topic: agribusiness

topic: agribusiness

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Latest palm oil deforester in Indonesia may also be operating illegally
- The biggest deforestation hotspot for palm oil in Indonesia is located on a small island off the southern Borneo coast, new data show.
- Up to 10,650 hectares (26,317 acres) of forest — one-sixth the size of Jakarta — were cleared from 2022-2023 inside the concession of PT Multi Sarana Agro Mandiri (MSAM), part of the influential Jhonlin Group.
- Activists say the company’s operations may be illegal, given the questionable process through which it obtained its permits.
- However, law enforcers have ignored calls to investigate, and previous efforts by journalists to expose the group’s business practices have led to their criminal prosecution on hate speech charges.

Pro-business parties accused of holding back Indonesia’s Indigenous rights bill
- Pro-business political parties in Indonesia have deliberately stalled the passage of an Indigenous rights bill for more than a decade, lawmakers and activists allege.
- These parties fear ceding control of natural resources to Indigenous communities by giving them land rights, they add.
- Lawmakers trying to push the bill through have identified the PDI-P and the Golkar Party as the main opponents of the bill, but others say it’s the entire ruling coalition: seven parties that control 82% of seats in parliament.
- Indigenous activists say the bill is urgently needed to formalize Indigenous land rights and stop the hemorrhaging of customary lands and forests to commercial, industrial and infrastructure projects.

A web of front people conceals environmental offenders in the Amazon
- A paper trail left by a notorious land grabber reveals how he used relatives and an employee as fronts to evade environmental fines and lawsuits, shedding light on this widespread practice in the Brazilian Amazon.
- Fronts prevent the real criminals from having their assets seized to pay for environmental fines, besides consuming time and resources from the authorities, who spend years trying to prove who the real financier of the deforestation is.
- Experts say it’s best to go after environmental offenders where it hurts the most, by seizing their assets, rather than to chase down their true identity.
- This investigation is part of a partnership between Mongabay and Repórter Brasil.

Mexico’s avocado industry harms monarch butterflies, will U.S. officials act? (commentary)
- Every winter, monarch butterflies from across eastern North America migrate to the mountain forests in Mexico, but those forests are threatened by the rapidly expanding avocado industry.
- Avocado production in Mexico is tied to deforestation, water hoarding and violence, and much of the resulting crop is exported to the U.S.
- Conservation groups are urging the U.S. State Department, USDA and USTR to ban imports of avocados from recently deforested lands in Mexico.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Snack giant PepsiCo sourced palm oil from razed Indigenous land – investigation
- In the last few years it is likely that PepsiCo has been using in its production palm oil from deforested land claimed by the Shipibo-Konibo people in eastern Peru, a new investigation has found.
- Palm oil from Peru enters PepsiCo’s supply chain via a consortium that shares storage facilities with Ocho Sur, the second largest palm oil producer in the country which has been associated with deforestation and violation of Indigenous peoples’ rights. In the last three years, further deforestation occurred within the company’s land, the investigation found.
- Some of the forest loss on company-run oil palm plantations occurred on land claimed by the Santa Clara de Uchunya community of Shipibo-Konibo Indigenous people.
- PepsiCo manufactures at least 15 products containing Peruvian palm oil that could be linked to deforestation. The company has pledged to make 100% of its palm oil supply deforestation-free by the end of 2022 and for its operation to be net zero by 2040.

Traceability is no silver bullet for reducing deforestation (commentary)
- The European Union, UK and US have passed, or are in the process of passing, legislation which places a duty on companies to prove that products they import do not come from recently deforested land.
- Businesses and governments are ramping up efforts to address emissions and deforestation in their supply chains, but the scale at which these initiatives are being implemented limits their effectiveness in tackling deforestation.
- Investments by companies and governments in farm-level traceability must be backed up by landscape approaches that address the systemic drivers of deforestation, climate change and biodiversity loss, a new op-ed argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

As fires ravaged Indonesia in 2023, some positive trends emerged, data show
- Indonesia’s 2023 fire season saw 1.16 million hectares (2.87 million acres) of land and forest go up in flames, and while this was five times higher than in 2022, experts highlight a positive trend.
- The fires were exacerbated by an intense El Niño weather system, unlike in 2022; the last time similar conditions prevailed, in 2019, the area affected by fires was much larger, suggesting fire mitigation efforts may be working.
- Most of the burning occurred in scrubland and areas of degraded forest rather than in intact forests, meaning greenhouse gas emissions from the burning were also much lower than in 2023.
- But a worrying trend highlighted by the numbers is that severe fires are now occurring in four-year cycles, intensified and exacerbated by the impacts of a changing climate.

Agribusiness bill moves to block grassland protections in Brazilian biomes
- The Brazilian Congress is analyzing a bill that would leave all the country’s non-forestry vegetation unprotected, affecting an area twice the size of the United Kingdom.
- Behind the proposal are the interests of economic sectors such as agribusiness and real estate companies.
- The most affected biome would be the Pantanal wetlands, a Natural World Heritage Site known for its highly biodiverse grasslands and flooded fields.

PalmWatch platform pushes for farm-to-fork traceability of palm oil
- PalmWatch, an online, open-source tool, is seeking to bring greater transparency to the global palm oil supply web, to better help consumers trace the impact of the commodity.
- A key hurdle to transparency has long been the fact that batches of palm oil and their derivatives sourced by consumer brands like Nestlé and PepsiCo potentially contain product from hundreds of mills processing palm fruit from thousands of plantations.
- By scraping various websites with mill disclosure data and standardizing the information in one place, PalmWatch can come up with a supply chain map that can link specific mills, suppliers and consumer brands to harms associated with palm oil.
- Advocacy groups have welcomed the launch of the tool, saying it will allow for improved targeting of campaigns to get brands to push for more sustainable practices in their supply chains.

Toilet paper: Environmentally impactful, but alternatives are rolling out
- While toilet paper use is ubiquitous in China, North America, parts of the EU and Australia, its environmental impact is rarely discussed. Environmentalists recently began urging people to be more aware of the real price paid for each roll — especially for luxury soft, extra-absorbent TP made from virgin tree pulp.
- Though not the global primary source of tissue pulp, large tracts of old-growth forest in Canada and Indonesia are being felled today for paper and tissue products, impacting biodiversity and Indigenous communities. Eucalyptus plantations to provide pulp for TP are mostly ecological deserts, and put a strain on water supplies.
- The environmental impacts of toilet paper occur all along its supply chain. Making TP is an energy- and water-intensive process, and also requires toxic PFAS and other chemicals. Upon disposal, toilet paper can become an insoluble pollutant that resists wastewater treatment and adds bulk and chemicals to sewage sludge.
- Many large tissue makers are investing in improved technologies to lighten this impact. But emerging markets in the developing world, beyond the reach of environmental watchdogs, are raising alarms. Bidets, recycled paper, bamboo, sugarcane and other alternative pulp sources offer more environmentally friendly options.

Palm oil deforestation persists in Indonesia’s Leuser amid new mills, plantations
- Deforestation for palm oil persists in Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem, including inside a national park that’s supposed to be off-limits to plantation activity, a new investigation has found.
- The Rainforest Action Network (RAN) characterizes the current deforestation trend as a “death by a thousand cuts,” with a large number of small operators hacking away at the ecosystem, in contrast to past deforestation carried out by a small number of large concession holders.
- RAN’s investigation also identified two new palm oil processing mills near the deforesting concessions, indicating that the presence of the mills, which need a constant supply of palm fruit, may be a driver of the ongoing deforestation.
- There’s a high risk that mills in the area may ultimately be supplying deforestation-linked palm oil to major global consumer products companies, including those with stated no-deforestation policies.

In Brazil’s soy belt, community seed banks offer hope for the Amazon
- In Brazil’s state of Mato Grosso, monoculture has replaced large swathes of the Amazon rainforest and ushered in changes in climate patterns, including severe droughts and scarce rains, according to climate experts.
- Traditional and Indigenous peoples are looking to counter the impacts of large-scale soy plantations in the region by setting up community seed banks and reforesting degraded lands with species native to the Amazon.
- Experts say seed initiatives could play a key role in restoration efforts as Brazil scrambles to rehabilitate 60,000 square kilometers (23,160 square miles) of deforested land by 2030 and agribusiness faces global demands to reverse the damage it has inflicted on the Amazon.
- Seed banks could also help restore the biodiversity being lost in the Amazon, preserve species central to Indigenous cultures, and mitigate climate change, locally and globally.

Palm oil deforestation makes comeback in Indonesia after decade-long slump
- Deforestation for oil palm plantations has increased for the second year in a row in Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer of palm oil, bucking a decade-long decline in forest loss.
- A third of the 2023 deforestation occurred on carbon-rich peatlands, raising the potential for massive greenhouse gas emissions as these areas are cleared and drained in preparation for planting.
- Historically, deforestation for plantations in Indonesia was concentrated on the island of Sumatra, but the surge in the past two years has been mostly on the islands of Indonesian Borneo and Papua.

Meet the think tank behind the agribusiness’ legislative wins in Brazil
- Agribusiness giants in the soy, beef, cotton and pesticides industries, among others, maintain a strong lobbying presence in Brazil’s Congress that offers advisory, technical and communication support to “ruralist” legislators.
- Central to these lobbying efforts is Pensar Agro (“thinking agribusiness”), or IPA, the think tank behind newly passed legislation like the so-called time frame bill that undermines Indigenous land rights and opens up the territories to mining and agribusiness.
- The institute’s strategy includes spreading fake news and crafting talking points for legislators from the agribusiness caucus to force through their bills.

Jokowi’s land reform agenda stalls as conflicts nearly double, report shows
- Land conflicts in Indonesia have nearly doubled under President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo as his administration pursues an investor-first economic agenda that has sidelined local communities and the environment, a new report shows.
- There were 2,939 pending disputes affecting 1.75 million households in the nine years to date of the Jokowi administration, compared to 1,520 disputes involving 977,000 households during the 10 years of the previous administration.
- The report by the Consortium for Agrarian Reform (KPA) says the government has largely failed in its reform agenda, having previously promised to register community-owned lands and redistribute expired concessions back to communities.
- A key driver of land disputes are infrastructure projects that the Jokowi administration has designated as projects of “national strategic importance,” which gives the government eminent domain rights to evict entire communities.

Why the Amazon’s small streams have a major impact on its grand rivers
- An unprecedented time-series study in the basin of the Tapajós River, a major tributary of the Amazon, assesses the level of degradation of small rivers threatened by agribusiness expansion.
- Researchers from several universities will assess the conservation status of 100 streams spread between the municipalities of Santarém and Paragominas, at the confluence of the Tapajós and the Amazon, which were first analyzed in 2010.
- The impact of dirt roads and their network of river crossings, which causes sediment load, siltation, erosion and changes in water quality, was one of the factors that caught researchers’ attention in the initial time-series study.
- Experts say that local development models should ideally start from water to land, rather than the other way around, given the importance of water for the rainforest, its biodiversity, and the inhabitants who depend on both.

Outcry over deforestation as Suriname’s agriculture plans come to light
- Government documents, first published by Mongabay last year, showed that hundreds of thousands of hectares of Suriname’s primary forest might be under consideration for agriculture development.
- Indigenous communities, conservation groups and some members of parliament are concerned about deforestation of the Amazon and the fate of ancestral territories.
- Some officials have threatened investigations into the Ministry of Land Policy and Forest Management, while Indigenous groups are looking into legal action.

Indonesian palm oil firm fined for fires sues expert a second time over testimony
- Environmental law experts say palm oil company PT Jatim Jaya Perkasa (JJP) is attempting to shirk its liability and fines for a forest fire by suing an expert witness who testified against it.
- The lawsuit is the second that JJP has filed against Bambang Hero Saharjo, an expert on fire forensics at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB); the company dropped its previous lawsuit against him in 2018.
- The company blames Bambang, who testified about the extent of the fire damage on JJP’s concession, for the high amount that it was fined, saying his testimony was “false and exaggerated.”
- Bambang and fellow experts refute this, saying JJP’s repeated lawsuits are a frivolous attempt to avoid having to take responsibility or to pay; to date, the company hasn’t paid any of the $36.7 million that it was fined for the fire.

2023 fires increase fivefold in Indonesia amid El Niño
- Nearly 1 million hectares (2.47 million acres, an area 15 times the size of Jakarta) burned in Indonesia between January and October 2023, according to environment and forest ministry data; El Niño and burning for new plantations contributed to this.
- 2023 was the worst fire season since 2019, when that year’s El Niño brought a prolonged dry season and fires so severe, they sent billowing smoke across Malaysia and Singapore.
- In the absence of local jobs, some people burn abandoned farmlands and turn them into new plantations as a way to make a living and survive.

Major soy producers announce improved deforestation commitments—with caveats
- Eight soy producers published a statement last week committing to halting deforestation in the Amazon, Cerrado and Chaco biomes by 2025 and the conversion of “non-forest primary native vegetation” by 2030.
- The companies include ADM, Amaggi, Bunge, Cargill, COFCO, LDC, Olam Agri and Viterra.
- Conservation groups have pointed out that without an immediate ban on deforestation, the new commitments would allow soy producers to continue clearing forests in years to come.

Rural finance in the Pan Amazon: the Brazil success case
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023 and 2024.

Roundtables and certification schemes in the Pan-Amazon
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023 and 2024.

Activists slam ‘independent’ probe by Indonesian palm oil giant into violations
- A report commissioned by Indonesian palm oil giant Astra Agro Lestari into alleged violations allegedly by its subsidiaries on the island of Sulawesi failed to investigate key issues such as community rights, NGOs say.
- The investigation was triggered by multiple media and NGO reports on the long-running conflict between three AAL subsidiaries and local communities in Central Sulawesi province who allege the companies grabbed their land.
- The investigation failed to verify whether AAL’s subsidiaries had obtained the free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) of local and Indigenous communities before operating in the area, according to Walhi and Friends of the Earth US.
- Instead, the verification focused on proving whether the communities in the area had legal permits to their land that overlaps with AAL’s concessions, resulting in biased and inaccurate findings, the NGOs say.

Indigenous groups rebuke court OK for palm oil company to raze Papua forests
- Indigenous Awyu tribal members in Papua lambasted a court decision that effectively greenlights palm oil company PT Indo Asiana Lestari’s plans to raze 26,326 hectares (65,000 acres) of primary forest that sit on ancestral lands.
- If developed in full, the project would replace 280,000 hectares (692,000 acres) of the third-largest stretch of rainforest on the planet with several contiguous oil palm estates run by various companies.
- The impending deforestation would subsequently release at least 23 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, which is 5% of Indonesia’s estimated annual carbon emissions.

Coca in the Amazon – The anti-development crop
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023 and 2024.

Local and national food crops in the Andean Amazon
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023 and 2024.

As RSPO celebrates 20 years of work, Indigenous groups lament unresolved grievances
- The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) held its annual conference in Jakarta to celebrate 20 years of growth and impact — but activists and Indigenous communities say they’ve been waiting years for RSPO to resolve ongoing conflicts and long-standing complaints.
- Indigenous groups and local communities that have lost their lands and forests say the RSPO grievance system has left them without justice or resolution.
- While the RSPO says it has improved its methods of dealing with grievances, affected communities say their complaints have been dismissed for lack of evidence, they have awaited answers for years and their voices aren’t being heard.

High quality cacao in Amazonia
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023 and 2024.

Cultivation and processing of Amazonian coffees
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023 and 2024.

Investigation shows ‘shadow companies’ linked to Indonesia palm oil giant First Resources
- The investigation is part of Deforestation Inc, a reporting collaboration coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists involving journalists from 28 countries.
- The findings indicate that companies associated with First Resources may have been behind more deforestation in Southeast Asia during the last five years than any other corporate organization.
- First Resources continues to supply blue chip consumer goods companies with palm oil, including Procter & Gamble and PepsiCo.

Coffee and cacao in the Pan Amazon
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023 and 2024.

Palm oil cultivation in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023 and 2024.

Study links pesticides to child cancer deaths in Brazilian Amazon & Cerrado
- According to new research, for every 5 tons of soy per hectare produced in the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado, an equivalent of one out of 10,000 children under 10 succumbed to acute lymphoblastic leukemia five years later.
- The researchers estimate that 123 childhood deaths during the 2008-19 period are associated with exposure to pesticides from the soy fields, amounting to half the deaths of children under 10 from lymphoblastic leukemia in the region.
- Experts say that the research is just the tip of the iceberg, and many other diseases and deaths may be associated with chemicals used in crops; further studies are needed.

Oil palm in the Pan Amazon
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023 and 2024.

Agriculture in the Pan-Amazon: Swine and poultry – Adding value to farm production
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023 and 2024.

Burn now, pay later: Fines trickle in from Indonesia’s crackdown on forest fires
- Ten years since a landmark lawsuit over forest fires, the palm oil company at the center of the case has finally begun paying its $23 million fine in installments.
- The case against PT Kallista Alam (KA) was supposed to set an example for how the government is cracking down on companies that allow burning in their concessions, but has instead highlighted the difficulty of collecting on the fines.
- KA has paid just $3.6 million of its total fine, and despite a 2021 regulation barring fine payments in installments, the company has been allowed to stagger its payments over time.
- The company is one of 22 sued by the government since 2013 for fires; 14 of these have been found liable and ordered to pay a combined 5.6 trillion rupiah ($353 million), but only one has paid in full.

Agriculture in the Pan Amazon: Industrial infrastructure for grains and cereals
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023.

As fire season worsens, Indonesian activists report four companies for burning

JAKARTA — Activists have reported four companies — two industrial forest firms and two palm oil firms — to the local police over fires in their concessions in Central Kalimantan as Indonesia is grappling with its worst fire episode since 2019. According to satellite image analysis done Sept. 2-10, the activists found a total of […]
Environmental groups speak out against arrival of Mennonite farmers to Suriname
- Mennonite farmers from Bolivia, Mexico and Belize are looking to buy thousands of hectares of land in Suriname. Conservation groups and Indigenous communities say it would be disastrous for the environment.
- Areas opened up by the Mennonites could provide new access for mining and logging, as well as jeopardize Indigenous communities’ campaign to obtain land rights.
- Faced with a lack of government transparency, a press conference demanding answers and publicizing the risks of large-scale agriculture was held by WWF, Conservation International, SAFE, Tropenbos International and Green Growth Suriname, among other environmental groups.

Indigenous Dayak ‘furious’ as RSPO dismisses land rights violation complaint
- The RSPO, the world’s leading sustainable palm oil certifier, has dismissed a complaint filed by an Indigenous community in Indonesia against a plantation company accused of violating their land rights.
- The company, MAS, arrived on the Indigenous Dayak Hibun’s ancestral land in 1996, and by 2000 had swallowed up 1,400 hectares (3,460 acres) of the community’s land within its concession.
- The community lodged its complaint in 2012, aimed at MAS’s parent company at the time, Malaysian palm oil giant Sime Darby Plantation, which is a member of the RSPO.
- In dismissing the complaint, 11 years later, the RSPO cited no evidence of land rights violations, and also noted that Sime Darby Plantation has sold off MAS — whose current owner isn’t an RSPO member and therefore isn’t subject to the roundtable’s rules.

Intensive agriculture in the Pan Amazon: Soy, maize and other field crops
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023.

Indonesia’s oil palm smallholders need both state and EU support (commentary)
- The EU’s recently adopted restrictions on the import of commodities linked to deforestation, such as palm oil from Indonesia, has a noble intention but could have unintended impacts on small farmers, argues Andre Barahamin, a senior campaigner at Kaoem Telapak, an Indonesian NGO.
- Smallholders account for 40% of Indonesia’s palm oil production, but lack the resources and capacity to comply with the new restrictions, and so must be provided with to training, technology, financing, and certification, Barahamin writes.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Livestock farming in the Andean Amazon and the rest of the Amazon
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023.

Young firefighter killed battling inferno in Borneo orangutan habitat
- Said Jaka Pahlawan, an oil palm plantation foreman, was killed on Sept. 30 while fighting a fire in Indonesia’s Tanjung Puting National Park, a key orangutan habitat.
- The 23-year-old worked for PT Kumai Sentosa, a plantation company that had been fined in 2019 by an Indonesian court over wildfires on its concession.
- The fire this time around was in the national park, where Jaka and other employees went to tackle the blaze as government firefighters responded to fires elsewhere.
- Friends of the young firefighter told Mongabay that Jaka was a dedicated professional who had participated in conservation activities in the area.

