topic: Social Justice

topic: Social Justice

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Global warming hits hardest for those who can’t escape it
- The world’s most vulnerable people, including refugees, migrants and the poor, increasingly face threats related to climate change.
- Many lack the ability to move away from impacts like heat, flooding and landslides.
- A new study reveals a lack of data showing the causes of this involuntary immobility.
- Experts say governments and organizations can invest in low-cost interventions aimed at reducing suffering.

Fishing rights, and wrongs, cast small-scale South African fishers adrift
- A community of mixed-race families has lived and fished in South Africa’s Langebaan Lagoon since the 1800s.
- Starting with the former apartheid government in the 1970s, a series of conservation-oriented decisions ostensibly aimed at protecting fish stocks have slowly squeezed the number of these fishers allowed to operate in the lagoon.
- The government now says fish stocks have collapsed and it has reduced the number of small-scale fishers operating in the lagoon even further, while allowing recreational fishing to continue unimpeded. For their part, the fishers deny the stocks have collapsed, and blame declining catches on industrial developments.
- One expert likened the three-decade-long exclusion of the Langebaan net fishers to a case of fortress conservation, in which local people are squeezed out of nature and denied access to resources they’ve long used in order to preserve them for elites.

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.”

How communities in sacrifice zones suffer environmental injustices in Mexico, Chile, Nigeria and Indonesia (analysis)
- Sacrifice zones are places where big business and transnational corporations contaminate rivers, air, waters and soil for profit, while the price is paid by local communities suffering degradation of their health and ecologies.
- “To dismantle sacrifice zones, governments and corporations must prioritize people over profit, implement robust environmental safeguards, and respect the rights and autonomy of affected communities,” a new analysis argues, with examples of four places across the world.
- This article is an analysis. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Peruvian fishers sue for additional compensation after big December oil spill
- On Dec. 22, 2024, a pipeline leak at the New Talara Refinery in northern Peru spilled oil into the Pacific Ocean, coating 10 kilometers (6 miles) of coastline in black.
- Three days later, the Peruvian environment ministry declared a 90-day environmental emergency, paralyzing tourism and work for more than 4,000 artisanal fishers.
- Now, more than three months later, the fishers have returned to work on a sea dominated by the oil industry. They say the compensation they received from the refinery owner, state-owned oil company Petroperú, is insufficient and they are seeking more.
- For its part, the company says it has met its commitments.

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.

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.

With biological and cultural diversity at literal crossroads in the tropics, a new approach is needed (commentary)
- Both biological and linguistic diversity are greatest in tropical regions, and both are endangered by unprecedented rates of road expansion.
- Will current paradigms for language and species protection help to protect this wealth of diversity into the next century, a new op-ed asks.
- While a “no roads” approach is unlikely to work in areas of overlapping cultural and biological richness, a framework of “people with nature” that acknowledges issues of justice and social equity, recognizes that local people have a right to environmental self-determination, understands that people and other-than-human species are intrinsically intertwined, and that solutions must be inclusive, could work, this commentary argues.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

What have we learned from 15 years of REDD+ policy research? (analysis)
- The Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation program (REDD+) is supposed to provide participating countries, jurisdictions and communities in the Global South with incentives to protect their forests.
- This analysis draws on more than a decade of comparative research and identifies a broad array of actors involved in REDD+, with large power differences between them. The authors argue that the power imbalances among these groups are obstructing progress toward shifting away from “business-as-usual” deforestation in the tropics.
- The ambition for sustainable forest “transformation” is at risk of being co-opted by those who stand to benefit from maintaining the status quo, and the authors say it is therefore important for the research community to keep asking what proposed reforms and changes may represent, and whom they serve.
- This article is an analysis. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Small-scale fishers’ role in feeding the planet goes overlooked: Study
- A new study found that small-scale fishing accounts for at least 40% of catch worldwide and provides employment for 60 million people, more than a third of whom are women.
- Small-scale fishing could provide a significant proportion of the micronutrient intake for the 2.3 billion people on Earth who live near coastlines or inland bodies of water, the study found.
- More than 60% of small-scale fishing catch in the studied countries came from places where small-scale fishers had no formal rights to participate in management and decision-making processes.
- “We wanted to have a paper that provided key findings at the global level for each of these dimensions, so that it will be clear for governments that small-scale fishing cannot continue to be overlooked in terms of policymaking,” one of the study authors told Mongabay.

Unchecked illegal trawling pushes Indonesia’s small-scale fishers to the brink
- Small-scale fishers in Indonesia face declining catches as illegal trawlers deplete fish stocks in near-shore waters, violating exclusion zone regulations.
- Trawling, a destructive fishing method banned in certain areas, is widely practiced due to weak law enforcement, with local authorities citing budget constraints for lack of patrols.
- The impact on traditional fishers has been severe, with daily catches and incomes plummeting, leading to economic hardship, job changes and social issues, such as increased poverty and divorce rates.
- Fishers and advocacy groups are calling for stricter enforcement of fishing laws and government action to protect small-scale fishers’ rights and livelihoods.

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.

Climate change forces Jakarta fishing families to marry off young daughters

Climate change is driving families on Indonesia’s northern Javanese coast toward child marriage as a survival strategy amid dwindling fish stocks and increasing economic hardships, two Mongabay reports show. Mongabay contributor Maulia Inka Vira Fendilla traveled to North Jakarta’s Kalibaru neighborhood in 2023 and met Janah and Jaroh, sisters who were both married off at […]
Can the Cali Fund provide a rights-based remedy for biopiracy? (commentary)
- One ongoing element of wealth extraction from the Global South that remains largely unaddressed – biopiracy – requires a human rights-based response, a new op-ed argues.
- Defined as the unauthorized use of genetic resources and traditional knowledge of Indigenous communities and developing nations for profit without their consent, a remedy to biopiracy was recently agreed to at the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP16) in Colombia.
- Can the Cali Fund – which obliges corporations that profit from biodiversity to contribute to its conservation – be a step in the right direction, the authors ask?
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

How ‘waste colonialism’ underpins Asia’s plastic problem (commentary)
- Most plastic is a product of oil and gas, so addressing Asia’s plastic pollution problem is not just a question of waste management, but of climate change, too.
- The largest plastic manufacturers are located in the US, EU, UK, and Japan, former colonial powers which are also now the main exporters of their societies’ waste to the Global South, in a cycle called ‘waste colonialism,’ which is likely to be debated again this month.
- “With the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) on the Global Plastic Treaty beginning in late November, world leaders have a make or break moment to address the worsening impacts of plastic pollution,” a new op-ed argues.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

I’m boycotting COP29 because local Indigenous action matters more (commentary)
- “I’ve decided to boycott COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan — a decision shaped by both the failure of the COP process to deliver tangible support for the most vulnerable communities, and the deeply troubling global events unfolding around us,” writes the author of a new op-ed who’s been to all the recent COPs.
- COPs seem unable to address the needs of small island states and Indigenous communities like her own. Instead of delivering on the promises made at previous summits, the conference has continually sidelined Indigenous voices and funneled financial support for them through national governments.
- “While I will not be at COP29, I believe that by supporting communities like these, we can lay the groundwork for systemic shifts needed to address the climate crisis. The boycott is temporary, but the work continues,” she states.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

‘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.

What Indigenous leaders want from the COP29 U.N. climate conference
- As COP29 runs Nov. 11-22 in Baku, Azerbaijan, Indigenous leaders look ahead to show their strong participation, although many leaders are setting their sights on this conference to prepare better for the next COP.
- With a package of new funds introduced this year, Indigenous leaders whom Mongabay spoke with plan to push negotiations for improved access to direct funds to fight the harsh impacts of climate change.
- Along with improved access to funds, the leaders say they seek ambitious commitments to the loss and damage fund, a just energy transition and carbon market regulations.

Indonesian mother imprisoned for protesting palm oil factory next to school
- Gustina Salim Rambe, a mother from North Sumatra province, was sentenced in October to more than five months in prison following a demonstration against a palm oil factory built adjacent to two schools in Pulo Padang village.
- Representatives in Indonesia’s national Parliament had urged police to apply principles of “restorative justice” rather than criminalize Gustina.
- Civil society advocates pointed to separate regulations and laws that should protect from prosecution people who speak out against alleged environmental abuses.
- From 2019-24, Amnesty International recorded similar cases affecting 454 civil society advocate in Indonesia.

New abuse allegations hit China ghost ships in Indonesia waters
- In mid-April this year, several Indonesian crew members aboard the China-based Run Zeng 03 fishing vessel jumped into the Arafura Sea following a pattern of alleged mistreatment on board.
- One of those who jumped didn’t survive, while the others were rescued by a fishing boat that happened on the crew members fighting for life in the water.
- Authorities in Indonesia may have missed opportunities to confine boats operated by Donggang Runzeng Ocean Fishing Co Ltd, a Chinese company based in a port on the country’s border with North Korea.
- The Indonesian fisheries ministry’s head of supervision explained in an interview that his history of contact with the manager of the boats’ operator was part of a law enforcement operation.

Carbon markets must recognize Indigenous ‘high forest, low deforestation’ areas (commentary)
- “We have lived in and safeguarded our forests for generations, helping maintain biodiverse ecosystems designated as high forest, low deforestation (HFLD) areas, which are regions with historically low deforestation,” two Indigenous leaders write in a new op-ed.
- Carbon markets have mostly focused on areas with pre-existing deforestation, but communities like these with historically low deforestation need financing to support their conservation work, too, so shouldn’t HFLD regions get better access to the voluntary carbon market?
- “For too long, Indigenous and local communities who have preserved forests without compensation have been excluded from financial benefits linked to forest conservation. This is not just an environmental issue, but a matter of climate justice,” they argue.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

What Indigenous leaders want from the COP16 U.N. biodiversity conference
- From Oct. 21 to Nov. 1, about 770 Indigenous leaders from around the world are registered to gather at the U.N. biodiversity conference, or COP16, to advocate for the recognition of Indigenous rights as part of the solution to the Earth’s biodiversity crisis.
- Mongabay spoke with several Indigenous delegates attending the conference to gauge what they’re looking for going into the conference.
- The main topics on their agenda include the development of reporting and monitoring mechanisms to ensure Indigenous and traditional peoples’ rights are not neglected in the race to achieve the goals of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
- Leaders from Guatemala, Colombia, Peru and other countries also plan to push for the creation of a program of work on Article 8(j) and its provisions, direct access to funding and the recognition and titling of Indigenous and local community lands.

Brazil elects record-high number of Indigenous mayors, vice mayors & councilors
- In Brazil, 256 Indigenous people were elected mayors, vice mayors and city councilors, the highest in the country’s history and an 8% increase compared with 236 elected in the 2020 ballot.
- With 1,635,530 votes, Indigenous candidates were the only group that recorded growth in votes this year, compared with candidates who self-declared white, pardo (brown), Black and Asian, which saw a reduction of around 20% altogether, according to a survey from the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), the country’s main Indigenous association, which used data from the Superior Electoral Court (TSE).
- Increasing representation of Indigenous people elected in municipal ballots is a key move to ensure the fulfillment of Indigenous rights and should pave the way to increase the number of Indigenous people elected in the 2026 state and federal ballots, advocates and activists say.
- However, the municipal election results also showed a gender gap: Indigenous women accounted for just one mayor of a total of nine Indigenous mayors elected, four vice mayors of a total of nine, and 36 of a total of 234 councilors.

Ahead of COP16, groups warn of rights abuses linked to ‘30×30’ goal
- In October, Indigenous leaders, government representatives, scientists and activists will meet at COP16, the U.N. Biodiversity Conference, in Colombia, where discussions on plans to expand protected area coverage are expected to take center stage.
- The 30 by 30 goal, which calls for 30% of Earth’s land and sea to be conserved by 2030, continues to be criticized by several human rights organizations who say its lack of clarity on where and how to expand protected areas may result in human rights abuses and forced evictions.
- In a new report by the Oakland Institute, researchers highlighted some of the implications of protected area expansion on the Batwa Indigenous community in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), including abuses by rangers and soldiers.
- Advocates say the COP16 discussions should include clear indicators to track respect of human rights and integrate locally led conservation initiatives that fit within the sociocultural context of each country, rather than top-down approaches.

In the DRC, a government commission is taking funds owed to people relocated by mines
- In the DRC, people relocated from mining sites often demand fair compensation for the loss of their property, homes, and other possessions.
- Mining companies do not take responsibility for this process, yet they pay 10% of the compensation funds owed to relocated people into an account owned by a branch of the provincial government, the Relocation Commission, which goes to the commission’s operation.
- According to members of civil society, the commission’s involvement not only deprives relocated people of money but also leaves them without a means of appeal.
- According to Lualaba’s provincial Minister of Mines, Jacques Kaumba, every party should follow the mining code, which he said “is quite clear” and doesn’t permit this to happen.

Colombia’s coca substitution program failing to help farmers or slow deforestation
- Colombia’s PNIS program, launched after the 2016 peace deal to offer coca growers alternative livelihoods in exchange for eradicating their crops, is failing to achieve its goals due to design, implementation and security issues.
- Many coca leaf growers and pickers who voluntarily committed to the program said that despite eradicating their crops, they haven’t received the agreed technical or financial support from the government.
- As a result, some have found themselves in a worse socioeconomic situation than before, and many have had to turn to illegal mining to survive.
- Coca production has actually increased in Colombia since the start of the program, as has deforestation in and around areas with PNIS agreements, leading some experts to conclude the program has done more harm than good.

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.

Sundarbans fisherfolk are battered by cyclones amid fishing bans
- Fishers in the Bangladesh Sundarbans have been struggling with income due to damage caused to the mangroves by the recent tropical cyclone Remal and also the seasonal ban on resource hunting from June to August.
- In every disaster, poor fisherfolk are entangled more in a complex debt trap for moving on, and this year, the situation is more aggravating as the cyclone hit just before the fishing ban started.
- Nonetheless, the government is adamant on continuing the ban for the sake of forest resource conservation.
- At the same time, the government is still in the planning stage of providing people food support during the ban period, as has been provided to sea-bound fishers during the hilsa harvest ban period.

Investigation confirms more abuses on Cameroon, Sierra Leone Socfin plantations
- Findings from a second round of investigations into allegations of human rights abuses on plantations owned by Belgian company Socfin have been published.
- Supply chain consultancy Earthworm Foundation found evidence of sexual violence and land conflict, following similar findings from other plantations in West and Central Africa published in December 2023.
- Around one plantation, in Sierra Leone, a mapping exercise may signal action to remedy some problems, but communities and their supporters elsewhere say it’s unclear how Socfin can be held to account.
- International NGOs point out that the findings are in conflict with Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certifications that Socfin holds.

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.

Caught in the net: Unchecked shrimp farming transforms India’s Sundarbans
- The Sundarbans region of India has experienced a significant shift from traditional agriculture to shrimp aquaculture due to erratic weather and increasing global demand for shrimp.
- This surge in shrimp farming has disrupted local communities, displacing them from their traditional livelihoods.
- The rapid expansion of shrimp farming in the Sundarbans is often conducted without proper scientific knowledge or technical training. Scientists warn that this will have long-term consequences.

