MINDANAO, Philippines – Legislators in the southern Philippine province of South Cotabato moved this week to overturn a 12-year-old provincial ban on open-pit mining that has for years stalled the…
JAKARTA — A surge in coal prices is driving a wave of bank loans to miners in Indonesia, the world's fifth-largest coal producer and top exporter. By continuing to finance…
Patricia Gualinga takes a deep breath and pictures herself inside the rainforest in Sarayaku, Ecuador. “It’s hard to describe the smell of such pure air when you’re in the rainforest”,…
Based on the best scientific data available, the unprecedented Amazon Water Impact Index draws together monitoring and research data to identify the most vulnerable areas of the Brazilian rainforest. According to the index, 20% of the 11,216 Brazilian Amazon microbasins have an impact considered high, very high or extreme; half of these watersheds are affected by hydroelectric plants.
JAKARTA — A court in Jakarta has rejected a lawsuit by a remote island community against a gold-mining operation that overlaps onto their villages, in a ruling deemed “problematic” by…
Before Jair Bolsonaro took office as Brazil’s president in 2019, Canadian investment bank Forbes & Manhattan was facing problems with its business activities in the Brazilian Amazon. The situation began…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government’s controversial plan to move the nation’s capital from Jakarta to Borneo has hit one of several snags that critics have long warned about: the presence…
Technology-critical elements (TCEs) — vital for wind and solar power and electric cars — are contaminating land and water, impacting biodiversity and health. A circular economy may be the solution.
A Brazilian Federal Police operation dismantled a criminal organization that operates in illegal mining inside Kayapó Indigenous Land, in southern Pará state. The gold is sold abroad to Chimet, an Italian business group specializing in refining gold to make jewellery.
TAMPAKAN, Philippines — For nearly a decade, Nora Sukal was the public face of Indigenous opposition to the Tampakan project, a planned gold and copper mine on Blaan tribal land…
Years of artisanal mining along the Madre de Dios River and its tributaries have left their marks, both seen and unseen. Miners, swarming to the region in a modern-day goldrush,…
Perched in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) near the borders of Uganda and South Sudan, Okapi Wildlife Reserve quietly encompasses some 14,000 square kilometers (5,405 square miles) of rainforest…
On February 11, 2022, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro published a decree establishing the Program for Supporting the Development of Artisanal Mining (Pró-Mape), which aims to “stimulate” this type of mining…
Major investment managers including BlackRock and Capital Group are among more than a dozen U.S. and Brazilian institutions heavily financing mining companies that are destroying Indigenous reserves and their inhabitants’…
JAKARTA — In the nearly two years since Indonesian lawmakers passed a controversial mining law, the legislation has increasingly been used by police to arrest villagers and local activists opposed…
Illegal mining in protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon saw as much as a fivefold increase since 2010, a gold rush driven largely by surging prices in international markets. Over…
In 2021, Mongabay’s investigative journalism set out to hold powerful figures accountable for deforestation and pollution, and the mistreatment of vulnerable communities trying to protect local ecosystems. Using data-driven analysis…
Mining interests in the Brazilian Amazon pose an imminent threat to Indigenous groups, a new study shows, causing “incalculable damage” for 43 isolated groups if a bill legalizing mining on…
MINDANAO, Philippines — Mount Apo, a protected area on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, is threatened by small-scale illegal mining, which remains a lingering problem elsewhere in the resource-rich…
Brazilian gold exporter BP Trading accounted for 10% of the country’s exports of the precious metal in 2019 and 2020, having purchased it from companies prosecuted for buying illegal gold.
How do you develop your economy and provide services in a sustainable manner? That’s a central theme of the U.N. climate summit underway in Glasgow, and in few places is…
Brazil’s Senate has opted not to call for a genocide charge against President Jair Bolsonaro, a week after the death of two Indigenous children in an Amazonian reserve being invaded…
Before the clearing and excavators and bulldozers, before plans to build a gold mine and oil palm plantations, the Jemaluang and Tenggaroh forest reserves in Johor, Malaysia, were wildlife-rich jungles…
JAKARTA — A new study strengthens the case for redirecting a planned mining road around the largest surviving tract of lowland tropical rainforest on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, but the…
What happens when an environmental catastrophe takes place in an isolated area at the periphery of the world’s attention? The last six weeks in the Democratic Republic of Congo and…
Brazil is likely feeding international demand for gold with bullion tainted by violence, deforestation and pollution, given that almost a third of the country’s registered gold production is classified as…
On Aug. 12, authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Kasaï province noticed the Kasai River had turned red. Witnesses said the bodies of hippos and dead fish were seen…
This story is the result of a reporting collaboration between Mongabay Latam and Rutas del Conflicto. In 2000, in the midst of Colombia’s vast Amazon rainforest, two elder members from…
In 2017, the name “La Merced de Buenos Aires,” or simply “Buenos Aires,” became famous throughout Ecuador. This small parish located high in the Andean province of Imbabura was invaded…
A breakthrough report has mapped out all the raids carried out to rescue people working in slave-labor conditions in mines across Brazil since 2008.
