forest degradation News

JAKARTA — Indonesia has signed a new climate deal with Norway that will see the Nordic country pay the Southeast Asian one to keep its forests standing. The deal comes…

PHNOM TAMAO, Cambodia — Prime Minister Hun Sen has stepped in to cancel all development projects slated for the Phnom Tamao forest, near the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, following…

Since March, bulldozers have opened around 40 kilometers, or 25 miles, of dirt road running north from the village of Kopongo in Cameroon across a forestry concession and into the…

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…

DHAKA, Bangladesh — In the early hours of July 19, a herd of wild elephants came down from the hills to a crop field located in Rangunia, in Bangladesh’s Chattogram…

The deaths of journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous rights defender Bruno Pereira in June this year exposed an interlocking web of crime involving drug trafficking, money laundering, and illegal fishing…

In the Indonesian village of Kun-kun, where illegal loggers once cut mangroves for timber, a new livelihood has come to the fore: crab fishing. “Without the mangroves, the crabs cannot…

JAKARTA — A part of the only forest on Earth where rhinos, tigers, orangutans and elephants coexist is seeing a resumption of deforestation for an oil palm concession. Indonesian company…

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…

The screechy, chirruping notes of Lilian’s lovebirds are the dominant music in the air on a sunny June afternoon in an expanse of mopane forest deep in Malawi's Liwonde National…

The rainforest is dense with sound. Like musicians in an orchestra, each animal plays a part, occupying its own “acoustic niche” in both frequency and time. But repeated fires are…

KAMALCHHORI, Bangladesh — Anupam Chakma, 60, has lived in the hilly village of Kamalchhori in Bangladesh all his life. When his grandfather and his contemporaries arrived in the region many…

JAKARTA — Tropical forest loss remained consistently high in 2021 with no sign of slowing down, despite commitments by companies and governments to curb deforestation, according to new data from…

KINANDU, Democratic Republic of the Congo - A small group of residents from Kinandu village, 19 kilometers (11 miles) west of Lubumbashi, head into the miombo wooded savanna, decimated by…

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…

JAKARTA — Pulpwood and palm oil companies were among the biggest contributors to the loss of a Manhattan-size area of forest in Indonesia’s Papua region in 2021, a new report…

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…

Forest degradation due to environmental causes (such as drought) and human causes (such as fragmentation) released three times as much carbon as deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon between 2010 and 2019, say researchers.

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…

Ten Native American tribal nations, forming the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council, have received ownership of 215 hectares (532 acres) of California’s redwood forest. The tribal council is partnering with Save…

In 2017, catastrophic flooding in Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, left at least 1,000 people dead and many more homeless. In a matter of minutes, mudslides wiped out homes and destroyed…

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…

JAKARTA — In 2019, fires raged through Indonesia’s rainforests and peatlands, sparked by the deliberate burning of land for agriculture, and fanned by an El Niño system bringing drier-than-usual weather…

The trafficking of illicit timber has hit the forested, tropical countries around the Mekong River Delta hard in recent years. Regulations and laws in places like the European Union and…

JAKARTA — Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer of palm oil, owes a substantial slice of that output to criminal deforestation, according to a new report showing that a fifth of…

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. Leaders in Sabah, a Malaysian state…

DANA, Jordan — Rugged hills frame a valley surrounded by evergreen oak, pistachio and pine trees in the village of Dana, where stone houses built centuries ago perch on the…

The U.N. climate summit now underway in Glasgow, Scotland needs to empower Indigenous peoples to protect the Amazon forest, which in turn stores carbon and helps prevent disastrous climate change.

Public hearings are underway on the proposed reconstruction of BR-319, a highway which will pierce the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, despite vast potential environmental harm, and a failure to consult Indigenous groups.

The loss of forest in an island province in Papua New Guinea (PNG) surged in August, according to satellite data. The target of these forays is likely timber, at least…