Indigenous peoples and local communities scored perhaps the most tangible progress as the 16th United Nations, or COP16 concluded after three days of final negotiations in Rome on Feb. 28,…
Highly prized teak from Myanmar continues to be imported into Poland, despite EU sanctions on the Southeast Asian country’s state-run timber monopoly following the 2021 military coup and violent crackdown…
Bottom trawling, a fishing technique in which vessels drag weighted nets along the seafloor, has long been condemned by conservationists for disrupting seabed habitat and capturing species indiscriminately. Yet it…
Hundreds of thousands of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) died on fish farms in Scotland in the final months of 2024. The mass mortality events took place as a parliamentary committee…
In Finland’s freezing Arctic, lakes and rivers have nourished the lifeways of Indigenous Skolt Sámi communities for generations as they fished and herded reindeer. But three years of research undertaken…
As the long summer days of August turn into nights, a few dozen volunteers gather in the small community of Witless Bay, a tiny town on the Atlantic coast about…
ALIAĞA, Türkiye — Every day, as dusk settles over the Aegean Sea, small vans ferrying workers homeward bustle in and out of Aliağa, a town nestled against lush, forested hills…
Mackerel and herring in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean, near Europe, have been dramatically overfished for many years, endangering the stocks and creating potential knock-on effects for marine mammals and seabirds…
ULLAPOOL, U.K. — The fish float on the surface by the dozen, their bellies pointing toward the still-dark sky of the early morning. We are peering into a cage of…
Parties members of the European People’s Party (EPP), a large center-right political party, received political donations from influential companies linked to illegal deforestation and which are likely to benefit from…
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…
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…
A civil trial began October 21 to determine whether several mining companies are liable for the collapse of a dam that released toxic sludge into communities in rural Brazil, resulting…
Scientists have long surmised that birds migrate during winters to save energy. The reasoning has been pretty obvious: far away from the biting cold, birds would need to expend less…
Forest defenders were stunned and concerned by the European Commission’s recent proposal for a 12-month delay in implementation of the EU’s new law to reduce global deforestation and forest degradation.…
Forests. We can't live without them. If they burn, we die. Many forests are at risk today. The Amazon has been so damaged that it may shift from being a…
Scores of tiny shrimplike crustaceans make a nightly pilgrimage from underwater caves out to feed in the open sea. Bellies full, they find their way back, homing in on their…
Norway is poised to move forward with plans to mine for seabed minerals along its continental shelf despite public opposition. On June 26, the Norwegian Ministry of Energy released a…
An ambitious anti-deforestation law in the EU could be delayed for at least a year following pressure from foreign governments and producers, who said they were struggling to meet upcoming…
A pioneering law under attack The world’s governments have long acknowledged the need to halt and reverse the loss of the planet’s precious forests, not least because of the contribution…
The majority of foreign visitors, and even most Swedish inhabitants, consider their country to be one that values nature. The image is also continually used in popular culture, for example,…
A crucial new European law to save global forests is under attack, by the Biden Administration – precisely at the time Biden seeks to burnish his environmental credentials. The regulation…
In Arctic Norway, among the Indigenous Sámi people, there is a custom: When cutting down a tree, tap its trunk three times. On the one hand, it’s simply practical advice:…
The EU’s regulation on deforestation-free products (EUDR) was hailed as a watershed in the fight to protect the world’s forests when it came into force in 2023. The world’s first…
Reporting for this story was supported by Journalismfund Europe under the Earth Investigations Programme. GALICIA, Spain — The first sleepy rays of morning light are starting to illuminate the beach…
After years of delays, a class action lawsuit is finally moving forward against the companies involved in a catastrophic dam collapse that released toxic sludge into communities across rural Brazil.…
It’s extremely difficult, perhaps impossible, to determine the full extent of the illicit production and trade of timber worldwide. Illegal loggers and the shadowy networks that trade in timber outside…
Robert Masolele says he remembers being struck by how small-scale farmers in his native Tanzania cleared large areas of forest to grow lucrative crops of cotton and cashews. In an…
In 2023, commercial fishing vessels equipped with dredges and bottom-trawling gear spent more than 33,000 hours operating in the U.K.’s offshore marine protected areas, according to ocean advocacy group Oceana…
Senegal now faces a decision it’s faced before. In the mid-2000s, small-scale fishers there mobilized in opposition to a fishing agreement with the European Union that allowed in many dozens…
CALABRIA, Italy — "On our coasts there is … a massive presence, that everyone can see, of poachers and illegal fishermen," a fisher in Calabria, in southwestern Italy, told Mongabay.…
We are now in a make-or break-moment for the landmark law to halt imported global deforestation into the European Union. Global forest defenders watch with bated breath as in the…
