Pressroom

Chief Tashka Yawanawa, leader of the Yawanawa indigenous tribe of approximately 1,000 people who live in the rainforest in the state of Acre in western Brazil, said he fears the government will take away his community’s territory to make way for agribusiness.

An indigenous leader has called on the international community to help protect his group’s ancestral home in the Amazon, as campaigners say indigenous land rights are under threat from the policies of the new Brazilian government.

America’s water infrastructure is in a state of disrepair, as evidenced by disasters such as the public health crisis in Flint, Michigan and dangerous flooding at the Oroville Dam.

Newly released Vietnamese customs data yesterday added further weight to reports that Vietnamese-backed illegal logging in Cambodia’s Ratanakkiri province surged during the dry season after provincial authorities in Vietnam’s Gia Lai province approved a mass importation of timber.

New customs data from Vietnam shows that Cambodian timber exports to the country continued to rise in the first quarter of the year, despite an official ban on the trade.

Corruption in Cambodia and demand in Vietnam have in recent months fueled illegal logging at “unprecedented scales” in the protected forests of Ratanakkiri province, according to a new report using undercover investigators.

Illegal logging on a vast scale by Vietnamese loggers has stripped huge areas of protected forests in recent months, with fresh piles of felled timber and rutted logging routes in Ratanakkiri province flatly contradicting the government assurances the trade is over.

Police in Ratanakkiri province on Friday arrested six journalists who were following a truck suspected of heading to Vietnam with a load of illegally logged timber for a local military police officer, though the reporters and police gave different accounts.

Authorities in Vietnam’s Gia Lai province have recently stopped at least nine overloaded timber trucks crossing into the country from the Kingdom, despite the Cambodian government ostensibly banning wood exports to its eastern neighbour, according to a Vietnamese news report.

More than 48 cubic meters of luxury rosewood has been found in Kratie province’s Snuol district, believed to have been hidden by illegal loggers.