Environmental Defenders

A new and timely LAB book by anthropologist and environmental rights researcher Jan Schulz, will examine the importance of The Rights of Nature in the battle to defend Indigenous territories in Ecuador, Colombia and Peru. It explains the origins of this concept, its profound challenge to the 'resources to be exploited by humans' approach to nature, and documents the ways it is being used today with growing success by Indigenous and other rural communities.

At London Climate Action Week, Indigenous women, especially from Latin America, featured prominently as leaders of their communities and territories

Fishing communities in Brazil are demanding legal recognition of 'marétorios' as Marine Spatial Planning and offshore wind expansion threaten traditional territories and livelihoods in the Amazônia Azul.

Yuvelis Morales Blanco is part of the Alianza Colombia Libre de Fracking (Colombia Free from Fracking Alliance), a collective that has been engaged in...

Indigenous leader Auricélia Arapiun describes the occupation of the Cargill terminal, in Pará, which forced the government to concede after 33 days, repealing the controversial decree 12.600, which provided concessions to developers hoping to turn the Tapajós, Madeira and Tocantins tributaries of the Amazon into waterways for the export of soya and the other fruits of extraction.

Indigenous activist Haizel explains to LAB contributor Isàlia McIntyre how strengthening Maya identity supports resistance to megaprojects harming communities across the Yucután.

COP30 in Belém raised hopes that the Amazon would finally move to the centre of global climate action. While governments agreed to expand adaptation finance and launch new forest-protection initiatives, binding commitments on deforestation, fossil fuels and Indigenous land rights remained absent. As Brazil hosted the climate summit in the heart of the rainforest, the gap between diplomatic ambition and enforceable protection became stark.

As an offshore oil prospecting ship arrives in Montevideo, Mike Gatehouse interviewed Vito Mata who has been closely involved in campaigns of protest that aim to halt seismic exploration and subsequent drilling and production. Uruguay’s ocean, fisheries and coastal communities are under threat.

Colombia is at a crucial point as major projects led by Gustavo Petro’s government have hinged the country’s future on the promises of the energy transition. But this transition will not benefit people in Colombia by default. We hear from environmental defenders working across the coal corridor to protect their territories and ensure no one is left behind as mines close and renewable energy projects begin. 

In Oaxaca, southern Mexico, communities are organizing to resist the large-scale private extraction of sand and gravel from the Río Grande, which is wiping...