In today’s industrialized world, avoiding plastic is virtually impossible. Every trip to the grocery store likely means coming home with food and household items packaged in plastic bottles, tubs and…
The early optimism that launched plastic treaty negotiations in 2022 was stymied at talks this month in Nairobi at which large petrostates stonewalled against creating a binding international treaty that would regulate cradle-to-grave plastics production.
As oil and gas production surge, shifting the global economy to a circular model is essential to charting a path away from fossil fuels, petroleum-based nitrogen fertilizers and petrochemicals such as plastics. Part 3 of a three-part miniseries.
This story is the second in a three-part mini-series surveying the range of impacts by the fossil fuel industry on the global environment. Part one and part two review harm…
In 2009, a controversial scientific experiment dumped 6 metric tons of dissolved iron into the Southern Ocean to see if it would trigger a massive bloom of phytoplankton in iron-deficient…
Fossil fuels have done great good for humanity, but they are now not only threatening our planet’s climate, but also taking a terrible toll on the global environment, putting at risk Earth systems vital to life as we know it. Part 1 of a three-part miniseries.
It started with monkey poop. A few years ago we analyzed the feces of wild baboons, chimpanzees, red-tailed monkeys, and red colobus in Uganda and found unexpectedly high levels of…
The researchers estimate that 123 childhood deaths during the 2008-19 period are associated with exposure to pesticides from the soy fields, amounting to half the deaths of children under 10 from lymphoblastic leukemia in the region.
Research finds impacts by tiny plastic particles on marine plankton and microbes could disrupt carbon and nitrogen cycling in the world’s oceans, possibly putting Earth’s operating system and the planet’s habitability at risk.
While PFAS impacts on human health are well known, scientists are also finding severe impacts on wildlife, including hawksbill turtles, American alligators, Arctic kittiwakes, hooded seals, striped bass, bottlenose dolphins and other species.
PALAWAN, Philippines — On Aug. 8, 2013, Fernando de Chavez, along with more than 400 farmers and advocates, stormed a Golden Rice field trial site in Pili, a town in…
This is the third story in a three-part Mongabay miniseries on the Dutch nitrogen crisis and farmer protests of 2022: The Dutch, and European, green agenda crashes into the continent’s…
Rapidly transitioning the world’s vehicle fleet to fully electric could significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, but also dramatically increase demand for critical battery metals like lithium, nickel and…
This is the second story in a three-part Mongabay miniseries on the Dutch nitrogen crisis and farmer protests of 2022: How EU conservation rules shook up Dutch politics. Read Part…
This is the first story in a three-part Mongabay miniseries on the Dutch nitrogen crisis and farmer protests of 2022: How the Dutch food revolution became an ecological time bomb.…
It’s long been known that many people depend on the world’s single largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans, for their livelihoods, as the forest naturally provides resources including fish, crabs, honey…
SINGAPORE — If you didn’t know better, you might think Edwin Beng is heading home after buying a new appliance. It’s a muggy Sunday morning in Singapore, and Beng, carrying…
Guanabara Bay, the historic gateway to Rio de Janeiro, is both a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most polluted coastal ecosystems in the world. It sees 18,000…
Once a nursery for marine life, Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro is now dying from the dumping of thousands of liters of sewage into its waters; artisanal fishermen now survive by picking up the garbage that floats in the bay.
The marine biodiversity hotspot known as the Coral Triangle is home to more than 76% of the world's known coral species and more than 3,000 species of fish. It sustains…
In a May-June meeting 135 nations agreed to press forward and write a draft of a strong international treaty regulating plastics, though some nations including the U.S., China and Saudi Arabia resisted a binding agreement.
JAMBI — A quintet of Jambi residents gathered one morning in May at the home of Leni Haini, an Indonesian environmental activist who last year received a prestigious award from…
A recent chemical spill in a protected reserve in northern Nicaragua is raising concerns about the contamination of several river ecosystems and the public health fallout for thousands of Indigenous…
Oil and gas companies, led by Shell, Eni, Chevron, Total and ExxonMobil, spilled 110,000 barrels of oil into Nigeria’s Bayelsa state over the past 50 years, a new report says.…
"Our cries over frequent oil spills that threaten our livelihoods have fallen on deaf ears."
Last year, a car fueled by human waste toured the European countryside, covering more than 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles). It was the culmination of To-Syn-Fuel, a pathfinding project using technology…
Between 2019 and 2021, swarms of desert locusts̨ swept across the Horn of Africa and East Africa. In response, the worst-affected countries, Kenya and Ethiopia, sprayed millions of hectares of…
Authorities investigating the discovery of 14 dead vultures in a feeding zone that’s meant to be safe for the scavenging birds have found that they died from eating poisoned bait…
AMBOHITSY HAUT, Madagascar — Etsizakay, 40, stood amid the rugged knolls of his village, Ambohitsy Haut, and pointed right. “That’s where my brother is buried,” he said. “There ahead are…
As 175 countries prepare to gather in May to move ahead on a global plastics treaty, the world’s plastic-producing and plastic-polluted countries remain divided on whether the agreement should be mandatory or voluntary, among many other issues.
