Tropical forests help regulate the global climate, host irreplaceable biodiversity and provide fresh water resources. Plus forests in general are the source of livelihoods for more than a billion people — so our…
I’m in Nice, France, this week attending the U.N. Conference to Support the Implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for…
When wildfires rage across landscapes, smoke fills our skies and chokes our lungs. It makes headlines, emergency measures are triggered, and communities rally to respond. We act because we can…
In the Tang dynasty, Chinese merchants began buying rice on credit with a system that relied on trust and trade to sidestep the authorities — and taxes — to deliver…
On May 19, the head of IBAMA, Brazil’s federal environmental agency, overrode the technical opinion of the agency’s licensing department and issued a decision allowing proposed oil drilling in the…
In 2024, the world lost almost 6.7 million hectares (16.5 million acres) of primary tropical forest, the fastest rate ever recorded. The world’s forests are still falling prey to mining,…
Guinea-Bissau is a mangrove country. These unique coastal forests cover around 326,000 hectares (about 806,000 acres), or 9% of the national territory — the highest proportion in the world. They…
Technology can be a powerful ally in conservation, but it’s not a silver bullet. Too often, tools like drones, GPS apps or satellite imagery are introduced as standalone solutions, disconnected…
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva lives in a “disinformation space,” to use the term coined by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to describe U.S. President Donald Trump. Lula is…
Conservation is our collective responsibility as humans, requiring broad participation from all members of society, rooted in a diverse range of knowledge systems and experiences. Yet modern approaches to conservation,…
In Brazil’s Yanomami Indigenous Territory and across other parts of the Amazon Basin, illegal gold mining has metastasized into a transnational criminal enterprise. What starts with illegal deforestation and mercury poisoning ends…
At 4 a.m. CET on April 16, 2025, in Geneva, after years of negotiation and a final day of intense deliberation, the World Health Organization's Intergovernmental Negotiating Body reached consensus…
The “blue economy” emerged as a popular vision for sustainable ocean development during the 2010s, as communities across the world grappled with challenges of declining ocean health, economic crises and…
The search for intelligent life is looking in the wrong direction. There are billions of stars in our galaxy, some of them older than our sun and with Earth-like planets…
Founder's Commentary: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis and perspectives. This month marks 20 years since I started the Mongabay news service. At the time,…
The abrupt suspension of USAID’s recent international funding sent shockwaves through the global conservation community. With more than $375 million disbursed in 2023, this freeze disrupted critical biodiversity programs across…
During my 2023-24 IIE Rodman C. Rockefeller Centennial Fellowship research in eastern Panama, I walked through my neighbor Johnson’s land (not his real name), discussing the 18 hectares (44 acres)…
Siamangs are the largest of the 20 gibbon species, and belong to their own genus, Symphalangus. Distributed across Sumatra, Peninsular Malaysia, and the southernmost part of Thailand, their unforgettable and…
As urbanization reshapes global landscapes, ecological balance is increasingly at risk, especially in Africa. The primary drivers are rapid development and expanding human settlements, often without proper environmental considerations, posing…
Few people working in wildlife conservation in the 1980s could have imagined a future where breeding wolf packs roam the Netherlands and Denmark — but this is now part of…
In November 2023, at 4 a.m., four snow leopards made their way into Mingmar Gurung’s livestock corral in Dhakmar village, Mustang district, Nepal. Hearing the goats’ commotion so early in…
Brazil is facing an alarming surge in forest fires. Last year, the country registered 237,000 fires and over 30.8 million hectares of vegetation were consumed by flames—an area the size of Italy. This represented a 79% increase in…
Belize is widely regarded as a global leader in conservation, home to vast rainforests, diverse wildlife and the second-largest barrier reef in the world. The country has implemented protected areas,…
The northern bald ibis (Geronticus eremita) is an extravagant waterbird adapted to forage in dry, open habitats, and is included in the list of the most genetically and evolutionarily unique creatures…
For the Akit tribe of Bengkalis and Pelalawan districts in Riau province, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, land is more than just soil beneath their feet: it is their…
Basic logic dictates that the more accurate and detailed knowledge one has about a problem, the better one can solve it. Take Europe’s forests. The bigger picture is clear: over…
The tropics are celebrated as hotspots of biological diversity and renowned as supply houses for food, fiber and pharmacies. They also harbor linguistic diversity, a proxy for cultural diversity, critical…
The situation is worse than previously thought In February 2025, three scientific papers were published showing that the climate situation is much worse than the scientific community thought, much less…
For decades, efforts to halt deforestation in the Global South have gained much attention within the policy arena, most recently as a powerful and effective measure to mitigate climate change…
In his first week in office back in 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden signed a historic commitment to conserve 30% of America’s lands and waters by 2030. Two years later,…
The mounting pressure on Brazil’s federal environmental agency (IBAMA) to approve the disastrous project to extract oil from the mouth of the Amazon River (see here and here) should be…
This analysis was conceived by its author as a trilogy of commentaries in the wake of Decision 16/2 from the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Convention…
