The petroleum industry has a long history of operational calamities, large and small, that has created an equally long history of efforts to manage the environmental and social liabilities that…
PHNOM PENH — New data published by the University of Maryland on April 4 and available through satellite monitoring platform Global Forest Watch show continued forest loss across Cambodia last…
Measures throughout 2023 to curb the illegal gold trade in Brazil led to a 20% drop in the country’s exports of the precious metal.
Floodplains are extraordinarily productive because they are the interface between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. They are remarkably diverse because they integrate a mosaic of lakes, marshes, palm swamps and inundated…
Gold is universally recognized as a form of money that has retained value over decades, centuries and millennia. Since it is non-corrosive and precious, approximately 95% of the gold mined…
New research from the NGO Conservation Strategy fund, working with federal prosecutors in Brazil, has refined a tool that puts a dollar value on the socioenvironmental costs of illegal gold mining across vital ecosystems in the Amazon.
Environmental advocates routinely oppose mining and hydrocarbon-development projects because they believe that remote areas of the Amazon should remain pristine. Typically, they organize their opposition during the environmental review process…
Mineral extraction is a major cause of contention among the inhabitants of the Pan Amazon. Thousands of families depend on economic activity that originates, directly or indirectly, from the mining…
JAKARTA — The Norwegian state pension fund has cut ties with U.K. conglomerate Jardine Matheson (Jardines) due to concerns that the group’s gold mining activity in Indonesia could damage the…
JAKARTA — Activists and scientists have condemned a British conglomerate’s decision to resume gold exploration in Indonesia's Batang Toru forest, saying it threatens the world's most endangered great ape, the…
U.S. sanctions imposed in 2022 against Nicaragua’s mining industry were supposed to help combat a bloody wave of human rights abuses against local communities. But several years later, some aspects…
JAKARTA — A conservation task force trying to help an Indonesian mine operator minimize its impact on the Tapanuli orangutan, the world’s most threatened great ape, says it was the…
Illegal placer gold mining along the scenic Indus River in the area of Nizampur, District Nowshera, has escalated to alarming levels, posing a dual threat to national assets and the…
Drenched up to his thighs, while crouching at the end of our small boat as it cuts through a dizzying collection of waves, our boat captain lifts his hands and…
Canadian mining company Belo Sun has filed a lawsuit against community leaders and environmental rights groups for allegedly invading and occupying company-owned land, in a case the defendants are calling…
*Name changed for the security of sources who feared retributions from authorities KAMPONG THOM, Cambodia — “The company operates as they please. We’ve asked the authorities for help, but they…
Between 2019 and 2020, the Peruvian government cracked down on illegal gold mining in Madre de Dios, its southeastern Amazon region, through an unprecedented initiative dubbed “Operation Mercury.” But according…
At almost 1.4 million hectares (3.4 million acres), a little smaller than the U.S. state of Connecticut, Kerinci Seblat National Park is the second-largest park in Indonesia, and a jewel…
Gold, whose value has spiked by more than 55% since the 2008 financial crisis, is notoriously difficult to trace. Once mined, it can follow a maze-like path to market, passing…
Last month, the U.S. agreed to lift some sanctions on Venezuela in exchange for a roadmap to presidential elections, tentatively scheduled for the second half of next year. The deal…
LAS NAVES, Ecuador — The small farming community of Las Naves in the center of Ecuador is surrounded by a rich variety of crops crawling up hillsides next to large…
The Okapi Wildlife Reserve in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) protects nearly 14,000 square kilometers (5,405 square miles) of tropical rainforest and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It’s…
Escalating geopolitical tensions, a weakening dollar, and growing distrust in financial markets has triggered a tropical rush for gold, diamonds and precious metals that’s doing serious ecological damage to Earth’s rivers.
The arrest of five environmental activists fighting water pollution and mining in El Salvador is drawing international criticism following questionable developments in court proceedings that suggest the case against them…
The alerts of illegal mining in the Yanomami Indigenous Land have zeroed for the first time since 2020, according to satellite monitoring by the Brazilian Federal Police.
This investigation is a collaboration between the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP), NBC News, Mongabay and El Espectador, with support from the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network. Conservation…
The environmental issues facing Venezuela are serious and wide-ranging: illegal mining in the Amazon, national water shortages, mudslides and flooding exacerbated by climate change, the degradation of protected areas, oil…
SANTA ELENA DE UAIRÉN, Venezuela — Flying over a dense jungle in southern Venezuela, the sea of trees below is suddenly replaced by large patches of bare soil, tree stumps…
A recent chemical spill in a protected reserve in northern Nicaragua is raising concerns about the contamination of several river ecosystems and the public health fallout for thousands of Indigenous…
In 1997, people in Asunción Mita, a municipality in eastern Guatemala, weren’t really thinking that mining could arrive close to home. But that same year, the country’s Ministry of Energy…