Farming has been radically transformed over the past five decades thanks to technological advances. In Indonesia, the sector is welcoming yet another digital revolution. Jakarta-born Yohanes Sugihtonugroho set up CROWDE…
JAKARTA — Activists have welcomed the Indonesian government’s announcement to carry out a nationwide audit of all palm oil companies operating here, in response to a shortage of cooking oil…
“How do we tell the stories of people that history forgets and the present avoids?” journalist-turned-author Jori Lewis asks in the preface to her debut book, Slaves for Peanuts: A…
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;…
ELGEYO-MARAKWET COUNTY, Kenya – Taking on the steep ridges one steady step at a time, Elias Kibiwot Kimaiyo heads deep into Kenya’s Embobut Forest, where he was born and raised.…
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.
On May 11 this year, dozens of activists with Greenpeace Netherland blocked a ship carrying 60,000 metric tons of soy from Brazil to the Netherlands. Among the protesters was Alberto…
“I had never seen these colored types of corn until I was 22 years old,” says Jerá Poty Mirim. “I’d only seen Tupi corn, the yellow kind you find in…
Tropical deforestation is a cost our planet pays every day for the food we eat. The palm oil in our ice cream, the steak on our tables, and the soy…
SANTIAGO ATITLÁN, Mexico – Lucio Jimenez Ocampo is always surrounded by coffee. In the yard of his house in Santiago Atitlán nestled in the Oaxaca state’s Sierra Norte highlands, there…
Sitting high in the hills of southwestern Ethiopia, the thick green forest of Yayu is a haven of biodiversity where Nuradin Aliyi, a third-generation wild-coffee farmer, has lived his whole…
Industrial logging, rubber, oil palm, then coal. The snowballing effects of these extractive industries have divided local communities and destroyed livelihoods in parts of Indonesian Borneo, a new study finds.…
PEKANBARU, Indonesia — Reportedly home to 3% of the planet's mammal species and one of the highest levels of lowland plant diversity known to science, Indonesia’s Tesso Nilo National Park…
Google and the World Resources Institute (WRI) this week announced the launch of a new mapping tool touted as providing an unprecedented level of detail about how land is being…
ANGAHUAN, Mexico — "Cuchita is the fourth-generation herb collector of our family," says Juana Bravo, 45, pointing to a photo of her niece. "Look here: she was picking medicinal plants…
Global investment firms taken together hold a bigger share in Brazil’s Big Three meat companies than their Brazilians founders, with many U.S. pension fund investors unwittingly contributing to rainforest destruction.
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…
It was a banner moment at COP26, one of the climate summit’s headline achievements. On stage, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson sat with President Félix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic…
CHIANG MAI, Thailand — Chotgun Prapatsit takes a handful of topsoil and deftly sprinkles it into a small cylindrical potting bag containing a tiny tree seedling. The spindly stem sports…
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…
Plants build themselves from sunlight, water, and soil. And, as it turns out, what crops “eat” can influence the nutrients on our own plates. A recent study, published in the…
A California court has ruled that state legislation on endangered species can apply to invertebrates. The decision this week by the Third District Court of Appeal means insects, including four endangered native…
Cannabis, marijuana, pot, bud, grass or herb — no matter its nickname, this go-to drug has long been associated with the essence of “green” and connected to eco-friendly movements. Yet,…
Last week, Mongabay, BBC News and The Gecko Project released a joint investigation into a scheme that was intended to help lift millions of Indonesians out of poverty and cut…
In Africa and beyond, large-scale agricultural investment projects have often been promoted as a means to increase food security and boost economies in the face of drought and famine, increasing…
A new analysis of satellite data of the Amazon published in late May provides the most detailed analysis yet of year-to-year deforestation in the region, revealing exactly where and why…
Antibody tests conducted on domestic cats and wild cats in Malaysian Borneo indicate that oil palm plantations may act as transmission sites for viruses, according to a new study. The…
On an island in the estuary known as Lagoa dos Patos, in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul state, an old lady kept a treasure in her fridge. For years, it…
The butiá landscapes of Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul state are exotic, even by the standards of tropical forests. The palm trees that make up these forests, from the genus…
Despite some amazing rebounds, six decades after Rachel Carson’s call to curb pesticide use, the world’s birds are in deep trouble — assaulted by toxic chemicals, lost habitat, hunting, invasive species, and climate change.
