Infrastructure News

JAKARTA — Conservation groups are calling on the Asian Development Bank to tighten its scrutiny of a road project it plans to fund in Indonesian Borneo that may pose risks…

RIO DE JANEIRO – Horto, a secluded neighborhood in the south of Rio de Janeiro with a view of the famed Christ the Redeemer statue, is enveloped by forest. Tropical…

Mining areas are dangerous for many reasons: they’re linked to a heightened risk of cancer, poisoning, heart and respiratory diseases. Now, researchers have identified a hitherto overlooked hazard: roads. Miners…

An analysis of bird sightings in Canada and the U.S. showed that many North American species, from mighty eagles to diminutive hummingbirds, gained ground during COVID-19 lockdowns as humans sheltered…

JAKARTA — A new study strengthens the case for redirecting a planned mining road around the largest surviving tract of lowland tropical rainforest on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, but the…

Editor’s note: Tim Killeen provides an update on the state of the Amazon in his new book “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon Wilderness – Success and Failure in the Fight…

It happened eight years ago: Elicarlos Ferreira da Silva and his family were returning home one afternoon from the town of Caetité in Brazil’s Bahia state when they were stopped…

Activists in Malaysia are celebrating an unprecedented U-turn by the Selangor state government after it cancelled plans last week to develop the Kuala Langat North Forest Reserve. The forest reserve…

On the western fringe of the Brazilian Amazon, lush forest stretches for miles across a protected reserve that is home to the Ashaninka Indigenous people. Just a few miles away,…

BLACK JOHNSON, Sierra Leone — Seated along the peninsula south of Freetown is the secluded village of Black Johnson. Rainforest covers the hills that rise behind it, home to chimpanzees…

In mid-July this year, camera traps from the Onças do Iguaçu Project in Brazil’s Paraná state captured images of two jaguar cubs (Panthera onca). In July 2020, the network of…

On Feb. 8, 2019, two weeks after the collapse of a dam holding mining waste killed 272 people and left a trail of destruction in Brumadinho, in the Brazilian state…

Feisal Abdalla spends his days on the sea, taking tourists on whale-watching, snorkeling and diving trips. He and his wife, Amina Sabel, also manage a string of ecotourism cottages along…

Every few years, stretches of Borneo’s towering dipterocarp trees fruit in a synchronized pulse. In those months, the air is rich with brown, winged fruit, which fall and spin to…

An Indigenous community in Peninsular Malaysia is fighting an eviction notice that could see it displaced to make way for a “world-class eco-city.” The Mah Meri families residing in the…

Water-sensitive urban design (WSUD), a holistic sustainable approach to water management, could give the world’s cities a viable means of dealing with the climatic shocks ahead. Cape Town and Singapore point the way.

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…

DUMAGUETE CITY, Philippines — Local authorities in the central Philippines pushing ahead with a land reclamation project that will bury four marine reserves face strong opposition from scientists, fishers and…

JAKARTA — An area of rainforest nearly five times the size of London has been destroyed in the past two decades in Indonesian New Guinea, home to Asia Pacific’s largest…

MAROS, Indonesia — Santuwo straightens the crease in the sarong that he often wears while working in his rice field in the village of Salenrang, in Indonesia’s South Sulawesi province.…

JAKARTA — UNESCO has urged the Indonesian government to close a stretch of road that runs through the largest protected area in Southeast Asia, citing its negative environmental impact. In…

Nearly 10,000 square kilometers of the Brazilian Amazon, an area the size of Lebanon, is at high risk of being cleared, according to a new tool using artificial intelligence technology…

I was quite thrilled reading Jut Wynne’s commentary on the Maya Forest Corridor (MFC) published by Mongabay on May 24th of this year. Jut described the critical importance of the…

GORONTALO, Indonesia — A troubled road project bisecting forests and mountains in Indonesia’s northern Gorontalo province has not complied with environmental checks required by law, according to interviews with local…

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — In a far-flung slice of the Brazilian Amazon, a potholed highway cuts hundreds of miles through the heart of the rainforest. In its most rudimentary…

Mongabay Latam and Folha, through the Stories Without Borders project, document what is happening on the border between Peru and Brazil. MÂNCIO LIMA, Acre — The Acre antshrike is known…

GORONTALO, Indonesia — Merlin Tahir says she doesn’t like to dwell on how much money her family lost after they were forced in 2014 to give up their land for…

Malaysian scientists and activists have called on road planners in the Bornean state of Sabah to reconsider a 13-kilometer (8-mile) stretch of the Pan Borneo Highway that will cut through…

Wild elephants are awe-inspiring — even if they’re trying to kill you, as I discovered in 2004. At the time I was studying how poachers and loggers threaten native mammals…

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,…