Multilateral development banks claim to have handed out a record $125 billion in “climate finance” in 2023. However, a recent report finds that some of the funds went to “problematic projects.”

“The development banks’ climate finance figures should be read with great caution,” Petra Kjell Wright, campaigns manager at Recourse, a Netherlands-based nonprofit that published the report, said in a statement. “We found financing for projects involving fossil fuels, human rights violations, and environmental destruction.” 

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), for example, classified more than 91% of their funding to the Greater Malé waste-to-energy project in the Maldives — which burns trash to produce energy — as “climate finance,” despite criticisms over its impacts on local communities and emissions of hazardous fumes and greenhouse gases, the report found.

Similarly, the World Bank, AIIB and ADB classified most of their funding to Nepal’s Upper Trishuli-1 hydropower project as climate finance, although the dam’s development “has marginalised and adversely affected Indigenous peoples in several critical ways,” the report noted.

The ADB also counts 100% of its investment into a project in Mongolia aiming to mine minerals for renewable energy as “climate finance.” Yet more than 60 civil society groups have raised health, economic, pollution and land-grabbing concerns about the project, in addition to Indigenous rights violations.

One problem with “climate finance,” the report noted, is that there’s no universally accepted definition for it. “[This] means that what counts as climate finance can include activities that in fact contribute to GHG emissions as well as undermining human, gender, environmental, health, land and Indigenous rights,” the report said.

Another issue, the report added, is that 70% of the climate financing in 2023 was in the form of loans. Moreover, instead of prioritizing climate-vulnerable areas, 44% of the 2023 climate financing went to European countries, while only 21% went to Asia Pacific and 14% to sub-Saharan Africa.

Nick Dearden, director of U.K. charity Global Justice Now, not involved in the report, told Mongabay by email that some of the projects reviewed “look like they are aimed more at enriching big business rather than building the just transition we need.”

“Those countries least responsible for the climate crisis are being made to pay, through high levels of debt, to deal with problems they haven’t created,” he said, adding that loans will make it harder for developing countries to pursue a clean energy transition.

The report’s authors say multilateral development banks’ climate financing should exclude projects involving fossil fuel and those that offer “false solutions” such as waste-to-energy incineration and carbon capture, and use caution when financing transition mineral mining.

Continued investment into problematic big business projects “will fundamentally turn people against a green transition which should be making their [lives] better but is actually exacerbating inequality,” Dearden said.

Banner image of AIIB headquarters by N509FZ via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

In many animal societies, elderly individuals are critical contributors to their species’ survival, a new study has found. That’s why wildlife conservation must account for older animals, researchers say.

Keller Kopf, lead author and ecologist at Charles Darwin University, Australia, told Mongabay he wanted to counter the idea that “getting old is always a bad thing.”

While aging is often linked to declining health and function, there’s mounting evidence that older animals offer many benefits, Kopf said by phone. However, most such studies have been conducted for different animal groups in isolation, he added, so the new review aimed to bring those findings together.

Older individuals, the review found, provide greater stability to their populations and ecosystems. For instance, some older fish mothers lay more eggs in better habitat than their younger counterparts, and some older bird parents provide better food and care for their chicks. Certain deep-sea corals that live for thousands of years provide critical food and shelter for a wide range of marine animals. These are “essentially irreplaceable within human lifespans,” Kopf said.

The review also highlighted how older animals contribute valuable “wisdom” or knowledge accumulated over their lifetime to their societies. Animals like whales, elephants and some migratory birds and fish, for example, rely on older individuals for guidance to find food and better breeding areas. Conversely, in species with strong social structures, like wolves, the death of older leaders can destabilize the pack structure, Kopf said.

The review is “comprehensive and compelling,” Tim Coulson, a zoology professor at the University of Oxford, U.K., not involved in the study, told Mongabay. It also shows that “our fixation on harvesting large, elderly fish, or the tallest, oldest trees is seriously misguided,” he added.

The authors recommend that commercial management of species, particularly in fisheries, should prioritize preserving older individuals.

This is “important food for thought,” said Lewis Barnett, a fish biologist at NOAA Fisheries, U.S., not involved in the study. He agreed with the authors that policy solutions around protecting older fish could work with recreational fishing where “harvesting can be more selective, or where individuals can be released alive with a high chance of survival.”

However, in commercial fisheries, “the more practical tools may be spatial management with no-take areas, gear modification, and reduced harvest rates overall,” he added.

The authors also recommend that the IUCN Red List incorporate “age class” in its assessments of species’ status, currently not the practice. This is akin to an old-growth forest, Kopf said: “You can chop down all of the big trees and still have a huge number of really young trees. But it doesn’t mean that the population or that species is necessarily in good shape.”

Coulson said that while a “nice thought experiment,” including the status of older individuals into IUCN assessments is an “unrealistic expectation,” considering the information needed to robustly capture the impact of such individuals in fluctuating populations.

