topic: Environmental Law

topic: Environmental Law

Social media activity version | Lean version

To renew or not to renew? African nations reconsider EU fishing deals
- The European Union currently has fisheries access deals with 11 African countries, several of which are up for renegotiation this year.
- Under the deals, called Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreements (SFPAs), European fishing companies gain access to resource-filled foreign waters, while the African countries get cash.
- Senegal was the first country to sign such a deal, in 1979, but President Bassirou Diomaye Faye was elected in March after proposing to suspend it altogether in response to concerns that it’s unfair to local fishers. It’s not yet clear whether he will follow through, but his rhetoric reflects shifting arrangements in African fisheries, where the EU no longer dominates as it once did.
- Experts see this as a possible win for local control of precious marine resources, but they also caution that many of the alternative arrangements African governments are turning to instead of SFPAs are more socially and environmentally problematic, and less transparent.

Bird populations are mysteriously declining at an Amazon park in Ecuador & beyond
- The number of individual birds found at the Yasuní Biosphere Reserve has dropped by half, according to a study published earlier this year.
- Other studies have shown a similar trend in preserved rainforests, pointing to habitat deterioration and pesticides as the usual causes of widespread bird decline in the Northern Hemisphere, but this does not explain the phenomenon in tropical sites.
- Researchers point to a few possible causes for the declines, such as signs of reduction in insect abundance, but climate change is the common suspect in all cases.

Canada oil sands air pollution 20-64 times worse than industry says: Study
- The amount of air pollution coming from Canada’s oil sands extraction is between 20 to 64 times higher than industry-reported figures, according to a groundbreaking study. Researchers found that the total amount of air pollution released from the oil sands is equal to all other human-caused air pollution sources in Canada combined.
- The Canadian government and Yale University study used aircraft-based sensors that captured real time readings for a much wider range of pollutants than are usually measured by the oil sands industry, which is meeting its legal requirements under Canadian law.
- While the study didn’t look at human health, it found hydrocarbon releases included toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs), intermediate volatility and semi-volatile organic compounds that can affect health. These toxic compounds can also react in the atmosphere, contributing to the formation of fine particulates harmful to health.
- The research adds to long-standing concerns by the region’s Indigenous communities over oil sands operations impacts on health and the environment. The study also suggests potential blind spots in calculating emissions from other industrial activities, including various types of unconventional oil and gas production.

Undercover in a shark fin trafficking ring: Interview with wildlife crime fighter Andrea Crosta
- Worldwide, many of the key players in wildlife trafficking are also involved in other criminal enterprises, from drug smuggling to human trafficking and money laundering.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Andrea Crosta, founder of Earth League International, talks about the group’s new report on shark fin trafficking from Latin America to East Asia and the concept of “crime convergence.”
- International wildlife trafficking, including the illegal trade in shark fins, is dominated by Chinese nationals, Crosta says.
- Since smuggling routes often overlap and criminal groups frequently work together across borders, Crosta calls for field collaboration among countries and law enforcement agencies to fight wildlife crime, the world’s fourth-largest criminal enterprise.

On a Borneo mountainside, Indigenous Dayak women hold fire and defend forest
- Indigenous women in Indonesian Borneo often have to combine domestic responsibilities with food cultivation, known as behuma in the dialect of the Dayak Pitap community in South Kalimantan province.
- Swidden agriculture relies on burning off discarded biomass before planting land in order to fertilize soil and limit pest infestations. But a law enforcement campaign to tackle wildfires has seen criminal prosecutions of at least 11 Borneo women for using fire to grow small-scale food crops from 2018-2022.
- Dayak women and several fieldworkers say the practice of burning is safe owing to cultural safeguards against fires spreading that have been passed down families for centuries.
- Indonesia’s 2009 Environment Law included a stipulation that farmers cultivating food on less than 2 hectares (5 acres) were exempt from prosecution, but Mongabay analysis shows prosecutors and police have pressed charges against small farmers using other laws.

Environmental defenders paid the price during Panama’s historic mining protests – report
- Last year’s protests against a copper mine in Panama resulted in injuries, lost eyesight and several deaths, according to a new report from the Foundation for Integral Community Development and the Conservation of Ecosystems in Panama (FUNDICCEP) and Panamanian National Network in Defense of Water.
- The protests were in response to a new contract for the Cobre Panamá copper mine operated by Minera Panamá, a subsidiary of the Canadian mining company First Quantum Minerals (FQM).
- Environmental defenders are concerned that another crackdown could take place should there be protests against renewed mining negotiations with the government of President-elect José Raúl Mulino, who takes office July 1.

Impunity and pollution abound in DRC mining along the road to the energy transition
- In the DRC’s copper belt, pollution from the mining of cobalt and copper, critical minerals for the energy transition, is on the rise and polluters are ignoring their legal obligations to clean it up.
- Cases of pollution have caused deaths, health problems in babies, the destruction of crops, contaminated water and the relocation of homes or an entire village, residents and community organizations say.
- Mining is the economic lifeblood of the region and the state-owned mining company, Gécamines, is a shareholder in several other companies — some accused of these same rights abuses.
- Mongabay visited several villages in Lualaba province affected by pollution and human rights violations to assess the state of the unresolved damage — and whether companies are meeting their legal obligations.

Desperation sets in for Indigenous Sumatrans who lost their forests to plantations
- The seminomadic Suku Anak Dalam Indigenous people have lived in two areas of what is now Jambi province on Indonesia’s Sumatra island for generations, but an influx of plantation interests has shrunk the customary territory available to their society.
- More than 2,000 Suku Anak Dalam have lost their land to oil palm and rubber plantations, which have also led to a loss of the native trees from which community members collect forest honey to sell.
- Several Suku Anak Dalam interviewees said state-owned rubber plantation company PT Alam Lestari Nusantara had failed to properly compensate them for their land.
- The company did not respond to several requests for comment.

Rights groups call for greater public input in ASEAN environmental rights framework
- Civil society and Indigenous rights groups are calling for greater public participation and transparency in the drafting process of what they say could be a pivotal agreement to protect environmental rights and defenders in Southeast Asia.
- The Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) declaration on environmental rights was initially envisioned as a legally binding framework, but the scaling back of the level of commitment to a nonbinding declaration has raised concerns among observers.
- Groups are calling for an extension of the public consultation period, which lasted for only one month, and greater commitments to address key issues in the region, such as strengthening Indigenous rights, access to environmental information and justice, and clarifying mechanisms for resolving transboundary development impacts.
- If the treaty remains non-legally binding, its ultimate success will depend largely on the political will of each separate ASEAN state and on the continued efforts of civil society to hold their governments accountable.

Scientists explore nature’s promise in combating plastic waste
- Since 1950, humanity has produced more than 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic. Most has ended up in landfills or the environment. Now, scientists are working on biological solutions to address the plastic pollution crisis at every stage of the material’s life cycle.
- Innovative new filters built from naturally occurring ingredients can capture micro- and nanoplastics in all their diverse forms. These filters could remove plastic contamination from drinking water, and prevent microplastic pollution in industrial and domestic wastewater from reaching rivers and oceans.
- Plastic-degrading enzymes, isolated from microbes and insects and engineered for efficiency and performance in industrial conditions, can break plastics down at the molecular level and even be used to turn plastic waste into new useful chemicals.
- Biological solutions are being developed for a range of pollutants, not just plastics. But this technological research is still young. Crucially, we must not allow solutions for existing pollutants to make us complacent about the impact of new chemicals on the environment, or we could risk making the same mistakes again.

As plastic talks wrap up in Canada, fishers in Indonesia count the costs
- Fishers in the Thousand Islands archipelago off the Jakarta coast have reported extensive economic losses due to the scale of plastic waste littering their seas.
- Declining catch volume and costly repairs to boat engines are cited as drags on productivity, with one fisher telling Mongabay that his family now earns less than a decade earlier.
- Negotiators convened by the U.N. hope to conclude an international agreement in November that would limit the hundreds of millions of tons of plastic produced around the world each year.

Indigenous leader’s killer is convicted in Brazil, but tensions over land remain
- Bar owner João Carlos da Silva was on April 15 sentenced to 18 years in prison for the murder of Indigenous land defender and teacher Ari Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau four years earlier.
- Ari’s murder became symbolic of the struggle land defenders in Brazil face when protecting their ancestral territories, including constant threats and sometimes deadly violence.
- The Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous Territory faces fresh threats after a national lawmaker claimed its current boundaries are wrong and vowed to reduce the area in favor of local cattle ranchers and farmers.
- It’s one of several territorial setbacks that Indigenous lands across Brazil are currently facing; others include a territory in Paraná state whose demarcation process has been suspended, and one in Bahía state that could potentially be auctioned off.

At its fourth summit, 170 nations strive toward a global plastics treaty by 2025
- Last week, the International Negotiating Committee of the United Nations Environment Programme wrapped up the fourth of five scheduled negotiating sessions to develop an international treaty to control plastic pollution.
- Environmentalists say the atmosphere in Ottawa was better and more cooperative, with more achieved than at the third meeting, which took place in November and bogged down in procedural disagreements. However, there was little forward progress in Ottawa on a proposal to significantly reduce plastic production.
- For the first time ever, the pollution of the world’s oceans by large amounts of “Ghost gear” came under discussion at a treaty summit. This plastic waste includes a variety of fishing equipment, including plastic traps, nets, lines, ropes and artificial bait left floating in the world’s seas which can harm marine life and degrade into microplastics.
- Two committees have been authorized to work during intersessional meetings on draft language for discussion and possible adoption at the next, and potentially final treaty session, scheduled for late November in Busan, South Korea. The goal is to achieve a plastic pollution treaty by 2025.

Indonesian palm oil, Brazilian beef top contributors to U.S. deforestation exposure
- A new report reveals that the United States imported palm oil, cattle products, soybeans, cocoa, rubber, coffee and corn linked to an area of tropical deforestation the size of Los Angeles between October 2021 and November 2023.
- Palm oil from Indonesia was the largest contributor to deforestation, followed by Brazil due to cattle grazing.
- The report by Trase, commissioned by Global Witness, found that the U.S. continues to import deforestation-linked commodities while awaiting the passage of the FOREST Act, which aims to prohibit imports of products linked to illegal deforestation.
- Experts emphasize the need for action from companies, governments, financial institutions and citizens to stop commodity-driven forest loss, urging support for smallholders, increased transparency in supply chains, and the passage of the FOREST Act in the U.S.

Plastic pollution talks end & Arctic peoples return home to a ‘sink’ of plastic
- In the wake of the plastics treaty talks in Ottawa, a new report highlights the severe impacts of plastics and petrochemicals on Arctic Indigenous communities.
- Indigenous delegates were left with bittersweet feelings that negotiations did not lead to commitments to cut plastic production, while oil companies and producing countries say more recycling is the answer.
- The Arctic is a hemispheric sink collecting plastic pollution from all corners of the world and is melting four times faster than the rest of the world.
- Indigenous communities in Alaska are among those who bear the brunt of climate change and plastic pollution, with studies finding toxic chemicals in peoples’ blood, breast milk and placentas, and melting ice impacting hunting and food security.

Indonesia resumes lobster larvae exports despite sustainability, trade concerns
- The Indonesian government will resume a controversial policy of exporting lobster larvae, initially just to Vietnam, in exchange for investment in its own lobster-farming industry.
- The ban has met with controversy since it was introduced in 2016; a subsequent attempt to lift it failed after the fisheries minister at the time was arrested for taking bribes to issue export permits.
- The current minister says the lifting this time around is based on pragmatic considerations, with law enforcement efforts failing to stop the smuggling of lobster larvae.
- Critics say the move will benefit Vietnam more than it will Indonesia, given that the former’s far more advanced lobster-farming industry generates far more value from the sale of mature lobsters than Indonesia ever could from the sale of larvae.

New ban threatens traditional fishers in Brazil’s Mato Grosso state
- Legislation in effect since Jan. 1 has banned fishing in Mato Grosso state rivers for five years, with heavy opposition from environmental defenders and traditional fishers.
- The bill affects part of the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest, the Cerrado savanna and part of the Pantanal wetland, one of the largest continuous wet areas on the planet.
- Experts consider fishers in the region guardians of the rivers and fear the bill could eliminate traditional fishing in the state.

No answers for Ghanaian fishery observer’s family months after suspected death
- Samuel Abayateye, a 38-year-old father of two, was working as a fisheries observer when he was reported missing from his assigned vessel in October 2023.
- After a body missing its head, forearms and feet that Abayateye’s family says closely resembled him washed ashore in December, the Ghana Police Service opened an investigation.
- Five months later, Abayateye’s family said they still haven’t received any information from the authorities investigating the case, or the results of a DNA test to confirm the identity of the body.
- A fisheries observer told Mongabay the case has sown fear among observers appointed to monitor and report on illegal fishing in fleets operating in Ghana. Fishing industry experts say the case highlights the dangers faced by observers, whose job is critical to ensuring fishing vessels comply with the law.

New illegal logging threatens Liberia’s forests amid vague ban
- Large-scale commercial operators are evading Liberian forestry regulations by illegally processing wood destined for export on-site in forests.
- Timber milled in forests with chainsaws is legally restricted to the production of boards by artisanal loggers for sale on the domestic market, but reporting by Liberian newspaper The Daylight and research by U.S.-based NGO Forest Trends has found large-scale operators producing thicker blocks of high-value wood for export.
- Chainsaw-milled timber isn’t entered into the country’s timber-tracking system, meaning producers can evade sustainable forestry regulations as well as taxes and benefits due to local communities.
- The country’s Forestry Development Authority says it has banned production of this type of timber, but campaigners say it has done little to publicize the ban or prevent traffickers from exploiting this loophole.

What’s at stake for the environment in Panama’s upcoming election?
- Panama holds elections Sunday, May 5 for president, vice president and all 71 seats in its national assembly.
- Several presidential candidates have a chance to win, including José Raúl Mulino, Romulo Roux, Ricardo Lombana and Martín Torrijos.
- They will have to address the country’s recent closure of a controversial mine, water shortages and an out-of-date waste management system that has led to pollution and public health concerns.

Indigenous Bolivians flee homes as backlash to mining protest turns explosive
- Indigenous communities have been threatened and attacked for protesting mining pollution, water scarcity and land use change in the community collective of Acre Antequera.
- The collective, or ayllu, is an Indigenous territorial structure made up of eight Quechua communities traditionally devoted to pastoralism and agriculture.
- But open-pit mining for silver, copper, lead, zinc, tin and other minerals has used up a lot of their freshwater.
- While protesting earlier this month against the harmful impacts of mining, several women in the community said dynamite was thrown into their homes and their children weren’t allowed to attend school.

Goldman Prize honors Brazilian investigation linking JBS & deforestation
- Marcel Gomes, the executive secretary at investigative journalism outlet Repórter Brasil, is one of this year’s prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize winners.
- Gomes coordinated an international investigation in December 2021 on JBS’ beef chain, using a powerful data platform on Brazilian livestock, investigative teams in different countries and a grassroots network of Indigenous communities, local NGOs and small-scale farmers.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Marcel Gomes said the Repórter Brasil series pressured big European retailers to stop selling illegally sourced JBS beef and public authorities to monitor big beef companies.
- Also known as the “Green Nobel Prize,” the Goldman Environmental Prize honored five other environmental activists on April 29.

Fewer fish and more rules lead to illegal catches, Italian fishers say
- The line between legal and illegal fishing in the waters off Italy’s Calabria region is often blurred, with fishers blaming stringent top-down regulations for constricting their traditional practices.
- The issue is further muddied by the presence here of the ‘ndrangheta or Calabrian mafia, which investigations have shown is involved in the fish trade and also uses it as cover for illicit activities such as drug smuggling.
- The Mediterranean Sea is experiencing a decline in fish stocks, ranging from 60-90% depending on the species, with the NGO Sea Shepherd Italia blaming illegal fishing for environmental damage.

Women weave a culture of resistance and agroecology in Ecuador’s Intag Valley
- In Ecuador’s Intag Valley, the women’s artisan collective Mujer y Medio Ambiente (Women and the Environment) has developed an innovative way to dye and stitch fibers from the cabuya plant, an agave-like shrub.
- The women use environmentally friendly techniques, such as natural dyes from native plants and insects, and agroecological farming practices to cultivate cabuya as a complementary crop to their primary harvests.
- Being part of the collective has empowered the women economically and personally, enabling them to contribute to their children’s education, gain autonomy, and become community leaders in the nearly 30-year struggle to keep mining companies out of their forests.
- In March 2023, the community’s resistance paid off when a provincial court recognized that mining companies had violated the communities’ constitutional rights and canceled their permits, setting an important precedent for protecting constitutional and environmental rights in Ecuador.

Tribes turn to the U.N. as major wind project plans to cut through their lands in the U.S.
- Last week a United States federal judge rejected a request from Indigenous nations to stop SunZia, a $10 billion dollar wind transmission project that would cut through traditional tribal lands in southwestern Arizona.
- Indigenous leaders and advocates are turning to the U.N. to intervene and are calling for a moratorium on green energy projects for all U.N. entities “until the rights of Indigenous peoples are respected and recognized.”
- Indigenous leaders say they are not in opposition to renewable energy projects, but rather projects that don’t go through the due process and attend their free, prior and informed consent.
- According to the company, the wind transmission project is the largest clean energy infrastructure initiative in U.S. history, and will provide power to 3 million Americans, stretching from New Mexico to as far as California.

All aboard Tren Maya: Here’s what we found riding Mexico’s controversial railway
- Mongabay sent a team to the Yucatán Peninsula to ride the Tren Maya, a multibillion-dollar train that’s become controversial for its environmental impacts.
- Reporter Maxwell Radwin and videographer Caitlin Cooper set out to ride the train from Cancún toward Palenque and back, with a stop in Playa del Carmen.
- On their journey, they looked for evidence of deforestation, the relocation of local and Indigenous communities, and the pollution of waterbodies — all part of multiple injunctions filed by communities and activist groups.
- In addition to deforestation, one of the major concerns is that pilings under line 5 are penetrating cave systems along the Caribbean coast, threatening freshwater and subterranean habitats.

Forest officer’s killing highlights Bangladesh authorities’ waning power
- The recent killing of a forest officer by illegal quarriers in Bangladesh has raised questions about the effectiveness of law enforcement amid intensifying encroachment into protected forests.
- Sajjaduzzaman, 30, was struck by the quarriers’ truck after confronting them for digging up a hillside in the southern district of Cox’s Bazar.
- Attacks on forest officers by people illegally logging, quarrying, hunting or carrying out other forms of natural resource extraction are a long-running problem, with around 140 officers attacked over the past five years.
- Experts have called for a more coordinated approach from various government law enforcement agencies to support the Forest Department in keeping encroachers out of protected areas.

