As oil and gas production surge, shifting the global economy to a circular model is essential to charting a path away from fossil fuels, petroleum-based nitrogen fertilizers and petrochemicals such as plastics. Part 3 of a three-part miniseries.
A new platform allows companies and landowners to monitor the ecosystems in their supply chains, as governments around the world increasingly consider regulations that require businesses to account for biodiversity.…
This story is the second in a three-part mini-series surveying the range of impacts by the fossil fuel industry on the global environment. Part one and part two review harm…
In 2009, a controversial scientific experiment dumped 6 metric tons of dissolved iron into the Southern Ocean to see if it would trigger a massive bloom of phytoplankton in iron-deficient…
Intact forests play a vital role in tackling the climate crisis by absorbing and storing carbon. Still, there’s uncertainty around their true carbon-capturing potential, and previous efforts to quantify it…
Fossil fuels have done great good for humanity, but they are now not only threatening our planet’s climate, but also taking a terrible toll on the global environment, putting at risk Earth systems vital to life as we know it. Part 1 of a three-part miniseries.
It started with monkey poop. A few years ago we analyzed the feces of wild baboons, chimpanzees, red-tailed monkeys, and red colobus in Uganda and found unexpectedly high levels of…
Commercial mining in the deep ocean is not yet a reality, but the possibility is on the horizon. Delegates of the U.N.-affiliated deep-sea mining regulator, the International Seabed Authority (ISA),…
Wildlife conservation actions tend to be focused in specific locations because the data that inform them also tend to be highly localized. But what if we could visualize where a…
The ocean's thermohaline circulation, a system of various ocean currents and water-mass conveyors, is crucial for distributing heat, salinity, minerals, dissolved gases, and nutrients around the globe, sustaining a habitable…
In 2022, the world’s nations committed to protecting 30% of their land and sea by 2030 (the so-called “30x30” initiative). At sea, this will require a massive buildup of marine…
Earlier this year, the IPCC report released its catastrophic global warming report. As UN Secretary-General, António Guterres succinctly put it after the release, “our world needs climate action on all…
How do you bridge the gap between ecology and the economy? It’s this question that guided both Kevin Webb and Tom Quigley, albeit from different perspectives. Webb, a venture capitalist,…
Protests are arising in South American communities as Google, Microsoft and other tech giants build water-hungry computer data centers in increasingly drought-besieged nations, including Uruguay and Chile.
New revelations around a carbon deal in Malaysian Borneo criticized for its opacity have led to further calls for clarity and transparency about the project. Two international carbon credit project…
Pope Francis is calling on policymakers, corporations and the world’s people to act decisively on climate. His plea comes as the faith-based climate movement — which built momentum after the 2015 Paris agreement — is lagging.
The green bond market’s remarkable success, currently valued at over US $500 billion, shows how bond finance is an effective way to raise substantial capital for climate-related investments. Following on…
The COP28 U.N. climate summit, which begins in just a couple of weeks, aims to make water more of a priority than it was in past COPs, with host country…
The construction industry, with its intensive use of cement, is a climate killer. But an innovator in Mexico has found one solution: combining traditional adobe construction in a state-of-the art solar-powered public building.
In November 2018, Pesqueras Echebastar, a Spanish tuna fishing company, received a certificate of sustainability from the London-based nonprofit Marine Stewardship Council, the world’s largest ecolabeling scheme for wild fisheries.…
A new report reveals that deforestation increased by 4% worldwide in 2022, dimming the prospects of ending forest loss by 2030. The spike indicates rates are trending “in the wrong…
I have worked as a grant writing professional for about 24 years and am also the part-time co-director of a small, U.S.-based wildlife conservation nonprofit called One Earth Conservation (OEC)…
With plastic pollution littering the planet, certification organizations are popping up to sell “plastic credits” to companies, allowing them to offset the plastic they make and use with equivalent plastic waste collected and reused. Critics are skeptical.
Mongabay has won the prestigious Biophilia Award for Environmental Communication for its “outstanding track record” in communicating issues related to nature and biodiversity, especially in countries in the Global South.…
The next time you see a leaf gliding down from above, you might want to take a closer look. For all you know, what’s tumbling down could possibly be a…
As our global thermostat keeps ticking up, species continue to vanish from the face of the planet, and as more and more lives are ruined by natural disasters, it’s clear…
New research shows that marine heat waves last longer in deeper water, increasing the possibility of species displacement or mortality. Marine heat waves, defined as events where ocean temperatures rise…
Conservation technology has witnessed an unprecedented boom in recent years. Drones are soaring higher than ever before. DNA sampled from soil, air and water are revolutionizing biodiversity surveys. Artificial intelligence…
A new report from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (RBG Kew) warns that Earth's vast numbers of plant and fungal species are threatened with extinction, and many may meet that…
Research finds impacts by tiny plastic particles on marine plankton and microbes could disrupt carbon and nitrogen cycling in the world’s oceans, possibly putting Earth’s operating system and the planet’s habitability at risk.