topic: Environmental Economics

topic: Environmental Economics

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Fishing by dodgy fleets hurts economies, jobs in developing countries: Report
- A recent report gauged the economic damage done by fishing fleets with shady track records in five vulnerable countries: Ecuador, Ghana, Peru, the Philippines, and Senegal.
- It found that these fleets’ activities could be costing the five countries 0.26% of their combined GDP, leaving some 30,000 people jobless and pushing around 142,000 deeper into poverty.
- “The report emphasizes that the uncontrolled growth in global fishing has led to overfishing, stressing fish stocks and impacting communities and the oceans’ well-being,” one of the authors told Mongabay.

Adventure tours with tigers? Nepal’s proposed policy changes raise alarm
- Nepal’s government is proposing zoning changes to allow adventure tourism activities such as canyoning, mountain biking and motorboating inside protected areas.
- The proposed changes are part of a wider push, which includes allowing the operation of hotels and cable cars inside protected areas, to commercialize the country’s globally acclaimed conservation sector.
- Critics argue that the proposed changes could potentially jeopardize hard-won achievements in biodiversity preservation and land restoration.

Cable car proposal is Nepal’s latest plan to commercialize national parks
- Nepal’s Ministry of Forest and Environment is considering allowing the construction of ropeways to carry cable cars within protected areas, according to a draft regulation seen by Mongabay.
- The proposed regulation aims to permit ropeway construction if it facilitates transportation to religious or tourist sites, provided no alternative transport options exist or if cable cars are deemed more environmentally friendly.
- The draft regulation suggests criteria for ropeway construction, including locating base or final stations outside protected areas and minimal infrastructure within, along with proposed fees based on the length of the ropeway.
- The plan comes on the heels of similar moves to open up Nepal’s protected areas to hydropower development and to hotels.

Expediting environmental policy: Interview with Bangladesh minister Saber Hossain Chowdhury
- Dhaka is considered to have some of the poorest air quality of any city in the world, the result of industrial-scale coal- and wood-burning brick kilns, diesel-powered vehicles, and ongoing construction work.
- At the same time, sea-level rise, shrimp cultivation and reduced water flow in its major rivers leave the southwestern part of the country barren for nearly half of the year due to saltwater intrusion.
- Saber Hossain Chowdhury, Bangladesh’s newly appointed minister of environment, forest and climate change, has declared a 100-day baseline program to identify the various environmental issues in the country and possible solutions to overcome them.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Chowdhury emphasizes the need for strong coordination across government, political will and leadership, and increased awareness from the public to protect the environment and meet the country’s clean energy goals.

Nepal mulls policy shift to allow hotels back into tiger strongholds
- Nepal’s Ministry of Forest and Environment is working new regulations to permit hotels to operate within national parks like Chitwan, a draft of the document seen by Mongabay suggests.
- The decision follows the closure of seven hotels in Chitwan National Park in 2009 due to ecological concerns and alleged involvement in poaching, with the last of them shutting down in 2012.
- Despite opposition from conservationists and local communities, the government has shown interest in allowing commercial activities, including large-scale hydropower plants, within national parks, raising concerns about environmental degradation.

From exporting coral to restoring reefs, a Madagascar startup rethinks business
- After her father died, Jeimila Donty took over her family’s coral export business and shifted its focus to conservation, creating Koraï.
- Donty is part of a young “pro-climate” generation that’s keen to incorporate the environment into business models.
- Koraï plants corals in Madagascan waters on behalf of other companies as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) commitments.
- The business is ambitious and faces challenges, such as recruiting workers and a lack of political support.

Can ‘degrowth’ solve our ecological, social & economic problems?
- Economist Tim Parrique speaks with co-host Rachel Donald on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast about the economic model known as “degrowth.”
- According to the Lund University researcher, degrowth originated in France in 2002 to address the current “limitless growth” economic model that stretches the ecological limits of the planet — the so-called Planetary Boundaries — unsustainably.
- The degrowth concept seeks to provide sustainable development pathways for low- and middle-income countries while stabilizing quality of life in wealthy nations, via producing and consuming less in the latter.
- Recent research indicates that the United States wastes 65% of its economic output on things that do not provide essential or quality-of-life needs, bolstering the argument that the economy could be strongly scaled back to decrease its impact on the environment.

How independent journalism uncovered a massive crime against people and planet
- By the time it uncovered the massive 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal, the independent media outlet Sarawak Report had built a solid reputation upon years of reporting about how corruption abets deforestation in Borneo.
- No longer able to enter Malaysia due to the political shakeup caused by the 1MDB exposé and her related reporting, the outlet’s founder, Clare Rewcastle Brown, speaks with Mongabay’s podcast about what inspires her reporting, including having been born in Malaysian Borneo.
- Podcast co-host Rachel Donald discusses with Rewcastle Brown — who was recently awarded the Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani Anti-Corruption Excellence Award — how the global financial system became the repository for the billions in stolen funds, some of which ended up as luxury homes in the United States and even gifts to Hollywood celebrities, and the critical role of the press in holding people in power to account.

How creative & emotive communication conserved 55,000 acres of Peru’s Amazon
- Protecting the Peruvian Amazon is dangerous work, but conservationist Paul Rosolie and his nonprofit Junglekeepers team have attracted millions of dollars in funding to protect 55,000 acres of rainforest in the country’s Madre de Dios region.
- Rosolie first received international recognition via his 2014 memoir, “Mother of God: An Extraordinary Journey in the Uncharted Tributaries of the Western Amazon.”
- Today, he runs both a nonprofit and an ecotourism service that employs and is co-led by local and Indigenous people.
- In this podcast episode, Rosolie reflects on his decade-plus journey to today and shares his recipe for conservation success.

Indonesian activist Gita Syahrani wins $3m award for work on sustainable growth
- Global philanthropy Climate Breakthrough has awarded Indonesian environmental activist Gita Syahrani $3 million in grants along with capacity-building resources to support her projects in developing alternative economic models for local governments across Indonesia.
- Gita has for many years focused on supporting district governments protect peatlands and forests while developing policies for sustainable economic growth.
- Gita said she is keen to explore and include approaches that are more mindful and spiritual in encouraging more people to be active in protecting, rehabilitating and recovering the balance between people and the environment.
- Gita is the second Indonesian awardee of Climate Breakthrough grants, following environmentalist Arief Rabik in 2019; her fellow awardee this year is Jane Fleming Kleeb of the U.S., a prominent activist against the Keystone XL pipeline.

Beyond ‘no,’ more positive visions for conservation need communication (commentary)
- “I have become increasingly concerned that [environmentalists’] ongoing failures stem at least partially from really bad messaging,” a new op-ed states.
- “We are so focused on being against things that we keep missing an opportunity to be for something…We desperately need new climate-friendly visions for our economies and governance systems that we can all get behind, not just a laundry list of what not to do,” the Cambridge scholar continues.
- Some environmentalists are starting to push more positive communications and the development of transformative visions for conservation, such as developing “socio-bioeconomies” to replace existing economic models.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Cacao and cupuaçu emerge as Amazon’s bioeconomy showcases
- A handful of pioneering Amazonian chocolatiers are promoting keeping the rainforest standing by taking advantage of two forest products: cacao and cupuaçu.
- Selling high-end chocolate made from both of these closely related pods increases the value of the products and also allows local communities to earn higher incomes, thereby giving them an incentive not to deforest.
- Portable biofactories are also set to teach traditional communities how to make bean-to-bar premium chocolate products, helping to increase the value of the raw cacao by up to 2,000%.
- These projects are part of an emerging bioeconomy in the Amazonian region, which experts say will keep the rainforest standing while also lifting the region’s population out of poverty.

Protecting the Amazon requires fresh thinking, veteran ecologist argues
- An ecologist and conservation biologist with 30 years of experience living in the Amazon region, Tim Killeen wants conservationists to think outside the box when it comes to incentivizing Amazon protection.
- He likens changing the deforestation pathway of the Pan Amazon to “turning an ocean liner” in that “pressure must be applied to the rudder of state” over a long period of time to drive change.
- That change, he says, must come from taking into consideration a variety of economic factors and pressures that each state in the Amazon faces, to provide viable ideas and solutions that incentivize forest protection.
- On this episode of Mongabay’s podcast, Killeen shares some key points from the second edition of his book, A Perfect Storm in the Amazon Wilderness; what inspired him to work in conservation; his advice for up-and-coming conservationists; and what gives him hope.

Why should funding Amazon forest sustainability be the world’s top priority? (commentary)
- In this opinion piece, Jonah Wittkamper, Mariana Senna, and Ricardo Politi argue that donors should urgently scale up support for the development of an Amazon bioeconomy based around protecting the world’s largest rainforest.
- Without such intervention, there is a risk of the Amazon rainforest ecosystem collapsing, a development that would destabilize regional rainfall, unleash massive carbon emissions, and drive large-scale species extinction.
- “Jumpstarting the region’s bioeconomy could create a permanent solution by shifting local financial incentives away from deforestation,” they write. “Philanthropy for Amazon bioeconomy development could only be necessary for several years. Catalytic funding could enable the economies of forest protection and regeneration to outcompete the economies of deforestation,” the op-ed argues.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Big potential and immense challenges for great ape conservation in the Congo Basin, experts say
- Great apes are on track to lose 94% of their range to climate change by 2050 if humans do nothing to address the problem, according to research.
- In the great apes stronghold of the Congo Basin, national interests in natural resource exploitation, a lack of security in areas like the Albertine Rift, hunting, and the illegal wildlife trade all greatly impact populations of bonobos and mountain gorillas.
- In this episode of Mongabay Explores, Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, Kirsty Graham, Terese Hart, and Sally Coxe speak with Mongabay about the threats to bonobos and mountain gorillas, the lessons learned from decades of conservation efforts, the importance of great apes for the protection of Congo Basin rainforest, and ways forward for conservation as well as livelihoods for Indigenous and local communities.

Over a third of conflicts over development projects affect Indigenous people: Study
- Roughly one-third of all environmental conflicts documented in an online crowd-sourced atlas affect Indigenous peoples, researchers have found.
- The mining of transition minerals has been linked to hundreds of allegations of abuse with multi-faceted impacts on the environment and communities, according to a new report.
- Some Indigenous organizations are calling for Indigenous rights and free, prior and informed consent to be central to the transition to a green economy in light of the global rush to secure clean energy minerals.

