topic: Land Grabbing

topic: Land Grabbing

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Amazon illegal miners bypass enforcement by smuggling gold into Venezuela
- Criminal groups are operating to smuggle illegal gold from the Brazilian Amazon into Venezuela, where the metal is laundered and exported overseas.
- Illegal gold traders adopted this new strategy after Brazil’s administration increased control over the metal’s commerce.
- Mongabay followed the steps of Adriano Aguiar de Castro, who, according to authorities, jumped from one gold laundering scheme to another and now is also involved with gold smuggling into Venezuela.
- The need to cross national borders brings gold trading groups closer to organized crime and poses new challenges to authorities.

Illegal gold mining creeps within a kilometer of Amazon’s second-tallest tree
- Prosecutors in Brazil’s Amapá state have warned of an illegal gold mine operating just 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) from second-highest known tree in the Brazilian Amazon — an 85-meter (279-foot) red angelim.
- Illegal gold miners have been moving into Amapá in the wake of federal raids on mining hotspots in other parts of the Brazilian Amazon, including the Yanomami and Munduruku Indigenous territories.
- A surge in the gold price has fueled the miners’ destructive potential and their capacity to open new areas in highly isolated places.

Mongabay investigation spurs Brazil crackdown on illegal cattle in Amazon’s Arariboia territory
- An ongoing Brazilian government operation launched in February has removed between 1,000 and 2,000 illegal head of cattle from the Arariboia Indigenous Territory in the Amazon Rainforest.
- In June 2024, Mongabay published the results of a yearlong investigation, revealing that large portions of the Arariboia territory have been taken over for commercial cattle ranching, in violation of the Constitution; the project received funding and editorial support from the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network.
- “Your report is very similar to what we’re actually finding in the field. It showed an accurate reality and this helped us a lot in practical terms,” Marcos Kaingang, national secretary for Indigenous territorial rights at the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, told Mongabay in a video interview.
- The investigation also revealed details that authorities said they hadn’t been aware of, including the illegal shifting of the territory’s border markers, Kaingang said: “We brought it up as an important point in our discussions and we verified that the [markers] had in fact been changed.”

After decade of delays, pressure mounts on Indonesia to pass Indigenous rights bill
- Indonesia’s Indigenous rights bill has been stalled in parliament for more than a decade despite repeated promises to pass it.
- Activists say the delay reflects a lack of political will and a reluctance on the part of lawmakers and government officials to cede power to Indigenous communities.
- The bill would secure legal recognition of Indigenous land, culture and self-governance, reducing conflict and criminalization.
- Civil society groups plan to mobilize thousands of protesters if the bill isn’t passed by August this year.

For scandal-ridden carbon credit industry, Amazon restoration offers redemption
- As REDD projects around the world face setbacks, restoration projects in the Amazon are flourishing as a means of reviving market confidence in forest-based carbon credits.
- In Brazil, the golden goose for restoration, this business model has attracted companies from the mining and beef industries, banks, startups, and big tech.
- Federal and state governments are granting public lands to restoration companies to recover degraded areas.
- Restoration projects require substantial investments and long-term commitment, face challenges such as increasingly severe fire seasons, and deal with uncertainty over the future of the carbon market.

After outcry, Brazil Supreme Court nixes proposal for mining on Indigenous lands
- Brazil’s Supreme Court backed down and withdrew its proposal to open up Indigenous territories to mining and economic activities from a controversial bill that critics say violates the Constitution.
- On the same day, the Federal Attorney General’s Office presented a draft presidential decree also excluding mining activities on Indigenous territories but allowing tourism and other activities led by Indigenous communities.
- Both drafts would keep contentious articles regarding compensation for non-Indigenous settlers, which could make the land demarcation process unfeasible, critics say.
- The proposals are the outcome of a yearslong legal battle centered in the highly controversial time frame thesis, aiming to nullify any Indigenous land demarcation claims to areas that weren’t physically occupied before the 1988 Constitution.

Brazil plans new Amazon routes linking the Pacific & China’s New Silk Road
- New roads and riverways integrating the Brazilian Amazon and ports on the Pacific coast of South America are expected to be announced in 2025, reducing shipment costs to supply China.
- Brazil’s plans to build ports and roads to help move grains, beef and iron ore from the rainforest echo a development vision that dates back to the military dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s.
- Environmentalists warn the new routes boost deforestation and encourage land-grabbers and ranchers to keep exploring the Amazon as a commodity hub.

Indigenous communities in Indonesia demand halt to land-grabbing government projects
- More than 250 members of Indigenous and local communities gathered in Indonesia’s Merauke district to demand an end to government-backed projects of strategic national importance, or PSN, which they say have displaced them, fueled violence, and stripped them of their rights.
- PSN projects, including food estates, plantations and industrial developments, have triggered land conflicts affecting 103,000 families and 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of land, with Indigenous communities reporting forced evictions, violence and deforestation, particularly in the Papua region.
- In Merauke itself, the government plans to clear 3 million hectares (7.4 million acres) for rice and sugarcane plantations, despite Indigenous protests; some community members, like Vincen Kwipalo, face threats and violence for refusing to sell their ancestral land, as clan divisions deepen.
- Officials have offered no concrete solutions, with a senior government researcher warning that continued PSN expansion in Papua could escalate socioecological conflicts, further fueling resentment toward Jakarta and potentially leading to large-scale unrest.

Indonesia’s Indigenous Akit community faces exploitation & land loss (commentary)
- For the Akit tribe of Sumatra and countless other Indigenous communities, their land is more than what provides their livelihoods. Rather, it is their past, present, and future, and more than that, it is like their body, a new op-ed explains.
- But the Akit community has steadily seen rights to its territory eroded, as the land continues to fall into the possession of private companies.
- “Respecting Indigenous self-determination is not just a matter of justice, but a journey to a more resilient future,” the authors argue.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

‘Unprecedented’ Supreme Court bill threatens Indigenous rights in Brazil
- Presented in February by Supreme Court Justice Gilmar Mendes, a draft bill violates Indigenous people’s constitutional rights by stripping their veto power against impactful activities on their ancestral lands and adding further obstacles to an already long land demarcation process.
- Critics say the Supreme Federal Court’s act is “unprecedented” in Brazil’s history by an institution that’s entitled to protect Indigenous and minorities’ rights — as dictated by the Constitution.
- The move comes months after the same court decided those Indigenous rights couldn’t be stripped by a legislative bill, with the support of Mendes.
- Critics say the bill “brings together the main threats to Indigenous peoples” and “directly contradicts the Brazilian Constitution, the decisions of the Supreme Court itself and international human rights law.”

The rough road to sustainable farming in an Amazon deforestation hotspot
- Far from international forums and economical centers, locals in one of the Amazon deforestation hotspots seek alternatives to agribusiness and gold mines.
- Mongabay went to Pará state’s southwest and found examples of people struggling to keep sustainable initiatives in a region dominated by soy, cattle, gold and logging.
- Despite the bioeconomy buzz, people working on the ground say they miss support from banks and public administrations.

A Cameroon stadium spurs one community’s fight over ancestral lands
- On the outskirts of Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, members of the local Yanda community say the construction of a large multisports complex has left them without their traditional forest lands, where their ancestors were buried.
- The forest previously provided Yanda families with trees, plants and animals for their food and medicine.
- The land, they say, was razed for the construction of the Paul Biya Omnisports Complex, which hosted the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations; today, the stadium stands empty.
- The Yanda community is asking the government for compensation, but the people have no formal titles to their ancestral lands — a common problem for traditional communities in similar situations seeking land rights or compensation for their eviction.

Brazil communities accuse companies of ‘green grabbing’ for wind energy
- In Brazil, community residents say the Italian energy company Enel and the Brazilian Maestro Holding de Energia have stripped them of their territory in order to pursue renewable energy projects.
- Experts call this trend “green grabbing,” a process by which energy companies obtain access to large swaths of common land to produce clean renewable energy.
- A months long investigation uncovered multiple potential cases involving land-grabbing by companies that acquire public land used by residents, exploiting the fact that many people in these areas don’t have documents to prove they own a piece of land and don’t officially register the geographical boundaries of the territories they occupy or own.
- While no source interviewed by this investigation contested the importance of renewable energies, experts, Indigenous and traditional communities, policymakers and government officials all agreed that doing so must account for the social and political realities of local residents.

Yanomami youth turn to drones to watch their Amazon territory
- In the Yanomami Indigenous Land, the largest in Brazil, leaders believe in their youths’ skills to maintain their ancestors’ legacy and safeguard the future of a sprawling territory covering almost the size of Portugal.
- Located in the Brazilian Amazon between the states of Roraima and Amazonas, the Indigenous territory faced a severe humanitarian and environmental crisis with the invasion of around 20,000 illegal miners in search of gold and cassiterite.
- Trained youths can now act as multipliers of drone monitoring and watch the land against new invasions.

Indonesia signs agrarian reform commitment amid rising land equity woes
- The Indonesian government and civil society groups signed a joint statement on the first day of the Asia Land Forum marking a shared commitment to fast-track agrarian reform aimed at alleviating poverty and achieving food self-sufficiency.
- This comes amid increasing land ownership inequality, land-grabbing, and agrarian conflicts in Indonesia, where up to 68% of lands are controlled by 1% of the population.
- President Prabowo Subianto has prioritized food and energy self-sufficiency and aims to expand harvestable lands, but critics worry about an increase in corporate-led agricultural projects.

Endemic fish wiped out in Brazilian Amazon hydroelectric dam area, study finds
- The construction of the Balbina hydroelectric dam in the Brazilian Amazon led to the loss of seven endemic fish species in the Uatumã River, researchers have found.
- The hydroelectric dam has transformed the Uatumã River’s fast-flowing habitats into static environments, making them unsuitable for certain fish species.
- Researchers call for the investigation of unaffected tributaries, such as the Jatapu River, as possible refuges for the missing species and future conservation efforts.
- The study underscores the broader threat of hydropower dams and other environmental stressors, like industrial fishing and climate change, to Amazonian fish populations.

As the rainforest gets drier, Amazon Indigenous groups thirst for clean water
- The 2024 extreme and historical drought that hit the Amazon exposed a chronic problem: access to drinking water and sanitation in Indigenous lands, where only a third of households have proper water supply systems.
- In some Amazon rivers in Brazil, cases of diseases related to inadequate basic sanitation, such as malaria and acute diarrhea, have been increasing amid climate change and population growth.
- Indigenous organizations have been demanding the implementation of adapted infrastructures in the villages, such as water tanks, wells, cesspools and septic tanks.
- The Brazilian federal government already has resources and plans to begin addressing these issues.

Mining dredges return to Amazon River’s main tributary, months after crackdown
- Five months after a major operation by federal forces, illegal mining dredges are back on the Madeira River in the Brazilian Amazon.
- The return of the floating structures shows the resilience of illegal gold mining in the Amazon, which destroys the riverbeds and contaminates the water with mercury.
- As the federal administration closes miners’ siege of Indigenous territories, the illegal miners are migrating to less-monitored areas, experts says.

Handcrafted woodwork helps save an Amazonian reserve, one tree at a time
- A community in the Brazilian Amazon is transforming fallen trunks and dead trees into everyday items and art pieces.
- Household utensils, furniture, miniature trees and jewelry made with forest seeds are some items being produced by women and youth in the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve.
- The woodshop sits in a region where rubber tappers have fought for environmental and labor rights for ago, and which still faces deforestation pressure.

Amazon states lead rebellion on environmental enforcement
- Brazilian Amazon states are leading an offensive against environmental regulations in the Amazon and beyond.
- The movement gained momentum in October when Brazil’s granary, Mato Grosso state, approved a bill undermining a voluntary agreement to protect the Amazon from soy expansion.
- Before Mato Grosso, other Amazon states like Acre and Rondônia had already approved bills reducing protected areas and weakening the fight against illegal mining.
- With its economy highly reliant on agribusiness, Mato Grosso is considered a successful model for other parts of the Amazon.

No justice in sight for World Bank project-affected communities in Liberia
- With one year delay, the International Finance Corporation has submitted its response to an investigation of human rights violations at a rubber project in Liberia to the World Bank’s board.
- While the case was pending, Socfin, the parent company of Salala Rubber Corporation, sold the plantation, creating uncertainty over its commitment to taking responsibility for failures identified by the IFC’s Compliance Advisor Ombudsman.
- Affected communities and civil society in Liberia say the IFC has watered down recommendations from its ombudsman and fear the change of ownership will prevent accountability.

Yanomami sees success two years into Amazon miner evictions, but fears remain
- Brazil’s federal government celebrated a decrease in deaths and the decline in gold mining two years after agents started to evict invaders on the Yanomami Indigenous territory in the Amazon.
- The Yanomami report that rivers are cleaner, and people are finally healthy enough to work in fields and resume rituals.
- Once estimated as 20,000 in the territory, hundreds of illegal miners still remain and may expand business at the slightest sign of the security forces withdrawing.

Probe details the playbook of one of Amazon’s top land grabbers
- Professional land grabbers operating in the Brazilian Amazon have sophisticated strategies to steal and deforest public lands and get away with it.
- According to the Federal Police, Bruno Heller is one of Amazon’s largest deforesters and relied on legal and technical advice, including a fake contract, bribing police officers, and near-real-time monitoring of deforestation work through satellite imagery, investigators said.
- Low penalties and hurdles faced by federal bodies in seizing back stolen lands from criminals have spurred the land-grabbing industry in Brazil.

NGOs raise concerns over Borneo pilot of ‘jurisdictional’ certification for palm oil
- A new report by a coalition of Indonesian environmental groups reiterates concerns over a long-running trial of “jurisdictional” certification conducted by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).
- The trial underway in Seruyan district, Central Kalimantan province, intends to apply the RSPO standards to the entire district, rather than the more costly, but more specific, vetting of individual plantations or corporate entities.
- A 2017 investigation by Mongabay and The Gecko Project documented how former Seruyan leader Darwan Ali blanketed the district in oil palm plantation concessions beginning in the mid-2000s, issuing licenses to many companies set up in the name of his relatives and cronies.
- Civil society researchers say they worry that a jurisdictional certificate for Seruyan could gloss over long-standing and ongoing land conflicts, and that the palm oil produced from such plantations could enter “green” supply chains.

After a searing Amazon fire season, experts warn of more in 2025
- South America recorded the highest number of fire outbreaks in 14 years in 2024, with Brazil at the epicenter of the crisis.
- In the Amazon, fire outbreaks grew out of control even amid a sharp reduction in deforestation rates, indicating deforesters are relying on fire as a new technique to clear land.
- Experts are urging more investment in fire prevention since the rainforest may face another intense fire season in 2025.

Indonesian president says palm oil expansion won’t deforest because ‘oil palms have leaves’
- Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto has called for the expansion of oil palm plantations, saying any criticism that this will cause deforestation is nonsense because oil palms are trees too.
- The remarks have prompted criticism that they go against the established science showing how plantations have driven deforestation, biodiversity loss and carbon emissions.
- Experts have long called for the palm oil industry to improve yields at existing plantations rather than expand into forests and other ecosystems.
- But the main industry association has welcomed the president’s call, and even the Ministry of Forestry under Prabowo has changed its logo from a forest tree to something that resembles oil palm.

