topic: Law

topic: 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.

Venezuela’s shrimp farms push for sustainability against hardship and oil spills
- Venezuela’s aquaculture industry used to go unnoticed in a national economy revolving around the oil industry, but has gained prominence since 2019 despite revenue cuts and the economic crisis.
- Oil spills from disintegrating crude infrastructure compelled shrimp farms to move from an open system that took water from Lake Maracaibo and the Caribbean Sea, to a closed system that’s not only more profitable but also provides environmental benefits for communities and yields healthier shrimp.
- In 2023, farmed shrimp was Venezuela’s sixth-largest export by value; while the top export markets are in Europe, China has become the industry’s fastest-growing destination.
- While the industry has found ways to thrive amid adversity, it says it needs more help from the government, including on supplies of fuel and electricity, on research, and on nurturing a more secure and stable regulatory climate.

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.

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.

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

Final cheetah conservationists freed in Iran, but the big cat’s outlook remains grim
- In April, the last four cheetah conservationists from the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation jailed in 2018 for alleged espionage were released from prison in Tehran; four of their colleagues had been released earlier, while one had died in custody.
- The case had a chilling effect on scientific collaboration and efforts to save the critically endangered Asiatic cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus), which is today found only in Iran, with fewer than 30 believed to remain in the wild.
- The cheetah faces a range of threats, chief among them vehicle collisions: some 52% of cheetah deaths in Iran are due to road accidents.
- Saving the species will require a comprehensive and coordinated effort, and international scientific cooperation is crucial — but conservation work has been hampered by complex geopolitical dynamics, including sanctions.

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.

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

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.

In Brazil, half a century of salt mining sinks a city, displacing thousands
- Decades of salt mining in Maceió, in northeastern Brazil, have led to earthquakes and cracks in several of the city’s neighborhoods, making buildings there unhabitable. As a result, about 60,000 people have been displaced.
- Braskem, the chemical giant that acquired the original salt mining company, has agreed with authorities to clean up the affected neighborhoods and compensate locals. But those affected complain that Braskem has offered them meager amounts, with no negotiation; the sums don’t cover the value of their properties, while compensation for moral damage is also extremely low.
- Locals indirectly affected do not receive compensation and continue to suffer losses, as properties within a 1-kilometer (0.6-mile) radius around the disaster zone can no longer be insured and lose value; businesses adjacent to the now unhabitable neighborhoods have also lost customers.

2024 Goldman Prize Winner Murrawah Johnson: First Nations must be at the forefront of creating change
- Murrawah Maroochy Johnson, an Indigenous Wirdi woman and Traditional Owner from the Birri Gubba Nation, has been awarded the 2024 Goldman Environmental Prize in the category of climate and energy.
- Johnson is the co-founder of Youth Verdict, an advocacy group that successfully won a court case against Waratah Coal in Queensland, Australia. She joins the Mongabay Newscast to discuss the significance of this case for First Nations rights in Australia, as well as the legal implications for similar cases in the future.
- The case Waratah Coal Pty. Ltd. vs. Youth Verdict Ltd. & Ors (2022) resulted in the Land Court of Queensland recommending a rejection of a mining lease in the Galilee Basin that would have added 1.58 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere over its lifespan.
- The case also set multiple precedents in Australia, including being the first successful case to link the impacts of climate change with human rights, and the first to include “on-Country” evidence from First Nations witnesses.

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.

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.

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.

No protection from bottom trawling for seamount chain in northern Pacific
- A recent meeting of the intergovernmental body that manages fisheries in the North Pacific Ocean failed to confer new protections for the Emperor Seamount Chain, a massive and richly biodiverse set of underwater mountains south of the Aleutian Islands.
- Bottom trawlers plied the Emperors aggressively in the past, decimating deep-sea coral communities and fish stocks.
- A proposal by the U.S. and Canadian delegations at the meeting of the North Pacific Fisheries Commission (NPFC) would have temporarily paused the limited trawling that continues there today, but failed to reach a vote.
- The NPFC did pass a separate proposal to regulate fishing of the Pacific saury (Cololabis saira), a severely depleted silvery fish that Japanese people traditionally eat in the fall.

UN puts spotlight on attacks against Indigenous land defenders
- At the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, experts called attention to the criminalization of Indigenous Peoples worldwide, exacerbated by intersecting interests in extractive industries, conservation, and climate mitigation.
- While Indigenous peoples are affected by the global trend of using criminal law to dissuade free speech and protests, the bulk of criminalization of Indigenous Peoples happens because of a lack of — or partial implementation of — Indigenous rights in national laws.
- Urgent actions are needed to address systemic issues, including legal reforms, enhanced protections for defenders, and concerted efforts to prevent and reverse the criminalization of Indigenous communities.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

E-bikes could cut smog, energy use and congestion globally — but will they?
- The global market for e-bikes is surging. These bicycles, usually equipped with pedals and an electric motor assist, are popular with consumers and commuters and are becoming part of local business delivery systems. The trend could significantly reduce particulate pollution and smog, as well as cut carbon emissions in the transportation sector.
- But there are barriers. No international manufacturing standard yet exists for e-bikes. Also, transportation and charging infrastructure doesn’t adequately accommodate e-bikes, especially in the developing world where electric bicycles have the potential to replace super-polluting gas-powered scooters, motorcycles and pedicabs.
- Poorly made or improperly maintained e-bike batteries have developed a reputation for sometimes causing fires, exploding and even killing people, which has caused hesitation among consumers. While this safety problem is a real one, manufacturers and enthusiasts say the e-bike industry can effectively deal with it.
- Some governments are offering subsidies and tax incentives to e-bike buyers, while some companies are offering deals allowing customers to trade in gas two-wheelers for e-bikes. As sales and use grow, updated bike lane construction and safety rules setting permissible e-bike horsepower, speed and size will be required.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Postponement of century-old Indian Science Congress sparks controversy
- Almost every year since 1914, the Indian Science Congress has brought together a wide range of scientists, academics, students and even Nobel laureates in an event that has been central to the development of science throughout India.
- This year, the Indian Science Congress was postponed amid reports of controversy between the organizing body and the Indian government.
- Meanwhile, the Indian Science Congress Association has been accused of politicizing the event in recent years and providing a platform for pseudoscience, sparking protests among many in the scientific community.

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.

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.

New agrarian courts in Colombia raise hopes for end to land conflicts
- The Colombian government announced in December the creation of a new agrarian judiciary to resolve land conflicts in rural areas of the country, often between peasant farmers and large companies.
- The first five agrarian courts will open in May in the cities of Cartagena, Quibdó, Popayán, Pasto and Tunja, with 65 more to come.
- Peasant farmers, or campesinos, have long struggled for recognition by the state, and advocates have praised the new development as a victory years in the making.
- However, some have expressed concerns over its implementation and say the courts must ensure access to justice no matter how unequal the social, economic or cultural differences are between the parties.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

‘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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 […]
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.

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.

Mine in ‘world cobalt capital’ displaces locals and monks under questionable circumstances
- Local residents living in the DRC’s ‘cobalt capital of the world’ are being forced to relocate in order to make way for a mine owned by Chinese company COMMUS (Compagnie miniere de Musonie).
- The relocation process is being done under questionable circumstances, including providing compensation payments under the table which don’t always meet amounts needed to buy a decent home, contradictory statements, lack of consultation, and few traces of written documentation to fact-check claims made by local government officials, the mining company and displaced people.
- The demand for cobalt, a critical mineral for the clean energy transition, is expected to increase and lead to the eviction of communities who find themselves living above their deposits, say energy experts.
- The mining company’s lawyer says the relocation process is happening fairly, payments are calculated alongside officials and civil society groups, and the land and buildings, like schools, rather belong to the company’s owners.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Bolloré blacklisted over alleged rights violations on plantations in Africa and Asia
- French logistics giant Bolloré SE has been deemed an unethical investment by some of Switzerland’s most powerful pension funds.
- Bolloré failed to act to resolve accusations of human rights abuses committed by its subsidiary, Socfin, around oil palm and rubber plantations in West Africa and Southeast Asia, the Swiss Association for Responsible Investments (SVVK-ASIR) determined.
- Investigators commissioned by Socfin recently found credible claims of sexual harassment, land disputes and unfair recruitment in Liberia and Cameroon; field visits to other sites will take place later this year.

Mother Nature Cambodia’s ‘relentless’ activism earns Right Livelihood Award
- Environmental activist group Mother Nature Cambodia has been named one of Right Livelihood’s 2023 laureates.
- The award, established in 1980, recognizes groups and individuals striving to preserve the environment and those who protect it.
- Mother Nature Cambodia has played a key role in campaigns against environmentally destructive dams, logging and sand mining, resulting in the imprisonment of multiple group members and banishment of its founder.

On Jakarta’s vanishing shoreline, climate change seen abetting child marriages
- Marriage before the age of 18 is classified as a form of gender-based violence by the United Nations, but is commonly practiced in low-income communities to mitigate household economic pressures.
- On Jakarta’s northern coastline, child marriage is common in fishing communities responding to inflationary pressures and declining stocks of fish in near-shore waters.
- Janah, now 23, fears she lacks the agency to break a cycle that saw her married at the age of 16.

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

10 years after land grab, local Nigerian farmers continue fight against palm oil producer
- A decade after transnational palm oil company Wilmar took control of a derelict oil palm plantation, local residents continue to fight for the farmlands, forests and rivers they use.
- The government leased land from several local communities in 1962, but abandoned it in the 1970s.
- In 2012, against the backdrop of a drive to expand Nigeria’s palm oil production, the land was transferred to Wilmar in a move bitterly resisted by local residents.
- Critics say expanding oil palm plantations are accelerating deforestation and local residents complain that Wilmar has encroached on their farms and wastewater from the plantation has contaminated watercourses.

Seventy-plus nations sign historic high seas treaty, paving way for ratification
- As of Sept. 22, 76 nations and the European Union had signed the high seas treaty while gathered at the 78th U.N. General Assembly in New York.
- After signing the treaty, each nation must ratify it. Then, once 60 nations have ratified the treaty, it will come into force after 120 days.
- The high seas encompass two-thirds of the world’s oceans, but only 1% currently has protected status.

São Paulo Indigenous community pins its territorial hopes on a new village
- Members of São Paulo’s Jaraguá Guarani Indigenous community have founded a new village on land they claim is ancestrally theirs.
- The Guarani are seeking recognition from the Brazilian government for a total of 532 hectares (1,315 acres) of land in the São Paulo area that’s home to some 800 Indigenous people.
- But a bill working its way through Congress could nix that claim; if passed, any claims to land occupied after the cutoff date of Oct. 5, 1988, would be rejected.
- Government officials including the minister of Indigenous peoples and the head of the Indigenous affairs agency recently visited the Guarani village to offer support, but said no official demarcation will happen this year.

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

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

Palm oil giants Indonesia, Malaysia start talks with EU over deforestation rule
- Negotiations have begun between the world’s top two palm oil producers and the EU to address sticking points in a deforestation law that would make it harder for the commodity to enter European markets.
- Indonesia and Malaysia account for 85% of global palm oil exports, and would be heavily impacted by the EU Deforestation-Free Regulation (EUDR), which prohibits imports into the EU of commodities sourced by clearing forests.
- At the first joint meeting of an EU-Indonesia-Malaysia task force, delegates discussed risk designations for producer countries as well as the role of certification schemes like the RSPO to help meet EUDR requirements.
- Indonesian officials say their main issue with the EUDR is that it discriminates against small farmers, who manage 41% of the total plantation area in the country and would have difficulty complying with the new regulation’s requirements.

For South Africa’s small fishers, co-ops prove a necessary, but bumpy, step up
- Sixteen years after small-scale fishers in South Africa were promised legal recognition and fishing rights, the policy regulating the new sector is at last being implemented.
- As fishing communities draw closer to finally claiming equal rights in a fishing industry that has been dominated by the commercial sector, they are currently forming cooperatives to access collective fishing rights and co-manage local marine resources.
- The rollout of the new policy has been long and bumpy, with many issues still to be resolved, and long-time fishers complaining they’ve been excluded.
- Even so, hope remains that cooperatives can hold new opportunities for income generation and equity building.

