JAKARTA — Critics have questioned the Indonesian government’s priorities as it prepares to evict longtime residents of a small island to make way for a $25 billion development that includes…
PANAMA CITY — Panama has been gripped by mass protests against a government deal with Central America’s largest copper mine amid claims it sacrifices national sovereignty and will damage the…
HOLBOX, Mexico — The tour I’d arranged in Holbox wasn’t one of the usual packages. It isn’t advertised on social media or sold at the dozens of stalls along the…
JAKARTA — As Indonesia positions itself to become a key global hub for electric vehicle batteries, it’s also putting people and the environment at harm through the coal-fired plants powering…
Argentina has spent the last several years expanding its investments into offshore drilling. But critics say weak regulations and a lack of oversight in the industry are raising concerns that…
JAKARTA — Indonesia is on a spree of building coal-fired power plants for industry, which will keep the country addicted to the fossil fuel for the foreseeable future, regardless of…
Decades of oil spills have polluted rivers and streams throughout the Amazon Rainforest, affecting wildlife and destroying the homes of Indigenous peoples. But the oil and gas industry doesn’t act…
JAKARTA — Major investors continue to sour on a hydropower project being built in an orangutan habitat in Indonesia, with the powerful Norwegian state pension fund the latest to call…
It all starts with a road. In Brazil, the federal government commissioned the construction of mule trails and telegraph lines to link their coastal cities with long-established settlements on remote…
JAKARTA — There’s been renewed scrutiny of the infrastructure being built for Indonesia’s new capital city on the island of Borneo following the sighting of a critically endangered orangutan crossing…
JAKARTA — Reports of human rights violations continue to mount around a major tourism development on the Indonesian island of Lombok, two years since the United Nations first flagged problems…
The environmental issues facing Venezuela are serious and wide-ranging: illegal mining in the Amazon, national water shortages, mudslides and flooding exacerbated by climate change, the degradation of protected areas, oil…
The takeover of a polluting landfill in Colombia was supposed to help clean up the area for residents falling sick from exposure to toxic chemicals, but years later they say…
The Gran Chaco, South America’s second-largest forest after the Amazon, has been steadily replaced by croplands and cattle ranches for decades. Now, the semiarid lowland faces a new threat: the…
Drug trafficking, logging, oil palm plantations, oil spills, highways, illegal fishing, expanding Mennonite communities — in the Peruvian Amazon, there’s no shortage of threats against Indigenous peoples or their lands.…
The borders between the countries that make up the South American trading bloc Mercosur (or Mercosul in Brazil) have an economic life of their own, where different characters subsist. An…
This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn was a fellow. *Names have been changed to protect sources who said they feared reprisals from…
SANTA ELENA DE UAIRÉN, Venezuela — Flying over a dense jungle in southern Venezuela, the sea of trees below is suddenly replaced by large patches of bare soil, tree stumps…
We live at the center of a spiderweb of global mining supply chains. The vehicle that took you to the market, the rechargeable battery in your headphones, and the phone…
Brazil’s Cerrado may not be a household name like the neighboring Amazon Rainforest, but this vast savanna biome is even more threatened and fragmented. A new study now shows there’s…
JAKARTA — When scientists made the bombshell announcement in 2017 that the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis) was a new species, the apes were immediately put under the global spotlight. With…
With the slogan “Invest in Klabin and build a sustainable future” and a long list of awards for its commitment to preserving the environment, Brazilian pulp and paper manufacturer Klabin…
MEXICO CITY — The sudden, unexpected construction of a hotel in the middle of a protected reserve in southern Mexico has surprised residents and left many conservationists scrambling to figure…
A recently opened salmon processing plant in southern Chile is raising concerns about whether environmental regulations were properly carried out to prevent contamination of marine ecosystems and clean drinking water.…
Bolivia’s failure to combat illegal gold mining generated a heated national debate last year. Numerous news sites published investigations into deforestation, pollution and corruption tied to the mining industry, while…
MEXICO CITY — China has taken a special interest in deepening ties with Latin America over the last twenty years. It’s provided well over $100 billion in loans for the…
On Dec. 5, a flight over the Yanomami Indigenous Territory in Brazil’s northern Amazon showed the Greenpeace and Brazilian NGO Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA) members on board an illegal road, already…
Venezuela sits on one of the largest deposits of proven crude oil and natural gas reserves in the world. For decades, it’s been the backbone, if not the lifeline, of…
President Nayib Bukele, now entering the last year of his term, has spent much of the previous four years trying to modernize El Salvador’s roads. His government has repaired new…
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…