Amid record-high fires across the Amazon, Brazil loses primary forests
- The number of fires shows no signs of easing as Brazil’s Roraima faces unprecedented blazes, and several Amazonian countries, including Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela, registered record-high outbreaks in the first quarter this year.
- Fire outbreaks in primary (old-growth) forest in Brazil’s Amazon soared by 152% in 2023, according to a recent study, rising from 13,477 in 2022 to 34,012 in 2023.
- Fires in the mature forest regions are the leading drivers of degradation of the Amazon Rainforest because the biome hasn’t evolved to adapt to such blazes, according to the researchers.
- The fires are a result of a drought that has been fueled by climate change and worsened by natural weather phenomena, such as El Niño, which has intensified dry conditions already aggravated by high temperatures across the world, experts say.

Activists file last-gasp suit as Indonesia fails again to pass Indigenous bill
- Lawyers for Indonesia’s main Indigenous alliance have initiated legal proceedings against the government for its failure to pass a long-awaited bill on Indigenous rights.
- The suit seeks to compel Indonesia’s parliament to expedite passage of the bill, which has remained deadlocked for more than a decade amid intransigence by elected representatives.
- “It still needs to be discussed,” a senior parliamentarian from the Golkar party said earlier this month.
- However, few expect any progress over the next few months, with a new parliament to be sworn in on Oct. 1 and a new president on Oct. 20.

Uttarakhand limits agricultural land sales amid protests & tourism development
- Following widespread protests, Uttarakhand’s Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami has issued orders to district magistrates to deny permission to sell agricultural lands to those outside the state.
- With just 14% of its land designated for agriculture and more than 65% of the population relying on agriculture, calls for legislation to safeguard residents’ land rights have intensified.
- With a lack of comprehensive, updated land records, monitoring the usage of farmlands for nonagricultural purposes has become challenging.
- Lack of employment opportunities and resources as well as shifting weather patterns and climate change have pushed numerous farmers to sell their land holdings.

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.

Brazil boosts protection of Amazon mangroves with new reserves in Pará state
- The state of Pará has created two new conservation areas along the Amazonian coastline, placing almost all of its mangroves under federal protection.
- The two reserves mean that an additional 74,700 hectares (184,600 acres) have been included in the largest and most conserved continuous belt of mangroves on the planet.
- The process to create the reserves took more than 13 years and faced several setbacks; the final outcome has been celebrated by environmentalists as a victory for local communities and biodiversity.
- The new extractive reserves allow resident populations to engage in traditional and sustainable extractive practices such as fishing and hunting, while keeping out big businesses, such as commercial aquaculture or logging.

Cross-border Indigenous efforts in Peru & Brazil aim to protect isolated groups
- Indigenous organizations in Peru and Brazil are joining forces to push their respective governments to safeguard the Yavarí-Tapiche Territorial Corridor, which covers 16 million hectares (39.5 million acres) across both countries.
- The cross-border initiative aims to protect the ancestral territories of Indigenous peoples in isolation and initial contact who travel freely across both borders and are threatened by those who engage in illegal activity in or near their territories.
- The Indigenous organizations plan to create a commission, made up of groups from both sides of the border, to exchange knowledge and define cross-border Indigenous policies for the protection of isolated peoples, such as measures to prevent territorial invasions and collaborate on health matters.

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.

In largest ever study, Indigenous and local communities report the impacts of climate change
- Indigenous peoples and local communities are reporting a series of tangible and nuanced impacts of climate change, according to a new study.
- The study collected 1,661 firsthand reports of change in sites across all inhabited continents and aggregated the reports into 369 indicators of climate change impacts, including changes in precipitation, plant cultivation and marine ecosystems.
- Existing measures to track climate change impacts are barely able to relate to the diverse and complex ways in which local people experience and observe environmental changes, according to the authors. For instance, instrumental measurements might capture changes in rainfall patterns but miss crucial relationships between climate change awareness, sensitivity and vulnerability.
- This research constitutes the largest global effort by Indigenous peoples and local communities to compile and categorize local observations of climate change and its impacts.

International hesitancy to adopt environmental regulations threatens Indigenous rights
- In recent years, state and corporate actors have been hesitant to adopt measures to reach climate and biodiversity goals, in some cases watering down regulatory frameworks or pulling out of voluntary commitments.
- Industry experts, the private sector and environmental organizations say this is not surprising, but for different reasons: Some argue the measures are too difficult to meet, while others say parties are putting profits before sustainability.
- The EU has struggled to pass its Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), a new legislative framework that aims to enhance the protection of the environment and human rights. Meanwhile, major banks and financial institutions are pulling away from various voluntary frameworks, such as Climate Action 100+ (CA100+) and the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi).
- Critics warn that a lack of such regulations could deprive Indigenous peoples of important protections to safeguard and guarantee their rights.

Brazil’s illegal gold trade takes a hammering, but persists underground
- Measures throughout 2023 to curb the illegal gold trade in Brazil led to a 20% drop in the country’s exports of the precious metal.
- In Itaituba, the hub of the Amazon illegal gold trade, taxes from gold sales fell by more than 90% in just the first quarter of this year.
- Experts attribute this drop to police raids on illegal mining operations and on requirements for sellers to issue electronic invoices.
- But they warn the illegal gold still persists, shifting to unofficial channels to evade the eye of regulators.

Rapid growth of Bolivia’s lithium industry creating new problems for local communities
- A lithium plant is using untested equipment and potentially mismanaging its use of freshwater, raising concerns for residents about whether the Bolivian government can responsibly manage the rapid growth of the industry.
- Activists are concerned about what they found during a recent inspection of lithium facilities in the Salar de Uyuni, a salt flat with an estimated 21 million tons of lithium.
- They called for increased transparency about what lithium facilities are able to produce and how much water and electricity they’re using.

Conservationists welcome new PNG Protected Areas Act — but questions remain
- In February 2024, Papua New Guinea’s parliament passed the Protected Areas Bill, first introduced two decades ago, into an act, which aims to establish a national system of protected areas to achieve the conservation target of protecting 30% of PNG’s territory by 2030.
- The act lays out a legal framework for working with customary landowners in the country to earmark protected areas, establishes regulations to manage these areas and provides provisions for alternative livelihoods to forest-dependent communities.
- The act also mandates the establishment of a long-term Biodiversity and Climate Task Fund, which communities can access to implement their management plans and conservation objectives.
- While conservationists say the act is a good step toward protecting biodiversity, they raise concerns about its implementation and whether the promised benefits of protected areas will reach landowning communities.

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.

Research links deforestation in Cambodia to stunting in kids, anemia in women
- An analysis of public health data in Cambodia has found increased rates of malnutrition among children born in areas where deforestation had recently occurred.
- It also found that pregnant women in these areas were more likely to suffer from anemia, a condition that often correlates with incidences of malaria.
- Cambodia has lost nearly 30% of its forest cover this century, while more than 30% of its children under 5 have stunted growth due to malnutrition.
- The study illustrates how deforestation and the ecological disruptions it causes can compound previously existing rural health issues.

In Java Sea, vigilantism and poverty rise as purse seine fishing continues
- Fishing communities on small islands in the Java Sea and farther afield have long complained that large purse seine vessels are encroaching on traditional fishing grounds.
- On Sembilan Island, between the islands of Java and Borneo, local fishers have resorted to vigilantism due to what they say is inaction by authorities to prevent fishing with the purse seine, known locally as cantrang.
- The head of the local fisheries department told Mongabay Indonesia that fishers would see a crackdown against the boats.

Forests in Vietnam’s Central Highlands at risk as development projects take priority
- Lâm Đồng province in Vietnam’s Central Highlands plans to delist an area of forest a quarter the size of the country’s biggest city, Ho Chi Minh City, in a bid to legalize farmland that’s currently zoned as forest.
- But an analysis of district- and city-level plans indicates an additional area more than half as large, most of which is natural forest, is also slated to be converted for a series of projects and infrastructure to serve socioeconomic development.
- More than three-quarters of that additional forest conversion will go toward mining projects, compared with a fraction of a percent that will be allocated for the use of ethnic minority communities.
- The forest delisting raises another concern: for every hectare of forest it converts, Lâm Đồng must reforest a hectare elsewhere — triple if it’s natural forest — and the province simply doesn’t have enough land available to do that.

Brazil’s cattle industry could suffer major losses without climate policies, report says
- Domestic beef production in Brazil could drop by 25% by 2050 as governments and the private sector look to step up climate change and forest conservation strategies, according to a new report from Orbitas, an initiative from Climate Advisers.
- Deforestation from cattle ranching could lead to hotter, drier conditions that worsen cattle health. It could also reduce soil productivity needed for growing animal feed, the report said.
- The industry has to invest in new technological and management techniques in order to prevent major losses.

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.

New FPIC guide designed to help protect Indigenous rights as mineral mining booms
- In the face of growing demand for critical minerals, Indigenous organizations developed a guide to help Indigenous communities implement their free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) when investors visit their lands for potential mining projects.
- Of the 30 metals and minerals needed to feed these technologies, about 54% are on and near Indigenous and peasant lands, according to a study published in Nature.
- The guide helps communities mold the FPIC framework to their governance and value systems and provides them with a “menu of options,” including preparations in advance of investor meetings, how to work through the negotiation process, steps to consider after a decision and a framework to agree on benefits of a project.
- By not following the FPIC process, companies open themselves up to operational, political, legal, reputational and investment risk when Indigenous activists protest their activities, a legal expert says.

Island-building and overfishing wreak destruction of South China Sea reefs
- The offshore islets and reefs of the South China Sea have been the stage of intense geopolitical standoffs for decades, as the region’s coastal states compete for territorial control of the productive maritime area that includes oil and gas fields and reef and oceanic fisheries.
- A new investigation based on satellite monitoring and fisheries data reveals that overfishing, giant clam harvesting and island-building have devasted significant portions of the region’s shallow coral reefs.
- Experts say the direct loss of some of the world’s most diverse marine ecosystems is not the only cost, citing likely consequences for distant fisheries that depend on spawning grounds on some of the now-obliterated reefs.
- Actions by China and Vietnam were found to be by far the most egregious; however, experts say the onus lies on all South China Sea coastal states to work together toward solutions that will ensure the long-term protection and health of remaining reefs.

Putting a value on Indonesia’s marine resources: Interview with Annisya Rosdiana & Heidi Retnoningtyas
- A group of experts led by Annisya Rosdiana from the Fisheries Resource Center of Indonesia (FRCI) is designing Indonesia’s ocean account to determine the exact abundance of the country’s maritime and fisheries resources.
- This initiative, begun in 2021, is part of the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries’ efforts to improve sustainable marine management.
- Indonesia’s ocean account is also part of the Global Ocean Accounts Partnership (GOAP), which aims to establish globally accepted ocean accounting methods.
- The initiative faces challenges due to data deficiencies, lack of coordination among government agencies, and weak enforcement of fisheries policies on the ground.

As a megaport rises in Cameroon, a delicate coastal ecosystem ebbs
- The deepwater port at Kribi, Cameroon, is a massive project, begun in 2011 and slated for completion in 2040.
- It aims to decongest the existing port at Douala and become a trade hub for all Central African countries.
- The port is located just a few kilometers from Cameroon’s only marine protected area, home to green, olive ridley and hawksbill turtles.
- While aiming to improve the country’s economy, the port has generated unintended environmental consequences, intensifying coastal erosion, increasing human pressure and pollution, and endangering marine life and local fishers’ livelihoods.

World Bank’s IFC under fire over alleged abuses at Liberian plantation it funded
- An investigation into the International Finance Corporation’s handling of human rights abuses at a project it financed in Liberia, the Salala Rubber Corporation, is expected to severely incriminate the World Bank’s private lending arm.
- The World Bank’s Compliance Advisory Ombudsman investigated whether the IFC did enough to address allegations of gender-based violence, land grabbing and unfair compensation by its client, Socfin, between 2008 and 2020.
- It’s anticipated that the report will find the finance institution didn’t act to prevent Socfin from violating its legal obligations to local communities and protect the environment; this finding would follow closely on a damning report into similar failures to hold another IFC client, Bridge International Schools in Kenya, to account
- The IFC missed a February deadline to respond to the CAO report and submit an action plan; the delay comes as a new remedial action framework for the IFC is due to be finalized and released

How to ‘stop mining before it starts’: Interview with community organizer Carlos Zorrilla
- Over nearly 30 years, Carlos Zorrilla and the organizations he co-founded helped stop six companies from developing open-pit copper mining operations in the Intag Valley in Ecuador.
- As a leader and public figure, Zorrilla is often asked for advice from communities facing similar struggles, so in 2009 he published a guide on how to protect one’s community from mining and other extractive operations.
- The 60-page guide shares wisdom and resources, including mines’ environmental and health risks, key early warning signs a company is moving in, and advice on mitigating damage if a mine does go ahead.
- The most important point, Zorrilla says in an interview with Mongabay, is to stop mining before it starts.

Indonesian court jails environmentalist for flagging illegal farms in marine park
- An Indonesian court has sentenced an environmental activist to seven months in jail for a Facebook post in which he criticized the growing problem of illegal shrimp farms operating inside a marine park.
- The court found that Daniel Frits Maurits Tangkilisan had “created unrest” because of his post, under a controversial 2008 law on online speech that’s been widely used to silence environmental and human rights activists.
- Three other activists face similar charges in the case, which centers on their efforts to highlight the presence of illegal shrimp farms inside Karimunjawa National Park, which is supposed to be a protected area.
- Fellow rights activists have lambasted the ruling against Daniel, saying it sets a dangerous precedent for exploitation of the justice system to silence and criminalize individuals.

Resort in Philippines’ protected Chocolate Hills sparks uproar, probes
- A video of a resort cut into the Philippines’ Chocolate Hills, a protected area, has caused public outrage in the island nation.
- The public outcry has prompted government investigations into the resort, which received approval at the local level but failed to obtain environmental permits required by national law.
- The controversy comes as tourism makes a post-pandemic comeback in the Philippines, prompting questions about how the industry can be managed more sustainably.

Enviva bankruptcy fallout ripples through biomass industry, U.S. and EU
- In March, Enviva, the world’s largest woody biomass producer for industrial energy, declared bankruptcy. That cataclysmic collapse triggered a rush of political and economic maneuvering in the U.S. (a key wood pellet producing nation), and in Europe (a primary industrial biomass energy user in converted coal plants).
- While Enviva publicly claims it will survive the bankruptcy, a whistleblower in touch with sources inside the company says it will continue failing to meet its wood pellet contract obligations, and that its production facilities — plagued by chronic systemic manufacturing problems — will continue underperforming.
- Enviva and the forestry industry appear now to be lobbying the Biden administration, hoping to tap into millions in renewable energy credits under the Inflation Reduction Act — a move environmentalists are resisting. In March, federal officials made a fact-finding trip to an Enviva facility and local communities who say the firm is a major polluter.
- Meanwhile, some EU nations are scrambling to find new sources of wood pellets to meet their sustainable energy pledges under the Paris agreement. The UK’s Drax, an Enviva pellet user (and also a major pellet producer), is positioning itself to greatly increase its pellet production in the U.S. South and maybe benefit from IRA subsidies.

Report shows dire state of Mekong’s fish — but damage can still be undone
- A recent report by 25 conservation organizations raises alarm about the state of fish in the Mekong River, determining that at least 19% of species are threatened with extinction.
- The report calls for the global “Emergency Recovery Plan” for freshwater biodiversity to be implemented in the Mekong, with an emphasis on letting the river and its tributaries flow more naturally, improving water quality, protecting and restoring critical habitats and species, and curbing unsustainable resource extraction.
- Despite the threats, the report notes conservation bright spots, including the discovery of new species, and emphasizes that it is not too late to protect the river, its fish, and the millions of people who depend on it.

Locals slam Zimbabwe for turning a blind eye to Chinese miner’s violations
- Mining workers and villagers near the Bikita Minerals lithium mine in Zimbabwe accuse the government and Chinese mining company Sinomine Resource Group of sidelining environmental and social standards in the scramble for lithium.
- After a series of displacements, spills, labor abuses, a death, and little action by authorities, locals and experts accuse the government of failing to enforce its own laws and letting bad mining practices run loose.
- According to industry experts, in theory, Chinese investments come with an increasingly robust set of ESG standards, but in practice these aren’t followed if host countries “shy away” from making such demands from their new partners.
- Zimbabwe, under economic stress, holds Africa’s largest lithium reserves and sees potential for an economic boost from mining the critical mineral, which represents the country’s fastest growing industry, with companies from China as the largest share of investors

Expediting environmental policy: Interview with Bangladesh minister Saber Hossain Chowdhury
- Dhaka is considered to have some of the poorest air quality of any city in the world, the result of industrial-scale coal- and wood-burning brick kilns, diesel-powered vehicles, and ongoing construction work.
- At the same time, sea-level rise, shrimp cultivation and reduced water flow in its major rivers leave the southwestern part of the country barren for nearly half of the year due to saltwater intrusion.
- Saber Hossain Chowdhury, Bangladesh’s newly appointed minister of environment, forest and climate change, has declared a 100-day baseline program to identify the various environmental issues in the country and possible solutions to overcome them.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Chowdhury emphasizes the need for strong coordination across government, political will and leadership, and increased awareness from the public to protect the environment and meet the country’s clean energy goals.

Cambodian official acquitted in trial that exposed monkey-laundering scheme
- A U.S. court has acquitted a senior Cambodian official accused of involvement in smuggling wild-caught and endangered monkeys into the U.S. for biomedical research.
- Kry Masphal was arrested in November 2022 and has been detained in the U.S. since then, but is now free to return to his job as director of the Cambodian Forestry Administration’s Department of Wildlife and Biodiversity.
- Evidence presented at his trial in Miami included a video of him appearing to acknowledge that long-tailed macaques collected by Cambodian exporter Vanny Bio Research were in fact being smuggled.
- The Cambodian government has welcomed news of the acquittal, while animal rights group PETA says that despite the ruling, “the evidence showed that countless monkeys were abducted from their forest homes and laundered with dirty paperwork.”

Indigenous Filipinos fight to protect biodiverse mountains from mining
- The global transition to renewable energy is driving a boom in applications to mine nickel and other critical minerals in the Victoria-Anepahan Mountains in the Philippines’ Palawan province.
- The Indigenous Tagbanua are organizing to halt these mining plans before they begin, along with downstream farmers, church and civil society groups.
- Concerns raised by the Tagbanua and other mining opponents include loss of land and livelihood, reduced supply of water for irrigation, and damage to a unique and biodiverse ecosystem.

