MINDANAO, Philippines — In the remote mountain village of Ned, on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, the arrival of heavy machinery signals that development is underway on a controversial,…
Neidinha, Almir and Txai Suruí are leading the fight against invaders destroying two of the most threatened Indigenous territories in the Brazilian state of Rondônia: the Sete de Setembro and Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau reserves.
Concerns about the environmental impacts of deep-sea mining have increased over the past few years, and for good reason: nearly 77% of the seafloor, home to highly unique biodiversity, has…
Along a northeastern stretch of the Brazilian Amazon, a palm oil war has broken out. Escalating violence triggered by land disputes between palm oil companies, on one side, and Indigenous…
“For the first time ever, there is a government that is against fracking,” says Amarilys Llanos Navarro. An activist and lawyer with the Cesar Without Fracking and Gas Movement, an…
Led by a teacher and a family farmer, 15 traditional communities living in public forests in Brazil’s Amazonas state earned official recognition and the rights to collective use of their…
WAWONII ISLAND, Indonesia — The coconut palm has been a source of food and identity for centuries among the people of Wawonii Island. In the local language wawo means above…
From oil to diamonds, offshore prospecting looms over South African fishing town DORINGBAAI, South Africa — On Sept. 23 and 24, 150 women in the small fishing town of Doringbaai,…
The July 2021 rupture of a tailings dam at a diamond mine in Angola killed off much of the aquatic life in the Lova, Tshikapa and Kasai rivers. Twelve people…
The Uinta Basin, named after the Ute Tribe, is located in Northeast Utah and Western Colorado, about 200 miles from Salt Lake City. Streams from the Uinta mountains roll through…
Belize is an amazing country where warm, humid jungles, cool tropical rivers, mangrove forests, and wildlife abound. I am an ecologist drawn to Belize as a special place where I…
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.…
An Australian court has set aside the federal government’s approval for major gas company Santos Limited’s drilling plans in the Timor Sea, north of the island nation, ruling in favor…
ASUNCIÓN MITA, Guatemala – Cecilia López and Luz Elena González were in good spirits as they left, walking beneath blue and white plastic streamers strung across the school property in…
TAMPAKAN, Philippines — In a move celebrated by anti-mining activists, local officials in the southern Philippine municipality of Tampakan have canceled the business permit for a controversial copper and gold…
On Sept. 14, the Hidden Gem — an industrial drill ship operated by a subsidiary of The Metals Company (TMC), a Canadian deep-sea mining corporation — left its port in…
GORONTALO, Indonesia — In a Chanel-print dress and wielding a machete, Ermi Mauke means business as she hikes past cashew and coffee seedlings she planted on the approach to Indonesia’s…
Industrial mining wiped out nearly 2,000 square kilometers, or 770 square miles, of forests in Indonesia between 2000 and 2019. The country is one of four worldwide where direct tropical…
An environmental think tank in Cameroon has raised the alarm over the pollution of rivers in the country’s east and north. The Centre for Environment and Development (CED) says two…
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…
Forest loss is increasing south of the Orinoco River due to lack of Venezuelan official oversight, a growing Colombian insurgency, fires set to create mining camps, and new agricultural lands cleared to feed miners.
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…
JAKARTA — A China-backed zinc and lead mine being developed in Indonesia’s Sumatra Island may pose “extreme” risks to the environment and nearby communities, according to an assessment by the…
Coordinated raids by police in Brazil have shed new light on the workings of the illegal mining industry in the Amazon. Federal police carried out three simultaneous raids against the…
ROKA KOANG, Cambodia — Some 45 kilometers, or 28 miles, up the Mekong River from Phnom Penh, Voi Thy sat and watched as 12 boats pumped sand from the riverbed.…
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…
(This report by La Cola de Rata is part of their series entitled Especial Tierra de Resistentes, which can be viewed here) Edith Lucía Taborda Guevara is an anxious…
National protests overwhelmed Ecuador in June, with Indigenous groups mobilizing in nearly every province of the country and President Guillermo Lasso announcing a state of emergency that restricted travel and…
Walk up to the cross on the highest peak in the Santana mountains near the city of Piatã in the Brazilian state of Bahia, and you’ll actually be able to…
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…