Banner image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

Satellite data and imagery confirm ongoing deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon around colonies of Mennonites, a group of highly conservative Christian communities.

Mennonites, whose early history can be traced to Europe in the 16^th century, are known for their large-scale industrialized agriculture. By the late 19^th century, they migrated to Canada, from where they have been fanning out to various parts of Latin America in search of land for new agricultural settlements, or “colonies.”

Mennonite colonies first began appearing in Peru’s rainforests around 2017, and deforestation due to their activities has spiked from zero in 2017 to more than 8,660 hectares (21,400 acres) in 2024, according to the latest update by the U.S.-based nonprofit Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP).

“It is clear the Mennonites will continue growing population and expanding deforestation if the government does not implement more effective strategies,” Matt Finer, senior research specialist and director of MAAP, told Mongabay by email.

MAAP’s analysis, published in October, examined all five Mennonite colonies in Peru — Chipiar, Vanderland, Osterreich, Providencia and Masisea — and found that deforestation around all of them were continuing as of September 2024.

Deforestation around the newest Chipiar colony, for instance, has reached 2,708 hectares (6,692 acres) since 2020, MAAP’s analysis found. Visualizing Chipiar colony on the Global Forest Watch (GFW) platform shows considerable deforestation and fire alerts as recently as October.

Data and imagery from GFW also show a dramatic burst of continued forest loss around the Masisea colony in October.

Finer said that while MAAP’s analysis focuses on actual deforestation, a lot of what’s seen in the October GFW images appear to indicate burning as a result of fires meant for clearing forested areas escaping into surrounding areas.

“I don’t have more information other than in the imagery it appears to be escaped fire damage, I don’t know who started the fire,” Finer said. “And yes that is different than actual deforestation.” Mongabay couldn’t immediately confirm the reasons behind the latest clearings.

Previous Mongabay investigations have found that much of the land grab by the Mennonites in Peru’s forests is likely illegal. Some of their settlements also overlap with the territories of Indigenous communities, and the colonies are being investigated by the country’s authorities.

“We delivered a pair of confidential reports to the Peruvian government in early October alerting them to the continuing deforestation in Chipiar and also Vanderland,” Finer said.

Banner image of clearing around the Chipiar Mennonite colony in Peru, courtesy of Global Forest Watch.

The Biden administration recently clarified its position on a global treaty calling for a reduction in the amount of new plastic produced: It no longer supports production caps.

Previously, the U.S. said it recognized the need to regulate plastic over its entire life cycle, including limiting its production.

“So, the U.S. has been very vague,” Bjorn Beeler, international coordinator with the International Pollutants Elimination Network, told Mongabay in a phone call. “Some people heard the vagueness and they determined that they [the U.S.] were suggesting that there should be caps. And the U.S. let everybody run with that.”

“The only thing the U.S. has done now is clarified what they’ve meant,” Beeler added. In other words, the U.S. has acknowledged that capping plastic production could help address the plastic waste problem, but it doesn’t think mandatory caps are a “viable landing zone,” according to reporting from Grist. 

Calling for a global cap on new plastic production would have put the U.S. in line with nearly 70 other countries, including Canada, France and Japan, that make up the High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution.

Top fossil fuel producing countries, including Saudi Arabia and China, have opposed stringent measures to limit plastic production and advocate for a less ambitious approach instead. Nearly all plastic is derived from oil and gas byproducts.

As the world shifts away from oil and gas for energy, “Plastics is the Plan B for the fossil fuel industry,” said Judith Enck, founder and president of the nonprofit advocacy group Beyond Plastics.

“Many of these fossil fuel states are really just trying to obstruct the whole process,” Beeler said.

It’s unclear which approach the U.S. will support. The U.S. is the world’s largest producer and consumer of oil and one of the largest producers of plastic. While the Biden administration has been vague on its position on plastic, the incoming Trump administration has always been clear in its support for the fossil fuel industry.

“A Trump election would really spell doom, I think, for a strong treaty, at least one that includes the United States,” U.S. Representative Jared Huffman told Politico before the election.

The U.S. clarification comes as delegates prepare to meet in Busan, South Korea, for the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) with the goal of developing an instrument to tackle the growing problem of plastic pollution.

In next couple decades, plastic production is expected to grow by roughly 300%, Beeler said. “So, limiting new plastic production could mean not 300% growth, but 200% growth,” he said.

A 200% growth rate would still be a disaster for wildlife, Earth’s planetary systems and human health, scientists say.

“Plastics are climate change and cancer,” Beeler said, stressing the need for action at INC-5 in South Korea.

Banner image: A woman pulls a large bag filled with plastic waste in a landfill in Bangladesh. Image by Mumtahina Tanni via Pexels (Public domain).

