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topic: Forest People
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Pressure bears down around uncontacted tribes at the edge of Brazil’s arc of deforestation
- A family of three isolated Indigenous people got separated from their group and ended up contacting non-Indigenous society in one of the best-preserved areas of the Brazilian Amazon.
- For more than a month, agents with Funai, Brazil’s federal agency for Indigenous affairs, have been camping near the family, helping them hunt and fish.
- The group lives on the edge of the so-called arc of deforestation, in a mosaic of conservation areas and Indigenous territories that form a green barrier to oncoming pressure from land grabbers and cattle ranchers who want the land to increase their wealth.
- Besides the impact on isolated Indigenous communities, the destruction of this part of the Amazon would affect Brazil’s rain cycle and potentially unleash new viruses and bacteria, researchers warn.
Indigenous Dayak community makes strides on Borneo toward forest autonomy
- In Mekar Raya, a semi-remote pocket of Ketapang district near the west coast of Indonesian Borneo, the local Dayak Simpan Indigenous society are navigating the complex bureaucracy of the state in a bid to gain semi-autonomous control of their customary forest.
- Under the national “social forestry” program, Indonesia’s central government has released more than 8 million hectares (20 million acres) from the national forest estate to management by local and Indigenous communities.
- The Dayak Simpan in Mekar Raya have previously resisted attempts by the palm oil industry to survey local land. Local sources say devolved management of the forest to the community will all but eliminate the risk of this land-use change.
- Several areas of the forestry are held sacred by the Dayak Simpan, with customary rules prohibiting the felling of trees or disturbance of water courses.
IPBES report highlights Indigenous & local knowledge as key to ‘transformative change’
- On Dec. 16, IPBES, the U.N.’s biodiversity policy panel, released a report on transformative change to address the biodiversity crisis, which centers the role of Indigenous and local knowledge and rights.
- The report identifies the three underlying causes of biodiversity loss and concludes with four principles to guide the change, five strategies to advance the change, six broad approaches, and five challenges this change faces.
- Many Indigenous and local traditional knowledge systems can offer insights into fostering human-nature interconnection and provide cost-effective strategies in conserving high-value areas for nature when they’re included in conservation strategies.
- With only six years left to achieve the 2030 global biodiversity goals, nature conservation faces many challenges, but the authors say they believe transformative change is still possible.
Canopy bridges serve a lifeline for Sumatra’s tree-dwelling primates
- An NGO is working with local authorities in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province to build canopy bridges for primates to safely cross roads that fragment their forest habitats.
- Pakpak Bharat district has seen rapid growth of new roads to improve communities’ access to schools and hospitals, with the trade-off being that many of these roads disrupt wildlife connectivity.
- The bridges, designed to meet the needs of different species, have been used by various wildlife, though not yet the critically endangered orangutans that the designers had in mind, and are monitored regularly through camera traps and maintenance checks.
- Conservationists highlight the bridges’ role in preventing inbreeding among isolated populations and sustaining the ecosystem’s biodiversity, with hopes to expand the initiative across Sumatra.
Congo looks to monetize its high-integrity forests
- The Republic of Congo’s Ministry of Forest Economy, in partnership with the Wildlife Conservation Society, has launched an investment plan for high-integrity forests in Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park.
- The HIFOR initiative aims to fill the funding gap for well-preserved forests that aren’t eligible for carbon offsetting schemes.
- Nouabalé-Ndoki in the north of the Republic of Congo is recognized for its ecological integrity.
- By integrating sustainable economic practices, the project promises to strengthen conservation efforts while supporting local communities.
The Amazon is ablaze again. What it means for us (commentary)
- The Amazon rainforest, devastated by over 70,000 wildfires in 2019, is once again ablaze, threatening even greater destruction of wildlife, human health, and ecosystems.
- Climate change is now a tangible global threat, with rising sea levels and extreme heat affecting entire regions, while indigenous communities, like the Kogi in Colombia, have long warned of these environmental dangers, argues Mark J. Plotkin, an ethnobotanist who co-founded the Amazon Conservation Team.
- The Amazon, which stores one-fifth of the world’s terrestrial carbon, plays a crucial role in regulating global climate, but continued deforestation risks releasing this carbon and disrupting weather patterns far beyond the region.
- This text is a commentary and does not necessarily represent the views of Mongabay.
Do Indigenous peoples really conserve 80% of the world’s biodiversity?
- A new commentary piece in Nature argues that the much-cited claim that Indigenous peoples protect 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity is not only baseless, but wrong.
- Although scientists and Indigenous advocates agree the statistic is under-researched, not all agree with the authors’ conclusions, especially as they did not provide evidence that suggests the statistic is wrong nor provide alternative ways of estimating biodiversity conservation on Indigenous lands.
- Scientists share their ideas and insights on calculating biodiversity on Indigenous lands, including the complexities of such research and what to avoid in the future to maintain scientific rigor.
- Indigenous advocates say the Nature commentary is unethical as it makes conclusions without enough evidence and undermines Indigenous guardianship of biodiversity, their land rights and access to funding ahead of the upcoming U.N. biodiversity conference.
DRC communities turn up heat on EU lenders funding palm oil giant PHC
- Communities living close to oil palm plantations run by PHC in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo are laying claim to just over 58,000 hectares (143,000 acres) of land, and are demanding access to the company’s land titles to determine the boundaries of its concessions.
- They accuse several European development banks, including Germany’s DEG, of having financially supported a PHC land grab in the DRC through $150 million in loans, in breach of their own loan agreement principles.
- Supported by a coalition of NGOs, an organization known as RIAO-RDC has written to a number of European Union governments calling for the suspension of the mediation process led by DEG’s Independent Complaints Mechanism (ICM).
- PHC, which is embroiled in a leadership battle among its shareholders, has also been accused of financial malpractice, environmental crimes and human rights violations on its plantations, including arbitrary arrests and the detention of workers by the police.
Are carbon credits another resource-for-cash grab? Interview with Alondra Cerdes Morales & Samuel Nguiffo
- Indigenous and traditional communities around the world are increasingly being recognized for their stewardship of forests.
- That’s led to their lands being seen as prime targets for carbon credit projects, the idea being that the carbon sequestered here can be sold to offset emissions elsewhere.
- While some Indigenous communities have welcomed these projects and the funds they bring in, others say they’re just another example of the monetization of natural resources that’s driving the climate crisis in the first place.
- Mongabay interviewed two leading Indigenous voices on both sides of the debate, who say the issue is a deeply nuanced one that carries implications for Indigenous land rights, culture and sustainability.
A short walk through Amazon time: Interview with archaeologist Anna Roosevelt
- Anna Roosevelt has been working in the Amazon for four decades and her pivotal research has changed the knowledge of the rainforest’s occupation.
- In an interview with Mongabay, she explains how her research led to evidence of much older Amazon settlements than previously thought, challenging a decades-long scientific consensus about how Indigenous people related to the forest.
- “One reason I was able to make some great discoveries is because of how opinionated archaeologists in the mid-20th century were. I only benefited from their mistakes,” she said.
- Roosevelt said the recent hype regarding the “garden cities” in Ecuador is “annoying”, as it is not a new discovery and it ignores older research from Latin American archaeologists.
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.
Do carbon credits really help communities that keep forests standing?
- Communities play a critical role in REDD+, a forest conservation strategy that aims to reduce emissions that can be sold as credits to raise money for forest protection.
- REDD+ projects often include components for the benefit of the communities, such as a focus on alternative livelihoods and provision of health care and education.
- But reports that REDD+ communities have faced abuses and rights violations have emerged recently in connection with high-profile REDD+ projects.
- Several Indigenous-led organizations have voiced their support for REDD+ because, they say, it provides an avenue to fund their climate-related conservation work, while other groups say it’s not the answer.
Who protects nature better: The state or communities? It’s complicated
- In a new study, more than 50 researchers conducted a review comparing the effectiveness of state-managed protected areas and areas managed by Indigenous peoples and local communities.
- The review found that comparing the two was very challenging for various reasons, including the difficulty in figuring out who was managing an area, as well as a lack of comparable data and different groups of researchers measuring different things, making comparisons hard.
- The studies that did allow for comparisons showed that no single governance type consistently outperformed the other. What works better seems to be super local and context dependent.
- At the same time, the review found that, in general, the existing scientific literature underscores the importance of community-driven conservation.
‘Indigenous’ and ‘local’ shouldn’t be conflated: Q&A with Indigenous leader Sara Olsvig
- Although there wasn’t much to celebrate at the COP28 climate summit for Indigenous peoples, who were vastly outnumbered by fossil fuel lobbyists, leading advocate Sara Olsvig points to some progress made.
- Olsvig is adamant that efforts to tackle the climate crisis must not infringe on the rights of Indigenous peoples, and that the approach to take must be centered on respect for human rights.
- She also successfully pushed for the final text of the summit to distinguish between Indigenous peoples and local communities, saying the long-held practice of conflating the two has often been to the detriment of Indigenous groups.
- “We have already reached the tipping points in a climate sense,” Olsvig says. “Now we are also reaching tipping points in a human rights sense. And this is a very, very worrying development for the world.”
Despite progress, small share of climate pledge went to Indigenous groups: report
- A report from funders of a $1.7 billion pledge to support Indigenous peoples and local communities’ land rights made at the 2021 U.N. climate conference found that 48% of the financing was distributed.
- The findings also show that only 2.1% of the funding went directly to Indigenous peoples and local communities, despite petitions to increase direct funding for their role in combating climate change and biodiversity loss.
- This is down from the 2.9% of direct funding that was disbursed in 2021.
- Both donors and representatives of Indigenous and community groups call for more direct funding to these organizations by reducing the obstacles they face, improving their capacity, and respecting traditional knowledge systems.
Carbon credit certifier Verra updates accounting method amid growing criticism
- The world’s largest carbon credit certifier, Verra, has overhauled its methods for calculating the climate impacts of REDD projects that aim to reduce deforestation.
- REDD stands for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
- The emissions reductions from these projects can be sold on the voluntary carbon market to individuals and companies, which proponents say provides a vital stream of funding for forest conservation.
- The update changes the process for calculating deforestation baselines, which help determine how effective a project has been at reducing forest loss and keeping the carbon those trees contain out of the atmosphere.
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.
Can carbon markets solve Africa’s climate finance woes?
- The African Carbon Markets Initiative, a consortium of Global North donors, corporate representatives, conservation groups and energy lobbyists, is pushing to expand carbon markets on the continent.
- The effort has gained the vocal support of Kenyan President William Ruto, along with a number of other African heads of state, who see carbon markets as a way to generate badly needed climate finance.
- But African environmental groups have sharply criticized carbon markets, saying they represent a “false solution” to the climate crisis and will mostly enrich bankers and traders based outside the continent.
- The drive to scale up carbon markets in Africa and elsewhere is set to be a major agenda item at this month’s COP28 climate summit in Dubai.
Namibia hosted Africa’s 1st community-led conservation congress. Where will it lead?
- Namibia hosted the first community-led conservation congress in Africa in late October.
- Hundreds of Indigenous and local community groups, conservation organizations, governments and policymakers gathered to strategize how communities can play a bigger role in African conservation efforts, which are typically dominated by big international NGOs.
- Participants said more work will be required on the local, regional and national levels to address the challenges of turning goals for the inclusion of communities in conservation into practical actions.
- Organizers say this congress is a starting point to elevating community voices in Africa while they’ve chosen a new alliance, the Alliance for Indigenous People and Local Communities for Conservation in Africa (AICA), to be a representative voice for communities across the continent.
Conservationists look to defy gloomy outlook for Borneo’s sun bears
- Sun bears are keystone species, helping sustain healthy tropical forests. Yet they’re facing relentless challenges to their survival from deforestation, habitat degradation, poaching and indiscriminate snaring; fewer than 10,000 are thought to remain across the species’ entire global range.
- A bear rehabilitation program in Malaysian Borneo cares for 44 sun bears rescued from captivity and the pet trade and has been releasing bears back into the wild since 2015. But with threats in the wild continuing unabated, success has been mixed.
- A recent study indicates that as few as half of the released bears are still alive, demonstrating that rehabilitation alone will never be enough to tackle the enormous threats and conservation issues facing the bears in the wild.
- Preventing bears from being poached from the wild in the first place should be the top priority, experts say, calling for a holistic approach centered on livelihood support for local communities through ecotourism to encourage lifestyles that don’t involve setting snares that can kill bears.
World Heritage Site listing for Ethiopian park leads to eviction of farming community
- The new designation of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Ethiopia will also come with the relocation of the more than 20,000 people living inside Bale Mountains National Park, say park officials.
- Home to a wealth of biodiversity, the park has experienced a dramatic increase in illegal human settlements, which park officials and conservationists say threatens its natural resources, forest cover, and habitat for rare and endemic species.
- Community members have mixed feelings about the planned relocation, with longtime residents mostly opposing it due to attachment to the land and fear over their livelihoods, and others open to receiving fair compensation in exchange.
- The relocation strategy is still in its initial stages and hasn’t officially been shared with communities, though UNESCO and Ethiopian officials underline the importance of consulting the locals and supporting their livelihoods.
Forest conservation ‘off-track’ to halt deforestation by 2030: New report
- The world lost 6.6 million hectares (16.3 million acres) of forest, an area larger than Sri Lanka, and deforestation rates increased by 4% in 2022, according to a report published Oct. 24 that tracks commitments to forest conservation.
- The Forest Declaration Assessment is an annual evaluation of deforestation rates against a 2018-2020 deforestation and forest degradation baseline compiled by civil society and research organizations.
- Much of the forest loss occurred in the tropics, and nearly two-thirds of it was in relatively undisturbed primary forests, while forest degradation, more than deforestation, remains a serious problem in temperate and boreal forests.
- Despite being far off the pace to achieve an end to deforestation by 2030, a goal that 145 countries pledged to pursue in 2021, more than 50 countries have cut their deforestation rates and are on track to end deforestation within their borders by the end of the century.
African NGOs seek more funds, trust, and autonomy in global partnerships
- A recent report from conservation nonprofit Maliasili scrutinizes partnerships between big international NGOs and their smaller conservation-focused partners in Africa.
- The biggest pain points in these often lopsided relationships Africa appear to be money, trust, and autonomy, the report says.
- More than half of the local organizations surveyed in Maliasili’s “Rooting for Change” report cited a lack of trust as a challenge in partnerships.
- “We want a supporting relationship rather than a dictatorial partner,” John Kamanga, co-founder and director of the Southern Rift Association of Landowners (SORALO) in Kenya, told the report authors, and “a willingness to co-design and build from our ideas.”
Ken Burns discusses heartbreak & hope of ‘The American Buffalo,’ his new documentary
- Mongabay’s Liz Kimbrough spoke with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns about his upcoming documentary, “The American Buffalo,” which premieres in mid-October.
- The buffalo was nearly driven to extinction in the late 1800s, with the population declining from more than 30 million to less than 1,000, devastating Native American tribes who depended on the buffalo as their main source of food, shelter, clothing and more.
- The film explores both the tragic near-extinction of the buffalo as well as the story of how conservation efforts brought the species back from the brink.
- Burns sees lessons in the buffalo’s story for current conservation efforts, as we face climate change and a new era of mass extinction.
When wildlife surveillance tech ‘watches’ people
- Conservation technologies such as camera traps, drones and acoustic sensors, are playing a greater role in protecting endangered species, preventing poaching, finding rare plants, tackling forest fires, and monitoring changes in forests and oceans.
- However, researchers and communities say these technologies are also increasingly playing a role in human surveillance, infringing on privacy, exasperating human conflicts with conservation, and posing serious social and ethical implications through their use.
- As conservation technologies increasingly monitor people much the same way CCTV cameras do, their use must be subjected to similar ethical guidelines of other public surveillance tech — which they lack, say researchers.
- Some researchers have drawn up checklists of best practices, such as getting consent from nearby communities, being transparent about how the technology will be used, not using human images opportunistically, and using tech only when there’s no alternative, less-intrusive way of collecting data.
Ethiopia’s largest community conservation area brings Indigenous communities into the fold
- Indigenous communities in the Lower Omo River Valley of southwestern Ethiopia have taken ownership and management responsibilities of the Tama Wildlife Reserve through the creation of the Tama Community Conservation Area (TCCA).
- The TCCA, spanning 197,000 hectares (486,000 acres), is Ethiopia’s largest community conservation area.
- The area is home to diverse wildlife, including the endemic black-winged lovebird, and is inhabited by the Mursi, Bodi, Northern Kwegu and Ari communities.
- The TCCA will be managed by a community council; however, guidelines on farming activities, natural resource use and preventing human-wildlife conflict have not yet been established.
Dams and plantations upend livelihoods in Ethiopia’s Lower Omo River Valley
- Food insecurity, famine and malnutrition have blighted the agropastoralist communities of the Lower Omo River Valley in southwestern Ethiopia.
- A government source blames a long-term drought for the recent suffering and, in some cases, the deaths of people in this part of the country.
- But researchers and human rights advocates say the drought has only exacerbated fundamental changes to the cultures of these peoples brought on by the construction of a dam and the establishment of sugarcane plantations in the region.
- They say such “economic development” projects have dispossessed the Lower Omo’s peoples of their farming and grazing lands and irreversibly altered the natural cycles of the Omo River that was once the mainstay of their livelihoods.
More evidence backs Indigenous territories as best safeguard against Amazon deforestation
- Protected areas and Indigenous territories in the Amazon Rainforest experienced just one-third the loss of primary forest compared to non-protected areas, according to a new report by the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP).
- Over the five-year study period, between 2017 and 2021, protected areas lost slightly less forest than Indigenous territories, but deforestation was lower in Indigenous territories.
- The MAAP study estimated that 11 million hectares (27 million acres) of primary forest were lost over the five years of the study, of which 71% were lost to deforestation and 29% to fire.
- The study highlights the effectiveness of Indigenous territories in protecting forests and the need for more protective designations, particularly for Indigenous territories.
Orangutan death in Sumatra points to human-wildlife conflict, illegal trade
- The case of an orangutan that died shortly after its capture by farmers in northern Sumatra has highlighted the persistent problem of human-wildlife conflict and possibly even the illegal wildlife trade in Indonesia.
- The coffee farmers who caught the adult male orangutan on Jan. 20 denied ever hitting it, but a post-mortem showed a backbone fracture, internal bleeding, and other indications of blunt force trauma.