UNESCO accused of supporting human rights abuses in African parks
- For years, human rights organizations have accused UNESCO of being either inattentive or complicit in the illegal evictions of communities and allegations of torture, rape and murder in several World Heritage Sites.
- These sites include biodiversity hotspots in Africa, including the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania and the Odzala-Kokoua National Park in the Republic of Congo.
- Although UNESCO is not participating in these human rights abuses itself, organizations say, a few aspects of the agency’s policies and structure allow abuses to happen: lack of solid mechanisms to enforce human rights obligations, its requests for countries to control population growth in heritage sites and the agency’s internal politics.
- UNESCO strongly contests the statements made against the World Heritage Convention and Committee, which has made stronger human rights commitments, and says such multilateral institutions are in fact the best allies to defend human rights.

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.

Report: Illegal fishing and labor abuse rampant in China’s Indian Ocean fleet
- A recent report by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) shows that the Chinese distant-water fleet is participating in illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and exploitative practices such as shark finning and human rights violations in the Southwest Indian Ocean.
- The report also suggests that Chinese investment in the blue economy in the Southwest Indian Ocean region could contribute to these problems by obligating indebted states to grant fishing rights to Chinese vessels.
- China has previously stated that it has a “zero-tolerance” approach to illegal fishing activities by its distant-water fleet, but evidence suggests that China isn’t taking adequate action to stop these issues.
- At the recent meeting of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC), China tried to introduce a proposal that would limit scrutiny of its distant-water fleet, but this was rejected by other parties to the commission — a move that founder and CEO of EJF called a “big win” in the ongoing work to document illegal fishing activities.

How real action on environmental justice comes from Latin America’s community alliances (commentary)
- Despite the regional Escazú Agreement coming into force in 2021 to ensure the protection of the environment and its defenders in Latin America, it is not being enacted and has still not been ratified by countries such as Peru, Brazil and Guatemala.
- Real action for environmental justice is rather coming from self-governed media and activism alliances forged between communities in different regions of Latin America, like the Black and Indigenous Liberation Movement (BILM), an Americas-wide network of grassroots groups working together to fight extractivism.
- “While we wait for states to act on environmental protection and to implement existing mechanisms like the Escazú Agreement and UNPFII goals, regional autonomous alliances like BILM are crucial for pushing this agenda forward and ensuring that strategies come from the grassroots,” a new op-ed argues.
- This post is a commentary, the views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Indigenous communities make clean energy drive work for, not against, them
- Indigenous peoples have been steadily warning about the impacts of renewable energy development on their lands and communities, but some see a way to harness this trend for the positive.
- Experts say Indigenous communities can play a leading role in the clean energy transition through partnerships that allow them to produce and benefit from renewable energy projects.
- In Canada, policy initiatives like the feed-in tariff program in Ontario province have encouraged Indigenous participation in renewable energy by providing incentives for Indigenous ownership in projects, making them a growing shareholder in Canada’s clean energy transition.
- While there are examples to be taken from Canada’s approach, barriers remain, including limited capacity within communities, access to capital, and governance structures supporting such partnerships.

Mongabay video screening at Chile’s Supreme Court expected to help landmark verdict in Brazil
- The recent screening of a Mongabay video before Chile’s Supreme Court has intensified international scrutiny of the killing of 26-year-old Indigenous leader Paulo Paulino Guajajara in Brazil 2019 — a case for which no one has yet gone on trial in Brazil.
- Alfredo Falcão, the Brazilian federal prosecutor leading the case, said he hopes the international exposure, part of a workshop for UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day Conference in Santiago, will put pressure on the Brazilian judiciary to schedule a long-awaited federal jury trial.
- The trial of Paulo’s case is expected to set a legal landmark as the first killing of an Indigenous land defender to go before a federal jury; it was escalated to that level because it was considered an aggression against the entire Guajajara community and Indigenous culture.
- Prosecutors plan to use excerpts from the Mongabay video and accompanying articles in the trial, whose schedule remains undetermined pending an anthropological report on the impacts to the Guajajara people as a result of Paulo’s killing.

Marshallese worries span decades — first nuclear tests, now sea-level rise
- The Marshall Islands were the site of numerous U.S. nuclear tests in the 1950s that displaced communities and altered their way of life.
- Locals across the islands and atolls are now at risk of evacuation and losing more of their ties to the land if sea-level rise continues at its current rate.
- For many Marshallese elders, their connection to the land is deeply rooted in their mind, body and soul: It is an integral part of their identity and culture.
- Elders talk about their concerns for the future and explain their intimate connection to their land.

Mongabay investigation is turned into art for World Press Freedom Day event
- Mongabay’s award-winning investigation that revealed water contamination from palm oil plantations in Indigenous territories in the Brazilian Amazon inspired an art installation at UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day Conference in Santiago; the artwork was also exhibited at Chile’s Museum of Contemporary Art.
- A group of 12 theater design students and three professors from the University of Chile worked together with Mongabay reporter Karla Mendes to create the concept of an art exhibition to highlight the hidden environmental damages of “sustainable” palm oil found in many common items bought at grocery stores without our being aware of the impacts.
- Published in 2021, the Mongabay investigation revealed water contamination from pesticides used on oil palm crops and clearing of native forests for crops impacting the Tembé people in northern Pará state; in late 2022, the investigation was used as key evidence by federal prosecutors to obtain a court decision to probe the environmental impacts of pesticides used by oil palm plantations in Pará.
- The palm oil art installation and other successful projects in which journalists and artists collaborated were also highlighted at a panel focused on how to promote more inclusive journalism narratives to convey environmental and climate change issues.

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

As miner quells protests in Ecuador, Canadian firms’ rights record faces scrutiny
- In March, violent clashes erupted between Ecuadorian security forces and campesino farmers over prospects for the revival of a mining project that has been rejected by protestors for at least 15 years.
- The company behind the project, Atico Mining, called in hundreds of police and paramilitary personnel to quell the protests, in what critics say is a disturbing pattern of Canadian resource companies running roughshod over human and environmental rights in other countries.
- Human rights advocacy groups and Indigenous organizations say the Canadian government, especially the embassy in Quito, has failed to safeguard human rights and environmental obligations despite its legal duties to do so.
- A spokesperson for the Canadian foreign ministry said the government expects Canadian companies operating abroad to abide by internationally respected guidelines on responsible business conduct — then cited guidelines that aren’t legally binding.

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

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

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

Multilateral development banks must prioritize clean & community-led energy projects (commentary)
- Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), governments, and corporations across 160 countries consider or approve more than one investment per day in the energy sector.
- Despite commitments to tackle the climate crisis, many of these investments support the fossil fuel industry, while others invest in false clean energy solutions like hydropower which often cause harm to local communities.
- “To achieve a just energy transition, MDBs and governments must prioritize sustainable renewable energy models that empower communities and ensure inclusive energy access,” a new op-ed argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

We need rapid response support for Indigenous peoples in the face of growing extreme weather events (commentary)
- Climate change can sometimes feel distant and intangible, but the increasingly frequent extreme weather events in tropical forest regions like the Amazon and Congo Basin are already having very real-world impacts on Indigenous and other local communities in these areas.
- While Indigenous and grassroots organizations are often the first responders and are best placed to know the needs of their communities, they face huge challenges in accessing heavily bureaucratic disaster response funding.
- This is why we are calling for the establishment of a dedicated fit-for-purpose rapid response fund for them to be able to respond and recover from such events.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

‘Another catastrophe’: Flooding destroys Indigenous agroforestry projects in Peru’s Amazon
- Heavy rains likely caused by El Niño began flooding Peru’s Ene River at the beginning of March, with waters reaching around 2 feet high and spreading across 5,000 hectares (12,355 acres) of land occupied by around 300 Indigenous Asháninka families.
- Families in five Asháninka communities lost their homes as well as years of work on successful and sustainable agroforestry projects for cacao, coffee and timber, among other products.
- The flood waters have only recently receded, so a long-term or even mid-term plan for recovering their agroforestry projects hasn’t been developed yet.
- The Asháninka have faced many other setbacks over the years, from drug trafficking groups to unsustainable development projects, but have often overcome them to defend their territory. This flood marks the latest setback.

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

Brazilian youngsters discuss how they are tackling the climate emergency
- Affected by drought, pollution, high waters and floods, young people from different Brazilian states describe how climate change is impacting their routines and causing illness, malnutrition, displacement and school disruption.
- According to a UNICEF report, 2 billion children and adolescents in the world are exposed to risks arising from the climate emergency; in Brazil, there are 40 million affected children and adolescents — 60% of Brazilians under 18.
- According to experts, the climate crisis is a crisis of the rights of children and adolescents, as it affects everything from the right to decent housing and health care to education and food, leading to problems in child development and learning abilities.

In climate-related flooding, a Ugandan river turns poisonous
- Uganda’s Nyamwamba river, in the Rwenzori Mountains, has begun to flood catastrophically in recent years, partly due to climate change.
- Along the river are copper tailings pools from an old Canadian mining operation, which are becoming increasingly eroded by the flooding.
- According to a series of studies, these tailings have been washing into the water supply and soil of the Nyamwamba River Basin, contaminating human tissue, food and water with deadly heavy metals.
- Cancer rates are higher than normal near the tailings pools, and scientists fear that as the flooding continues to worsen, so will the health crisis.

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

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

Climate change brings a river’s wrath down on western Uganda
- Since the 1960s, Uganda’s climate has warmed by an average of 1.3°C (2.3°F).
- The warming is partly responsible for an increasing number of catastrophic floods on the Nyamwamba River, in western Uganda’s Rwenzori Mountains.
- In 2020 alone, 173,000 people were affected by flooding in Kasese district, when 25,000 houses were destroyed.
- Many of those rendered homeless by the floods continue to languish in temporary housing camps four years on.

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

Attack on Pataxó Hãhãhãi Indigenous leaders must be investigated (commentary)
- In January, two leaders of the Indigenous Pataxó Hãhãhãi community of Bahia State in Brazil were brutally attacked by a militia calling for a ‘repossession’ of their land, as police officers allegedly watched.
- One was killed and the other badly injured in the attack, leading to calls from the community and rights advocates for police to be withdrawn from the territory and for the governor to take protective action.
- “Who is at the helm of public security forces in the southern, southwestern, and far southern regions of Bahia? Who orchestrates and steers operations of the military police in this area?” a new op-ed says in asking for a thorough investigation.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

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

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.

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

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

‘Indigenous’ and ‘local’ shouldn’t be conflated: Q&A with Indigenous leader Sara Olsvig
- Although there wasn’t much to celebrate at the COP28 climate summit for Indigenous peoples, who were vastly outnumbered by fossil fuel lobbyists, leading advocate Sara Olsvig points to some progress made.
- Olsvig is adamant that efforts to tackle the climate crisis must not infringe on the rights of Indigenous peoples, and that the approach to take must be centered on respect for human rights.
- She also successfully pushed for the final text of the summit to distinguish between Indigenous peoples and local communities, saying the long-held practice of conflating the two has often been to the detriment of Indigenous groups.
- “We have already reached the tipping points in a climate sense,” Olsvig says. “Now we are also reaching tipping points in a human rights sense. And this is a very, very worrying development for the world.”

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

When will families of slain Amazon land defenders get justice? (commentary)
- As the world marked International Human Rights Day on December 10, the murders of 32 Indigenous leaders and Amazon land defenders stood as a stark reminder of the persistent and systematic human rights violations faced by Indigenous communities, and the urgent need for systemic change to ensure their individual and collective rights.
- The recent murder of Quinto Inuma Alvarado, Indigenous Kichwa leader and chief of the Santa Rosillo de Yanayacu community, is just the latest crime in a list of dozens in the Peruvian Amazon along the border with Brazil.
- “We urgently demand that the state, through its institutions, effectively commits to protecting those who defend their ancestral territories, implementing intersectoral mechanisms that go beyond declarations on paper and translate into concrete and effective actions,” a new op-ed states.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

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

Small farmers caught in Indonesia’s war on wildfires

LIMBUNG, Indonesia — Sarijan is one of many Indonesians facing criminal prosecution for using fire in farming practices. Following President Joko Widodo’s commitment to prevent a recurrence of the devastating 2015 wildfire and air pollution crisis, Mongabay’s investigation—rooted in court records and personal interviews—explores the complexities surrounding agricultural burning in Indonesia. Watch the video to […]
Traditional small farmers burned by Indonesia’s war on wildfires
- An investigation by Mongabay based on court records and interviews shows police in Indonesia are increasingly charging small farmers for slash-and-burn practices.
- Prosecutions surged following a particularly catastrophic fire season in 2015, in response to which Indonesia’s president threatened to fire local law enforcement chiefs for not preventing burning in their jurisdictions.
- Most of those prosecuted were small farmers cultivating less than 2 hectares, and many were of old age and/or illiterate; several alleged they suffered extortion and abuse during their legal ordeal.
- Experts say law enforcers should be more judicious about the charges they bring, noting that a “targeted fire policy” should differentiate between various kinds of actors, such as traditional farmers, land speculators, and people hired to clear land by plantation firms.

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

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

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

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 […]
Control of Africa’s forests must not be sold to carbon offset companies (commentary)
- A forest carbon deal between Blue Carbon and the nation of Liberia would give the company exclusive rights to control 10% of the nation’s land mass for 30 years.
- Blue Carbon has also signed MOUs for similar deals with Tanzania and Zambia (and others) and combined with the Liberia deal, the land controlled by the company in these three African nations represents an area the size of the whole of the United Kingdom.
- “Carbon colonialism is a false solution to the climate crisis,” a new op-ed states. “The only real answer is to end our fossil fuel addiction by dramatically reducing our emissions, while financially supporting countries and local communities to protect their forests, rather than wrest control of them.”
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

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.

Muslim community must have a seat for global climate change discourse (commentary)
- Muslims account for nearly a quarter of the world’s total population, much of which is impacted by climate change.
- At the same time, Islamic worldviews can bring solution-based perspectives to events like the upcoming COP28 climate conference later this month.
- “It should be recognized that Islamic frameworks of climate solution thinking are important, and the climate issues facing Muslims need to be at the forefront of climate discourse as well,” a new op-ed argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Namibia hosted Africa’s 1st community-led conservation congress. Where will it lead?
- Namibia hosted the first community-led conservation congress in Africa in late October.
- Hundreds of Indigenous and local community groups, conservation organizations, governments and policymakers gathered to strategize how communities can play a bigger role in African conservation efforts, which are typically dominated by big international NGOs.
- Participants said more work will be required on the local, regional and national levels to address the challenges of turning goals for the inclusion of communities in conservation into practical actions.
- Organizers say this congress is a starting point to elevating community voices in Africa while they’ve chosen a new alliance, the Alliance for Indigenous People and Local Communities for Conservation in Africa (AICA), to be a representative voice for communities across the continent.

World Heritage Site listing for Ethiopian park leads to eviction of farming community
- The new designation of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Ethiopia will also come with the relocation of the more than 20,000 people living inside Bale Mountains National Park, say park officials.
- Home to a wealth of biodiversity, the park has experienced a dramatic increase in illegal human settlements, which park officials and conservationists say threatens its natural resources, forest cover, and habitat for rare and endemic species.
- Community members have mixed feelings about the planned relocation, with longtime residents mostly opposing it due to attachment to the land and fear over their livelihoods, and others open to receiving fair compensation in exchange.
- The relocation strategy is still in its initial stages and hasn’t officially been shared with communities, though UNESCO and Ethiopian officials underline the importance of consulting the locals and supporting their livelihoods.