Deforestation surges in hotspot of critically endangered Bornean orangutans
- Deforestation within a pulpwood concession that overlaps with key orangutan habitat in Indonesian Borneo has escalated in recent months.
- Concession holder PT Mayawana Persada cleared 14,000 hectares (34,600 acres) of forest between January and August, or 40 times the size of New York’s Central Park, of which 13,000 hectares (32,100 acres) were areas identified as orangutan habitat.
- In July alone, the company cleared 4,970 hectares (12,300 acres), the highest monthly deforestation figure recorded.

Report: Half of plantations in Indonesia’s palm oil heartland are illegal
- Nearly half of plantations in Riau province, Indonesia’s palm oil heartland, are illegal, according to a new report by the Eyes on the Forest, a coalition of NGOs based in Sumatra.
- With the illegal plantations spanning 2.52 million hectares (6.23 million acres) of land — an area nearly the size of Hawai‘i — Riau is home to more than half of illegal oil palm plantations in Indonesia.
- EoF has called on the government to focus its amnesty program, which gives operators of illegal plantations a grace period of three years to obtain the proper permits, in Riau.
- It has also called for greater transparency in the amnesty program to avoid corruption in the process.

Indonesian police slammed after protester demanding rightful land is shot dead
- Indonesian police have reportedly shot dead one protester and injured two others in a flareup of yet another land dispute between communities and outside investors.
- Residents of the mostly Indigenous Dayak village of Bangkal in Central Kalimantan province have since Sept. 16 protested over palm oil company HMBP’s failure to allocate land to them as required by law.
- Police claim the protesters attacked security forces in the Oct. 7 clash, but video and witness accounts from the ground strongly suggest otherwise.
- Activists say the Bangkal case is emblematic of how the Indonesian government prioritizes commercial interests over those of communities, including using excessive force against protesters.

Plan to bring Mennonite farmers to Suriname sparks deforestation fears
- Investors from Argentina and the Netherlands have spent the past several years trying to bring Mennonite farming communities to Suriname from Belize, Mexico and Bolivia.
- Mennonite farmers have faced criticism for clearing thousands of hectares of forest across Latin America, often in protected areas and Indigenous territories.
- The company behind the project is called Terra Invest Suriname & Guyana, and plans to purchase as much as 30,000 hectares (about 74,000 acres) for approximately 1,000 Mennonite families.

Indonesia’s peatland restoration claims in question as fires flare up
- The Indonesian government says companies have restored 3.7 million hectares (9.1 million acres) of peatland — an area larger than Belgium — in an effort to prevent the annual peat fires.
- But this claim has come into question following an increase in the number of hotspots in peatlands, including inside oil palm concessions that had burned in past years and went up in flames again this year.
- An investigation by The Gecko Project found the government appeared to have inflated the figure of 3.7 million hectares, with the actual figure derived from the government’s own methodology closer to 2.7 million hectares (6.7 million acres).
- Fires on carbon-rich peatlands are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions from Indonesia, which in turn is one of the world’s biggest emitters.

Experts slam massive ‘discount’ in fines for Indonesian palm oil billionaire
- Environmental experts have criticized an Indonesian court ruling that extends a palm oil billionaire’s sentence for corruption by just one year while slashing his fines by nearly 95%.
- The country’s highest court of appeal upheld the initial conviction of Surya Darmadi for conspiring with a local official to illegally obtain licenses for his oil palm plantation, but cut his fines from $2.7 billion to just $144 million.
- Experts who testified in Surya’s prosecution say the latest ruling sets a bad precedent for future law enforcement against corruption and environmental crimes in the country.
- And without fines, they warn, there can be no efforts to recover the carbon-rich and biodiverse peat ecosystems in Sumatra that Surya’s plantations destroyed.

Deforestation for palm oil continues in Indonesia’s ‘orangutan capital’
- Carbon-rich peatlands continue to be cleared and drained in an Indonesian protected wildlife reserve known as the “orangutan capital of the world,” with 26 kilometers (16 miles) of new canals dug so far in 2023, up from 9 km (5.6 mi) in 2022, according to an investigation by the advocacy group Rainforest Action Network (RAN).
- While new plantations appeared to have not been established yet along the new canal channels, there is a mosaic of illegal oil palm around the locations of the new canal, indicating a future development of palm oil.
- As new canals continue to be dug, deforestation has also picked up, reaching 372 hectares (919 acres) in the first six months of 2023, a 57% increase from the same period in 2022.
- RAN has called on global brands like Procter & Gamble, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Unilever to address the development of new canals and illegal plantations as their supply chains are tainted with illegal palm oil from the wildlife reserve.

El Niño leads to more fires and toxic air pollution in Indonesia
- Indonesia saw an increase in land and forest fires recently as the El Niño weather phenomenon brings a prolonged dry season.
- Official data show a fourfold increase in hotspots up to September, compared with the same period last year.
- Residents in some major cities like Palembang have fallen ill due to toxic smog from the fires.
- Carbon-rich peatlands, which have been protected and partly restored through government policies and measures, are also burning, with more than 14,000 hotspots detected in peat landscapes in August alone.

Kellogg’s latest to freeze Indonesian supplier over palm oil violations
- U.S. cereal giant Kellogg’s has become the latest major consumer goods brand to suspend business ties with Indonesian palm oil giant Astra Agro Lestari (AAL).
- It joins the likes of Hershey’s, PepsiCo and Nestlé, which all stopped buying palm oil from AAL following a 2022 report alleging land grabbing, environmental degradation, and the criminal persecution of environmental and human rights defenders.
- AAL has denied the allegations and launched an independent investigation, but has not yet taken steps to remedy the harm allegedly done.
- Activists say the investigation unfairly puts the onus on local communities to prove their allegations against AAL, and have called on other consumer goods companies and investors to stand up to AAL.

Indonesian regulator gets 12 years’ jail for palm oil permit bribery
- An Indonesian court has sentenced a senior land agency official to 12 years in prison for taking bribes from palm oil and mining companies to expedite their permits.
- Muhammad Syahrir, formerly the head of the land agencies in Riau and North Maluku provinces, was found guilty of taking the equivalent of $1.38 million in bribes from various companies over the course of five years.
- In addition to the jail sentence, the court also imposed fines totaling $1.5 million; failure to pay could incur additional prison time of up to three and a half years.
- The case has spurred calls for a sweeping evaluation of the permitting process, not just in the palm oil industry, but across all sectors in Indonesia, where bribery is common.

Court ruling spares Papua forest from further clearing for palm oil
- An Indonesian court has rejected lawsuits filed by two plantation companies operating in the Tanah Merah mega oil palm plantation project in the country’s Papua region.
- The ruling means the companies are legally required to stop clearing forest in their concessions and preserve what remains.
- Activists and Indigenous Awyu people living in the area have welcomed the ruling, but point out that communities in the concession areas still don’t have legal recognition of their ancestral rights to these forests.
- They’ve called on the government to formally recognize their ancestral rights and ensure the companies’ permits to the concessions are revoked.

Agro giant Cargill tied to deforestation in Bolivia’s Chiquitano forest
- A new report from Global Witness uncovered a paper trail that ties food giant Cargill to more than 20,000 hectares (49,400 acres) of deforestation in Bolivia’s Chiquitano forest.
- It’s unclear whether Cargill is intentionally overlooking the connections to soy-driven deforestation or is simply failing to carry out the necessary due diligence.
- The findings also implicate financial institutions that back Cargill, including Bank of New York Mellon, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and HSBC.

In the clash over Dutch farming, Europe’s future arrives
- Despite months of protests by farmers and an electoral rebuke, the Dutch government has pressed ahead with an attempt to make its farming system more ecologically sustainable.
- But there are deep divisions in the Netherlands over how extensive any reforms should be, and clashes over the role that new technologies should play in them.
- This summer, talks over a potential consensus position between the Dutch government and the national farmers’ union collapsed in failure.
- The clash between the continent’s green movement and its agricultural industry is building steam, with the EU’s flagship conservation law barely squeaking through parliament in June.

In the Netherlands, pitchforks fly for an empire of cows
- In response to a court ruling, the Dutch government announced in 2022 that it would aim to halve emissions of nitrogen from livestock like cows, pigs, and chickens.
- The announcement enraged farmers in the country and sparked a massive protest movement that upended Dutch politics.
- For years, farmers in the Netherlands were encouraged to produce more milk, eggs, and cheese to meet Dutch export targets.
- The sudden u-turn and subsequent backlash gave rise to a new political party in the Netherlands, the Farmers-Citizens Movement, which swept provincial elections in March.

How manure blew up the Netherlands
- The Netherlands is one of the smallest countries in Europe, but also one of its biggest food producers and exporters, thanks to a wildly successful intensive agriculture sector.
- With the highest density of livestock in Europe, the Netherlands has been in the throes of a years-long crisis over nitrogen emissions from manure, which ecologists say are destroying the country’s ecosystems.
- When the Dutch government announced plans to buy out farms close to nature reserves and cut the country’s livestock herd by as much as one-third, farmers revolted, staging massive demonstrations and destabilizing politics in the Netherlands.
- The “nitrogen crisis” has become a flash point in Dutch society, raising difficult questions over how to reform unsustainable food systems and offering a preview of what’s to come for other countries as well.

How the Amazon’s ‘greatest devastator’ sold cattle to a Carrefour supplier
- Arrested by Brazilian Federal Police, cattle rancher Bruno Heller and relatives have already received over $5 million in environmental fines. He is also suspected of land grabbing.
- Heller transported cattle from a family farm fined for environmental violations to two other properties free from environmental implications — this maneuver is an indication of the so-called “cattle laundering.”
- A Frialto Group meatpacking plant confirmed that it slaughtered 249 animals for the Heller family. The facility supplies Carrefour, but the French retail company states that the meat from animals raised by Heller did not reach its supermarkets.

Indonesia permit payoff raises alarm about palm oil industry corruption
- The ongoing trial of an Indonesian official accused of taking bribes from palm oil companies to expedite their permits has prompted calls for greater scrutiny into corruption in the sector.
- Muhammad Syahrir, formerly the head of the land agencies in Riau and North Maluku provinces, is accused of taking 20.9 billion rupiah ($1.36 million) in bribes from various companies over the course of five years.
- In the case at the center of the trial, Syahrir is alleged to have solicited the equivalent of $228,000 from palm oil company PT Adimulia Agrolestari to renew its right-to-cultivate permit, known as an HGU.
- Environmental law experts say the secrecy around HGU permits is what allows corruption to flourish, and have renewed calls for the government to make the permit data publicly accessible.

Palm oil, pulpwood firms not doing enough to prevent peat fires, analysis shows
- More than 2 million hectares (5 million acres) of oil palm, pulpwood and other concessions across Indonesia are at high risk of being burned because of companies’ failure to restore the peat landscape, according to a new analysis.
- This represents more than half of the Switzerland-sized area of tropical peatland throughout Indonesia that’s considered a high fire risk.
- With many concession holders still not doing enough to restore the peat landscapes in their concessions, researchers question the effectiveness of government mandates and certification schemes in preventing peat fires.
- The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) credits its early fire detection system with helping member concessions achieve lower numbers of hotspots than noncertified concessions, but groups like Greenpeace dispute the findings.

‘Sustainability is a continuous journey’: Q&A with RSPO’s Joseph D’Cruz
- The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the industry’s leading certifier of ethical compliance, has long faced scrutiny over its sustainability guidelines and how it responds to member companies’ frequent violations.
- Today, the organization is headed by veteran development professional Joseph D’Cruz, a self-professed newcomer to the industry who says he wants the RSPO to be less reactive and more proactive.
- In a wide-ranging interview with Mongabay, D’Cruz discusses why sustainability should be seen as an unending journey rather than an end goal, how the gap between sustainable and “conventional” palm oil is closing, and what role governments must play in driving greater sustainability.
- “When you watch the progress of platforms like the RSPO, sometimes on the outside it might seem frustratingly slow,” he says. “But that’s because you got to bring everybody along and that’s a very tricky challenge sometimes.”

Indonesian oil palm firm slapped with $61m fine for fires on its plantation
- Indonesia’s Supreme Court has upheld a $61 million fine against palm oil company PT Rafi Kamajaya Abadi for fires on its oil palm plantation in western Borneo.
- The fires burned an area spanning 2,560 hectares (6,326 acres), or more than seven times the size of New York City’s Central Park.
- To date, the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry has filed lawsuits against 22 companies for fires on their concessions, 13 of which have been found liable and must pay fines after exhausting all avenues of appeal.

Most Indonesian palm oil firms not sharing land with small farmers as required: audit
- Only 21% of Indonesian oil palm plantation companies have fulfilled their legal obligations to allocate land for smallholder farmers under a scheme called plasma, a new government audit shows.
- To address the lack of compliance by companies, the government has established a task force.
- The task force will also address other issues in the plantation industry, such as tax avoidance.

Indonesia slammed for ‘bowing down’ in amnesty for illegal oil palm estates
- The Indonesian government says it has no other option in dealing with illegal plantations than to legalize them under an amnesty program.
- Activists have lambasted the justification, saying it signals the state’s capitulation to environmental violators.
- They say the government has the option of taking legal action against the plantation operators, for which there’s already legal precedent.
- The amnesty program is set to run until the end of this year, with the aim of legalizing illegal plantations spanning an area the size of the Netherlands.

What can solve growing conflicts between agricultural giants and communities in Cameroon?
- Tensions between local communities and large-scale agriculture companies are running high in Cameroon and disputes over land and environmental impacts have increased over the years.
- The Cameroonian government views industrial agriculture companies as drivers of future economic development and is encouraging the sector’s development, but their establishment is marred in land issues arising from colonization.
- The government’s adopted solutions to conflicts have proved ineffective, and it is struggling to implement adequate measures to curb disputes.
- Civil society groups and organizations are calling for the reform of Cameroon’s land policy as communities turn to popular protests as a way to meet their demands.

Forests in the furnace: Cambodians risking life and liberty to fuel garment factories
- Entire villages in parts of Cambodia have turned to illegal logging of natural forests to supply the firewood needed by garment factories churning out products for international fashion brands.
- Mongabay spoke with several people who acknowledged the illegal and dangerous nature of their work, but who said they had no other viable means of livelihood.
- The work pits them against rangers they accuse of heavy-handed tactics, including the seizure or destruction of their trucks and equipment, arrests, and extortion.
- 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 the authorities.

Forests in the furnace: Cambodia’s garment sector is fueled by illegal logging
- An investigation has found factories in Cambodia’s garment sector are fueling their boilers with wood logged illegally from protected areas.
- A Mongabay team traced the network all the way from the impoverished villagers risking their lives to find increasingly scarce trees, to the traders and middlemen contending with slim margins, up to the factories with massive lots for timber supplies.
- The garment industry association denies that any of its members uses forest wood, but the informal and opaque nature of the supply chain means it’s virtually impossible to guarantee this.
- 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 the authorities.

Indonesia’s No. 2 palm oil firm faces global backlash over community conflict
- A growing list of global household brands, from PepsiCo to L’Oréal to Hershey’s, have suspended their purchases from Astra Agro Lestari (AAL), Indonesia’s second- largest palm oil producer.
- The move comes in the wake of reports of land grabbing, environmental degradation and criminal persecution of human rights defenders by AAL and its subsidiaries operating in Central Sulawesi province.
- AAL has launched an independent investigation into the matter, but NGOs say the process is unnecessary as the evidence of violations is plain.
- They say the company should instead focus on returning the land it claims to the farmers and communities who were there first.

Agroecology schools help communities restore degraded land in Guatemala
- The transformation of ancestral lands into intensive monoculture plantations has led to the destruction of Guatemala’s native forests and traditional practices, as well as loss of livelihoods and damage to local health and the environment.
- A network of more than 40 Indigenous and local communities and farmer associations are developing agroecology schools across the country to promote the recovery of ancestral practices, educate communities on agroecology and teach them how to build their own local economies.
- Based on the traditional “campesino a campesino” (from farmer to farmer) method, the organizations says it has improved the livelihoods of 33,000 families who use only organic farming techniques and collectively protect 74,000 hectares (182,858 acres) of forest across Guatemala.

One seed at a time: Lebanese project promotes agroecology for farmer autonomy
- Lebanese organic seed farm Buzuruna Juzuruna is on a mission, part of a growing network of agroecological efforts in the country, to change conventional farming through seed sharing and communal education.
- Despite its location in the Fertile Crescent, Lebanon today relies heavily on imports to feed its population due to economic collapse, conflicts and political upheaval.
- Buzuruna Juzuruna is using multiple efforts, including free classes, festivals and even circus performances to expose local farmers to older, more ecological methods of farming.
- In its work, Buzuruna Juzuruna emulates the ecosystems it treasures, by being open-source and horizontal in design.

In the land of honey and nuts: Indigenous solutions to save Brazil’s Cerrado
- Indigenous groups including the Terena, Kayapó and Kuikuro peoples are helping to both protect biodiversity and improve their welfare in the Cerrado by producing honey, roasted baru nuts and babaçu palm oil.
- Brazil’s second-largest biome and one of its most deforested, the Cerrado has lost half its original vegetation due to pressure from agribusiness and infrastructure projects.
- The paving of the BR-242 and MT-322 highways and construction of the EF-170 rail line are among the controversial projects driven by agribusiness that are expected to highly impact Indigenous territories in the biome.
- Indigenous communities are developing economic projects centered on the sustainable production of food resources native to the Cerrado, in the process helping to safeguard the world’s most biodiverse savanna and one of its richest in cultural diversity.

The climate is already changing in the Matopiba, Brazil’s new agricultural frontier
- Collecting data from the last 40 years, researchers have observed increased temperatures and more severe droughts in the Matopiba region, which encompasses parts of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia states.
- A transition zone between the Cerrado and the eastern Amazon, the Matopiba is the largest area of contact between forest and savanna in the tropics; in the last two decades it has become one of the main fronts for the expansion of grain cultivation in Brazil.
- According to the researchers, the increased frequency of hot and dry days in the region results from an interaction between global climate change and the advance of deforestation.
- In the near future, environmental changes can harm agribusiness itself, putting Brazilian food security at risk.

Sugarcane: The monoculture that transformed southern Quintana Roo
- The sugar cane area of the municipality of Othón P. Blanco reflects the results of decades of government policies that have privileged agriculture and livestock over jungles and forests.
- Starting in the 1970s, the federal government promoted sugar cane cultivation in the region. Although many sugar cane fields have been established since the ‘80s, this monoculture has continued to take over hectares inside and outside the sugar cane area. The sugar mill, to this day, marks life in the southern zone of Quintana Roo.
- In the entire municipality of Othón P. Blanco, since 2010, 75,364 hectares (186,228 acres) have been left without tree cover, equivalent to 109 times the area of the Chapultepec Forest located in Mexico City.

Palm oil giants face corruption charges as Indonesia probe widens
- Indonesian prosecutors have charged three palm oil giants with corruption relating to a cooking oil shortage across the country last year.
- Permata Hijau, Wilmar International and Musim Mas are alleged to have benefited from the criminal actions of their executives, who were convicted earlier this year in the same case.
- The executives were found to have bribed a top trade ministry official to issue the companies with permits to export their palm oil for a high price rather than sell it domestically at a capped rate.
- Industry watchdogs have welcomed efforts to prosecute the companies, but say these must be accompanied by an overhaul of the industry in general.

Palm oil: The crop that cuts into southeastern Mexico’s jungles and mangroves
- When deforestation caused by oil palms expanded in Indonesia or Malaysia, Mexican federal and state officials did everything they could to encourage planting these native African palms around the Lacandon Jungle.
- Between 2014 and 2019, at least 5,400 hectares (13,343 acres) of forests and jungle were lost due to the expansion of oil palm in Chiapas, Campeche, Tabasco and Veracruz, according to cartographic analysis carried out by the authors of the study “Cultivation of Oil Palm in Mexico.”
- At least 4,000 ha (9,800 acres) of oil palm are found inside the La Encrucijada Biosphere Reserve, a protected natural area on the Chiapas coast. The most remarkable monoculture expansion has occurred in the last 10 years.

