Editor’s note: Result of deeper structural failures

Speaking at a media briefing to raise awareness on the importance of accountability when such maritime disasters occur, Anita Perera, Campaigner for Greenpeace South Asia, said that when a team visited Mannar on June 19, they noticed a significant number of plastic pellets even after one round of cleanup operations. “The Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) is responsible for cleaning up the oil spill, but so far, they haven’t communicated their response to expedite the cleaning of nurdles or the oil spill. This isn’t an isolated incident but a result of deeper structural failures in how we are governing our oceans and environmental safety. These are critical ecosystems, and there are people(and all of the other species) whose daily livelihoods would be affected as a result of such disasters. We need to hold these companies accountable for such incidents,” she underscored.

By Malaka Rodrigo / Mongabay

COLOMBO — Sri Lanka is once again facing a significant marine environmental crisis, as tiny plastic pellets, commonly known as nurdles, have begun washing ashore along the island’s northern coastline. This time, the pollution is linked to the sinking of the Liberia-flagged container ship MSC ELSA 3 off of Kerala, India. The unfolding incident has triggered fears of a repeat of the X-Press Pearl disaster in 2021, the worst maritime disaster to have occurred in Sri Lanka, significantly impacting marine ecosystems and coastal communities.

According to the Indian Coast Guard, the MSC ELSA 3, carrying 640 containers including hazardous cargo, sank on May 25, roughly 38 nautical miles off the Kerala coast. The cause was reportedly a failure of its ballast system. Indian authorities confirmed the vessel was loaded with an estimated 85 metric tons of diesel and 367 metric tons of furnace oil, in addition to at least 13 containers of dangerous substances such as calcium carbide. All 24 crew members were safely rescued by Indian Coast Guard and Navy teams.

While Indian authorities were able to initially contain an oil spill, the environmental fallout soon escalated. Plastic nurdles released from sunken containers began appearing on beaches in southern India, and by June 11, ocean currents driven by strong gusts of southwest monsoon winds carried them toward Sri Lanka’s northern shores, raising serious concerns among marine biologists and local communities.

Fresh environmental fallout

“We’ve begun cleaning efforts and are evaluating coordinated response actions,” said Padma Abeykoon, additional secretary at the Ministry of Environment. With strong monsoon winds forecast for the coming days, she noted that ocean currents may bring even more pollutants ashore.

According to Abeykoon, Indian authorities had alerted Sri Lanka about the possibility of debris from the sunken vessel drifting toward its shores, depending on ocean current patterns. The plastic pellets first arrived on the northern islands and reached the Mannar coast within a day, continuously washing up along Sri Lanka’s southern-facing beaches.

One of the earliest reports from Sri Lanka came from Lahiru Walpita, a birdwatcher in Mannar, who observed the nurdles during his routine early morning seabird monitoring. “On June 12, I noticed strange white pebbles scattered across the Mannar beach. A closer look revealed they were plastic nurdles, something I sadly recognize from the X-Press Pearl spill,” Walpita said.

Walpita initially assumed the rough seas had opened up a remnant of X-Press Pearl, but as he discovered 20 25-kilogram (55-pound) bags of nurdles strewn across a 2-kilometer (1.2-mile) stretch of beach in Mannar, he realized something was wrong. Out of these, only two bags were damaged, and others were in perfect shape, Walpita told Mongabay.

Walpita also observed crows and an egret investigating the pellets but hadn’t consumed them. “However, seabirds, like little terns and bridled terns, feed off the ocean surface while in flight and I fear they could mistake these pellets for food as they have little time to observe,” he warned. The breeding season for these species, especially on tiny islands nearby in Adam’s Bridge Marine National Park, runs from May to September, and Walpita fears the nurdle invasion could disrupt their reproductive cycles.

Temporary fishing ban

Meanwhile, Indian authorities imposed a temporary fishing ban within 20 nautical miles of the MSC ELSA 3 wreck to mitigate risks from hazardous cargo. One of the most concerning chemicals on board was calcium carbide, which reacts violently with water to release acetylene — a highly flammable and potentially explosive gas — and produces caustic substances harmful to marine life.

“The ship sank about 300 nautical miles from Sri Lanka, so we don’t anticipate immediate chemical contamination threat for Sri Lankan waters,” said Jagath Gunasekara, general manager of Sri Lanka’s Marine Environment Protection Authority. “However, we are conducting continuous water quality tests and have activated the National Oil and Hazardous Noxious Substances Spill Contingency Plan to remain prepared,” he added.

