DELI SERDANG, Indonesia — A forest in Indonesia’s Sumatra Island is being cleared to build access roads for a state-funded dam project that has been bogged down by disputes over…
Ecuador is in a deep economic and health crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic that has spread seriously in the city of Guayaquil, in the province of Guayas. Amid that…
The Brazilian savanna has always been a dry place, but the massive conversion of native vegetation to soy is making it far dryer, as is deepening, climate change-driven, drought.
For the past five years, the indigenous Matsés people of the Peruvian Amazon region of Loreto ventured deep into their territory to draw up a complete map of everything that…
The land rights of quilombos — communities of runaway slave descendants —are assured by Brazil’s Constitution; but those rights are now largely disregarded by agribusiness and Bolsonaro.
Earlier this month, Myanmar’s Information Ministry announced that the country’s Forest Department had seized nearly 850 tons of illegal timber between March 30 and April 5. Teak and other hardwoods…
PUTA-O, Myanmar — In late 2018, following a series of demonstrations and confrontations, indigenous communities primarily from the Rawang ethnic minority expelled the Myanmar Forest Department and its international partner,…
Twelve rangers and five other people were killed in Virunga National Park in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo on Friday. It was the latest deadly incident…
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…
Huge swaths of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest are drier than usual after a rainy season with rainfall index well below historical levels, raising concerns about a further spike in wildfires and deforestation as the dry season approaches.
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — As the largest urban area in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City is known for its kinetic pace of life, rivers of motorbike traffic, and…
Brazil’s environmental agency IBAMA has stepped up efforts to fight environmental crimes during the COVID-19 crisis. But the fate of these operations is now uncertain, following the firing of IBAMA’s enforcement director.
A valuable Atlantic Forest reserve and the historic setting of the discovery of Brazil, the land of the Pataxó is suffering from the illegal logging of fine woods used to produce handicrafts.
Satellites are an excellent tool for monitoring forests. Those who work in the areas of forest management, policy development and environmental conservation are increasingly making use of these eyes in…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government’s plan to relocate the country’s capital from Java to Borneo has hit a wall amid the COVID-19 pandemic, with a top official saying they would…
The continued use of wood-derived biomass could result in a potential 30% increase in worldwide forest cover — more than a billion hectares (2.5 billion acres) — by the year…
Dramatic images of orangutans being rescued from clear-cut forests are ubiquitous on the web and in nature magazines, but new research suggests that rather than being a crucial tool for…
JAKARTA — Two people have died in a series of land disputes between major companies and rural communities in Indonesia. Activists have denounced the escalation in the conflicts, saying businesses…
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…
A court in Brazil has granted the Kinja indigenous people an unprecedented right of reply to racist invective, in a move that legal experts say could be a game changer against rising discrimination by President Jair Bolsonaro’s government.
The images are stark. Smogless skies over Los Angeles. A drop in air pollution over northern Italy that’s so sharp it can be seen from space. Emissions from vehicles in…
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.
Scientists who spent five years studying the impact of illegal mining in Peru’s southeastern Madre de Dios department recently explored that impact in La Pampa, a geographic area in the…
In a city known for the color grey because of skyscrapers and high pollution levels, the green of Jaraguá State Park’s famed Jaraguá Peak provides a welcome respite. Situated in…
A major operation across five regions of Peru has seen 47 prosecutors and 1,200 police officers arrest 18 people who, according to Peruvian authorities, were members of a criminal organization…
A major sovereign wealth fund has pulled its entire $12.3-million investment from a Peruvian company that was accused in 2019 of failing to sever ties to a palm oil plantation…
It’s the world’s biggest importer of logs, legal and illegal alike. A behemoth that drives an engine of timber harvesting across the world, from the rainforests of Malaysia to the…
More than a decade of illegal gold mining around the upstart town of La Pampa in the Peruvian Amazon has tainted local water supplies, razed forests adjacent to a world-class…
Smaller fragments of tropical forest experienced forest loss at a greater rate than larger blocks between 2001 and 2018, researchers have found, prompting calls for restorative measures to be taken…
For nearly a decade now, Vietnam has made “payment for forest ecosystem services” its key strategy for protecting forests and improving the lives of poor rural communities. Now, it plans…
