MINDANAO, Philippines — Mount Apo, a protected area on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, is threatened by small-scale illegal mining, which remains a lingering problem elsewhere in the resource-rich…
NUEVA VIZCAYA, Philippines – Community leader Eduardo Ananayo says he wept when heard the Philippine government had renewed its mining agreement with Australian-Canadian company OceanaGold Corporation this past July. “We…
Brazil’s Senate has opted not to call for a genocide charge against President Jair Bolsonaro, a week after the death of two Indigenous children in an Amazonian reserve being invaded…
Gana Gold generated R$ 1.1 billion (US$ 200 million) in revenue using illegally-obtained environmental licenses in Brazil, equivalent to 3 tons of gold extracted.
On July 19, Australian mining firm Predictive Discovery posted a breathless press release on its website. “Bonanza”-grade gold had been discovered at its Bankan exploration site in a remote part…
Mining areas are dangerous for many reasons: they’re linked to a heightened risk of cancer, poisoning, heart and respiratory diseases. Now, researchers have identified a hitherto overlooked hazard: roads. Miners…
Before the clearing and excavators and bulldozers, before plans to build a gold mine and oil palm plantations, the Jemaluang and Tenggaroh forest reserves in Johor, Malaysia, were wildlife-rich jungles…
There is a sacred hill in Nicaragua known as Kiwakumbaih, where the ancestors of the Indigenous Mayangna people would go to hold important annual events. To this day, it continues…
BOGOTÁ — In Colombia’s Chocó department, renowned by environmentalists for its abundant biodiversity, Afro-Colombian communities collect gold from rivers as part of an ancestral way of life. “When we talk…
Brazil is likely feeding international demand for gold with bullion tainted by violence, deforestation and pollution, given that almost a third of the country’s registered gold production is classified as…
This story is the result of a reporting collaboration between Mongabay Latam and Rutas del Conflicto. In 2000, in the midst of Colombia’s vast Amazon rainforest, two elder members from…
A breakthrough report has mapped out all the raids carried out to rescue people working in slave-labor conditions in mines across Brazil since 2008.
Gold mining activities in a region of the Brazilian Amazon ravaged by illegal operations could be suspended after prosecutors filed a lawsuit this week. In its lawsuit, the Federal Public…
Demand for manganese in China is having a huge impact on the other side of the world: for the Indigenous Kayapó people in the Brazilian Amazon. The metal is essential…
JAKARTA — Activists in Indonesia have filed a legal challenge to controversial mining legislation passed last year and widely seen as undermining environmental protections to the advantage of mining companies.…
A recent investigation has found dangerously high levels of mercury among women from different Indigenous communities in four Latin American countries. This chemical element is a neurotoxic substance that presents…
The renowned photographer endured the Nazi occupation. Settling in Brazil, she fought for the founding of the Yanomami Indigenous Territory, long under attack by illegal miners. A new photo exhibition celebrates her life and the Yanomami people.
JAKARTA — Human rights and environmental activists have called for an investigation following the sudden death of a top government official in a remote Indonesian archipelago who was opposed to…
Illegal miners attacked and tried to block Indigenous leaders in Brazil’s Amazon from traveling to the country’s capital to protest invasions of their lands and violence against their people, in…
A gold mining impacts calculator launched this week is the first to offer Brazilian authorities and society a consistent science-based formula for calculating the social and economic costs of the industrial-scale illegal mining operations that have swept the Brazilian Amazon, experts say.
Legal mining in Colombia is a significant driver of deforestation, contributing to the destruction of 121,819 hectares (301,021 acres) of forest from 2001 to 2018. During that time, deforestation from…
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) contains the bulk of Africa’s humid rainforest. But forests that were once dense, impenetrable and continuous are increasingly fractured by deforestation. New satellite…
Wildcat miners fired shots and set houses ablaze in an Indigenous village in the Brazilian Amazon this week, fueling worries among Indigenous rights groups of further violent attacks by gold…
An expansive clearing of primary forest has been detected in a protected area in the Brazilian Amazon, possibly driven by illegal mining activities. In March, the Global Land Analysis and…
Editor's note: Tim Killeen provides an update on the state of the Amazon in his new book “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon Wilderness – Success and Failure in the…
An invasion of up to 5,000 illegal miners is underway in the Raposa Serra do Sol Indigenous Reserve in Brazil’s Roraima state, Indigenous leaders estimate. Analysts say Jair Bolsonaro’s rhetoric has emboldened the miners.
MANILA — President Rodrigo Duterte has issued an order to lift a nine-year moratorium on granting new mining permits in the Philippines. The order is expected to ease the entry…
A new report reveals that investing in securing the land rights of Indigenous and tribal communities across Latin America and the Caribbean could cut carbon dioxide emissions at low costs…
The Amazônia Minada reporting project has revealed 1,265 pending requests to mine in Indigenous territories in Brazil, including restricted lands that are home to isolated tribes.
The Kalunga — 39 quilombola communities, the descendants of runaway slaves — have united with international funders to use high-tech georeferencing to catalog their traditional lands and natural resources in Brazil.