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…
Legislation would open indigenous reserves in Amazon and across Brazil to commercial mining, oil and gas exploration, ranching, agribusiness, new dams and tourism.
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,…
Looking back, 2019 was a year of mixed outcomes for Ecuador’s environmental agenda. The country’s ongoing economic crisis fossil fuel dependence will likely continue to fuel clashes with communities protecting…
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.
Models and real-world events indicate that, unless action is taken now, up to 70% of the Amazon rainforest could become savanna in under 50 years, with huge carbon releases, destabilizing global climate.
Data obtained via the Access to Information Act reveals that Vale has 236 applications registered with the National Mining Agency for mineral exploration in Brazil’s Amazon Basin. Many of them are applications for research, the first step to obtaining authorization for mineral exploration.
The new council headed by nation’s VP who is a retired general will oversee all ministries ‘involved in the protection, defense and development… of the Amazon.’
Deforestation and climate change could convert Amazon rainforest to savanna by 2050. New infrastructure development would quicken process.
Indigenous group entered Brazilian museum and retrieved sacred funeral urns that courts said were rightly theirs, but which dam construction firm and authorities kept from them.
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.
Farmers and irregular occupants in the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve in Acre are enjoying newfound political power and pressuring for the reduction of the first protected area of its kind in Brazil as it approaches its 30th anniversary in March.
This was meant to be a moment of triumph in the long battle to save the world’s forests. The year when the bold commitment hundreds of companies made to eliminate…
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.
JAKARTA — Environmental activists have called on the Indonesian government to swiftly crack down on plantation companies operating in protected forests, after the country’s highest court ruled such activities illegal.…
Scientists believe they’ve uncovered a tipping point in the deforestation of landscapes across Earth: Once an area loses half its forest, the rest of the forest is often swift to…
Transnational mining firms are in a rush to get access to the protected Amazon as the Bolsonaro administration plots with them to mine in RENCA and indigenous reserves.
Land grabbers and agribusiness are the big beneficiaries of new, little publicized policies; Amazon forests, indigenous and traditional peoples are the big losers.
