JAKARTA — Activists are warning of “severe environmental and social risks” from plans by two of the world’s largest paper companies to significantly expand their operations in Indonesia. Both Asia…
PANDUMAAN-SIPITUHUTA, Indonesia — For years, Ganjang, a member of the Pandumaan-Sipituhuta Indigenous community in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province, has been uneasy about extracting frankincense from trees in a nearby forest.…
JAKARTA — Palm oil giant Korindo Group has had its membership in the Forest Stewardship Council terminated, a move that activists say sends a signal to other companies that they…
JAKARTA — Human rights abuses continue to fester in the Indonesian palm oil industry as global brands and financial institutions and investors turn a blind eye to the problem, a…
JAKARTA — Activists in Indonesia have filed a legal challenge to controversial mining legislation passed last year and widely seen as undermining environmental protections to the advantage of mining companies.…
RIO DE JANEIRO — When the Portuguese fleet led by Pedro Álvares Cabral landed in Brazil in 1500, Pero Vaz de Caminha, a knight serving as the secretary to the…
RIO DE JANEIRO — Maracanã, Ipanema, the Lapa Arches, the Church of Our Lady of Glory of Outeiro … Millions of the visitors who flock to Brazil’s most famous city…
BOA VISTA, Brazil — When she was 24, Ariene dos Santos Lima adopted the Indigenous name Susui. In her ancestral Wapichana language, it means “flower” — the ornament that Ariene…
In São Gabriel da Cachoeira, a municipality in northern Amazonas state, the traditions and culture of 32 ethnic groups are the hallmarks of a daily life rich in diversity. But even here, traditional peoples face discrimination.
This piece was originally published on Atmos as Paid in Blood on June 7, 2021. It has been republished here with the permission of Atmos. Fernando dos Santos Araújo woke…
A gold mining impacts calculator launched this week is the first to offer Brazilian authorities and society a consistent science-based formula for calculating the social and economic costs of the industrial-scale illegal mining operations that have swept the Brazilian Amazon, experts say.
Land conflicts in Brazil hit 1,576 cases in 2020, the highest number ever recorded by the Catholic Church-affiliated Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), which has been keeping track of the issue…
DAHAB, Egypt — A decaying super-tanker anchored off Yemen with 1.1 million barrels of Marib light crude oil in its hold looks increasingly likely to wreak havoc in the Red…
Twenty-four years ago, an Indigenous leader was set on fire and killed in Brazil’s capital as a “joke.” Today, little seems to have changed, say Indigenous people living in Brasília.
On the land where their ancestors once lived, Indigenous and Afro-Brazilians band together in the face of hostility to preserve their cultures and traditions in the capital of Bahia state
JAKARTA — On March 10, Suande, a member of the Dayak Indigenous community in Indonesian Borneo, said goodbye to his family before leaving his village for the police station in…
In Brazil's biggest city, descendants of the original inhabitants live in invisibility and struggle to keep their traditions despite São Paulo’s celebrated cultural diversity
In a ruling that could strengthen Indigenous land rights claims across Brazil, the nation’s Supreme Court has sided with the Guarani Kaiowá, allowing the possible reopening of a case involving their territory claim.
Mongabay starts publishing today a series of data-driven multimedia stories on Brazil’s Indigenous people living in urban areas, including the metropolitan centers of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Brasília, showing that Indigenous people are much closer to most Brazilians than they realize
Firings, threats, thefts, gag orders, attempted kidnappings and other intimidation against environmental researchers and civil servants appear to be on the rise; many blame an incendiary Bolsonaro government.
Stretching along the narrow spit of land that connects the Malay peninsula to the rest of mainland Southeast Asia, Myanmar’s Tanintharyi region is home to a confluence of animals and…
I’ve lost count of the number of times, working as a journalist across Latin America, that I’ve met, spoken to, or heard from or about Indigenous peoples and other local…
JAKARTA — The framework for resolving land disputes involving palm oil companies in Indonesian Borneo has largely failed, allowing conflicts to fester for a decade or more, with very few…
Sonia Castro says her family stayed in self-isolation for two months in the Jambuaçu Territory in Brazil’s Pará state. She recounts how they eventually fell ill, their condition worsening bit…
The Kalunga — 39 quilombola communities, the descendants of runaway slaves — have united with international funders to use high-tech georeferencing to catalog their traditional lands and natural resources in Brazil.
JAKARTA — Conflicts over land flared up across Indonesia in 2020, as Indigenous and rural communities tried to hold off pulpwood, palm oil and logging companies ramping up their expansion…
A Malagasy law enforcement officer was hacked to death by a mob during a confrontation over illegal logging 150 kilometers (93 miles) from the capital, Antananarivo, on Jan. 20. Two…
JAKARTA — Activists have called on financiers and clients of Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), one of the world’s biggest paper producers, to stop doing business with the company, citing…
JAKARTA — U.S. agribusiness giants Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Bunge are buying palm oil from mills in Indonesia that have been publicly linked to land and human rights violations and…
On November 5, 2015 an iron ore mine tailings dam owned by Samarco, a joint venture of Vale and BHP Billiton, two of the world’s largest mining firms, collapsed in Mariana, Brazil. Life along Rio Doce has not been the same since.