Indonesia, Singapore to work more closely against lobster larvae smugglers
- Indonesia has called for Singapore’s commitment to shut its borders to illegal exports of lobster larvae.
- Indonesia has since 2021 banned exports of wild-caught lobster larvae, but Singapore still permits their import, serving as both a key market and a regional trading hub.
- Lobsters are among Indonesia’s top fisheries commodities, but the illegal export of larvae and baby lobsters costs the country billions of rupiah in lost revenue and threatens the declining wild population of the shellfish.
- The fisheries ministry puts the latest estimate of potential wild lobster stock in Indonesian waters at 27 billion, but many of the officially sanctioned fishing zones are overfished, with the rest being harvested at maximum capacity.

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

Energy company evades oil clean up as spills continue to contaminate Colombian town
- Oil activity in the town of Puerto Boyacá in Colombia is responsible for 109 contaminated sites, 37 of which have been caused by the company Mansarovar Energy, according to data from Colombia’s National Authority for Environmental Licencing (ANLA).
- Mongabay Latam and Rutas del Conflicto carried out a visit to the region to see the damage firsthand and hear stories of local inhabitants.
- Oil spills have polluted an important wetland, led to a 90% loss in fish and contaminated farmland — sparking a legal backlash by fishers and farmers who say their livelihoods have been gravely impacted.
- Although lawsuits over the damage caused to the local ecosystem and the region’s bodies of water have been filed by local inhabitants, fishers, farmers and even the municipal authorities of Puerto Boyacá, no work has yet been carried out to restore the contaminated sites by the company.

As Bangladesh’s crab fishery booms, its wild stocks suffer the fallout
- Crab harvests in Bangladesh are booming to meet thriving export demand, but the rates at which wild stocks are being depleted may be unsustainable, experts warm.
- Researchers say the loss of large numbers of mud crabs from ecosystems like the Sundarbans mangroves could trigger an ecological imbalance.
- Bangladesh exported about $35 million worth of crabs in the 2019-2020 fiscal year, with the trend expected to increase to markets like the U.S., the EU and Singapore.
- Experts have called for more efforts to hatch crabs on aquafarms as a way to ease the pressure on wild stocks, but this option isn’t available yet at commercial scale.

Investigation confirms most allegations against plantation operator Socfin
- After visits to plantations in Liberia and Cameroon, the Earthworm Foundation consultancy has confirmed many allegations against Belgian tropical plantation operator Socfin.
- Investigators found credible claims of sexual harassment, land disputes and unfair recruitment practices at both of the sites they visited.
- Activists in both countries remain unsatisfied, saying the consultancy should have spoken to a wider range of community members and calling for Socfin to answer directly to communities with grievances.

Video: Five Tembé Indigenous activists shot in Amazonian ‘palm oil war’
- In just 72 hours, five Indigenous people were wounded by gunfire in violent attacks in the past few days in a part of the Brazilian Amazon dubbed the “palm oil war” region, sparking outrage and claims for justice.
- This was the latest episode in a wave of escalating violence tied to land disputes between Indigenous communities and palm oil companies in the region, which Mongabay has consistently reported on over the past year.
- In this video, Mongabay showcases the Tembé Indigenous peoples’ outrage against increasing violence in the area as they protest for justice.

Can upcoming referendum in Ecuador stop oil drilling in Yasuní National Park?
- On Aug. 20, Ecuadorians will vote in a binding referendum on whether they want oil drilling to continue in Yasuní National Park, one of the most biodiverse areas on the planet.
- Environmentalists have been fighting for this referendum for nearly 10 years; meanwhile, drilling in ITT began in 2016, and today 225 wells produce 54,800 barrels of oil per day.
- But the decision won’t be easy for Ecuadorians, as oil has been a major driver of economic growth for the country since the 1970s. Exports today account for more than 10% of the country’s GDP.
- In August, Ecuadorians will also vote on whether or not to allow mining to continue in the Andean Choco forest. This is not the first time a referendum has been used in an attempt to control large-scale extractive projects in the country, and it likely won’t be the last.

Falcon trafficking soars in Middle East, fueled by conflict and poverty
- Worth thousands of dollars, migratory falcons are increasingly targeted by trappers in the Middle East, notably in Syria, where their value skyrocketed during the war.
- In Jordan, Iraq and Syria, authorities struggle to contain trafficking, which takes place nearly in the open; in Iraq and Syria, wildlife protection is hardly a priority given prevalent political instability and spiraling poverty.
- Experts say the capture and trade of falcons is driving the decline of wild populations in the Middle East.
- This story was produced with the support of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.

Indigenous activists demand justice after 5 shot in Amazonian ‘palm oil war’
- Between Aug. 4 and Aug. 7, security guards for a palm oil company allegedly shot and wounded five Tembé Indigenous people, in the latest flareup linked to a long-running land dispute.
- The incidents occurred in a part of the Amazonian state of Pará that’s been dubbed the “palm oil war” region, where Mongabay has over the past year documented the escalating tensions.
- Pará’s State Department of Public Security and Social Defense said the security guard identified as the mastermind of the initial shooting has been arrested, and inquiries to identify the other suspects are ongoing, along with increased security in the area.
- Palm oil company Brasil BioFuels S.A. (BBF) has denied the accusations, saying the Indigenous people had invaded part of its property and initiated the attack on its private security officers during an attempt to evict them.

Madagascar signs new ‘sustainable’ tuna deal with the EU
- In late June, Madagascar and the European Union struck a new four-year deal allowing fishing vessels flagged to EU countries to resume harvesting tuna in Madagascar’s waters after an unusual four-and-a-half-year gap.
- The EU says the deal benefits Madagascar by providing key funding to support fisheries governance, and civil society groups praised the Madagascar government for creating a more inclusive and transparent negotiating process than in the past.
- However, critics contend that the deal offers little benefit to the citizens of Madagascar, one of the poorest countries in the world, and enables European vessels to exacerbate the overfishing of Indian Ocean tuna stocks.

International community calls for release of El Salvador antimining activists
- Calls from the international community are growing for the release of five environmental activists fighting water pollution and mining in El Salvador who were arrested in January.
- A lack of evidence behind the allegation that they were involved in a civil war-era kidnapping and murder has raised questions from U.S. officials and the U.N. about the legitimacy of the charges.
- A group of 17 U.S. members of Congress is the latest to call for their release and a closer look at the steps the government is taking to renew a defunct mining sector.
- The five “water defenders” say there’s insufficient evidence in the case and that they’re protected from prosecution by a post-war reconciliation law.

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

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

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

Despite lawsuit, Casino Group still sells beef from Amazonian Indigenous territory
- A new investigation shows that farms located in the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous Territory in the Brazilian Amazon supplied two JBS meatpacking plants that sell beef to brands of the French supermarket giant.
- In most cases, animals were not transferred directly from ranches in the Indigenous land to JBS, but went through different farms before arriving at slaughterhouses, when it was no longer possible to differentiate between cattle from the Indigenous land and others.
- This maneuver is known as ‘cattle laundering’ and aims to hide any potentially illegal origin of the animals.
- Casino said its suppliers are required to detail the supply route and that it directly rechecks all farms, but it’s up to meatpackers to monitor indirect suppliers; meanwhile, the meatpacker says it has no control over indirect suppliers.

Civil society changes up campaign against jailed Kalimantan farmers
- In April, three farmers from Kinjil village in Central Kalimantan were arrested on suspicion of oil palm theft from land controlled by a plantation firm following a land dispute.
- The farmers’ case has been taken up by a coalition of civil society groups, and a complaint has been lodged with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil.
- Several complaints have been launched against companies associated with Bumitama Agri Ltd., a Singapore-based plantation firm tied to Indonesia’s Harita Group.

Bill stripping Peru’s isolated Indigenous people of land and protections scrapped
- A bill proposing to strip lands and protections of Indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation and initial contact was rejected by three congressional commissions at the end of June — permanently shelving it before it could reach Congress.
- The bill, which was proposed by a congressman from Peru’s oil-rich Loreto region and supported by the regional government and businessmen, aimed to shift responsibility for the creation of Indigenous reserves from the national government to the regional governments and re-evaluate whether to keep existing Indigenous reserves.
- Indigenous organizations, civil society and Peru’s Ministry of Culture, responsible for creating Indigenous reserves, say the proposed bill was illegal and would have endangered the lives of isolated communities.

Climate of fear persists among Nepal’s eco defenders as threats rise
- Environmental human rights defenders in Nepal continue to fear for their safety and lives amid a lack of protection from the government, a new report shows.
- It found that despite rising threats to the environment, Nepal doesn’t have specific legislation to define who defenders are, their work, or the measures of protection they need.
- It also found that women defenders, in particular, were more likely to experience domestic violence and sexual assault because of their work, as well as excluded from decision-making processes and participation in public life.
- Some of the respondents in the study cited the January 2020 killing of Dilip Mahato, a critic of illegal sand mining in Dhanusha district: “People pay attention … only when they get killed.”

Communities accuse Socfin and Earthworm Foundation of greenwash in West Africa
- A grievance assessment mission commissioned by Belgian oil palm and rubber company Socfin has been rejected by communities affected by the company’s operations in several African and Asian countries.
- Reasons include the Earthworm Foundation’s relationship with Socfin as a paying member, lack of adequate coordination with affected stakeholders, and the company’s history of refusing to enter conflict resolution suggested by third-party bodies.
- Phase one, consisting of missions to Liberia and Cameroon, has just been concluded without the participation of local groups, who say they were not included in the planning process.

Alleged torturers roam free as Indonesia struggles to bring charges in palm oil slavery case
- Prosecutors in Indonesia have still not charged the majority of men implicated in a slave-labor scandal at a local official’s oil palm plantation.
- The New York Times reported that only 13 of some 60 men, including military and police officers, remain free despite dozens of victims and witnesses accusing them of human trafficking and torture.
- The official, Terbit Rencana Perangin-angin, was jailed last year in a bribery case but never charged in the human trafficking case for enslaving the victims under the guise of a drug rehabilitation program.
- Prosecutor said a reliance on local police investigators whose own colleagues had participated in the forced-labor scheme had impeded their work.

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

Indigenous and local communities see big gains in land rights, study shows
- Land legally designated or owned by Indigenous, Afro-descendant and local communities increased by 102.9 million hectares (254 million acres) between 2015 and 2020, according to a new report released by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI).
- The report analyzed land increases across 73 countries and showed increases in 21 countries, though a handful of countries, like Kenya and Liberia, drove most of the significant gains.
- At least 1.3 billion hectares (3.3 billion acres) of ancestral lands have not been recognized under national laws and regulations.
- Many industrially developing countries are experiencing an increased demand for land, including Indigenous lands, and prioritize these sectors that achieve economic and industrial development or national climate and conservation targets over Indigenous land claims.

Not so fast, experts warn as Dhaka tries to clear the air with car tax and bus ban
- With one motor vehicle for every one of its more than 20 million inhabitants, Dhaka has grown into one of the most polluted and congested cities in the world.
- Policymakers want to change this with a pair of proposals: Slapping a carbon tax on multiple car ownership, and removing aging buses and trucks from the city’s roads.
- However, experts and studies point out that the biggest contributor to the city’s dire air quality isn’t vehicle emissions, but the burning of straw for brick kilns.
- They also warn that abruptly slashing the city’s bus fleet would severely impact residents, for whom the bus network is the main mode of transportation.

Can an app help Liberian artisanal fishers fight illegal fishing?
- Small-scale fishers in Liberia are using a data collection platform to document cases of illegal activity at sea.
- Artisanal fishers have long borne the brunt of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, some of it occurring within an inshore exclusion zone that extends 6 nautical miles from shore.
- Through the use of a mobile app called DASE, released by the NGO Environmental Justice Foundation, local fishers can geotag images and videos of incidents at sea and submit them to the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Authority for verification and possible investigation.
- Though the app has not resulted in any prosecutions yet, fishers say it is having a deterrent effect on illegal activities.

