Environmental journalism has long struggled with a practical problem: how to make distant ecological change feel relevant to people whose daily lives are shaped by more immediate concerns. Scientific reports document trends in temperature, biodiversity and land use with increasing precision, yet such findings often fail to travel far beyond specialist audiences. Video, once expensive and difficult to distribute, is now ubiquitous. Today the constraint is attention. Content that reaches large audiences usually foregrounds human experience rather than abstract risk.

One response has been to anchor environmental reporting in lived realities. Instead of beginning with emissions curves or species counts, journalists start with households, workers or communities navigating change. This approach repositions the science so climate change becomes visible as relocation, lost income, altered routines and disrupted schooling. The method carries risks, including the temptation to substitute anecdote for evidence. Used carefully, however, it can broaden understanding without sacrificing accuracy.

Lucía Torres, who leads video production at Mongabay, has built much of her work around this premise. In reporting on a Mexican coastal town forced to move inland after years of storms and encroaching seas, she focused on residents’ relationships with place and each other. The aim was to document gradual disruption rather than stage dramatic suffering. Time spent off camera proved as important as filming itself. Conversations, shared meals and repeated visits helped establish trust, yielding testimony that felt less performative and more reflective of ordinary life under strain.

Her broader advice to younger journalists is pragmatic. Technical skill matters, but persistence and adaptability matter more. Formats change quickly, especially on social platforms where algorithms reward novelty and brevity. Torres encourages experimentation, even when results are uneven. Failed attempts can clarify what resonates and what does not. She also stresses collaboration with local reporters and crews, arguing that proximity improves both accuracy and legitimacy.

For audiences inundated with information, the lesson may be straightforward. Environmental change is easiest to grasp when it is neither sensationalized nor reduced to numbers alone. Stories that connect global processes to specific places and people do not guarantee engagement, but they offer a plausible route. In an era of shrinking attention spans, that may be as much as journalism can reasonably promise.

Read the full interview with Lucía Torres here.

Banner image: Torres, center, interviewing architect Marina Tabassum in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 2025. Image courtesy of Wasif Kabir.

Near Brazil’s Belo Monte dam, one of the world’s largest hydropower projects, the promise of abundant electricity has proved uneven. A household survey of 500 families in Altamira found that 86.8% experienced higher electricity costs after the plant began operating in 2016. Many riverside residents still endure outages, pay steep tariffs or rely on diesel generators. As Emilio Moran, a social anthropologist at Michigan State University, observed, “People are right under the transmission line, but the energy doesn’t come from that hydroelectric plant.”

For some communities deeper in the Amazon, waiting for grid expansion has yielded little. In the Tapajós-Arapiuns Reserve near Santarém, researchers and residents have instead built small, independent energy networks, reports Mongabay contributor Jorge C. Carrasco. Launched in 2023, the pilot combines solar panels with hydrokinetic turbines placed in river currents. The aim, said project coordinator Lázaro Santos, is straightforward: “that we bring energy to contribute to improving the quality of life of these communities.”

For villages long dependent on diesel, the shift has been tangible. One resident recalled that fuel deliveries required multiday boat trips, and electricity was rationed to a few evening hours. Today, a communal freezer runs around the clock, enabling food storage and modest commerce. Internet access and emergency communications have also improved.

Crucially, the project trained local technicians to operate and repair the equipment. Three residents in one village can now maintain the system themselves, which builds technical confidence while lowering long-term costs. Instead of relying on distant technicians, communities can resolve routine problems themselves and adapt the system as needs evolve.

Several practical insights emerge from the experiment. Small, modular systems can deliver dependable electricity in places where extending a national grid would be prohibitively expensive or technically difficult. By generating power close to where it is used, communities avoid transmission losses and the long delays that often accompany large infrastructure projects.

Combining solar panels with river turbines also reduces exposure to natural variability. Sunlight fluctuates by hour and season, but river currents provide a steadier source of energy. Together, the two systems smooth supply in a way neither could achieve alone, offering reliability that diesel deliveries never provided.

Finally, prioritizing shared infrastructure has amplified the benefits of limited generation. A communal freezer, communications equipment and basic services can serve many households at once, supporting food security, health and small economic activities even when household electrification remains incomplete. Modest amounts of power can therefore produce meaningful improvements in daily life.

The initiative currently serves about 200 people, with plans to expand. It does not resolve the wider inequities associated with large dams but it does suggest that communities facing resource constraints are not without options. With technical support and local organization, incremental solutions can materially improve daily life while larger debates over energy policy continue.

Banner image: Energy-generation equipment is loaded onto a boat in Santarém, bound for remote riverine communities. Image courtesy of Karina Ninni.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysia’s government renewed Australian miner Lynas Rare Earths’ operating license for 10 years but will require it to stop producing radioactive waste by 2031.