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.

Biomass-burning coal plants leave the air even dirtier, Java communities say
- PLTU 1 Indramayu, a 13-year-old coal power complex, has begun adding biomass to the coal it burns on the north coast of West Java province.
- Indonesia’s state electricity firm said its 43 coal units nationwide consumed 1 million metric tons of biomass across in 2023, a 71% increase over 2022, as it seeks ways to trim emissions.
- In Indramayu, local people fear coal plants are endangering public health.

‘Planting water, eating Caatinga & irrigating with the sun’: Interview with agroecologist Tião Alves
- In an interview with Mongabay, Brazilian agroecologist Tião Alves tells how he has been teaching thousands of rural workers to survive in the Caatinga biome, severely afflicted by drought, climate change and desertification.
- At the head of Serta, one of the most important agroecology schools in the Brazilian Northeast, he teaches low-cost technologies that ensure food security with a minimum of resources, both natural and financial.
- Currently, 13% of the Caatinga is already in the process of desertification, the result of a combination of deforestation, inadequate irrigation, extreme droughts and changes in the global climate.

Indonesian activists face jail over FB posts flagging damage to marine park
- Four environmental activists in Indonesia face up to 10 months in jail for “hate speech” after complaining online about the proliferation of illegal shrimp farms inside a marine park.
- Karimunjawa National Park, which is supposed to be a protected area, has seen the number of such farms inside its borders proliferate in recent years, which groups like Greenpeace have linked to ecosystem degradation.
- Daniel Frits Maurits Tangkilisan is the first of the four members of the #SaveKarimunjawa movement to go to court; a verdict in his case is expected on April 4.
- All four men have been charged under a controversial 2008 law on online speech, which critics say has been abused vigorously by the Indonesian state to stifle dissent and opposition.

In Nepal, environmental advocates fend off ‘anti-development’ smear
- Nepal’s political focus on large-scale infrastructure development has long raised environmental concerns, with projects like dams and highways lacking adequate safeguards.
- Despite international commitments and constitutional rights to a healthy environment, Nepal’s government faces challenges in implementing effective environmental policies.
- Conservationists advocating for nature and sustainable development say protecting ecosystems is important for both the planet and its people.
- They also rebuff accusations from politicians that they’re “anti-development,” saying supporting nature doesn’t mean being opposed to development.

Under the shadow of war in the DRC, a mining company acts with impunity
- In Walikale, a territory located in the eastern DRC, Indigenous Twa people accuse the Canadian and South African-owned mining company Alphamin Bisie Mining SA of obtaining mining rights without consulting all the communities affected by the company’s activities.
- An analysis by Mongabay highlights several inconsistencies in the process of receiving mining and exploration permits that violate the law.
- For years, the Indigenous communities of Banamwesi and Motondo have been unsuccessfully calling on the mining company to recognize that it is occupying part of their community forests. In an exchange with Mongabay, Alphamin Bisie denies they are affected and says they will clarify these matters with the communities.
- In light of the conflict devasting the eastern DRC and government officials’ silence in addressing the communities’ situation, inhabitants and civil society representatives say the conflict is being used as a cover for the violations of the law taking place around them.

Suriname cancels controversial Mennonite pilot program, but bigger problems loom
- Suriname President Chan Santokhi confirmed to local media this week that he shuttered a pilot program setting aside 30,000 hectares (74,131 acres) for 50 Mennonite families, easing some fears that the country was on the verge of destroying large parts of the Amazon Rainforest.
- Mennonite colonies have a history of contributing to widespread deforestation in other parts of Latin America, including Belize, Mexico and Bolivia.
- But many conservation groups said there are bigger challenges than the Mennonites, including the development of around 467,000 hectares (1,153,982 acres) of land for agricultural activity.

Lula’s deforestation goals threatened by frustrated environmental agents
- Brazilian environmental agents worked hard in 2023 to control the Amazon deforestation, with impressive results that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has used to promote himself in the international arena.
- But since early January, these public servants went on strike, claiming their salaries do not make up for their risky and highly-qualified work, in a threat to Lula’s zero deforestation target.
- The workers’ movement has provoked a sharp decrease in environmental fines, besides affecting the licensing of infrastructure works and the importing of vehicles.

Comeback on the cards for Asian antelope declared extinct in Bangladesh
- Nilgais, the largest antelope species in Asia, are reappearing in northwestern Bangladesh, a country that was part of their historical range but where they were declared locally extinct in the 1930s due to habitat loss and hunting.
- Forays by nilgais, mostly from neighboring India but also from Nepal, suggest that the species can be reestablished in parts of Bangladesh that still have sufficient areas of undisturbed natural landscape.
- A 2023 study identified 13 instances of nilgai sightings in the country from 2018-2022 from media reports, but it’s likely that most sightings are going unreported because they end up in local residents catching and killing the antelopes for their meat.
- Experts say any attempt to reestablish a nilgai population within Bangladesh’s borders should be carried out in tandem with a public education campaign to discourage the hunting of the animal.

Fanned by El Niño, megafires in Brazil threaten Amazon’s preserved areas
- Researchers and protection agencies expected a dry season with more fires in Brazil’s Roraima state at the start of 2024, but the effects of an intense and prolonged El Niño have aggravated the situation.
- In February alone, the number of hotspots detected in this northernmost Amazonian state hit an all-time high of 2,057.
- According to IBAMA, Brazil’s federal environmental agency, 23% of the outbreaks recorded in Roraima are in Indigenous areas, affecting at least 13 territories.
- The Roraima state government says controlled fires in private areas are allowed with a permit, but the large number of fires this year indicates criminal activity.

Chocó land deal shows flaws in Ecuador’s forestry incentive program
- A conflict over thousands of hectares of the Andean Chocó bioregion of northwestern Ecuador — now enmeshed in a decade-long legal battle — shows that the country’s Socio Bosque program is susceptible to potential corruption and political dealmaking, activists in the area claim.
- Over 9,000 hectares (22,239 acres) were stolen from local communities through an illegal land sale that was then used to benefit from the Socio Bosque program, critics say.
- Complaints filed to the Ministry of Environment have led to multiple inspections of the land, and the person who collected Socio Bosque payments was ordered to return $152,364.

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.

Huge new no-fishing zones give Antarctic marine predators and their prey a break
- The government of the South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands (SGSSI), which operates as a British overseas territory, recently announced that it had established new no-fishing zones over 166,000 km² (64,100 mi²) of its existing marine protected area, and prohibited krill fishing in an additional 17,000 km² (6,600 mi²) of the MPA.
- These new no-fishing zones were established to protect krill-dependent marine wildlife, including baleen whales and penguins, while also considering the fisheries operating in the area, which target krill and other species.
- While conservationists initially pushed for further protections, they ultimately accepted the decision, with one calling it a “positive and good outcome.”
- However, Argentina, which claims the South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands as part of its Tierra del Fuego province, has expressed its dissatisfaction with the SGSSI government’s decision.

Brazil’s Amazonian states push for court reforms in bid for justice
- Brazil’s Supreme Court has sworn in Flávio Dino, the first justice of the country’s highest court with an Amazonian background in almost 20 years.
- Amazonian states have gone largely unrepresented at the top of the Brazilian judicial system for decades, a political distortion that has spurred calls for reform.
- Federal courts are of special interest in the Amazon because illegal activity in the region tends to be intertwined with environmental, Indigenous, mining and land reform issues — all of which fall under federal jurisdiction.
- The lack of federal courts of appeal in the Amazon and the large distances that people have to travel to access justice have long been a common complaint among Amazonian lawyers, public defenders, judges and politicians.

Tien Hai reserve saved from development in win for nature in Vietnam
- In 2023, the government of Vietnam’s Thai Binh province announced plans to remove protection from 90% of Tien Hai Nature Reserve, part of the UNESCO-recognized Red River Delta Biosphere Reserve.
- This month, Vietnam’s prime minister signed a decision that will fully retain the reserve’s protected status.
- The reversal announcement marks a rare win for environmental protection over development, and comes after local NGOs led awareness-raising efforts about the importance of the reserve.

Madagascar takes key step toward improving transparency of its fisheries
- Madagascar recently released its first fisheries transparency report, part of an effort to open up, democratize, and improve the sustainability of its fisheries sector.
- The report is a key step in a process defined by the Fisheries Transparency Initiative (FiTI), a Seychelles-based nonprofit.
- It contains important information on traditional, artisanal and industrial fisheries, a list of the laws and regulations governing the sector, tenure arrangements, and access agreements — including previously undisclosed information.
- It also assesses the country’s transparency according to the availability and accessibility of data from six thematic areas as outlined by the FiTI Standard.

Phantom deeds see Borneo islanders lose their land to quartz miners
- Gelam is a small uninhabited island off the southwest coast of Indonesia’s West Kalimantan province that used to be home to a community of fishers.
- In the previous decade, residents moved away from Gelam in order to access schools and public services, but the community continues to regard the island as home.
- In 2021, the local government began processing land deeds before transferring the titles to quartz mining companies.
- Several residents told Mongabay Indonesia they hadn’t been consulted about the transfer of the land.

Impunity for Cambodia’s exotic pet owners as trade outpaces legislation
- High-profile interventions by Cambodia’s former leader and weak legislation have allowed the illegal wildlife trade to persist largely in the open.
- The case of a gas station menagerie in western Cambodia is emblematic of the ease with which even endangered species can be bought and sold.
- The collection, owned by a police officer, includes cockatoos from Indonesia, marmosets and parakeets from South America, and a native gibbon.
- Authorities said they were aware of the collection, but were “following the format” set in the wake of their 2023 seizure of peacocks from a breeder, which culminated in them having to return the birds after then-prime minister Hun Sen criticized their actions.

Sumatra firefighters on alert as burning heralds start of Riau dry season
- On the northeast coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island, the first of two annual dry seasons led to a spike in wildfires in some peatland areas in February.
- In the week ending March 2, Indonesian peatland NGO Pantau Gambut said 34 hotspots, possibly fires, were identified by satellite on peatlands in Riau province.
- Emergency services in the province have been concentrated to the east of the port city of Dumai, where a fire started in the concession of a palm oil company, according to local authorities.

Indonesia unveils plan to launch a satellite network for maritime monitoring
- Indonesia plans to launch a satellite constellation starting in July to monitor its marine and fisheries resources more effectively.
- This constellation of 20 nanosatellites aims to actively manage conservation efforts and ensure economic benefits from marine resources.
- The satellites will feature radio frequency, imaging and vessel-tracking equipment, allowing officials “to know every condition in Indonesia from one [data] center.”
- Challenges such as budget cuts and low compliance among fishing companies underscore the need for technological solutions to protect Indonesia’s vast marine areas.

Report: Rising slaughter of small whales and dolphins threatens ocean balance
- Killings of small whales, porpoises and dolphins are rising, with more than 100,000 of these marine mammals slaughtered each year, according to a new report from German and British NGOs.
- Many regions report increased catches driven by demand for dolphin meat as food and shark bait in areas impacted by economic crisis and dwindling fish stocks.
- Failure to address unsustainable exploitation of small cetaceans exacerbates ecological imbalance and heavy metal toxicity risks to humans who eat them, according to the report.
- Insufficient legislation and enforcement remain critical issues, according to the report, which calls for international collaboration and stronger protection measures.

Stalemate: WTO talks again fail to end overfishing subsidies
- At the World Trade Organization’s 13th ministerial conference (MC13), which closed in Abu Dhabi on March 2, negotiators failed to finalize phase two of an international treaty banning harmful fisheries subsidies.
- Despite 22 years of negotiations, member states remained divided on crucial aspects of the treaty to phase out subsidies worth an estimated $22 billion annually that support overfishing.
- The draft negotiating text includes contentious loopholes, raising concerns about fairness and effectiveness from state delegates, fisheries experts and scientists.
- Ratifications of phase one of the treaty leapt to 71 as 10 more states signed up during MC13, but 39 more are needed for implementation.

Global protected area policies spark conflicts with Mexico Indigenous groups
- The creation of the UNESCO-listed Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in Mexico’s Campeche region has led to a long-standing conflict with Indigenous residents who argue the government restricted their livelihoods, despite promises of support and land titles by Mexico’s Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT).
- According to researchers, these conflicts are due to a fault in nations’ application of international conservation policy by overemphasizing the expansion of protected areas while paying less attention to socioeconomic factors and equitable management included in these policies.
- Authors underline the importance of adapting international conservation policy, such as the “30 by 30” pledge, which plans to conserve 30% of Earth’s land and sea by 2030, to specific local contexts and needs.

Surprise discovery of wind farm project in Philippine reserve prompts alarm
- In late 2023, conservationists monitoring the Philippine’s Masungi Georeserve were surprised to encounter four drilling rigs operating within the ostensibly protected wildlife sanctuary.
- The construction equipment belongs to a company building a wind farm within the reserve, which claims to have received the necessary permits despite the area’s protected status.
- Masungi Georeserve Foundation, Inc. (MGFI), the nonprofit organization managing the site, has launched a petition calling for the project to be canceled, saying that renewable energy generation should not be pursued at the expense of the environment.

Forest and climate scientists fear Biden delay on mature forest protection
- More than 200 forest ecologists and top climate scientists, including Jim Hansen and Michael Mann, have written the Biden administration urging it to quickly move forward on the president’s commitment to protect old-growth and mature forests on federal lands.
- The scientists made an urgent plea for an immediate moratorium on logging federal forests with trees 100 years old or older, many of which remain vulnerable to logging and dozens of timber sales nationally. They also asked for the establishment of substantive federal management standards to protect those forests.
- Federally owned old-growth and mature forests play an outsized role in storing carbon, offering a vital hedge against escalating climate change.
- At stake are 112.8 million acres (45.6 million hectares) of old-growth and mature forest on federal lands, according to a 2023 U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management inventory — an area larger than California. Less than a quarter of those forests are currently protected against logging.

Sumatra community faces up to ‘plasma’ disappointment after palm oil policy shift
- A 2022 investigation by Mongabay, the BBC and The Gecko Project found that hundreds of thousands of hectares of land had not been handed to communities by palm oil companies despite provisions in a 2007 law.
- In 2023, Indonesia’s Directorate-General of Plantations published updated rules stating that companies with licenses issued prior to 2007 would not be required to hand 20% of their concession to local farmers, although companies licensed after 2007 would still be required to do so.
- In Tebing Tinggi Okura on the island of Sumatra, a community is coming to terms with this change after a near two-decade dispute from which they hoped to win rights to farming land for hundreds of families.

Scientists and doctors raise global alarm over hormone-disrupting chemicals
- Endocrine-disrupting chemicals, which harm the human body’s regulation of hormones, have become ubiquitous in consumer products, food, water, and soil, says a new report, leading to serious global health impacts.
- There are some 350,000 synthetic chemicals and polymers used worldwide, and thousands may be endocrine disruptors. Most were not studied for their human health effects before being marketed. Known and suspected endocrine disruptors are found in pesticides, plastic additives, cosmetics, and waterproofing finishes.
- The new report examines four sources of endocrine-disrupting chemicals: plastics, pesticides, consumer products, and PFAS. Rising rates of cancer, infertility, and obesity are suspected to be at least partially attributable to the presence of endocrine disruptors in the human body.
- The Endocrine Society and International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN), which co-authored the new report, are calling for legally binding global treaties to restrict and ban endocrine disruptor production and use.

To save topsoil & reduce pollution, Bangladesh moves toward alternative bricks
- Bangladesh plans to move from traditional fuel-burned bricks to alternative bricks to save agricultural topsoil and reduce air pollution.
- As part of the initiative, the government has already set a target to use alternative bricks made from concrete blocks for all government works starting this year.
- The environment department estimates that the nation’s 7,000 or so brickfields currently use 3,350 million cubic feet of topsoil or clay annually as a raw material to produce around 23 billion bricks.
- Meanwhile, the Bangladesh Housing and Building Research Institute (HBRI) demonstrates through its research and development how the nation could save an enormous amount of topsoil by utilizing alternative building materials and bricks in place of the conventional bricks made from agricultural topsoil, which is necessary to maintain soil fertility.

Major meatpacker JBS misled the public about sustainability efforts, NY lawsuit claims
- New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against JBS USA Food Company and JBS USA Food Company Holdings for misrepresenting plans to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.
- The lawsuit cites numerous instances in which the company’s claims to the public didn’t align with what was happening behind closed doors. Its website and advertisements have boasted claims about reaching net-zero carbon emissions while company executives were making plans to grow.
- The New York attorney general said JBS Group’s greenhouse gas emissions calculations don’t include deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest, making its environmental goals “not feasible given the current scope of [its] business operations.”

As lightning strike fatalities increase, Bangladesh still has no reliable preventive measures
- Between 2011 and 2020, lightning strikes claimed the lives of 2,164 people, or nearly four people every week, in Bangladesh, according to the country’s disaster management department. However, a Bangladeshi NGO reports at least a thousand more lightning related fatalities between 2010 and 2021.
- Researchers linked the increased frequency of lightning with climate change; as for the increased death toll, they blamed the government’s inefficient protection measures, including the lack of tall trees.
- To reduce the number of fatalities, the government has started working on long-term solutions, such as installing lightning arresters and growing palm trees. Nevertheless, a significant sum of money is being squandered and nothing functions as expected, say experts.

Major meatpackers are unlawfully deforesting Brazil’s Cerrado, report says
- In the state of Mato Grosso, some of the country’s largest meatpackers are clearing parts of the Cerrado at an even faster rate than the Amazon Rainforest, a new report from U.K.-based NGO Global Witness says.
- Meatpackers JBS, Marfrig and Minerva have cut down nearly five times more of the state’s Cerrado than they have its Amazon. One in three cows that the companies purchased from the Cerrado had grazed on illegally deforested land.
- A major EU law regulating deforestation in supply chains is scheduled for review this year, and the Global Witness report said its language should be expanded to include “other wooded land” that would protect the Cerrado.

New precedent as Afro-Brazilian quilombo community wins historic land claim
- The Afro-Brazilian community of Quilombo de Bombas in São Paulo state has welcomed a court ruling ordering the state to issue it with a land title to its ancestral territory located inside a state park.
- The ruling is historic because it’s the first time this kind of traditional community whose ancestral territory overlaps with a state protected area will receive a title.
- Government agencies involved in the process have acknowledged that quilombo inhabitants, known as quilombolas, have historically tended to be among the best environmental stewards in the country.
- Despite the win, most of the nearly 500 quilombos throughout Brazil remain officially unrecognized, with only one in eight quilombolas living in formally titled territories.

