Bogotá — As the world became fixated on the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, the situation for environmental defenders across the globe has only become more precarious. In 2019, 212 environmental…
JAKARTA — Onrizal Onrizal remembers hearing stories of human-like creatures living in the forest when he was growing up in Sungai Dareh, a town in western Sumatra, Indonesia. Legend had…
Held aloft by a canopy crane nearly 10 stories above the forest floor, Susan Kirmse observed and collected beetles in the rainforest canopy for an entire year. What did she…
JAKARTA — The survival of critically endangered wildlife like Sumatran orangutans and tigers and the livelihoods of Indigenous communities might be in jeopardy as the Indonesian government plans to establish…
“Unless urgent and effective conservation action is taken, these magnificent animals are likely to go extinct within our lifetime.”- Dr. Carlos Drews, Director of WWF’s Global Species Program In 2011,…
In a newly released map, the coastal waters of the eight main Hawaiian islands are alight with color. Blue, turquoise, green, yellow, orange and red tinge the islands’ perimeters, each…
Between the pandemic, rising food insecurity and poverty, and catastrophic disasters like wildfires, storms and droughts, 2020 was a year of challenges that prompted widespread calls for systemic change in…
Flor Angela Martinez is a mother, campesino and entrepreneur. Based in the Colombian Amazon, her company has become renowned for its sustainable timber harvesting practices. But before she made the…
All told, this was a pretty bleak year. The COVID-19 pandemic brought tragedy and confusion; fires razed parts of Australia, the Amazon, and the Western U.S.; and the world is…
Books have provided a welcome refuge in 2020. The global pandemic has, in many cases, turned even routine travel into a risk not worth taking, and it has left many…
In Indonesia, the year 2020 has been marked by a number of events and decisions with significant, and likely long-lasting, environmental impacts. Here, we review five of the key stories…
Like virtually everything in 2020, COVID-19 defined the year for tropical rainforests. Conservation was particularly hard hit in tropical countries.
The world is on the brink of an important break-through. At the upcoming meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), nations will soon pledge to expand the area of…
With consumption, travel and commuting all suppressed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers from the Global Carbon Project calculate carbon dioxide emissions fell a record 7% in 2020. One key…
In this well-trodden world, the discovery of a species new to science is an exciting event, a glimmer of the uncharted riches of biodiversity still hidden around the globe. “Every…
On December 21, Reconnaissance Energy Africa (Recon Africa) announced that it had begun exploratory drilling for oil and gas in the Namibian portion of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA).…
Today we have two stories about the impacts of mining and some of the new and innovative ways conservationists are attempting to deal with those impacts. Listen here: Our first…
The world is facing an ongoing sixth mass extinction. To curb this human-caused loss of global biodiversity, many countries have made commitments to protect and conserve large areas of land in…
In September 2020, more than a million households in Malaysia's densely populated Klang Valley suffered extended water cuts after illegal chemical dumping debilitated the region's aging water purification systems. In…
Sitting cross-legged on a rough, wood plank floor, Jaidun is clad in the light-blue, button-up shirt that identifies the rehabilitation workers at PT Singlurus Pratama, a coal-mining company in East…
The advent of the Amazon soy moratorium in 2006 seemed to usher in a new era of hope for ending deforestation for food production in the world’s largest rainforest. From…
JAKARTA — The songbird trade in Indonesia has battered the wild population of the Sunda laughingthrush, an important seed disperser in the primary forest ecosystem, a new study shows. Bird…
315 traditional families in the Brazilian Amazon, evicted from their homes starting in 2015 to make way for the Belo Monte mega-dam, have won the right to resettle near their former Xingu River homes.
Tropical trees have shorter life spans than trees in other parts of the world, living, for example, just over half as long as temperate trees. A new analysis suggests that,…
Liberia’s Nimba county lies about an eight-hour drive north of the capital, Monrovia. In the dry season, the road leading into the far-flung region kicks up swirling clouds of red…
Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting the Eurasian badger. Eurasian badgers live from…
2020 is a year that many people would like to forget. Here's a look at 10 of the biggest environmental storylines to remember. The COVID-19 pandemic The impact of the…
Brazil has been mined for gold, bauxite, manganese and more. While companies, investors and nations benefit, the Amazon’s people often haven’t, as they’ve lost traditional cultures, livelihoods and health.
The four-wheel-drive bumped over a rutted road. Rain that began as soon as they left the pavement was so thick that the road, compacted by traffic, became slippery, and the…
1. The ocean in a worldwide pandemic As the year that challenged the world with a widespread pandemic draws to a close, COVID-19 has affected almost every aspect of life…