The Lynas refinery in Malaysia, its first outside China producing minerals that are crucial for high-tech manufacturing, has been operating in central Pahang state since 2012. The company has been e mbroiled in a dispute over radiation from waste that has accumulated at the plant.

Science Minister Chang Lih Kang said Monday that any radioactive waste generated within the next five years must be treated and neutralized by extracting thorium or other methods. No new permanent disposal facility will be allowed, he said.

The license runs until March 3, 2036, and will be reviewed after five years. It can be revoked if Lynas violates its conditions, Chang said.

Environmental groups have long campaigned against the Lynas refinery, demanding that the company export its radioactive waste. They contend that the radioactive elements, which include thorium and uranium among others, were more hazardous after going through mechanical and chemical processes.

Lynas was allowed five years to retrofit its facilities and ramp up operations under Chang described as a firm but accelerated timeline. He said lab tests have shown promising results in neutralizing radiation in waste through thorium extraction but scaling the technology to industrial levels typically takes seven to 10 years.

“We have not gone against our promise to prevent the accumulation of radioactive waste in Malaysia. We remain committed to that position, and through this license renewal, we aim to fully achieve this goal by 2031,” Chang said in a statement.

Chang said the license was granted after a thorough technical evaluation, taking into consideration Malaysia’s strategic interests and commitments from Lynas. Existing radioactive waste will be stored in a permanent disposal facility still under construction. It is due to be ready by the year’s end.

Rare earths are 17 minerals used to make products such as electric or hybrid vehicles, weapons, flat-screen TVs, mobile phones, mercury-vapor lights and camera lenses. China has about a third of the world’s rare earth reserves but a near monopoly on supplies. Lynas has said its refinery could meet nearly a third of world demand for rare earths, excluding China.

The only other rare earths refinery in Malaysia — operated by Japan’s Mitsubishi Group in northern Perak state — closed in 1992 following protests and claims that it contributed to birth defects and leukemia among residents. It is one of Asia’s largest radioactive waste cleanup sites.

By Eileen Ng, Associated Press

Banner image: Construction vehicles are parked at the site of Lynas’ rare earths plant in Gebeng, eastern Malaysia, on April 19, 2012. Photo courtesy of Lai Seng Sin, Associated Press. 

Brazilian authorities seized more than 1.5 metric tons of shark fins in Rodelas, Bahia state, on Feb. 12, uncovering what they allege is a Chinese run syndicate. They arrested seven people, including three Chinese nationals, in the raid at a rural processing site.

Shark species such as the vulnerable Atlantic nurse shark (Ginglymostoma cirratum) and the near-threatened blue shark (Prionace glauca) are likely among the target species, IBAMA, the federal environment agency, told Mongabay. Genetic tests to confirm that are underway.

“[Shark finning] is extremely cruel, because the fins are torn off, the animals are mutilated alive and thrown back into the sea so they don’t take up space on the vessel, since these criminals are interested only in the fins,” federal police agent Micael Andrade, told national TV station Globo. “The animal is discarded and agonizes and dies. Because it cannot move, it sinks. It cannot feed itself. It really is an extremely cruel practice.”

Authorities said the suspects, including a teenager, will face charges including crimes against wildlife, receiving stolen goods and corruption of a minor.

Andrade said the three Chinese suspects were likely coordinating the scheme.

“It became clear that only the Chinese men were in fact part of the international shark fin trading network,” he said. “They [the four Brazilian suspects] were poor workers earning daily wages to make some money. They did not even know how the entire operation worked, nor the origin or destination of the fins.”

In June 2023, Brazilian authorities seized almost 29 metric tons of shark fins, considered the largest such seizure ever recorded. The previous largest seizure was recorded in Hong Kong in 2020, when authorities confiscated 28 metric tons of fins.

Shark finning and the targeted capture of sharks is illegal in Brazil. Brazilian law also criminalizes the storage, transport, processing and sale of shark parts without authorization. However, fins can be legally exported if sharks were caught accidentally as bycatch and the whole animal is landed — an exemption that conservationists say is a loophole for the illegal trade.

This latest seizure “indicates that ‘legal’ exports continue to serve as a front for massive smuggling,” José Truda Palazzo Junior, a member of the National Environmental Council (CONAMA) and founder of the Humpback Whale Institute, told Mongabay by text message. He said finning likely still happens “due to a lack of effective inspection of industrial fishing boats, which do not have adequate coverage by observers on board or automated control systems.”  

CONAMA has proposed a complete ban on shark fins. Palazzo, a co-author of the motion for the ban, said it’s “frightening” that CONAMA’s unanimous recommendation has not been heeded yet “to ban this ‘legal’ trade once and for all.”

CONAMA’s decision amounts to a strong but nonbinding recommendation to the government,

Banner image: Shark fins seized during the police raid. Image courtesy of Brazilian Federal Police.

