JAKARTA — A corruption scandal now unfurling in Indonesian Borneo is shedding light on how high-level bribery in infrastructure projects poses long-term threats to the community and the environment. The…
BATANGHARI, Indonesia — On a sunny day in March, six teenagers have their hands full planting seedlings in a patch of burned forest in Sumatra. “This was our first time…
Turtles and tortoises in trouble On the island of Madagascar, locked gates, razor-wire fences, and 24-hour armed guards protect one of the world’s rarest treasures. That treasure, worth roughly $50,000…
JAKARTA — As Indonesia struggles to contain one of the deadliest coronavirus outbreaks in Asia, the country’s president has quietly issued a new regulation on eminent domain. Signed in May,…
TRIBUGÁ, Colombia — Aida Leides Palacios Moreno strolls through the narrow dirt streets in the Colombian town of Tribugá surrounded by palm and plantain trees rustling in the seaside breeze.…
MEMPAWAH, Indonesia — In a village in western Borneo, Suma Ruslian runs a community center that helps fellow agriculture and aquaculture farmers prepare for the impact of a massive infrastructure…
JAKARTA — A highway and levee project touted as a solution to coastal flooding in communities along the north coast of Indonesia’s Java Island will shortchange those very communities and…
Scientists studying the impact of 75 road projects in five countries in the Amazon Basin have found that they could lead to 2.4 million hectares (5.9 million acres) of deforestation. Seventeen percent of these projects were found to violate environmental legislation and the rights of indigenous peoples.
In Brazil, indigenous lands make up 13.5% of the national territory and are home to half a million indigenous peoples speaking 280 distinct languages. New research, published in the journal…
President Jair Bolsonaro has revived a plan, conceived in the 1970s, to extend the BR-163 highway, the main soy corridor in Brazil, north to the border with Suriname. The Trombetas State Forest, one of the four conservation units the road would cut through, stores 2.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide — more than Brazil’s entire emissions in 2018.
DELI SERDANG, Indonesia — A forest in Indonesia’s Sumatra Island is being cleared to build access roads for a state-funded dam project that has been bogged down by disputes over…
On 9 March 2020, Mongabay published a commentary written by Philip M. Fearnside on the “Solimões Sedimentary Area”, an oil and gas project that would implant thousands of wells spread over the western portion of the Brazilian Amazon. EPE, the Brazilian Energy Research Office, sent a response to Mongabay claiming “conceptual mistakes.” Fearnside, now, comments on these claims.
JAMBI, Indonesia — “If the forest is gone, where else can we live?” Teguh Santika is an indigenous woman from the Batin Sembilan community. Her home is in the Harapan…
JAKARTA — A court in Indonesia has convicted a former official and a contractor for their roles in a corruption case centered on a $5.3 million road project in Papua…
ACEH BESAR, Indonesia — Conservationists say a road project at the northern tip of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island poses a threat to critically endangered wildlife, but the government says it’s a…
Conserved areas, indigenous and traditional communities are being put at risk by illegal roads rapidly being built in the Amazon’s Purus / Madeira basin, while authorities do nothing.
JAKARTA — Conservationists and affected communities have slammed a plan to build a road through a jungle-clad mountain in Indonesia’s West Java province, citing the lack of permits and the…
PEKANBARU, Indonesia — Wildlife experts have called on the Indonesian government to boost protection of critically endangered tigers in the vicinity of a major road project in Sumatra, following a…
The biodiverse rainforest of the Amazon’s Purus and Madeira river basins is at risk; new roads could be built to eventually serve extensive oil and gas wells.
Papua New Guinea's government has ambitious plans to expand its road network, aiming to build more than 3,000 kilometers (1,900 miles) of road in the five-year period leading up to…
For more than 50 years, the Xavante indigenous group has been fighting to regain sovereignty of the Marãiwatsédé Indigenous Reserve in Mato Grosso state. The most recent obstacle is the federal government's plan to pave BR-158, the interstate highway that cuts through the middle of the reserve.
Deforestation and climate change could convert Amazon rainforest to savanna by 2050. New infrastructure development would quicken process.
The damage only became clear once the rain stopped and the clouds parted over Altamira National Forest in northern Brazil. Instead of dense jungle, large patches of bare land now…
PALEMBANG, Indonesia — A spate of recent tiger attacks on farmers in Indonesia's South Sumatra province has renewed calls from experts to protect wildlife habitats from development projects that threaten…
JAKARTA — In Indonesia’s Sumatra, which has lost much of its forests over the decades, a major highway project running the length of the island is poised to speed up…
Most of us have places where we feel safe — a tree in our backyard, a den in our house, a beach in our town. But these days, some “safe…
BITUNG, Indonesia – Animals and humans alike have been caught by surprise the excavators, roads and factories that have appeared in the last few years in this port city in…
PEKANBARU, Indonesia — The Pangkalan Kapas forest on the eastern coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island is central to the livelihoods of local villagers and the survival of the endangered wildlife…
Elephant poachers are using logging roads to infiltrate some of the last remaining pristine forests in Central Africa, according to a study published in July. The study’s authors also revealed…
On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with our adventurous Middle East-based staff writer John Cannon, who recently traveled the length of the Pan Borneo Highway to assess…
