KATHMANDU — When Suman Hamal was growing up in his hometown of Putalibazar in Nepal’s Syangja district, he saw birds of different species and sizes fly around in his neighborhood.…
TERRA FIRME, Brazil — Growing up, Maria de Fátima Batista often studied in the dark, using a candle or lantern for light because the riverine community where she lives in…
With no physical form, the digital currency Bitcoin can feel all but invisible to those who don’t use it. However, its harmful climate impacts are all too real – and…
JAKARTA — Indonesia will continue building new coal-fired power plants, despite a recent $20 billion deal with the G7 group of industrialized countries to help it transition to clean energy.…
The United States is known for a “bigger is better” mindset, but when it comes to building an infrastructure that accounts for climate change, that attitude is outdated. The solution…
The past decade has seen a paradigm shift in the way the world looks at lighting. Homes, offices and streets have turned off wasteful incandescent lights and fluorescent ones that…
The multibillion-dollar global console gaming industry is linked to environmental harm throughout the life cycle of these wildly popular devices. But the industry is taking some steps to curb its excesses.
A glut of electricity-generating capacity means Bangladesh is paying hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives to power producers that aren’t churning out any electricity, according to a government report.…
The recent discovery near Mount Everest of “super large” deposits of lithium, the key element in the batteries powering electric vehicles, has raised concerns over the fate of water resources…
On the border of northern Nevada and southeastern Oregon sits a caldera that formed around 16 million years ago through the collapse of a super volcano’s lava dome. Its formation…
IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, has reversed itself, allowing Norte Energia, operator of the mega-dam, to divert water flow to turbines, potentially wrecking the river’s Big Bend Indigenous and traditional fishery.
Today we’re discussing proposed solutions to the global climate crisis that could have unintended consequences and thus might not be the effective solutions they’re promoted as. Listen here: Nature-based solutions…
BANTEN, Indonesia — Every day, Subur and his wife walk past giant chimneys, painted red and white at the crown, pouring smoke out of a cluster of coal plants. Subur,…
A plan by Brazil’s Norte Energia, builder and operator of the Belo Monte mega-dam, to drastically reduce Xingu River water flows will be a disaster for habitat, fish, fisheries, and riverine communities, experts say.
South America’s French Guiana, a French overseas department, is slated for major new liquid biofuel power stations, fueled by soy plantations that will cause largescale Amazon deforestation, say environmentalists.
The planned 650 MW dam on the Rio Branco in Brazil’s Roraima state is scheduled to become operational in 2028; it could do extraordinary socio-environmental harm.
Brazil’s current 10-year Energy Expansion Plan calls for three more large dams in Amazonia by 2029, and the country’s 2050 National Energy Plan lists many more — putting the environment at risk.
Like the rainforest which takes its name, the Amazon is the largest and most biodiverse river on the planet: the Amazon carries more than five times the volume of world's…
Dealing with climate change should be a no-brainer, right? To paraphrase Greta Thunberg, the science is done and only denial, ignorance and inaction remain. Or is that really all? We…
JAKARTA — A newly secured loan of $300 million for Indonesia to boost its geothermal energy generation will be wasted amid a glut of cheap coal power, and also could…
Electric cars are intended to help mitigate the climate impacts of the transportation sector, which is responsible for about 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. But since electric vehicles, in…
A survey of 40,000 existing and 3,700 planned dams finds that the structures could fragment fish habitat in the Amazon, Niger, Congo, Salween and Mekong river systems by 25% or more.
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s parliament has for the first time prioritized passing new legislation on renewable energy, and activists have seized the opportunity to call for a shift away from coal.…
JAKARTA — Proponents of a hydropower plant to be built in the only known habitat of a critically endangered orangutan species say it’s important for meeting the future energy needs…
SANTARÉM, Brazil, and BERLIN — I got off the mototaxi, a means of transportation that is part of everyday life in several cities in the Amazon, took off the helmet…
BENGKULU, Indonesia — Hearings in a lawsuit filed by residents over a newly built Chinese-funded coal-fired power plant in Sumatra have revealed a litany of irregularities behind the permit that…
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…
JAKARTA — Investigators in Indonesia have charged the head of the state-owned power utility with corruption in connection to a coal-fired plant being built in Sumatra. The Corruption Eradication Commission,…
As part of a wave of rural violence sweeping Amazonia, dam activist Dilma Ferreira Silva, her husband and a friend were brutally murdered last Friday; a large scale landowner is in custody.
This month’s nationwide blackout forced citizens to deforest parks for firewood, to pull water from polluted rivers, and resulted in the death of hospitalized babies and endangered wildlife.