New evidence of the world’s smallest possum has emerged hundreds of kilometers from where it’s known to occur in southern Australia — a finding that potentially extends the range of this locally threatened species.

Pygmy possums are a group of tiny, mouse-sized marsupials that live in open woodlands, heathlands and scrub. They feed on nectar, pollen and insects, and play a crucial ecological role as pollinators. Yorke Peninsula in the state of South Australia is the traditional land of the Narungga people and was a known habitat for the western pygmy possum (Cercartetus concinnus). Now, a new study published in the journal Australian Zoologist suggests the rare and cryptic little pygmy possum (Cercartetus lepidus) may live there too.

Researchers revisited photographic data from wildlife surveys conducted between 2004 and 2011 in Dhilba Guuranda–Innes National Park, an important remnant patch of native vegetation at the tip of the peninsula. Among observations of more than 250 pygmy possums, two photographed in 2006 stood out: these possums were smaller, with distinctive gray belly fur. They were initially labeled as juvenile western pygmy possums because there were no existing records of other pygmy possum species in the area; the closest known population of little pygmy possums is on Kangaroo Island, which has been isolated from the Yorke Peninsula for 10,000 years.

However, the researchers hypothesized that the two observations were misidentified, so they compared the photos with specimens kept at the South Australian Museum. They concluded that these were indeed little pygmy possums.

“About 19 of 24 ground-dwelling mammals have become extinct on the Yorke Peninsula,” study first author Sophie Petit, from Adelaide University, told Mongabay by email. “It’s a big deal to find a new species that may have been there all along.”

Pat Hodgens, a fauna ecologist with the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, who wasn’t involved in the study, agreed the photograph in the paper could be that of a little pygmy possum. “It would be exciting if that could be confirmed through further studies such as recaptures and DNA analysis,” Hodgens told Mongabay by email.

Confirmation of a new population would be welcome news for the species, which is sensitive to habitat fragmentation and also likely vulnerable to burnt vegetation from bushfires and prescribed burns. Native vegetation has been cleared from much of the Yorke Peninsula; only 13% remains. The authors are trepidatious because the current population status of little pygmy possums on the Yorke Peninsula is unknown.

“It’s possible that this population has become [locally] extinct in the last 20 years, considering its rarity,” Petit said in a press release. “But it would be wonderful to discover it has survived. Adopting a precautionary approach to land management until the species’ status is verified would be the best course of action.”

Banner image: A pair of pygmy possums in South Australia. Image © Sam Gordon via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

A French court has begun hearing a lawsuit against oil and gas giant TotalEnergies over its growing portfolio of fossil fuel projects worldwide. The case being heard before the Paris Court of Justice was brought by a coalition of 14 French cities, including Paris, and five civil society organizations.

They assert that TotalEnergies must take action to align its activities with the 1.5°C (2.7°F) target of the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty adopted at the COP21 U.N. climate summit in Paris in 2015, to avoid the worst outcomes of climate change.

The suit targets TotalEnergies because the company is linked to the largest number of new fossil fuel projects worldwide, including 30 so-called carbon bombs — projects whose emissions threaten global efforts to keep warming within the 1.5°C target.

A proposed liquefied natural gas project in Papua New Guinea, for instance, would contribute more than 220 million metric tons of CO2 emissions over its lifetime, experts say.

“Total continues to develop new oil and gas projects all over the world. This is clearly incompatible with the Paris Agreement and with the findings of the IPCC reports, as well as those of the International Energy Agency, which call for a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions,” Justine Ripoll, campaign manager at Notre Affaire à Tous, one of the organizations that brought the lawsuit, told Mongabay by phone.

Other TotalEnergies projects in Tanzania, Uganda and Mozambique aren’t targeted in the lawsuit as they’re considered already too advanced.

“What we are specifically asking the judges is that Total put an end to oil and gas projects that have not yet reached the first investment decision stage. So this does not concern all fossil projects, but rather those where Total is either still exploring for oil and gas or has not yet signed an investment contract,” Ripoll said.

In a written response to Mongabay a representative with TotalEnergies said, “Trying to prevent TotalEnergies from producing oil and gas still used today in the global energy system makes no sense: oil and gas production naturally declines by 6 to 7% per year without investment (IEA report, September 2025), while at the same time demand for these energies is still increasing.”

The lawsuit is based on France’s corporate duty of vigilance law. Adopted in 2017, the law requires that large French companies must address impacts of their activities that could result in harm to the environment or human rights. The law also applies to their subsidiaries, subcontractors and suppliers. TotalEnergies is among the 20 largest historical emitters of greenhouse gases.

“There are clearly political considerations that make our request very ambitious but we hope there will be enough evidence to convince the judges,” Ripoll said.

The court is expected to deliver its decision on June 25.

Banner image: Flaring at the Djeno oil terminal, operated by TotalEnergies, in the Republic of Congo. Image by Elodie Toto/Mongabay.