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

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

Can the EU’s deforestation law save Argentina’s Gran Chaco from soy?
- Argentina’s Gran Chaco forest accounts for less than 10% of the soy produced in the country, but is where about 95% of soy-related deforestation occurs.
- Soy is one of several commodities that will now face stringent no-deforestation requirements for import into the European Union, which poses a major challenge to the soy industry in producer countries like Argentina.
- The country is the third-largest soy exporter in the world, and industry representatives say they’re ready for the new regulation, having long prepared for the changes using new technologies and developing a tracking system to trace the origins of soy.
- Environmentalists say they’re skeptical that the industry can be trusted to monitor itself, and have welcomed the EU regulation as putting needed external pressure on the industry.

Citizens demand sustainable solution to haze crisis in northern Thailand
- Citizens in northern Thailand have mounted a legal challenge against the prime minister and several government departments for inaction to tackle air pollution that experts say reduces people’s life expectancy and violates basic human rights.
- Air pollution levels in the northern city of Chiang Mai exceeded WHO guideline standards more than twentyfold earlier this year, ranking it among the most polluted places in the world.
- The sources of pollution are mainly from agricultural burning, both locally and in neighboring countries, a practice that coincides each year with the dry season. Air quality is also affected by forest fires that have taken a toll on the region’s landscapes and wildlife in recent years.
- Observers say the legal challenge is an example of civil society’s growing awareness of the right to use litigation avenues to hold companies and government departments accountable to their environmental commitments.

Boosted with fresh donations, Amazon Fund reboots stalled projects
- Created in 2008, the Amazon Fund supports rainforest conservation projects with donations from Germany and Norway but was paralyzed during former President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration.
- With Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva taking office early this year, the fund was resumed and should get new donations from the U.K. and the United States.
- In the first meeting in four years, the steering committee decided to prioritize 14 approved projects when Bolsonaro froze the fund.
- According to the Brazilian Development Bank, the Amazon Fund has already accumulated $1.1 billion and has about $620 million to spend on new projects to be submitted and approved.

Latest environmentalist arrest shocks Vietnam’s battered civil society
- Prominent Vietnamese environmentalist Hoang Thi Minh Hong has been arrested, becoming the latest civil society activist to face charges of tax evasion.
- Hong’s NGO, the Center of Hands-on Action and Networking for Growth and Environment (CHANGE), shut down last year amid intense pressure on civil society groups in the country.
- Another leading environmentalist, Goldman Environmental Prize winner Nguy Thi Khanh, was also jailed on tax evasion charges, but released from prison five months early on May 13.
- Fellow activist Dang Dinh Bach, jailed for five years for tax evasion, plans to begin a hunger strike “to the death” on June 24.

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

Palm giants Wilmar, Indofood, RGE fined over Indonesian cooking oil shortage
- The Indonesian government’s business competition watchdog has ruled seven companies, including subsidiaries of palm oil giants Wilmar, Salim Group and Asian Agri, guilty of restricting sales of cooking oil amid an acute shortage in early 2022.
- The watchdog, the KPPU, has fined the companies $4.75 million for hoarding cooking oil after the government capped the retail price in response to a price surge.
- Wilmar says it’s disappointed with the ruling and is considering filing an appeal.
- A Wilmar board member was earlier this year convicted and jailed for redirecting palm oil meant for the domestic market to the export market, where prices were higher.

Landmark Nepal court ruling ends impunity for wealthy wildlife collectors
- Wildlife collectors in Nepal will have to declare their collections to the government, under a landmark ruling spurred by the perceived injustice of the country’s strict wildlife protection laws.
- The May 30 Supreme Court ruling caps a legal campaign by conservationist Kumar Paudel to hold to account wealthy Nepalis who openly display wildlife parts and trophies, even as members of local communities are persecuted for suspected poaching.
- Under the ruling, the government must issue a public notice calling on private collectors to declare their wildlife collections, and must then seize those made after 1973, the year the wildlife conservation act came into effect.
- Conservationists and human rights advocates have welcomed the ruling, but say “only time will tell if the government will take this court order seriously or not.”

Financial downturn at Enviva could mean trouble for biomass energy
- Enviva harvests trees to manufacture millions of tons of wood pellets annually in the U.S. Southeast to supply the biomass energy demands of nations in the EU, U.K., Japan and South Korea. But a host of operational, legal and public relations problems have led to greater-than-expected revenue losses and a drastic fall in stock price.
- These concerns (some of which Mongabay has reported on in the past) raise questions as to whether Enviva can double its projected pellet production from 6 million metric tons annually today to 13 million metric tons by 2027 to meet its contract obligations. Enviva says its problems pose only short-term setbacks.
- While it isn’t possible to connect Enviva’s stock decline, or the company’s downgrading by a top credit ratings agency, with any specific cause, some analysts say that investors may be getting educated as to the financial risk they could face if the EU or other large-scale biomass users eliminate their subsidies to the industry.
- “The financial risk is there, maybe not today, but in the future, where countries may say, ‘This massive [biomass carbon accounting] loophole is making the climate crisis worse. Let’s close it.’ When that happens, Enviva and all other pellet manufacturers are out of business,” and investors would suffer, according to one industry expert.

Illegal trawling ravages Tunisian seagrass meadows crucial for fish
- The largest remaining seagrass meadows in the Mediterranean are in Tunisia’s Gulf of Gabès, a hotspot for biodiversity and fishing.
- But illegal bottom trawling and industrial pollution are destroying this unique habitat, a natural nursery to numerous species of fish and other marine fauna.
- Hundreds of trawlers ply their trade overtly with little consequence, and most of the catch makes its way to Europe, skirting laws designed to prevent the entry of illegally caught seafood.

Early release for imprisoned climate activist as Vietnam aims for net zero goals
- Vietnamese climate activist Nguy Thi Khanh was quietly released from prison this month, five months earlier than scheduled.
- No reasoning has been given for Khanh’s release, which has not been formally announced or discussed in local media, but activists note that Vietnam will require international financing to pursue its decarbonization goals, including a recently signed power development plan.
- Three prominent environmental activists remain imprisoned in Vietnam. One, Dang Dinh Bach, has announced plans to begin a hunger strike “to the death” on June 24.

Indonesian audit finds taxes unpaid on 22 million acres of oil palm plantations
- An Indonesian government audit finds that taxes are not paid on some 9 million hectares (22.2 million acres) — an area three times the size of Belgium — don’t pay taxes, an Indonesian government audit finds.
- Luhut Pandjaitan, a top government official, says the government will impose penalties on plantation owners who don’t pay taxes rather than take them to court.
- Activists have called on the government to address the root causes of the issue, which is irregularities in the permit issuance process.

Indigenous chief shot in head in Brazil’s ‘palm oil war’ region; crisis group launched
- On May 14, Indigenous chief Lúcio Tembé was shot by gunmen on an unpaved road in Brazil’s northern Pará state. This is the latest episode of violence in an area facing an outbreak of land conflicts between a major palm oil company and local communities, the so-called “palm oil war.”
- The Federal Public Ministry raised the possibility of the crime’s connection to conflicts with palm oil companies in the region and requested urgent measures of the Federal Police and Pará’s State Department of Public Security and Social Defense (Segup) in view of the intense level of conflict in the region “with concrete risks to the Indigenous peoples’ life and physical integrity.”
- A crisis committee to contain escalating conflicts in the region was announced on May 16; the crime is being investigated by the Federal Police and the Quatro Bocas municipal police station, urging that any relevant information be forwarded via the hotline 181 under guaranteed confidentiality.
- Some readers may find the images below disturbing, discretion is advised.

Award-winning, Indigenous peace park dragged into fierce conflict in Myanmar
- Two years since the Feb 1, 2021 military coup in Myanmar, Indigenous activists continue their struggle to protect the Salween Peace Park, an Indigenous Karen-led protected area, from conflict.
- The park was subject to military-led deadly airstrikes in March 2021 and renewed violence in the vicinity of the park continues to force people to flee their homes into the forest.
- The Salween Peace Park was launched in 2018 and encompasses 5,485 square kilometers (nearly 1.4 million acres) of the Salween River Basin in one of Southeast Asia’s most biologically rich ecoregions.
- With many examples around the world, peace parks seek to preserve zones of biodiversity and cultural heritage using conservation to promote peacebuilding. The SPP includes more than 350 villages, 27 community forests, four forest reserves, and three wildlife sanctuaries.

Trapping holds back speed of bird recovery in a Sumatran forest, study shows
- A decade of protection and natural regeneration of tropical forests has helped bird populations increase in the southern lowlands of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island, a new study says.
- However, it adds that continued wild trapping is preventing the reforestation effort from achieving its greatest results.
- The Harapan Forest, which straddles the provinces of Jambi and South Sumatra, in 2007 became the site of Indonesia’s first ecosystem restoration concession to recover biodiversity in the region after commercial selective logging ceased in 2005.
- Since 2004, Indonesia has awarded 16 licenses for ecosystem restoration concessions, including for the Harapan Forest, covering an area of 623,075 hectares (1.54 million acres) in Sumatra and Borneo, according to 2018 government data.

In Sumatra, potato appetite bites into a UNESCO-listed tiger haven
- Farmers transitioning from growing cinnamon to potatoes have encroached into Indonesia’s Kerinci Seblat National Park since the late 1990s.
- The park is a vital stronghold for the Sumatran tiger and more than 300 species of birds.
- Local farmers in a precarious legal position have resisted when confronted by law enforcement and civil society.

Indonesia legalizes illicit oil palm farms in program slammed as opaque
- Indonesia has legalized oil palm plantations one and a half times the size of London that were operating illegally in forest areas.
- Critics say the amnesty scheme effectively whitewashes the crimes of setting up plantations inside areas zoned as forest, where deforestation, wildfires and land conflicts are rife.
- To qualify for amnesty, plantation operators must pay fines and apply for the requisite licenses, but the process to date hasn’t been transparent, prompting concerns over backroom deals.
- With the deadline for the amnesty program ending this November, shortly before campaigning for next year’s elections begin, activists have also warned of the potential for operators to bribe candidates and officials in exchange for amnesty.

Forests & Finance: Agroforestry in Cameroon and reforestation in South Africa
- An agroforestry initiative in a cocoa-growing community on Cameroon aims to prevent the expansion of cocoa farms into the nearby forest while also providing additional income to farmers.
- A community effort in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province is restoring the region’s mistbelt forest that’s home to the iconic Cape parrot, and since 2011 has planted 52,000 trees while allowing participants, mostly women, to earn a living.
- A program meant to ensure the legality of timber in Gabon’s supply chain was briefly suspended between March and April over what the government says was missing paperwork — a justification that proponents have called into question.
- Forests & Finance is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin of briefs about Africa’s forests.

Brazil’s President Lula recognizes six Indigenous lands, and says more to come
- During the largest gathering of Indigenous people in Brazil, President Lula recognized six Indigenous lands, resuming the demarcation process which stalled for over five years under the two former presidents.
- Brazil has 733 Indigenous territories, of which 496 are now recognized by the state. The remaining 237 are in different stages of the demarcation procedure.
- The number of demarcations the president recognized was lower than the expected 14 lands, to the disappointment of attending Indigenous leaders who didn’t have their land recognized yet.
- The president declared that he will demarcate the highest number of Indigenous lands possible in his four-year term, but the fate of several lands depends, to a large extent, on the passing of a controversial bill which could restrict the amount of Indigenous lands recognized.

With little will to fight it, corruption is major risk for Indonesian palm oil
- Indonesia’s top 50 palm oil companies have weak antigraft measures, rendering the industry highly prone to corruption, according to a new report by Transparency International Indonesia.
- It found that practices such as political lobbying and revolving door practices among the 50 companies are barely regulated, and many companies don’t disclose their tax data.
- Some companies also don’t have antibribery policies and programs that extend to all staff, including executives and directors, the report says.
- On average, the 50 companies scored 3.5 out of 10 on six criteria, such as anticorruption programs, lobbying activities and data transparency.

