Land Use Change News

JAMBI — A quintet of Jambi residents gathered one morning in May at the home of Leni Haini, an Indonesian environmental activist who last year received a prestigious award from…

Large-scale soy production for European markets has long been associated with deforestation in South America’s forests, including in the continent’s second-largest, but lesser-known, forest, the Gran Chaco in Argentina and…

An innovative new study featuring the methodological use of machine learning algorithms, published in Nature magazine, has revealed that more than 3 million hectares (7.4 million acres) of Amazonian Rainforest…

With 2023 expected to see record amounts of brown macroalgae washing up on Caribbean beaches, green entrepreneurs in Mexico are turning waste into biogas, biofertilizer and even faux leather; all despite big bureaucratic hurdles.

 COLOMBO — On average one elephant has died each day in Sri Lanka in the first three months of this year, with nearly half of those deaths due to human…

JAKARTA — The ongoing development of Indonesia’s new capital city, Nusantara, in eastern Borneo has raised alarm bells among environmentalists and human rights defenders around the world as the region…

BALIKPAPAN/JAKARTA — A clearing for the ramp to a new toll road in the Indonesian Bornean city of Balikpapan gapes open on the side of a paved highway as big…

At the start of the 2000s, the search for a “miracle” biofuel led to a stubby Latin American tree. But jatropha’s boom went bust when high yields and big eco benefits failed to materialize. Now some say it’s set for a return.

MOCOA, Colombia — “We are experiencing a profound crisis, not only in the Amazon but throughout humanity,” said Campo Elías de la Cruz, a Catholic priest and environmental activist who…

Biofuels have long been held up as a viable high-tech climate solution, but in practice they’ve often not lived up to their promise, causing environmental harm and in some cases being more carbon-intensive than fossil fuels.

SEPAKU/BALIKPAPAN/JAKARTA, Indonesia — In 1977, when Darna was about 8 years old, her family moved from Indonesia’s central island of Java to Borneo, its largest. They were among the tens…

Between May 2021 and November 2022, more than 200,000 deforestation alerts covering a total of 2,700 hectares (6,670 acres) were recorded around Ouesso, the administrative seat of Sangha province, in…

KATHMANDU — When NASA’s Earth Observatory published a post on its website earlier this year describing how Nepal had regenerated its forests between 1992 and 2016, it received a lot…

Mennonites, often searching for new land to expand their simple, rural lifestyles, have founded hundreds of communities across Latin America over the last century. In forested areas, particularly the Amazon,…

EAST TANJUNG JABUNG, Indonesia — Ambo Angke trudged through the cemetery knowing he had been right to worry. A high tide surge had inundated the resting place here on the…

Canadian mining company Belo Sun wants to build a huge gold mine in the Big Bend of the Xingu region, in Pará; project foresees the extraction of 74 tons of gold in 20 years of operation.

Residents of a landless worker’s settlement in Anapu, Pará state in Brazil’s Amazon region, accuse the Federal Government of favoring large landowners, land grabbers and corporations at the expense of poor and landless peasants.

JAKARTA — Much of the mangroves, seagrass beds and coral reefs in Indonesia lie outside protected areas, which could thwart efforts at effective marine conservation, a new report shows. Indonesia…

DAK DOA, Vietnam — At the end of the rainy season, the hillsides in Dak Doa district, in central Vietnam's Gia Lai province, turn pink as the Cỏ Hồng grass…

NAVIRAÍ, Brazil — The red earth is dusty and cracked, parched from weeks without rain. Fields planted with neat rows of corn stretch for miles across this part of Mato…

KAMPONG THOM, Cambodia — The mood outside the Kampong Thom Provincial Court had grown tense on the afternoon of July 26. Some 12 residents of Ngon village, an Indigenous Kuy…

TIBATI, Cameroon – In Mbanti-Mbang village, Joseph Adamou and his family are living in fear. Living in the Tibati district located nearly 1,400 kilometres (870 miles) north of Cameroon’s capital…

WEST PASAMAN, Indonesia — Eren says he can’t forget the day in 2000 when he fled from the plantation security guards. He had joined fellow residents of Nagari Aia Gadang…

Carbon removal plans relying on land do not add up, says a new report. Or, more accurately, researchers have now actually added them up, but countries’ climate pledges would require…

Even before a definitive license was issued by the Brazilian main environmental agency, paving works had already begun on the so-called Middle Section of the BR-319, the highway that connects the Amazonian cities of Porto Velho and Manaus.

JAKARTA/NORTH PENAJAM PASER, Indonesia — The Indonesian government’s strategy to minimize the marine impacts of building a new capital city on the island of Borneo is severely lacking, researchers and…

After a 19-year process, uncontacted and recently contacted Indigenous peoples living in the Napo-Tigre region of the Peruvian Amazon have had their existence officially recognized. With an extensive anthropological study…

Discussions about the Greenland ice sheet often focus on what it’s losing. But from around the edges of the rapidly melting Greenland ice sheet, a global commodity is being created.…

As the clamor to protect vast portions of Earth’s lands and waters grows louder to meet upcoming international goals, a newly translated book critically examines the first principles of global…

Environmental activist Ângela Mendes coordinates the Chico Mendes Committee as part of her efforts to keep alive the memory and legacy of her father, a leader of the rubber tapper community and environmental resistance. In an interview with Mongabay Brasil, Ângela Mendes talks about the role of social networks as a fundamental instrument for resistance in the 21st century.