Ahead of COP28, pope spurs policymakers, faith leaders to push climate action
- In his October 4 papal declaration, Pope Francis called unequivocally for climate action in the face of a disastrously warming world.
- The pope’s message comes at a decisive time, as world leaders prepare to meet for the COP28 summit, in a United Nations climate process that many critics say is broken and has largely stalled since the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement.
- The pope’s call for action also comes at a time when the world’s faith-based climate movement — which was greatly energized by Paris, and which has had some notable successes since then — is struggling.
- Mongabay spoke with faith leaders, theologians and policymakers to assess the challenges that Francis’ message presents, and whether it can reinvigorate global religious leaders and spur the grassroots faithful to political and social action on the environment. Reportedly, Francis may travel to COP28 to press his message in person.

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.

African NGOs seek more funds, trust, and autonomy in global partnerships
- A recent report from conservation nonprofit Maliasili scrutinizes partnerships between big international NGOs and their smaller conservation-focused partners in Africa.
- The biggest pain points in these often lopsided relationships Africa appear to be money, trust, and autonomy, the report says.
- More than half of the local organizations surveyed in Maliasili’s “Rooting for Change” report cited a lack of trust as a challenge in partnerships.
- “We want a supporting relationship rather than a dictatorial partner,” John Kamanga, co-founder and director of the Southern Rift Association of Landowners (SORALO) in Kenya, told the report authors, and “a willingness to co-design and build from our ideas.”

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

Kenya’s Lake Victoria floods leave orphaned children to run their households
- Beginning in 2019, devastating floods on the shores of Kenya’s Lake Victoria have inundated homes, displaced families and left some orphaned children in charge of caring for their siblings and running the household.
- Many families continue to live in makeshift camps, hoping to rebuild and renew their lives; the effects of the flooding have been particularly harsh on children who have had to drop out of school or work to ensure the family’s survival.
- Experts attribute the floods to a combination of factors, including climate change, increased rainfall and lack of vegetation to control runoff; in 2015, an international research team predicted swiftly rising waters that could harm the region.
- UNICEF reports a concerning increase in the number of children affected by flooding in recent years, as climate change leads to more crises that can disrupt education, destabilize families and leave long-term effects on child development and psychosocial well-being.

Pope Francis condemns world leaders for deeply flawed UN climate process
- In the leadup to the 2015 Paris summit, Pope Francis issued Laudato Si, “On Care for Our Common Home,” a landmark climate and faith document that ultimately saw much of the pope’s language of human responsibility and hope enshrined in the breakthrough climate agreement.
- But this week Pope Francis issued Laudate Deum, a follow up document which condemns world leaders for eight years of climate inaction and of making hollow unfulfilled pledges as they repeatedly fail to respond effectively to the severely escalating global climate crisis.
- The pope notes in the new document that it is the world’s poorest who suffer most from the battering of record heatwaves, storms, floods, droughts, melting glaciers, and rising seas. He also asserts that it is the obligation of the world’s wealthiest nations to decisively lead humanity out of the crisis, before Earth reaches “the point of no return.”
- It seems clear from the timing of Pope Francis’ declaration that he hopes it will positively influence COP28, the climate conference to be held in early December in the United Arab Emirates, where an oil company executive will preside as chair.

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

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

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

New online map tracks threats to uncontacted Indigenous peoples in Brazil’s Amazon
- Mobi, a new online interactive map, draws information from public databases, government statistics and field observations to paint a comprehensive picture of the threats that uncontacted Indigenous peoples face in the Brazilian Amazon.
- The exact location of uncontacted communities is deliberately displaced on the map to avoid any subsequent attacks against them from those who engage in illegal activity in or near their territories.
- The tool can help Indigenous agencies deploy more effective protective actions to fend off threats such as diseases and environmental destruction, which can wipe out vulnerable populations.
- Activists hope the platform will help create a vulnerability index that ranks uncontacted populations according to the severity of threats against them, which can promote stronger public policies.

Indigenous peoples undersupported on frontline of hotter, drier, fiery world
- It’s official: This has been the warmest June-July-August on record, and much attention has focused on the urgent need to achieve climate resilience in impacted urban areas. But how are rural Indigenous communities around the world living with these new extremes?
- Indigenous peoples — from Africa to the Arctic to Central America — report unprecedented heat waves, droughts, storms and wildfires, extremes that are impacting the wildlife they hunt, the plants they gather, crops they grow, livestock they raise, and their very survival.
- Given that many Indigenous peoples live close to the land and depend directly on local resources, they’re especially vulnerable to the massive changes now sweeping our planet.
- But while Indigenous peoples are considered by many researchers and activists to be Earth’s best land stewards, their communities aren’t receiving the funding or resources necessary to adapt to a hotter, drier, stormier, fiery world, often due to the lack of access to their traditional lands.

DRC food sovereignty summit yields support for agroecology, local land rights
- The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (ASFA) recently held a meeting in Kinshasa to argue for the reorienting of food production around agroecology in the Congo Basin.
- Civil society groups, donors, government representatives and small-scale farmers gathered to exchange views on challenges and solutions to food security.
- Across Africa, agricultural policy is geared toward greater reliance on large-scale farms and mechanization, commercial seeds, pesticides and synthetic fertilizer.
- A declaration issued at the close of the summit instead called for investment in agroecological methods, as well as recognition of and protection for Indigenous and local peoples’ land rights.

Global green growth stalled by climate finance shortfalls (commentary)
- There is growing consensus that green growth – economic growth that is environmentally sustainable – is both possible and desirable: the green economy is estimated to represent $1.3 trillion in annual sales in the U.S. alone.
- Calls for worldwide green growth in recent years have come from far and wide, from the United Nations to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and others, but commitments to fund this growth continually fall short.
- Ahead of the upcoming Sustainable Development Goals Summit in mid-September, a new op-ed argues that this event offers a chance for world leaders to make progress on climate finance and green growth, to boost sustainable growth while limiting losses due to multiplying environmental crises.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

In Brazil, rural communities are caught in the eye of the wind farm storm
- In Brazil’s semiarid Caatinga biome, wind power farms have brought dirt, noise and disruption to the livelihood of local communities.
- Many locals say the project developers have failed to properly consult them before building roads, infrastructure and turbines in the region.
- Wind power is considered a clean energy source in Brazil, which qualifies developers for access to easier financing and licensing, often at the expense of conflicts with local villages.
- From loss of livelihoods to damaged houses, this investigation by the Marco Zero news outlet shows how the development model that Brazil has adopted for wind power expansion has come at a high cost to rural communities.

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

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.

South Africa community members decry traditional leaders’ power amid mine plans
- Community members, commercial farmers and environmentalists are raising concerns that Jindal’s proposed $2 billion iron ore mine project, slated to be one of the largest in the Southern Hemisphere, could be allowed to exploit the mineral without community consent — but only with that of their leader.
- Due to the structure of South African law, traditional leaders tend to see themselves as the sole decision-makers in their communities and approve of extractive projects for their stated economic benefits in the region.
- Many communities sit on valuable resources like platinum and titanium, and there is a significant possibility that with the current structure of the law, people will be removed from their lands to make way for extractive industries, say land policy researchers.
- Traditional leaders maintain that it is important for the law to recognize traditional authorities after decades and centuries of fighting for formal recognition after colonization.

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

Can Lula balance the transition to renewable energy with Amazon mining expansion? (commentary)
- At a recent summit in Colombia, Brazil’s President Lula emphasized the importance of avoiding an ecological transition based on the “predatory exploitation” of critical minerals, warning about the dangers of concealed neocolonialism.
- At the same time, his government is also promoting a “Green Plan” to transition away from fossil fuels, which paradoxically relies on an expansion of mining like he opined against.
- “While it is imperative that our societies move swiftly toward ecological transition away from fossil fuels, it is just as imperative that such a transition be just and not replicate the colonial extractive logic that underlies today’s climate crisis and that is exemplified by the mining industry,” a new op-ed argues.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Making space for Indigenous leadership is crucial for conservation (commentary)
- About 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity is found on lands cared for by Indigenous communities.
- First Nations in Canada, for instance, are leading the most ambitious plans for protecting lands in the country currently, in the establishment of Indigenous Protected Areas.
- “Conservation groups and funders can make collaborations with Indigenous peoples more fruitful by taking direction from Indigenous leadership when working on their territories,” the authors of a new op-ed say.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

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

Five ways to increase tree cover in cities (commentary)
- As cities in the U.S. and other nations suffer from current heat waves, one proven way to cool urban areas and clean the air is by planting trees.
- The solution sounds simple but there are numerous barriers to increasing tree cover in urban areas, from high mortality rates to capacity limitations within municipal forestry, parks, and recreation departments.
- “Trees are as integral to city infrastructure as sidewalks and power lines,” a new op-ed that shares useful resources says: people need improved information and tools to advocate for, plan, and implement urban tree conservation, maintenance, and planting activities to support cities’ future livability, equity, and public health.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

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

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

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

Over a third of conflicts over development projects affect Indigenous people: Study
- Roughly one-third of all environmental conflicts documented in an online crowd-sourced atlas affect Indigenous peoples, researchers have found.
- The mining of transition minerals has been linked to hundreds of allegations of abuse with multi-faceted impacts on the environment and communities, according to a new report.
- Some Indigenous organizations are calling for Indigenous rights and free, prior and informed consent to be central to the transition to a green economy in light of the global rush to secure clean energy minerals.

Red floods near giant Indonesia nickel mine blight farms and fishing grounds
- Farming communities in the shadow of Sulawesi’s giant Pomalaa nickel mining area say their fields have been flooded with red water, possibly laterite waste from the mining operations.
- Local farmers blame flooding from the mine for longer harvest cycles and reduced productivity.
- Indonesia’s biggest environmental NGO says the government should review mining permits to safeguard rice fields.

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

Women decision-makers can improve conservation and agriculture, study shows
- A new global study shows that both conservation and farming production can improve when women farmers are more involved in decision-making.
- The study, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, aimed to look at the effectiveness of paying farmers monetary incentives to protect the environment but found that such payments are not necessarily reliable; more reliable are women’s decision-making roles.
- The findings add to a growing body of research about women and decision-making in agriculture; yet, globally, women hold a minority of leadership positions, particularly in environmental sectors.

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

Congo Basin communities left out by ‘fortress conservation’ fight for a way back in
- Since the colonization of the Congo Basin by Europeans, many Indigenous communities have been cordoned off from land they once relied on in the name of conservation.
- The contentious “fortress conservation” model remains popular with some governments in Central Africa, but conservation leaders are shifting their opinion, signaling a desire to move toward inclusive and rights-based approaches to protected areas and ecosystems, including in declarations such as the Kigali Call to Action.
- However, Indigenous leaders and conservation experts say action, not just talk, is urgently needed to achieve the goals outlined by the 30x30 initiative, and to make good on promises to address injustices faced by Indigenous communities across the basin.
- On this episode of Mongabay Explores the Congo Basin, Cameroonian lawyer and Goldman Prize winner Samuel Nguiffo, Congolese academic Vedaste Cituli, and Mongabay features writer Ashoka Mukpo detail the troubling history of fortress conservation in Central Africa, the role of paramilitary forces in it, the impacts on local communities, and ways to address the conflicts it has created.

‘It gives life’: Philippine tribe fights to save a sacred river from a dam
- Each year, members of the Dumagat-Remontado tribe gather at the Tinipak River to observe an Indigenous ritual to honor their supreme being and pray for healing and protection.
- This year, the rite had an additional intention: to ward off an impending dam project they fear will inundate the site of the ritual.
- The Kaliwa Dam, part of a program aimed at securing a clean water supply for the Manila metropolitan region, is already under construction and scheduled to go online in 2027.
- The project has faced resistance from civil society groups as well as many of the Dumagat-Remontado, who say they fear it will cause both environmental and cultural damage.

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

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

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

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

Robust river governance key to restoring Mekong River vitality in face of dams
- Billions of cubic meters of Mekong River water are now harnessed behind dams in the interests of power generation, severely affecting crucial physical and biological processes that sustain the river’s capacity to support life.
- As the pace of hydropower development continues to pick up across the river basin, cracks in the region’s dated and limited river governance systems are increasingly exposed.
- Major challenges include the lack of formal, legally binding regulations that govern development projects with transboundary impacts, and a legacy of poor engagement with riverside communities who stand to lose the most due to the effects of dams.
- Experts say that open and honest dialogue between dam developers and operators is needed to restore the river’s natural seasonal flow and ensure the river’s vitality and capacity to support biodiversity and natural resources is sustained.

Will clean-energy minerals provoke a shift in how mining is done in Africa?
- Meeting the Paris climate goals to curb global warming could quadruple demand for metals like lithium, cobalt and nickel by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency. About a fifth of these critical reserves are found in Africa.
- With mining activity ramping up across Africa, civil society organizations are asking for concrete changes in how mining is done and whose needs it addresses.
- Many activists who work with communities in Africa fear that far from benefiting from their mineral wealth, countries that hold reserves for critical minerals will pay the steepest price for their extraction, a replication of the mining footprint without a transformation in the way mining is done.
- While most activists and observers agree about the need to pursue the highest environmental, social and governance standards, many CSOs say it doesn’t have to happen as part of a superpower-led geopolitical race but be part of a globally accepted framework.

As hydropower dams quell the Mekong’s life force, what are the costs?
- The Mekong River is one of Asia’s longest and most influential waterways, sustaining extraordinary species and biodiverse ecosystems and providing nutrition for millions via its fertile floodplains and unparalleled fisheries.
- But over the past few decades, the construction of hydropower dams has undermined the river’s capacity to support life: more than 160 dams operate throughout the Mekong Basin, including 13 on the river’s mainstream, with hundreds more either planned or under construction.
- Besides severing fish migration routes and natural sediment transport throughout the river system, the dams affect the river’s natural seasonal ebb and flow, an ancient rhythm alongside which ecosystems have evolved.
- Communities, scientists and decision-makers now face unprecedented challenges as fish catches dwindle, riverbanks erode, ecosystems collapse and the delta inexorably sinks.

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

Brazil’s Indigenous groups demand a voice in new soybean railway project
- The Ferrogrão railway project was conceived with a view to reducing transportation costs between the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso and Pará, where soybeans are one of the main export products.
- The railway has been met with resistance from the region’s Indigenous peoples, who will be impacted by the socio-environmental risks associated with the project.
- A study by the Federal University of Minas Gerais highlighted that the Ferrogrão railway line will cross several Indigenous territories in the Xingu River Basin, something that could see more than 230,000 hectares (568,000 acres) of rainforest lost to deforestation in Indigenous territories in the state of Mato Grosso by 2035; more than half of this would be in the Xingu Indigenous Park alone.
- After the project was suspended by Brazil’s Supreme Court in 2021, it has since been marked as a priority by the current government and its future will be decided by the Court’s plenary session in May this year.

Fishing industry transparency is key for a thriving ocean (commentary)
- As fish populations decline in many regions, unscrupulous fishing fleet operators have turned to illegal fishing, human trafficking, slavery and other abuses to cut costs.
- This is facilitated by the complex, opaque nature of global fisheries, but there is one essential step every government can and must take to end this and bring fisheries out of the shadows: introducing comprehensive transparency.
- “The fact that illegal fishing, human rights abuses and ecological collapse in the ocean are so closely interlinked means that systematic, rigorous transparency can help to resolve them all,” a new op-ed argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

As livelihoods clash with development, Vietnam’s Cần Giờ mangroves are at risk
- Cần Giờ, a coastal district of Ho Chi Minh City, is home to a 75,740-hectare (187,158-acre) mangrove forest, planted and maintained as part of post-war reforestation efforts.
- The district’s residents largely depend on aquaculture, shellfish gathering and small-scale ecotourism for their livelihoods.
- The government and developers hope to market the area as an ecotourism city based on its natural beauty and post-war success story, but major projects could disrupt Cần Giờ’s precarious balance between ecosystems and livelihoods.
- All names of sources in Cần Giờ have been changed so people could speak freely without fearing repercussions from authorities.

