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		<title>Conservation news</title>
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		<link>https://news.mongabay.com/list/carbon/</link>
		<description>Environmental science and conservation news</description>
		<lastBuildDate>Wed, 05 Aug 2026 12:35:52 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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	<title>News on carbon</title>
	<link>https://news.mongabay.com/list/carbon/</link>
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				<item>
					<title>As Australia expands seismic testing, experts warn of profound effects on sealife</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/07/as-australia-expands-seismic-testing-experts-warn-of-profound-effects-on-sealife/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/07/as-australia-expands-seismic-testing-experts-warn-of-profound-effects-on-sealife/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>22 Jul 2026 18:38:39 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Theoné van der Merwe]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rebecca Kessler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/07/22140035/b.-%C2%A9Wayne-and-Pam-Osborn-original-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=324311</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Australia and Oceania]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Alternative Energy, Biodiversity, carbon, Conservation, Ecosystems, Energy, Energy Transition, Environment, Marine, Marine Animals, Marine Conservation, Oceans, Research, Science, Technology, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[It was spring, 20 years ago now, but he remembers it clearly. On the deck of the Geco Resolution, wind tearing spray from the waves, Robert McCauley stood gazing out onto an ocean blackened by night. The ship had been firing seismic airguns all day, thunderous blasts punching through the water and into the seabed. [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[It was spring, 20 years ago now, but he remembers it clearly. On the deck of the Geco Resolution, wind tearing spray from the waves, Robert McCauley stood gazing out onto an ocean blackened by night. The ship had been firing seismic airguns all day, thunderous blasts punching through the water and into the seabed. Over time, the rhythmic boom reverberating through the hull had almost faded into the background. But then night fell, and the sound revealed itself. “Every time the airgun went off, the sea would light up,” McCauley told Mongabay. Each blast was triggering a burst of bioluminescence — dinoflagellates and other microscopic life igniting in unison. “A sheet of light would shoot out, like a wave traveling at the speed of sound. It went out for about a kilometer at least,” he said. As Australia’s leading expert in marine bioacoustics, McCauley, a research scientist at the Centre for Marine Science and Technology at Curtin University, was there to study how whales responded to the noise. But watching the bioluminescent glow pulse outward and fade, then pulse again, he found himself wondering less about whales and more about the tiny organisms that sustain them. “It made me think, what’s happening to all those little animals? How are they being stimulated? And what happens if they’re being stimulated every five or 10 seconds, repeatedly?” McCauley wondered. For decades, marine seismic surveys have echoed through the world’s oceans, largely in search of oil and gas. Research has shown the&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/07/as-australia-expands-seismic-testing-experts-warn-of-profound-effects-on-sealife/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-324311</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Can selective logging help the Congo Basin store more carbon?</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/07/can-selective-logging-help-the-congo-basin-store-more-carbon/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/07/can-selective-logging-help-the-congo-basin-store-more-carbon/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>02 Jul 2026 22:38:09 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Claudia Geib]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Morgan Erickson-Davis]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/07/02103623/elephants-in-the-congo-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=322365</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa, Central Africa, and Congo Basin]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[carbon, Carbon Sequestration, Climate Change, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Environment, Forest Carbon, Forestry, Forests, Governance, Logging, Rainforests, and Technology]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The rainforests of the Congo Basin are the planet’s largest forested carbon sink: as these 3.3 million square kilometers (1.3 million square miles) of trees in Central Africa breathe in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, they turn it into leaves and bark and branches, helping to mitigate the effects of climate change. Yet a recently [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The rainforests of the Congo Basin are the planet’s largest forested carbon sink: as these 3.3 million square kilometers (1.3 million square miles) of trees in Central Africa breathe in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, they turn it into leaves and bark and branches, helping to mitigate the effects of climate change. Yet a recently published study quantifying this carbon storage presents a surprising suggestion: that the most effective way to trap even more carbon in Congo Basin rainforests may be to cut some of its trees down. The study, published as an advance copy in April in ­­Nature Communications, found that selectively managed logging areas make up about 57% of the net carbon removals in the Congo Basin. The authors suggest this shows these forests could provide benefits to both the planet and local communities if sustainable logging is permitted. “The question is: is logging, or any other sustainable use of those forests, only bad for the environment?” said lead researcher Le Bienfaiteur Sagang, a tropical ecologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Can we use these forests, give them more value, provide jobs for the locals, and still provide a good contribution to the climate?” Sagang and his co-authors decided to put this questions to test. They designed a machine-learning program that combined land-cover data, captured between 1990 and 2020 across the Congo Basin’s six forested countries, with aboveground carbon levels estimated from other studies via lidar, which creates complex 3D landscape scans using lasers. This rainforest&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/07/can-selective-logging-help-the-congo-basin-store-more-carbon/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/07/can-selective-logging-help-the-congo-basin-store-more-carbon/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-322365</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Laser scanning forests may boost carbon estimates, but credibility questions linger</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/laser-scanning-forests-may-boost-carbon-estimates-but-credibility-questions-linger/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/laser-scanning-forests-may-boost-carbon-estimates-but-credibility-questions-linger/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>26 Jun 2026 14:55:49 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Shradha Triveni]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Morgan Erickson-Davis]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/06/26115840/Overlay1-1-1-768x512.png" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=321918</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Australia and Oceania]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[carbon, Carbon Credits, Carbon Emissions, Carbon Market, Climate Change, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Environment, Forest Carbon, Forests, Geology, Mapping, Research, Science, Soil Carbon, and Technology]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Forests are natural carbon sinks. But as reforestation of degraded land is becoming a global climate solution, a persistent question lingers: How do we know how much carbon a forest is actually storing? Researchers say ground-based laser scanning, or LiDAR, could improve the efficiency of measuring the outcomes of reforestation. And a recent paper published [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Forests are natural carbon sinks. But as reforestation of degraded land is becoming a global climate solution, a persistent question lingers: How do we know how much carbon a forest is actually storing? Researchers say ground-based laser scanning, or LiDAR, could improve the efficiency of measuring the outcomes of reforestation. And a recent paper published in Ecological Solutions and Evidence found that LiDAR scanning in Australia offered an improvement over other methods of carbon estimation. LiDAR instruments emit thousands of tiny laser pulses to create complex and intricate 3D maps of a forest’ structure, allowing researchers to more accurately estimate how much carbon is contained in its trees. Co-author of the paper Alexander W. Cheesman, a senior research fellow at James Cook University, North Queensland, Australia, calls the technology “transformative.” “Traditional field surveys heavily relied on manually measuring the height and diameter of a relatively small number of trees. But laser scanning captures the whole forest in 360 degrees, recording every stem, every branch and the shape of the canopy,” Cheesman told Mongabay during a virtual interview over Google Meet. In Australia, the Full Carbon Accounting Model (FullCAM) is the government’s main tool to track carbon stored in soil and roots (belowground carbon) and vegetation (aboveground carbon). It is used for national greenhouse gas reporting to the United Nations and to assess carbon credit within the country, through the government’s Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) Scheme. Rather than directly measuring carbon, FullCAM simulates the movement of carbon through ecosystems by&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/laser-scanning-forests-may-boost-carbon-estimates-but-credibility-questions-linger/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-321918</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>A ‘symphony’ of wildlife suggests carbon financing is working in Sierra Leone</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/05/a-symphony-of-wildlife-suggests-carbon-financing-is-working-in-sierra-leone/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/05/a-symphony-of-wildlife-suggests-carbon-financing-is-working-in-sierra-leone/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>27 May 2026 20:36:11 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Claudia Geib]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Morgan Erickson-Davis]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/05/27093342/White-necked_rockfowl_Picathartes_gymnocephalus_Nyamebe_Bepo_-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=320170</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa, Sierra Leone, and West Africa]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Bioacoustics, Biodiversity, Birds, carbon, Carbon Sequestration, Conservation, Environment, Forest Carbon, Forests, Rainforests, Research, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[One of the first things H.S. Sathya Chandra Sagar noticed in Gola Rainforest National Park was its profusion of sound. Standing amid the tallest trees he’d ever seen, Sagar could hear the calls of countless birds, the hoot of primates, and in the distance, drumming: chimpanzees, beating fists and sticks on tree roots to check [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[One of the first things H.S. Sathya Chandra Sagar noticed in Gola Rainforest National Park was its profusion of sound. Standing amid the tallest trees he’d ever seen, Sagar could hear the calls of countless birds, the hoot of primates, and in the distance, drumming: chimpanzees, beating fists and sticks on tree roots to check in with faraway friends. The din was a chorus of good news. Sagar, a conservation biologist, had traveled to the Sierra Leone national park as part of his Ph.D. research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the U.S. to try and figure out if economic measures aimed at conserving carbon in the Gola Rainforest also helped protect its animal biodiversity. In a study published in Conservation Science and Practice, Sagar and his co-authors find that its noisy soundscape suggests that it does. “We see that if it’s done well, carbon financing initiatives do have the capability to protect both biodiversity, beyond just habitat, and carbon markets,” Sagar says. Gola Rainforest National Park is one of the largest remaining portions of the Upper Guinean Tropical Rainforest, which once covered some 700,000 square kilometers (about 270,000 square miles) of West Africa. After a century of mining and logging, and a devastating civil war in the 1990s, Sierra Leone protected 700 km2 (270 mi2) of this forest that remained within its borders in 2010. In 2012, Sierra Leone established the Gola REDD+ project, a framework created through the United Nations Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+)&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/05/a-symphony-of-wildlife-suggests-carbon-financing-is-working-in-sierra-leone/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-320170</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Cerrado’s