TERBOL, Lebanon — Sitting cross-legged in the summer sun, Fatima collects seedpods from fava beans in Terbol, a quiet village surrounded by cypress trees and vineyards in the Beqaa Valley…
While forest advocates had high hopes, the EU parliament voted this week not to declassify woody biomass as a renewable energy source, paving the way for more EU, U.S., and Canadian forests to be turned into wood pellets and burned.
A tropical rainforest spanning the entire Guatemalan Caribbean coastline is among the world’s richest pockets of biodiversity. Historically, it has also experienced some of the highest global deforestation rates, driven…
The European Parliament has approved a bill blocking the import of "dirty commodities" by members of the European Union, in an effort to combat global deforestation. Under the new bill,…
A new study conveys a dire warning for the future: multiple tipping points could be triggered if global warming exceeds the critical threshold of 1.5°C. Published this week in Science,…
DHAKA – On July 30 this year, Moza Mia took his two buffalo out to graze in the field near his home in Bangladesh’s northern Lalmonirhat district. Soon after, lightning…
The death knell of coal has been proclaimed, but policy loopholes in Asia allow for cofired power plants, where coal and wood are combined as fuel. Both fuels produce lots of carbon emissions, but those from wood aren’t counted.
Climate scientists say there’s a 0.1% chance of keeping warming below 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) by 2100, as called for in the Paris Agreement. Even the less ambitious target of…
The IPCC report has long been touted as the principal text on climate science. Although the technical summary remains an unparalleled resource for assessment and future projections, the recent fossil…
MEDAN, Indonesia — Food plants intermingle on the second-floor rooftop of a house in Medan, the biggest city on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. They were planted by Sakiah Nasution,…
Bangladesh, a least developed country in South Asia, has made remarkable progress in various development sectors over the last few decades. From agricultural production and food security to infrastructural development,…
Tony Rinaudo is an Australian agronomist who was given the Right Livelihood Award in 2018 for demonstrating how drylands can be re-greened on a large scale at minimal cost, making…
DHAKA — Wasim Ali, 45, lived in one of the 55,000 houses destroyed by the deadly Super Cyclone Amphan in May of 2020. The tropical storm whipped up a tidal…
Indonesia’s planned new capital city on the island of Borneo, Nusantara, is being touted by the government as a "green" city. However, its construction may lead to a surge in…
At 49, Hamid Ali has moved house at least eight times in his life. The reason each time has been the same: the erosion of the char lands, or river…
There are moments in researchers’ lives when they realize the significance of something they hadn’t paid much thought to in the past. For primatologist Catherine Hobaiter and her team, one…
The world’s largest bank of the partially decomposed plant matter known as peat in the tropics is even more extensive than initially thought, according to a new study. The peatlands…
While modern water infrastructure assets such as dams and aqueducts have provided human civilization with electricity and potable water for a long time, it has also deprived us of it…
The increasing difficulty of accessing clean water is forcing young women in coastal areas of Bangladesh to try to halt their menstrual cycles by misusing contraceptive pills, putting their long-term…
If locusts return by the millions this September, as forecasted, South African farmers hope to follow their movements via a state-of-the-art tracking system, allowing for targeted elimination with pesticides.
Fifty-two-year-old Dhonjoy Mondol grows rice on his plot in the district of Sunamganj in northeastern Bangladesh. This year, he harvested 12 metric tons of rice from the 4-hectare (10-acre) plot;…
Freshwater’s life-giving benefits are being gravely threatened by humanity’s manipulations of the hydrological cycle, impacting the climate and biodiversity, and undermining Earth’s operating system.
Iluka Alain was a bit surprised when the two men turned up on a motorcycle in December 2021 in Bofekalasumba, the village where he’s chief in the northwestern Democratic Republic…
KIRKWOOD, South Africa — About 80 kilometers, or 50 miles, inland from the coastal city of Gqeberha, a brilliant patch of green stands out against a landscape recovering from six…
BLANTYRE, Malawi — A harvest of just four sacks of maize, each weighing 50 kilograms, or 110 pounds, means only four and a half months of food security for Ellena…
SATKHIRA, Bangladesh — Over the past three decades, Moyna Rani Mondol, who lives right on the coast in Bangladesh's southwestern district of Satkhira, has lost her home around 10 times…
The UK and EU were the primary users of woody biomass for energy. But Japan and South Korea have drastically stepped up their burning of wood pellets — potentially threatening forests, biodiversity, and the climate.
For the first time, a portion of the EU government has challenged the sustainability of burning forest biomass to make energy, a controversial policy pushed by the forestry industry but condemned by environmentalists.
Spotted hyenas appear to be adapting to climate change in Tanzania’s famous Serengeti National Park, surprising researchers who expected changing rainfall patterns would force the carnivores to spend more time…
In some respects, it was expected. The same doomsday scenarios. The same periodic reminders of more horror to come. The same organization of working groups. The same approach grounded in…
