Latin America and the Caribbean

Written by: Kimberly White The Amazonian Siekopai Nation are fighting to reclaim their ancestral lands in an ongoing legal battle with the Ecuadorian government.  Throughout the years, the Ecuadorian government has failed to recognize the Siekopai's rights to their ancestral home and deliver a land title,...

Written by: Juan Mayorga In Tepejillo, on one of the many hills in the southern Mexican municipality of San Juan Bautista Coixtlahuaca, extreme erosion has transformed the earth into bare rock, making it difficult to imagine that the area used to be home to a...

Written by: Luis Alexis Rodríguez-Cruz In Morovis, a town in the center of Puerto Rico’s main island, lies the Las Cabachuelas nature reserve, a green labyrinth of approximately 1,950 acres. This place — known for its numerous caves — holds pre-colonial stories, rock art and...

Written by: Amy White and Shannon Engstrom Extreme weather events such as hurricanes, flooding, wildfires, and heat waves, are increasing in intensity, frequency and duration due to climate change. Recently, there has been a spate of devastating storms across the Caribbean and North America, with the...

Written by: Maria Salazar Under the sea, jutting into the Pacific from the southern Peruvian department of Ica, rises a mountain range called Dorsal de Nasca. The 93 submarine mountains harbor more than 1,100 species, many of them endemic, and a section of the...

Written by: John C. Cannon A new app aimed at tracking forest fires in Bolivia could shake up the way authorities and firefighters battle fires, allowing them to pinpoint their locations more accurately and safely. Called “Amazon Fires — Bolivia,” the application pulls in data on...

Written by: Kimberly White On Thursday, April 11th, President Sebastián Piñera launched the COP25 climate change summit. Chile will be the host of the 2019 UN Climate Change Conference this December. President Piñera called for tougher and more ambitious steps to be taken to combat...

Written by: David Elliott Mexico’s Cabo Pulmo is buzzing with sea life. Sharks, rays, sea turtles and humpback whales are just some of the species that rely on its vibrant coral reefs. It wasn’t always like this. In the 1990s, the reefs, located next to a...

Written by: Kimberly White The Amazonian Siekopai Nation has been granted ownership of their ancestral homeland in a landmark decision by an Ecuadorian appeals court.  After a lengthy legal battle with the Ecuadorian government, an Ecuadorian appeals court has ruled in favor of the Siekopai Nation,...

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...