Sustainable Development News

Politics is idiosyncratic to each country, but trends in economic policies span borders. The political economy of the Pan Amazon is the legacy of strategic development plans that began in…

The Pan Amazon spans approximately 825 million hectares, of which approximately ninety million hectares have been lost to deforestation; this corresponds to ~13% of the original forest cover. At first…

When growing up in the Congo Basin forest, I witnessed the consequences of forest destruction by logging and industrial agricultural plantations. In some areas, Indigenous communities used to live alongside…

Why do people clear forest? To anybody who has lived on the forest frontier, the answer is as simple as it is obvious: it is essential to the livelihoods of…

The Amazon, home to the largest tropical forest on the planet, is an irreplaceable natural asset with enormous biodiversity and a critically important component in global carbon and water cycles.…

While his early days as a Boy Scout brought him closer to nature and introduced him to a number of outdoor activities during his childhood in the U.S., it was…

Today, Mongabay launches a digital version of the book, A Perfect Storm in the Amazon, by Timothy J. Killeen, an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the…

LAKE AMBAVARANO, Madagascar — On March 5, 2022, following days of cyclone-induced flooding, executives at the Rio Tinto-owned QMM mine in Madagascar shot off an urgent request to the country’s…

KIDAY, Philippines — Gloomy skies don’t dampen the spirit of Virginia Nazareno as she happily waters organic vegetables on an April morning in Kiday, a sitio or hamlet on the…

Last year, a car fueled by human waste toured the European countryside, covering more than 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles). It was the culmination of To-Syn-Fuel, a pathfinding project using technology…

SHAMSHY, Kyrgyzstan — “I was only 9 when I first saw a snow leopard with my father. He was a ranger bringing injured animals found in the mountains to the…

The town of San José del Fragua is just over an hour's drive from Florencia, the capital of the department of Caquetá, in southern Colombia. On one side of the…

Rio Tinto’s sprawling Qit Minerals Madagascar (QMM) mining operation is situated in one of the poorest regions of the fifth poorest country in the world. It lies in an area…

The Congo Basin contains the world’s second-largest rainforest at a staggering 178 million hectares (just under 440 million acres). It is also one of the biggest carbon sinks on the…

JAKARTA — A new study has shown that farmers who aren’t traditionally perceived as having the most social and cultural power in their community can be more effective at convincing…

Between 2004 and 2012, Brazil was able to slash deforestation by nearly 84% with a series of policies known as PPCDAm, a major instrument in reducing environmental destruction in the…

Trees are good for many things, and their widespread planting is promoted as a solution to challenges ranging from climate change to biodiversity loss, desertification of cropland and rangeland, to…

GATUNGA, Kenya — The dry spell that troubled Kenya for the past few years has shaken the country’s rural food systems. But Japheth Nthiga, a farmer from Karethani village in…

TERRA FIRME, Brazil — Growing up, Maria de Fátima Batista often studied in the dark, using a candle or lantern for light because the riverine community where she lives in…

Imagine having to choose between having water or a mining project in your backyard. Or between having a job or polluting your community. What would you choose? This dichotomy is…

Seaweed, a common name for thousands of marine plants and algae found in different water bodies, not only provides food and shelter for marine animals, but it can also help…

Canadian mining company Belo Sun wants to build a huge gold mine in the Big Bend of the Xingu region, in Pará; project foresees the extraction of 74 tons of gold in 20 years of operation.

Residents of a landless worker’s settlement in Anapu, Pará state in Brazil’s Amazon region, accuse the Federal Government of favoring large landowners, land grabbers and corporations at the expense of poor and landless peasants.

African cocoa plantations have seen massive growth in recent years on its path to help feed the world’s veracious appetite for a popular delicacy – chocolate. The Ivory Coast, the…

On October 18, 2022, Ugandan President H.E. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni delivered a keynote address during African Energy Week which took place in Cape Town, South Africa between October 18 and…

The European Union is considering a regulation on deforestation-free products that is one of the most promising environmental legislative initiatives of this decade. It would force traders in commodities that…

"It might be the highest density of trout species on Earth," says podcast guest Ulrich Eichelmann of Balkan countries' riverine legacy, which has become threatened by a tsunami of hydroelectric…

Belize is an amazing country where warm, humid jungles, cool tropical rivers, mangrove forests, and wildlife abound. I am an ecologist drawn to Belize as a special place where I…

BUJUMBURA — The squeal of passing bikes fills the air in the center of a newly created wetland on the outskirts of Burundi’s main city and largest urban settlement on…

It is quite astonishing that the first ever Africa Protected Areas Congress (APAC) was held in July 2022, given that the first protected areas were established in Africa during the…