A new study warns that deforestation across Ghana, Niger and Nigeria is intensifying West Africa’s water crisis, threatening the health and livelihoods of more than 122 million people.

Drawing on 12 years of satellite data from 2013-2025, the joint report by WaterAid and Tree Aid finds a direct correlation between forest loss and the decline of both the quality and quantity of freshwater. For every 1,000 hectares of forest cleared in Niger and Nigeria, 9.25 hectares of surface water disappear, leaving communities more exposed to disease, food insecurity and dehydration.

In Niger 99.5% of freshwater is already of poor quality and at risk of being unsafe to drink directly, according to the report. Deforestation is making that dire situation worse, as forests would effectively filter sediments and pollution.

“Trees and water are the essence of life in West Africa’s forest communities and around the world. Trees draw water into the earth, enrich soil for farmers, and shield land from floods. But as forests fall, water is vanishing at a ruthless rate,” Abdul-Nashiru Mohammed, WaterAid’s regional director for West Africa, said in a statement.

In the same statement, Ghanaian scientists Justine Kojo and Thomas Burns Botchwey, who contributed to the study, said their data reveal a “dangerous new reality” in which deforestation and climate change reinforce one another.

“What looks like more water on the surface is often a sign of flooding, runoff, and pollution beneath,” they noted, citing surveys showing that 93% of Ghanaians fear for their future because of climate change.

The report estimates that 45% of people in Ghana, Niger and Nigeria now live in areas of high water risk. In Nigeria alone, roughly 85.6 million people are affected by surface water loss linked to deforestation. Nigeria loses roughly 27,000 hectares (66,7000 acres) of vegetation cover annually.

Still, there are signs of progress. Niger has reforested more than 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) since 2013, potentially making more than 1,000 hectares (2,470 acres) of surface water available once again, the study notes.

Georges Bazongo, Tree Aid’s director of programs, said the findings underscore the need for “reforestation and land restoration efforts grounded in inclusive forest governance that balance environmental protection with local needs.”

The report was released ahead of the COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, and adds urgency to calls for governments to integrate forest and water protection into their climate finance pledges. WaterAid and Tree Aid say treating the two crises separately is “doomed to failure.”

The report concludes that climate change is compounding the crisis. Rising temperatures, erratic rainfall and extreme weather are accelerating deforestation and degrading water sources, while floods and droughts become more frequent and severe. Researchers say that without urgent climate adaptation and forest protection, millions of West Africans will face worsening water scarcity and food insecurity as the twin pressures of deforestation and climate change converge.

Banner image: Loggers inside Omo Forest Reserve in Nigeria. Image by AP Photo/Sunday Alamba.

A new global fund meant to reward tropical countries for protecting forests could instead drive deforestation and deepen debt in the developing world, civil society groups warn.

The Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), launched Nov. 6 in Belém, Brazil, ahead of the U.N. Climate Change Conference, aims to raise $125 billion and promises to pay countries up to $4 per hectare ($1.62 per acre) of standing forest each year.

More than $5.5 billion has been pledged so far, and the plan is officially supported by more than 50 nations, including countries making up the Amazon, Congo and Borneo basins. The fund mandates that at least 20% of the payments to each country must be allocated to Indigenous and local communities.

But more than 50 Indigenous and other civil society organizations from Latin America and the Caribbean argue the TFFF will make developing countries absorb the risks for the investments, while generous returns are guaranteed for investors and financial intermediaries.

The TFFF seeks to raise its initial $125 billion capital from wealthy countries and institutional and private investors. It aims to invest this in a diversified portfolio, mostly consisting of high-interest bonds issued by emerging markets and developing economies. Any profits generated are distributed first to private investors, then the sponsor countries. What remains is transferred to tropical forest countries that meet the deforestation criteria.

If the fund performs poorly financially, the price per hectare is reduced, even if environmental goals are met.

“In other words, it is ultimately the taxpayers of the Global South themselves who must finance the protection of forests historically deforested by corporations from countries in the North and, moreover, who will guarantee the returns for financial elites,” the groups wrote in a joint statement.

TFFF’s exclusion list for potential investments currently bars coal, oil and gas investments, but ratings agencies are still negotiating the full exclusion list. The investment arm of the fund, the TFIF, is a separate entity, so tropical forest countries won’t have a say in investment decisions, which will be made by “international asset managers selected through a competitive procurement process.”