- Watchdogs say it’s possible illegal wildlife traders may have tried to take the orangutan from the farmers, with such traders known to frequent farms during harvest season in search of the apes that are drawn there for food.
- Conservationists say the case is a setback in their efforts to raise awareness about the need to protect critically endangered orangutans.
‘You don’t kill people to protect forests’: New Thai parks chief raises alarm
- After playing a key role in an anti-corruption sting operation that toppled the head of Thailand’s department of parks and wildlife, senior forest officer Chaiwat Limlikit-aksorn was promoted to head of Thailand’s office of national parks.
- Human rights activists say the appointment raises serious concerns, citing a string of abuses that occurred while Chaiwat was head of Kaeng Krachan National Park.
- Cases against Chaiwat during this period include two murder charges and a corruption investigation.
- Chaiwat’s tenure in his new post will likely be short: He faces mandatory retirement in less than two years, as well as a reopened murder case and an ongoing corruption investigation.
‘Development’ projects in Ethiopia leave starvation, disease in wake: Report
- Indigenous groups in southwestern Ethiopia are suffering from starvation and disease after being displaced from their land for construction of a dam and the installation of large-scale sugarcane plantations, according to a report from the Oakland Institute, a California-based think tank.
- These projects have deprived the communities living in the Lower Omo Valley of their ability to farm and maintain their livestock herds, but this “catastrophe” has gone largely unnoticed in the shadow of even wider hunger and displacement due to civil war in the northern Tigray region, the report says.
- Humanitarian NGO World Vision International delivered some food aid to the region in November 2022.
- But the Oakland Institute said more food and medical care is urgently needed, along with the return of the land back to the Indigenous groups who have lived in this region for centuries, and is urging the government and the humanitarian community to respond immediately.
Indigenous peoples and communities drive climate finance reform
- At COP26, the United Nations climate conference in 2021, 22 philanthropies and governments pledged $1.7 billion to support Indigenous and community forest tenure as a way to address climate change, but a recent annual report released in 2022 reveals that only 7% of the funds disbursed in the pledge’s first year went directly to Indigenous and community organizations. (A subsequent analysis in 2023 revised this figure downward to 2.9%.)
- In response to an overall trend in which little climate-related aid goes directly to these organizations, they have banded together to develop funding mechanisms to which big donors can contribute. These organizations then control the distribution of money to smaller organizations, allowing more control over which priorities are funded.
- In support of these efforts, the U.S.-based Climate and Land Use Alliance, which is a collective of several private foundations, is working with a broader group of philanthropic climate donors to develop “a ‘plumbing’ system for this finance” through the Forests, People, Climate Collaborative.
- Indigenous leaders say more money overall is needed to protect forests and help to mitigate the effects of climate change, but the 2021 pledge has opened the door to finding ways to involve Indigenous and community organizations in how funds are spent.
Indonesia’s orangutans declining amid ‘lax’ and ‘laissez-faire’ law enforcement
- The widespread failure by Indonesian law enforcers to crack down on crimes against orangutans is what’s allowing them to be killed at persistently high rates, a new study suggests.
- It characterizes as “remarkably lax” and “laissez-faire” the law enforcement approach when applied to crimes against orangutans as compared to the country’s other iconic wildlife species, such as tigers.
- Killing was the most prevalent crime against orangutans, the study found when analyzing 2,229 reports from 2007-2019, followed by capture, possession or sale of infants, harm or capture of wild adult orangutans due to conflicts, and attempted poaching not resulting in death.
- The study authors call for stronger deterrence and law enforcement rather than relying heavily on rescue, release and translocation strategies that don’t solve the core crisis of net loss of wild orangutans.
Despite pledges, obstacles stifle community climate and conservation funding
- As science has increasingly shown the importance of conservation led by Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs), donors have begun to steer funding toward supporting the work these groups do.
- In 2021, during last year’s COP26 U.N. climate conference, private and government donors committed $1.7 billion to secure the land rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities.
- But a recent assessment of the first year of the pledge shows that little of the funding goes directly to them, often going first through international NGOs, consultancies, development banks and other intermediaries.
- Most aid intended to support IPLC-led conservation work follows this path. Now, however, donors and IPLC leaders are looking for ways to ease the flow of funding and channel more of it to work that addresses climate change and the global loss of biodiversity.
Small share of land rights pledge went to Indigenous groups: Progress report
- A report from funders of a $1.7 billion pledge to support Indigenous and community forest tenure made at the 2021 U.N. climate conference found that 19% of the financing has been distributed.
- The findings from 2022 also show that only 7% of the funding went directly to Indigenous and community organizations, despite the protection they provide to forests and other ecosystems. (A subsequent analysis in 2023 revised this figure downward to 2.9%.)
- Both donors and representatives of Indigenous and community groups are calling for more direct funding to these organizations by reducing the barriers they face, improving communication and building capacity.
Common goals ensure forest restoration success in northern Thailand
- Twenty-five years ago, the Hmong community of Ban Mae Sa Mai village in northern Thailand began a collaboration with researchers and national park authorities to restore agricultural fields to natural forest.
- Between 1997 and 2013, they honed methods of assisted regeneration while restoring 33 hectares (82 acres) of upland evergreen tropical forest in Doi Suthep-Pui National Park.
- Monitoring teams documented the return of biodiversity and ecosystem services to the restored land, and participants founded a tree nursery that continues to supply thousands of native tree seedlings each year to nearby initiatives inspired by the Ban Mae Sa Mai model.
- However, the Hmong community face the prospect of eviction from their ancestral land, which lies within a protected area. Experts warn that disputes between authorities and the community, coupled with an increasing risk of fire due to climate change, could jeopardize the survival of the recovering forest.
Bangladesh ban on resource hunting in Sundarbans leaves communities facing hardship
- The Sundarbans in the Bay of Bengal, the world’s largest stretch of mangroves, is a rich ecosystem of hundreds of species of flora and fauna. It’s also rich with natural resources for the communities living nearby, but is considered an ecosystem under threat.
- In a first-of-its-kind conservation effort, the Bangladesh government is implementing a complete ban on entry into the forest for three months, from July to August, which it says is the breeding season for the local wildlife.
- The communities surrounding the mangroves, who depend on the forests for food and resources, say this ban will affect their livelihoods and push them into hardship.
- Conservationists have also labeled the ban “inappropriate,” expressing concern about its timing — given that not all species here share the same breeding season — and its target, saying that tourists, and not local communities, are responsible for much of the pollution and disruption to the ecosystem.
Indonesian government lagging independent effort to recognize Indigenous lands
- A total of 17.6 million hectares (43.5 million acres) of Indigenous territories in Indonesia, an area half the size of Germany, have been demarcated under an independent initiative that began in 2010.
- The mapping is seen as the first step for Indigenous communities in the long and complicated process of applying for official government recognition of their land rights.
- But government efforts continue to lag behind this initiative, with the state to date only recognizing 15% of the territories demarcated by the latter.
- At the local level, governments in the eastern regions of Maluku and Papua have been more accommodating of Indigenous land claims; but at the national level, a bill on Indigenous rights has been stalled in parliament for a decade now.
Ecuador’s Pastaza province, Indigenous groups collaborate on forest conservation
- Pastaza province, located in Ecuador’s Amazon, has implemented a $52 million sustainable development plan working with Indigenous nations that includes their ancestral practices, knowledge, and life plans.
- The plan relies on curtailing dependence on oil and mining projects for economic development and implementing chakras, an ancestral agroforestry system, and conservation projects to boost food security and value chains.
- So far, the Pastaza government has received $1.35 million in funding to implement its strategies and hopes other Amazonian provinces will follow suit to conserve 5 million hectares (12 million acres) of land and water.
- However, Indigenous communities do not manage any of the REDD+ funds and are wary of agreements that offer inclusive development in exchange for oil and mining concessions, says Indigenous organization CONFENIAE.
Dams on Brazil’s Jamanxim River: The advancing assault on the environment and Indigenous peoples in the Tapajós basin (commentary)
- Brazil’s electrical authorities have given the go-ahead for studies to prepare for building three large Amazonian dams that would flood Indigenous lands and protected areas for biodiversity.
- The decision shows that Brazil’s presidential administration is confident that the National Congress will approve the bill submitted by President Bolsonaro to open Indigenous lands to hydroelectric dams, and probably also allow dams to continue to be built without consulting impacted Indigenous peoples.
- The decision also shows that Brazil’s electrical authorities continue to ignore inconvenient information on climate change, the financial viability of Amazonian dams and their many social and environmental impacts, as well as the country’s better energy options.
- This text is translated and expanded from the author’s column on the Amazônia Real website. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Indigenous land rights take center stage in a new global framework for biodiversity conservation (commentary)
- Indigenous land rights have taken center stage at negotiations currently underway in Geneva for the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity.
- Karl Burkart, Deputy Director of One Earth, says this is a critically important development: “If we truly want to achieve the top-level goal of the UN Convention — to save biodiversity and reverse the extinction crisis — we must simultaneously secure the land rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities at scale. We cannot achieve one goal without achieving the other.”
- Burkart sees the new global biodiversity framework (GBF) as an opportunity to advance both: “In the new GBF, all Indigenous and community lands that provide natural habitat for species could and should be incorporated into government targets, provided those communities are given proper land tenure and territorial finance for their conservation efforts.”
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Can a reforestation project stop land grabs? Villagers in the DRC give it a try
- Kinandu village residents in southern Democratic Republic of Congo are taking part in a reforestation initiative in the miombo woodlands while land grabs are simultaneously on the rise.
- The fear of losing the land on which they were born and raised, coupled with an awareness of the environmental degradation they took part of, is inspiring residents to own forest concessions and restore the land.
- However, restoration largely depends on whether residents and stakeholders will change the way they produce essential goods, such as maize and charcoal.
- The government should continue to support the project after it ends in July 2022, says Jonathan Ilunga, professor of the University of Lubumbashi’s faculty of agronomy and deputy director of the Open Forests Urban Observatory.
Moore Foundation pledges extra $300m to boost conservation of Amazon
- The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has allocated an additional $300 million toward the Andes-Amazon Initiative to continue biodiversity and forest conservation efforts in the region until 2031.
- To date, the initiative has been successful in conserving 400 million hectares (988 million acres) of land, about half the size of Brazil, since its establishment in 2003.
- New targets include ensuring 100 million hectares (247 million acres) of freshwater and forest ecosystems, as well as Indigenous and local communities’ lands, are effectively managed.
- To safeguard the resilience and health of the Andes-Amazon region’s ecosystems, at least 70% of its historic forest cover must remain intact, a threshold the initiative will exceed if it hits its new targets, says Avecita Chicchón, program director of the Andes-Amazon Initiative.
Indigenous-led report warns against ‘simplistic take on conservation’
- To deal with climate change and biodiversity loss effectively and equitably, conservation needs to adopt a human rights-based approach, according to a new report co-authored by Indigenous and community organizations across Asia.
- Unlike spatial conservation targets such as “30 by 30,” a rights-based approach would recognize the ways in which Indigenous people lead local conservation efforts, and prioritize their tenure rights in measuring conservation success.
- Without tenure rights, strict spatial conservation targets could lead to human rights abuses, widespread evictions of Indigenous communities across Asia, and high resettlement costs, the report warned.
- Also without tenure rights, the inflow of money into nature-based solutions such as carbon offsets and REDD+ projects could also result in massive land grabs instead of benefiting local communities.
Forest enterprise in Mexico attempts to present opportunities for Indigenous communities
- In the state of Jalisco, northwest Mexico, the Wixárika community of San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán is attempting to use the forest sustainably to create development opportunities for inhabitants.
- The state government and the National Forestry Commission (CONAFOR) are supporting projects that encourage forest conservation while providing income generating opportunities for the Indigenous Wixárika and O’dam communities.
- The area is home to Jalisco’s largest forest reserves with some 680,000 hectares (1,680,300 acres) of temperate, dense and arid forest in the state’s ten northernmost municipalities.
Indigenous communities uncertain over proposed change to Kenyan forest law
- Under an amendment proposed by Kenya’s parliament last November, members of the public would be able to directly petition parliament for changes to forest boundaries.
- The change would effectively cut out the intermediary role currently held by the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) and the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA).
- While some Indigenous leaders say this would make it easier for communities to contact parliament and overcome impediments the KFS may pose, others say the presence of the KFS is seen as better than nothing to halt petitioners seeking to open up forest lands for industrial or agricultural projects.
- A senior KFS official says the service doesn’t always favor forest-dwelling people living in forests, but insists that KFS’s interests and those of Indigenous communities are the same.
A conservation paradigm based on Indigenous values in DR Congo (commentary)
- Colonialism and the gazettement of the Kahuzi-Biega National Park in eastern DRC led to the evictions of Batwa Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands and a number of human rights abuses that continue today.
- To seek to address historical and contemporary injustices, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) is emphasizing Indigenous values and entering a partnership with the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN) to take actions that ensure that the rights of the Batwa peoples are respected and protected.
- This commentary is written by the Executive Director of Rights + Communities at the WCS, and a Congolese Lawyer and former Chairperson of the U.N. Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Malaysian officials dampen prospects for giant, secret carbon deal in Sabah
- The attorney general of the Malaysian state of Sabah has said that a contentious deal for the right to sell credits for carbon and other natural capital will not come into force unless certain provisions are met.
- Mongabay first reported that the 100-year agreement, which involves the protection of some 2 million hectares (4.9 million acres) from activities such as logging, was signed in October 2021 between the state and a Singapore-based firm called Hoch Standard.
- Several leaders in the state, including the attorney general, have called for more due diligence on the companies involved in the transaction.
- Civil society representatives say that a technical review of the agreement is necessary to vet claims about its financial value to the state and its feasibility.
Tukupu: The women of the Kariña community, guardians of Venezuela’s forests
- Tukupu is Venezuela’s first Indigenous forest business, sustainably managing and reforesting 7,000 hectares (17,300 acres) of the Imataca Forest Reserve in the south-east of the country.
- The business is led mainly by women who have used their ancestral knowledge to restore over 312 hectares (770 acres) of forest, reforest another 113 (280 acres) and dedicate 189 (468 acres) to agroforestry.
- According to the FAO, the equivalent of more than 23 million tonnes of carbon emissions have been avoided, either directly or indirectly, through the project.
- One of the key points of the project has been to figure out how the resources from the forest can be commercialised in a sustainable way that also benefits members of the community.
Indigenous hunter-gatherers in Cameroon diversify food sources in the face of change
- In southeastern Cameroon, zoning and settlement policies have forced the Indigenous Baka people to slowly transition away from their hunter-gatherer lifestyle in the rainforest, to one that relies more on farming and fishing in order to guarantee their food security.
- The community relies heavily on diverse food sources in and outside the forest in order to comprise a diet of about 60 animal species, 83 wild edible species, six species of fish, 32 crops and 28 varieties of plantain.
- According to Yon Fernández de Larrinoa, chief of the FAO’s Indigenous Peoples Unit, the Baka’s sustainable way of life should be considered by the government when implementing policies that will challenge the resilience of the group’s food system.
- This article is one of an eight-part series showcasing Indigenous food systems covered in the most comprehensive FAO report on the topic to date.
Ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin: Indigenous knowledge serves as a ‘connective tissue’ between nature and human well-being
- As a best-selling author, the co-founder of the award-winning Amazon Conservation Team, and an acclaimed public speaker, Mark Plotkin is one of the world’s most prominent rainforest ethnobotanists and conservationists.
- His experiences in Amazonian communities led Plotkin, along with Costa Rican conservationist Liliana Madrigal, to establish the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) in 1995. ACT took a distinctly different approach than most Western conservation groups at the time: It placed Indigenous communities at the center of its strategy.
- ACT’s approach has since been widely adopted by other organizations, and its philosophy as a whole is now more relevant than ever as the conservation sector wrestles with its colonial roots.
- Plotkin spoke of his work, trends in conservation, and a range of other topics in a January 2022 interview with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler.
California redwood forest returned to Indigenous guardianship, conservation
- Ownership of a 215-hectare (532-acre) redwood forest along California’s north coast was returned to Sinkyone tribes and has been renamed Tc’ih-Léh-Dûñ.
- The InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council is working with Save the Redwoods League, which donated the land, to protect California’s remaining old-growth forest, along with endangered species such as the northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet.
- The 30-year conservation plan and land transfer deal is funded by the Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) in order to offset habitat loss that may result from the company’s activities.
- Indigenous forest conservation principles, such as controlled burnings, will be included in the tribal protected area – an inclusion that should be seen in the 30×30 initiative to protect 30% of lands and ocean by 2030, says Save the Redwoods League and the tribal council.
What went wrong with conservation at Kahuzi-Biega National Park and how to transform it (commentary)
- The Coercive Conservation paradigm prevents local communities from accessing their lands, leading to human rights abuses, corrupt resource extraction, and loss of habitat and wildlife.
- Kahuzi Biega National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which expelled Indigenous Batwa people in 1975, is now overrun by refugees, militias, and mining, while ecoguards reportedly burn villages and kill indigenous people.
- We can transform conservation by supporting Protected Areas that integrate human well-being, are designed and managed by local communities, and are protected by local people with support from security forces, upon request.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Here’s how science is trying to conserve the monarch butterfly’s forests
- A team of Mexican scientists are developing a successful experiment that allows for the recovery and maintenance of endemic trees in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve that provide a habitat for monarch butterflies every winter.
- The team is employing a mix of natural restoration, soil conservation and active reforestation that has so far achieved a survival rate of 83 to 84 percent, at least three times more successful than some government reforestation programs.
- According to Dr. Cuauhtémoc Sáenz-Romero, one of the researchers of the project, forests where monarch butterfly colonies are located are becoming more susceptible to climate events through unusual foliage loss and increased woodland mortality.
- Researchers have started to implement the “assisted migration” of oyamel firs (Abies religiosa) to higher altitudes in the reserve, where they can best resist changing climatic conditions.
How can illegal timber trade in the Greater Mekong be stopped?
- Over the past decade, the European Union has been entering into voluntary partnership agreements (VPAs) with tropical timber-producing countries to fight forest crime.
- These bilateral trade agreements legally bind both sides to trade only in verified legal timber products.
- There is evidence VPAs help countries decrease illegal logging rates, especially illegal industrial timber destined for export markets.
- Within the Greater Mekong region, only Vietnam has signed a VPA.
How does political instability in the Mekong affect deforestation?
- Myanmar’s return to military dictatorship earlier this year has sparked worries among Indigenous communities of possible land grabs.
