Only 13 of some 60 men implicated in a human trafficking case in which Indonesian drug users were imprisoned under the guise of a rehabilitation program and forced to work…
JAKARTA — Indonesian prosecutors have charged three major palm oil companies in connection with a cooking oil shortage that rocked the world’s top producer of palm oil. The Attorney General’s…
Element Africa is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin of brief stories from the extractives industry in Africa.
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government’s decision to revoke hundreds of logging, plantation and mining permits across the country is marred with irregularities including companies continuing to operate or engage in…
Indigenous groups are seeking urgent measures against the escalation of police violence they face in seeking to reclaim their ancestral lands in Brazil’s Mato Grosso do Sul state. In most…
Rosaleen Duffy has long drawn the ire of those who support a forceful “guns and gates” approach to protecting wildlife. A professor of international politics at Sheffield University in the…
Police in Vietnam have detained prominent environmentalist Hoang Thi Minh Hong, known as Hong Hoang, on tax evasion charges frequently used against critics of the government’s environmental policies. Hong, who…
JAKARTA — Subsidiaries of some of the world’s biggest palm oil companies have been found guilty by Indonesia’s anticompetition watchdog of restricting sales of cooking oil amid acute shortages last…
KATHMANDU — In a landmark verdict, Nepal’s Supreme Court has directed the government to take concrete steps to implement the country’s conservation laws and seize illegal private collections of wildlife…
KERKENNAH ISLANDS, Tunisia — It’s a rainy afternoon in the port of Kraten, and all the fishing boats are docked, waiting for a winter storm to pass. Some fishers have…
On Saturday, May 13, Nguy Thi Khanh, the Goldman Environmental Prize-winning Vietnamese clean energy advocate, posted a surprising update on her personal Facebook page. The English translation read: “Endless happiness…
JAKARTA — A government audit on Indonesia's palm oil industry found that 9 million hectares (22.2 million acres) of concession holders — an area three times the size of Belgium…
Last December, delegates from nearly 200 governments adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal, Canada. This agreement aims to conserve 30 percent…
JAKARTA — A decade of protection and natural regeneration of tropical forests has helped bird populations increase in the southern lowlands of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island, but continued wild trapping by…
“The challenge in the Nkok SIZ is timber traceability. The SIZ must be kept free of illegally obtained timber,” says Marc Ona, executive secretary of the NGO Brainforest. The NGO…
JAKARTA — Illegal oil palm plantations spanning an area one and a half times the size of London have been amnestied under an Indonesian government program that critics say incentivizes…
JAKARTA — The combination of weak antigraft policies, lack of transparency, revolving-door politics, and the prevalence of politically exposed persons within companies makes Indonesia’s palm oil industry highly prone to…
A Mongabay investigation into land-grabbing in the Brazilian Amazon has led to the suspension of the sustainability certificate of the country's second top palm oil exporter, as shown in email correspondence…
Illegal deforestation, wildcat mining, drug trafficking, and lethal violence: Name your scourge and the Amazon Basin seldom disappoints. But as an unusual compact between police officers, prosecutors, environmental protectors, and…
Last year, farmer protests erupted throughout the Netherlands, riding a wave of rural anger at government plans to drastically halve nitrogen emissions by downsizing and closing farms. This quickly swept…
Environmental and social impact assessments (ESIA) have become an important tool for decision-makers around the world to explore and understand the impacts of proposed development projects on the wider ecosystem.…
DRC community accuses Canadian miner of encroaching into their forests WALIKALE, Democratic Republic of Congo — For the past 10 years, a Canadian-registered company, Alphamin Bisie, has been mining tin…
This story was produced with the funding support of the Pulitzer Center. WEST TURKANA, KENYA—By late morning along Kaito beach on the western banks of Lake Turkana, the heat beating…
JAKARTA — A court in Indonesia has sentenced palm oil billionaire Surya Darmadi to 15 years in prison for his role in the biggest corruption case in the country’s history.…
YAOUNDÉ, Cameroon – A ruined mining site rests at the heart of the village of Akak I, nestled on the outskirts of Cameroon's capital Yaoundé. This quarry site is no…
Thuý, who helped run environmental programs at a nonprofit based in Ho Chi Minh City, had for weeks pondered quitting her job to pursue an advanced degree. The 24-year-old, who…
Last week, a timber company won a controversial lawsuit against Liberia’s Forestry Development Authority when a court ordered the agency to allow a shipment of illegal logs to be exported…
On the morning of May 24, 2017, police and military carried out an operation in the Santa Lúcia farm in Brazil’s northern Amazon state of Pará, killing 10 unarmed rural…
Brazil’s use of pesticides has spiked in recent years, growing by over 300,000 tonnes since 2010, according to experts. A recent report, published by the NGO Operação Amazônia Nativa (OPAN)…
Illegal gold mining is accelerating deforestation in one of Venezuela’s most threatened national parks, a new report from Amazon Conservation revealed. Satellite imagery analyzed by the NGO shows that thousands…