Avocados: The green gold that wipes western Mexico’s forests from the map
- In Jalisco, avocado orchards are spreading and dominating the landscape: In 2010, there were about 8,400 hectares (about 20,750 acres) of this monoculture, and by 2021, that area had tripled.
- Satellite images show what is lost with the expansion of the Persea americana monoculture: Since 2019, at least 5,160 ha (12,750 acres) have turned from forests to avocado orchards.
- The loss of forest cover could continue indefinitely, especially after the United States government authorized the commercialization of avocados harvested in Jalisco in July 2022.

Soy: The agro-industry that devastates the Maya jungle
- Hopelchén is today one of the leading soybean producers in the country. Occupying that place has had a very high cost for biodiversity. In 20 years, this municipality in Campeche lost at least 153,809 hectares (380,070 acres) of tree cover, representing three times the area of Cozumel island.
- The expansion of soybeans in that region has gone hand in hand with processes of leasing and privatization of lands that were previously communal lands under collective ownership and government subsidies that benefit, above all, large producers.
- In the last seven years, the environmental authorities have not authorized any change in the use of forestland in Hopelchén. Clearing continues and has intensified in recent years, according to satellite images.

Planting deforestation: The forests that Mexico loses to agribusiness
- Every year in Mexico, at least 47,770 hectares (118,042 acres) of forests and jungles are cleared to establish agricultural fields. This forest cover is equivalent to the total area occupied by Cozumel, one of the largest islands in Mexico.
- Territories previously inhabited by biodiverse forests are now dominated by monocultures such as avocado, soybean, sugar cane and palm oil.
- Land clearing by agribusiness has progressed unimpeded for decades in various regions of the country. The engines that encourage it are, among others, government subsidies, a growing market, ignored environmental laws and, primarily, disdain for forested territories.

In Indonesia, companies defy government’s decision to revoke their permits
- Logging, plantation and mining companies have continued to operate and have been mired in conflicts with communities since their permits were targeted for revocation by the Indonesian government, a new report says.
- In Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua alone, four palm oil companies cleared 943.3 hectares (2,331 acres) of forests in the first four months of 2023 — an area three times the size of New York’s Central Park.
- Civil groups have been calling on the government to redistribute the revoked concessions to local and Indigenous communities, but they say their calls haven’t been heard.

Indigenous groups turn to Brazil’s highest court to stop police violence
- Brazil’s largest coalition of Indigenous groups has filed a motion with the country’s highest court in response to escalating police brutality against Indigenous peoples in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul.
- In the first seven months of 2022, 759 violent incidents with police were recorded, involving a total of 113,654 families and 33 killings in land-related conflicts in rural areas of the country, marking a 150% increase from the first six months of 2021.
- Most cases of violence are tied to disputes over non-demarcation lands; Indigenous peoples, attempting to reclaim their ancestral territory, often run into conflicts with landowners, such as farmers or developers, which end in forceful police interventions.
- The Indigenous coalition is requesting the installation of GPS equipment and recording systems on security officers’ uniforms and vehicles, as well as measures aimed to improve their training and public protocols to protect human rights.

Majority of Brazil’s Congress votes to restrict Indigenous land advances
- Brazil’s controversial bill 490 was overwhelmingly approved in the country’s Lower House by representatives and farmers, including political allies of President Lula’s party.
- The bill introduces a time frame to create Indigenous territories, reduces the area of Indigenous lands and opens Indigenous areas to mining and infrastructure projects, among other changes.
- According to opponents of the bill, this breaks with land rights guaranteed in the Constitution to Indigenous peoples. Proponents of the bill argue that more land should rather be given to farmers and economic development projects.
- The text now goes to the Senate, the majority of which are conservative and in favor of the reduction of the area of Indigenous territories. If approved, it goes to President Lula, who can veto the bill or be overridden by Congress.

The state of the Amazon: Chapter 1 of “A Perfect Storm”
- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.
- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
- Click the “Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023.

Borders between Mercosur countries have become a hub for trafficking agrochemicals
- Seizures of counterfeit, adulterated and stolen agrochemicals in Brazil have grown with the global economic impacts since the COVID-19 pandemic, with much of the contraband originating in China and arriving via neighboring South American countries.
- The trafficking in agrochemicals has been co-opted by organized crime syndicates that control the routes from Paraguay to Brazil, with most of the crimes recorded with these products also linked to drug trafficking.
- Half of the pesticide seizures in Brazil involve illicit products, up from just 5% in 2010, and involve products banned in the country yet widely used for growing soybean, corn, cotton and bean crops.
- The Brazilian market for pesticides is valued at $14.4 billion a year, yet tax and economic losses due to crimes involving agricultural inputs was almost $4 billion in 2022.

Agro giants buy grains from farmers fined for using Indigenous land in Brazil
- Bunge, Cargill, COFCO, Amaggi, ADM do Brasil, Viterra and General Mills bought soy and corn in an area where “grain laundering” is admitted by producers and civil servants.
- The illegal crops came from areas on the border of the Amazon Rainforest which had restrictions for production, but the real origin of the grains were concealed through paperwork.
- The revelations come from a joint investigation by the Brazilian news outlets Repórter Brasil and O Joio e o Trigo.

In Indonesia, clouds form over East Java’s promising band of avocado growers
- Global avocado production is rising to meet demand from increasingly health-conscious consumers.
- South and Central American producers remain the world’s largest, but production in Indonesia is rising quickly.
- Farmers have found new ways to increase value, but research shows rising temperatures and increased rainfall threaten to undermine productivity.

RSPO suspension of Brazil palm oil exporter tied to Mongabay land-grabbing report
- Agropalma, the only Brazilian company with the sustainability certificate issued by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) — a members organization including palm oil growers, traders, manufacturers, retailers, banks, investors and others — has had its certificate “temporarily suspended” since February.
- In December 2022, Mongabay published a yearlong investigation revealing that more than half of the 107,000 hectares (264,000 acres) registered by Agropalma in northern Pará state derived from fraudulent land titles and even the creation of a fake land registration bureau. Part of the area overlaps ancestral land claimed by Indigenous peoples and Quilombolas — descendants of Afro-Brazilian runaway slaves — including two cemeteries, which is at the center of a seven-year legal battle led by state prosecutors and public defenders.
- Just a few weeks after the publication of the investigation, representatives from the certifiers contacted Quilombola leaders “to understand the denouncements” published by the report, they went to the region and carried out audits in all affected communities; soon after, IBD Certifications Ltd. suspended Agropalma’s RSPO certificate.
- Assurance Services International (ASI), which evaluates the work of certifiers, confirmed that “the report was a reason for ASI to conduct a compliance assessment to IBD, the certifier of Agropalma, at the Certificate Holder’s premises.” University professors hired by ASI as local experts also cited the Mongabay investigation and this reporter when they contacted other key sources quoted in the report, as shown in email correspondence seen by Mongabay.

How do oil palm companies get away with disregarding Indonesian law? (commentary)
- University of Toronto anthropologist Tania Li argues that companies can act with impunity because of corporate-state collusion and a lack of organised resistance.
- Impunity does not mean Indonesia’s plantation zone is the Wild West. Rather than lawlessness, Li writes, the law sits adjacent to a parallel system of informal rules that affect when and how the law is observed.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
- This article was produced by The Gecko Project and republished by Mongabay.

Can we fix our failing food systems? Agroecology has answers
- The U.S. has an industrialized and unsustainable food system that depletes non-renewable resources such as groundwater and soil, and this model has been exported widely around the world, a top agriculture author explains on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast.
- Two regions where these impacts and depletion are being felt most are in California’s Central Valley and on America’s Great Plains.
- Consistent overproduction of commodities such as soy, milk and corn under an agribusiness model that pursues constant profits despite a local lack of demand exacerbates the problem, says Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future research associate Tom Philpott.
- An author and former food journalist for Mother Jones and Grist, Philpott joins the podcast to talk about these acute problems and what can be done to reform unsustainable food systems with practices like agroecology.

For Dutch farming crisis, agroforestry offers solutions: Q&A with Lennart Fuchs & Marc Buiter
- The Dutch government aims to halve nitrogen emissions by 2030 by downsizing and closing farms, sparking a wave of farmer protests and a surprising win for a new agrarian political party.
- Agricultural and environmental experts are calling for the need to introduce food system solutions that both address farmer livelihoods while tackling the climate and environmental crises.
- Agroforestry, agroecology and silvopasture — climate change and conservation solutions that can be profitable — are among the solutions they say can contribute positively to the country’s nitrogen goals.
- Mongabay spoke with two Dutch agricultural experts — Lennart Fuchs from Wageningen University & Research, and Marc Buiter from the Dutch Food Forest Foundation — on how agroforestry could be part of a solution that works for both farmers and the environment.

How we built a database of conflicts driven by Indonesia’s palm oil smallholder scheme
- Mongabay, The Gecko Project and BBC News recently published a joint investigation which found that many Indonesian smallholders have lost their cut of the country’s palm oil boom.
- In this article, Tom Walker, head of research at The Gecko Project, explains how our team built a database of public reports to shed light on the issue.
- The database enabled us to target field reporting, identify trends and connect plantation companies to major consumer goods firms.
- This article sets out how we developed the database, how we used it, what it includes, and its limitations. The data can be downloaded at the bottom of this article.

Companies eye ‘carbon insetting’ as winning climate solution, but critics are wary
- A tool that wields the techniques of carbon offsets is surging among companies claiming that it reduces their carbon footprints. The tool, known by some as “insetting,” had simmered for more than a decade on the fringes of climate action among brands that rely on agriculture, but is now expanding to other sectors.
- Insetting is defined as company projects to reduce or remove emissions within their own internal supply chains. Proponents say it is valuable for agriculture-based firms struggling to address indirect emissions from land that has already been deforested. Like offsets, insetting can bring social and economic benefits to communities.
- Some oppose the tool outright, saying it is subject to the same problems as offsets (including lack of permanence and enforceable standards), but can also be worse as it can lead to double-counting climate benefits and can have weaker oversight.
- Having now become popular with major corporations such as Nestlé and PepsiCo, insetting as a climate tool is poised to see increased scrutiny as companies and researchers figure out its place in corporate action and reckon with the urgency to reduce emissions from agriculture.

Six steps to tackle exploitation in Indonesia’s palm oil smallholder scheme (commentary)
- An investigation by Mongabay, The Gecko Project and BBC News found villagers across Indonesia gave up their land to corporations in exchange for a share of the palm oil boom but have been left with empty promises.
- Some villagers got nothing at all and others are languishing in debt, while companies operate in flagrant violation of Indonesian law.
- Tom Walker, head of research at The Gecko Project, argues that increasing transparency, accountability and investigations of errant companies are critical steps that could be taken to solve the problem.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

‘One of our greatest climate solutions’: Q&A with the U.S. National Agroforestry Center’s new director
- Agroforestry is a climate solution that’s growing in popularity in the U.S., where a new leader is set to promote and support its adoption.
- The new director of the National Agroforestry Center brings decades of experience to the task, and previously served as the organization’s acting director.
- “Agroforestry is particularly appealing as it has the potential to be one of our nation’s greatest natural climate solutions, while providing so many other benefits,” Anne Marsh tells Mongabay in a new interview.

Poisoned by pesticides: Health crisis deepens in Brazil’s Indigenous communities
- A recent report reveals communities in Brazil’s Mato Grosso region are contaminated by the agriculture industry’s increasing use of pesticides. About 88% of the plants collected, including medicinal herbs and fruits, on Indigenous lands have pesticide residue.
- Samples discovered high levels of pesticides in ecosystems and waters far from crop fields, including carbofuran — a highly toxic substance which is banned in Brazil, Europe and the U.S.
- Experts blame the lack of control by government officials for widespread environmental damage and an escalating health crisis among Indigenous populations, as communities report growing numbers of respiratory problems, acute poisonings and cancers.
- A spokesperson for the biggest agrochemical companies operating in Brazil disputes the findings of the report and numbers of people far from crop regions affected by pesticide usage.

Video: In Brazil’s Amazon, Quilombolas fight major palm oil firm for access to cemeteries
- Areas along the Acará River in northern Pará state are at the center of a six-year legal battle where Quilombolas — descendants of Afro-Brazilian runaway slaves — accuse Agropalma, the country’s second-largest palm oil exporter, of land-grabbing over their ancestral lands, including cemeteries, as revealed by Mongabay’s yearlong investigation.
- One of these areas is Our Lady of Battle Cemetery, where Mongabay witnessed in November 2021 Quilombolas celebrating the Day of the Dead for the first time in decades. They say access to the area was hampered since it became Agropalma’s “legal reserve” — the proportion of land that the Brazilian legislation obliges a private property owner to maintain in its natural state — in the 1980s.
- In this video, Mongabay exhibits what is called a “historic moment” and firsthand footage and interviews with Quilombolas going to this cemetery for the first time. This video also has impressive images of palm trees just a few steps from the graves at Livramento Cemetery, completely surrounded by Agropalma’s crops. Quilombolas accuse Agropalma of destroying three-quarters of its area to make way for its plantations; the company denies.
- “To support future lawsuits,” prosecutors in Pará state have cited the Mongabay investigation in their procedures looking into the conflicts between Quilombola communities seeking recognition of their territory and areas occupied by Agropalma.

Tobacco: Vaping and smoking drive environmental harm from farm to fingertip
- Electronic cigarettes heavily marketed via single-use flavored products are increasingly popular. These products require disposal of large amounts of hazardous waste, including huge quantities of lithium, a resource in demand for electric car batteries and rechargeable electronics for laptops and mobile phones.
- Even as vaping use grows, an estimated 6 trillion “traditional” cigarettes are still smoked annually; 4.5 trillion are thought to be discarded into the environment each year. Researchers and activists emphasize that the tobacco industry is responsible for considerable harm to nature and human health.
- Traveling along the supply chain, tobacco production and consumption has consequences for forests, oceans, the climate, and for farmers and their families who produce the crop — all to an extent not yet fully known or understood.
- Efforts are underway to rein in some of these negative impacts against the backdrop of an industry accused of consistently greenwashing to conceal an environmental footprint that is harming both nature and public health.

Better livestock health reduces carbon emissions (commentary)
- One direct, humane, and cost-effective way to bring down carbon emissions associated with livestock that few people are talking about is improving animal health.
- Lethal or not, diseases are directly responsible for driving up emissions from animal agriculture because farmers wind up raising more animals and using more resources to produce the same amount of food, fuel or fiber.
- Healthy animals can act as a potent tool in our global response to climate change – but only if policymakers act to better integrate animal health into climate strategies under the interconnected principles of ‘One Health,’ a new op-ed argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Video: Stolen Quilombola cemeteries in the Amazon, and the probe that revealed it all
- Palm oil is a ubiquitous ingredient in products ranging from chocolate to cookies to lipstick, but its production in a corner of the Brazilian Amazon may be linked to a land grab from traditional communities, including cemeteries, a year-long investigation by Mongabay’s Karla Mendes has revealed.
- Prosecutors in Pará state have cited the Mongabay investigation in their procedures looking into the conflicts between Quilombola communities seeking recognition of their territory and areas occupied by Agropalma, the country’s second-largest palm oil exporter.
- In November 2021, Mendes went to Pará’s Alto Acará region to investigate these land-grabbing claims, and shares her reporting journey in this behind-the-scenes video, including witnessing a historical Day of the Dead celebration at a cemetery that the Quilombolas say they were locked out of by Agropalma.
- Mendes also witnessed another cemetery hemmed in by Agropalma’s oil palms, where Quilombolas accuse the company of planting the trees over the graves of their loved ones, and investigated other palm oil-linked issues reported by local communities, including water pollution and the threat of displacement from the paving of a trucking road.

Major Brazil palm oil exporter accused of fraud, land-grabbing over Quilombola cemeteries
- Agropalma, the only Brazilian company with the sustainability certificate issued by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), is accused of a wide range of land-grabbing allegations in Pará state.
- The claims allege that more than half of the 107,000 hectares (264,000 acres) registered by Agropalma was derived from fraudulent land titles and even the creation of a fake land registration bureau, which is at the center of a legal battle led by state prosecutors and public defenders.
- Quilombola communities say that part of the area occupied by Agropalma overlaps with their ancestral land, including two cemeteries visited by Mongabay. In one of them, residents claim that just one-quarter of the cemetery remains and that the company planted palm trees on top of the graves, which the company denies.
- There are also other financial interests in the land at stake, researchers say, pointing to the company’s moves into bauxite mining and the sale of carbon credits in the areas subject to litigation, further intensifying the disputes.

To replace Western food imports, Cameroon gives community lands to ‘no-name’ agro-industry
- The Cameroonian government has allocated 95,000 hectares of land – three times the size of Cameroon’s capital – to the company Tawfiq Agro Industry, to develop an agro-industrial facility aimed at reducing expensive Western food imports.
- This immediately drew backlash from local communities and farmers, who would lose their lands in the process and have not seen an environmental and social management plan.
- The State plans to reconsider the amount of land granted to the company, and will ensure any impact on communities is mitigated, a state representative unofficially tells Mongabay. This promise is not written in official documents and has not been shared with locals.
- Tawfiq highlights the project’s economic potential, whose overall investment of an estimated $150 million (100 billion CFA francs) over 10 years should generate 7,500 direct and 15,000 indirect jobs.

Blue jeans: An iconic fashion item that’s costing the planet dearly
- The production of blue jeans, one of the most popular apparel items ever, has for decades left behind a trail of heavy consumption, diminishing Earth’s water and energy resources, causing pollution, and contributing to climate change. The harm done by the fashion industry has intensified, not diminished, in recent years.
- The making of jeans is water intensive, yet much of the world’s cotton crop is grown in semiarid regions requiring irrigation and pesticide use. As climate change intensifies, irrigation-dependent cotton cultivation and ecological catastrophe are on a collision course, with the Aral Sea’s ecological death a prime example and warning.
- While some major fashion companies have made sustainability pledges, and taken some steps to produce greener blue jeans, the industry has yet to make significant strides toward sustainability, with organic cotton, for example, still only 1% of the business.
- A few fashion companies are changing their operations to be more sustainable and investing in technology to reduce the socioenvironmental impacts of jeans production. But much more remains to be done.

Growing soy on cattle pasture can eliminate Amazon deforestation in Brazil
- Expanding soy cultivation into underutilized cattle pastureland would help prevent massive deforestation and carbon emissions compared to the current practice of clearing new forest for farmland, a new study says.
- Experts say that Brazil, the world’s No. 1 soy producer and beef exporter, has enough pastureland lying unused that would allow soy production to increase by more than a third without any further deforestation.
- Researchers warn that if Brazil continues with its current method of soy cultivation, it would end up clearing 5.7 million hectares (14 million acres) of Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savanna into cropland over the next 15 years.
- Environmentalists have welcomed intensifying agriculture as a solution to deforestation, but have raised concerns about the potential for increased pesticide use, biodiversity loss, and the expansion of cattle ranching into forested areas.

Forests & Finance: From logging in Cameroon to cocoa in Côte d’Ivoire
- Conservationists have flagged logging activity by a company in Cameroon that’s clearing forest near a national park in apparent breach of its permits.
- A campaign since 2017 to convince farmers in Côte d’Ivoire not to clear forests for new cocoa plantations is bearing fruit, with deforestation in the country falling by 47% in 2021.
- In Malawi, a replanting effort aims to revive populations of the endemic and threatened Mulanje cyad, an ancient tree species that grows on the mountain of the same name.
- Forests & Finance is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin of briefs about Africa’s forests.

Biofertilizers cut costs and GHG emissions for Brazilian soybean producers
- Brazilian scientists have developed biofertilizers with nitrogen-fixing microorganisms to replace the use of chemical fertilizers in the production of soybeans.
- Since the country highly depends on imports of fertilizers, the substitution has had a huge economic impact on the soybeans industry.
- Bio inputs are also more sustainable since they don’t require large amounts of energy for production, don’t pollute and are healthier for farmers and consumers.
- Pricing and supply constraints of chemical fertilizers due to the war in Ukraine are pushing for more R&D on microorganisms targeting different crops other than soybeans.

Europe considers large-scale seaweed farming; environmental effects unknown
- The European Commission is planning large-scale industrial farming of seaweed across the continent’s shores.
- The goal is to farm 8 million metric tons of seaweed annually by 2030, up from the current annual farmed production of about 3,000 metric tons.
- Proponents tout a sustainable form of farming that can produce food, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and biofuels, and sequester carbon.
- However, the potential ecological impacts have yet to be fully assessed.

