BOGOTA, Colombia — Droughts are lasting longer because of climate change and human intervention, but where does climate change leave off and human exploitation of natural resources begin? The Wayuu…
*This article is a collaboration between Semana Sostenible of Colombia and Mongabay Latam. Sofía and Nicole, two young girls from the Colombian village of Terraplén, sing at the top of…
At the end of January this year, Colombian President Iván Duque announced at the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland, that the country's goal is to plant 180 million…
In March 2020, just prior to COVID-19 being a pandemic, I spent a few days in the tri-border region of Brazil, Colombia, and Peru. There I used a drone to…
This story is a journalistic collaboration between Semana Sostenible of Colombia and Mongabay Latam. Eugenio Chacón scans the colorful branches of the trees with his strong, sharp gaze. The 58-year-old…
The first case of a member of an indigenous community in Peru testing positive for Coronavirus was recorded late last month. The person in question, Aurelio Chino, is an indigenous…
In early March 2020, I visited the tri-border area of Peru, Colombia, and Brazil and used the opportunity to explore a cluster of potential deforestation hotspots detected by Global Forest…
The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the world’s highest coastal mountain range, is an isolated massif in northern Colombia. Due to its unique geography, the steep mountain slopes ascend through…
Colombia is the world’s second-most biodiverse country after Brazil. Central Colombia’s Macarena region, in particular, is important for biodiversity as it serves as a transition zone between three major biomes:…
Across the globe, tree cover loss hit record highs from 2016-2018, with roughly the size of a soccer field lost each second. In 2018 alone, the area of tree cover…
‘Multinationals have cut the veins of our mother Earth,’ warned Pope Francis, urging conservation of the rapidly vanishing Amazon — but the world’s media barely took notice.
A new analysis based on estimated deforestation in the Amazon in 2019 pinpoints hotspots of forest loss and identifies several country-specific trends in the region. The figures project that deforestation…
Three European countries have put up $366 million in foreign aid to fight deforestation in Colombia’s Amazon. The region’s rate of forest loss remains stubbornly high, up 97% since 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…
Jaime Luis Arias grew up on the southern slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. An isolated coastal pyramid-shaped massif in northern Colombia, the Sierra Nevada is one of…
2019 closed out a "lost decade" for the world's tropical forests, with surging deforestation from Brazil to the Congo Basin, environmental policy roll-backs, assaults on environmental defenders, abandoned conservation commitments,…
The 2010s opened as a moment of optimism for tropical forests. Widely available satellite imagery via platforms like Google Earth brought new levels of accountability which, for the first time,…
Not all species "lost to science" are truly lost. For nearly 30 years, the starry night harlequin toad (Atelopus arsyecue), a tiny amphibian, named for its glossy black skin with…
Even as delegates to COP25, the Madrid climate summit, sidestep the environmental and human rights goals of the Paris Agreement, a godly 71-year-old woman steps up.
A major six nation study finds that the arrau is thriving mostly in river systems where conservationists are active, but not elsewhere; climate change looms as a major threat.
“Palm oil is here to stay,” reads the 2018 report “Oil Palm and Biodiversity,” which was produced by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and represents one of…
This article is a collaboration between Rutas del Conflicto and Mongabay Latam. PUERTO GAITÁN, Colombia — When Modesto Paredes bought 25 acres of land 10 years ago in the…
Snaking its way through Colombia’s northwestern department of Choco, for centuries the Atrato River has been the lifeblood for Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities living along its banks. But decades of…
GUAVIARE, Colombia — In the north of the department of Guaviare, the Jiw say they feel trapped in their own lands. The 2,500 hectares (6,200 acres) of the Barrancón resguardo,…
Starting October 6, the Catholic Church will hold its first ever synod focused on an ecological biome. Bishops, indigenous leaders and activists will meet and set plans to help save the Amazon.
The last few weeks have been critical for the Amazon in Brazil and Bolivia. Fires in August razed thousands of hectares of forest and drew the attention of the international…
In the Caño La Sal reservation in central Colombia, the Jiw indigenous community lives on a shrinking amount of land. Several armed groups have begun taking over their territory to…
Many of the world’s armed conflicts occur in areas with high biodiversity, according to a 2009 study published in Biological Conservation. The study found that more than 80 percent of…
As oil palm plantations expand across the world, razing swaths of tropical rainforests in their path, fears about their impact on the environment have also grown. In the plantations of…
It isn’t unusual for those who defend the environment to be threatened, but sometimes their commitment to nature puts their lives directly at risk. According to a recently published Global…