Kelp forests contribute $500 billion to global economy, study shows
- New research suggests that kelp forests generate up to $562 billion each year by boosting fisheries productivity, removing harmful nutrients from seawater, and sequestering carbon dioxide.
- The findings suggest that kelp forests are about three times more valuable than previously believed, contributing the equivalent of Sweden’s entire GDP to the global economy.
- However, experts say that kelp forests are generally overlooked and undervalued, and that many of these ecosystems are under threat worldwide.

Carbon offsets: A key tool for climate action, or a license to emit?
- The carbon offset market has existed for 25 years, and experts say there are still fundamental problems in its structure. Some question the underlying concepts, and refuse to consider it a tool for climate action.
- Part of the issue is that transparency is low. Buyers and sellers of carbon offsets often never meet and are separated by numerous intermediaries with their own profit incentives: registries, verifiers, and brokers. It’s not clear who buys offsets or which emissions are offset.
- Most experts say the offset market is not meant to contribute meaningful change to emissions, but rather to be an extra tool to channel funds toward sustainable development when companies are failing to transition from fossil fuels.

As banks fund oil pipeline, campaigners question their environmental pledges
- Activists say some banks that have signed up to the Equator Principles are failing to live up to their pledge of properly assessing the environmental and social risks of the projects they finance.
- South Africa’s Standard Bank and Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation are facilitating funding for the East African Crude Oil Pipeline project (EACOP).
- When fully operational, crude oil flowing through pipeline will generate 34 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year.
- Activists say EACOP, which will run 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) across many ecologically sensitive areas, has also affected 12,000 households who have been inadequately compensated.

Putting a price on water: Can commodification resolve a world water crisis?
- In 2018, a trader listed water on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and then in 2020 introduced a futures market so consumers can factor the cost of water into their investment plans. After a slow start, traders expect the market to grow more strongly in 2023.
- Some analysts see this as a positive step, allowing market adjustments to provide consumers with the cheapest and most efficient way of buying water. Others disagree, saying that water, like air, should not be commodified as it is a fundamental human right and must be available to all.
- Critics fear that creating a water market is a first step toward a future in which just a few companies will be able to charge market rents for what should be a free natural resource. Huge questions remain over water allocations for industry, agribusiness and smallholders, cities, and traditional and Indigenous peoples.
- The clash between these economic and socioenvironmental worldviews isn’t just occurring internationally. The conflict over water regulation is evident in many nations, including Brazil, which lays claim to the world’s biggest supply of freshwater, and Chile, currently suffering from its most severe drought ever.

Cutting down the Amazon does not build prosperity for most Brazilians
- Deforestation proponents in Brazil routinely argue that cutting down the Amazon is an effective way to alleviate poverty. This is especially the case with the Bolsonaro administration, which issued an official statement to the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference stating that “where there is a lot of forest there is also a lot of poverty.”
- Ahead of Brazil’s latest election, a group of us led by Darren Norris of the Federal University of Amapá decided to see what the data say about links between deforestation and poverty in the Amazon.
- We found no association between forest loss and these economic indicators. Indeed, the economic indicators for municipalities with less than 40% forest cover in 1986 were no different than those of similar municipalities with more than 60% forest cover from 1986 to 2019.
- The finding thus suggests that “deforestation does not necessarily generate transformative and equitable food production systems or lead to poverty alleviation,” as we write.

Greenland’s Indigenous population favors extracting sand from melting ice sheet
- In 2022, the Greenland ice sheet experienced net ice loss for the 26th year in a row. But that loss is producing a potentially valuable resource: sand, which the melting ice sheet is depositing on the coast.
- Together, sand and gravel are one of the most traded commodities in the world, and a study by researchers at McGill University found that the majority of Greenlanders, including Indigenous people, supported extracting sand for export.
- But Greenlanders—who have staunchly opposed some mining projects in the past—say this activity needs to be done with adequate environmental protection and consultation of Greenland’s predominantly Indigenous population.
- The environmental consequences are uncertain but could include impacts from sucking sand off the substrate and increasing shipping traffic.

Maldives shark-fishing ban tested by ebbing support from small-scale fishers
- A 2010 blanket ban on shark fishing in the Maldives doesn’t enjoy support from artisanal reef fishers, a new study suggests.
- Many fishers blamed sharks for stealing their catches, eating into their earnings, and damaging their fishing equipment — problems they perceive have worsened since the creation of a shark sanctuary.
- These negative perceptions could result in lower compliance with fishing restrictions and undermine efforts to revive shark populations in Maldivian waters.
- Pole-and-line skipjack tuna fishers reported the greatest support for the shark fishing ban because sharks corral tuna to the ocean surface, making them easier to catch.

Study tracks global forest decline and expansion over six decades
- Globally, there was a net loss of 817,000 square kilometers (315,000 square miles) in forest area between 1960 and 2019, according to a new study. That’s nearly 10% more than the size of Borneo, the world’s third-largest island.
- The study showed that most forest loss occurred in “lower-income” countries as their economies grew, which are found primarily in the tropics. Forests in wealthier countries tended to expand.
- The authors say their findings confirm the forest transition theory, which links countries’ economic development to changes in land use.
- International organizations like the U.N. and rich countries should provide support to less-industrialized, forested countries to allow them to find economically beneficial alternatives to deforestation, the study authors say.

Podcast: Blockchain for conservation? Maybe, but leave the crypto out
- The increasingly popular blockchain technology is being used for conservation finance purposes, but it comes with some significant downsides, both functional and environmental.
- The “mining” process for popular cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin, is highly energy intensive, comparable to the annual electricity usage of entire nations.
- Journalist Judith Lewis Mernit and author Brett Scott join the Mongabay Newscast to discuss these environmental impacts, complications, and the relationship of our financial systems with our ecological ones.

‘It sustains us all’: IPBES report calls for accounting of nature’s diverse values
- A recent assessment from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services calls for the integration of the variety of ways humans value nature.
- Often, many decisions are driven by market-based considerations, which has helped contribute to the global biodiversity crisis, the authors of the assessment say.
- But nature is worth more to humans than just the marketable or tangible.
- By considering these other values, such as cultural identity and spirituality, decision-makers can create policies that are more inclusive and have the potential to stem the worldwide loss of species, the scientists say.

Sri Lanka’s environmentalists brace for economic meltdown’s toll on nature
- The deepening economic crisis in Sri Lanka is expected to hit the environment and biodiversity conservation hard, experts warn.
- Acute fuel shortages mean the Department of Wildlife Conservation having to ration out fuel, when it can get it, for its patrol vehicles, while its revenue from tourism receipts at national parks has evaporated.
- Experts warn that skyrocketing prices of food and other essentials could push a growing number of desperate Sri Lankans into environmental crimes such as illegal logging for firewood, poaching for meat, and sand mining.
- The crisis also threatens to undo hard-earned gains and undermine future commitments, such as programs on emissions reduction, ending deforestation, and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

Podcast: Community empowerment and forest conservation grow from the galip nut in Papua New Guinea
- Galip nuts are a well-known, traditional agricultural product in Papua New Guinea (PNG).
- Papua New Guineans are currently reaping the economic and environmental benefits of this nut via agroforestry led by local communities and women entrepreneurs.
- In this episode, we speak with Dorothy Devine Luana, PNG-based owner of DMS Organics, a galip nut grower and processor, and Nora Devoe, research program manager for a project of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), focused on the potential of the galip nut industry to sustainably empower PNG communities.

Indonesia’s gasification plans could be costly for budget and environment
- Indonesia has broken ground on a $2.1 billion coal gasification plant, and plans to build 10 more.
- In supporting coal gasification, Indonesian officials aim to bolster coal production even if export demand diminishes.
- A new analysis by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis concludes that coal gasification will require massive government subsidies to be commercially viable in Indonesia.
- Advocates for renewable energy say any funds that might be used to support coal gasification would be better spent on supporting renewable energy projects.

Banning high-deforestation palm oil has limited impact on saving forests: Study
- Import bans on palm oil produced through deforestation haven’t had as strong an effect in preventing forest loss as might be expected, according to a new study.
- The paper’s modeling looked at what impact restrictions in Europe on imports of high-deforestation palm oil from Indonesia would have had from 2000-2015.
- They found these restrictions would have reduced deforestation by just 1.6% per year, and emissions by 1.91% per year compared to what actually occurred.
- The study authors and other researchers say the findings underscore the point that demand-side restrictions are only one tool in addressing commodity-driven deforestation, and should be part of a wider suite of incentives and disincentives.

Total’s oil pipeline gets go-ahead from Ugandan MPs despite secret terms
- Uganda’s parliament has passed a bill approving the construction of a controversial pipeline that will cut through high-biodiversity areas and displace thousands of people.
- Critics say the bill was rushed through parliament to pave the way for a secretive agreement between the government and French oil giant TotalEnergies, the pipeline’s operator.
- The $3.5 billion heated oil pipeline will run 1,445 kilometers (898 miles) from Uganda’s Lake Mwitanzige, in the Albertine Rift, to the Indian Ocean port of Tanga in Tanzania.
- The new bill that undergirds it holds “supremacy” over all existing legislation other than Uganda’s Constitution, making it “very difficult” for laws that offer environmental and social protections to be upheld in the event of a conflict.

Oil production or carbon neutrality? Why not both, Guyana says
- The government of Guyana says the South American country has already achieved net-zero carbon emissions, and adds it will further cut emissions by 70% by 2030.
- The declaration comes on the heels of Guyana becoming the world’s newest oil-producing country; it began pumping crude at the end of 2019.
- The government has played down the dissonance between its oil-producing status and its emissions reduction goals, saying that oil revenue can be directed to the green economy.
- The question, says Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, “is whether we can become an oil producer and still maintain our environmental credentials, and continue to advocate globally for a zero-carbon economy. And we believe the answer is yes.”

Indonesia’s clean energy transition must start with clean rivers (commentary)
- Indonesian President Joko Widodo has touted hydropower as key to the country’s transition away from coal, which currently dominates the national energy mix.
- But while Indonesia has a wealth of major rivers with the potential to high power-generating capacity, more than half are degraded and polluted.
- With Indonesia set to showcase its clean energy transition when it hosts the G20 summit later this year, this is the time to start cleaning up the country’s rivers, writes Warief Djajanto Basorie.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

2021’s top ocean news stories (commentary)
- Marine scientists from the University of California, Santa Barbara, share their list of the top 10 ocean news stories from 2021.
- Hopeful developments this year included big investments pledged for ocean conservation, baby steps toward the reduction of marine plastic pollution, and the description of two new whale species, Rice’s whale (Balaenoptera ricei) and Ramari’s beaked whale (Mesoplodon eueu).
- At the same time, rising ocean temperatures, a byproduct of climate change, had profound effects on marine species up and down the food chain, and action on key measures to maintain ocean resilience in the face of multiple threats hung in the balance.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

$1.5 billion Congo Basin pledge a good start but not enough, experts say
- At last month’s COP26 climate summit, a group of 12 international donors pledged at least $1.5 billion over the next four years to support protection and sustainable management of the Congo Basin forests.
- The pledge is part of a broader $12 billion commitment to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation worldwide by 2030.
- The 200 million hectares (500 million acres) of forests in the Congo Basin may be the last significant land-based tropical carbon sink in the world, making the forests vitally important in the global fight against climate change.
- So far, detail of the pledge remain limited, and reaction from regional experts has been mixed; but all agree that $1.5 billion is far from enough to resolve the region’s issues.

