France has rolled out a new initiative to fight deforestation and promote sustainable development. Under the initiative, announced in Ecuador in early December 2020, the South American country will be…
JAMBI, Indonesia — Armed with a flashlight, 43-year-old Musadat walks slowly through the thick and dense Harapan forest, one of the last remaining expanses of lowland tropical rainforest on the…
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…
Indonesia’s Kerinci Seblat National Park is the largest national park on the island of Sumatra and the second-largest park in Southeast Asia. It is home to a wide variety of…
Tropical forests are guardians against runaway climate change, but their ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is wearing down. The Amazon, which accounts for more than half of…
Covering around 13% of Earth’s surface and harboring an estimated 83% of its endangered wildlife, protected areas are tasked with an outsize responsibility to safeguard vulnerable species, as well as…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has denied that deforestation for oil palm plantations and coal mines contributed to a recent deadly flood in southern Borneo. At least 21 people died…
This article was co-produced with The Gecko Project. JAKARTA — Indigenous people in Indonesia’s easternmost Papua province are protesting against a company that’s preparing to raze their ancestral forest for…
JAKARTA — Recent floods that inundated large areas of the southern part of Indonesian Borneo might have been exacerbated by massive deforestation for oil palm plantations and coal mines, activists…
The year 2020 reminded us that a healthy humankind is impossible without a healthy planet. From the familiar impacts of climate change to the systems shock brought by the COVID-19…
Mario’s nervousness is evident on the other end of the phone as he speaks about how three men tried to stab him in November 2020. This wasn’t the first time something…
More than a hundred candidates who ran in municipal elections last November in cities across Brazil’s Amazonian states are on the environmental regulator’s "dirty list" for violations committed over the…
JAKARTA — An upgrade to a road that cuts through one of Southeast Asia’s last great swaths of intact rainforest is driving deeper encroachment by humans into blocks of forest…
For our first episode of 2021, we’re taking the opportunity to look at some of the most important trends and issues that will be affecting rainforest conservation over the next…
Two or three strokes, and it's gone: in less than five minutes, 10 years collapse. If it's some other palm tree native to the rainforest such as açaí (Euterpe oleracea), soon…
Deep inside the Brazilian Amazon, in areas still inaccessible to the outside world, the wildlife follows its natural cycle. Their remoteness guarantees a certain degree of isolation from human civilization,…
JAKARTA — A controversial new law that makes sweeping cuts to environmental regulations may also pave the way for greater corruption in Indonesia’s forestry sector, academics have warned. An analysis…
Thanks to the rollout of free, high-resolution satellite imagery, the job of monitoring deforestation in tropical forests just got a lot easier. Last year Norway’s Ministry of Climate and Environment…
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…
Srongpol Chantharueang remembers his parents telling him as a boy always to protect the local wetland forest when he grew up. They told him that the ecosystem would be important…
The Siona are a binational people, their territory straddling two countries: Sucumbíos province in northeastern Ecuador and in the Putumayo department in southeastern Colombia. But the forest they depend on…
The Brazilian Amazon is home to public lands that span an area the size of Spain — undesignated forests that are at growing risk of land grabbing encouraged by the…
The Catatumbo River originates in northeastern Colombia’s Norte de Santander Department and flows to Venezuelan Lake Maracaibo. For generations, it has provided passage for fishermen and small farmers; but increasingly,…
Bogotá — As the world became fixated on the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, the situation for environmental defenders across the globe has only become more precarious. In 2019, 212 environmental…
JAKARTA — Onrizal Onrizal remembers hearing stories of human-like creatures living in the forest when he was growing up in Sungai Dareh, a town in western Sumatra, Indonesia. Legend had…
Over the past twenty years the concept of "tipping points" has become more familiar to the public. Tipping points are critical thresholds at which small changes can lead to dramatic…
“Unless urgent and effective conservation action is taken, these magnificent animals are likely to go extinct within our lifetime.”- Dr. Carlos Drews, Director of WWF’s Global Species Program In 2011,…
Between the pandemic, rising food insecurity and poverty, and catastrophic disasters like wildfires, storms and droughts, 2020 was a year of challenges that prompted widespread calls for systemic change in…
JAKARTA — An Indonesian government initiative that fell short of its goal to rehabilitate degraded peat forests will get another chance to do so — plus the added task of…
2020 was a rough year for tropical rainforest conservation efforts, as explained in Mongabay's year-end wrap-up on rainforests. So what's in store for 2021? Here are 11 things to watch.…
