Four Ugandan farmers have filed a lawsuit before the High Court in London, U.K., against a contentious oil pipeline under construction in Uganda and Tanzania, human rights group Avaaz announced at a press conference on July 7.

The 1,443-kilometer (897-mile) East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) will stretch from the Tilenga and Kingfisher oil fields in landlocked Uganda to the Tanzanian port of Tanga for export. The pipeline is being built by French energy giant TotalEnergies.

“We are incredibly excited to bring this claim,” said Matthew Renshaw, a partner at law firm Leigh Day, which is representing the claimants. “It is against EACOP Limited, which is a U.K.-registered company that has the potential to cause devastation in Uganda and in the wider world.”

Joanna Setzer, an associate professor at the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute, said at the press conference that U.K. courts are looking at similar cases of U.K.-registered companies allegedly causing harm in other countries. “But the timing is critical in this case because it’s before the damage, before the harm occurs,” she said.

The Tilenga and Kingfisher fields lie near Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda’s largest protected area and home to endangered Rothschild’s giraffes (Giraffa camelopardalis rothschildi) and African bush elephants (Loxodonta africana). The pipeline will also cross 16 protected areas and the Lake Victoria Basin that’s vital for more than 40 million people. Environmental groups have warned that the ecosystem could suffer severe damage in the event of an oil spill.

“Tomorrow, after their pipes get old, there will be oil spills that will be poured into our waters and the little we are harvesting today, I don’t think we will be able to harvest it tomorrow,” Racheal Tugume, one of the claimants, said at the press conference.

Beyond its environmental impacts, EACOP has also raised concerns over human rights violations. More than 100,000 people, most of them farmers, have been displaced to make way for the project. Some of those affected, including one of the claimants, said they have still not received adequate financial compensation.

“I lost 42% of my land and I was inadequately compensated,” said Samuel Abidimba, one of the claimants. “I was not able to find another piece of land with the money they gave me to cultivate and grow enough food to support my family.”

Uganda has adopted climate legislation that offers legal protection against environmental harm, but EACOP has so far not faced legal action inside the country. Setzer said this may be linked to the country’s political climate: Many opponents of the project, including some of the claimants, say they’ve faced intimidation and pressure. Environmental activists have also been repeatedly arrested after protesting against the pipeline.

EACOP is expected to begin operations in 2027, with production from the oil fields projected to last around 20 years.

Banner image: Rothschild’s giraffes at Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda. The Tilenga and Kingfisher fields lie close to the park. Image by Daryona via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Thailand’s natural rubber industry is racing to comply with a new EU anti-deforestation law that will take effect in 2027, reports Mongabay’s Carolyn Cowan.

Thailand is the world’s largest producer of natural rubber and relies on approximately 1.7 million small-scale farmers for 90% of its supply. The country exports much of its rubber to China and Malaysia, but the value of its exports to the EU increased by about 65% from 2019 to 2024, according to the World Integrated Trade Solution database.

To comply with the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) and maintain access to European markets, from January 2027, rubber suppliers must provide geolocation data and legal documentation proving their products did not originate from land deforested after Dec. 31, 2020.

Complying with the regulation requires a massive shift for Thailand’s historically fragmented supply chain, where rubber from various sources is often mixed without requesting records of its origin. Millions of smallholder farmers supply middlemen, who combine rubber from different batches and sell it to processing factories that produce the final goods for the EU market.

This supply chain will need a complete overhaul, which will be a “revolution”, said Stefano Savi, director of the Global Platform for Sustainable Natural Rubber.

“Five years ago, supply chain traceability in natural rubber was considered impossible due to the fragmented nature of the industry,” Savi said.

To bridge the compliance gap, private intermediary firms are stepping in with tech-based solutions. One such firm, Agriac, uses its Traztru platform to georeference farm plots and maintain traceable digital records of land deeds and sustainable farming operations, including details of the producers and every rubber batch sold to processing factories.

Agriac exclusively works with smallholders who meet the standards of the Forest Stewardship Council’s (FSC) voluntary sustainability scheme. Many of these farmers are registered under cooperatives that ensure collection centers have strict separation of compliant and noncompliant rubber, said Maiprae Loyen, Agriac’s managing director.  This setup helps individual farmers come together to fulfill large international orders and stay competitive with industrial-scale producers. “As sustainable markets have grown, it’s only the big guys who have been able to profit,” Maiprae said. “We want to change that.”

While the Rubber Authority of Thailand has already mapped roughly 79% of the country’s rubber production area, significant hurdles remain. Approximately 20% of smallholders lack formal land documentation, often managing land through informal agreements with the government. Experts warn that without continued technical and financial support, these vulnerable producers risk exclusion from the high-value EU market.

Read the full story by Carolyn Cowan here.

