Developing Countries News

DIANA REGION, Madagascar — With the sun still low in the sky, my taxi boat pulled up to a floating wooden pontoon in the bustling port of Ankify in northwestern…

NOSY BE, Madagascar — Far offshore from the luxury resorts and seafood restaurants in the resort town of Nosy Be in northwestern Madagascar, three local fishermen are pulling on their…

Billions of dollars in loans issued to resource-rich countries could saddle them with insurmountable debt, according to a new report from the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), a nonprofit organization…

ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — Madagascar’s natural resources are under threat. Local people use some for food, fuel and shelter, but foreign capital drives the most intense exploitation. Gem dealers oversee the destruction…

TOLIARA AND MORONDAVA, Madagascar — When fishers on the west coast of Madagascar arrive home after a day at sea, children often poke their heads into the pirogues to see…

SAHANIVOTRY COMMUNE, Madagascar — The village of Farihitsara in Madagascar’s central highlands was littered with straw from the rice harvest when Mongabay visited in May. But people weren’t able to…

New research finds that global warming has exacerbated global economic inequality, making already-wealthy nations even richer while slowing economic growth in poorer countries. According to the study, published in PNAS…

MENABE, Madagascar — As the plane starts its descent toward Morondava, a city on Madagascar’s west coast, it crosses the Tsiribihina River. From here, almost all the way to Morondava…

A recent survey of wildlife rangers at a national park in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) found that most aren’t happy with their jobs. Faced with low pay, little…

Life on the coast of Madagascar is increasingly precarious. In recent decades, the overexploitation of marine life has made it difficult for hundreds of thousands of small-scale fishers to make…

An influential shrimp magnate in Madagascar moved millions of dollars among shell companies based in offshore tax havens, raising the possibility that one of the world’s poorest countries is missing…

MEKONG DELTA, Vietnam — Shrimp farmer Nguyen Manh Hung lost his entire farm to erosion in 2016 after a series of ravaging droughts and floods. He and his family had…

What began with a rare instance of aggressive enforcement of Madagascar’s environmental laws last month culminated in violent destruction. Angry farmers armed with sticks and machetes stormed into the northwestern…

Over the past decade, Norway has spent $3 billion to support efforts to keep forests standing in all of the world’s major rainforest countries, helping to elevate forest protection as…

Marine biologists have been raising concerns about bottom trawling for years. The fishing technique involves a boat dragging a weighted net along the seafloor, scooping up whatever marine life swims…

ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — For most people on the west coast of Madagascar, fishing is life. When the sun creeps over the horizon each morning, the men are already out in…

Fishermen in the Dili district of Timor-Leste have found an extra perk of the insecticide added to their mosquito bed nets: the chemicals act as a Taser for shrimp. The…

KAMPOT, Cambodia — As the Trapeang Sangke estuary opens up into the Gulf of Thailand, the dense green mangroves that line its edges taper off in stages, from thick, full-grown…

PORT BERGÉ, Madagascar — Karimo and Célice could scarcely believe their luck. Four years of bumper corn harvests have allowed the husband and wife, who each go by a single…

MAROANTSETRA, Madagascar — Two years ago, a group of foreigners visited Marovovonana, the riverside village where Amélin Toto Arison runs a general store, to make a presentation about carbon. Arison…

BEHELOKE BAS, Madagascar — For a few days each year, fishermen here can travel back in time. When octopus season opens on a new part of the reef every three…

ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — Nothing says patience quite like tromping around wet woods in the middle of the night to collar bats and track them back to their daytime roosts. And…

By the middle of the century most of the world’s projected population of 9.5 billion people will be living in the Tropics, including almost two-thirds of its children. The region…

A protest of a planned coal-fired power plant in Bangladesh turned sour on Thursday, when police reportedly confronted marchers with tear gas, rubber bullets, and water cannons in the capital…

Climate change publications are geographically imbalanced, according to a recent study published in Global Environmental Change. Researchers from Denmark and Brazil analyzed over 15,000 scientific publications on climate change published…

ith demand for seafood increasing and numerous fish species declining due to overfishing and other threats, scientists are proposing a seemingly drastic solution: close the high seas to fishing and…

A fishing boat off the coast of the Malaysian state of Sabah. Photo by: Rhett Butler. Consumers in the developed world want sustainably sourced seafood and increasingly retailers like Walmart…

Straw-colored fruit bat (Eidolon helvum) at the Zoological Garden Berlin, Germany. This species, along with other fruit bats, is present in the Ebola impacted area and may have been a…

For those living either north or south of the tropics, images of this green ring around the Earth's equator often include verdant rainforests, exotic animals, and unchanging weather; but they…

The Chinese Premier, Li Keqiang, has pledged $10 million [see note below] to combat poaching in Africa during a visit to the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa. The fund…