Bolivia is racing to attract foreign investment in its massive, untapped lithium reserves, with plans to expand operations and build new processing plants. But residents living near the lithium deposits…
No one on the Colombian island of Providencia was prepared for what happened on the night of Nov. 16, 2020. Not even Josefina Huffington, who had survived four hurricanes. That…
PALMAR SUR, Costa Rica — “Once, we were digging to build a fence for the animals and we discovered by luck some archaeological artifacts,” says Ana Isabel Vargas Ortiz, a…
KOSÑIPATA, Peru – “It’s the best road I’ve ever gone birding on, in terms of the variety of habitats and birds,” says Victor Emanuel, one of the pioneers of modern…
In late December 2023, when communities in the southeastern Peruvian province of Cotabambas received a copy of proposed modifications to the Las Bambas copper mine, they were at first surprised,…
JAKARTA — A massive nickel mining and processing project on the Indonesian island of Halmahera has cleared thousands of hectares of forest, forcefully displaced local people, and polluted the rivers…
In January 2019, a dam holding back mining sludge at the Córrego do Feijão iron ore mine in Brumadinho, southeastern Brazil, collapsed. Around 10 million cubic meters (2.6 billion gallons)…
A new road connecting eight Indigenous Waorani communities to urban centers in Ecuador’s Pastaza province aims to improve access to the interior of the Amazon and reduce transportation costs. But…
The government in Ecuador is looking for ways to keep open a controversial oil block in the Amazon Rainforest, defying the results of a referendum to close the operation due…
Ecuador’s new free trade agreement with China is getting backlash from critics worried about public health risks and potential damage to the environment. The agreement, which was signed last May…
In December, Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto announced that it was set to spend $6.2 billion on mining the rich, high-grade iron ore deposits of eastern Guinea’s Simandou Mountains, with…
PHNOM PENH — Two new hydropower dams approved by Cambodian authorities on Nov. 21 look set to bring further fragmentation to the dense rainforests of the Cardamom Mountains. If built…
Indigenous Shuar communities and local mayors in southern Ecuador have demanded immediate help in light of the “imminent” potential collapse of a massive dam holding mining waste, set in the…
SONORA, Mexico — A vital oasis in Mexico’s arid northwest, the Cocóspera River brings to life a ribbon of mossy green forest in the heart of the Sonoran Desert. Further…
JAKARTA — Activists have called on the developers of a major tourism project on the Indonesian island of Lombok to immediately remedy the rights violations alleged by local Indigenous communities…
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.…