Is colonial history repeating itself with Sabah forest carbon deal? (commentary)
- To the surprise of Indigenous and local communities, a huge forest carbon conservation agreement was recently signed in the Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo.
- Granting rights to foreign entities on more than two million hectares of the state’s tropical forests for the next 100-200 years, civil society groups have called for more transparency.
- “Is history repeating itself? Are we not yet free or healed from our colonial and wartime histories?” wonders a Sabahan civil society leader who authored this opinion piece calling for more information, more time, and a say.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Conflict and climate change are big barriers for Africa’s Great Green Wall
- Fourteen years since the launch of Africa’s Great Green Wall project, only 4% of the 100 million hectares (247 million acres) of land targeted for restoration in the Sahel region has actually been restored.
- Billions of dollars in new funding announced this year have raised hopes that the initiative to combat desertification will gain momentum, but experts and the reality on the ground point to money being far from the only hurdle.
- Funding restoration activities will cost $44 billion, with every dollar invested generating $1.20 in returns, a recent study in Nature Sustainability calculates.
- But experts have echoed concerns captured in the research that conflict and climate change are complicating efforts on the ground, with nearly half of the area identified as viable for restoration falling within the orbit of conflict zones.

Details emerge around closed-door carbon deal in Malaysian Borneo
- Leaders in Sabah have begun to reveal information about a nature conservation agreement signed in the Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo for the rights to carbon and other natural capital.
- The deal allegedly covers rights to more than 2 million hectares (4.9 million acres) of the state’s tropical forests for the next 100-200 years.
- Indigenous and civil society groups have called for more transparency.
- In response to the public reaction to news of the agreement, its primary proponent, Deputy Chief Minister Jeffrey Kitingan, held a public meeting but has declined to make the agreement public yet.

Changes to global fisheries subsidies could level the playing field for traditional coastline communities
- Community fishers struggle to hold their own against heavily-subsidized foreign fleets. Fisheries subsidies have long given wealthy nations an edge over Small Island Developing States (SIDS) like Jamaica that are rich in fishing traditions and natural resources.
- In places like the multigenerational fishing village of Manchioneal, Jamaica, artisanal fishers say they simply can’t compete with heavily-subsidized foreign fleets working in depleted waters.
- But decisions made by the WTO this year on subsidies could lead to more sustainable and equitable fisheries around the world, in turn leading to better food security and more fish.
- This story was produced with the support of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.

Forest finance expected to advance under new TREES standard and LEAF Coalition
- The latest edition of the TREES standard for forest carbon crediting attempts to bring together the best of what the private sector can do and the best of what governments can do to protect forests. It is explicit about how projects can be integrated into jurisdiction-level accounting.
- While effectively directing capital to forest communities on the ground, REDD+ projects have been dogged by methodological problems and what in some cases appear to be spurious claims of climate impact.
- The designers of TREES say that with its jurisdictional scale and transparent carbon accounting guidelines, it will better address the main credibility risks so far associated with REDD+ carbon credits.
- Almost 15 years after the original REDD framework, many regard TREES and the LEAF Coalition announced in April 2021 as the first real attempt at credible REDD+ implementation at scale.

Climate change threatens traditional extractive communities in the Amazon
- Traditional peoples in the Amazon are already experiencing the scientific community’s warnings that rising temperatures will impact those who depend on the forest for their livelihood.
- Brazil nuts, açaí berries, andiroba oil, copaíba oil, rubber, cacao and cupuaçu fruits are some of the products at risk of disappearance or reduced production in the next 30 years.
- In addition to climate change’s environmental impact on these resources, the social impact will likely bring worsening poverty and an exodus of traditional peoples to urban areas.

China joins the foreign fleets quietly exploiting Madagascar’s waters
- For decades, fleets of industrial vessels from several nations have fished in Madagascar’s waters.
- Now China appears to have joined the fishing spree, sending at least 14 industrial longliner fishing vessels in the last several years, new evidence shows.
- Clues from official documents indicate that Madagascar’s government may have authorized these vessels to fish, at least since 2019.
- If so, the authorization process was not public, raising renewed concerns about the lack of transparency in Madagascar’s offshore fishing sector.

Farmers in the Amazon could earn 9 times more and prevent ecosystem collapse
- In this opinion piece, Jonah Wittkamper, Alexander Borges Rose, and Denis Minev argue that agroforestry in the Amazon “can replace cattle, generate new wealth, create jobs and develop new economic zones that insulate pristine forest from deforestation risk.”
- “The opportunity is huge and the needs are urgent,” they write. “If landowners switched from producing soy to a polyculture of fruit and horticultural products, their income would more than triple.”
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

As the rest of world tackles plastics disposal, the U.S. resists
- In an expansion of the U.N.’s 1989 Basel Convention, amendments to the international protocol on the shipment of hazardous waste were revised to include plastics in 2021, with nations currently figuring out how to implement the agreement.
- The United States is the only major nation not to have fully implemented the treaty, despite strong support for it among both the Republican and Democratic parties. The Biden administration could soon change that.
- The U.S. remains a major dumper of hazardous waste globally, including large amounts of plastics, despite the attempted limitations imposed by the Basel Convention. The potential impacts of plastics and other “novel entities” on human health and ecosystems are largely unknown.
- Even if the Basel Convention is successful in its mission, it will only solve part of the plastics problem, as it doesn’t address the manufacture of plastics or their domestic disposal. Plastics and a wide variety of human-made materials are included in the “novel entities” planetary boundary — one of nine major threats to life on Earth.

The Possible Meat: A Brazilian farmer shows ranching can regenerate the Cerrado
- Matheus Sborgia, a Brazilian chef, decided to bet on regenerative agriculture after inheriting his grandfather’s cattle ranch in the heart of the Cerrado.
- Sborgia embraced the idea of holistic management and rotational grazing preached by Allan Savory, a Zimbabwean ecologist who became famous for his provocative idea that to save the planet from climate change, instead of reducing livestock farming, we would have to increase it.
- Instead of letting his 200 cows range freely, Sborgia lets them eat everything in a small plot of land before moving them on to another plot; by the time they cycle back the original plot has already regenerated.
- The Brazilian Cerrado is one of the country’s most overgrazed regions. It suffered one of its worst wildfire seasons ever during the past year, and while the ranches around Sborgia’s property were dry, his own land was green and full of life.

An economic case for competing in the XPRIZE Rainforest contest (commentary)
- In 2019, XPRIZE Rainforest opened its doors and challenged the world to develop new biodiversity assessment technologies by offering a $10 million prize for the best one.
- In this commentary, Jonah Wittkamper, President of the Global Governance Philanthropy Network and co-founder of NEXUS, makes an economic argument for participating in the contest.
- Wittkamper says a great deal of value could be unlocked with the ability to rapidly assess rainforest biodiversity.
- This post is a commentary and does not necessarily reflect the views of Mongabay.

Humanity’s ‘ecological Ponzi scheme’ sets up bleak future, scientists warn
- In a recently published perspective piece, 17 leading scientists say the world is facing a “ghastly future” due to ongoing environmental degradation, including biodiversity loss, climate change, and human overpopulation and overconsumption.
- The authors say their message is meant to give a “cold shower” to leaders who can help make positive changes for the planet.
- While other scientists agree with some of the report’s messages, they point out several issues with the argument’s framework, including its possible misidentification of migration and population growth in places like sub-Saharan Africa as driving environmental problems.

How the pandemic impacted rainforests in 2020: a year in review
- 2020 was supposed to be a make-or-break year for tropical forests. It was the year when global leaders were scheduled to come together to assess the past decade’s progress and set the climate and biodiversity agendas for the next decade. These included emissions reductions targets, government procurement policies and corporate zero-deforestation commitments, and goals to set aside protected areas and restore degraded lands.
- COVID-19 upended everything: Nowhere — not even tropical rainforests — escaped the effects of the global pandemic. Conservation was particularly hard in tropical countries.
- 2019’s worst trends for forests mostly continued through the pandemic including widespread forest fires, rising commodity prices, increasing repression and violence against environmental defenders, and new laws and policies in Brazil and Indonesia that undermine forest conservation.
- We don’t yet have numbers on the degree to which the pandemic affected deforestation, because it generally takes several months to process that data. That being said, there are reasons to suspect that 2020’s forest loss will again be substantial.

2020’s top ocean news stories (commentary)
- Marine scientists from the University of California, Santa Barbara, share their list of the top 10 ocean news stories from 2020.
- Hopeful developments this year included some long-overdue attention to Black and other underrepresented groups in marine science; new technologies to prevent deadly ship-whale collisions and track “dark” vessels at sea remotely; and surprising discoveries in the deep sea.
- At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in more trash than ever being dumped in the sea, and stalled international negotiations aimed at protecting waters off Antarctica and in the high seas. 2020 also brought the first modern-day marine fish extinction.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

‘Nature is next’: Q&A with Finance for Biodiversity’s Simon Zadek
- The Finance for Biodiversity Initiative wants to get governments, companies and the financial sector to factor nature and biodiversity, and not just carbon emissions, into their decision-making.
- Simon Zadek, the group’s chair, says the COVID-19 pandemic may prove the tipping point toward that end, even if the unprecedented wave of stimulus programs being rolled out now doesn’t reflect that focus yet.
- Zadek says there are multiple routes to greener finance, including linking environmental outcomes to debt relief, but that it will take radical transparency in the financial sector to move in that direction.
- He also says the conservation community must move away from a narrow focus on fundraising and realize that the real challenge is not finance for conservation, but aligning global finance — with its $30 trillion a year in public finance spending — with conservation objectives.