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

U.S. grocery chains flunk sustainability, human rights tests for tuna sourcing
- Greenpeace has scored the 16 largest U.S. grocery retailers on human rights and environmental sustainability in their tuna sourcing, giving just one, ALDI, a “passing” overall grade.
- The report gave just two of the retailers, ALDI and Whole Foods Market, passing grades for addressing sustainability issues.
- None of the retailers received a passing grade for efforts to rid their supply chains of forced labor and other human rights abuses.
- The U.S. is the world’s second-largest tuna importer and its retailers wield significant clout within the tuna sector, according to the report.

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

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

‘If Brazil starts with us, why did we arrive last?’: Q&A with Indigenous lawmaker Célia Xakriabá
- Indigenous lawmaker Célia Xakriabá says the fight for the climate emergency was key to her election to Brazil’s Congress last year, which drew votes from people with a completely different political party alignment.
- “We were not only elected by progressive people [voting]. It is the environmental issue, the issue for life, the issue of the right to water, the issue of the right to food without poison [pesticides]” — issues that she tells Mongabay must go beyond the progressive parties.
- In this video interview, Célia Xakriabá says one of her priorities in Congress is to create a secretariat for Indigenous education within the Ministry of Education, and establish quotas for Indigenous people at several levels, including Indigenous professors in universities and job posts in embassies.
- Another priority is an update to the statute on Indigenous peoples, which she says is still written “in a racist way and in a retrograde way.” Change is already coming on this front: on its first day in office, the new government changed the name of the federal Indigenous affairs agency from the National Indian Foundation to the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples.

Joenia Wapichana: ‘I want to see the Yanomami and Raposa Serra do Sol territories free of invasions’
- In this video interview two weeks before the health disaster outbreak in the Yanomami Indigenous Territory, Joenia Wapichana, the first Indigenous woman named president of Brazil’s national Indigenous affairs agency, Funai, says one of her priorities at the institution is the expulsion of 20,000 illegal gold miners from the area.
- “Indigenous health is a chaos there. Children are dying of malaria and malnutrition. So, it is not simply a matter of removing the miners, but you have to take immediate action to ensure security there,” she tells Mongabay at Funai’s headquarters in Brasília.
- Joenia Wapichana says coordinated actions are required among several governmental entities with “permanent oversight” to put an end to this crisis: “It’s not simply remove [the wildcat miners] and leave no one there to protect.”
- Given Funai’s precarious budget of 600 million reais ($118 million) per year, she says cooperation agreements with other countries, a successful strategy in the past, will be key to carrying out the demarcation of Indigenous lands in the Amazon that were stalled under the government of Jair Bolsonaro.

Tense neighbors: Chinese quarry in Cameroon takes a toll on locals
- Vibrations from explosive blasting operations carried out at the Chinese company’s Jinli Cameroon LLC stone quarry have impacted homes located next to the site which are beginning to show cracks.
- Local communities accuse the company of air and water pollution and not respecting its local development commitments.
- The quarry manager denies these allegations, pointing to their new road development leading to the mine which has increased the value of land in the village.
- Local authorities receive money from the quarry through taxes but are not responding to local demands to reinvest in the area.

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

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.

Corruption scandal in Thai parks agency has far-reaching impacts, activists say
- The head of Thailand’s parks department, Rutchada Suriyakul Na Ayutya, was arrested Dec. 27 after anticorruption authorities found envelopes and gift boxes in his desk containing the equivalent of nearly $150,000 in cash.
- Rutchada had allegedly demanded bribes from underlings to secure positions, as well as a cut of departmental budgets.
- Conservationists say corruption in the department, as well as recent budget cuts, has had severe implications for the country’s protected areas.

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

For Indigenous Brazilians, capital attack was ‘scenario of war’ akin to deforestation
- The morning after protesters attacked government buildings in Brazil’s capital, Mongabay spoke with Indigenous Congresswoman Célia Xakriabá, who compared the act of vandalism to forest destruction: “This is this scenario of war when you deforest.”
- * Célia Xakriabá had just returned from seeing the damage to the National Congress building: “When they [the rioters] were there also in the Green Room, it made me remember that it is this scenario of war when the repossession takes place in the [Indigenous] territory.”
- One of the immediate effects of the attack was the temporary suspension of the official inauguration of longtime activist Sonia Guajajara as Brazil’s first minister of Indigenous peoples and Anielle Franco as minister for racial equality.
- The two women were finally sworn in on Jan. 11 at the Presidential Palace, despite the missing glass on the walls, the destroyed gallery of photos of former presidents, and a swath of destruction throughout the building. “[This] is the most legitimate symbol of this secular Black and Indigenous resistance in Brazil!” Sonia Guajajara said.

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

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

‘Funai is ours’: Brazil’s Indigenous affairs agency is reclaimed under Lula
- Some 300 people reunited at the headquarters of Brazil’s Indigenous affairs agency, Funai, in Brasília to mark a “new era” for the institution and its “reopening” under the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
- Under the government of former president Jair Bolsonaro, Funai’s officials said they were “forced to not fulfill our mission” regarding Indigenous peoples’ rights.
- Joenia Wapichana, who was the first ever Indigenous woman elected to Brazil’s Congress played a central role thwarting Bolsonaro’s bid to undermine Funai, has been appointed the president of the institution.
- Funai’s formal name has also been changed from the National Indian Foundation to the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples — a request from Native peoples leaders accepted by Lula and issued on his very first day in office.

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

Shadows of oil in Peru: Shipibo people denounce damage, contamination left by company
- Community members guided a team of journalists to the creeks and land of Canaán de Cachiyacu and Nuevo Sucre, in the district of Contamana in Peru’s Loreto region, to demonstrate how they have been affected by the various spills attributed to the Maple Gas oil company for over 25 years.
- Shipibo community members say that due to contaminated water, they still suffer from illnesses and their farms no longer produce crops. The contract established that the company must comply with environmental protection laws, but Perupetro confirmed that it simply abandoned its operations.
- Mongabay Latam traveled to two Indigenous communities on the banks of the Ucayali River and listened to the concerns of their residents regarding the serious environmental impact that they claim was caused by the operations in Block 31-B and Block 31-E.

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

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.

Photos: Newcomer farmers in Brazil embrace bees, agroforestry and find success
- New female farmers that are part of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) are embracing beekeeping and agroforestry on land that was previously unproductive and worn out by pesticides and fertilizers.
- The workers’ movement seeks to rectify land inequality by helping families occupy, settle and farm on land throughout the country.
- People are initially given unproductive land and are taught agroecological techniques based on organic and regenerative farming.
- In the past five years since they started tending to the land, the new beekeepers and farmers say there have been improvements in soil quality, reduced soil erosion and higher bird and native bee diversity in the region.

Brazil’s new environmental future under Lula: Q&A with Marina Silva
- Considered for Brazil’s Ministry of the Environment, environmentalist Marina Silva says in an interview with Mongabay that the election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva means a new cycle of prosperity for the country, “when it will be possible to make the transition to a new development model that is capable of fighting inequality with democracy and sustainability.”
- “Part of the agribusiness sector is realizing that this practice by Bolsonaro is bad for business,” the congresswoman-elect said about the possibility of reconciling the environmental agenda and the demands of agribusiness.
- Silva stressed that the current challenges are much greater than those faced when she was a member of Lula’s first administration in 2003: “We are not going to become sustainable in the blink of an eye. It’s a transition.”

With climate reparations finally on the table at COP27, what now?
- The question of who should pay damages for climate change-induced losses is finally on the table at the COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
- While mitigation and adaptation goals aim to curb carbon emissions and prepare for future impacts, loss and damage is concerned with harm already wrought by climatic disruptions or locked in by current emission levels — and with who should foot the bill.
- Emerging research on climate-related damages shows that the U.S. could face the biggest claims for reparations, even though drawing direct causal links between carbon emissions arising in one country and damaging climatic events in another country is complicated.
- “Is there a scientific basis for loss and damage and climate liability? The answer is yes,” says Justin Mankin, a climate scientist at Dartmouth College in the U.S. and co-author of a recent study on calculating climate damages.

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.

Agroecology can feed Africa and tackle climate change — with enough funding
- Advocates say agroecological systems are the way to meet the climate crisis in its fullness — from limiting emissions to coping with climatic shocks — provided it gets the support of national governments and international donors.
- They are pushing for agroecology to be considered a climate solution by leaders at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt later this month.
- The agroecology movement is forged around opposition to the mindless transplantation of large-scale industrial agriculture to African countries, which is also one of the major sources of greenhouse gas emissions in more industrialized nations like the U.S.
- But its direct impacts on carbon budgets and effectiveness as an adaptation tool are understudied. Proponents like Bridget Mugambe say this hurdle could be overcome with adequate funding.

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

Saving the economically important hilsa fish comes at a cost to Bangladesh fishers
- Many fishers across Bangladesh say they still haven’t received the compensation promised by the government during a three-week ban on fishing of hilsa, the country’s most important fish.
- The ban ends on Oct. 28, and the government was supposed to hand out 40-kilogram (88-pound) rice packages to eligible fishers at the start of it, but some of the aid may have allegedly been embezzled by local officials.
- Almost half a million fishers are directly involved in the hilsa fishery in Bangladesh, with another 2 million indirectly involved; hilsa accounts for an eighth of total fish production and more than 1% of GDP in Bangladesh.
- In light of the fish’s importance, the government has since the 2000s enforced two bans a year, to allow the fish to breed and to protect the juveniles.

Brazil’s biggest elected Indigenous caucus to face tough 2023 Congress
- In Brazil’s Oct. 2 general elections, five self-declared Indigenous candidates were elected as federal deputies and two as senators, the highest number in the country’s history. The most celebrated victories were those of prominent Indigenous activists Sônia Guajajara and Célia Xakriabá, who were elected as federal deputies.
- Experts, activists and celebrities cheered the “Bancada do Cocar”(Feathered Headdress Caucus) to halt the escalating anti-Indigenous and anti-environmental agenda in the legislative power since President Jair Bolsonaro took office in January 2019.
- The success of the Indigenous and other left-wing caucuses will depend on the outcome of the presidential runoff on Oct. 30, given a more conservative elected Congress with more seats of supporters of Bolsonaro and the agribusiness lobby in both the lower and upper houses, experts say.

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

With FSC rule change, deforesters once blocked from certification get a new shot
- The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has adopted a number of significant changes during its recent general assembly in Bali, chief among them moving its cutoff date for eligibility from 1994 to 2020.
- With the change, logging companies that have cleared forests since 1994, but before 2020, will be allowed to obtain certification from the body, something they weren’t allowed to do before.
- To qualify, companies will have to restore forests and provide remedy for social harms done in the 1994-2020 period in their concessions.
- The decision has sparked responses from both critics and supporters, with the former saying the new rule rewards known deforesters, and the latter saying it opens opportunities for forest restoration and remedies for Indigenous and local communities.

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

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

Forests & Finance: Sit-ins, seeds over seedlings, and fuel-saving cookstoves
- Liberian communities affected by logging have staged a sit-in protest in front of the country’s ministry of finance, demanding unpaid royalties.
- Cookstoves and woodlots are the first step in a plan to halt deforestation in southern Zimbabwe.
- And a reforestation initiative experiments with providing Zimbabwean farmers seeds from indigenous trees rather than seedlings.
- Forests & Finance is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin of briefs about Africa’s forests.

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

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

Haiti: An island nation whose environmental troubles only begin with water
- As Haiti plunges into the worst social unrest the nation has seen in years, shortages abound. One of these is water. But in Haiti, water scarcity has deeper roots, that connect to virtually every other aspect of the environment. Haiti’s ecosystems today, say some, are under stress due to regional and global transgressions of the nine planetary boundaries.
- The planetary boundary framework originated in 2009 to define required limits on human activities to prevent collapse of vital Earth operating systems. They include biodiversity loss, freshwater, air pollution, climate change, high phosphorus and nitrogen levels, ocean acidity, land use changes, ozone layer decay, and contamination by human-made chemicals.
- Scientists defining the global freshwater boundary warn that tampering with the water cycle can affect the other boundaries. Haiti, as a small isolated island nation, suggests a laboratory case-study of these many interconnections, and offers a graphic example of the grim results for humanity and wildlife when freshwater systems are deeply compromised.
- Haiti today is plagued by an extreme socioeconomic and environmental crisis. As it fights climate change, freshwater problems, deforestation and pollution, it may also be viewed as a bleak bellwether for other nations as our planetary crisis deepens. But scientists warn that research on applying planetary boundary criteria on a regional level remains limited.

With rights at risk, Indigenous Brazilians get on the ballot to fight back
- A record 186 Indigenous candidates are running in Brazil’s general elections in October, up 40% from the 2018 elections.
- Candidates and activists say the surge is pushback against the increased attacks on Indigenous rights, lands and cultures under the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro.
- There’s currently only one Indigenous member in the 594-seat National Congress, a body whose lower House has overwhelmingly supported legislation considered detrimental to Indigenous rights and environmental protection.
- Only two Indigenous individuals have ever been elected to Congress, but Brazil’s main Indigenous coalition hopes to improve this representation with a coordinated campaign to support Indigenous candidates.

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

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

Debunking the colonial myth of the ‘African Eden’: Q&A with author Guillaume Blanc
- In debunking persistent myths like that of an “African Eden,” Guillaume Blanc, author of “The Invention of Green Colonialism,” lays bare contradictions in the European project to secure and simultaneously exploit Africa’s land during direct colonial rule and after.
- “The more the destruction was happening in Northern [Hemisphere] countries, the more we wanted to save it in Africa,” he told Mongabay in an interview, describing how the campaign to preserve pristine wilderness in Africa has led to the casting of its inhabitants as destructive invaders.
- Blanc argues that the organizations that evolved out of colonial arrangements for colonial aims must acknowledge and apologize for the harm inflicted, dig deeper when seeking change, and cast a wider net for more meaningful solutions that treat citizens of African countries as collaborators not encroachers on their own lands.
- Organizations with a global presence must work with residents of places where they operate and focus on localized research and solutions to remain relevant, Blanc said.

Cleaning up our own backyard: Racism, speciesism and the environmental crises (commentary)
- While environmental crises are predominantly caused by the West and industrialized countries, vulnerable groups across the whole world are carrying a disproportionately large burden while they lack the power over decisions that affect their lives. This has been coined environmental racism.
- Entangled with racism is the problem of speciesism, as there’s a clear classification of animals. Exotic and charismatic wild animals are given a higher precedence, and both humans and other animals make way for their conservation.
- The speciesist and racist tendencies get intertwined and become apparent in our dealing with environmental issues. These have been influencing policies, laws, conservation efforts, and funds.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

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

‘Viable, just & necessary’: Agroecology is a movement in Brazil
- Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST) has been organizing landless families to occupy, settle, and farm throughout the country since the dictatorship ended in 1985.
- Agroecology–a highly sustainable form of agriculture–has become increasingly central to their platform of land reform, and it is taught in 2,000 schools that have been established in MST encampments nationwide.
- In the four decades since its creation, MST has organized more than 350,000 families to create communities, cooperatives, farms, small-scale food processing enterprises, and farmers markets increasingly based on this sustainable method of food production, which is also good for the climate and biodiversity.
- In an interview with Mongabay, three leaders of MST’s agroecology education program share their philosophy, accomplishments and goals.