The Amazon in 2025: Challenges and hopes as the rainforest takes center stage
- The Amazon Rainforest, where next year’s COP30 climate summit will be hosted, is reeling from two consecutive years of severe drought, with major rivers at record lows, leading to water shortages and transportation disruptions for local communities.
- While deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon plunged during that period, the rainforest remains under threat from land grabbing, illegal gold mining, diminishing rainfall, and outbreaks of fire, many of them ignited by criminals.
- The world’s greatest tropical rainforest has also drawn the interest of carbon traders, but evidence of fraud within some carbon credit projects unearthed by Mongabay highlights the need for greater transparency and accountability in the carbon market.
- Amid all these threats, reforestation and restoration projects led by Indigenous communities and conservation organizations offer hope for a sustainable future for the Amazon.

Indonesia risks carbon ‘backfire’ with massive deforestation for sugarcane
- A plan to clear 2 million hectares (5 million acres) of forest in Indonesian Papua for sugarcane plantations would nearly double Indonesia’s total greenhouse gas emissions, a new report warns.
- It says the project, affecting an area half the size of Switzerland, would worsen the global climate crisis and impact Indigenous communities in Papua.
- Local communities have long protested the project, but the government has persisted undeterred, razing their farming plots and hunting grounds in the pursuit of what it says is food security.
- However, Indigenous rights and agrarian activists have called for the project to be replaced with a restorative economic model, one that empowers local farmers and communities through sustainable livelihoods that keep the forests standing.

Brazil’s Lula approves 13 Indigenous lands after much delay, promises more to come
- President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took almost two years to formalize the demarcation of 13 new Indigenous territories, a goal he was expected to complete within his first 100 days, much to the frustration of traditional communities who also await the promised demarcation of the Xukuru-Kariri Indigenous Territory.
- Demarcation processes in Brazil depend on the willingness of the federal administration and often take more than 30 years to complete; none were completed under Lula’s predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.
- For traditional communities, this long wait is often marked by violence and prejudice, as outsiders coveting their land and resources mount invasions and land grabs.
- Lula blamed the delay on a controversial bill passed by pro-agribusiness legislators, designed to make it harder for Indigenous communities to claim territory, but has promised to speed up demarcations over the next two years.

Brazil’s big push for tropical forest funding gets support for 2025 debut
- As host of 2025’s COP30 climate summit, Brazil is working on two complementary finance mechanisms, hoping to reward tropical forest conservation worldwide. Both rely on the concept of investing money and using profits for forest protection.
- Twelve countries, including Brazil, are currently discussing the Tropical Forest Finance Facility (TFFF) framework, which is expected to be concluded by next January.
- Its sister initiative, the Tropical Forest Mechanism (TFM), proposes that highly polluting industries donate a minimum fraction of their annual earnings to forest conservation.

Brazil’s illegal gold miners carve out new Amazon hotspots in conservation units
- President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration reduced the expansion of illegal gold mining in the Brazilian Amazon, but miners keep finding new sites.
- In 15 conservation units, illegal gold miners destroyed 330 hectares (815 acres) in only two months.
- According to experts, gold miners expelled from Indigenous territories may be migrating to conservation units.
- Alliances with narco mafias and the rise in gold prices are obstacles to fighting illegal mining.

In the Philippines, persecuted Lumads push for Indigenous schools to be reopened
- Five years after government forces began shutting down their schools for alleged links to communist rebels, thousands of Indigenous Lumads remain dispersed and deprived of justice.
- A group of 13 were earlier this year convicted on kidnapping and child trafficking charges after arranging the evacuation of students from a school targeted by paramilitaries, but have mounted an appeal.
- Without the opportunity for an education, many have returned to working the fields with their families, while young women have been married off by their parents to pay off debts.
- In the Lumads’ ancestral home in the country’s south, investors such as miners and property developers are moving in, leading to land grabs.

Illegal timber from Amazon carbon credit projects reached Europe, U.S.
- Amazon timber from carbon credit projects targeted by the Brazilian Federal Police was sold to companies in Europe and the United States.
- The group is suspected of land-grabbing and laundering timber from Indigenous territories and protected areas.
- Most of the exported timber belongs to the almost-extinct ipê species and was sent to a company in Portugal.
- The group is also suspected of using fake documents to launder cattle raised in illegally deforested areas.

Recycling gold can tackle illegal mining in the Amazon, but is no silver bullet
- Artisanal and small-scale gold mining in Brazil’s Tapajós River Basin emits 16 metric tons of CO2 per kilo of gold produced, and 2.5 metric tons of mercury annually, a study has found.
- Researchers suggest that recycling gold could dramatically reduce harmful emissions, along with other solutions such as formalizing mining, adopting clean technologies, and improving gold supply chain transparency.
- Economic dependence, mercury accessibility, and a demand for gold sustain small-scale gold mining, while enforcement risks pushing miners into ecologically sensitive areas.
- In November, Brazil launched a federal operation in the Tapajós Basin to expel illegal gold miners from the Munduruku Indigenous Territory, imposing millions of reais in fines to curb the damage caused by gold mining.

Loggers and carbon projects forge odd partnerships in the Brazilian Amazon
- Mongabay examined four REDD+ projects in Pará state and found that all were developed in partnership with sawmill owners with a long history of environmental fines.
- The projects were developed by Brazil’s largest carbon credit generator, Carbonext, a company linked to a major fraud involving REDD+ projects and illegal loggers in Amazonas state.
- According to experts, REDD+ projects may have become a new business opportunity for individuals who have profited from deforestation for decades.

Brazil plans new reserves to curb deforestation near contested Amazon roads
- Unallocated public areas account for 28% of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, and the destruction of these lands keeps rising even as rates plummet across other parts of the rainforest.
- To tackle the problem, Brazil’s federal government plans to convert lands around controversial Amazonian highways into protected areas.
- One of the priority areas is along the BR-319 highway, where experts warn deforestation may increase fourfold under another government plan to pave the highway.
- Despite the advances in comparison with former President Jair Bolsonaro, Indigenous and land reform movements are unhappy with the pace of land designation under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Researchers find high levels of mercury in Amazon’s Madeira River water & fish
- In a groundbreaking expedition, researchers from Harvard and Amazonas State University began monitoring water quality and mercury contamination in the Amazon Basin’s largest tributary.
- The Madeira River Basin has been heavily impacted by human actions, such as hydropower plants, deforestation and illegal gold mining, which degrade its ecosystems.
- Initial results from Harvard reveal high levels of mercury in the Madeira, although still below the limit recommended by Brazil’s authorities.
- Predatory fish species showed mercury levels above the recommended limit, while scalefish traditionally consumed by riverine populations were below.

Prosecutors urge suspension of Amazon carbon projects, citing Mongabay investigation
- Brazilian prosecutors asked the Amazonas state government to suspend carbon projects in 21 conservation units.
- According to the lawsuit, the government had failed to consult local communities.
- The filing mentioned Mongabay’s investigation linking some of Amazon’s largest REDD+ projects to an illegal logging scheme.

Communities band together to save besieged reserve in Bolivia
- Bolivia’s Tucabaca Valley Municipal Wildlife Reserve has been beset by clearing and fires over the past several years.
- Now, mining, infrastructure development and land trafficking are adding to the pressure faced by the reserve.
- Residents of nearby communities have formed an association called Movement in Defense of the Tucabaca Valley.
- In June, a delegation from the Movement visited the Tucabaca reserve to assess the damage.

Hopes and fears for the Amazon: Interview with botanist Hans ter Steege
- Dutch researcher and tree expert Hans ter Steege is the founder of the Amazon Tree Diversity Network, which brings together hundreds of scientists studying the rainforest to map and understand the region’s biodiversity.
- Ter Steege says the rainforest is in danger of collapse: If the deforestation in Brazil’s Pará state continues at the rate of the year 2000, he warns, “then our models show there will be hardly anything left by 2050.”
- Large trees are dying faster in the Amazon, he said, as they face a greater evaporation demand, which they can no longer meet with the water they extract from the soil, as there are more droughts and less rainfall.
- If the forest collapses, Brazil’s aerial water supply system — and its agriculture — will collapse, Ter Steege says.

‘Five years and no justice’ as trial over Indigenous forest guardian’s killing faces delays
- Nov. 1 marked the five-year anniversary of the killing of Indigenous forest guardian Paulo Paulino Guajajara and the attempted killing of fellow guardian Laércio Guajajara in an alleged ambush by loggers in the Arariboia Indigenous Territory in the Brazilian Amazon; the suspects haven’t been tried yet.
- Between 1991 and 2023, 38 Indigenous Guajajara were killed in Arariboia; none of the perpetrators have been brought to trial.
- Paulo’s case will be a legal landmark as the first killing of an Indigenous leader to go before a federal jury; as Mongabay reported a year ago, the start of the trial was contingent on an anthropological report of the collective damages to the Indigenous community as a result of the crimes.
- However, the report has yet to be made, given several issues that delayed the trial, including the change of judge, the long time to choose the expert to prepare the report and get the expert’s quote, and the reluctance from the Federal Attorney General’s Office (AGU) to pay for the report.

Brazil police identify fish trader behind Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira killings

Brazil’s Federal Police say they have identified the mastermind behind the 2022 double homicide of The Guardian journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira. The police released their finding Nov. 1, following a two-year investigation. Phillips and Pereira were shot to death June 5, 2022, in Javari Valley, a remote area of Brazil’s Amazonas […]
Brazil calls for ambition at COP but struggles over its own climate policy
- Brazil is trying to resume its role as a protagonist in the environmental arena by hosting COP30 in 2025 and urging other countries to present ambitious targets to cut emissions.
- However, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration failed to openly discuss the country’s nationally determined contribution (NDC) and allocated small budgets for climate transition.
- Experts state that zeroing out deforestation, recovering thousands of hectares of native vegetation and stepping back from oil expansion plans are crucial to meeting Brazil’s commitments.
- UPDATE (11/11/2024): The Brazilian government released its NDC on the evening of Nov. 8, hours after the publication of this story.

An ‘ocean grab’ for a property megaproject leaves Jakarta fishers grounded
- On the outskirts of Indonesia’s capital city, farming and fishing communities face displacement due to the planned construction of Pantai Indah Kapuk II, a vast complex of commercial property and mid-range apartments on the northeast coast of Jakarta’s metropolitan area.
- Farmers and fishers told Mongabay Indonesia that the developer had restricted their access to the sea, and acquired land without paying fair compensation for the value of productive trees.
- Indonesia’s fast-growing urban population has led to a housing crunch in several cities across the archipelago, with the national backlog estimated at more than 12 million homes.
- The national ombudsman’s office said no local residents had yet filed a report over land acquisition, while the developers did not respond to requests for comment.

New Canadian-backed potash mine under fire from Amazon Indigenous groups
- For more than a decade, Potássio do Brasil, a Canadian-backed mining company, has tried to exploit the Brazilian Amazon’s potash reserves, despite legal challenges.
- In April, the Amazonas Environmental Protection Institute (IPAAM) granted the company several installation licenses, which authorized the project’s implementation as well as the construction of a road and shipping port.
- According to the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPF) and Funai, the issuance of these licenses by the Amazonas government was illegal, as the project overlaps with Indigenous lands and many communities were not consulted.
- Many Mura residents, most of whom are concerned about the impact the project will have on the environment and their livelihoods, say the company did not consult them and instead co-opted leaders and falsified documents.

Brazil researchers boost timber traceability with new chemical analysis
- Brazilian researchers have opened a new front in the search for a reliable timber tracking system by using chemical analysis to determine where a tree was grown.
- The technique relies on identifying a wood sample’s chemical signature, which can then be matched against various known soil profiles to narrow down its origin.
- As the technology evolves, the researchers say they hope to combine it with stable isotope analysis to increase the precision of timber tracking.
- Most timber provenance inspections in Brazil rely on public documents whose information can easily be faked by illegal loggers.

JBS broke its own rules while buying cattle from deforested areas in Pantanal
- JBS, the world’s largest meatpacking company, has over the last five years been buying cattle from farms that were caught illegally deforesting Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands despite the company’s claims of environmental responsibility.
- An Unearthed investigation found that JBS suppliers cleared vast areas of the Pantanal wetlands in the past five years, with Fazenda Querência being the largest deforester, having cleared an area half the size of Paris.
- JBS has repeatedly violated its own zero-deforestation policies by continuing to purchase cattle from farms under embargo for illegal deforestation.
- The expansion of agribusiness, especially the demand for cattle and the introduction of invasive species like brachiaria grass, is threatening the Pantanal’s unique biodiversity and its ability to recover naturally from drought and wildfires.

Deforestation plunges but environmental threats remain as Colombia hosts COP16
- As global leaders, experts, activists and Indigenous voices meet this October in the Colombian city of Cali at the U.N. Biodiversity Conference, COP16, missteps and successes within President Gustavo Petro’s environment agenda are watched closely.
- COP16 occurs two years after the country’s first-ever left-wing president was sworn in, pledging to turn Colombia into “a leader in the protection of life,” as his four-year plan centers on energy transition, Indigenous causes and tackling climate change.
- But while praised internationally for his efforts to promote conservation, shift away from fossil fuels and surround himself with green-abiding authorities, Petro remains under pressure, as many of his environmental proposals are still on paper, upholding Colombia’s long-lasting socioenvironmental struggles.
- Experts attribute a lack of sufficient environmental resolutions to various factors, including a Congress resistant to government initiatives, challenges in curbing deforestation and Colombia’s status as the most dangerous country for environmental defenders, as highlighted by recent reports.

Revealed: Biomass firm poised to clear Bornean rainforest for dubious ‘green’ energy
- Indonesia’s strategy for increasing renewable energy production could see Indigenous communities lose huge swathes of their forests to biomass plantations.
- Mongabay visited the planned site of one such project on the island of Borneo, where three villages have signed over at least 5,000 hectares of their land to a biomass company. Much of this area, locals say, is covered in rainforest that would presumably be cleared for the project.
- Despite its billing as sustainable, research has shown that burning woody biomass emits more climate change-causing CO2 than coal per unit of electricity produced. The company in Borneo, moreover, has said it plans to export the wood pellets to be produced on its plantation.
- Villagers we spoke to complained of unfair dealing by the company, from inadequate compensation to outright land grabbing with no payment or consent.

Extreme drought wrecks rivers and daily life in Amazon’s most burnt Indigenous land
- Almost 20% of the Kayapó Indigenous Territory has burned in this year’s Amazon drought, the worst ever recorded in Brazil.
- The land has for years been subjected to illegal mining, cattle ranching and burning of forests, degrading both the soil and rivers and significantly disrupting the way of life for the Mebêngôkre-Kayapó people.
- The Indigenous inhabitants now confront a growing crisis as wildfires and drought threaten their lands, particularly along the Riozinho River.
- According to ecologist Rodolfo Salm, who has worked with the Kayapó since 1996, fire has now surpassed illegal logging as the greatest danger to the region.

Amazon voters elect environmental offenders and climate denialists in Brazil
- The Amazonian population elected climate change deniers and politicians with a history of environmental fines to govern some of the region’s major cities.
- Pará’s state capital, Belém, which will host COP30 in 2025, may elect a mayor unconcerned about climate change.
- According to experts, opposing illegal activities is political suicide in municipalities whose economies rely on deforestation, illegal mining and illegal logging.

Indonesia civil society rallies behind student investigated over nickel protest
- On Aug. 27 and Sept. 9, student advocates Christina Rumalatu and Thomas Madilis were called in for questioning by the Indonesian police following a demonstration linking floods to nickel mining in North Maluku province.
- The August demonstration in Jakarta blamed the deadly flash floods on land-use changes caused by the nickel mining boom underway in eastern Indonesia.
- The nickel mining complex in Halmahera “should not overreact to protests and try to criminalize people who are angry about the damage the nickel industry is doing to their land and water,” said Brad Adams, executive director of Climate Rights International.
- In a significant display of combined action, civil society organizations, legal advocates, youth groups in eastern Indonesia and the country’s human rights commission are rallying behind the Halmahera demonstrators, who may face prosecution under Indonesia’s widely criticized defamation law.

