In June, three environmental defenders from the remote island of Nende celebrated their acquittal from arson charges, along with the many supporters who had attended their trial. But the later…
JAKARTA — A corruption scandal now unfurling in Indonesian Borneo is shedding light on how high-level bribery in infrastructure projects poses long-term threats to the community and the environment. The…
In April, Brazil’s environment minister urged Pres. Bolsonaro to “run the cattle,” using the nation’s focus on COVID-19 as a diversion to dismantle environmental rule of law; some new executive acts appear to do just that.
17 former Brazilian Finance ministers and Central Bank presidents reject Jair Bolsonaro’s environmental policies, urging end to Amazon deforestation and adoption of economic policies addressing climate change.
One day around 2010, Agustinus Tomba and his neighbors heard the sound of heavy machinery in their ancestral forest, in the Indonesian province of Papua. When they went to see…
JAKARTA — Activists have called on the Indonesian authorities to probe the finances of the Korindo Group, a privately owned conglomerate, in the wake of an investigation that exposed a $22…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Part 1: ‘Maybe they didn’t expect us to find it’ In April 2019, an Indonesian delegate stepped onto the stage at a…
IJARE, Nigeria — The silver blade slides through the log laid over a metal bed beneath the sawmill machine. When the careful routine ends, one of the two operators pulls…
The land rights of quilombos — communities of runaway slave descendants —are assured by Brazil’s Constitution; but those rights are now largely disregarded by agribusiness and Bolsonaro.
Brazil’s environmental agency IBAMA has stepped up efforts to fight environmental crimes during the COVID-19 crisis. But the fate of these operations is now uncertain, following the firing of IBAMA’s enforcement director.
BINTUNI BAY, Indonesia — Residents of this part of the island of New Guinea have long known they live atop a coal deposit. Some local people recall hearing traditional stories…
U.S. President Donald Trump’s most senior intelligence official, Richard Grenell, came under scrutiny last month after it emerged he had carried out work for sanctioned Moldovan oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc. Mongabay…
JAKARTA — A court in Indonesia has convicted a former official and a contractor for their roles in a corruption case centered on a $5.3 million road project in Papua…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. KOKOE, Indonesia — For years, this eastern Indonesian village of fishermen and seaweed farmers simmered with anger over the pollution of its…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. A new company has begun clearing rainforest in an area of Indonesia’s easternmost Papua province earmarked to become the world’s largest oil…
The peatlands of the Congo Basin are home to more than just massive carbon stocks and some of our closest — and most threatened — relatives in the animal kingdom,…
Attacks on indigenous Kaiowá communities in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul at the start of the year have highlighted a long-running campaign of persecution and growing violence against the group.
The murder of Sister Dorothy in 2005, and resulting international outrage, helped curb violence in Brazil for a time, but crimes against landless peasants and activists are on the rise.
Nearly 4,000 requests have been submitted for mining-related activities on 31 indigenous reserves and 17 protected areas in Brazil, according to recently obtained data from the nongovernmental Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA) and the National Mining Agency.
The construction of the controversial Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in the Brazilian Amazon is the narrative engine that drives Sequestrada, the first full-length film by U.S. cinematographer and sociologist Sabrina McCormick.
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…
DURBAN, South Africa — Lee White was appointed minister of water and forests, the sea and the environment, in charge of sustainable development objectives and the land use planning for…
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,…
In an exclusive interview with Mongabay, Marcelino Guedes, a researcher at Brazil’s Amapá Federal University, talks about how important the management of traditional knowledge is for strengthening the forest economy in Brazil to overcome the paradigm that sees standing forest as an enemy of development.
25 environmental and indigenous groups in Brazil have filed a formal inquiry request into Environment Minister Ricardo Salles’ possibly illegal deal with convicted land grabbers.
Joenia Wapichana is the first indigenous woman to be elected a federal representative in Brazil. Last year, she submitted a bill to Congress proposing that funds collected from fines for environmental infractions committed on indigenous lands be returned to native peoples.
Amazon mega-dam was built with 11,233 MW capacity, but has fallen far short, even as deforestation and drought make the goal more remote. The US$9.5 billion dam may never be profitable.
The Estrondo mega-farm exports soy to the EU and China, but it is accused in a mega-land grab; it also has a long record of threatening traditional people.
A researcher at the INPE Center of Land System Science, Antonio Donato Nobre, describes the state of degradation threatening the future of the Amazon rainforest in an exclusive interview with Mongabay.
Brazil started the decade as an example to the world, dramatically curbing Amazon deforestation, but under Jair Bolsonaro the nation is moving toward ecological ruin.