Illegal agricultural project moves ahead on Brazilian Indigenous lands
- Marked by a fine for illegal deforestation, Agro Xavante, an initiative created with the blessing of President Bolsonaro, moves ahead with leasing public lands and a failure to conduct prior consultation with the local population.
- Called Indigenous Independence Project, the initiative determines that 80% of the net profits go to the rural producers, with the Xavante people receiving 20%.
- The very essence of the project makes it unconstitutional because, according to the Brazilian Constitution, the Indigenous peoples enjoy the exclusive use of their territories, with the sole right to the exploitation of the natural resources contained therein.

Sustainability pledges help Indonesia produce palm oil with less deforestation
- Deforestation that’s associated with palm oil has fallen by 82% over the past decade in Indonesia, the world’s top producer of the commodity, according to a new analysis.
- This is despite a rise in palm oil prices, which historically has been associated with a rise in deforestation as land is cleared for new plantings.
- Researchers attribute the continued decline in palm oil deforestation to the rising adoption of zero-deforestation commitments as well as public supply chain reporting by companies.

Mongabay probe key as Brazil court rules on palm oil pesticide contamination
- Prosecutors in Brazil say the findings from a Mongabay investigation were key to obtaining a court decision this week to probe the environmental impacts of pesticides used by oil palm plantations on Indigenous communities and the environment in northern Pará state.
- On Oct. 4, the Federal Circuit Court for the First Region in Brasília approved a forensic investigation into pesticide contamination and the socioenvironmental and health impacts in the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Territory and the production zone of the country’s largest palm oil operation in the Tomé-Açú region.
- The green light to carry out the expert report was finally issued eight years after the Federal Public Ministry (MPF) filed a lawsuit to hold palm oil company Biopalma — acquired by Brasil BioFuels S.A. (BBF) in late 2020 — accountable for environmental impacts.
- A 2017 University of Brasília study, contained in the Mongabay investigation, found traces of three pesticides (two of them typically listed among those used in oil palm cultivation) in the major streams and wells used by the Tembé people in Turé-Mariquita.

Palm oil firms not acting fast enough on no-deforestation vows: Report
- Only 22% of companies sourcing or producing palm oil in Indonesia have public and comprehensive no-deforestation policies, a new report by London-based nonprofit CDP says.
- The report also finds that only 28% of companies have robust public no-deforestation commitments that cover 100% of production and include a cutoff date before 2020.
- In light of the report, experts are calling for more companies to adopt robust no-deforestation policies that incorporate social elements including remediation, restoration, compensation of past harms, and/or commitment to protect rights and livelihoods of local communities.

Zero-deforestation commitments ‘fundamentally limited’ in tackling deforestation, study argues
- Researchers found that while 90-99% of tropical deforestation in 2011-2015 was driven by agricultural industries, only 45-65% of the cleared land was actually used to grow crops or raise cattle.
- The rest of the cleared land was the result of activities such as speculative clearing and out-of-control agricultural fires, the study says.
- The researchers also concluded that because three-quarters of tropical deforestation is driven by domestic demand, corporate zero-deforestation pledges geared toward expert markets are limited in their ability to reduce this forest loss.

Indonesia amnesties 75 companies operating illegally inside forest areas
- As many as 75 companies that operate illegally inside forest areas in Indonesia have been pardoned under an amnesty scheme.
- These companies paid fines totaling 222.7 billion rupiah ($14.93 million) to receive the pardons.
- Hundreds more plantation and mining companies will be pardoned, officials say, as the government has identified at least 616 companies operating illegally inside forest areas.

Commodity kings Cargill, Bunge buying soy from stolen Indigenous land, report says
- Commodity-trading giants Cargill and Bunge source some of the soy used in products like chicken feed and pet food to land where Indigenous communities have suffered violence and displacement, according to a new report from Earthsight, an organization investigating environmental and social injustices.
- The companies have ties to a 9,700-hectare (24,000-acre) soy farm in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul that operates on the ancestral land of the Guarani Kaiowá, an Indigenous group that has spent the last several decades fighting forced eviction.
- Earthsight has documented supply chain links between soy from the Brasília do Sul farm and chicken retailers like KFC, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Aldi and Iceland, as well as German supermarket chains like Rewe Markt, Netto Marken-Discount, Lidl, Aldi and Edeka.
- Earthsight said Cargill and Bunge need to take a firmer stance on Indigenous rights rather than passing off responsibility to intermediaries or deferring to legal loopholes.

Bad weather knocks down Brazil’s grain production as ‘exhaustively forewarned’
- Brazil’s agricultural GDP declined by 8% in the first quarter of 2022 due to a severe drought in the country’s south caused by a rare triple-dip La Niña.
- In Rio Grande do Sul, the nation’s southernmost state, 56% of last year’s total soy harvest was lost, harming thousands of farmers.
- Scientists warn that climate change will make Brazil’s southern region, an agribusiness stronghold, widespread crop losses more common.
- Despite warnings, climate denial in the agriculture sector is getting in the way of mitigation efforts as the government of President Jair Bolsonaro and the agribusiness lobby push an anti-environmental agenda.

We’ve crossed the land use change planetary boundary, but solutions await
- According to experts, we have passed the planetary boundary for land systems change — the human-caused loss of forest — and risk destabilizing Earth’s operating systems.
- Scientists calculate we must retain 85% of tropical and boreal forests, and 50% of temperate forests, to stay within Earth’s “safe operating” bounds, but the number of trees worldwide has fallen by nearly 50% since the dawn of agriculture.
- From 2001 to 2021, forest area roughly half the size of China was lost or destroyed across the planet; in 2021, tropical forests disappeared at a rate of about 10 football fields per minute.
- Despite these losses, solutions abound: Some of the actions that could bring us back into the safe operating space are securing Indigenous land rights, reforestation and landscape restoration, establishing new protected areas, redesigning food systems, and using finance as a tool

Farmer-to-farmer agroecology: Q&A with Chukki Nanjundaswamy of Amrita Bhoomi Learning Centre
- The Amrita Bhoomi Learning Centre in southern India is one of dozens of education hubs around the world providing a space for farmer-to-farmer training in agroecology.
- In a wide-ranging interview with Mongabay, the center’s Chukki Nanjundaswamy discusses their model of agriculture, its Gandhian roots, and how it grew out of the rejection of Green Revolution farming techniques that rely on chemical inputs and expensive hybrid seeds.
- Nanjundaswamy shares some of their innovative approaches to growing food without inputs, plus clever techniques to thwart notorious pests like fall armyworm, which is also prevalent in Africa.

No permit? No problem for palm oil company still clearing forest in Papua
- A field observation by Greenpeace Indonesia has confirmed reports that a palm oil company has resumed clearing land on its concession in Indonesia’s Papua region despite its permit having been revoked.
- As of June, the company, PT Permata Nusa Mandiri (PNM), had cleared more than 100 hectares (247 acres) of land, according to data from Greenpeace Indonesia.
- The resumption of land clearing has prompted the district head to reprimand PNM, and raised the possibility that the company is committing a crime.

From agribusiness to oil to nuclear power and submarines: welcome to anti-environmental Putin-Bolsonaro alliance (commentary)
- Brazil’s dependence on Russian fertilizers has contributed to Jair Bolsonaro’s friendly relationship with Vladimir Putin as well as environmental impacts in the South American nation.
- In this editorial Nikolas Kozloff, an American academic, author and photojournalist, reviews some of the implications of the growing ties between the two leaders, including deforestation in the Amazon, extractive industries, and infrastructure projects.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Palm oil producer mired in legal troubles still razing Sumatran forest
- A palm oil company has resumed clearing forest in its concession in Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem, the only place on Earth where tigers, orangutans and rhinos coexist.
- Analysis of satellite imagery by the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) shows the company, PT Cemerlang Abadi (CA), cleared 309 hectares (761 acres) of secondary and regenerating forests between September 2021 and February 2022.
- RAN says it’s possible that palm oil from trees grown on this deforested land may have entered the global supply chain, as CA isn’t blacklisted by any of the major brands or traders that buy palm oil.

Plantations threaten Indonesia’s orangutans, but they’re not oil palm
- A significant portion of orangutan habitat in Indonesia lies within corporate concessions, but industrial tree companies, like pulp and paper, don’t have strong enough safeguards and commitment to protect the critically endangered apes, a new report says.
- According to the report by Aidenvironment, there are 6.22 million hectares (15.37 million acres) of orangutan habitat within corporate oil palm, logging, and industrial tree concessions.
- Of the three types of concessions, industrial tree companies are the “key stakeholder” as they operate with much less transparency and scrutiny than the palm oil sector, Aidenvironment says.

As dry season starts in Indonesia, risk of fires — and haze — looms
- There’s a degree of risk that Southeast Asia may see the return of transboundary haze this year from forest fires in Indonesia, according to a new report by a Singaporean think tank.
- The key driver of that risk is the currently high price of palm oil on the world market, which could pose an incentive for farmers in Indonesia, the world’s top producer of palm oil, to expand their plantations, including by clearing land with fire.
- In anticipation of the dry season, which starts in July, some local governments in Indonesia are putting in place policies to prevent fires, including sanctions for companies using fire to clear their concessions.

Net-zero commitments must include more anti-deforestation policies, UN tells private sector
- Many companies with net-zero commitments have made little, tangible progress against tropical deforestation, according to a recent report from a U.N. climate change task force.
- Approximately a third of carbon emissions released each year are absorbed by forests, making tackling deforestation a key part of the fight to keep global temperatures below 1.5°C (2.7°F).
- Many companies, even ones that have implemented other effective net-zero commitments, have fallen short on deforestation, meaning their carbon footprint may end up being larger than they hope.

Indonesian palm oil audit a chance to clean up ‘very dirty’ industry
- The Indonesian government plans to audit all palm oil companies operating in the country, in a bid to tackle an ongoing shortage and high prices of cooking oil.
- Experts attribute the crisis to the fact that the country’s palm oil industry is dominated by a small number of big companies.
- These companies have large concessions, in excess of the limit imposed by the government, allowing them to wield outsized power to dictate prices, policies and supplies.
- Analysts say the audit should address this land ownership issue, as well as other problems that plague the industry, such as lack of clear data and transparency.

Second Indonesian province moves to retake forests from palm oil companies
- The government of Indonesia’s Papua province has recommended that district officials revoke the permits of 35 of the 54 oil palm concessions operating there.
- These concessions cover a combined 522,397 hectares (1.29 million acres) of land, and are being targeted for revocation because of a range of administrative violations by the license holders.
- If revoked, the large swaths of forests still standing inside these concessions could be saved from being cleared and converted into plantations, and returned to Indigenous communities, activists say.
- The move by the Papua government mirrors a round of revocations ordered last year by the government of neighboring West Papua province, which has also successfully warded off lawsuits filed by affected companies.

Draining tropical peatlands for oil palms isn’t just bad — it’s unnecessary, study shows
- Oil palms growing in rewetted peatlands show no decline in palm fruit yields compared to those in drained peatlands, a new study shows.
- This debunks the long-held thinking in the palm oil industry that draining the carbon-rich peat soil is necessary to maintain yields on peatlands.
- Instead, rewetting peatlands should have net positive effects for smallholders by reducing the risk of fires that can damage property, plantations and human health.
- The study also finds that conserving peatland forests supports bird biodiversity, as a richer variety of bird life is found in peat forests than in adjacent oil palm plantations.

For traditional peoples in Brazil’s Maranhão state, progress brings violence
- Brazil’s Maranhão state is home to Indigenous peoples and traditional Afro-Brazilian communities known as quilombos, who for generations have lived sustainably off the rich natural resources of the waterlogged Amazonian plains that make up this region.
- But tensions have escalated in recent years between these communities and outsiders, including agribusiness interests and infrastructure developers, who see opportunities for livestock ranching and power transmission lines on these vast plains.
- In 2017, in the ancestral lands of the Indigenous Akroá Gamella people, the conflict culminated in a violent attack blamed on agribusiness interests that left 22 community members injured, including two whose limbs were severed; today, the survivors live with serious psychological and physical scars.
- In the wetlands, the construction of electricity towers for transmission lines has been blamed for declining fish stocks, affecting the livelihoods of traditional fishing communities. The company responsible for the works rejects this allegation.

Indigenous agroforestry dying of thirst amid a sea of avocados in Mexico
- A rich tradition of cultivating and collecting medicinal plants in Mexico’s Michoacán state is at risk, as the Indigenous community behind it loses access to water.
- Avocado farms–mostly supplying the U.S. market–dominate water resources in the town of Angahuan, forcing Indigenous P’urhépecha healers to buy clean water by the gallon from shops to keep their medicinal plants alive.
- These healers, known as curanderas, have for generations grown a wide variety of such plants in agroforestry gardens that also combine fruits and vegetables, timber trees, and flowers.
- The P’urhépecha healers are resisting the impacts of avocado farms by planting trees in the hills to build up water resources while launching a natural pharmacy business in town, efforts for which the collective has already won an award from the state government.

Sumatra palm plantations the usual suspects as unusual burning razes peatlands
- Fires have swept through large swaths of peatland forest in the western part of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island since the start of the year, an area that usually sees much smaller, controlled fires.
- Environmental activists say they suspect the fires might be linked to palm oil companies with plantations in and around the burned areas.
- They warn the burning could get worse in the coming months, with the dry season in this part of Sumatra expected to peak only in August.

Legal and illegal cannabis: A cause for growing environmental concern
- Legalization of cannabis for medicinal and recreational use is an expanding global trend in the U.S. and globally, while the illicit market continues to feed large swaths of demand.
- Both the legal and illegal markets are linked to environmental challenges such as freshwater use, land-use change, toxic and nutrient pollution, and climate change-contributing CO2 emissions.
- Emerging legal cannabis businesses in the U.S. are subject to strict regulation, but many operate in ways that can contribute to environmental harms.
- While the scope of damage from booming legal growing operations is now being better assessed, the impacts of illicit clandestine operations remain mostly undetermined.

Legal defeats pile up for palm oil companies stripped of permits in Papua
- Two more palm oil companies in Indonesia that sued a local official for revoking their permits have had their lawsuits rejected.
- They join a growing list of palm oil firms being held to account for legal and administrative violations that were uncovered in a May 2021 audit of oil palm concessions across West Papua province.
- Four other lawsuits filed on similar grounds by other companies have also been thrown out since December 2021.
- Activists have welcomed the verdict, saying it’s an opportunity for the government to give the concessions back to the Indigenous communities who live on the land.

‘Water grab’: Big farm deals leave small farmers out to dry, study shows
- Large agricultural investment projects are often promoted as a way to increase food production and food security, but a recent analysis indicates that such projects often threaten water resources that local farmers and Indigenous populations depend on.
- While such investments can increase crop yields through the expansion of irrigation, the majority of the 160 projects studied were found to be likely to intensify water shortages through both the adoption of water-intensive crops and the expansion of irrigated cultivation.
- In effect, the researchers say, such deals can amount to “water grabs,” creating a crisis for local farmers who now find themselves competing with big investors for limited water resources.

Slick operator: Indonesian cooking oil probe may spread to biodiesel industry
- A top economist in Indonesia has been charged for his alleged role in helping palm oil companies export the commodity instead of selling it domestically — a practice blamed for a shortage of cooking oil in the world’s top producer of palm oil.
- The arrest of Lin Che Wei, who prosecutors allege was “involved in every palm oil policy,” also puts the spotlight on the state palm oil fund that he helped create and that disproportionately channels subsidies to many of the same companies implicated in the cooking oil scandal.
- President Joko Widodo has called for a thorough investigation to “find out who is playing a game here,” but the palm oil lobby has pushed back against what it says is a vilification of the industry — even threatening to stop producing cooking oil for the domestic market.
- The cooking oil shortage has battered domestic trust in Indonesia’s powerful palm oil industry, whose reputation abroad has long been tarnished by its links to deforestation, labor abuses, and conflicts with Indigenous and local communities.

Food for all: Q&A with Michel Pimbert of the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience
- Founded in 2014 at Coventry University, the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR) is teaching the next generation of agroecology researchers and practitioners.
- Agroecology is a biodiversity-positive and climate change-fixing suite of agricultural techniques, which the recent IPCC climate change report mentioned repeated times as being a key solution to the climate crisis.
- In a wide ranging interview with CAWR’s director, author Anna Lappé discusses how this practice can provide food for all while solving other crises the planet faces.
- Pimbert says it’s exciting to see the growing recognition of agroecology and its benefits, but notes that funding for agroecology remains “pitifully small” compared to the billions being poured into industrialized agriculture.

With ban on palm oil exports, Indonesia reaps condemnation and praise
- Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer of palm oil, announced it would ban exports of the commodity starting April 28 to address a domestic cooking oil shortage.
- The move has elicited a mixed response, with economists and a leading oil palm farmers’ union saying it will destroy the lucrative industry, including hurting small farmers.
- But another farmers’ group says the move is a necessary step toward a wider reform of the industry to devolve control from a handful of conglomerates to small farmers.

Brazil bill seeks to redraw Amazon borders in favor of agribusiness
- A new bill before Brazil’s Congress proposes cutting out the state of Mato Grosso from the country’s legally defined Amazon region to allow greater deforestation there for agribusiness.
- Under the bill, known as PL 337, requirements to maintain Amazonian vegetation in the state at 80% of a rural property’s area, and 35% for Cerrado vegetation, would be slashed to just 20% for both.
- The approval of the bill would allow for an increase in deforestation of at least 10 million hectares (25 million acres) — an area the size of South Korea — and exempt farmers from having to restore degraded areas on their properties.
- Environmental law specialists warn that the departure of Mato Grosso from under the administrative umbrella of the Legal Amazon would set off a domino effect encouraging the eight other states in the region to push for similar bills.

Indonesian trade official, palm oil execs charged in cooking oil crisis
- A trade ministry official and three palm oil executives have been charged by prosecutors in Indonesia in connection with a cooking oil shortage that has rocked the world’s biggest vegetable oil-producing country.
- The suspects are alleged to have conspired to secure export permits to sell crude palm oil at record-high prices internationally instead of complying with a domestic market obligation.
- The cooking oil shortage has prompted widespread outrage in a country that produces more than half of the world’s palm oil, driving up prices and forcing the government to step in with subsidies.
- The companies named in the conspiracy are the Permata Hijau Group, Wilmar Nabati Indonesia, Multimas Nabati Asahan, and Musim Mas.

Palm oil firm that cleared Papuan forest after losing its permit is still at it
- Satellite monitoring shows continued deforestation within an oil palm concession in Indonesia’s Papua province, long after the local government ordered concession holder PT Permata Nusa Mandiri (PNM) to halt land-clearing activities.
- The local government issued the order because PNM was among 137 palm oil firms whose permits were revoked by the environment ministry on Jan. 6.
- The Namblong Indigenous community, whose ancestral lands overlap with the company’s concession, say they never wanted PNM in their area and have called on the government to take firm action to stop it from clearing more forest.

All coked up: The global environmental impacts of cocaine
- Cocaine is one of the most widely used illicit drugs in the world, consumed by an estimated 20 million people in 2019, mostly in North America and Europe.
- Production, transit and consumption of the drug are exacting a heavy environmental toll, impacting tropical forests, freshwater and estuary ecosystems. Some of these effects, such as pollution impacts on eels and other aquatic species, have been documented, but most are still poorly understood, with many unresearched.
- Indigenous peoples are often at the front lines of criminal gangs’ activities in producer and trafficking countries. Often, when new narco-trafficking transport routes are established, like those in Central America, those same routes are used for other criminal activities such as wildlife and weapons trafficking.
- Researchers argue that detaching the environmental harm caused by the cocaine trade from the long-lasting war on drugs is not possible. Solutions implemented to deal with the drug problem, such as the aerial spraying of illegal coca crops, while locally effective in curbing illegal cultivation, also cause deforestation and biodiversity damage.

For Indonesians, palm oil is everywhere but on supermarket shelves
- Indonesia is the world’s top producer of palm oil, but has in recent months been hit by scarce supplies and high prices for vegetable oil.
- The country’s business competition regulator points to indications of cartel practices by the handful of conglomerates that dominate the industry.
- But government policies may also be to blame, experts say, including incentivizing palm oil producers to sell to the government’s biofuel program instead of to cooking oil refiners.
- Parliament has called hearings on the issue, while the competition watchdog has launched a formal investigation.