‘World’s largest’ carbon credit deal in the Amazon faces bumpy road ahead
- The Brazilian state of Pará has agreed to sell millions of carbon credits to multinational corporations, including Amazon, Bayer and Walmart Foundation, but many challenges loom.
- Experts are concerned the deal is overly ambitious and worry about the state’s long history of carbon credit project scams.
- Although Indigenous, Quilombola and extractive community entities support the arrangement, other community members state they have not been consulted about the project on their lands.

New conservation model calls for protecting Amazon for its archaeological riches
- Across the Amazon, archaeological remains indicate that the human presence in the rainforest is much older, larger and more widespread than previously thought.
- Researchers in Brazil are lobbying to register archaeological sites as national monuments, which would confer a new layer of protection status to parts of the rainforest.
- Earthen mounds known as geoglyphs, for instance, have been revealed to stretch from Acre state north into neighboring Amazonas; formally recognizing them under Brazil’s heritage law could protect this vast swath of rainforest.
- “Today we know it’s highly likely that part of the forest has been changed by people,” said Dutch biologist Hans ter Steege, co-author of research that has shown there may be up to 24,000 earthworks hidden throughout the rainforest that could qualify for protection.

Reporter who revealed deforestation in Cambodia now charged with deforestation
- A journalist who covered the land grab and deforestation of a community forest by a mining company has himself been charged with deforestation.
- Ouk Mao was instrumental in bringing to light the takeover of the Phnom Chum Rok Sat community forest in Stung Treng province by the politically connected company Lin Vatey.
- In mid-September he was charged with deforestation and incitement, for which he faces up to 10 years in jail; while not detained, he’s subject to court-ordered monitoring and cannot leave his village without permission.
- Activists say Cambodia’s courts have been weaponized against critics, with a pattern emerging where “protectors of Cambodia’s remaining forests are accused of perpetrating the very crime they are standing against.”

Brazil cracks down on illegal gold mining, sparking anger in the Amazon

Brazil has ramped up efforts to quell illegal gold mining over the last two years. Police raids in the Brazilian Amazon’s gold capital have destroyed mining machinery, leaving miners angry and struggling to keep their operations running, Mongabay’s Fernanda Wenzel reports. Federal agents destroyed 150 backhoes and 600 dredgers used in illegal mining in 2023, […]
‘We need white men on our side to save the Amazon from destruction,’ 92-year-old Indigenous Chief Raoni says
- Indigenous leaders gathered at New York Climate Week to call on global leaders to address the unprecedented drought and wildfire crisis in the Amazon Rainforest.
- Chief Raoni Metuktire, a historic Indigenous leader of Brazil, asked non-Indigenous communities to reflect on their responsibility — mainly the introduction of illegal mining, logging and cattle ranching that are accelerating the impacts of climate change.
- Many Indigenous communities are in the path of wildfires, and isolated Indigenous peoples (PIA) are the most vulnerable.

Police murder Guarani man as Brazil struggles with Indigenous land demarcation
- Neri Ramos de Silva, a 23-year-old Guarani Kaiowá man, was shot in the back of the head by military police in the southwestern state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, where the Ñande Ru Marangatu territory overlaps with private property.
- The violence has refocused attention on the country’s slow land demarcation process and the unsafe conditions it has created for Guarani and other Indigenous people.
- The Guarani Kaiowá have been trying to demarcate their land since the early 2000s but ran into delays because of the “time frame” law, which only allows reclamation for Indigenous communities who were physically present on land as of 1988, when the new constitution restored democracy.

As MotoGP heads to Indonesia, Indigenous Sasak brace for another weekend of repression
- Motorcycle racing’s biggest show, the MotoGP championship, is on the Indonesian island of Lombok this weekend, where top racers will battle it out on a track built on land taken by force from Indigenous Sasak communities.
- Experts from the United Nations have called on the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the single biggest lender to the Mandalika development where the race will be held, to suspend its funding for an assessment of the impact to the local communities.
- Since the track was completed in late 2021, the Sasak communities have been subjected to repressive security measures by Indonesian security forces, including threats of criminal charges for staging any kind of protest.
- Legal advocates for the Sasak say the communities continue to be denied fair compensation for their land, which developers appropriated through the use of eminent domain — essentially a land grab under the pretext of development.

Indigenous peoples won in court — but in practice, they face a different reality
- State implementation of international court rulings favoring Indigenous peoples and their access to land remain very low, lawyers say; in many cases, information on progress toward rulings is murky.
- Mongabay found that of the 57 rulings by the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights mentioned in a 2023 report, 52 of them had no update on implementation.
- States can be unwilling to implement rulings or can run into difficulties putting them into practice due to lack of resources, the need to create new laws or unexpected conflicts created when restituting land.
- Though complicated, international court systems are considered a lifeline for Indigenous communities that face land rights abuses, and better monitoring and enforcement mechanisms are needed to improve the system, advocates and Indigenous leaders say.

Why the EU must stand firm on its plan to help protect the world’s forests (commentary)
- The EU Deforestation Regulation, which was passed in May 2023 and comes into effect at the end of this year, is intended to prevent European consumption driving deforestation and associated illegalities and abuses.
- In the run-up to implementation, a growing chorus of affected governments and culprit industries has been calling for the law to be delayed and weakened.
- This commentary is a response to those calls. It shows how the problems the law is intended to solve have not gone away, that the need to address them grows ever more urgent, and that any delay risks opening the door to the law being gutted. It also points out that many of those calling for the EU to reconsider are deeply self-interested and their concerns should not be taken at face value. It also highlights the human cost of delay.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Community forest or corporate fortune? How public land became a mine in Cambodia

Mongabay features writer Gerry Flynn joins Mongabay’s podcast to discuss a new investigation he published with freelance journalist Nehru Pry looking at how mining company Lin Vatey acquired thousands of hectares of a public forest, essentially kicking local people, including the Kuy Indigenous community, off public lands that they previously relied on. In this conversation, […]
Report exposes meatpackers’ role in recent chemical deforestation in Brazil
- A new report links Brazil’s top meatpackers — JBS, Marfrig and Minerva — to widespread deforestation across the Pantanal, Amazon and Cerrado; of five farms investigated between October 2023 and February 2024, 86% of the destruction occurred in the Pantanal.
- Fazenda Soberana ranch is at the center of environmental controversy and is under investigation for using toxic herbicides to destroy tens of thousands of hectares of native vegetation, marking the largest environmental crime in Mato Grosso state history.
- Major meatpackers are criticized for failing to fully monitor indirect suppliers and for not ensuring that their supply chains are free from socioenvironmental violations.
- The report calls for supermarkets to cut ties with meatpackers linked to deforestation and for full transparency regarding the origin and supply chains of beef products.

How the Brazilian military sabotaged protection of Indigenous people in the Amazon
- The Brazilian military has been involved in a series of controversial episodes that have undermined emergency efforts to tackle the humanitarian crisis in the Yanomami Indigenous Territory.
- Reports show it failed (or sabotaged) airspace control and food deliveries to the Indigenous people, who suffer from malnutrition as a result of mercury contamination from illegal mining.
- President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has spent millions trying to evict the illegal miners and provide care to the Yanomami, but some 7,000 miners remain in the territory, while malnutrition, malaria and other diseases continue to afflict the Yanomami.
- Experts blame the military’s inaction of action against the illegal miners on a colonial ideology that was prevalent under Brazil’s former military dictatorship, and which was revived under the administration of Lula’s predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.

In Chile, a copper mining project tainted by environmental damage sues 32 locals
- In 2023, the Los Pelambres Mining Company’s “Operational Adaptation” project was unanimously approved. The project will allow for the relocation of pipelines that transport copper concentrate, the extension of the mining project’s lifetime, and the construction of a desalination plant.
- The mining company’s extensive history of environmental damage — which includes oil, copper concentrate and industrial water spills — has residents of Pupío concerned, especially because the new pipelines will be installed only 100 meters (330 feet) from their homes.
- However, the opposition of many residents to the new pipelines caused the mining company to bring a lawsuit against them. The 27 defendants are in addition to another five people from Choapa Viejo who are also facing a legal process after protesting for solutions to the environmental damage caused by the company.
- However, in response to the residents’ opposition, the mining company has sued 27 locals. Another five people from Choapa Viejo are also facing legal proceedings after they protested, demanding solutions for the environmental damage caused by the company.

Ugandan oil project linked with massive human rights abuses: Report

The Kingfisher oil project in Uganda operated by a Chinese company has resulted in numerous human rights violations, including forced evictions, inadequate compensation, threats, violence and loss of livelihoods, a new report says. Climate Rights International (CRI), a U.S.-based nonprofit, published the report on Sept. 2. “Our findings substantiate that this project is not for […]
Extreme drought pushes Amazon’s main rivers to lowest-ever levels
- Amid an extreme, unprecedented drought, almost all major Amazon rivers have registered their lowest levels in history.
- Experts say the outlook for the next months is even worse, putting researchers on alert for the possibility of Amazon’s worst drought ever.
- The low river level in Manaus, Amazonas’ state capital, may increase prices of products shipped through the city’s harbor.
- The drought has isolated some Indigenous communities, while others have to walk long distances through dry riverbeds carrying groceries and equipment.

Resilient and resourceful, Brazil’s illegal gold capital resists government crackdown
- Following regulatory changes and heavier enforcement of the gold trade, the Amazonian municipality of Itaituba, notorious as Brazil’s illegal gold capital, is struggling to deal with the new restrictions.
- Yet a series of raids and destruction of mining equipment hasn’t fazed the illegal miners, known as garimpeiros, who have simply picked themselves back up again and started working to resume their operations.
- The crackdown on illegal gold and its environmental destruction has outraged the garimpeiros, who accuse the government of preventing them from working in a region historically dedicated to gold extraction.

Mining company tied to Cambodian military officials grabs community forest
- A mining company affiliated with powerful Cambodian officials and their families has carved out a chunk of a community forest in the country’s northeast to be privatized.
- Community members say the company, Lin Vatey, is logging the forest, while community members who have complained or resisted have faced persecution by the authorities.
- Phnom Chum Rok Sat community forest, officially recognized in 2017, spans 4,153 hectares (10,262 acres); Lin Vatey has laid claim to 2,447 hectares (6,047 acres) of it.
- When questioned by Mongabay, officials at various levels of government initially denied there was anything going on in the community forest, before conceding that some complaints had been lodged.

Brazil launches ‘war’ on widespread fire outbreaks & criminal arsonists
- Fire outbreaks are setting records all over Brazil, with flames burning the Amazon, the Cerrado, the Pantanal and the São Paulo state.
- Federal authorities say most fires are criminal and they are launching investigations.
- Smoke from fires spread through 10 Brazilian states, impacting air quality and air traffic.

Study shows most Amazon beef & soy demand comes from Brazil — not exports
- A study shows that an area equivalent to nine times the size of Greater London was deforested in the Brazilian Amazon in 2015 to address the demand for beef from other parts of the country.
- The article, published in Nature Sustainability, concluded that the domestic market answered for three times more deforestation than international sales.
- Despite the predominance of domestic consumption, beef exports from Brazil have been increasing, and international capital has a crucial role in financing the country’s largest meat and soy companies.

Rio Tinto-linked mine still not fulfilling promises to Mongolian herders
- In 2017, nomadic herders in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert secured an agreement obliging one of the world’s largest copper-gold mines, Oyu Tolgoi, to make good on a list of 60 commitments, including compensation and improved access to land and water.
- Today, compliance researchers and herders say two-thirds of these commitments are complete and or in progress, but complain of slow progress with the remainder, including the all-important issue of access to clean water.
- Communities have also expressed concern over seepage of mining waste into the groundwater, and say the company, a subsidiary of multinational mining giant Rio Tinto, should be held accountable.
- The nomadic herding way of life is on the decline the area due to lack of progress on achieving these other commitments, herders tell Mongabay.

Indonesia expands IPLC land recognition — but the pace is too slow, critics say
- Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo has issued land titles for more than 1 million hectares (2.47 million acres) to Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs), bringing the total extent of IPLC-recognized areas to 8 million hectares (19.77 million acres) nationwide.
- But activists say the pace of recognition for IPLC land rights is slow; the Ancestral Domain Registration Agency (BRWA) has so far mapped 30.1 million hectares (74.4 million acres) of IPLC territories across Indonesia, including forests, rivers and sea.
- Advocates say that having a specific law on Indigenous rights would greatly help IPLCs to have their land rights formally recognized by the government by providing a legal framework that acknowledges and protects the rights of communities.

Deal ends environmental agents’ strike in Brazil, but grievances fester
- Brazilian environmental agents and the federal government have agreed a deal to end a months-long strike by the civil servants.
- The protests led to a sharp decrease in the number of environmental fines issued, and threatened Brazil’s commitment to zero deforestation.
- Despite the agreement, agents remain unhappy with how the administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva conducted the negotiations.

Communities fend off attacks as officials study Brazil’s anti-Indigenous land rights bill
- The Brazilian Supreme Court is once again studying a new law that only recognizes territorial rights for Indigenous people if they occupied the land as of October 5, 1988, when the country’s current constitution was ratified.
- Critics of the law say many Indigenous communities were forcibly displaced from their land before that date and didn’t always have the legal means of challenging land taken from them.
- Violence against Indigenous communities is on the rise across numerous states as farmers, ranchers and private developers see new opportunities to expand into land stuck in legal limbo.
- Last week, the Supreme Court, which had already declared the same time limit unconstitutional in 2023, held its first “conciliation meeting” to review several provisions of the law and better understand how it will be applied.

Amazon Fraud 101: How timber credits mask illegal logging in Brazil
- Sustainable forest management plans in the Brazilian Amazon are intended to ensure compliance with strict environmental rules, but many are used fraudulently as cover for illegal logging, according to new research.
- One expert estimates that 20% of all forest management plans in the Brazilian Amazon fall under this category, where applicants file the plans simply to obtain the timber credits that correspond with the volume of wood they claim to want to harvest.
- These credits are then used to launder illegal timber — often felled in Indigenous territories or conservation areas — into the legal supply chain.
- Criminal groups use many strategies to defraud the timber credit system, including misrepresenting the species of tree they claim to want to log, or its size.

Advocacy group links Uganda oil infrastructure to human-elephant conflict
- Environmental advocacy group AFIEGO has published a briefing saying the development of oil infrastructure in Uganda’s Murchison Falls National Park is disturbing wildlife and causing increased human-wildlife conflict in areas surrounding the park.
- The group spoke to biodiversity experts and residents of surrounding communities to assess changes in the behavior of elephants and other species in the park since TotalEnergies began building out infrastructure last year.
- TotalEnergies has previously insisted it is developing the oil fields here in line with domestic and international standards to protect the environment and nearby communities.
- The Uganda Wildlife Authority, which manages the park, rejects AFIEGO’s findings, but has not provided an alternative assessment of the impacts of construction on the park and its wildlife.

Gold mining in the Amazon has doubled in area since 2018, AI tool shows
- An artificial intelligence tool trained to track gold mines through satellite imagery found that the deforestation linked to the activity doubled in the Amazon Rainforest from 2018 to 2023.
- Mines are widespread in the biome, affecting especially Brazil, Guyana, Suriname, Venezuela and Peru.
- The spread of gold mines followed a sharp increase in the price of the metal, which nearly doubled since 2018.
- In Brazil, the federal government has succeeded in reducing the rate at which illegal mining is expanding inside Indigenous territories, but still struggles to block its spread outright.

