The biggest timber firm in Malaysia’s Sarawak state has been able to maintain sustainability certification despite clearing forests for oil palm plantations and skipping steps in informing affected communities, according…
Situated in western Nigeria, some 70 kilometers (113 miles) east of Nigeria’s commercial city of Lagos, Oluwa Forest Reserve is facing severe pressure from smallholder farmers and big plantations. On…
JAKARTA — When the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the world's largest association for ethical palm oil production, kicked off the second day of its annual roundtable conference on Nov.…
Plonked between the formidable Owen Stanley mountains to its west and the Solomon Sea to the east lies Oro, a remote province in Papua New Guinea east of the capital…
Central America’s largest protected area is in for a difficult year next year. The Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala is facing increased pressure from cattle ranching at the same time…
At almost 1.4 million hectares (3.4 million acres), a little smaller than the U.S. state of Connecticut, Kerinci Seblat National Park is the second-largest park in Indonesia, and a jewel…
Cacao (Theobroma cacao) is native to the Amazon rainforest and has been cultivated and consumed throughout the Americas since before Columbus. Cacao can be broadly segregated into to contrasting types…
Global food trader Cargill has announced new commitments to disentangle some of its most controversial agricultural products from deforestation in several South American countries. But some conservation groups say the…
The Supreme Court in Panama ruled that the contract for the country’s largest copper mine is unconstitutional, requiring it to shut down. Minera Panamá, a subsidiary of the Canadian company…
There are two major cultivated species of coffee: arabica (Coffea arabica) and robusta (Coffea canephora), each with a multitude of varieties adapted to a broad range of ecological conditions. Arabica…
JAKARTA — Researchers have credited a strong spirit of collaboration for the success of an expedition in Indonesia’s Cyclops Mountains that uncovered new sightings of a rare egg-laying mammal and…
Verra, the world’s largest certifier of carbon credits, has released an update for calculating the climate benefits of the REDD forest conservation projects it certifies. The U.S.-based nonprofit said the…
MRN, a mining company and aluminum producer, denied consultation rights to long-established Amazon riverine communities when it launched a new mine, impacting their way of life, say local people.
The makeshift road tears through the emerald canopy, splintering one of the Amazon’s most pristine corridors of rainforest. Along the edges of the road, running through the heart of the…
Renowned primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall is bringing her youth program, Roots & Shoots, to the Brazilian Amazon in partnership with Indigenous leaders and tech entrepreneur and conservationist Dax Dasilva.…
Only about 100,000 Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) remain, less than half of their original numbers. People are killing the iconic orange apes at rates that could lead to their extinction…
With their camouflaged coats, impossibly long tails, and extraordinary tree-climbing skills, clouded leopards are evolutionary marvels. They’re beautifully adapted to a feline life in the trees. But what evolution hadn’t…
Coffee and cacao have much in common. Both are descended from understory trees adapted to the low-light conditions of the forest floor. Each have multiple cultivated varieties that differ with…
Offsetting the carbon emissions released when we fly in a jet or when a company ships its products is one, albeit increasingly controversial, way to address the climate-warming consequences of…
Rubber cultivation in Southeast Asia is responsible for double or even triple the deforestation previously attributed to it, according to a recently published study. Antje Ahrends, one of the study’s…
SABAH, Malaysia — Although it’s early in the day, the sun is already beating down fiercely as we step off the boat onto the muddy banks of the Kinabatangan River…
The spikes in commodity prices in the first decade of the twenty-first century coincided with a global boom in biofuels. The interest in biofuels was motivated allegedly by a concern…
According to data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has declined by 22% for the year ending July 31, 2023. Mongabay’s CEO and…
A new collection of global maps and data sets aims to help companies better monitor their environmental impact along every step of the supply chain, and forecast future impacts as…
To all of those who are concerned about climate change and have decided that forest carbon credits are bad, I have a question for you. Have you ever looked closely…
Indigenous forest guardian Paulo Paulino Guajajara was killed in November 2019 in the Brazilian Amazon. Mongabay’s Karla Mendes, who interviewed Paulo nine months before his death, returned to the Arariboia Indigenous Territory in August 2023 to talk with his family and the other guardian who survived the attack, Laércio Guajajara, and shine a light on a case that still hasn’t gone to trial after four years.
The Pacific Forest of Ecuador holds a unique conflagration of ecosystems: Verdant cloud and mossy evergreen forests transition into semideciduous and dry forests closer to the coast that exist in…
JAKARTA — Activists have urged the Forest Stewardship Council to cut ties with a leading Canadian pulp and paper producer that they allege is effectively under the control of an…
In both national and multilateral fora, Bolivia is increasingly showing its reluctance to curb deforestation. President Luis Arce, soon to be entering the penultimate year of his term, has built…
BOGOTÁ — In the world’s major cities, partygoers do lines of cocaine, far removed from the environmental and human costs of consuming this white powder. Most are likely unaware that…