Cambodian activists commemorate 11th anniversary of Chut Wutty’s murder
- April 26, 2023, marks 11 years since Cambodian environmental activist Chut Wutty was gunned down, with no one ever facing justice for his death.
- Wutty was a frequent thorn in the side of Cambodia’s ruling elite, both in the government and in the security forces, for his repeated exposés of their role in illegal logging.
- In a vigil and march in Cambodia to commemorate his death, fellow activists demanded the Ministry of Justice reopen the investigation into Wutty’s killing.
- They also denounced the killings, arrests and prosecutions of environmental activists in recent years as a message from the government to stop.

U.N. parties are worlds apart on plastics treaty solutions
- The United Nations Environment Programme will sponsor a Paris meeting in late May and early June in the ongoing effort to create an international treaty to potentially control plastic production and pollution.
- Delegates from 175 nations, along with private stakeholders (including the petrochemical industry and environmental groups), remain far apart on what the treaty should cover: reuse, banning certain chemicals, limiting plastics production, whether to focus on cradle-to-grave supply chain regulation or mostly on ocean pollution, and much more.
- Perhaps most importantly, the world’s countries need to determine how the treaty will be implemented: Should the final agreement require mandatory international compliance, or should individual nations be allowed to act voluntarily to solve the plastics problem?
- China and the United States are taking a far less aggressive position on implementation, recommending a voluntary national approach, while Pacific Island countries and the European Union want to see stricter rules for compliance and more focus on production limits. At this point, no one has any idea what the final treaty document will look like.

Violence escalates in Amazonian communities’ land conflict with Brazil palm oil firm
- Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian communities in Brazil’s Pará state have accused the country’s top palm oil exporter, Brasil BioFuels S.A. (BBF), of violence during attempts to repossess in a disputed area in the Acará region on April 12 and 16.
- The company denies the accusations, saying it’s the community leaders who attacked its employees, holding 30 of them “in private captivity for three full days due to the blocking of the road.”
- The Federal Public Ministry in Pará said it’s investigating the action of armed militias and private security companies in the region, and possible crimes and irregularities by palm oil companies.
- The Public Defender’s Office questioned the legitimacy of the injunction used to justify the repossession as it was issued by a civil court instead of the due agrarian court; a hearing with an agrarian judge is scheduled for April 28.

Scramble for clean energy metals confronted by activist calls to respect Indigenous rights
- At the world’s largest gathering of Indigenous peoples in New York, mining for critical minerals is at the top of the agenda as the push for the clean energy transition gains steam worldwide.
- Indigenous leaders are calling on countries and companies to create binding policies and guidelines requiring the free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) of communities over clean energy mining projects that seek to explore and extract these minerals on their lands or in ways that affect their livelihoods.
- Such binding policies will be very difficult for government, companies and investors to abide by, says an executive, as it gives communities the capability to decline on highly-profitable projects and strategies part of national energy transition goals.
- Indigenous leaders also highlight FPIC as a framework for partnership with such projects, including options for equitable benefit-sharing agreements or memorandum of understanding, collaboration or conservation.

Indigenous Maasai ask the United Nations to intervene on reported human rights abuses
- Maasai delegates at the United Nations conference on Indigenous people are calling on the forum to increase pressure on the Tanzanian government to address evictions, forced displacement and thousands of seized cattle in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and Loliondo.
- Land disputes at both sites have been grinding on for years after the government revealed plans to lease the land to a UAE-based company to create a wildlife corridor for trophy hunting and elite tourism.
- Last year, the dispute reached a boiling point when Tanzanian police officers and authorities shot and beat dozens of Maasai villagers who protested the demarcation of their ancestral land. One Maasai man and one police officer have been killed.
- At the United Nations forum, a Tanzanian government representative rejected accusations brought against it, pointing to a recent court ruling in its favor and a visit by an African human rights commission.

Mining may contribute to deforestation more than previously thought, report says
- A new report from WWF says there are still considerable discrepancies about how mining-related deforestation is occurring, and why.
- Most mining-related deforestation is driven by gold and coal. Other minerals like bauxite, iron ore and copper are also major drivers.
- Mining clears the forest to dig excavation pits and access roads. But the report stressed that more attention needs to be paid to the indirect impacts of mining, such as the construction of infrastructure for energy, processing and storage, as well as local economic development that leads to in-migration and settlements.

EU parliament passes historic law forcing companies to track deforestation
- A law passed by the European Parliament requires companies working in cattle, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, rubber, soy and wood to demonstrate their products aren’t sourced to deforested land or land with forest degradation, or else risk heavy fines.
- Companies will have to submit “due diligence” reports showing they took proper steps to verify the origins of their products while also complying with countries’ local regulations on human rights and impacts on Indigenous people.
- Critics say the legislation may still lack the teeth to prevent deforestation, especially if political pressure from traders forces EU countries to overlook their noncompliance with the new regulations.

With no minister since October 2022, Nepal’s environmental issues hang in limbo
- Nepal has been without an environment minister even after the current coalition government took office on Dec. 25, 2022.
- Community groups and analysts say this vacuum is a setback for various issues, from community forestry to climate adaptation funding.
- However, others say it signals Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s recognition of the importance of the post, and hence his reluctance to appoint just anyone to lead the ministry.
- A senior coalition member says it’s possible a new environment minister may be appointed following by-elections next week that could see more parties join the coalition.

Indigenous leader assassinated amid conflict over oil that divided community
- In February, Eduardo Mendúa, an Indigenous leader representing opposition to oil operations in his community, was killed by hitmen after suffering from 12 gunshot wounds.
- Mongabay looks into Eduardo Mendúa’s life and the oil conflict against the Ecuadorian state-owned oil company Petroecuador EP that divided his community and escalated into his murder.
- David Q., a member of the community faction in favor of oil operations, has been charged with allegedly co-perpetrating the crime by transporting the assassins to the scene.
- The incident worsens the fragile relationship between the Confederation of Indigenous Nations of Ecuador (CONAIE) and President Guillermo Lasso, with the former accusing the government and oil company of amplifying the community conflict.

Mexico kills climate change fund, casting doubt on future environmental spending
- Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled against an injunction that was filed to revive the country’s Climate Change Fund, which was designed to channel public and private funding into actions to fight climate change.
- The fund helped support local and national projects for reducing deforestation rates, restoring degraded landscapes, developing sustainable agricultural practices and investing in renewable energy, among other things.
- Without the fund, it’s unclear how much of Mexico’s national budget will be allocated to climate-related issues, since spending is discretionary.

Report links financial giants to deforestation of Paraguay’s Gran Chaco
- Major banks and financial institutions including BlackRock, BNP Paribas, HSBC and Santander continue to hold substantial shares in – or provide financial services to – beef companies linked to illegal deforestation in the Gran Chaco region of Paraguay.
- A report by rights group Global Witness released last month says these financiers knowingly bankroll beef traders accused of having links to deforestation, despite warnings in 2020 by U.K.-based NGO Earthsight about the beef industry’s impact on the Gran Chaco.
- Almost all of the banks, investment managers and pension funds named in the new report are members of voluntary initiatives to eliminate and reverse commodity-driven deforestation from their portfolios.
- Paraguay has one of the highest rates of tropical deforestation in the world, having lost a quarter of its net forest cover between 2000 and 2020 — an area almost twice the size of Belgium.

Ecuador banned gas flaring over a year ago. Why is it still happening?
- In September 2021, a provincial court gave oil companies 18 months to eliminate gas flaring in the Amazon because of its role in spiking cancer rates among local residents.
- That deadline expired in March, but today oil companies continue to use gas flares more than ever. Before the court ruling, there were an estimated 447 gas flares in the country. Today, there are 475.
- Activists say they still have some legal avenues for pressuring the government to enforce the ban, including impeaching ministers that fail to comply with the court’s order.

Element Africa: Gold in Ghana, oil in Nigeria, and fracking in South Africa
- One small-scale miner was killed and four injured as security forces moved to evict them from a concession held by Ghana’s Golden Star Resources.
- ExxonMobil’s plan to exit from onshore oil production in the Niger Delta is effectively an attempt to escape from its toxic legacy in the region, communities say.
- Plans to frack for gas in South Africa will have devastating environmental impacts and cannot form part of a just transition to cleaner energy sources, an advocacy group says.
- Element Africa is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin rounding up brief stories from the commodities industry in Africa.

Indigenous Pataxó demand land demarcation amid rising violence and murders
- The Pataxó Indigenous people in southern Bahia state are experiencing a renewed wave of violence and orders to leave their communities after they began reoccupying part of their traditional lands last summer.
- They are looking to see if and how the new administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva can curb violence, mitigate land conflicts and demarcate their lands while standing up to powerful economic interests in the region, as state and local authorities are connected to the recent murders and violence.
- Without formal demarcation, agribusiness, ranching, eucalyptus and real estate development continue to encroach on their lands, which are in a legal limbo.
- The new Ministry of Indigenous Peoples has created a crisis desk to help deal with the escalating violence after two more Indigenous youth were killed in early 2023, but the Pataxó leaders say little has changed and they live in a state of constant threats and tension.

Mexico’s Tren Maya hotel construction clears forest reserve without permits
- The construction of a hotel in Mexico’s Calakmul Biosphere Reserve took many residents by surprise when bulldozers started clearing the forest in January.
- The hotel is part of the Tren Maya project, a controversial railway line that will move tourists and cargo throughout the Yucatán Peninsula and southern Mexico.
- Residents said they weren’t consulted and that the location of the project is dangerously close to Maya ruins and important sources of freshwater.

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

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

Can a new regional pact protect the Amazon from environmental crime? (commentary)
- Police, prosecutors, money-laundering experts and others convened last week in Brazil to tackle drug and environmental crimes like illegal mining and logging that are growing in scale across the Amazon.
- The group resolved to move law enforcement beyond occasional raids and periodic destruction of machinery used by organized crime syndicates and toward a concerted and pan-Amazonian push for local, regional and global cooperation on law enforcement.
- While acknowledging the increasing scale of these crimes, participants were optimistic: “We are living in a new moment to fight environmental crime and protect the Amazon,” said the newly appointed director for Amazon environmental crime with Brazil’s federal police, for example.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.

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

Peru congress debates stripping isolated Indigenous people of land and protections
- A new bill under debate in Peru’s congress seeks to reevaluate the existence of every Indigenous reserve for isolated peoples to determine whether to keep them or scrap them completely.
- The bill would shift decision-making power into the hands of regional governments and include economic interests in the evaluation process, changes which human rights and environmental experts call legally flawed and a human rights violation.
- Some regional governments and companies backing the proposed bill have questioned studies confirming the existence of isolated peoples and seek to place oil exploitation, logging and economic development as a priority.
- In the event of the bill’s approval, all open proceedings relating to Indigenous reserves and Indigenous peoples in isolation would be suspended.

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

Struggles loom as Bolivia prepares new plan to clean up its mercury problem
- Bolivia’s failure to combat illegal gold mining led to international outcry last year, as deforestation and mercury pollution continued to run rampant.
- Earlier this month, the government announced two plans to formalize small-scale and illegal gold mining operations and introduce technology that could help replace mercury.
- However, some critics say the government has a bad track record for implementing sweeping industry regulations, which might look good on paper but fall flat in practice.
- Major road investments in mining areas could also increase illegal activity at the same time the government is implementing regulations, as it will be easier for heavy machinery to access rural areas.

As U.N. members clinch historic high seas biodiversity treaty, what’s in it?
- On March 4, U.N. member states reached a landmark agreement on a legally binding treaty aimed at protecting the international waters of Earth’s oceans.
- The deal, more than 15 years in the making, was finalized after talks overran their two-week schedule into a final, grueling 36-hour negotiation marathon.
- Delegates reached consensus on multiple thorny matters, including a framework for establishing and maintaining a network of marine protected areas on the high seas and mechanisms to share benefits from high seas resources fairly among nations.
- For the new high seas treaty to be implemented, delegates must officially adopt the treaty text at an unscheduled next meeting, and then a minimum of 60 states must ratify it, a process that could take months or years.

