Why biodiversity credits cannot work (commentary)
The earth is on the brink of a sixth extinction crisis, making it urgent to expand programs to conserve nature and its biodiversity, especially in tropical countries with the highest…
Editorials News
The Amazon is ablaze again. What it means for us (commentary)
In 2019, the world watched in horror as images of the Amazon rainforest ablaze flooded the news. Over 70,000 wildfires raged uncontrollably, killing wildlife, filling hospitals with patients struggling to…
Brazil’s race to approve the end of the Amazon: The BR-319 highway needs a new environmental impact assessment (commentary)
The proposed reconstruction of Brazil’s BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) highway (Figure 1) needs a new environmental impact assessment (EIA). No rational decision can be made on going ahead with this project…
Brazil’s BR-319 highway disaster: Yet another maneuver (commentary)
On September 14, Brazil’s National Department of Transportation Infrastructure (DNIT) submitted to the Federal Regional Court of the 1st Region (TRF1) a consultancy report that DNIT had contracted from Engespro…
Scaling up the Amazon’s many bioeconomies requires investment in nature, prosperity, and inclusion (commentary)
Relentless climate change and biodiversity loss are pushing the world's ecosystems to the brink of collapse. The planet may have already surpassed at least six of nine planetary boundaries crucial…
Conservation pays and everyone’s benefitting from it (commentary)
In just one generation, Costa Rica halted deforestation and reversed land degradation. Currently, Costa Rica boasts 57% forest cover, with 25% of its land territory protected. All of this has…
“Game over” for the Amazon forest and global climate if Trump wins? (commentary)
Would another Trump presidency be “game over” for the Amazon forest and global climate? At least there is still a question mark at the end of that sentence! Global warming…
Climate surprises: Amazonia and the lessons of Brazil’s catastrophic flood in Rio Grande do Sul (commentary)
“Surprises” is a term introduced to the literature in climate science by Stephen Schneider (1945-2010) to represent unexpected climatic events, usually reflecting processes that are not yet included in climate…
Brazil’s BR-319 Highway: The latest maneuver to obtain approval for an environmental disaster (commentary)
Brazil’s Amazon deforestation has traditionally been primarily in the “arc of deforestation” along the southern and eastern edges of the forest, but highways connecting this arc, such as the BR-163…
Governments are ramping up actions to fight environmental crime across the Amazon, but is it working? (commentary)
After more than a decade of record-breaking deforestation across the Amazon Basin, rates declined in 2023 compared to the previous year. Measures to curb deforestation were led by Brazil and…
New technologies to map environmental crime in the Amazon Basin (commentary)
Environmental crime slows climate action, deters investment in nature-based solutions, and undermines the green transition. Around the world, land grabbing, illegal deforestation, illicit mining, poaching and a rash of other crimes are…
Mongabay Data Studio: Revealing nature’s hidden stories through data (commentary)
High-quality data journalism serves as a powerful tool in elucidating complex environmental issues, transforming raw data into compelling narratives that illuminate the hidden stories behind the numbers. By employing rigorous…
Brazil’s BR-319 highway: The danger reaches a critical moment (commentary)
The reconstruction of Brazil’s BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) highway (Figure 1) and its associated hidden projects are not yet a fait accompli, but the danger has reached a critical moment. In…
Brazil’s 2024-2027 “Transversal Environmental Agenda”: The elephants in the room (commentary)
Brazil’s “Transversal Environmental Agenda,” released on 25 January 2024, contains many good things for the government to be doing, but it misses the opportunity to implant what a transversal agenda…
Amazonia in flames: Unlearned lessons from the 2023 Manaus smoke crisis (commentary)
From September to November 2023 Manaus, a city located in the relatively intact forest area in the central part of Brazilian Amazonia, was surprised to find itself under a dense…
A decade of stopping deforestation: How the palm oil industry did the seemingly impossible (commentary)
Ten years ago this month, I stood with the CEO of Asia’s biggest agribusiness, Wilmar International, to announce the company’s new No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation policy. It banned…
Race to destroy the Amazon forest: Brazil’s National Congress set to force construction of Highway BR-319 (commentary)
This is a critical moment for the most damaging infrastructure project in the Amazon. On Monday, December 18th, a proposed law (PL 4994/2023) was put on the plenary agenda of…
Brazil’s “End-of-the-World” auction for oil and gas drilling (commentary)
One day after the end of the COP28 climate summit, Brazil’s National Petroleum Agency (ANP) conducted what is known as the “End-of-the-World” auction, selling off drilling rights in 602 new…
What Brazil should have said at COP28 but didn’t (commentary)
Positive changes President Lula’s speeches at the Climate Conventions 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) in Dubai contained positive signs for Amazonia and for mitigating climate change. Brazil had the…
Biden can tip the (pangolin) scales on China’s illegal wildlife trade (commentary)
In a new, tersely-worded letter to Congress, President Biden uses a word that – just a few short years ago – was seemingly foreign to the lexicon of most Americans. Threatening…
Jurisdictional REDD+ ready to fund forest-positive, socially-inclusive development in the Amazon and beyond (commentary)
