Nicaragua is the second-poorest economy in Latin America after Haiti, and has already lost much of its forest cover to agricultural development. About 21 percent of the country’s forests disappeared between 1990 and 2005.
The worst drought to grip Săo Paulo, Brazil and neighboring states in 80 years is wreaking havoc on the local population. As of late October, key reservoirs hold less than two weeks’ worth of drinking water.
Severe droughts in southern Brazil may be linked to deforestation and degradation of Earth's largest rainforest, argues a new report published by a Brazilian scientist.
This is the prepared text of the keynote address Richard E. Pates, the bishop of the Des Moines Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church, delivered Tuesday at the Iowa Hunger Summit.
“We could be the last Latin American and Caribbean generation living together with hunger.”
The international community is failing to take advantage of a potent opportunity to counter climate change by strengthening local land tenure rights and laws worldwide, new data suggests.
Conflicts with local communities over mining, oil and gas development are costing companies billions of dollars a year.
Deforestation, especially in the Andean highlands of Bolivia and Peru, was the main driver of this year’s disastrous flooding in the Madeira river watershed in Bolivia’s Amazon rainforest and the drainage basin across the border, in Brazil.
Coffee farmers in Central America are struggling to tackle the worst epidemic in nearly 40 years of coffee leaf rust, a climate change-linked disease that has slashed coffee production by hundreds of millions of dollars, cut wages and put coffee pickers out of work.
Ricardo Vásquez Sánchez glances up at the dry thatched roof on the wood-framed platform that is his home in Peru’s sweltering Amazon lowlands.
“If a spark lands there, it’ll go up in flames,” he says.
Alex Lacerda and Paulo Mau drive a silver pickup to an outdoor sawmill near the edge of the Amazon rainforest. Carrying 12-gauge shotguns, they step out and approach a shack, knock and enter cautiously. They are agents for Brazil's environmental police.
The economic and political conditions in Peru favor an increase in deforestation, despite the country having set a target of zero net deforestation by 2021, a new study shows.
Water, food supplies and energy production are all in jeopardy as the Amazon forest is felled for profit. And as Paul Brown writes, the damage is spreading well beyond Amazonia itself.
A U.N. programme aimed at protecting Panama's forests has been reopened after it was suspended earlier this year due to disagreement between indigenous forest communities and the Central American nation's government over how the scheme was being managed.
Few willing to take responsibility for cleaning up waste as bitter 20 year fight over oil pollution heads for another legal judgement.
When an oil company makes a mess, who clears up, and who pays?