*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…
“We are hopeful, we never gave up on our goal, to get our house back,” says Heber do Prado Carneiro. He and his wife, Vanessa Honorato, are Caiçaras, members of…
Lawmakers from the U.S. House of Representatives have introduced a bill that, if passed, would require human rights safeguards to be embedded in Department of Interior grants given to conservation…
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…
As thousands of people protested in Brazil’s capital against a “death package” of bills deemed anti-environmental and anti-Indigenous, the lower house of Congress agreed to fast-track one of those bills,…
International conservation groups are calling on countries in the Global North to provide billions more dollars every year to protect the world’s biodiversity. “The future of humanity is literally at…
A Brazilian Federal Police operation dismantled a criminal organization that operates in illegal mining inside Kayapó Indigenous Land, in southern Pará state. The gold is sold abroad to Chimet, an Italian business group specializing in refining gold to make jewellery.
Conservation needs to adopt a human-rights based approach to deal effectively and equitably with the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss, according to a new report co-authored by…
In 2018, the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) granted an injunction prohibiting the Tanzanian government from evicting Maasai communities from 1,500 square kilometers (580 square miles) of ancestral, legally…
Brazil’s lower house of congress has overwhelmingly approved a bill that would loosen regulations for the use of pesticides, raising concerns that approval in the Senate would unleash further environmental…
The Batwa Indigenous peoples lived in the Kahuzi-Biega forests of present-day Democratic Republic of Congo for centuries before Belgian colonial rule imposed formal change in 1937 with the establishment of…
At the end of January, Canadian oil and gas company Reconnaissance Africa (ReconAfrica) discreetly announced it expected approvals shortly for a second seismic survey and the drilling of three to…
MAKENI, Sierra Leone — Residents of Koidu, in eastern Sierra Leone, are pursuing a class-action lawsuit against the operators of a diamond mine they say has dumped toxic mine waste,…
JAKARTA — Local opposition to a mine on Indonesia’s Java Island, and the heavy-handed police crackdown on protesters, has turned the national spotlight on a spate of development projects touted…