Land Conflict
Paraguay failed to stop soy farms from poisoning Indigenous land, UN says
The United Nations’ Human Rights Committee has found that the Paraguayan government failed to regulate the use of harmful chemicals near an Indigenous community, resulting in severe health issues and the degradation of its culture. The OHCHR said the government didn’t adequately respond to credible complaints made by the Ava Guarani people about two nearby […]
Guatemala tightens cattle ranching rules, but can they stop deforestation?
Guatemala is getting ready to implement new regulatory programs for the cattle industry in hopes of slowing the rate of deforestation in some of the country’s most at-risk tropical forests. The government has invested in quarantine pens for cattle raised in Petén, a department that has struggled to prevent cattle ranching from encroaching on the […]
New areas of primary forest cleared in Brazil’s ‘lawless’ Lábrea
Satellite imagery reveals several areas of primary rainforest were cleared alongside agricultural fields in the Brazilian Amazon, all in close proximity to Indigenous and protected lands. In March, the Global Land Analysis and Discovery (GLAD) lab at the University of Maryland detected areas of newly cleared forest in Lábrea municipality, in the state of Amazonas. […]
West Papua revokes quarter of a million hectares of land from palm oil
JAKARTA — Palm oil licenses covering concessions twice the size of Los Angeles have been rescinded by the local government in Indonesia’s West Papua province due to violations by the license holders. The move follows on from a recent license review, carried out by the West Papua government working with the national anti-corruption agency, the […]