Brazil's Environment Minster announced plans to sue BHP Billiton Ltd and partners for $5.24 billion in damages caused by a dam collapse at an iron ore site that wiped out a village.
Brazilian mining company Samarco agreed to pay $260 million after waste dams were breached at its facility, flooding nearby villages with toxic mud.
Peru's government designated as a national park the vast Sierra del Divisor area of the Amazon rainforest—but will it really be able to police the remote territory?
Indigenous leaders and activists interrupted an auction of oil and gas exploration blocs in Rio de Janeiro, seizing the stage to discuss climate change and indigenous rights.
A Brazilian court sentenced ex-treasurer of the ruling Worker's Party Joao Vaccari Neto to 15 years for charges related to the Petrobras corruption scandal.
A Guarani-Kaiowa indigenous leader was shot dead in Brazil's Mato Grosso do Sul state, one week after his community occupied part of their ancestral lands usurped by ranchers.
Amnesty International charges that Brazil's military police have been responsible for more than 1,500 deaths in Rio de Janeiro's favelas in the last five years.
Gunmen killed at least 18 people in outlying districts of Sao Paulo, and authorities suspect a coordinated campaign of revenge by off-duty officers for the death of two colleagues.
Some 100 Guarani activists launched an occupation of the Justice Ministry building in Brasilia, demanding action on demarcation of ancestral lands usurped by ranchers and agribusiness.
Indigenous people and advocacy groups charge the mega-project to build a transcontinental railway through the Amazon basin would mean "genocide" for isolated tribes.
Brazilian prosecutors called for authorities to halt the eviction of some 2,000 families living in an area of the Amazon rainforest where the huge Belo Monte dam is being built.
China's Premier Li Keqiang, on a tour of South America, is plugging a transcontinental railway project that would cut through the heart of the Amazon rainforest.
