Pollution
As Jakarta chokes on toxic air, Indonesian government stalls on taking action
JAKARTA — Jakarta’s recent episode of world-beating air pollution has highlighted what activists describe as belligerent inaction by the Indonesian government to address the source of the problem, even in the face of a ruling by the nation’s top court ordering it to act. On June 20, readings for PM2.5, a class of airborne pollutants […]
Mining company destroys Indigenous cemetery during expansion in Honduras
When workers dig through the earth at the San Andres mine in western Honduras, one of the country’s largest mining operations, they sometimes find something mixed in that wasn’t there in older parts of the mine: human bones. For the past decade, the Maya Chortí Indigenous community in the town of Azacualpa were fighting to […]
Chinese investment in Latin America plagues people and nature: Report
China has spent the last two decades quietly establishing an economic foothold in Latin America, a region that has traditionally relied on Western investment. It’s become the top trade partner for countries like Brazil and Peru, and its banks have given out more than $137 billion in loans since 2005, mostly for infrastructure, energy and […]
Mongabay’s top Amazon stories from 2021
The world’s greatest tropical rainforest continued to come under pressure in 2021, due largely to the policies of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Deforestation rates hit a 15-year-high, while fires flared up again, combining to turn Brazil’s portion of the Amazon into a net carbon source for the first time ever. But the rainforest as a […]
Mongabay reporter sued in what appears to be a pattern of legal intimidation by Peruvian cacao company
In November 2020, Peruvian cacao company Tamshi filed a lawsuit against Mongabay Latam staff reporter Yvette Sierra Praeli for “aggravated defamation” over her reporting of a government investigation into the firm’s activities in the Peruvian Amazon. While the case was formally dismissed by a Peruvian court last month, it wasn’t the first time that Tamshi […]
Off West Africa’s coast, a sea of oil spills goes unreported
When BP’s Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig flooded the Gulf of Mexico with 4 million barrels of oil in 2010, the catastrophe was headline news across the world for months. A new study of satellite images taken between 2002 and 2012 suggests that it may have been dwarfed by the amount of oil spilled into […]
New restoration “Playbook” calls for political, economic, and social change
International forest and climate experts have released a “playbook” for ecosystem restoration with a set of 10 principles that they say, if followed, could be a game-changer. The Political Ecology Playbook, published in the journal Global Environmental Change, recognizes that issues such as climate change and forest loss are not just biophysical and environmental problems, […]
Scientists urge Biden to remove logging, fossil fuels, biomass from budget bills
More than 100 scientists have issued a letter urging U.S. President Biden and Congress to remove provisions promoting logging, forest biomass and fossil fuels from the multitrillion-dollar infrastructure and reconciliation (Build Back Better) bills.
Study chronicles dying of a lake in PNG with advent of oil & gas activities
JAKARTA — Years of deforestation and mining have devastated a wetland of international importance in Papua New Guinea, which, if left unchecked, could lead to the collapse of the ecosystem, researchers have warned. In a newly published study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from Australian National University (ANU) identified signs of […]