A Brazilian Indigenous leader of the Guajajara tribe attends a meeting calling on EU lawmakers to exert pressure on the Brazilian government to protect the rights of indigenous communities, 12 November 2019. Photo: Thomas Samson / AFP

Highest number of land and environmental activists murdered in one year – In 2019, 212 people were killed for peacefully defending their homes and standing up to the destruction of nature

29 July 2020 (Global Witness) – Global Witness today revealed the highest number of land and environmental defenders murdered on record in a single year, with 212 people killed in 2019 for peacefully defending their homes and standing up to the destruction of nature. The NGO’s annual report also shed a light on the urgent role […]

Map showing the most commonly used opioid, 2018 or latest available data. Data: UNODC, responses to the annual report questionnaire. Graphic: UNODC

UN World Drug Report 2020: Global drug use increased 30 percent from 2009 – COVID-19 has far reaching impact on global drug markets

VIENNA, 25 June 2020 (UNODC) – Around 269 million people used drugs worldwide in 2018, which is 30 per cent more than in 2009, while over 35 million people suffer from drug use disorders, according to the latest World Drug Report, released today by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The Report […]

Total summer (yellow bars; 1 April – 1 October), winter (gray; 1 October – 1 April), and annual (orange bars; 1 October – 1 October) honey bee colony loss rates in the United States across years of the Bee Informed Partnership’s national honey bee colony loss survey, 2007/2008-2019/2020. Results from the inaugural survey commissioned by the Apiary Inspectors of America and performed in 2006-07 are not included. Graphic: The Bee Informed Partnership

Annual U.S. honey bee survey shows Summer 2019 marked highest colony losses ever recorded

22 June 2020 (The Bee Informed Partnership) – The western honey bee, the species used across the country to support food production, to provide a natural sweetener, and to quite simply contribute to our leisure and free time, is among the most important of pollinators. To mark Pollinator Week, the Bee Informed Partnership (BIP) recently […]

Accumulated Amazon deforestation Jan-Apr, 2009-2020. Data: INPE. Graphic: Mongabay

14 straight months of rising Amazon deforestation in Brazil

By Rhett A. Butler 12 June 2020 (Mongabay) – Deforestation in Earth’s largest rainforest increased for the fourteenth consecutive month according to data released today by the Brazilian government. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is currently pacing 83 percent ahead of where it was a year ago. Data from Brazil’s national space research institute INPE […]

UN Secretary-General António Guterres warns of a global food crisis caused by Covid-19 during a speech on 9 June 2020. Photo: UN News

UN warns of global food crisis – “It is increasingly clear that there is an impending global food emergency that could have long term impacts on hundreds of millions of children and adults”

9 June 2020 (UN News) – Although the COVID-19 pandemic could push nearly 50 million more people into extreme poverty, this and other dire impacts of the crisis can be avoided if countries act immediately to shore up global food security, the UN Secretary-General said on Tuesday. For his latest policy brief on the pandemic, […]

Indigenous leader Davi Kopenawa Yanomami delivers a 30-page report at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland, on Tuesday, 3 March 2020, in which he notes that indigenous peoples isolated in the Amazon are at serious risk of genocide if they continue to "explode deforestation on their land." Photo: Marcelo Seixas / Funai

Deforestation drives cases of Covid-19 among indigenous peoples – “There is no decreased effect of deforestation with coronavirus, quite the contrary”

By Mark Candido 25 May 2020 São Paulo (ECOA) – Indigenous lands with the largest deforested areas in the country are also among the most vulnerable to the advance of the new coronavirus. According to experts, invaders may have taken the city’s virus toward the Yanomami and Raposa Serra do Sol lands in Roraima. In […]

Mother and son wearing masks stand under a sky tinted red as surrounding bushfires close in, Mallacoota, Australia, 4 January 2020. Photo: Reuters

The age of stability is over, and coronavirus is just the beginning – “Our modern interconnected global economy is much more vulnerable than we thought”

By Wolfgang Knorr 16 April 2020 (The Conversation) – Humanity has only recently become accustomed to a stable climate. For most of its history, long ice ages punctuated with hot spells alternated with short warm periods. Transitions from cold to warm climates were especially chaotic. Then, about 10,000 years ago, the Earth suddenly entered into a […]

Satellite view of a forest fire burning in the Chernobyl exclusion zone in Ukraine, not far from the nuclear power plant in April 2020. Photo: Planet Labs

Ukraine in flames: Chernobyl wildfire highlights a dangerous tradition – “We can’t afford to preserve such extreme traditions anymore”

By Veronika Melkozerova 18 April 2020 KYIV, Ukraine (NBC News) – Wind-whipped wildfires have in recent days raged perilously close to the exclusion zone at Chernobyl, the site of what is considered to have been the world’s worst nuclear disaster. But these fires were no accident — they were set by villagers who were clearing their land for […]

A pile of ripe squash sits in a field, in Homestead, Florida, 28 March 2020. Thousands of acres of fruits and vegetables grown in Florida are being plowed over or left to rot because farmers can't sell to restaurants, theme parks or schools nationwide that have closed because of the coronavirus. Photo: Lynne Sladky / AP Photo

Coronavirus claims an unexpected victim: Florida vegetables

By Tamara Lush 8 April 2020 PALMETTO, Florida (AP) – Mounds of harvested zucchini and yellow squash ripened and then rotted in the hot Florida sun. Juicy tomatoes were left to wither — unpicked — in farmers’ fields. Thousands of acres of fruits and vegetables grown in Florida are being plowed over or left to […]

Zezico Guajajara, an indigenous teacher and a supporter of the Guardians of the Forest, was murdered on 31 March 2020. He is the fifth Amazon forest protector to be killed in six months. Brazil’s populist President Jair Bolsonaro has drawn intense domestic and international criticism for failing to protect the Guardians’ territory in the eastern Amazon region. Photo: Zezico Guajajara

Amazon land defender Zezico Guajajara murdered – “The loggers are desperate to get rid of the Guardians, targeting them one by one”

2 April 2020 (BBC News) – A member of a protected tribe in the Amazon has been killed by gunmen, authorities in the Brazilian state of Maranhao say. The body of Zezico Guajajara, of the Guajajara tribe, was found near his village on Tuesday. He had been shot. The former teacher was a supporter of […]

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