Economics News

A living African elephant has 76 times the value of one poached for ivory, according to report Elephants are worth 76 times more when they’re alive than dead, according to…

Sunset. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. In 1870, John D. Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil Company. Rapidly becoming the world's largest oil refiner, Standard made Rockefeller a billionaire and one…

Chinese consortium pushes new canal through Nicaragua, threatening indigenous people, environment. A stealthy jaguar moves across a camera trap in Bankukuk, Nicaragua along the path of the Gran Canal. Conservationists…

Growing population and traditional mindset fueling demand for wild turtles, driving some species towards extinction For thousands of years turtles have been used in Chinese traditional medicine to treat a…

The only way to save the long-suffering elephants of Africa is to close every ivory market on the planet and destroy all ivory stockpiles, according to a bold new essay…

Aerial view of the Río Huaypetue gold mine in Peru. The mine, which was cut of the Amazon rainforest, has been blamed for large-scale environmental damage and social problems, including…

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…

Ironic ivory? Ivory trinkets carved into elephants, potentially from butchered wild elephants. Picture taken in the Jatujak weekend market, Thailand in 2014. Photo by: Naomi Doak/TRAFFIC. In the last four…

Innovation in Tropical Forest Conservation: Q&A with Dr. Claude Garcia Ivindo National Park in Gabon. The loss of rainforest is an emerging issue in the Congo Basin. The forests of…

Two new reports this week look at the economics of global warming. The first, Risky Business, tallies the cost of climate change to the U.S., including tens-of-billions lost to destruction…

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) June 2nd regulation proposal hit all the expected chords. Following on the heels of a January regulation for new power plants, the Clean Power…

A new study published in Global Environmental Change added up all the world’s ecosystem services – from carbon storage and crop pollination, to recreation and flood mitigation – and found,…

Can Elinor Ostrom’s revolutionary ideas halt climate change, improve people’s livelihoods, and save the world’s forests? “[T]here’s a five-letter word I’d like to repeat and repeat and repeat: Trust.” Thus…

Hydroelectric power, supplied mostly from dams, provides approximately 20 percent of the world's electricity, an amount of energy equivalent to 3.6 billion barrels of oil. However, a recent study by…

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…

The fossil fuel divestment campaign won a major victory today as Stanford University announced it would drop coal companies from its massive $18.7 billion endowment, the fourth largest of any…

It's not just melting glaciers and bizarrely-early Springs anymore; climate change is impacting every facet of human civilization from our ability to grow enough crops to our ability to get…

Innovation in Tropical Forest Conservation: Q&A with Dr. Phillip Fearnside Pasture meets gallery forest in the Brazilian Amazon. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. How much is a forest really worth?…

At the end of last year, the world got some good news on the green business front concerning a very unlikely set of participants. A recent market review revealed that…

In 2006, Mexico intensified its security strategy, forming an inhospitable environment for drug trafficking organizations (also known as DTOs) within the nation. The drug cartels responded by creating new trade…

On a Friday afternoon in June, the Plaza de Armas in Cajamarca is pulsing with life. It's winter here, and although thick white clouds hover low in the distance, the…

Economists find that protected areas reduce poverty in Costa Rica A new study has quantified a point long advocated by advocates of setting aside protected areas: ecotourism pays. The research,…

Environmental groups have blasted draft text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) released yesterday by WikiLeaks as potentially devastating to the environment and wildlife. The massive 12-nation free trade agreement has…

While the merits for slowing climate change will be treated here as a given, the method for doing so looms elusive. In a recent article, I described pricing carbon through…

Last month, over a hundred representatives from zoos and aquariums around the world joined climate activism group, 350.org, pledging that their institutions would take action against global warming, including the…

The link between good economic policy and climate change mitigation is instigated by policies such as the triple-bottom line, carbon limitations, and pro-environmental legislation. However, economic inequality is a little…

Sir David Attenborough has said that people living in poorer countries are just as concerned about the environment as those in the developed world, and "exporting environmentalism" isn't necessarily an…

A campaign to persuade investors to take their money out of the fossil fuel sector is growing faster than any previous divestment campaign and could cause significant damage to coal,…

For the majority of the new century, Americans have largely stopped caring about the environment. In that time, America has suffered 9/11, two of the nation's four longest wars, the…

Climate-conscious folk agree that atmospheric carbon dioxide is a key greenhouse gas and a large factor in global climate change. However, there are discrepancies in the methods chosen to address…