Study points to which Amazon regions could reach tipping point & dry up
- Scientists warn that 10% of the Amazon has a high risk of being converted into a drier and degraded ecosystem by 2050, while 47% has a moderate transitional risk.
- The article, published in Nature, used evidence collected by field researchers who are already witnessing changes in the rainforest as a response to increasing temperatures, extreme droughts, fires and deforestation.
- These regional tipping points may lead to a systemic breakdown of the biome unless humanity controls global warming, stops deforestation and starts to recover degraded parts of the rainforest, the authors say.

Should all marine reserves ban fishing? Not necessarily, new study shows
- A new study examined the performances of two types of marine protected areas: no-take MPAs, where all fishing activity is banned, and multiple-use MPAs, which allow certain forms of fishing.
- It found that no-take MPAs increased fish biomass by 58.2%, and multiple-use MPAs increased by 12.6% compared to zones without any form of protection; the study also found that both types of MPAs were more than 97% likely to improve fish populations.
- The authors suggest that multiple-use MPAs can provide “a viable and potentially equitable pathway to advance local and global conservation” when adequately designed and managed.
- However, an expert not involved in the study suggests that MPAs with full protection are more urgently needed to protect marine ecosystems like coral reefs.

Nepal’s human-wildlife conflict relief system hits roadblock with new guidelines
- New guidelines intended to streamline relief and compensation for human-wildlife conflict victims in Nepal have instead created a bottleneck in the process.
- Implementation challenges arise as forest offices lack budgets under the new arrangement, hindering their ability to provide compensation.
- Human-wildlife conflict remains a significant challenge in Nepal, with more than 200 fatalities reported in the past five years, prompting discussions on alternative solutions such as insurance-based schemes

Not waiting for the government, Myanmar’s Karen people register their own lands
- Amid decades-long armed conflict with Myanmar’s central government, Indigenous Karen organizations and leaders are mapping and documenting their ancestral lands in a self-determination effort — without seeking government approval.
- Locals receive land title certificates that provide security to villagers, giving a sense of inheritance rights and protection against land-grabs from the government, megaprojects and extractive industries.
- They use geographic information systems (GIS), computer tools and systems to interpret, document and agree on lands and forest data.
- Participatory methods with local communities and supporting organizations have been used to map more than 3.5 million hectares (8.6 million acres) of land, which includes reserved forests and wildlife sanctuaries.

Megafires are spreading in the Amazon — and they are here to stay
- Wildfires consuming more than 100 square kilometers (38 square miles) of tropical rainforest shouldn’t happen, yet they are becoming more and more frequent.
- Because of its intense humidity and tall trees, fire does not occur spontaneously in the Amazon; usually accidental, forest fires are caused by uncontrolled small fires coming from crop burning, livestock management or clear-cutting.
- Scientists say the rainforest is becoming increasingly flammable, even in areas not directly related to deforestation; fire is now spreading faster and higher, reaching more than 10 meters (32 feet) in height.

Agrochemicals take a big toll on Global South, new Atlas of Pesticides shows
- Recently launched, the Atlas of Pesticides compiles work by Brazilian and foreign scientists on the impacts of pesticides on soil, water and society.
- Brazil tops the list of countries that import and consume the most agrochemicals in the world: There are more than 3,000 registered agrochemicals, 49% of which are considered highly dangerous to health.
- Although the European Union has approved measures to control the use of pesticides, the atlas reveals that toxic residues have been found in the food consumed there — a reflection of the contamination present in the commodities exported by countries like Brazil.

With drop in illegal fishing comes rise in piracy, study in Indonesia finds
- Indonesia’s crackdown on illegal fishing is driving an increase in maritime piracy, a new study shows.
- In recent years, the government has taken harsh measures against illegal fishers, including banning foreign fishing vessels from its waters, and blowing up those it seizes.
- However, researchers say the crackdown’s success, without addressing the drivers of illegal fishing, including poverty, “can inadvertently shift effort from fishing to piracy.”
- Illegal fishing costs an estimated $3 billion in lost revenue for Indonesia, the world’s second-biggest producer of wild-caught seafood.

Landslide in Philippines mining town kills nearly 100, prompts calls for action
- A Feb. 6 landslide in a gold mining village in the Philippines’ southern island of Mindanao claimed nearly 100 lives and buried about 55 houses and a government office.
- The mining company was not held liable for the landslide, which occurred inside its concession but away from its mine mining operations; however, activists have called for more accountability by both the mining firm and the government.
- The area has previously been the site of deadly landslides, but neither the local government nor the company issued an evacuation order following landslide and flash flood warnings issued Feb. 4.
- The village that hosts the mine has been declared a “no build zone” since at least 2008, due to the high risk of landslides, but neither the village nor the mining operations have ever been relocated.

‘High Seas Treaty’ name is inaccurate and should center biodiversity (commentary)
- A new ocean governance treaty, formally called the “Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction” (BBNJ) was agreed to by the international community in 2023.
- As the negotiations wound down, a rebranding effort began, which dubbed the new agreement the ‘High Seas Treaty,’ which is not accurate and omits the most important term, biodiversity, but it’s not too late to re-think, re-frame, and re-name the agreement.
- “Calling it the High Seas Treaty was a choice, but there are better options, which are more accurate and do not bias the interpretation of the agreement…we argue that the shorthand should contain the word biodiversity,” say the authors of a new commentary.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Climate change, extreme weather & conflict exacerbate global food crisis
- Global food insecurity has risen substantially since pre-pandemic times, exacerbated by extreme weather, climate change, war and conflict.
- What the U.N. World Food Program calls “a hunger crisis of unprecedented proportions” plays out differently around the world.
- In this story, three of Mongabay’s Y. Eva Tan Conservation Reporting Fellows detail the local situation in their region – from rising inflation and flooding in Nigeria to diminished local food production in Suriname and the environmental and socioeconomic effects of commercial food production in Brazil.
- “If we do not redouble and better target our efforts, our goal of ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030 will remain out of reach,” write the authors of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 2023 report on global food security and nutrition.

UN award for Nepal’s tiger range restoration spurs euphoria amid challenges
- Nepal’s Terai Arc Landscape (TAL) initiative, aimed at restoring ecosystems and creating space for tigers, receives global recognition from the U.N. as one of seven World Restoration Flagships.
- Launched in 2004, the TAL initiative restored 66,800 hectares (165,000 acres) of forest and significantly increased the Bengal tiger population in the region.
- The U.N. recognition opens doors for technical and financial support to restore an additional 350,000 hectares (865,000 acres) in both Nepal and India, but overcoming challenges like infrastructure expansion and human-wildlife conflict remains critical for long-term sustainability.

No sea change on marine policy from candidates as Indonesia heads to polls
- None of the three candidates running in Indonesia’s Feb. 14 presidential election have presented meaningful policy changes for the country’s coastal communities and marine resources, observers say.
- Indonesians are voting in the biggest single-day election in the world, but the failure by candidates to prioritize maritime issues is a major omission for the world’s biggest archipelagic country.
- Observers say the interests of fishing communities continue to be subordinated to those of industry and developers when it comes to competition for space and resources, and that none of this looks set to change under any of the three candidates.
- They also note that issues such as poverty in coastal areas, threats to marine ecosystems, and the marginalization of coastal communities persist despite the significant role these communities play in Indonesia’s fisheries sector.

Risky development in Uttarakhand: Interview with environmentalist Ravi Chopra
- Ravi Chopra, an esteemed environmentalist based in Uttarakhand, is renowned for his dedicated efforts to preserve natural resources within the Himalayan region.
- In 2019, the Supreme Court appointed Chopra as chair of a committee to review the controversial Char Dham highway construction project; he later resigned after construction proceeded despite the committtee’s findings that the project could pose significant risks to the ecologically fragile region.
- The Char Dham project drew international attention in November 2023, when a segment of a tunnel collapsed, trapping dozens of workers for 17 days.
- In a recent interview with Mongabay, Chopra discussed the environmental risks and hazards of development in Uttarakhand.

Landmark report on migratory species underlines threats to Asia’s wildlife
- A U.N.-backed report has found that nominally protected migratory species face the rising risk of extinction amid habitat loss and overexploitation worldwide.
- Of the 1,200 species listed in the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals, half were found to have declining populations and one in five were threatened with extinction.
- The report found that “species occurring in Asia are the most threatened overall” and that “early indications suggest that the scale of unsustainable and illegal take may be even higher in Southeast Asia.”

Ecuador government weighs delaying closure of controversial ITT oil block
- The government in Ecuador is considering ways to avoid closing the 43-ITT oil block, located inside Yasuní National Park in the eastern Amazon, despite the results of a national referendum last year to halt drilling.
- Since opening in 2016, the operation has led to numerous oil spills and the construction of a road through the 82,000-hectare (202,626 acre) reserve, threatening biodiversity as well as Indigenous groups, many of them living in voluntary isolation.
- But some officials have said closing the oil block needs to be delayed by at least one year to allow the national economy to respond to what could amount to billions of dollars in losses.

Critics decry controversial bill that loosens deforestation restrictions in Peru
- On Jan. 10, Peru’s Congress approved a new amendment to the country’s forest and wildlife law, which loosens restrictions on deforestation and may affect the rights of Indigenous peoples, experts warn.
- According to opponents of this amendment, this change in legislation could pave the way for a large expansion of deforestation across Peru’s forests, with the Amazon at risk.
- Proponents of the bill argue that it will bring stability to the Peruvian agricultural sector and offer legal security to those dedicated to agricultural production.
- A group of civil society organizations and lawyers have filed a motion with the Constitutional Court, arguing the new revision violated the Constitution.

Concern for Mexico’s vaquita as totoaba swim bladder trafficking surges online
- The dried swim bladders, or “maw,” of totoaba, an endangered fish found in the Gulf of California in northern Mexico, are being increasingly trafficked on digital platforms, according to a report from the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).
- The demand for totoaba has impacted other animals that get caught in the same gillnets, most notably the vaquita, the smallest porpoise in the world.
- EIA’s investigation found an increase in the number of swim bladders sold online and on some social media platforms like WeChat, a Chinese texting and cash payments app.

New environmental rules for Chile’s protected areas rile the salmon industry
- A law that came into force in Chile last year has upset the salmon industry for imposing new requirements for salmon farms located in protected areas.
- The industry says the new rules threaten jobs and cause uncertainty in an industry that contributes 2% of Chile’s GDP.
- The salmon industry currently has 71 applications for concessions within protected areas, most of which wouldn’t meet the conditions laid out in the new rules.
- Conservation experts say the salmon industry’s reaction to this attempt at regulation is “unfortunate,” especially given its history of environmental harm.

Brazil’s environmental David fights Congress’s agribusiness Goliath: Interview with Nilto Tatto
- Nilto Tatto heads the environmental caucus in Brazil’s lower house of Congress, where the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has suffered key legislative setbacks at the hands of the well-funded and organized agribusiness caucus.
- Tatto attributes the challenges to the more conservative candidates voted in at the 2022 elections, and the drop-off in international pressure and civil society scrutiny following Lula’s return to the presidency.
- He acknowledges the uphill task of taking on the powerful agribusiness lobby, saying the administration will never have a majority vote on environmental issues, and adds there needs to be a stronger civil society movement inside Brazil and abroad to put pressure on Congress.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Tatto also refutes the claim that given its weakened position, the administration is using the environmental agenda as a bargaining chip to get its economic plans approved.

Annual South Pacific fisheries meeting nets bottom trawling controversy
- The annual conference of the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO), an intergovernmental body, took place in Manta, Ecuador, between Jan. 29 and Feb. 2.
- SPRFMO, which manages fisheries across the vast international waters of the South Pacific Ocean, made key decisions on bottom trawling, labor rights, observation of squid-fishing vessels and transshipment at sea, a practice that can obscure the origin of illegally caught seafood.
- In what was perhaps the most controversial outcome of the meeting, delegates failed to adopt a proposal to complete the implementation of rules passed last year that would have limited bottom trawling of vulnerable marine ecosystems, such as coral communities.

EU parliament expresses disapproval of Norway’s deep-sea mining plans
- On Feb. 7, members of the European Parliament voted in favor of a resolution that raises concerns about Norway’s intentions to begin deep-sea mining activities.
- Although the resolution doesn’t hold any legal power, experts say it sends a strong signal to Norway that it doesn’t have the European support it may be relying on.
- Norway’s foreign ministry said that it has taken note of the resolution, adding that, like its European partners, it is committed to “sustainable ocean management.”
- In January, Norway voted to allow deep-sea mining exploration to commence in its waters.

Study: Indonesia’s new capital city threatens stable proboscis monkey population
- A recent study warns that the ongoing construction of Indonesia’s new capital city on the island of Borneo could destabilize the population of endangered proboscis monkeys currently thriving in the area.
- President Joko Widodo has characterized the development as green and with a minimal environmental impact, but concerns have arisen over the potential threat to the nearby Balikpapan Bay mangrove ecosystem that’s home to proboscis monkeys and other threatened wildlife.
- Scientists have advocated for sustainable development practices and emphasized the importance of respecting local biodiversity while constructing the new city, Nusantara.
- Their recommendations include legal protection for affected areas, habitat restoration, and collaboration with local stakeholders to mitigate the environmental impact.

New guidebook supports U.S. tribal nations in adopting rights-of-nature laws
- A new guidebook aims to assist tribal nations across the United States in adopting legal frameworks that recognize the rights of nature.
- The growing rights-of-nature movement seeks to protect the environment by legally acknowledging its inherent right to exist and thrive independent of human use.
- The guide examines real-world challenges and pathways for passing laws and includes case studies of tribes that have enacted rights-of-nature laws through constitutions, ordinances and resolutions.
- The guide contains practical guidance on steps like surveying community perspectives, holding educational gatherings, and forming planning committees.

In East Java, social media push against Indonesia shark & ray trade lacks bite
- Over a period of four months in late 2023, Mongabay spoke with fishers and traders dealing primarily in rays and sharks in Indonesia’s East Java province.
- Advertisements for shark and ray products continued to feature on social media platforms despite pledges by companies to prevent users from conducting transactions in wildlife.
- Indonesia’s fisheries ministry said more needs to be done to enhance traceability to crack down on trade in protected shark and ray species.

African Parks vows to investigate allegations of abuse at Congolese park
- In late January, the Daily Mail published allegations that rangers working with African Parks at Odzala-Kokoua park in the Republic of Congo had beaten and raped Baka community members.
- In a statement, African Parks said it had hired the U.K.-based law firm Omnia Strategy to investigate the allegations, which were raised in a letter sent to a board member by the advocacy group Survival International last year.
- African Parks said it became aware of the allegations through that letter, but in 2022, a local civil society group in the Republic of Congo released a statement accusing rangers of committing “acts of torture.”

Harmful mining continues in Nicaragua despite U.S. sanctions, new investigation shows
- The U.S. imposed sanctions against Nicaragua in 2022 but numerous mines are still operating like normal or even expanding, according to a new report from the Oakland Institute, a think tank dealing with social and environmental issues.
- Despite the sanctions, the U.S. was Nicaragua’s largest gold importer last year, bringing in around $465 million.
- Expanding mining concessions has resulted in pollution and human rights violations against Indigenous communities.

Indonesia and Spain sign agreement to protect migrant fishing workers
- Indonesia and Spain have signed an agreement that will see Spanish regulators recognize competency certification issued by Indonesia for Indonesian fishing vessel workers.
- The move is part of efforts to boost protection of Indonesian migrant fishing workers in a global industry notorious for the exploitation and abuse of migrant deckhands.
- According to the fisheries ministry, some 1,000 Indonesians worked aboard Spanish fishing boats in 2021, earning on average about 1,000 euros ($1,075) per month.
- At home, Indonesia is also working to enhance training, certification, and protection for its large population of fishers and boat crews.

In the Brazilian outback, the half-century Kapinawá struggle for sacred ground
- The Catimbau Valley, in the backlands of Pernambuco state, is one of the most biodiverse areas in the Caatinga dry forest and also an archaeological treasure, with the second-largest collection of rock inscriptions in Brazil.
- It’s also the sacred and ancestral territory of the Kapinawá, a people who discovered their Indigenous identity in the mid-1970s amid a war against land-grabbers.
- Part of the Kapinawá lands became an Indigenous territory, while the remaining area was later transformed into a national park in 2002; those who live there complain about the numerous restrictions they now face.
- While fighting to reclaim their lands, the Kapinawá turn the Caatinga into a laboratory for experiments in agroecology, combining biodiversity preservation and food production.

Brazil’s 2024-2027 “Transversal Environmental Agenda”: The elephants in the room (commentary)
- Brazil’s current 4-year development plan is accompanied by a “Transversal Environmental Agenda,” released last week, to coordinate environmental measures across the different federal agencies.
- While the agenda lists many worthwhile items in the portfolios of the various ministries, it fails in the most basic role such an agenda should play: ensuring that government actions do not cause environmental catastrophes.
- Missing subjects include foregoing building roads that open Amazon forest to deforestation, legalizing illegal land claims that stimulates an unending cycle of land grabbing and invasion, plans for hydroelectric dams in Amazonia, expanding oil and gas drilling and the burning of fossil fuels that must end without delay if global warming is to be controlled.
- An earlier version of this text was published in Portuguese by Amazônia Real. It is a commentary and does not necessarily reflect the views of Mongabay.

Sarawak government’s hydropower plans worry Indigenous communities
- Indigenous residents begin submitting petitions as Sarawak officials announce three new cascading hydropower dams throughout the state.
- While Sarawak’s chief minister appears all-in for the dam in comments, other officials say plans hang on the results of upcoming feasibility studies.
- After some villages were devastated by older dams, Indigenous residents ask officials to consult them fully or simply drop the plans.

Labor abuse and work accidents on plantations of Cameroon’s largest sugar producer
- Industrial agriculture companies, considered drivers of economic growth in Cameroon, are also a source of conflict for workers and farmers following an increase in workplace accidents and the growing impact this industry has on the environment.
- With increasing accidents over the years, the industrial agriculture sector alone accounted for 26.4% of work-related accidents recorded in Cameroon in 2020, according to an estimate by the Cameroonian institution overseeing social protection, the CNPS.
- According to estimates from the seasonal workers’ union, the Cameroon Sugar Corporation (SOSUCAM), which holds a monopoly on sugar production in the country, is responsible for about a hundred accidents per year, some leading to death, on its plantations and in its factories.
- Local NGOs also accuse the company of polluting rivers and soil as well as destroying village plantations. Above all, the company is notorious for its glaring violations in applying Cameroonian labor, social security, and environmental protection legislation.

