Environment

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• Environmental impact assessments for development projects in Amazon countries have evolved from highly biased, centralized procedures to more rigorous processes that aim to avoid conflicts of interest.
• EIAs have also become increasingly focused on the social impacts of development and on how to mitigate them or compensate affected communities.
• Large-scale development projects are generally reviewed by national-level entities while less controversial initiatives can be attributed to regional governments.

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• Hundreds of protesters, including Indigenous and coastal youth from Karossa, Pasangkayu and Kalukku, rallied on May 5 at the West Sulawesi governor’s office to demand the closure of PT Alam Sumber Rezeki’s sand mining operations, citing environmental harm, permit irregularities and lack of community consent.
• Tensions flared after Governor Suhardi Duka dismissed anti-mining resistance as “thuggery,” triggering public outrage and a clash with security forces during the protest, where demonstrators were met with water cannons and no official response.
• The mining, tied to supplying materials for Indonesia’s new capital, Nusantara, has fueled a wider grassroots resistance across West Sulawesi, with activists condemning the criminalization of local opposition and calling for meaningful community involvement in environmental decision-making.

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• Brazil’s President Lula apparently lives in a “disinformation space” surrounded by ministers promoting projects that destroy the Amazon Rainforest and lock in petroleum extraction for decades to come, a new opinion piece argues.
• Among these projects are the BR-319 highway and its associated side roads; the distribution of government land to known deforesters; and opening new oilfields at the mouth of the Amazon River.
• Lula’s support for these proposals is leading Brazil to a climate catastrophe that would devastate the country, the author writes, and the two key ministers who should be the ones to explain to the president the consequences of these projects are apparently not penetrating Lula’s disinformation space.
• This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

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archived (Wayback Machine)

archived (Wayback Machine)

• Located at the edge of the western Pacific Ocean, New Guinea is a vast island where the biota of Asia and Australasia meet, making it a melting pot of unique plants and animals that occur nowhere else on the planet.
• Development pressure is ramping up across the island, however, opening up landscapes to new roads, industrial logging and agricultural conglomerates pushing biofuel agendas.
• New Guinea’s low-elevation forests, which represent some of the world’s last vestiges of ancient lowland tropical rainforest, are particularly imperiled, according to a new study.
• To avert tragedy, the authors urge policymakers to improve land-use planning systems, focus on retaining intact forest landscapes, and strengthen the rights of the people who live among them.

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The aquifer under Fish Lake Valley feeding the groundwater-dependent ecosystem is heavily over-appropriated, meaning more water is taken out of it than goes into it each year. One acre foot of water is the equivalent to 325,850 gallons, or enough to supply two to three homes for a year, and the basin has a perennial yield of just 30,000 acre feet, according to state documents. But more than that is pumped out each year, and even more water is allocated on paper than what is currently taken.

The basin’s over-appropriation is somewhere between 150 to 250 percent. The aquifer’s water level has dropped two feet a year, the overuse drawing it down 75 feet since the 1960s.

Nearly all of that groundwater has gone to agriculture in the region, most of which is used to grow alfalfa, the water-intensive crop that primarily feeds cattle in the beef and dairy industries.

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• A new dataset and analysis released by World Resources Institute finds global tropical forest loss jumped to a record high in 2024, with 6.7 million hectares (16.6 million acres) worldwide.
• In total, the area of forest lost in 2024 is nearly the size of Panama.
• For the first time, fire, not agriculture, was the primary driver of primary tropical forest loss, with Latin America badly hit.
• Non-fire related tropical forest loss also increased, by 14%.

archived (Wayback Machine)

archived (Wayback Machine)

archived (Wayback Machine)

Archived copies of the article:

• archive.today
• ghostarchive.org
• web.archive.org

The world’s biggest polluters are also the most protected from the environmental harm they helped create, a new study finds.

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• EcoWatch article
• research cited

• A new report by Brazilian nonprofit Instituto Centro de Vida (ICV) states that Casino Group’s beef supply chain could be linked to up to 526,459 hectares (about 1.3 million acres) of deforestation in Brazil between 2018 and 2023.
• The data are being used in a $64.1 million lawsuit filed in 2021 by environmental and Indigenous groups that accuse the French retailer of contributing to illegal deforestation.
• Among the plaintiffs are Indigenous communities from the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau territory in the Brazilian Amazon that have faced decades of land invasions by illegal cattle ranchers.

archived (Wayback Machine):

• Mongabay article
• report cited

Ibama approves Petrobras plan for Foz do Amazonas that allows oil exploration

The next step in the oil extraction project in the Foz do Amazonas region is to carry out practical tests with animals

arquivado (Wayback Machine)

arquivado (Wayback Machine)

• In central Belize, the Maya Forest Corridor, a narrow section of forested land, is key for wildlife movements across Belize, conservationists say.
• A land acquisition by the Maya Forest Corridor Trust in 2021 was a major step forward in protecting the corridor.
• Members of the Trust are now working on ways to secure and bolster the ecological integrity of the land, but face threats like roads, fire and even a national sporting event.

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• In late April, security forces fired live ammunition to disperse protesters near a mine in the DRC province of Lualaba.
• The protesters were demanding compensation from the mine’s owner, Kamoa, as part of a stalled resettlement process.
• The company says the delay is because the number of people claiming to have been displaced by its operations has ballooned.

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• An analysis by the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL) finds that the country’s energy transition plans do not address the remaining impacts of coal plants such as pollution, degraded ecosystems and lost livelihoods.
• This raises a critical question about what happens to the communities and environments left behind as the country plans to retire its coal-fired power plants to tackle climate change.
• In Cirebon, West Java province, fishers and farmers had to change professions when their land was used for a coal plant; now, some want to return to their former work, but their lands and sea are polluted and degraded from years of coal plant operations, and traditional livelihoods are no longer viable.
• ICEL program deputy director Grita Anindarini said Indonesia could benefit from drawing examples from other countries or jurisdictions whose transitions are designed to remedy harm, with land redistribution, economic diversification and Indigenous rights being central to their plans.

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Nonrecyclable food and beverage packaging dominates the trash littering the Indian Himalayas, according to a recent report. Since 2018, regional alliances Zero Waste Himalaya  and Integrated Mountain Initiative have organized an annual campaign during the last week of May called The Himalayan Cleanup. Volunteers from schools and civil society organizations clean up sites across the Himalayas, followed by an audit identifying waste types and associated brands. In 2024, more than 15,000 volunteers across nine Indian Himalayan states collected 121,739 pieces of waste. Of this, 106,856, or nearly 90%, was some sort of plastic. Food and beverage packaging made up 84.2% of all plastic waste, of which 77% was nonrecyclable multilayered plastics, including food wrappers, beverage bottles, juice boxes, bottle caps, sachets, cutlery, bags, straws and lollipop sticks. Being nonrecyclable, these plastics hold no value for waste pickers and scrap dealers, so they are “strewn across the Himalayas and piling up in the landfills,” Kapil Chhetri, from Zero Waste Himalaya, told Mongabay by email.

archived (Wayback Machine):

• Mongabay article
• report cited

Nevada’s congressional delegation, environmental groups, tribes and local officials see the late-night amendment to House Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill as a threat to the state's water resources, tribal sovereignty and public engagement.

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archived (Wayback Machine)

Carbon credits are a scam. Governments and corporations will fail the forest and its inhabitants every time.