JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has acquiesced to the reality that local and indigenous communities already manage land within conservation areas, saying it will begin formalizing this de facto stewardship…
Visit by Pope Francis to Peru brought needed attention to Amazon deforestation and indigenous suffering due to illegal mining, but will the pontiff’s words be a game changer?
Pope Francis will visit one of the Peruvian Amazon’s most threatened regions today, where the leader of the Catholic Church is expected to address escalating deforestation and uncertainty about indigenous…
Late last year, the Peruvian government gave the go-ahead for the construction of new roads along its border with Brazil in the Ucayali and Madre de Dios regions. The main…
Experts say 2017 Brazilian wildfires were caused not principally by drought, but mostly set by people, and worsened by human-caused forest degradation. Agency budget cuts worsened the crisis.
In 2016, President Maduro declared the Arco Minero; today thousands of indigenous people are being impacted by a mining boom that endangers their lives and culture.
LORETO REGION, Peru — Starting yesterday, 868,927 hectares of forest in Peru’s Loreto Region will be protected through the creation of Yaguas National Park, comprising a mega-diverse ecosystem that, until…
Happy new year to all our listeners out there! On our first episode of 2018, we speak with the author of a book about the resilience of indigenous peoples in…
In 2018, expect more Amazon assaults by the Temer administration, as indigenous and environmental resistance builds, with court rulings and October elections adding uncertainty.
PAKULI INDUK, Indonesia — In a remote village on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi lies a small garden of near-mythic repute — a place whose stewards grow not mere plants, but…
Between America's abandonment of leadership on conservation and environmental policy, Brazil's backtracking on forest conservation, massive forest fires worldwide, and the revelation of a sharp increase in global forest loss…
JAKARTA — 2017 saw Indonesia once again fulfilling its economic development potential. The Southeast Asian nation started out the year with mixed superlatives: home to the third-largest stretch of tropical…
In a major policy shift, the Brazilian government says it is abandoning plans for new mega-dams in the Amazon basin, a victory for conservationists and indigenous groups.
JAYAPURA, Indonesia — On a sunny afternoon in early August, two tribal chiefs in northern Papua province, at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago, met to formalize the system…
GARUT, Indonesia — It was, at first sight, a typical scene for the Ath-Taariq Islamic boarding school in Indonesia’s West Java province: some 50 people, most of them women, gathered…
President Temer, pressed by the ruralist lobby, attacked indigenous and traditional land rights, conserved lands, and Amazon forests this year, and retreated from Brazil's Paris climate goal – analysis.
PUNAN ADIU, Indonesia — It’s no ordinary day here in the tiny village of Punan Adiu, tucked away in the northeastern corner of Indonesian Borneo. Devit, 9, is rushing off…
In 1986, Patricia Wright, then a budding primatologist, spent weeks combing the rainforests of eastern Madagascar in search of the greater bamboo lemur (Prolemur simus), a five-pound bamboo-eating primate that…
The indigenous inhabitants of Indonesia’s Mentawai district, a cluster of islands off the southwestern coast of Sumatra, are a step closer to reclaiming their ancestral rights to their land from…
TAMBRAUW, Indonesia — It took more than two hours by boat, through a driving rain, to reach the village of Saubeba from the nearest large town of Sausapor in Indonesia’s…