Will new bottom trawling rules do enough to protect South Pacific seamounts?
- The South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO) is an intergovernmental body that regulates fishing across the vast international waters of the South Pacific Ocean.
- At a meeting in Manta, Ecuador, in February, the SPRFMO changed its rules around bottom trawling, a controversial fishing practice that involves dragging fishing gear along the seabed, running roughshod over any organisms or structures in its path.
- The new rules mandate the protection of at least 70% of species that indicate the presence of so-called vulnerable marine ecosystems, such as sponge fields and cold-water coral communities.
- However, conservationists have decried the new rules, calling them less protective than the current policy, let alone the ban on trawling seamounts they’ve been asking for.

Lula government scrambles to overcome Yanomami crisis, but hurdles remain
- Within weeks of taking office, the new Brazilian government began an emergency operation to provide health care assistance to Indigenous people in the Yanomami territory and remove the 20,000 illegal gold miners there who have sparked a humanitarian and environmental crisis.
- So far, over 6,200 Yanomami people have been treated and more than 100 health care personnel have been recruited. However, a lack of health care workers, deteriorating infrastructure and minimal support from the military is preventing access to communities most in need.
- As miners have begun to flee the area and environmental authorities seize and destroy their equipment, some Indigenous leaders say important progress is underway but more remains to be done.

Herders turn to fishing in the desert amid severe drought, putting pressure on fish population
- As Northern Kenya’s unabating drought continues, a growing wave of pastoralists are finding it challenging to keep their livestock alive and are switching to fishing in Lake Turkana, the world’s largest desert lake.
- However, environmentalists, fishing authorities, and some fishers worry that potential overfishing and increased pressures on fish populations will cause a collapse in fish stocks and the lake’s ecosystem.
- Authorities are also concerned about the rampant use of illegal fishing gear, such as thin mesh nets that catch undersized fish in shallow breeding zones, and an illegal tilapia smuggling network draining the lake by the tons.
- Though no studies have yet been done to assess fish populations, some environmentalists and fishers are calling for better enforcement of regulations to keep livelihoods afloat.

Yanomami crisis sparks action against illegal gold in the Amazon
- Brazilian Attorney General Augusto Aras requested the Federal Supreme Court to overturn a law establishing the concept of “good faith” of gold buyers, which eases illegal gold laundering.
- Under the law, passed in 2013, the word of gold traders is enough to ensure that the mineral came from a legal mine, opening a route to the illegal gold extracted from protected areas and Indigenous territories, such as the Yanomami reserve.
- The Federal Police and the Public Ministry are investigating authorized gold trading companies, known as DTVMs, suspected of laundering the Amazon’s illegal gold.
- Indigenous federal deputy Célia Xakriabá is trying to speed up the vote of a new bill that establishes new rules for the gold trade in Brazil, including overriding the “good faith” concept.

Indonesian palm oil billionaire gets 15 years for corruption
- A Jakarta court has sentenced palm oil tycoon Surya Darmadi to 15 years in prison for corruption that allowed him to establish illegal palm oil plantations in Indonesia’s Riau province.
- The court also ordered him to pay more than $2.7 billion in fines and restitution for the environmental and social damage caused by the illegal plantations, believed to be the costliest corruption case in Indonesia’s history.
- Surya fled Indonesia in 2014 after being charged in another corruption case, and only surrendered to the authorities last year.
- Palm oil from his plantations was exported to six countries: India, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Kenya, Italy and Singapore.

Treacherous pits and lakes left in the wake of Cameroon’s abandoned mining sites
- Inactive mining sites in Cameroon are continuously abandoned without restoration by foreign companies, leaving behind huge pits in the ground that later form into artificial lakes which endanger local populations and damage ecosystems.
- In January, a 13-year-old boy drowned in one of these lakes near Yaoundé, left behind by the quarry company Transatlantique Cameroon Ltd, a subsidiary of the Chinese consortium Cameroon Meilan Construction Conglomerate (CMCC).
- In 2021 and 2022, the Cameroonian NGO Forests and Rural Development (FODER) identified more than 700 mining pits in Cameroon, including 139 which had become artificial lakes, claiming the lives of more than 200 people.
- Cameroonian legislation obligates mining companies to refill mining pits after their operations. Despite this, the law is not being adhered to or enforced.

Forests & finance: A lawsuit, an import ban, and restoring Zambian forests
- Campaigners sue Ghana’s government to block mining of Atewa Forest biodiversity hotspot.
- Conservationists assist a forest reserve in Zambia to restore itself.
- Forest certification is expanding rapidly across the Congo Basin.
- EU bans imports of products linked to deforestation.

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

Element Africa: The platinum ‘bully’ and the secret oil deal
- South African authorities have extended the deadline for compensation talks over a platinum mine, after a no-show by the mining company that affected communities say is “run by bullies.”
- Also in South Africa, a community that only recently reclaimed land it was driven from during apartheid faces fresh eviction for a planned coal plant and steel mill.
- In the Democratic Republic of Congo, NGOs say a secret deal to allocate two of 30 oil blocks to a company with no industry experience should be grounds for suspending the whole auction.
- Element Africa is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin rounding up brief stories about land rights & extractives in Africa.

Vietnam’s environmental NGOs face uncertain status, shrinking civic space
- A wave of recent closures of environment organizations in Vietnam, as well as the arrests of NGO leaders, reflects the difficult position that activists face in the one-party state.
- Nonprofit organizations have an unclear legal status in the country, and are vulnerable to pressure from the state as well as from powerful private interests.
- Though the communist-led government has at times recognized the value of NGOs as partners in implementing social and environmental programs, it has also attacked the concept of civil society as a threat to official ideology and morality.

Element Africa: A lawsuit over oil, deaths over mining, and worries over lithium
- A community in Nigeria’s oil heartland is suing Shell in a U.K. court for oil-related pollution and compensation dating back to 1989.
- Two teenage boys fleeing a raid by forestry officers on illegal gold mining in Ghana’s Ashanti region have been found drowned, but the district chief alleges they were assaulted before being thrown into the river.
- A lithium boom in Zimbabwe looks set to benefit foreign mining firms and exclude local communities, activists say, drawing a parallel to an earlier diamond bonanza that has left many communities mired in poverty today.
- Element Africa is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin rounding up brief stories from the commodities industry in Africa.

Thai government turns its sights on illegal coral trade
- For years, Thailand has focused on curtailing its illegal trade in terrestrial wildlife.
- Recently, the country has begun trying to do the same for marine coral species, primarily those caught up in the ornamental aquarium trade.
- New laws, higher penalties for breaking them, beefed-up enforcement and a national mandate to curtail illegal coral trade are all part of Thailand’s efforts to end the trade in its corals.
- While authorities have made several arrests, they have yet to bust any high-profile coral traders.

Study aims to unmask fishing vessels, and owners, obscured by loopholes
- A new study reveals information about the shifting identities of the global fishing fleet, which can help tackle illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU) fishing.
- The research combines a decade’s worth of satellite vessel tracking data with identification information from more than 40 public registries to generate a first-of-its-kind global assessment of fishing compliance, foreign ownership of vessels, and reflagging.
- It found that nearly 20% of high seas fishing was likely unregulated or unauthorized, and that the reflagging of vessels, which operators may do to avoid oversight, mainly took place in ports in East Asia, West Africa and Eastern Europe.
- The researchers plan on making a broader data set publicly available soon and regularly updating this data so that authorities have access to timely information.

Murders of 2 Pataxó leaders prompt Ministry of Indigenous Peoples to launch crisis office
- On Jan. 17, 17-year-old Nawir Brito de Jesus and 25-year-old Samuel Cristiano do Amor Divino were shot dead in Brazil’s northeastern Bahia state, according to the state’s civil police.
- The crimes reportedly occurred when the two Indigenous leaders were returning to a resettlement farm, located within the limits of the Barra Velha Indigenous Territory, an area recognized in 2008 as being traditionally occupied by the Pataxó people but has since awaited its full demarcation.
- The newly created Ministry of Indigenous Peoples is setting up a crisis office to monitor land conflicts in the region with the Ministry of Justice and other authorities “to guarantee the rigorous investigation and punishment of the criminals, besides, of course, the protection of the Pataxó people.”
- Violence against Indigenous people this year is not isolated to Bahia. On Jan. 9, two Indigenous Guajajara were shot in the head in northeastern Maranhão state, near Maranwi village, close to the town of Arame, as confirmed by the state’s civil police.

Violence in Brazil’s Amazon are also crimes against humanity, lawyers tell international court
- Three organizations, including Greenpeace Brazil, filed a case with the International Criminal Court (ICC) pressing for the investigation into a network of politicians, law enforcement and business executives they suspect are responsible for systematic attacks against land defenders.
- They documented over 400 murders, 500 attempted murders, 2,200 death threats, 2,000 assaults and 80 cases of torture that occurred between 2011 and 2022.
- Former Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro is one suspect in these crimes, yet the organizations say the attacks are part of a larger system operating in Brazil, and will likely continue even when he’s out of office.
- If the criminal court choses to go forward with this case, it will be the first time they investigate crimes against humanity committed in the context of environmental destruction.

At a rubber plantation in Liberia, history repeats in a fight over land
- Last year, Mongabay visited the Salala Rubber Corporation in Liberia, which has been accused of sexually abusing women working on its plantation and grabbing community land.
- Salala is owned by Socfin, the French-Belgian agribusiness giant that operates rubber and palm oil plantations across West and Central Africa.
- In 2008, Salala received a $10 million loan from the International Finance Corporation, which advocates say was used to clear community land.
- In 2019, 22 communities in and around Salala’s plantation filed a formal complaint with the IFC, but the investigation has dragged on for years.

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

Dammed, now mined: Indigenous Brazilians fight for the Xingu River’s future
- Canadian mining company Belo Sun wants to build a huge gold mine in the Big Bend of the Xingu River in the Brazilian Amazon, but faces opposition from Indigenous communities.
- In addition to the environmental impacts, experts warn of the risk of the proposed tailings dam rupturing, which could flood the area with 9 million cubic meters (2.4 billion gallons) of toxic waste.
- The same region is already suffering the impacts of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam, which diverts up to 85% of the flow of the Xingu River, leading to a mass decline in fish that traditional riverside dwellers and Indigenous people rely on.
- The Belo Sun project was legally challenged last year, prompting supporters to harass and intimidate those who oppose the mine’s construction; tensions in the region remain high.

Weakening of agrarian reform program increases violence against settlers in Brazilian Amazon
- Residents of a landless workers’ settlement in Anapu, Pará state, in Brazil’s Amazon region, accuse the federal government of favoring large landowners, land-grabbers and corporations at the expense of poor and landless peasants.
- This year, the settlers have already suffered three attacks by landowners, with houses set on fire and a school destroyed.
- In 2021, Incra, the Brazilian federal agency responsible for addressing the country’s deep inequalities in rural land use and ownership, made an agreement with the mining company Belo Sun, which ceded 2,400 hectares (5,930 acres) of an area reserved for agrarian reform for gold exploration in exchange for equipment and a percentage of mining profits.
- In protest, landless peasants occupied one of the areas included in the agreement; since then, they have been threatened and intimidated by Belo Sun supporters and armed security guards hired by the mining company.

Indonesia prosecutors decry ‘lenient’ sentences in palm oil corruption case
- An Indonesian court has found a top trade ministry official, a prominent economist and three palm oil executives guilty for violating requirements to ensure supplies of palm oil for the domestic market.
- The five were convicted of conspiring to export crude palm oil to the international market, where prices are higher, rather than allocating it for the Indonesian market, where the government had imposed a price cap.
- Executives from three companies — the Permata Hijau Group, Wilmar Nabati Indonesia, and Musim Mas — were among those jailed.
- Prosecutors and anticorruption activists say the sentences and fines imposed by the court are far too lenient in light of the suffering they caused to the public; prosecutors say they will appeal for stronger sentences and higher fines.

For Indonesian smallholders, EU deforestation rule is a threat — and an opportunity
- Small farmers in Indonesia could be excluded from the European palm oil supply chain under a new EU deforestation regulation because they’re far from being able to comply, a new survey shows.
- The main challenges they face are in meeting traceability, legality and sustainability requirements, given the largely informal nature of transactions at the farm level and the lack of awareness about the need for documents like land titles and plantation certificates.
- The country’s main oil palm smallholder union has called on the EU to provide support for small farmers to be able to comply, such as setting a premium price for certified legal and deforestation-free palm oil.

