Environmental headlines

MANILA — As the climate crisis bites, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has unveiled its ambitious plan to scrap funding for coal mining and power plants, and ban support for…

I am not here to give you a startling new angle on the climate crisis. I cannot claim to have the silver bullet, the awe-inspiring technology that will solve all…

From Tripoli to Phoenix, the world’s thirst in great desert cities is deepening, even as agribusiness guzzles more water to feed them. Humanity’s arid urban places are colliding with a key Planetary Boundary, scientists warn.

WOB Timber, a logging company based in Hamburg, Germany, has been ordered by a court to pay a $4 million fine for illegally trading Myanmar timber. The April 27 decision…

JAKARTA — Lawmakers in Indonesia have expressed shock — shock! — that a controversial bill they passed into law last year amid near-universal criticism legitimizes illegal deforestation for oil palm…

COLOMBO — Environmentalists have welcomed the Sri Lankan government’s surprise decision to ban palm oil imports into the country and raze existing plantations, but others say the science justifying the…

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon surged during the month of April, ending a streak of three consecutive months where forest clearing had been lower than the prior year. The rise…

SOUTH TAPANULI, Indonesia — The death toll from a landslide at the site of a hydropower plant being built in Indonesia’s Batang Toru forest has risen to 10, with three…

The world is brimming with bad news about people failing to take care of the Earth. But there is a way to change the narrative, says Canadian conservationist Harvey Locke.…

JAKARTA — Indonesia could lose an area of tropical rainforest bigger than Belgium to oil palm plantations over the next three years without existing measures to slow this loss, activists…

Today the Biden Administration formally laid out its vision for conserving 30% of America’s land and waters by 2030. The “America the Beautiful” report, released by the Departments of Commerce,…

An April 26 ruling against a licence for a commercial farm near Kenya's Amboseli National Park will help to preserve free movement of both Maasai livestock herders and wildlife. The…

“I’m the one who called the meeting; I’m going to set the tone,” says Viviane Aguiar, a lawyer representing the Renova Foundation, interrupting Valeriana Gomes de Souza, a cattle farmer…

An unprecedented lawsuit by an Indigenous group that was once nearly wiped out seeks $8.2 million in damages for continued invasions and destruction of their territory

JAKARTA — Authorities should go after illegal loggers with financial charges like money laundering, Indonesian officials said last week at an online panel. Officials from the Attorney General’s Office and…

A horrifying video surfaced last week showing National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre struggling to kill an African savanna elephant in Botswana. LaPierre’s pursuit of a trophy, documented (though never…

PALAWAN, Philippines — Nicole Tayag, 30, learned to snorkel at 5 when her father took her to the teeming waters of Coron to scout for potential tourist destinations back in…

Sea sponges don’t move. At least, that’s what a lot of people used to think about these aquatic invertebrates. But a new study has upended this assumption, and pushed and…

Western corporations have been inflicting environmental damage overseas for generations, but the sharp rise in the scale of China's international ambitions and operations in recent years has put a spotlight…

Some 100 ozone-depleting CFCs and HCFCs are being phased out by the landmark treaty, but can this evolving accord now save Earth from the HFCs — one of which is a greenhouse gas 12,700 more potent than carbon dioxide.

In Brazil’s beef industry, meatpackers or slaughterhouses that are monitored and audited to comply with zero-deforestation purchasing criteria compete against facilities that flout the rules. Ranches with the space and…

KUPANG, Indonesia — In Indonesia’s arid, southern East Nusa Tenggara province, clean water is hard to come by. The issue made national headlines last year when an “extreme drought” triggered…

Manual Pintado spent the past 15 years raising cattle in El Pangui, a municipality nestled in south-eastern Ecuador´s Amazonian region. Now, he receives an income for leaving his 15 hectares…

At least two top Indigenous leaders in Brazil, Sônia Guajajara and Almir Suruí, were recently summoned for questioning by the federal police over allegations of slander against the government of President Jair Bolsonaro.

Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting the biggest of the four species of…

In the forests of El Tuparro National Natural Park, a protected area in the far east of Colombia’s Orinoco region, a jaguar roams freely, the king of a territory it…

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, together with two dozen other leaders from around the world, have called for a new international treaty for pandemic preparedness…

PURWOKERTO, Indonesia — An environmental expert in Indonesia has warned against a government plan to relocate mangrove trees along the north coast of the island of Java to make way…

Covering a vast peninsula that juts out into the Gulf of Thailand on Cambodia’s southern coast, Botum Sakor is one of the largest national parks in the country and known…

The Brazilian president is making big promises to reduce Amazon deforestation, even as he moves to legalize large scale land theft with potentially catastrophic results for Earth’s climate and the Amazon.