Economy News

A cow stands in Brazil's Pantanal, the world's largest wetland which is threatened by cattle ranching and agriculture. In 2006 it was announced that 17 percent of the Pantanal had…

Deforestation for a palm oil plantation in Malaysia. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Environmental damage poses a long-ignored risk to sovereign bonds, according to a new report by the UNEP…

Stream and forest in the Tongass National Forest, the world largest temperate rainforest located in Southeast Alaska. Photo by: Matthew Dolkas. Although unlikely to pass anytime in the near term,…

Hurricane Sandy last night over Georgia and Florida. Photo by: NASA. Mr. Jeremy Grantham, co-chair of the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment and co-founder and chief investment…

In Good Derivatives: A Story of Financial and Environmental Innovation, Richard Sandor, PhD has written a rich compelling first-person narrative of the development of financial futures and environmental markets over…

A book review of: William F. Hyde's The Global Economics of Forestry Jungle in Malaysian Borneo. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Environmental economics is similar to other expanding fields, it…

Lesser flamingoes in Kenya. One third of the world's lesser flamingoes nest in Tanzania's Lake Natron. Photo by: Steve Garvie. In a choice between flamingoes and a soda ash plant,…

Motorbikes carrying coffee bags out of Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park. Photo courtesy of Patrice Levang. Sumatra's Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park—home to the Critically Endangered Sumatran rhinos, tigers, and…

The ongoing decline in Arctic sea ice hit a new record this year that rocked even the most pessimistic predictions. The low sea ice extent hit 18 percent below the…

Girl in village in Madagascar. One of the world's poorest countries, it has been estimated that about 70 percent of Malagasy people suffer from malnutrition. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler.…

Rainforest in Borneo. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Thank you Professor Anthony Hall. After many years, we finally have a REDD textbook that can be used in the undergraduate and…

Popular for a time, General Motor's Hummer brand was criticized for its lack of efficiency. The brand has now been dropped. Last month, the American Council for an Energy Efficient…

Aerial view of Kaieteur Falls, Guyana. Photo © Conservation International/John Martin. The nation of Guyana sports some of South America's most intact and least-imperiled rainforests, and a new $8.5 million…

This has become Watt's most popular and widely viewed photo to date. It was taken on a foggy February day in a haunting clearcut near the Avatar Grove. It has…

Logging in Gabon, Central Africa. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Industrial logging in primary tropical forests that is both sustainable and profitable is impossible, argues a new study in Bioscience,…

Map shows the level of drought and dryness across the US in July 2011. Map courtesy US Department of Agriculture. Click to enlarge. Climate change is here and its increasing…

Deforestation of tropical forests for oil palm plantations in Sabah, Malaysia. Palm oil is one of over 15,000 commodities in a recent study that have been linked to biodiversity loss…

Vegetables in a Congo market. Photo by: Nancy Butler. Compiling over 1,000 foreign land deals from 2000-2010, a new report finds that 702,000 square kilometers (271,043 square miles) of agricultural…

This month, momentous events will occur on the global scene that will set the tone for whether 2012 will be a hopeful year or one in which dislocations and disconnects…

African elephants at Chobe River in Botswana. Photo by: Tiffany Roufs. Last month ten African nations, led by Botswana, pledged to incorporate "natural capital" into their economies. Natural capital, which…

Aerial view of the infamous Río Huaypetue gold mine in the Peruvian Amazon. This remote but massive gold mine is known for the destruction of primary rainforest, widespread mercury pollution,…

Coal truck in western China. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Governments, NGOs, and others fighting climate change should consider buying coal and oil deposits—not to exploit them, but to keep…

Man in a rice field in China. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Economic growth alone may not raise happiness, according to a recent study in the Proceedings of the National…

An interview with the Nature Conservancy's China Program. TNC staff and volunteers repairing signage at Meili Snow Mountain National Park in northwest Yunnan. Community benefits and ecotourism are at the…

Suburban sprawl in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The average American's ecological footprint is the fifth highest in the world. Photo by: Jeremy Hance. Human society is consuming natural resources as if…

Sawmill in Indonesia. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Last year researchers took the first ever publicly-released video of an African golden cat (Profelis aurata) in a Gabon rainforest. This beautiful,…

Observations of planet Earth from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on July 11, 2005. Photo by: NASA. Seventeen top scientists and four acclaimed conservation organizations have called for radical…

Kelompok Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) Indonesia telah menjadi sasaran banyak LSM selama bertahun-tahun karena dugaan dampak negatif terhadap hutan tropis. Hal ini memuncak dalam kampanye spektakuler yang diluncurkan oleh…

An interview with Arbio Left bank: Arbio's concession area. Photo by: Arbio. Arbio was begun by Michel Saini and Tatiana Espinosa Q. in the Peruvian Amazon region of Madre de…

Map, Bahuaja Sonene National Park, Grasshopper Mimicking a Wasp. Photo by: David Johnston. Research and exploration in the Neotropics are extraordinary, life-changing experiences. In the past two decades, a new…