Cambodia’s Indigenous communities renounce communal land titles for microloans
- Indigenous rural communities in northeastern Cambodia are struggling under debts that have ballooned from modest microloans with high interest rates.
- Microlending as a means of increasing communities’ access to finance is strongly supported by the World Bank, but runs counter to efforts to grant communal land ownership of homes, farmlands and sacred forests — another World Bank initiative.
- Entire villages have opted out of the communal land titling program because it would prevent them from using this land as collateral for microloans and selling land to outsiders, often to repay debt.
- This project was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Journalism Fund.

Critics push for more transparency at RFMOs that govern high seas fishing
- Around 17 regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) manage fishing in international waters, or the “high seas.”
- Scientists and civil society members have long criticized these international bodies for failing the high seas; many of the stocks they manage are overfished, research shows.
- Critics cite opaque decision-making as a key reason for conservation failures, and they’re making an increasingly vociferous case for RFMOs to become more transparent, citing their oversight of shared public resources.
- RFMO representatives, while citing internal rules as well as a need for privacy to maintain open negotiations among parties, point to recent steps toward transparency.

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.

Overfishing leads to decline in Bangladesh marine fish stocks & diversity
- Bangladesh is facing a decline in marine fish stocks and diversity due to lack of knowledge among fishers, proper implementation of the Marine Fisheries Act and rampant use of industrial trawlers and unauthorized fishing gear in permitted fishing zones.
- The country has a 710-kilometer (440-mile) coastline with 121,110 square kilometers (46,760 square miles) of exclusive economic zones (EEZs) within the Bay of Bengal and is a hub of 740 aquatic species.
- The marine fisheries sector contributes about 15% of Bangladesh’s total fish production, which helps meet the population’s demands for animal protein.

Grassroots efforts and an Emmy-winning film help Indigenous fight in Brazil
- The 2022 documentary “The Territory” won an Emmy award this January, shining a light on the Uru-eu-wau-wau Indigenous people and the invasions, conflicts and threats from land grabbers in their territory in the Brazilian Amazon from 2018 to 2021.
- After years of increasing invasions and deforestation in the protected area, experts say the situation has slowly improved in the past three years, and both Indigenous and government officials in the region “feel a little safer.”
- Grassroots surveillance efforts, increased visibility of the problems, and a more effective federal crackdown against invaders have helped tackle illegal land occupiers and allowed the Indigenous populations to take their land back.
- Despite the security improvements, however, the territory still struggles against invasions and deforestation within the region, experts say.

What’s at stake for the environment in El Salvador’s upcoming election?
- Salvadorans will go to the polls on February 4 to choose a president and 60 members of the Legislative Assembly.
- Polls show that President Nayib Bukele, who took office in 2019, will likely win by a wide margin despite constitutional restrictions on running for a second term.
- Environmental concerns include the destruction of coastal habitats by mega-infrastructure projects, the return of the mining industry and the safety of environmental defenders.

Climate change made 2023 Amazon drought 30 times more likely, scientists say
- A new report from World Weather Attribution (WWA) estimates that climate change increased the likelihood of the 2023 Amazon drought by a factor of 30.
- Both El Niño and climate change contributed to the lack of rainfall in the region, but climate change also led to extremely high temperatures and increased water evaporation.
- In a world 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) warmer than preindustrial levels, similar or worse droughts will likely occur in the region every 10-15 years.

Mexico announces 20 new protected areas despite budget cuts
- Mexico recently announced 20 new protected areas covering roughly 2.3 million hectares (5.7 million acres) across the country.
- The protected areas, which include national parks, sanctuaries and flora and fauna protection areas, are located in the states of Quintana Roo, Oaxaca, Zacatecas, Chiapas and eight others, as well as the Gulf of Mexico and Gulf of California.
- Mexico’s environmental agencies under the Obrador administration have been subjected to consistent cuts in funding since 2016, raising concerns among experts that the departments will not have the personnel or resources to protect the country’s 225 protected areas.

Lula’s ambitious green agenda runs up against Congress’s agribusiness might
- With reduced support in Brazil’s Congress following the 2022 elections, the administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been unable to prevent the passage of bills dismantling environmental safeguards in favor of agribusiness interests.
- Throughout 2023, the agribusiness caucus managed to push through legislation undermining Indigenous rights to land and slashing regulations on pesticides.
- The same election that brought Lula back to power in Brazil also led to a conservative Congress that’s more right-wing, better-organized, and aware of its powers, according to experts.
- One bright spot is a drop in Amazon Rainforest deforestation, a headline figure for Lula’s international diplomacy; but more progress is needed to give Brazil a prominent place in international environmental advocacy, experts say.

Kenyan villagers show how to harvest more octopus by fishing less
- Residents of Munje, a fishing village south of the Kenyan port of Mombasa, have established an octopus closure to ensure sustainable fishing.
- Octopus catches in the reefs just offshore had been declining as larger numbers of fishers, often using damaging techniques, hunted this profitable species.
- Previous attempts to regulate the octopus fishery had failed, but the village’s beach management unit enlisted support from an NGO to replicate successful strategies from elsewhere.
- Clearer communication and patient consensus-building have secured buy-in from the community, and the village is anticipating a second successful harvest period in February.

Ecuador-China free trade agreement poses serious environmental risks, critics say
- A free trade agreement with China is awaiting approval in Ecuador’s National Assembly, but some lawmakers are reluctant to pass it due to new policies that could lead to pollution, deforestation and a decline in endangered species populations.
- The focus of concern has been the waste that Ecuador would receive from China, including pharmaceutical products, electrical parts, batteries, scrap metal, single-use plastics, glass and contaminated liquids.
- The agreement could also ease the application process for permits in the mining, oil, agriculture and energy sectors, which could let many foreign companies off the hook for actions damaging the environment.

Indigenous effort in Bangladesh helps reverse endangered fish’s slide to extinction
- Unchecked logging and quarrying of rocks from streambeds in Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts led to springs drying up and populations of putitor mahseer fish, an endangered species, disappearing.
- The situation was worsened by climate change impacts, characterized here by a more intense dry season during which even streams that once ran year-round now dry up.
- A project launched in 2016 and backed by USAID and the UNDP is working with Indigenous communities to reverse this decline, starting with efforts to cut down on logging and quarrying.
- As a result of these efforts, areas where forests have been conserved have seen the flow of springs stabilize and populations of putitor mahseer and other fish revive.

Study: Burning wood pellets for energy endangers local communities’ health
- A new peer-reviewed study quantifies broadly for the first time the air pollution and public health impacts across the United States from both manufacturing wood pellets and burning them for energy.
- The study, said to be far more extensive than any research by the US Environmental Protection Agency, finds that U.S. biomass-burning facilities emit on average 2.8 times the amount of pollution of power plants that burn coal, oil or natural gas.
- Wood pellet manufacturers maintain that the harvest of forest wood for the purpose of making wood pellets to burn for energy remains a climate-friendly solution. But a host of studies undermine those claims.
- The Southern Environmental Law Center says the study provides new and rigorous science that could become a useful tool in arguing against the expansion of the wood pellet industry in the United States.

Guyana Amerindian communities fear Venezuela’s move to annex oil-rich region
- In Decemer, Venezuela’s president announced a series of measures and legislation to formalize the country’s possession of the oil-rich Essequibo region in Guyana, which he argues was stolen from Venezuela when the border was drawn more than a century ago.
- Venezuela has instructed the state’s oil and gas agencies to immediately grant operating licenses to explore and exploit oil, gas and mines in the Essequibo region, giving companies already operating in the area three months to leave.
- Amerindian communities in Guyana have raised concerns that Venezuela’s takeover may threaten decades-long battles for recognition of their customary lands and, in the process, endanger the region’s rich biodiversity.

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.

Civil-backed proposal seeks to address root causes of Thailand’s choking haze
- Policymakers in Thailand have begun proceedings on a new Clean Air Act to address seasonal air pollution that blankets parts of the country every dry season, presenting what experts describe as severe health risks for citizens.
- Agricultural burning and industrial emissions, both locally and in neighboring countries, are the main sources of air pollution levels that annually exceed WHO safe limits, often making Thailand among the most polluted places in the world.
- Several draft versions of clean air legislation have been presented for parliamentary approval, including a citizen-backed proposal that focuses on empowering local action and addressing the root causes of the choking haze.

Global shark deaths increasing despite finning bans, study shows
- A new study finds that shark mortality increased by 4% in coastal fisheries and decreased by 7% in pelagic fisheries, between 2012 and 2019, despite legislation to ban shark finning increasing tenfold over this period.
- Based on these findings, experts say shark finning regulations may not be effective in decreasing shark mortality, and may even create new markets for shark meat.
- However, the study also shows that successful management of shark fisheries can lead to a decrease in mortality; such is the case with retention bans and other measures taken by regional fisheries management organizations.

EU’s legal loophole feeds gray market for world’s rarest parrot
- Loopholes in the 1973 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) have allowed near-extinct animals to be moved across borders for breeding; in principle, CITES allows species trading for research, zoos or conservation.
- It was in this context that dozens of Spix’s macaws, a blue parrot from Brazil that’s considered extinct in the wild, were introduced into the EU, despite an international ban on the species’ commercial trade.
- In 2005, German bird breeder Martin Guth acquired three of the parrots for breeding purposes, with CITES approval, before going on to amass nearly all the world’s captive Spix’s macaws and transferring several dozen of them to facilities throughout Europe and India under an EU permit not covered by CITES.
- At a CITES meeting last November, representatives from Brazil and other tropical countries affected by the illegal wildlife trade expressed frustration that the EU had allowed unregistered commercial breeders to flourish, despite CITES having created a dedicated registration program for legitimate captive breeders 20 years earlier.

India’s new forest rules spark dismay — and hope: Q&A with activist Soumitra Ghosh
- India has recently adopted amendments to its forest laws that have sparked an outcry from activists and NGOs that say the changes severely weaken protections for biodiversity, forests and the people who depend on them.
- However, journalist-turned-activist Soumitra Ghosh says the new rule changes merely codify what had been happening for years: a gradual dilution of the regulatory powers for protecting India’s forest and environment laws, beginning with a system called “compensatory afforestation,” which he says commodified India’s forests.
- Ghosh talked with Mongabay about the history of India’s forest laws, as well as his hopes that despite the “draconian” new amendments, forests will still be protected since their primary authority still lies with the communities that live within and depend upon them.

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’s top ocean news stories (commentary)
- Marine scientists from six international research and conservation institutions share their list of the top ocean news stories from 2023.
- Hopeful developments this past year include a monumental global treaty to protect biodiversity on the high seas and the regulation of international trade in 97 species of sharks and rays under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
- At the same time, 2023 was the hottest year on record, with widespread bleaching of corals in the Caribbean and Great Barrier Reef, and many more hot years forecast as humanity’s emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming continue.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Indonesia offers lobster larvae exports to Vietnam in exchange for investment
- Indonesia is seeking investment from Vietnam to develop Indonesia’s fisheries sector, especially the lobster farming industry, the country’s fisheries minister said during a visit to Hanoi.
- In exchange, Indonesia could supply up to 300 million lobster larvae to Vietnam and would stop seizing Vietnamese fishing boats encroaching into Indonesian waters, instead just turning them back.
- Jakarta banned exports of lobster larvae in 2016 to prevent the overharvesting of wild population from the country’s rich waters, but smuggling remains rampant.
- Despite concerns about potential harm to the domestic aquaculture industry, the government plans to finalize a decree to resume exports, citing the economic benefits and potential to reduce smuggling.

Promise of full demarcation for isolated Amazon tribe rings hollow for some
- The 23-year struggle to declare a territory for the isolated Kawahiva people of the Brazilian Amazon could finally conclude this year after the government announced the closing stages of the demarcation process will begin soon.
- The physical demarcation will formally define the boundaries of the 412,000-hectare (1.02-million-acre) territory in Mato Grosso state, home to some 45-50 Kawahiva, which is a crucial step before a presidential declaration recognizing the Indigenous territory.
- However, some Indigenous experts remain skeptical the territory will ever be fully demarcated in the face of ever-present delays and structural problems within the Indigenous affairs agency.
- The territory sits within the “Arc of Deforestation” in the southern part of the Brazilian Amazon, which is slowly moving north as cattle ranchers, miners, loggers and soy growers clear forest for more land.

Spain sanctions fishing vessels for illegally ‘going dark’ near Argentine waters
- The Spanish government sanctioned 25 of its vessels for illegally turning off their satellite tracking devices while fishing off the coast of Argentina between 2018 and 2021.
- Experts say ships that “go dark” by turning off their trackers often do so to partake in illicit behavior, such as crossing into a nation’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) without authorization.
- While some have praised the Spanish government’s actions, one expert says he doesn’t believe the sanctions go far enough.
- Most fishing activity in this region is also unregulated and unmonitored, which raises environmental concerns.

Chile again rejects Constitution rewrite; experts say no big loss for environment
- On Dec. 17, 55% of Chilean voters rejected a proposal to reform the country’s Constitution, which dates back to the Augusto Pinochet regime; it was the second attempt, after a different proposal failed to get approval in September 2022.
- The latest proposed text, drafted mainly by conservatives, did not make significant progress on environmental and climate change topics, experts say.
- The 2022 draft included an entire chapter on the environment and made provisions on nature’s rights, while expanding protections against extractive industries. But concerns regarding the nationalization of water resources contributed to the “no” vote.

Elite appetite turns Bangladesh from source to consumer of tiger parts
- Previously a source country for live tigers and their parts, Bangladesh has transformed into both a consumer market and a global transit hub for the illegal trade, a new study shows.
- The shift is fueled by local demand from a growing elite, global connections, and cultural fascination with tiger products, and facilitated by improved transport infrastructure networks that have allowed two-way flow of tiger parts through Bangladesh’s airports, seaports and land border crossings.
- Despite some progress in curtailing tiger poaching and smuggling over the past two decades, enforcement remains weak and poaching continues, especially in the Sundarbans mangrove forest.
- Experts say there needs to be broader collaboration among state agencies, international organizations and other countries to combat wildlife trafficking more effectively.

Illegal gold mining threatens Indus River water and biodiversity in Pakistan (commentary)
- The Indus River in Pakistan is being extensively disturbed by unregulated mining of the river’s bed (‘placer mining’) for gold.
- Numerous operations employing an estimated 1,200 heavy machines dig daily into the riverbed and dump buckets of sediment and rocks into screening devices, destroying habitat and muddying the water flowing downstream.
- “It is crucial to the development for the region’s economy and environmental preservation efforts to regulate placer gold blocks along the Indus River,” a new op-ed argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Historic land win for Ecuador’s Siekopai sets precedent for other Indigenous peoples
- Following 80 years of displacement, Indigenous Siekopai communities regained ownership of their ancestral Amazonian homeland on Ecuador’s border with Peru.
- The provincial court of Sucumbíos ruled in favor of the community, saying the environment ministry must deliver a property title for 42,360 hectares (104,674 acres) to the Siekopai, as well as a public apology for its violation of their collective territorial rights.
- The ruling is historic because it’s the first time an Indigenous community whose ancestral territory lies within a nationally protected area will receive title to the land.
- According to experts, this new ruling may change the approach communities use to obtain their ancestral lands in Ecuador, and the country may see more communities filing similar lawsuits to obtain lands locked away for state conservation.

Togo monkey seizure turns spotlight on illicit wildlife trafficking from DR Congo
- In December, Togo seized 38 monkeys in transit to Thailand.
- Nearly 30 of the animals in the shipment had not been declared in the official documentation.
- The monkeys, many of which were in poor health, were repatriated to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- Only 24 monkeys from the group survived, and these have been taken in by a Lubumbashi animal refuge.

Conservation ‘setback’ looms as Nepal opens protected areas to hydropower projects
- Nepal’s government has approved a controversial new proposal allowing the development of large-scale hydropower plants within protected areas, prompting concerns about conservation setbacks.
- The “Construction of Physical Infrastructure Inside Protected Areas” procedures was officially approved Jan. 4, permitting hydropower developers to build projects entirely within protected areas, release minimal water during the dry season, and acquire land more easily.
- Conservationists, lawyers and Indigenous communities have opposed the policy, calling it legally flawed and warning that it threatens conservation achievements in the face of climate change.
- More than two dozen conservationists submitted feedback during the policy’s public consultation phase, but these weren’t accommodated to any significant degree in the final document.

Finance and support are key to fishers adopting eco-friendly gear, study shows
- Access to financing, the support of a peer group, and a general awareness of environmental problems are all factors that make it more likely a fisher will switch to using eco-friendly gear, a new study shows.
- The findings come from a three-month survey of nearly 650 blue swimming crab fishers on the north coast of the Indonesian island of Java.
- It found that those who made the switch also enjoyed significantly higher production and profitability, while also reducing their catch of egg-bearing female crabs, thus helping the sustainability of stocks.
- The study authors say these factors should provide valuable insights for fisheries policymakers in Indonesia and other less-industrialized countries.

As the world swims in plastic, some offer an answer: Ban the toxic two
- Anti-plastic campaigners have achieved limited initial success in passing bans based on the toxic health effects of some plastic types, especially those that contain known carcinogens and hormone-disrupting chemicals.
- Some activists say that two of the most toxic types of plastic, polystyrene and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) should be completely banned. But so far, bans of polystyrene in Zimbabwe, Scotland and elsewhere have focused only on certain products, such as takeout containers.
- PVC is used in medical devices and children’s products, despite its well-known toxicity. PVC and polystyrene are both used in consumer construction, where they can leach chemicals into water or home air, or release particles into the wider environment.
- The U.S. EPA is reviewing vinyl chloride, PVC’s main ingredient and a known carcinogen, but the outcome won’t be known for several years and may only affect U.S. production, not imported products made of PVC. More than 60 nations want a ban on “problematic plastics” by the global plastics treaty now being negotiated.

Amazon chocolatiers: Biofactory offers ‘new way of living’ for forest communities
- The Surucuá community in the state of Pará is the first to receive an Amazonian Creative Laboratory, a compact mobile biofactory designed to help kick-start the Amazon’s bioeconomy.
- Instead of simply harvesting forest-grown crops, traditional communities in the Amazon Rainforest can use the biofactories to process, package and sell bean-to-bar chocolate and similar products at premium prices.
- Having a livelihood coming directly from the forest encourages communities to stay there and protect it rather than engaging in harmful economic activities in the Amazon.
- The project is in its early stages, but it demonstrates what the Amazon’s bioeconomy could look like: an economic engine that experts estimate could generate at least $8 billion per year.