Crisis in Venezuela: Non-governmental organizations adapt to survive
- Many non-governmental organizations in Venezuela — which many analysts now call a failed state — have decided to reduce their operations to stay alive.
- As Venezuelan inflation rates soar, environmental NGOs are learning to skillfully juggle currency exchange rates that complicate their international funding.
- Alliances between NGOs, volunteerism, along with the efficient use of small donations from businesses, are all helping keep environmental organizations going, as they prioritize which of their programs should survive and which must be cut or passed on to other groups.

Brazil green recovery plan could boost economy, add jobs, cut emissions: Report
- If Brazil shifts to a low carbon economy, carbon emissions would be cut by a third while also creating jobs, benefiting economic growth and infrastructure, according to a recent report by the World Resources Institute.
- Brazil’s post-COVID-19 economic recovery plan could provide an opportunity to implement long-term solutions across multiple sectors that could reduce carbon emissions and Amazon deforestation.
- Study authors hope that the economic benefits of the plan will push the current Jair Bolsonaro administration to adopt a green agenda, even if conservation is not a priority.
- “Climate denial is at a peak, but cost-benefit will be the leading decision-maker, whether or not it benefits the environment.… Due to post-COVID-19 economic recovery plans, we have a window of opportunity that will close in a year and a half or less.” — World Resources Institute Climate Policy Director Carolina Genin.

Business risk and COVID-19 are pushing Asian financiers away from coal
- Three major Japanese banks have announced plans to divest from coal projects, while South Korea’s ruling party has pledged a similar policy proposal.
- The moves are part of a growing investor backlash against the fossil fuel, seen as an increasingly risky financial bet because of the costs of building and operating coal power plants amid sluggish electricity demand.
- The COVID-19 pandemic, and the economic shutdowns it prompted around the world, have contributed to a fall in thermal coal prices, with global demand for coal expected to decline by 8% this year.
- Environmental activists have welcomed the move away from coal, but say pressure must be sustained to ensure divestments out of coal projects that are planned or in pre-production.

We need a green life support plan (commentary)
- Tourism — much of it nature-based – comprises 2% of sub-Saharan African nations’ GDP, which can rise to up to 38% for some countries. It is also critical to sovereign credit analysis, giving countries access to capital markets, external financing and funds to support government programs, including nature-based tourism. But with the collapse of international tourism in response to COVID-19, sub-Saharan African countries are facing credit rating downgrade risks, putting conservation funding at risk.
- Without income from nature-based tourism, many small- and medium-size enterprises in the nature-based tourism sector risk closure, and wildlife conservation will be seriously compromised as landowners and locals could be incentivized to convert conserved land into agriculture production and partake in illegal activities such as overfishing, with significant negative results for countries’ nature-based assets.
- With the long-term sustainability of these nature-dependent economies threatened, the authors argue for standardized, methodical and systemic funding for the conservation, protection and restoration of the natural capital.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

A Brazilian forest community shows certified timber really does work
- In Pará, the Brazilian state with the highest deforestation rate, communities inside Tapajós National Forest have for the past 15 years run one of the most successful native timber management projects.
- Eighteen of the 24 communities in the conservation area are part of the project, which involves an average of 130 people. Forest management is their main source of income.
- In 2013, the communities earned FSC certification.
- Today, their products are sold around the world, thanks to partnerships with renowned designers to produce quality sustainable furniture and decorative objects.

How coffee growers can adapt to a precipitous industry: Q&A with Dean’s Beans founder Dean Cycon
- Climate change is making traditional coffee-growing areas in the tropics less suitable for the crop, forcing farmers to look for new land at higher elevations and higher latitudes.
- Scientists are trying to tackle the problem by developing climate-resistant coffee plants, but solutions already exist from arid regions in Africa that can be adapted by farmers in Latin America.
- “This is something the scientific community is completely ignoring,” says Dean Cycon, founder of Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee and a longtime advocate of social justice for the millions of coffee farmers in the global south.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Cycon offers his unique insights into one of the world’s favorite beverages, the challenges of climate change, the plight of tropical farmers, and the solutions he sees as still within reach.

In the Amazon, a farmer practices the future of sustainable cattle ranching
- A cattle farmer in Tefé, Brazil, has turned his ranch into a new standard for ranching in the forest — one that’s more profitable and more productive, while using less land.
- This type of farming eliminates the need for clearing new areas of forest for new pasture, a practice that has made cattle ranching one of the major drivers of deforestation in Brazil.
- Under the rational grazing system, cattle are grazed in a fenced-off plot of pasture, then rotated to another plot to allow the soil and vegetation in the previous plot to recover.
- Using land that has already been degraded and abandoned is one solution recommended for raising cattle in the Amazon region; there are an estimated 50 million hectares (125 million acres) of such land in Brazil that could be used for this purposed.

Economists put a price tag on living whales in Brazil: $82 billion
- Last year, a team of four economists published a report suggesting that living whales have a high market value for the services they provide in terms of ecotourism, carbon sequestration, and fishery enhancement. Each whale is worth about $2 million USD, they estimated.
- The economists, in collaboration with two conservation organizations, Instituto Baleia Jubarte and the Great Whale Conservancy, estimated that Brazil’s whale population is worth $82 billion.
- The team says it hopes the notion of valuing whales in Brazil, as well as in other coastal nations, can help protect whales from common fatalities like ship strikes, fishing gear entanglement, and deliberate hunting.

Through biomimicry, Brazil seeks tech innovations inspired by nature
- From spiderweb-inspired shampoo to a hotel whose architecture is based on the thermal properties of toucan beaks, scientists and companies in Brazil are betting on nature’s intelligence to create innovative solutions that reduce impacts on the planet.
- By valuing multifunctional design and being able to integrate materials that nature acknowledges in productive cycles, biomimicry reinforces the optimization of resources and aligns itself with the principles of a circular economy.
- Biomimicry began to be systematically implemented in the 1990s, initially to achieve energy efficiency; examples include buildings in Zimbabwe and Australia inspired by the circulation of air inside termite hills, the principle of whale fins applied to the generation of wind energy, and antiseptic walls that imitate shark skin.
- In Brazil, many immersion courses are now offered in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes that focus on innovative materials, and biomimicry consultants and startups are emerging in the market: In 2018, Nucleário became the first Brazilian company to win a prize from the Biomimicry Institute for its technology that protects trees in reforestation projects, based on the principles of winged seeds and bromeliads.

Keeping gorillas safe amid COVID-19 concerns
- Gorillas are vulnerable to human diseases, including respiratory illnesses, and may be susceptible to infection by COVID-19.
- Researchers and trackers working for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, a conservation nonprofit in Rwanda, are taking special precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19 to the gorillas they study and protect in the wild.
- Economic turmoil from COVID-19, including loss of tourism revenue, could spell trouble for gorilla conservation.

Mortgaging the future: Report details risks of resource-backed loans
- A recent report by the Natural Resource Governance Institute finds that billions of dollars in loans backed by the value of a country’s natural resources may be putting these often-developing economies at risk.
- China is a major player in providing such “resource-backed loans,” which can help countries finance critical infrastructure projects.
- But the terms of these loans are frequently unclear, potentially saddling the borrowing countries with untenable debt levels.
- The hasty push to extract resources could also sideline the input of local communities, and it may lead to harming the environment.

Madagascar: Is NGO-led conservation too conservative to conserve much?
- International environmental NGOs working in Madagascar assume a relatively narrow role of supporting local conservation and development in line with government strategy.
- The nature of the NGOs’ legal relationship with the Malagasy government, which has close ties to the extractive industries, and the restrictions that come with international funding make it difficult for them to take a broader role or push for systemic environmental reforms.
- The result, some critics say, is that international NGOs fail to address the country’s most serious conservation challenges.
- Homegrown civil society groups have more room to operate in Madagascar and do some of the most important conservation work.

Analysis: Floating solar power along the dammed-up Mekong River
- This year, the first floating solar power generating system in Southeast Asia was deployed on a reservoir in Vietnam.
- Floating solar power systems are being written into the energy master plans of Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines as well as Vietnam, and into the calculations of investment banks.
- The technology presents an alternative to additional hydroelectric power projects.

Madagascar: Opaque foreign fisheries deals leave empty nets at home
- Malagasy fishers blame shrimp trawlers that ply coastal waters for their declining catches.
- However, the bulk of industrial fishing in Madagascar’s waters takes place far from shore and out of view. It’s conducted by foreign fishing fleets working under agreements that critics say lack transparency.
- Conservationists argue that these foreign vessels are also depleting the country’s fish stocks and marine ecosystems.
- With negotiations to renew a fisheries deal with the European Union having flopped late last month and uncertainty lingering over an enormous and controversial fisheries deal with a Chinese company, much is at stake for Madagascar’s small-scale fishers.

A healthy and productive Amazon is the foundation of Brazil’s sovereignty (commentary)
- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro likes to assert that foreigners deserve no say over the fate of the Amazon because it is a national sovereignty issue. In making the argument, Bolsonaro at times lays out a grand conspiracy under which a body like the U.N. tries to “internationalize” the Amazon, claiming it as the domain of the world.
- As fires rage, some on social media are raising the idea of the Amazon being the domain of the world. But this discussion plays directly into Bolsonaro’s narrative, strengthening his hand.
- Instead, concerned people of the world should talk about how a healthy and productive Amazon actually underpins Brazil’s sovereignty by strengthening food, water, and energy security, while supporting good relations with its neighbors.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Life on the Amazon oil frontier: From exploration to ecotourism
- Petroamazonas’s entry into the region in 2013 divided the community, with some saying it brought opportunities, while others say it destroyed the environment and way of life, and failed to deliver on promised jobs.
- Many expect ecotourism to be their only hope for economic salvation as the oil industry expands in the Amazon rainforest. Particularly among indigenous communities here, It is an increasingly common perspective.
- While the idea of turning to ecotourism is an increasingly common view among indigenous communities here, experts say the industry is complicated, and that to work it must be managed by the community itself, with conservation in mind.

Venezuelan crisis: Caring for priceless botanical treasures in a failed state
- Venezuela’s Botanical Garden of Caracas was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000. Its 70-hectare (173-acre) garden, National Herbarium and Henri Pittier Library are considered a national, and international treasure, and a vital repository of Latin American and global natural history utilized frequently by researchers.
- But a devastating drought that started two years ago, plus massive thefts of equipment (ranging from air conditioners to computers, plumbing and even electrical wiring), plus a failed electrical and public water supply, have all combined to threaten the Garden’s priceless collections.
- The annual botanical garden budget has been slashed to a mere $500 per year, which has forced staff to rely on innovative conservation solutions which include crowd funding to pay for rainwater cisterns, as well as volunteer programs in which participants contribute not only labor, but irrigation water they bring from home.
- As Venezuela’s government grows increasingly corrupt and incompetent, and as the national economy spirals out of control with hyperinflation topping 1.7 million percent in 2018, the botanical garden’s curators have no ready answers as to how to go about preserving the rare plants they tend on into the future.

