The United Nations Basel Convention regulates international transport of hazardous waste, which in 2021 expanded to include plastics. But the U.S. has never fully implemented the agreement; Biden may change that.
Created in 1987, the pathbreaking treaty not only phased down scores of ozone depleting chemicals and is helping heal the ozone hole — it also offers a flexible, regularly updating example for future environmental treaties.
From Tripoli to Phoenix, the world’s thirst in great desert cities is deepening, even as agribusiness guzzles more water to feed them. Humanity’s arid urban places are colliding with a key Planetary Boundary, scientists warn.
Some 100 ozone-depleting CFCs and HCFCs are being phased out by the landmark treaty, but can this evolving accord now save Earth from the HFCs — one of which is a greenhouse gas 12,700 more potent than carbon dioxide.
The Brazilian president is making big promises to reduce Amazon deforestation, even as he moves to legalize large scale land theft with potentially catastrophic results for Earth’s climate and the Amazon.
Polar phytoplankton, fish, seabirds and mammals are increasingly threatened by global warming, which is destabilizing Arctic ecosystems, even as southern species move northward — will the imbalanced biome collapse?
Simple mathematical models suggest overshooting Paris climate accord emission targets for a short time won’t immediately trigger some environmental tipping points, allowing time to act.
The Brazilian president offered up conservation promises during the Earth Day global Climate Leaders Summit, then slashed the environmental ministry’s 2021 budget by $44 million.
More numerous than stars, our planet’s microbes play an integral role in helping life thrive on Earth. But what happens when climate change, pollution and ocean acidification impact microbes? — We don’t know.
The US, China, UK, EU, Japan, South Korea, Canada and others upped their climate ambitions at Joe Biden’s Earth Day Leaders Summit on Climate, but activists pointed to duplicitous policies on forest biomass, coal, and more.
In recent days, U.S. and Brazilian negotiators engaged behind closed doors to clinch an Amazon protection deal. So far, they’re stalemated, with Brazil asking for money and the U.S. seeking proof of real commitment.
Last fall, the ruling New Democratic Party promised to defer cutting BC’s last old-growth, but the NDP has so far failed to act and may be embracing the province’s old policy: forestry first; nature and planet a distant second.
An invasion of up to 5,000 illegal miners is underway in the Raposa Serra do Sol Indigenous Reserve in Brazil’s Roraima state, Indigenous leaders estimate. Analysts say Jair Bolsonaro’s rhetoric has emboldened the miners.
Analysts offer an assessment of the 13+ year-long record of the global carbon credit program, examining REDD’s pros and cons, and its future role in curbing deforestation and combating climate change.
In a ruling that could strengthen Indigenous land rights claims across Brazil, the nation’s Supreme Court has sided with the Guarani Kaiowá, allowing the possible reopening of a case involving their territory claim.
Firings, threats, thefts, gag orders, attempted kidnappings and other intimidation against environmental researchers and civil servants appear to be on the rise; many blame an incendiary Bolsonaro government.
The Jair Bolsonaro administration, with its anti-environmental policies, has done little to promote a regulated carbon market in the country, which has resulted in the development of a very active voluntary market.
Though still labor- and time-intensive, 3D printing of beaks, feet and tails holds promise for disabled wildlife ranging from toucans to penguins, and baby elephants; it may even help rare species at risk of extinction.
More than a decade after the Planetary Boundaries framework was first proposed by top scientists, we are no closer to changing our destructive trajectory — but 2021 gives us three opportunities to act.
Experts see sustainable small-scale cultivation of endemic fruits, nuts and vegetables by traditional communities as a way to value and save Cerrado ecosystems, while also supporting some of the biome’s best defenders.
Three Guarani men were assaulted last week in Mato Grosso do Sul state allegedly over an ongoing land dispute between ranchers and Indigenous people; one expert accuses the Bolsonaro government of “restriction of the rights of Indigenous peoples.”
I’ve lost count of the number of times, working as a journalist across Latin America, that I’ve met, spoken to, or heard from or about Indigenous peoples and other local…
The Kadiwéu Indigenous group, living where the Cerrado and Pantanal biomes meet, has resisted annihilation since the colonial era. Their secret weapon: the creative arts that help define their identity.
New research finds that ice in both polar regions, and especially sea ice, is disappearing at a quickening rate, while in the Arctic the last stronghold of multiyear ice is under assault from warming.
Ocean shipping is presently the world’s sixth-largest carbon emitter. But a push by entrepreneurs is addressing the climate crisis and trying to revolutionize the industry with a next generation of wind-powered vessels.
The Netherlands has voted to stop issuing new subsidies for the burning of forests to generate heat. Though a small win for critics who say biomass is not carbon neutral, the vote could influence a June EU biomass review.
IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, has reversed itself, allowing Norte Energia, operator of the mega-dam, to divert water flow to turbines, potentially wrecking the river’s Big Bend Indigenous and traditional fishery.
The illegal sale of protected land in the Brazilian Amazon has been going on for years, but a new BBC report got deeply inside the criminal network and found some land grabbers advertising on Facebook.
The Kalunga — 39 quilombola communities, the descendants of runaway slaves — have united with international funders to use high-tech georeferencing to catalog their traditional lands and natural resources in Brazil.
Scientists warn that we are approaching the Amazon biome tipping point, but proposed solutions in Brazil appear stillborn, politically impractical or lack sufficient scale and/or funding.
