Latin America and the Caribbean

Written by: Maxwell Radwin An Indigenous community in Ecuador has finally obtained national protections for part of its territory after decades of fighting off deforestation and pollution in its mega-diverse rainforests. Ecuador’s National System of Protected Areas now includes the 5,497-hectare (13,583-acre) ancestral Tiwi Nunka Forest,...

Courtesy of Forests News Written by: Gloria Pallares Guyana, meaning “land of water,” is one of the smallest, most densely forested countries in South America. It is also an important part of the Amazon biome. In 2009, the country made a landmark pact with Norway to maintain...

Written by: Kimberly White  Gabon and Costa Rica have joined together to call for more ambitious international environmental law to tackle wildlife crime.  The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) reports that more than one million species already face extinction. Biodiversity decline can...

Courtesy of Landscape News Written by: Augusta Dwyer A new study published in Nature Communications has quantified for the first time exactly how much deforestation decreases rainfall in the Amazon rainforest – and has put a price on it.  According to the analysis carried out by scientists at the Centre...

Written by: Kimberly White Indigenous groups in Brazil are calling on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate President Jair Bolsonaro for genocide and ecocide.  The Articulation of Indigenous Peoples from Brazil (APIB) filed a statement with the ICC accusing the Bolsonaro administration of genocide and...

Courtesy of Landscape News Written by: Natasha Vizcarra An international panel of 200 scientists has called for a halt to deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, saying the biome plays a critical role in global water cycles and regulating climate variability and therefore must be protected. “We are scientists who...

Written by: Kimberly White  Ecuador has moved to bar mining activity in the Los Cedros Protected Forest in a landmark case. The Constitutional Court of Ecuador has ruled that plans to mine copper and gold in the protected cloud forest violate the rights of nature.  Spanning...

Written by: Gabriel Cardoso Carrero, Cynthia S. Simmons, and Robert T. Walker Imagine that several state legislators decide that Yellowstone National Park is too big. Also imagine that, working with federal politicians, they change the law to downsize the park by a million acres, which...

Written by: Victoria Masterson The bioeconomy is becoming big business in Colombia. By protecting and restoring the Amazon rainforest – and cultivating some of its 80,000 plant species – communities are replacing work that once relied on deforestation. Here, we detail three businesses in Colombia that are...

Written by: Stella Muzin Healing Coral doesn't want to save the planet, they want to heal with it. This initiative, officially launched in April of 2022, is not just talking about what they plan to do but actually taking action. By creating ocean-based artworks and virtual...