The year in rainforests: 2023
- The following is Mongabay’s annual recap of major tropical rainforest storylines.
- While the data is still preliminary, it appears that deforestation declined across the tropics as a whole in 2023 due to developments in the Amazon, which has more than half the world’s remaining primary tropical forests.
- Some of the other big storylines for the year: Lula prioritizes the Amazon; droughts in the Amazon and Indonsia; Indonesia holds the line on deforestation despite el Niño; regulation on imports of forest-risk commodities; an eventful year in the forest carbon market; rainforests and Indigenous peoples; and rampant illegality.

Report: Rush for ‘clean energy’ minerals in Africa risks repeating harmful extractivist model
- The nonprofit Global Witness investigated lithium mining projects in Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Namibia, which appear to reproduce the same model of extractivism that has impoverished African countries for centuries.
- In March, residents of the Namibian town of Uis took to the streets to protest the activities of Chinese miner Xinfeng, alleging the company was carrying out large-scale industrial mining without the proper permits or social license.
- In Zimbabwe, activist Farai Maguwu from the Centre for Natural Resource Governance described a similar experience of exclusion and exploitation at Chinese miner Sinomine’s Bikita lithium operation, calling it “typical extractivism.”
- One of the ways to prevent exploitation is to shut out companies that “socialize the costs and privatize the profits,” Maguwu said, adding he remains hopeful that encouraging competition between companies from across the world is the way to ensure better outcomes for Zimbabweans.

For forests, COP28 was better than expected, but worse than needed
- The COP28 climate summit in Dubai was a mixed bag for forest conservation as climate mitigation.
- The final text included the goals from the 2021 Glasgow Declaration, which calls for halting deforestation by the end of the decade.
- However, the summit failed to make progress on paying countries to keep forests standing to offset emissions elsewhere, which has run into trouble following carbon offset scandals.
- Observers say the COP30 summit in Brazil in 2025 will see a larger push for forest protection.

Shrinking civil space and persistent logging: 2023 in review in Southeast Asia
- Home to the third-largest expanse of tropical rainforest and some of the world’s fastest-growing economies, Southeast Asia has seen conservation wins and losses over the course of 2023.
- The year was characterized by a rising trend of repression against environmental and Indigenous defenders that cast a shadow of fear over the work of activists in many parts of the region.
- Logging pressure in remaining tracts of forest remained intense, and an El Niño climate pattern brought regional haze crises generated by forest fires and agricultural burning returned.
- But some progress was made on several fronts: Most notably, increasing understanding of the benefits and methods of ecosystem restoration underpinned local, national and regional efforts to bring back forests, mangroves and other crucial sanctuaries of biodiversity.

Still on the menu: Shark fin trade in U.S. persists despite ban
- An Al Jazeera investigative report has revealed that the trade in shark fins is still happening in the U.S. despite legislation banning the activity.
- The report also showed illegal shark finning operations occurring in Peru, currently the world’s largest exporter of fins due to laws that make this export legal, and in Ecuador, where sharks are landed in high volumes.
- A year ago, the international convention on wildlife trafficking enacted shark trade bans, but this has not yet stamped out the global fin trade, prompting experts to call for better enforcement and scrutiny.

Could mugger crocodiles be brought back from regional extinction in Bangladesh?
- Once, mugger crocodiles (Crocodylus palustris) were common in Bangladesh’s major rivers, including the Padma, Jamuna, Meghna and most of their tributaries, but the species is thought to have gone extinct in the country due to unchecked poaching for its prized skin.
- Although the IUCN in 2000 declared the mugger regionally extinct in Bangladesh, three adult muggers were recovered from the country’s river and water bodies in only 11 days, Oct. 17-28 this year.
- The crocodiles were taken to the Karamjol Crocodile Breeding Centre in Khulna, and authorities are working on how muggers could be brought back to nature by increasing their population through captive breeding.
- Experts suggest establishing a safe zone for the crocodiles in the upper Padma River.

With half its surface water area lost, an Amazonian state runs dry
- Water bodies across the Brazilian state of Roraima have shrunk in area by half over the past 20 years, according to research from the mapping collective MapBiomas.
- Today, locals are facing even drier times amid a severe drought in the Amazon, which has led to record-low levels of water in the rainforest’s main rivers.
- Since 1985, Roraima’s agricultural area has grown by more than 1,100%, with experts pointing to crops as one of the state’s main drivers of water loss.

Cocopah Tribe aims to restore Colorado River habitat — and tribal culture
- On the lands of the Cocopah Tribe in the U.S. state of Arizona, declining water levels on the Colorado River have paved the way for invasive plants to take over a riverside once full of native trees.
- Native vegetation along the river not only provides habitat for wildlife but also has shaped Cocopah culture by providing resources to build homes, art and other items.
- This year, the Cocopah Tribe’s Environment Protection Office cut the ribbon on a project to restore land along the river to what it looked like decades ago, complete with a walking trail.
- For 2024, the tribe plans to use $5.5 million in grant funding to restore habitat and plant native trees along an even longer stretch of the river, helping to preserve Cocopah culture for generations to come.

Peru’s ports allow entry of Chinese ships tied to illegal fishing & forced labor
- Experts say that as of October, around 75 foreign vessels, most of them Chinese, entered Peruvian ports in 2023 without carrying a satellite tracking device Peru requires of foreign fleets.
- Mongabay Latam analyzed the background of 56 vessels that entered between June and August 2023 and found that at least 10 belonged to companies with a history of illegal fishing or forced labor.
- Experts cite deficiencies in port inspections and say Chinese-flagged ships have continued to turn off their satellite systems on the Peruvian border at sea to avoid detection.

Detailed NASA analysis finds Earth and Amazon in deep climate trouble
- A NASA study analyzed the future action of six climate variables in all the world’s regions — air temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, short- and long wave solar radiation and wind speed — if Earth’s average temperature reaches 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, which could occur by 2040 if emissions keep rising at current rates.
- The authors used advanced statistical techniques to downscale climate models at a resolution eight times greater than most previous models. This allows for identification of climate variations on a daily basis across the world, something essential since climate impacts unfold gradually, rather than as upheavals.
- The study found that the Amazon will be the area with the greatest reduction in relative humidity. An analysis by the Brazilian space agency INPE showed that some parts of this rainforest biome have already reached maximum temperatures of more than 3°C (5.4°F) over 1960 levels.
- Regardless of warnings from science and Indigenous peoples of the existential threat posed by climate change, the world’s largest fossil fuel producers, largely with government consent, plan to further expand fossil fuel exploration, says a U.N. report. That’s despite a COP28 climate summit deal “transitioning away from fossil fuels.”

Causeway threatens mangroves that Philippine fishers planted as typhoon shield
- The city of Tacloban in the central Philippines was ground zero for Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most powerful tropical cyclones ever recorded and the deadliest in the Philippines’ modern record.
- A decade after the storm, the city is moving forward with controversial plans to build a road embankment and land reclamation project that proponents say will help protect the city from storm surges.
- Opponents of the plan say it threatens local fisheries, will disrupt natural storm protection measures like mangroves, and is poorly designed as a barrier against storms.
- The plan will also result in the relocation of a coastal village of 500 households, who have been active stewards of the bay’s mangrove forests.

Violent evictions are latest ordeal for Kenya’s Ogiek seeking land rights
- On Nov. 2, a joint force of the police, the Kenya Forest Service and the Kenya Wildlife Service moved to evict 700 Ogiek households from the edges of the Maasai Mau Forest.
- But the African Court on Human and People’s Rights had in 2017 ordered the government to recognize the Ogiek claim to the forest, involve them in its management, and pay damages for earlier evictions.
- The government still hasn’t acted on the court’s rulings, instead accusing the Ogiek of responsibility for the destruction of as much as 2,800 hectares (7,000 acres) of forest.
- But the African Court found no evidence the Ogiek are responsible for this damage, and Ogiek leaders want collective titles to the forest to be formally granted, so the group’s members can live in peace on their ancestral land.

Incentivizing conservation shows success against wildlife hunting in Cameroon
- Providing farming support to communities living near a wildlife reserve in Cameroon has been shown to lower rates of hunting, according to a three-year study.
- Thirty-five of the 64 hunters enrolled in the study near Dja Faunal Reserve were able to increase their income from fishing or cacao farming, the two main economic activities aside from hunting in the region.
- The participants spent more time working on their farms and less in the forest hunting with guns, an important indicator that they weren’t targeting “animals of conservation importance and primates in particular.”
- While the results of the experiment are promising, experts say it’s not a silver bullet and should be used alongside other solutions, including education, governance, and sustainable natural resource management.

Little achieved for Indigenous groups at U.N. climate summit, delegates say
- At this year’s U.N. climate conference, COP28, Indigenous delegates numbered more than 300, but were left generally disappointed with the outcomes of the event.
- The final agreement had little inclusion of Indigenous rights and excluded an Indigenous representative from sitting on the board of the newly launched loss and damage fund.
- Indigenous groups say two big climate mitigation strategies, the clean energy transition and carbon markets, should include robust protection of Indigenous rights and consent.
- Despite setbacks, Indigenous leaders say they’re working on increasing their presence and influence at the next climate conferences, including upping their numbers to 3,000 delegates, creating a large international Indigenous Commission, and taking part in the summit’s decision-making.

‘Shark dust’ helps researchers ID threatened species in Indonesia fish trade
- Researchers have developed a new tool to identify a wide range of threatened and protected sharks being processed at fish factories in Indonesia.
- The method relies on DNA analysis of “shark dust,” the tiny fragments of skin and cartilage swept from the floors of fish-processing plants and export warehouses.
- From 28 shark dust samples collected from seven processing plants across Java Island, they found the genetic sequences of 61 shark and ray species.
- About 84% of these are CITES-listed species, meaning there are official restrictions in place on the international trade in these species.

‘The police are watching’: In Mekong countries, eco defenders face rising risks
- Activists, journalists, environmental lawyers and others who raise attention for environmental issues in the Mekong region say they feel threatened by authoritarian governments.
- Environment defenders say they feel under surveillance and at risk both in their home countries and abroad.
- The risks they face include violence and arrests, as well as state-backed harassment such as asset freezes and smear campaigns.

Ecuador court ruling leaves a legal gray area in environmental consultation
- Ecuador’s Constitutional Court struck down a controversial decree that tried to reform how environmental consultations for large-scale infrastructure projects are carried out with communities.
- Environmental and Indigenous groups had filed a motion with the court, calling the decree unconstitutional, and the court agreed, saying consultation processes can only be regulated through an organic law issued by the National Assembly, not through an executive decree.
- However, in a rare move, the court also deferred its ruling, allowing the decree to remain in place until after the National Assembly creates the needed laws.
- Lawyers say the ruling doesn’t clear up the confusion, and the multiple interpretations of the Constitution, that lie at the heart of Ecuador’s consultation processes.

Video: For farmer imprisoned over wildfires, fear and poverty linger
- Sarijan, a farmer in Indonesia’s West Kalimantan province, spent seven months in jail for setting a controlled fire on his land in 2019.
- Throughout the ordeal, he says he experienced violence in jail and extortion by the authorities.
- Sarijan is one of at least 200 farmers in Indonesian Borneo prosecuted for this offense since 2016, amid a crackdown by the government on land burning.
- To this day, Sarijan hasn’t resumed farming his land; as a result, he now has to buy food instead of growing it, driving an increase in his living costs.

Indonesia delays enforcement of widely panned fisheries policy
- The Indonesian government has pushed back the implementation of a new fisheries policy based on catch quotas amid near-universal criticism from stakeholders.
- The fisheries ministry said the year-long delay would allow more time to prepare the fundamental infrastructure, but some observers speculated it was likely also linked to political factors.
- The quota-based fisheries management policy, introduced in March this year, will have affected industrial, local and noncommercial fishers, while small fishers are exempted from the quota.
- The fisheries ministry, however, said it would use the extended time to increase efforts for public outreach, education and gaining support for the implementation of the new policy.

Outcry as Brazil Congress overrides president to revive anti-Indigenous law
- Brazil’s Congress has pushed through a new law that includes several anti-Indigenous measures that strip back land rights and open traditional territories to mining and agribusiness.
- It includes the controversial time frame thesis, requiring Indigenous populations to prove they physically occupied their land on Oct. 5 1988, the day of the promulgation of the Federal Constitution; failure to provide such evidence will nullify demarcated land.
- The decision provoked outrage among activists, who say the new law is the biggest setback for Indigenous rights in Brazil in decades.
- Both President Lula and the Supreme Court have previously called the measures in the bill unconstitutional and against public interests, and Indigenous organizations announced they will challenge the law.

COP28 cements goal to halt forest loss in 7 years, but where’s the money?
- While COP28 in Dubai included a goal to halt and reverse forest loss by the end of the decade, tropical forest nations say they are still not seeing the funding required to keep forests standing.
- The Democratic Republic of the Congo says it has not seen any of the $500 million pledged to it two years ago to protect the Congo Basin rainforest, the second-largest in the world.
- As forest nations wait for funding, some are controversially turning to untapped fossil fuel reservoirs underneath the forests.
- While carbon credits have come under fire this year, many at COP28 still say they see carbon credits as one way to bring in much needed funding to keep carbon and wildlife-rich forests standing.

Suriname preparing to clear Amazon for agriculture, documents suggest
- The government of Suriname is weighing a series of land deals that would allow the Ministry of Agriculture and a group of private entities to carry out agriculture, livestock and aquaculture activities on hundreds of thousands of hectares of land, most of it Amazon Rainforest.
- The Amazon covers 93% of Suriname’s total land area, making agricultural development an especially sensitive issue in the country.
- Five private entities are involved in the deals, with an interest in commodities like soy and cashews.

Traditional small farmers burned by Indonesia’s war on wildfires
- An investigation by Mongabay based on court records and interviews shows police in Indonesia are increasingly charging small farmers for slash-and-burn practices.
- Prosecutions surged following a particularly catastrophic fire season in 2015, in response to which Indonesia’s president threatened to fire local law enforcement chiefs for not preventing burning in their jurisdictions.
- Most of those prosecuted were small farmers cultivating less than 2 hectares, and many were of old age and/or illiterate; several alleged they suffered extortion and abuse during their legal ordeal.
- Experts say law enforcers should be more judicious about the charges they bring, noting that a “targeted fire policy” should differentiate between various kinds of actors, such as traditional farmers, land speculators, and people hired to clear land by plantation firms.

Philippines oil spill may reverberate long after cleanup declared complete
- On March 1, the MT Princess Empress oil tanker sank in the Philippines, carrying 900,000 liters (237,754 gallons) of industrial fuel oil. A huge oil slick polluted local waters and prompted authorities to impose a ban on fishing that sent local communities into a tailspin.
- The wreck occurred in the Verde Island Passage, between the Philippines’ main islands of Luzon and Mindoro, an area with the highest concentration of marine biodiversity in the world.
- The spill cleanup activities are now finished, and life is returning to normal in many places. However, experts say the effects of the oil spill on the ecosystem could linger over the long term.
- The spill has reinvigorated calls for the Philippine Legislature to pass a law declaring the entire Verde Island Passage a marine protected area.

COP28 ‘breakthrough’ elevates litigation as vital route to climate action
- In the past three decades, the United Nations has sponsored 28 annual climate summits. But that process has failed to provide a legally binding path to significant carbon emission reductions or to the phaseout of fossil fuels responsible for the climate crisis.
- The just concluded COP28 summit, held in Dubai and largely controlled by fossil fuel interests, has pledged “transitioning away from fossil fuels” but that deal is also voluntary. Now, with the world on track for catastrophic global warming, litigation is increasingly being used to force governments to regulate fossil fuels and enforce existing laws.
- Thousands of climate-related lawsuits are underway to reduce emissions, stop drilling or gain compensation for the Indigenous and traditional peoples who are the most vulnerable to climate impacts.
- But despite some court wins for the environment, the litigation process is slow and unlikely to achieve major results in time to staunch fast-moving warming. Even when lawyers do win climate suits, there is no guarantee governments or corporations will obey judicial decisions.

Mining company Belo Sun sues environmental defenders in intimidation tactic, NGOs say
- Canadian mining company Belo Sun has filed a lawsuit against community leaders and environmental rights defenders, including members of Amazon Watch and International Rivers, for their alleged support or involvement in the illegal occupation of company-owned land.
- A coalition of environmental lawyers and human rights activists say the lawsuit is an intimidation tactic part of a pattern the company uses to silence and weaken those who speak against its operations near the biodiverse Xingu River.
- Belo Sun denies persecuting or threatening environmental defenders and says it is only acting to preserve its rights, preserve the rights of the protesters and stop criminal activity.
- The lawyers of those accused have started to provide their defense in court and plan to present a complaint of the lawsuit to the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the U.N.

Iconic Indonesian raptor still threatened by habitat degradation, isolation
- The latest survey has showed an increase in population of the Javan hawk-eagle, an iconic bird of prey endemic to Indonesia, from the previous survey carried out in 2009.
- Still, the research also found habitat isolation is a growing concern, linked to the small size of forest patches as primary forest is lost due to human activity.
- The Javan hawk-eagle heavily relies on primary forests for breeding, particularly for the tall trees in which it builds its nests.
- The hawk-eagle is Indonesia’s national bird, and conservation efforts were meant to boost its population by 10% from a 2019 baseline; this hasn’t happened, according to the recent survey.

NGOs at COP28 demand Vietnam free climate advocates before it gets energy funding
- Vietnam has unveiled the resource mobilization plan for its just energy transition partnership (JETP) at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai.
- The $15.5 billion plan, a partnership between Vietnam and G7 countries, outlines the policies and financing Vietnam will need to achieve 47% renewable energy and peak emissions in 2030.
- Environmentalists are calling for Vietnam to release imprisoned climate activists and guarantee protections for civil society before the JETP can move forward.
- In the past two years, Vietnam has imprisoned six leading environmental advocates, including individuals working on alternatives to fossil fuel expansion.

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.

With Indonesia’s new fishing policy starting soon, fishers still mostly unaware
- Indonesia is scheduled to enforce a new fisheries policy at the start of the new year, but new reports have highlighted persistent inadequacies in the strategy.
- The office of the Indonesian Ombudsman says the quota-based fisheries management policy in general lacks accountability and transparency, including broader consultation with fishing communities.
- A separate report from Destructive Fishing Watch (DFW) Indonesia, an NGO, similarly found that many fishers had very limited awareness of the regulation changes and that existing fisheries infrastructure was inadequate to support the new strategy.
- Both organizations have called on the fisheries ministry to boost its efforts in public outreach about the new policy and ensure infrastructural readiness at all levels of government in the short time remaining before the policy goes into force.