- It has also ignited concerns about a return to large-scale natural resource extraction, which has historically been an important source of funding for the junta.
- In the months since the coup, many of the country’s environmental and land rights activists have either been arrested or gone into hiding.
- The military has bombed forests and burned down Indigenous villages in Karen state, forcing minorities to flee to neighboring Thailand.
Indigenous leader sues over Borneo natural capital deal
- An Indigenous leader in Sabah is suing the Malaysian state on the island of Borneo over an agreement signing away the rights to monetize the natural capital coming from the state’s forests to a foreign company.
- Civil society and Indigenous organizations say local communities were not consulted or asked to provide input prior to the agreement’s signing on Oct. 28.
- Further questions have arisen about whether the company, Hoch Standard, that secured the rights under the agreement has the required experience or expertise necessary to implement the terms of the agreement.
Climate efforts won’t succeed without secure community rights, says Nonette Royo
- Indigenous territories account for at least 36% of the world’s “intact forests” and Indigenous Peoples and local communities (ILPC) live in or manage about half of the planet’s lands, making these areas a critical imperative in efforts to combat climate change and species loss.
- Yet in many places, IPLCs lack formal recognition of their customary lands and resources, jeopardizing their basic human rights and heightening the risk that these areas could be damaged or destroyed. For these reasons, helping IPLCs secure land rights is increasingly seen as a central component of efforts to address climate change and achieve conservation goals.
- Nonette Royo, the executive director of the Tenure Facility, is one of the most prominent advocates for advancing the rights of Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and women. Royo spoke with Mongabay about progress and obstacles in the push to advance local peoples’ tenure rights as well as the Tenure Facility’s approaches.
- “Many models are now emerging to get these types of approaches, which require deep listening and letting communities lead the process, and adjusting or adapting their own agenda, and being willing to be transformed in the process,” Royo said. “This is most needed in the conservation space. This means respecting all rights, not just of people (as individuals or collective), but of their ways of tending with nature and co-beings with nature.”
Between land and sea: Agrobiodiversity holds key to health for Melanesian tribes
- Residents of Baniata village on the Solomon Islands’ Western province practice an ancient agroforestry system that intercrops 20 edible species and features the ngali nut, a delicacy sold in domestic and international markets.
- The community’s traditionally self-sufficient and biodiverse diet features 132 species, notably the fe’i banana, a Melanesian specialty that contains 100 times the vitamin A of a typical banana.
- The resilient food system and diet is increasingly affected by climate change, imported crops, processed foods, and the loss of traditional knowledge in younger generations.
- This article is one of an eight-part series showcasing Indigenous food systems covered in the most comprehensive FAO report on the topic to date.
In Brazil, an agribusiness haven’s green pivot leaves many skeptical
- The Amacro project was conceived in early 2020 as an agribusiness hub in a heavily deforested part of the Brazilian Amazon, but a year later is being touted as a hub for sustainable business.
- Now renamed the Abunã-Madeira Sustainable Development Area (ZDS), it stretches across 32 municipalities in the states of Amazonas, Acre and Rondônia, which last year accounted for nearly a quarter of the total deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.
- The ZDS project aims to attract investments into a wide range of sectors, from agroforestry and fish farming, to tourism and logistics, as well as the agribusiness, while promising to avoid deforestation through technology to help boost agricultural productivity.
- Despite these green claims, prosecutors and nonprofit researchers say the prospect of new investment is already boosting land grabbing and deforestation in the area, and argue the best way to halt deforestation is to create protected areas — something that’s not included in the ZDS project.
Kenya’s Indigenous Ogiek partner with government rangers to restore Mau Forest
- The Ogiek people of Kenya have for more than a century faced eviction from their ancestral lands in the Mau Forest, on which they have long depended for their material and cultural needs.
- Three years ago, some community members decided to start working with the Kenyan Forest Service to restore the forest complex and promote conservation coupled with sustainable livelihoods such as beekeeping.
- Today, using this biocultural approach, volunteer community members have planted more than 60,000 native trees in four different blocs within the forest, including the endangered parasol tree (Polyscias kikuyuensis) and African cherry tree (Prunus Africana).
- The KFS has been relying on Ogiek knowledge of the terrain and geography of the forest to provide intelligence on the routes used by illegal loggers and those starting forest fires.
Questions over who gets the billions pledged to Indigenous causes at COP26
- Private, public and philanthropic donors pledged billions of dollars to strengthen Indigenous land tenure and forest management at COP26, notably donating $1.7 billion as part of efforts to reverse forest loss.
- Some Indigenous leaders are skeptical about how this will play out given that most previous financial support was not addressed to Indigenous organizations and communities, but to intermediate NGOs, government agencies and regional banks.
- Indigenous organizations say increasing direct funding to Indigenous-led initiatives and transparency in the flow of funds can increase effectiveness of the pledges and build trust.
- Funding for forest monitoring technology is increasingly having a role in how some Indigenous communities safeguard biodiversity and map out their territories.
Report: Orangutans and their habitat in Indonesia need full protection now
- A new report underscores the urgency of protecting Indonesia’s orangutans and conserving their remaining habitat, warning that Asia’s only great ape is in crisis.
- The report from the Environmental Investigation Agency says the Indonesian government has systematically failed to protect orangutan habitat, enforce existing wildlife laws, or reverse the decline of the three orangutan species.
- “For decades, Indonesia has prioritized industry and profit over environmental health and biodiversity protection, and orangutans have paid the price,” said EIA policy analyst Taylor Tench.
- The report calls for protecting all orangutan habitat (much of which occurs in oil palm and logging concessions), halting a dam project in the only habitat of the Tapanuli orangutan, and recognizing Indigenous claims to forests adjacent to orangutan habitat.
Deforestation notches up along logging roads on PNG’s New Britain Island
- Recent satellite data has shown a marked increase in the loss of tree cover in Papua New Guinea’s East New Britain province.
- Many of the alerts were near new or existing logging roads, indicating that the forest loss may be due to timber harvesting.
- Oil palm production is also growing, altering the face of a province that had more than 98% of its primary forest remaining less than a decade ago.
- The surge in land use changes has affected not only the environment in East New Britain, but also the lives of the members of the communities who depend on it.
Green groups call for scrapping of $300m loan offer for Borneo road project
- The Asian Development Bank is considering a $300 million loan proposal from the Indonesian government to fund a road project in Borneo.
- The 280-kilometer (170-mile) project across North and East Kalimantan provinces are designed to boost economic growth and further the integration of the Malaysian and Indonesian palm oil industries.
- Environmental groups around the world have urged the ADB to impose stricter environmental and social requirements for the project to reduce its expected impacts on the environment and the Indigenous communities living in the region.
- Indigenous peoples like the Dayak rely on the forests staying intact, as do critically endangered species such as Bornean orangutans.
For some Indigenous, COVID presents possibility of cultural extinction, says Myrna Cunningham
- COVID-19 has devastated communities around the world, but for some Indigenous groups, the pandemic posed an existential threat.
- Few people are better placed to speak to the impact COVID is having on Indigenous communities than Myrna Cunningham, a Miskitu physician from the Wangki river region of Nicaragua who has spent 50 years advocating for the rights of women and Indigenous peoples at local, regional, national, and international levels.
- Cunningham’s many achievements and accolades include: First Miskito doctor in Nicaragua; first woman governor of the Waspam autonomous region; Chairperson of the PAWANKA Fund; President of the Fund for the Development of Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean (FILAC); Advisor to the President of the UN General Assembly during the World Conference of Indigenous Peoples; member of the Board of Directors of the Global Fund for Women; Deputy of the Autonomous Region of the North Atlantic Coast in Nicaragua’s National Assembly; president of the Association for Women’s Rights in Development; and the first Honoris Causa Doctorate granted by the National Autonomous University of Mexico Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México to an indigenous woman, among others.
- Cunningham spoke about a range of issues in a recent interview with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler.
Win for Malaysian forest after government backs down on development plan
- Plans to remove protections from the Kuala Langat North Forest Reserve, a protected forest close to Kuala Lumpur in Peninsular Malaysia, have been cancelled by the local government.
- The Selangor state government will regazette the area as a protected forest following an intense civil society campaign against the plans to build a “mixed use” development covering half of the extant forest.
- Selangor state is unique in Malaysia for having laws that require public review of plans to convert protected forests for other use; activists are now calling for these regulations to be adopted more widely.
Environmental activist ‘well-hated’ by Myanmar junta is latest to be arrested
- As demonstrations and deadly crackdowns continue in Myanmar, land and environmental defenders are increasingly under threat.
- On Sept. 6, environmental and democracy activist Kyaw Minn Htut became one of the latest political prisoners; authorities had detained his wife and 2-year-old son a day earlier.
- He had openly challenged the military and reported on illegal environmental activities, making him a “well-known and well-hated” target, fellow activists said.
- Some 20 environmental organizations across the world have signed a statement calling for Kyaw Minn Htut’s release.
Borneo’s bearded pigs and traditional hunters adapted to oil palms. Then came swine fever
- Oil palm expansion and urbanization have altered the traditional hunting of bearded pigs by the Indigenous Kadazandusun-Murut (KDM) community in Sabah, Malaysia, a new study has found.
- Researchers interviewed 38 hunters on changes in pig behavior and hunting practices before the African swine fever (ASF) epidemic hit Sabah in 2021.
- They found that even though pig hunting patterns have changed dramatically, the activity remains a cornerstone of KDM communal culture for food, sport, gift-giving, festivals and celebrations.
- As ASF devastates wild pig populations, the researchers’ findings highlight a need for long-term hunting management that conserves both the bearded pig and Indigenous cultural traditions.
With Myanmar’s press muzzled, experts warn of surge in environmental crimes
- Myanmar’s military authorities have followed their Feb. 1 coup with a sweeping clampdown on press freedom, including the arrest of reporters, closing of news outlets, and driving of journalists underground or into exile.
- Industry experts say the measures have effectively criminalized independent journalism in the country.
- As conflict and violence spreads throughout the country, monitoring forests, illegal logging and the associated illicit trade on the ground is increasingly risky. Satellite platforms that monitor forest loss will likely become increasingly useful.
- With the loss of the independent press watchdog a reality, experts say they fear the circumstances are ripe for overexploitation of natural resources.
The women on the front lines of safeguarding the Amazon
- Indigenous women are important conservation leaders in the Amazon, and also recently played key roles in mobilizing responses to the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on isolated Indigenous communities.
- Mongabay’s special reporting project, “Amazon Women,” shares their victories, visions, and struggles via a wide-ranging series of reports, interviews, videos and podcasts.
- Here are some highlights from among the dozen-plus features of these inspiring women from across the Amazon Basin.
Highway cutting through Heart of Borneo poised to be ‘very, very bad’
- With Indonesia planning to shift its capital from Jakarta to the Bornean province of East Kalimantan, infrastructure development pressures on the island have intensified.
- Neighboring Malaysia is adding new stretches to the Pan Borneo Highway to capitalize on spillover economic benefits; within Indonesia, East Kalimantan’s developmental gains are also expected to trickle to other provinces through the transboundary highway.
- While the new roads could spur economic development in remote villages, they also carve into protected areas in the Heart of Borneo, opening them up for resource extraction.
- In particular, the roads could fast-track development of a new “oil palm belt,” with disastrous consequences for the wildlife and Indigenous peoples of Borneo, and for global climate, experts say.
Deforestation surge continues amid deepening uncertainty in Myanmar
- Satellite data from the University of Maryland show a surge in forest clearing in northern parts of the Tanintharyi region in southern Myanmar, including within a protected area.
- Major drivers of deforestation are commercial oil palm and rubber plantations, small-scale agriculture, and infrastructure development.
- In the region’s south, forest loss is affecting the already fragmented habitat of globally threatened Gurney’s pittas and tigers, among other rare species.
- Meanwhile, activists say the political turmoil following the Feb. 1 military coup has effectively halted community-led forest protection work.
Cambodian dam a ‘disaster’ for local communities, rights group says
- Rights activists allege that a Chinese-financed hydroelectric project in northeastern Cambodia has been a human rights “disaster” after it displaced nearly 5,000 Indigenous and ethnic minority people.
- In a recent report, advocacy group Human Rights Watch says communities were largely coerced into accepting inadequate compensation and provided with substandard resettlement arrangements.
- The scheme also had wide-ranging environmental impacts, affecting fishery yields across the wider Mekong Basin and flooding vast areas of forest.
- The report highlights the humanitarian and environmental shortcomings of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which is advancing many similar projects across Africa and Asia.
The Kichwa woman fighting drug traffickers and loggers in the Peruvian Amazon
- Marisol García Apagüeño is the first woman to serve in the leadership of her Indigenous federation in the Peruvian Amazon, where she has made it her mission to support the struggle for the recognition and land titling of the Kichwa people.
- Drug traffickers and illegal loggers have encroached onto Indigenous lands and threatened community leaders, including García Apagüeño, for reporting the problems to the outside world.
- Indigenous leaders and legal experts say a key obstacle to driving out the criminal groups is the government’s failure to issue land titles to the Indigenous communities, which leaves them with no legal standing to complain about the invasions.
- García Apagüeño says the communities need government support and economic livelihood alternatives to avoid being co-opted by the loggers and traffickers.
EU sanctions no ‘silver bullet’ against Myanmar’s illegal timber trade, experts say
- The European Union has imposed sanctions on Myanma Timber Enterprise, a state-owned entity that regulates all harvesting and sales of Myanmar timber.
- The new sanctions mean it is now illegal for businesses in the EU to directly import any timber from Myanmar.
- While the sanctions send a strong political signal to the junta, experts say their actual impact on Myanmar’s illegal timber trade could be limited.
- Local activists are urging the international community to do more as globally significant tracts of forests in the country come under threat, with illicit logging financing the military’s repressive rule.
Road construction imperils tree kangaroo recovery in PNG
- The Torricelli Mountains of northwestern Papua New Guinea are home to a wide variety of wildlife, including three species of tree kangaroos.
- Recently, construction of a road that could potentially be used by loggers has pushed closer to the border of a proposed conservation area that, if gazetted, would be the country’s second-largest.
- The Tenkile Conservation Alliance, a Papua New Guinean NGO, has worked with communities for around two decades in the Torricellis with the goal of improving the lives of humans and wildlife living in the mountains.
- Now, the group’s leaders fear that the road could jeopardize a tenuous recovery by several of the area’s threatened tree kangaroo species.
Global demand for manganese puts Kayapó Indigenous land under pressure
- InfoAmazonia’s Amazônia Minada project has found an unusual rise in demand to mine for manganese last year in Brazil, one of the world’s top producers of the metal.
- Previously, only 1% of mining bids on Indigenous lands were for manganese; in 2020, it was with 15% of all requests, second only to gold.
- Some of the richest manganese deposits in the world are in southeast Pará state, overlapping with the territories of the Kayapó Indigenous people, which have been targeted the most by mining applications in general.
- Demand from Asia, particularly China, has increased the price of manganese, driving illegal mining; 300,000 tons of the ore were seized last year in Brazil, including from a company bidding to mine on Indigenous land.
Armed with data and smartphones, Amazon communities boost fight against deforestation
- Equipping Indigenous communities in the Amazon with remote-monitoring technology can reduce illegal deforestation, a new study has found.
- Between 2018 and 2019, researchers implemented technology-based forest-monitoring programs in 36 communities within the Peruvian Amazon.
- Compared with other communities where the program wasn’t implemented, those under the program saw 52% and 21% less deforestation in 2018 and 2019 respectively.
- The gains were concentrated in communities at highest risk of deforestation due to threats like logging and illegal mining.
The Brooklyn Bridge needs a makeover. Is rainforest lumber still in style?
- Last year, a proposal to replace the Brooklyn Bridge’s walkway with wooden planks sourced from a Guatemalan rainforest won a City Council-sponsored competition.
- The planks would come from Uaxactun, a community-managed forest concession in the remote northeastern jungles of Petén.
- Set up after Guatemala’s civil war, community concessions in Petén have achieved remarkably low rates of deforestation and have a high prevalence of wildlife.
- Some environmentalists in New York say the proposal is misguided, and that creating any demand for tropical hardwood is a mistake no matter where it’s sourced from.
NGOs call for alternative routes for Bornean road to avoid wildlife habitat
- Coalition Humans Habitats Highways has urged authorities in the Malaysian state of Sabah to adopt alternative routes to a 13-kilometer (8-mile) stretch of the Pan Borneo Highway.
- That particular stretch cuts through a protected forest reserve and overlaps extensively with heavily used elephant migration paths.
- Experts say constructing the highway as currently planned would increase wildlife-vehicle collisions, including deadly accidents involving elephants, as well as human-elephant conflict.
- It would also derail progress made by local community efforts encouraging humans and elephants to coexist in harmony.
Researchers look to locals to fill knowledge gap on Philippine tarsier
- Philippine tarsiers (Carlito syrichta) are the poster child of the country’s burgeoning ecotourism industry, but little is known about their taxonomy, population size and conservation status.
- The findings of a new study suggest that tarsiers are being captured from the wild to supply tourism venues and the local pet trade, presenting a major threat to the species’ survival.
- Researchers say they hope educational programs that focus on changing local people’s perceptions of tarsiers and encouraging ecotourism in tarsiers’ natural habitat could help protect them.
Malaysian council opens hearing into claims of timber certification flaws
- For more than a year, Indigenous communities in Malaysian Borneo have been campaigning against timber conglomerate Samling’s certified-sustainable production plantations.
- They allege the certification processes for the plantations, which overlap with their traditional territory, were flawed and carried out without proper community consent; Samling has denied the allegations.
- The Malaysian Timber Certification Council last month launched a dispute resolution case between the two sides, giving the communities a chance to formally air their complaints.
- The conflict comes as the local government works toward a 2022 goal to have all timber companies obtain sustainable forest management certification.
Brazil’s Uru-eu-wau-wau document COVID-19 victory with new video
- As of June 1, 2021, Brazil has confirmed more than 16.5 million COVID-19 cases and over 462,000 deaths, with devastation particularly severe among the Amazon’s Indigenous communities.
- But one Indigenous group has done an exceptional job protecting its people: The Uru-eu-wau-wau in Rondônia state sealed off their territory in March 2020 — no small feat considering that the federally demarcated territory suffers from an onslaught of invaders, including illegal miners, loggers and land grabbers.
- In a new video, shot entirely by Indigenous cinematographers and exclusive to Mongabay, the Uru-eu-wau-wau tell their own story of how they survived the pandemic for more than a year without a major case inside their territory.