Indigenous Brazilians demand justice as 4 killed in escalating violence
- Two Indigenous Guajajara men were killed on Sept. 3 in Brazil’s Maranhão state and a 14-year-old Guajajara boy shot and hospitalized, Indigenous leaders and rights groups say.
- The day after, a 14-year-old Indigenous Pataxó boy was also allegedly gunned down and a 16-year-old shot and wounded as they sought to retake a farm that had reportedly been established illegally within their territory in Bahia state.
- On Sept. 11, another Indigenous Guajajara was murdered in Maranhão. In the past 20 years, more than 50 Guajajara individuals have been killed in the state, with none of the alleged perpetrators ever going on trial, advocates say.
- Indigenous groups and advocacy organizations are demanding justice for these and earlier killings, and have raised concerns about escalating violence against native peoples throughout the country.

‘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.

Cut off from Sundarbans and denied compensation, Bangladesh communities face arrest
- The first month of a three-month ban on anyone entering Bangladesh’s Sundarbans mangrove forest has seen 59 people from forest-dependent communities arrested, sparking criticism of the government’s approach.
- Community members and conservation activists have called for an end to the arrests, and have faulted the government for not giving the compensation it promised to the communities to help tide them over during the June-August ban.
- The government, which says the ban is necessary to ease pressure on the Sundarbans’ wildlife during the breeding season, says the compensation still hasn’t been approved by the state treasury.
- Some 600,000 people depend directly or indirectly on the Sundarbans’ resources for their livelihood, which includes fishing and harvesting honey; tourists are also banned from entering the world’s largest mangrove forest during this three-month period.

‘The sea means everything’: Q&A with deep-sea mining opponent Debbie Ngarewa-Packer
- New Zealand parliamentarian and Māori activist Debbie Ngarewa-Packer has spent more than two decades serving in leadership roles, using her positions to advance social justice issues and to campaign for the protection of the marine environment.
- A key issue that Ngarewa-Packer is currently working on is a push to ban deep-sea mining in the global ocean, a proposed activity that would extract large amounts of minerals from the seabed.
- Ngarewa-Packer previously worked with other Māori activists, NGOs and community members to block consent for a deep-sea mining operation in her home district of South Taranaki on New Zealand’s North Island.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Ngarewa-Packer talks about why it’s critical to protect the deep sea from mining, what ancestral teachings say about protecting the ocean, and why she feels hopeful about the future.

Sri Lankan environmental policy failures helped fuel people power revolution
- Mismanagement of environmental concerns contributed to the unpopularity and eventual resignation, in the face of popular protests, of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s president.
- While Rajapaksa’s main legacy is the worst economic crisis in the country’s history, he also leaves behind a multitude of failed environmental policies, critics say.
- Uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources, creating opportunities for land grabbing through amendments to the law, and dismissing environmental concerns have all impacted the country, with some of these policies expected to have lasting effects.
- With Sri Lanka’s economic hardship deepening and driving the population of 22 million into “survival mode,” environmental activists are warning of even more intensive exploitation of natural resources.

Scientists call for end to violence against Amazon communities, environmental defenders
- The Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) demanded urgent action to stop attacks against Indigenous peoples, environmentalists and communities in a July 14 declaration.
- An alignment between illegal resource extraction and drug trafficking in the Amazon places people protecting resources at increasing risk, according to the association.
- Latin America is the most dangerous region in the world for environmental defenders, and Colombia and Brazil are at the top of the list for killings.

For women on Bangladesh’s coast, rising seas pose a reproductive health dilemma
- In coastal areas of Bangladesh, where poor families often can’t afford menstrual pads, women and adolescent girls are compelled to use cloth rags that they wash in water that’s becoming increasingly saline.
- This has led to a spate of uterine diseases, prompting many women and girls to misuse birth control pills in an effort to stop their menstrual cycles altogether.
- Health experts say this practice, carried out without medical advice, poses both short- and long-term risks to their reproductive and mental health.
- The root of the problem is the ever-worsening intrusion of saltwater into the water table, driven by a combination of rising sea levels, seepage from shrimp farms, and falling levels of the Ganges River.

Indigenous reporters awarded for fight against fake news deep in the Amazon
- Brazilian Indigenous communications network Rede Wayuri has won the 2022 Rule of Law Award from the World Justice Project (WJP).
- Using word of mouth, radio, and mobile messaging apps, the network plays a key role getting news to and from Indigenous communities in the Rio Negro region of the Brazilian Amazon.
- Rede Wayuri has been credited with debunking wild claims circulating on WhatsApp about the COVID-19 vaccine — including that it can turn a person into a crocodile — thereby helping counter vaccine hesitancy among vulnerable Indigenous populations.
- The network has 55 Indigenous communicators from 15 ethnic groups, disseminating information in at least four native languages (Baniwa, Tukano, Nheengatu and Yanomami), in addition to Portuguese, in a region the size of Nicaragua.

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.

African court rules in favor of Indigenous land titles, reparations from the Kenyan government
- The African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights has ruled that the Kenyan government must pay reparations for repeatedly evicting Indigenous Ogiek people from ancestral lands in the Mau Forest in western Kenya, ending a 13-year court battle. The state must also grant collective land titles to the Ogiek.
- The reparation judgment follows a 2017 court finding that the state violated seven articles of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights due to its evictions.
- Daniel Kobei, the executive director of the Ogiek Peoples’ Development Program (OPDP), says the Ogiek community is hoping that the government will comply with the court’s ruling.
- Rights groups such as the Minority Rights Group International (MRG) and a lawyer representing the Ogiek in court remain apprehensive over the Kenyan government’s intention to follow through with the court’s ruling.

We’re winning with climate activism, ‘just not fast enough,’ says Goldman Prize winner Julien Vincent (commentary)
- 2022 Goldman Environmental Prize winner Julien Vincent shares his thoughts on the power of people to make change, even against the most entrenched of forces like climate change denialism.
- “From my vantage point in such a wealthy and privileged part of the world, I get frustrated by in-activism…But I remind myself that it’s in the interests of our opponents to keep the public in a state of apathy, confusion and disempowerment.”
- “There is one thing I want to impart more than anything: the power people have to create change is mind-blowing, and that power is our greatest asset,” he writes in a new op-ed.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

The war on journalists and environmental defenders in the Amazon continues (commentary)
- Journalists in Brazil and around the world are devastated about the tragic end of a 10-day search for British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous advocate Bruno Pereira in the Amazon rainforest near the Brazil-Peru border in northern Amazonas state. Bodies believed to be theirs were found on June 15 after a huge outcry against the federal government’s inaction following their disappearance. Indigenous patrols bravely conducted their own search while the government did little.
- The murders of Dom and Bruno are emblematic of the plight of journalists across Latin America as violence against both journalists and activists in the region escalates. It also raises an alarm for the need to protect reporters as we report on environmental crime from Nature’s frontline.
- But these crimes will not stop us: Exposing wrongdoing across Brazil’s critical biomes — from the Mata Atlantica to the Cerrado to the Amazon — is more necessary than ever now. At the same time, demanding justice for the murder of Bruno and Dom became a fight for all of us.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Protect Persian leopards, and their defenders, for World Environment Day (commentary)
- For World Environment Day 2022 on June 5, Jane Goodall and 50 other conservationists published a letter urging protection for Persian leopards and and clemency for seven scientists imprisoned for their work studying the cats.
- In an open letter, the scientists highlight the impact of current conflicts, sanctions, and political tensions on the conservation of the leopard, whose range spans 11 countries, including Iran. It was in Iran where nine conservationists associated with the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation were arrested in January 2018, accused of spying because they were using camera traps. One of the conservationists, Kavous Seyed-Emami, who died in jail. The rest still sit in prison.
- Goodall and her colleagues call for the release of the imprisoned scientists and actions to facilitate international cooperation beyond recent political circumstances.
- This letter is a commentary containing the opinions of its writers and signers, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Vandana Shiva on the agroecology solution for the climate, biodiversity crisis and hunger
- On this episode we talk about agroecology, which applies ecological principles to agricultural systems and is considered an important strategy for both mitigating and adapting to global climate change as well as a solution to a number of the other ecological crises we're facing.
- Dr. Maywa Montenegro, an assistant professor in the department of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, joins us to discuss agroecology as a science, a practice, and a movement.
- We also speak with Dr. Vandana Shiva, whose brand new book synthesizes decades of agroecology research and implementation.
- Dr. Shiva shares how agroecology is an effective solution not just to climate change but also to a host of other ecological crises humanity faces, such as water scarcity, land degradation, and biodiversity loss.

From victims to claimants: Mobilizing the IPCC Assessment for climate justice (commentary)
- Poor and marginalized communities worldwide, and island nations especially, have contributed the least to the climate crisis, but are nonetheless impacted the most by it.
- The most recent assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) affirmed for the first time the need for fairness, equity, and climate justice in the world’s response.
- The usual frame that casts island peoples as passive victims in need of climate aid is not only overplayed, but is shortsighted and counterproductive for the achievement of equitable policy and transformative adaptation, a new op-ed argues.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Reframing trophy hunting’s socio-economic benefits in Namibia (commentary)
- Namibia is often cited as a case study to make arguments for trophy hunting, a morally contentious practice that has been adapted into a conservation strategy there by various stakeholders including community-based conservancies.
- But a 2016 study of the total revenue generated by trophy hunting revealed that 92% went to ‘freehold’ landowners, over 70% of whom are white, while less than 8% went to communal conservancies.
- If we are sincere about aligning environmental and social justice, then centering trophy hunting related debates in Namibia around racial inequalities would be an essential and meaningful step, a new op-ed argues.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

In Benin, the line between conservation and counterinsurgency blurs
- On Feb. 8-10, a series of roadside bombings in northern Benin’s W National Park killed seven employees of the conservation group African Parks, including four rangers and a French anti-poaching trainer.
- The attack is suspected to have been carried out by Islamist militants based in the forests of neighboring Burkina Faso, raising fears that violence in the Sahel is spilling over into Benin, with the country’s national parks as its front line.
- Over the border in Burkina Faso, militants have targeted forestry and conservation officials, hoping to capitalize on local discontent over park restrictions and gain new recruits.
- According to some researchers, African Parks has been thrust into the uneasy role of border security and “counter-terrorism” in northern Benin.

DRC’s cacao boom leaves a bitter aftertaste for Congo Basin forest
- The DRC’s Tshopo province lost a record-breaking area of intact forests to fires in 2021, a trend researchers say is driven by agricultural expansion, as displaced people from the violence-ravaged eastern DRC move into the province.
- There’s been an increase in clearing of forests to cultivate food crops and cash crops like cacao beans, used to make cocoa for chocolate.
- Around 70% of the world’s supply of cacao beans is produced in West African countries, with Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon the biggest producers, where its cultivation has also accelerated deforestation.
- “You are aware of what has happened in West Africa in countries like Ivory Coast and Ghana,” Germain Batsi, a DRC agroforestry expert, told Mongabay. “I am afraid such scenarios will be reproduced here, something we would regret afterwards.”

2021’s top ocean news stories (commentary)
- Marine scientists from the University of California, Santa Barbara, share their list of the top 10 ocean news stories from 2021.
- Hopeful developments this year included big investments pledged for ocean conservation, baby steps toward the reduction of marine plastic pollution, and the description of two new whale species, Rice’s whale (Balaenoptera ricei) and Ramari’s beaked whale (Mesoplodon eueu).
- At the same time, rising ocean temperatures, a byproduct of climate change, had profound effects on marine species up and down the food chain, and action on key measures to maintain ocean resilience in the face of multiple threats hung in the balance.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Top Brazil gold exporter leaves a trail of criminal probes and illegal mines
- Brazilian gold exporter BP Trading accounted for 10% of the country’s exports of the precious metal in 2019 and 2020, having purchased it from companies prosecuted for buying illegal gold.
- Most of the illegal mines are concentrated in Indigenous territories, where they deforest the land, pollute the rivers, and inflict violence on Indigenous communities.
- The company saw strong growth in recent years, with revenues of $256 million in 2019, more than double what it made in 2018.
- Illegal mining generates $600,000 to $800,000 a year in Brazil, according to Ministry of Mines and Energy estimates.

For Brazil’s persecuted Krenak people, justice arrives half a century later
- A federal court has condemned Brazil’s federal government, the Minas Gerais state government and the country’s Indigenous affairs agency, Funai, for human rights violations against the Krenak Indigenous people committed under the military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985.
- Decades of reports, witness statements and evidence show torture, beatings, solitary confinement and forced labor were commonplace in the Krenak Reformatory and Guarani Farm, considered concentration camps by the Federal Public Ministry.
- Speaking Indigenous languages, drinking alcohol, and resisting land invasions by farmers were among the supposed infractions to justify the arbitrary imprisonment of Indigenous individuals deemed rebels by the regime.
- The court has ordered the federal government to organize an official ceremony for a public apology with national coverage, as well as deliver reparations.

‘On the map’: App shines light on 5,000 ‘invisible’ families in Brazil’s Cerrado and beyond
- A new report shows the results of an application that has mapped out more than 5,000 families in 76 communities from 23 Brazilian states, whose territories amount to 350,000 hectares (865,000 acres) that, until now, have gone unrecognized on official government maps.
- The digital mapping platform, called Tô No Mapa (“I am on the map” in Portuguese), allows traditional communities to demarcate their lands and list significant points of interest and conflict.
- The app was developed by the Brazilian civil society organization Institute for Society, Population and Nature (ISPN), the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) and several other Brazilian NGOs working with traditional communities.
- Traditional peoples and communities play a vital role in conserving biodiversity, and guaranteeing their legal rights to land and territory is increasingly being recognized as a key conservation necessity, according to a wide range of studies and reports.

Convergence, community and justice: Key emerging conservation trends of the pandemic era (commentary)
- As a product of the profound impacts of climate-induced disasters, the pandemic, and rising awareness of social injustice, the conservation sector is in the midst of a period of rapid change.
- Fred Nelson, the CEO of Maliasili, which works to scale the impact of local conservation and natural resource organizations in Africa, identifies four key trends that are “significantly reshaping the conservation field” and what these mean for the sector.
- “Conservation organizations should anticipate greater support for locally-led or community-based organizations and initiatives, continued and increasing interest in the intersection of the environment and social justice, and more funding and policy support for the central role of healthy ecosystems in addressing climate change,” Nelson writes. “Ultimately these trends are all creating important opportunities for strengthening the conservation field in crucial ways—with more resources, deeper partnerships, greater diversity, and stronger local and grassroots leadership—during this critical period.”
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

‘I am Indigenous, not pardo’: Push for self-declaration in Brazil’s census
- Brazil’s 2010 census was the first to map out the presence of Indigenous people throughout the whole country, but still maintained the term pardo, for a mixed-race individual, that Indigenous activists say has long been used to render Indigenous identities “invisible.”
- The next census is due in 2022, and activists and leaders are mounting a campaign to get all Indigenous Brazilians to self-declare as Indigenous.
- Getting a more accurate picture of the number and distribution of Indigenous people, especially in urban areas, is key to informing public policies geared toward their specific needs, experts say.
- “Everything is Indigenous,” says Júlio César Pereira de Freitas Güató, one of the Indigenous leaders promoting the campaign. “All the rest is invasion.”

