Temer, pressed by the ruralist lobby, attacked indigenous and traditional land rights, conserved lands, and Amazon forests this year, and retreated from Brazil's Paris climate goal – analysis.
In 2016, Pres. Maduro proclaimed the Orinoco Mining Arc. Today armed gangs and the military fight over its riches at the expense of the environment and small-scale miners.
With COP23 well underway, scientists warn that President Temer’s policies could doom the Amazon and Brazil’s Paris goals, while destabilizing the global climate.
In Paris, Brazil promised to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 37 percent by 2025. But the country’s emissions grew by 8.9 percent in 2016, largely due to deforestation.
A new study found that mining caused nearly 10 percent of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon between 2005 and 2015, not the 1-2 percent assumed by past assessments.
PUERTO LEGUIZAMO, Colombia – Already infamous for coca production and conflict, Colombia’s southwest department of Putumayo borders Ecuador and Peru and is ripe for a variety of eco-crimes. In 2016…
The president has undermined Brazil’s slavery law, making it very difficult to prosecute the wealthy elites enslaving roughly 155,000 Brazilians, critics say.
Brazilian environmental and human rights activist Antônia Melo da Silva received the Alexander Soros Foundation Award earlier this month in recognition of her work organizing opposition to the Belo Monte…
Colombia is home to more bird species than any other country on Earth. It’s also well-known for a long-simmering conflict that has only recently begun to cool. Now, a pair…
100 families, given legal title to their land by the Brazilian government, are being threatened by illegal miners. The Temer government has yet to respond.
Brazilian politicians and economically dominant social classes have for centuries exploited nature as if it was infinite. It is not. The consequences are more than evident.
Public protest and congressional action have forced Brazil’s politically embattled president to reverse his decree allowing mining in vast RENCA Reserve.
Study warns that six hydroelectric mega-dams proposed for Andean highlands would put environment and food security at risk in Amazon basin.
On August 23, 2017, Brazil’s president Michel Temer issued a decree revoking the RENCA (National Reserve of Copper and Associated Minerals), an area the size of Switzerland on the northern…
It’s not uncommon to find ecologist Greg Asner flying transects over the rainforests of the Amazon or Borneo. His specially outfitted plane has helped map out the three-dimensional structure of…
Activists, military police, and other unusual collaborators meet in Marabá, Pará, Brazil to seek agreement on sustainable solutions, extraction, dams.
Violent contact is alleged between Illegal miners / farmers in Amazonas state and two uncontacted indigenous groups; up to 10 deaths reported.