In destroying the Amazon, big agribusiness is torching its own viability
- A new study has found that the transition zone between the Amazon and Cerrado in the northeast of Brazil has heated up significantly and become drier in the past two decades.
- The research points to deforestation in the Amazon and global climate changes as factors prolonging the dry season and warming up the region, leaving it susceptible to severe droughts and forest fires.
- Ironically, the changes being driven by the intensified agricultural activity are rendering the region less suitable for crop cultivation.
- The authors of the new study say there needs to be a balance of sustainable agricultural solutions and an environmentally focused political agenda to protect the region’s ecosystems, its economy, and its people.

Banning high-deforestation palm oil has limited impact on saving forests: Study
- Import bans on palm oil produced through deforestation haven’t had as strong an effect in preventing forest loss as might be expected, according to a new study.
- The paper’s modeling looked at what impact restrictions in Europe on imports of high-deforestation palm oil from Indonesia would have had from 2000-2015.
- They found these restrictions would have reduced deforestation by just 1.6% per year, and emissions by 1.91% per year compared to what actually occurred.
- The study authors and other researchers say the findings underscore the point that demand-side restrictions are only one tool in addressing commodity-driven deforestation, and should be part of a wider suite of incentives and disincentives.

Brazil agrochemical bill nears passage in Bolsonaro’s ‘agenda of death’
- A bill loosening regulations on agrochemicals has been approved by Brazil’s lower house of congress and now goes before the Senate, prompting concerns that it will unleash environmental destruction and threaten consumer health.
- The bill is one of several in the list of priority legislation for 2022 that environmentalists and Indigenous groups say underscore President Jair Bolsonaro’s anti-environmental and anti-Indigenous agenda.
- If approved, the slate of proposed bills would allow companies to exploit Indigenous territories for resources and further impede Indigenous people from staking a claim to their traditional lands.
- Other bills in the works include one that would effectively facilitate land grabbing, and another that would do away with environmental licenses. Bolsonaro has already issued a decree encouraging small-scale gold mining, raising further concerns for the Amazon and its Indigenous inhabitants.

Can the little-known tamanu tree replace palm oil in Indonesia’s biofuel bid?
- Government researchers in Indonesia believe oil from the tamanu tree (Calophyllum inophyllum) could serve an alternative feedstock for biofuel to palm oil.
- They say the plant has shown the ability to grow in burned areas and former mining sites, as well as in waterlogged peat soils.
- Oil from the tree, native to tropical Asia, has been used for centuries across the region as a salve for wounds and scars, and in lotions and balms.
- With the Indonesian government’s ambitious biodiesel program requiring the establishment of more oil palm plantations, alternative feedstocks like tamanu could help stave off the associated deforestation.

Preventing the next pandemic is vastly cheaper than reacting to it: Study
- A new study emphasizes the need to stop pandemics before they start, stepping beyond the quest for new vaccines and treatments for zoonotic diseases to also aggressively fund interventions that prevent them from happening in the first place.
- Researchers estimated that based on Earth’s current population and on past pandemics, we can expect 3.3 million deaths from zoonotic diseases each year in future. COVID-19 pushed numbers in 2020-21 even higher. These outbreaks are now happening more frequently, and their cost is calculated in trillions of dollars.
- Addressing the main drivers — deforestation, the wildlife trade and burgeoning agriculture, especially in the tropics — could prevent future pandemics, save lives and catastrophic societal disruptions.

As its end looms, Cerrado tracker records 6-year deforestation high
- The satellite-based deforestation-monitoring program focused on Brazil’s vast Cerrado savanna may end in April because of lack of funding, with some members of the team reportedly already laid off.
- Unlike the monitoring program for the Amazon, the one for the Cerrado isn’t included in the government budget and relies on external financing, which dried up in August 2020; since then, the program team has had to scrounge for funding from other projects and institutions.
- Sharing the scientists’ concerns is the agribusiness sector, which relies on the data to prove that its commodity is deforestation-free, and which has blasted the government’s “blurred” vision with regard to failing to fund the monitoring program.
- News of the impending closure of the monitoring program comes a week after its latest data release showed an area six times the size of the city of São Paulo was cleared between August 2020 and July 2021 — the highest deforestation rate in the Cerrado since 2015.

Across Latin America, palm oil violations abound — with little accountability
- Palm oil producers across four countries in Latin America are able to violate environmental safeguards with relative impunity, according to a recent investigation.
- A team of Mongabay Latam journalists, Agencia Ocote (Guatemala), Contracorriente (Honduras) and La Barra Espaciadora (Ecuador) made 70 requests for information to Colombian, Ecuadorian, Honduran and Guatemalan authorities about environmental sanction processes launched against oil palm producers between 2010 and 2020.
- Despite the difficulty of obtaining official information, the investigation revealed that the expansion of oil palm as a profitable industry that provides substantial employment in the region often wins out over complaints about the industry’s environmental problems by communities and NGOs

Urban ecology that saved Argentina’s Rosario held up as a model for others
- The Argentine city of Rosario has over the past two decades developed private-public partnerships to set aside land for farming and create a network of local markets where farmers locally sell their crops.
- Local sustainable farming is seen as a solution to mitigate climate change and promote biodiversity, and Rosario’s urban agriculture program does this by growing food for domestic consumption.
- This reduces greenhouse gas emissions from food transportation, boosts the amount of green space within the city to reduce the urban heat island effect, and allows diverse wildlife populations to thrive alongside crops.
- Rosario’s detailed maps identified vacant land unsuitable for other purposes and reimagined that land to create farms within the city, while collaboration with neighboring jurisdictions has led to the development of an agricultural green belt surrounding Rosario.

Visions of a post-supply chain society (commentary)
- For the past several months, Americans have been hearing about, and experiencing firsthand, supply chain disruptions.
- Nikolas Kozloff, a writer who authored No Rain in the Amazon: How South America’s Climate Change Affects the Entire Planet, asks whether we need to be thinking about a post-supply chain society.
- “Now that the pandemic has exposed underlying weaknesses in the system, there will undoubtedly be a reckoning by some,” Kozloff writes. “But perhaps the real question is whether we have wrestled with more severe challenges like climate change, which will disrupt lives to an even greater degree. Indeed, if consumers thought COVID-19 posed a headache for holiday shopping, imagine how rising sea levels, massive increases in temperature, severe wildfires and flooding will place additional stress on orderly supply chains.”
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

New flavor of vanilla farming aims to stop deforestation in Madagascar
- Madagascar is the world’s biggest producer of vanilla, with the plant grown in agroforestry systems established in forests or on fallow lands.
- Conservationist Andriamanana Rabearivelo introduced a new technique of vanilla cultivation with promising early results.
- His goal is to develop new agricultural methods to help the impoverished rural community near his farm in eastern Madagascar improve its conditions so it can reduce its reliance on the area’s natural forests.
- These forests are subject to runaway deforestation from the illegal harvest of timber and conversion to agricultural land.

As climate-driven drought slams farms in U.S. West, water solutions loom
- Drought in the U.S. West has been deepening for two decades, with no end in sight. Unfortunately for farmers, water use policies established in the early 20th century (a time of more plentiful rainfall), have left regulators struggling with their hands tied as they confront climate change challenges — especially intensifying drought.
- However, there is hope, as officials, communities and farmers strive to find innovative ways to save and more fairly share water. In Kansas and California, for example, new legislation has been passed to stave off dangerous groundwater declines threatening these states’ vital agricultural economies.
- Experts say that while an overhaul of the water allocation system in the West is needed, along with a coherent national water policy, extreme measures could be disruptive. But there are opportunities to realize incremental solutions now. Key among them is bridging a gap between federal water programs and farmers.
- A major concern is the trend toward single crop industrial agribusiness in semi-arid regions and the growing of water-intensive crops for export, such as corn and rice, which severely depletes groundwater. Ultimately, 20th century U.S. farm policies will need to yield to flexible 21st century policies that deal with unfolding climate change.

Brazil’s Suzano boasts its pulpwood plantations are green; critics disagree
- Suzano, the world’s largest pulp exporter, is strongly promoting a new green agenda. Its plantations, now being grown in association with native forests, could help curb the global climate crisis, the company says.
- Some conservation groups agree, and are working with the firm to ensure it gets greener.
- But other environmentalists say that the expansion of eucalyptus monoculture is causing widespread environmental damage in Brazil. Plantation carbon sequestration is minimal, they argue, while pulpwood factories are highly polluting and eucalyptus forests lack the biodiversity of rainforests.
- Moreover, they say, eucalyptus plantation expansion is resulting in the usurpation of natural lands and the expulsion of traditional and Indigenous communities who have much more to offer in the fight against climate change and efforts to protect intact forests.

Across Latin America, Mennonites seek out isolation at the expense of forests
- A conservative religious group called Low German Mennonites has been accused of ongoing deforestation in Central and South America and encroaching on Indigenous communities’ land.
- They started migrating to Latin America from Canada more than 100 years ago, after refusing to integrate into modernizing society.
- With a reputation for being successful farmers, the group was granted privileges by Latin American governments that have played a facilitating role in the continuous expansion into previously untouched forest landscapes.

Climate change agricultural impacts to heighten inequality: Study
- Major changes in crop productivity will be felt globally in the next 10 years according to new computer simulations. Climate impacts on crops could emerge a decade sooner than previously expected in major breadbasket regions in North America, Europe and Asia according to the new forecasts.
- Researchers combined five new climate models with 12 crop models, creating the largest, most accurate set of yield simulations to date. Corn could see yield declines of up to 24% by 2100, while wheat may see a boost to productivity. In some sub-tropical regions, climate impacts on crops are already being felt.
- High- and low-emissions scenarios project similar trends for the next 10 years, suggesting these agricultural impacts are locked-in. But actions taken now to mitigate climate change and alter the long-term climate trajectory could limit corn yield losses to just 6% by 2100.
- Climate adaptation measures such as sowing crops earlier or switching to heat- tolerant cultivars are relatively cheap and simple to implement, while other actions, such as installing new irrigation systems, require financial investment, planning, and time.

The complete guide to restoring your soil: Q&A with soil expert Dale Strickler
- Soil expert Dale Strickler’s new book, “The Complete Guide to Restoring your Soil,” covers why we should restore soil, what ideal soil looks like, practices that build better soil, and how to build better agricultural systems.
- The book is peppered with case studies from around the globe, including a section on Indigenous farming techniques, and includes many anecdotes from Strickler’s own life and experiences as a farmer.
- Strickler says many societal ills — malnutrition, disease, conquest, colonialism, warfare, famine, pestilence — can all be traced back to a root cause of soil mismanagement.
- The book offers farming techniques, strategies and practices that can be used to regenerate soil, remediate contaminated soil, and build thriving agriculture systems.

In Brazil, an agribusiness haven’s green pivot leaves many skeptical
- The Amacro project was conceived in early 2020 as an agribusiness hub in a heavily deforested part of the Brazilian Amazon, but a year later is being touted as a hub for sustainable business.
- Now renamed the Abunã-Madeira Sustainable Development Area (ZDS), it stretches across 32 municipalities in the states of Amazonas, Acre and Rondônia, which last year accounted for nearly a quarter of the total deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.
- The ZDS project aims to attract investments into a wide range of sectors, from agroforestry and fish farming, to tourism and logistics, as well as the agribusiness, while promising to avoid deforestation through technology to help boost agricultural productivity.
- Despite these green claims, prosecutors and nonprofit researchers say the prospect of new investment is already boosting land grabbing and deforestation in the area, and argue the best way to halt deforestation is to create protected areas — something that’s not included in the ZDS project.

Banking on deforestation: Top lenders make $1.7b from agribusiness deals
- Some of the world’s leading banks — JPMorgan, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, Rabobank and Bank of China — allegedly made $1.74 billion in five years from funding businesses implicated in deforestation and human rights abuses, a new report says.
- Lenders in the U.S. alone made $538 million by doing business with companies accused of clearing forests, according to the investigation by the UK-based NGO Global Witness.
- Lenders in the U.S. alone made $538 million by doing business with companies accused of clearing forests, according to the investigation by the UK-based NGO Global Witness.
- Voluntary commitments are falling short, the report’s authors argued, and called on countries to pass laws against bankrolling forest destruction and human rights abuses.

Inga tree points to way out of slash-and-burn for Central American farmers
- The Inga Foundation has created a sustainable agricultural system that doesn’t deplete nutrients in the soil like slash-and-burn farming does.
- Alley cropping inga trees has been shown to restore degraded land while withstanding tropical storms and drought.
- Around 400 families in Honduras have planted over 4 million trees in accordance with the Inga Foundation planting system.
- Yet despite its successes with Honduran farmers that could translate to all of Central America, the organization has struggled to gain traction on a regional level.

Plantation giant Socfin accused of dodging taxes in Africa
- A new report by Bread for all, Alliance Sud, and the German Network for Tax Justice has accused Belgian-French multinational Socfin, which operates rubber and palm oil plantations across West Africa, of shifting profits from Africa to Switzerland.
- According to Socfin’s corporate filings, of 600 million euros in revenues booked in 2020, 100 million euros were said to have been generated in Europe, despite the fact that it does not produce commodities there.
- The use of “transfer pricing” to avoid taxation is common among multinationals operating in Africa, depriving low-income governments of badly needed revenue.

Brazil farming co-op carves a sustainable path through agribusiness stronghold
- Coopcerrado, a farmer’s cooperative of 5,000 families, won the United Nations’ Equator Prize under the category of “New Nature Economies” due to its more than two decades of work in developing a farmer-to-farmer model of mutual support for training, commercializing and setting up organic and regenerative businesses in the Brazilian Cerrado.
- The Cerrado savanna, a biodiversity hotspot holding 5% of the world’s biodiversity is also among one of the most threatened, with almost half of the biome destroyed for agriculture and a process of desertification already underway, scientists say.
- To save the Cerrado, farmers and traditional extractivist communities have developed an expandable model of collective support in knowledge and resource-sharing while restoring the biome and providing an income for thousands of vulnerable families.
- Bureaucratic and logistic hurdles in Brazil traditionally leave small farmers and traditional communities out of mainstream markets and industries, but bridging this gap has been one of the keys to the cooperative’s success.

Timmermans vs. Bolsonaro: Will the EU get deforestation off our dinner plates? (commentary)
- The European Commission is drafting a plan to address deforestation linked with commodity supply chains.
- But Nico Muzi, Europe Director of global environmental group Mighty Earth and member of the EU Commission Expert Group on protecting and restoring the world’s forests, argues the measure has a significant loophole for soy-based animal feed and leather from Brazil.
- “The leaked plan has several major loopholes that would substantially and unnecessarily weaken its impact even as deforestation in Brazil surges,” Muzi writes. “Even while the law would protect parts of the Amazon rainforest, it would still allow big agriculture companies like Cargill to continue to drive large-scale deforestation right next door in Brazil’s Cerrado savanna and Pantanal wetlands and export the products of that destruction to Europe.”
- The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

New Zealand developer denies key role in giant palm oil project in Indonesia
- A decade ago, Indonesian officials earmarked an area of rainforest in Papua province to become the world’s largest oil palm plantation.
- The entire project was initially controlled by a mysterious company known as the Menara Group, but other investors soon entered the scene. Nearly half the project is now in the hands of a New Zealand property developer named Neville Mahon and his Indonesian partners, the well-connected Rumangkang family, corporate records show, although Mahon has denied major involvement.
- A new article by the New Zealand-based news site Newsroom, re-published here by Mongabay, homes in on Mahon’s role in the project, which if fully developed would release an amount of carbon equivalent to Belgium’s annual emissions from burning fossil fuels.

Nitrogen: The environmental crisis you haven’t heard of yet
- The creation of synthetic fertilizers in the early 20th century was a turning point in human history, enabling an increase in crop yields and causing a population boom.
- But the overuse of nitrogen and phosphorus from those fertilizers is causing an environmental crisis, as algae blooms and oceanic “dead zones” grow in scale and frequency.
- Of the nine “planetary boundaries” that scientists say we must not cross in order to sustain human life, the boundary associated with nitrogen and phosphorus waste has been far surpassed, putting Earth’s operating system at risk.
- Global policymakers are beginning to slowly recognize the scale of the problem, as climate change threatens to make it worse. Absent major reforms to agribusiness practices, scientists are aiming to convince the world to reduce waste.

11 Mongabay investigations in two years. Here’s what we found
- Two years ago, Mongabay and its partners launched a project dedicated to revealing corruption and collusion at the core of many natural resource industries around the world via its investigative journalism program.
- The result was observable impacts in multiple sectors including government agencies, international financial institutions, local communities and civil society organizations.
- The project supported investigations focused on cattle, fisheries, minerals, palm oil, soybeans, sunflower oil, and timber.
- Some findings include exposing contradictory actions from sustainability statements of financial institutions, mining encroachment on Indigenous lands, suspicious payments made to unnamed consultants by palm oil conglomerates and broken promises of land rights acknowledgements.

For Indonesian MPs, Indigenous rights may be bad for business, report says
- Indonesia’s Indigenous rights bill continues to languish in parliament because it threatens the business interests of lawmakers, activists say in a new report.
- The bill was submitted in 2012 to parliament, where nearly six out of every 10 lawmakers either owns or is involved in a business that could potentially be impacted if the land rights of Indigenous communities are recognized.
- The head of the parliamentary committee working on the bill has acknowledged lawmakers’ “paranoia” toward the legislation, saying parliament’s leaders have repeatedly refused to bring it to a floor vote.
- The inaction on the bill is in stark contrast to the rapid passage last year of two pro-business bills — one a slate of deregulatory measures, and the other an amended mining law — that will make it easier for companies and the government to seize Indigenous lands, among other points.

Amazon, meet Amazon: Tech giant rolls out rainforest carbon offset project
- Tech giant Amazon has announced a nature-based carbon removal project in the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest in partnership with The Nature Conservancy (TNC).
- The project will help small farmers produce sustainable agricultural produce through reforestation and regenerative agroforestry programs, in exchange for carbon credits that will go to the internet company.
- Called the Agroforestry and Restoration Accelerator, the initiative is expected to support 3,000 small farmers in Pará state and restore an area the size of Seattle in the first three years, and in the process remove up to 10 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through 2050.
- In addition to addressing climate and social issues, the partners say the project intends to address the shortcomings of the carbon credit market by creating new standards for the industry.

New coating could help seeds survive in drought conditions
- Water is the limiting factor for agriculture in many of the world’s semiarid regions, where crops are lost to drought in their early stages of life, during germination and as young seedlings.
- Scientists have developed a new seed coating, made from biodegradable waste products and applied directly to seeds before they are planted, to help seeds survive and germinate in dry conditions.
- The new seed coating consists of two layers: an inner one containing a nitrogen-fixing bacteria, and an outer one to hold moisture, much like a chia seed.
- Field trials with the new seeds are underway, but the key challenge to their adoption will be the cost.

Enhancing biodiversity through the belly: Agroecology comes alive in Chile
- Agroecology, the practice of ecological principles in farming, is coming to life in a corner of Chile through different faces and practices.
- Like individual bees working toward a common, greater goal, practitioners of agroecology tend have a positive multiplication effect in their territory.
- From food producers to beekeepers to chefs, these practitioners show that scaling up agroecology requires deconstructing implicit knowledge hierarchies, a disposition to learning continuously, and sharing through horizontal networks.

Brazil punching below its weight in getting forest products to the world
- Brazil may have given its name to the Brazil nut, but it exports less than 6% of the global export market of the nut, while Bolivia supplies 52%.
- That’s one of several key findings from new research that shows that Brazil, home to a third of all tropical forests, is punching well below its own weight when it comes to the value of its exports of forest-derived commodities.
- Experts highlight several key obstacles preventing production and export of these commodities from being scaled up, including logistics, lack of technical expertise and equipment, and costly certification requirements for breaking into markets like the EU.
- Proponents say ramping up production and exports of forest commodities could be the key to achieving economic and social development in the Brazilian Amazon, as well as a way of reviving vast swaths of degraded and abandoned areas.

