The Lower Sesan 2 hydroelectric scheme was completed in northeast Cambodia in 2018. The reservoir flooded 300 square kilometers (116 square miles) upstream of the confluence of the Sesan and…
Update: On Aug. 10, the village governments of Naboay and Malay publicly released resolutions opposing the hydroelectric project, citing concerns about the project's potential impacts on the Northwest Panay Peninsula…
The year 2021 is a La Niña year, and La Niña events typically lead to droughts in southeastern Brazil where São Paulo, the world’s fourth largest city, is located. La…
When the UNESCO World Heritage Committee (WHC) meets from July 16 to 31, they will be tasked with addressing urgent threats to some of the world’s most treasured sites of…
The alleged mastermind of the 2016 killing of environmental and Indigenous rights activist Berta Cáceres was convicted of homicide by a Honduran court on Monday. Roberto David Castillo Mejía, the…
Indigenous people living near the Teles Pires and São Manoel dams in the Brazilian Amazon say the projects have polluted their river, causing health problems and wrecking the fishery. COVID-19 made things worse.
On June 17th a judicial decision marks a new phase for the struggle over water flow to the “Volta Grande” (“Big Bend”) of Brazil’s Xingu River between the two dams…
The prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, also known as the “Green Nobel Prize” will be awarded today to six environmental activists, one from each of the world’s inhabited continents. This year’s winners…
This past December marked the 5th anniversary of the landmark Paris Agreement. Soon after, the Biden Administration rejoined the Paris Agreement as one of their first actions in office. And…
IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, has reversed itself, allowing Norte Energia, operator of the mega-dam, to divert water flow to turbines, potentially wrecking the river’s Big Bend Indigenous and traditional fishery.
KALINGA, Philippines — On Nov. 12, 2020, Typhoon Vamco cut across the northern Philippines, flooding more than 60 cities and towns in the Cagayan Valley. Millions of dollars’ worth of…
Today we’re discussing proposed solutions to the global climate crisis that could have unintended consequences and thus might not be the effective solutions they’re promoted as. Listen here: Nature-based solutions…
Even in this era of “alternative facts,” the letter to the New York Times from Norte Energy (the company responsible for Brazil’s Belo Monte Dam) will surely be remembered as…
JAKARTA — Onrizal Onrizal remembers hearing stories of human-like creatures living in the forest when he was growing up in Sungai Dareh, a town in western Sumatra, Indonesia. Legend had…
On any list of places menaced by climate change, Vietnam's broad and fertile Mekong Delta ranks near the top. And yet, as I wrote for Mongabay four years ago, rising…
315 traditional families in the Brazilian Amazon, evicted from their homes starting in 2015 to make way for the Belo Monte mega-dam, have won the right to resettle near their former Xingu River homes.
A plan by Brazil’s Norte Energia, builder and operator of the Belo Monte mega-dam, to drastically reduce Xingu River water flows will be a disaster for habitat, fish, fisheries, and riverine communities, experts say.
JAKARTA — One person is missing and feared dead following a series of landslides near the site of a planned hydropower plant in the only known habitat of the critically…
North Sumatra is home to 1 of only 8 known great ape species in the world, the newly described Tapanuli orangutan, first classified in 2017 after its habits and DNA…
Nearly 2 billion people live within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of a forest, and many rely on forests directly as a source of livelihood. But forests also play a critical…
The planned 650 MW dam on the Rio Branco in Brazil’s Roraima state is scheduled to become operational in 2028; it could do extraordinary socio-environmental harm.
Brazil’s current 10-year Energy Expansion Plan calls for three more large dams in Amazonia by 2029, and the country’s 2050 National Energy Plan lists many more — putting the environment at risk.
MANILA — Community members and civil society groups have filed a petition against a planned coal-fired power plant in the Philippine province of Palawan, a biodiversity haven that’s one of…
The Bailique Archipelago is located at the mouth of the Amazon, where the mighty river meets the Atlantic Ocean in the Brazilian state of Amapá. It comprises eight estuarine islands…
A new study finds that the four fish species most commonly consumed by Indigenous and riverine communities in northern Brazil contain the highest concentrations of mercury, up to four times in excess of WHO recommendations.
JAKARTA — Developers of a hydropower dam that threatens the only known habitat of a critically endangered orangutan say they will push on despite calls from the IUCN for an…
For two years, regions of Brazil that depend on precipitation fed by Amazonian vegetation have seen rainfall below historical averages, impacting crops and harvests. A recent bulletin from a federal agency points to agribusiness itself as one of the drivers of this pattern.
Hundreds of dams are planned within global protected areas, a prospect that threatens people, plants and animals that rely on the lifegiving waters of free-flowing rivers. According to a first-of-its-kind…
JAKARTA — Construction of a hydropower plant in the only known habitat of a critically endangered orangutan species on the Indonesian island of Sumatra might be delayed for up to…
Juma Xipaya, a young indigenous woman, medical student and fierce activist, fought the Belo Monte dam and exposed corruption; now she lives in daily terror of two thugs in a white pickup.
