Indigenous Rights
How Canada’s growing presence in Latin America is hurting the environment
MEXICO CITY — Canada has become a major force in Latin America. It’s spent the last 30 years beefing up its portfolio with investments in mining, oil and natural gas. It’s established free trade agreements and foreign investment protections with dozens of countries, and is in the process of negotiating more. As a result, the […]
Investors over islanders as Indonesia uses force to push development project
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 […]
São Paulo Indigenous community pins its territorial hopes on a new village
TEKOA PINDÓ MIRIM, Brazil — “If we hadn’t come here, someone non-Indigenous would probably already have occupied this space,” says Neusa Poty. The 35-year-old Guarani Indigenous leader speaks in a low but firm voice. In March this year, she and other members of the Jaraguá Guarani community living on the northwestern outskirts of São Paulo […]
Court ruling spares Papua forest from further clearing for palm oil
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, […]
Indonesia awards biggest Indigenous forest claim yet to Bornean Dayaks
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 […]
In Panama, an Indigenous kingdom fights for its right to the forest
CHANGUINOLA, Panama — Long before the Naso peoples in the northern jungles of Panama won the fight for their land, before a king came from far away to lead them against the invaders and cattle ranchers, the bureaucrats and corporations who wanted the territory to themselves — long before all of that, the Naso people […]
Cambodia approves, then suspends, marble mine in Keo Seima REDD+ project
MONDULKIRI, Cambodia — In a rare win for conservationists and Cambodia’s Indigenous communities, the Ministry of Environment has opted to suspend a planned marble mining operation within a wildlife sanctuary along the border with Vietnam. A letter dated June 27 from then-environment minister Say Samal ordered that the mining exploration operation be suspended before it […]
Skepticism as Cambodia expands protected areas by more than a million hectares
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — A flurry of subdecrees released through the end of July and early August show that the Cambodian government has approved he addition of more than a million hectares of land, or 2.5 million acres, to the country’s protected areas. But amid the ongoing deforestation and privatization of Cambodia’s protected areas, civil […]
What drives and halts tropical deforestation? Analyzing 24 years of data
With the climate crisis in full swing, world leaders have made pledges to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030. In a new meta-analysis, researchers synthesized the findings of 320 studies about what is associated with more or less deforestation in the tropics. According to the study, published in the journal Review of Environmental Economics […]
New law would tie U.S. conservation funding to human rights protection
Lawmakers from the U.S. House of Representatives have introduced a bill that, if passed, would require human rights safeguards to be embedded in Department of Interior grants given to conservation organizations working overseas. Co-sponsored by Arizona Democrat Raul Grijalva, chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources, and Bruce Westerman, an Arkansas Republican, the bill […]