Impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on vulnerable communities in the Global South go far beyond the looming public health emergency. The broader economic and environmental ramifications are of profound importance…
Last December, I flew to Brazil to learn everything I could about Amazon conservation. As a global citizen, I wanted to understand more about deforestation and how I can help.…
The only positive effect of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic is that it has generated public awareness of the risks of emerging diseases. One may hope that this will result in…
When threatened, the pangolin — also known as the scaly anteater — curls up into a ball, hiding its head and face under its tail. While helpful in the short…
The European Union Timber Regulation (EUTR), which came into force in 2013, prohibits operators from placing illegally harvested timber on EU markets. EUTR implementation relies on a due diligence process…
It’s such a simple idea: plant a tree, let it grow, and each year it will capture more and more carbon from the atmosphere. This is the logic behind a…
Every day for the past week or so, I have woken up only to find a daily dose of more than 300 messages on my mobile phone. Piled up overnight…
In Peru, communities in the Andes and the Amazon have come together to defend the health of people and families affected by pollution from toxic metals. To achieve this, they…
The lion. The king of the jungle. It’s certainly one of Africa’s (if not the world’s) most iconic animals. It is on the ‘must see’ list of just about every…
Poaching is threatening wildlife conservation in Africa. Elephant (Loxodonta africana) and rhino (Ceratotherium simum and Diceros bicornis) populations have been devastated and the bush meat trade is severely impacting wildlife…
Fire is not natural to Australia, as incomprehensible as that may seem today. When humans first landed on the northern shores it was a very different continent. Most of Australia…
A forest in Brazil is set on fire to make way for soy plantations. An oil pipeline leak in South Dakota threatens the drinking water of local communities. A Honduran…
Every year, thousands of apes and monkeys are cruelly bought and sold as part of the illegal wildlife trade. The recent outbreak of the coronavirus, believed to have originated in…
A surfeit of disinformation is hampering public health efforts to contain and counter the coronavirus disease before it turns into a fully-fledged global pandemic. Various conspiracy theories are circulating about…
The extinction of the Chinese paddlefish, announced by researchers in January 2020, is entirely the result of human impacts on the Yangtze River over the last 50 to 60 years.…
Every day, tourists to lodges along the Kinabatangan River catch glimpses of Borneo’s “Big Five”: orangutan, proboscis monkey, pygmy elephant, rhinoceros hornbill, and estuarine crocodile. I wish I could tell…
The recent fires in Australia bring flashbacks of last August in the Brazilian Amazon, when news of massive blazes also captured the world’s attention (and for many, provoked intense concern…
In the past, wetlands — marshes, fens, peatlands, flooded forests, mangroves — were widely considered unproductive wastelands full of disease and danger. In a world where the human instinct was…
This was meant to be a moment of triumph in the long battle to save the world’s forests. The year when the bold commitment hundreds of companies made to eliminate…
Brazil is the most biologically diverse country in the world, harboring 10 to 18% of the world’s total biota. This biodiversity, however, is rapidly declining due to habitat degradation, overexploitation,…
As the COP25 climate conference in Madrid, Spain came to a close with little progress earlier this month, the future of the Brazilian Amazon remained dangerously unclear. The Amazon is…
A ceaselessly growing human population and an ever-expanding world economy based on the unsustainable demands of a few over-consuming nations, have already caused habitat degradation, forest fragmentation, and forest loss…
The recent forest fires in Brazil and Bolivia showed once more that traditional approaches to sustainable development and nature conservation are not sufficient to reduce carbon emissions from land use…
The world urgently needs to embrace effective financial incentives to arrest the climate crisis, but attempts to greenwash hydropower are counterproductive and must be abandoned. As world leaders, industry groups,…
They left at five o’clock in the morning and traveled all day, sitting in their dugout canoes called peke-peke under the punishing tropical heat — all to attend a meeting.…
Most of us have places where we feel safe — a tree in our backyard, a den in our house, a beach in our town. But these days, some “safe…
After the United States pulled out of the 2016 Paris Climate Agreement, combating climate change at local scales in the U.S. has become increasingly important to meet greenhouse gas (GHG)…
The scientific imprimatur fell on us just six months ago: Yes, the extinction crisis we are witnessing is only the beginning of a wave of mass ecocide of non-human life…
The Bolsonaro administration is downplaying new data showing a major surge in Amazon deforestation, but a close look at the numbers shows that the statistics are even worse than they appear at first glance.
Over the past few days, the Kincade Fire has burned nearly 75,000 acres in Sonoma County, California, forcing 180,000 people to evacuate. Miles away, the Getty Fire burned through more…
