Vaca Muerta, Argentina, is one of the world's largest shale oil and gas deposits, that deposit is also home to the indigenous Mapuche people. In 2013, a new deal saw U.S. energy giant Chevron (energy) enter Vaca Muerta, opening the region for the first time to the international oil and gas industry. In collaboration with The Guardian, FA investigated a local Mapuche community's claim that the oil and gas industry has damaged their ancestral land, eroded their traditional ways of life and irreversibly damaged the environment.

Oil and Gas Pollution in Vaca Muerta

A stretch of the Mississippi River once called "Plantation Country" is now the "Petrochemical Corridor", known to those who breathe its toxic air as "Death Valley".  Using advanced cartography and fluid dynamics techniques, we work to support local demands for liability and repair.

If toxic air is a monument to slavery, how do we take it down?

Clouds are always double. Seen from the outside they are measurable objects, seen from within they are experiential conditions of optical blur and atmospheric obscurity. Today’s clouds are both environmental and political. Their toxic fog is easily surrounded by lethal doubt. When ‘post-truth’ and denialism obscure acts of violence and compound the harm, we, the inhabitants of toxic clouds, must find new ways of resistance.

Cloud Studies

Since Jair Bolsonaro assumed the presidency of Brazil in 2019, vast tracts of the Amazon rainforest and the indigenous communities that live in and care for it have been subjected to increasing violence and a rapid increase in illegal gold mining, encouraged by his administration's rhetoric and policies.  The research had three interrelated dimensions: the policies adopted by the Bolsonaro administration, the violent attacks against Yanomami villages, and the destruction of the environment. The evidence strongly suggested that the policies and rhetoric of the Bolsonaro administration before and during his presidential term correspond with the rapid increase in environmental destruction and violence against indigenous peoples throughout the Amazon.

Gold Mining and Violence in the Amazon Rainforest

Building on Forensic Architecture’s previous investigation into herbicidal warfare and its effects on Palestinian farmers along the eastern perimeter of the occupied Gaza Strip, this investigation marks Land Day in Palestine by examining the systematic targeting of orchards and greenhouses by Israeli forces since October 2023. Our analysis reveals that this destruction is a widespread and deliberate act of ecocide that has exacerbated the ongoing catastrophic famine in Gaza and is part of a wider pattern of deliberately depriving Palestinians of critical resources for survival.