JAKARTA — A surge in coal prices is driving a wave of bank loans to miners in Indonesia, the world's fifth-largest coal producer and top exporter. By continuing to finance…
COLOMBO — The Knuckles mountain range in central Sri Lanka is a UNESCO-declared World Heritage Site that’s home to a rich diversity of wildflowers. Among them are plants in the…
KATHMANDU — On April 25, 2020, barely a month after the country went into COVID-19 lockdown, authorities at Nepal's Sagarmatha National Park reported “one of the worst cases of poaching…
JAKARTA — The office of the Indonesian ombudsman says it has found indications of maladministration in the government’s decision to revoke hundreds of logging, plantation and mining permits across the…
It might be surprising to learn that, in a lake as large as Victoria, a single fish could shape so much of East Africa’s history, culture and, now, an uncertain…
A glut of electricity-generating capacity means Bangladesh is paying hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives to power producers that aren’t churning out any electricity, according to a government report.…
RAJA AMPAT, Indonesia — Esterlita Jabu says she still remembers the gut-wrenching horror of hearing explosions from blast fishers near the beach where she played as a child with her…
Bali lies at the heart of the Pacific Coral Triangle, an area of the ocean that supports the greatest diversity of coral species in the world. The reefs around the…
It’s Jan. 29, two weeks after an oil spill off Pocitos Beach in the Ancón protected area, and one’s eyes and skin still burn when walking near the oil-blackened rocks.…
COLOMBO — When a study published in January flagged the risks to Himalayan forests from excessive atmospheric nitrogen pollution, it relied on an often-overlooked member of the ecosystem to assess…
JAKARTA — An independent initiative in Indonesia has mapped Indigenous lands covering an area half the size of Germany since it began in 2010, nearly a third of it in…
Ecuador has become the first Latin American country to join a growing international effort aimed at bringing greater transparency to the fishing industry and making it more sustainable. In a…
JAKARTA — Lawmakers in Indonesia are pressing the government to uncover the true scale of illegal oil palm plantations in the country, following the revelation that the state missed out…
A plan being pushed by the government of President Jair Bolsonaro to pave a long-abandoned road in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon has spurred a rash of land grabs…
“Anywhere you find humans, you find the extinction of species,” says biologist Mathias Pires, a professor of biology at Campinas State University (UNICAMP) in Brazil. The near-eradication of the American…
WEST YENSAWAI, Indonesia — Linani Arifin says she never thought the flapping seagrass growing along the beach in her hometown in Indonesia’s Raja Ampat archipelago would be key to protecting…
For the ancient Mayans, the king vulture was an intermediary that crossed the skies, communicating with humans and the gods. Seeing it soar through the air today, with its wingspan…
KATHMANDU — Nepali conservationist Sonam Tashi Lama from the Red Panda Network is one of the six global conservation leaders to win this year’s prestigious Whitley Awards, which carries a…
JAKARTA — A court in Jakarta has rejected a lawsuit by a remote island community against a gold-mining operation that overlaps onto their villages, in a ruling deemed “problematic” by…
JAKARTA — Tropical forest loss remained consistently high in 2021 with no sign of slowing down, despite commitments by companies and governments to curb deforestation, according to new data from…
Illegal miners operating insider the Yanomami Indigenous Territory in the Brazilian Amazon are coercing Indigenous girls as young as 11 into sex work, as well as inflicting violence and disease…
KATHMANDU — Decades ago, rhinos in Nepal's Chitwan National Park were so rare that tourists who ventured on safaris in hopes of a sighting often returned disappointed. Since then, the…
Agriculture, fossil fuels, deforestation, rising temperatures, greenhouse gas emissions, forest fires, floods, droughts. These are just some of the factors and consequences involved in the complex cause-and-effect dynamics of the…
*UPDATE: On April 1, 2022, Mexico’s Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) said it would designate the wetlands of La Kisst and María Eugenia as “critical habitats” for the…
An international team of scientists studying the distribution and threats facing some of South and Southeast Asia’s most economically important tree species has confirmed that current environmental protections fail to…
JAKARTA — Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer of crude palm oil, has ordered a ban on the export of the commodity starting April 28 to address an ongoing shortage of…
JAKARTA — Indonesian coal mining company Bayan Resources has challenged the government's decision to revoke its permits and effectively shrink its concession area. The legal challenge is the latest in…
The figures vary and come from different sources, including the government, but they all point to the wildlife massacre taking place on the roads of Brazil’s Mato Grosso do Sul…
It’s just before noon on a Saturday in the forest shared by the San Juan Totolapan ejido, or communal farming village, in central Mexico. Not a single bird can be…
As hot and muggy as most tropical rainforests are, you only need to leave their florid confines and step onto a recently razed plot of land to feel an immediate…