La Guajira, COLOMBIA — On Oct. 9, Colombia’s first wind farm, Jepírachi, officially reached its end of life after running for almost two decades in Uribia, in the northeastern region…
JAKARTA — An Indigenous community in Indonesian Borneo that has waged a decades-long legal battle against a palm oil giant has slammed a decision to absolve the company of allegations…
When Mauricio Velasco Castro graduated from culinary school in Bogotá, he didn’t look for a job in one of Colombia’s fine dining restaurants or for an internship abroad. Instead, he…
The election victory in 2022 of Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing president in decades, has fanned winds of change in the country. The new government has vowed to tackle many…
Funding for the research and writing of this series of articles was provided by Amazon Aid Foundation. “We have to be very skeptical,” says Carlos Latorre, artisanal gold miner and…
BECERRIL, Colombia — “This makes me very happy, this is why we came down from the Sierra, to see the people celebrating the guáimaro tree,” says Orfelina Perez Restrepo, an…
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…
Flying this November into a remote region of the Orinoquía savanna in Vichada, Colombia, environmental biologist Jacobo Arango could spot the Hacienda San José cattle ranch that his team was…
“As a boy, my father killed pumas,” says Vincente Navarra, whose family has been raising sheep against the backdrop of Argentina’s Patagonian wilderness for generations. Navarra, a 71-year-old rancher who…
Opening up protected areas to mining in the Brazilian Amazon could have an even bigger impact than previously thought, according to a study published in Nature Sustainability earlier this year.…
BRUSSELS — Indonesia's timber industry is known for having the only legality system in the world that's robust enough to be recognized by the European Union. And now, the country…
“We always grew native products that come from here, like corn, beans, potatoes or lulos,” says Don Danilo, a longtime farmer near Sonsón, a small municipality in the Colombian state…
Brazilian soybean producers have been highly successful in using genome technology to benefit their crops, with huge economic and environmental gains, a new paper highlights. Currently, the growers are using…
Forests are an integral part of Earth’s ecosystems as they provide essential social, economic and environmental benefits, such as forest products, biodiversity, and carbon storage and sequestration. However, large swaths…
NUEVO MEXICO, Mexico — Standing in her cornfield in Chiapas state, surrounded by mountains and dry tropical forests, Maria Luisa Gordillo Mendoza looks concerned. “They said we were pigs for…
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…
KAVRE, Nepal – Srijana Karki still remembers her childhood when she visited her grandfather's farm. "The green fields were dotted with various fruit trees and we would get to eat…
An Afro-Colombian community on the southwest coast of Colombia has helped establish a new marine protected area that will create more sustainable fishing and hunting practices while ensuring that one…
In November 2020, Peruvian cacao company Tamshi filed a lawsuit against Mongabay Latam staff reporter Yvette Sierra Praeli for “aggravated defamation” over her reporting of a government investigation into 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…
JAKARTA — A new web monitoring platform aims to achieve full traceability in palm oil supply chains and help companies to meet their zero-deforestation commitments — a goal that continues…
JAKARTA — One of the biggest palm oil growers in Indonesia has announced a plan to rehabilitate an area half the size of New York City to atone for its…
JAKARTA — The world’s leading palm oil sustainability certification scheme may have helped reduce deforestation and pollution in areas where it’s applied, but has had a limited impact on rural…
JAKARTA — A new report has added to growing concerns that Indonesia’s ambitious program to increase its use of palm oil-based biodiesel will drive greater deforestation across the country. The…
JAKARTA — Palm oil-driven deforestation is slowing down in Southeast Asia in 2020 but a handful of low-profile companies continue to drive the majority of the destruction, according to a…
JAKARTA — A new study on certified oil palm plantations and their links to past deforestation has sparked a debate over whether they can be considered sustainable if they’re established…