Amazon rural development and conservation: a path to sustainability?
- Oil palm production in Brazil continues to be conducted on a small scale as compared to the nation’s vast soy plantations. Total oil palm cultivation was just 50,000 hectares in 2010. Today, that total has risen to 236,000 hectares, 85 percent of which is in Pará state.
- While environmentalists fear escalated oil palm production could lead to greater deforestation, Brazil possesses 200 million hectares (772,204 square miles) of deforested, degraded lands, three quarters of which is utilized as pasture, most of it with low productivity that could be converted to oil palm.
- The Rurality Project offers an example of sustainable oil palm production through its recruitment of small-scale growers to boost local economies. But, the bulk of Amazon palm oil is produced on large plantations managed by big firms, like Biopalma, many of which have poor socioenvironmental records.
- If oil palm is to become a large-scale reality in Brazil, without major deforestation, growth will need to be backed by strong regulation and enforcement. But critics say the Bolsonaro government is backing weak regulation that encourages land speculation and deforestation.

Audio: New CITES head on next COP, reining in online wildlife trafficking, and more
- On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast we speak with Ivonne Higuero, secretary general of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora — better known by its acronym, CITES.
- Signatories to CITES will meet later this summer for the eighteenth meeting of the Congress of the Parties (or COP). The meeting was originally to be held in Colombo, Sri Lanka last May, but a series of terrorist bombings in the South Asian country during Easter services in April forced CITES officials to postpone the meeting until August and move it to Geneva, Switzerland.
- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, Huigero, the first woman to ever serve as CITES secretary general, discusses how her background as an environmental economist informs her approach to the job, how CITES can tackle challenges like lack of enforcement of CITES statutes at the national level and the online wildlife trade, and what she expects to accomplish at the eighteenth congress of the parties to CITES.

Chinese banks risk supporting soy-related deforestation, report finds
- Chinese financial institutions have little awareness about the risks of deforestation in the soy supply chain, according to a report released May 31 from the nonprofit disclosure platform CDP.
- China imports more than 60 percent of the world’s soy, meaning that the country could play a major role in halting deforestation and slowing climate change if companies and banks focus on stopping deforestation to grow the crop.
- Around 490 square kilometers (189 square miles) of land in Brazil was cleared for soy headed for China in 2017 — about 40 percent of all “converted” land in Brazil that year.
- As the trade war between the U.S. and China continues, China may increasingly look to Latin America for its soy, potentially increasing the chances that land will be cleared to make way for the crop.

On the island of Java, a social forestry scheme creates jobs at home
- Indonesian President Joko Widodo has pledged to transfer 127,000 square kilometers of state land to communities, but progress has been slow.
- In Kalibiru, outside the central Javan city of Yogyakarta, one community forest management program has generated impressive revenues for local governments and incomes for community members.
- Some locals say they’re now less likely to migrate away from Kalibiru for higher pay.

In Ethiopia, women and faith drive effort to restore biodiversity
- In Addis Ababa, approximately 35 percent of the household fuelwood – mainly eucalyptus – is systematically gathered from the Entoto Mountains just outside the city.
- Ethiopia historically planted large areas with fast-growing eucalyptus, a non-native species, to meet the demand for fuelwood. But the trees’ water-hogging nature has had a destructive impact on the land.
- There are efforts to reforest areas with native species, supported by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which has a tradition of maintaining tree gardens throughout the country.

Local fishers oppose $2.7 billion deal opening Madagascar to Chinese fishing
- Two months ago, a little-known private Malagasy association signed a 10-year, $2.7 billion fishing deal — the largest in the country’s history — with a group of Chinese companies that plans to send 330 fishing vessels to Madagascar.
- Critics of the deal include the country’s fisheries minister, who said he learned about it in the newspaper; environmental and government watchdog groups; and local fishers, who are already struggling with foreign competition for Madagascar’s dwindling marine stocks.
- Critics say no draft of the deal has been made public and the association that signed it did not conduct an environmental impact assessment or any public consultation.
- The issue has drawn media attention in the run-up to the presidential election on Wednesday. The incumbent and a leading candidate, Hery Rajaonarimampianina, was present at the fisheries deal’s signing, although he later claimed not to be familiar with it.

Top Madagascar shrimp co. moved millions among tax-haven shell companies
- Aziz Ismail, 85, a French citizen born in Madagascar, bought into Madagascar’s shrimp business in 1973. His empire, known generally as Unima, now includes at least eight privately held companies in Europe and Africa that are mainly involved in seafood from Madagascar, where operations are centered.
- Ismail has also owned a British Virgin Islands-based shell company called Ergia Limited since 2000. In the last decade, Ergia appears to have had financial transactions totaling several million dollars with another apparent shell company in Mauritius that has close ties to Unima, and with Unima companies in Europe.
- Although owning and using offshore companies is generally legal, tax and law enforcement officials are increasingly scrutinizing transactions through tax havens like the British Virgin Islands and Mauritius. Tax inspectors from Madagascar and other experts said Unima’s use of multiple offshore companies raises the risk of lost taxes for one of the world’s poorest countries.
- Files obtained from the now-defunct Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca as part of the “Panama Papers” were the basis for this investigation by Mongabay and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Study games out oil palm development scenarios in Borneo
- The study authors quantify what will happen under a business as usual (BAU) approach, a strict conservation plan (CON), and expansion guided by sustainable intensification (SUS-INT).
- Under a BAU scenario, all land currently zoned for corporate oil palm concessions are utilized to their maximum capacity.
- At the other end of the spectrum, the CON scenario considers what will happen if Indonesia’s 2011 forest moratorium preventing new concessions on primary forest and peatland is applied to all currently undeveloped land, and companies adhere to zero-deforestation commitments.
- In between the two, the SUS-INT option considers what would happen if plantations are expanded only in non-forested and non-peat areas, while yields are increased through improved cultivars and intensive management.

An indigenous village navigates its ecotourism success
- The village of Wae Rebo on Indonesia’s Flores Island is inhabited by 1,200 residents from the Manggarai indigenous group.
- Wae Rebo began its dalliance with ecotourism in 2007 with the help of Indonesian ecotourism NGO Indecon. By 2016, it was already recording 6,000 annual visitors — as many as 50 or more per day — despite the seven-hour drive and three-hour hike required to reach it from the nearest town.
- As its popularity as a destination grows, there are concerns that the community’s traditions and way of life could be sacrificed in the process.
- Locals interviewed for this story expressed a general satisfaction with the economic stability that tourism revenue has brought. The one recurring complaint was about the quality of the interactions between visitors and residents.

New tea plant discoveries in Vietnam highlight vitality of protected areas
- Two new species of tea plant, from the genus Camellia, have been described from a protected area in central Vietnam.
- The discoveries, along with similar finds of other new plant and animal species, underscore the country’s rich biodiversity.
- However, the excitement generated by new discoveries such as these tends to be tempered by the reality that they don’t always translate into funding for conservation or further study.

Tracking the shift of tropical forests from carbon sink to source
- Improved maps of carbon stocks, along with a better understanding of how tropical forests respond to climate change, are necessary to meet the challenge of keeping the global temperature below a 2-degree-Celsius (3.6-degree-Fahrenheit) rise, according to scientist Edward Mitchard of the University of Edinburgh.
- Currently, tropical forests take up roughly the same amount of carbon as is released when they’re cleared or degraded.
- But climatic changes, which lead to more droughts and fires resulting in the loss of tropical trees, could shift the balance, making tropical forests a net source of atmospheric carbon.

Hunting, fishing causing dramatic decline in Amazon river dolphins
- Both species of Amazon river dolphin appear to be in deep decline, according to a recent study. Boto (Inia geoffrensis) populations fell by 94 percent and Tucuxi (Sotalia fluviatilis) numbers fell by 97 percent in the Mamirauá Reserve in Amazonas state, Brazil between 1994 and 2017, according to researchers.
- Difficult to detect in the Amazon’s murky waters, both species are listed as “Data Deficient” by the IUCN. But researchers maintain that if region-wide surveys were conducted both species would end up being listed as Critically Endangered.
- The team noticed scars from harpoon and machete injuries on the dolphins they caught. Interviews with fishermen confirmed the team’s suspicions: dolphins were being hunted for use as bait. The mammals also get entangled in nets and other fishing gear, are hunted as food, eliminated as pests, and suffer mercury poisoning.
- Researchers believe the passage and enforcement of new conservation laws could save Amazon river dolphins, and halt their plunge toward extinction. But a lack of political will, drastic draconian cuts to the Brazilian environmental ministry budget, and continued illegal dolphin hunting and fishing make action unlikely for now.

Government subsidies serving to prop up destructive high-seas fishing: study
- More than half of fisheries on the world’s high seas would be running a loss without the billions of dollars in government subsidies that keep the ecologically destructive industry afloat, a recent study suggests.
- The researchers described the annual subsidies as being far in excess of the net economic benefit from fishing in these international waters.
- They called for greater transparency by governments and substantial reforms of high-seas fisheries in a bid to improve the management of the industry they labeled as ecologically and economically unsustainable.

Local conservancies create new hope for wildlife in Kenya’s Maasai Mara (commentary)
- Naboisho and roughly a dozen neighboring conservancies in Kenya’s Maasai Mara are made up of hundreds of individual plots owned by local Maasai residents of the Mara, who converted their traditional communal lands in this part of Kenya to individual holdings.
- Tour operators with existing camps around the Mara have worked to pool together individual Maasai landowners who had subdivided their lands into larger groups that could then lease a large area of land to the tour operators.
- Each landowner is paid a monthly lease fee of around $235, amounting to over $900,000 of landowner income annually.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Over $720 million in profit from tourism in Peru’s protected natural areas
- According to a study published recently by the Conservation Strategy Fund, tourism in Peru’s natural protected areas created 36,000 jobs in 2017.
- One of the findings indicates that revenue from ecotourism activity is 40 times greater than the amount invested by the state in the management and handling of the country’s protected areas.

