This report was produced with the support of the Rainforest Journalism Fund in partnership with the Pulitzer Center. MOKOLO, Cameroon — The sun is already beating down this morning, a…
BELLINGEN, Australia — A coastal breeze can be felt through the rustling eucalyptus leaves of blackbutt, ironbark and tallowwood trees in the old-growth native forest now known as Newry on…
RIO DE JANEIRO — Monitoring the threats that uncontacted traditional peoples face in the Brazilian Amazon is set to become easier for Indigenous rights activists and agencies, thanks to a…
MALIKO’MIJK, Canada — Decades ago, the sea around Maliko’mijk Island was an expansive green carpet of eelgrass, the meadows so thick that members of the Pictou Landing First Nation had…
The Philippines has gained the grim distinction of being Asia's deadliest country for land and environmental defenders, with 281 deaths over the past decade, roughly one-third of which were linked…
LABASA, Fiji — Jerry Lotawa knows his forest. He was raised in the tiny settlement of Drawa, a village of 11 brightly painted houses tucked high in the mountains of…
LABASA, Fiji — No one finds their way to the village of Drawa by accident. To get there, you must first board a tiny plane to Labasa, the biggest town…
PALAWAN, Philippines — On Aug. 8, 2013, Fernando de Chavez, along with more than 400 farmers and advocates, stormed a Golden Rice field trial site in Pili, a town in…
HARAR, Ethiopia — In the hilly terrain of Babile Elephant Sanctuary in Ethiopia, Fetiya Ousman, a female wildlife ranger, is leading her team on a patrol. Dressed in a jungle-green…
SÃO PAULO — On Aug. 17, Maria Bernadete Pacífico, a 72-year-old Quilombola leader in Brazil, was brutally killed when two men wearing helmets entered her home and unloaded more than…
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…
VANCOUVER — The devastating wildfires in the interior of British Columbia, Canada, in mid-August, forced the province into a state of emergency and gloom. But just a few days later,…
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…
Yesterday, representatives of 185 countries officially agreed to launch a new fund to ramp up investment in meeting major global biodiversity goals. The new Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF) was…
Yesterday, Ecuador voted to halt all future oil drilling in a sensitive protected area known for its fragile rainforest ecosystem and isolated Indigenous communities. Millions of people participated in a…
MASVINGO, Zimbabwe — The weight of the world felt as if it was crushing Nyemudzai Jakiti, a single mother in Zimbabwe’s southern city of Masvingo, when she found herself out…
In September 2022, researchers at BC Whales, a Canadian research nonprofit studying cetaceans in the north of British Columbia province, gasped when they saw a drone image of a humpback…
KAVIENG, Papua New Guinea — Papua New Guinea’s minister for mining confirmed in early August that a deep-sea mining company would once again be looking to mine the seafloor under…
KATHMANDU — Long ago, in the ancient kingdom of Kapilavastu, young prince Siddhartha Gautama, who would later become the Buddha, and his cousin Devadatta were honing their archery skills when…
José Celestino Trujillo is a fisherman who lived for nearly 80 years in the same rural district in central Colombia. For decades, he had borne witness to the transformations that…
This Saturday is International Youth Day, established by the U.N. in 1999. With a different theme every year, this year celebrates youth worldwide developing the "green skills" needed to shift…
QUITO, Ecuador — Ecuadorians have been given a chance to vote on whether or not they want oil drilling to continue in Yasuní National Park, deep in the northern Amazon…
Indigenous peoples and local communities have critical intimate knowledge of climate change impacts and adaptation options in their lands while the majority of those lands are under threat from industrial…
Less than 3% of the world’s oceans are currently protected. Conservationists say that figure needs to hit 30% to prevent major diversity loss and climate change. But marine conservation can…
In 2017, a camera installed on the fringes of Corbett Tiger Reserve in northern India photographed an unsuspecting woman. The local forest staff had set up the device discreetly to…
LOS BAÑOS, Philippines — Built on wooden stilts and tied to endemic bangkal trees (Nauclea orientalis) are the homes of the Manobo Indigenous tribe, seemingly floating on the waters of…
Despite being among the best safeguards against deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest, Indigenous lands saw a sharp increase in deforestation over the past decade, according to a study published recently…
YAOUNDÉ — It’s already been three years since the nearly 4,000 inhabitants of Apouh, a village in eastern Cameroon, have been locked in an intractable conflict with Socapalm, a local…
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — Ankarafantsika, a primary forest in Madagascar’s northwest Boeny region, is the site of a vicious cycle where declining livelihoods and its environmental impact aggravate one another. Rice paddies,…
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…