Deforestation-free supply chains in Vietnam rely on working with small scale farmers (commentary)
- Almost all of the forest-based commodities produced in Vietnam are destined for other countries, which through their market requirements and laws, have a growing sway on deforestation-related trends and practices.
- Recent studies have found that nearly 70% of the tropical deforestation related to such commodities between 2013-2019 was illegal.
- Smallholder farmers play a vital role in producing these commodities, so for the sector to be sustainable, they need fair and equitable access to export markets: governments and businesses in consumer and producer markets have vital roles to play in this regard.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Debt deal with deforester BrasilAgro puts UBS’s green commitment in question
- Despite its sustainability rhetoric, Swiss bank UBS has financed controversial land developer BrasilAgro with a bond issuance that raised $45.5 million. The operation is part of a broader strategy to profit from Brazilian agribusiness, including the consolidation of a joint venture with the Brazilian bank.
- BrasilAgro is allegedly responsible deforesting nearly 22,000 hectares (54,000 acres) of native vegetation in its farms in Brazil’s Cerrado region and was fined $1.1 million by Brazil’s environmental protection agency for illegal deforestation.
- The financial product chosen to raise money for BrasilAgro, a CRA or “agribusiness receivable certificate,” is backed by future harvests and has been a favored tool used to raise record amounts of money from the capital markets for Brazilian agribusiness firms over the past several years.
- Although there are hopes that CRAs could support sustainable practices in Brazil, financial data reviewed by Mongabay show that the largest issuances in recent months have all been for highly controversial companies such as BrasilAgro, JBS and Minerva.

Why we need the government to curb Amazon deforestation? (commentary)
- Deforestation is rising in the Brazilian Amazon, with last year’s forest loss reaching the high level since 2008.
- Brazilian lawyers Daniela Castro, the founder and CEO of Impacta Advocacy, and Silvia Gonçalves, head of projects at Impacta Advocacy, argue that combatting deforestation in Brazil requires government intervention.
- “Without government action, there won’t be better days for the rainforest,” write Castro and Gonçalves. “The fact is only the government has the resources, institutions and power on a scale capable of halting deforestation.”
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

As blazes on embargoed Amazon land surge, links to meat industry emerge
- An analysis of fires on land sanctioned for illegal deforestation show the number of major fires has increased during Jair Bolsonaro’s administration.
- Brazil’s largest meatpackers have sourced hundreds of head of cattle from a farmer in Mato Grosso state linked to repeated cases of deforestation resulting in multiple embargoes and subsequent fires.
- Published in cooperation with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, these findings raise serious questions about the effectiveness and enforcement of Brazil’s embargo system and undermine the “deforestation-free” claims of multinational meat companies and their international customers.

Old and new solutions pave way to net-zero emissions farming, studies show
- Agriculture and food account for one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, making these sectors critical in efforts to address our current overshoot of the climate planetary boundary. They are also having profound impacts on freshwater, biodiversity and biogeochemical cycles.
- New and emerging technologies could pave the way to net-zero emissions agriculture in the next two decades, using robotics, electric vehicles, improved crop varieties and distributed monitoring, according to a new study. Precision agriculture could cut emissions by 71% and help build soil carbon stores.
- A second study reports that microbial protein cultivation powered by solar panels could achieve up to 10 times higher protein yield per unit of land than staple crops like soybeans, reducing greenhouse gas emissions from land conversion and synthetic fertilizers.
- A third report shows that Europe could feed a projected population of 600 million by 2050 with organic farming alone, by reducing consumption of animal products to around 30% of our diet, implementing crop rotations, and reconnecting livestock and cropping systems via use of manure.

Lessons from Brazil’s São Paulo droughts (commentary)
- São Paulo is increasingly facing severe droughts, as is the case in 2021. In 2014 the city came close to having its reservoirs run dry. Brazil’s agriculture and hydropower also depend on reliable rains.
- Anthropogenic climate change is increasing the fluctuations in ocean surface water temperatures, and the frequency is increasing of the combination of warm water in the Atlantic and cold water in the Pacific off the coasts of South America, a combination that leads to droughts in São Paulo.
- The trends in ocean temperatures are expected to worsen these droughts, but what could make them truly catastrophic is the prospect of this variation being combined with the impact of deforestation depriving São Paulo of the water that is recycled by the Amazon forest and transported to southeastern Brazil by the “flying rivers.” The lessons are clear: control global warming and stop deforestation.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Cerrado desertification: Savanna could collapse within 30 years, says study
- Deforestation is amplifying climate change effects in the Brazilian Cerrado savanna biome, making it much hotter and drier. Researchers observed monthly increases of 2.24°C (4.03°F) in average maximum temperatures between 1961 and 2019. If this trend persists, temperature could be 6°C (10.8°F) higher in 2050 than in 1961.
- Cerrado air moisture is decreasing partly due to the removal of trees, which bring water up from as much as 15 meters (nearly 50 feet) underground to carry on photosynthesis during the dry season. Replacement of native vegetation by crops also reduces the absorption of sunlight by wild plants and leads to an increase in temperature.
- Even dew, the only source of water for smaller plants and many insects during the dry season, is being reduced due to deforestation and deepening drought. The demise of pollinators that rely on dew may prompt a cascading effect adversely impacting the biome’s biodiversity, which could collapse in the next 30 years.
- The Cerrado is often called Brazil’s “water tank,” as it is the source of eight of 12 Brazilian river basins. Its looming biome collapse and deepening drought mean less water for rural and urban populations and for agriculture. Low flows in rivers will also affect hydropower, likely causing energy shortages.

Bigger is badder when it comes to climate impact of farms in the Amazon
- A 20-year analysis of satellite data shows significant temperature differences in agricultural lands in southern Amazonia, depending on farm size.
- Extensively deforested commercial farms are up to 3 °C (5.4 °F) warmer than adjacent forests, while on smaller farms this difference is 1.85 °C (3.3 °F).
- Management practices that try to balance productivity with the maintenance of essential ecosystem services, such as the water cycle, will be crucial to preserving the Amazon’s remaining forests, the study’s authors say.

The key to averting environmental catastrophe is right beneath our feet
- Billions of years ago, the first soils served as a cradle for terrestrial life. Today, the land beneath our feet underpins a multitrillion-dollar, global agricultural industry and provides food for nearly 8 billion humans, along with countless wild and domestic species. But soils are in global crisis.
- We are now living in the “danger zone” for four of the nine planetary boundaries: climate change, biodiversity, land-use change, and biogeochemical flows. All four are intimately linked to soil health. Soils hold 80% of all the carbon stored on land.
- Deteriorating soil health is already gravely impacting lives and livelihoods. Land degradation due to human activities costs around 10% of global gross product. When combined with climate change effects, soil degradation could reduce crop yields by 10% globally by 2050.
- There is an inevitable delay between recognizing global problems and enacting solutions, and seeing the resulting boost to ecosystem services. That’s why we must act now if we are to leverage soil ecosystems in the fight against disastrous global environmental change.

What stops the rubber industry from being sustainable? (commentary)
- Six million smallholder farmers produce almost 90% of the world’s natural rubber: 70% of this goes to the tire industry, which then services other downstream users.
- Sold by the ton, there are some costs that are not included in the price especially when produced in an unsustainable way. These costs have historically included deforestation, forced labor, and corruption.
- The members of the relatively new Global Platform for Sustainable Natural Rubber aim to change that with a focus on sustainability in the rubber supply chain.
- This is a commentary. The views expressed are of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

As illegal forest conversion for industrial ag worsens, this moment is pivotal (commentary)
- A major new study released today finds that illegal conversion of forest for industrial agriculture and exports has been getting worse. Deforestation for consumer goods is up 28%, and more than 2/3 of this is illegal.
- This has big consequences for the health of our planet: if illegal agro-conversion were a country, its emissions would be the third largest after China and the US.
- Laws are now under development in the US, EU and UK, to address this, but whether they will be effective hangs in the balance: the German law has already been gutted, while the UK law leaves penalties to be determined at some later date.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Behind the scenes video unveils water contamination by ‘sustainable’ Amazon palm oil
- Brazil’s official policy states that Amazon palm oil is green, but is that true? An 18-month investigation showed the opposite, with impacts including deforestation and water contamination, and it revealed what appears to be an industry-wide pattern of brazen disregard for Amazon conservation and for the rights of Indigenous people and traditional communities in northern Pará state.
- The Mongabay investigation will be used by federal prosecutors as evidence to hold a palm oil company accountable for water contamination in the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Reserve.
- Federal prosecutors have pursued Brazil’s leading palm oil exporters in the courts for the past seven years, alleging the companies are contaminating water supplies, poisoning the soil, and harming the livelihoods and health of Indigenous and traditional peoples, charges the companies deny.
- In this behind-the-scenes video, Mongabay’s Contributing Editor in Brazil, Karla Mendes, takes us on her reporting journey as her team tracks how the palm oil industry is changing this Amazonian landscape.

Humanity’s challenge of the century: Conserving Earth’s freshwater systems
- Many dryland cities like Los Angeles, Cairo and Tehran have already outstripped natural water recharge, but are expected to continue growing, resulting in a deepening arid urban water crisis.
- According to NASA’s GRACE mission, 19 key freshwater basins, including several in the U.S., are being unsustainably depleted, with some near collapse; much of the water is used indiscriminately by industrial agribusiness.
- Many desert cities, including Tripoli, Phoenix and Los Angeles, are sustained by water brought from other basins by hydro megaprojects that are aging and susceptible to collapse, while the desalination plants that water Persian Gulf cities come at a high economic cost with serious salt pollution.
- Experts say that thinking about the problem as one of supply disguises the real issue, given that what’s really missing to heading off a global freshwater crisis is the organization, capital, governance and political will to address the problems that come with regulating use of a renewable, but finite, resource.

Criticizing Brazil over Amazon conservation will likely backfire (commentary)
- Although Brazilians share a concern for the Amazon, and even hosted the groundbreaking Earth Summit in 1992, polls show less consensus on who is responsible for Amazon deforestation, who is best addressing this problem, or the role of foreign actors.
- When activists or leaders from abroad single out Brazil and its president as bad actors on the environment, they risk potential backlash from Brazilians who often view such attacks as a double standard.
- The heavy-handed tone that the Biden Administration has adopted may create unfortunate roadblocks to the progress which is possible, argue two authors from the Amazon Environmental Research Institute and the University of São Paulo.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Bolsonaro abandons enhanced Amazon commitment same day he makes it
- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro offered up Amazon conservation promises during the April 22 virtual Climate Leaders Summit hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden and attended by heads of state from more than forty nations.
- That same day, Bolsonaro approved Brazil’s 2021 budget that includes a R$240 million ($44 million) annual reduction for the Ministry of the Environment. Conservationists say that the cuts will be utterly devastating for the nation’s deforestation monitoring program.
- The reductions will also impact the monitoring of pollution levels, pesticide contamination (Brazil under Bolsonaro is the biggest user of pesticides in the world), illegal mining, and wildlife trafficking. ICMbio, which oversees 334 of Brazil’s protected areas, also saw cuts.
- While environmentalists were enraged by the slashed ministry budget, the agricultural sector remains largely happy with Bolsonaro whose policies continue to benefit them. However, if Brazil continues along an anti-environmental path, it risks global boycotts of its commodities.

The world needs a food movement based on agroecology and equity (commentary)
- The idea of a Food Systems Summit seemed timely when it was announced in 2019 by the World Economic Forum and the UN Secretary-General’s Office.
- But while the need was widely appreciated, the unorthodox proposal by Davos to expand “stakeholder capitalism” to encompass the United Nations alarmed some involved in the food movement.
- Neither the upcoming climate conference nor the Kunming biodiversity COP can succeed without fundamental changes to our food systems, argues Pat Mooney.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Beef giant JBS vows to go deforestation-free — 14 years from now
- JBS, a giant company implicated in multiple cases of large-scale forest clearing in Brazil, recently made a commitment to achieve zero deforestation across its global supply chain by 2035. Environmentalists argue this pledge is grossly insufficient.
- In a new Soy and Cattle Deforestation Tracker, JBS scores just a single point out of 100. Its nearest competitors, Minerva and Marfrig, have scores of 46/100 and 40/100 respectively.
- Tagging and tracking systems to ensure transparency along the entire beef supply have long been proposed, but JBS has resisted disclosing its full list of suppliers.
- Under present conditions, Brazil is losing forest cover at the fastest rate in more than a decade, and this deforestation is driven largely by the meatpacking industry.

Can palm oil be grown sustainably? Agroforestry research suggests it can, and without chemicals
- Oil palms are typically grown in large monocultures worldwide, and aside from the deforestation these plantations are typically associated with, water pollution from heavy chemical application is another problem.
- But must oil palms be grown in monocultures with heavy chemical inputs to produce a profitable crop? Mongabay asked a researcher in Brazil about his group’s findings indicating that they do not.
- Using an ecologically friendly agroforestry system, the researchers have demonstrated higher yields on 18 demonstration farms: 180 kg of fresh fruit bunches per plant, compared with 139 kg per plant from monocultures.
- By growing oil palms in an agroforestry system among other useful and profitable crops–like açaí and passionfruit plus timber trees like mahogany and fertilizer trees plus annuals like cassava–farmers have more crops to eat and sell, enjoy greater resilience to palm oil price variations, and can make a competitive profit without using toxic and expensive chemicals.

The nine boundaries humanity must respect to keep the planet habitable
- All life on Earth, and human civilization, are sustained by vital biogeochemical systems, which are in delicate balance. However, our species — due largely to rapid population growth and explosive consumption — is destabilizing these Earth processes, endangering the stability of the “safe operating space for humanity.”
- Scientists note nine planetary boundaries beyond which we can’t push Earth Systems without putting our societies at risk: climate change, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosol pollution, freshwater use, biogeochemical flows of nitrogen and phosphorus, land-system change, and release of novel chemicals.
- Humanity is already existing outside the safe operating space for at least four of the nine boundaries: climate change, biodiversity, land-system change, and biogeochemical flows (nitrogen and phosphorus imbalance). The best way to prevent overshoot, researchers say, is to revamp our energy and food systems.
- In 2021, three meetings offer chances to avoid planetary boundary overshoot: the Convention on Biological Diversity meeting in Kunming, China; the U.N. Climate Summit (COP26) in Glasgow, U.K.; and the U.N. Food Systems Summit in Rome. Agreements with measurable, implementable, verifiable, timely and binding targets are vital, say advocates.

Brazil prosecutors cite Mongabay probe in new legal battle against palm oil firms
- Prosecutors in Brazil say they will use findings from an investigation by Mongabay as evidence to hold a palm oil company accountable for water contamination in an Indigenous reserve in the Amazon.
- The move comes as prosecutors filed an appeal March 26 against a ruling blocking a forensic investigation into water contamination from pesticide use by Biopalma that has impacted the Tembé people of the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Reserve in Pará state.
- Mongabay’s 18-month investigation, published March 12, revealed evidence of this pollution as well as similar cases involving two other top Brazilian palm oil companies, pointing to a potentially industry-wide pattern of disregard for Amazon conservation and for the rights of Indigenous people and traditional communities.
- The investigation also revealed the clearing of native forests for oil palm cultivation, as shown through satellite imagery, contradicting claims by the companies and the government that oil palm crops are planted only on already deforested land.

Can ‘Slow Food’ save Brazil’s fast-vanishing Cerrado savanna?
- The incredibly biodiverse Cerrado is Brazil’s second-largest biome after the Amazon. However, half of the savanna’s native vegetation has already been lost to industrial agribusiness, which produces beef, soy, cotton, corn, eucalyptus and palm oil for export.
- Those wishing to save the Cerrado today are challenged by the lack of protected lands. One response by traditional communities and conservationists is to help the rest of Brazil and the rest of the planet value the Cerrado’s cornucopia of endemic fruits, nuts and vegetables that thrive across South America’s greatest savanna.
- These include the baru nut, the babassu and macaúba coconut, the sweet gabiroba (looking like a small guava), the cagaita (resembling a shiny green tomato), the large, scaly-looking marolo (with creamy pulp and strong flavor), the berry-shaped mangaba, which means “good fruit for eating,” the egg-shaped, emerald-green pequi, and more.
- Small family farmers, beekeepers, traditional and Indigenous communities, Afro-Brazilian quilombolas (runaway slave descendants), socioenvironmental activists, and celebrity chefs have become allies in a fast-expanding slow food network, declaring: “We want to see the Cerrado on the plate of the Brazilian and the world!”

Guarani Indigenous men brutalized in Brazilian ‘expansion of violence’
- In the 1960s and 70s, the Guarani Kaiowá Indigenous group was expelled from its ancestral lands in Mato Grosso do Sul state by the Brazilian military dictatorship to expand the country’s agricultural frontier. Today, their traditional Indigenous homeland is occupied by large farms, whose owners refuse to return the property.
- A federal Supreme Court decision resulted in an order to allow the return of the Guarani Kaiowá to their former homeland where they now await the official demarcation of their territory to be approved by the federal government — an approval that still hasn’t come after the passage of ten years.
- The land dispute and standoff between the ranchers and the Guarani Kaiowá has repeatedly flared into violence over the years. In 2011, Indigenous leader Nízio Gomes was murdered in the Guaiviry community area by armed thugs.
- Violence flared yet again in Guaiviry last week when three Guarani Kaiowá men were assaulted, they say, by gunmen from the large Querência Farm. The Guarani Kaiowá say that intimidation of their community members has seriously escalated under the Jair Bolsonaro administration, which has shown hostility toward Indigenous rights.

Video: Communities struggle against palm oil plantations spreading in Brazilian Amazon
- Palm oil, a crop synonymous with deforestation and conflict in Southeast Asia, is making inroads in the Brazilian Amazon, where the same issues are now playing out. Indigenous and traditional communities say the plantations in their midst are polluting their rivers and lands, and driving fish and game away.
- Federal prosecutors have pursued Brazil’s leading palm oil exporters in the courts for the past seven years–alleging the companies are contaminating water supplies, poisoning the soil, and harming the livelihoods and health of Indigenous and traditional peoples–charges the companies deny.
- This video was produced as part of an 18-month investigation into the palm oil industry in the Brazilian state of Pará.

Déjà vu as palm oil industry brings deforestation, pollution to Amazon
- Palm oil, a crop synonymous with deforestation and community conflicts in Southeast Asia, is making inroads in the Brazilian Amazon, where the same issues are playing out.
- Indigenous and traditional communities say the plantations in their midst are polluting their water, poisoning their soil, and driving away fish and game.
- Scientists have found high levels of agrochemical residues in these communities — though still within Brazil’s legal limits — while prosecutors are pursuing legal cases against the companies for allegedly violating Indigenous and traditional communities’ rights and damaging the environment.
- Studies based on satellite imagery also disprove the companies’ claims that they only plant on already deforested land.

Review finds palm oil firm Golden Veroleum cleared carbon-rich Liberian forests
- The largest investor in Golden Veroleum is Singapore-based Golden Agri-Resources, itself a branch of the Indonesian conglomerate Sinar Mas.
- In 2018, a Liberian civil society group joined with the U.S. and Netherlands chapters of Friends of the Earth in submitting a complaint to the High Carbon Stock Approach alleging that Golden Veroleum cleared high carbon stock forests in Liberia.
- The investigation was the first of its kind by the High Carbon Stock Approach, and found that Golden Veroleum cleared more than 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) of carbon-rich forests in Liberia’s remote southeast.

As Amazon forest-to-savanna tipping point looms, solutions remain elusive
- Leading scientists project that if an additional 3-8% of rainforest cover is lost in the Amazon, it may overshoot a forest-to-degraded-savanna tipping point. That shift could mean mega-drought, forest death, and release of great amounts of stored carbon to the atmosphere from southern, eastern and central Amazonia.
- Despite this warning, Brazilian Amazon deforestation hit an 11-year high in 2020. Government clampdowns on environmental crime greatly decreased deforestation in the past, but Brazil is now facing a political backlash led by President Jair Bolsonaro, resulting in agribusiness and mining expansion and deforestation.
- Market efforts to create incentives have been ineffective. A public-private plan to cut deforestation led by Mato Grosso state has not met its environmental targets, even as agricultural lands increased. Amazonas, Acre and Rondônia — Bolsonaro-aligned states — are pushing for the creation of a new agriculture frontier.
- Indigenous communities, because they’re the best land stewards, should be at the forefront of public policy to conserve the Amazon, say experts, but instead they face poverty and marginalization by the institutions responsible for securing their land rights. International response to the Amazon crisis has also lagged.

