While forest advocates had high hopes, the EU parliament voted this week not to declassify woody biomass as a renewable energy source, paving the way for more EU, U.S., and Canadian forests to be turned into wood pellets and burned.
JAKARTA — Indonesia has pardoned 75 companies operating illegally inside forest areas, with hundreds more to be amnestied in the future, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry announced during a…
Chiang Mai, THAILAND — Piya Thedyam was born into a fisherman's family and first went to sea with his father at age 12. “I didn't like it and almost ran…
Citing growing repression against environment defenders in Vietnam, 52 celebrated environmentalists from across the globe have signed a joint letter calling on the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to…
Water management experts have derided as “a drop in the ocean” an agreement between Bangladesh and India to share water from the Kushiara River, a minor waterway out of the…
SIEM PANG, Cambodia — “I remember seeing a buffalo, its head tied to a floating barrel, drifting down the river,” says Pheng Sisuwath, gesturing to the Sekong River from his…
Brazilians will go to the polls in October to vote in presidential and congressional elections that many consider a critical moment for the fate of the environment in Brazil. Activists…
On April 10, 2019, a fishing vessel known as Da Wang left Taiwan to sail out into distant waters in search of tuna. Two months into the voyage, a disturbance…
JAKARTA — An ambitious and long-anticipated plan by Indonesian lawmakers to revise the country’s criminal code, inherited from the Dutch colonial era, could make it much more difficult to prosecute…
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.
In 2021, faced with an economy battered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the island nation of Maldives considered lifting a ban on shark fishing that had been in place since 2010.…
A Brazilian company stands poised to start mining inside an Indigenous territory in the Amazon as soon as October, highlighting the precarious nature of the protections afforded to Indigenous lands…
The death knell of coal has been proclaimed, but policy loopholes in Asia allow for cofired power plants, where coal and wood are combined as fuel. Both fuels produce lots of carbon emissions, but those from wood aren’t counted.
CHHNOK TRU, Cambodia — From her sun-bleached wooden houseboat in the floating village of Koh Tapov, on the southeastern side of the Tonle Sap lake in Kampong Thom province, Hai…
JAKARTA — Villagers in Indonesia’s Sumatra Island have demanded authorities revoke the permit of an iron ore miner after it continued operating in violation of an order to halt its…
MARERENI, Kenya — It’s mid-morning in April, and Ngombo Tsuma is seated under a lone neem tree by one of his two grass-thatched huts. His wife sits by the door…
Mining of sand to feed the red-hot demand from Bangladesh’s construction industry has fueled an illegal industry that overshadows the legal one and that’s destroying ecosystems and exacerbating river erosion.…
An Australian company is threatening to sue the government of Papua New Guinea after its proposed carbon credit deal was canceled. Mayur Resources, a mining and energy company that works…
The state of Mato Grosso has approved a bill that allows extensive ranching and tourism in protected areas of the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland. The move comes just…
New legislation passed by the Chilean government in May 2021 aims to rid the nation of all single-use products in the food and beverage industry, including plastics, within three years.…
JAKARTA — More than 100 Indigenous people in Indonesia’s Papua region are calling on the local government to revoke all the permits of a palm oil company that’s continuing to…
Smoke from fires in parts of the Brazilian Amazon are getting closer to cities. The combination of the highest number of forest fires in 15 years and highest ever deforestation…
Authorities in Bangladesh have been slammed for harassment and lack of compassion after arresting 59 people from forest-dependent communities for violating a ban on entering the Sundarbans, the world’s biggest…
PREK TABAEK, Cambodia — Bat Savoeun claims he has Prime Minister Hun Sen’s signoff to farm his 2 hectares of land in Prek Tabaek village, on the edge of the…
Lying at the nexus of South Asia, Southeast Asia and China, Myanmar hosts an extraordinary mix of ecosystems that represent some of the last refuges of an ever-lengthening list of…
Since February of this year, a tailings dam at the QMM mine in Madagascar has failed at least twice. Hazardous mine wastewater overflowed and contaminated the surrounding lagoon system relied…
JAKARTA — Jakarta’s recent episode of world-beating air pollution has highlighted what activists describe as belligerent inaction by the Indonesian government to address the source of the problem, even in…
In late June 2002, the container ship MOL Independence docked at a Singapore port after a voyage of almost a month from Durban in South Africa. On board was a…
JAKARTA — Activists have welcomed the Indonesian government’s announcement to carry out a nationwide audit of all palm oil companies operating here, in response to a shortage of cooking oil…
“How do we tell the stories of people that history forgets and the present avoids?” journalist-turned-author Jori Lewis asks in the preface to her debut book, Slaves for Peanuts: A…
