While individual investors have no idea where their money is applied, large finance firms camouflage participation in companies that foment tree-cutting in the Amazon.
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.
When Hans Peter Lankes, a top official at the International Finance Corporation, visited Madagascar in February, he made it a point to tour the IFC-backed BoViMa facility near the southern…
In an episode of the Netflix dystopian sci-fi show “Black Mirror,” artificial bees have been deployed to pollinate the world’s plants after a massive pollinator extinction. A great idea, until…
Brazil is well positioned to benefit from forest restoration and agroforestry, but policies in states like Maranhão fail to address that potential and could contribute to further deforestation.
Jan Erik Saugestad, executive vice president of Norway’s Storebrand Asset Management, who has led an international pressure campaign against deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, says the government must back up its promises with action to reverse the rising trend.
A pork and chicken producer has expanded its operations in northern Ecuador with the help of funding from the World Bank's commercial lending arm, despite sustained complaints from local communities…
Agribusiness entities that deforested vast swaths of the Cerrado biome in Brazil to grow corn are now suffering a drop in production because of climate changes brought about by their own actions.
This story is a collaboration between La Nación and Mongabay Latam. It is the first installment of a five-part series about illegal deforestation for marijuana production in eastern Paraguay. Read…
Censorship, persecution, and dismissals of supervisors have become the norm in Brazil’s environmental agencies since Jair Bolsonaro took office. Now, prosecutors are seeking the dismissal of his environment minister, Ricardo Salles, alleging "countless initiatives that violate the duty to protect the environment."
It’s the one-year anniversary of the finalization of a gigantic trade agreement between the EU and Mercusor, a bloc of Latin American nations, but Brazil’s soaring deforestation rate puts ratification at risk.
SAHN, Sierra Leone — The day they came, Margaret Fascia was in her forest garden of cocoa trees, pineapple plants, palms, ferns and cassavas. Like most days of the week,…
MBONJO, Cameroon — The first time Emmanuel Elong wrote a letter to Vincent Bolloré was in 2013. “The impact of the group that you are controlling on our lives is…
Between 1885 and 1908, Belgium’s King Leopold II exerted control over a vast area of Africa that would later become the Democratic Republic of the Congo. His rule was characterized…
A first ever study has quantified carbon emissions across Brazil’s entire soy sector in detail and pinpointed the highest deforestation related emissions in the Cerrado savanna, followed by the Amazon.
Last year the world lost some 119,000 square kilometers (45,946 square miles) of tree cover – an area the size of Nicaragua – according to satellite data collated by the…
Native Brazilian bees provide several environmental services – pollination of flora and agricultural crops being the most important one. But new studies show that pesticides may affect them more intensely.
Following the International Day for Biological Diversity, a leader of the Partnership Fund for Critical Ecosystems draws attention to the environmental importance of the most biodiverse tropical savanna on the planet.
JAKARTA — Nyoman Suryadiputra says he still vividly remembers the time he traveled deep into the heart of the lush tropical peat forests of Indonesian Borneo in 1996 to document…
38 indigenous groups in Brazil are reporting 537 COVID-19 cases. In Mato Grosso state, a new map tracks the virus, while officials push measures that put indigenous land rights at risk.
KOKOPO, Papua New Guinea — Change. That’s what Monica Yongol has seen in her 54 years. In that time, the loggers and then the oil palm companies have moved into…
The Brazilian savanna has always been a dry place, but the massive conversion of native vegetation to soy is making it far dryer, as is deepening, climate change-driven, drought.
An area half the size of Switzerland in Brazil’s Cerrado biome could see its biodiversity plummet as sugarcane farms expand to meet global demand for bioethanol, a new study says. Researchers calculated that some parts of the Cerrado could see up to 100% loss of mammalian species richness; endangered animals like the maned wolf and the giant anteater will be the most affected.
The land rights of quilombos — communities of runaway slave descendants —are assured by Brazil’s Constitution; but those rights are now largely disregarded by agribusiness and Bolsonaro.
The Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve turns 30 this year, but the spirit of sustainable forest use that drove its creation is fading away amid economic and environmental pressures. The reserve’s young people are increasingly being drawn away from the extractivism model to work in more stable activities, such as cattle ranching.
In the small community of Boca de Chajul just over the Guatemalan border in the Mexican state of Chiapas, Rafael Lombera recounts how he has seen large expanses of Lacandon…
The amount that the Brazilian government fails to collect because of tax exemptions on pesticides is nearly four times as much as the Ministry of the Environment’s total budget this year. In addition, multinational giants in the pesticide sector also receive millions in public funding for research.
AMBON, Indonesia — Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry has charged a director of a plantation firm on the eastern Indonesian island of Seram with illegal logging in a dispute…
After enduring a fraught election process that resulted in the resignation of president Evo Morales in November 2019, Bolivia will once again be holding a general election in 2020. Meanwhile,…
Continued deregulation and fast tracking of new products under President Bolsonaro have helped secure Brazil’s place as the world’s largest user of very toxic pesticides.