PALAWAN, Philippines — Lawyers have condemned police officers on the Philippine island of Palawan for holding at gunpoint and arresting environmental law enforcers who visited a coastal village on June…
Land grabbers, landed estate owners and even oil companies stand to benefit from a new guideline released by FUNAI, the federal indigenous affairs agency, which opens up 237 indigenous territories in Brazil for sale, subdivision and speculation.
When Cristobal Pop, 41, started fishing in Lake Izabal in eastern Guatemala with his uncle nearly 30 years ago, they always returned to shore with a generous bounty of robalo,…
JAKARTA — Activists in the Indonesian province of Papua are demanding an investigation into the death of an indigenous man who was reportedly assaulted by a police officer after complaining…
KOKOPO, Papua New Guinea — Change. That’s what Monica Yongol has seen in her 54 years. In that time, the loggers and then the oil palm companies have moved into…
A sweeping policy change by the Bolsonaro government opens unregistered ancestral indigenous lands to landgrabbers, loggers, ranchers, and soy growers, with huge risk for the Amazon.
Zezico Rodrigues Guajarara, a teacher from the Arariboia indigenous reserve in Maranhão state, was found shot dead on March 31. He is the fifth Guajarara leader to be killed since November in the lawless frontier region dominated by powerful landowners and logging mafias.
In 2019, suspect exports of rare wood to Europe, the US and beyond were legalized, likely prompting soaring damage to the Amazon rainforest and new attacks on indigenous people by illegal loggers.
The murder of Sister Dorothy in 2005, and resulting international outrage, helped curb violence in Brazil for a time, but crimes against landless peasants and activists are on the rise.
For Ecuador, 2019 was a critical year for court decisions regarding environmental and social issues. At the end of 2018, the courts set precedent by ruling in favor of the…
In Colombia, a year of crucial environmental decisions ended with a national strike that began on Nov. 21, 2019. Various social sectors say they are dissatisfied with President Iván Duque…
Three indigenous men in Amazonas state, and two peasant farmers in Maranhão, have been killed so far this month in violence experts say is spurred by Pres. Bolsonaro’s policies.
An indigenous Guajajara leader was reported murdered by loggers Friday, adding to rising violence occurring against forest protectors under the Jair Bolsonaro government.
At least 9 people are known dead in new violent attacks on remote Amazon communities near areas of heavy deforestation and large hydroelectric dams.
Three suspected totoaba poachers were reportedly shot yesterday by Mexican marines following a confrontation over illegal gillnets that had been confiscated. According to local news outlet Fronteras, the governor of…
As part of a wave of rural violence sweeping Amazonia, dam activist Dilma Ferreira Silva, her husband and a friend were brutally murdered last Friday; a large scale landowner is in custody.
Agribusiness, well backed by government, is hailed an “economic miracle.” But family farms, with nominal help, provide 70% of the food Brazilians eat.
Jair Bolsonaro pledged to leave the Paris accord during his presidential run. But his Amazon agribusiness and mining expansion plans may pose a far bigger threat to forests and global climate.
A Honduran court has convicted seven men in the murder of indigenous rights activist Berta Cáceres in 2016. Until her death on March 2, 2016, Cáceres had been leading a…
“To leave my dream was difficult, but I had to do it for my son,” says Ileana Herrera, a former ecologist from Venezuela, now living in Ecuador. Herrera, like many…
Interviewed by Mongabay in 2016, Aluisio Sampaio is the most recent victim in a growing wave of Amazon violence against socio-environmental activists.
NAKURU COUNTY, Kenya — Caroline Chepkoeh looked around her idyllic property, perched on a hilltop surrounded by green maize fields as far as the eye can see. A storm front…
EMBOBUT FOREST, Kenya — One morning in May, David Kisang, 50, sat outside his tiny dome-shaped hut, with its walls made of sticks and black polythene for a roof, sipping…
After the Seko indigenous peoples of Indonesia rejected a plan to build a hydropower plant on their traditional lands in the province of South Sulawesi, the company behind the plant…
AREIA, Pará state, Brazil — “I’m only leaving here when I’m dead. And I hope it won’t be after a gunman has killed me,” said peasant farmer Osvalinda Maria Marcelino Pereira,…
The Temer administration ignored UN letters warning of threats to land defenders and environmentalists, and condemning Brazil’s record number of activist murders.
On March 2 Honduran authorities arrested a hydroelectric company executive they say orchestrated the murder of indigenous activist Berta Cáceres two years earlier to the day. David Castillo Mejía is…
Global Witness, a London-based NGO, published a report yesterday examining the involvement of government officials and foreign aid in violent conflicts over mining, hydroelectric, tourism, and palm oil projects in Honduras.…
In August 2015, about a thousand Guarani-Kaiowá indigenous people invaded nine farms in the southern part of the state of Mato Grosso do Sul as part of a plan for…
Sieng Darong, a Forestry Administration ranger, and Sab Yoh, a police officer, were shot and killed while patrolling a protected forest in Cambodia on Saturday morning. A third ranger wounded…