Brazilian archbishop is threatened for defending Indigenous peoples — even during Mass
- Dom Roque Paloschi, president of the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) and archbishop of Porto Velho in the state of Roraima, Brazil, has been under attack because he denounced Indigenous people’s rights violations.
- It has always been risky to live in Amazonia and defend social-environmental issues, but Paloschi says the situation has worsened greatly in the last four years — the period that coincides with Jair Bolsonaro’s administration.
- In 2021, 355 attacks against Indigenous people were reported in Brazil — the most since 2013, according to a CIMI report.

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

Top 10 notable Indigenous stories of 2022
- This year was a historic one for many Indigenous communities around the world that marked many ‘firsts’ with successful land rights rulings, both on the global and national level.
- As Indigenous rights, roles and contributions in biodiversity conservation gain more attention, underreported and critical issues impacting Indigenous peoples were thrust into the spotlight this year.
- To end this impactful year, Mongabay rounds up its 10 most notable Indigenous news stories of 2022.

The Netherlands to stop paying subsidies to ‘untruthful’ biomass firms
- On December 5, 2022, Mongabay featured a story by journalist Justin Catanoso in which the first ever biomass industry insider came forward as a whistleblower and discredited the green sustainability claims made by Enviva — the world’s largest maker of wood pellets for energy.
- On December 15, citing that article and recent scientific evidence that Enviva contributes to deforestation in the U.S. Southeast, The Netherlands decided it will stop paying subsidies to any biomass company found to be untruthful in its wood pellet production methods. The Netherlands currently offers sizable subsidies to Enviva.
- Precisely how The Netherlands decision will impact biomass subsidies in the long run is unclear. Nor is it known how this decision may impact the EU’s Sustainable Biomass Program (SBP) certification process, which critics say is inherently weak and unreliable.
- Also in December, Australia became the first major nation to reverse its designation of forest biomass as a renewable energy source, raising questions about how parties to the UN Paris agreement can support opposing renewable energy policies, especially regarding biomass — a problem for COP28 negotiators to resolve in 2023.

Strong marine protected areas credited with manta ray surge in Indonesia
- Manta ray populations are thriving in Indonesia’s Raja Ampat archipelago, a new population assessment shows, highlighting the importance of marine protected areas to the species’ conservation.
- The study showed that reef manta ray (Mobula alfredi) populations saw up to 10.7% compound annual increase from 2009-2019 in the region, even as global ray and shark populations undergo a sweeping decline.
- The study authors attribute this to well-planned and -implemented conservation measures by Indonesian authorities, conservation groups and local communities.
- The finding chimes with the discovery earlier this year that manta ray populations are also flourishing in Komodo National Park, another tightly regulated protected area in Indonesia.

Landmark bill will ban the shark fin trade in the US
- On Dec. 15, the U.S. Senate passed legislation that will ban the shark fin trade within the nation.
- It’s estimated that fins from as many as 73 million sharks annually end up in the global market, but it is difficult to fully grasp the size and severity of the shark fin industry since much of it is unregulated.
- This forthcoming ban follows other measures to protect sharks, including the listing of many shark species on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and a ban on gear that is used to target sharks in the Pacific.

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

In Bangladesh, Ecologically Critical Areas exist only on paper
- Since 1999, Bangladesh has declared 13 biodiversity-rich areas as Ecologically Critical Areas (ECAs) under the Environment Conservation Act.
- The government has failed to conserve the ECAs so far, despite some protection measures undertaken in Saint Martin’s Island, Tanguar Haor, Hakaluki Haor, Cox’s Bazar and Sonadia Island.
- The government has permitted industries to be set up in one of the major ECAs, the Sundarbans, including an oil refinery and coal-fired power plant.
- Authorities blame inadequate budget allocation and staff shortage, which environmentalists describe as a “lack of interest of the government.”

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

Dalian Ocean Fishing, subject of Mongabay probe, now sanctioned by U.S.
- The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control recently announced sanctions on Chinese individuals and companies allegedly involved in human rights abuses and illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing while operating in distant waters.
- One sanctioned company, Dalian Ocean Fishing Co., Ltd. (DOF), was the subject of two Mongabay investigations: one uncovered widespread human rights abuses, and the other exposed extensive illegal shark-finning operations within the DOF fleet of longline fishing vessels.
- China, which operates the world’s largest distant-water fishing fleet and has a long history of fisheries offenses, denounced the sanctions, saying that it is a “responsible fishing country.”

“Sinchiurco is coated with oil”: The Kichwa people going up against Petroecuador
- In 1985, a road opened through the Kichwa community of Sinchiruco, in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon. With it came the Guanta 1 oil platform, which would lead to repeated complaints of human and environmental rights violations.
- Until 1990, Guanta 1 was operated by Texaco. Texaco and the companies that came later have been accused of oil and diesel spills, creating crude oil pools, and accidents that led to the death of a child and the loss of one girl’s sight.
- The platform was later managed by Petroamazonas and PDVSA. Now run by Petroecuador, the surrounding communities are still demanding compensation for previous spills and repairs to partially fixed pipelines that, they claim, continue to cause spills. After 37 years, the community is saying that enough is enough.

Shark-fishing gear banned across much of Pacific in conservation ‘win’
- The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission has outlawed shark lines and wire leaders, both of which aid industrial-scale fishers in targeting sharks.
- Shark numbers in the open ocean have dropped by roughly 71% in the past 50 years.
- Proponents consider the measure a potentially precedent-setting move that could precede similar bans in other regions.

As EU finalizes renewable energy plan, forest advocates condemn biomass
- The EU hopes to finalize its revised Renewable Energy Directive (RED) soon, even as forest advocates urge last minute changes to significantly cut the use of woody biomass for energy and make deep reductions in EU subsidies to the wood pellet industry.
- Forest advocates are citing a new commentary published in Nature that argues that the EU’s continued expansive commitment to burning forest biomass for energy will endanger forests in the EU, the U.S. and elsewhere — resulting in a major loss in global carbon storage and biodiversity.
- Changing RED to meet forest advocate recommendations seems unlikely at this point, with some policymakers arguing that woody biomass use is the only way the EU can achieve its 2030 coal reduction target. The woody biomass industry is pressing for sustained biomass use and for continued subsidies.
- Russia’s threat of reducing or cutting off its supply of natural gas to the EU this winter is also at issue. In the EU today, 60% of energy classified as renewable comes from burning biomass. If RED is approved as drafted, bioenergy use is projected to double between 2015 and 2050, according to the just published Nature commentary.

New criminal code rings alarms for environmental protection in Indonesia
- Indonesia has passed an overhauled criminal code that experts and activists say will weaken environmental protections and make it easier to persecute environmental defenders.
- Among the controversial provisions in the heavily criticized bill: an exemption from prosecution for companies that violate environmental laws; reduced punishment and the choice to pick a fine over a jail sentence for convicted violators; and a higher burden of proof for environmental crimes.
- It could also be used to prosecute environmental defenders who protest public works projects, on the pretext of insulting the president.
- The new code will not go into full effect until 2025, giving opponents time to challenge it at the Constitutional Court.

Whistleblower: Enviva claim of ‘being good for the planet… all nonsense’
- Enviva is the largest maker of wood pellets burned for energy in the world. The company has, from its inception, touted its green credentials.
- It says it doesn’t use big, whole trees, but only uses wood waste, “tops, limbs, thinnings, and/or low-value smaller trees” in the production of woody biomass burned in former coal power plants in the U.K., EU and Asia. It says it only sources wood from areas where trees will be regrown, and that it doesn’t contribute to deforestation.
- However, in first-ever interviews with a whistleblower who worked within Enviva plant management, Mongabay contributor Justin Catanoso has been told that all of these Enviva claims are false. In addition, a major recent scientific study finds that Enviva is contributing to deforestation in the U.S. Southeast.
- Statements by the whistleblower have been confirmed by Mongabay’s own observations at a November 2022 forest clear-cut in North Carolina, and by NGO photo documentation. These findings are especially important now, as the EU considers the future of forest biomass burning as a “sustainable” form of renewable energy.

Podcast: How reporters uncovered a massive illegal shark finning operation
- Podcast host Mike G. speaks with Mongabay reporters who conducted recent investigations revealing a major and illegal shark finning operation by one of China’s largest fishing fleets, and the involvement of a major Japanese company, Mitsubishi, in buying that fleet’s products.
- Through an exhaustive interview process with deckhands who worked throughout the company’s fleet, the team showed that Dalian Ocean Fishing deliberately used banned gear to target sharks across a huge swath of the western Pacific Ocean.
- The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission is currently meeting to discuss policies that would crack down even further on use of this gear, and we speak with Phil Jacobson who is there covering the event.
- We also speak with Japan-based reporter Annelise Giseburt who was able to verify that the illegal operation benefited greatly from selling a massive share of its tuna catch to the Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi.

Environmental peacebuilding must pay more attention to armed groups (commentary)
- State and non-state armed groups often play crucial roles in conflict and cooperation over natural resources.
- Environmental peacebuilding examines how addressing resource conflict and improving governance can serve as a stepping stone for broader efforts at peace.
- Though much research and programming of this sort speaks of governments and communities as the main conflict parties, armed parties should also be considered conflict actors in their own right.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Indonesia’s Supreme Court rules President Widodo not liable in 2015 fires
- Indonesia’s highest court has ruled President Joko Widodo not liable in the 2015 fires, overturning three previous court rulings that found him to be liable for the disaster.
- The plaintiffs, a group of citizens and environmental activists affected by the 2015 fires, have lambasted the court’s decision, saying it raises questions over the government’s seriousness in tackling the annual fire problem.
- The plaintiffs also questioned the process behind the ruling, saying they hadn’t been given the chance to refute new evidence presented by the government.

Following the impacts of palm oil alliance: Violated regulations and penalty proceedings
- The journalistic partnership behind a 2021 database gathering information on the penalties for environmental violations given to palm oil producers in Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Honduras has added two more countries: Costa Rica and Brazil
- In these six Latin American nations, between 2010 and 2021, at least 298 cases were opened against 170 companies and individuals involved in the palm oil industry, according to the details offered by authorities in response to requests from the journalists working on the database.
- The handing over of incomplete documents and lack of information are, once again, a common feature of how authorities across the region respond to journalists’ requests. In 181 cases, it was impossible to understand the stage of the penalty proceedings, while in 42 cases there was no concrete information on whether a sanction or fine had been applied. In 47 instances, the exact nature of the environmental violation committed by the target of the proceedings was not specified.

After 14 years of advocacy, the DRC president finally signs new Indigenous peoples law (commentary)
- On Wednesday, the president of the DRC, Felix Antoine Tshisekedi, signed and promulgated the new law on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of the Indigenous Pygmy Peoples.
- For the country’s Indigenous pygmy people, this is the first time that they are legally recognized as a distinct people with rights and access to free, prior and informed consent before the government and industries can exploit their land.
- But not everything will change in the blink of an eye and implementation of the law will take time, says Patrick Saidi, one of the Indigenous coordinators that worked to get the protections enshrined into law.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

EU ‘moving the goal posts’ with new timber requirement, Indonesia says
- In 2011, Indonesia began the process of ensuring that its timber exports to the European Union met strict legality verification standards, which the EU duly recognized in 2016.
- Now, a new bill threatens to undermine this progress by revoking the “green lane” access for imports of Indonesian timber and subjecting them to addition checks for deforestation links.
- “You can’t suddenly change your mind by saying ‘I’m not willing to accept [Indonesian timber products] because they’re not sustainable enough,’” says Arif Havas Oegroseno, the Indonesian ambassador to Germany.
- The official adds that Indonesia is willing to take the matter to the World Trade Organization — a move that other tropical forest countries, including Brazil and Ghana, have also hinted at.