hidden carbon highlights gaps in Brazil’s conservation policy</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/05/cerrados-hidden-carbon-highlights-gaps-in-brazils-conservation-policy/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/05/cerrados-hidden-carbon-highlights-gaps-in-brazils-conservation-policy/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>07 May 2026 09:47:40 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Daniel Shailer]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Alexandra Popescu]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Amazon]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/05/07093915/Foto1_GuilhermeAlencar-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=318792</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Brazil, Cerrado, Latin America, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Biodiversity, carbon, Carbon Emissions, Carbon Sequestration, Climate Change, Conservation, Deforestation, Governance, Grasslands, Planetary Boundaries, Protected Areas, Reforestation, Research, and Soil Carbon]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Fieldwork in the wet grasslands of the Brazilian Cerrado often means long trudges through head-high reeds, following tapir trails and watching for tick nests or boggy pitfalls. All this is made more difficult when your equipment is not waterproof. So in February 2024, when a thunderstorm broke over Chapada dos Veadeiros, a national park in [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Fieldwork in the wet grasslands of the Brazilian Cerrado often means long trudges through head-high reeds, following tapir trails and watching for tick nests or boggy pitfalls. All this is made more difficult when your equipment is not waterproof. So in February 2024, when a thunderstorm broke over Chapada dos Veadeiros, a national park in the northeast of Goiás state, ecologist Larissa Verona and her team sprinted for their truck. “The rain passed in about 10 minutes, but when we returned, we saw a fire had started right in the middle of the road,” presumably from a lightning strike, she tells Mongabay in a video call. “Oh my god, we need to go,” she recalls thinking. “We don’t want to be here when the fire chief arrives.” Wildfires have become increasingly more common in the Cerrado, Brazil’s second-biggest biome (after the Amazon), which sprawls across 2 million square kilometers (about 770,000 square miles) and hosts a mix of savannas, grasslands and forested corridors. In the past half-century, some 55% of the Cerrado’s native vegetation has been cleared — largely to support the expansion of industrial monocultures and often with the justification that this biome holds less environmental value than the Amazon Rainforest to the west or the Atlantic Forest to the southeast. This has resulted in degraded soils and dwindling groundwater. But draining and clearing vegetation from the Cerrado’s peaty, wet grasslands, known locally as veredas and campos úmidos, could also threaten a critical carbon stockpile, according to recent research.&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/05/cerrados-hidden-carbon-highlights-gaps-in-brazils-conservation-policy/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-318792</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Novel research finds unexpected climate resilience in up to 36% of Amazon forest</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/novel-research-finds-unexpected-climate-resilience-in-up-to-36-of-amazon-forest/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/novel-research-finds-unexpected-climate-resilience-in-up-to-36-of-amazon-forest/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>10 Apr 2026 03:23:48 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Justin Catanoso]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/04/09222759/1-Palms-along-river-in-Manu-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=317301</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Planetary Boundaries]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Brazil, Latin America, Peru, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Biodiversity, carbon, Climate, Climate Change, Conservation, Deforestation, Drought, Ecosystems, Environment, Fires, Forest Fragmentation, Forests, Precipitation, Rainforest Destruction, Rainforests, Research, Temperatures, Threats To Rainforests, Tipping points, Trees, Water, and Wetlands]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Reports on the health and vitality of the Amazon — often dubbed as Earth’s lungs — have been grim for years. Record drought has stressed large swaths of the world’s largest rainforest. Major Amazon River tributaries, including the Rio Negro and Madeira River, hit their lowest levels in more than a century of measurement in [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Reports on the health and vitality of the Amazon — often dubbed as Earth’s lungs — have been grim for years. Record drought has stressed large swaths of the world’s largest rainforest. Major Amazon River tributaries, including the Rio Negro and Madeira River, hit their lowest levels in more than a century of measurement in 2024. And experts warn that deforestation and wildfires are tipping parts of the biome from carbon sink to source. Yet in Manaus, a city at the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, forest ecologist Flávia Costa is upbeat as she highlights what appears to be a previously underappreciated underlying Amazon reality: Her research finds that the region’s vast wetlands, or shallow water table areas, have proven to be stubbornly drought resistant through years of intensifying climate change. In fact, her long-term research reveals that palm species and other wetland trees are not just surviving drought seasons, they’re maintaining their health and even adding biomass. That could mean these areas could serve as valuable refugia, as other parts of Amazonia degrade. Significantly, these shallow water table areas compose 36% of Amazonia and have been a crucial part of the evolving rainforest ecosystem for millions of years. Sturdy, resilient palms account for one in five tree species across the Amazon, which includes parts of nine nations, and of which Brazil occupies 60%. These forested wetlands and Costa’s research represent one bright spot in the Amazon’s otherwise gloomy projected trajectory for the 21st century — forecasts built on decades&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/novel-research-finds-unexpected-climate-resilience-in-up-to-36-of-amazon-forest/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-317301</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>‘Ancient’ carbon venting from lakes in the Congo Basin peatlands: Study</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/ancient-carbon-venting-from-lakes-in-the-congo-basin-peatlands-study/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/ancient-carbon-venting-from-lakes-in-the-congo-basin-peatlands-study/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>31 Mar 2026 13:35:06 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[John Cannon]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Malavikavyawahare]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/03/30170255/9_dinghy-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=316575</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa, Central Africa, Congo Basin, and Democratic Republic Of Congo]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[carbon, Carbon Dioxide, Climate, Conservation, Forest Carbon, Forests, Lakes, Peatlands, Research, and Soil Carbon]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Across the central Congo Basin lies a bastion of carbon that scientists are just beginning to understand. First mapped only about a decade ago, the Cuvette Centrale peatlands are the size of England and hold some 30 billion metric tons of carbon. Over thousands of years, the swampy conditions in this part of Central Africa [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Across the central Congo Basin lies a bastion of carbon that scientists are just beginning to understand. First mapped only about a decade ago, the Cuvette Centrale peatlands are the size of England and hold some 30 billion metric tons of carbon. Over thousands of years, the swampy conditions in this part of Central Africa have slowed the decay of plant matter falling from the forest above. The process leads to the development of peat, and the peatlands in the Congo Basin are the largest known repository in the tropics. Across the millennia, enormous amounts of carbon have built up and been stashed away inside the peat. Recent research now suggests that some of that very old carbon may be returning to the atmosphere through lakes that form amid peatlands — similar to the way smoke escapes a fireplace through a chimney, according to the authors. It’s a finding that opens new questions about how we account for the cycling of carbon through these ecosystems and the resulting influence on climate change. Water draining forested landscapes meets water draining savanna landscapes at this confluence between the Fimi and Kasaï rivers in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The reddish color of the Kasaï River originates from the iron oxides associated with clays of suspended sediments transported by the river, which are more predominant in savanna compared to forest. The much darker color of the Fimi River, which drains Lake Mai Ndombe, stems from organic materials that leach from leaves and soils&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/ancient-carbon-venting-from-lakes-in-the-congo-basin-peatlands-study/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/ancient-carbon-venting-from-lakes-in-the-congo-basin-peatlands-study/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-316575</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>A South African reserve shows how carbon can catalyze rewilding conservation</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/a-south-african-reserve-shows-how-carbon-can-catalyze-rewilding-conservation/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/a-south-african-reserve-shows-how-carbon-can-catalyze-rewilding-conservation/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>27 Mar 2026 17:06:59 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[John Cannon]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Terna Gyuse]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/03/27145726/gemsbok-Oryx-gazella-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=316455</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa, South Africa, and Southern Africa]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, carbon, Carbon Credits, Carbon Sequestration, Climate Change, Conservation, Environment, Forest Carbon, Payments For Ecosystem Services, Private Reserves, Rewilding, Savannas, Soil Carbon, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[TSWALU KALAHARI RESERVE, South Africa — From high on a promontory in the Korannaberg Mountains, a mountain zebra (Equus zebra hartmannae) peers down to the west across the green-dappled plain below, the sun rising behind. In the distance, wild dogs (Lycaon pictus) hunt in the veld, verdant after early rains. And nearby, white rhinos (Ceratotherium [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[TSWALU KALAHARI RESERVE, South Africa — From high on a promontory in the Korannaberg Mountains, a mountain zebra (Equus zebra hartmannae) peers down to the west across the green-dappled plain below, the sun rising behind. In the distance, wild dogs (Lycaon pictus) hunt in the veld, verdant after early rains. And nearby, white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum) graze among thorny thickets. These species, and dozens more, persist here thanks to a decades-long effort to rewild a sliver of Southern Africa’s great desert and dry savanna. The Tswalu Kalahari Reserve has become a sanctuary for rare and threatened animals, drawing in a steady stream of well-heeled tourists from around the globe. More recently, the reserve’s managers have embarked on a quest to increase the carbon stored in its soils — a quest that relies heavily on the reserve’s animals. At first glance, places like Tswalu might not seem suited for stockpiling carbon. The Tswana people call this part of the world Kgalagadi — “the waterless place.” Fickle precipitation in the Kalahari averages a scant 10-50 centimeters (4-20 inches) annually, and much less in some years. That means the comparative lushness here in late 2025 could evaporate if the rains don’t carry on throughout the austral summer of the Southern Hemisphere. To date, most nature-based carbon storage efforts have focused on fast-growing tropical forests, expanding native or plantation tree cover that draws carbon out of the atmosphere. Soil carbon, by contrast, is slower to accumulate, and it’s more laborious and expensive to monitor.