Adding to the urgency, Indian authorities are battling another maritime emergency just two weeks after the ELSA 3 incident. On June 7, the Singapore-flagged container ship MV Wan Hai 503 caught fire following multiple explosions, approximately 88 nautical miles off the coast of Kerala. The vessel, carrying more than 2,128 metric tons of fuel and numerous containers with hazardous materials, poses a potentially greater environmental risk than ELSA 3. As of June 18, Indian Coast Guard reports indicated that the fire was under control. The drifting vessel has since been secured and successfully towed away.

Nurdle spill

The nurdles are highly persistent in the marine environment, as they can absorb toxic chemicals and enter the food chain, posing a risk to marine life and potentially humans as research on the aftermath of X-Press Pearl disaster proves.

The parallels of these disasters with the X-Press Pearl disaster are striking. The 2021 incident released billions of nurdles into the Indian Ocean, contaminating beaches for months, killing marine organisms and disrupting fishing livelihoods. One silver lining is that a lot of research was conducted following the X-Press Pearl disaster, and this can be informative in tackling the ongoing episode of the nurdle pollution, Gunasekara said.

Even today, Sri Lanka is fighting for adequate compensation, with legal proceedings dragging on in international courts. The echoes of that catastrophe now serve as a grim warning: Unless stronger regional protocols and maritime safety measures are enforced, the region could be doomed to repeat history.

Malaka Rodrigo is a naturalist with an IT background that took environmental journalism in 2007 to follow his belief ‘conservation through awareness’. He won many awards for his work and writes extensively on biodiversity, wildlife, oceans, water, climate change and environmental issues.

Banner image: The Liberia-flagged vessel MSC ELSA 3, carrying 640 containers including 13 with hazardous cargo, together with almost 85 metric tons of diesel and 367 metric tons of furnace oil sank on 25 May, off of Kerala in southern India. Image courtesy of the Indian Coast Guard.

Editor’s note: Indonesia lifts its ban on sea sand exports

By Wahyu Chandra / Mongabay

Hundreds of protesters, including young and Indigenous peoples from three coastal villages, have demanded the closure of sand dredging in Indonesia’s West Sulawesi over environmental concerns and permit violations.

The protest earlier this month marked the latest in a series of demonstrations by residents of Karossa, Pasangkayu and Kalukku, who have voiced opposition to sand mining in Mamuju and Central Mamuju districts since November 2024. Tensions escalated after the West Sulawesi provincial investment office issued a mining business permit in March 2024 to PT Alam Sumber Rezeki (ASR), which plans to operate at the mouth of the Benggaulu River in Karossa.

The May 5 rally at the West Sulawesi governor’s office was sparked by a public statement from Governor Suhardi Duka, who dismissed the opposition as “thuggery” and insisted the mining permit had been issued in accordance with the law.

“That statement shows that our leaders still greatly lack a sense of solidarity with the people and the ability to understand what we are going through,” said Taufik Rama Wijaya, youth coordinator at the Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN) in West Sulawesi.

For nearly three hours of the protest, no government official came to address the crowd. It was reported that the governor and his team were on their way to Jakarta — some 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) to the west from his office. Frustrated, the protesters attempted to force their way into the governor’s office, sparking a clash with security forces. Several demonstrators were drenched by water cannons during the confrontation.

“So why is it so difficult for us to simply meet the governor and directly express our concerns?” said Zulkarnain, a coordinator of the Alliance of West Sulawesi People Against Mining.

PT Alam Sumber Rezeki holds a 69.9-hectare (173-acre) mining concession, according to Minerba One Map Indonesia (MoMI), an area that largely overlaps with community-owned land and fishponds. An investigation by the Alliance of West Sulawesi People Against Mining into the company’s feasibility study indicates that sand extracted from the river will be transported to North Penajam Paser district in East Kalimantan to support the construction of Indonesia’s new capital, Nusantara.

Many environmentalists have warned of the extensive footprint of environmental degradation brought on by the development of the city’s core and supporting infrastructure — not just in the interior of East Kalimantan, but across the island and beyond.

“The presence of sand and rock mining operations in several parts of West Sulawesi meant to supply materials for the new capital (IKN) or for sand exports poses a serious threat to communities living near the extraction sites,” the group said. “This is currently being experienced by residents in Mamuju and Central Mamuju.”

The protest in West Sulawesi is part of a long-running resistance. Residents had previously organized demonstrations at the village, subdistrict and regency levels and repeatedly participated in public hearings with the West Sulawesi provincial legislature and the mining company.

Yet, the government pushed ahead with the permit while public opposition was still mounting. The decision has not only intensified tensions between the community and the company but also led to criminalization of at least 21 residents (18 from Central Mamuju and three from West Kalukku) reported to the West Sulawesi police for rejecting the mining operation.