Garifuna land rights abuses persist in Honduras, despite court ruling
- On the northern Caribbean coast of Honduras, Garifuna Afro-Indigenous peoples seeking to reclaim their ancestral lands have been subjected to threats and violence by private developers, drug traffickers and state forces.
- For more than two decades, the territory has been threatened by the expansion of palm oil, tourist developments, mining projects and drug traffickers.
- In 2015, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights declared Honduras responsible for violating the Garifuna peoples’ territorial rights and ordered the government to return the respective lands to its peoples.
- The state has still not complied with the ruling; meanwhile, Garifuna residents and human rights organizations say threats, criminalization and violence against them have increased.

Allegations widen against Indonesian palm oil giant Astra Agro Lestari
- Subsidiaries of Indonesia’s second-biggest palm oil company, PT Astra Agro Lestari (AAL), are running illegal plantations, grabbing community land, and intimidating critics, according to a new report by NGOs.
- The report is a follow-up to a 2022 report by Friends of the Earth, and identifies at least 1,100 hectares (2,718 acres) of the subsidiaries’ concessions that lie inside forest areas that should be off-limits to plantation activity.
- The NGOs also interviewed community members who say they weren’t consulted on the plantations in their midst and never gave their consent.
- The allegations of ongoing violations should prompt buyers of AAL’s palm oil and the financial institutions bankrolling its operations to put pressure on the company, FoE says.

Environmental agents intensify strike amid record fires in Brazil
- On a partial strike since January, environmental agents have intensified their protest in Brazil, significantly impacting on-the-ground activities.
- Major raids to seize cattle in protected areas and to fight illegal mining on Indigenous territories are suspended during the strike.
- The decision was announced amid record fires in the Pantanal and Cerrado, while the Amazon may face another severe dry season.

Revealed: Illegal cattle ranching booms in Arariboia territory during deadly year for Indigenous Guajajara
- Commercial cattle ranching is banned on Indigenous territories in Brazil, but a year-long investigation reveals that large portions of the Arariboia Indigenous Territory have been used for ranching amid a record-high number of killings of the region’s Indigenous Guajajara people.
- A clear rise in environmental crimes became evident in the region during the middle of 2023, including an unlicensed airstrip and illegal deforestation on the banks of the Buriticupu River, which is key for Guajajara people’s livelihoods.
- With four Guajajara people killed and three others surviving attempts on their lives, 2023 marked the deadliest 12 months for Indigenous people in Arariboia in seven years, rivaling the number of killings in 2016, 2008 and 2007.
- The findings show a pattern of targeted killings of the Guajajara amid the expansion of illegal cattle ranching and logging in and around Arariboia: areas with the most violent incidents coincide with the tracked activities and with police operations aimed at curbing illegal logging.

2 years after Bruno & Dom’s murders, Amazon region still rife with gangs
- Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips were shot to death on June 5, 2022, launching outcries and a wave of attention on the Javari Valley.
- The region, near the tri-border area of Brazil, Peru and Colombia, has been beset by gangs that profit from drug trafficking, illegal logging and fishing, and land-grabbing.
- Friends, relatives and Indigenous organizations now say the international uproar wasn’t enough to curtail local crime.

Activists decry latest arrests of East African oil pipeline opponents
- On June 2, police arrested four villagers in a northwestern district of Tanzania, along the route of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline.
- The men had all spoken out against the pipeline at a May 25 event organized by civil society groups from Uganda and Tanzania, who say the arrests are part of a pattern of harassment of the project’s opponents.
- Activists and other people affected by the pipeline have been arrested in the past, then released without charge, but sometimes compelled to report regularly to the police.
- The villagers arrested were detained overnight without explanation, and then released without being charged with any crime.

Brazil police raid Amazon carbon credit projects exposed by Mongabay
- The Brazilian Federal Police arrested people and seized assets linked to some of the country’s largest carbon credit projects.
- According to the investigators, the group was running land-grabbing and timber laundering crimes in the Amazon for more than a decade and profiting millions of dollars.
- The projects were exposed at the end of May in a one-year investigation published by Mongabay, which showed links between the REDD+ projects and an illegal timber scam.
- Authorities and experts hope the findings will raise the bar for projects in the country and persuade lawmakers to create strict rules for the Brazilian carbon market, which is now under discussion.

Cambodian companies tied to abuses promoted by UN program, rights group alleges
- The United Nations Development Programme’s internal watchdog is reviewing a complaint that a project led by the agency is platforming companies linked to human and environmental rights abuses.
- Local rights group Licadho had as early as December 2022 flagged the UNDP’s SDG Impact – Private Sector Capital project, which aims to assist in facilitating investment in Cambodian companies.
- Several of the companies promoted as “investment opportunities” by the project are linked to government and business bigwigs with track records of deforestation, illegal logging and forced evictions.
- Licadho said there was “no meaningful due diligence” by the UNDP in selecting the companies to promote, and that the project “lend[s] reputational support to companies with documented involvement” in issues as serious as child labor and trafficking in persons, among others.

Can Vietnam’s forests survive the spread of acacia and eucalyptus plantations? (commentary)
- The large-scale planting of acacia and eucalyptus monoculture plantations in Vietnam raises concerns about their long-term environmental impact on soil health and biodiversity.
- This aggressive expansion also leads to fierce competition for land, often displacing local communities with limited resources.
- “Fostering a spirit of cooperation between companies and farmers is essential to ensure that the Vietnamese forestry industry thrives while promoting the livelihoods of both parties,” a new op-ed states.
- This post is a commentary, the views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Fishers left with no land, no fish, in fire sale of Cambodian coast
- Coastal communities in Cambodia are facing a double threat, from land and sea, as developers evict them from their homes and farms, and trawlers encroach on their nearshore fishing grounds.
- Illegal fishing, chiefly embodied by rampant, unchecked trawling in protected and prohibited waters, has devastated fish stocks, trashed marine ecosystems and left coastal communities in dire poverty.
- At the same time, the land is being sold out from under them: Nearly half of Cambodia’s coast has been privatized since 2000, with a slew of new projects tied to politically connected wealthy investors announced in the last five years, displacing families and closing off access to the sea.
- This is the second part of a Mongabay series about challenges faced by Cambodia’s small-scale fishers along the coast.

Narco activity takes heavy toll on Colombia’s protected forests, satellite data show
- Deforestation inside protected areas in central Colombia appears to be picking up pace this year, suggesting the steep drop-off from 2022-2023 was just a blip, according to satellite data.
- The most affected areas include Llanos del Yarí Yaguara II Indigenous Reserve, two national natural parks — Sierra de la Macarena and Tinigua — and the surrounding La Macarena Special Management Area.
- Threats to the region and its protected areas include agricultural expansion, along with the cultivation of illegal crops such as coca and marijuana, and illegal gold mining.
- The region’s protected areas are increasingly falling under the control of armed groups emboldened and funded by the drug industry, according to monitoring agencies and local residents interviewed by Mongabay.

New bill to expand farmlands in the Amazon may derail Brazil’s green efforts
- A bill that would reduce the amount of primary forest that landowners in the Brazilian Amazon must preserve may lead to the deforestation of an area twice the size of Rio de Janeiro state.
- The bill has been tailored for the interests of the agribusiness lobby by permitting an increase in legal deforestation and would bring regulation of the Amazon closer to that of the heavily deforested Cerrado savanna biome.
- For environmental organizations, its potential approval would undermine Brazil’s stated goals of reducing carbon emissions and putting an end to deforestation by 2030.

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

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

‘Our rights are on trial in Brazil’: Interview with Indigenous movement pioneer Brasílio Priprá
- In an interview with Mongabay, Brasílio Priprá, one of the pioneers of the Free Land Camp, the largest event of the Brazilian Indigenous movement, looks back on its 20 years of existence.
- Priprá, who has been active in the Indigenous movement for 40 years, has seen few changes, but enough to keep fighting for his rights.
- Land demarcation has been the main demand over the two decades of the Free Land Camp. Since 2019, marco temporal, a legal thesis that aims to restrict Indigenous land rights, has made this demand more pressing.
- Priprá shares his thoughts on the impacts of marco temporal on Indigenous rights, Brazil’s environmental goals and the future of the country for all citizens.

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

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

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

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

How environmental crimes are covered up in the Amazon?

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

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

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

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

Protected areas bear the brunt as forest loss continues across Cambodia
- In 2023, Cambodia lost forest cover the size of the city of Los Angeles, or 121,000 hectares (300,000 acres), according to new data published by the University of Maryland.
- The majority of this loss occurred inside protected areas, with the beleaguered Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary recording the highest rate of forest loss in what was one of its worst years on record.
- A leading conservation activist says illegal logging inside protected areas is driven in part by demand for luxury timber exports, “but the authorities don’t seem to care about protecting these forests.”
- Despite the worrying trend highlighted by the data, the Cambodian government has set an ambitious target of increasing the country’s forest cover to 60% by 2050.

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

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

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

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

Indonesian nickel project harms environment and human rights, report says
- A new report highlights land rights violations, deforestation and pollution associated with a massive nickel mining and processing project on the Indonesian island of Halmahera.
- Community members accuse the developers of the Indonesia Weda Bay Industrial Park (IWIP) of land grabbing and of polluting rivers and the sea.
- The Indonesian government has billed its nickel policy as a push toward clean energy, but mining of the metal has resulted in at least 5,331 hectares (13,173 acres) of deforestation on Halmahera alone.
- The report calls on global automakers sourcing their nickel from IWIP to exert pressure on the miners and smelters to prevent environmental and human rights harms.

Kapinawá: the 50 year fight for sacred territory in the Catimbau Valley

CATIMBAU VALLEY, Brazil — Catimbau Valley of the Caatinga region is renowned for its incredible biodiversity and rich archaeological heritage. Home to the second largest collection of rock inscriptions in Brazil, this area is not only a natural treasure but also holds deep cultural significance. It is the sacred ancestral land of the Kapinawá people, […]
In the Brazilian outback, the half-century Kapinawá struggle for sacred ground
- The Catimbau Valley, in the backlands of Pernambuco state, is one of the most biodiverse areas in the Caatinga dry forest and also an archaeological treasure, with the second-largest collection of rock inscriptions in Brazil.
- It’s also the sacred and ancestral territory of the Kapinawá, a people who discovered their Indigenous identity in the mid-1970s amid a war against land-grabbers.
- Part of the Kapinawá lands became an Indigenous territory, while the remaining area was later transformed into a national park in 2002; those who live there complain about the numerous restrictions they now face.
- While fighting to reclaim their lands, the Kapinawá turn the Caatinga into a laboratory for experiments in agroecology, combining biodiversity preservation and food production.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chinese gold miners ‘illegally’ tearing up Cambodian wildlife sanctuary
- An NGO report and complaints by villagers allege a Chinese company has been mining gold inside one of Cambodia’s largest protected areas years before it was license to do so.
- Late Cheng Mining Development was awarded an exploratory license in March 2020 spanning 15,100 hectares (37,300 acres) inside Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary, and an extraction license in September 2022.
- Local villagers say the company has likely been operating in the region since early 2019; villagers who spoke to Mongabay requested anonymity, citing fears of reprisals from the authorities.
- A report by the Bruno Manser Fonds and testimony from locals also allege the company’s mining activities risk contaminating waterways that villagers rely on.

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

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

Logging, road construction continue to fuel forest loss in Papua New Guinea
- Papua New Guinea boasts the third largest rainforest in the world and houses about 7% of the planet’s biodiversity, including threatened species found nowhere else in the world.
- In recent years, fraudulent practices in the logging and agriculture industry have resulted in massive forest loss across the country while road network expansion plans threaten to further fragment forests and open them up for resource exploitation.
- Satellite data and imagery show logging activity on the rise in PNG, particularly in the province of Oro.
- Conservationists and officials say forest laws must be tightened in PNG and local communities included in decision-making to reduce forest loss, while incentivizing communities to conserve the remaining forests.

Guatemala braces for unprecedented year of deforestation in Maya reserve
- Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve is facing increased pressure from cattle ranching and farming at the same time that droughts threaten to spark an unprecedented wave of fires.
- A tumultuous government transition could also leave environmental agencies without enough funding and resources to keep up with the increased fires, which could further hinder efforts to tackle deforestation.
- The areas that have been traditionally badly hit by deforestation include Laguna del Tigre National Park and Sierra del Lacandón National Park, but there are signs that informal settlers are pushing into new parts of the reserve.

Paradise lost? Brazil’s biggest bauxite mining firm denies riverine rights
- Mineração Rio do Norte (MRN), Brazil’s largest bauxite producer, launched a new mining project in the Amazon region in 2019 but failed to notify and consult four impacted traditional riverine communities that have been established for generations. The villages say their lives are heavily impacted.
- MRN’s stance of no significant impact is backed by IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, because it only is required to recognize Indigenous and Quilombola populations as legitimate traditional peoples guaranteed prior, free, informed consultation — a right enshrined in international law.
- Other traditional riverine communities are being denied such a right, say critics who are calling on President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government to instruct IBAMA to reduce the impact of mining on riverine communities.
- Action by IBAMA could help preserve the way of life for hundreds of traditional riverine people likely to be affected by a series of new mines planned by MRN. The ruling could also act as a precedent for other traditional communities not currently guaranteed prior, free, informed consultation.

Brazil’s biggest bauxite mining firm denies riverine rights

Jesi Ferreira de Castro, coordinator of the São Francisco community

ORIXIMINÁ, Pará state, Brazil — In 2019, Mineração Rio do Norte (MRN), Brazil’s largest bauxite producer, initiated a controversial new mining project in the Amazon region without notifying or consulting four traditional riverine communities that have thrived there for generations. These villages report significant disruptions to their way of life due to the mining activities. […]
End of impunity for Indigenous killings in sight for Brazil’s Guajajara
- Indigenous forest guardian Paulo Paulino Guajajara was killed in November 2019 in an alleged ambush by illegal loggers in the Arariboia Indigenous Territory in Brazil’s Maranhão state.
- Mongabay’s Karla Mendes, who interviewed Paulo for a documentary film nine months before his death, returned to Arariboia in August 2023 to talk with his family and the other guardian who survived the attack, Laércio Guajajara, and shine a light on a case that still hasn’t gone to trial after four years.
- “If those invaders had managed to kill us both, me and Paulo, they were going to hide us in the forest. Who would find us? Nobody was ever going to find me or Paulo again in a forest of that size,” Laércio says of his will to warn the guardians about Paulo’s murder, even as he suffered four gunshot wounds.
- Justice may soon be on the horizon for the Guajajara people: Paulo’s case will be the first killing of an Indigenous defender that will go before a federal jury, likely in the first half of 2024, after a court in late October denied a motion by those accused to try the case in state court.

The trial that could change the fate of the Guajajara

ARARIBOIA INDIGENOUS TERRITORY, Brazil — In November 2019, Paulo Paulino Guajajara, a dedicated “Guardian of the Forest,” was tragically murdered in an ambush allegedly orchestrated by loggers in Brazil’s Maranhão state. As a member of the Indigenous Guajajara community in the Arariboia Territory, Paulo played a crucial role in protecting not only his people but also […]
‘We won’t give up’: DRC’s Front Line Defenders award winner Olivier Ndoole Bahemuke
- Olivier Ndoole Bahemuke, Africa winner of the 2023 Front Line Defenders Award, is an environmental lawyer and community activist.
- He has spent 15 years working in defense of communities in and around Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- Because of his activism in a region dominated by armed conflict and the illicit exploitation of natural resources, including gold and coltan, his life has been threatened on numerous occasions and he currently lives in exile.
- Defending the environment is becoming increasingly dangerous: Nearly half of the 194 human rights defenders killed in 2022 were environmental defenders.

