Food systems are responsible for 80% of the world’s deforestation, 70% of freshwater use and contribute to 40% of the planet’s land degradation says a recently published report by the…
A new report by the Forest Declaration Assessment says that fulfilling the Paris Agreement won’t be possible without acknowledging and supporting the crucial role of Indigenous peoples and local communities’…
In November 2018, Earthsight published an in-depth investigation in collaboration with Mongabay into the Tanah Merah oil palm project in Papua, on the Indonesian half of the island of New…
In Gribe, a village located in southeastern Cameroon, the Indigenous Baka of Dimgba are one of dozens of hunter-gatherer groups of the Congo basin diversifying their food sources to maintain…
JAKARTA — Palm oil companies in Indonesia’s West Papua province are suing a local district head for revoking their permits, the second such case filed since authorities last year rescinded…
JAKARTA — A “social forestry” program administered by the Indonesian government to grant land rights to communities has not been effective in preventing deforestation, and in some cases has even…
Pledges and solutions proposed by world leaders to address the climate and biodiversity crisis at the United Nations climate summit, COP26, and biodiversity conference, COP15, are not going to be…
JAKARTA — Electric vehicles, solar power plants, biofuel, blue carbon, green bonds and the carbon market: all got a mention from Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo in his speech at the…
The Glasgow Declaration on Forests pledges to end deforestation by 2030. But critics say there’s a catch: Will natural forests continue being cut, and land converted to plantations, causing CO2 emissions to rise and biodiversity to fall?
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…
The statistics paint a grim picture: Accelerating species losses, 10 million hectares (25 million acres) of forest destroyed every year, apocalyptic declines in the abundance of some wildlife. The planet…
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…
It all started with the monkeys. What began as a research effort to understand the black lion tamarin, one of the rarest of the New World monkeys, has blossomed into…
Imagine you have invaded a public land in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest, cut the forest down and, after all that, you get the papers that certify you as…
In a ruling that could strengthen Indigenous land rights claims across Brazil, the nation’s Supreme Court has sided with the Guarani Kaiowá, allowing the possible reopening of a case involving their territory claim.
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…
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.
The historical record shows that Indigenous reserves are only safe from invasion by illegal deforesters once fully protected by government — protections rapidly eroding in Bolsonaro’s Brazil.
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…
JAKARTA — Palm oil companies will no longer be required to allocate a fifth of their land for smallholder farmers under a new bill, a move activists and officials call…
The Land Portal Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in the Netherlands, recently released what it’s calling “the largest global database of land and property rights projects.” In around a decade…
The murder of Sister Dorothy in 2005, and resulting international outrage, helped curb violence in Brazil for a time, but crimes against landless peasants and activists are on the rise.
MANILA — Environment and land rights leaders were among the activists rounded up in a new wave of arrests in the Philippines as part of the government’s extensive counter-insurgency campaign…
JAKARTA — In late September, international news outlets caught flak for their coverage of Indonesia’s largest mass protests since the 1998 uprising that led to the fall of the dictator…
Scientists call it flood-retreat agriculture. As a swollen river blankets a dry plain and then recedes, it replenishes the thin soil with enough nutrients to sprout grass for cattle and…
The way humans have changed the forests of Central and South America may be making it impossible for subsistence hunters to continue their way of life, according to two conservation…
This week, the Indonesian electoral commission confirmed the results of the April 17 election that gave President Joko Widodo a solid victory over his challenger, former army special forces general…
KALIBIRU, Indonesia — For years, Parjan hoped his community might one day gain title to the Menoreh Hills. The green valley northwest of the Javan city of Yogyakarta was tilled…
JAKARTA — In the space of a few days, Indonesian President Joko Widodo has vowed to side with local communities in their disputes over land with large companies — yet…
Life on this planet, in all its wide diversity, is disappearing more quickly now than it has at any time in human history, and some 1 million species of plants…