“Community involvement in issuing permits must not be merely a formality because they are the ones most affected by the mining,” AMAN’s Rama said.

Rama and his group demanded the closure of harmful mining operations in areas such as Karossa, Kalukku and Pasangkayu while also condemning the West Sulawesi governor’s remark equating anti-mining protests with thuggery and calling for a public apology. They also denounced police repression of peaceful demonstrators, urged the release of three detained protesters and called for an end to all environmentally destructive mining activities.

“The Indigenous youth and communities will not remain silent. We will continue to speak the truth and stand with the people,” Rama said.

Photo by Jandira Sonnendeck on Unsplash

Editor’s note: The International Day for Biodiversity was celebrated on May 22, which commemorates the adoption of the Convention on Biological Diversity, a global treaty. What lessons have we learned from undoing past harms and conserving biodiversity for our planet’s future?

Global efforts to restore forests are gathering pace, driven by promises of combating climate change, conserving biodiversity and improving livelihoods. Yet a recent review published in Nature Reviews Biodiversity warns that the biodiversity gains from these initiatives are often overstated — and sometimes absent altogether.

Restoration has typically prioritized utilitarian goals such as timber production, carbon sequestration or erosion control. This bias is reflected in the widespread use of monoculture plantations or low-diversity agroforests. Nearly half the forest commitments in the Bonn Challenge to restore degraded and deforested landscapes consist of commercial plantations of exotic species, a trend that risks undermining biodiversity rather than enhancing it.

Scientific evidence shows that restoring biodiversity requires more than planting trees. Methods like natural regeneration — allowing forests to recover on their own — can often yield superior biodiversity outcomes, though they face social and economic barriers. By contrast, planting a few fast-growing species may sequester carbon quickly but offers little for threatened plants and animals.

Biodiversity recovery is influenced by many factors: the intensity of prior land use, the surrounding landscape and the species chosen for restoration. Recovery is slow, often measured in decades, and tends to lag for rare and specialist species. Alarmingly, most projects stop monitoring after just a few years, long before ecosystems stabilize.

By Sruthi Gurudev / Mongabay

Edward Faison, an ecologist at the Highstead Foundation, stood quietly in a patch of forest that stretched for miles in all directions. Above him, the needles from white pine trees swayed — common in the Adirondack Forest Preserve in northern New York state. He stepped past downed wood and big, broken snags, observing how the forest functioned with minimal interference.

“These forests have been essentially unmanaged for over 125 years. To see them continue to thrive and accumulate carbon, recover from natural disturbances and develop complexity without our help reveal just how resilient these systems are,” Faison says.

Protected from logging in 1894 by an act of the New York Legislature, the Adirondack Forest Preserve (AFP) is a model of natural forest growth, or letting forests simply “get on with it.” The largest trees, white pines (Pinus strobus), are more than a century old and stretch more than 150 feet tall and are 4-5 feet in diameter.

The AFP, the largest wilderness preserve in the eastern United States, is a prime example of what researchers have come to call “proforestation.” Coined in 2019 by Tufts University professor William Moomaw and Trinity College professor of applied science Susan Masino, the term proforestation describes the process of allowing existing forests to continue growing without human interference until they achieve their full ecological potential for carbon sequestration and biological diversity.

Proforestation is considered a natural climate solution, i.e., a strategy to steward the Earth’s vegetation to increase the removal of carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere. According to Faison, a forest naturally develops greater complexity over time, with a diversity of tree sizes and heights as well as large standing dead trees and downed logs. This complexity provides habitat for various animals, plants and fungi, which make the forest more resilient to disturbances associated with climate change.

Proforestation is distinct from reforestation, which can involve planting new trees in deforested areas to restore them (or allowing deforested areas to naturally regenerate). It is also different from afforestation, which is the process of planting new forests in previously unforested areas. Proforestation’s merit lies in inaction: simply leaving old forests undisturbed, allowing for continuous growth to maximize carbon accumulation over time. As forests mature and trees grow larger, they sequester greater amounts of carbon.

“The largest 1% diameter trees in a mature multiage forest hold half the carbon,” according to Moomaw. “It’s the existing forests that we have that are doing the work.” Existing forests remove almost 30% of CO₂ from the atmosphere that humans put in every year from burning fossil fuels.

Older is better

In Mohawk Trail State Forest in Massachusetts, Moomaw studied the tallest grove of white pine trees in New England, aged between 150 and 200 years, observing how the trees grew. When comparing them with younger trees of the same type growing under similar conditions, he found that “the amount of carbon added by these trees between 100 and 150 years of age is greater than the amount added between zero and 50.”