- Their battle is ongoing as they continue resisting invasions of their reserve, where three highly vulnerable uncontacted Indigenous groups also live. The dismantling of Brazil’s rural health care infrastructure by the Bolsonaro administration has been particularly daunting to the Uru-eu-wau-wau during the pandemic.
‘Listening to communities must go beyond ticking compliance boxes’, says Peter Kallang, a Kenyah leader
- The Malaysian state of Sarawak was until recently home to some of the last nomadic peoples of Borneo, who roamed its wild and rich rainforests as they had done since time immemorial. Starting in the early 1980s, industrial logging companies moved deep into Sarawak’s hinterland, tearing down forests, forcing forest peoples from their traditional lands, and laying the groundwork for large-scale conversion of biodiverse ecosystems into monoculture plantations.
- Sarawak’s Indigenous peoples put up resistance against these state-backed incursions into their traditional territories. One of the most dramatic outcomes of these efforts came in 2016, when the Chief Minister of Sarawak cancelled the Baram mega-dam project.
- Peter Kallang, a member of the Kenyah people who runs the NGO SAVE Rivers, was one of the leaders of the Baram campaign, helping coordinate, organize, and mobilize Indigenous communities that would have been most impacted by the dam. Now Kallang, SAVE Rivers, and other groups are fighting to defend traditional Indigenous lands against logging by Samling, a Malaysian timber company.
- Kallang spoke about his background, Indigenous-led advocacy, the conservation sector’s shortcomings in recognizing Indigenous rights, and other topics during a June 2021 interview with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler.
From Flores to Papua: Meet 10 of Indonesia’s mangrove guardians
- Indonesia is home to 3.2 million hectares (7.9 million acres) of mangroves, more than any other country.
- These coastal forests, which serve as nurseries for countless fish species and help mitigate tidal flooding and tsunami waves, are being cleared for fish farms, charcoal production, and other commercial activities.
- The Indonesian government in 2020 announced a plan to replant 600,000 hectares (1.5 million acres) of mangroves on degraded coastline by 2024.
- But an unsung army of ordinary Indonesians has been toiling around the country for decades to save and grow mangrove forests. These are some of their stories.
Science refutes United Cacao’s claim it didn’t deforest Peruvian Amazon
- Years of satellite imagery and analysis reveals that United Cacao, a company once publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange, deforested nearly 2,000 hectares (about 5,000 acres) of primary forest in the Peruvian Amazon.
- The evidence refutes the company’s narrative that farmers had degraded the land before it arrived.
- The deforestation, as well as other legal violations, have led to sanctions against a successor to United Cacao’s Peruvian subsidiary, now called Tamshi SAC.
- But Tamshi is now claiming that Mongabay Latam improperly used the term “deforestation” and has sued for defamation.
Protected areas now cover nearly 17% of Earth’s surface: U.N. report
- A new report from the United Nations Environment Programme and the International Union for Conservation of Nature reveals that countries are closing in on the target set in 2010 of protecting or conserving 17% of the Earth’s surface.
- Since 2010, the area of the marine environment that’s under protection has more than tripled, although global coverage is less than 8%, falling short of the 10% goal set in Aichi Target 11.
- While there has been some success, international leaders agree there should be more focus on quality as well as quantity in designating protected and conservation areas.
- As the U.N. Biodiversity Conference scheduled for October 2021 in Kunming, China, approaches, the report calls for a stronger emphasis on the contributions of Indigenous and local communities, while also ensuring that the world’s poorest don’t shoulder an outsize burden from these efforts.
We need more rewilding and connections to nature, says Enrique Ortiz
- Enrique Ortiz is a Peruvian biologist who has been working in conservation in Latin America since the 1970s. Today he works at the Andes Amazon Fund, a philanthropic initiative that has helped establish 79 protected areas and get 18 Indigenous territories titled.
- Ortiz says the pandemic has been “terrible and tragic” for both people and the environment, with a rise in poverty, violence against environmental defenders, and environmental crime and degradation.
- But he also notes surprising resilience where communities and local governments have continued protecting wilderness despite COVID-19.
- Ortiz spoke about these issues and more during an April 2021 conversation with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler.
Peru to establish rainforest reserve for isolated Indigenous peoples
- After nearly twenty years of discussion, the Peruvian government has moved to establish a new Indigenous reserve for “uncontacted peoples” deep in the Amazon rainforest.
- Yavarí Tapiche Indigenous Reserve, which covers 1.1 million hectares (2.7 million acres) in the department of Loreto on the Peru-Brazil border, is home to Matsés, Remo, and Marubo peoples, as well as other groups that have yet to be identified.
- Yavarí Tapiche will be established under Peru’s law governing territories for peoples in isolation and initial contact (PIACI).
- Yavarí Tapiche has been officially categorized as the first PIACI reserve in Loreto, but its protection plan still must be approved by the Ministry of Culture within 60 days.
Nearly half the Amazon’s intact forest on Indigenous-held lands: Report
- A new report from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and the Fund for the Development of the Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean (FILAC) draws on more than 300 studies from the last two decades to demonstrate the protection that Indigenous societies provide for forests in Latin America and the Caribbean.
- According to the team’s research, about 45% of the intact forests in the Amazon Basin are in Indigenous territories.
- The forests occupied by Indigenous communities in the region hold more carbon than all of the forests in either Indonesia or the Democratic Republic of Congo, home to the next two biggest swaths of tropical forest after Brazil.
- The report’s authors say investing in securing land rights for Indigenous communities is a cheap and effective way to address climate change, while also helping these communities recover from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pension and endowment funds linked to conflict-plagued oil palm in DRC
- A new report from the Oakland Institute, a policy think tank, reveals that several well-known pension funds, trusts and endowments are invested in a group of oil palm plantations in the Democratic Republic of Congo accused of environmental and human rights abuses.
- Plantations et Huileries du Congo (PHC) was recently purchased by two African private equity investors, and several European development banks have invested millions of dollars in the company’s operations.
- Accusations of abuses at the hands of police and plantation-contracted security guards have dogged the company, most recently with the death of a protester in February 2021.
Pig nest-building promotes tree diversity in tropical forest: Study
- New research from a tropical forest in Malaysia reveals that wild pigs, better known for their destructive tendencies on farms and in ecosystems, may actually help encourage tree diversity in forests.
- Expectant mother pigs will build nests amid clumps of saplings, which are usually from a set of tree species common to the forest.
- When the sow kills these saplings for the nest, she’s effectively providing a check on any one species becoming dominant in the forest.
- The research demonstrates the benefits that pigs can bring to forest health, but they also note that pig populations that grow too numerous could — and do, in places — keep the forest from regenerating.
Traditional healers are preserving their knowledge, and with it, the biodiversity of Brazil’s savanna
- The Brazilian savanna contains almost a third of Brazil’s biodiversity but less than 10% is officially protected and its native vegetation is threatened by a rapidly-advancing agricultural frontier.
- Much of the flora and fauna remain unknown to conventional science.
- A network of traditional healers is at the forefront of finding ways to protect, sustainably manage, and document the biodiversity based on their in-depth knowledge of medicinal plants.
- Experts say that finding ways to value the savanna more, such as through recognizing its immense botanical and pharmacological value, could aid in its conservation.
Forest patches amid agriculture are key to orangutan survival: Study
- A recent study highlights the importance of small fragments of forest amid landscapes dominated by agriculture for the survival of orangutans in Southeast Asia.
- The research, drawing on several decades of ground and aerial surveys in Borneo, found that orangutans are adapting to the presence of oil palm plantations — if they have access to nearby patches of forest.
- The authors say agricultural plantations could serve as corridors allowing for better connectivity and gene flow within the broader orangutan population.
“Securing Indigenous guardianship of vital ecosystems”: Q&A with Nia Tero CEO Peter Seligmann
- One of the dominant trends in conservation over the past 20 years has been growing recognition of the contributions Indigenous peoples have made toward conservationists’ goals of protecting biodiversity, wild places, and ecosystem functions.
- This view is a departure from historical conservation approaches, which have tended to marginalize, undervalue, or even criminalize Indigenous peoples. The transition unfolding across conservation is an important development for the sector, but going from talking about change to actually implementing meaningful reforms will be a challenge.
- For these reasons, Peter Seligmann – one of the best-known and most influential figures in conservation – is an important figure to watch. In 2017 Seligmann launched a new organization called Nia Tero that puts Indigenous peoples at the center of its strategy: “For us, it was clear that humanity’s fate is directly dependent upon the ability of nations, and the public, to support Indigenous territorial rights and embrace Indigenous peoples’ belief in the reciprocal relationship between all beings and the Earth.“
- Seligmann spoke about Nia Tero’s ambitions in a February 2021 interview with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler.
U.N. report lays out blueprint to end ‘suicidal war on nature’
- According to a new report from the United Nations Environmental Programme, the world faces three environmental “emergencies”: climate change, biodiversity loss, and air and water pollution.
- U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said we should view nature as “an ally,” not a foe, in the quest for sustainable human development.
- The report draws on assessments that quantify carbon emissions, species loss and pollutant flows to produce what the authors call concrete actions by governments, private companies and individuals that will help address these issues.
Indigenous community wins recognition of its land rights in Panama
- A ruling by Panama’s Supreme Court of Justice in November 2020 led to the official creation of a comarca, or protected Indigenous territory, for the Naso Tjër Di people in northern Panama.
- The 1,600-square-kilometer (620-square-mile) comarca is the result of a decades-long effort to secure the Naso’s land rights.
- Panama’s former president had vetoed legislation creating the comarca in 2018, which he said was unconstitutional because it overlapped with two established protected areas.
- Other Indigenous groups in Panama with longstanding comarcas still struggle to hold back outside incursions for projects such as dams and power transmission lines.
Southeast Asian wild pigs confront deadly African swine fever epidemic
- A recent study in the journal Conservation Letters warns that African swine fever, responsible for millions of pig deaths in mainland Asia since 2018, now endangers 11 wild pig species living in Southeast Asia.
- These pig species generally have low populations naturally, and their numbers have dwindled further due to hunting and loss of habitat.
- The authors of the study contend that losing these species could hurt local economies and food security.
- Southeast Asia’s wild pigs are also important ecosystem engineers that till the soil and encourage plant life, and they are prey for critically endangered predators such as the Sumatran tiger and the Javan leopard.
Timber organization’s backing ‘one step’ toward ‘peace park’ in Borneo
- In December 2020, the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) endorsed a proposal by the Forest Department Sarawak (FDS) for what’s come to be known as the Baram Peace Park, covering 2,835 square kilometers (1,095 square miles) on the island of Borneo.
- Proponents of the park say it will protect wildlife, forest-dependent livelihoods, and the last remaining primary forest in the Malaysian state of Sarawak.
- But they also acknowledge that the ITTO’s announcement is only a step toward the park’s designation, and industrial logging continues to threaten the region’s forests.
Protesters hold back military takeover of Balkans’ largest mountain pasture
- A 2019 decree by the government of Montenegro sets forth the country’s intention to set up a military training ground in the highland grasslands of Sinjajevina in the northern part of the country.
- But the pastures of Sinjajevina have supported herders for centuries, and scientists say that this sustainable use is responsible in part for the wide array of life that the mountain supports; activists say an incursion by the military would destroy livelihoods, biodiversity and vital ecosystem services.
- A new coalition now governs Montenegro, one that has promised to reevaluate the military’s use of Sinjajevina.
- But with the country’s politics and position in Europe in flux, the movement against the military is pushing for formal designation of a park that would permanently protect the region’s herders and the environment.
How the pandemic impacted rainforests in 2020: a year in review
- 2020 was supposed to be a make-or-break year for tropical forests. It was the year when global leaders were scheduled to come together to assess the past decade’s progress and set the climate and biodiversity agendas for the next decade. These included emissions reductions targets, government procurement policies and corporate zero-deforestation commitments, and goals to set aside protected areas and restore degraded lands.
- COVID-19 upended everything: Nowhere — not even tropical rainforests — escaped the effects of the global pandemic. Conservation was particularly hard in tropical countries.
- 2019’s worst trends for forests mostly continued through the pandemic including widespread forest fires, rising commodity prices, increasing repression and violence against environmental defenders, and new laws and policies in Brazil and Indonesia that undermine forest conservation.
- We don’t yet have numbers on the degree to which the pandemic affected deforestation, because it generally takes several months to process that data. That being said, there are reasons to suspect that 2020’s forest loss will again be substantial.
Ribeirinhos win right to waterside Amazon homeland lost to Belo Monte dam
- Some 40,000 people — mostly peasant farmers, fisherfolk, traditional families (living from the collection of forest products), Indigenous people, and ribeirinhos — were evicted to make way for the Belo Monte dam, constructed between June 2011 and November 2019.
- The ribeirinhos (traditional riverine people) were not politically well organized at the time, and along with many others, were forced out of their traditional riverside homes and livelihoods. Most moved into urban housing developments away from the Xingu River, where they were forced to pay rent and acclimate themselves to urban life.
- But over the years the ribeirinhos gained political savvy. Negotiating with Norte Energia, the consortium that built and runs Belo Monte, they gained the right to establish a collectively owned Ribeirinho Territory beside the Belo Monte reservoir.
- Under the agreement, 315 families are each to be provided with 14 hectares (34 acres) for individual use. Added to that are areas for collective use and a forest reserve — a combined total of 20,341 hectares (50,263 acres). However, with the deal now seemingly sealed, Norte Energia has backpedaled, wanting to propose a different agreement.
Historical analysis: The Amazon’s mineral wealth — curse or blessing?
- Mining of gold and other precious metals in the Amazon fueled the Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires, while bringing misery and death to unknown hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people and African slaves, forced to work the mines.
- Modern industrial mining came to the Brazilian Amazon in the late 1940s as transnational firms began digging up and processing manganese, iron, bauxite, zinc, and other ores. Like the earlier iterations of mining, transnational firms, investors, and nations profited hugely, while local people saw little benefit.
- Brazil offered massive subsidies and tax incentives to attract transnational mining companies, and built giant public works projects, including mega-dams, transmission lines, and roads to provide energy and other services to the mines. Though the government offered little to disrupted traditional communities.
- All this came with extraordinary socio-environmental costs, as Brazilian Amazon deforestation soared, land and waterways were polluted, and Indigenous and riverine peoples were deprived of their traditional ways of life and lands, and suffered major public health repercussions. This mining trend continues today.
In an oil spill’s aftermath in Peru, new voices lead an Indigenous fight for justice
- The women formed three organizations that have been crucial over the past six years in pushing for improvements to public health, the environment, and economic stability.
- Through the consolidated and strengthened organizations, the women of Cuninico have worked to successfully reclaim crucial community rights.
- Among their victories is a pending court order for the government to remediate the 2014 oil spill and commit to basic community services.
In the Colombian Amazon, a leader trains her people to save the forest
- María Clemencia Herrera Nemerayema is the founder of the School of Political Education in the Colombian Amazon, which trains Indigenous people to protect their territory; her dream is to establish an intercultural university in the heart of the jungle.
- This year, the Indigenous leader won the Bartolomé de las Casas Prize from the Spanish Foreign Ministry for her work in defending Indigenous territories, based on restoring local cultures and sustainably using Amazonian resources.
- She has been working for more than 30 years to empower Amazonian women through education.
- One of the organizations she founded is Mujer, Tejer y Saberes (Women, Weaving and Knowledge), in which displaced Indigenous women based in Bogotá put their knowledge into practice to generate an income.
‘She goes and helps’: Noemí Gualinga, Ecuador’s mother of the jungle
- Her sister, Patricia, and daughters, Nina and Helena, are much more recognizable as defenders of the rights of the Indigenous Kichwa people of Sarayaku, in the Ecuadoran Amazon.
- But within her community, there’s almost universal recognition that Noemí Gualinga is the one person everyone can turn to for help.
- Known as the “mother of the jungle,” she’s been particularly busy this year, helping her community deal with the double blow of the COVID-19 pandemic and a major flood.
Hope and peace: Bison return to the Rosebud reservation
- The Sicangu Lakota Oyate, the Native nation living on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in the U.S. state of South Dakota, released 100 American bison onto part of an 11,300-hectare (28,000-acre) pasture.
- The project is a collaboration between the Sicangu Oyate’s economic arm, REDCO, the U.S. Department of the Interior, and WWF.
- Over the next five years, the leaders of the Wolakota Buffalo Range project hope to expand the herd to 1,500 buffalo, which would make it the largest owned by a Native nation.
France falls short in ending deforestation linked to imported soy
- A new agreement signed by eight grocery store chains in France is aimed at ending the importation of soybeans grown on deforested lands.
- France introduced a national strategy to address deforestation in supply chains in 2018.
- But environmental and watchdog NGOs say the country must go beyond voluntary commitments from companies and mandate an end to trade with producers linked to deforestation.
Activists in Malaysia call on road planners to learn the lessons of history
- To its proponents, the 2,000-kilometer (1,200-mile) Pan Borneo Highway holds the promise of economic development for the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak on the island of Borneo.
- But activists in Sabah say that poor planning and an emphasis on extracting resources mean that the highway could harm communities and ecosystems in Sabah’s forests and along its coastlines.
- A new film captures the perspectives of people living closest to the highway’s proposed path and reveals the struggles that some have faced as the road closed in on their homes.
- Meanwhile, an environmental historian argues that Pan Borneo Highway planners are repeating the same mistakes British colonists made in focusing on extraction, rather than trying to find ways to benefit Sabah’s communities.
Brazil sees record number of bids to mine illegally on Indigenous lands
- An exclusive investigation shows Brazil’s mining regulator continues to entertain requests to mine in Indigenous territories, which is prohibited under the country’s Constitution.
- There have been 145 such applications filed this year, the highest number in 24 years, spurred by President Jair Bolsonaro’s anti-Indigenous rhetoric and a bill now before Congress that would permit mining on Indigenous lands.
- Prosecutors and judges say that by maintaining these unconstitutional mining applications on file and not immediately rejecting them, the mining regulator is granting them a semblance of legitimacy.
- Mining represents a real threat to the Brazilian Amazon, where the protected status of Indigenous territories is the main reason the forests they contain remain standing.
Peruvian Indigenous groups thwart oil drilling in their territory — for now
- An immense oil concession known as Lot 64 overlaps with much of the Indigenous Achuar Nation’s 8,020-square-kilometer (3,100-square-mile) homeland, as well as a portion of the neighboring territory of the Wampis people.