&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/a-south-african-reserve-shows-how-carbon-can-catalyze-rewilding-conservation/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/a-south-african-reserve-shows-how-carbon-can-catalyze-rewilding-conservation/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-316455</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Shipping’s biofuel gamble could deepen Africa’s land squeeze and food insecurity (commentary)</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/shippings-biofuel-gamble-could-deepen-africas-land-squeeze-and-food-insecurity-commentary/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/shippings-biofuel-gamble-could-deepen-africas-land-squeeze-and-food-insecurity-commentary/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>20 Mar 2026 15:10:43 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Million BelaySusan Chomba]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Erik Hoffner]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/08/07145348/container-ship-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=316050</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa and Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[agribusiness, Agriculture, Biofuels, Business, carbon, Climate, Climate Change, Commentary, Farming, Food, food security, International Trade, Land Rights, Mitigation, Poverty, Poverty Alleviation, Shipping, Social Justice, and Trade]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Africa&#8217;s future prosperity depends on how fast we can reduce emissions, especially from large polluting sectors like shipping. But using crops as fuel to cut emissions risks causing more harm than good. As countries gather at the UN&#8217;s International Maritime Organization (IMO) meeting in April to lay down the rules for future clean energy to [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Africa&#8217;s future prosperity depends on how fast we can reduce emissions, especially from large polluting sectors like shipping. But using crops as fuel to cut emissions risks causing more harm than good. As countries gather at the UN&#8217;s International Maritime Organization (IMO) meeting in April to lay down the rules for future clean energy to power shipping, African governments must ensure that crop-based biofuels are not part of the solution. If that does happen, Africa might once again find itself paying the price for a transition from which it may not benefit. Shipping, as with other heavily polluting sectors, must decarbonize. But not all climate solutions are equal. The expansion of biofuels, often portrayed as ‘green’ in international shipping dialogues, could intensify pressures on land and food systems that are already stretched to the limit. As our work has shown, competition for land has reached a breaking point across Africa. Since 2000, hundreds of large-scale land deals have been recorded for industrial farming, carbon credits, mining, and biofuels. What is often presented as ‘unused’ or ‘marginal’ land is, in reality, the basis of livelihoods for small-scale farmers and Indigenous communities who are being displaced or stripped of control over their territories, which drives land inequality, rural poverty, and food insecurity. Biofuels for shipping risks accelerating this trajectory. Farmers at Yangambi, Democratic Republic of Congo. Image by Axel Fassio/CIFOR via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). Shipping consumes roughly 300 million tons of fuel each year, and is responsible for 3% of global&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/shippings-biofuel-gamble-could-deepen-africas-land-squeeze-and-food-insecurity-commentary/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/shippings-biofuel-gamble-could-deepen-africas-land-squeeze-and-food-insecurity-commentary/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-316050</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Forest advocates accuse EU energy firm of Dutch biomass certification fraud</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/forest-advocates-accuse-eu-energy-firm-of-dutch-biomass-certification-fraud/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/forest-advocates-accuse-eu-energy-firm-of-dutch-biomass-certification-fraud/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>13 Mar 2026 16:21:42 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Justin Catanoso]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2023/05/25141443/wood-pellets-burning-768x512.jpeg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=315699</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Planetary Boundaries]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, European Union, Global, Malaysia, and Netherlands]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Bioenergy, carbon, Carbon Emissions, Carbon Sequestration, Climate Change, Controversial, Deforestation, Energy, Environment, Environmental Law, Forests, Governance, Industry, Politics, Renewable Energy, Sustainability, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[For years, a battle has raged between EU nations that claim their forest biomass certification policies safeguard against deforestation, promote sustainability and enable carbon-emissions reductions, even as forest advocates have argued that those policies fail to combat climate change, are badly flawed or outright fraudulent. EU policymakers remain entrenched today, defending their certification schemes as [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[For years, a battle has raged between EU nations that claim their forest biomass certification policies safeguard against deforestation, promote sustainability and enable carbon-emissions reductions, even as forest advocates have argued that those policies fail to combat climate change, are badly flawed or outright fraudulent. EU policymakers remain entrenched today, defending their certification schemes as a means of complying with laws to stop burning coal and for achieving national net-zero goals, despite evidence that burning wood pellets to make energy is dirtier than coal. But now forest advocates are turning up the pressure in the Netherlands in an unprecedented way. In a possible first-of-its-kind action, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service is considering a criminal investigation against RWE, one of the Netherlands’ largest energy providers. RWE faces allegations made by two forest advocacy groups that the company, which has collected billions of euros in Dutch biomass subsidies, misrepresented itself by claiming that hundreds of thousands of tons of wood pellets imported from Malaysia came entirely from sawmill waste. The two advocacy groups, Comite Schone Lucht and Biofuelwatch, say their research establishes that those pellets come mostly from whole trees, contributing to Malaysian deforestation. The Public Prosecution Service, the sole authority responsible for investigating and prosecuting Dutch criminal offenses, is expected to decide how to proceed by the end of March. Research shows that “biomass burning power plants emit 150% the CO2 of coal, and 300-400% the CO2 of natural gas, per unit energy produced.” Image by GIZ Bush Control and Biomass&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/forest-advocates-accuse-eu-energy-firm-of-dutch-biomass-certification-fraud/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/forest-advocates-accuse-eu-energy-firm-of-dutch-biomass-certification-fraud/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-315699</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Petrostates stymie effort to rein in Arctic shipping carbon emissions</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/petrostates-stymie-effort-to-rein-in-arctic-shipping-carbon-emissions/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/petrostates-stymie-effort-to-rein-in-arctic-shipping-carbon-emissions/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>23 Feb 2026 15:41:06 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Sean Mowbray]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/02/22030600/b.-AdobeStock_254252875-768x512.jpeg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=314611</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Planetary Boundaries]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Arctic and Arctic Ocean]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Air Pollution, Black Carbon, carbon, Carbon Emissions, Climate, Climate Change, Conservation, Environment, Fossil Fuels, Global Warming, Marine, Oceans, Pollution, Sea Ice, Shipping, Transportation, and Water]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[International shipping is on the rise in the Arctic region now that climate change regularly opens up transpolar sea routes in summer. That surge in traffic is leading to higher emissions of black carbon — colloquially known as soot, considered a “super pollutant.” Those emissions are escalating climate change and quickening sea ice and snow [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[International shipping is on the rise in the Arctic region now that climate change regularly opens up transpolar sea routes in summer. That surge in traffic is leading to higher emissions of black carbon — colloquially known as soot, considered a “super pollutant.” Those emissions are escalating climate change and quickening sea ice and snow loss across the Arctic, which is already Earth’s most rapidly warming region. At a recent meeting of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), member states (led by Denmark, and including France, Germany and the Solomon Islands), proposed new regulations to require ships sailing in the Arctic to use fuels that emit low amounts of black carbon. But in February, global petrostates, including Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States, opposed this effort, meant to slow Arctic warming. This delay follows a 2025 postponement of an IMO plan that had been widely expected to succeed, which would have accelerated the decarbonization of global shipping. That plan was blocked by the U.S. along with other oil-producing nations. The just-nixed Arctic proposal would have required ships sailing in the Far North to stop burning residual fuels — responsible for high black carbon emissions — and instead move to less polluting fuels. As spring approaches in the Arctic, an orange horizon backlights a ship&#8217;s stack emissions. The Research Vessel Polarstern embarked on a yearlong expedition to drift in Arctic sea ice called the Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC). Image by Julienne Stroeve/NSIDC via Flickr (CC&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/petrostates-stymie-effort-to-rein-in-arctic-shipping-carbon-emissions/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/petrostates-stymie-effort-to-rein-in-arctic-shipping-carbon-emissions/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-314611</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>New study assesses geoengineering marine ecosystem risks, knowledge gaps</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/new-study-assesses-geoengineering-marine-ecosystem-risks-knowledge-gaps/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/new-study-assesses-geoengineering-marine-ecosystem-risks-knowledge-gaps/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>19 Feb 2026 15:22:02 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Ruth Kamnitzer]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/02/19044926/7-Image-5-1536x642-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=314457</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Planetary Boundaries]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[algae, carbon, Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Emissions, Carbon Sequestration, Climate, Climate Change, Conservation, Ecosystems, Environment, Fish, Fisheries, food security, Geoengineering, Marine, Marine Conservation, Nutrient Pollution, Oceans, Regulations, Research, Technology, and Water Pollution]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Science has made it clear: The prospect of heat waves without end, increasingly destructive floods, relentless drought, rapidly rising sea levels, and the risk of “point of no return” tipping points require humanity to swiftly stop burning fossil fuels to avoid catastrophe. But with political will and action lagging, some researchers say now is the [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Science has made it clear: The prospect of heat waves without end, increasingly destructive floods, relentless drought, rapidly rising sea levels, and the risk of “point of no return” tipping points require humanity to swiftly stop burning fossil fuels to avoid catastrophe. But with political will and action lagging, some researchers say now is the time to evaluate the safety and feasibility of geoengineering. These are a suite of proposed technologies that could potentially delay the worst warming or sequester carbon, thus buying civilization time as it struggles to slash fossil fuel emissions. One place scientists are looking for geoengineering solutions is the world’s oceans, which store vast amounts of carbon, including about a quarter of anthropogenic emissions. Some researchers are especially interested in a set of geoengineering methods collectively dubbed marine carbon dioxide storage (mCDR). Still others are looking at ways to artificially cool the Earth by reflecting sunlight into space, especially above oceans. One major concern with all these untried technologies is that, if widely implemented, they could profoundly impact marine ecosystems, says Kelsey Roberts, a research associate at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in the U.S. In a recent Reviews of Geophysics paper, Roberts and co-authors examined eight geoengineering interventions most likely to directly impact marine ecosystems, identifying knowledge gaps and risks. “If we implement some of these insane science fiction-sounding technologies, what would happen to the fish? What would happen to the megafauna … and particularly, [what’s] the importance for global food security?” Roberts asks. Illustration&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/new-study-assesses-geoengineering-marine-ecosystem-risks-knowledge-gaps/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/new-study-assesses-geoengineering-marine-ecosystem-risks-knowledge-gaps/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-314457</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>UN recognition is latest boost to restoring spekboom across South Africa’s semidesert