Today Christ Jacob Belseran received the Oktovianus Pogau Award for courage in journalism from Pantau Foundation. The citation is usually reserved for reporters who continue their work despite adversity and, at times, direct threats.

Belseran is a contributor to Mongabay Indonesia and the editor and founder of Titastory, a local outlet he established in Ambon in 2020. His reporting has tracked how mining, land claims, and state decisions land on the lives of Indigenous communities across the Maluku islands and North Maluku— where forests underpin livelihoods and culture. Pantau credited him with explaining how large companies seize land, degrade forests, and pollute coastal waters, and with covering protests and community aspirations that some would prefer remain unrecorded.

In Pantau’s telling, the work is not performed from a safe distance. Belseran travels by boat and on foot, sleeping where he can—sometimes in village houses, sometimes alongside the communities he is covering. He has described it, with a characteristic understatement, as “nomadic journalism.” In practice, it involves carrying a machete to clear paths, foraging for food, setting small fires to keep biting insects at bay, and sleeping on makeshift beds of branches.

The greater dangers, as he notes, come from people. Pantau recounts an episode in East Halmahera in which police tried to prevent him from filming a meeting between an Indigenous community and local officials. The community responded by threatening to walk out if the journalist was expelled. For Belseran, it was a practical lesson about the role a reporter can play in contested spaces: not as a protagonist, but as a witness the public can later rely on.

He has also been pulled toward the story by the state itself. After covering the arrest of activists linked to the Republic of South Maluku flag-raising, Belseran was summoned repeatedly by police investigators and, for a time, faced insinuations that he was part of the movement. He was ultimately deemed uninvolved, but the implication lingered in rumor. The point was not simply intimidation; it was contamination—casting doubt on the reporter so the reporting can be dismissed.

The award he received is named for Oktovianus Pogau, a Papuan journalist who died at 23 and whose work helped document violence and rights abuses that much of Indonesia’s media neglected. The prize, established in 2017, is intended as an annual reminder of what such reporting can cost, and why it still matters.

Belseran’s career suggests a simple ethic: journalism as an honest way to defend the public interest and to bridge citizens and the state. He has also been recognized beyond Indonesia: he is a recipient of the Pulitzer Center Rainforest Journalism Grant Fellowship for Southeast Asia.

Awards do not reduce the hazards attached to this kind of reporting. They serve mainly as recognition that the work exists and continues. Belseran has continued to do it in places where access is difficult and scrutiny is often unwelcome.

Solar energy is rapidly expanding across Africa, giving hope for electrifying more of the continent with renewable energy. The Central African Republic, for example, generates more than a third of its energy from sunlight, giving it the highest penetration of solar in its electricity mix in Africa. That’s according to the latest report from the Africa Solar Industry Association (AFSIA).

The Central African Republic is leading on solar but two other countries also now get more than a quarter of their energy from solar power, while 13 countries generate more than 10% of their electricity from the sun, including Chad, Somalia and Malawi. At least one village in Malawi runs entirely on solar power.

In its report, the Kigali-based AFSIA notes that their energy breakdown is an estimate and very likely underestimates the true size of the sector, as the methodology used failed to capture many small projects. These figures should also be put into perspective, as Africa remains the least-electrified continent in the world; roughly 600 million people lack access to reliable and affordable electricity. In the Central African Republic, only 15.7% of the population has access to electricity, mostly concentrated in the capital, Bangui. Such energy poverty creates major obstacles to development and the protection of human rights, researchers have found.

Africa is endowed with vast renewable energy resources. The continent holds around 60% of the world’s best solar potential, but just 1% of global installed solar photovoltaic capacity. Such abundance leaves significant room for growth in the sector, but solar was long overlooked by investors because of its intermittent nature, the report notes.     

However, the growing availability and affordability of batteries are helping to overcome limitations, opening the possibility that solar could become a more significant source of power generation in Africa.

However, batteries, including the most commonly used lithium-ion batteries, carry environmental risks, including contamination from mining the minerals needed to make them and pollution of local water supplies. Less-expensive lead-acid batteries are also sometimes used. In 2024, researchers in Malawi found that informal lead-acid battery remanufacturing also releases dangerous amounts of lead into the environment, threatening the health of recyclers as well as people and animals.

The expansion of solar power in Africa could soon slow down. China is the world’s leading supplier of photovoltaic solar panels and battery storage, accounting for an estimated 80% of global solar panel production. Starting in April 2026, Chinese solar panel manufacturers will no longer benefit from export VAT credits for batteries used in solar storage, which could drive up costs for African buyers. It will be a gradual reduction, but the tax credits will be completely phased out by 2027, potentially dealing a significant blow to the development of this renewable energy sector in Africa.

 Banner image: Solar-powered lights afford residents more hours to work or study. Image courtesy of Kondwani Jere/SolarAid.

Peru has the most oil and gas projects heading into production in the Amazon, according to a new data set published by the Stockholm Environment Institute. At 85 blocks in pre-production in the rainforest, that’s more than the 68 in Colombia and 53 in Brazil.

