JAKARTA — A highway and levee project touted as a solution to coastal flooding in communities along the north coast of Indonesia’s Java Island will shortchange those very communities and…
José Ramírez Talango is a retired teacher and beekeeper. When he was a child he used to walk through the jungle to reach Laguna Chakanbakán in the southeastern Mexican state…
In 2014, the West African nation of Liberia faced an epidemic outbreak of Ebola, which claimed over 11,000 lives globally. To combat the spread of disease, Liberians were urged to…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government’s plan to relocate the country’s capital from Java to Borneo has hit a wall amid the COVID-19 pandemic, with a top official saying they would…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Images by Nanang Sujana. When the people of Aru discovered that most of the land in their islands was to be converted…
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,…
JAKARTA — Indonesian authorities have ordered a temporary closure of dozens of national parks and conservation sites to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus that has killed thousands of…
LOMBOK, Indonesia — Environmental activists have called on authorities in Indonesia’s Lombok Island to drop plans for a cable car project serving a UNESCO-listed national park. The government of West…
PEKANBARU, Indonesia — Wildlife experts have called on the Indonesian government to boost protection of critically endangered tigers in the vicinity of a major road project in Sumatra, following a…
Billions of dollars in loans issued to resource-rich countries could saddle them with insurmountable debt, according to a new report from the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), a nonprofit organization…
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.
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…
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,…
JAKARTA — President Joko Widodo’s focus on building tourism hotspots has created an increasingly hostile environment for indigenous communities and land rights activists in Indonesia, a new report says. There…
Visual artist Denilson Baniwa and singer Djuena Tikuna are taking the Amazon to galleries and stages around the world, sharing the rainforest’s socio-environmental diversity and bringing up questions about its future.
PALEMBANG, Indonesia — A spate of recent tiger attacks on farmers in Indonesia's South Sumatra province has renewed calls from experts to protect wildlife habitats from development projects that threaten…
JAKARTA — In Indonesia’s Sumatra, which has lost much of its forests over the decades, a major highway project running the length of the island is poised to speed up…
LUSAKA – On a chilly August afternoon in Chongwe, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of the Zambian capital, Lusaka, a handful of children warm themselves around a small fire…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. This month Mongabay and The Gecko Project published “Saving Aru,” an article chronicling how the people of Indonesia’s Aru Islands thwarted a…
ANJA COMMUNITY RESERVE, Madagascar — When the Anja Community Reserve opened in 2001 the organizers of this bite-size protected area along the highway knew they’d need to come up with…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s anti-corruption agency has charged a former politician from Borneo in connection with a port development project, in a move that could shed light on an earlier scandal…
CIBULAO, Indonesia — A light drizzle falls outside Kiryono's home as he peers at the thermostat on a coffee roaster. The 39-year-old's green robusta harvest absorbs the heat in the…
JAKARTA — Bali’s mangrove-rich Benoa Bay is now legally off-limits for any reclamation or development activities, following the government’s designation of the area as a maritime conservation zone. Spanning some…
This story was co-published with The Gecko Project. Additional support was provided by Earthsight. (Baca dalam Bahasa Indonesia.) I. The movement begins Late one rainy night in August 2013, a…
This story is part of a series on Marae Moana, the massive, recently enacted multiple-use marine protected area covering the Cook Islands’ entire exclusive economic zone. Other stories in the…
This story is part of a series on Marae Moana, the massive, recently enacted multiple-use marine protected area covering the Cook Islands’ entire exclusive economic zone. Other stories in the…
A planned highway network in the Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo threatens the forests protected as part of the Heart of Borneo agreement made with Indonesia…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s new capital city will sit at the nexus of the country’s coal and oil hubs in eastern Borneo, the president revealed on Aug. 26. President Joko Widodo,…
PALEMBANG, Indonesia — The planned construction of a bridge and private port in southern Sumatra threatens to damage one of the last remaining habitats of the island’s critically endangered elephants.…
AMORON’I MANIA REGION, Madagascar — People in the highlands of central Madagascar have long buried their loved ones in shrouds of thick wild silk. After several years, they exhume the dead…