‘Hungry’ palm oil, pulpwood firms behind Indonesia land-grab spike: Report
- Land conflicts in Indonesia escalated in 2020, with palm oil and pulpwood companies taking advantage of movement restrictions to expand aggressively, according to a new report.
- These disputes have historically waned during times of economic downturn, but last year’s increase was driven by “land-hungry” companies, according to the NGO Consortium for Agrarian Reform (KPA).
- Most of the conflicts involved palm oil and pulpwood companies, while infrastructure developments backed by the government were also a major contributor.

‘What’s at stake is the life of every being’: Saving the Brazilian Cerrado
- The Cerrado boasts a third of Brazil’s biodiversity and is the largest savanna in South America with 44% of its 10,000 species of plants endemic. And yet, since the colonial period, this semi-arid region was largely ignored, and has even been portrayed as an “infertile, uninhabited region,” nothing more than “a place between places.”
- That all changed over recent decades with agribusiness declaring the Cerrado to be Brazil’s last great agricultural frontier. Today, half of the vast savanna which covers two million square kilometers (770,000 square miles) has been converted to crops of soy, cotton, corn and eucalyptus, or to pasture covered in massive cattle herds.
- As the savanna has been lost, its communities have simultaneously risen to save what’s left. The National Campaign in Defense of the Cerrado, launched in January 2016, has fought an uphill political battle to preserve the region’s native vegetation and biodiversity. The effort has grown more dogged during the Bolsonaro presidency.
- Working with Indigenous and traditional peoples, the organization is striving to build global awareness of the Cerrado’s natural significance and to get more of the region declared as World Heritage sites. “Defending the Cerrado is defending its people,” declares one activist.

Pandemic fails to slow agribusiness’s thirst for Cerrado’s water
- Between April and November last year, the government of the Brazilian state of Bahia authorized agribusinesses to collect nearly 2 billion liters (528 million gallons) of water a day.
- The spread of giant soybean plantations in the state’s west threatens tributaries, floodplains and sources of essential rivers such as the Corrente and the São Francisco.
- The large-scale irrigation poses a major threat to traditional communities, whose own communal farming practices have long protected the Cerrado’s water resources.
- Tensions over water management sparked a popular movement by small farmers in 2017, known as the “Water Uprising” and aimed at protecting the Cerrado’s water resources.

‘Race against time’: Saving the snakes and lizards of Brazil’s Cerrado
- Brazil’s Cerrado is among the world’s most biodiverse savannas, covering two million square kilometers (772,204 square miles), nearly a quarter of the country and half the size of Europe.
- Once thought of as a “wasteland,” scientists have counted 208 snake species, some 80 lizards, 40 worm lizards, seven turtles and four crocodile species — many recently logged in the biome’s grasslands, palm-covered riverscapes, lowland forests and dry plateaus.
- But half of the Cerrado’s natural vegetation has been lost to mechanized agribusiness and ranching, with native plants and wildlife also at risk from climate change, and more frequent and intense fires. Today’s biome is fragmented, with just 3% under strict protection, and another 5% “protected” in farmed, inhabited mixed-use areas
- While researchers agree that there is an urgent need to protect large swathes of remaining savanna, there is also a vital requirement to preserve patches of unique habitat where diverse, niche-specialized reptilians make their homes.

Land inequality is worsening and fueling other social ills, report says
- A new report shows that global land inequality is much more severe than previously estimated, with control of vast swaths of the planet increasingly concentrated in the hands of the wealthy few.
- According to the report, the top 10% of the rural population captures 60% of agricultural land value, while the bottom 50% only control 3% of land value.
- The authors of the report say that tackling land inequality is a fundamental part of dismantling other social and environmental ills, from climate change and democratic decline to global health crises.
- To do this will require pushing back against the economic model of resource commodification and yield maximization, and embracing the culture and rights of women, Indigenous peoples, and small farmers, the report says.

Restaura Cerrado: Saving Brazil’s savanna by reseeding and restoring it
- The Cerrado is Brazil’s second largest biome, and the most biodiverse tropical savanna in the world. It is of vital importance for Brazil’s watersheds, for global biodiversity, and is an important but undervalued carbon stock.
- But in recent decades, half of the Cerrado’s native vegetation has been destroyed to make way for cattle, soy, and other agricultural commodities. In the southern Cerrado, scientists are now shifting their focus to restoring the native vegetation
- However, scientific knowledge on savanna restoration is scarce. So one collaborative network, Restaura Cerrado, is bringing together scientists, seed collectors, and the public to advance practical knowledge about restoration. The group’s goal is to achieve the means for ongoing effective Cerrado restoration.
- Restaura Cerrado is a collaboration between ICMBio, the University of Brasília, the Cerrado Seeds Network, and Embrapa (the Brazilian Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Research Enterprise); together they hope to use restoration to bring sustainable development to the savanna region.

Multiplying Amazon river ports open new Brazil-to-China commodities routes
- Nearly 100 major industrial river ports have been built on the Brazilian Amazon’s major rivers over the past two decades. Many of the projects have been internationally financed and built by commodities companies with little government oversight.
- These ports have transformed the region, opening it to agribusiness and the export of commodities, especially soy, to China and the rest of the world. However, this boom in port infrastructure often came at the expense of the environment and traditional riverine communities.
- Today, more than 40 additional major river ports are planned in the Amazon biome on the Tapajós, Tocantins, Madeira and other rivers, projects again being pursued largely without taking cumulative socioenvironmental impacts into account.
- “What resources do these soy men bring to our city?” asked Manoel Munduruku, an Indigenous leader. “They only bring destruction.”

Brazilian and international banks financing global deforestation: Reports
- According to a new report, some of the world’s biggest Brazilian and international banks invested US$153.2 billion in commodities companies whose activities risked harm to forests in Brazil, Southeast Asia, and Central and West Africa since 2016 when the Paris Climate Agreement was signed.
- These investments were made primarily in forest-risk commodities companies that include beef, soy, pulp and paper, palm oil, rubber and timber producers. The big banks are failing to scrutinize and refuse loans to firms profiting from illegal deforestation, said several reports.
- Banco do Brasil offered the most credit (US$30 billion since 2016), for forest-risk commodity operations. BNDES, Brazil’s development bank, provided US$3.8 billion to forest-risk companies. More than half of that amount went to the beef sector, followed closely by the pulp and paper industry.
- “Financial institutions are uniquely positioned to promote actions in the public and private sector and they have an obligation with their shareholders to mitigate their growing credit risks due to the degradation of natural capital and their association with industries that intensively produce carbon,” said one report.

Indonesia’s ‘militarized agriculture’ raises social, environmental red flags
- The Indonesian government’s plan to push through an ambitious program of establishing massive crop plantations across the country has raised concerns about community disenfranchisement and the loss of rainforests.
- The government has put the defense minister in charge of part of the program and enlisted the military to assist, raising the prospect of a crackdown on civilian opposition to the program.
- Observers and activists have criticized what they call the militarization of agriculture, as well as the expedited process of environmental assessments, which bypasses the need for public consultation.
- The way the program is structured also appears to benefit agribusiness players over small farmers, despite Indonesia’s stated commitment to empowering family farmers.

‘Digital land grab’ deprives traditional LatAm peoples of ancestral lands: Report
- South American nations, including Brazil and Colombia, are increasingly using georeferencing technology for registering land ownership.
- However, if this high-tech digital technique is not backed up by traditional ground truthing surveys, it can be used by landgrabbers and agribusiness companies to fraudulently obtain deeds depriving traditional communities of their collective ancestral lands, according to a new report.
- The georeferenced process is being partly funded by the World Bank, which has provided US $45.5 million for digital registration of private rural properties in Brazil. Georeferencing is allowing the international financial sector to play a key role in converting large tracts of rainforest and savanna into agribusiness lands.
- To prevent this form of land theft, prospective landowners’ claims need to be independently verified via a centralized governmental land registration system organized to resolve land conflicts and to detect and eliminate local and regional corruption.

Harvard’s half-billion land stake in Brazil marred by conflict and abuse
- Harvard University has plowed $450 million of its $40 billion endowment in Brazil, most of it to buying up at least 405,000 hectares (1 million acres) of land in the Cerrado.
- This is a region where major landowners have racked up human rights violations against smallholder farmers and crimes against the environment.
- Most investments in land in this region are purely speculative; while the land goes unused, locals are deprived of their water sources, farmland and other resources.
- Harvard would not comment on its Brazilian investments specifically, but said it is trying to divest from unsustainable ventures. But even as it has trouble finding buyers for the farms, it continues to profit from the appreciating value of the land.

Deforestation in the Amazon is drying up the rest of Brazil: Report
- The center-west, south and part of the southeast regions of Brazil have seen rainfall well below average in recent years.
- Agriculture is the first sector to feel the effects of the drought, with drastic losses in production. Water supply and power generation have also been impacted.
- Agribusiness suffers the consequences of drought but also causes it: Deforestation of the Amazon to clear land for livestock, farming and logging affects the rainfall regime in Brazil and other Latin American countries.
- “South America is drying up as a result of the combined effects of deforestation and climate change”, says scientist Antonio Donato Nobre.

‘Criminalizing’ dissent, martial law fuel attacks on Philippine environmental defenders
- Attacks on environmental and land defenders in the Philippines have escalated under President Rodrigo Duterte, with at least 43 deaths in 2019, watchdog group Global Witness says in its latest report.
- It recorded a total of 119 defender deaths in the Philippines since Duterte took office in mid-2016.
- Martial law in Mindanao, which was only lifted last December, combined with Duterte’s counterinsurgency campaigns and wide-scale anti-drug war, exacerbated the threats against defenders, local groups say.
- A plurality of the casualties in the global tally are in mining and agribusiness; the Philippines registered the most number of deaths in both sectors, the report says.

World Bank-backed attempt to commercialize Madagascar’s beef industry falters
- In 2018, the IFC, the arm of the World Bank that invests in the private sector, approved a $7 million investment in a company that wanted to buy zebu cattle from farmers in Madagascar and export the beef mainly to rich Middle Eastern countries.
- The BoViMA project hit a major roadblock when Malagasy President Andry Rajoelina banned the export of zebus last year, and has failed to recover.
- Despite being aimed at reducing poverty, the project has invited scrutiny for its potential impacts on food security, especially the sourcing of human-edible crops for cattle feed in one of the poorest and most water-scarce regions in the world.
- When fully operational, the slaughterhouse and feedlot would require 120,000 tons of feed and 150 million liters of water a year.

Only a few ‘rotten apples’ causing most illegal Brazil deforestation: Study
- It is well known that agribusiness — especially cattle and soy production — is the major driver of illegal deforestation in Brazil, which has seen soaring rates of forest destruction since the election of Jair Bolsonaro. Many of those agricultural commodities end up being exported to the European Union.
- But little has been done to curb the problem, partly due to lack of government will, and partly due to the fact that the precise amount of illegal deforestation linked to exported meat and soy has never been identified, while ranches and plantations and their owners mostly responsible are difficult to pinpoint.
- Now a new potentially game changing study finds that while around 20% of all agricultural exports from Brazil to the EU appear to come from illegally deforested areas in the Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savanna, only about 2% of producers are responsible for the majority of that illegal deforestation.
- The study methods have the potential to advance supply chain traceability, showing that it is now possible to trace agricultural products from illegal deforested areas all the way to foreign consumers, making it far easier for nations and companies to curb deforestation — if they have the will.

Brazil bows to pressure from business, decrees 120-day Amazon fire ban
- 38 transnational companies in the agricultural, industrial, mining and service sectors, along with four major business associations, sent a letter Monday to Brazil VP Hamilton Mourão, president of the Amazon Council, asking him to address “environmental irregularities and crime in the Amazon and other Brazilian biomes.”
- The letter — backed by Amaggi, Suzano, Vale, Bradesco, Alcoa, Bayer, Shell, Siemens, among others — comes just weeks before this year’s Amazon fire season begins, and as criticism of rapid Amazon deforestation under Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro intensifies in the European Union and threatens the EU-Mercusor trade agreement.
- The administration — long resistant to all efforts to redirect its Amazon development and environmental policies — responded today announcing a decree for a 120-day ban on fires in the Amazon. The Army has also been deployed to the region to guard against a replay of last year’s wildfires. Analysts say this is not near enough to curb rampant deforestation.
- The business letter came just weeks after 32 international financial institutions that manage US$4.5 trillion in assets told Brazil that if it didn’t curb deforestation they would stop investing in Brazil. The problem, say critics, is Bolsonaro has set new policies that greatly undermine past socio-environmental safeguards, policies which need to be reversed.

Brazil could dynamite Amazon dolphin, turtle habitat for industrial waterway
- Brazil plans to excavate and dredge many millions of cubic meters of material, including the ecologically sensitive Lourencão Rocks, to create an industrial shipping channel on the Tocantins River in the Amazon. This article includes rarely seen video images of some of the endemic and threatened fish living in the Tocantins River rapids.
- Citing cost considerations, São Paulo-based DTA Engenharia plans to dump more than 5.6 million cubic meters of sand inside the Tocantins riverbanks, where Amazonian turtles now lay their eggs. The endangered Araguaian river dolphin would also be impacted.
- In September 2019, IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, identified dozens of mistakes in DTA Engenharia’s environmental impact studies, which failed to list a dozen endangered fish, ignored the specialized riverine rock environment, and didn’t study turtles in most affected areas.
- IBAMA ordered DTA to redo fish and turtle studies, with new studies conducted on local traditional fisherfolk’s fishing practices. Six fisherfolk village associations near the Lourencão Rocks (35 kilometers of which are due to be dynamited and dredged) warn that the fishery and the unique traditional culture it supports are in peril.

China and EU appetite for soy drives Brazilian deforestation, climate change: Study
- A recent study highlights how demand for Brazilian soy by Europe and China is stoking deforestation, thereby increasing carbon emissions, especially in Brazil’s Cerrado savanna biome, followed by the Amazon rainforest.
- The extent to which Brazilian soy production and trade contribute to climate change depends largely on the location where soybeans are grown. Soy exported from some municipalities in Brazil’s Cerrado, for example, contributes 200 times more total greenhouse gas emissions than soy coming from other parts of the country.
- China was the world’s largest importer of Brazilian soy from 2010 to 2015 and responsible for 51% of associated carbon dioxide emissions, with the European Union responsible for about 30%. However, EU soy imports (sourced from the northern Cerrado) were linked to more recent deforestation than China’s imports.
- The study is the first to offer an estimate of carbon emissions across Brazil’s entire soy sector. The data obtained by analyzing 90,000 supply chain streams could help policymakers curb emissions by designing low-carbon supply chains, with more effective forest conservation, and making improvements in transport infrastructure.

Murder, logging and land theft: inside a crime factory in the Amazon
- One of the Amazon’s most deforested regions, Lábrea is remote, poorly policed and suffering from a land tenure crisis. As a result, land grabbing, illegal logging and murder are routine.
- A criminal nexus of landholders laying claim to protected forests they intend to turn into cattle pasture competes over the former São Domingos rubber plantation, where reporters found settlers had left en masse following a spate of killings last year.
- Several of the high-profile landholders and local officials investigated and convicted by federal prosecutors since 2013 were found to have cloned or forged legal documents, and engaged in conspiracy, fraud, environmental crimes and invasion of public land.

Rapid deforestation of Brazilian Amazon could bring next pandemic: Experts
- Nearly 25,000 COVID-19 cases have been confirmed in Brazil, with 1,378 deaths as of April 15, though some experts say this is an underestimate. Those figures continue growing, even as President Jair Bolsonaro downplays the crisis, calling it “no worse than a mild flu,” and places the economy above public health.
- Scientists warn that the next emergent pandemic could originate in the Brazilian Amazon if Bolsonaro’s policies continue to drive Amazon deforestation rates ever higher. Researchers have long known that new diseases typically arise at the nexus between forest and agribusiness, mining, and other human development.
- One way deforestation leads to new disease emergence is through fire, like the Amazon blazes seen in 2019. In the aftermath of wildfires, altered habitat often offers less food, changing animal behavior, bringing foraging wildlife into contact with neighboring human communities, creating vectors for zoonotic bacteria, viruses and parasites.
- Now, Bolsonaro is pushing to open indigenous lands and conservation units to mining and agribusiness — policies which greatly benefit land grabbers. Escalating deforestation, worsened by climate change, growing drought and fire, heighten the risk of the emergence of new diseases, along with epidemics of existing ones, such as malaria.

Cattle put Paraguay’s Chaco biome at high risk, but report offers hope
- Cattle production is the largest driver of tropical forest loss worldwide, with devastating impacts for climate, biodiversity and people.
- Paraguay has one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world, largely due to the rapid expansion of cattle ranching, especially in the western Gran Chaco region — a highly biodiverse and sparsely populated dry forest ecosystem.
- Experts predict that if the current rate of expansion continues in the Chaco, the forest and other native vegetation there could disappear within decades.
- As Paraguay considers new global markets into which to expand, and implements a new forest monitoring platform, a new report suggests that the country has a unique opportunity to shift towards large-scale sustainable cattle production, greatly reducing deforestation.

Wealth fund divests from Peruvian firm after indigenous group complaint
- Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) withdrew more than $12 million from Alicorp SAA on March 5, 2020.
- In 2019, the Shipibo-Konibo indigenous group said a palm oil company in Alicorp’s supply chain had destroyed 70 square kilometers (27 square miles) of community forest.
- NBIM said it expects the companies it invests in to have strategies in place to mitigate deforestation but that reasons for divestment are usually financial.

Versace, Amazon, Samsonite among companies listed as deforestation ‘laggards’
- In its annual Forest 500 report, the environmental organization Global Canopy reports on the most influential companies and financial institutions that deal in key commodities linked to deforestation.
- The six commodities that drive deforestation worldwide are leather, beef, palm oil, soybeans, timber, and pulp and paper.
- The report identifies 140 companies as having made no public commitments to ending deforestation, and 100 as having done so but not reporting on the implementation or progress of these commitments.
- It also finds that 68% of 150 financial institutions assessed have zero commitments to deforestation.

Amazon Tipping Point puts Brazil’s agribusiness, energy sector at risk: Top scientists
- Scientists are sounding the alarm: the Brazilian Amazon is dangerously close to, or may already be hitting, a disastrous rainforest-to-savanna tipping point, with heightened drought driven by regional and global climate change, rapidly rising deforestation and more numerous and intense wild fires.
- Overshooting the tipping point would not only be cataclysmic to Amazon biodiversity and release massive amounts of forest carbon destabilizing the planet’s climate further, it could also devastate Brazil’s economy by depriving agribusiness and hydroelectric energy production of water.
- Signs of deepening drought are already evident, as are serious repercussions. The $9.5 billion Belo Monte mega-dam for example, is already seeing greatly reduced seasonal flows in the Xingu River, a trend expected to worsen, potentially making the dam economically unviable, while also threatening the proposed Belo Sun goldmine.
- Reduced rainfall and a shorter growing season are also putting Brazilian agribusiness at risk. Even as scientists rush to develop heat and drought-resistant crops, many doubt new cultivars will keep pace with a changing climate. The Bolsonaro government is ignoring the economic threat posed by the tipping point

California lawmakers introduce legislation to fight tropical deforestation
- California’s AB 2002 bill would require any contractors supplying the state to comply with strict rules against tropical deforestation.
- It would apply to a wide range of products, including palm oil, beef, soybeans, and timber.
- A similar bill stalled and died last year, but its sponsors are optimistic that this time around it will fare better.

Investors drop demands after Tyson Foods commits to no deforestation
- Impact investment group Green Century Capital Management has withdrawn a shareholder proposal compelling Tyson Foods Inc. to address sustainability in its supply chain.
- The withdrawal comes after Tyson, the world’s No. 2 meat processor, announced last October that it would commit to a policy of “No Deforestation, No Peatland, No Exploitation,” or NDPE.
- Investors are increasingly pressing companies to adopt sustainable practices; though while many companies have done so, few are on track to meet their self-imposed deadlines.

