ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — Madagascar’s natural resources are under threat. Local people use some for food, fuel and shelter, but foreign capital drives the most intense exploitation. Gem dealers oversee the destruction…
For two decades or more, alarms have been sounding for the Mekong Delta. It's being hammered by climate change, by a proliferation of upstream dams, by unsustainable and inappropriate farming…
TOLIARA AND MORONDAVA, Madagascar — When fishers on the west coast of Madagascar arrive home after a day at sea, children often poke their heads into the pirogues to see…
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…
LLANCHAMA, Ecuador — A long passenger boat floats abandoned outside Andres Machoa’s house, along the Tiputini River in Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest. The community bought the boat more than five years…
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.
Small-scale oil palm projects show that sustainable supply chains, coupled with tough environmental regulation could benefit both farmers and forests.
On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast we speak with Ivonne Higuero, secretary general of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora — better…
The homegrown banks that back the flood of soy into China have with little knowledge of the deforestation their funding is potentially supporting, according to the nonprofit CDP, an international…
KALIBIRU, Indonesia — For years, Parjan hoped his community might one day gain title to the Menoreh Hills. The green valley northwest of the Javan city of Yogyakarta was tilled…
ENTOTO, Ethiopia — In a tiny home not far from the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa, 80-year-old Aragash Boka finally rests from a long day’s work carrying an awkward, heavy…
Life on the coast of Madagascar is increasingly precarious. In recent decades, the overexploitation of marine life has made it difficult for hundreds of thousands of small-scale fishers to make…
An influential shrimp magnate in Madagascar moved millions of dollars among shell companies based in offshore tax havens, raising the possibility that one of the world’s poorest countries is missing…
Although expansion of oil palm plantations appears to be inevitable, regulators have options when deciding what land may be converted into the world's most widely planted vegetable oil crop. A…
Reaching the village of Wae Rebo on Indonesia’s Flores Island requires a seven-hour drive down rugged jungle roads from the port town of Labuan Bajo. At the edge of the…
HO CHI MINH CITY - Two new Camellia species, a type of tea plant common to East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent, have been discovered in a protected…
Scientists seeking the tools necessary to tackle climate change need to better understand both the current interplay between carbon and tropical forests and how those forests will respond as temperatures…
Both species of Amazon river dolphin declined by over 90 percent between 1994-2017 in an Amazonas state reserve, mostly due to hunting and fishing: study.
Much of the fishing that takes place in international waters would be unprofitable without the billions of dollars in subsidies pumped in by governments to sustain the ecologically destructive industry,…
Set amid the open plains and rolling savannas of Kenya’s Maasai Mara landscape, Naboisho conservancy hosts some of the finest wildlife viewing that Africa can offer. Covering around 20,000 hectares…
When evaluating a business proposition, we often consider two economic variables: revenue versus investment. If you earn 40 times what you put in, that’s quite clearly a profitable venture. This…
A new study finds that putting a price on carbon could drastically reduce the amount of deforestation in the tropics by 2050: $20 per metric ton (about $18/short ton) could…
KAMPOT, Cambodia — As the Trapeang Sangke estuary opens up into the Gulf of Thailand, the dense green mangroves that line its edges taper off in stages, from thick, full-grown…
In Bonn, Trump administration delegation provides cover for developed nations to stall financing for climate adaptation and loss for world’s most impacted developing nations.
When Pres. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement last June, France and Germany offered U.S. climate researchers the opportunity to emigrate. Some are responding to the call.
Trump advisors and fossil fuel industry reps argued that “energy security and economic development” trumped climate action; they were met with derision and disbelief by the COP23 audience.
The CETA trade agreement was supposed to undo past treaty abuses and be a model for future global trade agreements. But critics say CETA still threatens the environment and national sovereignty.
Text by Jacopo Pasotti, photos by Elisabetta Zavoli MANGUNHARJO, Indonesia – A mangrove forest once surrounded this village on Java’s northern coast. That was before the woods were clear-cut to…
By the middle of the century most of the world’s projected population of 9.5 billion people will be living in the Tropics, including almost two-thirds of its children. The region…
Much of the deforestation in the world’s tropical rainforests comes so that we humans have enough to eat. But sustainable agricultural practices exist that help farmers coax more corn and…