In Rio de Janeiro, Indigenous people fight to undo centuries of erasure
- Rio de Janeiro holds a special place in Brazil’s history, but many of its residents are unaware of the city’s Indigenous heritage — from the names of iconic places like Ipanema and Maracanã, to the Indigenous slave labor that built some of its most recognizable structures.
- Nearly 7,000 Indigenous people live in Rio, the fourth-biggest population among Brazilian cities; a unique interactive map by Mongabay shows how they’re spread across the city, as well as their living conditions and ethnic groups.
- Despite their presence, and Rio’s famed diversity and laidback culture, Indigenous people in the city continue to face prejudice and a “silencing” of their traditions and culture that they attribute to centuries of efforts to erase them and make them invisible.
- But Indigenous people are pushing back, agitating to get their rights on the political agenda, and working through academia to unearth the Indigenous history of the city that has long been hidden.

In Boa Vista, Indigenous Brazilians retake their identity through education
- The city of Boa Vista near Brazil’s borders with Venezuela and Guyana is home to Indigenous groups whose ancestral range don’t recognize national boundaries, and who still continue to flow into Brazil from crisis-stricken Venezuela.
- The colonization of Boa Vista by Europeans forced the Indigenous inhabitants off their lands on the banks of the Rio Branco, and resentments simmer today over the return of some of those lands to the original owners.
- The land conflicts also killed off the use of the many ethnic languages spoken in the region, but community-led movements are seeking to bring them back, including in learning materials published by the local university.
- Higher education is seen as a life-changing opportunity for Indigenous students, not just for their personal growth but also for the avenues it opens up to advocate for and empower the wider Indigenous community.

Reckoning with elitism and racism in conservation: Q&A with Colleen Begg
- Long-running concerns about discrimination, colonial legacy, privilege, and power dynamics in conservation have come to the forefront with the recent resurgence of the social justice movement. But will this movement lead to lasting change in the sector?
- South African conservationist Colleen Begg says that meaningful transformation will require dedicated and sustained efforts to drive real change in conservation.
- Begg, who co-founded both the Niassa Carnivore Project in Mozambique and Women for the Environment, Africa, says that conservationists in positions of power need to open themselves to criticism and change, while creating pathways for new leaders and ideas to come forward.
- Begg spoke about these issues and more in a recent conversation with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler.

Brazil continues to lose an entire generation of Indigenous leaders to COVID-19
- With scant support from the federal government, Indigenous Brazilians are taking matters in their own hands when it comes to dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.
- For many of these communities, however, decimated by centuries of massacre and disease, the avoidable deaths of the few remaining elders mean an incalculable loss of culture and cultural memory.
- Aruká Juma, the last elder of his Juma people, died from COVID-19 in February after being treated with a cocktail of drugs promoted by the president but not proven to be effective against the illness.
- Decades of inadequate health care for Indigenous communities have also left them with comorbidities that make them particularly susceptible to death from COVID-19.

Under assault at home, Indigenous leaders get a violent welcome in Brasília
- Three Indigenous leaders were reportedly seriously injured after Brazilian police fired rubber bullets and stun grenades at protesters in the capital, Brasília
- The incident comes as Indigenous groups from across Brazil gather in the capital to protest against violence and invasions that they face on their own lands; the Munduruku people had to have a police escort to travel to Brasília after being attacked by illegal miners in their reserve in Pará state.
- The Indigenous protesters are also in the capital to press Congress to halt deliberations of legislation that they call the “bill of death,” that would severely undermine Indigenous rights. On the day after the confrontation, it was approved by a congressional commission and will go to a vote in the lower house.
- Among other measures, the bill would make it harder to demarcate Indigenous reserves; override Indigenous territorial sovereignty for “public interest” projects; and dismantle the current policy of non-contact with isolated Indigenous people.

In Brazil’s most Indigenous city, prejudice and diversity go hand in hand
- São Gabriel da Cachoeira, in northern Amazonas state, is recognized as Brazil’s most Indigenous municipality: an estimated 90% of its population is Indigenous, accounting for both its urban and rural areas; the urban area alone is 58% self-declared Indigenous.
- Spread across an area the size of Cuba, São Gabriel da Cachoeira has a history marked by the arrival of Brazilian military forces in 1760 and subsequently Catholic and Protestant missionaries, organized Indigenous social movements, as well as national and international NGOs focused on defending the environment and the Indigenous peoples.
- According to the census, there are 32 indigenous ethnic groups in São Gabriel da Cachoeira, many of them unknown in the rest of the country, such as the Koripako, Baniwa, Baré, Wanano, Piratapuya, Tukano, and Dãw people.
- The municipality is the only one in the country with four official languages, in addition to Portuguese: Baniwa, Tukano, Nheengatu and Yanomami. But despite its cultural and ethnic diversity, there are frequent reports of discrimination against Indigenous people.

It’s Juneteenth, but these American companies are still profiting from slavery (commentary)
- Samuel Mawutor, forest campaign group Mighty Earth’s Senior Advisor for Africa, argues that while June 19th marks the official end of slavery in the Confederacy, American agribusiness companies are still engaging in practices analogous to slavery in their commodity supply chains.
- Mawutor specifically calls out Cargill, which he says isn’t doing enough to address labor abuses in its cocoa supply chain.
- “The cocoa sector is notorious for its widespread use of child labor and other abuses– so much so that in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, groups from both cocoa producing and consuming countries signed an open letter on racial injustice in the cocoa sector,” Mawutor writes. “It is estimated that 1.56 million children work in the cocoa industry; many are forced to use dangerous tools and chemicals and carry enormous weights, in direct violation of international labor standards, the UN convention on child labor, and domestic laws.”
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

With Indigenous rights at stake in Brasília, a territory is attacked in Paraty
- As lawmakers tussle over the future of Indigenous land rights in Brazil’s capital, Indigenous people in a municipality in Rio de Janeiro state are fending off attacks and threats by settlers who reject their ancestral land rights over the territory.
- Settlers opposed to the recognition of the Tekohá Dje’y Indigenous Reserve yanked off a new identification plaque marking the reserve, threatened Indigenous leaders and tried to run residents over with a vehicle, the community alleges.
- The Indigenous group in Paraty, a municipality a four-hour drive from Rio’s capital, blames farmers and land grabbers for the attacks and for not recognizing their rights to the land; the community says authorities are not doing enough to protect them from attacks.
- The attacks come amid ongoing violence in the Yanomami and Munduruku reserves, where illegal miners have invaded Indigenous lands in search of gold. Indigenous groups are protesting in Brasília this week against a host of anti-Indigenous bills that could weaken land rights and legalize the mining.

Paid in Blood: Standing up to private interests often turns deadly in Brazil
- In 2017, police officers killed 10 rural workers in Pau D’Arco, Pará, Brazil. On January 26, 2021, a survivor—Fernando dos Santos Araújo—was found shot in his home.
- His story reveals a frightening pattern in Brazil where standing up to private interests often turns deadly.
- The land remains in dispute, but the workers argue it has cost them enough already. They’ve paid in blood.

Specter of tailings disaster looms after spill at Canadian firm’s Brazil mine
- A spill from a pond at Canadian company Equinox Gold’s mining site in Brazil’s Maranhão state disrupted water supplies for some 4,000 residents and stoked fears about the potential failure of its tailings dam.
- Residents say the spill is just the latest in a litany of problems they attribute to the mine, which include structural damage to their homes, air and noise pollution, and water contamination.
- The company attributes the spill to unusually heavy rains; denies any links between its detonation activity and damage to residents’ homes; and says all the paperwork and certification for its tailings dam are in order.
- Its tailings dam is nearly identical to one operated by Vale, Brazil’s biggest miner, in Minas Gerais state, which failed catastrophically in 2019, killing 270 people.

Indigenous in Brasília: The fight for rights in Brazil’s power base
- Since its founding in 1960, Brasília has drawn Indigenous leaders and activists looking to bring their grievances and requests to the country’s center of power.
- Some, like Beto Marubo, who successfully pushed for health supplies and support for his Amazonian community during the COVID-19 pandemic, say they have better chances of achieving their goals by being in the capital.
- Another prominent figure is Joenia Wapichana, the first Indigenous woman elected to Congress, who has made it her mission to thwart the anti-Indigenous agenda of President Jair Bolsonaro.
- But many of the Indigenous people who live there say it doesn’t feel like home, with frequent incidents of prejudice and violence; Īrémirí Tukano, who has a degree in events and is now studying tourism, says he’s only passing through to learn the knowledge of the non-Indigenous and take it back to his people.

Brazil court orders illegal miners booted from Yanomami Indigenous Reserve
- A court has ordered Brazilian authorities to remove all illegal gold miners from the Yanomami Indigenous Reserve in the Amazon, following five days of attacks and intimidation by the miners against an Indigenous village.
- The federal government has still not complied with the May 17 ruling. Army officials say they are planning operations in the region, but have not provided dates. The Federal Police say a team will arrive May 21 to collect data for investigation.
- The attacks that began May 10 saw the miners shoot at the village of Palimiú, throw tear gas canisters, and station several boats nearby in an apparent attempt at intimidation.
- The violent conflict between miners and Indigenous groups follows a surge of land invasions and illegal mining in Indigenous reserves and other conservation areas, dubbed “The Bolsonaro Effect” by Brazilian researchers after its chief enabler.

‘Amazônia must live on’: Photographer Sebastião Salgado returns home with his new book
- Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado traveled the Amazon for six years to capture nature and the people of the world’s largest rainforest, now depicted in his new book, Amazônia.
- Salgado, one of the most respected documentary photographers in the world, returned to the region four decades after gaining fame shooting the Serra Pelada gold mine and its thousands of mud-covered diggers.
- The book is also a cry for preservation of what remains of the Amazon: “My wish … is that in 50 years’ time this book will not resemble a record of a lost world,” he says.

Brazil’s environment minister investigated for alleged illegal timber sales
- A week after Brazil’s Lower House of Congress approved a bill that exempts environmental impact assessments and licensing for development projects, Brazil’s environment minister, Ricardo Salles, has been named in a probe for alleged illegal exports of Amazon timber, following a Federal Supreme Court ruling on May 19.
- The ruling cites “extremely atypical financial transactions” totaling $2.7 million involving a law firm where Salles is one of the stakeholders.
- The federal police carried out raids in various ministry offices in the early hours of May 19, which led to the suspension of 10 high-ranking environmental officials, including Eduardo Bim, the head of the IBAMA, the country’s environmental agency.
- Salles denied any wrongdoing and called the operation “exaggerated” and “unnecessary” in a press conference on May 19.

After gold miners shoot Yanomani people, Brazil cuts environmental regulation further
- With 300 votes in favor and 122 against, Brazil’s Lower House passed the draft of a bill on May 12 that withdraws environmental impact assessments and licensing for development projects, ranging from construction of roads to agriculture.
- The measure, which was submitted to the Senate for its appraisal, is backed by President Jair Bolsonaro and the powerful conservative agribusiness lobby — the ‘ruralistas’ — who champion it as a way of slashing red tape on environmental licensing, to facilitate “self-licensing” infrastructure projects.
- Congressmen, experts and activists opposed to it are convinced the new legal framework will inevitably fast-track approval of high-risk projects, leading to deforestation and the escalation of violence against traditional communities.
- As the Lower House moved to approve it, Yanomami people were under attack by illegal gold miners with automatic weapons for the third time this week in northern Roraima state. “They [illegal miners] are not shooting to try and scare us. They want us dead,” a Yanomami leader told Mongabay.

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

Indigenous in Salvador: A struggle for identity in Brazil’s first capital
- The city of Salvador in Brazil’s Bahia state was one of the first established by European colonizers 500 years ago, built where settlements of Indigenous people already existed.
- Today, the predominantly Afro-Brazilian city is home to an Indigenous minority of around 7,500, many of whom are enrolled in the local university under the Indigenous quota system.
- They say they continue to face prejudice from others, who question why they wear modern clothes and use smartphones and don’t look like the pictures in history books.
- Over centuries of suffering from colonization and enslavement, Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian communities here have forged something of a cultural alliance in an effort to keep their respective traditions alive.

‘Throw them overboard’: Brazil mine disaster victims bullied over compensation
- Communities awaiting compensation from the worst environmental disaster in Brazilian history say they’re being stymied by a convoluted legal process that favors those responsible.
- Compensation for the 2015 Mariana tailings dam disaster, which killed 19 people and polluted a river basin the size of Portugal, is being administered by a foundation set up by the mining companies.
- State and federal prosecutors and public defenders allege collusion between the foundation and the judge overseeing the process; they also call the compensation being offered “ridiculously low.”
- In a recording of a meeting this past January, a lawyer for the foundation can be heard berating community members and demanding that they apologize for staging a peaceful protest, or risk the payments being stopped.

Karipuna people sue Brazil government for alleged complicity in land grabs
- Leaders of the Karipuna Indigenous group in Brazil are suing the government for what they say is complicity in the continued invasion and theft of their land.
- Findings by Greenpeace and the Catholic Church-affiliated Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) show 31 land claims overlapping onto the Karipuna Indigenous Reserve, while 7% of the area has already been deforested or destroyed.
- The Karipuna Indigenous, who rebuilt their population to around 60 in the last few decades from just eight members who survived mass deaths by disease that followed their forced contact with the outside world in the 1970s, are seeking damages of $8.2 million, the right to permanent protection, and the cancellation of all outsider land claims to their territory.
- Land grabbing has been fueled by the political rhetoric and action of President Jair Bolsonaro and his allies, who are seeking to drastically reduce protected areas in the Amazon and weaken environmental protections, activists and experts say.

Brazil’s Bolsonaro vowed to work with Indigenous people. Now he’s investigating them
- At least two top Indigenous leaders in Brazil, Sônia Guajajara and Almir Suruí, were recently summoned for questioning by the federal police over allegations of slander against the government of President Jair Bolsonaro.
- Both probes were prompted by complaints filed by Funai, the federal agency for Indigenous affairs, just a week after Bolsonaro pledged at a global leaders’ climate summit to work together with Indigenous peoples to tackle deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.
- The NGO Human Rights Watch said it’s “deeply concerned” about the government’s moves and called any retaliation against Indigenous peoples a “flagrant abuse of power,” while APIB, Brazil’s main Indigenous association, called the government’s approach a “clear attempt to curtail freedom of expression.”
- Under Bolsonaro, deforestation in Brazil has reached its highest level since 2008, invasions of indigenous territories increased 135% in 2019, and the persecution of government critics under a draconian national security law has skyrocketed.

Indigenous in São Paulo: Erased by a colonial education curriculum
- São Paulo, the biggest city in the western hemisphere, is home to two Indigenous reserves with vastly differing fates.
- The Jaraguá reserve is the smallest in Brazil, hemmed in by a controversial property development and highways that commemorate colonizers who enslaved and massacred the Indigenous population.
- On the much larger Tenondé Porã reserve, residents grow their own food and speak their own language.
- Despite these differences, Indigenous people in São Paulo, whether in the reserves or in the city, face the common problems of discrimination, an education system that refuses to acknowledge their presence, and the continued glorification of genocidal colonizers.

