Today, Munduruku Indigenous representatives and activists traveled thousands of kilometres from the heart of the Brazilian Amazon to the annual shareholder’s meeting of General Electric (GE) in the United States. Their goal: to confront the company on its involvement in destructive hydroelectric mega dams in the Amazon.

The Munduruku are fighting a massive hydroelectric project – the São Luiz do Tapajós mega dam – along the Tapajós River in the Amazon Rainforest that would displace entire villages and destroy livelihoods. As Munduruku leader Adalto Jair Munduruku explains, “We journeyed here to speak to the leadership of GE and meet those that would consider profiting off the displacement of thousands of people from our traditional lands against our will, destroying our natural environ...

The word nadeshda means hope in Russian. The Nadesha rehabilitation centre was founded to give hope to children living in towns and villages contaminated by the Chernobyl disaster.

Thousands of children across Belarus have been robbed of a healthy childhood. Their food and playgrounds are contaminated. Their health weakened by radiation.

At Nadeshda I meet Elena Solovyeva, a teacher from the heavily contaminated Mogilev region, who has brought her class to the centre. She tells me that around 40% of her students have health problems: asthma, diabetes and cancer or weak immune, respiratory and digestive systems.

"We explain to the kids where their problems come from. They get it. We breathe contaminated air, we eat contaminated food… You never get used to it, but it is almost impo... Read more >

As Indonesia's president announces a temporary ban on palm oil development, one of the world's biggest palm oil traders faces a customer revolt over its deforestation in Borneo… and it could lead to some big wins for forest protection.

Remnant forest beside artificial drainage and recent plantation development in IOI's PT Bumi Sawit Sejahtera oil palm concession.

Earlier this month [PDF], the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) finally took action on palm oil company IOI, suspending its certification because it was destroying rainforests in Borneo. Now the destructive company can no longer claim its palm oil is "sustainable".

IOI is huge: it supplies palm oil to over 300 companies, including the household brands whose products line our supermarket shelves. It's also hugely destru... Read more >

People in Europe have massively rejected GMOs, and our governments have started to ban their cultivation, but agro­chemical companies have cooked up a new way to get GMOs onto the European market. They are claiming that GMOs which are produced through a range of new techniques ­aren’t in fact GMOs.

Don't let unlabelled or untested GMOs in through the back door.

If the companies get their way, GM plants and animals could soon end up on our fields and on our dinner table without any safety testing or labelling - and without any way to ban them. And we wouldn’t even know! European law requires that GMOs undergo a detailed assessment of health and environmental risks, as well as labelling, to allow consumer choice.

The European Commission said that it would publish a legal opinion to tel... Read more >

Today, on Earth Day, more than 165 countries sign a global agreement - Paris Climate Agreement - to protect our environment. This is a record turnout for an international agreement. It is an encouraging sign. After many years of foot-dragging, the world is finally coming together to confront climate change, the most urgent issue of our time.

We are seeing agreement to take action to prevent a climate catastrophe only after many years of hard work. Above all, it is thanks to people all over the world standing up for action. Before the Paris climate summit an estimated 800,000 people marched for a safer climate.

The countries most vulnerable to climate change stood together and demanded that global warming be limited to 1.5 degrees C compared to pre-industrial times. A threshold we must...