South America

How 'Rights of Nature' Is Recasting the Relationship Between Law and the Earth

In 2006, a local government council in Pennsylvania concerned about sewage sludge dumping enacted the Western legal system’s first formal “rights of nature” instrument. Today, numerous countries have laws recognizing specific rights or even legal personhood for nature. As legal expert Alice Bleby explains, this new perspective arises from a wide range of contexts and plays out in many different ways.

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"New Colombian President Pledges To Protect Rainforest"

"Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first elected leftist president, will take office in August with ambitious proposals to halt the record-high rates of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. Petro has promised to limit agribusiness expansion into the forest, and create reserves where Indigenous communities and others are allowed to harvest rubber, acai and other non-timber forest products."

Source: AP, 06/27/2022

"Family Says Bodies Found In Search For Journalist And Colleague"

"The family of a missing journalist says they have been told by Brazilian authorities that two bodies have been found tied to a tree in the Amazon rainforest. The report came more than a week after the journalist and a Brazilian government official went missing."

Source: Washington Post, 06/14/2022

SEJ Statement of Concern on Journalist and Activist Missing in Brazil

The Society of Environmental Journalists joins journalism organizations and many other individuals and groups in calling for Brazilian authorities to redouble their search for British freelance journalist Dom Phillips (pictured) and Brazilian Indigenous activist Bruno Pereira, with whom Phillips was traveling on an assignment.

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Global Satellite Data IDs Tensions Between Food Production, Biodiversity

A recent study of global cropland expansion highlights several trends that are ripe with environmental news stories. One finding: New farm fields have taken over an area the size of Texas and California combined since the start of the century, an expansion primarily affecting biodiversity-rich natural ecosystems, with Africa leading the cropland boom. Freelancer Gabriel Popkin explores the latest data and the reporting possibilities.

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A Castoff Bumper Leads to a Literary ‘Autobiography’ of Plastic

Environmental writer Allison Cobb, in “Plastic: An Autobiography,” tells the story of the ubiquitous material through a series of interwoven narratives that range from her own experiences with it (including a discarded plastic car bumper), to the corporate origins of its spread and the way it’s now dangerously carpeting nature and damaging human communities. Contributor Nano Riley has a review in our new BookShelf.

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