Landmark decision: Brazil Supreme Court sides with Indigenous land rights
- Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court (STF) has unanimously accepted an appeal by the Guarani Kaiowá Indigenous people and agreed to review the process around a past case that cancelled the demarcation of their Indigenous territory.
- The Guarani Kaiowá’s decades-long fight for land rights to their ancestral territory, the Guyraroká land in Mato Grosso do Sul state, had been suspended by a 2014 ruling halting the territory’s demarcation process.
- The STF’s decision to review the process in the 2014 case, which hadn’t allowed for Indigenous consultation, is seen by analysts as a victory for Indigenous groups in Brazil, and as a setback for President Jair Bolsonaro who has declared his opposition to any Indigenous demarcation occurring during his administration.
- In a related upcoming case, the STF is expected to rule on the “marco temporal,” which requires that Indigenous people have been living on claimed lands in 1988 in order to establish a legal territory. But litigators have argued that date is unfairly arbitrary, as many Indigenous groups were forced off ancestral lands by then.

‘We’re at a tipping point with coal’: Q&A with Bloomberg’s Antha Williams
- Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg was key in marshaling city and state governments across the U.S. to ramp up their climate action after the Trump administration pulled the country out of the Paris Agreement.
- With the climate-focused Biden administration now in office, Bloomberg Philanthropies is going “all-in toward climate solutions,” says Antha N. Williams, head of the foundation’s environment program.
- Among its main initiatives is the Beyond Coal campaign, which seeks to get OECD countries to transition away from coal by 2030 and the rest of the world by 2040.
- In this post-Trump follow-up interview with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler, Williams discusses a just energy transition, the role of finance in driving change, and the importance of ocean protection.

‘We are made invisible’: Brazil’s Indigenous on prejudice in the city
- Contrary to popular belief, Brazil’s Indigenous people aren’t confined to the Amazon Rainforest, with more than a third of them, or about 315,000 individuals, living in urban areas.
- Over the past year, we dived into the census and related databases to produce unique maps and infographics showing not only how the Indigenous residents are distributed in six cities and in Brazil overall, but also showcasing their access to education, sewage and other amenities, and their ethnic diversity.
- Access to higher education is a milestone: the number of Indigenous people enrolled in universities jumped from 10,000 to about 81,000 between 2010 and 2019, giving them a higher college education rate than the general population.
- This data-driven reporting project received funding support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting’s data journalism and property rights grant.

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

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

Melina Laboucan-Massimo: Catalyzing an Indigenous-led just energy transition
- A Just Transition is the idea that the shift toward low-carbon economies needs to be fair and inclusive, meaning it considers the people that will be most impacted by abandoning fossil fuels.
- Among the groups most likely to be affected by the green energy transition are Indigenous communities, many of whom may be disproportionately dependent on fossil fuels for their day-to-day energy needs and livelihoods, and at the same time are also most likely to bear the brunt of the impacts of climate change.
- Recognizing the need for a Just Transition for Indigenous Peoples, Melina Miyowapan Laboucan-Massimo of the Lubicon Cree First Nation in northern Alberta founded Sacred Earth Solar in 2015 to empower Indigenous communities across Canada to adopt renewable energy.
- Laboucan-Massimo spoke about catalyzing a just energy transition for Indigenous peoples, the legacy of colonization, and more, during a March 2021 conversation with Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler.

BlackRock must commit to Indigenous rights — not just climate change (commentary)
- BlackRock is an investment management firm reportedly with $8 trillion in assets. It is also well documented for its financing of large-scale mining, fossil fuel production and agribusiness projects across Latin America doing harm to Indigenous communities in Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Brazil and elsewhere.
- The company has recently become outspoken about its position to vigorously combat climate change. But even though the United Nations recognizes Indigenous peoples as the best stewards of the environment, guardians of their lands and defenders against climate change, BlackRock remains virtually silent on Indigenous issues.
- If the company’s climate change commitment is to be taken seriously by the world, then BlackRock needs to step up now and adopt an explicit “Forest and Indigenous Rights Policy.”
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Brazil’s isolated tribes in the crosshairs of miners targeting Indigenous lands
- The Amazônia Minada reporting project has revealed 1,265 pending requests to mine in Indigenous territories in Brazil, including restricted lands that are home to isolated tribes.
- Brazil’s federal agency for Indigenous affairs, Funai, holds 114 reports of isolated tribes, of which 43 are within Indigenous lands targeted by mining.
- In addition to the spread of diseases such as COVID-19 and malaria, mining activity poses health threats from the mercury used in gold extraction, which contaminates rivers and fish.
- Indigenous groups have filed a lawsuit with Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court against the government, demanding protection for isolated Indigenous peoples.

Freight train project that railroads Indigenous rights still on track
- A controversial project to build a rail line for transporting soybeans and other commodities through Indigenous lands in the Brazilian Amazon may get its environmental license as soon as April.
- Prosecutors in the state of Pará, where the line will terminate at the Miritituba river port, have filed a court request for a suspension of the project until prior consultation with the affected Indigenous communities have been carried out.
- The request seeks to challenge the project on its economic viability, with prosecutors arguing that without detailed data on costs and compensation measures, there is no way of knowing how the project will impact on public coffers.
- This is the first time that prosecutors have highlighted a project’s viability to seek its suspension.

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

Amazon’s Belo Monte dam cuts Xingu River flow 85%; a crime, Indigenous say
- In February, IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency permitted Belo Monte mega-dam operator Norte Energia to drastically reduce flows to the Volta Grande (Big Bend) of the Xingu River for at least a year. That decision reversed an earlier ruling to maintain much higher Xingu River flows and the fishery — as legally required.
- The flow reduction will leave 70% of usually-flooded forest dry this season, causing massive fish mortality and diminished reproduction, experts say. Community group Xingu Vivo Para Sempre denounced the decision as “a death sentence for the Xingu” and demanded IBAMA’s and Norte Energia’s presidents be “criminally prosecuted.”
- Norte Energia has funded projects to mitigate the reduced flow, collecting and dropping fruit into the river for fish to feed on, and releasing captive-bred fish. But scientists say these approaches are unscientific and will likely be ineffective, and can’t make up for the loss of the river’s seasonal flood pulse, upon which fish depend.
- Residents say the government has spread misinformation, telling Brazilian consumers that their electricity bills would go up if Belo Monte released more water to maintain the Xingu’s ecosystem — something Norte Energia is obligated to do. At present, water levels on the Volta Grande have not been restored.

Persistence of slave labor exposes lawlessness of Amazon gold mines
- A notorious mining family continued to be awarded permits and lay claims to land in the Brazilian Amazon after being busted for enslavement of workers in a 2018 raid.
- The gold mining operations overseen by Raimunda Oliveira Nunes were raided in 2018 and 2020 by labor inspectors, who rescued 77 workers from slave-labor conditions. Nunes was convicted last year in court but remains free pending an appeal.
- An investigation by Mongabay shows that, even after the first raid and Nunes’s inclusion on a blacklist of known enslavers, she and her children were still able to apply for and obtain permits from the National Mining Agency (ANM).
- Mongabay also found that they staked claims to land under the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR), which is often exploited by land grabbers trying to legitimize illegal activities such as mining, cattle ranching or farming.

Backing the stewards of biocultural diversity: Q&A with Indigenous rights leader Carla Fredericks
- For at least the past 20 years, conservation has been wrestling with some of the darker aspects of its historical relationship with local communities. These issues gained increased notoriety in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing last year when the Black Lives Matter movement forced a public conversation around state violence and social injustice in the United States and beyond.
- There are signs that the conservation sector is now doing more than just paying lip service to these concerns: Indigenous peoples and local communities are being more actively engaged in decision-making; leadership and boards of conservation institutions are prioritizing diversity and inclusion; and discriminatory practices are increasingly being called out as unacceptable.
- Recognizing Indigenous rights as a gap in the philanthropic space in general, the San Francisco-based Christensen Fund recently reoriented its grantmaking approach and adopted a new mission: supporting the global Indigenous peoples’ movement “in its efforts to advance the rights and opportunities of stewards of biocultural diversity.”
- To deliver on this mission, last year Christensen hired Indigenous legal expert and advocate Carla Fredericks as its executive director. Fredericks, an enrolled citizen of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation of North Dakota, spoke with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler during a February 2021 interview.

Brazil flower-gatherers win acclaim: ‘Efficient, long-lasting, resilient’
- For three centuries communities of “flower-gatherers” have lived self-reliantly in the Serra do Espinhaço, a mountain range bordering Brazil’s Cerrado savanna on its east. Many are descended from former slaves, but they’ve mingled with Indigenous and descendants of Portuguese migrants.
- Their several hundred communities have long fostered a cooperative relationship with nature, using fire judiciously and a code of sustainable rules to keep their communal pastures and natural landscapes in balance.
- In 2020, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recognized their way of life, designating the flower-gatherers’ traditional farming system as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System. But encroaching mining and agriculture, and a national park all now put this unique culture at risk.
- “The struggle of the flower-gatherers is a profound struggle. It is a struggle for a way of life, a way of thinking the world, of relating with the Serra [mountain range], and constructing a future they want for their children,” says one academic.

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

Brazil guts agencies, ‘sabotaging environmental protection’ in Amazon: Report
- A new report documents draconian budget cuts to Brazilian environmental monitoring and firefighting of 9.8% in 2020, and 27.4% in 2021 — reductions, analysts say that were inflicted by the Bolsonaro administration in “a clear policy for dismantling national environmental policies.”
- Brazil’s environmental agencies under Bolsonaro have also been subjected to nearly 600 administrative and rules changes, invoked by presidential executive order and resulting in massive environmental deregulation.
- Under Bolsonaro, deforestation has soared, with an increase of 34% in the last two years, even as capacity to punish environmental criminals fell sharply due to funding shortages. Fines imposed for illegal deforestation, instead of rising during this Amazon environmental crime wave, fell by 42% from 2019 to 2020.
- Faced with Bolsonaro’s gutting of environmental agencies and protections, two Indigenous leaders — Kayapo Chief Raoni Metuktire, and Paiter Surui Chief Almir Narayamoga Surui — have asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague to investigate President Bolsonaro for “crimes against humanity.”

Indigenous groups blast Amazon state’s plan to legalize wildcat mining
- Brazilian legislators in the Amazon state of Roraima have passed a bill legalizing garimpo wildcat mining on state lands without studies. Amendments would also legalize the use of toxic mercury in gold processing, and greatly expand the legal size of mining claims.
- Indigenous groups say the law was passed without adequate consultation, and will invite gold miner invasions of Indigenous reserves in the state, including that of the Yanomami, the largest reserve in Brazil. Since the election of President Jair Bolsonaro more than 20,000 illegal miners have been reported on Yanomami lands.
- Wildcat mining is already legal in some Brazilian Amazon states. Based on that experience, experts say that legalization in Roraima will enable fraud, with gold illegally mined in Indigenous reserves “laundered” to become “legal” gold, and illicit “conflict gold” trafficked from neighboring Venezuela laundered in Roraima.
- The Roraima garimpo mining bill now awaits the state governor’s signature.

In ‘dire’ plea, Brazil’s Amazonas state appeals for global COVID assistance
- In a letter describing pandemic conditions as “dire,” the government of Brazil’s Amazonas state is pleading for urgent medical assistance from the international community. The authenticated letter apparently bypassed the Bolsonaro administration which critics say has been ineffectual in dealing with COVID-19.
- Manaus, the Amazonas state capital, was overwhelmed by the coronavirus last April, but this second wave, according to state authorities is far worse, impacting not only the city, but increasingly, the state’s rainforest interior. The soaring number of cases and deaths statewide is yet to be fully tallied.
- According to authorities, medical facilities in Manaus and Amazonas are presently being utterly overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases, with hospitals and clinics lacking beds, oxygen and other vital resources, resulting in deaths. The disease’s rapid spread may be the result of the P.I. viral lineage variant newly detected in Brazil.
- “The situation is dire, and our fear is that the same situation we are seeing in the capital Manaus will reach the inland of Amazonas, the traditional and indigenous populations that are in situation of greater vulnerability,” said the letter sent to international NGOs. The international response isn’t yet known.

Brazil’s collapsing health service, new COVID variant, raise Indigenous risk
- The city of Manaus made world headlines last April when a first wave of the coronavirus swept through the city. Now that city, and the entire state of Amazonas, is being swept by a second wave of the pandemic, which is shaping up to be far worse than the first.
- Indigenous people are especially vulnerable, with their mortality rate from COVID-19 at least 16% higher than the Brazilian average. Now, São Gabriel da Cachoeira, located 852 kilometers (529 miles) from Manaus, near the Colombia-Venezuela frontier, is being heavily impacted.
- São Gabriel has a large Indigenous population, and while it escaped the worst of the first wave of the pandemic, its meagre health system resources are now being overwhelmed. The state of Amazonas lacks sufficient hospital beds, its ICUs are overrun, and medical facilities lack sufficient oxygen.
- Of extreme concern is a new Brazilian coronavirus variant called P.1, which recently appeared in Amazonas state. While more research is needed, one possibility is that P.I. is bypassing the human immune response triggered by the initial coronavirus lineage that ravaged Manaus last year. This means people could be reinfected.

Human rights-based conservation is key to protecting biodiversity: Study
- To slow the rapid loss of global biodiversity, many countries have made commitments to protect and conserve large areas of land in the coming decades, but the fate of the Indigenous peoples, local communities and Afro-descendants who live on these lands remains unclear.
- Past approaches to creating protected areas have involved relocating people or banning access and traditional use of land from its historical inhabitants. An estimated 136 million people have been displaced in the process of formally protecting land.
- A new study addresses the risks Indigenous peoples, local communities and Afro-descendants face from exclusionary conservation measures and urges decision-makers to adapt rights-based conservation approaches.
- As the new post-2020 Global Biodiversity framework draft is negotiated, the 190 countries involved have the opportunity to, according to the study, “actively redress conservation’s colonial history and begin decolonizing conservation,” by codifying rights-based conservation approaches.

Ribeirinhos win right to waterside Amazon homeland lost to Belo Monte dam
- Some 40,000 people — mostly peasant farmers, fisherfolk, traditional families (living from the collection of forest products), Indigenous people, and ribeirinhos — were evicted to make way for the Belo Monte dam, constructed between June 2011 and November 2019.
- The ribeirinhos (traditional riverine people) were not politically well organized at the time, and along with many others, were forced out of their traditional riverside homes and livelihoods. Most moved into urban housing developments away from the Xingu River, where they were forced to pay rent and acclimate themselves to urban life.
- But over the years the ribeirinhos gained political savvy. Negotiating with Norte Energia, the consortium that built and runs Belo Monte, they gained the right to establish a collectively owned Ribeirinho Territory beside the Belo Monte reservoir.
- Under the agreement, 315 families are each to be provided with 14 hectares (34 acres) for individual use. Added to that are areas for collective use and a forest reserve — a combined total of 20,341 hectares (50,263 acres). However, with the deal now seemingly sealed, Norte Energia has backpedaled, wanting to propose a different agreement.

2020’s top ocean news stories (commentary)
- Marine scientists from the University of California, Santa Barbara, share their list of the top 10 ocean news stories from 2020.
- Hopeful developments this year included some long-overdue attention to Black and other underrepresented groups in marine science; new technologies to prevent deadly ship-whale collisions and track “dark” vessels at sea remotely; and surprising discoveries in the deep sea.
- At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in more trash than ever being dumped in the sea, and stalled international negotiations aimed at protecting waters off Antarctica and in the high seas. 2020 also brought the first modern-day marine fish extinction.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Brazilian woman threatened by Amazon loggers wins global human rights award
- Rural community leader Osvalinda Alves Pereira is the first Brazilian to receive the Edelstam Prize, a Swedish award given to human rights defenders. She was honored this November for her brave stand against illegal loggers and for her defense of the Amazon agrarian reform community of Areia in Pará state.
- Illegal loggers there have repeatedly threatened Osvalinda and her husband with violence, forcing them out of their community and into urban safe houses. Now the couple has returned to their rural home; threats to Osvalinda and her community have resumed since she received the Edelstam Prize.
- Illegal deforestation, especially the illegal export of rare and valuable Amazon woods, has been strongly aided by the deregulatory policies of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, according to critics, who also say that the president’s incendiary rhetoric is emboldening illegal loggers and others to violence.
- Still threatened by logging militias in Amazonia, Osvalinda received the award just a week after President Bolsonaro in a speech tried to shift responsibility for the policing of Amazon illegal deforestation away from Brazil and onto its foreign trading partners who are importing timber from the South American nation.

