JAKARTA — Felicia Siregar was only 2 years old when her father, Golfrid Siregar, an outspoken Indonesian environmental activist, died in suspicious circumstances last October. Four months on, Felicia is…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s parliament has for the first time prioritized passing new legislation on renewable energy, and activists have seized the opportunity to call for a shift away from coal.…
JAKARTA — Proponents of a hydropower plant to be built in the only known habitat of a critically endangered orangutan species say it’s important for meeting the future energy needs…
JAKARTA — Indigenous activists in Indonesian Borneo have scored a big win in a lawsuit against a coal mining firm that sought to operate on their land. After a two-year…
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.
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.
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.
JAKARTA — Activists say they’ve identified the business tycoons who control land in the area slated for Indonesia’s new capital and who could potentially benefit from the $33.5 billion mega…
2019 closed out a "lost decade" for the world's tropical forests, with surging deforestation from Brazil to the Congo Basin, environmental policy roll-backs, assaults on environmental defenders, abandoned conservation commitments,…
In Indonesia, a major producer and consumer of coal, politicians often argue that continued reliance on the highly polluting fossil fuel remains an economic necessity. Challenging this conventional wisdom, a…
A researcher at the INPE Center of Land System Science, Antonio Donato Nobre, describes the state of degradation threatening the future of the Amazon rainforest in an exclusive interview with Mongabay.
Brazil started the decade as an example to the world, dramatically curbing Amazon deforestation, but under Jair Bolsonaro the nation is moving toward ecological ruin.
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s North Sumatra province, the only known habitat of the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis), has proven to be a precarious place for the ape. Just 800 individuals survive…
Analysts are calling the COP25 climate summit in Madrid a colossal failure — undermining the carbon reduction goals set by the 2015 Paris Agreement, leaving the world in mortal danger.
JAKARTA — Indonesia has launched a campaign that government officials say should boost the reputation of the country’s palm oil industry, even as activists and experts warn it could make…
Two top officials have announced that after 2020 the EU will look at closing the biomass carbon neutrality loophole that has created a boom in emission-producing wood pellets.
While the Bolsonaro govt. pushes Amazon ‘development’ and agribusiness in Madrid, social movements defend forests, indigenous and traditional land rights.
Interviewed in Madrid, Will Gardiner, CEO of the UK’s largest biomass plant, said his firm leads way in energy decarbonization, despite scientific evidence to the contrary.
Even as delegates to COP25, the Madrid climate summit, sidestep the environmental and human rights goals of the Paris Agreement, a godly 71-year-old woman steps up.
Negotiators drafting Paris Agreement Article 6 rules appear to be assuring loopholes to up carbon emissions, turn forests into plantations, and failing to protect human rights.
Madrid negotiators plan to create rules for a global carbon market, but a failure so far to include forest incentives, and a silence on a biomass carbon accounting loophole could hinder progress.
JAKARTA — Indonesia must stop building new coal-fired power plants by 2020 if it wants to do its part to cap global warming under the targets of the Paris climate…
SANTARÉM, Brazil, and BERLIN — I got off the mototaxi, a means of transportation that is part of everyday life in several cities in the Amazon, took off the helmet…
JAKARTA — A quick scan of social media trending topics in Southeast Asia reveals K-pop to be the flavor of the moment. But the highly polished and cannily choreographed girl…
Intensifying cattle grazing on existing pasture could free up degraded land for new sugarcane plantations without need to clear Amazon forests and other native vegetation.
The Bolsonaro government is pressing ahead with plans to fast track a powerline through the Waimiri-Atroari Reserve without indigenous consultation.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is opening the Amazon and Pantanal wetland biomes to sugarcane production, risking deforestation and intensified carbon emissions.
In a surprise move even to the sugarcane industry, the president has removed restrictions on Amazon sugarcane production; land speculators could benefit.
This article is a collaboration between Rutas del Conflicto and Mongabay Latam. PUERTO GAITÁN, Colombia — When Modesto Paredes bought 25 acres of land 10 years ago in the…
