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…
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 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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
As if all the strategic and political aspects of the Putin-Bolsonaro alliance weren’t detrimental enough, underlying environmental considerations add yet another undesirable dimension. Meeting with Putin at the Kremlin literally…
From the Scarlet Macaw to the glass frog, Peru is a land of tropical splendors. At least half the country is blanketed by Amazon rainforest. It is one of the…
MENLO PARK, CA — With the impacts of environmental degradation becoming more acute around the globe, the world needs journalists reporting from Nature’s frontline to provide accurate and actionable information.…
Since I became an environmental journalist six years ago, my family, friends and acquaintances all labeled me “crazy”. Why? Because they were extremely scared after reading my articles and hearing…
The Arce government is currently negotiating with various foreign companies from countries including Argentina, the United States, China, and Russia, for the handling of its lithium extraction. The bidding war…
Brazil’s plan to open vast areas of Amazon forest to the entry of deforesters via Highway BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) and associated side roads such as AM-366 is undoubtedly the planned…
However horrific, the Ukraine crisis has the potential to finally nudge the world towards a long overdue clean energy future. As one of the world’s top three suppliers of fossil…
Brazil’s Amazon dam plans have been slowed down over the past decade due to realization by the country’s electrical authorities that obtaining environmental licenses would be difficult when Indigenous peoples…
Scholars and political leaders worldwide are fretting over the complex connections between climate and insecurity. Many social scientists theorize that climate disruption is a “conflict multiplier.” To residents of the…
With negotiations underway in Geneva for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, Indigenous land rights have finally taken center stage. The human rights group Avaaz released a 30-page document calling for…
It’s a long way from Kyiv to Itaituba, but Brazil’s busy wildcat gold prospectors don’t need a map. The war on Ukraine has sent international gold prices soaring and word…
On February 11, 2022, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro published a decree establishing the Program for Supporting the Development of Artisanal Mining (Pró-Mape), which aims to “stimulate” this type of mining…
The Batwa Indigenous peoples lived in the Kahuzi-Biega forests of present-day Democratic Republic of Congo for centuries before Belgian colonial rule imposed formal change in 1937 with the establishment of…
Over recent years, consumers have become increasingly aware of the bitter-sweet legacy left by the chocolate industry in the countries that supply a majority of the world’s cocoa. While cocoa…
Once the epicenter of the global trade in gold, illegal mining is once again surging across the Amazon. Its extraction and trade is not only fueling corruption, money laundering and…
Over the course of the holiday season, Americans asked themselves why many of their favorite consumer items became difficult to obtain, from board games to apparel to bicycles. Amid pandemic…
I have not traveled anywhere these past 2 years. I couldn’t travel even if I wanted to since Australia, where I live, closed its borders in March 2020 in a…
As of July 2021, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rose 22% over the previous year. High levels of deforestation across the entire Amazon region are bringing the rainforest to a…
In the 1970s, coral reefs in the Western Indian Ocean were relatively untouched by people. Today, these same reefs are at a tipping point with more than 69 million people…
A few years ago, alone on the top of a mountain in Zion National Park, in Utah, USA, I had an almost mystical experience that immediately transported me to the…
The Glasgow conference saw a plethora of announcements on forests. The most high-profile of these was the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use, signed by 133 world leaders,…
Hurricane Ida’s warpath is the latest in a litany of natural disasters, estimated to have cost the world $210 billion in damage in 2020, that is shining a spotlight on climate change.…
