Degraded Lands News

MARERENI, Kenya — It’s mid-morning in April, and Ngombo Tsuma is seated under a lone neem tree by one of his two grass-thatched huts. His wife sits by the door…

Mining of sand to feed the red-hot demand from Bangladesh’s construction industry has fueled an illegal industry that overshadows the legal one and that’s destroying ecosystems and exacerbating river erosion.…

The state of Mato Grosso has approved a bill that allows extensive ranching and tourism in protected areas of the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland. The move comes just…

THUNG NUI, Thailand — Firdaw Manjeed says she’s glad to be back to school for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Here in Thailand’s southernmost province, Satun, on…

“Many people have died on this railroad, killed by the trains,” says Deusimar de Oliveira Santos, a resident of the community of Auzilândia in Brazil’s Maranhão state, echoing a common…

Fifty-two-year-old Dhonjoy Mondol grows rice on his plot in the district of Sunamganj in northeastern Bangladesh. This year, he harvested 12 metric tons of rice from the 4-hectare (10-acre) plot;…

Industrial logging, rubber, oil palm, then coal. The snowballing effects of these extractive industries have divided local communities and destroyed livelihoods in parts of Indonesian Borneo, a new study finds.…

Tanzania’s Rufiji Delta is arguably the mangrove capital of East Africa, home to around 55,000 hectares (135,900 acres) of mangrove forest. In the face of the climate crisis, mangroves like…

Today we’re talking about agroecology, which applies ecological principles to agricultural systems and is considered to be a key strategy for both mitigating and adapting to global climate change, as…

“Recover Citatah Karst, Make People Prosper.” That’s the call printed in red letters on a huge white banner pinned on a limestone cliff in Indonesia’s West Java province. “We put…

RIPÁ, Brazil — One muggy morning last December, eight women and their chief drove out of the Indigenous Xavante village of Ripá across a forested savanna in the Brazilian state…

Training cattle ranchers in Brazil to recover degraded pastures could curb carbon dioxide emissions, scale down deforestation for agriculture in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes, and increase their income, according…

Ban Khao Mo, THAILAND — Standing in the house where she has lived since she was born 45 years ago, Premsinee Suntornthammathat points to the temple where her grandparents took…

Food systems are responsible for 80% of the world’s deforestation, 70% of freshwater use and contribute to 40% of the planet’s land degradation says a recently published report by the…

On Feb. 28, a landslide of earth and waste from mines in Myanmar's Hpakant township engulfed dozens of miners and scavengers looking for jade in this remote, mountainous region. Official…

Organizations in the Malaysian state of Sabah have filed a complaint with the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples about a once-secretive deal aimed at locking up…

Panama is embracing a host of forest restoration and reforestation solutions aimed at meeting its Paris climate agreement carbon reduction goals, including agroforestry and incentivizing the planting of teak plantations.

We set out from the town of Extrema, in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state, in a four-wheel-drive vehicle at 9 a.m. on a Monday. Driving beneath a mountainous vista and blue…

During last year’s COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, more than 140 countries committed to halting and reversing deforestation by 2030. The Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use recognized…

BANGKA BELITUNG, Indonesia — A conflict that flared up at the start of the year between traditional fishers and illegal miners in Indonesia’s Bangka-Belitung Islands has once again highlighted the…

At the end of January, Canadian oil and gas company Reconnaissance Africa (ReconAfrica) discreetly announced it expected approvals shortly for a second seismic survey and the drilling of three to…

An agreement for the rights to the natural capital covering 2 million hectares (4.9 million acres) in Malaysian Borneo for the next 100 years “in its present form is legally…

Less than 16% of the world’s coastal regions remain intact, while other parts are severely degraded by human activities, according to a new study. With coastal regions supporting a rich…

BARINGO COUNTY, Kenya — Across the arid landscape of Baringo county in western Kenya, in the geologically active Great Rift Valley, the December heat is scorching. Although the Indigenous pastoralist…

Update Feb. 10, 2022: Sabah's attorney general says the consent of Indigenous communities is required for this agreement to move forward. Read the update here. Adrian Lasimbang, an Indigenous leader in…

Severe droughts over the past two decades have affected the resilience of the Amazon Rainforest, a new study shows, with stretches of affected forest taking between one and three years…

JAKARTA — Restoring Indonesia’s tropical peatlands is a cost-effective strategy to reduce the impacts of fires tearing through the carbon-rich soil, a new study says. The benefits of effective peatland…

When it comes to slowing climate change, there’s one natural solution that has recently gripped the world: large-scale tree planting and reforestation. But a new study warns that other natural…

Watching the largest feline in the Americas in the wild has always been a rare and remarkable experience. In Brazil’s Pantanal, the world’s largest continental floodplain and one of the…

Five years ago, one of South Africa's largest coal mines was given permission to grow even larger. In 2016, the Tendele mine was granted mining rights to an additional 212…