Nearly 4,000 requests have been submitted for mining-related activities on 31 indigenous reserves and 17 protected areas in Brazil, according to recently obtained data from the nongovernmental Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA) and the National Mining Agency.
Local forest managers in southeastern Mexico are sounding the alarm that their livelihoods are under threat, as companies press for access to the region’s gold, silver and other minerals. “They…
Legislation would open indigenous reserves in Amazon and across Brazil to commercial mining, oil and gas exploration, ranching, agribusiness, new dams and tourism.
In an exclusive interview with Mongabay, Marcelino Guedes, a researcher at Brazil’s Amapá Federal University, talks about how important the management of traditional knowledge is for strengthening the forest economy in Brazil to overcome the paradigm that sees standing forest as an enemy of development.
Scientists know from a bevy of studies that the inclusion of indigenous peoples and local communities is critical to holding deforestation at bay across the tropics, even as a tide…
One year after a tailings dam collapsed in Brazil’s southwestern state of Minas Gerais, killing 259 people and unleashing a tsunami of toxic mud, affected indigenous inhabitants are still struggling to relocate away from the polluted waters of the Paraopeba River.
The effects of commercial logging, mining and farming can ripple beyond the boundaries of the operations, leading to the substantial loss and degradation of nearby forest for subsistence agriculture, a…
Indigenous group entered Brazilian museum and retrieved sacred funeral urns that courts said were rightly theirs, but which dam construction firm and authorities kept from them.
Joenia Wapichana is the first indigenous woman to be elected a federal representative in Brazil. Last year, she submitted a bill to Congress proposing that funds collected from fines for environmental infractions committed on indigenous lands be returned to native peoples.
More than one-third of the world’s remaining pristine forests, known as intact forest landscapes, exist within land that’s either managed or owned by indigenous peoples, a new study has found.…
A researcher at the INPE Center of Land System Science, Antonio Donato Nobre, describes the state of degradation threatening the future of the Amazon rainforest in an exclusive interview with Mongabay.
Brazil started the decade as an example to the world, dramatically curbing Amazon deforestation, but under Jair Bolsonaro the nation is moving toward ecological ruin.
PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea — The upstart deforestation over the past year and a half that's sidling up to Pochon Lili’s land has him worried. "As a landowner, I'm…
Not all species "lost to science" are truly lost. For nearly 30 years, the starry night harlequin toad (Atelopus arsyecue), a tiny amphibian, named for its glossy black skin with…
Three indigenous Guajajara were killed in the last six days in the Amazonian state of Maranhão, making 2019 the country’s deadliest years for indigenous leaders in two decades. In total, 10 indigenous people were murdered so far this year; seven of them were leaders.
TANGKENO, Indonesia — Teenagers pound cowhide drums to dancers weaving their feet between bamboo stalks on this stage beneath the stars. It’s the island of Kabaena’s annual indigenous culture festival,…
SANTARÉM, Brazil, and BERLIN — I got off the mototaxi, a means of transportation that is part of everyday life in several cities in the Amazon, took off the helmet…
The Bolsonaro government is pressing ahead with plans to fast track a powerline through the Waimiri-Atroari Reserve without indigenous consultation.
The world’s most impoverished communities don’t need to be told that intact ecosystems are vital to their health, says Joseph Walston, vice president for field conservation programs with the Wildlife…
This is the first article in a two-part series on the Kaliwa Dam project. GENERAL NAKAR, Philippines — In the barangay, or village, of Lumutan, the Dumagat-Remontados tribe speaks of…
On the same day that President Jair Bolsonaro made his anti-indigenous speech at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Brazil’s Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) released its annual report, “Violence…
Starting October 6, the Catholic Church will hold its first ever synod focused on an ecological biome. Bishops, indigenous leaders and activists will meet and set plans to help save the Amazon.
It was a sunny afternoon in Tobelo, a town on the eastern Indonesian island of Halmahera, when I met the late Den Upa Rombelayuk, a Torajan woman from the neighboring…
How we use the planet’s land, including forests, will make a huge difference in determining the path of climate change in the future, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate…
The Sateré and other groups say they’ve been deprived of healthcare; critics see it as Bolsonaro’s way of forcing reliance on mining and agribusiness for aid.
Documentary offers a glimpse of the uncontacted Awá Guajá indigenous group, who live in the highly threatened Araribóia reserve in Brazil’s Maranhão state.
In 2007, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) launched the Heart of Borneo, an initiative that aimed to conserve 22 million hectares (54 million acres) in the transboundary area…
Federal and state investigators are looking into the knifing death of Emyra Wajãpi and the alleged invasion of Wajãpi territory by heavily armed miners.
Don Lizardo was sitting in his hammock, rocking gently back and forth, as he told us heartbreaking stories about working in haciendas when he was younger. We were sitting in…
The anti-indigenous policies of the Bolsonaro government appear to be emboldening well-funded illegal mining operations in Northern Brazil. To date, law enforcement has not stepped in.