In addition to carbon storage capabilities, old forests are pivotal in controlling regional and global water cycles through a process called evapotranspiration, by which water is transferred from the land to the atmosphere. Due to deeper and more complex root systems as well as larger canopies and leaves, old forests capture more water and release it as vapor into the atmosphere.

“Old forests have the genetic competence to do this work,” Masino says. “It’s not done by meadows. It’s not done by grassy areas. It’s not done as effectively by forests that have been cut or planted. It’s these ancient systems that have the complexity to bring water to themselves. And in doing that, they’re bringing it to the rest of the landscape. Once you start cutting the landscape, you’re drying it out.”

Masino, who also has a joint appointment in neuroscience and psychology at Trinity College, emphasizes the importance of designating natural areas appropriately and allowing more room for proforestation.

“It’s urgent to decide where we intend to prioritize natural processes, where we are doing research, and what areas we are dedicating for our resource needs,” she says. “Nature needs room to breathe. We can’t leave everything open to manipulation and extraction. It’s deadly.”

She says that planting trees on streets, on campuses or in parks is good for temperature regulation, flood protection and creating habitat, but these trees don’t grow up in a web of life. Planting trees in a forest, too, can risk disrupting the dynamic complexity of evolved and evolving genetic knowledge.

Wildlife dependent on old growth

Over on the West Coast, University of Oregon professor emeritus Beverly Law has studied forests for decades. She describes watching three logging trucks, each with a giant log from an old, single tree strapped to the back, passing in a procession while waiting at an intersection on her bike, a frequent occurrence on her way to work at the university in the late 1980s.

“There are plant and animal species that rely on these old forests for their survival. You take away the forest, and they’re gone,” Law says. “It’s important to have diverse genetics in the forest. Some of them will be more genetically able to withstand climate change than others. You don’t know which ones they will be. That is why genetic diversity within species is important.”

Mature forests are crucial to the survival of certain critically endangered animals that rely on the connected canopies or the soil-rich forest floor. Preserving the biodiversity of the Pacific Northwest, which hosts forests more than a thousand years old, is especially dire. According to a 2022 paper published in Environmental Chemistry Letters, old growth forests retain a number of species from both the top and bottom of the food chain, such as the Olympic salamander (Rhyacotriton olympicus), the Del Norte salamander (Plethodon elongatus) and the two species of tailed frog (Ascaphidae). Losing them forever could kick off a cascade effect and result in severe consequences for the environment.

The spotted owl (Strix occidentalis), too, depends on old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest, requiring the specific environment for roosting and nesting, and remains a central figure in forest management debates.

Such hulking ancient trees are the eyes of the woods, having stood through changing years and the changing climate.

“Ten to 12% of old-growth forests are left [in the US], and it’s insane that people are still trying to cut them down,” Law says. “They are the only survivors of American handiwork. Is it man’s dominion over the forest? We should have reverence, considering they’re all that’s left.”

Banner image: Pine cone of a white pine (Pinus strobus). Image by Denis Lifanov via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

Indigenous land defenders face rising threats amid global push for critical minerals

The past decade has seen “a consistent, sustained pattern against people who speak out against business-related human rights” abuses.

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Miguel Guimaraes, a Shipibo-Konibo leader, has spent his life protesting palm oil plantations and other agribusiness ventures exploiting the Amazon rainforest in his homeland of Peru. Last spring, as he attended a United Nations conference on protecting human rights defenders in Chile, masked men broke into his home, stole his belongings, and set the place on fire. Guimarares returned days later to find “he will not live” spray-painted on the wall.

The U.N. special rapporteur on human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, denounced the attack and urged Peru to guarantee Guimarare’s protection. Although Guimaraes enjoyed international support, his assailants haven’t been identified.

Guimaraes is one of 6,400 activists who endured harassment or violence for defending human rights against corporate interests. That’s according to a new report from the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre that chronicles attacks and civil violations human rights defenders worldwide have experienced over the past decade. Although Indigenous people make up 6 percent of the world population, they accounted for one-fifth of the crimes documented in the report. They also were more likely than others to be killed, particularly in Brazil, the Philippines, and Mexico.

Some of these attacks arise from the “range of ways” governments are restricting civic space and discourse and “prioritizing economic profit,” said Christen Dobson, an author of the report and co-head of the Civic Freedoms and Human Rights Defenders Programme. “Over the past 10 years, we’ve seen a consistent, sustained pattern of attacks against people who speak out against business-related human rights, risks, and harms,” he said.