Banner image: Lump rubber, a raw material used to manufacture tires, dries in a collection center in Krabi province in Thailand. It will soon be transported to a factory for further processing and export. Image by Carolyn Cowan/Mongabay.

BEIJING (AP) — Tornadoes and storms hit central China, killing at least 11 people and injuring hundreds, state media reported on Tuesday, while areas in the south suffered record-breaking rain.

Thunderstorms battered parts of Hubei province’s eastern region on Monday night, affecting 14,600 people, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. More than 330 people were injured, and one person remained missing, the agency said, adding that over 20 houses collapsed and 4,800 others were damaged.

A rare EF2 tornado swept through the city of Huanggang, where a logistics company and a warehouse were hit hard and multiple trucks were lifted and displaced by winds as much as 30 meters (98 feet), Xinhua reported.

A video posted by Shanghai Daily on X appeared to show people on the ground floor of a building screaming as high winds blew open the glass doors, shattering one.

Tornadoes are usually recorded in southern and coastal provinces such as Guangdong and Jiangsu, according to China Weather News, which is run by the China Meteorological Administration. They are rare in Hubei and multiple factors, including the remnants of Tropical Storm Maysak, contributed to those that swept the region on Monday night, meteorological expert Wang Xiaoling told the Hubei Daily newspaper.

Meanwhile, in southern China, officials said six people had died, and 11 others were missing as record-breaking rain from Maysak caused widespread flooding in the Guangxi region, affecting 375,000 people, of whom 130,000 evacuated, according to the Guangxi regional propaganda office.

Guangxi issued a red alert, the highest level, for flooding on Tuesday. River levels rose to up to 7.5 meters (24 feet) above warning levels, according to Xinhua.

By Associated Press

Banner image: Rescuers work at a logistics center hit by a tornado in Huangzhou District, Huanggang City, Hubei Province, China, on July 7, 2026. Image by Wu Zhizun/Xinhua via Associated Press

On Chile’s Robinson Crusoe Island, in the South Pacific, a tree juts out precariously from the side of a steep cliff. It’s the last known wild individual of Dendroseris neriifolia. To prevent its total extinction in the wild, conservationists recently collected seeds from the tree and have begun trials to cultivate them.

All 11 species of the genus Dendroseris are exclusive to the Juan Fernández Archipelago off Chile. The trees, with striking yellow, orange or white flowers, have been nearly wiped out by extensive habitat degradation, invasive plants, and damage by introduced mammals such as goats and rodents.

Only one known wild individual of the critically endangered D. neriifolia remains on Robinson Crusoe, one of the three main islands in the archipelago, according to Paulina Hechenleitner, research associate at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, U.K.

This tree, estimated to be around 150 years old, hangs off a remote cliff that “is extremely difficult to access, requiring specialist fieldwork and careful planning to avoid any harm,” she told Mongabay by email.

Every year, local conservationists attempt to collect seeds from the tree’s one-seeded fruits. However, fruiting is irregular and some seasons the fruits produce few or no viable seeds, Hechenleitner said.

This year, conservationists collected about 400 seeds, of which 29 were considered potentially viable and sent to the Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) at Kew, the world’s largest wild plant seed conservation program. There, researchers used X-ray imaging to confirm that 24 seeds showed the presence of embryo development.

These 24 “good seeds” were split into three groups of eight, said Alice Hudson, MSB partnership officer at Kew.  “An initial eight were trialled for germination to see if we had the conditions right,” Hudson told Mongabay by email. “Now we know that the methodology works we plan to germinate another 8 of the seeds. The final 8 will be banked at the MSB for long-term conservation.”

The seedlings will be shared with U.K. botanical gardens to refine and improve cultivation and propagation methods under different growing conditions, Hechenleitner said. “Increasing seed production is key to strengthening seed bank collections and generating material that can eventually be repatriated to Chile for habitat restoration. Continued seed collection from the last wild tree, whenever viable crops are produced, will help secure remaining genetic diversity.”

The ultimate goal of the project is to restore wild populations of the tree. But “this will require long-term investment in habitat restoration, invasive species control, monitoring, and carefully planned reintroductions,” Hechenleitner said.

Survival of Dendroseris trees is crucial for species that depend on them, including the critically endangered Juan Fernández firecrown (Sephanoides fernandensis), a hummingbird that forages on nectar produced by the trees’ flowers.

“This genus [Dendroseris] only occurs on the Juan Fernández Islands, if they’re lost that’s a whole group of species gone with unique diversity,” Hudson said.

Banner image of the last known wild individual of Dendroseris neriifolia, courtesy of Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.

Mohammed Abu Daya is a marine ecologist from Gaza. His work focuses on spinetail devil rays, also known as giant devil rays, a critically endangered species that moves through the Mediterranean and beyond. Few scientists specialize in these animals. Fewer still have studied them from Gaza, where local waters form part of their range.

