Finalizing the new Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) is taking longer than expected and yet another round of negotiations – this time in Nairobi, Kenya – ended without much progress, say…
Three years ago, Indigenous leader Paulo Paulino Guajajara was killed in an alleged ambush by loggers in the Brazilian Amazon. He was a member of the “Guardians of the Forest,”…
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…
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…
Authorities in Brazil have uncovered the bodies believed to be those of Dom Phillips, a British journalist, and Bruno Pereira, a prominent Indigenous rights defender. The discovery, on June 15…
In May 2017, Brazilian representatives to the United Nations Human Rights Council brought back 242 recommendations from other U.N. member states on how to improve the country’s compliance with international…
When 700 members of Tanzania’s anti-riot Field Force Unit (FFU) arrived in the Loliondo division of Ngorongoro on June 6, no one told local Maasai pastoralists about the purpose of…
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…
JAKARTA — Indonesia has issued a much-anticipated decree to boost the protection of Indonesian deckhands working aboard foreign commercial and fishing vessels. The move comes in response to a pending…
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…
A report accusing Kenya-based conservation group the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT) of involvement in extrajudicial killings of pastoralists was rejected on June 9 in an independent review commissioned by the…
For years, Ruth Alipaz has been fighting against the Chepete-El Bala hydroelectric project. The project involves the construction of two reservoirs that together would flood at least 66,200 hectares (163,500…
*UPDATE: On March 30, 2021, a press release announced that the Collegiate Court of Circuit in Work and Administration Matters had reversed the decision to suspend activity on Sections 1,…
Bangladesh is set to implement a total ban on entry into the Sundarbans mangrove forest for three months starting June. This will apply not only to tourists but also the…
Local opposition to a planned coal mine in northern Thailand escalated in April when plaintiffs representing more than 600 villagers filed a lawsuit requesting the revocation of an environmental impact…
JAKARTA — The United Nations has reiterated its concerns over allegations of human rights violations in a mega infrastructure tourism development project on the Indonesian island of Lombok. In light…
Lower incomes and loss of employment were among the most urgent issues faced by fishing and seafood-processing workers in Asia and the Pacific during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to an…
Smelters and manufacturers that use coltan, tin and tungsten in cars, mobile devices and other electronics can't be sure the minerals have been extracted without using children or forced…
Patricia Gualinga takes a deep breath and pictures herself inside the rainforest in Sarayaku, Ecuador. “It’s hard to describe the smell of such pure air when you’re in the rainforest”,…
During the first conference of the parties to the Escazú Agreement (COP 1) held in April in Santiago, Chile, Indigenous leader Nadino Calapucha asked participants to respect the heart of…
Adiela Jineth Mera Paz wakes up every morning with only one thing on her mind – protecting her land in Puerto Asis, Putumayo, on the Colombia-Ecuador border. However, this is…
JAKARTA — An independent initiative in Indonesia has mapped Indigenous lands covering an area half the size of Germany since it began in 2010, nearly a third of it in…
MANAUS, Brazil — In the historic center of Manaus, the largest city in the Brazilian Amazon, a giant mural depicting the city’s Indigenous history looms above pedestrians jostling for space…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government’s plan to administratively split the country’s easternmost region of Papua into five provinces, from the current two, has raised concerns that its forests and natural…
A new investigative report details human rights abuses committed against Indigenous Batwa people between 2019 and 2021 in the Kahuzi-Biega National Park (KBPN) located in eastern Democratic Republic of the…
At least 358 human rights defenders were killed in 2021, according to an analysis by Front Line Defenders (FLD) and the international consortium Human Rights Defenders Memorial. Of the total,…
Myanmar’s military-led regime exported more than $190 million worth of timber in 2021, including to countries with active sanctions on the country’s state-controlled timber monopoly, according to a recent report…
The shadowy world of fisheries crime is difficult to study; much of the action takes place far from land, without the knowledge of anyone but the perpetrators. New research shows…
With negotiations underway in Geneva for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, Indigenous land rights have finally taken center stage. The human rights group Avaaz released a 30-page document calling for…