A recent report by the Uruguay-based World Rainforest Movement (WRM) said the mechanism may also finance state-supported “clean” projects such as hydropower dams, mining linked to batteries, and industrial agriculture such as eucalyptus tree farms, despite evidence of their severe environmental impacts and harm to Indigenous communities.

To contain ballooning interest payments and meet debt obligations for the bonds they sell, governments may further cut public spending on health, education and even forest protection, the report adds.

Brazil Environment Minister Marina Silva, the fund’s main proponent, said at a press conference that it brings stability for forests. “It is possible to have a tool to finance the maintenance of tropical forests that is not based on donations.”

Banner image: TFFF roundtable in Belém, Brazil on Nov. 6. Image courtesy of Fernando Donasci/MMA.

Brazil officially launched a new financial market fund, called the Tropical Forests Forever Facility, or TFFF, at a Nov. 6 event ahead of the COP30 climate summit it will host in Belém.

Countries with significant amounts of tropical forest cover can receive up to $4 per hectare ($1.62 per acre) of standing forest per year under the fund’s rules. But with penalties of up to $800 per hectare ($324 per acre) of deforestation, payments shrink fast, meaning even small increases in deforestation can amount to hundreds of millions lost.

“Forests are worth more standing than cut down. They should interact with the GDP of our nations,” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said at the event. “The ecosystem services they provide to humanity must be compensated, as should the people who work to protect them.”

Tropical forest countries must allocate 20% of payments to Indigenous and local communities, but it’s up to governments to decide how; it may not even be in the form of direct cash payments.

Every hectare of forest cleared can have a big impact on how much a country gets paid. If deforestation rates are low (less than 0.3%), each hectare deforested faces a discount of $400, or the equivalent of 100 hectares if the price per hectare falls below $4. For higher deforestation rates (0.3-0.5%), each hectare cleared is discounted at the value of 200 hectares. Forests degraded by fire are counted as 35 hectares lost.

In 2021, the Brazilian Amazon’s worst deforestation year since 2006, the biome lost around 1.3 million hectares (3.2 million acres). In 2024, this fell to 671,200 hectares (1.65 million acres).

This difference of more than 628,000 hectares (1.5 million acres) could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars under the fund’s rules, creating a significant incentive for governments to keep forests standing.

According to the TFFF’s latest concept note, investor repayments and interest payments are top priority; remaining profits will go toward forest payments. If there isn’t enough left over to meet the $4 target, the per-hectare payment is reduced.

Marina Silva, Brazil’s environment minister, said this adds to the fund’s long-term feasibility. “It is possible to have a tool to finance the maintenance of tropical forests that is not based on donations,” she said at a press conference following the announcement, adding that investor returns are guaranteed.

Groups such as the World Rainforest Movement have criticized this feature of the fund, saying it prioritizes investors over Indigenous communities and other forest stewards. Also, financing that relies on emerging market bonds depends on high borrowing costs for developing nations to be feasible.

The fund’s architects aim to secure $25 billion in seed money from countries attending COP30, and an additional $100 billion from private investors. So far, more than $5.5 billion has been pledged, including $3 billion from Norway and $1 billion each from Brazil and Indonesia.

Banner image: Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva at a Nov. 6 press conference. Image courtesy of Fernando Donasci/MMA.

Researchers have captured video of an unexpected predator at two bat hibernation sites in northern Germany: invasive brown rats that lie in wait to intercept the bats mid-flight.

Invasive rodents are known predators of native animals on islands, including bats. However, this is likely the first time invasive brown rats (Rattus norvegicus) have been recorded feasting on bats in urban hibernation sites of continental Europe, the researchers say in a recent study.

“Because bats in Central Europe are increasingly threatened by human activities such as urbanization, light pollution, and road construction, it is becoming harder for them to reach their winter hibernation sites,” Florian Gloza-Rausch, study co-author and bat researcher at the Museum of Natural History Berlin, told Mongabay by email. “If an additional stress factor — predation by invasive species — is added, populations may weaken and decline further.”

The brown rat, believed to be native to parts of Asia, colonized Central Europe in the 18th century and has since become pervasive in the region’s cities and towns.

In northern Germany, the researchers observed rats preying on native bats at two sites: Segeberger Kalkberg, a cave in the town of Bad Segeberg, and Lüneburger Kalkberg, a rocky hill with crevices in the city of Lüneburg.

Both sites are winter roosts for thousands of bats, including Daubenton’s bat (Myotis daubentonii), Natterer’s bat (Myotis nattereri) and the rarer Bechstein’s bat (Myotis bechsteinii) and pond bat (Myotis dasycneme), Gloza-Rausch said.

