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Southern frontlines

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  • Three men stand in a clearing next to some freshly-felled and split tree trunks.

    Conservation
    Killed, dismembered and scattered: the Honduran father and son who made a stand against illegal logging

    The country is the most deadly to be an environmental activist – and the brutal murders of Juan Bautista Silva and Juan Antonio Hernández are the latest in a long line of violent acts against defenders
  • BRAZIL-UN-COP30-ENVIRONMENT-MINING-DEFORESTATION<br>Aerial view of solar panels next to houses in the village of Metuktire, in the Amazon rainforest of Mato Grosso state, Brazil, taken on March 22, 2025. Metuktire, home to Brazil's most influential indigenous leader, Cacique Raoni Metutkire, has been the heart of a decades-long successful fight against deforestation in a region devastated by illegal mining and other crimes against the rainforest. (Photo by Pablo PORCIUNCULA / AFP) (Photo by PABLO PORCIUNCULA/AFP via Getty Images)

    Brazil
    Solar panels and pristine forest: how one Amazon village is adapting to protect itself – in pictures

    Metuktire, in the Indigenous Capoto-Jarina territory in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, is a pocket of resistance against mining, which has devastated the landscape in nearby areas. The AFP photographer Pablo Porciúncula travelled deep into Mato Grosso state to see how it has staved off deforestation and continued to honour its traditional ways of life – while also facing the threats of miners and the climate crisis
  • An aerial view of a broken road bridge over a river. Many people are standing and walking on the road and on the ground beneath

    Mexico
    How hurricanes Otis and John exposed Acapulco’s big divide and left residents ‘scared for our lives’

    The last two big storms to hit Mexico have left the city vulnerable to organised crime and in fear of the next climate shock
  • A woman holds a sign with a photograph of a Mapuche woman with 'Where is Julia Chuñil' written above it in Spanish, among a crowd of people

    Land rights
    Silence surrounds the disappearance of Chilean grandmother Julia Chuñil. What really happened?

    Nearly five months ago, the Indigenous land rights defender went out to herd animals in the forest and vanished. Her family say she had been threatened – and no trace of her has been found
    • A man on a small yellow boat casts a fishing net into a waterway

      Colombia
      Dying fish, polluted water and a terrible stench: the French firm accused of dumping toxic waste in Colombia’s wetlands

    • Two men holding spears and wearing protective vests stand in a cabin

      Indigenous peoples
      Stop-and-search, fire ants and stinging nettles: doling out justice to illegal miners in Peru’s Amazon

    • A plantation worker walks away from a dense group of trees carrying a large bundle of bananas wrapped in blue plastic over one shoulder.

      Chlordecone
      ‘A deliberate poisoning’: how a banned pesticide haunts the French Caribbean

    • Smoke rises from a woman's cupped hands in a forest. She is wearing beads and a feather headband and has a facial tattoo. Her eyes are closed

      Indigenous peoples
      ‘This is your mission’: why one Brazilian doctor is training to be a shaman

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In pictures

  • A topless man with a hat stands holding bags while looking at a dry horizon

    The year the rainforest dried up: how the climate crisis beached Brazil’s floating communities

  • A man trudges through a flooded street in Gardi Sugdub. After surviving the Spanish colonisation, the Guna people face another existential challenge as the climate crisis threatens their homeland. Rising sea levels have already forced the relocation of around 300 families from the island of Gardi Sugdub to a new mainland community called Isberyala.

    Vanishing act: Panama’s Guna people forced to move as the sea swallows their island – in pictures

    Earlier this year, families from the Indigenous Guna people on the tiny island of Gardi Sugdub became the first to undergo a climate-related relocation by the Panamanian government because of the threat of rising sea levels. Hundreds of residents moved to Isber Yala, a new town built on the mainland. But many fear that the relocation has put their traditions and culture in peril
  • Members of a fire brigade work to extinguish a fire rising in Amazon rainforest in Brazil, on 8 August 2024.

    ‘The Earth is crying out for help’: as fires decimate South America, smoke shrouds its skies

    Huge tracts of land have burned from largely man-made blazes in Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Brazil and other countries, with people suffocating from its fallout
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Uncontacted people

  • Exclusive
    Photographs reveal first glimpse of uncontacted Amazon community

  • A group of naked men in dense forest, one seated at teh base of a tree, the others standing holding poles.

    Massaco community
    New images show Brazil’s uncontacted people are thriving – but with success comes a new threat

  • A man’s back can just been seen through thick forest.

    Land rights
    Brazil’s mysterious ‘man of the hole’ is dead. Should his land remain protected?

  • A picture of a man walking though dense tree cover

    Brazil
    ‘They knew that we were here’: following in the footsteps of the uncontacted Pardo River Kawahiva people

Explore

  • A fistful of recently harvested vanilla crops in Bahía Solano, El Valle. They are harvested when they look ripe and green, and are then left to dry and mature over three to four months.

    ‘What joy! What damn joy!’: vanilla boom transforms fortunes of Colombia’s farmers

    In El Valle, the world’s second-most expensive spice is not just providing an economic lifeline but also helping to preserve rich biodiversity
  • People milling about as seven long thin boats pulled up on a sandy riverbank are loaded up

    ‘We are crying for rain’: Suriname’s villages go hungry as drought bites

  • A child's hand on a chain link fence.

    Panama’s vast Cobre mine is closed. So why is their security still restricting access to local villages?

  • Protesters whose faces are in shadow hold up placards with a skull and crossbones and the Spanish words for 'metal mining' in a march in darkness

    ‘Live sick or flee’: pollution fears for El Salvador’s rivers as mining ban lifted

  • A guna makes fake wooden guns for the children of the island to play in the battle against the conquistadors.

    ‘In 10 years we may cease to exist’: rising seas and influx of tourists threaten to engulf Panama island

  • A cows near a tree in a green pasture

    Can Colombia’s ‘crazy’ cattle ranchers make beef an eco-friendly choice?

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People

  • Aerial view of a low-rise town with wide roads sprawling for miles

    From the ashes: how a mayor beat the loggers to turn the Amazon green again

  • 0Leonela Moncayo, 14, sitting in a red plastic chair.

    Fossil fuels
    ‘Just by breathing we are contaminated’:schoolgirls fight to extinguish Ecuador’s gas flares

  • A pregnant woman stands in front of two graves: one is painted black and white with a hand-lettered inscription, a wreath and a rickety wooden awning; next to it is a small square brown concrete block, To the right can be seen a small black and white painted concrete grave topped with a cross.

    Colombia
    The Wayúu people live on land rich in resources. So why are their children dying of hunger?

  • Franz Tattenbach, Costa Rica's minister of environment and energy, during an interview

    Franz Tattenbach
    ‘This country is what the world would like to be’:can Costa Rica’s environment minister keep its green reputation intact?

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Resources

  • Montage illustration showing a fisher with cutouts of oil rigs

    ‘Like dropping a bomb’: why is clean energy leader Uruguay ramping up the search for oil?

  • Workers from Argentine firm Pluspetrol clean up after an oil spill in the Amazon region of Loreto, 11 Aug 2011, Iquitos, Peru

    ‘I’ve seen the dark, fat grease stuck to the leaves’: oil and gas encroach on Peru’s uncontacted peoples

  • The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, wearing orange overalls and a white hard hat, holds up his oil-covered hands to the camera.

    ‘Will you stop exploring yours?’: Latin America forges ahead on new oil frontier

  • A photographic collage showing the colours of Guyana's flag, a map of Guyana, oil pipelines, deforestation and some of the people featured in the article

    Guyana banks on future as a ‘new Qatar’ in high-stakes gamble over oil production

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