Foreign investors are suing Latin American and Caribbean nations for $36.6 billion, often targeting environmental policies.
These legal battles undermine government efforts to protect ecosystems, transition to clean energy, and human rights.
Story by @aimeegabay.bsky.social for #Mongabay.
A landmark court ruling in Brazil allows for potential mining in Indigenous territories to fund local health and education. However, critics warn that this sets a dangerous precedent and "opens the door" to wider threats across the Amazon.
Story by @aimeegabay.bsky.social for #Mongabay.
Mining giant Vale has obtained a preliminary license for its Bacaba project, the first step toward doubling its copper production in the Brazilian Amazon over the next decade.
@schroder.bsky.social for @mongabay.com
news.mongabay.com/2025/10/copp...
While this has led to some positive results in the form of security and conservation work, now in 2025, the Wampís still find themselves vying for control over their land.
The chief hurdle is that the state has not recognized the autonomous nation.
For decades, they resisted the expansion of oil drilling and other extractive projects in their Amazonian territory, to little avail.
By declaring themselves autonomous, they sought to change this.
In 2015, the Wampís of northern Peru did what no other Indigenous people had done in the country’s modern history: They declared themselves an autonomous nation to gain greater control over their territory.
To understand why, see 🧵:
news.mongabay.com/2025/09/the-...
Brazil’s largest #Indigenous organization has launched the country’s first Native-led strategy to cut greenhouse gas emissions,
This comes as the world marks International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples on Aug. 9, as @aimeegabay.bsky.social reports:
NEW: A shadowy legal tool called ISDS is allowing foreign corporations to sue Honduras — one of the region's poorest countries — for a total of $19.4 billion, roughly 53% of the country’s 2024 GDP.
The public good must be put over this corporate greed. @aimeegabay.bsky.social in @mongabay.com:
In Latin America, energy transition stirs a rise in human rights lawsuits.
Almost half of the 95 lawsuits were filed by Indigenous peoples and 76% of those filed in Latin America and the Caribbean concerned mining for transition minerals.
For @mongabay.com: news.mongabay.com/2025/07/in-l...
The first story for the series is a profile on Yaqui water defender Mario Luna Romero, who has received constant threats to his life for his work. He was arrested in 2014 and spent a year and 11 days in a maximum-security prison.
Full story for @mongabay.com here: news.mongabay.com/2024/07/as-d...
Super excited to share that my series on the Yaqui tribe and their struggle for water in Mexico has won an award at the Indigenous Media Awards. It was in the ‘Best Coverage of Indigenous Communities’ category 🥺
The self-proclaimed nation, the United States of Kailasa, operates from different parts of the world and offered high sums of money to Indigenous leaders in exchange for lands to exploit or conserve for carbon credit projects, say legal experts. @mongabay.com: news.mongabay.com/2025/05/boli...
Bibles, bullets and beef: Amazon cowboy culture at odds with Brazil’s climate goals
My long read on the struggle of frontiersmen and women to adjust to a decaying environment - and how this feeds into the rise of the far right.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Seven years after four officials were charged with negligence that resulted in a toxic cyanide spill at Canadian miner Barrick Gold’s Veladero gold mine in Argentina, the case has still not gone to trial.
New for @mongabay.bsky.social: news.mongabay.com/2025/04/stil...
The aguaje, a tropical palm tree that grows in peatlands and other wetland areas in tropical South America, produces oval-shaped fruits that can be consumed raw or processed to make beverages, soap, oils and other products.
But climate change and the lack of a secure market remain a challenge.
My latest story looks into one alternative income option that has taken hold in communities. This involves the sustainable harvesting and selling of Amazonian fruit. I focus specifically on the potential of the aguaje, a tropical palm tree that grows in tropical South America.
In some cases, communities have become dependent on mining projects because of a lack of alternative income options. They may be cut off from markets or at the mercy of shrinking rivers during severe drought.
A little 🧵: Most of the stories I have written over the years are about extractive projects in the Amazon. Many highlight the concerns of affected community members, such as contamination in rivers they depend on or a lack of consultation about a project that impacts their agricultural lands.
The involvement of Munduruku people in illegal mining inside the Munduruku Indigenous Territory made Brazil’s efforts to stop it more complicated, federal officials said.
Munduruku sources say that deception, abandonment by the state & lack of alternative income are what push some people to mine.
What pushes Indigenous Munduruku people to mine their land in Brazil’s Amazon?
I asked Munduruku people to share how illegal miners lure in their relatives and the conditions that led to dependency for some.
3rd of a series for @mongabay.bsky.social:
news.mongabay.com/2025/04/what...
Residents say the contamination has killed so much livestock that one community had to open a cemetery specifically for animals.
For several months a year, due to flooding by the nearby dam, homes and pastures are inundated with contaminated water, forcing residents to migrate to higher ground.
I spent the last few weeks interviewing members of campesino communities who live around Lake Chinchaycocha in Peru, a critical water source that has been contaminated for decades by mining pollution and domestic waste.
Full story @mongabay.bsky.social: news.mongabay.com/2025/03/drow...
A Mongabay estimate found that, based on a company map of the port and 2020 data of the ecosystem, it could impact 341.59 hectares (844 acres) of mangroves.
The Alcântara Port Terminal will be constructed within the Reentrâncias Maranhenses environmental protection area (APA), a Ramsar site. It is connected to four other important wetland sites nearby, which together form one of the largest continuous area of mangroves in the world.
A proposed port terminal within a protected mangrove area on Brazil’s Amazon coast will impact the area’s wetlands and cause a disturbance to breeding bird colonies and marine species.
🔗 New for @mongabay.bsky.social: news.mongabay.com/2025/03/plan...
As the operation to evict miners from the Munduruku Indigenous Territory enters phase two, I asked researchers and federal officials to share plans and strategies to prevent illegal miners from returning.
