The governments of nine tropical countries recently made a joint pledge to recognize 160 million hectares, or 395 million acres, of Indigenous and other traditional lands by 2030, according to a Nov. 7 announcement at the World Leaders Summit, an event hosted ahead of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil.

The Intergovernmental Land Tenure Commitment (ILTC) marks the first time countries have come together to expand recognition for land tenure for Indigenous and other traditional land stewards. 

So far, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Fiji, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo have signed the commitment. A breakdown of specific commitments by country has not yet been made publicly available but is expected to be announced on Nov. 17, according to the ILTC press office.

Sonia Guajajara, Brazil’s minister of Indigenous peoples, said in a press release that at least 59 million hectares (146 million acres), more than one-third of the pledge’s total commitment, would come from Brazil, the conference’s host country.

According to a 2023 report by the global advocacy group Rights and Resources Initiative, more than 1.3 billion hectares (3.2 billion acres) of land is protected by Indigenous, Afro-descendant and other traditional communities, but only 11% is formally recognized as theirs in the 73 countries analyzed.

The announcement of the ILTC was made on the same day that Norway, Germany, the U.K., the Netherlands and 35 philanthropies and donors renewed a pledge to donate $1.8 billion over four years toward land tenure.

Over the last four years, the Forest and Land Tenure Funders Group behind the pledge donated an annual average of $485 million, increasing every year. In 2024, the donors reached $527 million in donations, but only an estimated 7.6% of this was considered direct funding. In the pledge’s renewal, the donors said they would increase this percentage from 2026 onward.

“We will continue efforts to increase the share of direct, long-term, and flexible financing, ensuring communities have genuine decision-making power and influence over how funds are used,” the group’s signatories wrote in their announcement.

Referring to the new commitment, the renewed funding pledge and the launch of a new financial market fund called the Tropical Forests Forever Facility, Wanjira Mathai, managing director for Africa and global partnerships at the World Resources Institute (WRI), wrote in a statement: “Together these initiatives demonstrate a massive and welcome shift in recognizing the central role that Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendants, and local communities play in protecting the forests that sustain us all.” WRI receives funds from at least one of the pledge’s donors.

“These pledges represent both a matter of justice for these communities, survival for our forests, and necessity for our climate goals,” Mathai added.

Banner image: World leaders link arms ahead of the COP30 climate summit. Image courtesy of the European Union.

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Taiwan evacuated more than 8,300 people from coastal and mountainous areas and closed schools before a tropical storm brushes the southern part of the island later Wednesday.

Fung-wong had super typhoon strength when it battered the Philippines on Sunday, causing flooding, landslides, power outages and at least 27 deaths. Still holding tropical storm strength Wednesday morning, it was expected to continue losing wind speed and size as it approached Taiwan.

Heavy rains and flooding injured at least 51 people as of Wednesday morning, according to the National Fire Agency.

Authorities evacuated 8,326 people, the majority from the eastern Hualien County, where a typhoon in September left 18 dead.

An overflowing creek flooded a village in Hualien on Tuesday. Images carried by local media showed a car being swept away by floodwater.

Schools and offices were closed in central and southern parts of Taiwan including the coastal cities of Kaohsiung, Taichung and Tainan as well as Pingtung, Chiayi and Miaoli counties. The capital, Taipei, in the island’s north, operated as usual.

As of Wednesday morning, Fung-wong was about 140 kilometers (87 miles) southwest of Taiwan in the South China Sea, moving northeast at 16 kph (10 mph). It was expected to make landfall during the afternoon or evening and graze the southern part of the island before exiting from its southeastern side.

The storm had maximum sustained winds of 65 kph (40 mph) and higher gusts.

Authorities warned residents around the island to avoid going to the beach, where waves were expected to rise to about 3 to 5 meters (about 10 to 16 feet). Signboards, fences and flowerpots were to be secured in anticipation of strong winds.

In the Philippines, more than 623,300 people remained in evacuation centers Wednesday, according to the Office of Civil Defense.

Several of the deaths in the Philippines occurred in landslides in the Cordillera, a six-province mountainous region popular among backpackers and vacationers for its pine tree-dotted towns, cool breezes, strawberry fields and mountainside rice terraces.

By Simina Mistreanu, Associated Press

Banner image: A town is surrounded by floodwaters after the onslaught of Typhoon Fung-wong in Cagayan province, northern Philippines on Tuesday Nov. 11 2025. (Cagayan Police Provincial Office via AP)

Researchers have long speculated that humans introduced spiny-tailed iguanas to Mexico’s remote Clarion Island about 50 years ago. However, a recent study suggests the Clarion iguanas are likely native to the island, arriving long before human colonization of the Americas.

Clarion Island is the westernmost and oldest of a small group of islands in Mexico’s Revillagigedo Archipelago. Despite its remoteness, the island is home to endemic wildlife, including two snake species and a lizard species, and at least three species or subspecies of birds.

In the 1970s, the Mexican military brought some nonnative animals to Clarion, including pigs, sheep and rabbits, which transformed the island’s native flora.

Along with the domestic animals, biologists speculated the military also introduced a population of spiny-tailed iguanas (Ctenosaura pectinata) sometime between the 1970s and 1990s. Wildlife records from earlier expeditions to Clarion hadn’t mentioned the lizards.

When Daniel Mulcahy from the Museum of Natural History in Berlin and first author of the new study visited the island in 2013 and 2023 to study snakes, he began to suspect the Clarion iguanas were different from those on the mainland.

Genetic analysis confirmed his suspicion. The team found the island iguanas diverged from their mainland relatives roughly 425,000 years ago. According to some recent estimates, humans arrived in North America much later, roughly 23,000 years ago.

