Much of Bangladesh lies in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Basin, where the three rivers meet in the world’s largest delta before washing out in the Bay of Bengal. The Meghna Basin covers…
JAKARTA — Major coal-fired power plant projects in Indonesia and Bangladesh have effectively been cancelled after the Japanese government, their main funder, recently announced it would stop providing loans to…
When is seaweed much more than seaweed? In the United States, seaweed farms are sprouting up all over the country, but on the east end of Long Island, New York,…
When Kristin Laidre began working on a long-term project to study polar bears in eastern Greenland, she didn’t expect to find a new subpopulation of the species — and she certainly…
Plastic has been found in the most unexpected places: in the deepest parts of the ocean, in the remote mountain air, in human blood. And now, it’s even been found…
Between 1869 and 1870, the H.M.S. Porcupine sailed into the North Atlantic Ocean and scraped a dredge along the seafloor. When the sailors pulled the dredge back to the surface,…
BARINGO COUNTY, Kenya – Last December in the town of Marigat, in Kenya's central Baringo county, Paul Chepsoi had to excuse himself from a dinner of nyama choma (roasted goat)…
The UK and EU were the primary users of woody biomass for energy. But Japan and South Korea have drastically stepped up their burning of wood pellets — potentially threatening forests, biodiversity, and the climate.
For the first time, a portion of the EU government has challenged the sustainability of burning forest biomass to make energy, a controversial policy pushed by the forestry industry but condemned by environmentalists.
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.
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.
JAKARTA — Tropical forest loss remained consistently high in 2021 with no sign of slowing down, despite commitments by companies and governments to curb deforestation, according to new data from…
The Mediterranean is a cradle — of civilization, of agriculture, of history. But the region, stretching across southern and southeastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, is also a…
A reassessment by an international group of scientists finds that human-caused destabilization of the water cycle is seriously impacting global soil moisture, with knock on effects for forests and other ecosystems.
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.
JAKARTA — Indonesia, a top greenhouse gas emitter, will need far more than the international funding it has already been promised if it’s to achieve its carbon reduction goals, a…
The world still has a fighting chance to keep temperatures below 2° Celsius over pre-industrial levels, if all countries meet their commitments to curb global warming, scientists say. In a…
Current pledges to cut emissions won’t be enough to slow climate change, according to a new report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). U.N. Secretary-General António…
A new report by the Forest Declaration Assessment says that fulfilling the Paris Agreement won’t be possible without acknowledging and supporting the crucial role of Indigenous peoples and local communities’…
The Amazon Rainforest is resilient: the largest rainforest on the planet has been around for at least 55 million years, surviving repeated ice ages and warming. But human impacts, combined…
In 2010, an influx of cold air blew over the lower Florida Keys, chilling the subtropical waters to temperatures as low as 11° Celsius, or 52° Fahrenheit. The coral reefs…
Arctic sea ice extent continued its trending decline in winter 2022, while the Antarctic saw a record low summer minimum extent. Both regions also saw extraordinarily high temperatures for this time of year.
JAKARTA — An eight-year effort by Indonesia to protect its remaining forests contributed just 4% of its emissions reduction target, yet still yielded carbon savings worth far more than it…
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.
To support ongoing conservation efforts in the Amazon rainforest, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation is putting an additional $300 million toward its Andes-Amazon Initiative, which is the largest private…
The transition zone between the Amazon and the Cerrado, where the world’s greatest rainforest melds into its largest tropical savanna, is heating up, posing severe threats to both biomes, a…
Of the nine critical planetary boundaries that humanity is transgressing, climate change is the best known and understood, while atmospheric aerosol pollution may be the least, but aerosols are already having climate impacts and polluting Earth’s skies, killing millions.
KISANGANI, Congo — A major European logging firm may have illegally converted more than a dozen of its timber concessions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo into so-called conservation…
JAKARTA — A plan to clear forests in Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua for food crops will release as much greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as Australia emits in an…
