environmental justice News

The president has undermined Brazil’s slavery law, making it very difficult to prosecute the wealthy elites enslaving roughly 155,000 Brazilians, critics say.

Last Friday, eighty Munduruku warriors — demanding an apology for destruction of two sacred sites — tried to occupy an Amazon dam; they were met by armed police.

A brief legal battle related to the Barro Blanco hydroelectric project in western Panama concluded late last month in a rare triumph for the impacted indigenous communities who have opposed…

100 families, given legal title to their land by the Brazilian government, are being threatened by illegal miners. The Temer government has yet to respond.

Brazilian politicians and economically dominant social classes have for centuries exploited nature as if it was infinite. It is not. The consequences are more than evident.

Public protest and congressional action have forced Brazil’s politically embattled president to reverse his decree allowing mining in vast RENCA Reserve.

A Brazilian court has ordered the Belo Monte dam to shut down due to resettlement violations, but Norte Energia, the consortium building and operating the dam, has so far refused to comply.

Study warns that six hydroelectric mega-dams proposed for Andean highlands would put environment and food security at risk in Amazon basin.

Brazilian court finds Norte Energia consortium guilty of failure to keep housing commitments for those displaced by mega-dam in Amazon. Installation license suspended.

Brazil last week established the Indigenous Territory of Turubaxi-Téa, covering 1.2 million hectares along the Middle Negro River in Amazonas state.

Activists, military police, and other unusual collaborators meet in Marabá, Pará, Brazil to seek agreement on sustainable solutions, extraction, dams.

Violent contact is alleged between Illegal miners / farmers in Amazonas state and two uncontacted indigenous groups; up to 10 deaths reported.

Scientist, activist and elder Dr. David Suzuki sounds off on Trump, Canada’s Blue Dot amendment to protect the environment, and about stonewash jean mania.

Three years ago this month, my friends Edwin Chota and Jorge Ríos were assassinated along with Francisco Pinedo and Leoncio Quintícima as they hiked through their homelands in the Peruvian…

Conservationists call for total halt to deforestation and implementation of sustainable agroforestry in Brazilian state of Maranhão.

Environmentalists and indigenous people condemn Chinese owned Mirador and Panantza-San Carlos copper mines in Ecuador’s biodiverse Cordillera del Cóndor region.

Brazilian president’s order to open 17,800 square miles of Amazon rainforest to mining met by crushing opposition; voided by judge (this story has been updated).

Escaped slaves and their descendants have struggled to claim and hold community lands for centuries; now Quilombolas face a new existential threat in the Supreme Court.

The president opens vast Amazon lands to mining; decrees new mining code that guts environmental monitoring, puts mining companies in charge of enforcement, opponents say.

Court decides against claims of Mato Grosso state, which wanted compensation for land lost to Indian reserves set up in that Amazonian state by federal government.

Indians decry Temer’s backing of “marco temporal,” which could negate legal indigenous claims to millions of hectares in the Amazon and elsewhere, protestors say.

Mining of vast diamond reserves, plus three new dams which could power the mines, would likely harm Indians on Roosevelt and Aripuanã rivers.

AMPASINDAVA PENINSULA, Madagascar — Solondraza, a 63-year-old farmer in northwestern Madagascar, has led a mostly conflict-free life. He and his wife live in a small house made of ravinala, a…

Brazil’s president approves new criteria for indigenous land demarcation to deny Indians their traditional lands; opens door to elite land thieves, agribusiness, opponents say.

The MST, in a protest against corruption, has occupied six farms of Brazil's elite.

Sometimes a single person can change history. One such individual is José Porfirio Fontenele de Carvalho, who died on 13 May from cancer, aged 70. Without him, the Waimiri-Atroari, an…

SUKAU, Malaysia – At first blush, the muddy waters of the Kinabatangan River in northern Borneo seem to laze through a hodge-podge of sleepy fishing and farming villages. The river…

LOTE 9, Guatemala — Rodrigo Tot chatted in Q’eqchi’ with community members as they gathered at a simple wooden building that doubles as a church and a community meeting hall…

The marchers didn’t stop all day, defiant of the chill and the rain, the Trump administration and Congress: “We’re nerds. We’re wet. We’re really, really upset!” “We don’t care what…

Indigenous community residents seeking justice for attacks in Guatemala faced a major setback Thursday. A judge in the Caribbean coastal city of Puerto Barrios acquitted the former head of security…