Did climate change really kill billions of snow crabs in Alaska?
- In October 2022, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that the lucrative snow crab fishery in the Bering Sea would close for the first time, following a population decline of 80% between 2018 and 2022.
- While fisheries managers and biologists say climate change is to blame for the species’ retreat, some fishers and crab experts suggest that trawling bycatch and other fishing activity may have played a role in the snow crab’s decline.
- The fishery’s closure has amplified a chorus of concerns about Alaska’s trawling industry and the knowledge gaps around its potential impact on fisheries.

Element Africa: Keeping platinum in the ground, and minors out of mines
- South Africa’s minister of mines has approved a platinum mine in the Vhembe Biosphere Reserve despite objections from a farming community of 500 whose homes sit atop the deposits.
- The end of a government-funded program to incentivize parents in the Democratic Republic of Congo to keep their children in school has seen more than 250 return to working in cobalt mines.
- It’s a different story in Kenya’s Makueni county, where strong local regulations are keeping minors, and criminal elements, out of the sand mining industry.
- Element Africa is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin rounding up brief stories from the commodities industry in Africa.

New Zealand convicts company of illegal trawling in high seas restricted area
- In late August, a court in Aotearoa New Zealand convicted a subsidiary of one of the country’s major seafood companies of illegal trawling in a closed area in the Tasman Sea between New Zealand and Australia.
- The judge fined the company NZ$59,000 (about $33,000) and the skipper NZ$12,000 (about $7,000), and seized the vessel.
- It’s the fourth case in the past five years where courts convicted New Zealand-flagged vessels of illegal trawling.
- The recent conviction comes amid an ongoing debate about trawling in New Zealand, with campaigners calling for a ban on bottom trawling on submarine mountains, and the industry disputing their arguments and resisting aspects of the proposed change.

For water quality, even a sliver of riverbank forest is better than none
- Costa Rica currently has laws in place to protect riparian zones along waterways, but they are unevenly enforced.
- Implementing these laws, even at the bare minimum of maintaining a 10-meter (33-foot) strip of riverbank vegetation, could lead to benefits for water quality and people, according to a new modeling study.
- The study shows that a small increase in forest cover around waterways can reduce nutrient and sediment runoff, especially on steeper lands and near farms and cities.
- Increases in water quality from riparian zones would improve drinking water for vulnerable populations in Costa Rica.

Broken houses and promises: residents still in poverty near massive diamond project
- More than 14 years since the discovery of the Marange diamond fields, one of the world’s largest diamond-producing projects, relocated residents and locals living near the mines are still living in poverty.
- The government and mining companies promised homes, electricity, water, employment, social services and compensation, but residents and civil society organizations say they have still not received many of these promises since Mongabay last reported on the project in 2016.
- Rivers, which residents rely on for their livestock, vegetable plots and cleaning, are polluted and silted by artisanal miners seeking additional income and opportunities to escape poverty.
- Previously, foreign companies in Zimbabwe had to either give the majority of their shares to locals or divest money into community trusts. However, this promise has fallen short since current president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, reversed the law.

Bangladesh e-waste rules hang in limbo as electrical goods companies ask for delay
- The Bangladesh government has failed to implement electronic waste management regulations a year after introducing a new rule that was a decade in the making.
- Countries with large stakes in Bangladesh’s electrical goods market are reportedly lobbying the World Trade Organization for a one-year delay in the implementation of e-waste regulations; meanwhile, the WTO has raised several issues with the new rule, including a reduction in the standard for lead.
- As the process stalls, e-waste continues to pile up, as the Bangladesh electrical market experiences a massive boom.
- According to a 2010 report of the Environment and Social Development Organization, more than 15% of child recycling workers in Bangladesh die during and after the effects of handling e-waste each year, and more than 83% are exposed to toxic substances.

Element Africa: Mines take their toll on nature and communities
- Civil society groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo are demanding the revocation of the license for a Chinese-owned gold miner operating inside a wildlife reserve that’s also home to nomadic Indigenous groups.
- Up to 90% of mines in South Africa aren’t publishing their social commitments to the communities in which they operate, in violation of the law, activists say.
- A major Nigerian conglomerate that was granted a major concession for industrial developments in 2012 has still not compensated displaced residents, it was revealed after the company announced it’s abandoning the project.
- Element Africa is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin rounding up brief stories from the commodities industry in Africa.

Local coverage of Nepal’s ‘Himalayan Viagra’ harvest lacks eco focus, study says
- Yarsa gunbu, better known outside Nepal as the Himalayan Viagra, accounts for two-fifths of the country’s non-timber exports.
- Every year, hundreds of thousands of Nepalis head for the hilly regions to harvest this fungus-mummified caterpillar larvae from the wild, leaving schools, farms and entire villages deserted.
- A new study analyzing domestic news coverage of yarsa gunbu has found that much of the reporting focuses on the scale of the harvest and the exorbitant prices that the commodity can fetch.
- The study authors have called on the media to emphasize other aspects of the yarsa gunbu trade, including the ecological cost from harvesting, and the social cost when schools are bereft of teachers.

Southern Philippine coal project moves ahead despite community opposition
- Heavy machinery has begun operating at a coal mining site on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao.
- The concession is held by three subsidiaries of Philippine conglomerate San Miguel Corp., which estimates the mine will produce 180 million metric tons of coal and plans to build a mine-mouth power plant.
- The project has been opposed by environment activists, the local Catholic Church and some tribal groups, who say it threatens the environment, food and water security and will displace Indigenous people in the area.
- Opponents of the project also say that San Miguel’s plans to strip mine run afoul of a provincial ban on open-pit mining.

Dog shooting highlights Sri Lanka’s need for stricter animal cruelty laws
- Sri Lanka’s outdated laws on animal welfare are 115 years old and were introduced when the country was under the British yoke.
- With violence toward animals reported on more frequently, animal rights groups are calling for tougher laws to combat cases of animal cruelty.
- The current punishment for mistreating an animal is $0.27 and is among the lowest in South Asia.
- A proposed animal welfare law has not been adopted despite being placed on the parliamentary agenda on 44 occasions.

Ecuador’s Indigenous Siekopai communities sue for title in protected area
- Approximately 800 Siekopai occupy territory in the Western Amazon along the Ecuador-Peru border but haven’t been able to obtain a constitutionally guaranteed title to their ancestral land in the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve.
- After years of requests, they decided to file a lawsuit against the government in hopes that they will finally gain control of Pë’këya, the ancestral and spiritual home of their peoples.
- The Siekopai are world renowned for their knowledge of local flora and fauna, which they use in many of their traditional ceremonies.

Conservatives tighten grip on Brazil Congress, hampering environmental agenda
- Brazilians elected a more conservative Congress in the Oct. 2 ballot, with supporters of President Jair Bolsonaro and the agribusiness lobby winning seats in both the lower and upper houses.
- Experts say that if former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wins the runoff presidential vote on Oct. 30, he could curtail some of the pressure from the agribusiness caucus and reverse the past four years of destructive policies for the Amazon.
- Two Indigenous women and former environment minister Marina Silva are expected to lead the opposition against the agribusiness, mining and logging agenda in Congress, after winning seats in the lower house.

Element Africa: Diamonds, oil, coltan, and more diamonds
- Offshore diamond prospecting threatens a fishing community in South Africa, while un-checked mining for the precious stones on land is silting up rivers in Zimbabwe.
- In Nigeria, serial polluter Shell is accused of not cleaning up a spill from a pipeline two months ago; the company says the spill was mostly water from flushing out the pipeline.
- Also in Nigeria, mining for coltan, the source of niobium and tantalum, important metals in electronics applications, continues to destroy farms and nature even as the government acknowledges it’s being done illegally.
- Element Africa is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin rounding up brief stories from the commodities industry in Africa.

The mine leak was bad. The DRC and Angola’s response are no better, report says
- In July 2021, an Angolan diamond mine leaked large amounts of polluted water into the Kasai River Basin which stretches across Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- Twelve people were killed, a further 4,400 fell ill and an estimated 1 million more were affected by the polluted water.
- Fourteen months later, the DRC government has not released full results of tests conducted on the rivers, but a ban on drinking the water from the Kasai and Tshikapa rivers remains in place.
- An independent report published in September 2022 has found that the leak killed off much of the rivers’ aquatic life, with severe and ongoing impacts on river-dependent communities.

Labor groups seek to build on Indonesian palm oil court win in new cases
- Last year, Indonesia’s Supreme Court ordered one of the world’s largest palm oil companies to make severance payments worth tens of thousands of dollars, handing palm oil workers an important victory in a labor dispute.
- Asserting the decision as a new precedent, activists and union groups are mounting a case for two new lawsuits against the company, London Sumatra, on behalf of 200 workers over unfair dismissals.
- Indonesia is the world’s top palm oil producer but allegations of labor abuses have dogged the industry.

Maasai villages lose important court case as wildlife game reserve trudges on
- The East African Court of Justice (EACJ) has ruled in favor of the Tanzanian government after a five-year legal battle between Maasai communities and the state over evictions that took place in 2017.
- The East African Court of Justice (EACJ) says Maasai communities did not provide sufficient evidence that evictions were done violently and that they occurred on legally registered land.
- The court case is part of a larger battle between Maasai communities and the state over the creation of a wildlife reserve on disputed lands near Serengeti National Park.
- According to Maasai villagers and their attorneys, the court omitted important evidence and they plan to appeal the EACJ’s decision.

Pluspetrol Norte: A history of unpaid sanctions and oil spills in the Peruvian Amazon
- The Kichwa community of 12 de Octubre in Loreto experienced multiple oil spills earlier this year due to activities in the region by the oil and gas producing company Pluspetrol Norte.
- The company has received 73 sanctions imposed by Peru’s Environmental Evaluation and Enforcement Agency (OEFA) between 2011 and 2021, with fines totaling over $47 million.
- Pluspetrol Norte has pending trials with the Peruvian government for attempting to liquidate the company and for not taking responsibility for their environmental liabilities.

Indonesian lobster larvae bound for Singapore reveal role of smuggling network
- Two recent seizures of lobster larvae shipments destined for Singapore have prompted an investigation by Indonesia into a smuggling network operating between the two countries.
- The shipments had an estimated value of $2.2 million, and were the latest in a string of attempts to smuggle the larvae to buyers in Singapore, Vietnam and China.
- Indonesia has banned the export of wild-caught larvae in an effort to its lobster stocks, and is encouraging the growth of the domestic lobster-farming industry.
- Lobsters are among Indonesia’s top fisheries commodities, but the illegal exports cost the country $64 million in lost revenue in 2019 alone, according to official data.

Brazil 2022: Election, environment and the future of the Amazon
- Prior to the Oct. 2 Brazilian election, Mongabay aims to ensure the public has access to factual information on environmental issues in the country.
- Mongabay’s efforts include a year long joint investigation with Earthsight, which has uncovered new evidence of corruption and illegality used by Brazil’s largest flooring exporter, Indusparquet, and its suppliers.
- Mongabay has also produced a collection of Twitter threads that examine the interplay between Brazil’s elected officials — mainly the Bolsonaro administration — the environment and Indigenous peoples.

The Fixers: Top U.S. flooring retailers linked to Brazilian firm probed for corruption
- New evidence uncovered by a yearlong investigation by Mongabay and Earthsight reveals the corrupt deals made by Brazil’s largest flooring exporter, Indusparquet, and its suppliers.
- The company was charged in two corruption lawsuits in Brazil over its use of public officials to gain access to timber supplies. Mongabay and Earthsight gained access to dozens of hours of wiretaps and video footage, along with thousands of pages of court records, revealing how the alleged bribery schemes were carried out.
- One of the court cases showed the company used a local official to secure the supply of bracatinga, a tree species native to the Atlantic Forest, for an unnamed “U.S. client.”
- We also found indications that the American client was Floor & Decor, America’s largest flooring retail chain, which was previously involved in illegal timber scandals with Indusparquet, while LL Flooring, fined for breaching the Lacey Act in 2013 over its illegal timber exports, is also an Indusparquet client.

