After highways, investments in large-scale hydropower facilities are the most controversial infrastructure investments in the Pan Amazon. Governments pursue hydropower as a sovereign source of renewable energy and driver of…
When it comes to the trajectory of Amazon deforestation, “we’re in a bad spot,” according to ecologist and conservation biologist Tim Killeen. With 30 years of experience living and working…
In the Ecuadorian Amazon, a region marked by half a century of extractive industries, mainly oil, deforestation is a constant. In recent years, a new threat to the conservation of…
Joseph D’Cruz has more than 20 years of experience in sustainability, having worked for various international organizations like the United Nations Development Programme and the World Economic Forum, on issues…
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon plunged sharply in July, continuing a downward trend since President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office at the beginning of the year, according to…
From Aug. 7-9, eight Amazonian nations will meet in Brazil hoping to agree on future joint strategies that will protect the rainforest while sustainably developing the region.
Roads are scarce in the Northern Amazon, and surprisingly, the few that exist have not triggered widespread deforestation. This apparent anomaly is largely the consequence of a development dynamic that…
MENDAHARA ULU, Indonesia — At the end of 2018, three communities in this subdistrict on the island of Sumatra were given rights to manage their local peatland by Indonesian President…
Although never organized as a specific project, the Carretera Marginal de la Selva has emerged from multiple projects that have been established in the Andean foothills from Colombia to Bolivia.…
Decades of oil spills have polluted rivers and streams throughout the Amazon Rainforest, affecting wildlife and destroying the homes of Indigenous peoples. But the oil and gas industry doesn’t act…
On April 19, the European Parliament approved a law aimed at curbing deforestation. This legislation bans imports of coffee, cocoa, beef, soybeans, palm oil (and a series of its derivatives),…
Cameroon’s government is again planning to open a portion of Ebo Forest to logging, threatening 200,000 hectares (500,000 acres) of largely intact forest that is home to several rare and…
Ghanaian researchers diligently working to save two endangered tree species Ghanaian scientists are cultivating seedlings of two critically endangered tree species while searching forests across the country for surviving Talbotiella…
POHUWATO, Indonesia — The world's largest collective of seafaring nomads has sailed the waters off Sulawesi Island and farther afield for centuries, forging a cultural legacy that inspired even James…
JAKARTA — Major investors continue to sour on a hydropower project being built in an orangutan habitat in Indonesia, with the powerful Norwegian state pension fund the latest to call…
The Rainforest Foundation UK claims that all the leading carbon credit verification schemes have allowed millions of credits to enter the voluntary carbon market which do not accurately represent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
The world’s linear economy, critically labeled as “take-make-waste,” is blamed for many global environmental problems, including climate change. The circular economy — focused on conserving resources and material reuse — is a proposed alternative.
Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia all invested in major highway building initiatives in the last half of the twentieth century, motivated in part to project sovereignty over their Amazonian provinces.…
SABAH, Malaysia — Inside a former oil palm plantation, the palms appear to be sinking into a sea of greenery, their fronds meeting with spindly saplings that forge upward. In…
The Southern Amazon has experienced massive deforestation, coupled with the degradation of soil and water resources. The forest frontiers at the remote corners of the Brazilian highway system have remained…
BOTUM SAKOR, Cambodia — Once Cambodia’s largest national park, Botum Sakor has shriveled under the gaze of tycoons, whose parcels of land have swallowed up more than 80% of the…
SERAM ISLAND, Indonesia — Zainudin Kelsaba traversed across the eastern Seram highland and stopped at an ancient outcrop grown over by trees and scrub. “The mountain is our home,” Zainudin…
The Parcel de Manuel Luís coral reef, off the coast of northeastern Brazil, is vital for the survival of 53 species at risk of extinction. Despite vetoes from Brazil’s environmental regulator, the local government seeks to give the go-ahead to oil drilling projects in the Pará-Maranhão basin.
Top tropical ecologists have spent two decades studying the impact of climate change on a single transect in the Peruvian Andes, an area unparalleled in its biodiversity. They find that every species studied there is struggling against warming temperatures.
Big cat conflict is a threat to charismatic species like tigers and leopards. Small cat conflict, though often less severe, can also harm the livelihoods of communities and farmers and…
Despite being among the best safeguards against deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest, Indigenous lands saw a sharp increase in deforestation over the past decade, according to a study published recently…
According to a 2020 study, private philanthropy, at that time, dedicated to Amazon forest conservation amounted to about $100 million a year. That is about one ten thousandth of estimated…
It all starts with a road. In Brazil, the federal government commissioned the construction of mule trails and telegraph lines to link their coastal cities with long-established settlements on remote…
*Names have been changed to protect sources who said they feared reprisals from the authorities. BOTUM SAKOR, Cambodia — “We’ve filed complaints with four institutions now — the Ministry of…
Research has found that drought and declining water availability are increasingly impeding the ability of tropical ecosystems to soak up carbon dioxide, making the tropics a less effective carbon sink.…