Disturbing graves is latest violation attributed to East African oil pipeline
- Faith-based climate justice organization GreenFaith says the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), will disturb at least 2,000 graves along its 1,441-kilometer (895-mile) route from Uganda’s Lake Albert to the Tanzanian port of Tanga.
- Surveys in affected communities found numerous cases where residents said TotalEnergies, the French oil giant leading the project, had disturbed and disrespected the graves of their families and ancestors, despite their best efforts to alert the company to their presence.
- TotalEnergies says the process of identifying and relocating burial sites, and paying compensation to affected people, has been carried out in line with international standards.
- Since its inception in 2017, the EACOP project has been dogged by criticism over its environmental, social and climate change impacts.

Kenyan government again evicts Ogiek communities from Mau Forest
- On Nov. 2, the Kenyan government began demolishing houses and evicting Indigenous Ogiek from the Maasai Mau Forest.
- The evictions are taking place despite a 2017 ruling by an African court of human rights that acknowledged the Ogiek’s claim to the forest as well as their traditional role in preserving it.
- Kenya Forest Service officials say they are acting against people who are living and farming in the forest illegally.

Calls grow to repurpose land squandered in Cambodia’s concession policy
- The mismanagement of large swaths of Cambodia’s land by the country’s elites under the policy of economic land concessions has displaced thousands of rural families and accounted for 40% of total deforestation.
- With even the government seeming to acknowledge the ineffectiveness of ELCs as an economic driver, calls are growing to return the land to dispossessed communities or repurpose them in other ways.
- One expert says the role of local communities will be central to the success of any reformation of the ELC system and will need to be carefully considered to avoid the pitfalls of the old system.
- Another proposes giving land currently owned by nonperforming ELCs to agricultural cooperatives managed by communities, placing more negotiating power in the hands of farmers rather than concessionaires.

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

Report alleges APP continues deforestation 10 years after pledge to stop
- A new Greenpeace report alleges that pulp and paper giant APP continues to clear forests and develop peatlands 10 years after adopting its landmark 2013 pledge to stop destroying natural forests for its plantations.
- The report identifies 75,000 hectares (185,300 acres) of deforestation in APP supplier concessions or companies connected to APP between February 2013 and 2022 — an area the size of New York City.
- APP has also changed the start date of its no-deforestation policy from 2013 to 2020, which would allow the company at some point in the future to accept new suppliers that deforested between 2013 and 2020.
- APP denies allegations of continued deforestation and says its suppliers have ceased forest conversions since 2013; the company also says it has committed to peatland restoration.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brazil Supreme Court quashes time frame proposal in win for Indigenous rights
- Brazil’s Supreme Court voted against the highly controversial time frame proposal, a legal challenge that would have stripped Indigenous rights and opened up traditional territories to mining and agribusiness.
- Indigenous people and organizations hailed the decision as a victory for human rights in Brazil after years of protesting against the legal challenge.
- Activists remain cautious, however, as ministers seek to reach a middle ground between ruralists and Indigenous people, which could affect demarcation processes and encourage economic activities on traditional land.
- The points proposed for a possible agreement include compensating non-Indigenous people for land granted to Native communities and allowing economic activities such as agribusiness on traditional territories.

EU bill and new green policies spur progress on Brazil’s cattle tracking
- Brazilian banks have created new rules for releasing credit to meatpackers and slaughterhouses in Amazonian states in which their clients must implement traceability and monitoring systems by 2025 to show that their cattle didn’t come from illegal deforestation.
- Even the powerful Brazilian Agriculture and Livestock Confederation (CNA) recognizes the cattle tracking demand and proposes a traceability model to the federal government.
- A new study shows that existing cattle companies’ zero-deforestation commitments have reduced Brazilian Amazon deforestation by 15% and that the devastation could be halved by scaling up the implementation of supply chain policies.
- The ideal animal tracking model is individual, but experts defend a middle-of-the-road solution to reduce illegal deforestation based on cross-referencing from inter-ranch cattle transport data and the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR).

Investors over islanders as Indonesia uses force to push development project
- A plan to build the world’s second-largest glass and solar panel factory on an Indonesian island has met with protests from locals set to be evicted for the multibillion-dollar project.
- Security forces have cracked down hard on the protesters, raising concerns about human rights violations, including the use of rubber bullets and tear gas at a middle school.
- The government has justified its response and its insistence on pushing the project through, saying it’s of strategic national importance and that the investors must be accommodated.
- Critics have pointed out that the government previously championed local residents’ rights when it came to disputes like these, and that the U-turn shows preferential treatment for “big capital” over local communities.

Meatpacking giant and Amazon deforester JBS bid for NYSE listing challenged
- Environmental groups have filed complaints with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission against Brazilian meat-processing company JBS’s bid to list on the New York Stock Exchange by the end of the year.
- JBS, the number one beef producer in Brazil, and among the top three meat processors in the United States, has been implicated in multiple land-clearing investigations in the Amazon and other Brazilian biomes. Brazil’s forests are vital to the storage of carbon and to preventing catastrophic climate change.
- The latest audit by Brazilian authorities in the Amazonian state of Pará found that JBS had the lowest environmental compliance rate among large meatpackers there, with one out of six cows coming from dubious or illegal sources.
- JBS’s total deforestation footprint may be as high as 1.7 million hectares (4.2 million acres) in its direct and indirect supply chains, a 2020 study found. Environmentalists say a surge in new JBS investments via the NYSE could convert far more Brazilian rainforest to ranches, leading to climate disaster.

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

Skepticism as Cambodia expands protected areas by more than a million hectares
- Cambodia expanded the coverage of its protected areas by 1.06 million hectares (2.62 million acres) in July and August, a flurry of subdecrees shows.
- However, civil society groups have expressed skepticism about the lack of consultation involved in the process and the ability of authorities to police this much larger area, given the ineffective enforcement of existing protected areas.
- Much of the newly protected land appears to be corridors neighboring existing protected areas, where homes and farms are already established.
- This has raised concerns about a surge in conflicts over land and access to natural resources, particularly affecting Indigenous communities.

Will Brazil’s Supreme Court rule against Indigenous land rights? (commentary)
- On the 30th of August, Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court is set to rule on the Marco Temporal, a legal argument that would severely limit Indigenous peoples’ land rights.
- Bill 490 was overwhelmingly approved by representatives of the Lower House of Congress and introduces a time frame to create Indigenous territories, reduces the area of Indigenous lands, and opens Indigenous areas to mining and infrastructure projects, among other changes.
- “If the Supreme Court determines the Marco Temporal is valid …all legal recourse for future land titling would be blocked, and titled territories could be at risk as communities could be obligated to prove their claim within the new, limited framework,” a new op-ed argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

New concession in Botum Sakor National Park handed to Cambodia’s Royal Group
- Cambodia’s Botum Sakor National Park continues to be carved up and its ostensibly protected land awarded to private developers with close links to the country’s ruling party.
- In the latest development, approved Jan. 25 but only announced Aug. 14, local conglomerate Royal Group was awarded a 9,968-hectare (24,631-acre) concession that adjoins another land parcel it received in the park in 2021.
- This leaves Botum Sakor with 20,000 hectares (less than 50,000 acres) of land that’s not in private hands, or just one-ninth of its original area when it was declared a national park in 1993.
- Civil society groups have expressed concern over the lack of transparency surrounding the new concessions being issued in Cambodia’s protected areas, especially when the recipients are tycoons with reputations for illegal logging, forced evictions and environmental destruction.

The deceptions of the Amazon Summit in Belém (commentary)
- The summit of the eight Amazon countries held in Belém produced many statements of good intentions but no concrete commitments.
- No agreement was reached either on ending oil extraction in the Amazon or on ending deforestation, not even only “illegal” deforestation.
- Urgent but politically difficult topics were not discussed, such as foregoing plans to build roads opening rainforest areas and the need to end the legalization of land claims on government land.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

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

Amazon Summit nations agree on saving rainforest — but not on conservation goals
- Leaders of eight Amazonian nations signed the Belém Declaration on Aug. 8, strengthening regional coordination and laying out a list of intentions to save the rainforest.
- Environmental organizations lament the lack of consensus over zero-deforestation targets among the nations and criticize the failure to mention fossil fuel exploration in the declaration.
- The declaration strongly asserts Indigenous rights and recognizes the need to protect their territories, however, activists expressed frustration that no specific goals or targets were defined.
- Alongside the Amazon nations, the two Congos, Indonesia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines also signed another declaration on Aug. 9 demanding that developed countries fulfill their promises of extensive climate change financing.

Brazilian authorities launch probe into ‘Amazon’s largest single deforester’
- The suspect, Bruno Heller, destroyed 6,500 hectares (16,100 acres) of Amazon Rainforest for cattle ranching — an area larger than the island of Manhattan — according to authorities.
- The public forests illegally invaded in the Novo Progresso region of Pará state were divided into smaller properties and registered in the Rural Environmental Registry in the name of stooges, several of them were Heller’s relatives.
- Areas along the BR-163 highway that runs through this part of Pará have long been a target for land grabbers, but the criminal business became more attractive after land prices rose with the highway fully paved in 2019.
- Experts say the high availability of unallocated public forests boosts land grabbing and deforestation and that these areas must be allocated quickly — such as for protected areas, reserves, or Indigenous lands — to discourage illegal occupation.

Amazon Summit sparks hope for coordinated efforts from the rainforest nations
- From Aug. 7-9, eight Amazonian nations will meet in Brazil hoping to agree on future joint strategies that will protect the rainforest while sustainably developing the region.
- A pre-summit in the three days before the event will unite thousands of civil society representatives to thrash out proposals that will be delivered to the heads of state to guide their discussions and decision-making.
- Experts and conservationists have hailed the event as Brazil’s most critical environment summit so far this year and could be a turning point for the future of the Amazon Rainforest.
- Some organizations demand greater Indigenous inclusivity in the Amazon Summit debate, although experts believe Amazonian populations will play an important role in shaping policies during the three-day conference.

In Brazil’s Amazon, a ‘new agricultural frontier’ threatens protected lands
- Deforestation in the southern region of Amazonas state, long one of the best-preserved slices of the Brazilian Amazon, is spreading rapidly as illegal gold miners, farmers, ranchers and land grabbers advance in the region.
- The four municipalities leading destruction in this region – Apuí, Novo Aripuanã, Manicoré and Humaitá – together accounted for nearly 60% of deforestation alerts detected in Amazonas in the first six months of the year.
- Environmental advocates and Indigenous leaders say the destruction is threatening the way of life of communities that depend on the forest for survival and splintering an important ecological mosaic brimming with plant and animal species

Cambodia awards swath of national park forest to tycoon Ly Yong Phat’s son
- A Cambodian tycoon notorious for his association with illegal logging has expanded his grip over the country’s largest national park, with a swath of forest awarded to his son’s rubber company.
- This gives Ly Yong Phat, a ruling party senator, and his family members effective control of tens of thousands of hectares of land inside Botum Sakor National Park.
- The carving up of the park, awarded in parcels to politically connected tycoons, has led to widespread deforestation that’s driven both people and wildlife out of Botum Sakor.
- Longtime residents evicted by Ly Yong Phat’s various operations in the park have protested to demand their land back, but to no avail, with many even being jailed for their activism.

Cambodian conglomerate sparks conflict in Botum Sakor National Park
- For decades Cambodia’s Botum Sakor National Park has been carved up and the land handed out to companies as economic concessions, at the expense of the ecosystem and local communities.
- In 2021, a massive swath of the park, including its densest expanse of forest, was handed over to the Royal Group, led by politically connected business tycoon Kith Meng.
- While the companies developing the national park promised jobs, as well as homes with running water and electricity, and access to schools and health centers, none of this has materialized, affected residents say.
- Royal Group’s presence, and the threat of more companies grabbing a piece of the park, has instead sparked disputes that residents acknowledge they’re likely to lose.

Divided by mining: Vale’s new rail track fractures an Amazon Indigenous group
- In 1985, mining giant Vale opened a railroad that cuts through the Mãe Maria Indigenous Territory in the Brazilian Amazon.
- Since being built, the railroad has driven away game, cut off access to important water bodies and disrupted the Indigenous peoples’ way of life by introducing compensation money paid by Vale into the daily life of the villages.
- Now, the mining giant has secured permission to build a second railroad track.
- Indigenous leaders say that not only will the railroad extension cause greater environmental damage, but also that the company reached the agreement by using “divide and conquer” tactics over the years and by applying other maneuvers they consider unethical.

Forests in the furnace: Cambodians risking life and liberty to fuel garment factories
- Entire villages in parts of Cambodia have turned to illegal logging of natural forests to supply the firewood needed by garment factories churning out products for international fashion brands.
- Mongabay spoke with several people who acknowledged the illegal and dangerous nature of their work, but who said they had no other viable means of livelihood.
- The work pits them against rangers they accuse of heavy-handed tactics, including the seizure or destruction of their trucks and equipment, arrests, and extortion.
- This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn was a fellow. *Names have been changed to protect sources who said they feared reprisals from the authorities.

Forests in the furnace: Cambodia’s garment sector is fueled by illegal logging
- An investigation has found factories in Cambodia’s garment sector are fueling their boilers with wood logged illegally from protected areas.
- A Mongabay team traced the network all the way from the impoverished villagers risking their lives to find increasingly scarce trees, to the traders and middlemen contending with slim margins, up to the factories with massive lots for timber supplies.
- The garment industry association denies that any of its members uses forest wood, but the informal and opaque nature of the supply chain means it’s virtually impossible to guarantee this.
- This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn was a fellow. *Names have been changed to protect sources who said they feared reprisals from the authorities.

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

A standing Amazon Rainforest could create an $8 billion bioeconomy: Study
- The Brazilian Amazon could create an $8 billion bioeconomy each year by preserving the rainforest, promoting sustainable agricultural practices and commercializing regional products, a new study has found.
- If current deforestation and emission trends continue, the Amazon faces irreversible degradation that will devastate Brazil and beyond, experts warn.
- Growing the bioeconomy depends on elevating Indigenous knowledge and providing local communities the tools to produce and sell hundreds of forest-grown products.
- It will take an investment of more than $500 billion by 2050 to implement a new economy, but the costs of not doing this “could be much higher,” say the study authors.

As one Brazilian state takes up carbon trading, others may fall for the ‘illusion’
- A recent agreement will allow the Brazilian state of Tocantins to sell carbon credits to Swiss oil-trading company Mercuria.
- Proponents see the deal as an opportunity for Tocantins to obtain financial resources that will support the state’s environmental policies.
- However, carbon offsets are hotly debated and many experts say the carbon market does more harm than good for the environment and global greenhouse gas emissions.
- The deal is likely to have a ripple effect on surrounding Amazonian states, experts say, leading to future carbon offset deals and prolonging the global use of fossil fuels.

Indonesia’s Mandalika megaproject still trampling on Indigenous community’s rights: Report
- U.N. human rights experts have raised concerns about the Mandalika tourism development megaproject in Indonesia for a third year running, a record number for a project of this scale funded by a multilateral development bank.
- The concerns revolve around alleged violations by the security forces against local and Indigenous communities in the Mandalika region of the island of Lombok, which the government plans to turn into a “New Bali” with resorts, hotels and a racetrack.
- The U.N. experts say reports of intimidation, impoverishment and disenfranchisement of the Indigenous communities in Mandalika continue to flood in, despite the U.N. having flagged the project since 2021.
- NGOs have called on the $3 billion Mandalika project’s main funder, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), to suspend its financing and launch an independent investigation into the alleged human rights violations.

