Juneteenth marks the date in 1865 where an estimated 250,000 enslaved people in Texas were freed, marking the official end of slavery in the Confederacy – two years after the…
"Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are," the French lawyer Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote in his 1826 opus, Physiologie du Goût. This is quite…
WOB Timber, a logging company based in Hamburg, Germany, has been ordered by a court to pay a $4 million fine for illegally trading Myanmar timber. The April 27 decision…
In a recent report entitled “Destruction: certified” Greenpeace concluded that “certification is not a solution to deforestation, forest degradation and other ecosystem conversion”. Although Greenpeace acknowledges some positive impacts of…
Belgium will ban biofuels made from soy and palm oil from 2022 onward as part of its effort to combat deforestation, said the European nation's Federal Minister of Environment and…
Financial giant JPMorgan Chase has agreed to expand its policies addressing deforestation after pressure from shareholders, led by the investment group Green Century Capital Management. Green Century strategically invests in…
An average 75% of respondents in 12 European nations say the gigantic EU-Mercosur trade pact should not be ratified if Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil doesn’t end Amazon deforestation; EU governments are listening.
JAKARTA — Palm oil-driven deforestation is slowing down in Southeast Asia in 2020 but a handful of low-profile companies continue to drive the majority of the destruction, according to a…
The European salmon industry's Brazilian soy product supply chain for feed is set to become deforestation-free. According to the Rainforest Foundation Norway, Brazilian salmon-feed supply growers CJ Selecta, Caramuru and…
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…
A day after Brazil announced 11,000 square kilometers of annual deforestation, France, the EU’s biggest buyer of Brazilian soy flour, announced plans to become more self-sufficient on the commodity.
Eight French supermarket chains will now require that their suppliers obtain soybeans that were not grown on deforested land, according to the Washington, D.C.-based environmental NGO Mighty Earth. The announcement…
Almost a fifth of Brazil’s soy and grains already flow down Amazonia’s rivers. Now a boom in private river port construction, with little government oversight, further threatens the region’s waterways.
As Colombia searches for a way forward after a half-century of war, the cacao tree (Theobroma cacao) could have a significant role to play. Called the food of the gods,…
Some of the world’s biggest banks have invested US$153.2 billion in forest-risk companies in Brazil, Southeast Asia, and Central and West Africa since the Paris Climate Agreement was signed in 2016.
The majority of shareholders of international consumer goods company Procter & Gamble (P&G), which makes paper-based products like toilet paper, have voted to tackle supply chain loopholes that impact deforestation…
Major European automakers including Jaguar Land Rover and BMW are using leather linked to illegal deforestation in South American forests home to one of the world’s last uncontacted tribes, according…
2020 was supposed to be a big year for forests. Six years ago this month, world leaders gathered at the UN Climate Summit and endorsed the New York Declaration on…
The Swiss NGO Bruno Manser Fonds (BMF) has lodged a complaint against the local subsidiary of furniture giant Ikea and its CEO, Jessica Anderen, accusing them of violating Swiss wood…
There have been more fires alerts around the world this year than last year, spelling dire consequences for health, biodiversity, and the economy — and human actions are mostly to…
Millions of tons of emissions are embedded in Europe’s Brazilian beef imports each year, equivalent to the annual footprint of between 300,000 and 2.4 million EU citizens, according to a…
Gold mining can demolish Amazon rainforest in just a few days. New research finds that the impacted forest does not recover even 3-4 years after a mine is abandoned.
When Hans Peter Lankes, a top official at the International Finance Corporation, visited Madagascar in February, he made it a point to tour the IFC-backed BoViMa facility near the southern…
New research finds that roughly 20% of Brazilian agricultural exports to the EU are linked to illegal deforestation, but only about 2% of agricultural properties produce the majority of this forest loss.
17 former Brazilian Finance ministers and Central Bank presidents reject Jair Bolsonaro’s environmental policies, urging end to Amazon deforestation and adoption of economic policies addressing climate change.
Censorship, persecution, and dismissals of supervisors have become the norm in Brazil’s environmental agencies since Jair Bolsonaro took office. Now, prosecutors are seeking the dismissal of his environment minister, Ricardo Salles, alleging "countless initiatives that violate the duty to protect the environment."
With the Amazon fire season looming, 38 transnational firms, including Alcoa, Bayer, Shell, Siemens, Suzano, and Amaggi asked Brazil to act against environmental crimes. Brazil’s vice president has responded with a fire ban — critics say much more is needed.
It’s the one-year anniversary of the finalization of a gigantic trade agreement between the EU and Mercusor, a bloc of Latin American nations, but Brazil’s soaring deforestation rate puts ratification at risk.
Soaring gold prices, brought on by the economic meltdown and COVID-19 uncertainty, have led to a rapid, largely un-policed, expansion of illegal gold mining in the Amazon.
Dr. Kinari Webb believes this because she has witnessed it — up close: Amid this global pandemic, the health of the planet is intricately connected to public health around the…