At Segeberg, the team installed infrared video cameras at the cave entrance in late August 2020 and ran them until early October. Over those five weeks, they observed brown rats frequently patrolling a landing platform at the cave’s entrance and adopting one of two hunting strategies: snatching bats as they flew in, or catching them as they landed on the platform.

“We were impressed by the fine motor skills of the brown rats,” Gloza-Rausch said. “It was astonishing how precisely and skillfully they could catch bats in mid-air.”

The researchers also found a stash of at least 52 dead bats in a rat feeding site, suggesting the rats regularly caught and hoarded the bats, they write.

At Lüneburg, the team, using handheld thermal imaging devices, detected brown rats around crevices that bats enter through. They also observed a cache of bat carcasses deep in a rock fissure, like at Segeberg, although they didn’t directly observe rats eating bats.

“The fact that rats were present as predators at both large bat hibernacula struck us as remarkable,” Gloza-Rausch said. “We now hope to hear about similar observations from other parts of the world.”

He added they hope their results “will encourage local authorities to allocate resources for controlling rat populations” near both sites.

Brown rats capturing bats at Segeberger Kalkberg. Video courtesy of Gloza-Rausch et al., 2025 (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

Banner image: Video of a brown rat catching a bat at Segeberger Kalkberg. Image courtesy of Gloza-Rausch et al., 2025 (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

In a review article published in Nature, researchers have introduced a new term to describe the importance of seabirds across land and marine ecosystems: the circular seabird economy.

Although seabirds spend most of their lives at sea, they return to land to breed, often forming colonies of thousands of individuals. This influx of birds, bringing their guano, or droppings, feathers and eggshells to land constitutes a transfer of ocean-derived nutrients, including phosphorous, carbon, nitrogen and calcium.

“By eating at sea, and then pooping at breeding colonies, seabirds are estimated to transfer as much nitrogen and phosphorus from sea to land as all commercial fisheries combined,” Nick Holmes, study co-author and associate director for oceans at the NGO The Nature Conservancy, told Mongabay by email.

This surge in nutrients on land feeds soil and helps “shape plant communities, which in turn support diverse insect, bird, and reptile populations,” David Will, study co-author and senior director of impact and innovation at U.S.-based nonprofit Island Conservation, told Mongabay by email.

“In Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, seabirds contribute over 80% of available nutrients to land and sea ecosystems, making them the primary drivers of productivity in some of the planet’s harshest environments,” Will added. “When new islands emerge from the sea, they are empty until seabirds show up with seeds and nutrients and jump start life and keep it going.”

The flow of nutrients doesn’t just go from ocean to land. Studies show that a significant amount washes back the other way, fueling marine food webs as well.

Compared to islands without seabirds, marine environments near islands with seabirds have “coral reefs recovering faster after bleaching events, fish growing faster, higher fish biomass, and increased macroalgae,” Holly Jones, lead author of the study and an ecologist at Northern Illinois University, U.S., told Mongabay in an email.

Healthier marine life also means greater climate resilience, Jones added. For example, “coral reefs grow faster and calcify quicker, both of which will be important in the face of increasing extreme weather events and sea level rise,” she said.

Despite their importance, nearly a third of seabird species are at risk of extinction, the researchers note. Their main threats include invasive rats and cats on islands that eat the birds’ eggs and chicks. At sea, they often get caught as fisheries bycatch. Other threats to seabirds include plastic pollution, overfishing of their prey species, and climate change, the researchers note.

Because seabirds are crucial to so many ecosystems, Jones said, protecting them “is one of the most effective strategies we have to make a huge impact on land, at sea, and in our own communities.”

“This paper shows how restoring seabirds doesn’t just help the birds — it helps entire ecosystems recover and thrive,” Will added in a press release.

Banner image: Puffins near their breeding burrows near Dunfermline, Scotland. Image by Steve Garvie via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — World leaders gathering in a coastal city in the Brazilian Amazon for the U.N.‘s annual climate summit hope it’s a rare opportunity to turn previous commitments into practical steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, preserve rainforests and make good on pledges to finance clean energy. But the heads of the world’s three biggest polluters — China, the United States and India — are notably absent from the preliminary leaders’ gathering that kicked off Thursday. Brazil’s left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva warned in a speech that the window to act is rapidly closing. Some Latin American leaders and activists called out Trump for failing to act on climate change.

By Isabel Debre and Mauricio Savarese, Associated Press

Banner image: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva addresses a plenary session of the COP30 U.N. Climate Summit in Belem, Brazil, Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)