Amazonian expedition searches out rare ‘fish from the clouds’
- Researchers carried out a massive survey in the Brazilian Amazon for so-called annual rivulids, a family of fish whose eggs survive in a hibernation state during drought and then hatch when it rains — a phenomenon that’s earned them the name “fish from the clouds.”
- There are 200 species of annual rivulids in Brazil, nearly half of which are at risk of extinction; their fragile ecosystems — ponds, swamps and marshes — are highly vulnerable to infrastructure works like highways, ports and hydroelectric dams.
- Little studied in the Amazon, these species are subjected to stress brought on by human occupation; three new endemic species discovered during the expedition live in the Belo Monte hydropower dam’s area of influence.
- The survival of annual rivulids could be guaranteed by environmental licensing laws, but proposed legislation currently in the Senate could weaken those guidelines.

Brazil cattle traceability program to limit deforestation in Pará state
- A new traceability program will keep tabs on the millions of cattle present throughout the state of Pará, in northern Brazil, where the Amazon Rainforest has been hit especially hard by deforestation from cattle ranching.
- The tagging program aims to monitor all transported cattle transported through the state by December 2025 and the permanent herd of approximately 24 million cattle by December 2026.
- The program was created last week through a decree signed by Pará governor Helder Barbalho following the introduction of the Leaders Declaration on Food Systems, Agriculture and Climate Action at COP28, the annual UN climate conference.

Biden can tip the (pangolin) scales on China’s illegal wildlife trade (commentary)
- If China doesn’t act to wean itself off its pangolin addiction before December 31st, President Biden must follow through on threats to sanction China –– or risk losing not just pangolins, but the US’s critical influence over global wildlife trafficking, argues Azza Schunmann, the Director of the Pangolin Crisis Fund.
- Schunmann says Biden’s opportunity to take action against pangolin trafficking lies in the Pelly Amendment, which authorizes the president to limit imports from countries that support the illegal wildlife trade: “The Pelly Amendment was proven to be one of the most powerful tools at the disposal of the Chief Executive to end wildlife trafficking. Now, it’s overdue to be wielded once again – this time, for pangolins.”
- “President Biden has given China until December 31 of this year to comply by ‘completely closing its domestic market for pangolins and pangolin parts, transparent accounting of domestic stockpiles, and fully removing pangolins and pangolin parts from the national list of approved medicines,” Schunmann notes.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Red flags but no repercussions for ‘certified’ Malaysian logger Samling: Report
- A report by NGOs focused on forests and Indigenous rights in Borneo alleges that Malaysian timber firm Samling has appeared to log beyond the terms of the national forest certification scheme with minimal repercussions.
- An auditor raised several issues with Samling’s FPIC process at certified timber concessions, including one concession that lost its certification and one that has so far retained it.
- One of the report’s authors told Mongabay that they focused the report on auditor SIRIM QAS and Malaysia’s homegrown certification system, in the hope the government can reform the system.
- The report, whose findings Samling and SIRIM QAS have both disputed, highlights ongoing debate about Malaysia’s timber certification process.

Sieged by mining and megaprojects, the Munduruku push for land rights in the Amazon
- In the face of threats from illegal mining and major infrastructure projects, the Munduruku people of the Sawré Muybu Indigenous Territory have for years performed annual “self-demarcation” expeditions to protect the land and press for official protection.
- The land is in the final stages of getting state protection, but previous right-wing administrations delayed demarcation.
- The Munduruku say they now hope that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will sign its protection, which, given the vast array of threats to their land and culture, they say can’t come soon enough.

New algorithm looks at how Amazon vegetation will behave after climate change
- Brazilian scientists have pioneered a new vegetation model with a broader array of life strategies that is expected to provide a more accurate representation of the Amazon ecosystem’s functioning and the forest’s responses to climate change.
- The new model suggests that Amazon plants would reorganize, allocating more energy to their roots at the expense of stems and leaves; consequently, they would have a lower capacity to retain and absorb carbon in a scenario with reduced rainfall.
- Field research and future contributions will add new information to the model, and experts hope it will get better at predicting the future and shaping policies for conservation.

Panama copper mine to close after Supreme Court rules concession unconstitutional
- Minera Panamá, a subsidiary of the Canadian company First Quantum Minerals (FQM), will have to shut down the Cobre Panamá mine after the country’s highest court ruled the concession contract unconstitutional.
- One of the challenges to the constitutionality of the contract focused on tendering, a process in which companies are invited to bid on a project, ensuring a fair market and competition.
- Last year, the mine produced over 86,000 tons of copper, around 1% of the world’s total production and 5% of Panama’s GDP. But the operation is also exacerbating a current drought and threatening migratory birds, protestors said.

In Brazil’s Amazon, a clandestine road threatens a pristine reserve
- Terra do Meio Ecological Station, a pristine reserve under federal protection, has suffered invasions amid efforts to open up an illegal road cutting through the rainforest.
- Much of the deforestation is spilling over from APA Triunfo do Xingu, a sustainable use reserve that has become one of the most deforested corners of the Amazon in recent years.
- Federal and state authorities have cracked down on environmental crime in the region, but experts say this has not been enough to halt the advance of the road or stop outsiders from turning forest into pasture.
- Environmentalists worry that, if invaders succeed in fully opening up the road, it would splinter an important ecological corridor meant to protect the region’s rich biodiversity and its Indigenous residents.

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.

Can impermanent carbon credits really offset forever emissions?
- A team of researchers has put forth a method that they say makes it possible to compare credits for carbon from forests projects against more permanent storage solutions.
- The carbon emissions that these credits are meant to offset can last for hundreds, if not thousands, of years in the atmosphere. Forests, by comparison, are subject to fires, disease and deforestation, meaning that their climate benefits can be more temporary than longer-term solutions, such as direct air carbon capture.
- By “discounting” the credits from forest carbon projects based on conservative upfront estimates of how long a forest will safeguard or sequester carbon, the authors say that “like-for-like” comparisons would be possible.
- The team published their work Oct. 30 in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The coveted legacy of the ‘Man of the Hole’ and his cultivated Amazon forest
- Tanaru, also known as The Man of the Hole, was an Indigenous person who survived several massacres that decimated his relatives in the state of Rondônia, in the Brazilian Amazon, in the 1980s and 1990s.
- He was the last of his group and refused contact with non-Indigenous Brazilian society and with other Indigenous people for decades, and he died peacefully in 2022.
- Tanaru’s dramatic story was told in Corumbiara, a documentary by Vincent Carelli, who hoped to capture Tanaru’s footage to persuade the Brazilian state to recognize the land as an Indigenous territory.
- Now Indigenous people and advocates are fighting for the Tanaru Indigenous land to remain an Indigenous territory, but ranchers want to take possession of the plot to turn it into pastures and soy fields.

Salty wells and lost land: Climate and erosion take their toll in Sulawesi
- Coastal erosion on the west coast of Indonesia’s Sulawesi Island is so advanced that seawater has penetrated the groundwater supply that tens of thousands use for drinking water.
- The communities have yet to be served by utility water provision, so families are resorting to costly supplies of water from private distributors.
- Research shows that rising seas and more frequent and powerful storms will accelerate coastal abrasion, raising burdens shouldered by the world’s coastal communities.

Enviva, the world’s largest biomass energy company, is near collapse
- The forest biomass energy industry took a major hit this month, as Enviva, the world’s largest producer of wood pellets — burned in former coal power plants to make energy on an industrial scale — saw catastrophic third quarter losses. Enviva’s stock tanked, its CEO was replaced and the company seems near collapse.
- Founded in 2004, Enviva harvests forests in the U.S. Southeast, with its 10 plants key providers of wood pellets to large power plants in the EU, U.K., Japan and South Korea — nations that use a scientifically suspect carbon accounting loophole to count the burning of forest wood as a renewable resource.
- A former manager and whistleblower at Enviva told Mongabay in 2022 that the company’s green claims were fraudulent. Last week, he said that much of Enviva’s downfall is based on its cheaply built factories equipped with faulty machinery and on large-scale fiscal miscalculations regarding wood-procurement costs.
- How the firm’s downfall will impact the global biomass for energy market, and worldwide pellet supply, is unknown. European and Asian nations rely on Enviva pellets to supply their power plants and to meet climate change goals, with the burning of forests to make energy erroneously claimed as producing zero emissions.

Can India’s Forest Rights Act deliver? Odisha state is trying to find out
- In 2021, the village of Kodalpalli in Odisha’s Nayagarh district became one of the few places in India where the country’s landmark Forest Rights Act of 2006 (FRA) was translated into formal rights for traditionally forest-dependent communities.
- This July, the east Indian state of Odisha launched a scheme to expand FRA coverage to 30,000 villages that are home to tribal groups and other traditionally forest-dwelling communities.
- It took Kodalpalli villagers more than 10 years to get their claim validated; by then, a women-led forest stewardship scheme called thengapalli had been in place for about four decades.
- Experts say the legal right has helped strengthen existing community-based institutions and practices like thengapalli while opening up new livelihood opportunities for residents.

End of impunity for Indigenous killings in sight for Brazil’s Guajajara
- Indigenous forest guardian Paulo Paulino Guajajara was killed in November 2019 in an alleged ambush by illegal loggers in the Arariboia Indigenous Territory in Brazil’s Maranhão state.
- Mongabay’s Karla Mendes, who interviewed Paulo for a documentary film nine months before his death, returned to Arariboia in August 2023 to talk with his family and the other guardian who survived the attack, Laércio Guajajara, and shine a light on a case that still hasn’t gone to trial after four years.
- “If those invaders had managed to kill us both, me and Paulo, they were going to hide us in the forest. Who would find us? Nobody was ever going to find me or Paulo again in a forest of that size,” Laércio says of his will to warn the guardians about Paulo’s murder, even as he suffered four gunshot wounds.
- Justice may soon be on the horizon for the Guajajara people: Paulo’s case will be the first killing of an Indigenous defender that will go before a federal jury, likely in the first half of 2024, after a court in late October denied a motion by those accused to try the case in state court.

Indonesia welcomes new Singapore regulation to help curb lobster smuggling
- A new reexport regulation in Singapore could help stem the smuggling of lobster larvae from neighboring Indonesia.
- The city-state is a key destination for the contraband and a transit point for lobster larvae reexported to third countries like Vietnam and China.
- Under the new regulation, reexporters in Singapore will have to get health certificates for live animals from the country of origin, which in theory should be impossible for smugglers.
- Indonesian authorities have cautiously welcomed the plan, but say both countries must work more closely on the long-running problem.

‘We won’t give up’: DRC’s Front Line Defenders award winner Olivier Ndoole Bahemuke
- Olivier Ndoole Bahemuke, Africa winner of the 2023 Front Line Defenders Award, is an environmental lawyer and community activist.
- He has spent 15 years working in defense of communities in and around Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- Because of his activism in a region dominated by armed conflict and the illicit exploitation of natural resources, including gold and coltan, his life has been threatened on numerous occasions and he currently lives in exile.
- Defending the environment is becoming increasingly dangerous: Nearly half of the 194 human rights defenders killed in 2022 were environmental defenders.

Remediation overdue: South American countries fail to enforce oil cleanup laws
- Existing legislation in Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia provides for the remediation of environmental damage, though experts point to a “lack of political will” to enforce the laws.
- Bolivia is pressing ahead with its plans to expand activity of its hydrocarbon sector, while in Ecuador, there is an ongoing debate in international courts over an emblematic pollution case.
- In Peru, not a single environmental liability has yet been fully dealt with, while in Colombia a law has just been passed that will seek to catalog the damage caused by the oil industry.

New study pushes for protection of one of Africa’s ‘least understood treasures’
- A new study reveals the extent of a tropical water tower in Angola, which performs the same role as snow-capped mountains in the Northern Hemisphere.
- The Angolan Highlands Water Tower contains peatlands and freshwater lakes that supply major rivers in the region, and the wildlife-rich Okavango Delta in Botswana.
- Despite this vital hydrological role, the water tower currently has no formal protection.
- The team behind the study hopes it will help to strengthen the case for recognition of a vast portion of the water tower as a Ramsar Site of International Importance.

Crime analysis sheds light on tiger poaching in Malaysia
- Conservationists have successfully applied an urban policing strategy to assess and fine-tune their efforts to tackle poaching of tigers in Peninsular Malaysia.
- They reported in a new paper that poaching success by hunters from Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand — the main group of poachers in the country — declined by up to 40% during the study period.
- The conservationists used the EMMIE crime prevention framework (short for effect, mechanisms, moderators, implementation and economic costs) to identify what worked and areas to improve.
- There are fewer than 200 critically endangered Malayan tigers believed to survive in Malaysia, with snaring by poachers among the leading causes of their decline.

Dominica set to open world’s first reserve centered around sperm whales
- The tiny island nation of Dominica has announced that it will create a 788-square-kilometer (304-square-mile) reserve to protect endangered sperm whales.
- Most of the sperm whales that live off the coast of Dominica are part of the Eastern Caribbean Clan, which currently has a population of fewer than 300 individuals.
- Sperm whales in this region are threatened by fishing gear entanglement, pollution, boat strikes, and even tourism.
- The new reserve aims to protect whales by restricting activities such as fishing, vessel traffic and tourism, while not entirely banning them.

Forests hold massive carbon storage potential — if we cut emissions
- A new study finds forests could potentially store 226 billion metric tons of carbon if protected and restored, or about one-third of excess emissions since industrialization.
- Nearly two-thirds of this potential lies in conserving and letting existing forests mature.
- The authors say that restoring deforested areas through community-driven approaches such as agroforestry and payments for ecosystem services is essential.
- Planting trees can’t replace cutting fossil fuel emissions, as climate change threatens forests’ carbon uptake.

How the U.S. financial system props up illegal logging and mining
- The U.S. has an estimated $466 billion in illicit funds floating around its economy, much of it from environmental crimes like illegal logging and mining sourced to Latin America.
- The FACT Coalition, a group advocating for a fair tax system in the U.S., recently made the case that more attention needs to be paid to “financial secrecy” in conservation circles fighting climate change, deforestation and pollution.
- Weak regulation of shell companies, financial institutions and the real estate market make it too easy for environmental criminal activity to hide illicit funds in the U.S., the coalition said.

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.

Lifted sanctions on gold, oil could slow conservation efforts in Venezuela
- Last month, the U.S. agreed to lift some sanctions on Venezuela’s oil and gas and gold, some of the country’s largest industries, but also its most environmentally hazardous.
- Eased restrictions could allow neighboring countries with illegal mining, such as Suriname, Brazil, Guyana and Colombia, to launder gold through Venezuela’s new legal channels.
- Spills from oil and gas fields may continue as before given the government’s disregard for infrastructure maintenance, such as fixing pipes and replacing worn-down tanks.

Can carbon markets solve Africa’s climate finance woes?
- The African Carbon Markets Initiative, a consortium of Global North donors, corporate representatives, conservation groups and energy lobbyists, is pushing to expand carbon markets on the continent.
- The effort has gained the vocal support of Kenyan President William Ruto, along with a number of other African heads of state, who see carbon markets as a way to generate badly needed climate finance.
- But African environmental groups have sharply criticized carbon markets, saying they represent a “false solution” to the climate crisis and will mostly enrich bankers and traders based outside the continent.
- The drive to scale up carbon markets in Africa and elsewhere is set to be a major agenda item at this month’s COP28 climate summit in Dubai.

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.

Not MPAs but OECMs: Can a new designation help conserve the ocean?
- To meet the landmark commitment struck last year to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030, the world’s nations will have to designate many new and large marine protected areas. But there’s also a different, less familiar option for meeting that target: “other effective area-based conservation measures,” or OECMs, areas that are not necessarily designed to protect biodiversity — they just happen to do so.
- Countries are now working to identify areas that meet the criteria and register them as OECMs, including in Africa where a recent webinar highlighted the promises and pitfalls of this relatively new conservation designation.
- Conservationists say OECMs could bring many positives, including the development, recognition or financing of de facto conservation areas led by local communities or Indigenous peoples.
- However, they also warn of the dangers of “bluewashing” or creating so-called paper OECMs that fail to deliver real conservation benefits in the rush to meet the 2030 deadline.

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 […]
Amazon drought: Much damage still to come (commentary)
- The Amazon Rainforest is being hit by three kinds of drought at once: an “eastern El Niño,” a “central El Niño” and an “Atlantic dipole.”
- Together, these drought conditions extend to almost the entire Amazon, and they are expected to last until at least mid-2024.
- These phenomena are all aggravated by global warming.
- This is a commentary and does not necessarily reflect the views of Mongabay. It is an updated translation of a text by the authors that is available in Portuguese on Amazônia Real.

Amazon recovery offers hope of big rewards but poses equally big challenges
- While deforestation rates have plunged, up to 80 million hectares (198 million acres) of the Brazilian Amazon have already been destroyed, most of it on private and undesignated public lands.
- Reforestation pledges have promised to replant more than 12 million hectares (30 million acres) in the coming decade.
- Carbon credit enthusiasts say they believe the market could inject billions into the region and pay for reforestation.
- Experts are skeptical that either of these plans would work at the scale needed, as landowners often see value in clearing the forest.

Australia crackdown on climate protesters grows amid fight against gas project
- The Indigenous ancestral land of Murujuga in Western Australia is home to the world’s oldest and largest collection of petroglyphs, which would be partially destroyed by the country’s biggest fossil fuel project, the Burrup Hub, owned by Woodside Energy.
- As the company argues more gas is needed, direct action tactics by protesters, like releasing non-toxic stench gas or painting on art, have erupted across the state, as well as crackdowns by the police who have begun imposing the strongest form of charges on activists — some facing up to 20 years in prison.
- This is on trend with a general increasing intolerance toward environmental protesters in Australia and an uptick in the use of direct action by protesters who feel the time is running out to meet climate targets and protect endangered species.
- Environmentalists and researchers worry the project will endanger marine life through seismic blasting and say studies show it is not necessary to meet the country’s energy needs.

Key Indonesian fish populations depleted & new assessments needed, study shows
- The wild populations that sustain a significant Indonesian fishery are more depleted than the government had estimated, as highlighted by a recent scientific study.
- The authors have called for a reevaluation of the method used to assess fish stocks to address the overexploitation of these populations.
- The Indonesian deep-slope demersal fisheries have helped position Indonesia to be the world’s second-largest exporter of snapper species.

