Planetary health News

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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
American Avocet. Image by Michael Barry via Pixabay (Pixabay Content License).

Bird-watching for nature connection & social justice

Mike DiGirolamo 7 Oct 2025
Palm civet in a wildlife farm in Dong Nai Province, Viet Nam. Image courtesy of Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

New global guidelines needed to rein in the wildlife pet trade (commentary)

Elizabeth Bennett 7 Oct 2025
A giant dust storm approaches the metro area of Phoenix, Arizona, Aug. 25, 2025.

Climate change is messing with global wind speeds, impacting planetary health

Sean Mowbray 3 Oct 2025

Every stage of fossil fuel life cycle harms people & the environment: Report

Bobby Bascomb 26 Sep 2025
Waorani leader Nemonte Nenquimo with elders and community leaders.

Protecting Indigenous Amazon lands may also protect public health, study says

Constance Malleret 19 Sep 2025
An Indigenous Tikuna man in the Amazon Rainforest in Colombia. Some researchers oppose the idea that human cultures would have been limited and determined by the environment, and that supports the notion that human cultures have modified the environment as desired. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

Forests on Indigenous lands help protect health in the Amazon

Rhett Ayers Butler 12 Sep 2025
A protestor sums up INC-5.2’s failure with the slogan: “Consensus kills ambition.”

As plastics treaty talks break down, are there paths to a breakthrough?

Charles Pekow 29 Aug 2025
Waste burning in the Maldives. Open burning of plastic is a cheap way of reducing waste volume, but the practice is rife with health and environmental risks.

Global South bears growing burden of health threats from plastic burning

Mongabay.com 25 Aug 2025
The waters along the Baliara coast, home to the Bajo people, have been contaminated by mining waste. Image courtesy of Satya Bumi.

Indonesia’s Bajau fishers lament nickel mining’s marine pollution

Mongabay.com 21 Aug 2025
Elephants are one of the species that have bounced back after Namibia’s independence in 1990.

Climate change tests the resilience of people and desert-adapted wildlife in Namibia

Petro Kotzé 21 Aug 2025

Argentina’s elephant seals face 100-year recovery after avian flu devastation: Study

Astrid Arellano 20 Aug 2025
A woman collects plastic and other waste for recycling in South Africa. Less than 10% is recycled worldwide, with the rest remaining in the environment.

UN plastic treaty negotiations end in failure, again

Bobby Bascomb 15 Aug 2025

PFAS ‘forever’ chemicals found in 98% of US waters tested

Bobby Bascomb 14 Aug 2025

As climate change burdens grow, community mental health alarm bells ring

Petro Kotzé 14 Aug 2025
Banner image of smoggy air in Dakar, Senegal, by Issiaga via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Study links long-term exposure to air pollution with increased dementia risk

Kristine Sabillo 5 Aug 2025
Plastic washed up on a beach in Barcelona.

As UN plastic treaty talks face possible deadlock, what are the ways forward?

Tosca Ballerini 31 Jul 2025

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