Planetary health News

RSS
249 stories
Residents use canoes to navigate the floodwaters in Banjar Regency.

Indonesia reviews firms in river basins after latest floods affect 7% of Bornean province

Riyad Dafhi Rizki 31 Mar 2026
Research finds that there are already places on Earth where it gets so hot and humid at times during the year that it’s unsafe for either younger or older adults to do more than lie down or sit outdoors. Photo by NOAA.

Global warming already impacts daily lives around the globe, study finds

Mike Gaworecki 30 Mar 2026
Research shows that a koala’s gut microbiome directly influences its diet limitations, determining the species of eucalyptus it can eat. Translocations and reintroductions should take this relationship into account, says Michaela Blyton. Image by Mathias Appel via Flickr (CC0 1.0).

Poop pills and gut microbes: Wildlife microbiome studies aid conservation

Sean Mowbray 26 Mar 2026

Investigation links DRC air pollution concerns to major copper-cobalt plant

Elodie Toto 19 Mar 2026

Disastrous floods in Colombia reignite debate over hydroelectric dam

Euan Wallace 13 Mar 2026
The construction site of Bridge Data Centre's 0.2 GW QHI01 data center in Khlong Tamru subdistrict, Chonburi province, Thailand. Photo by Andy Ball/Mongabay.

Thai data center boom sparks fears of water shortage, air pollution

Gerald Flynn 11 Mar 2026

The rate of global warming is accelerating, study finds

Bobby Bascomb 6 Mar 2026

Peru mining pollution linked to children’s cognitive impairment: Study

Aimee Gabay 18 Feb 2026
A caddisfly in the Oligotricha genus.

Insects are moving pharmaceutical pollutants from rivers to land; risks unknown

Sean Mowbray 13 Feb 2026
A firefighter puts out fires in a peatland in Indonesia.

Thousands of peat fires flare across Indonesia despite rainy season

Hans Nicholas Jong 13 Feb 2026

US cuts legal foundation for federal climate regulation

Bobby Bascomb 13 Feb 2026

Pilot projects aim to break Indonesia’s habit of burning household waste

Hans Nicholas Jong 12 Feb 2026

Indonesia’s steel expansion risks a surge in greenhouse gas emissions

Hans Nicholas Jong 11 Feb 2026
Open burning of plastic in a community in Guiyu, China. This practice is fast becoming a common way to dispose of plastic and other waste.

Plastic household waste burned as fuel on rise in Global South, risking health

Sean Mowbray 5 Feb 2026
Coastline of Big Sur in California. In 2013, a group of researchers found eggs of California condors in the coastal redwoods of Big Sur contaminated with DDT, even though the pesticide has been banned in the U.S. since 1972. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

Writer Megan Mayhew Bergman on science, emotion, and the lasting power of ‘Silent Spring’

Mike DiGirolamo 3 Feb 2026

Lower levels of PFAS ‘forever chemicals’ in North Atlantic whales show regulations work: Study

Liz Kimbrough 3 Feb 2026
Soil microbes. Invisible to the naked eye, microbial communities play a huge role in planetary processes, such as nutrient cycling, and are vital to ecosystem and human health.

IUCN launches group to conserve at-risk microbes vital to life on Earth

Sean Mowbray 21 Jan 2026
A community settlement in Pidie Jaya Regency, destroyed by flooding.

Indonesia launches sweeping environmental audits after Sumatra flood disaster

Hans Nicholas Jong 7 Jan 2026
Misty morning in Borneo. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler

Rethinking how we talk about conservation—and why it matters

Rhett Ayers Butler 19 Dec 2025
A sewage outlet in Bangkok.

Marine heat waves and raw sewage combine to put human health at risk

Sean Mowbray 18 Dec 2025
Community members gather as a tagged Mekong giant catfish (Pangasianodon gigas) is prepared for release in the Cambodian stretch of the Mekong River.

Earth’s freshwater fish face harsh new climate challenges, researchers warn

Stefan Lovgren 17 Dec 2025
Smoke rises from a coal-burning power plant. Refuse-derived fuel (RDF), which includes large amounts of plastics, is replacing fossil fuels in some energy and industrial furnaces. But critics say this practice is merely replacing one dirty fuel for another.

Boom in burning waste for fuel could put human health and environment at risk

Sean Mowbray 10 Dec 2025
Bamboo lemur in Madagascar. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler

Lemurs are at risk. So are the people protecting them.

Rhett Ayers Butler 7 Dec 2025
A child at work collecting e-waste in the Agbogbloshie dump in Ghana.

Can two Amazons survive? Invisible e-waste is poisoning the world

Gerry McGovern, Sue Branford 3 Dec 2025
Spraying pesticides on a field. Chemical pesticides have become ubiquitous in industrial agriculture, and have contributed to a rapid rise in chronic diseases, researchers say.

‘Silent epidemic of chemical pollution’ demands radical regulatory redo, say scientists

Mike Gaworecki 3 Dec 2025
Workers at BRAC's plastic project sort out single-use plastics.

New ventures set out to tackle the plastic choking Bangladesh’s ECAs

Abu Siddique 2 Dec 2025
Collage: Elise Paietta, postdoctoral research scholar during fieldwork, with tropical forest

How do we stop the next pandemic?

Abhishyant Kidangoor 26 Nov 2025
A forest fire in Acre, the westernmost state of the Brazilian Amazon. Image courtesy of Victor Moriyama/Clean Air Fund.

Soot: The super-pollutant choking a burning Earth, in photos

Shanna Hanbury 20 Nov 2025
A turtle consumes a plastic bag.

Lethal dose of plastic for seabirds and marine animals ‘much smaller than expected’

Elizabeth Claire Alberts 19 Nov 2025
By fusing satellite, drone and ground-based data with AI-powered analytics, Earth observation systems now provide meter-scale insights (or finer) for key human-driven environmental impacts.

Report identifies 10 emerging tech solutions to enhance planetary health

Julian Reingold 4 Nov 2025
Students in Afghanistan walk to school in a sand storm during a drought in 2019.

Supercharged dust storms are exposing millions to deadly air pollution

Mongabay.com 28 Oct 2025

Nepal seeks World Bank loan to fight air pollution despite hefty taxes to do so

Abhaya Raj Joshi 17 Oct 2025

you're currently offline