It’s hard to imagine how the oceans might operate without the sway of human activity. The recent assessment by the U.N. Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services found…
Investments known as green bonds that are intended to slow climate change can finance the operation of tree plantations in ways that have few, if any, environmental benefits, according to…
Life on this planet, in all its wide diversity, is disappearing more quickly now than it has at any time in human history, and some 1 million species of plants…
At first glance, the news seems good: global tropical deforestation declined for the second year in a row, according to new satellite data. But digging in a little deeper reveals…
Deforestation can reduce communities’ access to clean drinking water, according to a recent study conducted in Malawi. A lot of prior research on how deforestation impacts water dynamics has shown…
Tapirs may help rainforests recover after destructive human use and increase the amount of carbon they hold, new research has found. The study, based in the Brazilian Amazon, found that…
UPDATE (19 March 2019): The European Parliament voted March 12 to consent to the VPA with Vietnam by a vote of 632-14 with 23 abstentions. The resolution, including the explanatory…
In a suit filed Monday, accusers say European nations burning wood pellets and chips for energy are putting the world at risk with carbon emissions greater than from coal burning.
Tallying up the toll of our individual roles in fueling climate change is a daunting task. To make decisions simpler, we rely on the sorts of trade-off behaviors and cognitive…
The United Nations’ Green Climate Fund (GCF) has accepted the first proposal for REDD+ results-based payouts from Brazil, effectively paying the country for reducing its deforestation rates in 2014 and…
Climate research has demonstrated that the overall warming of the planet is leading to a jump in extreme weather. High temperatures have risen even higher than they’ve typically been, of…
Forests store vast quantities of carbon and play a huge role in the world’s carbon cycle – as well as in human hopes of mitigating global warming. Tropical rainforests, the…
On February 20, Nature published a comment on hydropower claiming that dams are good for the climate and should be subsidized through the Climate Bonds initiative, a proposal that is…
For more than three decades, fossil fuel interests have waged a campaign to protect their businesses by undermining public trust in climate science and delaying action to forestall global warming.…
Most scientists and experts agree that forests are critical to stabilizing the global climate, and the 2015 Paris climate agreement recognized the need to “conserve and enhance” their carbon sequestration…
Poland climate meeting addressed some issues, including Paris rulebook, but fell far short. UN’s António Guterres to convene special September climate action meeting in New York.
Jair Bolsonaro pledged to leave the Paris accord during his presidential run. But his Amazon agribusiness and mining expansion plans may pose a far bigger threat to forests and global climate.
Burning wood pellets, once deemed as carbon neutral, produces big CO2 emissions instead. But developed nations are cooking the books on bioenergy, toying with climate disaster.
In my lifetime, global wildlife populations have seen an overall decline of more than half. That’s a statement of such enormity that it’s hard to process. The evidence comes from…
More than one-fifth of current greenhouse gas emissions in the United States could be kept out of the atmosphere and stored in the land, according to new research. A study…
An area of Brazilian Amazon rainforest bigger than Ireland is at risk of losing its legal protection, according to new research. In an ironic twist, the trigger for this loss…
New, highly detailed maps now reveal the state of the world’s wilderness, both on land and at sea, and the picture looks bleak. In a series of recent studies, a…
To stay under 2 degrees Celsius of warming and thereby stave off the worst effects of climate change, more funding must be allocated to forest-focused global warming mitigation strategies. That’s…
Land-based options offer the best solutions to help nations meet their Paris carbon reduction goals and limit warming to 1.5 degrees C, says study in response to new IPCC climate report.
Researchers say they have discovered the conditions that determine whether deep soil acts as a source of carbon emissions, releasing heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, or as a sink,…
A group of 17 philanthropic foundations has committed at least $459 million through 2022 in support of land-based solutions to climate change — including forest conservation and restoration — and…
The local fishermen looked on skeptically. From the deck of a small motorboat, scuba divers grabbed odd chunks of ceramic – which could be described as rocky brains stuck on…
A group of prominent scientists is calling on California governor Jerry Brown to incorporate tropical forest conservation into the state's cap-and-trade regulation ahead of next month's Global Climate Action Summit,…
Rainier weather could be hampering the ability to siphon methane from the air by forest soils, thought to be important repositories for the growing concentrations of the greenhouse gas in…
Climate change could shift the appetites of Arctic spiders, leading to the slower release of carbon from the thawing tundra, according to new research led by biologist Amanda Koltz of…