Peru has 173 oil and gas lease blocks in total, 59% of them located in its Amazonian region, covering 48 million hectares (119 million acres) of forest, or more than a third of the country’s total area. In the Brazilian Amazon, lease blocks cover 28 million hectares (69 million acres), and in Colombia 18 million hectares (44 million acres).

A Mongabay estimate found that, based on the data set, 17% of the leases in Peru, or 5.85 million hectares (14.47 million acres), overlap with protected areas and 25.6%, or 12.36 million hectares (30.54 million acres), overlap with Indigenous territories. Image by Andrés Alegría/Mongabay.

The impacted ares include San Matias-San Carlos Protection Forest and parts of Sierra del Divisor National Park. Numerous Indigenous communities are affected by the leases, including the Kukama-Kukamiria, Achuar, Kichwa, Quechua and Urarina communities.

Mauricio Pinzás Luna, a geographer at the Peruvian NGO CooperAcción, told Mongabay that fossil fuel extraction in the Peruvian Amazon comes with high risks and such exploitation should not be allowed. He told Mongabay over WhatsApp voice messages that communities that live near these blocks suffer from water contamination, oil spills, deforestation, and new roads that attract illegal miners and other criminals. Such activities destroy livelihoods and culture, he said.  

 Several rivers, such as the Marañón and Ucayali, that both feed into the Amazon, run through several blocks in pre-production. Local people depend on these rivers for sustenance, Pinzás Luna said. “The impact on communities stems from their vulnerability — in this case, their dependence on [contaminated] fish, but also their use of direct water sources, as there is no supply of potable water,” he said.

The Northern Peruvian Oil Pipeline runs directly through some of the lease blocks, as well as through Indigenous Achuar communities and close to Wampis territory. It has ruptured several times, and conservationists and Indigenous communities have raised concerns about the increased risk of spills during excavation and construction of the pre-production lease blocks across the Peruvian Amazon.

Mongabay contacted Peru’s environment and energy ministries for comment, but didn’t receive a response by the time this story was published.

Banner image: A protest held in the Yankuntich community against Petroperú‘s oil exploitation plans. Image courtesy of Handrez García/FENAP.

Brazil recently passed a law to recognize açaí, a berry endemic to the Amazon, as a national fruit, citing concerns about biopiracy — the commercial exploitation of native species and traditional knowledge without consent or fair compensation.

Açaí is a staple food in northern Brazil, where it’s eaten as a savory paste typically served with fish and manioc flour. Globally, it’s gained a reputation as an energy-dense “superfood,” often used in smoothies, amid growing international demand and investment in traditional bioeconomy products derived from Amazonian biodiversity. The new law, sanctioned by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, recognizes both the açaí tree (Euterpe oleracea) and its berries as part of Brazil’s biodiversity heritage.

“The legislative recognition of açaí as a national fruit will have a mostly symbolic value. It seeks to reinforce the identity of açaí as a Brazilian product,” Sheila de Souza Corrêa de Melo, an intellectual property analyst at Embrapa Oriental, the Amazon branch of Brazil’s Agricultural Research Corporation, told Mongabay by phone.

In 2021, Brazil ratified the Nagoya Protocol, a global treaty governing access to genetic resources and benefit-sharing. It has helped improve international guidelines to prevent biopiracy and related disputes, de Melo said.

The new law amends a 2008 law that granted similar recognition to cupuaçu (Theobroma grandiflorum), another fruit endemic to the Amazon Rainforest, closely related to cacao, following a trademark dispute with Japan in the early 2000s.

Before that, in 2003, another dispute arose from Japanese company K.K. Eyela Corporation registering açaí as its intellectual property. That claimed was cancelled in 2007.

In 2018, Brazilian federal prosecutors accused a U.S.-based açaí exporter, Sambazon, of biopiracy for using the fruit without authorization under Brazil’s biodiversity laws. The company denied the charges.

Brazil’s legal framework also includes a landmark 2015 biopiracy law. It requires that 1% of company profits be paid to Indigenous or traditional communities if their knowledge was used in the development of a product including pharmaceuticals or cosmetics. The 2015 law doesn’t apply to simple consumption

According to the Intellectual Property Division of Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, açaí has grown from a regional food to an international commodity. In 2024, Brazil produced 1.7 million metric tons of açaí, and is expected to keep pace with growing demand for exports. “Açaí has become a symbol of the Amazon and one of the country’s most dynamic production chains,” the ministry told Mongabay by email.

Formal recognition of açaí as a national fruit strengthens Brazil’s ability to distinguish its biological resources and traditional knowledge, the ministry said. That will make it harder for foreign companies to claim exclusive rights over açaí-derived products, it added.

“The measure strengthens the country’s position in commercial disputes and protects traditional communities that depend on harvesting the fruit to survive,” the ministry wrote.

Banner image: Açaí berry harvesting in the Sawré Muybu Indigenous Territory, home to the Munduruku people, Pará state, Brazil. Image © Valdemir Cunha/Greenpeace.

