Long before climate change had been deemed a global crisis, the Kogi Indigenous people, who have long lived in seclusion in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada mountains, were already warning that industrial…
When Nelly Flores looks out over the Urao Lagoon, she smiles and asks me: “Do you know what those dots moving in the water are?” Mosquitoes, I guess. Nelly shakes…
The fight to save the Amazon has continued in 2022, as tragedy and political hope are shaping the region. Violence against environmental defenders ran rampant Indigenous people have continued to…
Two hours by boat from Belém, the state capital of Pará in Brazil, in the small village of Acará-Açu, wood houses rise on thin piles on the banks of the…
Officials and NGOs have hailed the European Union's agreement on a law banning the import of commodities associated with deforestation, but say it falls short of protecting areas typically not…
KAMPONG THOM, Cambodia — The mood outside the Kampong Thom Provincial Court had grown tense on the afternoon of July 26. Some 12 residents of Ngon village, an Indigenous Kuy…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has recognized community claims to ancestral forests in the country’s eastern Papua region for the first time in history, a move that environmentalists say could…
Josefa Mería has lived in the Peruvian city of Moyobamba, where the Andes meet the Amazon rainforest, for more than 30 years. Even in this humid tropical climate, she remembers…
Deforestation is pushing the Amazon rainforest dangerously close to its tipping point, and the effects could soon be felt across the globe. A new report from the World Wildlife Fund…
LA PAZ — Gold is Bolivia’s second-biggest export, valued at more than $1 billion annually and employing hundreds of thousands of people in the country. But much of that gold…
Community-based groups in Honduras have expressed optimism that a new timber export agreement with the European Union will help curb illegal logging and other illicit activities impacting the country’s forests…
“For the first time ever, there is a government that is against fracking,” says Amarilys Llanos Navarro. An activist and lawyer with the Cesar Without Fracking and Gas Movement, an…
Scientists warn that the Amazon is hurtling toward a tipping point, beyond which it would begin to transition from lush tropical forest into a dry, degraded savanna, unable to support…
Funding for the research and writing of this series of articles was provided by Amazon Aid Foundation. “We’ve been fighting the government of Suriname for almost 25 years, for recognition…
JAKARTA — An independent initiative in Indonesia continues to make rapid progress in mapping Indigenous lands, with an area the size of Belgium mapped in the past few months alone.…
Just weeks after visiting a patch of Malaysian rainforest, Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler learned it had been logged for wood chips to supply a paper plant. A teenager at…
An Indigenous community in Ecuador has finally obtained national protections for part of its territory after decades of fighting off deforestation and pollution in its mega-diverse rainforests. Ecuador’s National System…
MARAMCHE, NEPAL— The monsoon clouds that arrive in Nepal in the first week of June herald the start of the rice-planting season. The country's hills, valleys and plains turn green…
In La Playa, a fishing village of around 500 people in Santander, Colombia, well-kept houses and vibrant murals live in the shadow of el monstruo — the locals’ nickname for…
KATHMANDU — On June 6, a 41-year-old woman was attacked by a tiger while she was collecting firewood in a forest in Nepal's Bardiya district, a key habitat for endangered…
JAKARTA — Residents of a remote island in eastern Indonesia have won a lawsuit against a company planning to mine gold on their island, after having an earlier legal challenge…
JAKARTA — An independent initiative in Indonesia has mapped Indigenous lands covering an area half the size of Germany since it began in 2010, nearly a third of it in…
The Amazon gets a lot of attention, but there’s another massive forest in South America: the Gran Chaco. This hot, dry forest stretches across Paraguay, Bolivia, and Argentina, covering 87…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government’s plan to administratively split the country’s easternmost region of Papua into five provinces, from the current two, has raised concerns that its forests and natural…
KATHMANDU -- On the evening of March 27, as residents of the settlement of Kusum Khola, on the fringes of Nepal’s Chitwan National Park, were preparing dinner, they heard footsteps…
A ruling by Mexico’s Supreme Court this month canceled two controversial mining concessions in Indigenous communities, which have been fighting to stop the projects for nearly two decades. The Nahua…
JAKARTA — Palm oil companies in Indonesia’s West Papua province are suing a local district head for revoking their permits, the second such case filed since authorities last year rescinded…
Local stories in Michoacán tell how, when the Spanish invaded what would later be known as Mexico in the 1500s, they found Indigenous communities tapping pine trees and using the…
At the very southern tip of Colombia, Indigenous communities practice a sustainable food system that involves artisanal fishing and rotating crop structures within cycles of flooding periods. This has allowed…
SORONG, Indonesia — An Indigenous clan in Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua has had its rights to its ancestral lands and forests recognized by the local government, a key step…