A frog smaller than a pencil eraser has hopped into the record books as the one of the smallest vertebrates known to science. Researchers formally described the species in late October 2024 after encountering it in the Atlantic Forest in southeastern Brazil’s São Paulo state.

At a length of 6.95 millimeters (0.27 inches), Brachycephalus dacnis has given scientists a new appreciation of just how small vertebrates can get. The only known frog smaller than this, found in February 2024 in northeastern Brazil, beats it by just 0.5 mm (0.02 in) but struggles with balance.

Frogs in the tiny Brachycephalus genus are notorious for their clumsy landings, often tumbling over or falling on their heads after jumping, as their vestibular systems were compromised in their evolution to be small.

But the B. dacnis retained its inner ear structure, allowing it to hear and leap quite proficiently. Researchers found that it can jump an impressive 32 times its own size, with surprising grace.

“The size makes this frog very special,” Edelcio Muscat, one of the researchers who described B. dacnis and a coordinator at Projeto Dacnis, a conservation NGO working in the Atlantic Forest, told Mongabay by phone. “The miniaturization process hasn’t affected any of its organs or its skeleton.”

In 2016, Muscat was on a typical nighttime expedition carefully turning over leaves on the forest floor when one of the frogs jumped out. Recordings of its croak, more akin to a cricket’s chirp than a typical toad’s ribbit, would confirm it was a unique species years later.

Brazil is home to the world’s largest number of amphibian species, most of them in the Atlantic Forest, a biodiversity hotspot encompassing Brazil’s largest cities, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, with dozens of species described every year. Just 13% of the original Atlantic Forest remains.

“The discovery of this species reveals how much we’ve lost without even realizing it,” Adrian Garda, a herpetologist at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, not involved in the study, told Mongabay by phone. “Right before our eyes, such a peculiar and extremely miniaturized vertebrate existed. What might we have lost over the past 40 to 80 years of industrialization?”

Worldwide, nearly 41% of amphibian species are threatened with extinction, compared with 26.5% of mammals, 21.4% of reptiles and 12.9% of birds.

B. dacnis is speckled brown and white and has survived by blending in and laying low. Its tiny size helps it avoid predators, and the leaves of the forest floor provide thermal comfort, which might help protect it against the brunt of climate change, Muscat said.

“The discovery shows us how much we need to preserve the Atlantic Forest,” Muscat said. “There are still species it supports that we have not yet found.”

Banner image: A B. dacnis rests on a fingertip, courtesy of Lucas Machado Botelho.

A recent report says that a new Philippine law meant to hold companies responsible for their plastic waste is showing “promising results,” with most of the country’s largest plastic packaging producers going beyond the minimum recovery target. But critics say the law has several shortcomings.

The Philippines’ Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) law of 2022 requires large companies with more than 100 million pesos ($1.7 million) in assets to take responsibility for reducing their plastic waste. They’re expected to recover 20% of their plastic waste by the end of 2023 and 80% by 2028, preventing it from entering the environment. 

Companies can comply with the recovery targets on their own or authorize a “producer responsibility organization” like the nonprofit PCX Solutions, which published the report.

The report estimates based on available data that 626,725 metric tons of plastic packaging in the Philippines need to be recovered annually.

By the end of 2023, the first milestone, 947 companies had registered for the country’s EPR program and helped recover and divert 163,000 metric tons of post-consumer plastic packaging waste, the report says. While government is yet to validate the numbers, the report added that this suggests plastic packaging recovery has already surpassed the 20% target for the year. 

However, not all firms obliged to comply with the EPR law have done so, the report says, suggesting education and awareness to improve compliance are still needed. The report also noted several challenges, including addressing decades of legacy plastic pollution, creating the supply and demand for recycled materials, and reducing unnecessary plastic packaging. 

Dominic Hogg, founder of U.K.-based environment consultancy Equanimator and author of a report about EPR in the Philippines and other countries, said the PCX Solutions report “makes some sensible comments” about the law, but cautioned it doesn’t address its “key shortcomings.”

Hogg said the data in the report also fail to clarify “what the scheme has achieved that was not already happening in the Philippines: there is no clear indication of who received how much money for doing what under the scheme.”

The report emphasized the role of incentives to boost compliance, like plastic credits, where companies can pay other groups to clean up plastic waste and earn credits in return, without having to rely on their own efforts. However, Emma Priestland from the NGO Break Free From Plastic (BFFP), told Mongabay that “plastic credits can be deeply problematic and can actually incentivize harmful waste treatment methods,” such as burning plastic in cement kilns that causes air pollution. 

Miko Aliño of BFFP added that the Philippine EPR “is limited to plastic collection targets, having little impact on reduction.”

“The law doesn’t mandate companies to reduce their plastic footprint through production reduction, product redesign, or reuse systems — higher-priority strategies in the Zero Waste hierarchy,” he said. 

Banner image of waste pickers in the Philippines, courtesy of PCX Solutions.