Amid record melting, countries fail again to protect Antarctic waters
- The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), the intergovernmental body charged with protecting marine life and managing fisheries in the Southern Ocean, met from Oct. 16-27 in Hobart, Australia, with 26 member countries and the European Union participating.
- For the seventh year in a row, the CCAMLR declined to establish new marine protected areas (MPAs) around Antarctica, despite having committed to creating “a representative network of MPAs” in 2009.
- Scientists, conservationists and some governments have been pushing for greater protections, concerned that the melting ice in Antarctica has reached alarming levels, jeopardizing some key populations of penguins, krill, whales, seals and other marine animals.
- The stalemate came even as a new threat to wildlife emerged in the region: the discovery last week that a virulent form of avian flu had reached Antarctic bird colonies.

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.

The Indo-West Pacific harbors two distinct mangrove hotspots, study says
- New research on slugs has found two types of mangrove forests in the Indo-West Pacific region, highlighting their much-needed protection against deforestation and rising sea levels.
- The Indo-West Pacific is known to have the highest diversity of mangrove plants in the world, but it wasn’t previously clear which parts of the region had peak diversity.
- The latest research found the mangrove forests of the archipelagic region that spans from Papua New Guinea to Malaysia differ in numerous characteristics, including sediment size, freshwater input and plant species.

Malaysian logger Samling’s track record leaves Indigenous Sarawak questioning its plans
- Malaysian timber giant Samling has held logging concessions in the Bornean state of Sarawak since the 1970s, many of them overlapping with Indigenous customary lands.
- In a recently settled lawsuit, Samling described complaints against its operations in Sarawak as defamatory.
- Mongabay recently traveled to Sarawak to meet with Indigenous and local leaders, who said that while the company has recently made more efforts to meet with villages affected by logging, it’s not doing much to address their complaints and suggestions.

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.

People and nature suffer as historic drought fuels calamitous Amazon fires
- The state of Amazonas, the largest in Brazil, recorded 3,181 fires from Oct. 1-23, an all-time record for this month, according to monitoring by Brazil’s space agency, INPE.
- Surrounded by fires, Manaus, the state capital, has been shrouded in a thick layer of smoke, increasing the number of medical emergencies for respiratory problems.
- Researchers writing in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution say fires have become the main factor in the degradation of the Brazilian Amazon, threatening to undo the results of environmental protection policies.
- Water levels in the Solimões, Negro, Madeira and other great Amazonian rivers have dropped to unprecedented levels, forcing families to live on boats and drag themselves through the mud in search of water and food.

Report: Half of MSC-certified ‘sustainable’ tuna caught with controversial gear
- Tuna fisheries often rely on fish aggregating devices (FADs), floating human-made structures that fish congregate around, which makes it relatively easy to catch them, but which have also raised concerns about high rates of bycatch, capture of juvenile tuna, and pollution.
- Despite these concerns, the number of tuna fisheries using FADs that are certified sustainable under the standards of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), the largest ecolabeling scheme for wild fisheries, has soared, and FAD-fished tuna now account for more than half of all MSC-certified tuna, according to a new report from France-based nonprofit BLOOM Association.
- The report contends this constitutes a weakening of MSC standards in order to meet market demands for tuna.
- The MSC has refuted this claim, pointing to steps that certified fisheries are taking to reduce and study the impact of FADs.

Lula partially blocks anti-Indigenous land rights bill, but trouble isn’t over
- Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva partially blocked a controversial bill that dramatically violates Indigenous rights, a month after the Supreme Court ruled out its core article.
- While some Indigenous activists lament that the bill wasn’t fully rejected, many hail the partial veto as a win for human rights and the protection of the Constitution.
- The vetoed bill now returns to Congress, where Lula’s decision will be upheld or rejected; if rejected, the time frame bill will be enacted, in a major blow to Indigenous rights and environmental protection, experts say.
- The veto sparked outrage among Brazil’s powerful rural lobby, which vowed to reject Lula’s changes to the bill, although any decision made in Congress can be challenged in the Supreme Court.

New Paraguay law aims to improve carbon credit market
- A new law in Paraguay creates a more organized, transparent carbon credit system but might also complicate the way credits are bought and sold.
- The law creates a registry for carbon credit projects and ensures land isn’t being assigned more than once.
- The Gran Chaco, South America’s second-largest forest, has been of particular interest to the carbon credit market, as there are concerns about deforestation in the area.

Indonesia renews effort to resume controversial lobster larvae exports
- The Indonesian government is drafting a new policy that could allow the resumption of lobster larvae exports, which were banned in 2016 to prevent overharvesting of wild stocks.
- The fisheries ministry says a resumption is necessary to boost local fishers’ earnings and develop the domestic aquaculture industry.
- However, critics say the new policy mirrors a previous attempt to resume exports in 2020, which spawned a corruption scandal that led to the fisheries minister at the time being jailed.
- The ministry says this time around the policy will be monitored and enforced more strictly, although questions still remain over how sustainably lobster larvae can be harvested from the wild.

As companies buy ‘plastic credits,’ are they reducing waste or greenwashing?
- Companies and other entities are buying “plastic credits” allowing them to offset every ton of plastic they make with an equivalent amount of plastic waste collected and taken out of the environment elsewhere — often in poor nations lacking waste management programs. Several organizations now offer credits and will certify plastic collection and reuse.
- No worldwide standards or regulations govern the use of these plastic credits or assure their reliability, nor what gets done with the collected waste. Verra, which runs the world’s largest carbon credit verification system, but has come under fire for that system’s poor verification record, recently launched its own plastic credits verification system.
- Skeptics warn the plastic credit systems being created by various organizations, rather than recycling significant plastic waste, merely amount to greenwashing and allow companies to continue to make and use polluting materials, while running PR campaigns to make themselves look environmentally responsible.
- The credit system at best only deals with waste already manufactured and thrown out; it doesn’t address the need to ban the most toxic plastics, reduce production of others, or replace disposable single-use plastic with eco-friendly or reusable materials. Verra is urging that plastic credits become part of the U.N. global plastics treaty currently under negotiation.

Nepal’s constitutional bench halts ‘triple taxation’ on community forests
- Nepal’s Constitutional Court has issued a stay on the laws that require community forest user groups to pay taxes to the local, provincial and federal governments, which are seen as unfair and contradictory to the constitution.
- Community forest user groups manage about 34% of Nepal’s forested area under a participatory conservation model that has been praised for increasing forest cover and empowering local communities.
- The petitioners argued that the taxation system violates the constitutional provision of balance between development and environment, and that only the federal government can determine taxes for community forests.
- The court ordered the government not to implement the taxation laws until a final verdict is passed, and the user groups hope that the court will rule in their favor.

South Africa’s penguins heading toward extinction; will no-fishing zones help?
- With just 10,000 breeding pairs left, the endangered African penguin (Spheniscus demersus) could be extinct in the wild by 2035 if the current rate of population decline continues.
- To protect the bird’s food supply and slow its population collapse, South Africa is throwing a protective no-fishing cordon around its main breeding colonies for a period of 10 years.
- But the devil is in the details, and conservationists say the cordons are too small to ensure the penguins get enough fish.
- Negotiations over whether to adjust the cordons are continuing in advance of an early 2024 deadline.

Tensions flare as Ecuador’s environment consultation process is put to the test
- In July, farmers in Las Naves, Ecuador, got into violent clashes with police while protesting a new environmental consultation process and a large-scale open-pit mine soon to begin operations in their canton.
- The environmental consultation is part of the new controversial Decree 754 passed in May by outgoing President Guillermo Lasso which may speed up environmental permits for infrastructure projects — including mining — as its oil economy flounders.
- This conflict highlights an important tension that lies at the heart of all extraction projects in Ecuador: the consultation process. Amid much dispute between environmental lawyers and the ministry on the legality of the decree, the Constitutional Court is stepping in to review it.
- Addressing tensions like these will be on the plate of Daniel Noboa, newly elected to become the next president, as he promises to revamp the country’s economy.

In biodiverse Nepal, wildlife crime fighters are underpowered but undeterred
- Wildlife crime investigators in Nepal face various challenges, such as lack of training, resources, evidence and database, as well as political and legal pressure.
- They’re responsible for investigating and prosecuting cases related to the hunting and trafficking of iconic species such as tigers, rhinos, snow leopards and pangolins.
- A key obstacle, many say, is a constitutional provision that now requires more serious cases of wildlife crime to be tried before a court; prior to 2015, all such cases would be heard by district forest offices and protected area offices.
- Change is slowly coming, however, with additional training in scientific investigative methods, most recently funded by the U.S. State Department, and with transfer of knowledge.

Fishing ban extension raises hopes for iconic Amazon pink river dolphin
- The Amazon river dolphin, or boto, is an integral feature of the rainforest’s biodiversity and culture, and is central to several Indigenous tales.
- Even though the dolphin isn’t fished for human consumption, it’s become endangered over the decades because fishers use its flesh as bait for catching piracatinga catfish.
- The Brazilian government earlier this year renewed a moratorium on fishing of piracatinga, first imposed in 2014, in the hope of saving the dolphin, but experts say fishers have just been ignoring the rule.
- The measure became even more relevant in October following the detection of more than 100 dead dolphins in an Amazon lake — experts suspect that the deaths are directly linked to the extreme drought affecting the region.

Iceland’s whaling paradox (commentary)
- As Iceland’s latest whaling season comes to a close, a heated debate continues over the ethics and sustainability of the country’s policy on these marine mammals.
- Filmmaker and activist Micah Garen — who co-directed the documentary “The Last Whaling Station” — shares his thoughts on what may be the nation’s last whaling season.
- “The paradox of whaling is the inherent contradiction between a utilitarian and Kantian world view. If you believe your choices matter, then ending whaling now is the only ethical, moral and philosophical choice we can make,” he argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Indigenous environmental defenders among favorites for Nobel Peace Prize
- Indigenous leaders Victoria Tauli-Corpuz and Juan Carlos Jintiach were shortlisted by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) as possible winners of the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize.
- This was the first year the PRIO included a topic for Indigenous environmental defenders.
- Both leaders say they are grateful for the recognition, especially for recognizing the international Indigenous peoples’ movement, and priority areas remain the protection of Indigenous rights and access to direct climate funding.
- The first and only time an Indigenous person won the Nobel Peace Prize was in 1992 when Guatemalan rights defender Rigoberta Menchú Tum received the award.

Brazil strikes intruders of Amazon’s most deforested Indigenous land
- On Oct. 2, federal agencies descended upon the Native Apyterewa and Trincheira Bacajá territories in the state of Pará in an attempt to remove non-Indigenous people from the land.
- Human rights activists praise the move as Indigenous communities within these lands continue to struggle against soaring levels of deforestation and decades-old conflicts with outsiders.
- Insiders say that federal agencies are temporarily relocating Indigenous people to villages far from invader settlements to ensure their safety.
- The Parakanã people from the Apyterewa Territory lament that local authorities in Pará are rallying in Brazil’s capital Brasília to suspend operations and allow the illegal invaders to remain on the land.

Calls for crackdown intensify as fire crisis heats up across Indonesia
- A senior member of Indonesia’s parliament has called for tougher law enforcement as firefighters continued to battle wildfires across the archipelago.
- Indonesia’s environment ministry says it had sealed off 35 land concession, including several oil palm concessions, in the year to date.
- The fires are also fueling a diplomatic spat with neighboring Malaysia, which blames poor air quality there on the haze blowing from fires in Sumatra and Borneo.

Conservationists condemn Nepal proposal to allow hydropower in protected areas
- The Ministry of Forest and Environment has proposed a new procedure that would allow large-scale hydropower development inside protected areas, with fewer environmental safeguards and more legal loopholes.
- Conservationists and legal experts have criticized the proposal as going against the Constitution and the National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act as well as risking the biodiversity and ecosystem services of Nepal’s protected areas.
- They have also warned that the proposal could undermine the balance between development and conservation and expose the country to more climate change impacts such as floods and landslides.
- The Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation has defended the proposal as documenting the existing practices and bolstering the balance, not upsetting it.

Conservation success lies with governments, not NGOs: Q&A with Hem Sagar Baral
- Hem Sagar Baral is a renowned Nepali ornithologist and conservationist who recently retired as the country representative of the Zoological Society of London.
- In an interview with Mongabay, he talks about his experience setting up ZSL’s office in Nepal, the challenges and achievements of working with various stakeholders, and the role of NGOs in conservation.
- He also emphasizes that NGOs can’t replace the government’s role in conservation, but can only complement it by filling in the gaps and providing technical expertise.

Microplastics pose risk to ocean plankton, climate, other key Earth systems
- Trillions of microplastic particles in the ocean threaten marine life, from huge filter-feeders to tiny plankton. Although not lethal in the short term, the long-term impacts of microplastics on plankton and marine microbes could disrupt key Earth systems such as ocean carbon storage and nitrogen cycling.
- Oceans represent Earth’s largest natural carbon store and are crucial to mitigate atmospheric CO2 increase. Carbon taken up by plankton and stored in the deep ocean — known as the biological carbon pump — is a major process in ocean carbon storage. Microplastics may “clog” this pump and slow ocean carbon uptake.
- Microplastics in marine sediments alter microbial communities and disrupt nitrogen cycling, potentially magnifying human-caused problems like toxic algal blooms. Changes in plankton communities at the ocean surface could exacerbate deoxygenation driven by climate change, starving marine organisms of oxygen.
- Small plastic particles are impossible to remove from the oceans with current technology, so stopping pollution is a priority. Plastic production continues to soar year-on-year, but a U.N. treaty to address plastic pollution could offer a glimmer of hope that the international community is ready to take action.

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.

Cambodia bars green activists from traveling to accept international award
- Three Cambodian environmental activists have been barred from leaving the country to accept an award in Sweden, prompting criticism of the government.
- Long Kunthea, Phun Keo Reaksmey and Thun Ratha are with the group Mother Nature Cambodia, which last month was named a winner of the Right Livelihood award for its “relentless” activism against environmental destruction in the country.
- The three are currently under court supervision following early release from jail in a case related to their activism, which means they can’t travel abroad.
- Mother Nature Cambodia’s founder says the government has put itself in a “lose-lose situation” by barring them, as the incident has both garnered international scrutiny and revealed the shrinking space for civil society in Cambodia.

Cut down once again: Uncontrolled logging puts new Sahel reforestation projects at risk
- Reforestation projects to restore degraded lands in Chad and Cameroon, like the “Great Green Wall” and the “Reforestation 1400” projects, are facing increasing pressure from logging activity.
- Facing poverty, war and corrupt local authorities, locals and refugees are cutting trees in new protected areas for firewood or to sell charcoal.
- Local environmental defence organizations, officials and administrations who lead these reforestation projects are raising the alarm about the extent of deforestation which is contributing to desertification in these areas.
- Despite alternative solutions to excessive logging being proposed and implemented, locals are still harvesting from reforested areas.

What does land mean to Australia’s Indigenous groups fighting logging?
- Many Indigenous Gumbaynggirr people in Australia feel an intimate connection to their ancestral lands, which holds the trees, animals, ancestral spirits and creation stories that form a core part of their identity and sense of belonging.
- This landscape, part of the Newry State Forest in New South Wales, Australia, is facing a logging project by the state-owned Forestry Corporation that threatens the habitat of the vulnerable koala species — also a cultural totem.
- Gumbaynggirr protesters resisting logging plans say they believe every part of the world is in deep relationship with each other, including humans to nature and the land. Their cultural duty to protect totems, they say, pushes them to try to stop extractive industries.
- In this piece, Indigenous Gumbaynggirr protesters explain what land — this piece of the Earth — means to them.

Logging route cut into Cambodia’s Prey Lang from Think Biotech’s concession
- A road carved from a reforestation concession into the heart of Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary in Cambodia appears to be facilitating the illegal logging and trafficking of valuable timber, a Mongabay investigation has revealed.
- The road originates in the concession of Think Biotech, a company previously implicated in forestry crimes, but its director denies being involved in the new road.
- The road had advanced 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) into the ostensibly protected Prey Lang before authorities ordered a crackdown — one that activists say was just for show and targeted only small-time loggers.
- Community groups and activists say Prey Lang’s forests are being decimated at alarming rates, with satellite data showing nearly the same amount of forest cover loss in the past five years as in the previous 18.

Indonesian islanders draw line in sand as Dubai-style reclamation nears
- Residents of the island of Lae-Lae off the Makassar seafront in eastern Indonesia are stepping up their opposition to a major reclamation project conceived in 2009.
- The community has staged seven demonstrations this year to press their opposition to the ongoing development, which they warn will decimate their near-shore fisheries.
- The provincial government has previously said the island’s population will not be required to move, and that Lae-Lae will derive economic benefits from the development.

Small wins for Indigenous Malaysian activists in dispute with timber giant
- For decades, Indigenous activists in the Malaysian state of Sarawak have found themselves in conflict with timber giant Samling.
- In September, Samling agreed to withdraw a lawsuit it filed against SAVE Rivers, a local NGO that publicized concerns about the company’s treatment of people living in and around two areas under the company’s management.
- Samling also lost certification for its Ravenscourt Forest Management Unit, one of the areas of concern in its lawsuit against SAVE Rivers.
- Activists in Sarawak say they will continue in their fight to empower Indigenous communities questioning Samling and other industrial giants’ plans for their land and resources.

For Indonesia’s Kei islanders, a marine protected area makes perfect sense
- Fishing communities in Indonesia’s Kei Islands support the idea of a marine protected area to safeguard their main source of livelihood from unsustainable fishing and climate change impacts.
- That’s the finding of a new study by local researchers, who found that the majority of respondents said they were also willing to contribute a token annual payment for the upkeep of such an MPA.
- The researchers have proposed the MPA to the local government and council, and say they hope that if it’s accepted, it could serve as a template for other MPAs in the region.
- The waters around the Kei Islands are blessed with some of the richest fish stocks in Indonesia, but destructive fishing practices and the impacts of climate change are threatening the age-old fishing tradition here.

Amazon drought cuts river traffic, leaves communities without water and supplies
- Falling water levels in the rivers and lakes of the Brazilian Amazon are restricting the flow of ships and boats, the main form of transport in the region and the only means of access to health and education facilities for many communities.
- This year’s drought is exacerbated by two simultaneous natural events, the main one being El Niño, that inhibit the formation of rain clouds, further reducing the already low rainfall recorded during the dry season.
- More than 100 Amazonian river dolphins were found dead in a lake in Amazonas state, likely due to high water temperatures and low water levels, according to researchers.
- The state of Amazonas is preparing for the worst drought in its history, which will affect 500,000 people by the end of October; the federal government has created a task force to mitigate the impacts, promising to send water, food and medicine.

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