When around 70,000 Indigenous Maasai were expelled from their lands in northern Tanzania in 2022, it didn’t happen in a vacuum. For years, the Tanzanian government has systematically attacked Maasai…
Indigenous peoples and local communities are already feeling the impacts of climate change, according to firsthand accounts documented in a new study. The authors of the paper, published in the…
New research has linked prenatal exposure to deforestation in Cambodia to child stunting and anemia among women. This link between human well-being and forest loss illustrates how the latter can…
SEMBILAN ISLAND, Indonesia — Until recently, skippers on this island relied on their day’s catch of grouper, mackerel and snapper tipping the scales at around 50 kilograms (110 pounds). Today,…
The World Bank’s independent watchdog, the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO), has finalized its investigation into a complaint filed five years ago, alleging grave human rights violations by communities living near…
In recent weeks, Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) has seen Indigenous peoples and local communities we work with in the Peruvian Amazon and the Congo Basin devastated by unprecedented rains. In…
Flooding caused by heavy rains in central Peru in March displaced hundreds of Indigenous families and destroyed their sustainable agroforestry projects, raising concerns about how they’ll recover and what steps…
While wind turbines and solar panels multiply across the Brazilian dry forests, Tião Alves insists on tin windmills and PET bottle-based heaters. "Backcountry technology," as he defines it, arguing that…
The climate emergency has affected development and violated the rights of children and adolescents around the world, and in Brazil. In addition to fires, prolonged, extreme droughts make access to…
This is the second of a two-part series on climate-related disasters in western Uganda. Read Part One here. KASESE, Uganda — Right as the Nyamwamba River emerges from the foothills…
Conflicts between communities and government plans to protect vast swaths of land in line with international conservation policies, such as the “30 by 30” goal of preserving 30% of the…
PEKANBARU, Indonesia — Almost two years after a joint Mongabay investigation revealed systemic failure by Indonesia’s plantation industry to share gains with community farmers, countless small farmers have yet to…
This is the first of a two-part series on climate-related disasters in western Uganda. Part Two will be published next week. KASESE, Uganda — In March 2020, right as the…
In the past year, international agencies worldwide have continued to sound an alarm over surges in food insecurity that are plunging millions of people into extreme hunger, malnutrition and threats…
Echoing the harrowing imagery of a Ku Klux Klan onslaught, a chilling episode unfolded on Sunday, January 21, showcasing the brutal reality of Brazil’s rural hinterland. In Bahia, two Indigenous…
Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s recent announcement of a new court system to resolve land ownership conflicts in rural areas of the country has drawn a mixed response from advocates of…
BUÍQUE, Pernambuco, Brazil — In the Brazilian backlands, the jurema is a most willful tree: When you think it's dead, it sprouts again. You can cut it, tear it down,…
NKOTENG, Cameroon — At the Cameroon Sugar Corporation (Société Sucriere du Cameroun, SOSUCAM), the year 2023 came to a close on a grim note: the death of a man named…
New amendments to India’s existing green laws in the last couple of years have sparked a fierce backlash from activists, social groups and NGOs across the country. Many have argued…
DUBAI — It was Sara Olsvig's love of ice that brought her to the desert of Dubai for the 2023 U.N. climate summit, COP28. As an Inuit child growing up…
A recent report from U.K.- and U.S.-based nonprofit Global Witness captures the details of how a new mining rush driven by demand for “clean energy” minerals can go wrong, reproducing…
On the afternoon of November 29, Quinto Inuma Alvarado, Indigenous Kichwa leader and chief of the Santa Rosillo de Yanayacu community, was murdered in front of his family with three…
LIMBUNG, Indonesia — Sarijan struggled to understand why they had come to arrest him. His mother tongue was Javanese, and he could parse only bits and pieces of Indonesian as…
LIMBUNG, Indonesia — Tall brush has taken over the land that Sarijan farmed for decades here on the island of Borneo. At the height of Indonesia’s 2019 wildfire crisis, the…
One of the world’s largest palm oil companies appears to have overseen a network of companies responsible for deforestation of tens of thousands of hectares, according to a new investigation…
Pramila Pradhan, 51, embraced thengapalli, a form of forest stewardship, because of her mother-in-law, who took her along on forest patrols. Thenga means stick, and palli means turn or rotation.…
Indigenous forest guardian Paulo Paulino Guajajara was killed in November 2019 in the Brazilian Amazon. Mongabay’s Karla Mendes, who interviewed Paulo nine months before his death, returned to the Arariboia Indigenous Territory in August 2023 to talk with his family and the other guardian who survived the attack, Laércio Guajajara, and shine a light on a case that still hasn’t gone to trial after four years.
It’s been called a “new scramble for Africa”: a modern incarnation of European powers’ 19th century imperial seizure of vast swathes of Africa. Under the guise of fighting the climate…
A new report by GreenFaith, an international, multifaith climate justice organization, alleges that the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) will disturb at least 2,000 graves along its route from…
Earlier this year, the IPCC report released its catastrophic global warming report. As UN Secretary-General, António Guterres succinctly put it after the release, “our world needs climate action on all…