Roads are scarce in the Northern Amazon, and surprisingly, the few that exist have not triggered widespread deforestation. This apparent anomaly is largely the consequence of a development dynamic that…
Although never organized as a specific project, the Carretera Marginal de la Selva has emerged from multiple projects that have been established in the Andean foothills from Colombia to Bolivia.…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s highest court has upheld a $61 million fine against an oil palm company over massive fires on its plantation that razed an area seven times the size…
Freshwater dolphins navigate the waterways of the Amazon Basin. In the wet season, water spills from the rivers, flooding parts of the forests. The dolphins go, too, using their exceptionally…
Cameroon’s government is again planning to open a portion of Ebo Forest to logging, threatening 200,000 hectares (500,000 acres) of largely intact forest that is home to several rare and…
JAKARTA — Major investors continue to sour on a hydropower project being built in an orangutan habitat in Indonesia, with the powerful Norwegian state pension fund the latest to call…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government plans this year to recognize community claims to ancestral forests in the Sumatran province of Aceh for the first time in history. The Ministry of…
In a remote corner of the Brazilian Amazon, federal police agents hovered in helicopters above a massive gash in the rainforest canopy. Below them, gaping craters and muddy pools of…
Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia all invested in major highway building initiatives in the last half of the twentieth century, motivated in part to project sovereignty over their Amazonian provinces.…
The Southern Amazon has experienced massive deforestation, coupled with the degradation of soil and water resources. The forest frontiers at the remote corners of the Brazilian highway system have remained…
SERAM ISLAND, Indonesia — Zainudin Kelsaba traversed across the eastern Seram highland and stopped at an ancient outcrop grown over by trees and scrub. “The mountain is our home,” Zainudin…
Indonesia’s oldest women’s Islamic organization will prepare volunteers in Kalimantan and Sumatra to open clean air sanctuaries, should a strengthening El Niño accelerate wildfires over the coming months. “We will…
Top tropical ecologists have spent two decades studying the impact of climate change on a single transect in the Peruvian Andes, an area unparalleled in its biodiversity. They find that every species studied there is struggling against warming temperatures.
According to a 2020 study, private philanthropy, at that time, dedicated to Amazon forest conservation amounted to about $100 million a year. That is about one ten thousandth of estimated…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has justified a sweeping amnesty for millions of hectares of oil palm plantations established illegally in forest areas, saying there are so many of them…
It all starts with a road. In Brazil, the federal government commissioned the construction of mule trails and telegraph lines to link their coastal cities with long-established settlements on remote…
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines infrastructure as the ‘underlying structure’ of a country – specifically, the physical installations needed to ensure that its economy functions for the benefit of society. Modern…
JAKARTA — Male orangutans that resettle to a new area appear to be imitating the behavior of local individuals in an effort to survive and find a future home range,…
For the last several years, soldiers have been entering the Colombian Amazon armed to the teeth to fight deforestation, surging ever since the 2016 peace accord between rebel group FARC…
DISANGA, Tanzania — Michele Menegon creeps stealthily through short grass before pouncing. Gently, the scientist holds up his prize: an unnamed species of forest agama. He shows the reptile to…
JAKARTA — Indonesian officials say the country’s deforestation rate continued to decline for the third year running, hitting a historical low in 2021-2022. But claims of an improving trend are…
Tanzanian herpetologist John Lyakurwa was born and raised in a village at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro. The chameleons he and his family encountered on their coffee farm sparked his…
Indonesia is readying a fleet of drones to launch over Nusantara, its new capital city, as part of efforts to protect the under-construction site in Borneo from wildfires, officials told…
The Amazon Rainforest is the largest in the world and a key player in regulating global water and carbon cycles. It also happens to be home to sophisticated criminal networks…
The consensus strategy for saving the Amazon is based on a set of five self-reinforcing policies: (1) create protected areas and recognize Indigenous reserves; (2) improve governance to combat illegal…
The current development trajectory of the Pan Amazon is uncertain. The ongoing investment in protected areas and Indigenous territories has created a solid foundation for conservation of the region’s biodiversity.…
Formed in 1938 on a swath of primary forest nearly four times the size of Paris, Nigeria’s Akure-Ofosu Forest Reserve is home to a diverse array of wildlife. These include…
JAKARTA, Indonesia — The Kinjil Three languished in a jail cell an island away as demonstrators arrived outside a beige Jakarta office block and began distributing thousands of coins on…
CENTRAL SULAWESI, Indonesia — Karolus Kolong, a 62-year-old villager on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island, has spent nearly two decades fighting to get his land back from palm oil giant Astra Agro…
The rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has fallen significantly since Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office in January 2023, as revealed by data released today from Brazil's…