Private firms will pay soy farmers not to deforest Brazil’s Cerrado
- The meteoric growth of the soy industry, which cultivates the profitable bean to feed livestock and cultivated fish in both Brazil and internationally (especially in the UK and EU) is rapidly destroying critical biomes like the Cerrado, Brazil’s tropical savanna.
- But in December. Tesco, Nutreco, and Grieg Seafood launched a groundbreaking initiative aimed at reducing deforestation in the Cerrado by paying farmers to conserve native vegetation on their lands.
- The “Funding for Soy Farmers in the Cerrado Initiative” has so far managed to secure around US$13 million in pledges to incentivize farmers to avoid new deforestation, and instead grow on land that has already been transformed for agriculture. A mechanism for distributing the funds has yet to be established.
- The initiative’s goals align with those of the Cerrado Manifesto, a voluntary pact already signed by 60+ organizations to protect the Cerrado. Backers only want soy grown on the 38 million hectares already converted from savanna to agriculture. A sticking point: transnational commodities companies, like Cargill, haven’t signed on.

Cerrado in crisis: One Brazilian farm family commits to sustainable soy
- Brazil’s Cerrado is one of the most biodiverse tropical savannas on the planet, with aquifers and rivers vital to Brazil’s urban water supply. But more than half the biome’s 2 million square kilometers have been cleared, and the rest is vanishing fast.
- The Cerrado today serves a soaring global demand for soy, used as animal feed for livestock in Brazil, the European Union, United Kingdom and elsewhere.
- The Bergamaschi family soy plantation is different from most. The family has conserved 8% of its land above the 20% required by Brazil’s Forest Code. It is also fully committed to growing soy sustainably, and has received Roundtable for Responsible Soy certification — a designation that assures zero deforestation.
- But few Cerrado growers are following suit, largely due to economics. For now the EU market for certified soy is very small. Without consumer demand, and a strong commitment from government, soy certification will likely lag in the Cerrado. However, signs are that the EU could soon act to ban “imported deforestation.”

Ten actions for Brazilian scientists to engage in environmental politics (commentary)
- Brazil has faced several environmental and political issues in recent years. For instance, three mining disasters caused the death of more than 250 people and major damage to biodiversity. Also, the unrestricted expansion of agribusiness has led to high rates of deforestation, a pattern that is only expected to increase in the near future.
- In this commentary, the authors look at the political aspects of the environmental crises in Brazil and argue that scientists have an important role to play in transforming the country.
- The authors propose ten actions that can help Brazilian scientists participate more effectively in political matters.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

EU/Chinese soy consumption linked to species impacts in Brazilian Cerrado: study
- The Brazilian Cerrado, the world’s largest tropical savanna, is a biodiversity hotspot with thousands of unique species and is home to 5 percent of the world’s biodiversity.
- However, half of the Cerrado has already been converted to agriculture; much of it is now growing soy which is exported abroad, particularly to the European Union (EU) and China, primarily as animal feed. But tracing soy-driven biodiversity and species losses to specific commodities traders and importing nations is challenging.
- Now a new groundbreaking study published in the journal PNAS has modeled the biodiversity impacts of site-specific soy production, while also linking specific habitat losses and species losses to nations and traders.
- For example, the research found that the consumption of Brazilian soy by EU countries has been especially detrimental to the giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla), which has lost 85 percent of its habitat to soy in the state of Mato Grosso.

Killings of environmental defenders on the rise in the Philippines
- Forty-six land and environmental defenders have been recorded killed in the Philippines so far this year, according to a tally by Kalikasan PNE, a local green NGO.
- The toll surpasses the 28 deaths that the group recorded in 2018, and the 30 recorded by eco-watchdog Global Witness, which named the Philippines the most dangerous country in the world for environmental defenders last year.
- Agriworkers and farmers account for the majority of the deaths this year with 29, or 63%, followed by government officials and forest rangers with16 deaths, or 35%.
- Most of the deaths are concentrated in the islands of Negros and Mindanao, where activists have been swept up in security operations unleashed in response to communist and Islamist insurgencies, respectively.

Martial law in Mindanao takes deadly toll on land, environmental defenders
- The island of Mindanao has long been the deadliest place in the Philippines for individuals defending their land and environment from extractives and agribusiness interests.
- The threat to these defenders escalated with the imposition in 2017 of a state of martial law across Mindanao, meant to help the government root out terrorists who had seized the city of Marawi.
- Under the pretext of security operations, however, the military has ramped up its targeting of land and environmental defenders, according to the watchdog group Global Witness.
- Global Witness named the Philippines the deadliest country in the world for environmental defenders in 2018, recording at least 30 killings that year.

Report highlights business, political players behind Philippine environment defender deaths
- Global Witness, an eco-watchdog, has linked businesses and investors, including development banks to the increasing violence against land and environmental defenders in the Philippines, a practice rooted in the country’s “business at all costs” approach, it says in a new report.
- In a previous Global Witness report, released in July, the Philippines was named the deadliest country in the world for environmental defenders after recording 30 deaths in 2018 alone.
- The report calls on international banks and providers of foreign loans and aid to refrain from investing in big-ticket projects that endanger environmental defenders in the Philippines.

New initiative aims to jump-start stalled drive toward zero deforestation
- Over the past decade there has been a rise in corporate zero-deforestation commitments, but very few companies have shown progress in meeting their goals of reducing deforestation in their supply chains by 2020.
- The Accountability Framework Initiative, launched by a group of 14 civil society organizations, is the latest tool to help companies make progress, and hold them accountable, on their zero-deforestation commitments.
- The Accountability Framework Initiative is expected to be especially important for markets like Europe, where demand for crops like soy has been linked to rising deforestation in places like the Brazilian Cerrado.

EU holds the key to stop the ‘Notre Dame of forests’ from burning (commentary)
- Brazil’s President vowed to rip up the rainforest to make way for farming and mining, threatening the lives of Indigenous people.
- European scientists and Brazilian Indigenous groups say that the EU can halt the devastation. In ongoing trade talks, the EU must demand higher standards for Brazilian goods.
- EU citizens care about our planetary life support systems. Their leaders should reflect this on the global stage.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Cargill pledges to stop forest to farmland conversions, but no results yet for the Cerrado
- Cargill has announced new and updated policies to achieve deforestation-free supply chains by 2030, including more transparency in supply chains for soy – a crop that is a major cause of large-scale deforestation in Brazil’s Cerrado.
- The announcement came just days after the Soft Commodities Forum announced a new framework for transparency and traceability in “high-risk” soy supply chains in Brazil, and two years after an investigation shed light on large-scale forest-clearing by Bolivian and Brazilian soy farmers selling to Cargill.
- A newly released report shows that not a single company will achieve their 2020 deforestation-free pledges, and recent research questions the effectiveness of such commitments.

Investors warn soy giants of backlash over deforestation in South America
- Investors have called on the world’s biggest soy companies to make firm commitments to end deforestation in wildlife-rich areas of South America such as the Cerrado and Gran Chaco.
- Those that fail to do so risk being exposed by environmental activists to consumer boycotts, legal action and falling profits, experts warn.
- Investors are leading the way as companies fail to appreciate the scale of the crisis, campaigners say.

RSPO should suspend membership of groups undermining Guatemala’s anti-impunity commission (commentary)
- The journey toward sustainability must begin from a baseline of proven ethical intent — and a number of recent signs raise serious doubts about the ethical intent of a wide swath of industry players in Guatemala.
- Palm oil is the fastest growing agribusiness industry in Guatemala. Along with mining and hydroelectric projects, it is a major cause of land grabs that displace indigenous communities. Palm oil companies have been heavily involved in Guatemalan President Morales’ campaign to stop the U.N. Commission Against Impunity.
- In order to responsibly address the unfolding political crisis in Guatemala, the RSPO should postpone the certification processes of all Guatemalan palm companies until GREPALMA and its members end their campaign to sabotage the U.N. Commission Against Impunity and desist from undermining the rule of law in the country.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

COP24: Will they stay or will they go? Brazil’s threat to leave Paris
- In October, Brazil elected far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency. During the campaign, he threatened to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, implement extreme environmental deregulation policies, and introduce mining into Amazon indigenous reserves, while also using incendiary language which may be inciting violence in remote rural areas.
- Just days before his election, Bolsonaro contradicted his past utterances, saying he won’t withdraw from the Paris accord. At COP24, the Brazilian delegation has fielded questions from concerned attendees, but it appears that no one there knows with certainty what the volatile leader will do once in office. He begins his presidency on the first of the year.
- Even if Bolsonaro doesn’t pull out of Paris, his plans to develop the Amazon, removing most regulatory impediments to mining and agribusiness, could have huge ramifications for the global climate. The Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, stores massive amounts of carbon. Deforestation rates are already going up there, and likely to grow under Bolsonaro.
- Some in Brazil hope that environmental and economic realities will prevent Bolsonaro from fully implementing his plans. Escalating deforestation is already reducing Amazon rainfall, putting aquifers and agribusiness at risk. Agricultural producers also fear global consumer perceptions of Brazil as being anti-environmental could lead to a backlash and boycotts.

Tropical forest conservation in the Bolsonaro era (commentary)
- Brazil’s President-elect represents a major threat to Brazil’s legacy of forest conservation and to the prospects of preventing extremely dangerous climate change. This legacy was achieved largely through command-and-control measures that were supported by consistently pro-environment presidents over the last three decades; these measures are now vulnerable to the abrupt decline in environmental political will.
- A strategy to avoid major forest conservation setbacks and achieve new wins is possible under Bolsonaro if Brazil’s farmers and the broader society are convinced that they will be worse off if this legacy is dismantled.
- Instead of escalating antagonism between conservation leaders and medium- to large-scale farmers and agribusinesses, dialogues and collaborations are urgently needed to deliver positive incentives to conservation-minded producers.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Extreme floods on the rise in the Amazon: study
- Scientists and the media have documented deepening drought in the Amazon basin. But a new study finds that flood events are significantly intensifying too, becoming five times more common over the last century.
- The effect is caused by a combination of factors, including an increase in strength of the Walker circulation – an ocean-driven pattern of air circulation that carries warm moist air from the tropical Atlantic across South America towards the Pacific, resulting in Amazon precipitation.
- Human-driven climate change is a major contributing factor to this increased Amazon basin flooding. Intensifying flood events result in lives and property lost, and significant harm to croplands, pastures and livestock.
- A better understanding of flood and drought dynamics, and better predictability due partly to this study, could help reduce this damage. How escalating changes in precipitation occurrence and intensity might be altering Amazon flora and fauna is uncertain, though new research shows that tree species composition is altering.

Smallholder farmers defy cocoa’s production model in Brazil
- Filha do Combu, a family-run chocolate factory in the Amazon makes tree-to-table organic chocolate and is an exception to this model.
- Using an agroforestry system, smallholder farms like Filha do Combu can now produce their own chocolate, which allows them to have more autonomy and control over their quality of life.
- When cocoa is grown within an agroforestry system, it helps preserve the forest by reducing erosion and the use of pesticides, as well as preserving biodiversity.
- However, there is still a lack of support from the public sector for these smallholder farmers.

Palm oil supplier to PepsiCo, Mars, and Hershey resumes deforesting in Indonesia
- A palm oil producer that supplies major companies including Nestlé, Mars, Hershey and Johnson & Johnson has been found to have cleared 4.5 square kilometers (1.7 square miles) of intact forest in Indonesia since May.
- While the clearing by the subsidiary of Jakarta-listed PT Austindo Nusantara Jaya Tbk (ANJ) is likely legal, it violates the well-publicized no-deforestation commitments of many of its customers.
- Satellite monitoring by initiatives like the Word Resources Institute’s Global Forest Watch are making it harder for companies to deny knowledge of forest clearing by suppliers.
- But how aggressively each company responds is ultimately up to them, and is often directly linked to how much pressure they receive. Only Nestlé has confirmed it is actively working to remove ANJ from its supply chain.

Land rights, forests, food systems central to limiting global warming: report
- In the wake of the dire, just released UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, a climate advocacy group known as CLARA (Climate, Land, Ambition and Rights Alliance) has published a separate report proposing that the world’s nations put far more effort into land sector measures to store carbon and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
- They suggest that these nature-oriented, land-based approaches could be far more effective, and more rapidly implemented, than relying on costly or largely untested high tech solutions such as bioenergy, carbon capture-and-storage, and geoengineering.
- Among the approaches CLARA proposes are the establishment of far stronger land rights for indigenous peoples (who are among the world’s best forest stewards), as well as a serious reduction in deforestation and the restoration of forest ecosystems worldwide.
- The CLARA report also calls for the transformation of agriculture (less tilling, less fertilizers, more support for small farms), and a global revolution in dietary habits, including a reduction in meat consumption and less food waste.

Deforestation-linked palm oil still finding its way into top consumer brands: report
- A new report by Greenpeace finds that palm oil suppliers to the world’s largest brands have cleared more than 1,300 square kilometers (500 square miles) of rainforest — an area the size of the city of Los Angeles — since the end of 2015.
- Greenpeace says palm oil-fueled deforestation remains rampant in countries like Indonesia and Malaysia because global consumer brands like Unilever, Nestlé and PepsiCo continue to buy from rogue producers.
- These brands have failed to commit to their zero-deforestation pledges and are poised to fall short of their own 2020 deadlines of cleaning up their entire supply chain from deforestation, Greenpeace says.
- Greenpeace has called for a transformation in the palm oil industry, particularly in Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer of the commodity.

Number of murdered environmental activists rose once again in 2017
- According to a new report by London-based NGO Global Witness, 207 activists were killed in 2017, the highest total number since the group started tracking violence against “land and environmental defenders” around the world. Previous reports documented 185 murdered activists in 2015 and 200 in 2016.
- Latin America is still the most dangerous place on Earth to protest the destruction of the environment and violations of land rights, with 60 percent of the killings in 2017 occurring there. In particular, Mexico saw a large increase in murders last year, from three to 15. And Brazil alone was the site of 57 murdered activists — the most deaths Global Witness has ever recorded over the course of one year in a single country.
- But Latin America is hardly alone: every region of Earth saw a growing number of attacks against activists in 2017.

Soy giant Louis Dreyfus pledges deforestation-free supply chain
- The Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC), a global commodities trader, has announced a plan to eliminate the destruction of native vegetation from its soy supply chain in Brazil and across Latin America. Particularly important to environmentalists, LDC pledges to avoid buying soy from producers who have caused new deforestation in the Cerrado biome.
- The Amazon Soy Moratorium, instituted in 2006 via an agreement between Greenpeace and global commodities companies, has been credited with vastly reducing the cutting of forests to make way for soy planting there. But the companies, until now, have resisted making a similar commitment in the Cerrado, where soy-caused deforestation is rampant.
- Many environmentalists are hailing LDC’s new deforestation commitment, though they note that the pledge has yet to be backed by implementation and timeline details.
- Tesco, the UK’s biggest supermarket chain, has also just announced the planned launch this year of a certification system that will only source soy from areas that have been certified as deforestation-free. From 2025 onward, the company also plans to transition to sourcing only from “zero deforestation areas.”

Cerrado: traditional communities win back land from agribusiness firm
- Traditional communities, which have inhabited rural lands sometimes for centuries but without land deeds, are protected under Brazilian law. However, a variety of elite land grabbers, ranging from cattle ranchers to large agribusiness companies, have used intimidation and other methods to seize community lands.
- Rural communities in Formosa do Rio Preto in Bahia state are a case in point. They are in conflict with Agronegócio Estrondo, an agribusiness firm which the communities say illegally seized their lands on the Black River. A state court has now ruled in the communities’ favor, ordering the land returned and fines paid.
- However, the communities say Estrondo, which has a documented history in Bahia as a land grabber, has continued its tactics of intimidation, recently digging a 1.8-mile trench to hinder movement of local people and livestock, and using a private security force and police to seize the rural community of Cachoeira’s cell phone tower.
- Also, in Cachoeira, in June, local police and private security, allegedly from Estrondo, entered the home of Adão Batista Gomes, arrested, then released him. He is the community leader whose name appears first on the judicial action against the agribusiness firm. Estrondo seems likely to appeal the court ruling.

Palm oil supplier to food giants clears forest, peatland in Indonesia, Greenpeace says
- The Yemen-based Hayel Saeed Anam Group, which sells palm oil to Mars, Nestlé, PepsiCo, and Unilever through subsidiaries, is responsible for clearing 40 square kilometers (15 square miles) of rainforest and peatland in Indonesia’s Papua province between 2015 and 2017, according to Greenpeace.
- Staff from the environmental organization shot video revealing the extent of the destruction.
- Greenpeace campaigners have raised concerns that Mars, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Unilever are not upholding their commitments to get rid of deforestation, peatland destruction and exploitation from their supply chains.

Brazil high court Forest Code ruling largely bad for environment, Amazon: NGOs
- In a tight decision, the Brazilian Supreme Court (STF) upheld the constitutionality of much of Brazil’s 2012 New Forest Code, that had been created under the powerful influence of the bancada ruralista agribusiness lobby. The upheld 2012 New Forest Code is a weaker body of environmental regulations than the 1965 code created under Brazil’s military government.
- The court ruling made constitutional a declared amnesty for those who illegally cleared their Legal Reserves (lands, by law, they must not clear) before 22 July 2008, eliminating required fines and tree replantings. It allows for the reduction of Legal Reserves in states or municipalities largely occupied by indigenous reserves or protected areas.
- The STF decision also allows for the reduction in size of APAs (Areas of Permanent Protection), even when considered fundamental by environmentalists for maintaining water supplies and preventing climate disasters such as floods and mudslides.
- The ruling allows farmers who have already illegally cleared protected APAs, to get authorization to clear even more land, and approves farming activities on steep slopes and hilltops. Environmentalists were critical of the high court decision, while agribusiness praised it.

Consensus grows: climate-smart agriculture key to Paris Agreement goals
- Attendees at the annual Global Landscape Forum conference in Bonn, Germany, this week sought approaches for implementing “climate-smart” agricultural practices to help keep global temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100.
- Some 40 percent of the earth’s surface is used for food production, with 400 million small farmers worldwide, plus industrial agribusiness, so policymakers understand that climate-smart agriculture, practiced broadly, could play a significant role in reducing carbon emissions and helping nations meet their Paris carbon-reduction pledges.
- Numerous agricultural management practices to reduce carbon emissions, enhance food security, productivity and profitability, are available now. They include wider use of cover crops, low and no till techniques, increased application of organic fertilizers such as manure, judicious use of chemical fertilizers, and the growing of crops bred for climate resiliency.
- These techniques are already being embraced to a degree in the U.S. and globally. Land of Lakes and Kellogg’s, for example, are insisting on sustainable farm practices from their suppliers, while John Deere is building low-till equipment that allows for “precision farming,” optimizing returns on inputs while preserving soils and soil carbon.

Raising beef cattle on grass can create a higher carbon footprint than feedlots, new study suggests
- Feedlot cattle have a smaller carbon footprint than pasture-raised cattle because they grow faster and produce higher meat yields, a new study has found
- This is important for countries that must balance the demand for beef with maintaining a fragile environment.
- However, grassland ranchers argue this is a short-sighted approach to take, and that, holistically, grass-fed cattle are better for the environment.

Charcoal and cattle ranching tearing apart the Gran Chaco
- The year-long probe of Paraguay’s charcoal exports by the NGO Earthsight revealed that much of the product was coming from the Chaco, the world’s fastest-disappearing tropical forest.
- Suppliers appear to have reassured international supermarket chains that it was sustainable and that they had certification from international groups such as FSC and PEFC.
- But further digging by Earthsight revealed that the charcoal production methods used may not fit with the intent of certification.
- Several grocery store chains mentioned in the report have said they’ll take a closer look at their supply chains, and the certification body PEFC is reexamining how its own standards are applied.

New report exposes “network of secret deal-making and corruption” that has kept Cambodia’s ruling family in power for decades
- In a report titled “Hostile Takeover,” the group lays out evidence that Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen — who has been in power for 30 years — and his family manipulate the country’s economy in order to accrue vast personal fortunes while using arbitrary imprisonment, murder, and torture to silence political opponents.
- Cambodia has dwelled at the bottom of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index for years, ranking 150th out of 168 countries in 2015 — the lowest of all Southeast Asian countries.
- Global Witness said in a statement that the report should serve as a warning for investors in the United States in particular. As Cambodia’s biggest trading partner, the U.S. imports a third of all Cambodian exports, worth almost $3 billion a year.

Oil palm plantations need to protect orangutans (commentary)
- All orangutans are Critically Endangered.
- The threats to orangutans are well known and easy to sum up. First, there is habitat loss, primarily because of plantation development for palm oil, rubber, pulp and paper and coconut, small-scale agriculture, and reckless and illegal burning of land. Secondly, it is outright killing.
- This post is a commentary — the views expressed are those of the author.

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