- The Achuar and the Wampis say they do not consent to drilling for oil on Lot 64, and thus, any exploitation of the lot would be illegitimate under Peruvian law.
- They argue that drilling for oil and transporting it to the coast would almost certainly contaminate rivers vital to their existence in this corner of the Amazon.
- In July, the private company that had a 75% stake in the concession withdrew from its contract, but the Indigenous communities see this as a temporary victory, as the government-backed oil company, Petroperu, has indicated it will seek a new partner to tap into Lot 64’s reserves.
IPBES report details path to exit current ‘pandemic era’
- A new report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) calls for a “transformative change” in addressing the causes of virus outbreaks to prevent future pandemics and their devastating consequences.
- Human-driven climate change, the wildlife trade, and conversion of natural ecosystems all increase the potential for the spillover of viruses that infect animals to people.
- The current COVID-19 pandemic is likely to cost the global economy trillions of dollars, yet preventive measures that include identification of the hundreds of thousands of unknown viruses that are thought to exist would cost only a fraction of that total.
New Latin American treaty could help protect women conservation leaders — and all environment defenders
- On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we once again highlight the work of women leaders in Amazon conservation, and look at an international agreement that could help protect environmental defenders in Latin America — one of the most dangerous places in the world to be an environmental activist, especially as a woman.
- We speak with Osprey Orielle Lake, founder and executive director of the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network, or WECAN International, who tells us about some of the most inspiring women she’s worked with who are fighting to protect their communities and their forests in the Amazon, and discusses the groundbreaking Escazu Agreement, which would help protect defenders of the environment across Latin America.
- We also speak with Nicolas Bustamante Hernandez, a contributor to Mongabay who recently profiled an ornithologist and activist in Colombia named Yehimi Fajardo. Bustamente Hernandez tells us how, via the Alas Association she helped establish, Fajardo’s work has led hundreds of Indigenous children in Colombia’s Putumayo department to become avid birders, able to recognize the songs of birds in the region and to more fully appreciate the important role birds play in the local ecosystem.
Amazon botanist Sir Ghillean Prance: ‘The environmental crisis is a moral one’
- Sir Ghillean Prance first visited the Amazon in 1963 as a budding botanist, going on to describe more than 200 plant species and becoming a leading expert on the rainforest’s flora.
- But his studies coincided with a period of massive deforestation, prompting him to turn his focus toward generating data that would help inform more sustainable practices.
- Devoutly religious, Prance says Christians have a duty of care for “the creation on which our future depends.”
- In this interview with Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett A. Butler, Prance calls the ongoing environmental crisis “a moral, religious and ethical one.”
Camila Chindoy, the Indigenous daughter poised to lead her Amazon community
- Her mother previously served as governor of the reserve; if Chindoy is elected, community leaders and supporters say, it will be thanks to her selfless commitment to bettering the lives of the residents while being a responsible steward of the environment.
- Chindoy currently leads the reserve’s team in charge of implementing a territorial environmental management plan, a road map for the sustainable use of resources in the reserve.
- If elected, the 25-year-old would be one of the youngest matriarchs of her reserve.
Colombia, ethnobotany, and America’s decline: An interview with Wade Davis
- Wade Davis is a celebrated anthropologist, ethnobotanist, photographer, and author who has written thought-provoking accounts of indigenous cultures around the world. Through his writing, Davis has documented the disappearance of indigenous languages and cultures, the loss of which is outpacing the destruction of the world’s rainforests.
- Davis’s newest book, Magdalena: River of Dreams: A Story of Colombia, traces the path of the Magdalena River as a vehicle to tell the story of Colombia, including the nation’s tumultuous recent past, the tenuous peace of its present, and its future promise. Colombia holds a special place for Davis: it trails only Brazil in terms of biodiversity, is geographically and culturally diverse, and has gone to great lengths to recognize indigenous rights and protect its forests.
- Davis’s research into Colombia, indigenous cultures, and other societies has given him an unusually broad perspective with which to evaluate recent developments in the United States, which he compared to a collapsing empire in a commentary he authored in August for Rolling Stone.
- Davis talked about his career path, his new book, and the decline of America in an October 2020 interview with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler.
Mining covers more than 20% of Indigenous territory in the Amazon
- A new report from the World Resources Institute and the Amazon Geo-Referenced Socio-Environmental Information Network reveals that mining has impacted more than 20% of the Amazon’s Indigenous territory.
- The analysis shows that deforestation rates are as much as three times higher on Indigenous lands with mining compared to those without.
- The study’s authors suggest that improved law enforcement, greater investment in Indigenous communities and stricter environmental protections are necessary to combat the surge of mining in the Amazon.
The Amazon savanna? Rainforest teeters on the brink as climate heats up
- A new study has found that 40% of the Amazon is at risk of turning into savanna due to decreases in rainfall.
- The paper’s authors used satellite data, climate simulations and hydrological models to better understand the dynamics of rainfall across the tropics and their impacts on the stability of tropical forest ecosystems.
- The team’s simulations suggest that sustained high greenhouse gas emissions through the end of the century could shrink the minimum size of the Amazon by 66%.
Protect Indigenous People’s rights to avoid a sixth extinction (commentary)
- In this commentary, David Wilkie, Susan Lieberman, and James Watson from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) argue that protecting Indigenous Peoples’ traditional land rights is one of the most effective strategies for preventing the Sixth Mass Extinction.
- “Most of humanity have been grossly negligent in our use of the Earth,” they write. “Wise stewardship of natural resources by Indigenous Peoples within their traditional territories has had a profoundly positive impact on the conservation of plant and animal species on land and in rivers, lakes, and coastal waters.”
- “The decisions Indigenous Peoples have made over generations have done more to protect the planet’s species and ecological systems than all the protected areas established and managed by individual countries combined. The majority of our planet’s last wild, ecologically intact places on land exist because Indigenous Peoples rely on them for their wellbeing and cultural sense of self.”
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Exploring the history of the Amazon and its peoples: an interview with John Hemming
- Dr. John Hemming is a legendary author and historian who has spent the past six decades documenting the history of Indigenous cultures and exploration in the Amazon.
- Hemming has traveled in the remotest parts of the Amazon, visiting 45 tribes and being present with Brazilian ethnographers at the time of four first contacts. Of the course of his career Hemming has authored more than two dozen books from the definitive history of the Spanish conquistadors’ conquest of Peru to a 2,100-page, three-volume chronicle of 500 years of Indigenous peoples and exploration in the Amazon.
- Hemming’s latest book, People of the Rainforest: The Villas Boas Brothers, Explorers and Humanitarians of the Amazon, tells the remarkable story of the Villas Boas brothers, middle-class Brazilians from São Paulo who would go on to become arguably the largest driving force for the conservation of the Amazon rainforest and recognition of the rights of its Indigenous peoples.
- Hemming spoke about his work and the legacy of the Villas Boas brothers in a September 2020 interview with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler.
Rieli Franciscato died protecting isolated indigenous peoples in the Amazon (commentary)
- Rieli Franciscato of the Brazilian government’s Indigenous affairs agency FUNAI was killed last week on the edge of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous territory in Rondonia.
- Franciscato, 56, was a sertanista, a “field person” who works in the most remote parts of the Brazilian Amazon. Franciscato specifically worked to protect the rights and territory of Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation in the Amazon rainforest. These peoples are sometimes referred to as “uncontacted tribes” in the press.
- In this commentary, Enrique Ortiz, Senior Program Director at the Andes Amazon Fund, writes that Franciscato “died in the hands of those he loved” and notes his death was probably at least part to blame on outsiders who have been invading Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau lands and threatening the tribe. “One can imagine that the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau can see the advances into their territory as a threat to their survival,” he writes.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
‘Tamper with nature, and everyone suffers’: Q&A with ecologist Enric Sala
- Marine ecologist and National Geographic explore-in-residence Enric Sala has written a new book, The Nature of Nature: Why We Need the Wild, published Aug. 25.
- The book is a primer on “ecology for people in a hurry,” Sala writes, revealing the startling diversity of life on our planet.
- It also serves as a warning, calling out the impacts we humans are having on the global ecosystem, as well as solutions, such as protecting half of the Earth for nature, to address these problems.
Mercury from gold mining contaminates Amazon communities’ staple fish
- The four species of fish most commonly consumed by Indigenous and riverine people in the Brazilian state of Amapá contain the highest concentrations of mercury.
- In some species, researchers found levels of mercury four times in excess of World Health Organization recommendations.
- The mercury comes from gold-mining activity, where it’s used to separate gold from ore before being burned off and washed into the rivers.
- The health impacts of mercury contamination are well-documented, and include damage to the central nervous system, potentially resulting in learning disabilities for children and tremors and difficulty walking for adults.
In the Amazon, women are key to forest conservation
- Women are a driving force in the movement to protect the Amazon rainforest, the largest rainforest in the world.
- Joining us on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast is environmental journalist Sarah Sax, who recently wrote about the Women Warriors of the Forest, an all-female Indigenous group that is employing new tactics and building new alliances to protect the forests they call home.
- We also interview Dr. Dolors Armenteras, who is a pioneer in the use of remote sensing to monitor Amazon forests and biodiversity, and has been named one of the most influential scientists studying forest fires.
- Despite her pedigree, Armenteras has faced discrimination as a woman scientist, and discusses how she is supporting the next generation of women scientists to help them overcome such biases.
Infrastructure plans imperil Latin America’s forests: Analysis
- A recent analysis in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by social scientists, along with representatives of NGOs and funding organizations, warns of the danger to forests, communities and biodiversity as a result of planned infrastructure.
- The team writes that the planning process needs to be focused on projects that bring the most benefits to people and the environment.
- The authors advocate an approach that includes input from often-marginalized groups like Indigenous communities and looks to science to inform planning for large-scale projects.
‘It’s taking away our wise men’: COVID-19 hits Peru’s Indigenous people hard
- The Ombudsperson’s Office reports that 19 health centers in the Amazonian provinces of Condorcanqui and Bagua, with almost 100,000 inhabitants, have closed as the pandemic takes hold.
- Many of the dead in the Indigenous communities are tribal elders, considered the “spiritual guides” of the communities’ struggle for rights and justice.
- Indigenous leaders accuse the government of neglect in its handling of the pandemic response, especially with regard to Peru’s Amazonian communities.
Study revealing New Guinea’s plant life ‘first step’ toward protection
- A recent study in the journal Nature found that New Guinea has more plant species than any other island on Earth.
- The island has more than 13,000 species of plants, more than two-thirds of which live only in New Guinea.
- The island’s forests are relatively intact, and researchers say the list of species is a step toward protecting them from the looming threats of large-scale agriculture, logging and road building.
For South America’s wilderness areas, COVID-19 brings risk and respite
- A rise in illegal activities and plunge in tourism revenue are some of the problems that protected areas across Latin America are facing due to COVID-19 lockdown measures.
- Experts say the suspension in human activity marks a welcome break for the parks and a unique opportunity to carry out studies about the changes ecosystems are experiencing during this time.
Amazon ‘women warriors’ show gender equality, forest conservation go hand in hand
- Recognition of the role that Indigenous land plays in forest protection, biodiversity conservation and environmental health has been growing, but less attention has been paid to the role of women.
- An increasing body of research and experts are calling for a greater recognition of the link between gender equality and environmental protection.
- Examples like the Guajajara “women warriors” in the Brazilian Amazon show how greater inclusion of women can benefit conservation goals.
COVID is killing Indigenous leaders (commentary)
- Jose de los Santos Sauna Limaco, a political leader of the Kogi peoples of the Sierra Nevada of Colombia, died last week of COVID-19. He was 44.
- Santos Sauna is one of several indigenous leaders who’ve fallen during the pandemic. Mark Plotkin, an ethnobotanist who founded the Amazon Conservation Team, says the world is a poorer place with the loss of people like Santos Sauna.
- “Not only have the Kogis lost a great, wise and inspiring leader, but so has the entire world,” Plotkin writes. “Those of us who were blessed enough to know him will mourn him forever.”
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Why I stand for my tribe’s forest: It gives us food, culture, and life (commentary)
- For the occasion of International Indigenous Peoples Day August 9, 2020, Arkilaus Kladit, a member of the Knasaimos-Tehit people in South Sorong Regency in West Papua Province, Indonesia, writes about the importance of his tribe’s customary forests.
- Arkilaus, who is a member of the Knasaimos Indigenous Peoples Council, describes his tribe’s long struggle to secure recognition of his tribe’s customary lands by the Indonesian government.
- Arkilaus explains how the Knasaimos-Tehit people are dependent on forests for food, community resilience, and cultural significance.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
In Colombia, a protected park is buffeted by social, environmental conflicts
- When Serranía de Las Quinchas Regional Natural Park was established in Colombia in 2008, thousands of campesinos were already living there on land previously dominated by paramilitaries.
- Many productive activities have been restricted and residents are requesting state support.
- There have been reports that the army is eradicating illicit coca crops while disregarding health and safety protocols put in place to combat COVID-19.
- Residents of the park say they have no means of making a living and are worried about illegal logging, land ownership and oil infrastructure in the area.
In Bogotá, communities weave an unlikely wetland success story
- Around 27 years ago, a community on the northwest border of Bogotá launched a concerted campaign to defend the Conejera wetland against a city and business sector that saw it as disposable.
- The success of their efforts launched a long-standing community movement of wetland defenders in an otherwise urbanized city, where 98% of its original wetlands have been wiped out.
- Today the Colombian capital’s 15 official wetlands are home to dozens of endemic species, including 202 species of birds, and take up about 727 hectares (1,800 acres).
New report asks, do land titles help poor farmers?
- A new report by the Oakland Institute, a policy think tank, outlines cases of land privatization around the world.
- The report’s authors caution that privatizing land, especially when it has been traditionally managed communally, could sideline the interests of Indigenous groups and local communities.
- They cite evidence that governments and agencies see private land titles as a way not to help poor farmers, but rather to “unlock the economic potential of the land.”
Photos: In southern Papua, navigating an alien world built on palm oil
- In June 2019, photographer Albertus Vembrianto spent three weeks on assignment in the southern lowlands of Papua, Indonesia’s easternmost province, for Mongabay and The Gecko Project. He traveled through the villages of Indigenous Papuans whose land had been taken over by palm oil conglomerates.
- A decade ago, the Indonesian government promoted investment by plantation firms in this region with a vision of turning it into a major agribusiness hub. Today, Indonesia is the world’s top producer of palm oil, but many Papuans have lost their land and are struggling to acclimatize to a very new world, with their traditional food sources dwindling.
- Albertus’s photos were featured in an investigation into the operations of one of the these companies, the Korindo Group, recently published by The Gecko Project and Mongabay in collaboration with the Korean Center for Investigative Journalism-Newstapa and 101 East, Al Jazeera’s Asia-Pacific current affairs program.
- In this photo essay, Albertus, who is Indonesian, writes about his experience reporting in Papua.
Environmental defenders voice concerns as COVID-19 crisis deepens
- The Global Alliance for Green and Gender Action (GAGGA) has collected firsthand testimonies from women who are environmental defenders.
- In the recordings, they share their perspectives on family life, their conservation work, criminal and corporate abuse of the environment, and life at home in the time of COVID-19.
- Local groups are trying to respond to food shortages and lack of personal protective equipment, while also trying to mitigate loss of livelihoods.
World Bank-funded factory farms dogged by alleged environmental abuses
- The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) has provided funding totaling $120 million to Ecuadoran pork and chicken producer Pronaca, despite widespread and evidence-backed concerns about the effects of industrial-scale livestock farming on water sources, air quality and the climate.
- IFC investments are intended to boost the economies of developing countries.
- But the Pronaca case and others described in a series by Mongabay in cooperation with The Guardian newspaper and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism raise questions about the impacts of these investments on local communities and the environment.
- Mongabay spoke with residents of the province of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, where Pronaca has more than 30 farms, who said that complaints to the IFC’s Compliance Adviser/Ombudsman over the past decade have done little to improve the situation.
‘Injustice’ for West Papuans whose land was sold out from under them
- Al Jazeera's 101 East program recently aired a documentary about allegedly fraudulent land deals on Indonesian part of New Guinea, produced as part of a collaboration with Mongabay, The Gecko Project and the Korean Center for Investigative Journalism-Newstapa.
‘Saving sun bears’: Q&A with book author Sarah Pye
- A new book, “Saving Sun Bears,” chronicles the efforts of Malaysian wildlife biologist Wong Siew Te to protect sun bears in Borneo.
- Author Sarah Pye tells Wong’s story, from his boyhood in peninsular Malaysia, to his studies of animal husbandry and wildlife around the world.
- Wong’s journey led him to return to Malaysia and start the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre, the only facility of its kind in the world, in 2008.
The Consultant: Why did a palm oil conglomerate pay $22m to an unnamed ‘expert’ in Papua?
- In a year-long investigation with The Gecko Project, the Korean Center for Investigative Journalism-Newstapa and Al Jazeera, Mongabay traced a $22 million “consultancy” payment connected to a major land deal in Indonesia’s Papua province.
- It took us from South Korea and Singapore to the heart of the largest rainforest left in Asia, to find out how the payment helped make the Korindo Group one of the largest oil palm producers in the region.
- Photography by Albertus Vembrianto.
Using photography and indigenous art to help Amazon communities during COVID
- Xapiri, a Cusco-based art gallery and media production studio, is working to raise awareness of the situation and funds to help indigenous peoples navigate the COVID crisis. In response to the pandemic, Xapiri has jettisoned its plans to visit indigenous partners in the field and instead focused on online fundraising campaigns.
- In a June 2020 interview with Mongabay, Jack Wheeler, Xapiri’s founder and director, spoke about his group’s work, the transition to a COVID world, and why now is a more important time than ever to support indigenous communities.
COVID-19 and rainforest fires set up potential public health crisis
- Peaking fires in the world’s rainforests combined with the global COVID-19 pandemic threaten to create a devastating public health crisis, experts warn.
- The fires typically follow recent deforestation, as farmers and ranchers burn brush and trees to make way for crops and livestock.
- Soot from the fires causes severe respiratory problems and exacerbates existing conditions, health researchers say. The uptick in the need for treatment could overwhelm already-strained hospitals in the Amazon and Southeast Asia.
- Researchers say that solutions exist, involving government enforcement, consumer demand for deforestation-free products, and company commitments to halt the destruction of forests. Now what’s needed is political will.
