Activism

JAKARTA — Critics have questioned the Indonesian government’s priorities as it prepares to evict longtime residents of a small island to make way for a $25 billion development that includes a solar panel factory and a tourism resort. The island of Rempang, part of the Riau Islands archipelago in the Malacca Strait, has been awarded […]

NEW YORK — In one of the largest acts of civil disobedience to protest climate change in New York in a decade, more than 100 climate protesters were arrested on Monday after blockading the entrances to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where they called on financial regulators to curb fossil fuel financing.  Undeterred […]

Latin America is far and away the most dangerous place for people fighting to protect the environment. From activists and community leaders to journalists and politicians, standing up against deforestation, pollution and other threats to the environment results in death more than anywhere else in the world. At least 177 environmental defenders were killed last […]

JAKARTA — An Indonesian court has upheld a government decision to curb the expansion of a multibillion-dollar oil palm plantation project in the country’s easternmost region of Papua. In its Sept. 9 ruling, the Jakarta State Administrative Court rejected lawsuits filed by two plantation companies that are part of the Tanah Merah mega plantation project, […]

Cargill, the world’s largest agribusiness company—and the United States’ largest privately held company—is coming under yet more scrutiny from advocacy groups that have traced its business operations to recently cut tropical forests in Bolivia. On Wednesday, the group Global Witness released a report showing that the Minnesota-based company has been buying soy grown on 50,000 […]

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has recognized the rights of 15 Indigenous Dayak communities to forests on Borneo covering a combined area larger than Jakarta. The nearly 70,000 hectares (173,000 acres) is the largest cluster of customary forests ever recognized by the state. “This recognition of 15 ancestral forests in Gunung Mas district, Central Kalimantan […]

When commodity prices spiked in the late 2000s, multinational agribusiness giants smelled profits. Eager to branch out of crowded Southeast Asian rainforests, some palm oil companies set their sights on Africa, where governments in countries like Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cameroon, and Côte d’Ivoire assured them that they had land to spare. In just a few […]

Officials in Honduras say they are cracking down on open-pit mining, an activity that has plagued the country with deforestation, pollution and loss of biodiversity, among other environmental hazards. The government is no longer granting environmental permits for open-pit mining projects, the Ministry of Energy, Natural Resources, Environment and Mines said in a statement. It […]

A group of women in rural El Salvador is standing up against a major infrastructure project that threatens to clear hundreds of hectares of forest and cut off access to rivers that provide the community with clean drinking water. The project, known as Ciudad Valle El Ángel, involves the construction of thousands of stores, hotels […]

One of the most poisonous animals on earth, the golden dart frog carries enough toxins in its body to kill 10 people. If it enters the blood stream, the toxin paralyzes the nervous system and, in only a few minutes, stops the heart from beating. The golden dart frog (Phyllobates terribilis) is found only in […]