Land rights and extractives News

A mine in Likasi on November 26, 2025. Image by Glody MURHABAZI / AFP).

In the race for DRC’s critical minerals, community forests are on the frontline

Didier Makal, Latoya Abulu 16 Jan 2026

Nevada lithium battery

Scramble for clean energy metals confronted by activist calls to respect Indigenous rights

Sarah Sax 21 Apr 2023

Jaguars still roam the Chaco, but they require large tracts of contiguous forest to survive and reproduce. As forest is destroyed, fewer of these intact landscapes exist. Photo by Eduardo Merille via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Report links financial giants to deforestation of Paraguay’s Gran Chaco

Aimee Gabay 13 Apr 2023

Element Africa: Gold in Ghana, oil in Nigeria, and fracking in South Africa

Mongabay.com 5 Apr 2023

A cobalt mine in central Africa.

Will clean-energy minerals provoke a shift in how mining is done in Africa?

Malavika Vyawahare 30 Mar 2023

Soraida Chindoy, 38, Indigenous leader from the Inga community of the Condagua reservation. She has been part of the movement to stop the mining project from the beginning. Image by Antonio Cascio for Mongabay.

Plan to mine ‘clean energy’ metals in Colombian Amazon splits communities

Natalia Torres Garzón 22 Mar 2023

Malocas (traditional longhouses) of Indigenous communities in isolation on the Peru-Brazil border. Image by ORPIO.

Peru congress debates stripping isolated Indigenous people of land and protections

Yvette Sierra Praeli 16 Mar 2023

Illegal mining areas inside Yanomami land near the Mucajaí River.

Brazil tackles illegal miners, but finds their mercury legacy harder to erase

Sean Mowbray 16 Mar 2023

Since the beginning of the operation, government environmental agents have been destroying the logistical support of illegal mining, such as an airplane, a helicopter and a tractor, and have seized weapons and boats. Image courtesy of IBAMA by Ricardo Campos.

Lula government scrambles to overcome Yanomami crisis, but hurdles remain

Jenny Gonzales 6 Mar 2023

Anthony Adejuwon points at the polluted water.

‘Brought down by gold’: Communities and nature suffer amid Nigerian bonanza

Gabriel Ogunjobi 3 Mar 2023

Part of a Yanomami community.

Yanomami crisis sparks action against illegal gold in the Amazon

André Schröder 28 Feb 2023

Celebration of the 2020-2023 election period of the Sámi assemblies in 17 June 2022. Image by Kevin J. Francett / Kajastus Creative / Sámediggi Saamelaiskäräjät (the Sámi Parliament) via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

Finland’s debate over Indigenous identity and rights turns ugly

John Last 21 Feb 2023

Deforestation in the Amazon.

The $20m flip: The story of the largest land grab in the Brazilian Amazon

Fernanda Wenzel 14 Feb 2023

The dilapidated home of Ambroise Ondoa, local leader from Nkol-Bifouan, damaged by vibrations from the Febe village quarry. Image © Yannick Kenné.

Tense neighbors: Chinese quarry in Cameroon takes a toll on locals

Yannick Kenné 24 Jan 2023

FOIA lawsuit suggests Indonesian nickel miners lack environmental licenses

Eko Rusdianto 24 Jan 2023

Humberto Sánchez.

Shadows of oil in Peru: Shipibo people denounce damage, contamination left by company

Enrique Vera 26 Dec 2022

In Liberia, a gold boom leads to unregulated mining and ailing rivers

Varney Kamara 22 Dec 2022

A Gbaya farmer in Mbanti-Mbang, on land left unscathed by the agro-industrial project / Image © Yannick Kenné.

To replace Western food imports, Cameroon gives community lands to ‘no-name’ agro-industry

Yannick Kenné 1 Dec 2022

Waikas, Raraima, Brazil September 1st 2022 Robervaldo a young Yek'wana that used to work in a Garimpo. Photographed in his community Waikas near the venezuelian border. Photo © Victor Raison 2022, all rights reserved.

Indigenous youths lured by the illegal mines destroying their Amazon homeland

Victor Raison; Jean-Mathieu Albertini 30 Nov 2022

Saliou Hassana, a 17-year-old gold miner, extracting and collecting gold nuggets using mercury at Kambélé III. Image © Yannick Kenné.

About 72% of gold miners poisoned with mercury at artisanal mining sites in Cameroon

Yannick Kenné 29 Nov 2022

Pablo Sibas Sibas delivering a testimony at the HRD Memorial Vigil in Dublin, during the Front Line Defenders Dublin Platform 2022. Image by Kamil Krawczak

‘We go in and take Indigenous lands back from cattle ranchers’: Q&A with activist Pablo Sibar

Kimberley Brown 21 Nov 2022

A photo taken of the Indigenous Tanaru man by a Funai official in 2018.

Delayed Indigenous ‘Man of the Hole’ burial reveals dispute over his land

Sarah Brown 9 Nov 2022

A member of an indigenous community in Putumayo watches over his community’s territory. Photo courtesy of Michelle Carrere.

As gangs battle over Peru’s drug trafficking routes, communities and forest are at risk

Michelle Carrere 8 Nov 2022

A group of Guarani-Kaiowá residents dance and chant.

In Brazil’s soy belt, Indigenous people face attacks over land rights

Ana Ionova 8 Nov 2022

Laborers at a cobalt mine.

Element Africa: Keeping platinum in the ground, and minors out of mines

Mongabay.com 4 Nov 2022

Alice Gama looks at cracks that have developed on the wall of her house in Arda Transau, an area near Zimbabwe’s Chiadzwa diamond fields. Image courtesy Linda Mujuru, GPJ Zimbabwe. Image courtesy of Evidence Chenjerai.

Broken houses and promises: residents still in poverty near massive diamond project

Anna Weekes 24 Oct 2022

Activists and Indigenous peoples holding a protest.

Southern Philippine coal project moves ahead despite community opposition

Bong S. Sarmiento 18 Oct 2022

Tewe Dayuma Michela Conta, one of the girls kidnapped from the Tagaeri and Taromenane territory, speak during the trial. Image courtesy of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).

First-ever regional court case involving rights of uncontacted peoples awaits verdict

Kimberley Brown 13 Oct 2022

Fishmongers in the Ndji village market get by with very little. Image by Yannick Kenné.

“Largest of its kind” dam in Cameroon faces backlash from unimpressed fishmongers

Yannick Kenné 13 Oct 2022

A rice farmer harvesting in rice fields.

Thailand bets on coal despite long losing streak for communities

Kannikar Petchkaew 13 Oct 2022

The main road built by PT Gema Kreasi Perdana

Sulawesi islanders grieve land lost to nickel mine

Eko Rusdianto 6 Oct 2022

Forests & Finance: Sit-ins, seeds over seedlings, and fuel-saving cookstoves

Mongabay.com 5 Oct 2022

A man in a boat in Bodo

Element Africa: Diamonds, oil, coltan, and more diamonds

Mongabay.com 4 Oct 2022

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Photographer Jonathan Bachman was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for capturing a photograph of Ieshia Evans being arrested in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It was Ieshia Evans first protest, and Bachman’s first time covering one. The photo was included in The New York Times’ “The Year in Pictures 2016,” among other honors. jonathan bachman / reuters. Shepard Fairey—a prolific artist and activist who often addresses social and political issues in his work—was invited by the authors of ‘Protest’ to interpret Bachman’s photograph for the book. Image credit to Shepard Fairey. Image Courtesy of Patagonia Books.

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