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

The counterstrike: Brazilian Congress moves to block Lula’s environmental agenda
- The Brazilian Congress approved a series of actions to dismantle the president’s ambitious environmental agenda, including attacks on Indigenous people’s rights and stripping powers of ministers.
- Among the changes is the approval of the controversial time frame thesis for Indigenous lands, which can reduce new demarcations, shrink approved territory and open Indigenous areas for mining and infrastructure projects.
- Some of the actions can be reversed by the Senate, Lula and the Supreme Court, but experts see the move as a major defeat for the president.

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

World Bank: Brazil faces $317 billion in annual losses to Amazon deforestation
- Brazil could face losses of $317 billion per year as well as biodiversity depletion and severe social setbacks for millions of people if Amazon deforestation continues, a new report from the World Bank warns.
- The value is seven times higher than profits from commodities taken from the rainforest, the report concludes.
- Experts say that infrastructure development connecting coastal cities, rather than within the Amazon Rainforest, can help boost Brazil’s economy and improve social conditions while reducing pressure on the forests.
- Development efforts must be supported by strong forest governance and international backing in order to be effective, according to experts.

Indonesia’s new capital ‘won’t sacrifice the environment’: Q&A with Nusantara’s Myrna Asnawati Safitri
- The ongoing development of an entirely new capital city from the ground up in Indonesia has alarmed environmental and Indigenous rights activists, who have warned of both deep ecosystem and social impacts.
- The government has justified the plan to move the nation’s capital from Jakarta, on the island of Java, to Indonesia Borneo as a way of ensuring a greater share of development beyond the country’s western islands.
- Mongabay has already reported on the risks to the wider Bornean region and the additional pressures on marine ecosystems that are a biodiversity haven.
- In response, Myrna Asnawati Safitri, the deputy for environment and natural resources at the government agency overseeing the development, reached out for an exclusive interview where these and other thorny questions were addressed.

‘Many features of the Amazon are man-made’: Q&A with archaeologist Eduardo Neves
- Research shows that the human presence in the world’s largest tropical rainforest dates back much further and was much more varied than previously thought.
- Archeologist Eduardo Neves has studied human occupation of the Amazon for 30 years and found evidence of rice, manioc and palm tree cultivation dating back thousands of years.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Neves talks about the new understanding of the Amazon: “The diversity of the Amazon, the presence of many large nut trees and fruit-bearing palm trees, is a result of Indigenous practices.”
- The old paradigm about the agricultural limitations of the rainforest has been shelved, according to Neves. “The Amazon Rainforest is not only a natural heritage, but [also] a biocultural heritage.”

‘I’ll keep fighting’: Indigenous activist and Goldman winner Alessandra Munduruku
- Indigenous leader and human rights activist Alessandra Korap Munduruku was one of the six winners of this year’s prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, also known as the “Green Nobel Prize.”
- The award recognizes her relentless resistance to illegal mining within the Munduruku Indigenous Territory, including prospecting attempts by mining giant Anglo American.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Alessandra discusses what the prize means to her, the policy changes she’s seeing in Brazil, and the current crisis in the Munduruku territory.
- While she praises some actions of the current government, she says her fight isn’t over yet, as she warns of possible environmental issues arising from upcoming infrastructure projects.

Professional services abound for Amazon land grabbers seeking legitimacy
- How does public land in the Brazilian Amazon, including chunks of protected areas and Indigenous territories, end up under private ownership?
- This investigation unveils the network of realtors and engineers who take advantage of Brazil’s disjointed land registration system to launder stolen land.
- Experts say the CAR land registry in particular, which was meant to prevent environmental crimes, has instead made land grabbing easier than ever.
- This article was originally published in Portuguese by The Intercept Brasil and is part of the Ladrões de Floresta (Forest Thieves) project, which investigates the appropriation of public land inside the Amazon and is funded by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network.

‘Don’t buy Brazilian gold’: Q&A with Indigenous leader Júnior Hekurari Yanomami
- Júnior Hekurari Yanomami is a leader of the Yanomami people in Roraima state, Brazil, where he founded an organization to aid his people after working as a health worker.
- In a Mongabay interview, the Indigenous leader called for a boycott of Brazilian gold and said he hoped for efforts to find long-term solutions to keep illegal miners out of the Yanomami territory.
- In early March, Júnior led a campaign to raise international awareness about Amazonian gold by awarding wooden statuettes to Oscar nominees.

Namibia’s first peoples struggle to access their traditional lands (commentary)
- Namibia’s internationally acclaimed Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) program receives significant backing.
- Two CBNRM land conservancies are sited in the last strongholds for Indigenous communities in southern Africa, the Ju/hoansi San and the !Kung San.
- However, research suggests that the conservancies’ natural resources often benefit traders, herders, and trophy hunting guides more than the Indigenous peoples, who too often are unable to access their traditional lands.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

‘They have conned us out of our lands’: Conflict brews in Peru as Mennonite settlers clear forest
- Mennonite groups began arriving in the Peruvian town of the district of Padre Márquez in Peru’s Loreto region in 2020.
- Settling near the town of Tiruntán, one Mennonite colony has cleared hundreds of hectares of old growth rainforest since 2021.
- Tiruntán community members claim they were given plots of public land by the town mayor, which were then sold to “the Mennonites, some Chinese business owners, and a logging company” in an effort to get around regulations that prohibit the clearing of forested land.
- Similar situations are playing out in other parts of Peru, as well as elsewhere in South America.

Report sums up Bolsonaro’s destruction legacy and Amazon’s next critical steps
- A damning report confirms what many environmentalists already knew: that the destruction of nature in Brazil from 2019 to 2022 was a deliberate campaign of sabotage led by the government of the time.
- The report compiled four years of data to describe record levels of land invasions, illegal mining and Amazon deforestation under the administration of Jair Bolsonaro.
- Against this challenging scenario, experts have mostly praised President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s initial actions in his first 100 days, especially his efforts to address the health crisis in the Yanomami Indigenous Territory.
- However, key actions remain pending, they say, including the quashing of anti-environmental bills and an end to the plan to pave a controversial highway through the Amazon Rainforest.

To build its ‘green’ capital city, Indonesia runs a road through a biodiverse forest
- A new toll road in Indonesia’s East Kalimantan province is under construction to improve access to the interior of Borneo, including to the nation’s new capital city, Nusantara.
- Construction of the road, however, poses immediate environmental risks, as the route cuts through a forested area with high conservation value that connects the Sungai Wain protected forest, coastal mangroves, and Balikpapan Bay.
- Prior to road construction, the integrated forest and coastal ecosystem supported populations of orangutans, sun bears, proboscis monkeys and Irrawaddy dolphins.
- Conservationists say the construction of this toll road belies the Indonesian government’s claims that the development of the new capital will be green and sustainable.

Indonesian Indigenous group AMAN wins Skoll Award for defending land rights
- Indonesia’s main Indigenous alliance, AMAN, has won a 2023 Skoll Award for Social Innovation for its work in advocating for Indigenous rights.
- The group’s work includes mapping Indigenous territories and lobbying for legislation that supports and protects Indigenous rights to their lands.
- AMAN says the award fuels its spirit to work even harder, as there’s still much work to be done, with many Indigenous communities still lacking legal recognition of their land rights and an Indigenous rights bill being stalled in Parliament.
- Four other organizations have won this year’s award, including Conexsus, a Brazilian NGO that promotes sustainable forest management and forest-based economies by centering community-led efforts and Indigenous ecological knowledge.

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

Sámi rights must not be sacrificed for green energy goals of Europe (commentary)
- Last week, the European Commission released the Critical Raw Materials Act for minerals used in renewable energy and digital technologies.
- It mandates that EU countries should be extracting “enough ores, minerals and concentrates to produce at least 10% of their strategic raw materials by 2030,” and part of that looks likely to come from mines on Indigenous Sámi land.
- Mines already sited there have caused pollution, devastated ecosystems, poisoned reindeer forage, and taken away their reindeer grazing areas. “How can this transition be sustainable if it destroys our land and violates our Indigenous and human rights?” a new op-ed asks.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

As Indonesia’s new capital takes shape, risks to wider Borneo come into focus
- Indonesia’s plan to build its new capital city on an expiring logging concession in eastern Borneo has sparked concerns among environmental and human rights observers about the larger eco-social impacts to the rest of the island.
- The administration of President Joko Widodo, who made the decision and will leave office next year, has made glowing promises of a green and sustainable development: claiming minimal forest clearance, respect for Indigenous and local communities’ rights, and a net-zero carbon emission design.
- Mongabay visited the site of the project last October to see its progress, observe firsthand some of the earliest impacts from the construction of the city and supporting infrastructure, and speak with the people most likely to be affected.
- Clearing of mangroves and high-conservation forest areas, land conflicts with Indigenous communities, and potentially large-scale displacements are already happening, calling into question whether the $34 billion project’s benefits will outweigh its downsides.

Palm oil plantation linked to Wilmar faces accusations in Liberia
- A report released by the Liberian and Dutch affiliates of Friends of the Earth says the Maryland Oil Palm Plantation in Liberia is abusing its workers and rural villagers.
- The company is owned by Côte D’Ivoire-based SIFCA, which is itself nearly 30% owned by the Singapore-based agribusiness giant Wilmar.
- Friends of the Earth’s Liberian affiliate said the company has polluted local waterways, beaten villagers it accuses of stealing palm fruit, and withheld pay from its contractors.

The $20m flip: The story of the largest land grab in the Brazilian Amazon
- This is the story of how three individual landowners engineered the single-largest instance of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.
- The clearing of 6,469 hectares (or 15,985 acres) of forest in the southern part of Pará state could earn them nearly $20 million in profit at current land prices.
- The case is emblematic of the spate of land grabs targeting unallocated public lands throughout the Amazon, where speculators clear and burn the vegetation, then sell the empty land for soy farms, or plant grass and sell it for cattle ranching.
- This article was originally published in Portuguese by The Intercept Brasil and is part of the Ladrões de Floresta (Forest Thieves) project, which investigates the appropriation of public land inside the Amazon and is funded by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network.

US pledges Amazon Fund donation, renewing hope for the rainforest
- Recent talks between the presidents of Brazil and the U.S. have spurred hope for a renewed global commitment to protect the Amazon Rainforest.
- The U.S. has pledged to work with Brazil to strengthen the protection of the Amazon, including offering “initial support” to the recently revived Amazon Fund.
- Reports claim the U.S. will initially donate $50 million toward the fund, inciting disappointment among some experts who claim billions, not millions, are required to eliminate deforestation.
- However, many environmentalists praise the collaboration as giving credibility to Brazil’s environmental agenda and claim it could encourage more countries to donate.

JBS is accused of misleading investors with suspicious green bonds
- The global NGO Mighty Earth has filed a complaint against the beef giant JBS with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), accusing the company of misleading investors in a sustainability-linked bonds issuance that raised $3.2 billion for the company in 2021.
- The bonds were attached to JBS’ promise to reduce its climate footprint and become net-zero by 2040. According to Mighty Earth, these targets don’t include cattle enteric fermentation and deforestation, which account for 97% of JBS’ emissions.
- JBS argues it can’t measure its indirect emissions and that it has always been transparent with investors about the scope of its commitments.
- The case will probably be analyzed by SEC’s recently created Climate and ESG Task Force, which has already punished heavyweights such as the mining company Vale and the international financial group Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

Indigenous communities in Latin America decry the Mennonites’ expanding land occupation
- A team of journalists followed in the footsteps of five Mennonite colonies that have been reported for clearing forests by Indigenous communities and locals in Bolivia, Colombia, México, Paraguay and Perú. Many of these cases are being investigated by prosecutors and environmental authorities.
- Authors of a recent study to understand the extension of Mennonite presence in the region say that the expansion will continue as the colonies grow in size and continue to pursue farming, creating new colonies.
- Many of these cases are being investigated by prosecutors and environmental authorities.

Australian niobium mining project instills 16 years of anxiety for Malawi communities
- In 2006, Australian mining firm Globe Metals & Mining began exploring for rare earth metals niobium and tantalum in Malawi’s Kanyika hills, confirming in 2012 its intention to begin commercial mining.
- The metals will be used in the manufacture of high-tech equipment like electric vehicle batteries and gas and wind turbines.
- For villagers being relocated for the mine, these high-tech goods hold little appeal when compared with the loss of their land, and with the 16 years they have been living in limbo while awaiting relocation.

Q&A: Climatologist Carlos Nobre’s dream of an Amazon Institute of Technology
- Three decades ago, Carlos Nobre projected a not-very-encouraging scenario for the Amazon. Today, he witnesses the beginning of the forest’s savannization, but he says he believes that the scenario can still be reversed.
- As an internationally renowned expert when it comes to the world’s largest tropical forest, Nobre is leading a project that intends to bring Amazonian countries together in developing research and educational centers focused on a “standing forest economy.”
- In an exclusive interview with Mongabay, he detailed the project of the Amazon Institute of Technology (AmIT) and spoke about what must be done to prevent the Amazon from reaching a point of no return.

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

Deforestation ‘out of control’ in reserve in Brazil’s cattle capital
- Forest destruction has ravaged Triunfo do Xingu, a reserve earmarked for sustainable use that has nonetheless become one of the most deforested slices of the Brazilian Amazon.
- Fires burned swaths of the reserve in recent months and forest clearing has surged, with satellite images showing even the most remote remnants of old-growth rainforest were whittled away last year.
- Advocates say the forest is mainly giving way to cattle pasture, although illegal mining and land grabbing are gaining ground.
- The destruction, facilitated by lax environmental regulation, is placing pressure on nearby protected areas and undermining agroforestry efforts in Triunfo do Xingu, advocates say.

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

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

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

‘We’re not going to give Lula a free pass’: Q&A with Indigenous leader Beto Marubo
- Despite his criticisms of the previous Workers’ Party (PT) administrations when it came to environmental issues, Beto Marubo, an Indigenous leader from Brazil, says he believes that the incoming president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, will be able to make Brazil a major player on the world stage in climate and environmental matters again from 2023 onward.
- Beto says he believes that pressure from civil society is more important than ever in ensuring the government-elect reassumes environmental protection commitments and in preventing the agribusiness lobby from sabotaging advances, as happened in Lula’s previous administrations.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Beto, a member of the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley (UNIVAJA), condemned the current government for the increases in deforestation and criminality in his region under its watch and reaffirmed his call for justice for the brutal murder of his friend Bruno Pereira and the journalist Dom Phillips in June this year.

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

Island shopping: Cambodian officials buy up the Cardamoms’ coast
- A buying spree by Cambodia’s wealthy and politically connected elites has put the fate of a string of small islands in the balance, affecting the livelihoods of local fishers.
- Resort developments threaten the Koh S’dach archipelago’s seagrass and coral ecosystems, which harbor rare and threatened marine life.
- Local fishers have also found themselves locked out of their traditional fishing grounds by the developers, leading to a loss of earnings.
- This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn is a fellow.

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

‘Panic’ sets in as armed groups occupy, deforest Colombian national park
- Once covering an expanse of more than 2,140 square kilometers (826 square miles) of the Colombian Amazon Rainforest, Tinigua National Natural Park has lost 29% of its forests over the past 20 years; the majority of this loss has occurred since 2018.
- Satellite data and monitoring suggest forest loss has kept a quick pace in 2022.
- Authorities say illegal cattle ranching, coca growing and land-grabbing are driving deforestation in the park, much of it reportedly done at the hands of armed groups affiliated with FARC dissident factions.
- Local communities have also reportedly been threatened by these groups.

