Imagine showers of little green sand grains drifting through the ocean: collecting on coral reefs, rolling off the backs of whales, sprinkling schools of tuna — and helping to save…
Tropical forests play a key role in our efforts to stabilize the global climate. As a readymade means of ameliorating our continued greenhouse gas emissions, tree-clad tropical landscapes provide us…
Last July, as the Ukraine war raged, the EU barred all Russian woody biomass imports; even as South Korea took in Russia’s supply. Illicit woody biomass may also still be flowing to the EU from Turkey, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
Pedro Brancalion is used to the roar of chainsaws. For years, he’s heard loggers tearing down rainforest giants in the Brazilian Amazon, and listened as ancient trees were toppled and…
A stone causeway connects an islet, the famed Aragonese Castle perched atop it, to the island of Ischia off the coast of Naples in southern Italy. Below water, along the…
A Mongabay story featuring a whistleblower who debunked the green claims of Enviva — the world’s largest wood pellet maker — has prompted the Dutch to ban subsidies to biomass firms who make false sustainability claims.
An existing regulation designating the burning of forests to make energy as being renewable has been reversed in Australia. That decision seems unlikely to alter the EU’s heavy commitment to biomass burning.
Agriculture is gradually killing forests, and yet up to half of tropical forestland in Africa, Latin America and Asia cleared for agriculture remains idle, according to research published in the…
Among the ambitious commitments made at COP27 were plans for a methane monitoring satellite system that would improve tracking in the energy sector where the majority of global greenhouse gas…
Flying this November into a remote region of the Orinoquía savanna in Vichada, Colombia, environmental biologist Jacobo Arango could spot the Hacienda San José cattle ranch that his team was…
An area of salt marsh twice the size of Singapore has disappeared since the turn of the century, NASA scientists determined by analyzing satellite images from around the globe. Severe…
Two hours by boat from Belém, the state capital of Pará in Brazil, in the small village of Acará-Açu, wood houses rise on thin piles on the banks of the…
In contrast to their reputation, big plant eaters such as elephants that disturb forest and grassland vegetation could help curb climate change.
JAKARTA — Fully protecting Indonesia’s remaining peatlands and mangroves is the key to achieving the government’s goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the decade — and…
On Dec. 6, legislators in Argentina’s southernmost province of Tierra del Fuego approved a law to permanently protect the land and sea of the Mitre Peninsula at the tip of…
Wildlife — as big as elephants and as small as spiders — are important players in the carbon cycle, and scientists say that supercharging ecosystems with animals could enhance terrestrial and marine carbon sinks.
In 2016, Bangkok opened its first waste-to-energy incinerator in the district of Nong Khaem, turning up to 500 metric tons of solid waste into electricity every day. The 9.8 megawatt…
Policymakers could finalize revisions to the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive by year end, even as forest activists offer new evidence denouncing wood pellets as an energy source, and calling for an end to subsidies.
A group of researchers from more than a dozen countries are calling for worldwide peatland protection and restoration. In a signed statement released Dec. 1, more than 40 scientists say…
With no physical form, the digital currency Bitcoin can feel all but invisible to those who don’t use it. However, its harmful climate impacts are all too real – and…
A biomass industry insider tells Mongabay in exclusive interviews that Enviva, the world’s largest maker of wood pellets for energy, is disingenuous in its green, eco-friendly claims to the public and stockholders.
The prospect of a European winter energy crisis loomed from the moment Russia launched its assault on Ukraine in February. In the following weeks, the EU – which in 2021…
COLOMBO — The small Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka may contribute only 0.03% to global carbon emission levels yet it has set an ambitious target to become carbon neutral…
JAKARTA — Indonesia will continue building new coal-fired power plants, despite a recent $20 billion deal with the G7 group of industrialized countries to help it transition to clean energy.…
JAKARTA — Indonesia has struck a historic deal with the G7 group of industrialized countries on a $20 billion financing package to help it speed up its transition from fossil…
It’s a stunning landscape with a prophetic name: Lisima lya mwono, or “the source of life” as it’s known in the language of the local Luchaze people. But that’s not…
More than three decades after the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu raised the issue at international climate talks, the question of who should pay damages for climate change-induced losses is…
The past decade has seen a paradigm shift in the way the world looks at lighting. Homes, offices and streets have turned off wasteful incandescent lights and fluorescent ones that…
ORLEANS, California—An elemental smell wafts through the Klamath mountains in early autumn—woodsmoke. Despite the U.S. Forest Service’s intermittent bans on lighting fires in the forest, the Karuk Tribe is maintaining…
Funders of a $1.7 billion pledge announced at the 2021 U.N. climate conference say they disbursed around 19% of the money to bolster the land rights of Indigenous and local…
