With help from U.S. organizations, Panama’s Indigenous people are using satellite images and other technologies to identify illegal logging and incursions by ranchers on their territory. But getting the government to act is far harder.
As of November, nine major mining companies considered key players in the extraction of rare metals for electric vehicle batteries had 225 active applications to expand operations into or near Indigenous territories in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest.
The Interior Department found "significant deficiencies" in an environmental analysis of Ambler Road, which would traverse one the country’s largest roadless areas as well as Indigenous communities.
Indigenous people across the Americas are trying to defend their communities from the pandemic. But for many, isolation can quickly turn into deprivation.
