Peru

Las comunidad de Santa Clara Uchunya lleva varias generaciones viviendo en una zona remota del Amazonas peruano. Al igual que muchos grupos indígenas, esta comunidad del pueblo Shipibo-Konibo ha gestionado y dependido tradicionalmente de sus bosques para la caza, la pesca y los recursos naturales.

Pero en 2014, alguien empezó a talar grandes extensiones de los bosques ancestrales de la comunidad.

Sin el conocimiento ni el consentimiento de la comunidad, el Gobierno regional había entregado 200 parcelas de tierra, que fueron compradas a continuación por la empresa de aceite...

The Santa Clara de Uchunya community has lived in a remote section of the Peruvian Amazon for generations, relying on the forest for hunting, fishing and natural resources. But in 2014, someone started cutting down large sections of their ancestral lands. They've been struggling for their land rights ever since.

Armed with satellite-generated maps, indigenous peoples are successfully fending off unwanted destruction of their traditional forests.

New data on Global Forest Watch shows that in some of the world's most heavily forested nations, more than 90 percent of tree cover loss is happening in natural forests rather than plantations. That's a problem since natural forests, especially those in the tropics, provide much greater climate, biodiversity and water benefits over planted lands.

A recent government audit found evidence of timber laundering, where exporters make illegally logged wood appear to be legitimately harvested by concocting “ghost trees” – trees that never existed, except on paper.

El apetito mundial por el chocolate está a un punto máximo sin precedentes, y los productores buscan nuevos lugares para cultivar cacao, la materia prima del chocolate y del cacao en polvo. Algunos productores han recurrido a Sudamérica, donde las imágenes satelitales resaltan a una plantación de cacao que está invadiendo la selva tropical amazónica.

With the world’s appetite for chocolate at an all-time high, producers are looking for new places to grow cacao—the raw ingredient in cocoa and chocolate. Some are turning to South America, where satellite images show one cacao plantation encroaching dramatically on the Amazon rainforest.