The conservation group African Parks says it has contracted the law firm Omnia Strategy LLP to investigate allegations of human rights abuses at Odzala-Kokoua National Park in the Republic of…
In June 2023, where the Caquetá River leaves Colombian territory and enters Brazil, no more than 35 kilometers (21.7 miles) from the border, Custodio Yucuna Tanimuca came across a group…
The 2022 documentary “The Territory” won an Emmy award this January, shining a light on the Uru-eu-wau-wau Indigenous people and the invasions, conflicts and threats from land grabbers in their territory in the Brazilian Amazon from 2018 to 2021.
JAKARTA — Land conflicts nearly doubled under the administration of Indonesia’s current president, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, compared with his predecessor, driven largely by his prioritization of investors and infrastructure projects…
Yuly Velásquez grew up on the banks of the Magdalena River near the Colombian city of Barrancabermeja, an area surrounded by a large network of swamps, lagoons and tropical forests.…
One of the final stages in demarcating the Amazonian territory of the isolated Kawahiva tribe is set to take place this year, Brazil’s Ministry of Indigenous Peoples has announced. It’s…
Southeast Asia is home to the third-largest expanse of tropical rainforest in the world, making it a pivotal region for global efforts to address the biodiversity crisis and climate change.…
Mining giant Glencore’s operations in Peru and Colombia continue to threaten Indigenous communities and cause extensive environmental damage despite the company’s public pledges to mitigate harms, according to three new…
SASIMWANI, Kenya — On a cold November afternoon, Esther Norparua and two of her daughters sat on the ground outside her homestead facing the forest. Dark clouds gathered, but the…
While attending a recent United Nations forum, Toto, a Lao environmental activist, had an opportunity to meet with a U.N. special rapporteur in person. In the end, he decided not…
“In this park, there are many complications, because if an official begins environmental work with a community leader for some time, no one knows whether he will be able to…
Kichwa leader Quinto Inuma Alvarado, president the Santa Rosillo de Yanayacu community, was murdered last Wednesday, November 29, in the San Martín region of the Peruvian Amazon. The crime took…
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.
Among the 3,500 inmates in the overcrowded Munzenze prison in Goma, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, are five farmers from the town of Kitshanga. In November 2022, they were…
On Nov. 2, the Kenyan government began demolishing houses and destroying property belonging to Indigenous Ogiek living in the Mau Forest. The Ogiek had won a landmark case in 2017…
BALIKPAPAN, East Kalimantan — Activists have slammed the Indonesian police for rights violations after officers reportedly shot dead a villager and injured at least two others during a protest against…
RIO DE JANEIRO — Monitoring the threats that uncontacted traditional peoples face in the Brazilian Amazon is set to become easier for Indigenous rights activists and agencies, thanks to a…
One morning in 2013, Ojobe William watched as the blade of a bulldozer destroyed his farm in southeastern Nigeria. Soldiers armed with whips and rifles looked on, alert. Residents of…
The Philippines has gained the grim distinction of being Asia's deadliest country for land and environmental defenders, with 281 deaths over the past decade, roughly one-third of which were linked…
In just 72 hours this month, five Indigenous people were wounded by gunfire in violent attacks in a part of the Brazilian Amazon dubbed the “palm oil war” region, sparking outrage and claims for justice.
Between Aug. 4 and Aug. 7, security guards for a palm oil company allegedly shot and wounded five Tembé Indigenous people, in the latest flareup linked to a long-running land dispute. The incidents occurred in a part of the Amazonian state of Pará that’s been dubbed the “palm oil war” region, where Mongabay has over the past year documented the escalating tensions.
Gabriel Trujillo was unstoppable when it came to studying nature. Botany, his passion, led him to explore lots of places while cataloging plants and their behaviors. In June 2023, that…
Anger over latest oil spill as Shell pipeline contaminates river and farms in Nigeria Nigeria’s National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) says an oil spill from Shell’s Trans…
KATHMANDU — On Jan. 10, 2020, 24-year-old Dilip Mahato died after being stabbed multiple times and then run over with a truck. Mahato was an outspoken critic of illegal sand…
Only 13 of some 60 men implicated in a human trafficking case in which Indonesian drug users were imprisoned under the guise of a rehabilitation program and forced to work…
Element Africa is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin of brief stories from the extractives industry in Africa.
Indigenous groups are seeking urgent measures against the escalation of police violence they face in seeking to reclaim their ancestral lands in Brazil’s Mato Grosso do Sul state. In most…
This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Karla Mendes is a fellow. A prominent Indigenous leader was shot in the head on May 14…
The human rights organization Front Line Defenders has published its Global Analysis 2022, a report on the state of people who have dedicated their lives to defending the environment, Indigenous…
PHNOM PENH — On the morning of April 26, a handful of activists took to the streets of the Cambodian capital to commemorate the 11th anniversary of environmentalist Chut Wutty’s…