Healing the world through ‘radical listening’: Q&A with Dr. Kinari Webb
Dr. Kinari Webb believes this because she has witnessed it — up close: Amid this global pandemic, the health of the planet is intricately connected to public health around the…
Articles by Justin Catanoso
Justin Catanoso is a professor of the practice at Wake Forest University and director of its journalism program from 2011-2016. His environmental reporting is often supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting in Washington, D.C., and the Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability at Wake Forest.
As investment giant BlackRock pulls back from coal, NGOs urge the same for biomass energy
Responding to intense pressure from investors and environmental activists, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, signaled in January that it would reduce investments in coal for energy generation. Other fossil…
Pope makes impassioned plea to save the Amazon — will the world listen?
‘Multinationals have cut the veins of our mother Earth,’ warned Pope Francis, urging conservation of the rapidly vanishing Amazon — but the world’s media barely took notice.
Success of Microsoft’s ‘moonshot’ climate pledge hinges on forest conservation
Tech giant Microsoft says it will go “carbon negative” by 2030; to get there, it will rely on Pachama, a startup using LIDAR and artificial intelligence to truthfully track forest carbon storage projects.
COP25: Self-serving G20 spites youth, humanity, world at climate talks
Analysts are calling the COP25 climate summit in Madrid a colossal failure — undermining the carbon reduction goals set by the 2015 Paris Agreement, leaving the world in mortal danger.
COP25: EU officials say biomass burning policy to come under critical review
Two top officials have announced that after 2020 the EU will look at closing the biomass carbon neutrality loophole that has created a boom in emission-producing wood pellets.
COP25: Wood pellet CEO claims biomass carbon neutrality, despite science
Interviewed in Madrid, Will Gardiner, CEO of the UK’s largest biomass plant, said his firm leads way in energy decarbonization, despite scientific evidence to the contrary.
Indonesian dam raises questions about UN hydropower carbon loophole
A company attending the COP25 climate summit says its dam will reduce Indonesia’s carbon emissions, but current science says tropical dams are greenhouse gas emitters.
COP25: Laura Vargas inspires with power of faith in defense of forests
Even as delegates to COP25, the Madrid climate summit, sidestep the environmental and human rights goals of the Paris Agreement, a godly 71-year-old woman steps up.
Hopes dim as COP25 delegates dicker over Article 6 and world burns: critics
Negotiators drafting Paris Agreement Article 6 rules appear to be assuring loopholes to up carbon emissions, turn forests into plantations, and failing to protect human rights.
COP25 may put climate at greater risk by failing to address forests
Madrid negotiators plan to create rules for a global carbon market, but a failure so far to include forest incentives, and a silence on a biomass carbon accounting loophole could hinder progress.
Vatican calls landmark meeting to conserve Amazon, protect indigenous peoples
Starting October 6, the Catholic Church will hold its first ever synod focused on an ecological biome. Bishops, indigenous leaders and activists will meet and set plans to help save the Amazon.
Interfaith leaders step up to protect the world’s ‘sacred’ rainforests
During Climate Week, starting September 22 at the UN in New York City, interfaith leaders will unveil the Faiths for Forests Declaration, with a call to political action by global congregations.
Gov’t takedown of illegal gold mining in Peru shows promise, but at a cost
PUERTO MALDONADO, Peru — Luis Hidalgo Okimura, the new governor of Peru’s Madre de Dios region, entered his conference room in the regional government building here carrying a half-empty bottle…
Carbon to burn: UK net-zero emissions pledge undermined by biomass energy
The UK and EU say they plan to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, even as both pursue plans to burn massive amounts of carbon-producing wood pellets.
EU sued to stop burning trees for energy; it’s not carbon neutral: plaintiffs
In a suit filed Monday, accusers say European nations burning wood pellets and chips for energy are putting the world at risk with carbon emissions greater than from coal burning.
COP24: Summit a step forward, but fails to address climate urgency
Poland climate meeting addressed some issues, including Paris rulebook, but fell far short. UN’s António Guterres to convene special September climate action meeting in New York.
COP24: Will they stay or will they go? Brazil’s threat to leave Paris
Jair Bolsonaro pledged to leave the Paris accord during his presidential run. But his Amazon agribusiness and mining expansion plans may pose a far bigger threat to forests and global climate.
COP24: Nations complicit in ignoring bioenergy climate bomb, experts say
Burning wood pellets, once deemed as carbon neutral, produces big CO2 emissions instead. But developed nations are cooking the books on bioenergy, toying with climate disaster.
COP24: Trumpers tout clean coal; protesters call it ‘climate suicide’
Demonstrators, subnationals, NGOs and COP24 delegates have moved beyond the Trump administration delegation’s public farce advocating coal as a viable climate solution.