Carbon pricing could save millions of hectares of tropical forest: new study
- Recently published research in the journal Environmental Research Letters found that setting a price of $20 per metric ton (about $18/short ton) of carbon dioxide could diminish deforestation by nearly 16 percent and the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere by nearly 25 percent.
- The pair of economists calculated that, as things currently stand, the world stands to lose an India-size chunk of tropical forest by 2050.
- In addition to carbon pricing, stricter policies to halt deforestation, such as those that helped Brazil cut its deforestation rate by 80 percent in the early 2000s, could save nearly 1 million square kilometers (386,000 square miles).

Mega developments set to transform a tranquil Cambodian bay
- Sim Him has organized the planting of more than 200,000 mangrove trees in Cambodia’s Trapeang Sangke estuary. The surrounding ecosystem, which feeds thousands of families, is thriving.
- But the nearby construction of a ferry terminal and a luxury resort are upsetting the estuary’s equilibrium, and development projects continue west along the coastline from there.
- Dotted along a 25-kilometer (15.5-mile) coastal strip, no less than six large-scale developments present a direct threat to healthy mangrove forests and the fishing communities they support.
- Aside from being a nursery for sealife and a barrier to erosion, mangroves are also one of the planet’s most effective carbon neutralizers, capable of capturing and storing it for millennia.

COP23: U.S., wealthy nations curtail climate aid for developing world
- The small U.S. delegation sent by President Trump to the COP23 climate summit in Bonn has apparently led a successful effort to obstruct significant, much needed, climate change adaptation financing and loss-and-damage financing for the developing world.
- Over the past two weeks in Bonn, the U.S. provided cover for the other developed countries, especially coal-producing Australia, tar sands-producer Canada, and the European Union, as they curtailed offering financial climate aid to the world’s developing nations, including island nations whose existence is at risk from rising oceans.
- One victory: delegates agreed to draft language for Pre-2020 Ambitions, a measure requiring that developed countries be transparent about their current emissions and describe voluntary steps they will take prior to 2020 to further reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
- It is now hoped by some that the issue of adaptation financing and loss-and-damage financing to the developing world will be finally effectively addressed at COP24 in Poland in December 2018.

Should I stay, or should I go: is U.S. facing a climate scientist brain drain?
- When Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement last June, French President Emmanuel Macron offered U.S. climate scientists refuge to continue their research. So did Germany. Several hundred answered that call, though many others are in a wait-and-see holding pattern.
- With Trump proposing major budget cuts to scientific programs, and an “anti-science” mantra resounding throughout the new administration, young scientists face a difficult climb up the career ladder. Some are actively looking for research opportunities in the private sector or abroad, while others are staying put in the U.S. and stepping up to resist Trumpian anti-science policies.
- Some experts warn that a decline in U.S. political openness and Trump’s closing of the door to immigrants, who often staff research positions, could pose greater problems for science in the U.S. than any outflow of researchers. Einstein, Enrico Fermi, and many other scientists were immigrants to the U.S. and provided some of the nation’s greatest scientific advances.

COP23: Trump team leads ‘surreal’ coal-gas-nuke climate summit panel
- The only U.S. presentation to be offered at the COP23 climate summit was led by Trump administration energy advisors, along with coal, natural gas and nuclear industry representatives.
- The panel argued that fossil fuel production at high, subsidized levels is vital to “energy security and economic development.” Panel members made only infrequent references to climate change, and they made no mention of the dire impacts from burning fossil fuels.
- The presentation was likely one of the most uproarious in the history of COP. Two U.S. state governors burst in at the start to give impromptu speeches, attacking Trump’s climate denialist policies.
- A memorable highlight occurred when a chorus of young people arose en masse during the panel’s opening remarks, and to the tune of Lee Greenwood’s patriotic hit “God Bless the USA” sang: “So you claim to be an American. But we see right through your greed.” Their song lasted seven minutes, after which they peacefully departed the hall.

CETA: environmentally friendly trade treaty or corporate Trojan horse?
- As early as September 21st, the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) could come into provisional effect, linking international commerce between Canada and all of the nations in the European Union (EU).
- Supporters claim CETA includes new mechanisms that make it a blueprint for future trade treaties, chief among them the replacement of the controversial Investor State Dispute System (ISDS), with the new investor court system (ICS).
- Opponents argue CETA’s rules guarantee numerous benefits for foreign investors and transnational corporations, while the agreement includes no enforceable rules to guarantee labor rights, environmental protection or food safety. “Profit comes before people and the planet,” argues one expert.
- Though it could come into provisional effect as early as this week, big roadblocks remain before CETA is fully approved, with resistance possible from the public, NGOs and government.

Photos: Where once were mangroves, Javan villages struggle to beat back the sea
- Mangunharjo, Bedono, Sawah Luhur — these are just some of the communities where clear-cutting mangrove forests has caused environmental disaster.
- Mangroves are removed to make way for shrimp and fish farms. But without the forests’ protection, coastal communities become dangerously vulnerable to erosion and flooding.
- In some places, residents have planted new mangroves, and managed to reclaim their home from the sea. But not everywhere.

Singapore statement on International Day of the Tropics: infrastructure deficit must be met sustainably (commentary)
- The majority of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities are in the Tropics, and will be most affected by environmental challenges like climate change.
- The landmark report State of the Tropics in 2014 outlined the full range of these challenges.
- As the world celebrates the second UN International Day of the Tropics on June 29, 2017, a new report on one of the great needs, Sustainable Infrastructure in the Tropics, is launched in Singapore.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Financing sustainable agriculture possible, if terms fit farmers’ needs
- Worldwide, more deforestation results from the push for farmland than any other cause.
- The Global Canopy Programme reports that funding aimed at encouraging a move away from deforestation-based agriculture and toward more sustainable methods must be designed to address the needs of farmers.
- Loans with longer terms and lower interest rates can help farmers who are switching to sustainable agriculture survive the ‘valley of death’ – that is, the first few years of new methods before their production becomes profitable.

Indonesian governor asks president to let timber firms drain peat in his province
- West Kalimantan Governor Cornelis asked President Joko Widodo to let some timber plantation companies drain peatlands, even though Jakarta banned the practice last year.
- In a letter to the president dated Apr. 25, Cornelis makes an economic argument for allowing the companies to proceed as usual.
- Cornelis is a member of an international consortium of governors dedicated to fighting climate change; Greenpeace said his request to the president amounted to a “double standard.”
- His request came just days after Jakarta sanctioned a timber firm in his province for building an illegal canal through the Sungai Putri peat swamp forest.

Methane mystery: fossil fuels spewing less methane, but gas continues to accumulate
- Methane levels are on the rise again after a decade-long slowdown, but scientists still don’t know why.
- New research provides a ‘top down’ estimate of methane emissions due to fossil fuels, yielding a more rigorous look at how much methane the industry is responsible for.
- Improved monitoring technology can be used to get a more accurate reading of each nation’s methane emissions – and may be able to solve the mystery of the missing methane.

Trump failure to lead on climate doesn’t faze UN policymakers in Bonn
- Policymakers from nearly 200 countries are gathering in Bonn this week for climate change talks aimed at fulfilling the promise of the Paris Agreement. U.S. negotiators will be there too, despite President Trump’s denial of climate change and his signaled alliance with the fossil fuel industry.
- Under President Obama, the U.S. played a key leadership role in climate negotiations, bringing China fully on board, and helping broker the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement. President Trump has threatened to withdraw from the pact — a four-year process — and claims he will make a final decision this month. It seems likely China would step into the leadership gap left by the U.S.
- Bonn negotiators remain unfazed by Trump’s climate change denialism or his threat to withdraw from Paris. Every signatory nation is going forward with meeting voluntary carbon reduction pledges. Some policymakers do worry how the parties to the Paris Agreement will make up the loss of billions of dollars in U.S. climate aid promised under Obama, but now denied by Trump.
- The feeling among Bonn participants is that the rest of the world will go forward briskly and effectively in combatting climate change by embracing alternative energy solutions that will bring jobs and prosperity to their countries, while the U.S. will play the role of a rogue nation that will share no part in the resulting economic boon.

Investors learning to pay heed to community land rights
- Most conflicts besetting private investments in Africa – 63 percent – relate to pushing people off their lands.
- These conflicts affect agriculture, mining, and even green energy investments.
- In Southern Africa, 73 percent of conflicts turned violent and 73 percent halted work on the developments.

Public criticism forces U.S. congressman to back off public land disposal bill
- The law would have allowed the sale of 3.3 million acres (1.34 million hectares) of public lands ‘deemed to serve no purpose for taxpayers.’
- Supporters, including Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who introduced the bill to the House of Representatives, said that getting rid of the excess lands would provide the federal government with cash and rural communities with development opportunities.
- Chaffetz pulled the bill after an outcry from conservation groups and the public concerned about the loss of federal lands.

Will there really be enough sustainable palm oil for the whole market?
- A report by non-profit CDP suggests companies may have a false confidence in their ability to find enough sustainable palm oil to meet their commitments.
- Certified sustainable palm oil was in short supply last summer and prices spiked when two major producers were suspended by the industry’s main certification association, revealing vulnerabilities in the supply.
- Better planning to secure future supply includes working more intensively with suppliers, says CDP.

How local elites earn money from burning land in Indonesia
- Members of political parties and local figures are organizing farmers to burn land for sale to a variety of large and small buyers, a new study shows.
- These elites pocket most of the profits from this destructive and illegal activity. Village officials who administer land documents and the workers who carry out the burning also receive a cut.
- For the fires to stop, the study says, these actors must be disempowered through law and policy.

Consumer pressure to ditch deforestation begins to reach Indonesia’s oil palm plantation giants
- Four of Indonesia’s top 10 oil palm growers have improved sustainability practices due to pressure from buyers since June 2015.
- But not all have changed their ways. At least one grower has found new customers that haven’t promised to eliminate practices like deforestation from their supply chains.
- Several major palm oil users with strong sustainability policies continue to buy from the worst of these 10 growers.

Green groups raise red flags over Jokowi’s widely acclaimed haze law
- Indonesian President Joko Widodo last week codified a much-praised moratorium on peatland development into law.
- Though widely reported as a permanent ban on clearing and draining the archipelago’s carbon-rich peat swamps, the prohibition will only last until the government finishes mapping and zoning the nation’s peatlands, although stronger protections have been put in place.
- Norway praised the policy’s legalization, announcing it would release $25 million to support the sustainable management of Indonesia’s peatlands.
- Some environmental groups tell Mongabay that the regulation pays insufficient heed to the scientific evidence of what is required to prevent the wholesale collapse of peatland ecosystems.

