Dimitri Selibas

The Nyae Nyae Conservancy in Namibia—In a clearing here on the eastern fringe of the Kalahari Desert, four men intently examine animal tracks snaking through dry yellow grass and leafless thorn bushes. “Wild dogs. Six of them took down an impala 2 days ago and they dragged it,” says /Ui G/Aqo*, a master tracker and member of the Indigenous Ju/’hoansi group that has lived on these lands for millennia.

G≠kao Tsamkxao, an apprentice tracker, starts to measure the tracks with a ruler. Debe enters...

Dario Mejía Montalvo, an Indigenous leader of the Zenu people of Colombia, recently stepped down from his role as president of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
With this year’s U.N. biodiversity summit set to take place in his home country, he reflects on some of the major issues affecting Indigenous peoples, including sovereignty, self-determination and direct funding.
Despite progress made in recognizing Indigenous people’s key role in protecting nature and climate m...

A report by U.K. investigative NGO Earthsight links supply chains of fashion giants H&M and Zara to large-scale illegal deforestation, land-grabbing, violence and corruption in Brazil.
The country’s Cerrado region, home to a third of Brazil’s species, has already lost half of its vegetation to large-scale agriculture and is under increasing pressure from a booming cotton industry.
The two major producers linked to illicit activities, SLC Agrícola and Grupo Horita, deny the accusations, as doe...

A massive increase in renewable energy capacity will require critical minerals, such as rare earth elements, lithium, cobalt and graphite, which mining companies and governments say can create jobs and generate wealth to the benefit of communities and the environment.
However, finding the next generation of employees appears to be a growing concern: A 2023 McKinsey report found 70% of its respondents aged 15-30 said they definitely or probably wouldn’t work in mining, and Australia has seen a...

A new report by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) reveals that about 13,000 hectares (32,000 acres) of Amazon forest in the Peruvian regions of Loreto and Ucayali have been cleared after being purchased by several palm oil and cacao companies between 2012 and 2021.
The investigation stresses that systemic failures in Peru’s governance, particularly in land title allocation, have allowed corporations to acquire land unlawfully, deforest without permits, disregard environmental rules...

Viche, a sugar cane-based drink made by African-Colombian communities for centuries, is slowly gaining legality and respectability
The thick forest buzzes with life in the background as a circle of women meet in an open-air hall in Triana, a mountainside hamlet in Colombia’s verdant Pacific region. Doña Gloria walks up to each person and pours a shot of viche from a herb-infused bottle.
“For us, viche is a distillate of wisdom, ancestry and culture,” says Gloria, a master viche maker and lead...

At this year’s U.N. climate conference, COP28, Indigenous delegates numbered more than 300, but were left generally disappointed with the outcomes of the event.
The final agreement had little inclusion of Indigenous rights and excluded an Indigenous representative from sitting on the board of the newly launched loss and damage fund.
Indigenous groups say two big climate mitigation strategies, the clean energy transition and carbon markets, should include robust protection of Indigenous rights...

Five policy briefs launched at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai highlight the critical challenges facing the Amazon Basin, as well as the immediate actions and solutions needed to ensure a sustainable future for the region’s ecosystems and the 47 million people living there.
The reports, published by the Science Panel for the Amazon (SPA), a high-level science body, cover cross-cutting topics, from root causes of deforestation and rethinking Amazon infrastructure to restoration and finance s...

A coalition of NGOs has filed a criminal complaint against several French banks for allegedly financing meat companies driving deforestation in Brazil.
Between 2013 and 2021, the four French banks involved invested a total of nearly $70 million in bonds issued by leading meat companies in Brazil generating about $11.7 million in profits.
This is the first time that French banks have received a criminal complaint for money laundering, receiving stolen goods related to funding deforestation and...

The most important and sacred thing for us is to prevent diseases and control nature itself,” says Indigenous Yurutí Nelson Rodriguez, whose traditional name, Neñú, means leader of the elders. “This is because the nature surrounding communities gives a person their daily sustenance.”
Speaking from Mitú, the capital of the far-flung Vaupés department in Colombia’s Amazon, Rodriguez wears a red golf shirt, his hands painted black up to the wrists, part of a dabakuri abundance ceremony. As a trad...

Community members, commercial farmers and environmentalists are raising concerns that Jindal’s proposed $2 billion iron ore mine project, slated to be one of the largest in the Southern Hemisphere, could be allowed to exploit the mineral without community consent — but only with that of their leader.
Due to the structure of South African law, traditional leaders tend to see themselves as the sole decision-makers in their communities and approve of extractive projects for their stated economic...

A bill proposing to strip lands and protections of Indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation and initial contact was rejected by three congressional commissions at the end of June — permanently shelving it before it could reach Congress.
The bill, which was proposed by a congressman from Peru’s oil-rich Loreto region and supported by the regional government and businessmen, aimed to shift responsibility for the creation of Indigenous reserves from the national government to the regional gover...

Climate change impacts on Central America’s forests could cost the region between $51 billion and $314 billion per year by 2100, according to a new study.
For some of the countries in region, the loss of ecosystem services provided by forests could lead to losses equivalent to more than three times their GDP.
This is the first time ecological and economic measurements have been assessed together for climate change impacts in Central America and could help to inform conservation activities lik...

Land legally designated or owned by Indigenous, Afro-descendant and local communities increased by 102.9 million hectares (254 million acres) between 2015 and 2020, according to a new report released by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI).
The report analyzed land increases across 73 countries and showed increases in 21 countries, though a handful of countries, like Kenya and Liberia, drove most of the significant gains.
At least 1.3 billion hectares (3.3 billion acres) of ancestral lan...

Hyundai has announced it will stop its heavy equipment from being used in illegal mining in Brazil’s Amazon, following a Greenpeace report that found 43% of excavators used in this practice come from the South Korean conglomerate.
Each hydraulic excavator costs more than $133,000 and can perform the same work in 24 hours as three men would take to do in 40 days.
Yet the wider costs are higher: it’s estimated that each kilogram of gold illegally extracted from Indigenous territories in the Ama...