Have a good cry, but don’t miss deadline (insider)
About eight years ago when I was still fairly new to the reporter game in New York City, these two journalists I knew were killed while working in Libya. One…
With no oil cleanup in sight, Amazon tribes harvest rain for clean water
LAGO AGRIO, Ecuador — Nemonte Nenquimo covers her face and squeezes her eyes shut as a pungent whiff of petroleum hits. She’s digging with a pole into an unmarked lagoon…
A development project in a Bali mangrove bay gets a new lease on life
JAKARTA — Four months after activists in Bali celebrated what they believed was the end of a controversial plan to develop part of the island’s mangrove-rich Benoa Bay, the scheme…
‘Light for everyone’: Indigenous youth mount a solar-powered resistance
CUETZALAN, Mexico — Rain clouds thicken overhead as a small crew finishes the installation of a pair of rooftop solar panels. The house stands along a dirt road in a…
COP24: Human rights concerns cast a shadow over U.N. climate summit
KATOWICE, Poland — Concerns about the apparent sidelining of human rights have been aired as the United Nations climate summit in Poland enters its second week. According to the Climate…
Culls push endangered fruit bat closer to extinction in Mauritius
The culling of fruit bats in recent years to protect crops in Mauritius has pushed the species closer to extinction, and now the government is planning to do it again.…
Roads divide opinions along with forests, study finds
Politicians and planners often sell roads as wholly beneficial to communities. New arteries open up opportunities for employment, connections to markets and access to services such as health care, so…
Cerrado farm community fights for life against dam and eucalyptus growers
Alcoa, Vale Mining, Suez Energy, Camargo Corrêa Energia, and Brazil’s government promised the town of Formosa mega-dam reparations, a pledge never fulfilled.
The ongoing trade in conflict timber (commentary)
November 6 is the UN’s International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict. A decade after a tragic war in Liberia that was largely…
Bear-human conflict risks pinpointed amid resurgent bear population
Scientists have mapped out instances of human-black bear conflict in a part of the U.S. state of Nevada where bears are returning decades after they vanished. The results of their…
Politics and peace: The fate of Colombia’s forests (commentary)
Juan Manuel Santos will be forever remembered as the president who ended one of the world’s longest armed conflicts, establishing a peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia…
Scientists, conservationists: Give Nobel Peace Prize to Jane Goodall
More than 30 scientists and leaders in environmental conservation are calling for the Norwegian Nobel Committee to award Jane Goodall with the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. Citing the 84-year-old primatologist’s…
Jakarta cancels permits for controversial bay reclamation project
JAKARTA — The Jakarta administration says it has finally pulled the plug on a $40 billion land reclamation project pushed by the Indonesian government off the coast of the nation’s…
Criminal mafias take over Colombian forests
There are various competing land uses of the Amazon rainforest. The region in southern Colombia that until less than two years ago was the stronghold of the FARC guerrilla group…
As Bali reclamation project dies, activists seek conservation status
DENPASAR, Indonesia — Hundreds of people in Bali are celebrating a key victory against a multi-billion-dollar land reclamation project that would have destroyed vast swaths of mangroves on the resort…
Indonesia’s land swap program puts communities, companies in a bind
JAKARTA — Last year the inhabitants of Konbaki village in the Indonesian island province of East Nusa Tenggara filed a request to farm some 174 hectares, about 430 acres, of…
Protected landscape across India-Bhutan border a refuge for wildlife during armed conflict
From the late 1980s until 2003, recurring ethno-political violence rocked Manas National Park, a protected area in the northeastern Indian state of Assam, in the Himalayan foothills. The conflict changed the…
In Ecuador, a pipeline cuts a trail of misery through indigenous land
SAN JOSÉ DE WISUYÁ, Ecuador — One morning in November 2015, one of the elders, or taitas, of the Siona indigenous community in San José de Wisuyá, in Ecuador’s Sucumbíos…
On an island in the sun, coal power is king over abundant solar
JAKARTA — Dolphins haven’t had it easy in Bali, a resort island in Indonesia that’s massively popular with tourists. They’re often held captive in chlorinated pools for traveling circuses; a…
Mexico: pipeline divides Yaqui communities and triggers wave of violence
LOMA DE BÁCUM, Mexico — October 21, 2016, is a date that the Yaqui community in the town of Loma de Bácum will never forget. That’s when the community’s inhabitants,…
Special series
Endangered environmentalists
- Iran upholds heavy sentences for conservationists convicted of spying
- Two deaths trigger alarm at Mexico’s Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve
- Fighting to save an endangered ape, Indonesian activists fear for their lives
Indonesias forest guardians
- Reforesting a village in Indonesia, one batch of gourmet beans at a time
- Restoring Sumatra’s Leuser Ecosystem, one small farm at a time
- Indigenous Iban community defends rainforests, but awaits lands rights recognition
Amazon infrastructure
- Database offers new details on the dams that hold mining waste
- Xavante tribe digs in as Brazil reneges on vow not to build a road in their reserve
- Vale has filed hundreds of requests to exploit indigenous lands in Amazon
Asian rhinos
- Indonesia-WWF split puts rhino breeding project in Borneo in limbo
- Indonesian officials wield sharia law in defense of Sumatran rhinos
- Love triangle complicates efforts to breed Sumatran rhinos