From a Philippine conflict hotspot, a new insect-eating plant emerges
- Filipino scientists have discovered a new species of insect-eating pitcher plant in a mountain range in the country’s southern Mindanao region.
- The range is a key biodiverse area but has not been granted any form of environmental protection, and is prone to armed conflicts, criminal activity, and tribal wars.
- The scientists risked threats to explore the unprotected remote area, but say they are determined to catalog as much of the biodiversity as they can before it is destroyed by logging and land conversion activities.
- Identifying new species could help preserve the ecology of this area that is crucial to the existence of indigenous ethnolinguistic groups, researchers say.
Bison: (Back) home on the range
- The Rosebud Indian Reservation in the U.S. state of South Dakota plans to bring the American bison back to around 11,300 hectares (28,000 acres) of prairie on the reservation.
- Over the next five years, tribal groups will work with WWF and the U.S. Department of the Interior to release as many as 1,500 bison on the Wolakota Buffalo Range, which would make it the largest Native American-owned herd in North America.
- The Lakota people of Rosebud have an abiding connection with the bison, or buffalo, and the leaders of the project say that, in addition to the symbolic importance of returning the Lakotas’ “relatives” to their land, the herd will help create jobs, restore the ecological vigor of the landscape, and aid in the conservation of the species.
Overlap of fire, COVID-19 peaks: A ‘catastrophe’ for Brazil’s Amazon
- Scientists at the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project, an initiative of the Amazon Conservation Association, have discovered the first major fire of 2020 in the Brazilian Amazon.
- The team has developed a new app that uses aerosol and fire alert data gathered from satellites to pinpoint significant fires across the world’s largest rainforest.
- Another report, led by scientists at Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research (INPE), indicates that the continued rise in cases of COVID-19 combined with the approach of fire season in the Amazon could overwhelm the Amazon region’s clinics due to the increase in respiratory diseases as a result of the fires.
- Higher-than-normal sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean may also lead to drought in the southwestern Brazilian Amazon, exacerbating fire risk, air pollution, and the incidence of respiratory ailments, especially among children.
Gender-based violence shakes communities in the wake of forest loss
- Women in the province of East New Britain in Papua New Guinea say they have faced increasing domestic violence, along with issues like teenage pregnancy and drug abuse, in their communities as logging and oil palm plantations have moved in.
- Traditionally, women have been the stewards of the land and passed it down to their children, but they say they’ve felt sidelined in discussions about this type of land “development.”
- Experts say that the loss of forest for large-scale agriculture and extractive industries goes hand in hand with violence against women globally, linked with the colonial and patriarchal paradigms associated with these uses of the land.
- In Papua New Guinea and elsewhere, women are working to protect themselves, their families and their forests from these changes.
Seed by seed, a women’s collective helps reforest Brazil’s Xingu River Basin
- Members of the Yarang Women’s Movement in Brazil have collected 3.2 tons of seeds over the past decade.
- The native seeds are sold to rural landowners and organizations to help replenish forests that have been degraded.
- The Yarang Women’s Movement is part of a seed network collective responsible for replanting nearly 6,000 hectares (14,800 acres) of land in Brazil’s Xingu River Basin.
- Unpredictable changes in weather patterns have made the seed-collecting process more challenging in recent years.
Amazon indigenous leader: Our survival is at stake. You can help (commentary)
- Beto Marubo, a representative of the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley, warns that indigenous peoples in the Amazon face existential threats from rising deforestation, anti-environment and anti-indigenous policies from the Bolsonaro administration, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Marubo, whose indigenous name is Wino Këyashëni, is calling upon the outside world to pressure the Bolsonaro administration to protect indigenous peoples’ rights, lands, and livelihoods.
- He’s asking for (1) the Brazilian government to evict land invaders from indigenous territories, (2) restrictions on outsiders’ access to indigenous lands, and (3) logistical and medical support.
- This article is a commentary and does not necessarily reflect the views of Mongabay.
Indonesian environmental poet and Dayak leader Yohanes Terang, 1956-2020
- Biologist Erik Meijaard of Borneo Futures writes an homage to Yohanes Terang, a Dayak poet, who died May 6 in Ketapang District at the age of 63.
- Terang took up social and environmental activism long before it became a mainstream concern in West Kalimantan, Indonesia.
- Terang wrote poetry in Indonesian about the relationship between people and nature, and the challenges currently faced by both humanity and nature.
- This obituary is a commentary.
Yehimi Fajardo: A voice for the birds of Putumayo
- She has made censuses of the birds of her department and established bird-watching routes.
- Around 500 hundred people have attended the association’s courses and workshops.
The mining map: Who’s eyeing the gold on Brazil’s indigenous lands?
- Miners have their eyes on reserves that have been officially demarcated for 15 years and are inhabited by isolated indigenous peoples.
- Applications to mine on indigenous lands in the Amazon have increased by 91% under the Bolsonaro administration.
- The majority of applications to mine on indigenous lands are for areas in Pará, Mato Grosso, and Roraima.
- Among the applicants are mining giant Anglo American, small-scale cooperatives whose members are embroiled in a range of environmental violations, and even a São Paulo-based architect.
Everything you need to know about the Amazon rainforest: an interview with Mark Plotkin
- As Earth’s largest rainforest, the Amazon is the planet’s single greatest repository of biodiversity, houses the largest number of uncontacted indigenous tribes, and is home to the world’s mightiest river. Yet the Amazon faces a range of dire threats.
- A new book, The Amazon: What Everyone Needs to Know succinctly summarizes these issues but also adds important context, color, and factoids on why we should care about the fate of the Amazon.
- The book is written by Mark Plotkin, one of the world’s most foremost experts on ethnobotany and the co-founder of the Amazon Conservation Team, a non-profit that works with indigenous communities to conserve rainforests in the Amazon and northern Colombia.
- Plotkin talked about his new book during a May 2020 interview with Mongabay’s founder Rhett A. Butler.
Flooding devastates Ecuador’s indigenous communities in the Amazon
- Extreme floods in the Ecuadoran Amazon have left hundreds of indigenous people homeless.
- Such events have become more frequent, partly as a result of human-driven climate change.
- These communities have little to no access to basic services, which leaves them in an extremely vulnerable situation.
- Further complicating their plight is the global COVID-19 pandemic that has now made its way into Ecuador, one of the Latin American countries hit hardest by the coronavirus so far.
Companies use COVID-19 to weaken standards, secure subsidies: Report
- A report from the U.S.-based NGO Mighty Earth identifies major corporations representing industries ranging from logging in Indonesia to automakers in the U.S. and outlines their attempts — successful in many cases — to garner subsidies, loosen restrictions, and walk back commitments to climate-related targets amid the global COVID-19 pandemic.
- In Indonesia, regulators have relaxed requirements for legality verification of timber.
- U.S. lawmakers have awarded grants and loans to agricultural companies accused of promoting deforestation in the Amazon.
- Officials in the U.S. have also relaxed fuel mileage requirements and regulation enforcement, bowing to pressure from the auto, airline and oil and gas industries.
Decades-old mine in Bougainville exacts devastating human toll: Report
- A new report by the Human Rights Law Centre in Australia details the continuing devastation wrought by a copper and gold mine that closed more than 30 years ago in the Papua New Guinean territory of Bougainville.
- The 17-year-long operation of the mine generated more than a billion metric tons of mining waste, which continues to seep into the region’s water sources, fouling drinking water supplies and causing disease.
- The British-Australian mining company Rio Tinto divested from its majority stake in the local operating company in 2016 and says that the governments of Bougainville and Papua New Guinea, now the majority shareholders, are best placed to address the problems.
- The Human Rights Law Centre and other groups contend that Rio Tinto has the ultimate responsibility to facilitate and finance the cleanup.
Using satellites to alert an Amazonian indigenous community of coca encroachment (insider)
- In early March 2020, Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler visited the tri-border area of Peru, Colombia and Brazil and used the opportunity to explore a cluster of potential deforestation hotspots detected by Global Forest Watch’s GLAD alert system.
- According to Global Forest Watch, the patches were small and dispersed. Therefore Butler expected to find small-scale clearing for subsistence or local agriculture. But he was in for a bit of a surprise: forest within an indigenous reserve was being cleared for coca, unbeknown to the local community.
- Given the sensitivity and the potential security implications of the issue, Mongabay won’t be disclosing the name of the community or the location of the coca fields.
- This post is insider content, which is available to paying subscribers.
Gold mining threatens indigenous forests in the Brazilian Amazon
- MAAP, a program of the organization Amazon Conservation, has documented more than 102 square kilometers (40 square miles) of mining-linked deforestation in the indigenous reserves of Kayapó, Munduruku and Yanomami in Brazil. Mongabay had exclusive access to the report prior to its release.
- Though mining is still illegal in indigenous reserves under Brazilian law, President Jair Bolsonaro has introduced a bill awaiting a vote in Congress that would to allow mining, oil and gas extraction and other uses of these lands.
- Human rights groups like Survival International hold Bolsonaro and his policies responsible for the loss of forest, as well as mercury pollution, societal disruption and the introduction of diseases such as malaria and potentially COVID-19 that result from mining.
- The groups say Bolsonaro’s rhetoric, in favor of developing the Amazon, has emboldened would-be miners.
Oil exploration at odds with peatland protection in the Congo Basin
- A new report details an investigation led by the investigative NGO Global Witness into the exploration for oil in the world’s largest peatlands, found in Central Africa’s Congo Basin.
- The Republic of Congo and the company licensed to search for oil in a block containing more than 6,000 square kilometers (2,300 square miles) of peatlands argue for the right to extract the oil for the benefit of the country, and they say they are following strict environmental guidelines.
- But Global Witness found that the environmental impact assessment for the block is dated July 2013, nearly a year before scientists discovered the existence of the peatlands.
- The authors also point out that an agreement worth $65 million to protect the peatlands and the Republic of Congo’s other tropical forests doesn’t require that the carbon-rich peatlands be legally protected until 2025.
Qualified success: What’s next for Peru’s Operation Mercury?
- The Peruvian government’s launch of Operation Mercury to crack down on illegal mining had a burst of initial success, cutting deforestation by 92% since its kickoff in February 2019.
- Concerns have surfaced that the operation would simply displace miners, forcing them to deforest new areas.
- However, satellite imagery analysis published in January 2020 revealed that, while deforestation due to mining continues to be a problem in southeastern Peru, Operation Mercury has not led to a surge in forest loss adjacent to the targeted area.
- The government is also investing in programs aimed at providing employment alternatives so that people don’t return to mining.
Complaint alleges oil company left Peru communities’ environment in ruins
- Indigenous communities and human rights NGOs contend that Pluspetrol violated a set of business standards issued by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
- The complaint, delivered March 11 in the Netherlands, says the company has avoided paying taxes and has failed to address damage to the environment in the Peruvian Amazon caused by its oil-drilling activities through 2015.
- The groups allege that the release of toxic heavy metals into the water supply have caused numerous health problems for community members.
Companies leave communities to grapple with mining’s persistent legacy
- The destructive legacy of mining often lingers for communities and ecosystems long after the operating companies leave.
- Several large, multinational mining corporations have scrubbed their images — touting their commitments to sustainability, community development and action on climate change — but continue to deny accountability for the persistent impacts of mining that took place on their watch.
- A new report from the London Mining Network, an alliance of environmental and human rights organizations, contends that these companies should be held responsible for restoring ecosystems and the services that once supported communities.
Abraham Khouw, the professor who joined the Save Aru movement
- Professor Abraham Khouw is one of dozens of academics in the Indonesian city of Ambon who lent his expertise to the Save Aru movement in the mid-2010s.
- The movement formed after a company called the Menara Group got permits to clear nearly two-thirds of the Aru Islands’ rainforest for a giant sugar plantation.
- The academics lent extra firepower to the fight against the plantation, which was mainly driven by local indigenous communities.
Mining could topple community-managed forests in Mexico: New film
- Community residents in the state of Puebla in southeastern Mexico are concerned about the exploration for gold currently underway in their region.
- Mining concessions currently cover around 30% of the state.
- Opponents of the project say it will sap vital water sources and destroy the local economy, which is currently based on sustainable management of forests for timber, farming and ecotourism.
Early deforestation numbers for 2019 reveal trends in the Amazon
- The Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project, or MAAP, an initiative of the nonprofit organization Amazon Conservation, has published its analysis of preliminary deforestation data for the Amazon in 2019.
- The figures project that deforestation in 2019 tapered, if slightly, or held relatively steady in four of the five Amazon countries included in the study.
- Bolivia’s loss of forest in 2019 rose in comparison with 2018, likely as a result of widespread fires that burned standing forest.
- The researchers used early-warning alerts of tree cover loss in 2019 to estimate total deforestation in the five countries and then compared the figures with historical rates going back to 2001.
Database offers new details on the dams that hold mining waste
- A new database called the Global Tailings Portal pulls together information on 1,700 dams that store waste, or tailings, from mines around the world.
- Around 100 publicly traded companies have shared information about their dams with GRID-Arendal, the Norwegian foundation that developed the database.
- The portal’s creators say that much of the information, including the size, location, and risk factors associated with the included dams, hasn’t been publicly available before, even as catastrophic dam failures continue to occur.
Mika Ganobal, the civil servant who risked his job to save his homeland
- Several years ago, a plantation company nearly broke ground on a plan to clear more than half of the rainforest in Indonesia's Aru Islands.
- Local residents organized against the project. One of the leaders of the effort to stop it was a local bureaucrat named Mika Ganobal.
- Watch our video profile of Mika below.
Illegal industrial fishing hampers small-scale African fisheries
- A new analysis shows that industrial fishing fleets operating in the waters of African countries and territories spend an average of nearly 6% of their fishing effort inside zones set aside for small-scale fisheries.
- In some countries, foreign fleets spend the bulk of their time — more than 90% in Somalia, for example — within the prohibited zone.
- Communities along Africa’s coasts are often dependent on fish as a source of food and protein.
- But incursions by large-scale fishing vessels, called “the most common form of illegal fishing in the region,” can threaten the sustainability of the resource, create conflict over it, and endanger the lives of fishers themselves.
Indigenous, protected lands in Amazon emit far less carbon than areas outside
- A new study calculates the gains and losses in carbon across the Amazon rainforest from deforestation as well as human-caused and naturally occurring degradation of the forest.
- The team found that around 70% of the total carbon emitted from the Amazon between 2003 and 2016 came from areas outside indigenous-held lands and protected areas, despite the fact that these outside areas made up less than half of the total land area.
- The researchers argue that their findings make the case for supporting indigenous communities with “political protection and financial support” to protect carbon stocks in the Amazon necessary to address climate change.
Subsistence farming topples forests near commercial operations in Congo
- A new study has found that deforestation for subsistence agriculture often occurs nearby commercial logging, mining and agriculture operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- Shifting cultivation, which sustains most of the DRC’s farmers and their families, continues to drive much of the forest loss in the country.
- Commercial operations accounted for relatively little forest loss in the DRC between 2000 and 2015.
- But the study showed that around 12% of the forest lost as the area used for shifting agriculture expanded occurred within 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) of these large-scale ventures.
Deforestation clips howler monkey calls, study finds
- In a recent study, scientists report that howler monkeys in Costa Rica make longer calls in forest interiors and near naturally occurring forest edges, such as those along rivers, than near human-created edges.
- The researchers believe that the longer howls serve as a way for male monkeys to protect their groups’ access to higher-quality food resources.
- The team’s findings indicate that this behavioral change in response to deforestation supports the protection of standing forest and reforestation along human-created forest edges.
Indigenous lands hold 36% or more of remaining intact forest landscapes
More than one-third of the world’s remaining pristine forests, known as intact forest landscapes, exist within land that’s either managed or owned by indigenous peoples, a new study has found. The study, published Jan. 6 in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, builds on previous work by lead author John Fa and his […]
Forest loss moves swiftly once 50% deforestation ‘tipping point’ reached
- Scientists looked at satellite images showing land use change between 1992 and 2015.
- Their analysis and modeling reveals that deforestation occurs relatively slowly at first, until a block has lost around 50% of its forest.
- After that “tipping point,” the transition to a wholly different type of landscape is much more rapid.
- The findings support conservation strategies aimed at protecting intact areas that still have the bulk of their forest standing.
2019: The year rainforests burned
- 2019 closed out a “lost decade” for the world’s tropical forests, with surging deforestation from Brazil to the Congo Basin, environmental policy roll-backs, assaults on environmental defenders, abandoned conservation commitments, and fires burning through rainforests on four continents.
- The following review covers some of the biggest rainforest storylines for the year.
10 noteworthy books on conservation and the environment from 2019
- 2019 produced a number of notable books on the environment, ranging from the memoirs of researchers and journalists to how-to guides and prescient novels.
- Here’s a sample of what was published in the past year.
- They cut across a variety of environment-related themes, though climate change is a common point of meditation for many of the authors on the list.
- Inclusion on this list does not imply Mongabay’s endorsement of a book’s content; the views in the books are those of the authors and not necessarily Mongabay.
Deforestation for potential rubber plantation raises concerns in Papua New Guinea
- The project, ostensibly for a 125-square-kilometer (48-square-mile) rubber plantation, began in mid-2018.
- Satellite imagery shows that Maxland, working with a local landowner company, has built logging roads and deforested patches of the Great Central Forest on Manus Island.
- Like Papua New Guinea as a whole, Manus is home to a wide variety of unique wildlife — just one aspect of the forest on which human communities have depended for thousands of years.
- Government forestry and environment officials were aware of the importance of the forest and a local forest management committee protested the project before it began, but it’s been allowed to continue anyway.
Women from the Xingu Territory unite against threats from Bolsonaro administration
- In May 2019, some 200 representatives from 16 different ethnicities gathered for the first women’s summit in the Xingu Indigenous Territory’s in the state of Mato Grosso. Feeling under threat from policies regarding native peoples under the Jair Bolsonaro administration and tired of their community roles being restricted to domestic tasks, the women met to discuss ways to occupy leadership roles alongside men and, in doing so, gain strength to protect their territory.
- Even though many men in the Xingu still disapprove of female empowerment, the event itself already led to changes in local gender relationships: During the summit, some domestic partners took responsibility for household tasks and childcare while the women were away. In the village where the event was held, the men took over traditional female jobs like collecting food, fishing and cooking for the hundreds of women present.
