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Forests are cleared to make space for housing, industries, businesses and for agriculture. (Photo by ADITYA AJI/AFP via Getty Images)

World leaders promise an end to the ‘chainsaw massacres’ causing deforestation at COP26

As long as agribusinesses and global financial institutions continued to fuel and make money from global deforestation these carbon sinks will continue to be razed

The murder of Fikile Ntshangase in KwaZulu-Natal was not an isolated incident. Around the globe, from Nigeria to Brazil, environmental activists are similarly being silenced, and it is our duty to continue this struggle. (Oupa Nkosi)

Fears of violence persist a year after the murder of land activist Fikile Ntshangase

The court battle to stop coal mining in rural KwaZulu-Natal has heightened the sense of danger among environmental activists

Place of mourning: The home where environmental activist Fikile Ntshangase was killed while children played outside. (Oupa Nkosi/M&G)

Record number of land and environmental defenders killed globally in 2020

In South Africa, environmental activist Fikile Ntshangase and police detective Leroy Bruwer were killed

The murder of Fikile Ntshangase in KwaZulu-Natal was not an isolated incident. Around the globe, from Nigeria to Brazil, environmental activists are similarly being silenced, and it is our duty to continue this struggle. (Oupa Nkosi)

The living nightmare of environmental activists who protest mine expansion

Last week Fikile Ntshangase was gunned down as activists fight mining company Tendele’s expansions. Community members tell the M&G about the ‘kill lists’ and the dread they live…

A landmark report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in May last year painted a bleak picture of our planet’s health.

Alarm bells ring over activist death toll

A new Global Witness report has revealed that environmental activists were killed at the rate of more than two a week in 2011.

Report: Mugabe’s loyalists squirrelling diamond money

Global Witness has said mining officials loyal to President Robert Mugabe are stashing profits from Zimbabwe’s diamond fields off shore.

Angola’s top officials reap the cream

Angola’s top officials reap the cream

Lobby groups want multinational companies to stand against a government that bends the rules.

Kimberley Process left in the lurch over diamond dispute

Global Witness has left the Kimberley Process after a series of disagreements, including the resumption of sales of Zimbabwe’s Marange diamonds.

Zim media activist detained in fresh crackdown

Zim to get huge diamond boost but activists irate

Zimbabwe could earn billions of dollars selling diamonds from an area scarred by abuse after a crisis that left the "blood diamond" watchdog tattered.

Zim rulers running diamond trade with ‘corruption, violence’

Zimbabwe’s political and military leaders have used violence and intimidation to seize control of the country’s lucrative diamond business.

Call for Zim to scrap sale of blood diamonds

A rights group on Wednesday called on Zimbabwe to abandon plans to sell "blood diamonds" from a field plagued by abuses.

Global Witness condemns use of ‘conflict minerals’

The watchdog group Global Witness on Monday urged cellphone manufacturers to beware of "conflict minerals" being used in their products.

Watchdog alleges discrepancies in Sudan oil figures

Sudan’s central government could owe its semi-autonomous south hundreds of millions of dollars in oil revenue, a watchdog group said on Monday.

NGO: Banks facilitate corruption in poor countries

Some of the world’s biggest banks have been dealing with some of the world’s most corrupt regimes, Global Witness said in a report on Wednesday.

DRC’s murky mining trade feels pinch of global pressures

Rich Congolese mineral deposits are both the bounty and the curse of the war-torn nation, the seeds of recovery and the drivers of the bloody conflict

Punish buyers of rebel DRC ore, UN panel says

Buyers of minerals from rebel areas of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) should be punished under a United Nations arms embargo, a group of experts has told the Security…

Gbagbo probes corruption in cocoa, coffee industry

Côte d’Ivoire President Laurent Gbagbo has called for an investigation into long-standing accusations that cocoa and coffee boards have embezzled funds meant to aid the producers…