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.
BANDUNG, Indonesia — In a valley downstream from the source of the Citarum River, retired army general Doni Monardo approaches a magnolia tree planted in 2018 by President Joko Widodo…
Deforestation is on track to register a near-15-year-high in the Brazilian Amazon according to data published earlier this month by Imazon, an organization that independently monitors forest loss in Earth's…
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…
Repórter Brasil’s tool points out the federal deputies with the worst socio-environmental performance and shows that the right-wing wave of 2018 strengthened the rural caucus in Congress. Analysts say that the ruralist leanings of the Chamber were already a reality, but the Bolsonaro government unbalanced the political chessboard with the weakening of the Ministry of Environment.
JAMBI, Indonesia — Rahmad Saleh Simbolon, who died of a heart attack on Aug. 9 at age 47, is remembered by both civil society and government officers as a dedicated…
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…
INDRAGIRI HILIR, Indonesia — Customary leaders Patih Majuan, Datuk Manti and Datuk Mangku approach their scared forest with hands clasped in prayer. Other residents of the village of Talang Durian…
It was in 1859 when British naturalist Charles Darwin published the work that’s still considered the basis of evolutionary biology. With On the Origin of Species, he introduced the scientific…
Two of the world’s largest agricultural producers are caught up in another scandal involving soy grown on illegally seized Indigenous land in Brazil. Both Cargill and Bunge source some of…
Across Russia, Europe, Indonesia, the Amazon Basin, North America, Australia, and beyond, we have watched fires blaze across landscapes, causing immense damage to life and land. Now, a new analysis…
JAKARTA — Smallholder farmers in Sumatra who cultivate oil palms are more likely to expand their farms into carbon-rich peat forests the closer they are to roads and palm oil…
If there is an ecosystem that captures my imagination, it is the cloud forests, or perhaps better called, “the forests of the clouds.” Walking underneath their damp and dark canopy…
A major section of Mexico’s Tren Maya railway line could be moving forward with construction, following a high court decision to reject several legal challenges that had created months of…
In Bolivia, the infamous “Death Road” has become a haven for life. Once the only route north from La Paz, the narrow and treacherous old road to the Yungas claimed…
Deforestation in Earth's largest rainforest is on track to rival last year's 15-year-high according to data released today by the Brazilian government. INPE, Brazil's national space research institute, today published…
Trees play a critical role in supporting life on Earth, and over the past few years, everyone from governments to companies to celebrities has been talking about tree planting as…
JAKARTA — Fires are flaring up in Indonesia’s Riau province, the perennial epicenter of the burning season in Sumatra, as the dry season sets in. At the end of March,…
Some 50,000 wild species provide for many of the world’s people, according to a recent report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). But today, those…
The deforestation sweeping across the Brazilian Amazon is driven largely by industrial agriculture, mining and cattle ranching. But those activities wouldn’t be possible without heavy machinery like bulldozers and tractors,…
Malaysian timber giant Samling has removed logging equipment from a long-disputed area in Sarawak state’s Upper Baram Forest Area, in what the Penan Indigenous community is calling a win for…
Less than two months since the killing of British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira in early June, armed illegal gold miners reportedly intimidated government rangers near…
BENGKALIS, Indonesia — On the east coast of the island of Sumatra lies a grove of timber, fruit and native trees known as the Marsawa Peat Arboretum. This shady grove,…
Chocolate is one of the world’s greatest little pleasures. But its primary ingredients — cocoa, palm oil and soy — all contribute to global deforestation. The industry is working now to make chocolate more sustainable.
The deaths of journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous rights defender Bruno Pereira in June this year exposed an interlocking web of crime involving drug trafficking, money laundering, and illegal fishing…
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…
As if all the strategic and political aspects of the Putin-Bolsonaro alliance weren’t detrimental enough, underlying environmental considerations add yet another undesirable dimension. Meeting with Putin at the Kremlin literally…
Spanning more than 1,600 square kilometers (620 square miles), the Ulu Muda rainforest is one of the last large, continuous tracts of forest in the Malay Peninsula, and provides vital…
An Indigenous community in Ecuador has finally obtained national protections for part of its territory after decades of fighting off deforestation and pollution in its mega-diverse rainforests. Ecuador’s National System…
There are moments in researchers’ lives when they realize the significance of something they hadn’t paid much thought to in the past. For primatologist Catherine Hobaiter and her team, one…