No justice for Indigenous community taking on a Cambodian rubber baron
- A land dispute that has simmered for a decade pits an Indigenous community inside the Beng Per Wildlife Sanctuary against a politically well-connected rubber company.
- The company, Sambath Platinum, cut off the Indigenous Kuy residents of the village of Ngon from the forests from which they have gathered herbs and medicinal plants for generations.
- The community have followed all the procedures to obtain a communal land title, but continue to be stonewalled by various government ministries, but now face questionable criminal charges.
- This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn is a fellow.

Indigenous communities in Peru ‘living in fear’ due to deforestation, drug trafficking
- Between 2021 and 2021 the territory of the Indigenous Kakataibo community of Puerto Nuevo lost 15% of its tree cover.
- Satellite data suggest forest loss in the community territory may have accelerated in 2022.
- Residents say outsiders are invading the territory and clearing forest to grow coca crops for the production of cocaine.
- The presence of armed groups is deterring government intervention.

U.N. report calls for the ban of mercury trade and its use in gold mining
- Small-scale gold mining is the key driver of global mercury demand, according to a U.N. report on the highly toxic metal, with South America accounting for 39% of this demand.
- Hair samples taken from Indigenous communities in the Bolivian and Brazilian Amazonian regions showed mercury levels in excess of the safe limit prescribed by the World Health Organization.
- In Brazil specifically, mercury use has risen with the boom in illegal mining that has been largely overlooked — and in some cases even encouraged — by the government of President Jair Bolsonaro.

Report offers a road map to restore the rule of law in the Brazilian Amazon
- Brazilian president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will have to supercharge many of the same policies that he employed in his first two terms to bring Amazon destruction rates down from their record highs, a new report says.
- The report, by a group of development, security and conservation think tanks, lists 92 proposals for Lula when he takes office at the start of 2023, centered around ending the culture of criminal impunity that flourished under the outgoing president, Jair Bolsonaro.
- Experts say the absence of law enforcement in the Amazon has strengthened a criminal ecosystem that profits from land grabbing, illegal logging, mining, and wildlife and drug trafficking.
- The Bolsonaro administration has encouraged this in large part by weakening environmental enforcement agencies and putting loyalists in their top posts.

Tensions boil in Sumatra over a palm oil promise villagers say has yet to be kept
- In West Sumatra province, tensions in a three-decade-old land conflict spiked this year after several residents of Nagari Aia Gadang village were detained by police.
- The dispute centers on the community’s entitlement to a proportion of oil palm company PT Anam Koto’s concession under Indonesia’s plasma program.
- Residents of Nagari Aia Gadang say the company’s refusal to cede the land has held back local livelihoods, elevating risks that parents will not be able to afford to send their children to school.

In Brazil’s soy belt, Indigenous people face attacks over land rights
- In Brazil’s Mato Grosso do Sul state, Guarani-Kaiowá Indigenous people seeking to reclaim their ancestral lands have been subjected to threats and violence by farmers and security forces, according to Indigenous residents and rights activists.
- In June, tensions escalated in the Guapo’y Mirim Tujury community when a military police operation to evict the Guarani-Kaiowá from part of a farm they were occupying left one Indigenous resident dead and injured at least nine other residents, including children, according to advocates.
- The incident was the latest in a decades-long struggle for land rights and demarcation, which has led to the deaths of 608 Guarani-Kaiowá people in Mato Grosso do Sul between 2003 and 2021.
- The violence has continued since the Guapo’y Mirim Tujury operation: in July and September, two Guarani-Kaiowá leaders were killed in the region, with Indigenous residents blaming farming interests for the deaths.

How the Indigenous Shuar regained their ancestral forest
- “Ecuador had not declared community protected area management by Indigenous peoples until Tiwi Nunka Forest. This area is the first of its kind in Ecuador, and one of the few in the entire Amazon,” says our first guest on this episode, Felipe Serrano.
- Serrano is the Ecuador country director for Nature and Culture International, which helped the Shuar people in their struggle to reclaim this territory and get the forest included in Ecuador’s National System of Protected Areas.
- We also speak with journalist Paul Koberstein about the flawed basis for the U.S. State of Washington’s new and unusual climate solution: cutting down forests.
- The state claims that it’s more effective to store carbon in wood products than it is to keep forests standing, but as Koberstein shares, research shows that only a small percentage of the carbon remains in wood products, and the rest is lost to the atmosphere, so activists are pushing for a change in policy.

As banks fund oil pipeline, campaigners question their environmental pledges
- Activists say some banks that have signed up to the Equator Principles are failing to live up to their pledge of properly assessing the environmental and social risks of the projects they finance.
- South Africa’s Standard Bank and Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation are facilitating funding for the East African Crude Oil Pipeline project (EACOP).
- When fully operational, crude oil flowing through pipeline will generate 34 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year.
- Activists say EACOP, which will run 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) across many ecologically sensitive areas, has also affected 12,000 households who have been inadequately compensated.

There is not enough land to meet many of the world’s climate pledges, says new study
- National climate pledges would collectively require 1.2 billion hectares (about 3 billion acres) of land, researchers have found in a new study, The Land Gap Report.
- More than half of this land is already currently used for something else. This demand for land will put pressure on ecosystems, Indigenous lands, smallholder farmers and food security.
- Protecting existing forests and securing Indigenous and community land rights are more effective than carbon capture plans requiring land-use change, including reforestation.
- Indigenous leaders are calling for updates and transparency at the upcoming U.N. climate conference, COP27, concerning funding pledges at last year’s conference.

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

Activists slam Bolsonaro rule change seen as ending demarcation of Indigenous lands
- The Brazilian government has drawn up a new statute for Funai, the country’s Indigenous affairs agency, without the input of Indigenous peoples.
- Indigenous rights activists say the structural changes will hinder the body’s functioning and effectively end the demarcation of new Indigenous territories across the country.
- The move is the latest attempt by the government of President Jair Bolsonaro to undermine Funai, according to insiders and observers.
- Bolsonaro came to power in 2019 on a campaign promise to stop demarcating Indigenous territories and to “deliver a blow to the neck” of Funai.

How an Indigenous family under siege became a symbol of resistance in the Amazon
- Neidinha, Almir and Txai Suruí are leading the fight against invaders destroying two of the most threatened Indigenous territories in the Brazilian state of Rondônia: the Sete de Setembro and Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau reserves.
- Indigenous territories in Rôndonia have been the target of a recent wave of illegal activities such as land invasions, illegal mining and illegal logging, while their defenders have been threatened and even killed.
- The violence faced by defenders of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous Territory has been captured in the documentary “The Territory” (“O Território”), released in Europe and the U.S. in August and in Brazil in September, in which part of the production team was made up of local Indigenous leaders.

As Brazil starts repaving an Amazon highway, land grabbers get to work
- Paving work has begun on a stretch of highway running through one of the remotest and best-preserved parts of the Brazilian Amazon — even as questions about the project’s permits abound.
- BR-319 was built in the 1970s to connect the Amazonian cities of Manaus and Porto Velho, but a 405-kilometer (250-mile) “Middle Stretch” fell into disrepair, making the road virtually impassable and killing the flow of traffic.
- Conservation experts have long warned against repaving the Middle Stretch, warning that improved access to this carbon-rich region will lead to a surge in deforestation, burning and land grabbing.
- With the repaving underway, this is already happening, raising concerns about unchecked forest loss that would have massive ramifications for the global climate.

Mangroves and wildlife in Bornean bay at risk from Indonesia’s new capital
- Experts and activists say the construction of Indonesia’s new capital city upstream of Balikpapan Bay on the island of Borneo fails to mitigate against damage to the marine ecosystem.
- The stretch of coast between the bay and the mouth of the Mahakam River is packed with mangroves, which host a rich diversity of marine and terrestrial life, including proboscis monkeys and Irrawaddy dolphins.
- The government has said the construction of the new capital, Nusantara, will include retaining a large swath of mangrove forest, but zoning details show most of it won’t be protected against development.
- The $33 billion planned city will in 2024 take over as the Indonesian capital from Jakarta, and its full construction will be completed by 2045, according to the government’s plans.

Cambodia’s elites swallow up Phnom Penh’s lakes, leaving the poor marooned
- Lakes in Phnom Penh are fast being filled in and parceled off as prime real estate to wealthy and politically connected individuals.
- Families who have for generations fished and practiced aquaculture on the lakes and surrounding wetlands face eviction and the loss of livelihoods.
- At the same time, experts warn that filling in these natural rainwater reservoirs risks exacerbating flood intensity and damage in the Cambodian capital.
- This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn is a fellow.

Sulawesi islanders grieve land lost to nickel mine
- The Harita Group holds a nickel mining concession covering about 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) on Wawonii Island.
- The arrival of the mine has divided the community between those who support the development and farmers hoping to retain their fruit and nut trees.
- One man described his grief as the grave of his son was exhumed and moved as a result of the mine.

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

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

European bill passes to ban imports of deforestation-linked commodities
- Imports of 14 types of commodities into the European Union will soon have to be verified for possible association with deforestation in the countries in which they were produced.
- That’s the key provision in a bill passed on Sept. 13 by the European Parliament, which initially targeted soy, beef, palm oil, timber, cocoa, and coffee, but now also includes pork, lamb and goat meat, as well as poultry, corn, rubber, charcoal, and printed paper.
- The bill still needs the approval of the Council of the EU and the national parliaments of the 27 countries in the bloc, but is already considered a historic step against deforestation.
- In Brazil, experts have welcomed the bill as a means of tackling the demand-side pressures driving increasing levels of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest, while the agribusiness lobby has denounced it as unfair.

Can Two New Bills Reshape Indigenous Rights and Illegal Gold Mining in Suriname?
- Two bills currently before Suriname’s parliament aim to recognize the rights of the country’s Indigenous inhabitants and tackle the forest-poisoning mercury pollution associated with gold mining.
- But both bills face an uphill battle: Suriname has repeatedly refused to recognize Indigenous rights, making it one of the few Amazonian countries to do so, while gold mining is the backbone of the country’s economy.
- A key provision in one of the bills is the right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), which would make it illegal to open mining concessions on Indigenous land without the community’s consent.
- The other bill, on stopping the illegal mercury trade, threatens to ruffle the feathers of powerful individuals with links to the gold industry, including Suriname’s current vice president.

Report lists Indigenous territories under greatest pressure in the Amazon
- Apyterewa, the territory of the Parakanã people, continues to be the main target of deforestation by land grabbers among the Indigenous territories of the Amazon, a report by Imazon shows.
- The advance of land grabbing in the area known as the “deforestation belt” is used as a form of political pressure for reducing and questioning legally recognized areas.
- Despite increasing pressure, Indigenous territories still have the lowest deforestation rate among protected areas, proving their effectiveness as a preservation policy.
- Indigenous representatives and civil society advocates criticize the federal government for reducing vigilance and putting forward bills to explore Indigenous land.

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

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

Toxic rare earth mines fuel deforestation, rights abuses in Myanmar, report says
- Highly toxic rare earth mining has rapidly expanded in northern Myanmar, fueling human rights abuses, deforestation and environmental contamination, an investigation by the NGO Global Witness has found.
- People living near mining sites have seen surrounding land polluted and waterways contaminated by the chemicals used to extract the rare earth minerals that are used in smartphones, home electronics and clean energy technology, such as electric cars and wind turbines.
- The investigation found that China has outsourced much of its rare earth mining industry to Myanmar’s Kachin state, where more than 2,700 heavy rare earth mines have proliferated over an area the size of Singapore since 2016.
- There is a risk of minerals mined illegally in Myanmar making their way into products manufactured by several global brands, the investigation says.

Organized crime drives violence and deforestation in the Amazon, study shows
- Increasing rates of both deforestation and violence in the Brazilian Amazon are being driven by sprawling national and transnational criminal networks, a study shows.
- Experts say criminal organizations engaged in activities ranging from illegal logging to drug trafficking often threaten and attack environmentalists, Indigenous people, and enforcement agents who attempt to stop them.
- In 2020, the Brazilian Amazon had the highest murder rate in Brazil, at 29.6 homicides per 100,000 habitants, compared to the national average of 23.9, with the highest rates corresponding to municipalities suffering the most deforestation.
- Experts say the current government’s systematic dismantling of environmental protections and enforcement agencies has emboldened these criminal organizations, which have now become “well connected, well established and very strong.”

Indigenous advocates sense a legal landmark as a guardian’s killing heads to trial
- For the first time in Brazil, the killing of an Indigenous land defender is expected to be tried before a federal jury — escalated to that level because of what prosecutors say was an aggression against the entire Guajajara Indigenous community and Indigenous culture.
- Paulo Paulino Guajajara, 26, was killed in an alleged ambush by illegal loggers in the Arariboia Indigenous Territory in November 2019; two people have been indicted to stand trial in the case.
- The impending trial stands out amid a general culture of impunity that has allowed violence against Indigenous individuals and the theft of their land — including the killings of more than 50 Guajajara individuals in the past 20 years — to go unpunished.
- It could also set an important legal precedent for trying those responsible for the recent killings of British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian Indigenous rights defender Bruno Pereira.

Amazon rainforest activist under threat in Brazil plans to flee his home
- Erasmo Theofilo, an agroecologist, founded a farmers’ cooperative in one of the most hostile corners of the Amazon to defend landless and poor rural workers and promote sustainable farming practices.
- He has been the target of death threats, ambushes and attempts on his life for his work in the municipality of Anapu, in Pará state, where U.S.-born nun Dorothy Stang was killed for her activism in 2005.
- Since President Jair Bolsonaro took office at the start of 2019, land conflicts and deforestation in the Amazon have surged, with a recent report showing that Pará is the most dangerous for land rights defenders.
- Theofilo told Mongabay he believes he will never be safe in Anapu again, even if the land conflicts are resolved, and is planning to leave for good with his family.

Swiss pledge to stop illegal gold imports from Brazil Indigenous reserves
- Switzerland imported 24.5 tonnes of gold in 2021, at least a fifth of which came from Brazilian Amazon states. Evidence indicates most of it is mined illegally on Indigenous lands. Illicit mining operations have resulted in major Amazon deforestation, widespread mercury poisoning and soaring violence.
- With the Brazilian government of Jair Bolsonaro unresponsive to the escalating crisis, an independent delegation of Indigenous people along with others travelled to Switzerland in May to plead with major gold refiners to end the importation of illicit Brazilian gold.
- This week, the refiners published a statement pledging to remove illegal gold mined within Brazilian Indigenous reserves from their supply chains. If the initiative is fully followed, experts say it could be a game changer that could undermine the, until now, lucrative illegal gold trade.
- Canada, the world’s biggest importer of gold from the Brazilian Amazon, has made no such agreement.

Deaths of Phillips and Pereira shine light on a region of the Amazon beset by violence
- Brazilian police reported on June 15 that they had found the bodies believed to be those of Brazilian Indigenous defender Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips deep in the western Amazon.
- The bodies were found not far from where the pair disappeared on June 5, in the Vale do Javari region, considered the most violent region of Brazil, where criminal groups vie to seize land occupied by Indigenous and traditional communities.
- Similar conflicts occur all over the Amazon, with some land grabbers admitting that they will, if necessary, use violent methods to achieve their goals.
- The Brazilian Senate has launched an investigation into the disappearance of Pereira and Phillips, but observers say it’s unlikely to deliver the far-reaching change required to tackle the violence.

