For the first time ever at a climate summit, the final text of this month’s COP27 included a “forests” section and a reference to “nature-based solutions.” But it's premature to declare a victory for forests.
The new Brazilian president pledges to protect the Amazon, Indigenous peoples and their lands, ending illegal mining, logging and land grabbing. But he must deal with a largely hostile congress and “not enough” international forest funding.
Likely the world’s most popular garment, jeans use huge amounts of water to grow irrigated cotton, a major factor in destroying the Aral Sea. Today, the industry, though making sustainability pledges, still does much harm.
Environmentalist George Monbiot argues for the production of food from bacteria fed on hydrogen — bypassing photosynthesis. Some warn this techno fix will be taken over by corporations and exclude the world’s traditional peoples.
The past decade has seen a paradigm shift in the way the world looks at lighting. Homes, offices and streets have turned off wasteful incandescent lights and fluorescent ones that…
A last-minute add-on to the COP27 agenda allows discussion of Loss and Damage payments to the developing world, a policy long resisted by the U.S. and other wealthy nations who caused most historic carbon emissions.
The multibillion-dollar global console gaming industry is linked to environmental harm throughout the life cycle of these wildly popular devices. But the industry is taking some steps to curb its excesses.
As Arctic sea ice begins melting out fully in summer, the frequency of strong El Niños could increase by 35% by century's end, causing extreme weather events to increase, says recent modeling study.
New research looks beyond the known physical effects of plastic ingestion in seabirds and suggests it can cause on-going harm in various body organs, impacting health.
Organized crime cartels and Chinese laborers continue draining the Amazon of jaguars and other endangered species, threatening ecosystems with collapse.
Diseases affecting domestic animals, such as canine distemper, are increasingly infecting tropical wildlife, including wild felids, presenting a threat to biodiversity; so far solutions are few and funding is scarce.
The trillions of pieces of plastic currently roving through the global ocean are known to be an assault on life. Turtles get tangled up in discarded plastic fishing nets. Whales…
A 2020 move to open a futures water market on the Chicago exchange has resulted in a heated conflict between those who say monetizing is a positive step, and those who see speculation as bad for the environment and traditional peoples.
In April 2022, a Texas company unveiled a plan to transform a tiny Pennsylvania town into an industrial hub: it would invest $1.1 billion into building a manufacturing plant that…
The Caribbean island is currently being convulsed by a wave of civil unrest and gang violence, immediately triggered by soaring gas prices. But a dire environmental crisis underlays and feeds Haiti’s socioeconomic and political disorder.
Discussions about the Greenland ice sheet often focus on what it’s losing. But from around the edges of the rapidly melting Greenland ice sheet, a global commodity is being created.…
Sea ice extent didn’t reach record lows this summer, but air temps over Greenland and ocean temps in some Arctic seas were extraordinarily high. Polar warming also likely continues influencing global extreme weather events, scientists say.
On Sept. 20, the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research, or EDGAR, a scientific group associated with the European Commission, released its 2022 report detailing the CO2 emissions of every…
Unstudied at sea until recently, this huge, fast-moving ocean current may hold a key to resolving climate change uncertainties. But doing remote research in southern oceans poses financial, data gathering, and unexpected challenges.
Hours after being born, oysters are already working to form their protective, chalk-layered shells. Drawing calcium and carbonate from seawater, they combine the two to form hardened shells. But as…
Heat waves are reshaping life in the Mediterranean, with few of the sea’s coves, bays and shorelines untouched, according to a recent study looking at the impact of marine heat…
England’s Itchen River and other chalk rivers have been dubbed the nation’s coral reefs due to high biodiversity, but like small watersheds worldwide, they’ve gotten little attention, despite threats. That’s where Janet Marsh steps in.
The death knell of coal has been proclaimed, but policy loopholes in Asia allow for cofired power plants, where coal and wood are combined as fuel. Both fuels produce lots of carbon emissions, but those from wood aren’t counted.
Climate scientists say there’s a 0.1% chance of keeping warming below 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) by 2100, as called for in the Paris Agreement. Even the less ambitious target of…
Just weeks after visiting a patch of Malaysian rainforest, Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler learned it had been logged for wood chips to supply a paper plant. A teenager at…
A new model that links climate change-reduced oceanic oxygen levels to smaller ectotherms predicts marine microorganisms could shrink as the world gets warmer, with impacts up the food chain, impacting fisheries.
Chocolate is one of the world’s greatest little pleasures. But its primary ingredients — cocoa, palm oil and soy — all contribute to global deforestation. The industry is working now to make chocolate more sustainable.
This week, member states of the U.N. General Assembly — the highest UN body that wields considerable influence over its member states — adopted a historic resolution: the recognition that…
War, supply chain breakdowns, and climate change-driven weather disasters are pushing wheat prices up and increasing the threat of global hunger. Some analysts say financial speculation is making things worse.
Environmental regulation runs up against political roadblocks in many nations, but the trend is especially strong in authoritarian countries like Turkey, where weak laws, lack of transparency, and repression are rife.
