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 […]

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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, […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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Cambodia approves, then suspends, marble mine in Keo Seima REDD+ project

A path is cut deep into the core zone of Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary in Cambodia's Mondulkiri province following the government's approval of a new mining license in the protected forest. Photo by Gerald Flynn/Mongabay.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 […]

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What drives and halts tropical deforestation? Analyzing 24 years of data

Squirrel monkey near Yasuni NP. Photo credit: Rhett A. Butler / MongabayWith 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 […]

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New law would tie U.S. conservation funding to human rights protection

Rangers on a boatLawmakers 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 […]

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