Karoo</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/un-recognition-is-latest-boost-to-restoring-spekboom-across-south-africas-semidesert-karoo/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/un-recognition-is-latest-boost-to-restoring-spekboom-across-south-africas-semidesert-karoo/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>17 Feb 2026 12:40:57 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Joe Walsh]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Terna Gyuse]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/02/17121000/20250610_UNEP-Decade-on-Ecosystem-Restoration_South-African-Thicket_Todd-Brown_31-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=314351</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa, South Africa, and Southern Africa]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Adaptation To Climate Change, Agriculture, Biodiversity, carbon, Carbon Credits, Conservation, Desertification, Deserts, Drought, Ecosystems, Environment, Landscape Restoration, Plants, Reforestation, Restoration, and Soil Carbon]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[“Spekboom is everywhere, it’s all anyone talks about … what used to be an Angora goat farming town is now a spekboom town,” says field ecologist Rae Attridge. In the past two years, Nat Carbon, the carbon project developer Attridge works for, has planted 10,000 hectares (nearly 25,000 acres) of spekboom in the Klein Karoo, [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[“Spekboom is everywhere, it’s all anyone talks about … what used to be an Angora goat farming town is now a spekboom town,” says field ecologist Rae Attridge. In the past two years, Nat Carbon, the carbon project developer Attridge works for, has planted 10,000 hectares (nearly 25,000 acres) of spekboom in the Klein Karoo, a semidesert region of South Africa. Their work is the first phase of an effort to restore 100,000 hectares (250,000 acres) of degraded land on five farms near Jansenville in Eastern Cape province. The company is one of more than 60 entities carrying out spekboom thicket restoration projects across 800,000 hectares (2 million acres), all loosely tied up under what the United Nations calls the Thicket Restoration Movement. The Subtropical Thicket Restoration Programme was started in 2004 by the South African government with $8 million of funding intended to catalyze large-scale investment into thicket restoration efforts in the region. These were the first green shoots of a growing collection of projects now recognized by the U.N. In 2009, researchers had planted spekboom (Porticularia afra) on 331 quarter-hectare plots scattered across over roughly 7.5 million hectares (18.5 million acres) of the biome to evaluate the potential for restoration. These earlier experiments found that thicker stems would increase survival rates, but watering at planting time had a negligible impact. It also found that animals, both wild and domestic, easily found their way to these small poorly protected plots. An Angora goat in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province.&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/un-recognition-is-latest-boost-to-restoring-spekboom-across-south-africas-semidesert-karoo/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/un-recognition-is-latest-boost-to-restoring-spekboom-across-south-africas-semidesert-karoo/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-314351</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Thousands of peat fires flare across Indonesia despite rainy season</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/thousands-of-peat-fires-flare-across-indonesia-despite-rainy-season/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/thousands-of-peat-fires-flare-across-indonesia-despite-rainy-season/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>13 Feb 2026 06:40:47 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Hans Nicholas Jong]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Hans Nicholas Jong]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2023/12/28140328/firefighter-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=314232</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Aceh, Asia, Indonesia, Kalimantan, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Kalimantan]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Air Pollution, carbon, Carbon Emissions, Climate, Climate Change, Corporate Environmental Transgressors, Corporations, Ecosystems, Environment, Fires, Forestry, Forests, Health, Peatlands, Planetary Health, Plantations, Pollution, Public Health, Rainforests, Rehabilitation, Restoration, Threats To Rainforests, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[JAKARTA — Satellite imagery recorded more than 5,000 fire hotspots on peatlands across Indonesia in January, despite the fact that much of the country remains firmly in the grip of the rainy season. Independent watchdog Pantau Gambut identified 5,490 hotspots within peatlands, perennially waterlogged ecosystems that store massive amounts of carbon dioxide. Official monitoring also [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[JAKARTA — Satellite imagery recorded more than 5,000 fire hotspots on peatlands across Indonesia in January, despite the fact that much of the country remains firmly in the grip of the rainy season. Independent watchdog Pantau Gambut identified 5,490 hotspots within peatlands, perennially waterlogged ecosystems that store massive amounts of carbon dioxide. Official monitoring also recorded an increase in fire hotspots, though using a different reporting method. Based on NASA Terra/Aqua satellite data, the Ministry of Forestry reported 110 hotspots nationwide in January 2026, up from 29 in January 2025 and 18 in December 2025. The two figures aren’t directly comparable, as they rely on different spatial filters and detection criteria. Pantau Gambut said the rise it recorded is concerning because it’s occurring during the wet season, which has been so intense this time around that it led to massive flooding in Sumatra in late 2025. The spike suggests fire risk in peat landscapes is no longer confined to the traditional dry season, but increasingly driven by degraded hydrology and land-use pressures, said Pantau Gambut campaigner Putra Saptian. Peat soil, which can be several meters deep, is made up of dead vegetation that, thanks to the waterlogged conditions, is only partially decomposed. In peat-rich areas across Sumatra and Borneo, logging and plantation companies have typically dug canals to drain the peat soil in preparation for cultivation, leaving behind vast swaths of highly flammable organic matter. Pantau Gambut recorded 1,824 hotspots inside the concessions of such companies in January, or a&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/thousands-of-peat-fires-flare-across-indonesia-despite-rainy-season/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/thousands-of-peat-fires-flare-across-indonesia-despite-rainy-season/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-314232</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Mapping underground fungal networks: Interview with SPUN’s Toby Kiers</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/mapping-underground-fungal-networks-interview-with-spuns-toby-kiers/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/mapping-underground-fungal-networks-interview-with-spuns-toby-kiers/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>11 Feb 2026 10:16:46 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Abhishyant Kidangoor]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Sarahengel]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/02/10233608/Banner-Image-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=314068</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Central America, East Asia, Global, Latin America, Mongolia, and Panama]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Biodiversity, Biodiversity Hotspots, carbon, Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Sequestration, Climate, Conservation, Ecosystems, Environment, Fungi, Interviews, Plants, Research, Soil Carbon, Symbiotic Relationships, Technology, and Water]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[All around her, scientists had their eyes set on studying flora and fauna that lived aboveground. But Toby Kiers’s interest always lay in the oft-overlooked biodiversity that existed beneath it. It was the mysterious nature of the vast mycorrhizal fungal networks that so fascinated Kiers. “It’s so alive, but humble and quiet,” Kiers, an evolutionary [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[All around her, scientists had their eyes set on studying flora and fauna that lived aboveground. But Toby Kiers’s interest always lay in the oft-overlooked biodiversity that existed beneath it. It was the mysterious nature of the vast mycorrhizal fungal networks that so fascinated Kiers. “It’s so alive, but humble and quiet,” Kiers, an evolutionary biologist and co-founder of the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN), an organization that’s working to map mycorrhizal fungi around the world, told Mongabay in a video interview. Mycorrhizal fungi, found in almost every soil system on the planet, have a crucial symbiotic relationship with plants. They live on plant roots and extract nitrogen, phosphorus and water from the soil for the plants. The plants, in return, feed carbon dioxide absorbed during photosynthesis to the fungi, which need it for their growth. As a result, a massive amount of CO2 — more than 13 billion metric tons, according to a 2023 study — moves from plants to these fungal networks, making them a crucial tool in carbon sequestration. But there’s more to it than meets the eye. The movement of nutrients and carbon between plants and fungal networks is a calculated barter system in which the fungal networks allocate nutrients for plants based on how much they get in return. “We still don’t understand how they are doing it,” Kiers said. “It’s almost like watching the best poker players in the world play a game of poker.” To understand more about these complicated&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/mapping-underground-fungal-networks-interview-with-spuns-toby-kiers/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/mapping-underground-fungal-networks-interview-with-spuns-toby-kiers/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-314068</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>‘Blew us away’: Researchers find nitrogen boost spurs faster tropical forest growth</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/blew-us-away-researchers-find-nitrogen-boost-spurs-faster-tropical-forest-growth/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/blew-us-away-researchers-find-nitrogen-boost-spurs-faster-tropical-forest-growth/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>30 Jan 2026 17:10:05 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Ruth Kamnitzer]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Jeremy Hance]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/01/30081255/c-A-root-nodule-on-a-legume-tree-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=313530</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Central America, Global, Latin America, and Tropics]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Biodiversity, carbon, Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Sequestration, Conservation, Ecosystems, Environment, Forest Carbon, Forests, Nitrogen Cycle, Reforestation, Research, Restoration, Soil Carbon, Tropical Conservation Science, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Regenerating tropical forests pull carbon dioxide from the air, but a lack of nitrogen in the soil could slow this process, a new Nature Communications study has found. Restoring tropical forests is widely seen as one of the most important ways to mitigate climate change, but scientists still don’t fully understand how nutrient availability may [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Regenerating tropical forests pull carbon dioxide from the air, but a lack of nitrogen in the soil could slow this process, a new Nature Communications study has found. Restoring tropical forests is widely seen as one of the most important ways to mitigate climate change, but scientists still don’t fully understand how nutrient availability may constrain tree growth. That means we can’t really predict how quickly regenerating forests will accumulate carbon. Both nitrogen and phosphorus are critical for plant growth, but when forested land is cleared, nitrogen in disturbed soils can evaporate or wash away. Phosphorus is also thought to be limited in many tropical soils. Now, a large-scale experiment in Panama finds that a lack of nitrogen in soil limits the early stages of tropical forest regrowth. When researchers added nitrogen to recently cleared land, the trees grew nearly twice as fast. Recovering forest in Panama. Image by Wenguang Tang. The finding “totally blew us away” says study author Sarah Batterman, an ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and associate professor at the University of Leeds. “We didn&#8217;t realize that nitrogen could be that important in tropical forests, and the fact that the forest grew back twice as fast in the first decade was just kind of amazing.” The study took place within the Panama Canal Watershed in lowland tropical forest. To understand the impact of nutrient availability on tree growth, the researchers applied nitrogen and phosphorus, alone or in combination, to forest plots at different stages&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/blew-us-away-researchers-find-nitrogen-boost-spurs-faster-tropical-forest-growth/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/blew-us-away-researchers-find-nitrogen-boost-spurs-faster-tropical-forest-growth/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-313530</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Cameroon