Georeferencing, a digital process for registering land ownership, is now widespread in South America, but it is high-tech that can be used by landgrabbers and companies to obtain deeds to collective ancestral lands.
SOUTH COTABATO, Philippines — A court in the Philippines has dealt another setback to the company looking to mine Southeast Asia’s largest untapped deposits of copper and gold, ruling to…
When rain falls on Bantayan Island, the supply of fresh water rises. If the rains fail, it becomes scarcer. The more than 120,000 residents of Bantayan and 22 nearby islets…
In 2009, traditional Brazilian Amazon communities and Catholic nuns brought the transnational mining company to the negotiating table and galvanized Amazonia’s land rights struggle.
MANILA — On July 29, the San Miguel Corporation, the Philippines’ largest company by revenue, started planting 25,000 mangrove trees in a coastal area just north of the capital, Manila.…
Reaching down into the Malay Peninsula, Myanmar’s southern Tanintharyi region is home to rainforests that support a unique assemblage of endemic and endangered species, including the endangered Malay tapir (Tapirus…
JAKARTA — Indigenous rights activists have welcomed the cancellation of an oil palm plantation permit on Indigenous land in Indonesia’s Papua region. They say the case is a prime example…
SOUTH COTABATO, Philippines — Officials in the southern Philippines have canceled a $5.9 billion project to exploit Southeast Asia’s largest known undeveloped copper and gold reserves, but have left open…
The Kayapó Mekrãgnoti Indigenous people have launched a blockade of the BR-163 highway, a key Brazilian commodities shipment route, mostly in protest over lost funding to prevent reserve invasions.
While MRN, a mining firm makes big profits working within, and harming, a Brazilian conservation unit, traditional people can be fined for collecting Brazil nuts and fishing sustainably in a nearby protected area.
JAKARTA — An Indonesian government scheme to certify sustainable palm oil doesn’t do enough to protect human rights or the environment, and needs to accommodate input from Indigenous and forest…
Companies and governments are pushing for the privatization of land around the world as a way to get at economically valuable resources, according to a recent report from the Oakland…
JBS, a Brazilian company repeatedly accused of “laundering cattle” in the past, has again allegedly been caught purchasing livestock illegally reared in an Amazonian indigenous reserve in Rondônia state, Brazil.
BATANGHARI, Indonesia — On a sunny day in March, six teenagers have their hands full planting seedlings in a patch of burned forest in Sumatra. “This was our first time…
JAKARTA — Lawmakers in Indonesia plan to call pulp and paper executives to testify about a recent case in which an Indigenous farmer was jailed for cutting down pulpwood trees…
A federal judge has issued an emergency order giving the Bolsonaro administration just days to evict all illegal miners, and keep them out until the danger of the COVID-19 pandemic is over.
JAKARTA — Activists have called on the Indonesian authorities to probe the finances of the Korindo Group, a privately owned conglomerate, in the wake of an investigation that exposed a $22…
An exclusive study shows that 114 properties have been certified inside indigenous territories awaiting demarcation in the Brazilian Amazon, spurred in large part by a recent statute that leaves these reserves unprotected from such illegal land grabs.
JAKARTA — A court in Indonesia has sentenced two indigenous farmers to eight and 10 months in prison respectively for stealing oil palm fruit from a plantation company that is…
JAKARTA — As Indonesia struggles to contain one of the deadliest coronavirus outbreaks in Asia, the country’s president has quietly issued a new regulation on eminent domain. Signed in May,…
Land grabbers, landed estate owners and even oil companies stand to benefit from a new guideline released by FUNAI, the federal indigenous affairs agency, which opens up 237 indigenous territories in Brazil for sale, subdivision and speculation.
As a young boy living on South Dakota’s Rosebud Indian Reservation, Wizipan Little Elk remembers the first time he saw a buffalo herd. The experience ignited a passion, and at…
JAKARTA — Activists have condemned the conviction and jailing of an indigenous farmer in Sumatra whose community is embroiled in a long-standing land dispute with paper giant Asia Pulp &…
JAKARTA — A highway and levee project touted as a solution to coastal flooding in communities along the north coast of Indonesia’s Java Island will shortchange those very communities and…
JAKARTA — Activists in the Indonesian province of Papua are demanding an investigation into the death of an indigenous man who was reportedly assaulted by a police officer after complaining…
Some 600 indigenous people have seen their crops die due to the expansion of agribusiness in the state of Pará, Brazil. The streams used by the Munduruku have also been damaged, if not dried up.
JAKARTA — A broad coalition of civil society groups has called on investors and buyers to stop doing business with Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), one of the world’s biggest…
Four Alter do Châo volunteer firefighters were charged last year with setting Amazon fires; the police lack evidence, while locals say the real suspects — landgrabbers — are likely still on the loose.
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…