- This is a particularly delicate time in the region: 147 square kilometers (57.8 square miles) of the forest were destroyed in the Xingu Socio-environmental Biodiversity Corridor between July and August 2019 — 172% more than occurred during the same period last year. A mosaic composed of 21 indigenous reserves and nine conservation units, the corridor is home to one of Earth’s largest concentrations of environmental diversity.
Tropical forests’ lost decade: the 2010s
- The 2010s opened as a moment of optimism for tropical forests. The world looked like it was on track to significantly reduce tropical deforestation by 2020.
- By the end of the 2019 however, it was clear that progress on protecting tropical forests stalled in the 2010s. The decade closed with rising deforestation and increased incidence of fire in tropical forests.
- According to the U.N., in 2015 global forest cover fell below four billion hectares of forest for the first time in human history.
Illegal hunting a greater threat to wildlife than forest degradation
- In a recent study, researchers used camera-trapping records to show that illegal hunting may be a bigger threat mammals and ground-dwelling birds than forest degradation in Southeast Asia.
- They chose Borneo and the Annamite Mountains on the Southeast Asian mainland, two rainforest study sites that have similar habitats.
- While widespread logging has degraded many forests in Borneo, the island has faced less hunting.
- By contrast, the Annamites have experienced exceedingly high illegal hunting, but its forests are structurally more intact.
Illegal logging persists in Cambodia’s Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary: Report
- Cambodia’s Prey Lang forest was declared a wildlife sanctuary in 2016, but illegal land clearing within the protected area continues, a new report has found.
- Members of the Cambodian Youth Network (CYN), who recently patrolled 1,761 hectares (4,352 acres) of forest in Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary, found that several hundred hectares of dense, evergreen forest had been cleared, and hundreds of trees had been marked for logging in the near future.
- CYN worries that if the clearing continues, the government could grant economic land concessions on those lands in the future.
- CYN has called on the Cambodian government to crack down on the illegal encroachment and stop any more forest from being cleared.
Deforestation preceded fires in ‘massive’ area of Amazon in 2019
- Deforestation watchdog Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project found that 4,500 square kilometers (1,740 square miles) of the Brazilian Amazon was deforested between 2017 and 2019 and then burned.
- The team’s analysis revealed that 65 percent of that deforestation occurred in 2019 alone.
- The research points to the need for policymakers to address deforestation as well as fires.
Healthy ecosystems, healthy humans: ‘One Health’ broadens its scope
- At an Oct. 25 conference in Berlin, conservation and public health leaders issued 10 principles aimed at encouraging cross-disciplinary research and efforts to address both human health and environmental problems.
- The principles, part of the One Health movement, grew out of the Manhattan Principles introduced in 2004.
- The declaration acknowledges that the world’s poor often suffer the most as a result of environmental degradation.
- However, the conference organizers point out that climate change has global reach and must be addressed from both the environmental and health perspectives.
Research points to low forensic capacity to tackle timber fraud in U.S.
- New research has found that more than 60 percent of a sample of 73 wood products in the U.S. had misrepresented or fraudulent species labels.
- While not “statistically representative,” the findings do indicate that improperly labeled wood is a concern in the U.S.
- The study also found that the U.S. does not have the capacity for forensic wood anatomy identification to address this issue.
What’s at stake after Chile cancels its hosting of COP25?
- Massive protests triggered by social unrest over economic, justice and environmental issues have forced Chile to cancel its hosting of this year’s U.N. climate change summit in December.
- As the organizer of the 25th Conference of Parties, Chile was to have led the effort to bolster ambitions in the fight against climate change aimed at ensuring that global temperatures don’t increase by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
- On Oct. 31, a day after Chile’s president announced the cancellation, Spain offered to hold the conference on the scheduled dates, Dec. 2-13, in Madrid.
Carbon emissions from loss of intact tropical forest a ‘ticking time bomb’
- When undisturbed tropical forests are lost the long-term impact on carbon emissions is dramatically higher than earlier estimates suggest, according to a new study.
- Between 2000 and 2013, about 7 percent of the world’s intact tropical forests were destroyed, leading not just to direct carbon emissions but also “hidden” emissions from logging, fragmentation and wildlife loss.
- Another key difference between the old and new estimates is that the latter take into account the diminished carbon sequestration potential of these forests.
- The authors write that the indigenous communities who live in and protect about 35 percent of these forests will have a bigger role to play in the fight against climate change.
Finding hope in ‘extreme conservation’ (Insider)
- A Mongabay staff writer shares an account of his trek to see mountain gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- From a low of 250 individuals in the 1980s, the mountain gorilla subspecies now numbers more than 1,000, making it the only great ape whose population is growing.
- Those gains have come thanks to the “extreme conservation” practiced by a dedicated group of people who have worked to ensure the survival of one of our closest relatives in the animal kingdom.
- This post is insider content, which is available to paying subscribers.
10 takeaways from Indonesia’s grassroots #SaveAru success
- The Save Aru campaign is one of Indonesia’s most successful grassroots movements in recent years.
- The people of Indonesia’s Aru Islands managed to defeat a plan to turn more than half of their archipelago into a massive sugar plantation.
- This month, Mongabay and The Gecko Project published a narrative article about the movement. Here are 10 takeaways from the article.
Malaria surges in deforested parts of the Amazon, study finds
- A recent study found that deforestation significantly increases the transmission of malaria, about three times more than previously thought.
- The analysis showed that a 10 percent increase in deforestation caused a 3.3 percent rise in malaria cases.
- The study’s authors analyzed more than a decade of data showing the occurrences of malaria in nearly 800 villages, towns and cities across the Brazilian Amazon.
- They also controlled for the “feedback” from malaria, by which a rise in the incidence of the disease actually slows deforestation down.
Biodiversity ‘not just an environmental issue’: Q&A with IPBES ex-chair Robert Watson
- The World Bank and IMF meetings from Oct. 14-20 will include discussions on protecting biodiversity and the importance of investing in nature.
- A recent U.N. report found that more than 1 million species of plants and animals face extinction.
- In a conversation with Mongabay, Robert Watson, who chaired the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services that produced the report, discusses the economic value of biodiversity.
$65 million deal to protect Congo’s forests raises concerns
- The Central African Forest Initiative negotiated a deal with the Republic of Congo for $65 million in funding.
- The aim of the initiative is to protect forest while encouraging economic development.
- But environmental organizations criticized the timing and the wording of the agreement, which they argue still allows for oil drilling and exploration that could harm peatlands and forest.
- Two companies in the Republic of Congo recently found oil beneath the peatlands that could nearly triple the Central African country’s daily production.
Saving Aru: The epic battle to save the islands that inspired the theory of evolution
- In the mid-1800s, the extraordinary biodiversity of the Aru Islands helped inspire the theory of evolution by natural selection.
- Several years ago, however, a corrupt politician granted a single company permission to convert most of the islands’ rainforests into a vast sugar plantation.
- The people of Aru fought back. Today, the story of their grassroots campaign resonates across the world as a growing global movement seeks to force governments to act on climate change.
New app tracks down forest fires in Bolivia
- A new app uses aerosol data and recent satellite images to find fires in the forests of Bolivia in real time.
- The application’s creators, from the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project, say the novel use of the aerosol data, originally intended to monitor air quality, represents a significant advance over traditional, temperature-related alerts.
- According to the NGO Friends of Nature Foundation, more than 41,000 square kilometers (15,800 square miles) of Bolivia has burned in 2019.
Wilderness cuts the risk of extinction for species in half
- Wilderness areas buffer species against the risk of extinction, reducing it by more than half, a new study shows.
- Places with lots of unique species and wilderness with the last remaining sections of good habitat for certain species had a more pronounced impact on extinction risk.
- The authors contend that safeguarding the last wild places should be a conservation priority alongside the protection and restoration of heavily impacted “hotspots.”
Notes from the road: 5 revelations from traveling the Pan Borneo Highway
- Construction of the Pan Borneo Highway will add or expand more than 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) of roadway in Malaysian Borneo.
- Mongabay staff writer John Cannon spent several weeks traveling the proposed route in July 2019 to understand the effects, both positive and negative, the road could have on communities, wildlife and ecosystems.
- The project is designed to energize the economies of the region, and though officials have responded to entreaties from NGOs to minimize the harmful impacts of the road, they remain singularly focused on the economic benefits that proponents say the highway will bring.
Industrial palm oil investors struggle to gain foothold in Africa
- Twenty-seven concessions intended for industrial oil palm plantations in West and Central Africa have either failed or been abandoned in the last decade.
- Of the 49 that remain, less than 20 percent of the allocated land has been developed.
- Malaysian palm oil giant Sime Darby recently announced its intention to withdraw from Liberia after years of conflict with communities and environmental groups.
Pan Borneo Highway development endangers the Heart of Borneo
- The construction of the Pan Borneo Highway in the Malaysian state of Sabah could disrupt the connections between wildlife populations and appears to run counter to the state’s conservation commitments, according to a new study.
- Passages under the highway and the rehabilitation of key forest corridors could lessen the impacts of the road, but the authors of the study caution that these interventions are expensive and may not be effective.
- They argue that planners should consider canceling certain sections of the road with the greatest potential for damaging the surrounding forest.
Worldwide deforestation rising despite bold commitments, report finds
- In 2014, the New York Declaration on Forests set out bold commitments to stem deforestation, cutting it in half by 2020 and ending it entirely by 2030, along with global forest restoration targets.
- But a new assessment finds that, globally, the loss of forests is on the rise, at rates that are around 40 percent higher than five years ago when the agreement was signed.
- The report’s authors say that, despite the “sobering” findings, the assessment should serve as a call to action that more needs to be done to address deforestation and forest degradation.
REDD+ more competitive than critics believe, study finds
- Critics have argued that the strategy known as REDD+, or reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, hasn’t adequately slowed emissions from forest loss in developing countries in the way it was intended.
- Introduced in 2007, REDD+ is meant to help individual countries earn money for development when they lower the amount of released carbon from clearing and degrading forests.
- In a recent paper focused on the South American country of Guyana, a team of researchers argues that the problems with REDD+ stem from its implementation at the project level.
- REDD+ implementation across the jurisdiction of an entire country would address nearly all of the problems with individual REDD+ projects, and societies would benefit more financially than they currently do from commercial forest uses such as gold mining and logging, the researchers say.
The end of the road: The future of the Pan Borneo Highway
- The construction of more than 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) of road for the Pan Borneo Highway across Malaysian Borneo holds the promise of spurring local economies for its proponents.
- But from the outset, conservationists and scientists voiced concerns that the road would displace people, harm sensitive environments, and threaten Borneo’s splendid diversity of wildlife.
- As construction moves forward, these groups are working with planners to find a way for the highway’s construction to avoid the worst environmental damage.
The Pan Borneo Highway on a collision course with elephants
- Out of the controversy surrounding the Pan Borneo Highway and its potential impacts on the environment has arisen a movement to bring conservationists, scientists and planners together to develop a plan “to maximize benefits and reduce risks” to the environment from the road’s construction.
- The chief minister of the Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo has called for the highway to avoid cutting through forests.
- But a planned stretch would slice through a protected forest reserve with a dense concentration of elephants.
- A coalition of scientific and civil society organizations has offered an alternative route that its members say would still provide the desired connection while lowering the risk of potentially deadly human-wildlife conflict.
The Pan Borneo Highway could divide threatened wildlife populations
- Crews are set to begin construction on a stretch of Malaysia’s Pan Borneo Highway in eastern Sabah state, involving the widening of the road from two lanes to four.
- The new divided highway will cross the Kinabatangan River and pass through a critical wildlife sanctuary that’s home to orangutans, elephants and proboscis monkeys, along with other wildlife species already hemmed in by the region’s oil palm plantations.
- Planners and politicians hope the road will stimulate local economies and bring in more tourists.
- Conservationists and scientists, however, are concerned that the highway could further section off animal populations and damage the current tourism infrastructure, unless certain mitigation measures are introduced.
Aimed at linking communities, Malaysian highway may damage forests
- Leaders hope that the construction of a road linking the Pan Borneo Highway between the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak will connect remote communities to markets and to each other.
- But conservationists warn that the highway will cut through some of the last remaining dense forest in Sarawak.
- In addition to the challenges of building in a rainy tropical environment, the mountainous terrain will make construction and maintenance difficult, skeptics of the road say.
The Pan Borneo Highway brings wildlife threats to nat’l park doorstep
- The southern terminus of the Pan Borneo Highway in Malaysia extends to the edge of Tanjung Datu National Park in Sarawak.
- The highway’s proponents say the road is already bringing more tourists who are eager to see the park’s wildlife to the adjacent communities, helping to boost the local economy.
- But one of the world’s rarest primates, the Bornean banded langur, resides in the park, raising concerns in the conservation community that increased access could bring poachers into the park.
Connecting an island: Traveling the Pan Borneo Highway
- The Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah are in the midst of building more than 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) of the Pan Borneo Highway.
- The goal is to boost the states’ economies and connect them with the Indonesian provinces on the island of Borneo as part of the Trans Borneo Highway.
- Advocates of the highway, including many politicians, say the upgraded, widened and in some places entirely new stretches of highway will link markets and provide a jolt to the promising tourism sector in Malaysian Borneo.
- But skeptics, including scientists and conservationists, argue that parts of the highway cut through ecologically sensitive areas and that planning prior to construction didn’t adequately account for the damage that construction could cause.
Forests and forest communities critical to climate change solutions
- A new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change highlights the importance of land use in addressing climate change.
- The restoration and protection of forests could be a critical component in strategies to mitigate climate change, say experts, but governments must halt deforestation and forest degradation to make way for farms and ranches.
- The IPCC report also acknowledges the role that indigenous communities could play.
- The forests under indigenous management often have lower deforestation and emit less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Forest loss threatens territorial gibbons in southern Borneo
- Bornean southern gibbons have the largest territories of any species in their genus, a new study has found.
- These large home ranges, combined with the species’ intense territoriality, puts it at particular risk of habitat loss as a result of deforestation and fire.
- The findings of this research demonstrate that this endangered species needs large areas of unbroken forest.
New roads in Papua New Guinea may cause ‘quantum leap’ in forest loss
- Papua New Guinea intends to nearly double its existing network of roads between now and 2022.
- A new study raises concerns about the impacts of building these roads through tropical forest environments on local communities, sensitive habitats and vulnerable species.
- The authors of the paper, published July 24 in the journal PLOS ONE, suggest that the country would reap more benefits and avoid future debt by investing in existing roads, many of which are largely unusable because of flagging maintenance.
In Nigeria, a highway threatens community and conservation interests
- Activists and affected communities in Nigeria’s Cross River state continue to protest plans to build a major highway cutting through farmland and forest that’s home to threatened species such as the Cross River gorilla.
- The federal government ordered a slew of measures to minimize the impact of the project, but two years later it remains unclear whether the developers have complied, even as they resume work.
- Environmentalists warn of a “Pandora’s box” of problems ushered in by the construction of the highway, including illegal deforestation, poaching, land grabs, micro-climate change, erosion, biodiversity loss and encroachment into protected areas.
- They’ve called on the state government to pursue alternatives to the new highway, including investing in upgrading existing road networks.
Indigenous Iban community defends rainforests, but awaits lands rights recognition
- Over the past half century the rainforests of Borneo have been logged, strip-mined, burned, and converted for monoculture plantations. The forests that local people primarily relied upon for sustenance are now felled to feed commodities into the global market.
- But the Dayak Iban of Sungai Utik community in Indonesian Borneo has managed to fend off loggers and land invaders from their forest home.
- Sungai Utik’s efforts to sustainably manage its community forest in the face of large-scale deforestation and cultural loss across Borneo have won it accolades, including the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Equator Prize last month.
- During a June 2019 visit, Mongabay spoke with Apay Janggut, or “Bandi”, the head of the Sungai Utik longhouse about his community’s traditional practices, resistance to loggers, and efforts to adapt to issues facing indigenous peoples around the world.
’Livestock revolution’ triggered decline in global pasture: Report
- Since 2000, the area of land dedicated for livestock pasture around the world has declined by 1.4 million square kilometers (540,500 square miles) — an area about the size of Peru.
- A new report attributes the contraction to more productive breeds, better animal health and higher densities of animals on similar amounts of land.
- The report’s authors say that technological solutions could help meet rising demand for meat and milk in developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, without reversing the downward trend.
Out on a limb: Unlikely collaboration boosts orangutans in Borneo
- Logging and hunting have decimated a population of Bornean orangutans in Bukit Baka Bukit Raya National Park in Indonesia.
- Help has recently come from a pair of unlikely allies: an animal welfare group and a human health care nonprofit.
- Cross-disciplinary collaboration to meet the needs of ecosystems and humans is becoming an important tool for overcoming seemingly intractable obstacles in conservation.
Dam in Ethiopia has wiped out indigenous livelihoods, report finds
- A dam in southern Ethiopia built to supply electricity to cities and control the flow of water for irrigating industrial agriculture has led to the displacement and loss of livelihoods of indigenous groups, the Oakland Institute has found.
- On June 10, the policy think tank published a report of its research, demonstrating that the effects of the Gibe III dam on the Lower Omo River continue to ripple through communities, forcing them onto sedentary farms and leading to hunger, conflict and human rights abuses.
- The Oakland Institute applauds the stated desire of the new government, which came to power in April 2018, to look out for indigenous rights.
- But the report’s authors caution that continued development aimed at increasing economic productivity and attracting international investors could further marginalize indigenous communities in Ethiopia.
Altered forests threaten sustainability of subsistence hunting
- In a commentary, two conservation scientists say that changes to the forests of Central and South America may mean that subsistence hunting there is no longer sustainable.
- Habitat loss and commercial hunting have put increasing pressure on species, leading to the loss of both biodiversity and a critical source of protein for these communities.
- The authors suggest that allowing the hunting of only certain species, strengthening parks and reserves, and helping communities find alternative livelihoods and sources of food could help address the problem, though they acknowledge the difficult nature of these solutions.
’Green’ bonds finance industrial tree plantations in Brazil
- The Environmental Paper Network (EPN), a group of some 140 NGOs with the goal of making the pulp and paper industry more sustainable, released a briefing contending that green or climate bonds issued by Fibria, a pulp and paper company, went to maintaining and expanding plantations of eucalyptus trees.
- The report suggests that the Brazilian company inflated the amount of carbon that new planting would store.
- The author of the briefing also questions the environmental benefits of maintaining industrial monocultures of eucalyptus, a tree that requires a lot of water along with herbicides, pesticides and fertilizer that can impact local ecosystems and human communities.