cookstove project looks to slow forest loss</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/cameroon-cookstove-project-looks-to-slow-forest-loss/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/cameroon-cookstove-project-looks-to-slow-forest-loss/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>30 Jan 2026 09:13:41 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Leocadia Bongben]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Ashoka]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/01/30073019/Pabamis-daughter-in-the-Kitchen-2-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=313523</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa, Cameroon, and West Africa]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Avoided Deforestation, Black Carbon, carbon, Carbon Emissions, Conservation, Deforestation, Environment, Food, Forest Loss, Fuelwood, Research, and Timber]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[GAROUA, Cameroon — One morning during the July monsoon in Bang, a village of 3,000 in North Cameroon, people woke up to heavy rains. The Mayo Tefi, a small river which runs through the village, swelled as the water level rose. Astha Pabami, a mother of 11 in her 50s, could not go out to [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[GAROUA, Cameroon — One morning during the July monsoon in Bang, a village of 3,000 in North Cameroon, people woke up to heavy rains. The Mayo Tefi, a small river which runs through the village, swelled as the water level rose. Astha Pabami, a mother of 11 in her 50s, could not go out to fetch firewood, as crossing the river would have meant being swept away. Instead, she used some of the wood stacked behind her hut, lighting a fire to prepare a meal on her new cookstove. The cookstove looks like a traditional oven, with one opening for firewood and another for the pot. But it’s a big improvement over what she used to use: an open three-stone fireside. Pabami is one of about 250 women in Bang who were using these stoves when Mongabay visited the town. They were distributed as part of a project run by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), with support from the European Union. The stoves are meant to burn cleaner and use less wood — saving forests and protecting people’s health in the process. “The open fireside consumes more firewood and dirties our pots, and we inhale smoke. We could use about 8-10 pieces of wood to cook a meal; presently, a maximum of four pieces of wood is enough,” Pabami tells Mongabay. Since the improved stoves need less firewood, she doesn’t have to collect as much during the dry season, and what she puts into storage behind her hut&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/cameroon-cookstove-project-looks-to-slow-forest-loss/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/cameroon-cookstove-project-looks-to-slow-forest-loss/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-313523</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>World Bank carbon program risks further infringing upon rights of Indonesian Indigenous community (commentary)</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/world-bank-carbon-program-risks-further-infringing-upon-rights-of-indonesian-indigenous-community-commentary/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/world-bank-carbon-program-risks-further-infringing-upon-rights-of-indonesian-indigenous-community-commentary/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>28 Jan 2026 00:22:04 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Anna Christi SuwardiFuat Edi KurniawanSadar Ginting]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Erik Hoffner]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/01/27155741/c6e3108f-c040-4581-a22b-14f4f1d66a0a-768x512.jpeg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=313404</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Borneo, Indonesia, and Southeast Asia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Business, carbon, Carbon Credits, Carbon Market, Carbon Offsets, Climate Change, climate finance, Commentary, Culture, Finance, Forests, Governance, Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights, Rainforests, Social Justice, and Traditional Knowledge]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[In the upper reaches of the Mahakam River, inside one of the last intact rainforest corridors of Borneo, the Dayak Bahau community of Long Isun has been fighting a long, layered battle for justice. Their history on the land predates the Indonesian state, yet on official maps their existence is reduced to an administrative code [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[In the upper reaches of the Mahakam River, inside one of the last intact rainforest corridors of Borneo, the Dayak Bahau community of Long Isun has been fighting a long, layered battle for justice. Their history on the land predates the Indonesian state, yet on official maps their existence is reduced to an administrative code printed on a sheet of paper, with no record of the rivers they follow like family, the sacred groves where their elders are buried, the hills that hold ancestral stories. In the documents that decide the fate of their territory, their cosmology disappears beneath lines drawn to serve other interests. Erasure becomes technical: their land is not seen, so their rights are not acknowledged. The consequence is real. When companies arrive with permits approved in distant government offices, those papers speak louder than generations of lived governance. And now, international climate finance mechanisms have entered this same forest, treating the landscape as a source of carbon emission reductions while the people who protected it have yet to see their rights recognized. In November 2025, representatives from Long Isun filed a formal grievance against the World Bank’s Emission Reduction (ER) Program in East Kalimantan province, arguing that the project infringed upon their rights, ignored unresolved territorial conflicts, and failed to uphold a meaningful process of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC). The complaint is not a sudden reaction, but is the culmination of more than a decade of resistance, from daily patrols and adat (customary laws&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/world-bank-carbon-program-risks-further-infringing-upon-rights-of-indonesian-indigenous-community-commentary/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/world-bank-carbon-program-risks-further-infringing-upon-rights-of-indonesian-indigenous-community-commentary/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-313404</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>In Brazil, planting forests for carbon credits could help ecosystem restoration</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/in-brazil-planting-forests-for-carbon-credits-could-help-ecosystem-restoration/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/in-brazil-planting-forests-for-carbon-credits-could-help-ecosystem-restoration/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>23 Jan 2026 11:12:52 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Constance Malleret]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Alexandra Popescu]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[agroecology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Amazon]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/01/23110048/AMAZON-MARANHAO-Entre-Rios-Project-4-768x512.png" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=313254</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Brazil, Latin America, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agroecology, Agroforestry, Business, carbon, Carbon Credits, Carbon Emissions, Carbon Market, Carbon Offsets, Carbon Sequestration, climate finance, Community Forests, Community-based Conservation, Conservation, Forest Regeneration, Forestry, Green, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Rainforest Destruction, and Sustainable Forest Management]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[In Eunápolis, in the south of the Brazilian state of Bahia, the clearing of Atlantic Forest for agriculture started centuries ago, leaving a patchwork of cattle pastures, monocultures and degraded land. Between 11% and 25% of Brazil’s native vegetation is in a process of degradation related to deforestation, while 22% of its pasture is severely [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[In Eunápolis, in the south of the Brazilian state of Bahia, the clearing of Atlantic Forest for agriculture started centuries ago, leaving a patchwork of cattle pastures, monocultures and degraded land. Between 11% and 25% of Brazil’s native vegetation is in a process of degradation related to deforestation, while 22% of its pasture is severely degraded. To reverse this, efforts are underway across the country to recover ecosystems and their services, a vital help in climate change mitigation. Since 2022, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) away from the city of Eunápolis, restoration efforts have been ongoing on the Ouro Verde farm to bring back Atlantic Forest species on hundreds of hectares of unproductive cattle pasture. Currently, 344 hectares (850 acres) of forest have been restored. “In two years, you’ve gone from degraded pasture, extremely damaged, sandy soil, to a forest with more than 60 species, trees more than 4 meters [13 feet] high. It looks like a forest,” said Miguel Moraes, director of projects at re.green, the Brazilian company behind the Ouro Verde project. Founded in 2021, re.green aims to restore 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of tropical forests across the Amazon and Atlantic Forest, while selling carbon credits and generating benefits beyond carbon capture. “We’d like to be a leader showing that there are different models of monetizing forests and natural ecosystems that don’t just generate benefits for the climate, but also for people and biodiversity,” Moraes told Mongabay in a video interview. Restored forest at re.green&#8217;s Ouro&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/in-brazil-planting-forests-for-carbon-credits-could-help-ecosystem-restoration/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/in-brazil-planting-forests-for-carbon-credits-could-help-ecosystem-restoration/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-313254</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Earth Rover Program seeks to track the world’s soil health</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/earth-rover-program-seeks-to-track-the-worlds-soil-health/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/earth-rover-program-seeks-to-track-the-worlds-soil-health/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>21 Jan 2026 18:02:09 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[John Cannon]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Terna Gyuse]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/01/21162907/Women_smallholder_farmers_in_Kenya-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=313172</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[carbon, Carbon Emissions, Climate Change, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Degraded Lands, Earth Science, Environment, Food, Forest Carbon, Research, Science, Soil Carbon, Technology, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[With a synchronized tap from run-of-the-mill hammers on metal plates resting on the ground, researchers kneeling in nine fields across four continents believe they’ve hit upon more than just the earth beneath their feet. “Waiting for it,” someone said. And then, “Waveforms!” “Excellent, waveforms!” another said, as the tiles on screen reveal EKG-like sets of [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[With a synchronized tap from run-of-the-mill hammers on metal plates resting on the ground, researchers kneeling in nine fields across four continents believe they’ve hit upon more than just the earth beneath their feet. “Waiting for it,” someone said. And then, “Waveforms!” “Excellent, waveforms!” another said, as the tiles on screen reveal EKG-like sets of squiggles on laptops and smartphones from each of the locations. The video promotes the Earth Rover Program, a new effort to glean critical details about the soil from the way that a hammer tap tickles a set of sensors. It’s early days for the project. But its global team is working to bring the tools of seismology — known affectionately as “the science of the squiggle,” said co-founder Simon Jeffery — to bear on teasing apart the global puzzle of soil health. Jeffery and his fellow founders, geophysicist Tarje Nissen-Meyer and journalist George Monbiot, have staked out a far-reaching ambition to map soils with a cost-effective technology. They say they hope the program will equip farmers the world over with a better set of tools to grow crops and ensure that soils will remain healthy long into the future. “If we don’t have soil, then we don’t have the wonderful aboveground ecosystems that the vast majority of us enjoy so much,” Jeffery, a professor of soil ecology at Harper Adams University in the U.K., told Mongabay in an interview. He’s quick to point out that soil — the accumulated minerals, organic matter, droplets of liquid&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/earth-rover-program-seeks-to-track-the-worlds-soil-health/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/earth-rover-program-seeks-to-track-the-worlds-soil-health/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-313172</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Measuring