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.
An analysis of social and economic parameters in gold and diamond mining regions in the Brazilian Amazon shows that these activities have done little to boost development for locals. The…
The Naso Tjër Di people of Panama now have a protected territory of their own. The creation of the 1,600-square-kilometer (620-square-mile) comarca, as it’s called in Panama, came as a…
Even as agribusiness and the Brazilian government became allies to aggressively convert more of the savanna for soy and cattle, the National Campaign in Defense of the Cerrado moved to conserve the biome.
The flower-gatherers of the Cerrado uplands, invisible for centuries, win UN recognition for sustainable farming, even as threats from mining, agriculture, and a national park deepen.
Between April and November last year, the government of the Brazilian state of Bahia authorized agribusinesses to collect nearly 2 billion liters (528 million gallons) of water a day.
An intergovernmental organization representing countries that produce the bulk of the world’s timber has thrown its support behind a decade-long effort to protect the last remaining primary forest in the…
The governor of Amazonas state in an exceptional appeal — apparently bypassing the Bolsonaro administration — is asking for emergency international assistance to combat a devastating new COVID-19 second wave.
Amazon hospital beds and ICUs overflow, and oxygen runs out as a new, maybe more virulent, COVID-19 variant rages. “It’s not a second wave we’re dealing with, but a whole tsunami,” says a doctor.
Mileva "Gara" Jovanović's family has been taking cattle up to graze in Montenegro’s Sinjajevina Highlands for more than 140 summers. The mountain pastures of the Sinjajevina-Durmitor Massif are the largest…
Brazil’s Ferrovia Paraense (FEPASA) railroad will run from Pará state’s rainforest interior to the Amazon estuary; traditional communities say they haven’t yet been consulted as required by international law.
315 traditional families in the Brazilian Amazon, evicted from their homes starting in 2015 to make way for the Belo Monte mega-dam, have won the right to resettle near their former Xingu River homes.
Brazil has been mined for gold, bauxite, manganese and more. While companies, investors and nations benefit, the Amazon’s people often haven’t, as they’ve lost traditional cultures, livelihoods and health.
Osvalinda Alves Pereira is the first Brazilian to win the prestigious Edelstam Prize. As a civil rights defender, and at great risk to herself, Osvalinda is resisting criminals illegally harvesting Amazon timber.
The Karipuna Indigenous Territory in the Brazilian Amazon, home to a tribe that was nearly wiped out, became a sanctuary for the survivors when it was ratified in 1998. Today,…
A plan by Brazil’s Norte Energia, builder and operator of the Belo Monte mega-dam, to drastically reduce Xingu River water flows will be a disaster for habitat, fish, fisheries, and riverine communities, experts say.
It’s been more than a year since the Sinop hydroelectric dam started operations in the northern part of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso. But residents say the business consortium…
Toxic legacy of mining firms — Norwegian-Japanese Albrás, Brazil’s Vale, Norway’s Norsk Hydro, and France’s Imerys Rio Capim Caulim — wreak havoc on livelihoods and health in Amazon communities: Critics.
The bison circled four times around the holding pen, before the lead animals took them into the 3,400-hectare (8,500-acre) pasture, their new home on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in the…
Major roadbuilding, including the “reconstruction” of the BR-319 highway, now threatens the Brazilian Amazon’s last, vast intact rainforest, vital to Brazilian ecosystem services.
Four clay panthers look at visitors through glass shields. The first two, black, are the guardians of memory. The ones at the back, on pedestals, are jaguars — but they…
Brazil’s mining authority is actively entertaining more than 3,000 requests to mine on Indigenous lands in the Amazon, despite such activity being prohibited under the country’s Constitution, an investigation by…
Iawá, also known as Odete Kuruaya, is the last remaining fluent speaker of the Kuruaya language. Not much is known of the Kuruaya, an Indigenous group from the Amazon Rainforest.…
The reconstruction of the BR-319 highway — a north-south cut through what remains of Brazil’s Amazon forest — is being fast tracked by Pres. Bolsonaro, but the project risks huge socio-environmental impacts.
An analysis of 12 Brazilian volunteer projects certified by the REDD+ carbon-offset program found that emission and deforestation reductions were overstated. Improvements in carbon accounting are recommended.
In the Peruvian Amazon, two Indigenous groups have been battling the government and oil companies for decades to prevent an incursion they believe would forever alter their homeland. An immense…
Amazon fires are burning this year within the protected lands inhabited by isolated uncontacted Indigenous peoples. The fires, largely illegal and intentionally set by land grabbers, ranchers and farmers, are…
Georeferencing, a digital process for registering land ownership, is now widespread in South America, but it is high-tech that can be used by landgrabbers and companies to obtain deeds to collective ancestral lands.
Mining, both legal and illegal, impinges on more than one-fifth of Indigenous territory in the Amazon, according to a new study from the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the Amazon…
Traditional Amazonian populations have used fire for agricultural purposes for centuries, but leaving space for the forest to regenerate. The climate crisis, however, is making it increasingly difficult to control the fires. A project in the state of Pará promises an alternative to fight them.
