Last month, the Democratic Republic of Congo approved the auctioning off of 16 oil blocks, at least nine of which are in the fragile peatland ecosystem of the Cuvette Centrale.…
A new book by Wake Smith, “Pandora’s Toolbox,” explores controversial ideas for artificially cooling the planet. Smith discusses the hopes and hazards of geoengineering in an exclusive Mongabay interview.
Training cattle ranchers in Brazil to recover degraded pastures could curb carbon dioxide emissions, scale down deforestation for agriculture in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes, and increase their income, according…
Japan and South Korea are increasingly burning biomass, such as wood pellets, to make energy, with potentially adverse impacts on the global climate, deforestation and biodiversity.
As hot and muggy as most tropical rainforests are, you only need to leave their florid confines and step onto a recently razed plot of land to feel an immediate…
Slice through a tree trunk, and you’ll find a series of rings that tell a story of how that tree grew over the course of its life. These rings are…
In the past, ocean carbon data was sparse, mostly gathered by ships. But the future of monitoring belongs to robot floats that deliver real-time data across vast oceans — even in the remote Antarctic Southern Ocean.
In the past decade, the European bison (Bison bonasus) has made a comeback in Central and Eastern Europe. Hunters had killed the last known bison in the region nearly a…
Papua New Guinea’s environment minister has imposed a moratorium on new voluntary carbon credit schemes to give the government time to create a regulatory framework for future and existing deals.…
Traditional and Indigenous peoples in the Arctic are joining with scientists to successfully rewild mining-degraded peatlands and other sites.
A nearly seven-decade-long experiment in South Africa’s largest national park is yielding surprising results about how fires mold savanna land. The analysis from Kruger National Park, published in the journal…
The EU remains committed to burning forests to make energy, despite conclusive scientific evidence of its climate destabilizing impacts. In a new strategy, forest advocates plan to take the EU to court to fight that policy.
An agreement for the rights to the natural capital covering 2 million hectares (4.9 million acres) in Malaysian Borneo for the next 100 years “in its present form is legally…
Forest degradation due to environmental causes (such as drought) and human causes (such as fragmentation) released three times as much carbon as deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon between 2010 and 2019, say researchers.
After a disappointing track record over the past two decades, carbon credit markets are back in style. Also known as “offsets,” carbon credits are having a renewed moment, as corporations…
Under threat since 2020, the 20-year satellite monitoring program for deforestation in Brazil’s Cerrado savanna, a global biodiversity hotspot, may end in April due to lack of funding. "Part of…
KWALE COUNTY, Kenya — More than 20 years ago, along the lush southeastern coast of Kenya, the area known as Vanga Bay was home to a mangrove forest spanning 4,428…
The U.S. West is already deep in drought, with forecasts for far worse this century. But there’s hope for water-stressed farms: regulators are testing solutions that rely on cooperation and bold water saving and sharing strategies.
Update Feb. 10, 2022: Sabah's attorney general says the consent of Indigenous communities is required for this agreement to move forward. Read the update here. Adrian Lasimbang, an Indigenous leader in…
This is the wrap-up article for our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four. In the first half of December, Mongabay…
Suzano’s vast eucalyptus plantations may soon be counted toward Brazil’s reforestation and CO2 emission reduction goals. But critics say tree farms can’t equal rainforests for carbon storage or biodiversity.
This is the fourth article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Two and Part Three. The muddy cores that Ian Lawson and his colleagues…
In November 2020, Peruvian cacao company Tamshi filed a lawsuit against Mongabay Latam staff reporter Yvette Sierra Praeli for “aggravated defamation” over her reporting of a government investigation into the…
This is the third article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Two and Part Four. The logging concession moratorium signed in 2002 was supposed to shore…
When it comes to slowing climate change, there’s one natural solution that has recently gripped the world: large-scale tree planting and reforestation. But a new study warns that other natural…
This is the second article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Three and Part Four. The announcement came in mid-2019: A pool of oil lay deep…
On Nov. 2, a group of 12 donors, including the European Commission, United Kingdom, United States and the Bezos Earth Fund, collectively pledged at least $1.5 billion in financing toward…
This is the first article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part Two, Part Three and Part Four. The notion seemed straightforward: A massive swamp in the Congo Basin…
“Bornean communities locked into 2-million-hectare carbon deal they don’t know about” - 9 Nov 2021, Mongabay This was the headline Sabah woke up to on the morning of November 10th.…
While it’s clear that soil can help limit the impacts of climate change, leveraging its power requires a menu of solutions at many scales. Most of them require big policy…