biodiversity in a world of tree-planting pledges</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/one-year-on-tgbs-benchmark-shows-how-to-restore-forests-for-biodiversity/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/one-year-on-tgbs-benchmark-shows-how-to-restore-forests-for-biodiversity/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>12 Jan 2026 16:54:04 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Ruth Kamnitzer]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Jeremy Hance]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/01/12121050/Chimps_Photo-credit_Jane-Goodall-Institute-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=312848</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa, East Africa, Madagascar, and Uganda]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Biodiversity, carbon, Carbon Credits, Carbon Sequestration, Certification, Climate, Climate Change, Conservation, Environment, Environmental Policy, Forests, Invasive Species, Reforestation, Saving Species From Extinction, Solutions, Trees, Wildlife, and Wildlife Corridors]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[There are around 60,000 known tree species in the world, and they can do amazing things: store carbon, provide people with food and firewood, shelter creatures big and small, and so much more. In the past two decades, numerous high-profile initiatives have announced ambitious restoration targets for forests. Restoring forests can bring all kinds of [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[There are around 60,000 known tree species in the world, and they can do amazing things: store carbon, provide people with food and firewood, shelter creatures big and small, and so much more. In the past two decades, numerous high-profile initiatives have announced ambitious restoration targets for forests. Restoring forests can bring all kinds of benefits and is widely seen as an effective nature-based solution to climate change and biodiversity loss. But planting the wrong trees, or planting them in the wrong places, is, at best, a missed opportunity — and at worst, can even harm biodiversity. In fact, a 2019 Nature commentary found that almost half the area pledged under the Bonn Challenge, a high-profile initiative to restore 350 million hectares (865 million acres) of degraded forest by 2030, was for plantation-style monocultures, and thus a poor strategy for both carbon sequestration and biodiversity. Meanwhile, half of the land pledged for reforestation under the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative was actually on savanna, a landscape not suitable for tree planting, according to a 2024 Science study. “It started to occur to us that there was potentially a problem here, particularly given the size of the pledges that were being made,” says Paul Smith, secretary-general at U.K.-based charity Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI). What was needed, Smith and colleagues thought, was some way to promote best practices and recognize projects that got things right. When they looked at existing certification standards, they found that none focused primarily on biodiversity. What’s&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/one-year-on-tgbs-benchmark-shows-how-to-restore-forests-for-biodiversity/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/one-year-on-tgbs-benchmark-shows-how-to-restore-forests-for-biodiversity/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-312848</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Ditches on peatland oil palm plantations are an overlooked source of methane: Study</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/ditches-on-peatland-oil-palm-plantations-are-an-overlooked-source-of-methane-study/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/ditches-on-peatland-oil-palm-plantations-are-an-overlooked-source-of-methane-study/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>30 Dec 2025 14:18:37 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[John Cannon]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Isabel Esterman]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/12/30075343/Tropical-peatland-clearance-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=312273</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Borneo, Malaysia, Southeast Asia, and Tropics]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, carbon, Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Emissions, Climate Change, Conservation, Environment, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Methane, Peatlands, Politics, Research, Soil Carbon, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The water-filled ditches that laced through the oil palm plantation in Sarawak, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo, nagged at Kuno Kasak when he saw them in 2022. He knew that these canals, used to draw water out of spongy peatlands to make them suitable for agriculture, had been shown to be sources [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The water-filled ditches that laced through the oil palm plantation in Sarawak, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo, nagged at Kuno Kasak when he saw them in 2022. He knew that these canals, used to draw water out of spongy peatlands to make them suitable for agriculture, had been shown to be sources of methane. But just how much remains an open question, with too few data points to make estimates with certainty. Though methane dissipates more quickly in the atmosphere than CO2, it’s more than 20 times more effective at trapping heat. It’s also responsible for nearly a third of the global temperature rise since the industrial revolution, making accurate methane accounting imperative for addressing climate change. Kasak, a professor of environmental technology at Estonia’s University of Tartu, is the lead author of a recent study in which he and his colleagues report that methane from these drainage canals accounted for as much as 10% of the total greenhouse gases from a given hectare of the oil palm plantations they studied. At the same time, the ditches covered no more than 4% of the plantations’ total area. “This is significant because it means that previous estimates of emissions from drained peatlands likely underestimate the contribution from ditches, which are often ignored in global carbon accounting,” Kasak told Mongabay in an email. They also found that the ditches were sources of CO2. One of the oil palm plantations where Kasak and his colleagues sampled emissions from drainage ditches.&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/ditches-on-peatland-oil-palm-plantations-are-an-overlooked-source-of-methane-study/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/ditches-on-peatland-oil-palm-plantations-are-an-overlooked-source-of-methane-study/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-312273</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>In California’s redwoods, scientists rebuild lost ecosystems high up in the canopy</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/in-californias-redwoods-scientists-rebuild-lost-ecosystems-high-up-in-the-canopy/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/in-californias-redwoods-scientists-rebuild-lost-ecosystems-high-up-in-the-canopy/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>29 Dec 2025 14:14:51 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Marlowe Starling]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Sharon Guynup]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/12/24171113/2048px-California_Scrub-Jay_38808625355-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=311969</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[California, North America, and United States]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[carbon, Conservation, Ecosystems, Environment, Forest Recovery, Forest Regeneration, Forests, Logging, Old Growth Forests, Plants, Restoration, Sustainable Forest Management, Temperatures, Trees, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The Van Eck Forest in northwestern California is home to iconic coast redwood trees, which store more above-ground carbon per acre than any other forest type. The oldest trees can grow to heights of more than 90 meters (300 feet) and may be more than 2,000 years old. But due to the region’s extensive logging, [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The Van Eck Forest in northwestern California is home to iconic coast redwood trees, which store more above-ground carbon per acre than any other forest type. The oldest trees can grow to heights of more than 90 meters (300 feet) and may be more than 2,000 years old. But due to the region’s extensive logging, which reduced old-growth redwood forests to just 5% of their original extent, very few large, old redwood trees (Sequoia sempervirens) exist today. Consequently, there are also fewer fern mats high up in the forest canopy: large masses of leather-leaf ferns (Polypodium scouleri), a keystone species that stores water, mitigates forest temperatures and provides habitat for other plants and animals. To help restore these historic forests, a conservation nonprofit and a university are experimenting with ways to transplant the mats back into redwood treetops. In a collaboration that began in 2021, the Pacific Forest Trust and scientists from California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, are taking fern mats that have fallen from old-growth trees and replanting them in younger trees to restore the canopy layer. As they grow over decades and centuries, these mats collect decomposing plant matter and germinate seeds, creating swaths of arboreal gardens that are home to salamanders, insects, birds and rare lichens. “It’s like having a little garden up there,” said Laurie Wayburn, co-founder and president of the Pacific Forest Trust. A great horned owl, a common redwood forest resident. Image by B. Washburn via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0). ‘Putting back the&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/in-californias-redwoods-scientists-rebuild-lost-ecosystems-high-up-in-the-canopy/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/in-californias-redwoods-scientists-rebuild-lost-ecosystems-high-up-in-the-canopy/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-311969</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Huge ‘blue carbon’ offsetting project takes root in the mangroves of Sierra Leone</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/huge-blue-carbon-offsetting-project-takes-root-in-the-mangroves-of-sierra-leone/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/huge-blue-carbon-offsetting-project-takes-root-in-the-mangroves-of-sierra-leone/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>23 Dec 2025 20:15:00 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Edward CarverMohamed Fofanah]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Morgan Erickson-Davis]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[africa]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/12/23151914/4-Community-members-plant-red-mangrove-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=311956</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa, Sierra Leone, and West Africa]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Biodiversity, Blue Carbon, carbon, Carbon Credits, Carbon Emissions, Carbon Offsets, Carbon Sequestration, Conservation, Ecosystems, Environment, Forest Carbon, Governance, Islands, Mangroves, Marine Conservation, Oceans, Restoration, and Soil Carbon]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[BONTHE, Sierra Leone — On the island of Sherbro in Sierra Leone, as in much of the country, there’s limited access to vital services needed to make ends meet. “Here our people only rely on fishing and a few on agriculture and have nothing else to occupy our children, our youths,” Nenneh Sumaila, the chief [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[BONTHE, Sierra Leone — On the island of Sherbro in Sierra Leone, as in much of the country, there’s limited access to vital services needed to make ends meet. “Here our people only rely on fishing and a few on agriculture and have nothing else to occupy our children, our youths,” Nenneh Sumaila, the chief of Gbomgboma, a village of about 300 people on the island, told Mongabay. “There are no good roads, no proper health facilities, there’s poor housing, electricity is a dream and the standard of living is poor.” One of the ways to make ends meet in Gbomgboma is by cultivating oil palm trees. But to process the fruit into palm oil, they need fuel for fire, which often comes from mangroves — one of many local uses for the wood. Cutting mangroves unsustainably turns them from a carbon sink into a source of greenhouse gas emissions and hurts their ability to foster biodiversity and provide other ecosystem services. “Blue carbon” projects aim to reverse this trend, and one called the Sherbro River Estuary Project has just been launched with more than 124 communities there. A wholly owned subsidiary of West Africa Blue, a Mauritius-based company, reportedly signed a deal with the communities in October that will reward them financially for conserving and restoring their mangroves. Company representatives told Mongabay that the funds will be generated by selling offsets on the voluntary carbon credit market, with revenues shared between West Africa Blue, the communities and the government&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/huge-blue-carbon-offsetting-project-takes-root-in-the-mangroves-of-sierra-leone/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/huge-blue-carbon-offsetting-project-takes-root-in-the-mangroves-of-sierra-leone/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-311956</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Statewide