Environmental headlines

Last year, the Amazon saw some of the highest rates of deforestation in over a decade, due to a combination of cattle ranching, agriculture, mining and road projects that cleared…

From the outset, academics realised that the development programmes being deployed across the Amazon in the 1960s and 1970s would bring irreversible harm. Attempts to promote conservation were a natural…

The Nioaque Indigenous Territory in Brazil’s Mato Grosso do Sul state is home to some 2,000 Terena people living in four villages. The territory spans some 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres)…

JAKARTA — The tropics lost 10% more primary rainforest in 2022 than in 2021, as forest loss in deforestation hotspots like Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) continued…

When we think of iconic animals, we tend to imagine them in the wild — African elephants marching across grasslands, tigers prowling through forests, or humpback whales breaching through ocean…

JAKARTA — There’s been renewed scrutiny of the infrastructure being built for Indonesia’s new capital city on the island of Borneo following the sighting of a critically endangered orangutan crossing…

Perhaps the most notorious industrial farming institution is the concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO, in which livestock are raised in crowded conditions that require the heavy use of antibiotics…

Bangladesh's famous Rajshahi silk industry has been struggling in recent years for many reasons, including the excessive dependency on imported low-cost yarn. The recent erratic weather has been worsening the…

In the transition zone between the eastern Amazon and the Cerrado, an interaction between climate change and agricultural expansion may be resulting in increased temperature and reduced rainfall. This is…

Plants play a vital role in purifying water, regulating the climate, supporting biodiversity, and stabilizing the soil. Or more simply put, vegetation holds the planet together. Because of this, international…

It seems a cache of biodiversity data was hiding in plain sight all along. In the midst of hazardous particulate matter trapped in the filters of two air quality monitoring…

KATHMANDU — On Jan. 10, 2020, 24-year-old Dilip Mahato died after being stabbed multiple times and then run over with a truck. Mahato was an outspoken critic of illegal sand…

DHAKA — Bangladesh has over the last century lost seven plant species that once occurred in the country, and now risks losing at least another five, according to the first-ever…

From high up in the Serra das Almas Private Natural Heritage Reserve in Brazil’s Ceará state, the forest spreads out beyond the horizon. It’s April here in the municipality of…

ARU ISLANDS, Indonesia — More than 10 years have passed since a young official in Indonesia’s eastern Aru Islands saved his archipelago from becoming a monoculture plantation. Today, Mika Ganobal…

Following tea with King Charles III, then Prince of Wales, the king of global retail made an extraordinary announcement on the next stage in his bid to help save the…

Starting in the 1990s, ecosystem ecologists and atmospheric scientists in the Brazilian space agency embarked on a sophisticated collaboration with NASA and other international research institutions; their goal was to…

JAKARTA — Small-scale and traditional fishers make the greatest contribution to Indonesia’s total fish production, driving the country’s rise as one of the world’s top fishing nations. In an effort…

DHAKA — It was a misty winter morning in February 2012. Shomour Kumar Ghosh started out his day by opening his sweetmeat shop in the district of Pabna in western…

KATHMANDU — In early February 2022, a team of tiger researchers started downloading images from camera traps as part of a population census for the big cat in Nepal. They…

“People need to think about river basins or freshwater systems like a heart, a living system,” says Bernardo Caldas, from WWF-Brasil. Caldas is the co-lead author of a new study…

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government says it will reduce its annual tuna catch, the world’s largest, by a tenth in an effort to sustain the future of the fisheries. The…

KANAGAWA PREFECTURE – The Miyawaki method for cultivating fast-growing groves of native vegetation has found eager practitioners all over the world. But some say the method promises more than it…

Iceland has suspended its planned hunt for fin whales this year, citing animal welfare concerns. On June 20, Svandís Svavarsdóttir, the country’s minister of food, agriculture and fisheries, announced that…

The alerts of illegal mining in the Yanomami Indigenous Land have zeroed for the first time since 2020, according to satellite monitoring by the Brazilian Federal Police.

Climate change impacts could cost countries in Central America up to $314 billion per year by 2100 if ecosystem services provided by the region’s forests are affected, a recent study…

May is about to end. There are no trees that provide shade to reduce the heat that exceeds 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit). José Jesús Pérez Castro walks along…

The Norwegian government is pushing forward with plans to open its nearby ocean to deep-sea mining, despite opposition from scientists and environmentalists. On June 20, the government announced its intention…

Over the past decade, communities affected by transnational palm oil and rubber company Socfin’s plantations have raised complaints with local authorities and in international media. Socfin recently initiated an investigation…

DHAKA — Studies on the hazards of microplastics have tended to focus on their presence in the food chain and risks to human health. A new study now shows they…