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Editor’s note: Indonesia’s capital relocation mirrors the move of the country’s former colonisers By Hans Nicholas Jong / Mongabay JAKARTA — Indonesia’s national human rights commission has found a slew of legal and rights violations in a government-backed project to establish large-scale plantations in the eastern region of Papua. The so-called food estate project, categorized by the government as being of strategic national importance, or PSN, aims to clear 3 million hectares (7.4 million acres) of land in Merauke district, two-thirds of it for sugarcane plantations and the rest for rice fields — an area 45 times the size of Jakarta. ...

This lithium company is trying to sue Indigenous land defenders into silence by Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network May 9, 2025 https://open.spotify.com/episode/4bT1oQv4m9xpi42O9TU5oH?si=d7db06343fce4142 Vancouver-based Lithium Americas is developing a massive lithium mine in Nevada’s remote Thacker Pass, but for nearly five years several local Indigenous tribes and environmental organizations have tried to block or delay the mine in the courts and through direct action. Six land defenders, known as the “ Thacker Pass 6,” are currently being sued by Lithium Nevada Corporation and have been barred by court injunction from returning to and peacefully protesting and praying at the sacred site on their ancestral homeland. TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with two members of the “Thacker Pass 6,” Will Falk and Max Wilbert, about the charges against them and the current state of the struggle over the construction of the Thacker Pass mine. ...

DGR’s next annual conference August 1-5, 2025 in Philadelphia. The Deep Green Resistance Annual Conference will make its East Coast debut this year in Philadelphia. This is an opportunity to build our movement with activists who may have been unable to attend our previous conferences on the West Coast. Your conference ticket includes all meals, overnight accommodations (beds are limited, so some people may be on couches or floors), great workshops and discussions, and a chance to talk to Derrick Jensen in an intimate setting. ...

By Mike DiGirolamo / Mongabay In 2006, a group of international NGOs and the government of Kazakhstan came together to save the dwindling population of saiga antelope of the enormous Golden Steppe, a grassland ecosystem three times the size of the United Kingdom. Since that moment, the Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative has successfully rehabilitated the saiga ( Saiga tatarica) from a population of roughly 30,000 to nearly 4 million. For this monumental effort, it was awarded the 2024 Earthshot Prize in the “protect & restore nature” category. This prize, launched by David Attenborough and Britain’s Prince William, also provides a grant of 1 million pounds ($1.32 million) to each winner. ...

Editor’s note: When you invent nuclear energy (nukes) you invent radioactive waste Some proponents of nuclear energy refuse to give up on the technology. They blame the decline in nuclear energy and the high costs and long construction periods on the characteristics of older reactor designs, arguing that alternative designs will rescue nuclear energy from its woes. In recent years, the alternatives most often advertised are small modular (nuclear) reactors—SMRs for short. These are designed to generate between 10 and 300 megawatts of power, much less than the 1,000–1,600 megawatts that reactors being built today are designed to produce. ...

Editor’s note: Result of deeper structural failures Speaking at a media briefing to raise awareness on the importance of accountability when such maritime disasters occur, Anita Perera, Campaigner for Greenpeace South Asia, said that when a team visited Mannar on June 19, they noticed a significant number of plastic pellets even after one round of cleanup operations. “The Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) is responsible for cleaning up the oil spill, but so far, they haven’t communicated their response to expedite the cleaning of nurdles or the oil spill. This isn’t an isolated incident but a result of deeper structural failures in how we are governing our oceans and environmental safety. These are critical ecosystems, and there are people(and all of the other species) whose daily livelihoods would be affected as a result of such disasters. We need to hold these companies accountable for such incidents,” she underscored. ...

Editor’s note: Indonesia lifts its ban on sea sand exports More than 250 members of Indigenous and local communities gathered in Indonesia’s Merauke district to demand an end to government-backed projects of strategic national importance, or PSN, which they say have displaced them, fueled violence, and stripped them of their rights. PSN projects, including food estates, plantations and industrial developments, have triggered land conflicts affecting 103,000 families and 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of land, with Indigenous communities reporting forced evictions, violence and deforestation, particularly in the Papua region. In Merauke itself, the government plans to clear 3 million hectares (7.4 million acres) for rice and sugarcane plantations, despite Indigenous protests; some community members, like Vincen Kwipalo, face threats and violence for refusing to sell their ancestral land, as clan divisions deepen. Officials have offered no concrete solutions, with a senior government researcher warning that continued PSN expansion in Papua could escalate socioecological conflicts, further fueling resentment toward Jakarta and potentially leading to large-scale unrest. ...

Editor’s note: The International Day for Biodiversity was celebrated on May 22, which commemorates the adoption of the Convention on Biological Diversity, a global treaty. What lessons have we learned from undoing past harms and conserving biodiversity for our planet’s future? Global efforts to restore forests are gathering pace, driven by promises of combating climate change, conserving biodiversity and improving livelihoods. Yet a recent review published in Nature Reviews Biodiversity warns that the biodiversity gains from these initiatives are often overstated — and sometimes absent altogether. ...

Indigenous land defenders face rising threats amid global push for critical minerals The past decade has seen “a consistent, sustained pattern against people who speak out against business-related human rights" abuses. “This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.” Miguel Guimaraes, a Shipibo-Konibo leader, has spent his life protesting palm oil plantations and other agribusiness ventures exploiting the Amazon rainforest in his homeland of Peru. Last spring, as he attended a United Nations conference on protecting human rights defenders in Chile, masked men broke into his home, stole his belongings, and set the place on fire. Guimarares returned days later to find “he will not live” spray-painted on the wall. ...

Declaration of Yajxonax* Today, October 12th of 2024 –a symbolic date for Indigenous Peoples of this territory we call Abya Yala– we have gathered in these territories of resistance in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, at the Continental Encounter Building an Alliance Against Gas Pipelines and Other Megaprojects in Defense of the Territories of Indigenous Peoples. We are 374 delegates including representatives and spokespersons of Indigenous Peoples and organizations, environmentalists, people from the academia, communicators and free media journalists, coming from 20 states of the part of the Planet some call Mexico, 22 Indigenous Peoples and 11 countries, we have gathered in order to strengthen and amplify the alliances and networking initiatives of the Peoples of the Americas. ...