Experts decry ‘funny math’ of plastics industry’s ‘advanced recycling’ claims
- Environmental experts say there’s a strong possibility that a federal bill will be introduced in the U.S. that seeks to strengthen an industry known as “advanced recycling,” or “chemical recycling.”
- While proponents of advanced recycling tout it as a solution to the ever-growing plastic pollution issue, critics say that it’s not recycling at all, but a highly polluting incineration process that converts plastic into fuel.
- Experts say that current advanced recycling plants are able to operate with ease due to state laws that subject them to fewer regulations.
- Critics say the passing of a federal bill into law would substantially increase the number of advanced recycling plants across the U.S., allowing them to evade many environmental regulations while disproportionately polluting the air in low-income communities and communities of color.

Indonesia’s sustainable fisheries push sails into storm in Java Sea
- Civil society activists have questioned whether a sanctioned alternative to the seine net will help fish stocks recover in Indonesia’s fishing zones.
- Fishers on Java’s northern coast are struggling to adapt to sustainability changes announced by Indonesia’s fisheries ministry.
- Cases of conflict between seine net fishers and smaller local fishing boats continue to be reported.

In the Amazon, Bolsonaro’s far right may retain power even if Lula wins
- While polls show former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ahead in the upcoming elections, far-right ideology persists in the Amazon region.
- Bolsonaro’s allies lead the polls for governor in five of the nine Amazon states: Acre, Mato Grosso, Rondônia, Roraima and Amazonas.
- In all Amazonian states, polls indicate that the two presidential candidates are tied, in contrast to national polls.
- Experts say that even if most states choose right-wing governors, the federal government will determine the future of the Amazon rainforest.

Java fishers struggle with seine net ban amid rising costs, falling profits
- Fishers on the north coast of Java are struggling to adapt to a ban on the seine net, with many boats confined to port after the government ceased issuing new permits to seine net fishers.
- Java fishers report declining catch volumes from the alternative net.
- Some boat captains fear bankruptcy as cash flow pressures mount.

Big data monitoring tool aims to catch up to Indonesia’s booming online bird trade
- A web-trawling tool developed by researchers in Indonesia has identified more than a quarter of a million songbirds in online listings from a single e-commerce site between April 2020 and September 2021.
- More than 6% of these were species listed as threatened on the IUCN Red List, including the Javan pied starling (Gracupica jalla) and the straw-headed bulbul (Pycnonotus zeylanicus), both critically endangered.
- In a newly published paper, the researchers say the online bird trade is highly successful thanks to well-developed e-commerce infrastructure such as internet and shipping services.
- The researchers have proposed the adoption of their tool by Indonesian authorities to monitor the online bird trade, given the absence of any other platform to crack down on trafficking.

EU votes to keep woody biomass as renewable energy, ignores climate risk
- Despite growing public opposition, the European Parliament voted this week not to declassify woody biomass as renewable energy. The forest biomass industry quickly declared victory, while supporters of native forests announced their plan to continue the fight — even in court.
- The EU likely renewed its commitment to burning wood as a source of energy largely to help meet its target of cutting EU carbon emissions by 55% by 2030, something it likely couldn’t achieve without woody biomass (which a carbon accounting loophole counts as carbon neutral, equivalent to wind and solar power).
- Scientific evidence shows that burning wood pellets is a major source of carbon at the smokestack. The European Union also likely continued its embrace of biomass this week as it looks down the barrel of Russian threats to cut off natural gas supplies this winter over the EU’s opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
- While the EU decision maintains that whole trees won’t be subsidized for burning, that natural forests will be protected, and that there will be limits to logging old growth and primary forests, these provisions include legal loopholes and were not backed with monitoring or enforcement commitments. No dates were set for biomass burning phase down.

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

Thailand’s contentious plan to curtail bottom trawling unfolds in slow motion
- To rebuild its dwindling fish stocks, Thailand has implemented a series of reforms to its fishing sector since 2015, reining in illegal fishing while curtailing catches and the size of its commercial fishing fleet.
- In July, the Thai government announced a ban on new registrations for bottom trawlers, a particularly destructive and indiscriminate kind of fishing vessel, coupled with a $30 million buyout program for them and other gear types.
- Small-scale fishers say the reforms don’t go far enough to protect fish stocks, while commercial fishers say the new rules are hobbling their industry and should be scrapped.

Vietnam’s Human Rights Council bid under fire after environmentalists jailed
- Fifty-two winners of the Goldman Environmental Prize have signed on to a letter calling on the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to vote against Vietnam’s bid for membership.
- The letter cites the imprisonment of Nguy Thi Khanh, founder of Hanoi-based GreenID and Vietnam’s first Goldman Prize winner, on tax evasion charges, as well as the case of Dang Dinh Bach, an environmental lawyer and former director of the Law and Policy of Sustainable Development Research Center, also imprisoned on tax-related charges.
- Noting that the UN General Assembly has declared a clean, healthy and sustainable environment to be a universal human right, the letter asks how Vietnam will uphold this right with these experts behind bars and many in civil society concerned about the possibility of more arrests.

Latest water-sharing deal between Bangladesh, India is ‘drop in the ocean’
- Bangladesh and India share 54 rivers that flow down from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal, chief among them the Ganges and the Brahmaputra.
- Managing the flow of water both upstream and down is crucial for agriculture, navigation, inland fisheries, and keeping saltwater intrusion at bay in Bangladesh, but is undermined by a lack of water-sharing agreements.
- The Bangladeshi and Indian prime ministers recently signed an agreement on sharing water from the Kushiara River for irrigation, but experts say this is nothing special in the grand scheme of things.
- They’ve called on the governments of both countries to push for securing long-term treaties on water sharing from major rivers like the Ganges and the Teesta, which in the latter case has been hobbled by local politics in India.

In the Mekong Basin, an ‘unnecessary’ dam poses an outsized threat
- A dam being built in Laos near the border with Cambodia imperils downstream communities and the Mekong ecosystem as a whole, experts and affected community members say.
- The Sekong A dam will close off the Sekong River by the end of this year, restricting its water flow, blocking vital sediment from reaching the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, and cutting off migration routes for a range of fish species.
- Experts say the energy to be generated by the dam — 86 megawatts — doesn’t justify the negative impacts, calling it “an absolutely unnecessary project.”
- This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn is a fellow.

Bolsonaro trails in polls, but his base in Congress looks likely to persist
- With Brazil’s presidential election scheduled for Oct. 2, environmental activists have expressed hope that a turning point in favor of nature could be just weeks away if Jair Bolsonaro loses.
- But two-thirds of the current lower house of Congress voted for anti-environmental bills, and experts predict that the profile of the lawmakers will remain right-wing and pro-agribusiness.
- Deforestation in the Amazon rose to its highest levels in 10 years under Bolsonaro, who vowed to open up the rainforest to agriculture and mining.
- However, experts say a greener agenda could be possible depending on who is appointed the next lower and upper house presidents, a decision that will be made early next year.

Illegal fishing, worker abuse claims leave a bad taste for Bumble Bee Seafood
- A new report published by Greenpeace East Asia has found that Bumble Bee Seafoods and its parent company, Fong Chun Formosa Fishery Company (FCF) of Taiwan, are sourcing seafood from vessels involved in human rights abuses as well as illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing practices.
- It found that 13 vessels supplying seafood to Bumble Bee violated Taiwanese fishery regulations, and were even on the Taiwan Fisheries Agency’s (TFA) list of vessels involved in IUU fishing, and that many supply vessels were involved in issues of forced labor and human trafficking.
- Both Bumble Bee and FCF have sustainability and corporate social responsibility policies in place.

In revising its criminal code, Indonesia risks unraveling environmental laws
- Indonesia’s plan to revise its outdated criminal code could lead to a systematic weakening of existing environmental laws, experts warn.
- The latest draft of the code contains provisions that would make it more difficult to prosecute environmental crimes, such as dumping toxic waste in rivers and setting forest fires, the experts say.
- They note also that it makes punishment more lenient and lets companies off the hook, while potentially making it easier to prosecute environmental defenders.
- The experts have called on the government and lawmakers to go back to the drawing board and ensure that environmental crimes are treated as the extraordinary crimes that they are.

‘Brazilians aren’t familiar with the Amazon’: Q&A with Ângela Mendes
- Environmental activist Ângela Mendes coordinates the Chico Mendes Committee as part of her efforts to keep alive the memory and legacy of her father, a leader of the rubber tapper community and environmental resistance.
- In an interview with Mongabay Brasil, Ângela Mendes talks about the role of social networks as a fundamental instrument for resistance in the 21st century.
- She also reflects on the culture of impunity that allowed the masterminds of her father’s murder to evade justice, and which she says persists in Brazil today.
- But she also holds out hope for change, noting that Brazilians are largely concerned about the environment, but that they need to channel this concern into concrete actions, including in the national elections coming up in October.

Maldives shark-fishing ban tested by ebbing support from small-scale fishers
- A 2010 blanket ban on shark fishing in the Maldives doesn’t enjoy support from artisanal reef fishers, a new study suggests.
- Many fishers blamed sharks for stealing their catches, eating into their earnings, and damaging their fishing equipment — problems they perceive have worsened since the creation of a shark sanctuary.
- These negative perceptions could result in lower compliance with fishing restrictions and undermine efforts to revive shark populations in Maldivian waters.
- Pole-and-line skipjack tuna fishers reported the greatest support for the shark fishing ban because sharks corral tuna to the ocean surface, making them easier to catch.

Brazil miner sees Indigenous land as ripe for exploration if protections expire
- Mining company Oxycer has filed five applications to prospect for gold in the Piripkura Indigenous Territory, in anticipation of restrictions being lifted this October.
- The territory is home to two of the last three surviving Piripkura individuals, who live in voluntary isolation and already face threats from invasions of their territory by illegal loggers and cattle ranchers.
- Mining in Indigenous territories is currently illegal in Brazil, which is why the Federal Public Ministry is pursuing lawsuits to scupper mining requests being filed with the National Mining Agency (ANM).
- However, the ANM continues to accept and register these applications for what’s clearly an illegal activity, though it’s unclear if the agency has approved any of them yet.

Biomass cofiring loopholes put coal on open-ended life support in Asia
- Over the past 10 years, some of Asia’s coal-dependent, high-emitting nations have turned to biomass cofiring (burning coal and biomass together to make electricity) to reduce CO2 emissions on paper and reach energy targets. But biomass still generates high levels of CO2 at the smokestack and adds to dangerous global warming.
- In South Korea, renewable energy credits given for biomass cofiring flooded the market and made other renewables like wind and solar less profitable. Although subsides for imported biomass for cofiring have decreased in recent years, increased domestic biomass production is likely to continue fueling cofiring projects.
- In Japan, renewable energy subsidies initially prompted the construction of new cofired power plants. Currently, biomass cofiring is used to make coal plants seem less polluting in the near term as utilities prepare to cofire and eventually convert the nation’s coal fleet to ammonia, another “carbon-neutral” fuel.
- In Indonesia, the government and state utility, encouraged by Japanese industry actors, plan to implement cofiring at 52 coal plants across the country by 2025. The initiative will require “nothing less than the creation of a large-scale biomass [production] industry,” according to experts.

Fisheries crackdown pushes Cambodians to the brink on Tonle Sap lake
- A ban on illegal fishing in Tonle Sap, Cambodia’s largest lake, is hitting local communities hard — even those engaged in legal fishing.
- “By continuing to fish, we are forced into hiding, we are forced into crime,” one fisher told Mongabay, describing a climate of fear amid a heavy law enforcement presence.
- Another says the crackdown is being prosecuted with impunity: officers “will confiscate anything from anyone and then say ‘It’s illegal’” in an alleged ploy to solicit a bribe.
- This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn is a fellow.

Sumatra villagers protest iron mine allegedly operating despite stop order
- An iron ore mining company in Indonesia’s Sumatra Island has continued operating despite the local government telling it to halt its activities, local villagers say.
- An inspection by provincial authorities had found the company, PT Faminglevto Bakti Abadi (FBA), to be lacking permits and posing risks to the environment and nearby communities.
- The company’s reported violation of the order has prompted locals to set up camp outside the concession as an act of protest.
- The villagers are demanding the government to revoke the concession, citing ongoing and potential damage to the environment and their livelihoods.

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