MAKHASANENI, South Africa — In a village in the rolling hills of grassland, woodlands and scattered homesteads in South Africa’s picturesque KwaZulu-Natal province, a broil between traditional leaders and community…
A bill eyeing to strip uncontacted Indigenous people in Peru of lands and protections was officially scrapped at the end of June. This legislative proposal, called a “step backward” by…
Climate change impacts could cost countries in Central America up to $314 billion per year by 2100 if ecosystem services provided by the region’s forests are affected, a recent study…
Land legally designated or owned by Indigenous, Afro-descendant and local communities increased by 102.9 million hectares (254 million acres), larger than the size of Egypt, between 2015 and 2020, according…
In April, South Korean conglomerate Hyundai announced that it would prevent its excavators from being used in illegal mining in the Brazilian Amazon. This followed a recent Greenpeace report that…
Lula's administration is weighing the renewal of Belo Monte hydroelectric plant's license, a dam blamed for taking away the livelihoods of riverine communities and causing socio-environmental chaos - built by Lula's party.
In part of the world’s first nationwide distribution of carbon credits, the government of Guyana announced Indigenous communities will receive millions as it signed off on a $750 million carbon…
On Dec. 5, a flight over the Yanomami Indigenous Territory in Brazil’s northern Amazon showed the Greenpeace and Brazilian NGO Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA) members on board an illegal road, already…
With its towering natural walls, Sumidero Canyon National Park is one of the main tourist attractions in Chiapas state in southern Mexico. Protecting mostly dry tropical forest — one of…
The U.N. biodiversity conference (COP15) negotiations in Montreal have been moving slowly and under much strain with a target to protect 30% of the world’s land and ocean by 2030—known…
This year’s U.N. climate conference, known as COP27, ended on Sunday in Egypt with what has seen the highest participation of Indigenous peoples, more than 300 delegates. The participation of…
“For the first time ever, there is a government that is against fracking,” says Amarilys Llanos Navarro. An activist and lawyer with the Cesar Without Fracking and Gas Movement, an…
After a 19-year process, uncontacted and recently contacted Indigenous peoples living in the Napo-Tigre region of the Peruvian Amazon have had their existence officially recognized. With an extensive anthropological study…
NUEVO MEXICO, Mexico — Standing in her cornfield in Chiapas state, surrounded by mountains and dry tropical forests, Maria Luisa Gordillo Mendoza looks concerned. “They said we were pigs for…
RINCON VITINA, Colombia — In this small Indigenous reserve, or resguardo, in the Colombian department of Guainía, people tend to their cassava, plantain and pineapple crops, raise ornamental fish, and…
AGUA BONITA CAMP, Colombia – Walking all day through the jungle to visit the encampments of friends and relatives is what Tumni Abtukaru misses the most about life before his…
Food systems are responsible for 80% of the world’s deforestation, 70% of freshwater use and contribute to 40% of the planet’s land degradation says a recently published report by the…
Women-led philanthropy garnered renewed attention after MacKenzie Scott, former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced in March that she had given away $3.9 billion in grants to 465 organizations…
CANELOS, Ecuador — An almost invisible trail snakes through thick buzzing forest leading to a chakra, an ancestral food garden in the Kichwa Cuya community located in Ecuador’s largest province,…
A new report by the Forest Declaration Assessment says that fulfilling the Paris Agreement won’t be possible without acknowledging and supporting the crucial role of Indigenous peoples and local communities’…
Felipe “Pipe” Henao is a young environmentalist from the small town of Calamar in southeastern Colombia. At the meeting point of the Amazon and Orinoco basins, it’s an area of…
One of the major announcements from the United Nations climate summit in Scotland last month, known as COP26, was the Glasgow Declaration on Forests and Land Use, along with the…
BOGOTÁ — In Colombia’s Chocó department, renowned by environmentalists for its abundant biodiversity, Afro-Colombian communities collect gold from rivers as part of an ancestral way of life. “When we talk…
Nature-based solutions to tackle the climate crisis, specifically through the global carbon market, are attracting major public and private investment. Yet, according to new research by the NGO Rights and…
Manual Pintado spent the past 15 years raising cattle in El Pangui, a municipality nestled in south-eastern Ecuador´s Amazonian region. Now, he receives an income for leaving his 15 hectares…
Indigenous communities in Latin America and the Caribbean have consistently asserted that they are the best guardians of their forests. Now, a recent U.N. report has mainstreamed this argument, adding…
Flor Angela Martinez is a mother, campesino and entrepreneur. Based in the Colombian Amazon, her company has become renowned for its sustainable timber harvesting practices. But before she made the…
“This is a country that has a forestry vocation,” says José Miguel Orozco, professor of forest governance and policy at Bogotá’s Francisco José de Caldas District University. High-altitude Andean forests,…
The area surrounding the town of Nuquí and its neighboring bay of Tribugá on Colombia’s northern Pacific coast has some of highest levels of rainfall in the world, a unique…
In March 2020, as Bogota’s coronavirus quarantine began, a white smog hung over the city, coming from fires burning in Nukak National Nature Reserve, nearly 400 kilometers, or 250 miles,…
Dimitri Selibas is writer and photographer from South Africa, currently based in Bogota, Colombia. His stories concentrate on the interactions between people and the environment, focusing on social justice, culture, travel, cities, health, and environmental defenders.