Ecuador has 65 oil and gas lease blocks, 88% of them in the Amazon, covering a quarter of the country’s total area. That’s according to a new data set from the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI).

Many of the lease blocks overlap with several Indigenous territories, including the Cuyabeno-Imuya Intangible Zone, which is home to 11 Indigenous communities from the Secoya, Siona, Cofán, Kichwa and Shuar nations. Oil and gas leases also overlap with other Indigenous Shuar communities in Pastaza and Morona Santiago provinces, among others.

A Mongabay estimate based on the dataset found that roughly 21% of the leases overlap with protected areas and 61% overlap with Indigenous territories in Ecuador. Image by Andrés Alegría/Mongabay.

The SEI data set also shows lease blocks overlapping with protected areas, including the west side of Yasuní National Park.  In a historic referendum in 2023, more than 5.2 million Ecuadorians voted to halt all current and future oil drilling in the park. Cofán-Bermejo Ecological Reserve (RECB) and Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve, both home to a great diversity of wildlife including pink river dolphins (Inia geoffrensis) and jaguars (Panthera onca), also host active oil and gas production blocks, according to the data.

Combined, the blocks cover 7 million hectares (17 million acres), one-fourth of Ecuador’s total land area.

Alexandra Almeida, president of Ecuadorian environmental organization Acción Ecológica, told Mongabay via WhatsApp messages that the chemicals used for oil production are highly toxic to both the environment and human health. “Many of these are released into the environment without any treatment, contaminating water and soil,” she said.

Numerous studies have shown that exposure to such toxic substances is associated with a host of health problems, from respiratory issues and cardiovascular diseases to miscarriage and cancer.

According to the data set, some lease blocks lie along active seismic faults, which increases the risk of landslides and damage to pipelines and wells. In April 2020, seismic activity and landslides caused the Trans-Ecuadorian Oil Pipeline System (SOTE) to rupture. As a result, more than 15,000 barrels of oil spilled into the Coca River,  impacting more than 27,000 Indigenous people.

A March 2025 rupture in the SOTE released 25,000 barrels of oil that polluted three rivers, killed wildlife and affected more than 5,000 people in northwestern Esmeraldas province, one of the country’s poorest regions.

Nearly a year later, the environment and local people continue to feel the impacts, Almeida said.

“According to our monitoring, there is still contamination — the rivers can’t be used,” she said. “The fish are contaminated because the [toxic] substances enter the food chain. They bioaccumulate.”

Mongabay reached out to Ecuador’s environment ministry and energy ministry for comment, but neither had responded by the time this story was published.

Banner image: State oil company workers clean up the Viche River in Ecuador’s Esmeraldas province on March 15, 2025, after an oil spill triggered by a mudslide that fractured a pipeline. Image by AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa.

In 2025, more than 200 climate-related disasters affected more than 87.8 million people worldwide, according to preliminary figures from the International Disaster Database analyzed by Mongabay. The disasters include flash floods, landslides, severe storms, wildfires and droughts.

Drought and food insecurity impacted the largest number of people. In Syria, which faced its worst drought in 36 years, an estimated 14.5 million people were left without enough food. In Kenya, a drought in January 2025 affected food supply for more than 2 million people. In Nepal’s Madhesh province, a September drought left 1.2 million people short of food.

In late November and early December, a rare convergence of two tropical cyclones and a typhoon caused thousands of deaths across Asia, making it the deadliest tropical storm system of 2025. Indonesia reported 1,109 deaths and Sri Lanka 826, with and hundreds more in Pakistan and Thailand.

The database shows that, globally, climate-related disasters claimed more than 8,000 lives in 2025, though the actual number is likely much higher, due to missing data from several events and unreported disasters from some countries.  

In October, the year’s most destructive storm, Hurricane Melissa, reached sustained wind speeds of 295 kilometers per hour (185 miles per hour) and affected millions of people across the Caribbean. It left at least 127 people dead in Jamaica, Haiti, Panama, the Dominican Republic and Cuba.

Human-caused warming from burning fossil fuels made Hurricane Melissa more intense and more likely, according to World Weather Attribution (WWA), a global research network that analyzes the impact of climate change on extreme weather.

Researchers warn that events like these are pushing the limits of climate change adaptation and mitigation. Fossil fuel emissions continue to rise despite the growth in renewable energy. Although 2025 was a cooler year than 2024, due to weak La Niña conditions, it was still the third-warmest year on record.

“The events of 2025 make it clear that while we urgently need to transition away from fossil fuels, we also must invest in adaptation measures,” WWA researchers wrote in an end-of-year report. “Many deaths and other impacts could be prevented with timely action.”

They added that, “Events like Hurricane Melissa highlight the limits of preparedness and adaptation: when an intense storm strikes small islands such as Jamaica and other Caribbean nations, even relatively high levels of preparedness cannot prevent extreme losses and damage.”

Banner image: An aerial view of Black River, Jamaica, in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa. Image by AP Photo/Matias Delacroix.