The researchers hypothesize that spiny-tailed iguanas likely arrived on Clarion from the Mexican mainland, a distance of about 1,100 kilometers (700 miles), by floating on vegetation mats across the Pacific. Once there, the lizards would likely have evolved in isolation.

Based on their genetic analysis, the researchers consider the island’s iguanas “an evolutionarily significant unit” but add that more data is needed to determine if the lizards could be considered a subspecies or even a species of their own.

As to why previous surveys hadn’t spotted iguanas, the researchers pointed to the island’s dense cactus thickets and tall grasses. Thick vegetation historically covered the rock outcrops and burrows that spiny-tailed iguanas scurry away to when approached, which could explain why early visitors to Clarion hadn’t seen them, the authors write. The domestic animals brought over in the 1970s cleared much of the vegetation, as did a large fire in 1984, likely bringing the iguanas into view.

The findings of the study have important conservation implications, the researchers say; the Mexican government, assuming the iguanas were an invasive species, has been exploring plans to eradicate them from the island.

“Our research is of critical importance in demonstrating that iguanas are native to Clarion and should be considered part of the natural fauna, which should be conserved rather than eradicated,” the authors write.

“This type of work is fundamental to conserving some of the world’s most unique and imperiled diversity,” Rayna Bell, an amphibian and reptile expert from the California Academy of Sciences, U.S., told The New York Times.

Banner image: Spiny-tailed Iguana from Clarion Island. Image courtesy of D.G. Mulcahy.

NEW DELHI (AP) — A thick layer of smog enveloped India’s capital Monday, filling the air with an acrid smell as pollution levels surged and worsening a public health crisis that has prompted its residents to take the streets to protest and demand government action.

By Monday morning, New Delhi’s air quality index stood at 344, a level considered “severe” and dangerous to breathe, according to the World Health Organization’s recommended exposure limits.

Late Sunday, hundreds of people, including parents and environmental activists, gathered at New Delhi’s India Gate in a rare protest, urging authorities to act. Many wore masks and carried placards, with one reading: “I miss breathing.”

“I am here just as a citizen who cares and who is worried about the state of situation that we are in with respect to the lack of clean air to breathe,” said protester Meghna, who only gave her first name.

Police later confiscated placards and banners and asked protesters to disperse, saying they did not have permission to demonstrate.

Worsening air quality in the capital has sparked outrage from residents suffering from headaches and persistent coughs. Frustration is mounting toward politicians accused of trading blame instead of enforcing policies to combat what has become an annual health emergency.

Home to more than 30 million people, New Delhi and its surrounding region routinely rank among the world’s most polluted cities. India has six of the 10 most polluted cities globally, and New Delhi remains the most polluted capital, according to a report from Switzerland-based air quality monitoring database IQAir earlier this year.

Air quality in the city worsens further each winter as farmers burn crop residue in nearby states and cooler temperatures trap the smoke, which mixes with vehicle and industrial emissions. Toxic particles linger because Delhi’s winters are often dry and windless, sometimes pushing pollution levels to 20 times the World Health Organization’s safe limit.

Authorities have temporarily banned construction, restricted diesel generators and even tried using cloud seeding to promote rain, but critics say only long-term measures to cut emissions can bring real relief.

By Rishi Lekhi, Associated Press

At the COP30 Leaders’ Summit in Belém, host country Brazil  formally introduced the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF). It’s an endowment-style mechanism designed to pay countries and forest stewards to keep tropical forests standing. TFFF has drawn goodwill and cautious optimism from leaders and NGOs.

TFFF has received more than $5.5 billion in initial pledges; architects of the plan hope to secure $125 billion total from sovereign and institutional investors, the money will be invested in the bond market as a permanent tropical forest conservation fund. Investors will be repaid first, and remaining funds will be divided among qualifying forest countries and communities.

Unlike past project-based schemes, the TFFF is designed to generate predictable, long-term payouts to reward countries and front-line communities for the verified conservation of standing forests and forest restoration.

TIFF is being hailed as a potential breakthrough for climate and biodiversity finance. Led by Brazil with the World Bank confirmed as interim host, the facility aims to address a long-standing market failure that largely places value on products extracted from forests and not benefits derived from the ecosystem services forests provide.

“Today marked a turning point for tropical forest finance,” said Brian O’Donnell, director of the Campaign for Nature, in a statement. “The leadership of tropical forest nations is inspiring.”

Indeed, 20% of TFFF payments must go to Indigenous and local communities, historically the best guardians of tropical forests. Juan Carlos Jintiach, executive secretary of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, an alliance representing Indigenous peoples and local communities from 24 tropical forest countries, said in a statement emailed to Mongabay. Adding, “is a historic victory that recognizes our leadership in the fight against climate change.”

The plan has gained initial support from Norway, which pledged $3 billion, while Brazil and Indonesia have each committed $1 billion. WWF and the World Resources Institute have said the plan is potentially a major step toward fixing fragmented forest finance, provided early pledges are followed by rapid operationalization and transparent access rules.

Several countries in the Congo Basin will potentially benefit from the fund. DRC’s country director of WWF told Mongabay, “TFFF is a turning point for the DRC and the wider Congo Basin.”

Still, caution tempers optimism.

“We shouldn’t be allowing the people who destroyed the Amazon to manage the funds for its restoration,” Drea Burbank, CEO of Savimbo, told Mongabay. Savimbo is a social enterprise founded by Indigenous peoples to help them access climate markets directly. “Don’t send any conservation money to Quito, Bogotá, Rio or Lima if you want to see changes in how Amazon forests are managed.”

Greenpeace notes that earlier funds often struggled to move money to frontline guardians at speed and scale. Greenpeace welcomed the direction but pressed for robust transparency and direct finance to Indigenous peoples and local communities.

Banner image: Cows roam an area recently deforested in the Brazilian Amazon. Image by AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File.

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.