Global trade 101: How NAFTA’s Chapter 11 overrides environmental laws
- NAFTA’s Chapter 11 was meant to safeguard investors against potential corruption in Mexico, but trade lawyers and corporations quickly learned that the knife cuts both ways. By 1999, corporate suits involving projects impacting the environment (often having little to do with corruption) were made against Mexico, Canada and the US.
- The power of NAFTA Tribunals to settle wide-ranging disputes rapidly resulted in larger and larger claims being made by companies, raising the financial stakes from millions to billions in suits against governments.
- In Clayton and Bilcon of Delaware Inc. v. Government of Canada, American investors were granted a US$101 million award by a NAFTA Tribunal, which ruled against Canada’s right to protect community values and a sensitive marine environment by rejecting the company’s plan to expand a quarry and construct a giant marine terminal.
- Though still pending, that case and others have set a dangerous precedent, leveraging corporate profit over environmental protection and local and national governance.

Elephant poaching costs African nations $25 million a year in lost tourism revenue
- The elephant poaching crisis does not harm elephants alone, it is bad for the economy too, according to a new study.
- The loss of elephants to wildlife trafficking is costing African countries about $25 million a year in lost tourism revenue, the study found.
- The tourism revenue lost due to declining elephants exceeds the anti-poaching costs necessary to stop the decline of elephants in east, west and southern Africa, the researchers found.

Mother Nature and a hydropower onslaught aren’t the Mekong Delta’s only problems
- Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, home to nearly 20 million people, is one of the most highly productive agricultural environments in the world, thanks in part to an elaborate network of canals, dikes, sluice gates and drainage ditches.
- On the strength of Delta agriculture, Vietnam has gone from a chronic importer of rice to a major exporter.
- But farmers in the region are critical of the government’s food security policies, which mandate that most of the Delta’s land be devoted to rice production. And many of them are taking measures to circumvent those rules, in ways that aren’t always friendly to the environment.
- That’s just one example of how water and land-use policy in the Delta is undermining efforts to protect the vulnerable region from climate change and upstream development.

Airbus to marshal its satellites against deforestation
- Starling is a new service developed by Airbus, The Forest Trust and SarVision.
- Palm oil suppliers can use it to verify their compliance with their customers’ zero-deforestation policies.
- Starling, which will be sold to companies, is meant as a compliment to Global Forest Watch, a publicly available platform that anyone can use to track deforestation in near-real time.
- Starling is more powerful than Global Forest Watch, with the ability to see through clouds and zoom in close enough to count the trees.

A cost-benefit analysis of securing indigenous land rights in the Amazon
- According to the report, the investments required to secure land rights for indigenous communities would be modest, but could generate billions of dollars in returns economically, environmentally, and socially — a boon not just for local communities but the global climate, as well.
- According to the report, between 2000 and 2012 the annual deforestation rates in tenure-secure indigenous forests were significantly lower than outside those areas.
- “The estimated economic benefits for a 20-year period are: $54–119 billion for Bolivia; $523–1,165 billion for Brazil; and $123–277 billion for Colombia,” the report states.

Indonesia exploring new model to fund national parks
- The environment ministry’s budget for conservation was recently slashed by parliament.
- To fill the gap, the ministry is exploring a mechanism to seek foreign funding, the ministry’s director for nature conservation told Mongabay.
- The mechanism could build on a model established last year in Raja Ampat district, in which a special authority was set up to manage the district’s protected areas using tourism revenue.

Going green with the aviation industry (commentary)
- The UN International Civil Aviation Organization intends to achieve “carbon neutral” growth from 2020, largely through carbon offsets.
- The authors argue in favor of the aviation industry’s plans, described as “an opportunity to massively scale up funding to protect the world’s forests.”
- This post is a commentary — the views expressed are those of the authors.

Indonesia seeks foreign funds to aid peat restoration drive
- The head of Indonesia’s peat restoration agency said corporate social responsibility and donor funds would not be enough to meet the country’s target.
- Indonesia’s finance ministry is preparing a reform package to provide incentives to invest in peat rehabilitation.
- The environment ministry has moved to issue five timber companies with administrative sanctions for complicity in wildfires burning on their concessions.
- Three companies had their licenses altogether revoked; land from two of those concessions will be converted into a buffer zone for Tesso Nilo National Park.

Revealed: Australian miner used arbitration threat to upend Indonesian environmental law
- In the early 2000s, Australia-based Newcrest Mining was one of 13 companies to win an exemption from Indonesia’s 1999 Forestry Law, which banned an environmentally destructive form of mining in protected forest areas.
- The companies had obtained permits from Indonesia’s military government, but when the regime fell in 1998, the newly democratized country tried to implement new rules to protect its forests.
- Newcrest responded by threatening to sue the Indonesian government in a secretive international tribunal presided over by corporate lawyers, under an instrument of international law known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS).
- ISDS is written into thousands of trade and investment treaties, including the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The 101 on how global trade treaties came to threaten the environment
- After World War II, well meaning protections were established to safeguard international investors and reduce financial risk in Europe’s rebuilding, and later, to protect investments made in the politically volatile developing world.
- Today, more than 3,000 international trade treaties and agreements include something called an Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism, a tool originally intended to protect investors making risky foreign investments.
- More recently, numerous ISDS cases — averaging around 50 per year — have been used by investors to challenge national sovereignty in order to invalidate environmental laws and access natural resources or markets.
- The signing of NAFTA in 1992 brought with it the first ever inclusion of environmental provisions in a trade treaty, yet most NAFTA ISDS cases have sided with investors over the environment.

These banks are pumping billions into Southeast Asia’s deforestation
- The new Forests and Finance database was launched on Tuesday by a coalition of research and campaign groups.
- The data show that in 2010-2015, banks in Asia and the West pumped over $50 billion into Southeast Asian forest-risk companies.
- Many banks lack policies to prevent their money from being used to harm the environment.
- Even the policies that do appear strong on paper are often of little effect, experts say.

Can conservationists overcome their differences to save life on Earth?
- Conservation, Divided is an in-depth series investigating how the field of conservation has changed over the last 30 years — and the challenges it faces moving into an uncertain future.
- The series explores how the world’s biggest conservation groups have embraced a human-centric approach known as “new conservation” that has split the field over how best to save life on Earth.
- It also investigates the role of big money in pushing conservation agendas, and the field’s changing relationship with people living in areas targeted for conservation.
- Jeremy Hance reported the Conservation, Divided series over the course of eight months. Stories ran weekly in April and May, generating intense interest from readers.

Unclear if France will revisit ‘discriminatory’ palm oil tax
- The proposed tax became a controversy in Indonesia and Malaysia, the two largest palm oil producers, which lobbied hard to get it rescinded.
- France consumes less than two-tenths of a percent of the palm oil produced globally, most of which goes to India and China.
- Palm oil is crucial to the Southeast Asian nations’ economies but leads the way in damaging the environment.

Epilogue: Conservation still divided, looking for a way forward
- Ideas promoted under a new philosophy in conservation that focuses on nature’s service to humanity merit continued trial and a fair hearing, Hance writes, but they also require ongoing scrutiny.
- Likewise, Hance writes that the world’s biggest conservation groups, which have embraced the new philosophy, have made major achievements in recent years. But widespread dissatisfaction with their methods within the conservation community means they, too, deserve questioning.
- Conservation, Divided is an in-depth four-part series investigating how the field of conservation has changed over the last 30 years — and the challenges it faces moving into an uncertain future. Hance completed the series over the course of eight months. Stories ran weekly between April 26 and May 17.

How big donors and corporations shape conservation goals
- In Part 2 of Conservation, Divided, veteran Mongabay reporter Jeremy Hance explores how major donors at foundations, governments, and corporations are pushing conservation groups to adopt a human-centric approach known as “new conservation” that some critics say leaves wildlife and wild lands out in the cold.
- Meanwhile, cozy relationships with environmentally destructive corporations have prompted long-running arguments that some of the world’s biggest conservation groups have lost sight of their environmental missions. Yet big conservation and corporations are closer than ever.
- Conservation, Divided is an in-depth four-part series investigating how the field of conservation has changed over the last 30 years — and the challenges it faces moving into an uncertain future. Hance completed the series over the course of eight months. Stories are running weekly between April 26 and May 17.

A decade in the making: EU, Indonesia to start licensing scheme for legal timber shipments
- The EU said Indonesia had “met the final major requirement” of their trade deal under Europe’s anti-illegal-logging action plan.
- Indonesia is one of 15 countries to sign an agreement with the EU under the plan, and it would be the first to license exports under it.
- Both legal and illegal forms of logging have devastated Indonesia’s vast rainforests and biodiversity.

Has big conservation gone astray?
- In Part 1 of Conservation, Divided, veteran Mongabay reporter Jeremy Hance explores how the world’s biggest conservation groups have embraced a human-centric approach known as “new conservation” that has split the field over how best to save life on Earth.
- Neither side of the debate disagrees that conservation today is failing to adequately halt mass extinction. But how to proceed is where talks break down, especially when it comes to the importance of protected areas and the efficacy of the biggest, most recognizable groups.
- Conservation, Divided is an in-depth four-part series investigating how the field of conservation has changed over the last 30 years — and the challenges it faces moving into an uncertain future. Hance completed the series over the course of eight months. Stories will run weekly through May 17.

Grim forecast for paper giant’s wood supply raises deforestation fears
- Asia Pulp & Paper spent decades eating through Indonesia’s vast rainforests. Then in 2013, it promised to stop logging natural forests and rely on plantation timber exclusively.
- The company’s huge new mill in Sumatra, though, will require vast quantities of wood when it starts operating this year.
- A new NGO report suggests the company will have to resume deforestation or risk shattering financial losses. APP has dismissed those concerns, promising to import wood chips if needed.

Study finds link between RSPO certification and profitability for palm oil companies
- Certification by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil was found to increase a palm oil company’s profitability, according to a study commissioned by the RSPO.
- The findings are a boost for the RSPO, which has continuously grappled with industry claims that its certification schemes burden oil palm growers while providing few tangible benefits.
- Jan Willem van Gelder, director of the consultancy Profundo, was positive about the findings, saying they show that sustainability has an impact on profitability.

Companies asked to pitch in to Indonesia’s peat restoration drive as early fires flare in Sumatra
- Twenty-two hotspots were spotted in Riau province on Thursday, with rain expected to quell them in mid-April.
- Central Kalimantan province, the worst-hit of last year’s fire and haze crisis, continues to suffer an urgent shortage of doctors, a local politician said.
- A prominent NGO official called on Jakarta to establish a dedicated agency to see through the all-important One Map initiative.

