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Banner image of waves near Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour following Typhoon Wipha, July 20, 2025. Image by AP Photo/Vernon Yuen.

How science links extreme weather disasters to climate change: Interview with WWA’s Clair Barnes

Kristine Sabillo 25 Aug 2025
Prayer flags in Mustang.

Escalation in tourism, climate change leaves Nepal’s Mustang in fragile state

Abhaya Raj Joshi 22 Aug 2025
Drax is the largest consumer of wood pellets for energy in the UK.

Sustainable biomass certification scheme is flawed, degrades forests, report finds

Annelise Giseburt 21 Aug 2025
After separating the edible pulp, the leftover enset fibers are collected and used to make durable household items like ropes, mats and baskets. Image by Solomon Yimer for Mongabay.

Ethiopian initiatives try to mainstream traditional and resilient enset crop in diets

Solomon Yimer 20 Aug 2025
The paving of the BR-319 highway would open the Amazon to further deforestation, affecting Brazil's rain cycle and endangering Indigenous communities. Image courtesy of the National Department of Transport Infrastructure (DNIT).

Brazil’s new licensing accord is a gateway to forest destruction via the BR-319 highway (commentary)

Philip M. Fearnside 20 Aug 2025

Respite, for now, for bird migration hotspot at heart of Sri Lanka’s wind power dispute

Malaka Rodrigo 20 Aug 2025
Sea fans in a coral reef in San Pedro, Belize. Image by Fabrice Dudenhofer / Ocean Image Bank.

Belize project seeks out heat-resilient corals to protect its reefs

Marco Lopez 19 Aug 2025

How Indonesian companies dodge fines for forest & peatland fires

Hans Nicholas Jong 19 Aug 2025
Banner image of a reindeer calf in 2009 at a Gabna Sámi village in Sweden, by Silje Bergum Kinsten/norden.org via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.5 DK).

Deadly Nordic heat wave made 10 times worse by climate change: Study

Kristine Sabillo 19 Aug 2025
White rhyolite spires on the shores of Jodogahama Beach in Miyako, Japan. These spires are estimated to be around 45 million years old and form a natural version of a Japanese garden. This beach is part of Sanriku Fukkō National Park. It was incorporated into this national park as a reconstruction effort following the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Image by Mike DiGirolamo for Mongabay.

Don’t quit: A podcaster’s charge to listeners & fellow humans (commentary)

Mike DiGirolamo 15 Aug 2025
A barberfish (Johnrandallia nigrirostris) swimming through Pocillopora corals in Panama's Coiba National Park.

Microbiomes may be corals’ secret weapon against climate change: Study

Marlowe Starling 14 Aug 2025
Waterfowl at Patlai River in Tanguar Haor, Bangladesh.

Global wetlands conference results in resolutions for protection & restoration

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 12 Aug 2025
This photo provided by the Securite Civile on Friday, Aug.8, 2025 shows firefighters next to a wildfire Thursday, Aug. 7, 2025 near Jonquieres, southern France. (Securite Civile via AP)

High temperatures threaten to reignite blaze after France’s largest wildfire in decades

Associated Press 8 Aug 2025
Banner image of motorists riding through a flooded road caused by heavy monsoon rain in Lahore, Pakistan, on July 10, 2025. Image by AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary.

Deadly monsoon rains in Pakistan made worse by climate change: Study

Kristine Sabillo 7 Aug 2025

Power poop saves the day (cartoon)

Rohan Chakravarty 5 Aug 2025
River in the Kosnipata valley, Peru. Photo by Rhett A. Butler

Empathy and spiritual ecology are a conservation solution and ‘radical cure’

Mike DiGirolamo 29 Jul 2025

Batang coal plant’s seawater permit imperils marine life, fishing communities

Basten Gokkon 26 Jul 2025
Lena Estrada, Colombia's minister of environment. Image by Eduardo Santamaría.

Oil ‘does not guarantee stability’: Colombia’s environment minister on energy transition

Latoya Abulu 24 Jul 2025
Campaigners in The Hague, Netherlands, where the ICJ gave its advisory opinion. Image courtesy of Tengbeh Kamara/Greenpeace.

Historic court ruling says countries legally bound to prevent climate harm

Shreya Dasgupta 24 Jul 2025
A Dayak Ngaju tribe man tries to extinguish fire on burning peatland in Mantangai, Central Kalimantan.

Indonesian palm oil company sues experts who helped secure $18m pollution ruling

Hans Nicholas Jong 24 Jul 2025
Mangrove forest in the Philippines. Image courtesy of the National Blue Carbon Action Partnership (NBCAP).

