Threats against indigenous people and rainforests have risen during the coronavirus pandemic as governments have rolled back social and environmental safeguards to boost economic growth, land rights activists said on Thursday.

Governments in five countries with tropical forests have weakened legal safeguards to aid economic recovery, while expanding projects near native land, said a study by Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) and two universities.

Increasing land grabs endangering forest communities and wildlife as governments expand mining and agriculture to combat economic impact of Covid

Indigenous communities in some of the world’s most forested tropical countries have faced a wave of human rights abuses during the Covid-19 pandemic as governments prioritise extractive industries in economic recovery plans, according to a new report.

In their quest to bolster economies battered by the pandemic, governments in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and elsewhere have set aside social and environmental safeguards in favor of destructive development projects that are harming Indigenous communities and the forests they care for, according to a report released today by Forest Peoples Programme.

• A report by Global Witness has found that more than 100 Indonesian palm oil mills supplying agribusiness giants ADM and Bunge have been accused of land and human rights violations and environmental destruction.
• Global Witness found that neither company is addressing the majority of these allegations through their formal grievance processes, and effectively passing on this “conflict” palm oil to major consumer brands such as Nestlé, Unilever and PepsiCo.
• ADM and Bunge have denied any failure to police their suppliers, but have also pledged to look

Adan Medina, a vocal activist in disputes with loggers and landowners, was shot and killed by a group of men

An indigenous leader and activist was killed in northern Honduras, officials said on Wednesday, the second such murder in the Central American country in less than a week.

Adan Medina, 46, of the Tolupan indigenous community, was shot and killed by a group of men on Sunday after returning from work in the town of Candelaria, according to Noe Rodriguez, the president of a local indigenous federation.

Main image: photo of Grabbing char land, influentials have been digging ponds for fish farming in Sonagazi upazila of Feni. Dhaka Tribune

Leaders of plain land indigenous people demand to be supervised under a separate ministry

The indigenous people of the plain land are still victims of various discrimination and their demands, including constitutional recognition, stay in limbo. They are struggling to protect their lands from encroachers.

Main photo: young oil palms await planting on land deforested by South Korea’s Korindo in the Indonesian province of Papua (Image: Mighty Earth)

In 2019, South Korea imported 745,000 metric tonnes of palm oil, up from 194,000 metric tonnes in 2005. It is one of the fastest-growing markets for the commodity in the world, driven by government policies to boost palm oil as a lucrative green industry and to secure food and energy supplies from overseas.

• Top Indonesian ministers who pushed for the passage of a deregulation bill that benefits the mining and “dirty energy” industry have links to some of those very companies, a new report shows.
• The report by a coalition of NGOs highlights “massive potential for conflicts of interest” in the drafting and passage of the so-called omnibus bill on job creation.
• Under the new law, coal companies can qualify for an exemption from paying royalties, as well as be absolved of criminal and financial sanctions for mining in forest areas.
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BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Thai authorities have reached an agreement with a landless community that will allow villagers to live in a mangrove forest if they help protect the area, a unique collaboration that could work across the country, land rights groups said.

Under a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the government, human rights groups and about 45 families in the coastal town of Ranong, the community will not get ownership rights but will receive assistance in building homes and access to utilities.

A Korean palm oil giant has been buying up swathes of Asia's largest remaining rainforests. A visual investigation published today suggests fires have been deliberately set on the land

Petrus Kinggo walks through the thick lowland rainforest in the Boven Digoel Regency.

"This is our mini market," he says, smiling. "But unlike in the city, here food and medicine are free."

The struggles of Indigenous leaders of the Honduran Peoples within a multiethnic, multicultural and multilingual country that is made up of four ethnic groups: mestizo or white, Indigenous (Lenca, Misquito, Tolupan, Chorti, Pech or Paya, Tawahka), Garífuna and Creole-Anglo-speakers, have turned into streams of blood through the years, under the rule of capitalism.