Ongoing violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has taken a heavy toll on the country’s women, with sexual violence there gaining the DRC a label as the…
For all the economic benefits the palm oil industry has brought to Indonesia and Malaysia, which together produce more than 80 percent of the global supply of the commodity, the…
Great apes should be humanity’s best bet for conservation — charismatic, intelligent, strikingly familiar, with big emoting eyes. It’s hard to think of creatures with whom the public empathizes more…
In a remote mountainous rainforest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), scientists have discovered a new species of wild ginger. The newly described plant -- discovered on the…
The Democratic Republic of Congo’s extensive forests seem like a bright spot in an otherwise-troubled country. With forests covering an area larger than Colombia, DRC has managed to sidestep the…
On the surface, the Republic of Congo appears to be making strides toward both conservation and economic development. But the process of becoming an emerging economy is not without its…
A vast area of peatlands in the swamp forests of the Congo Basin, known as the Cuvette Centrale peatlands, has just been mapped for the first time and shown to…
Most of the attention around palm oil production has focused on where the crop has the largest footprint: Southeast Asia. Yet oil palm plantations are rapidly mushrooming throughout the tropics, from…
Using remote cameras attached high up in trees and in the understory, researchers have captured the first ever video footage of a new population of the rare Dryas monkeys (Cercopithecus…
A study published in the journal Science Advances this month found that, between 2000 and 2013, the global area of intact forest landscape declined by 7.2 percent, a reduction of…
Over the last several decades, the Northern Sub-Saharan African region has been hit by a number of severe droughts and the associated societal impacts, such as food shortages that result…
KAHUZI-BIEGA NATIONAL PARK, Democratic Republic of the Congo - I came out of my room and a park ranger was standing just outside the door with an AK-47 in his hands.…
Seven oil palm-growing African nations pledged today to protect their tropical forests by shifting to sustainable palm oil production. The TFA 2020 Marrakesh Declaration for the Sustainable Development of the…
Cables obtained by the non-profit Oakland Institute through a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that U.S. government officials pushed the Central African nation of Cameroon to approve a deeply…
Industrial oil palm oil plantations in Southeast Asia have caused regional greenhouse gas emissions levels to spike and led to widespread deforestation and loss of biodiversity. So as global demand…
Central African country Gabon has formally adopted a new guidance document produced by local communities and civil society groups that aims to help forest communities receive a share of profits…
Elephant poachers killed three wildlife rangers and wounded two more in a shootout yesterday in Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, reports African Parks, a conservation group…
ver the last four decades, industrial agriculture has been a boon to Southeast Asia, but it also helped destroy more than 30 percent of Borneo’s rainforest — one of the…
frica is similar to other developing regions of the world in that agriculture is central to the continent’s economy, composing almost one quarter of its GNP and employing nearly two-thirds…
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has one of the world's biggest remaining tracts of rainforest (second only to the Amazon in size), home to unique and threatened species…
New research shows how soil carbon could be the key to protecting endangered species and reining in global emissions of greenhouse gases at the same time. Worldwide, we’re spending less…
The rare “forest giraffe,” a native of the lowland rainforests in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, faces numerous threats, including habitat loss, armed conflict, poaching, and, increasingly, the mining…
In southeast Cameroon, World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) has helped support a number of conservation initiatives, including the creation of three national parks. But WWF’s presence in Cameroon since…
The discovery of a new species of mormyrid, a “weakly electric” fish endemic to the continental freshwaters of Africa, has led to the creation of a new genus containing not…
n December of last year, a small group of government officials took a long arduous trip to visit the site of a remote palm oil plantation in the Republic of…
A team of researchers has described 60 new species of dragonflies and damselflies from various parts of Africa, according to a recent study published in the journal Odonatologica. This is…
Critics say the controversial project will destroy sensitive habitat in a nearby national park.
International NGOs are denouncing the charges brought against Nasako Besingi, a leader in the fight against a project by U.S. agribusiness giant Herakles Farms to develop oil palm plantations in Cameroon.
More than 120 countries have submitted climate plans to the UN ahead of upcoming negotiations in Paris and, as you might expect, some are more ambitious than others. That’s especially…
Norway and several European Nations, along with the United Nations and the World Bank, today committed to a new initiative that takes aim at the underlying causes of deforestation in…