Resource Conflict News

More than a decade of illegal gold mining around the upstart town of La Pampa in the Peruvian Amazon has tainted local water supplies, razed forests adjacent to a world-class…

Leaders of several indigenous communities have lodged a complaint with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, that a Netherlands-based oil company fouled the environment in Peru's slice…

Billions of dollars in loans issued to resource-rich countries could saddle them with insurmountable debt, according to a new report from the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), a nonprofit organization…

IABOAKOHO, Madagascar — The only light for many miles came from the glow of the makeshift screen as a cool July evening descended on the Iaboakoho commune. A generator whirred…

The scale of excavation for copper and gold in the 1970s and 1980s at the Panguna mine, then one of the world’s largest open-pit mines, was massive: It swallowed up…

Many of the world’s armed conflicts occur in areas with high biodiversity, according to a 2009 study published in Biological Conservation. The study found that more than 80 percent of…

Scientists call it flood-retreat agriculture. As a swollen river blankets a dry plain and then recedes, it replenishes the thin soil with enough nutrients to sprout grass for cattle and…

Giraffes have to search a wider area for food and water when people live nearby, according to a recent study. “Giraffes are huge browsing animals that live in African savanna…

Ecologists know that when we humans start tugging at the threads of a food web, the unraveling that results is often catastrophic to the connected species, paving the way for…

Wearing nothing more than leaves hanging from belts of woven vegetation, the three scientists stand in the rain with little idea of what to expect. They’ve lived and worked with…

A recent survey of wildlife rangers at a national park in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) found that most aren’t happy with their jobs. Faced with low pay, little…

About eight years ago when I was still fairly new to the reporter game in New York City, these two journalists I knew were killed while working in Libya. One…

November 6 is the UN’s International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict. A decade after a tragic war in Liberia that was largely…

More than 30 scientists and leaders in environmental conservation are calling for the Norwegian Nobel Committee to award Jane Goodall with the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. Citing the 84-year-old primatologist’s…

Traditional landholders in the Papua New Guinea highlands say they finally see signs of progress in a cycle of contentious negotiations over land rights and royalties at a massive ExxonMobil-led…

JAKARTA — Last year the inhabitants of Konbaki village in the Indonesian island province of East Nusa Tenggara filed a request to farm some 174 hectares, about 430 acres, of…

PORT MORESBY — Heavily armed civilian groups have burned and damaged ExxonMobil construction equipment in a land dispute involving a natural gas plant in Papua New Guinea. The civil unrest…

PUERTO CONCORDIA, Colombia — Councilman Ricardo Vargas* sits at the bus depot in the riverside hamlet of Puerto Concordia where narco-inspired corridos play on the radio and a sea of oil palm expands…

JAKARTA — It took Yando Zakaria, an Indonesian anthropologist, four hours to convince the embattled Suku Anak Dalam tribe to get involved in his study last year on the cost…

A gold mine in the remote northern Cambodian province of Preah Vihear is being opposed by local people who claim they have lost their land and are being manipulated by…