As a grueling March heat wave batters the U.S. West with dangerous temperatures, and the world girds itself for what could be another sizzling record-smashing Super El Niño, a team…
Plastics have a gigantic built-in problem: They’re tenacious, which is very good for a milk jug or a car bumper. But they don’t easily break down, which is bad for…
The world’s nations committed to halving overall threats to biodiversity from pesticides and other highly hazardous chemicals by 2030 at the 15th United Nations Biodiversity Conference in 2022. But new…
Invisible in their trillions, microbes dwell in our bodies, grow in soils, live on trees and are integral to planetary health. Yet the huge oversized roles these teeming biodiverse microbial…
Few locations on Earth are as haunting or deeply ironic as so-called involuntary parks — places too toxic, dangerous, or otherwise made off-limits for human habitation, but which have paradoxically…
Earlier this year, a spate of deaths in Florida caused by Vibrio vulnificus, known as the flesh-eating bacteria, made headlines. Infections of this kind are troublingly on the rise as…
Another major scientific warning about the planet’s accelerating decline landed this week, and once again, the numbers are sobering. Released at the U.N. Environment Assembly in Nairobi, the seventh Global…
“I live in Accra, Ghana,” says Isaac Dinwe, who works for Closing the Loop, a Dutch company that works with the electronics industry to increase global recycling. “The e-waste problem…
An international team of scientists has issued a stark warning that current toxicology and chemical regulatory regimes are failing to protect public health and the environment from a host of…
The amount of single-use plastic that gets recycled as a measure to manage plastic pollution is insignificant in Bangladesh. However, some small-scale ventures working in this sector are trying to…
New research has found that even small amounts of plastic can be deadly to seabirds, sea turtles and marine mammals. While previous research has established that plastic can lead to…
Perhaps it is something inherent to youth, but I am not yet ready to throw in the towel. I admit it: I want the real possibility of dreaming, imagining…
Initiated in 2024, the Planetary Health Check is a comprehensive, science-based global initiative dedicated to measuring and maintaining Earth systems critical to life as we know it. These annual reports…
Sea ice floating atop the Arctic Ocean reached its minimum extent for 2025 on Sept. 10, covering 4.602 million square kilometers (1.78 million square miles) concluding this year’s summer melt-out.…
Events this August raise a critical question: Can the United Nations process to combat global plastic pollution ever reach agreement? Or is some other way forward necessary? The Intergovernmental Negotiating…
Historically, most United Nations agreements have been reached by consensus. But based on recent events, this no longer seems likely for achieving a fully effective global treaty on plastic pollution,…
Researchers have recently found that sacred waters protected by Indigenous traditions are key to fish conservation in Indonesia, yet they remain largely unrecognized and excluded from national frameworks for biodiversity…
Ocean health is moving into a danger zone, with rampant human-caused carbon dioxide emissions having already pushed ocean acidification levels beyond safe limits in large swaths of the marine environment,…
Bangladeshi people love to throw a party, as the disposable tableware industry has increasingly seen. They get together or organize social gatherings often, be it to celebrate festivals or go…
A coalition of leading European environmental groups has cautiously welcomed a “landmark” agreement by lawmakers in Brussels on new rules aimed at curbing a major source of microplastic pollution in…
On a busy morning in November 2024, a dramatic scene unfolded in a supermarket in Banani, Dhaka. Government officials, armed with security personnel, launched a joint operation to crack down…
Sea ice extent is at record, and near record, lows for this time of year in both polar regions, leaving the planet increasingly vulnerable to the cascading effects of global…
Africa’s remaining tropical glaciers are rapidly disappearing as greenhouse gas emissions drive global warming. In the Rwenzori Mountains, a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the border between the Democratic Republic…
Earth’s frozen places — ice sheets, glaciers and permafrost — are melting: A clear sign of climate change and a planet quickly exiting the stable state that gave rise to…
In a lab in Türkiye, researcher Sedat Gündoğdu zooms in on the image of a small red fiber. For the first time on film, viewers are witnessing microplastics in the…
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…
Delegates and observers applauded, with caveats, the delayed conclusion of the 16th United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, or COP16, in Rome on Feb. 28. The big takeaway was an…
Ocean-based carbon dioxide removal technology is ramping up, with startups and existing companies racing to develop electrochemical techniques that either remove carbon from seawater or prompt oceans to suck up…
Next-generation geothermal technologies are gaining steam as a source of clean, renewable energy and an alternative to fossil fuels. With demonstration projects across the globe now showing strong potential, enhanced…
In 2022, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres declared that the “lifeline of renewable energy can steer [the] world out of climate crisis.” In saying so, he echoed a popular and tantalizing…
“Just wait till next year!” goes the slogan often attributed to disappointed sports fans. Those same words could equally apply to proponents of an internationally binding U.N. agreement to phase…
“Plastics pollution exacerbates the impacts of all [nine] planetary boundaries,” warns a report published this month in the journal One Earth in the run-up to what could be the final…
