Today we’re taking a look at two stories that show the effectiveness of combining traditional Indigenous ecological knowledge and Western science for conservation and restoration initiatives. Listen here: Earlier this…
“How do we tell the stories of people that history forgets and the present avoids?” journalist-turned-author Jori Lewis asks in the preface to her debut book, Slaves for Peanuts: A…
Fifty-two-year-old Dhonjoy Mondol grows rice on his plot in the district of Sunamganj in northeastern Bangladesh. This year, he harvested 12 metric tons of rice from the 4-hectare (10-acre) plot;…
PUNTA UVA, Costa Rica — Every morning, just after dawn, small-scale fishers Ettel Lattouche and Rafael Hernández head to the beach with their fishing gear to eke out a living.…
Global investment firms taken together hold a bigger share in Brazil’s Big Three meat companies than their Brazilians founders, with many U.S. pension fund investors unwittingly contributing to rainforest destruction.
BLANTYRE, Malawi — A harvest of just four sacks of maize, each weighing 50 kilograms, or 110 pounds, means only four and a half months of food security for Ellena…
Plants build themselves from sunlight, water, and soil. And, as it turns out, what crops “eat” can influence the nutrients on our own plates. A recent study, published in the…
On this episode we discuss Indigenous peoples’ long relationship with — and stewardship of — marine environments through the lens of aquaculture. Listen here: Coastal cultures have often enjoyed abundant…
On an island in the estuary known as Lagoa dos Patos, in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul state, an old lady kept a treasure in her fridge. For years, it…
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — As dawn breaks, the fishing wharf at Tamba Kula in Freetown buzzes with the movement of early-morning commerce. Fishers just back from days spent far out…
Today we’re talking about agroecology, which applies ecological principles to agricultural systems and is considered to be a key strategy for both mitigating and adapting to global climate change, as…
RIPÁ, Brazil — One muggy morning last December, eight women and their chief drove out of the Indigenous Xavante village of Ripá across a forested savanna in the Brazilian state…
Just east of Birmingham in the U.K. sits the sixth-largest university in the country, Coventry University, home to 38,000 students and a relatively new center for the study of agroecology — a…
It might be surprising to learn that, in a lake as large as Victoria, a single fish could shape so much of East Africa’s history, culture and, now, an uncertain…
Land degradation – the deterioration or loss of the productive capacity of land – is progressing at an alarming rate. Globally, over a fifth of the total land area has…
The Mediterranean is a cradle — of civilization, of agriculture, of history. But the region, stretching across southern and southeastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, is also a…
The summit of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park in the northeastern U.S. state of Maine offers sweeping, unobstructed views of Frenchman Bay. Surrounded by islands and rocky shorelines, the…
For the past decade, an association of small farmers has been growing vegetables amid a strip of filao trees that grow on the sand dunes along the coastline in the…
On Sunday mornings, my mother would grate coconut meat. She would squeeze the milk from the grated shreds, then cook the coconut milk in a saucepan over a medium heat.…
From substantial philanthropic pledges to studies revealing the increasing threat of extinction, world leaders are paying unprecedented attention to biodiversity. In March, governments gathered to continue shaping the Convention on…
As more people are born onto this great green planet, the demand for food grows. Feeding the nearly 8 billion of us here today is a challenge, not only because…
JAKARTA — The establishment of large-scale agriculture under the Indonesian government’s “food estate” program is harming local farmers in Sumatra, a study has found. The program was announced in 2020 by President…
MALANG, Indonesia — It was a January day in Malang, a city on the island of Java, and restaurateur Bobby was surprised to find the officers from the municipal public…
JAKARTA — A plan to clear forests in Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua for food crops will release as much greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as Australia emits in an…
Brazil’s lower house of congress has overwhelmingly approved a bill that would loosen regulations for the use of pesticides, raising concerns that approval in the Senate would unleash further environmental…
KAVREPALANCHOK, Nepal — Ram Shrestha is spraying pesticide on his potato plants next to a paved road. The cracked earth seems lifeless here in this part of Kavrepalanchok district, a…
In Gribe, a village located in southeastern Cameroon, the Indigenous Baka of Dimgba are one of dozens of hunter-gatherer groups of the Congo basin diversifying their food sources to maintain…
Escalating ocean temperatures stemming from climate change are devastating the world’s tropical coral reefs. In response to the stress, corals, which are animals, sometimes unceremoniously jettison the algae that live…
For the uninitiated, the first mouthful of the Hawaiian red algae known as limu kohu (Asparagopsis taxiformis) may be an unpleasant one: intensely iodine-rich and bitter, with all the marine…
HUMBANG HASUNDUTAN, Indonesia — Indonesia has an enormous variety of plants with medicinal properties, and traditional herbal medicines such as jamu are still widely used by both urban and rural…
