The Earth is a huge floating mass of rock, liquid and gas, weighing a staggering 5.9 sextillion tons. But there’s only one part that supports life: the biosphere, a thin…
The terrestrial and marine ecosystems in the Caribbean exist in a very delicate balance, which produces the exotic forms of life it has become famous for. On islands like Jamaica…
Endemic species face a greater risk of going extinct because of climate change than native or introduced species, a recent study in Biological Conservation has found. Species that are exclusive…
Today we discuss Planetary Boundaries, nine environmental systems identified by scientists as essential to Earth’s ability to sustain life and the limits to how far out of equilibrium we can…
More than a decade after the Planetary Boundaries framework was first proposed by top scientists, we are no closer to changing our destructive trajectory — but 2021 gives us three opportunities to act.
Today we’re discussing proposed solutions to the global climate crisis that could have unintended consequences and thus might not be the effective solutions they’re promoted as. Listen here: Nature-based solutions…
Today we’re taking a look at how agroforestry, an ancient indigenous technology that is increasingly being adopted by farmers around the world, can help solve many of the major environmental…
Chances are, the works of the world’s insects touch your lips every day. The coffee or tea you savor, both are insect pollinated. Apples, oranges, cabbages, cashews, cherries, carrots, broccoli,…
Earth’s future looks decidedly bleak, according to a group of 17 prominent international scientists. But understanding the magnitude of the world’s problems is not an easy feat, even for knowledgeable…
Few images captured the mood of climate activists this week more vividly than a video posted to Twitter of Christiana Figueres, one of the architects of the Paris Agreement, jubilantly…
Avoiding the loss of human life and the economic fallout caused by future pandemics will require a seismic change in our approach to the causes of the emergence of disease-causing…
A new tiny orchid species with fiery orange flowers has been discovered on a mountain peak in the northern Philippines’ Cordilleras range. The wild orchid species was named Dendrochilum ignisiflorum…
Shifting rainfall patterns, especially those exacerbated by climate change, could drive large parts of the Amazon rainforest to become drier savanna, a new study has found. Rainfall acts like a…
The world’s protected areas are largely a jumble of disjointed refuges, separated from each other by the encroachment of human impacts, a recent study has found. Fewer than 10% of…
On the island of Siquijor in the central Philippines, groups of women risk their lives for a cause: to manage and protect their marine sanctuaries. Communities in the central Philippines…
As the planet plunges headlong into its sixth mass extinction, caused by humans, biodiversity is being lost at an unprecedented rate. Global targets to slow this alarming trend have not…
By 2070, rising soil temperatures could cause germination failure in 20% of tropical plants, and reduced rates in more than 50%, with the potential to disrupt and alter tropical ecosystems.
Argentina’s Paraná Delta is on fire, and conservationists are sounding the alarm, warning that this major ecosystem could be devastated beyond repair. The delta system, which spans 19,300 square kilometers…
This week, Greenpeace International released a series of dramatic photos revealing megafires burning in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia, Russia. The images, captured on July 16 by drone, show red…
Habitat loss and climate change are often blamed for the decreasing numbers of migratory shorebirds in a major flyway in the Asia-Pacific region in recent years. But it might be…
Filipino lepidopterist Jade Aster T. Badon is accustomed to traveling to some of the remotest parts of the Philippines in search of new butterfly species. In August 2019, he made…
Pixaim is one of the remaining quilombos on the Atlantic coast, an Afro-Brazilian settlement already gravely impacted by upstream dams. Now climate change could doom it.
Scraping sounds fill the nights at Mapungubwe, a national park at the confluence of the Limpopo and Shashe rivers, where the borders of Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa meet. Families…
Life can’t function without insects. At least, not for long. Dutifully, they pollinate, break down waste, cycle nutrients, move seeds, and touch every node in the web of life, filling…
JAMBI, Indonesia — As Indonesia grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, infections from another animal-borne disease have gone on the rise largely unnoticed and likely driven by climate change, with more…
Environmental degradation has already triggered disease outbreaks in Brazil. The risk of a new emergent zoonotic disease arising there, like COVID-19, is intensified by Bolsonaro’s forest policies.
MISAMIS ORIENTAL, Philippines — For hundreds of years, the lives of fisherfolk along the sleepy coastal villages in the town of Candiis in the Philippines’ Misamis Oriental province have been…
Dung beetle species populations are moving toward collapse in parts of the Brazilian Amazon apparently due to climate change-driven drought, fires, and other human disturbances.
Patagonia’s huemul is an agile herbivore of which only about 1,500 may remain at 100 or so scattered sites between sea level and the Andes; it is being buffeted by complex interrelated stressors.
A comment piece published in Nature yesterday urges tropical countries to adopt a tax on carbon emissions in order to halt global warming, species loss, and deforestation. The authors of…
