Human rights are not just words on paper. Advocates, social movements and government champions have brought much needed positive changes by pushing for the adoption of international human rights standards…
Garment factories burning coal is bad, and must stop. The fashion industry has largely aligned on this fact by now, with most high street brands (absent Patagonia, PVH, C&A and…
In the quiet Swiss town of Davos, Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain unfolds as young Hans Castorp’s brief visit to a sanatorium turns into a seven-year exploration of ideas, intrigue,…
Rivers, as Bengal's nurturing mother, shaped the soul of this land and cultural landscape. The ever-flowing water and fertile sediments formed the entire Bengal region, nourishing the Indus Valley civilization…
The Himalayan wolf (Canis lupus chanco) and snow leopard (Panthera uncia) are apex predators in alpine ecosystems. By controlling the numbers of meso-predators and herbivores, these top predators can have…
Attending the UN climate (COP28) and biodiversity (COP16) conferences during the past two years, it strikes this observer that the UN specialist environmental agreements on climate, biodiversity, pollution, hazardous waste,…
1. Long-awaited plastics treaty flops, for now Despite around-the-clock efforts from delegates, negotiators and numerous advocacy groups, the fifth session of the U.N. Environment Programme’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) on…
In pre-colonial Bengal, Dhaka was the fashion capital, a city known globally for its rich heritage of luxury muslin fabric and its handloom industry. During the colonial period, the British…
In the 1990s, a single moratorium announcement wiped out an entire industry, leaving 37,000 people unemployed overnight. The ecological collapse of the Canadian Grand Banks Cod Fisheries is the most…
Wikipedia defines a 'nothing-burger' as “a situation that receives a lot of attention but which, upon closer examination, reveals to be of little to no real significance.” That unfortunately applies…
Recognition of the need to restore degraded landscapes is accelerating at pace. The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (the UN Decade) has triggered a global movement to rally individual action,…
When considering the vastly unequal realities of the current global order, it is clear that the ongoing impact of the colonization of the Global South is wide ranging and all-encompassing.…
In recent years, there has been an enormous increase in awareness about the importance of rainforests to global ecosystems and economies. Meanwhile, another biome – one that covers more than…
When most people think about climate change, images of melting ice caps or rising sea levels come to mind. However, the reality is far more intricate and urgent. The effects…
The climate crisis is global, but its impacts are deeply local. In Africa, communities at the frontlines of climate change are not only among the most vulnerable, but also among…
Scientists agree that the biodiversity crisis we face today may be one of the most disruptive events in Earth’s history. The response so far has been for hundreds of billions…
December 2009, Copenhagen, three in the morning. Tired of waiting for any official announcement from the COP15 presidency, a journalist friend and I decided to sleep right there in the…
There have been 29 United Nations Climate Change Conferences (UNFCCC COPs) so far. The first COP meeting was held in Germany in 1995, and the 29th meeting of the Conference…
As we've watched the biodiversity COP in Colombia and then the climate COP negotiations in recent weeks, the urgency of addressing the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss…
Agriculture and nature are closely intertwined, with millions of farmers around the world relying on nature-based activities as their source of livelihoods. Yet the adverse impacts of agriculture on the…
‘Out of sight, out of mind’ is a typical approach to waste and is one of the main reasons why the waste trade persists. The world discovered that toxic waste…
The first United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that I worked on was in 2009. I didn’t actually go but rather volunteered for Farhana Yamin representing the Marshall…
What a week. The global biodiversity conference in Cali, Colombia (COP16) had just concluded. And then Trump got re-elected as President of the United States. Clearly the latter puts an…
The evidence is irrefutable: Sweden has spent the last few years trying to frustrate any EU-proposed measures to protect forests. A brief – and far from comprehensive – snapshot of…
In late September 2014 a besuited and bearded Leonardo DiCaprio stood at the grey marble dais in the UN General Assembly in New York and declared somberly that world leaders…
A European Commission project to counter deforestation and forest degradation associated with "the making available on the Union market as well as the export" of certain agricultural products was unveiled…
It is always puzzling to witness the immense hype surrounding COPs (conferences of the parties to international conventions or treaties). Back in 2009, Barack Obama had just been elected U.S.…
At the turn of this century, seeing a wild jaguar was exceptionally difficult. People driving through the Jaguar Ecological Reserve in the Pantanal in Brazil would very occasionally get a…
To help address the biodiversity crisis, momentum has been gaining around establishing and tracking protected areas (PAs) and Other Effective area-based Conservation Measures (OECMs) to achieve 30-by-30, the conserving of…
Our ocean is being hit hard by global warming. Marine heatwaves are devastating coral reefs, triggering the largest global mass bleaching event on record last year, while ocean wildlife —…
For us, protecting our forests is like protecting our families. They are our homes. They give us life. For decades, we’ve witnessed deforestation destroy large areas of tropical forests, where…
As world leaders and scientific institutions from across the globe gather to discuss the biodiversity crisis at COP16 and climate change at COP29 this fall, it’s critical that they do…