In the coming weeks and months, a number of Guatemalan palm oil producers are expecting to receive memberships in the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) — a move that…
A wave of announcements by the Bolsonaro administration threatens indigenous reserves, could worsen deforestation and bring major environmental harm: experts.
The most popular stories published recently by our Spanish-language news service, Mongabay Latam, featured endangered pink Amazon river dolphins, the world’s rarest flamingos, palm oil plantations in Nicaragua, impunity in…
JAKARTA — It’s responsible for pushing a product found in half of the most common food and consumer items, but the $60 billion palm oil industry has largely evaded the…
Bolsonaro has backed off from Paris withdrawal “for now,” but his actions imply emissions exceeding Brazil’s carbon cut pledge.
A recent survey of wildlife rangers at a national park in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) found that most aren’t happy with their jobs. Faced with low pay, little…
Engineered by insect intelligence, the hive was a convoluted mesh of waxy secretions and labyrinthine cavities. Worker bees streamed through its recesses. Bulbous pods brimmed with fresh honey. It was…
Many pollinator insect species like bees, butterflies, and hoverflies are on the decline, due in large part to habitat destruction driven by conversion of land to agricultural fields and urbanization.…
A Brazilian official last week announced plans to build an Amazon River bridge, Trombetas River dam, and highway thru what he called “desert-like” rainforest.
It was an ambitious project from the start: to capture the Congo Basin rainforest in the pages of a book. Stretching across an area larger than Saudi Arabia, the world’s…
Spatial data from satellites are now fine-scale enough to provide land use and vegetation cover information at the level of individual farms. An international team of researchers examined the potential…
If you're a coffee lover, you're probably familiar with the two most widely grown coffee species: Arabica (Coffea arabica) and robusta (Coffea canephora). But there are more than 100 species…
Agribusiness, well backed by government, is hailed an “economic miracle.” But family farms, with nominal help, provide 70% of the food Brazilians eat.
The Cerrado biome, covering 20 percent of Brazil, has seen rapid deforestation in the 21st century; a recent report says that much of this is driven by soy grown to feed livestock, which feeds Brazilians.
OUEZZANE, Morocco — Suisi Rheia was checking the olives on her tree in front of the community huilerie, or olive oil mill. It was already mid-November 2018, but some fruits…
Indigenous groups, quilombolas, agrarian reform settlements, and environmentalists are all responding to the new president’s early moves which could undermine past protections.
Social anthropologist Liana Chua leads a project, POKOK, that aims to reduce the killing of orangutans in Indonesian Borneo through deeper engagement with local people. The project came about as…
The recent plunge in numbers of Grauer's gorillas in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has lopped off one-fifth of the subspecies’ genetic diversity, leaving it potentially vulnerable to…
A recent study finds that governments and researchers routinely underestimate the potential for changes to land use and human diets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the impacts of…
FUNAI moved rapidly before Christmas to safeguard the isolated Kawahiva indigenous group from intruders into their territory – two weeks before Pres. Bolsonaro took office.