People like Guimaraes experience a wide variety of harassment, including judicial intimidation, physical violence, death threats, and killings. Most abuse stems from defenders raising concerns about the social and environmental harm industrial development brings to their communities and land. (More than three-quarters of all cases involve environmental defenders, and 96 percent of the Indigenous people included in the report were advocating for environmental and land issues.) The majority are tied to increased geopolitical tensions, a crackdown on freedom of speech, and the global minerals race, the report found.

Most of these attacks are reported by local organizations focused on documenting and collecting Indigenous cases, and the number of crimes against them may be higher. “The only reason we know about even a slice of the scale of attacks against defenders worldwide is because defenders themselves are sharing that information, often at great risk,” said Dobson.

Virtually every industry has a case in the database that the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre maintains. The organization has tracked companies, trade associations, and governments believed to have requested, or paid, law enforcement to intervene in peaceful protest activity. In 2023, for example, local authorities in Oaxaca, Mexico, attacked and injured members of the Union of Indigenous Communities of the Northern Zone of the Isthmus who were peacefully blocking the Mogoñe Viejo-Vixidu railway, which posed a threat to 12 Indigenous communities in the area.

The protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline saw the highest number of attacks related to a single project over the last decade, the report found. Around 100,000 people in 2016 and 2017 gathered to oppose the pipeline and were met with a campaign of harassment, intimidation, and arrest. Energy Transfer, the company that led the project, filed a defamation suit accusing Greenpeace of violating trespassing and defamation laws and coordinating the protests. In March, a jury ordered Greenpeace to pay $660 million in damages, a verdict legal experts called “wildly punitive.”

The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre cites that lawsuit as an example of companies using a legal tactic called a strategic lawsuit against public participation, or SLAPP suit, to silence dissent and harass protesters. But Energy Transfer cited that courtroom victory in its response to the nonprofit’s report: “The recent verdict against Greenpeace was also a win for the people of North Dakota who had to live through the daily harassment and disruptions caused by the protesters who were funded and trained by Greenpeace.”

Fossil fuel companies were hardly the only offenders, however. Dobson and her team identified several cases involving renewable energy sectors, where projects have been linked to nearly 365 cases of harassment and more than 100 killings of human rights defenders.

But mining, including the extraction of “transition minerals,” leads every sector in attacks on defenders. Forty percent of those killed in such crimes were Indigenous, a reflection of the fact that more than half of all critical minerals lie in or near Indigenous land.

The outsize scale of harassment and violence against Indigenous people prompted the U.N. special rapporteur to release a statement last year making clear that “a just transition to green energy must support Indigenous peoples in securing their collective land rights and self-determination over their territories, which play a vital role in biodiversity, conservation, and climate change adaptation.“

Businesses, particularly those in mining and metals, are being pressured to ensure their operations do just that. The Consolidated Mining Standard Initiative, or CSMI, for example, is a voluntary framework to improve industry policies adopted by several trade associations like the Mining Association of Canada. “The standard addresses a broad range of community risks by requiring mining operations to work with communities to identify and work together to mitigate risks faced by the community,” the association said. “Such risks include those to human rights defenders, where they exist.”

Another member of the initiative, the International Council of Mining and Metals, said it has “strengthened our member commitments on human rights defenders to explicitly include defenders in companies’ due diligence, stakeholder engagement, and security processes. Defenders often work on issues related to land, the environment, and Indigenous peoples’ rights.”

Even as this report highlights the dangers human rights defenders face, a growing need for critical minerals, mounting demand for the infrastructure to support AI, and the dismantling of regulatory oversight in the United States bring new threats. The report also makes clear that these attacks will not decrease until broad agreements to adopt and implement protections for these activists are enacted. Such policies must be accompanied by legislation designating Indigenous stewardship of their land and requiring their involvement in project consultations.

Yet Indigenous organizations tend to doubt any industry can be trusted to voluntarily participate in such efforts. In a letter sent to the CSMI, 25 human rights organizations including the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre said mandatory participation will be required to ensure robust protection of human rights defenders and relationships between industry and Indigenous peoples. “People and the environment suffer when companies are left to self-regulate with weak voluntary standards,” the letter stated.

Still, change is coming, however slowly. When Dobson and her team started tracking the harassment and violence against human rights defenders, she wasn’t aware of any companies with a policy pledging to not contribute to or assist attacks against defenders. Since then, “We’ve tracked 51 companies that have made this policy commitment,” she said. “Unfortunately that doesn’t always mean we see progress in terms of implementation of those policies.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/indigenous/indigenous-land-defenders-face-rising-threats-amid-global-push-for-critical-minerals/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

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