’Unprecedented’ loss of biodiversity threatens humanity, report finds
- The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services released a summary of far-reaching research on the threats to biodiversity on May 6.
- The findings are dire, indicating that around 1 million species of plants and animals face extinction.
- The full 1,500-page report, to be released later this year, raises concerns about the impacts of collapsing biodiversity on human well-being.
Can rice husk briquettes stem the tide of mangrove deforestation in Myanmar?
- Despite the knowledge about the role mangroves play to protect inland areas from storm swells, and a nationwide ban on logging, Myanmar continues to lose mangroves, particularly to communities in the Irrawaddy Delta where electricity is lacking and a reliance on mangroves as firewood and to make charcoal.
- An enterprising rice mill owner, U Zayar Myo, uses discarded rice husks to create compact briquettes that can be burned as an alternative fuel to mangrove wood or charcoal.
- These rice-husk briquettes are now being distributed to other businesses historically reliant on burning mangrove wood, and point to one way to reduce the rate of mangrove deforestation in Myanmar.
Deforestation diminishes access to clean water, study finds
- A recent study compared deforestation data and information on household access to clean water in Malawi.
- The scientists found that the country lost 14 percent of its forest between 2000 and 2010, which had the same effect on access to safe drinking water as a 9 percent decrease in rainfall.
- With higher rainfall variability expected in today’s changing climate, the authors suggest that a larger area of forest in countries like Malawi could be a buffer against the impacts of climate change.
Malaysian state chief: Highway construction must not destroy forest
- The chief minister of Sabah, one of two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo, said that the Pan Borneo Highway project should expand existing roads where possible to minimize environmental impact.
- A coalition of local NGOs and scientific organizations applauded the announcement, saying that it could usher in a new era of collaboration between the government and civil society to look out for Sabah’s people and forests.
- These groups have raised concerns about the impacts on wildlife and communities of the proposed path of the highway, which will cover some 5,300 kilometers (3,300 miles) in the states of Sabah and Sarawak.
In Ethiopia, women and faith drive effort to restore biodiversity
- In Addis Ababa, approximately 35 percent of the household fuelwood – mainly eucalyptus – is systematically gathered from the Entoto Mountains just outside the city.
- Ethiopia historically planted large areas with fast-growing eucalyptus, a non-native species, to meet the demand for fuelwood. But the trees’ water-hogging nature has had a destructive impact on the land.
- There are efforts to reforest areas with native species, supported by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which has a tradition of maintaining tree gardens throughout the country.
European Parliament to vote on timber legality agreement with Vietnam
- The European Parliament begins debate March 11 on a resolution to consent to the recently signed Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) with Vietnam on the trade of timber and timber products from the Southeast Asian country.
- The VPA is the result of nearly eight years of negotiations aimed at stopping the flow of illegally harvested timber into the EU.
- Members of parliament are expected to vote in favor of the resolution on March 12, though officials in the EU and outside observers have voiced concerns about the legality of the wood imported into Vietnam from other countries, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In the Solomon Islands, making amends in the name of conservation
- The Kwaio people of the Solomon Islands have been working with scientists to protect their homeland from resource extraction and development.
- But violent clashes in 1927 between the Kwaio and the colonial government created a rift between members of this tribe and the outside world.
- To heal those old wounds and continue with their conservation work, a trio of scientists joined the Kwaio in a sacred reconciliation ceremony in July 2018.
- Kwaio leaders say that the ceremony opened the door to a more peaceful future for their people.
Bans on the bird trade in South America yield mixed results
- After decades of rampant exports, several South American countries banned the international trade of wild-caught birds.
- In some cases, in concert with conservation, the bans have helped bird populations recover, leading several countries to invest in birdwatching tourism.
- However, the bans have also led to a significant illegal trade on the continent and a shift of the economic benefits from the wild bird trade to other countries.
Saving the forests of the Congo Basin: Q&A with author Meindert Brouwer
- Central African Forests Forever, first published in 2017, takes readers to the heart of the continent, introducing them to the people and wildlife of this region.
- Its author, independent communications consultant Meindert Brouwer, says the book also functions as a tool for sharing information about efforts to address poverty and environmental issues in the region.
- Mongabay spoke with Brouwer to learn more about his motivations and the reception of his work in Central Africa.
Solomon Islands province bans logging in bid to protect environment
- The leaders of Central Island province, part of the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific, have decided not to issue new business licenses to logging and mining companies following a local petition and recent reports detailing the lack of sustainability and legality in the country’s logging sector.
- Local and international organizations have blamed unsustainable and corrupt logging practices for destroying the islands’ sensitive habitats and creating civil strife among the people who live there.
- Provincial governments in the Solomon Islands lack the power to block logging outright, leading Central Island province to take the licensing approach to stop new operations.
The man who made Ecuador’s wooden Tigua masks famous
- The 73-year-old artisan, woodworker, and painter takes his inspiration from Andean life for his artwork and colorful wooden masks.
- Long a part of traditional indigenous culture, popular use of the masks has declined over time but the art of the craft remains very much alive.
Rapid population drop weakened the Grauer’s gorilla gene pool
- The loss of 80 percent of all Grauer’s, or eastern lowland, gorillas in the past two decades has led to a severe reduction in the subspecies’ genetic diversity, new research has found.
- That slide could make it more difficult for the fewer than 4,000 remaining Grauer’s gorillas to adapt to changes in their environment.
- Scientists look for signs of hope in the animal’s sister subspecies, the mountain gorilla, which, studies suggest, has adapted to its own low levels of genetic diversity.
Indigenous peoples denounce ongoing land rights violations in Ecuador
- Indigenous leaders in Ecuador say that a lack of progress toward addressing key issues stands in the way of their fundamental territorial rights.
- Concerns include resource extraction projects initiated without proper prior consent and consultation, as well as the activation of several mining and oil concessions in Ecuador.
- The outcry comes at a time when indigenous peoples are increasingly being recognized as key partners in ensuring the protection of the world’s tropical forests.
The secret deal to destroy paradise
- “The secret deal to destroy paradise” is the third installment of Indonesia for Sale, an in-depth series on the opaque deals underpinning Indonesia’s deforestation and land-rights crisis.
- The series is the product of 22 months of investigative reporting across Indonesia, interviewing fixers, middlemen, lawyers and companies involved in land deals, and those most affected by them.
- This article is based on a cross-border collaboration between Mongabay, Tempo, Malaysiakini and Earthsight’s The Gecko Project.
Rock icon Roger Waters denounces Chevron in Ecuador
- During a tour in Latin America and Mexico, the Pink Floyd frontman stopped over in Ecuador to call for justice in a decades-long battle between the community and an oil giant.
- Nearly 25 years ago, 30,000 community plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against Chevron for environmental damage by its subsidiary Texaco. The $9.5 billion award to plaintiffs in the case has not been paid.
- Waters, a longtime grassroots activist who is outspoken on a variety of political and human rights issues, says the Ecuador Chevron case has global significance.
Thousands of radiated tortoises seized from traffickers in Madagascar
- More than 7,000 critically endangered radiated tortoises were confiscated by authorities from suspected wildlife traffickers in Madagascar on Oct. 24.
- The seizure happened in the same area where a similar bust, involving nearly 10,000 tortoises of the same species, took place in April.
- The NGO Turtle Survival Alliance is working with the Madagascar environment ministry to care for the surviving tortoises.
Chinese demand wiping out forests in the Solomon Islands: New report
- Logging companies are harvesting timber from the forests of the Solomon Islands at about 19 times the sustainable rate, according to an analysis by the watchdog NGO Global Witness.
- More than 80 percent of the Solomons’ log exports go to China.
- Global Witness is calling on China to build on its efforts to develop its “Green Supply Chain” by requiring companies to verify that the timber they import comes from sustainable and legal sources.
Fire fundamentally alters carbon dynamics in the Amazon
- With higher temperatures and increasingly severe droughts resulting from climate change, fires are becoming a more frequent phenomenon in the Amazon.
- New research finds that fires fundamentally change the structure of the forest, leading it to stockpile less carbon even decades after a burn.
- The research also shows that the burning of dead organic matter in the understory can release far more carbon into the atmosphere than previously thought.
To conserve West Papua, start with land rights (commentary)
- West Papua Province in Indonesia retains over 90 per cent of its forest cover, as well as some of the world’s most biologically diverse marine areas.
- The drive to become a conservation province, however, runs the risk of repeating past mistakes that have disadvantaged indigenous communities and left their customary land rights unrecognized.
- We recommend that the recognition of customary land and resource rights should be prioritized, followed by strengthening the management capacity of customary institutions while improving the markets and value for forest-maintaining community enterprise, as we illustrate with the District of Fakfak.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
How a national reserve stopped the extinction of the Peruvian vicuña
- In the 1960s, the total number of vicuñas in Peru was approximately 5,000.
- The community of Lucanas was able to overcome violence from internal armed conflicts, and now those in the community use vicuña fur from Pampa Galeras National Reserve.
- Every year, the Lucanas community exports 1,000 kilograms (about 2,200 pounds) of vicuña fur.
- The National Service of Natural Protected Areas (SERNANP) will give a “green seal” to the fur sheared off the vicuñas by the community for their outstanding conservation practices.
Forests and indigenous rights land $459M commitment
- A group of 17 philanthropic foundations has committed nearly half a billion dollars in support of land-based solutions to climate change and the recognition of indigenous peoples’ and traditional communities’ collective land rights and resource management.
- The announcement is notable because it brings together a range of philanthropies that have often taken a siloed approach to tackling the world’s social and environmental problems.
- The pledge, which includes both previous commitments and new money, raises the profile of two often overlooked opportunities in climate change mitigation: forests, which could help meet up to a third of global emissions targets by 2030, and indigenous and local communities, whose lands comprise nearly a sixth of global forest cover.
- The foundations signed an agreement stating five shared priorities, ranging from the rights of indigenous communities to transitioning toward more sustainable food systems.
Palm oil giant’s claim it can’t control Liberian subsidiary a ‘red herring,’ NGO says
- The Forest Peoples Programme, an NGO, recently filed five new complaints against palm oil giant Golden Agri-Resources. The complaints were filed in the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, or RSPO, of which the company is a member.
- One of the complaints targets the company’s Liberian subsidiary, Golden Veroleum, which recently withdrew from the RSPO after losing an appeal against a different complaint filed against it.
- The Forest Peoples Programme says it is egregious for Golden Agri to stay in the RSPO while its own subsidiary violates the organization’s standards. A spokeswoman for Golden Agri-Resources said the company has “no management control” over its Liberian subsidiary.
Study finds widespread degradation, deforestation in African woodlands
- New research has found that deforestation rates between 2007 and 2010 in the woodlands of southern Africa were five times greater than previously thought.
- Similarly, carbon losses from the region during that time period were three to six times higher.
- The study used radar data, as opposed to visual satellite imagery, to measure the biomass found in southern Africa’s woodlands.
- Around 17 percent of the region’s area was degraded during the time period, the researchers found.
Drone used to confirm existence of uncontacted Amazon tribe (video)
- The Brazilian government used a drone to help confirm the presence of an uncontacted indigenous group deep in the Amazon rainforest.
- FUNAI, Brazil’s indigenous affairs agency, undertook an expedition to an area near the Brazilian border with Peru to confirm the presence of voluntarily isolated peoples along the Juruazinho River.
- To confirm the presence of the group without encroaching on their territory, FUNAI flew a drone over the forest and photographed huts and crops amid a section of felled trees.
- The drone also filmed two individuals walking, one of whom was carrying a spear or pole.
In Brazil, a forest community helps seed new trees far and wide
- Brazil’s Atlantic Forest is dotted with quilombos, communities originally founded by former slaves, some of which have been around for more than 300 years.
- Following the example of indigenous communities in the Xingu area of Mato Grosso state, quilombos in São Paulo state’s Vale do Ribeira region are collecting and selling seeds as a source of income.
- They ship the seeds by mail, in mixed batches called muvuca, to landowners who use them to reforest degraded lands through direct seeding.
- The project has not only helped financially empower the quilombos, but also raised the communities’ understanding and appreciation for the native trees and plants of their land.
Recovering conservationist: Q&A with orangutan ecologist June Mary Rubis
- The rainforest in the Malaysian state of Sarawak is one of last remaining habitats of the nearly extinct Bornean orangutan.
- Orangutan conservation efforts have made the region a top priority for protecting the iconic species, but Malaysian conservationist June Mary Rubis says these efforts often sideline the indigenous peoples who live along with the great apes.
- Mongabay spoke with Rubis after she gave the keynote speech at the recent conference of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation, in which she reflected on mainstream conservation narratives, politics, and power relations around orangutan conservation in Sarawak and elsewhere in Borneo.
- Rubis says she believes indigenous knowledge is crucial for the success of conservation and community development in orangutan landscapes.
Community vs. company: A tiny town in Ecuador battles a palm oil giant
- In 2000, palm oil company Energy & Palma bought some land in the district of Esmeraldas in northern Ecuador. This land is home to the Afro-Ecuadorian community of Wimbi, a town of some 400 people settled in the 19th century.
- The situation came to a head in 2015 when judges in the provincial court of Esmeraldas ruled in favor of the company and ordered the evacuation of Wimbi residents. In 2016, Energy & Palmas began clearing the land for an oil palm plantation.
- Wimbi community members refused to leave, forcing the company to vacate the area and agree to not develop it. Residents say that the land sale, although legal in the eyes of the court, is invalid as only one person in the community agreed to it. Energy & Palmas retains its land rights.
- Researchers say Afro-Ecuadorian communities have lost over 30,000 hectares of ancestral land since the 1990s. They found palm oil companies have used several tactics in order to acquire land, including buying it through intermediaries, buying from the community directly, invasion, and using pressure and threats.
‘I can’t get out’: Farmers feel the pressure as Ecuador’s palm oil sector grows
- The first commercial oil palm trees were planted in 1953. Since then, Ecuador has become Latin America’s second largest producer of oil palm, and the world’s sixth largest.
- The region comprising the canton of La Concordia is one of the country’s primary centers of production. Here, oil palm plantations were cultivated on land already degraded as small farmers sought a more profitable crop.
- But a volatile market and a deadly disease are cutting deep into the pockets of oil palm farmers in La Concordia who, because of oil palm’s long harvest cycle, worry they’re locked into a doomed investment.
- Meanwhile, conservationists are racing to protect rainforest as oil palm plantations expand in other parts of Ecuador.
In Peru, coca puts one of the world’s best coffee crops at risk
- Of the more than 8,400 hectares (nearly 21,000 acres) of coffee planted, only 2,330 hectares (about 5,700 acres) remain in operation.
- A buffer zone around Bahuaja-Sonene National Park has been impacted: Drug trafficking has expanded into the protected area, damaging more than 400 hectares (over 980 acres) of important biological corridors.
- Coffee production of the area’s central coffee cooperative, Cecovasa, has dropped from 8.5 million pounds to 600,000 pounds, jeopardizing the group’s survival.
Rangers face a ‘toxic mix’ of mental strain and lack of support
- Wildlife rangers are facing numerous psychological pressures leading to potentially serious mental health implications.
- Rangers tackling wildlife crime and defending natural habitats in parts of Africa and Asia are frequently subjected to violent confrontations inside and outside their work.
- Many rangers see their families as little as once a year, causing immense stress to personal relationships.
- There is currently very little awareness of the mental strain placed on rangers, and a dearth of research into the potential mental health issues they face.
Colombia’s supreme court orders government to stop Amazon deforestation
- Colombia’s supreme court granted protections, filed by 25 children and other young people, that affirm that deforestation in the Colombian Amazon violates their rights to health and life.
- In the ruling, the supreme court ordered the president of Colombia and environmental authorities to create an action plan to protect this important natural area.
- This article is a journalistic collaboration between Mongabay Latam and Semana Sostenible of Colombia.
For the Caiçaras, environmental laws in Brazil at odds with tradition
- The origin of the Caiçaras trace back to the early mixture of indigenous tribes, European settlers and African slaves in Brazil.
- For the last 300 years the Caiçaras subsisted on fishing and farming in one of the best conserved stretches of Atlantic Forest.
- Confined between the Atlantic Ocean and the Serra do Mar mountain range, Caiçaras lived in relative isolation until the 1970s, when the creation of the BR-101 road opened the doors to mass tourism.
- In just the last few decades, real estate speculation and the enforcement of strict environmental laws have threatened the Caiçara’s traditional way of life.
Papuan chef Charles Toto serves up sustainability and environmental protection in a platter
- Charles Toto is the founder of the Jungle Chef Community, a network of enthusiasts from across the Indonesian region of Papua who promote sustainable living and environmental protection through local cuisine.
- Toto came up with the idea after seeing foreign documentary makers and tour groups embarking on weeks-long treks in the Papuan wilderness with nothing more than instant and canned food.
- Over the years, he has learned to make the best use of the ingredients served up by the forest and the sea, and has taken his unique mission to culinary shows across Indonesia and abroad.
- But for Toto and his group, the opening up of Papua’s forests to palm oil and other commercial operators, aided by a government-backed infrastructure push, threatens the region’s natural wealth and heritage.
Island logging must go beyond current ‘best practices’ to avoid erosion: New study
- In a new study, a team of ecologists modeled what would happen if companies were allowed to log the forests of Kolombangara Island under several management scenarios, including those designed to minimize soil erosion and protect water quality.
- As the model simulated higher proportions of land clearance, the most stringent methods couldn’t stop the soil erosion that would foul clean water and agricultural land for the island’s people, as well as the habitats of local aquatic plants and animals.
- The Kolombangara Island Biodiversity Conservation Association is spearheading an effort to get intact forests at elevations higher than 400 meters (1,310 feet) designated as a national park on the island.
Greenpeace International ends its Forest Stewardship Council membership
- Greenpeace International announced on March 26 that it would not renew its membership with the FSC.
- The environmental organization says the FSC is not meeting its aims of protecting forests and ensuring that human rights are respected.
- Greenpeace and the FSC both say they intend to continue to engage with each other, despite the end of a long formal relationship.
Indigenous Amazonian women demand end to extraction
- After long journeys by foot and bus, the women gathered in Ecuador’s capitol Quito to protest last week and call for a meeting with Ecuador’s president, Lenin Moreno.
- After several days of protest, Moreno agreed to a meeting with the group today.
- Amazonian leaders say they plan to discuss their mandate, particularly the sexual exploitation and harassment they face due to extractive activities in the Amazon and the loss of economic opportunity.
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