Belo Monte dam’s water demands imperil Amazon communities, environment
- Norte Energia, the builder and operator of the controversial Belo Monte mega-dam is pushing for implementation of a much disputed “consensus hydrogram” — a plan to annually manipulate water releases into the Xingu River’s Volta Grande (Big Bend), with estimated peak April releases ranging from a mere 4,000 – 8,000 m3/s.
- Noting that April average historical river flows in the Volta Grande before the dam was built were 19,985 m3/s, analysts say this dearth of water flow will prevent and imperil annual fish reproduction. One Volta Grande expert estimates that, using the so-called consensus hydrogram plan, at least 80% of Volta Grande fish will die.
- Documents from IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, which first came to light publicly on December 3, acknowledge “grave and irreparable impacts” from the Belo Monte dam, and signal an urgent need to revise Norte Energia’s planned consensus hydrogram.
- Two recent studies say fish are decreasing dramatically in diets within Belo Monte’s influence area, causing food insecurity. Norte Energia claims fish quantities sold locally remain the same, but their data may mask significantly increased fishing effort, and the need to fish more widely, beyond previous fishing areas.

Building a road to recovery for subtle racism in conservation (commentary)
- The following stories are based on firsthand experiences, personal observations, and eyewitness accounts related to race and privilege in the conservation space in Africa.
- More than 20 African women from nearly a dozen countries, each conservation leaders in their own right, contributed to these stories.
- They came together with a desire not to pulverize the conservation space, but rather to heal it. The goal is to offer a chance for self-reflection and open conversation in a world where too many things go unsaid.
- This article is a commentary, the views expressed are not necessarily those of Mongabay.

The Amazon’s Yanomami utterly abandoned by Brazilian authorities: Report
- A new report highlights the escalating existential crisis among the 30,000 Indigenous people living in the Yanomami Territory, covering 9,664,975 hectares (37,317 square miles) in northern Brazil. Data shows that the Yanomami reserve is in the top ten areas now most prone to illegal deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.
- The report accuses Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazilian government of abandoning the Yanomami to the invasion of their territory by tens-of-thousands of illegal miners. While the administration has launched sporadic operations to stop these incursions, the miners return as soon as police leave the reserve.
- Bolsonaro is also accused of having done little to combat COVID-19 or provide basic healthcare. As a result, pandemic case numbers have grown by 250% in the last three months, now possibly infecting 10,000 Yanomami and Ye’kwana, about a third of the reserve’s entire population, with deaths recorded among adults and children.
- “Children, young people and the generations to come deserve to live healthy lives in their forest home. Their futures should not be cut off by the actions of a genocidal administration,” says the report compiled by the Yanomami and Ye’kwana and a network of academics. Brazil’s Health Ministry denied the charge of negligence.

Deadly anniversary: Rio Doce, Brazil’s worst environmental disaster, 5 years on
- On November 5, 2015, the Fundão iron mine tailings dam failed, pouring 50 million tons of mud and toxic waste into Brazil’s Rio Doce, killing 19 people, polluting the river, contaminating croplands, devastating fish and wildlife, and polluting drinking water with toxic sludge along 650 kilometers (400 miles) of the waterway.
- Five years on, the industry cleanup has failed to restore the river and watershed, according to residents, with fisheries and fields still poisoned and less productive. Access to clean water also remains difficult, while unexplained health problems have arisen, though some cleanup and livelihood projects are yielding hope.
- Rio Doce valley inhabitants remain frustrated by what they see as a slow response to the environmental disaster by the dam’s owner, Samarco, a joint venture of Vale and BHP Billiton, two of the world’s biggest mining companies, and also by the Brazilian government. Roughly 1.6 million people were originally impacted by the disaster.
- The count of those still affected is unknown, with alleged heavy metal-related health risks cited: Maria de Jesus Arcanjo Peixoto tells of her young grandson, sickened by a mysterious illness: ”We’re left in doubt… But he was three months old when the dam burst. And all the food, the milk, the feed for the cows — it all came from the mud.”

2020 fires endangering uncontacted Amazon Indigenous groups
- Amazon fires this year are seriously threatening Indigenous territories in which isolated uncontacted Indigenous groups make their homes. Brazil has an estimated 100+ isolated Indigenous groups living within its borders, more than any other Amazonian nation.
- Particularly threatened by fires in 2020 are the isolated Ãwa people who live on Bananal Island in Tocantins state; the uncontacted Awá inhabiting the Arariboia Indigenous Reserve in Maranhão state; and uncontacted groups in the Uru Eu Wau Wau Indigenous territory in Rondônia and Ituna Itatá Indigenous territory in Pará, the Brazilian state with the highest deforestation and land conflicts rates.
- All of these Indigenous territories are under intense pressure from land grabbers, illegal loggers and ranchers, with many of this year’s fires thought to have been set intentionally as a means of converting protected rainforest to pasture and cropland.
- Meanwhile, the Jair Bolsonaro government has hobbled IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, defunding it and preventing it from fighting fires, causing one critic to accuse the administration of having “waged war against Indigenous peoples” and of “an ongoing genocide.”

Alcoa vs. the Amazon: How the ribeirinhos won their collective land rights
- In 2009, communities of ribeirinhos (traditional riverine settlers) launched a major land rights protest in the Amazon against Alcoa, the transnational mining company. Their action led to an agreement that proved decisive not only for the ribeirinhos, but for collective land rights activists across Brazil.
- Alcoa came to Juruti, Pará state, Brazil in 2000 with big plans to mine for bauxite. At first, the 44 communities on the south bank of the Amazon River, made up of Indigenous and traditional peoples, supported the plan, hoping it would bring jobs and prosperity.
- But land rights organizers argued the mine would be a disaster for the environment, traditional livelihoods and culture. Attempts to block the mine failed. But efforts to get collective land rights recognized, along with financial compensation, were successful.
- The government granted full collective land rights, and Alcoa agreed to pay rent for occupying community land, compensate for losses and damages, and give locals an annual share in mine profits. Land rights activists have pursued similar goals — with varying success — in the Amazon ever since.

Latin America unites to fight global inequalities in new regional pact
- More than 2,800 environmentalists, academics, lawyers, activists, and community leaders from Mexico to Argentina have already signed the pact.
- The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated inequality in Latin America, where five of the top 10 countries with the highest transmission rates in the world are located. The ILO estimates more than 41 million people will lose their jobs in the region, while the U.N. has warned that extreme poverty will surpass 83 million people, and deforestation has increased, putting ecosystems and Indigenous communities in jeopardy.
- Some of the proposals in the pact include cancellation of external debt, offering universal basic income, creating solidarity-based tax reform, building post-extractivist economies, and prioritizing food sovereignty and local health care systems, among others.

Indigenous best Amazon stewards, but only when property rights assured: Study
- New research provides statistical evidence confirming the claim by Indigenous peoples that that they are the more effective Amazon forest guardians in Brazil — but only if and when full property rights over their territories are recognized, and fully protected, by civil authorities in a process called homologation.
- Researchers looked at 245 Indigenous territories, homologated between 1982 and 2016. They concluded that Indigenous people were only able to curb deforestation effectively within their ancestral territories after homologation had been completed, endowing full property rights.
- However, since the study was completed, the Temer and Bolsonaro governments have backpedaled on Indigenous land rights, failing to protect homologated reserves. Also, the homologation process has come to a standstill, failing its legal responsibility to recognize collective ownership pledged by Brazil’s Constitution.
- In another study, researchers suggest that a key to saving the Amazon involves reframing our view of it, giving up the old view of it as an untrammeled Eden assaulted by modern exploitation, and instead seeing it as a forest long influenced by humanity; now we need only restore balance to achieve sustainability.

Indigenous Ashaninka launch fundraiser to help Amazon neighbors amid pandemic
- In early July, the Ashaninka indigenous people launched a fundraising campaign to encourage food production in communities living near the Kampa do Rio Amônia Indigenous Territory, in the Brazilian state of Acre.
- The “Ashaninka for the Peoples of the Forest” campaign plans to raise 1 million reais (about $200,000) to distribute food, farming tools and fishing gear to 1,800 local families, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous.
- There have been no reports of any Ashaninka being infected with COVID-19 to date; isolated by barriers they set up in the river leading to their village, they’re surviving on their traditional farming techniques.
- Nearby communities, however, depend on food aid and lack medical care in highly complex cases, prompting the Ashaninka to launch the fundraising campaign out of a sense of duty.

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

Life as an Amazon activist: ‘I don’t want to be the next Dorothy Stang’
- Socio-environmental activists are an endangered species in the Brazilian Amazon, with regularly occurring assassination-style killings like those of activists Chico Mendes in 1988 and Sister Dorothy Stang in 2005 creating an ongoing climate of fear.
- According to human rights watchdog Global Witness, Brazil in 2017 was the world’s most dangerous country for environmental acivists: 57 out of 201 deaths worldwide occurred in Brazil. Intimidation and murder of activists continues into the present.
- Activist Juma Xipaya saw the village she grew up in fundamentally changed by the building of the Belo Monte mega-dam. When she later exposed corruption and incompetence she faced death threats and now lives perpetually on guard.
- In recent years, Xipaya has been repeatedly pursued by a white pickup driven by two armed thugs, but police fail to respond to her pleas for help. The men eventually made an attempt on her life — a close call that almost killed her and her children.

Traditional villages dread living in shadow of Amazon tailings dams
- Mineração Rio do Norte (MRN), the world’s fourth largest bauxite producer, encroached on riverine communities beside the Trombetas River in the Brazilian Amazon in the 1970s. Over the years, MRN became notorious for its contamination of local waters with bauxite mining waste, residents say.
- To resolve that problem, the company built 26 tailings dams. The largest of these waste-holding impoundments covers 110 hectares (270 acres). The entire system for managing mining waste encompasses 1,700 hectares (4,200 acres) and is located within a national protected area.
- Brazil has suffered two catastrophic mining tailings dam collapses since 2015, leaving Trombetas riverine community residents concerned about the 26 MRN dams.
- Brazil’s National Agency of Mining has rated one of MRN’s dams as “high risk.” Fourteen more, should they fail, possess “social, environmental, economic and mortality risk.” MRN says its dams are safe. Locals are also worried over possible water contamination and loss of traditional livelihoods

Brazilian court orders 20,000 gold miners removed from Yanomami Park
- The Yanomami Park covers 37,000 square miles in the Brazilian Amazon on the Venezuelan border; it is inhabited by 27,000 Yanomami. Soaring gold prices have resulted in a massive ongoing invasion of the indigenous territory by gold miners who are well supported with monetary backing, heavy equipment and aircraft.
- On 3 July, a federal judge issued an emergency ruling ordering the Jair Bolsonaro administration to come up with an immediate plan to stop the spread of the pandemic to Yanomami Park, a plan which must include the removal of all 20,000 invading miners within ten days. Brazil’s Vice President pledges to back the plan.
- That eviction must stay in effect until the danger to the Yanomami of the pandemic passes. There have so far been five Yanomami deaths due to the disease and 168 confirmed cases. More are expected.
- The invasion has also resulted in violent clashes between miners and indigenous people. In mid-June two Yanomami were killed in a conflict, evoking fears of a replay of retaliatory violence that occurred in the 1990s. In response to the current crisis, the Yanomami have launched their “Miners Out, Covid Out” campaign.

Court forces Ecuador government to protect Indigenous Waorani during COVID-19
- A provincial court ruled that the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Social Inclusion must better communicate and coordinate with Waorani leaders to get more COVID-19 tests, food and other necessities to communities.
- It also ordered the Ministry of Environment and Water to send a report detailing how it is monitoring illegal mining, logging and drug trafficking activities in the region, and to provide information on COVID-19 protocols for oil companies operating there.
- The lawyer for the Waorani called these industries “vectors of contagion” in the Amazon, as they never stopped during quarantine.

Brazil’s indigenous hit especially hard by COVID-19: why so vulnerable?
- At least 78 indigenous peoples in the Brazilian Amazon are infected by COVID-19, with 3,662 individuals testing positive and 249 dead among 45 of those peoples. Detailed data is lacking for the other 33 peoples. Experts say poverty, poor resistance to Western diseases, and lack of medical facilities may explain high vulnerability.
- The Coordination of Indigenous Organizations in the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB), which gathered and tallied this data, expects cases and deaths are underreported. Many leaders and elders continue dying among indigenous people, including elders of the Munduruku, Kayapó, Arara, Macuxi, and Tuyuka peoples.
- COVID-19 has now penetrated the Xingu river basin, a vast area south of the Amazon River in Pará and Mato Grosso states. The Arara people there were devastated by disease and violence in the 1980s. Now, of 121 remaining Arara, almost half have tested positive for the coronavirus.
- Of the 1,818 Xicrin in southwest Pará state, 270 (15%) have tested positive, with seven deaths. Analysts speculate this high infection and death rate (higher than Brazil’s general populace, and even many other indigenous groups), may be due to poor underlying health due to water allegedly polluted by a Vale nickel mine.

Amazon poor go hungry as Brazil slashes social safety net, cuts forests: Study
- Living along the rivers of the Amazon rainforest, many imagine, would make for a sustainable diet packed full of freshwater fish. But a recent study finds this is not the case. A combination of interacting factors is now causing many poor families in riverine communities to go hungry.
- Researchers found that Amazon fish catch rates are naturally 73% lower in the highwater season. In the past, this lull was supplemented by hunting. But Brazilian deforestation, increased under former Pres. Michel Temer and now under Pres. Jair Bolsonaro, has replaced biodiverse forests with soy and other kinds of plantations.
- Add to this Bolsonaro’s and Temer’s rapid deconstruction of internationally-lauded social welfare programs, implemented by Presidents Lula and Rousseff and their Workers’ Party, which fed many riverine families when fish catches dropped.
- Figure in climate change too: its deep droughts harm forest and river diversity, while extreme floods keep stream levels high and fish catches low, and for longer. Now, COVID-19 has come to the Amazon, with food shopping trips made from rural riverine settlements to cities now requiring a serious element of risk.

Conservationists find opportunity and community amidst current crises
- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we look at how the environmental crises we’re currently facing intersect with two other major crises: the Covid pandemic and the systemic racism and police brutality that have sparked protests around the world in recent weeks.
- We welcome two guests onto the Mongabay Newscast today. Leela Hazzah, founder and executive director of Lion Guardians, joins us to discuss conservation as an essential service, how the Covid pandemic has impacted Lion Guardians’ community-based conservation work, and what she sees as opportunities for transformative change in conservation due to the pandemic.
- We’re also joined by Earyn McGee, a herpetologist and science communicator who helped organize the first-ever Black Birders Week, a week-long celebration of black birders and outdoor enthusiasts. McGee tells us how Black Birders Week came together so quickly and why it is necessary to celebrate black nature lovers.

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