Commentary News

The year 2021 is a La Niña year, and La Niña events typically lead to droughts in southeastern Brazil where São Paulo, the world’s fourth largest city, is located. La…

I was quite thrilled reading Jut Wynne’s commentary on the Maya Forest Corridor (MFC) published by Mongabay on May 24th of this year. Jut described the critical importance of the…

I’m a native of North Queensland. I love Rugby League, an arvo in my tinny angling for coral trout (translation: an afternoon in a fishing boat) and The Reef. These…

Naryan-Mar is a sea and river port town on the Arctic coast of Russia with a population of 22,000. It is a tundra ecosystem, with shallow peat soils. The local…

When the Okhchuchay River runs milky white, it means there has been another dangerous incident. The waterway begins in Armenia, passing through lands rich for mining, then flowing into Azerbaijan, where it…

When the UNESCO World Heritage Committee (WHC) meets from July 16 to 31, they will be tasked with addressing urgent threats to some of the world’s most treasured sites of…

Most people do not realize how much the internet requires in energy, physical space, and its carbon footprint.  Here are some tips on what we can do, individually, to reduce it.

The past 16 months have been challenging for many of us, a time from which we are learning how to better care for one another. And from these challenges of…

The cage door opens. A monkey takes its first, tentative steps out. There’s a fleeting backwards look, then the animal takes off, back into the wild. Whether you call such…

Elephants are always the prime attraction. In zoos, circuses, and safaris, elephants are the number one draw. They make an impression with their playfulness and intelligence, their docile nature despite…

The smart money is on the Amazon forest. Agroforestry can replace cattle, generate new wealth, create jobs and develop new economic zones that insulate pristine forest from deforestation risk.  Investors…

Wild elephants are awe-inspiring — even if they’re trying to kill you, as I discovered in 2004. At the time I was studying how poachers and loggers threaten native mammals…

On June 17th a judicial decision marks a new phase for the struggle over water flow to the “Volta Grande” (“Big Bend”) of Brazil’s Xingu River between the two dams…

Juneteenth marks the date in 1865 where an estimated 250,000 enslaved people in Texas were freed, marking the official end of slavery in the Confederacy – two years after the…

Global emissions of carbon dioxide reached 36.8 billion metric tons in 2019, and were on track for the highest levels ever in 2020. But then the coronavirus hit, and the resulting economic…

It might sound nihilistic and harsh to describe Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia (Indochina) as forming a kind of buffer zone against the onslaught of snaring and the defaunation of forests…

The U.S. surprised many by vowing to reduce its carbon emissions by 50%. This pledge followed hot on the heels of a similar announcement by the U.K., and many other…

Come dry season every year, fires flare up across Indonesia, including in protected forest areas. Not only do these endanger the plant and animal wildlife in these forests, but they…

Brazil is internationally known for its astonishing biodiversity. Nevertheless, there is another natural heritage for which Brazil should also be recognized: its caves. As a continental-sized country, with a rich…

Every time I meet someone new and tell them I work on defining sustainability for the rubber industry, a range of questions follows. The most important of these typically is,…

Belize sits on the cusp of protecting the key piece of the largest rainforest preserve north of the Amazon. In April 2021, the Nature Conservancy and a consortium of conservation…

Seven years ago, I published a major report for the US think-tank Forest Trends: ‘Consumer Goods and Deforestation’ revealed how international markets for commodities like beef, soy and palm oil…

In the late 2000s and the early 2010s, the Brazilian palm oil industry told us that oil palm plantation expansion would take a different path than in Southeast Asia, where…

The Pope, a prince, and a judge walk into a bar... Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. What it represents instead is not a meeting in a bar,…

Wild animals, especially big cats, have captivated human interest for as long as we have existed. The very first figurative art, laboriously carved out of woolly mammoth ivory over 40,000…

I am not here to give you a startling new angle on the climate crisis. I cannot claim to have the silver bullet, the awe-inspiring technology that will solve all…

A horrifying video surfaced last week showing National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre struggling to kill an African savanna elephant in Botswana. LaPierre’s pursuit of a trophy, documented (though never…

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, together with two dozen other leaders from around the world, have called for a new international treaty for pandemic preparedness…

The Brazilian president is making big promises to reduce Amazon deforestation, even as he moves to legalize large scale land theft with potentially catastrophic results for Earth’s climate and the Amazon.

The climate and environmental crisis the world has long been experiencing is embedded in concern for future generations. But research shows that consequences are already affecting the world's population and…