To all of those who are concerned about climate change and have decided that forest carbon credits are bad, I have a question for you. Have you ever looked closely…
Journalism’s role in the Nature Crime Alliance (commentary)
Today, more than 20 partners came together to establish the Nature Crime Alliance. This initiative seeks diverse approaches to help address illegal activities that leave our natural world a poorer…
Why should funding Amazon forest sustainability be the world’s top priority? (commentary)
According to a 2020 study, private philanthropy, at that time, dedicated to Amazon forest conservation amounted to about $100 million a year. That is about one ten thousandth of estimated…
Despite landmark law, Europe faces tough test to end role in global forest loss (commentary)
In mountaineering, it is said, 80 per cent of fatalities happen on the descent. When you reach the summit, you are less than half way to any meaningful measure of…
Mobilizing Amazon societies to reduce forest carbon emissions and unlock the carbon market (commentary)
Brazil has an unprecedented opportunity to secure $10 billion dollars or more over the next four years to move the Amazon region towards an equitable, forest-maintaining economy. The very real…
Agroecology is a poverty solution in Haiti (commentary)
Haiti is facing a profound political and economic crisis. Functional governance that serves the interests of Haiti’s people is largely nonexistent. One of the necessities to overcome this crisis is…
Biodiversity credits: An opportunity to create a new financing framework (commentary)
Biodiversity conservation requires a fundamentally different approach to managing climate change, and their respective crediting systems need to accommodate that difference for technical, social and practical reasons. Carbon credits are…
Biden-Lula meeting: The time is right for U.S. and Brazil to work together for Amazonia (commentary)
The Amazon rainforest and its people have gone through tough times recently. For the last four years, under Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, the region has experienced increasing deforestation and the…
Emmanuel Macron’s “Biodiversity Credits”: What are we talking about? (commentary)
President Macron announced on 7 November 2022 at the CoP 27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, an initiative to protect the planet's "vital carbon and biodiversity reserves", such as old-growth forests,…
Drive for restoration and remedy behind some NGOs’ cautious support for FSC changes (commentary)
This year's Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) General Assembly in Bali on 9th-14th October marked the most significant change in direction for the certification scheme in the last 20 years. One…
How bears “make” a forest (commentary)
In the Andean region the ageless story of Juan Oso, a half-human and half-bear character, has been heard throughout generations. It is said that Juan lived all sad and alone…
Amazon cloud forests need protection (commentary)
If there is an ecosystem that captures my imagination, it is the cloud forests, or perhaps better called, “the forests of the clouds.” Walking underneath their damp and dark canopy…
Special series
Forest Trackers
- In Brazil’s Amazon, land invasions — and fires — threaten a protected reserve
- A Guatemalan reserve turns from civil war refuge to deforestation hotspot
- Narco activity takes heavy toll on Colombia’s protected forests, satellite data show
- Photos confirm narcotraffickers operating in Peru’s Kakataibo Indigenous Reserve
Oceans
- As tidal power rides a wave of clean energy optimism, pitfalls persist
- Plan for close season rings alarm bells for Liberia’s artisanal fishers
- Lab-grown corals resisted bleaching during Caribbean’s worst marine heat wave
- Six months after first Houthi ship sinking, attacks slick Red Sea with oil
Amazon Conservation
- ‘World’s largest’ carbon credit deal in the Amazon faces bumpy road ahead
- New conservation model calls for protecting Amazon for its archaeological riches
- Brazil dredges Amazon rivers to ease drought isolation, raising environmental concerns
- ‘We need white men on our side to save the Amazon from destruction,’ 92-year-old Indigenous Chief Raoni says
Land rights and extractives
- Peruvian logger loses FSC label after latest clash with isolated Mashco Piro
- In the DRC, a government commission is taking funds owed to people relocated by mines
- A national park and its rangers in Bolivia endure persisting road construction, illegal mining
- Can nations ever get artisanal gold mining right?
Endangered Environmentalists
- Vietnam sentences yet another energy expert over renewables research
- Mother Nature Cambodia activists sentenced to prison — again
- Mongabay video screening at Chile’s Supreme Court expected to help landmark verdict in Brazil
- Indonesian activist freed in hate speech case after flagging illegal shrimp farms
Indonesia's Forest Guardians
- On a Borneo mountainside, Indigenous Dayak women hold fire and defend forest
- Fenced in by Sulawesi national park, Indigenous women make forestry breakout
- In Borneo, the ‘Power of Mama’ fight Indonesia’s wildfires with all-woman crew
- Pioneer agroforester Ermi, 73, rolls back the years in Indonesia’s Gorontalo
Conservation Effectiveness
- How effective is the EU’s marquee policy to reduce the illegal timber trade?
- How sharing and learning from failures can transform conservation (commentary)
- Is planting trees as good for the Earth as everyone says?
- Failure in conservation projects: Everyone experiences it, few record it
Southeast Asian infrastructure
- Study: Indonesia’s new capital city threatens stable proboscis monkey population
- Indonesia’s new capital ‘won’t sacrifice the environment’: Q&A with Nusantara’s Myrna Asnawati Safitri
- Small farmers in limbo as Cambodia wavers on Tonle Sap conservation rules
- To build its ‘green’ capital city, Indonesia runs a road through a biodiverse forest
