CHIANG MAI, Thailand — A plan to construct seven dams in one of mainland Southeast Asia’s last intact forest systems could cause widespread habitat loss and sever important wildlife corridors,…
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — In a move that has prompted outrage in Cambodia and beyond, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on May 5 sentenced five activists from the environmental group…
While Yanomami people were under attack by illegal gold miners with automatic weapons for the third time this week in northern Roraima state, Brazil’s Lower House approved a bill that exempts environmental impact assessments and licensing for development projects, further endangering the country’s ecosystems and traditional communities.
Western corporations have been inflicting environmental damage overseas for generations, but the sharp rise in the scale of China's international ambitions and operations in recent years has put a spotlight…
PURWOKERTO, Indonesia — An environmental expert in Indonesia has warned against a government plan to relocate mangrove trees along the north coast of the island of Java to make way…
With much of the accessible lowland primary forests in Sumatra and Borneo cleared and converted for agriculture and industrial plantations, the Indonesian half of New Guinea is the last stand…
A controversial freight railway line that would cut through Indigenous lands in the Brazilian Amazon looks set to be approved for construction by the federal government as soon as April,…
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.
JAKARTA — Forests in parts of Indonesia regions that have remained largely untouched are now fast disappearing as deforestation driven by agribusiness and infrastructure development moves east, according to a…
An analysis of social and economic parameters in gold and diamond mining regions in the Brazilian Amazon shows that these activities have done little to boost development for locals. The…
Manaus, the capital of Brazil’s state of Amazonas, has gained worldwide notoriety for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, first for the collapse of its hospital system in April 2020…
BANTEN, Indonesia — Every day, Subur and his wife walk past giant chimneys, painted red and white at the crown, pouring smoke out of a cluster of coal plants. Subur,…
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…
JAMBI, Indonesia — Armed with a flashlight, 43-year-old Musadat walks slowly through the thick and dense Harapan forest, one of the last remaining expanses of lowland tropical rainforest on the…
JAKARTA — An upgrade to a road that cuts through one of Southeast Asia’s last great swaths of intact rainforest is driving deeper encroachment by humans into blocks of forest…
Srongpol Chantharueang remembers his parents telling him as a boy always to protect the local wetland forest when he grew up. They told him that the ecosystem would be important…
Like virtually everything in 2020, COVID-19 defined the year for tropical rainforests. Conservation was particularly hard hit in tropical countries.
Brazil’s Ferrovia Paraense (FEPASA) railroad will run from Pará state’s rainforest interior to the Amazon estuary; traditional communities say they haven’t yet been consulted as required by international law.
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.
Osvalinda Alves Pereira is the first Brazilian to win the prestigious Edelstam Prize. As a civil rights defender, and at great risk to herself, Osvalinda is resisting criminals illegally harvesting Amazon timber.
The Trans-Sumatran Highway is a $1.1 billion dollar project spanning 2,700 kilometers – from Banda Aceh in the north to Bandar Lampung in the south – and is designed to…
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.
In his homeland, Norwegian social geographer Torkjell Leira is known as a leading expert on Brazil. After coming to the country as an exchange student some 30 years ago, he…
Jumar is no stranger to the presence of elephants. Having lived and farmed in the village of Pematang Pudu village in Bengkalis district, in Indonesia’s Riau province, for more than…
It’s been more than a year since the Sinop hydroelectric dam started operations in the northern part of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso. But residents say the business consortium…
Toxic legacy of mining firms — Norwegian-Japanese Albrás, Brazil’s Vale, Norway’s Norsk Hydro, and France’s Imerys Rio Capim Caulim — wreak havoc on livelihoods and health in Amazon communities: Critics.
From underwater tunnels to bridges to communication cables snaking across the ocean floor, structures made by humans are encroaching on marine life at an ever-growing pace. Our physical footprint of…
Brazil’s Serra do Divisor National Park is at risk from a BR-364 branch road running from Acre state to Peru. Brazil’s Congress is about to strip away the park’s protections, risking wholesale deforestation.
South America’s French Guiana, a French overseas department, is slated for major new liquid biofuel power stations, fueled by soy plantations that will cause largescale Amazon deforestation, say environmentalists.
Amid the steaming swamps adjoining Borneo’s Mahakam River, a fisherman slows his boat to glide gently across the surface of Lake Melintang. He senses something amiss up ahead. A critically…
