Climate change has generated a rush in tree planting, with many hurried initiatives failing. But high-tech solutions — artificial intelligence, robotics, satellites and sensors — can help tree-planting projects succeed every step of the way.
Humans have transformed the planet to a staggering extent. Studies estimate that, as a species, we’ve modified at least three-quarters of the Earth’s land surface. Over time, vibrant mosaics of…
Editor's note: Mongabay has withdrawn this article from publication. On July 6, Mongabay published a news article based on a scientific journal article entitled "Prioritization of peatland restoration and conservation…
EBRO DELTA, Spain — Perched on an oyster and mussel farming platform in the middle of Fangar Bay, Vacile Cotirlet works with the assured movements that come with two decades…
Anger over latest oil spill as Shell pipeline contaminates river and farms in Nigeria Nigeria’s National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) says an oil spill from Shell’s Trans…
For Jake Robinson, Greno Woods was an easy choice. This large, old forest in South Yorkshire county in the U.K. has historically undergone timber harvesting, quarrying and fires. Plantations of…
Element Africa is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin of brief stories from the extractives industry in Africa.
Sustainable liquid biofuels are needed to reduce the carbon footprint of fossil fuel-powered planes, ships, trucks and cars. Grass feedstock has shown promise in biofuel labs, but commercial scaling up may be an insurmountable hurdle.
At the start of the 2000s, the search for a “miracle” biofuel led to a stubby Latin American tree. But jatropha’s boom went bust when high yields and big eco benefits failed to materialize. Now some say it’s set for a return.
When it comes to environmental destruction in Brazil, the world’s focus tends to be on the deforestation and burning of the Amazon. Yet the Cerrado, the second-largest Brazilian biome, at…
Brasília National Forest is a Paris-sized oasis of green surrounded on three sides by concrete satellite cities that serve Brazil’s capital city. Extensive trails and expanses of forest make it…
Biofuels have long been held up as a viable high-tech climate solution, but in practice they’ve often not lived up to their promise, causing environmental harm and in some cases being more carbon-intensive than fossil fuels.
DRC community accuses Canadian miner of encroaching into their forests WALIKALE, Democratic Republic of Congo — For the past 10 years, a Canadian-registered company, Alphamin Bisie, has been mining tin…
CACHOEIRAS DE MACACU, Brazil — Gesturing across the still, green water reflecting the backdrop of forest-clad mountains, Nicholas Locke told of the time when this flourishing wetland was once a…
This interview was produced with the funding support of the Pulitzer Center. WESTERN TURKANA, Kenya—Driving across Northern Kenya’s Turkana County, the seemingly boundless terrain of sand dunes, dusty brushes and…
As unbelievable as it may seem, a neighborhood in the city of Salvador did not have electricity until the late 1980s and piped water until the end of the 20th…
Tropical forests play a key role in our efforts to stabilize the global climate. As a readymade means of ameliorating our continued greenhouse gas emissions, tree-clad tropical landscapes provide us…
MZIMBA DISTRICT, Malawi — For 16 years, people in villages around the Kanyika hills in Mzimba district in northern Malawi have lived with uncertainty and anxiety. In 2006, an Australian…
In an effort to feed 170 million people in a rapidly growing economy, Bangladeshi farmers rely on the widespread use of chemical fertilizers to boost production, leaving the country’s soil…
The answer is, it depends. A multitude of conditions must be analyzed, and forests properly managed long-term, if they’re to curb climate change-intensified flooding, landslides, and even stand up to a tsunami.
NAVIRAÍ, Brazil — The red earth is dusty and cracked, parched from weeks without rain. Fields planted with neat rows of corn stretch for miles across this part of Mato…
“My son was covered in burns, poor boy – he just died,” says María Grefa, a Kichwa from Sinchiurco, a community in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon. The tragedy took place…
Not far up the hill, after a right turn off the main road that leads from the Zulu town of Mtubatuba in the province of KwaZulu-Natal into one of South…
Residents of a village in northeastern South Africa, displaced to make way for one of the country’s largest open-pit coal mines in 2007, are suffering from long-term collective trauma, with…
It’s a stunning landscape with a prophetic name: Lisima lya mwono, or “the source of life” as it’s known in the language of the local Luchazi people. But that’s not…
MARERENI, Kenya — It’s mid-morning in April, and Ngombo Tsuma is seated under a lone neem tree by one of his two grass-thatched huts. His wife sits by the door…
Mining of sand to feed the red-hot demand from Bangladesh’s construction industry has fueled an illegal industry that overshadows the legal one and that’s destroying ecosystems and exacerbating river erosion.…
The state of Mato Grosso has approved a bill that allows extensive ranching and tourism in protected areas of the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland. The move comes just…
THUNG NUI, Thailand — Firdaw Manjeed says she’s glad to be back to school for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Here in Thailand’s southernmost province, Satun, on…
“Many people have died on this railroad, killed by the trains,” says Deusimar de Oliveira Santos, a resident of the community of Auzilândia in Brazil’s Maranhão state, echoing a common…