In Indonesian Borneo, a succession of extractive industries multiplies impacts, social fractures
- Much of the landscape of Indonesia’s East Kalimantan province has been transformed, its formerly vast forests razed for logging, monocrop agriculture and open-cast coal mining.
- A recently published study analyzes how waves of extractive industries have affected the inhabitants of one village in the province
- The cumulative impacts of these industries were found to be severe, but also to vary depending on multiple factors including ethnicity, gender, wealth and age. Women, young people and recently arrived migrants were found to be disproportionately affected.

Indonesian villagers missing out on spoils from palm oil boom
- BBC News recently aired a documentary about Indonesia's palm oil smallholdings program, produced as part of a joint investigation undertaken with Mongabay and The Gecko Project.

A hidden crisis in Indonesia’s palm oil sector: 6 takeaways from our investigation

Last week, Mongabay, BBC News and The Gecko Project released a joint investigation into a scheme that was intended to help lift millions of Indonesians out of poverty and cut them in on the spoils of the global palm oil boom, but has instead been plagued by allegations of exploitation and illegality. Indonesia produces millions […]
Push for potash mine in Brazil’s Amazon looms over Indigenous people
- A Canadian-backed company seeking to mine potash in the Brazilian Amazon has finally begun a consultation process with Indigenous inhabitants — more than a decade after it arrived and started prospecting.
- Potássio do Brasil has promised jobs and prosperity for the municipality of Autazes, but Indigenous Mura communities say they’re worried the mine could pollute their rivers, killing the fish they depend on.
- But their resistance is undermined by the government’s long-standing refusal to acknowledge their land claims; officially recognized Indigenous territories in Brazil are off-limits to mining.
- The proposed mine is part of a wider push to exploit the Amazon by President Jair Bolsonaro, who says the potash project specifically will ease Brazil’s reliance on fertilizers imported from sanctions-hit Russia.

‘The promise was a lie’: How Indonesian villagers lost their cut of the palm oil boom
- An investigation by Mongabay, BBC News and The Gecko Project estimates that Indonesian villagers are losing hundreds of millions of dollars each year because palm oil producers are failing to comply with regulations requiring them to share their plantations with communities.
- The “plasma” scheme was intended to lift communities out of poverty. But it has become a major source of unrest across the country, as government interventions fail to compel companies to deliver on their commitments and legal obligations.
- Palm oil from companies accused of withholding profits from communities is flowing into the supply chains of major consumer goods firms like Kellogg’s and Johnson & Johnson. Some have pledged to investigate.

Pasture replaces large tract of intact primary forest in Brazilian protected area
- Satellites have detected forest clearing within the Triunfo do Xingu Environmental Protection Area (APA) this year, a legally protected area of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest.
- Despite its status, 35% of the primary (or old-growth) forest within the APA was lost between 2006 and 2021, making it one of the most deforested slices of the Brazilian Amazon.
- The APA was created in 2006 to serve as a buffer for vulnerable surrounding areas, such as the Apyterewa Indigenous Territory and the massive Terra do Meio Ecological Station, but deforestation has spilled over into both.
- Deforestation in the region is largely driven by cattle ranching, but land grabbing and mining have also increased in recent years, with invaders emboldened by the rhetoric and policies of the current government.

Analysis: Myanmar’s gemstone riches bring poverty and environmental destruction
- Myanmar is endowed with rich reserves of jade, rubies and other gemstones, but endemic corruption and poor regulation mean little wealth has flowed to ordinary citizens.
- The jade-mining hotspot of Hpakant, in Kachin state, is emblematic of the problem: There are currently no licensed mines in the area, but jade extraction nonetheless continues at a massive scale.
- The speed and size of these poorly regulated operations results in both massive environmental damage and human casualties, as scavengers flock to unstable dumpsites to hunt for jade left behind by machines.

Who owns the companies destroying rainforests in the heart of New Guinea?
- New Guinea, home to the world’s third-largest rainforest, also contains the world’s largest planned oil palm plantation.
- Covering 2,800 square kilometers (1,100 square miles) the Tanah Merah project is nearly the size of the U.S. state of Rhode Island.
- However, the true owners of the seven concessions that make up the project remain hidden through a shroud of corporate secrecy.
- We speak with Philip Jacobson, senior editor at Mongabay, and Bonnie Sumner, investigative reporter at the Aotearoa New Zealand organization Newsroom, to discuss the project from inception to present day, the involvement of a New Zealand businessman, and where the project could go next.

Rangers in DRC gorilla park abused Indigenous villagers, report says
- According to a new investigative report by Minority Rights Group (MRG), 20 Indigenous Batwa were killed, 15 women were raped and 2 children were burnt alive by park guards and soldiers in the DRC’s Kahuzi-Biega National Park (KBNP), home to the critically endangered eastern lowland gorilla.
- The acts were committed between 2019 and 2021 under the knowledge and paramilitary support of U.S and German government agencies and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), say the report’s researchers who obtained evidence through interviews with eyewitnesses and park guards involved in the attacks.
- WCS denies allegations brought against the organization, saying it had no involvement in military operations. The KBNP bulletin denied similar reports of violence during a visit by the government agency that manages the park in February.
- German government agencies and a cabinet secretary are calling for an independent investigation into allegations of abuses, which MRG says is just the “tip of the iceberg”. According to sources, another investigation is underway.

Best-preserved part of Brazil’s Amazon, home to isolated tribes, faces ‘decimation’
- An area of forest larger than England could be cleared by 2050 in one of the best-preserved parts of the Brazilian Amazon, a new report warns.
- It says the main drivers of deforestation in the Middle Purus region of Amazonas state are illegal logging, neglect by government institutes, and the paving of the BR-319 road.
- The Middle Purus region is home to two areas where isolated Indigenous people were recently discovered, the Jacareúba-Katawixi Indigenous Territory and the Mamoriá Grande River region, but both have been without formal protection since temporary decrees were allowed to expire last year.
- The road-paving project, revived by the Bolsonaro administration in 2020 after being shelved in 1988, also threatens a surge in the deforestation rate, giving land grabbers and illegal loggers greater access to previously remote areas of forest.

NGOs alert U.N. to furtive 2-million-hectare carbon deal in Malaysian Borneo
- Civil society organizations have complained to the United Nations about an opaque “natural capital” agreement in the Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo.
- The agreement, signed behind closed doors in October 2021, involved representatives from the state government and Hoch Standard Pte. Ltd., a Singaporean firm. But it did not involve substantive input from the state’s numerous Indigenous communities, many of whom live in or near forests.
- The terms ostensibly give Hoch Standard the right to monetize carbon and other natural capital from Sabah’s forests for 100 years.
- Along with the recent letter to the U.N., the state’s attorney general has questioned whether the agreement is enforceable without changes to key provisions. An Indigenous leader is also suing the state over the agreement, and Hoch Standard may be investigated by the Singaporean government after rival political party leaders in Sabah reported the company to Singapore’s ambassador in Malaysia.

Tree kangaroos may be key to New Guinea forest conservation
- New Guinea is home to 12 of 14 species of the elusive, charismatic tree kangaroo.
- Conservationists in Papua New Guinea have been fighting for decades to establish protected areas using these species as a flagship species for these conservation efforts. PNG is now on the cusp of passing legislation aimed at creating a network of them.
- The Torricelli mountain range in northern PNG, home to the critically endangered tenkile tree kangaroo, has been in the crosshairs of a road project threatening to encroach upon the region, but the government is in the process of reviewing a draft proposal to halt the road for now.
- We speak with Jim Thomas of the Tenkile Conservation Alliance and Lisa Dabek and Modi Pontio of the Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program for this episode to explore what's known about these intelligent marsupials, and the successes from nearly two decades working in PNG to conserve both them and the forests they inhabit.

Brazil Congress fast-tracks ‘death package’ bill to mine on Indigenous lands
- Thousands of protesters, including celebrities, activists and 150 Indigenous people from eight ethnic groups, gathered for the biggest environment protest ever held in Brazil’s capital against a series of bills dubbed the “death package” by critics.
- Protesters say the slate of five key bills will cause unbridled environmental damage and violate Indigenous rights by encouraging commercial activities in vulnerable regions and invasions of Indigenous territories.
- While the protests were taking place, the lower house of Congress voted to fast-track one of those bills, which would allow mining on Indigenous lands — an activity that’s banned under Brazil’s Constitution.
- While some lawmakers say they oppose the bills and will vote against them, the bills enjoy the support of President Jair Bolsonaro and the powerful agribusiness lobby.

To fight invaders, Munduruku women wield drone cameras and cellphones
- Three young women from the Munduruku Indigenous group in the Brazilian Amazon run an audiovisual collective that uses social media to raise awareness about illegal invasions of their territory.
- “Many people no longer believe what we say, they only believe what they see,” says Aldira Akai, who, at 30, is the oldest member of the collective.
- The Munduruku living in the Sawré Muybu Indigenous Territory say the anti-Indigenous rhetoric of the Jair Bolsonaro administration has emboldened illegal loggers and miners, and put native defenders under greater risk.
- The impact of illegal logging and mining in Sawré Muybu has seen deforestation surge to 146 hectares (361 acres) in 2020, up from 105 hectares (259 acres) the previous year.

In Brazil, Indigenous Ka’apor take their territory’s defense into their own hands
- In the Alto Turiaçu Indigenous Territory in Brazil’s Maranhão state, the Ka’apor people have taken the defense of their land into their own hands following years of neglect and corruption by the state.
- They have created a self-defense force to retake logging sites and access roads from illegal loggers, and established a network of settlements at each site to make their gains permanent.
- The strategy has paid off: in the first three years of the effort, from 2013-2016, the Ka’apor burned 105 logging trucks and closed 14 access roads, and managed to reduce the deforestation rate in their reserve significantly.
- But the illegal loggers, part of criminal organizations linked to local politicians, have reacted with violence against the Ka’apor, resulting in attacks on villages and the murder of five Indigenous people.

New IPCC climate report stresses Indigenous & local land rights 58 times: let’s respond with a concrete tenure plan (commentary)
- Actions to strengthen land access and tenure security of Indigenous and local communities are central to one of the new IPCC report’s five areas recommended for systemic change.
- Ramping up the recognition of land rights could help to preserve enough of the natural world to pull the climate back from the brink, the authors of a new op-ed argue.
- “We need a plan now, one with targets and deadlines, and crucially in terms of land rights, detail on how it will be monitored and enforced. Let’s do this before COP27 or we may run out of time,” they write.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.

In Brazil, evicted Indigenous residents fight to reclaim their community
- Some 2,260 families, many of them Indigenous, were displaced in March 2020 when authorities dismantled the Monte Horebe informal settlement on the outskirts of Manaus, in the Brazilian state of Amazonas.
- Two years later, many of the displaced residents continue to struggle with precarious housing, deepening poverty and the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, Indigenous leaders say.
- The Indigenous community is now fighting to reclaim the Monte Horebe settlement, asking a court to order authorities to compensate residents and allow them to return to the area.
- Informal settlements provide a lifeline for vulnerable Indigenous people forced to cities in search of employment, education or health care, but a crackdown by the authorities on these settlements threatens Indigenous people’s right to housing, community leaders say.

At a disputed Native massacre site, tribes brace for a new, lithium-driven rush
- The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has approved an open-pit lithium ore mine in northern Nevada, despite protests by Native tribes to protect the disputed sacred site.
- Lithium is in high demand as the key component in batteries that fuel electric vehicles and cellphones, raising environmental concerns about its extraction.
- The U.S. government is ramping up production of lithium all along the domestic supply chain to meet its clean energy goals.

John Deere and Brazilian bank team up to equip farmers deforesting the Amazon
- Farmers whose properties have been embargoed by environmental authorities in Brazil for deforestation have still been able to access government-subsidized loans to buy John Deere tractors, an investigation has found.
- The five farmers identified in the investigation received a combined 28.6 million reais ($5.4 million) in loans under a program administered by the state-owned Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) and underwritten by John Deere Bank, a wholly owned subsidiary of the U.S. farm equipment manufacturer.
- Under Central Bank rules, farms that have been embargoed for deforestation are barred from accessing credit, but a loophole allows the farm owners to apply on the basis of a different property; in some cases, lender oversight was so lax that the farmers didn’t need to resort to this subterfuge.
- In addition to being embargoed, some of the farmers also had outstanding fines for environmental violations; one of them still owed 18 million reais ($3.4 million), yet went on to receive 11 million reais ($2.1 million) in loans.

Can ecotourism save Cambodia’s ‘ghost parks’?
- Cambodia’s 2021 signing into law of Sub-decree No. 30, which removed official protection from some 127,000 hectares of land formerly included in national parks, reserves and wildlife sanctuaries in Koh Kong province, has conservationists concerned about the ecological integrity of southern Cambodia.
- But experts caution that other protected areas in the country are hardly faring better, claiming that “a lack of commitment and vision, systemic corruption at varies levels and competing interests by state and private actors” is contributing to the rapid degradation of Cambodia’s remaining protected forest.
- There is some agreement between conservationists and government officials that the country does not have the resources to effectively manage its protected areas.
- As a solution, some point to Africa, where public-private ecotourism partnerships have been successful at preserving habitat. But others disagree.

Endangered wildlife face perilous future as vital habitat loses protection in Cambodia
- In March 2021, this imbalance has widened into a chasm as Cambodia’s government signed Sub-decree No. 30 into law, effectively revoking protection from some 127,000 hectares of land in reserves, wildlife sanctuaries and national parks in the southern province of Koh Kong province.
- One of the protected areas affected is Peam Krasop Wildlife Sanctuary, which lost almost a third of its total land area to the sub-decree — meaning these habitats are now for sale.
- Peam Krasop is home to species threatened with extinction, such as the hairy-nosed otter — the world’s rarest otter species — and the fishing cat.
- Researchers say the degradation of these habitats could result in “trophic cascades“ in which the loss of key species destabilizes entire ecosystems , which in turn may lead to further loss.

How a ‘dirty gambling company’ may have set the standard for habitat destruction in Cambodia
- Union Development Group (UDG) is a Chinese company that was granted a 36,000-hectare concession in Cambodia’s Botum Sakor National Park in 2008, followed by an additional 9,100-hectare concession granted in 2011. Much of Botum Sakor National Park’s forests have been cleared by UDG and other companies.
- On Sep. 15, 2020, the United States Treasury Department, sanctioned UDG for “serious human rights abuses and corruption,” noting that UDG had enlisted the support of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces to evict and harass residents, and also managed to skirt the 10,000-hectare limit on land concessions by “falsely registering as a Cambodian-owned entity.”
- In 2021, the Cambodian government signed into law Sub-decree No. 30, which transformed some 127,000 hectares of protected land in Koh Kong province into state-private land.
- Conservationists, researchers and local residents interviewed by Mongabay worry that the sub-decree will mean that many other parts of Koh Kong province will follow in the destruction of Botum Sakor.

Mau Forest rehabilitation still overshadowed by forced evictions
- More than 50,000 people have been forcefully evicted from Kenya’s ecologically important Mau Forest in the past decade.
- With few options to relocate, evicted smallholders and others continue to enter the forest in search of grazing and fuel.
- The Kenya Water Tower Agency has built electrified fencing, but encroachers have torn sections of this down.
- Enlisting evictees to create tree nurseries and support for alternative livelihoods points the way to more constructive approaches.

Attack on environmental lawyer’s home alarms DRC rights defenders
- Armed men, including two dressed in police uniform, attacked the home of Congolese lawyer Timothée Mbuya earlier this month and told family members they were sent to kill him.
- Mbuya is also facing a defamation lawsuit after publishing a report alleging encroachment of a protected area by a farm owned by former DRC president Joseph Kabila.
- Campaigners say both the lawsuit and the violent assault on the lawyer’s home fit a pattern of harassment of environment and human rights activists in the country.

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