As climate change brings extreme conditions to more parts of the world, the requests to draw down the savings kept in crop genebanks are evolving. European countries facing rising temperatures…
From substantial philanthropic pledges to studies revealing the increasing threat of extinction, world leaders are paying unprecedented attention to biodiversity. In March, governments gathered to continue shaping the Convention on…
Brazil’s Amazon dam plans have been slowed down over the past decade due to realization by the country’s electrical authorities that obtaining environmental licenses would be difficult when Indigenous peoples…
Indonesia is the biggest palm oil producer in the world. Alongside Malaysia, both countries dominate 85% of the global market. Palm oil is considered one of the strategic commodities in…
Scholars and political leaders worldwide are fretting over the complex connections between climate and insecurity. Many social scientists theorize that climate disruption is a “conflict multiplier.” To residents of the…
With negotiations underway in Geneva for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, Indigenous land rights have finally taken center stage. The human rights group Avaaz released a 30-page document calling for…
A critical new donor-funded evaluation of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has confirmed what African civil society and faith leaders have claimed: “AGRA did not meet…
It’s a long way from Kyiv to Itaituba, but Brazil’s busy wildcat gold prospectors don’t need a map. The war on Ukraine has sent international gold prices soaring and word…
In November 2018, Earthsight published an in-depth investigation in collaboration with Mongabay into the Tanah Merah oil palm project in Papua, on the Indonesian half of the island of New…
In December, the British government announced a plan to ban the import of hunting trophies into the UK. The proposal has popular support, but there is a vocal contingent that…
Illegal deforestation represents an outsized share of global deforestation. Tropical forest loss is accelerating climate change, displacing Indigenous and local communities, and destroying landscapes that biodiversity and communities depend on…
The latest IPCC climate report mentions tenure security a whopping 58 times. This is a welcome shift in emphasis from the UN – strengthening land rights is a just and…
If you are pessimistic about the state of our planet, let me surprise you with this: It is perfectly possible to rebuild life in our ocean to avoid ecological disaster.…
After two seasons of the hit television show Tiger King and a new dramatization, Joe vs. Carole, soon to debut, millions of people have been desensitized to the dangerous and cruel…
On February 11, 2022, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro published a decree establishing the Program for Supporting the Development of Artisanal Mining (Pró-Mape), which aims to “stimulate” this type of mining…
The Batwa Indigenous peoples lived in the Kahuzi-Biega forests of present-day Democratic Republic of Congo for centuries before Belgian colonial rule imposed formal change in 1937 with the establishment of…
Gharials (Gavialis gangeticus), are a strange and unique crocodilian. Although they’re one of the world’s largest crocodilians by mass, they also have comically thin jaws suited for catching fish rather…
Over recent years, consumers have become increasingly aware of the bitter-sweet legacy left by the chocolate industry in the countries that supply a majority of the world’s cocoa. While cocoa…
Proposed legislation to ban the import of hunting trophies (e.g. horns, antlers, tusks) apparently enjoys popular support within the UK, yet the effects of these policies are likely to be…
The European Commission's plan to counter deforestation associated with certain imported agricultural products was unveiled on November 17, 2021. One third of global deforestation is linked to international trade, and…
The price of palm oil has doubled since the early weeks of the pandemic. In May 2020, the price of palm oil contracts sold on the Bursa Malaysia, the main…
In 2010, the 13 countries that still retained tiger populations in the wild converged on St. Petersburg, Russia, to sign a summit declaration to double the number of tigers before…
On the 1st of February 2022, the Year of the Tiger starts. The Chinese zodiac is an increasingly popular pseudoscientific classification scheme with followers in Asian countries, like China, Japan,…
2022 has already started out with a series of extreme climate events, reminiscent of last year’s record-breaking storms, heat, drought, and flood events, which displaced nearly 30 million people. In…
When we routinely flush a toilet, the waste is hurled away so quickly that most of us don’t give it a second thought. But that waste, despite our inclination to…
Once the epicenter of the global trade in gold, illegal mining is once again surging across the Amazon. Its extraction and trade is not only fueling corruption, money laundering and…
"Ecuador is proud to announce the creation of the Hermandad Marine Reserve in the coming days," the country's president declares in an opinion piece shared with Mongabay. His country had…
Two of the world’s most ubiquitous and important crops have a 7,000-year-old backstory, which can be traced to the Andes in South America, where maize and potatoes have long been…
A recent article on the Emirati newspaper The National reports that, according to conservationists, “The increased enforcement by Somaliland in the Gulf [of Aden] and along known smuggling routes, plus the…
Recovering Together, Recovering Stronger. Indonesia adopted this tagline when it took over the rotating chair of the club of the world’s 20 largest advanced and emerging economies, the Group of…