COP24: US, Russia, Saudis downplay IPCC report in display of disunity
Vulnerable nations were eager to praise the IPCC report, the US was not. Environmental activist Tom Steyer sees another blue wave as the only route to global climate action.
COP24: World’s nations gather to grapple with looming climate disaster
As scientists’ warnings over climate catastrophe mount, will nonstate actors at COP24 in Poland be able to goad nations to finally take decisive climate change action?
Land rights, forests, food systems central to limiting global warming: report
Land-based options offer the best solutions to help nations meet their Paris carbon reduction goals and limit warming to 1.5 degrees C, says study in response to new IPCC climate report.
‘Guardians of the forest:’ Indigenous peoples come together to assert role in climate stability
SAN FRANCISCO – A half mile from the din of the Global Climate Action Summit and its 4,000 attendees in San Francisco, indigenous peoples from around the world came together in…
Putting the action in the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – The second day of California Governor Jerry Brown’s three-day Global Climate Action Summit on September 13 put a hard emphasis on action, whether in speeches at…
Climate mitigation has an ally in need of recognition and land rights: indigenous peoples in tropical countries
As global warming continues to outpace the tepid international response, a range of environmentalists are raising their collective voice to demand full rights and recognition for those long associated with…
In Peru, a new president is faced with old conservation challenges
MANU NATIONAL PARK, Peru — There was movement in the understory deep in the dense rainforest off Trail 6. We saw a shadow scurry left to right, followed by more…
UN forest accounting loophole allows CO2 underreporting by EU, UK, US
Scientists say burning woody biomass is not carbon neutral, yet the United Nations IPCC appears to be ignoring its own guidelines, so substantial emissions aren’t getting counted. But nature knows.
Pope’s message to Amazonia inspires hope, but will it bring action?
Visit by Pope Francis to Peru brought needed attention to Amazon deforestation and indigenous suffering due to illegal mining, but will the pontiff’s words be a game changer?
Consensus grows: climate-smart agriculture key to Paris Agreement goals
The Global Landscape Forum met in Bonn this week and advocated for altering farming practices planet-wide to boost food security, profitability and soil carbon sequestration.
Special series
Forest Trackers
- Indigenous community in Peru losing forests to timber, drug, land trafficking
- Bolivian protected areas hit hard by forest fires
- The protected area that isn’t: Bolivia’s Ñembi Guasu beset by fires, farms, roads
- New oil refinery ‘a huge disaster’ for Nigerian forest reserve
Oceans
- As shark numbers plummet, nations seek ban on devastatingly effective gear
- Illegal bottom trawling widespread inside Mediterranean marine protected areas
- Will shipping noise nudge Africa’s only penguin toward extinction?
- A new tool to peer into fishing networks: Q&A with Austin Brush of C4ADS
Amazon Conservation
- U.N. report calls for the ban of mercury trade and its use in gold mining
- Following the impacts of palm oil alliance: Violated regulations and penalty proceedings
- Brazil’s new environmental future under Lula: Q&A with Marina Silva
- Growing soy on cattle pasture can eliminate Amazon deforestation in Brazil
Land rights and extractives
- ‘We go in and take Indigenous lands back from cattle ranchers’: Q&A with activist Pablo Sibar
- Delayed Indigenous ‘Man of the Hole’ burial reveals dispute over his land
- As gangs battle over Peru’s drug trafficking routes, communities and forest are at risk
- In Brazil’s soy belt, Indigenous people face attacks over land rights
Endangered Environmentalists
- Worries and whispers in Vietnam’s NGO community after activist’s sentencing
- Scientists call for end to violence against Amazon communities, environmental defenders
- Indigenous advocates sense a legal landmark as a guardian’s killing heads to trial
- In Brazil, an Indigenous land defender’s unsolved killing is the deadly norm
Indonesia's Forest Guardians
- Pioneer agroforester Ermi, 73, rolls back the years in Indonesia’s Gorontalo
- After 20 years and thousands of trees planted, Kalimantan’s veteran forester persists
- Aziil Anwar, Indonesian coral-based mangrove grower, dies at 64
- A utopia of clean air and wet peat amid Sumatra’s forest fire ‘hell’
Conservation Effectiveness
- Mangrove forest loss is slowing toward a halt, new report shows
- ‘South Asia needs its own tiger plan’: Q&A with Nepal’s Maheshwar Dhakal
- Nepal was supposed to double its tiger population since 2010. It tripled it
- In prioritizing conservation, animal culture should be a factor, study says
Southeast Asian infrastructure
- Tunnel collapse at dam project in orangutan habitat claims yet another life
- Sulawesi nickel plant coats nearby homes in toxic dust
- Indonesia’s grand EV plans hinge on a ‘green’ industrial park that likely isn’t
- Java communities rally as clock ticks on cleanup of ‘world’s dirtiest river’