Before the war, Abu Daya taught at Palestinian universities and worked from Gaza’s National Research Center. He went to sea with fishers, measured spinetail devil rays (Mobula mobular) brought ashore, monitored markets, and gathered data on a species more often studied from the western Mediterranean. His work helped place Gaza within the known range of the threatened migratory animal, reports contributor Lyse Mauvais for Mongabay.

The pressures on Gaza’s sea were already severe. Israeli restrictions limited where fishers could work. Fish stocks had declined. Poverty and fuel costs pushed people toward whatever could be caught close to shore. In 2013, when a large group of devil rays came near Gaza’s coast, fishers landed several hundred of them. Abu Daya did not treat the event only as a conservation failure. He tried to understand what had led to it, including the lack of local conservation systems and the strain on people living with few choices.

Then came the current war. Abu Daya lost his home, his office, and regular access to the sea. Universities, libraries, fishing boats, landing sites, and port infrastructure have been destroyed. He has been displaced several times and now lives, like many in Gaza, with limited access to food, clean water, electricity, and the internet.

He has continued to work.

In 2025, during the war, Abu Daya co-authored a study on spinetail devil ray movement across the Mediterranean. One ray he had personally tagged off Gaza with the help of local fishermen traveled to Spain and later returned to the Levantine Sea. The finding helped show that these animals make long, repeated migrations, and that eastern Mediterranean waters are important to their survival.

His persistence is difficult to absorb. A scientist cut off from his laboratory, his students, and the sea keeps analyzing data from a tent. He joins conferences remotely when he can. He collaborates with colleagues abroad. He works on manuscripts while daily life is reduced to securing water and food.

The war has also damaged the conditions that make science possible. It has destroyed institutions, field sites, records, equipment, and classrooms. It has interrupted the lives of people whose knowledge may never be rebuilt in the same form. Conservation depends on those people: the local scientists who know the coast, the fishers who remember what came ashore, and the students who might have carried the work forward.

Read the full interview with Mohammed Abu Daya here.

Banner image: Mohammed Abu Daya, right, collects data on a spinetail devil ray in Gaza in 2015. Image courtesy of Mohammed Abu Daya and Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have played a critical role in the fight to secure title to ancestral Indigenous lands in the Amazon. They can provide financial assistance and legal representation in court, but new research shows that for groups that do not benefit from this support, the arrival of NGOs may cause more harm than good.

A recent paper, published in Political Geography, highlights how this dynamic has played out in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon. There, with the backing of the NGO Amazon Frontlines, the Siekopai community of San Pablo de Katëtsiaya won title to 42,360 hectares (104,674 acres) of their ancestral land. However, the area had long been occupied by another Indigenous group, the Kichwa community of Zancudo Cocha, or Zancudo, which also had deep cultural and spiritual ties to the land but was not included in Amazon Frontline’s efforts.

Such unequal support is termed “uneven territorial sponsorship” by the study authors. It can come from third parties including NGOs, states, religious organizations and others when they support one community at the disadvantage of another that may have a similar ancestral claim to the land. In Ecuador, it has led to tensions between the two communities, with reported incidents of violence and a lack of compromise.

Amazon Frontlines helped the Siekopai secure title to the territory by framing their claim in a more non-Indigenous, Western, legal tradition, which defines territory as sovereign, sacred and timeless, according to the paper. Historically, before the mid-20th century, Amazonian communities saw territorial claims as more fluid; co-occupation is common as families relocate periodically due to conflicts or pandemics.

Mitch Anderson, the founder and executive director of Amazon Frontlines, told Mongabay in a statement that tension in the region was not due to the NGO’s involvement but because of the “Ecuadorian Government’s reckless approach to the creation of ‘protected areas’ that overlap Indigenous ancestral lands, and the doling out of ‘use and access’ agreements to diverse Indigenous communities without sufficient consideration to the historical and cultural connections to the land.”

Mongabay covered the case in a four-part series.

“I think one key lesson for NGOs working in the Amazon (and donors and beneficiaries) is that legal rulings to resolve territorial disputes may not have any real effect if they lack legitimacy on the ground or among the interested parties,” co-author of the paper Angus Lyall, a geographer at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, told Mongabay via WhatsApp messages. “In addition, trials can even make those disputes more contentious and more difficult to resolve.”

Lyall said that “although mediation can be long, frustrating, and unproductive, an overarching principle to consider is that NGOs avoid worsening divisions between communities or nationalities, particularly as they confront shared challenges and threats.”

Banner image: Members of Siekopai communities gather together to talk about gaining the land, known as Pë’këya. Image by Amazon Frontlines.