Mileva "Gara" Jovanović's family has been taking cattle up to graze in Montenegro’s Sinjajevina Highlands for more than 140 summers. The mountain pastures of the Sinjajevina-Durmitor Massif are the largest…
Six rangers working at Virunga National Park in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo were killed in an ambush by a local militia group on Sunday, according to the park’s…
JAKARTA — Activists have called on financiers and clients of Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), one of the world’s biggest paper producers, to stop doing business with the company, citing…
JAKARTA — U.S. agribusiness giants Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Bunge are buying palm oil from mills in Indonesia that have been publicly linked to land and human rights violations and…
As global demand for edible oil keeps growing, palm oil has enjoyed unprecedented growth both in consumption and production. Used in everything from chocolate to ice-cream, lipstick to shampoo, palm oil…
“This is a country that has a forestry vocation,” says José Miguel Orozco, professor of forest governance and policy at Bogotá’s Francisco José de Caldas District University. High-altitude Andean forests,…
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.
Brazil has been mined for gold, bauxite, manganese and more. While companies, investors and nations benefit, the Amazon’s people often haven’t, as they’ve lost traditional cultures, livelihoods and health.
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.
Smallholders and family farms, Indigenous people, rural women, youth, and landless rural communities are being squeezed into increasingly smaller parcels of land or forced out entirely as global land inequality…
“The invasions do not stop, the deforestation does not stop, and the threats do not stop,” Iván Flores Rodríguez said by phone from the Indigenous Santa Clara de Uchunya community.…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Read parts one and two of the series, and watch the film here. It’s cloudy when my plane lands at the airport…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Read parts one and three of the series, and watch the film here. It's raining, windy, and misty as I head toward…
Their territory is suffering the ravages of COVID-19, invasion by 20,000 illegal miners, mercury pollution, severe deforestation, and “genocidal” government apathy, say the Yanomami people.
Almost a fifth of Brazil’s soy and grains already flow down Amazonia’s rivers. Now a boom in private river port construction, with little government oversight, further threatens the region’s waterways.
This article was co-produced with The Gecko Project. Read parts two and three of the series, and watch the film here. Serene, prosperous, fertile. These words come to mind as…
Brazil’s mining authority is actively entertaining more than 3,000 requests to mine on Indigenous lands in the Amazon, despite such activity being prohibited under the country’s Constitution, an investigation by…
Amazon fires are burning this year within the protected lands inhabited by isolated uncontacted Indigenous peoples. The fires, largely illegal and intentionally set by land grabbers, ranchers and farmers, are…
This article was co-produced with The Gecko Project. The alleged assault of an Indigenous man in the Indonesian province of Papua by a police officer around two hours before he…
JAKARTA — Observers and activists have raised concerns about the leading role the Indonesian government plans to give to the military and to big corporations in a program to establish…
Jair Bolsonaro and 6,000 of his appointees come from Brazil’s military, which historically sees Amazon infrastructure and development as vital to national security and to averting foreign invasion: Analysis.
JAKARTA — When Indonesia’s parliament passed a new slate of deregulation that, among other things, drastically strips back environmental protections against coal mining, critics and protesters denounced it as catering…
JAKARTA — Activists have slammed one of the world’s biggest pulp and paper companies for clearing peatland in Indonesia despite its zero-deforestation pledge. They say Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings…
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…