Community Development News

Well-known investment funds in the U.S., Europe and South Africa are financing a set of oil palm plantations that have been at the center of more than a century of…

National and international NGOs from around the world have asked more than two dozen banks not to finance a 1,445-kilometer (898-mile) pipeline to shuttle oil from fields in Uganda to…

Two or three strokes, and it's gone: in less than five minutes, 10 years collapse. If it's some other palm tree native to the rainforest such as açaí (Euterpe oleracea), soon…

Liberia’s Nimba county lies about an eight-hour drive north of the capital, Monrovia. In the dry season, the road leading into the far-flung region kicks up swirling clouds of red…

While many look to sustainability certifications as a panacea for the issues surrounding oil palm plantations, a new study cautions that these programs may not be enough to prevent negative…

For centuries, Lake Andranobe in Madagascar's central highlands has nourished the surrounding communities. Over the past 16 years, its dependents have come together to restore the ailing lake. Now, that…

Gorongosa National Park has quite a history, from its inception 60 years ago to being battleground the subsequent Mozambique civil war, to its recent revitalization and engagement with the human…

Mining, both legal and illegal, impinges on more than one-fifth of Indigenous territory in the Amazon, according to a new study from the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the Amazon…

Companies and governments are pushing for the privatization of land around the world as a way to get at economically valuable resources, according to a recent report from the Oakland…

A pork and chicken producer has expanded its operations in northern Ecuador with the help of funding from the World Bank's commercial lending arm, despite sustained complaints from local communities…

TRIBUGÁ, Colombia — Aida Leides Palacios Moreno strolls through the narrow dirt streets in the Colombian town of Tribugá surrounded by palm and plantain trees rustling in the seaside breeze.…

Dean Cycon spoke recently to students at Harvard Business School. A student asked him what his profit margin was at Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee, a company he founded in 1993…

The coronavirus (covid-19) pandemic has created a profound crisis for conservation efforts in eastern and southern Africa as a result of the sudden cessation of all international travel in a…

South Korea has been held up as a model by other nations around the world for its current handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. But the country also leads the way…

LOS ASIENTOS, Panama — It was auction day in the town of Santiago, and ranchers from the region gathered to buy and sell cattle. A metallic clatter rang out from…

The Land Portal Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in the Netherlands, recently released what it’s calling “the largest global database of land and property rights projects.” In around a decade…

Eating chocolate shouldn’t mean fueling environmental and social destruction. But, as a stream of news stories and reports make abundantly clear, too often it does. Cocoa production in Ghana and Ivory Coast – the world’s biggest cocoa producers…

This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Images by Nanang Sujana. When the people of Aru discovered that most of the land in their islands was to be converted…

MANILA – For more than two decades, anti-mining groups and indigenous communities in the southern Philippines have opposed a massive mining project there, blocking it both in the courts and…

This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Additional support was provided by Earthsight. In late 2013, during a hearing convened by the local legislature of Indonesia’s Maluku province, a…

Homero Gómez González took a circuitous path to becoming an advocate for butterflies. After strongly opposing the creation of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, he became one of its most…

This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Additional support was provided by Earthsight. When the politician in charge of Indonesia’s Aru Islands signed permits for a vast sugar plantation,…

Fish are an indispensable source of food and protein for communities in many African countries. But the growth in industrial-scale fishing fleets around the continent has put that resource and…

DESULO, Italy — In a late 1990s photo, a little girl with a ponytail and white apron poses at the corner of a cheese-making machine. Two decades later, with the…

The effects of commercial logging, mining and farming can ripple beyond the boundaries of the operations, leading to the substantial loss and degradation of nearby forest for subsistence agriculture, a…

KRIBI, Cameroon — Alarm flashed through Cameroon's conservation community in mid-September, when images of untidy rows of black polythene bags in a freshly bulldozed gash in the rainforest made the…

This week the Malagasy government indefinitely suspended activities of the Base Toliara mine project, the third-largest mining project in Madagascar. It cited friction between the project and local communities and…

This article was co-published with The Gecko Project.  This month Mongabay and The Gecko Project published “Saving Aru,” an article chronicling how the people of Indonesia’s Aru Islands thwarted a…

ANJA COMMUNITY RESERVE, Madagascar — When the Anja Community Reserve opened in 2001 the organizers of this bite-size protected area along the highway knew they’d need to come up with…

Amid a deluge of news during the U.N. Climate Summit last month, one major announcement went largely uncovered, yet is among the most important initiatives aimed at reducing the effects…