In 2020, a Mongabay reporting team visited Bolivia’s Amboró National Park and Integrated Management Natural Area and found that portions of its protected forest had been cleared and replaced by…
Undesignated public land One of the objectives of the ZEE process was to assist the nations of the Pan Amazon to allocate their public lands among different constituencies and stakeholder…
The cattle ranching industry in Brazil is deforesting one of the country’s largest ecosystems without proper authorization, often with the financial backing of major international banks. Some of the country’s…
Scientists warn that 10% of the Amazon has a high risk of being converted into a drier and degraded ecosystem by 2050, while 47% has a moderate transitional risk.
The 2024 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement has gone to Johan Rockström who led the team of international researchers who originated the planetary boundary framework in 2009.
Ecuador The territorial planning framework in Ecuador is known as the Plan de Desarrollo y Ordenamiento Territorial (PDOT). It is one component in an ambitious effort to articulate a Plan…
A new species of giant anaconda has been found in the Amazon Rainforest in Ecuador, scientists announced. The snake, named the northern green anaconda (Eunectes akayima), is genetically distinct from…
Rewilding advocate Eoghan Daltun was unsatisfied with life in Dublin, so he sold his property and bought a farm on the Beara Peninsula of southwestern Ireland. His plan was simple:…
“We did it!” Doka Nason shouted as he stared at the screen of a camera trap in Papua New Guinea. He and his team had just captured a long-sought image:…
KATHMANDU — Until four decades ago, villagers in Nepal’s mountains would likely name Himalayan wolves as their primary concern among the wild animals native to their region. Lower down in…
Russia's dictator Vladimir Putin has seemingly just had jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny assassinated. Navalny incarnated the best chance for democracy and human rights in Russia. He was a beacon…
JAKARTA — A massive nickel mining and processing project on the Indonesian island of Halmahera has cleared thousands of hectares of forest, forcefully displaced local people, and polluted the rivers…
Ocean rise and changes in the Amazon River are ruining the way of life in an archipelago close to where the Amazon River runs into the Atlantic.
YELWA, Nigeria — Nightfall at the Ngel Nyaki Forest Reserve field station is clad in the whispers, chirps and trills of insect song. Flames from the burning wood in the…
Teeming with tropical rainforest, the Amazon Basin is a vital defense against global warming. Yet deforestation combined with extreme weather are behind the region's worst drought in fifty years. Forest clearance to make…
“When I see the rainforest burning, I know what I’m really seeing is Amazonia dying. I see that fire and, as a scientist, I know how much that hectare will…
Land-use maps and their explicit recommendations are most relevant on pioneer landscapes that are in the flux of change. Recommendations can provide sound information and support an expanding agricultural production…
Regulating land tenure is not the only power available to the state for influencing how people use land. Land-use planning and land-use zoning are two closely related mechanisms that Pan…
BALIKPAPAN, East Kalimantan — As the Indonesian government embarks on a massive push to reforest the area around the country’s new capital city in Borneo, it is turning to the…
PREAH VIHEAR, Cambodia — Vegetation lurches over a concrete wall that runs alongside a quiet road in the northern Cambodian province of Preah Vihear. Behind the wall, and the rusty…
A new road connecting eight Indigenous Waorani communities to urban centers in Ecuador’s Pastaza province aims to improve access to the interior of the Amazon and reduce transportation costs. But…
The reconstruction of Brazil’s BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) highway (Figure 1) and its associated hidden projects are not yet a fait accompli, but the danger has reached a critical moment. In…
COLÍDER, Brazil — Not too long ago, the plot of land that Maria Ivonete de Souza inherited was barren, the soil hardened by years of cattle ranching. When the family…
In January 2020, Luis Carlos Galeano was traveling with his family through the Claro River Basin in Colombia’s mountainous Antioquia department when his wife, Viviana Aguirre, pointed out a tree…
The sharecropping system that defined land tenure in the Ecuadorian highlands prior to agrarian reform was known as the ‘huasipungo’, a Quechua word that describes the relationship between landlords and…
BALIKPAPAN, East Kalimantan — Planners building Indonesia’s new capital city in eastern Borneo say they’re far from their target of reforesting the site that the country’s president has projected will…
JAKARTA — Deforestation by the palm oil industry in Indonesia increased in 2023 for the second year in a row, bucking a decade of gradual decline, according to an analysis…
A new amendment to Peru’s forest and wildlife law is being criticized by opponents as unconstitutional and a step backward in forest protection after it came into effect Jan. 10…
Several palm oil and cacao companies operating in the Peruvian Amazon have systematically contributed to clearing at least 13,000 hectares (32,000 acres) between 2012 and 2021 in the country’s most…
The agrarian reform process in Peru began in 1964. Originally a cautious effort targeting the more egregious examples of peasant exploitation, it was dramatically expanded by a left-wing military government…