Scientists know from a bevy of studies that the inclusion of indigenous peoples and local communities is critical to holding deforestation at bay across the tropics, even as a tide…
Models and real-world events indicate that, unless action is taken now, up to 70% of the Amazon rainforest could become savanna in under 50 years, with huge carbon releases, destabilizing global climate.
After a decade of increased deforestation, broken commitments, and hundreds of murders of rainforest defenders, the 2020s open as a dark moment for the world’s rainforests. Here are some key…
2019 closed out a "lost decade" for the world's tropical forests, with surging deforestation from Brazil to the Congo Basin, environmental policy roll-backs, assaults on environmental defenders, abandoned conservation commitments,…
The Amazon worst-case scenario has arrived, say leading researchers, as predicted signs of a shift from rainforest-to-savanna begin to be seen in real time on the ground.
Scientists warn that escalating deforestation due to mining, agribusiness and other human disturbance is reducing the ability of intact tropical forests to sequester carbon.
An expanse of warm water in the Indo-Pacific doubled in size between 1900 and 2018, adding an area the size of California every year. The culprit? Rising carbon dioxide emissions,…
CIBULAO, Indonesia — A light drizzle falls outside Kiryono's home as he peers at the thermostat on a coffee roaster. The 39-year-old's green robusta harvest absorbs the heat in the…
As Indonesia’s forests go up in smoke, the world may be losing a lot more than we currently understand.
Research and recent events demonstrate that climate change is intensifying and destabilizing the annual monsoon, with impacts not just for India but the world.
The world is in a slow-moving, persistent water crisis. Rapidly rising water usage, increasingly uncertain rainfall, and widespread water pollution push more of our world into water stress and intensify…
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro likes to assert that foreigners deserve no say over the fate of the Amazon because it is a national sovereignty issue. His logic: Brazilian Amazon is…
After two years of severe drought, lacking electricity and water, with a $500 annual budget, the Botanical Garden of Caracas struggles valiantly to protect its precious collection.
The climate crisis is bringing extreme storms, drought and temperatures to the High Plains, even as U.S. administrations from Clinton to Trump have withdrawn aid to reservations.
Small trees in the shade of the canopy are able to thrive during dry spells in the Brazilian Amazon, but those exposed to the sun in forest clearings suffer.
A recent attempt to induce rain amid a prolonged drought in Sri Lanka has fallen short, but that hasn’t stopped the government from embracing the project, to the dismay of…
On Dec. 17, 2010, a 26-year-old Tunisian fruit vendor named Tarek el-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire to protest the confiscation of his produce. This act kicked off protests…
The IUCN has identified tree species that are resilient to deepening drought and fires brought on by climate change in Indonesian Borneo. The species will be used for government-backed forest…
Droughts can transform tropical forests. They kill trees and slow their growth. They also affect microbes that are critical to keeping the forest soil healthy. But termites, better known for…
Throughout the spring and summer of 2017, a “flash drought” developed quickly in the Northern Great Plains region of the United States, which encompasses the states of Montana and North…
2018 was a difficult year for the world's tropical rainforests. Below are of some of the biggest rainforest storylines for the year, but we couldn't cover everything, so if there…
The fires closing in on Erika Berenguer’s research site in Brazil’s eastern Amazon were unlike anything she had seen in years working in the forest. Smoke hung heavy the air.…
Mother Nature is the ultimate boss on the prairie — and the boss seems pretty agitated these days. Weather events are more frequent, more extreme, and harder to predict than…
On this episode we welcome the godfather of biodiversity, Dr. Thomas Lovejoy, to discuss some of the most important environmental issues we’re currently facing and why he believes the next…
Because they take vast amounts of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, rainforests are an important part of the planet’s carbon cycle and their conservation is playing front and center…
In many ways, 2018 is the year of the refugee. At U.S. borders, Mediterranean shores and Asian cities, millions are fleeing war, hunger and persecution in search of safety and…
Research published yesterday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution finds that pressures from human activities and climate change caused the African continent to lose as much as 2.6 billion…
Conservationists recently awoke to the extraordinary value of the Cerrado - a biodiverse biome long outshone by the Amazon and a key carbon sink; but agribusiness is fast destroying it.
A 2007 study estimated that with 40% Amazon deforestation a tipping point could be reached, converting forest to savannah. New factors put that tipping point at 20-25%. Deforestation is now at 17%.
KERICHO, Kenya – Less than a decade ago, the hills of Tuiyobei village in Kenya’s Rift Valley were nearly bare, with few trees or shrubs beyond the coffee plantations that…