Blue carbon ecosystems are key for protecting the Philippines from climate shocks (commentary)

Jurgenne H. Primavera, Rona Joy Loma, Emily Richardson 22 Jul 2025
NASA's Artemis program plans to return humans to the moon, with the U.S. government agency working with SpaceX to develop the company's Starship human landing system.

Commercial space race comes with multiple planetary health risks

Sean Mowbray 22 Jul 2025
Heavy rainfall in Colombia and Venezuela caused deadly landslides and widespread flooding in June. A new analysis now points to rapid urbanization, deforestation, mining and overgrazing as having reduced the region’s climate resilience. 
 “The rapid growth of population and informal settlements in areas prone to landslides, particularly in Colombia, puts people and infrastructure at risk,” the World Weather Attribution (WWA), a network of scientists evaluating extreme weather events, said in its latest rapid analysis. It said the informal communities are growing as people seek livelihoods in cities or are displaced due to conflict. Roop Singh, report co-author from the Netherlands-based Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said at a media briefing that pasture- and agriculture-driven deforestation rose over the past two decades, increasing “the risk of landslides because tree roots are no longer binding and anchoring the soils.”
 The heavy rains during the last week of June triggered widespread flooding and damage in Colombia; a landslide in Antioquia department killed 27 people. In Venezuela, rivers overflowed, and smaller landslides cut off rural communities. WWA said in its report that rains in these regions had persisted since April, and that the June rain fell on already saturated ground where the deadly landslide occurred, and in rivers with already high levels of water. The scientists examined the total rainfall from April-June this year over the Magdalena River catchment in Colombia and the Falcón and Maracaibo basins in Venezuela. They also studied data on the accumulated rainfall from June 20-24 in the affected states in the Venezuelan Llanos, a grassland plain. “Neither events were particularly extreme,” Mariam Zachariah, co-author and research associate at Imperial College London, said at the briefing. The WWA analysis showed the heavy rain that fell in June is common, expected every 10 years in Colombia and every three years in Venezuela. The scientists also used climate models to understand the influence of human-induced climate change on the rains, but the findings were inconclusive. Instead, the models projected a drying trend for Colombia and mixed results for Venezuela. Friederike Otto, co-author and climate science professor at Imperial College London, said not being able to show clear linkages to climate change doesn’t mean there’s no influence. The researchers attributed some of the uncertainty to a lack of long-term observational weather data and weather stations in the region. “Unfortunately, extreme weather is not well understood in northern South America,” Paola A. Arias, a professor at the University of Antioquia, said in a statement. “We urgently need more investment in climate science to understand shifting risks and prepare for what’s ahead. More science will save lives." Zachariah said Colombia and Venezuela must prepare for both rainfall and drought, and build resilience to extreme weather. Banner image: People look at their destroyed home after a deadly landslide was triggered by heavy rain in Colombia’s Antioquia department on June 25, 2025. Image by AP Photo/Fredy Amariles.

Deadly landslide and flooding in Colombia and Venezuela linked to rapid urbanization

Kristine Sabillo 18 Jul 2025
A view from Saint George on the island of Antigua and Barbuda. Image by docshiznit via Wikimedia Commons.

Small island nations provide big environmental solutions but need finance partners (commentary)

Gaston Browne 15 Jul 2025
Amanda L. Cordeiro (left), a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Minnesota and Daniela F. Cusack, Associate Professor in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability at Colorado State University at one of their research sites to investigate how root systems react to climatic changes.

Tropical forest roots show strain as changes aboveground filter below

Petro Kotzé 15 Jul 2025

The world’s children suffer brunt of wildfire smoke health impacts

Anna Dulisse 14 Jul 2025
A man fans himself on a hot day in Retiro Park in Madrid, Spain, on June 28, 2025. Image © Paul White/AP.

Extreme heat kills at least 2,300 in European cities, study estimates

Shanna Hanbury 14 Jul 2025
Most of the lightning strike victims tend to be farmers and fishers.

Study links surge in lightning disasters in Bangladesh to transboundary air pollution

Mahadi Al Hasnat 11 Jul 2025
Rukka shows the location of a former coal mine pit that flows into the Nangka River, which is now polluted.

Indonesian civil society urges probe after payout for mine recovery that never happened

Muhibar Sobary Ardan 10 Jul 2025
Using the law to save the planet | Against All Odds

Youth and women find success in taking climate cases to court

Mongabay.com 9 Jul 2025
Corals and fish in Lighthouse Reef atoll, Belize.

Restoration, protection aim to save Belize’s coral reef from extreme heat and disease

Marco Lopez 9 Jul 2025
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva with his environmental and climate change minister, Marina Silva on his first day in office on Jan. 1.

Why is Lula still silent on Brazil’s ‘Bill of devastation?’ (commentary)

Philip M. Fearnside 8 Jul 2025

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