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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Satellite images taken one month apart, on 25 December 2019 and 26 January 2020, show a big recent jump in clearing activity (indicated by yellow circles) in the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve around the indigenous community of Alal, Nicaragua. Source: Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8, accessed through Global Forest Watch. Graphic: Mongabay

Massacre in Nicaragua: Four indigenous community members killed for their land

By Taran Volckhausen 14 February 2020 (Mongabay) – An illegal armed group connected to land grabbers killed four members of the indigenous Mayangna people, left two injured and burned 16 houses in northern Nicaragua on 29 January 2020, according to the UN Human Rights Office. The UN Human Rights Office condemned the Nicaraguan government for allowing […]

Indigenous leader of the Celia Xakriaba tribe walks next to the Xingu River during a four-day pow wow in Piaracu village, in Xingu Indigenous Park, near Sao Jose do Xingu, Mato Grosso state, Brazil, 15 January 2020. Photo: Ricardo Moraes / REUTERS

Brazil tribes back manifesto to save Amazon rainforest and its indigenous people from the “genocide, ethnocide, and ecocide” planned by far-right President Jair Bolsonaro

By Ricardo Moraes 18 January 2020 XINGU INDIGENOUS PARK, Brazil (Reuters) – Leaders of native tribes in Brazil issued a rallying call to protect the Amazon rainforest and its indigenous people from what they called the “genocide, ethnocide and ecocide” planned by the country’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. A manifesto signed on Friday at the […]

Global primary energy consumption by region, 2010-2050. Data: U.S. Energy Information Administration International Energy Outlook 2019 reference case. Graphic: EIA

EIA projects nearly 50 percent increase in world energy usage by 2050, led by growth in Asia – Carbon dioxide emissions to grow from all three fossil fuel sources

3 January 2020 (EIA) – In its newly released International Energy Outlook 2019 (IEO2019) Reference case, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects that world energy consumption will grow by nearly 50 percent between 2018 and 2050. Most of this growth comes from countries that are not in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and […]

Aerial view of the Kasulo neighborhood of Kolwezi, DRC. In the first picture, taken May 2016, there are just residential houses. By May 2019, Congo DongFang International Mining (a subsidiary of chinese company Huayou Cobalt) have built a mining site, with a walled perimeter and processing buildings (in blue). The pink tarps cover tunnels used for mining. Photo: CNES / Airbus DS / Earthrise / The Guardian

Apple and Google named in U.S. lawsuit over Congolese child cobalt mining deaths

By Annie Kelly 16 December 2019 (The Guardian) – A landmark legal case has been launched against the world’s largest tech companies by Congolese families who say their children were killed or maimed while mining for cobalt used to power smartphones, laptops and electric cars, the Guardian can reveal. Apple, Google, Dell, Microsoft, and Tesla […]

Repparfjord is near the northernmost point of Norway. On 30 November 2019, Norway greenlit a copper mine that will dump two million tons of tailings in Arctic fjord each year. Photo: Thomas Nilsen / The Barents Observer

Norway greenlights copper mine that will dump two million tons of tailings in Arctic fjord each year – “Dumping of mining waste will kill every living thing on the ocean floor in the immediate area and disturb spawning grounds over a much greater distance”

ByThomas Nilsen 30 November 2019 (The Barents Observer) – “Allowing this to happen with a protected national salmon fjord doesn’t make sense at all,” said Silje Lundberg, head of Naturvernforbundet. The organisation is the Norwegian branch of Friends of the Earth. Lundberg said the planned dumping of tailings from the copper mine to the fjord […]

Fires burn in Pará state, Brazil, in September 2019. Jair Bolsonaro accused Leonardo DiCaprio of ‘giving money for the Amazon to be torched’. Photo: Nelson Almeida/ AFP / Getty Images

Brazil’s president Bolsonaro claims Leonardo DiCaprio paid for Amazon fires – “Our negligent and incompetent president, responsible for an environmental dismantling unprecedented in our country, wants to blame DiCaprio”

By Tom Phillips 29 November 2019 (The Guardian) – Brazil’s president has falsely accused the actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio of bankrolling the deliberate incineration of the Amazon rainforest. Jair Bolsonaro – a populist nationalist who has vowed to drive environmental NGOs from Brazil – made the claim on Friday, reportedly telling supporters: “This Leonardo DiCaprio’s […]

Animation showing deforestation in Brazil’s Mato Grasso state, 1984-2018. Graphic: William Neff / The Washington Post

Brazil’s Bolsonaro calls Amazon deforestation “cultural”, says it “will never end”

By Marina Lopes 20 November 2019 SAO PAULO, Brazil (The Washington Post) – Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro shrugged off a government report that deforestation in the Amazon reached an 11-year high on his watch, saying Wednesday he expects the destruction of the world’s largest tropical rainforest to continue. “Deforestation and fires will never end,” the […]

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