This archive covers progress stories and milestones from across South America, spanning countries from Brazil and Colombia to Argentina and Peru. Expect reporting on conservation wins, public health advances, economic shifts, and community-led efforts shaping life across the continent.
After years of stalling due to opposition by the two former presidents with the country’s Indigenous policies, they are the first Indigenous lands to be demarcated since 2018.
Spanning more than 1,700 miles across Patagonia, the route crosses 17 national parks and protects more than 27 million acres of land.
The Yasuní Strip of Diversity and Life was created to protect the area’s Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation and to uphold the rights of Indigenous and farming communities in the region.
A provincial court recognized that the mining companies violated the communities’ constitutional right to consultation and the rights of nature guaranteed by Ecuador’s Constitution since 2008.
Since last August, thousands of Awá have been forcibly displaced or suffered threats, intimidation, torture or forced recruitment by organized crime groups participating in drug trafficking and illegal mining.
The invasion of miners has contributed to the spread of malaria among the Yanomami, with devastating consequences
Indigenous land protection at this scale is rare — and this story shows what’s possible when communities lead the way. Four Indigenous nationalities in Ecuador’s Morona Santiago province spent more than a year in community-led consultations before a single boundary was drawn. The resulting reserve connects to protected areas across eastern Ecuador and northern Peru, giving jaguars, tapirs, and thousands of bird species room to move and survive. When Indigenous communities hold legal authority over their own land, forests stand a far better chance — and that’s a model the world needs more of.
One of the decrees annuls mining in Indigenous lands and protected areas, another resumes plans to combat deforestation in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes, and a third reinstates the Amazon Fund.
Trawl nets literally sweep the ocean floor, turning a complex ecosystem into a desert.
Ecuador’s National System of Protected Areas now includes the 13,583-acre ancestral Tiwi Nunka Forest in the country’s south.
