The Kerinci Seblat landscape, a highly biodiverse rainforest in western Sumatra, is one of the Indonesian island’s crown jewels. Anchored by the 14,000-square-kilometer (5,405-square-mile) Kerinci Seblat National Park, its mountainous…
JENNINGS MOUNTAIN, St. Vincent and the Grenadines — The destruction was terrible, but the silence was even worse. Yvette Pereira had just walked up the road to the farm she…
RINCON VITINA, Colombia — In this small Indigenous reserve, or resguardo, in the Colombian department of Guainía, people tend to their cassava, plantain and pineapple crops, raise ornamental fish, and…
For 13 years, the Indigenous Ogiek people have been embroiled in a legal battle with the Kenyan government for legal recognition of their rights to the Mau Forest, the largest…
Reforestation initiatives are more popular than ever, with thousands of projects across the globe led by private companies, nonprofits, institutions, governments and communities. So how can an investor or donor…
CUARIRENDA, Bolivia — In October 2020, residents of a Mennonite colony began clearing a road through the forest in the Cordillera province of the Bolivian department of Santa Cruz. By…
Tangãi Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau recalls the evening of April 17, 2020, when his brother left their village deep in the Amazon rainforest to go out for a routine motorbike ride. It was…
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…
Frogs usually land on their feet, but one group of tiny toadlets from Brazil are so small they can’t stick a landing. Pumpkin toadlets (Brachycephalus spp.) are teensy, about the…
“Many people have died on this railroad, killed by the trains,” says Deusimar de Oliveira Santos, a resident of the community of Auzilândia in Brazil’s Maranhão state, echoing a common…
JAKARTA — Activists have welcomed the Indonesian government’s announcement to carry out a nationwide audit of all palm oil companies operating here, in response to a shortage of cooking oil…
CHELEM, Mexico — In Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, a few words describe the most common occupations: fisher, merchant, mother. Over the past decade, the port town of Chelem has seen the…
ELGEYO-MARAKWET COUNTY, Kenya – Taking on the steep ridges one steady step at a time, Elias Kibiwot Kimaiyo heads deep into Kenya’s Embobut Forest, where he was born and raised.…
Freshwater’s life-giving benefits are being gravely threatened by humanity’s manipulations of the hydrological cycle, impacting the climate and biodiversity, and undermining Earth’s operating system.
“I had never seen these colored types of corn until I was 22 years old,” says Jerá Poty Mirim. “I’d only seen Tupi corn, the yellow kind you find in…
News articles and opinion pieces have popped up in the pages of different Costa Rican newspapers over the past several years, warning of the imminent collapse of Corcovado National Park,…
Over a decade ago I traveled around Sweden to view its forestry practices – the country has a gigantic forest products industry that largely transforms trees into paper products and…
Tropical deforestation is a cost our planet pays every day for the food we eat. The palm oil in our ice cream, the steak on our tables, and the soy…
When plant systematist Elliot Gardner first began collecting samples of a fruit-bearing tree in Malaysian Borneo, he thought he was looking at just one species. Western taxonomists had long considered…
Since I became an environmental journalist six years ago, my family, friends and acquaintances all labeled me “crazy”. Why? Because they were extremely scared after reading my articles and hearing…
Alexandra Narváez and Alex Lucitante, two young Indigenous leaders from the A’i Cofán community of Sinangoe, located in the Ecuadoran Amazon, have been awarded the 2022 Goldman Environmental Prize for their…
JAKARTA — Authorities in Indonesia’s Papua province have recommended the revocation of licenses for 35 out of the 54 oil palm concessions operating there. The move follows an evaluation of…
It was over twenty years ago when locals in Bolivia’s northern plains told archaeologist Heiko Prümers, with the German Archaeological Institute in Bonn, about mysterious mounds of earth in the…
JAKARTA — For decades, oil palm farmers in Indonesia have drained — and destroyed — tropical peatlands on the basis that the crop doesn’t grow well in the boggy soil.…
Mahogany is everything you would want in a tree: tall and majestic, with leaves up to half a meter wide that cast cooling shade on the forest floor below. It…
Iluka Alain was a bit surprised when the two men turned up on a motorcycle in December 2021 in Bofekalasumba, the village where he’s chief in the northwestern Democratic Republic…
Sitting high in the hills of southwestern Ethiopia, the thick green forest of Yayu is a haven of biodiversity where Nuradin Aliyi, a third-generation wild-coffee farmer, has lived his whole…
The Sepik River takes an unhurried 1,126 kilometers, or 700 miles, to snake from the lush highland rainforests of western Papua New Guinea, swerving momentarily across the border into Indonesia’s…
ISANGI, Congo — In a secluded corner of the Congo, machetes in hand, scientists make their way through the Yangambi Man and Biosphere Reserve, using shallow streams as natural paths…
Industrial logging, rubber, oil palm, then coal. The snowballing effects of these extractive industries have divided local communities and destroyed livelihoods in parts of Indonesian Borneo, a new study finds.…
