JAKARTA — Recent floods that inundated large areas of the southern part of Indonesian Borneo might have been exacerbated by massive deforestation for oil palm plantations and coal mines, activists…
More than a hundred candidates who ran in municipal elections last November in cities across Brazil’s Amazonian states are on the environmental regulator’s "dirty list" for violations committed over the…
JAKARTA — An upgrade to a road that cuts through one of Southeast Asia’s last great swaths of intact rainforest is driving deeper encroachment by humans into blocks of forest…
Thanks to the rollout of free, high-resolution satellite imagery, the job of monitoring deforestation in tropical forests just got a lot easier. Last year Norway’s Ministry of Climate and Environment…
JAKARTA — Activists have called on financiers and clients of Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), one of the world’s biggest paper producers, to stop doing business with the company, citing…
The Brazilian Amazon is home to public lands that span an area the size of Spain — undesignated forests that are at growing risk of land grabbing encouraged by the…
JAKARTA — An Indonesian government initiative that fell short of its goal to rehabilitate degraded peat forests will get another chance to do so — plus the added task of…
As global demand for edible oil keeps growing, palm oil has enjoyed unprecedented growth both in consumption and production. Used in everything from chocolate to ice-cream, lipstick to shampoo, palm oil…
Brazil’s Ferrovia Paraense (FEPASA) railroad will run from Pará state’s rainforest interior to the Amazon estuary; traditional communities say they haven’t yet been consulted as required by international law.
The advent of the Amazon soy moratorium in 2006 seemed to usher in a new era of hope for ending deforestation for food production in the world’s largest rainforest. From…
315 traditional families in the Brazilian Amazon, evicted from their homes starting in 2015 to make way for the Belo Monte mega-dam, have won the right to resettle near their former Xingu River homes.
JAKARTA — An Indonesian government program to phase out diesel for an alternative made from palm oil could spur massive deforestation for palm plantations spanning an area a fifth the…
Osvalinda Alves Pereira is the first Brazilian to win the prestigious Edelstam Prize. As a civil rights defender, and at great risk to herself, Osvalinda is resisting criminals illegally harvesting Amazon timber.
When Celso Silva Junior, a Ph.D. candidate at the Brazilian Institute for Space Research (INPE), stepped back from his recently completed map of Brazil’s secondary forests, he was surprised by…
Brazil’s biggest beef companies have been directly linked to more than 17,000 hectares (42,000 acres) of illegal deforestation in the Amazon state of Pará. According to a recent investigation by…
JAKARTA — A major sawmill operation linked to widespread deforestation and corruption in Indonesia has had its legality certification revoked by the licensing authority over allegations of a forged permit,…
JAKARTA — An area of natural forest the size of 1,500 football fields has been cleared since January in an oil palm concession in Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua by…
In its work to combat climate change by preserving the world’s rainforests, Norway has revamped its efforts by doubling the amount it pays countries to seek cleaner solutions, incentivizing them…
A day after Brazil announced 11,000 square kilometers of annual deforestation, France, the EU’s biggest buyer of Brazilian soy flour, announced plans to become more self-sufficient on the commodity.
Brazil’s Serra do Divisor National Park is at risk from a BR-364 branch road running from Acre state to Peru. Brazil’s Congress is about to strip away the park’s protections, risking wholesale deforestation.
South America’s French Guiana, a French overseas department, is slated for major new liquid biofuel power stations, fueled by soy plantations that will cause largescale Amazon deforestation, say environmentalists.
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — On Oct. 21, Madagascar’s council of ministers issued a decision to reopen the domestic market for so-called ordinary wood — non-precious timber logged from natural forests. This…
Major roadbuilding, including the “reconstruction” of the BR-319 highway, now threatens the Brazilian Amazon’s last, vast intact rainforest, vital to Brazilian ecosystem services.
Senior officials with Paraguay’s Environment Ministry are helping cover up illegal deforestation by the country’s cattle industry, according to damning new testimony by current and former ministry employees. A landlocked…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s dwindling forests may be cleared for farmland under a government-led program to boost domestic food production, raising fears of a surge in deforestation. The government’s “food estate”…
Their territory is suffering the ravages of COVID-19, invasion by 20,000 illegal miners, mercury pollution, severe deforestation, and “genocidal” government apathy, say the Yanomami people.
Almost a fifth of Brazil’s soy and grains already flow down Amazonia’s rivers. Now a boom in private river port construction, with little government oversight, further threatens the region’s waterways.
It was another intense year for fires in the Amazon. More than 2,500 major blazes burned across Brazil’s Legal Amazon between May 28 and November 3, according to a fire…
The planned 650 MW dam on the Rio Branco in Brazil’s Roraima state is scheduled to become operational in 2028; it could do extraordinary socio-environmental harm.
Brazil’s major meat companies say they want to implement full traceability of cattle by 2025. But Brazil already has the necessary tools to identify cattle farmers who cut forest illegally.