survey aims to put California’s fungi on the conservation map</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/statewide-survey-aims-to-put-californias-fungi-on-the-conservation-map/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/statewide-survey-aims-to-put-californias-fungi-on-the-conservation-map/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>20 Dec 2025 13:08:41 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Sean Mowbray]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Sharon Guynup]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/12/19121458/Image_2-LAPTOP-7JODAAGR-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=311724</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[California, North America, and United States]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[carbon, Citizen Science, Climate, Climate Change, Conservation, data, DNA, Drought, Ecology, Ecosystems, Environment, Fires, Forests, Fungi, Nitrogen Cycle, Plants, Soil Carbon, Species, Species Discovery, Surveying, and Trees]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Getting to The Cedars, an ecological preserve in California’s Sonoma county, is a slog. Multiple rivers and creeks must be crossed, and it can be tough going on an often storm-destroyed road. But it’s home to a rich diversity of species found nowhere else on Earth that are uniquely adapted to serpentine soil, composed of [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Getting to The Cedars, an ecological preserve in California’s Sonoma county, is a slog. Multiple rivers and creeks must be crossed, and it can be tough going on an often storm-destroyed road. But it’s home to a rich diversity of species found nowhere else on Earth that are uniquely adapted to serpentine soil, composed of decomposed rock and rich in heavy metals. If you’re a fungi collector, it’s well worth the trip. Over the past two years, a dedicated team of mycologists — specialists in the study of fungi — and experienced mushroom collectors have combed California’s forests, rivers and mountains in often remote locations such as this, searching for and collecting fungi. Those making the arduous journey out to The Cedars have identified more than 100 new species, 25 of which are only known from the area. They snapped photos, which were then uploaded with all pertinent data to iNaturalist, a citizen scientist biodiversity database. Collections have been sent to labs where scientists extracted DNA for sequencing. Dried specimens are stored for safe keeping at California State University, East Bay, and the University of California, Los Angeles. This is part of an expansive effort to map the state’s fungal diversity, which has yielded thousands of specimens and is the first of its kind in North America, says Harte Singer, who heads genetic research at the California Fungal Diversity Survey (CA FUNDIS). The CA FUNDIS team collected thousands of fungi species from across California. Many of those collected are undescribed.&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/statewide-survey-aims-to-put-californias-fungi-on-the-conservation-map/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/statewide-survey-aims-to-put-californias-fungi-on-the-conservation-map/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-311724</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Top-down projects, exotic trees, weak tenure: Congo Basin restoration misses the mark</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/top-down-projects-exotic-trees-weak-tenure-congo-basin-restoration-misses-the-mark/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/top-down-projects-exotic-trees-weak-tenure-congo-basin-restoration-misses-the-mark/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>12 Dec 2025 16:49:18 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Amindeh Blaise Atabong]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Jeremy Hance]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/12/11145146/a.-Banner-Loxodonta_cyclotis_3970045-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=311149</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa, Cameroon, Central Africa, Central African Republic, Congo Basin, Democratic Republic Of Congo, Gabon, Republic of Congo, and Rwanda]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agroforestry, Biodiversity, carbon, Climate, Conservation, Forest Carbon, forest degradation, Forests, Logging, Reforestation, Slash-and-burn, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The Congo Basin, the world’s largest tropical rainforest after the Amazon, is under mounting pressure. The Congo’s vast green canopy, stretching across six countries and storing more carbon than the Amazon, is vanishing at an alarming rate — losing an average of 1.79 million hectares (4.42 million acres) per year between 2015 and 2019. The [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The Congo Basin, the world’s largest tropical rainforest after the Amazon, is under mounting pressure. The Congo’s vast green canopy, stretching across six countries and storing more carbon than the Amazon, is vanishing at an alarming rate — losing an average of 1.79 million hectares (4.42 million acres) per year between 2015 and 2019. The key drivers are well known: small-scale slash-and-burn agriculture, logging for fuelwood, and weak land governance. In response, some governments, international donors and NGOs have turned to reforestation projects as a cornerstone of the region’s climate and biodiversity strategies. But despite a panoply of projects — from tree-planting drives to agroforestry schemes — newly published research suggests that much of what’s happening in the name of “forest restoration” may not be restoring forests at all — but largely focused on nonnative, commodity species. The study analyzed 64 publications covering 26 initiatives in five countries: the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Cameroon, Gabon, Rwanda, and the Central African Republic. The findings paint a complex picture of progress over the last two decades — one where the rhetoric of “restoration” often outpaces the reality on the ground. On paper, Central African governments have made major commitments to the Congo Basin. Under the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100) and the Bonn Challenge, governments pledged to restore 25% of degraded land by this year. International donors, including the European Union, World Bank, as well as the French, German, Danish and U.K. development agencies, have poured millions of dollars into&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/top-down-projects-exotic-trees-weak-tenure-congo-basin-restoration-misses-the-mark/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-311149</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Boom in burning waste for fuel could put human health and environment at risk</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/boom-in-burning-waste-for-fuel-puts-human-health-and-environment-at-risk/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/boom-in-burning-waste-for-fuel-puts-human-health-and-environment-at-risk/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>10 Dec 2025 15:23:16 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Sean Mowbray]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/12/10123021/1--768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=311039</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Planetary Boundaries]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Australia, Europe, Global, India, Indonesia, Jakarta, Myanmar, North America, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and United States]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Bioenergy, carbon, Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Emissions, Climate, Climate Change, Conservation, Energy, Environment, Fires, Fossil Fuels, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Health, Methane, Planetary Health, Plastic, Pollution, Public Health, and Waste]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[As the world desperately searches for a way out of its global climate change and plastic pollution crises, nations are increasingly turning to burning municipal waste to make fuel as a solution to both problems. One approach, dubbed refuse-derived fuel (RDF), processes, packages and burns conglomerated combustible organic waste with large amounts of potentially hazardous [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[As the world desperately searches for a way out of its global climate change and plastic pollution crises, nations are increasingly turning to burning municipal waste to make fuel as a solution to both problems. One approach, dubbed refuse-derived fuel (RDF), processes, packages and burns conglomerated combustible organic waste with large amounts of potentially hazardous plastics in order to make fuel to produce heat or electricity. RDF is an escalating global trend causing concern among environmental experts due to its potential climate, pollution and human health impacts. RDF is typically made up of around 50% plastic waste, which is combined with other combustible materials like wood, cardboard and textiles. The mixed waste is processed via drying and shredding, with the resulting materials then burned in so-called waste-to-energy incinerators, cement kilns, or other industrial facilities such as paper mills. Proponents argue that burning waste is an effective way to simultaneously reduce landfilling and plastic pollution, while cutting greenhouse gas emissions, as it’s a substitute for fossil fuels. Advocates have even marketed RDF as a circular economy solution. Critics aren’t convinced. They say that incinerating RDFs, with their high plastic content, is akin to swapping out one dirty fuel source for another, resulting in the release of significant greenhouse gases, along with harmful particulate and chemical pollutants, including dioxins, a potential byproduct of burning plastics. “Our concerns about [RDF] relate to the fact that plastic consists of polymers that are mixed with many, many different chemicals,” says Lee Bell, technical and policy&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/boom-in-burning-waste-for-fuel-puts-human-health-and-environment-at-risk/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-311039</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Assessments argue carbon offsets are failing communities and climate goals (commentary)</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/assessments-argue-carbon-offsets-are-a-false-unjust-climate-solution-commentary/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/assessments-argue-carbon-offsets-are-a-false-unjust-climate-solution-commentary/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>05 Dec 2025 19:45:00 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[GRAIN]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Erik Hoffner]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024/08/27093058/eucalyptus-monoculture-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=310678</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global and Madagascar]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Biodiversity, Business, carbon, Carbon Credits, Carbon Offsets, Climate, Climate Change, climate finance, Commentary, Environment, Finance, Governance, Indigenous Peoples, Land Grabbing, Land Rights, Redd, and Social Justice]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The Land Matrix, a collaboration between the International Land Coalition and several universities, just published a new report on land deals for carbon offsets. Carbon offsets are “credits” sold to polluters who buy them to compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions. The Land Matrix documented 9 million hectares (more than 22 million acres) that are [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The Land Matrix, a collaboration between the International Land Coalition and several universities, just published a new report on land deals for carbon offsets. Carbon offsets are “credits” sold to polluters who buy them to compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions. The Land Matrix documented 9 million hectares (more than 22 million acres) that are subject to these land deals worldwide. At GRAIN, we came to a similar figure when we tallied carbon land deals last year. However, there are some major differences between these two assessments that we want to highlight. The Land Matrix looked at land deals from the year 2000 onward. They included projects for avoided deforestation (often known as REDD+) as well as tree planting, wetland restoration and grassland management. Two-thirds of the land they accounted for are for REDD+ projects alone. GRAIN, on the other hand, looked at land deals concluded between 2016 and March 2024, and did not include REDD+ or wetland or grassland restoration and management. We only looked at projects where lands were taken over to plant trees and other crops to produce carbon offsets for companies. The Land Matrix data only cover low- and middle-income countries, but exclude China “due to the lack of a country partner.” GRAIN’s data also focused on the Global South, but included China — which we learned was one of the top targets for land-based carbon offset projects. The Land Matrix data set also excludes carbon offset projects where the land claims predate 2000, leaving out&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/assessments-argue-carbon-offsets-are-a-false-unjust-climate-solution-commentary/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-310678</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>SE Asia forest carbon projects sidelining social, biodiversity benefits, study finds</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/se-asia-forest-carbon-projects-sidelining-social-biodiversity-benefits-study-finds/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/se-asia-forest-carbon-projects-sidelining-social-biodiversity-benefits-study-finds/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>01 Dec 2025 17:18:03 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Carolyn Cowan]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Isabel Esterman]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/12/01170004/Banner-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=310403</guid>

					
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Adaptation To Climate Change, Biodiversity, carbon, Carbon Credits, Carbon Market, Carbon Offsets, Climate Change, Conservation, Environment, Forest Carbon, Forests, Governance, Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Rights, Industry, Land Rights, Redd, Research, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Home to Asian elephants, gibbons and critically endangered black-shanked douc langurs, the forests of Cambodia’s Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary were brought under a REDD+ project in 2010. However, several years into the project, Indigenous communities whose land was absorbed into the project reported legal harassment, crop destruction and property confiscation as a result of land [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Home to Asian elephants, gibbons and critically endangered black-shanked douc langurs, the forests of Cambodia’s Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary were brought under a REDD+ project in 2010. However, several years into the project, Indigenous communities whose land was absorbed into the project reported legal harassment, crop destruction and property confiscation as a result of land conflicts with the scheme’s implementers. Across Southeast Asia, forest carbon projects like the one in Keo Seima are falling short on social justice safeguards, according to a recent study published in WIREs Climate Change. While carbon-offsetting programs have been around for more than a decade, they require continuous scrutiny to ensure they aren’t having unintended negative impacts, said Yingshan Lau, an economist at the National University of Singapore and lead author of the study. “Forest carbon credits transcend scale and geographies,” Lau said. “Decisions by more privileged groups of people in one part of the world could affect more vulnerable groups in other parts of the world.” Forest carbon initiatives, such as REDD+ (which stands for “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries”), are intended as a way of integrating forest conservation into climate change mitigation. Countries, companies and even individuals can buy “credits” sold through carbon markets that help them offset, or compensate for, their own emissions that can’t be avoided. These carbon credits are generated by carbon-sequestering activities like conservation of forests and ecosystem restoration. Natural forests, like this one in Indonesia, contain hundreds of native species that all contribute&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/se-asia-forest-carbon-projects-sidelining-social-biodiversity-benefits-study-finds/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
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										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/se-asia-forest-carbon-projects-sidelining-social-biodiversity-benefits-study-finds/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-310403</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>The valuable peatlands of Peru’s Pastaza River Fan: one of the world’s largest carbon reservoirs</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/the-valuable-peatlands-of-perus-pastaza-river-fan-one-of-the-worlds-largest-carbon-reservoirs/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/the-valuable-peatlands-of-perus-pastaza-river-fan-one-of-the-worlds-largest-carbon-reservoirs/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>01 Dec 2025 10:24:39 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Leslie Moreno Custodio]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Alexandra Popescu]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/12/01101934/Turberas_Leslie-3-scaled-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=310396</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Latin America, Peru, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[carbon, Carbon Dioxide, Climate Change, Community-based Conservation, Conservation, Ecosystems, Peatlands, and Research]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[On the banks of the Pastaza River, in Peru’s northern Datem del Marañón province, Kietre Gonzales remembers just how close his childhood home was to the aguajales, the swampy palm forests so common in this part of the Peruvian Amazon. But over time, the landscape began to change. The aguajes (Mauritia flexuosa), the palms that [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[On the banks of the Pastaza River, in Peru’s northern Datem del Marañón province, Kietre Gonzales remembers just how close his childhood home was to the aguajales, the swampy palm forests so common in this part of the Peruvian Amazon. But over time, the landscape began to change. The aguajes (Mauritia flexuosa), the palms that bear the wine-red fruit of the same name, started to be cut down. “Fifteen years ago, we ourselves were destroying them. We used to cut down the aguaje palm to harvest its fruit, leaving empty spaces where other kinds of weeds would grow. We started cutting them down because there were no initiatives to protect them,” says Gonzales, a member of the Recreo Native Community, part of the Kichua Indigenous people. At the foot of a tree along the riverbank, Gonzales looks up at the broad leaves of the aguaje palms rising above the distant vegetation, where the bright green of the community sports field ends beneath a clear sky and a scorching sun that makes the skin glisten. A rooster crows, breaking his contemplation of the landscape. “Now we understand that we must not cut down the trees of the Amazon,” he says. The aguajal peat bogs that still survive in this part of the Amazon are part of the Pastaza River Fan Wetland Complex, one of the deepest peatland systems in the world — the third-deepest tropical peatland, at more than 8.1 meters (26.6 feet), after Central Kalimantan in Indonesian Borneo and the&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/the-valuable-peatlands-of-perus-pastaza-river-fan-one-of-the-worlds-largest-carbon-reservoirs/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-310396</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Afro-descendant territories slash deforestation, lock in carbon, study shows</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/11/afro-descendant-territories-slash-deforestation-lock-in-carbon-study-shows/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/11/afro-descendant-territories-slash-deforestation-lock-in-carbon-study-shows/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>28 Nov 2025 10:02:23 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Gonzalo Ortuño López]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Jeremy Hance]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/11/28095807/portada-mujeres-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=310290</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Latin America, South America, and Suriname]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[carbon, Carbon Dioxide, Community-based Conservation, Conservation, Deforestation, Environment, Protected Areas, and Traditional People]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Afro-descendant peoples in Latin America have historically been guardians of nature, but their role could be more important than previously estimated. New research carried out in four Amazonian countries — Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Suriname — has revealed that their territories have achieved lower levels of deforestation and greater conservation of biodiversity than other protected [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Afro-descendant peoples in Latin America have historically been guardians of nature, but their role could be more important than previously estimated. New research carried out in four Amazonian countries — Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Suriname — has revealed that their territories have achieved lower levels of deforestation and greater conservation of biodiversity than other protected areas. The study, funded by Conservation International and published in the journal Communications Earth &amp; Environment, is the first to use statistics, georeferenced information and historical context to measure the contributions of Afro-descendant populations to conservation. Afro-descendant people were taken as slaves from Africa to Latin America, where many fled into the wilderness in search of freedom. One of the study’s most significant findings is the sustained reduction of deforestation in Afro-descendant lands. Here the study found that forest loss was lower, depending on location, than in protected areas. For example, deforestation rates in Afro-descendant lands were 29% lower when the lands were inside protected areas, 36% lower when they were outside protected areas, and 55% lower when they were on the edge of these areas. “It confirms that we are the guardians of these Amazonian lands; we have been doing this sustainably for over 400 years,” says Hugo Jabini, Saramaka Maroon leader and winner of the 2009 Goldman Prize for defending Afro-descendant rights in Suriname. What’s more, Afro-descendant territories are vital for tropical biodiversity: the researchers found that they host habitat for more than 4,000 species of amphibians, birds, mammals and reptiles. At least&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/11/afro-descendant-territories-slash-deforestation-lock-in-carbon-study-shows/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-310290</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Saving forests won’t be enough if fossil fuels beneath them are still extracted, experts warn</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/11/saving-forests-wont-be-enough-if-fossil-fuels-beneath-them-are-still-extracted-experts-warn/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/11/saving-forests-wont-be-enough-if-fossil-fuels-beneath-them-are-still-extracted-experts-warn/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>26 Nov 2025 11:25:27 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Hans Nicholas Jong]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Hans Nicholas Jong]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/11/02172845/kaltim_191418z-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=310184</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Brazil, China, Global, India, and Indonesia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[carbon, Carbon Emissions, Climate, Climate Change, climate finance, Coal, Conservation, Deforestation, Drivers Of Deforestation, Environment, Forest Carbon, Forests, Fossil Fuels, Fossils, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Natural Gas, Oil, Oil Drilling, Politics, Protected Areas, Rainforest Destruction, Rainforests, Research, Threats To Rainforests, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[BELÉM, Brazil — A new analysis warns that the world is overlooking a major source of future emissions hidden beneath tropical forests — and that Brazil’s newly launched Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) could dramatically expand its climate impact by addressing it. Published by the nonprofit Leave it in the Ground Initiative (LINGO), the study overlays [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[BELÉM, Brazil — A new analysis warns that the world is overlooking a major source of future emissions hidden beneath tropical forests — and that Brazil’s newly launched Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) could dramatically expand its climate impact by addressing it. Published by the nonprofit Leave it in the Ground Initiative (LINGO), the study overlays forest cover with national fossil fuel deposit maps and finds that forests in 68 countries sit on top of oil, gas and coal deposits whose extraction would release an estimated 317 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases. When including all resources, not just proven reserves, the figure rises to 4.6 trillion metric tons. The 317 gigaton (Gt) figure alone exceeds the remaining global carbon budget to keep warming below 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit), raising the stakes for countries that may be asked to choose between forest protection and fossil fuel extraction. “[We found] that governments were quite unwilling to stop fossil fuel extraction, even if it’s a national park, even if it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site, or other categories of nature conservation,” LINGO director Kjell Kühne said at a side event of the COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil. LINGO argues that forests sitting on fossil reserves face heightened risk, as authorities may see extraction as too financially valuable to forgo — even where forests are intact or legally protected. Maps of TFFF biomes with underlying oil/gas and coal. Image courtesy of LINGO A blind spot in forest finance All forests identified in the&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/11/saving-forests-wont-be-enough-if-fossil-fuels-beneath-them-are-still-extracted-experts-warn/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-310184</doi>				</item>
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