France imposes new palm oil tax; Indonesia, Malaysia protest
- The tax is part of France’s new biodiversity bill. It was imposed on environmental grounds.
- The Indonesian and Malaysian governements, and industry associations in both countries, protest the tax.
- The tax will eventually reach 90 euros per ton in 2020.

Market-based conservation programs slow deforestation in Chile, study finds
- In recent years, eco-certification, moratoria, and other so-called non-state, market-driven governance regimes have become a common approach to reducing deforestation.
- However, data on the effectiveness of these programs has been limited.
- A new study analyzing three such programs in Chile finds that the more collaboration between industry and environmental groups a program entails, the more successful it may be.

Jakarta governor proposes lighter environmental permitting
- Indonesian President Jokowi has endeavored to make it easier for companies to get permits, and Jakarta Governor Ahok is following his example.
- In January, the environment ministry rejected Ahok’s proposal to ease up on environmental permitting requirements; now, Ahok is taking his proposal straight to Jokowi.
- Jakarta is not free of environmental problems, and some express concern about the governor’s initiative.

How can banks spur the palm oil industry toward sustainability?
- Banks are starting to come up with ways to encourage sustainability in the palm oil sector, whose unbridled expansion is fueling deforestation and rights abuses across the world.
- Still, the nascent green finance industry faces a number of obstacles as it seeks to expand its influence.
- These include a lack of transparency with regard to company ownership, misguided valuations of palm oil enterprises, and more.

Norway pledges $50m to fund Indonesia’s peat restoration
- The pledge follows last year’s fire and haze disaster, which burned 2 million hectares of land, mostly peat, in the archipelago.
- The money will support the newly created Peat Restoration Agency.
- The U.S. government also pledged $17 million for peatland restoration in Indonesia’s Jambi province.

What’s preventing palm oil investors from going green?
- Green investment could make the palm oil industry more sustainable, but a variety of obstacles are preventing it from becoming more prevalent.
- A lack of expertise, the structural issue of short-termism, and a lack of proven materiality all keep funds from flowing toward sustainable operations.
- Additional issues specific to palm oil exist as well.

Brazilian environmental NGOs depend heavily on corporate money
- Is it a conflict-of-interest for environmental NGOs — which, in principle, fight for the preservation of nature — to receive contributions from mining companies, which by their very nature, can cause negative impacts on the environment?
- Between 2009 and 2014 Fundo Vale invested more than $30 million in environmental projects by 25 organizations in seven Amazonian states throughout Brazil.
- Environmental NGOs in Brazil should now focus on helping prevent new disasters, since there’s a risk of other Samarco dams breaking, says one observer.

Ocean contributes $2.5 trillion to economy annually

A new study attempts to place a value of goods and services afforded by the ocean, estimating that if the planet’s seas were classified as a country, it would rank as the world’s seventh largest economy. Reviving the Ocean Economy, commissioned by environmental group World Wildlife Fund (WWF), “conservatively” places the value of the ocean […]
Employing shame for environmental change

Shame’s power: new book explores how shame can challenge environmental transgressors Chilean jack mackerel (Trachurus murphyi) are caught by a Chilean purse seiner off of Peru. Overfishing has become a massive global environmental problem, yet to date both governments and corporations have done little to tackle it. Photo by: C. Ortiz Rojas. In 2010, Greenpeace […]
Economic models for forests often neglect value of biodiversity

Tropical forests provide countless goods and services that help sustain human life. Given the rapid conversion of forests to agricultural lands, scientists say it is critical that we prioritize conservation of forest ecosystems. While economists have attempted to quantify the economic value of tropical forests, these estimates may overlook the intricacies of the landscape. According […]
Ecosystem services pioneer wins $1M award

Forests like this rainforest in Borneo provide an array of ‘ecosystem services’ including carbon storage, flood and erosion control, transpiration, climate moderation, and biodiversity, among others. Forest Trends, a non-profit that is working to develop market-based tools and approaches to value ecosystems for the services they afford, has won a million dollar award from the […]
Accounting for natural capital on financial exchanges

Maliau Falls in Borneo. The global economy depends on natural capital such as freshwater. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Last month, Norway’s stock exchange, the Oslo Børs, introduced a way for investors to use their money to promote sustainability. A new list by the stock exchange highlights green bonds, financial products issued by companies to […]
How black rhinos and local communities help each other in Namibia
- Africa’s rhinos are in a state of crisis.
- Poaching for their horn has resulted in the deaths of thousands of animals and pushed the continent’s two species—the white and black rhino—against the wall.
- Yet, despite the crisis, there are pockets of rhino territory where poaching remains rare and rhinos live comparatively unmolested.
- Indeed, one of the brightest spots for rhinos is in Namibia.

Green Climate Fund nears $7 billion after U.S. pledges $3 billion

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) is suddenly looking very lively after two announcements over the weekend. The U.S. has announced an initial pledge of $3 billion to the fund, while Japan pledged $1.5 billion. This more than doubles the current amount pledged to the key fund, which is now around $6.94 billion from thirteen countries. […]
Is the world moving backwards on protected areas?

50-80% of protected areas underfunded, poorly managed Yellowstone National Park was the world’s first modern protected area. Photo by: Julie Larsen Maher © WCS. Protected areas are undoubtedly the world’s most important conservation success story, and recent research shows that protected areas are effective—housing more biodiversity and greater abundances of species inside rather than out. […]
Can we stop runaway global warming? ‘All we need is the will to change’

Scientists become increasingly stark about the choices facing humanity on global warming Debris in Tacloban, Philippines after devastating Typhoon Haiyan. Higher storm surges due to climate change are worsening damage from hurricanes and other tropical storms. Photo by: Trocaire/Creative Commons 2.0 Twenty-six years after the founding of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the […]
Climate coup: Rockefeller announces they are dropping fossil fuel investments

Sunset. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. In 1870, John D. Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil Company. Rapidly becoming the world’s largest oil refiner, Standard made Rockefeller a billionaire and one of the world’s greatest philanthropists. A hundred and forty-four years later and John D. Rockefeller’s descendants have announced they are stripping fossil fuels from the […]
Saving the Atlantic Forest would cost less than ‘Titanic’

Brazil can protect and restore Mata Atlântica for 6.5 percent of what it spends on agricultural subsidies Want to save the world’s most imperiled biodiversity hotspot? You just need a down payment of $198 million. While that may sound like a lot, it’s actually less than it cost to make the film, Titanic. A new […]
Price of ivory triples in China

Ironic ivory? Ivory trinkets carved into elephants, potentially from butchered wild elephants. Picture taken in the Jatujak weekend market, Thailand in 2014. Photo by: Naomi Doak/TRAFFIC. In the last four years the price of ivory in China has tripled, according to new research from Save the Elephants. The news has worrying implications for governments and […]
Next big idea in forest conservation? Playing games to understand what drives deforestation

Innovation in Tropical Forest Conservation: Q&A with Dr. Claude Garcia Ivindo National Park in Gabon. The loss of rainforest is an emerging issue in the Congo Basin. The forests of the Congo Basin are some of the wildest areas on Earth, and until now, the level of threat was comparatively low, a result of low […]
Next big idea in forest conservation? Learning from innovations to make REDD+ work

Innovation in Tropical Forest Conservation: Q&A with Dr. Amy Duchelle Brazil nut producer in Pando, Bolivia. Photo by: Amy Duchelle. A scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in Brazil, Dr. Amy Duchelle coordinates research on the effectiveness, efficiency, equity, and co-benefits of REDD+ initiatives at the sub-national level in Latin America as […]
Next big idea in forest conservation? Making community protection economically viable

Innovation in Tropical Forest Conservation: Q & A with Dr. Neil David Burgess Rural scene in Tanzania. Photo by: Nika Levikov. After years of discovering new species and setting up protected areas, Neil Burgesses’ career changed. Currently he is focused on community-driven conservation and on how to improve protected areas in Africa’s Eastern Arc mountains […]
Stanford kicks coal out of its $18 billion endowment

The fossil fuel divestment campaign won a major victory today as Stanford University announced it would drop coal companies from its massive $18.7 billion endowment, the fourth largest of any American university. The action follows a petition by student group Fossil Free Stanford, five months of research by Stanford’s Advisory Panel on Investment Responsibility and […]
Next big idea in forest conservation? Quantifying the cost of forest degradation

Innovation in Tropical Forest Conservation: Q&A with Dr. Phillip Fearnside Pasture meets gallery forest in the Brazilian Amazon. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. How much is a forest really worth? And what is the cost of forest degradation? These values are difficult to estimate, but according to Dr. Phillip Fearnside, we need to do a […]
The best of the worst: fossil-fuel extractors pave the way for the low-carbon revolution

At the end of last year, the world got some good news on the green business front concerning a very unlikely set of participants. A recent market review revealed that Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell, Duke Energy, PG&E Corporation, American Electric Power Company, ConAgra Foods and Walmart, among others, are including shadow […]
Ecotourism pays: study finds lower poverty where nature-based tourism is prevalent

Economists find that protected areas reduce poverty in Costa Rica A new study has quantified a point long advocated by advocates of setting aside protected areas: ecotourism pays. The research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), finds that communities neighboring conservation areas in Costa Rica had lower rates of poverty relative […]
Tools against climate change: carbon tax and cap-and-trade

Climate-conscious folk agree that atmospheric carbon dioxide is a key greenhouse gas and a large factor in global climate change. However, there are discrepancies in the methods chosen to address the problem. Some say that carbon emissions should be banned. Some say fossil fuels should be priced. Others say that there are nuances within each. […]
Yasuni could still be spared oil drilling

When Ecuadorean President, Rafael Correa, announced on August 15th that he was abandoning an innovative program to spare three blocs of Yasuni National Park from oil drilling, it seemed like the world had tossed away its most biodiverse ecosystem. However, environmental groups and activists quickly responded that there may be another way to keep oil […]
Arctic melt to cost trillions

Rapid thawing of the Arctic could trigger a catastrophic “economic timebomb” which would cost trillions of dollars and undermine the global financial system, say a group of economists and polar scientists. Governments and industry have expected the widespread warming of the Arctic region in the past 20 years to be an economic boon, allowing the […]
In age of climate change, Australia’s vast coal fields could become worthless
Australia’s huge coal industry is a speculative bubble ripe for financial implosion if the world’s governments fulfill their agreement to act on climate change, according to a new report. The warning that much of the nation’s coal reserves will become worthless as the world hits carbon emission limits comes after banking giant Citi also warned […]
Local economy ruined by pesticide pollution in the Caribbean

On 15 April more than 100 fishermen demonstrated in the streets of Fort de France, the main town on Martinique, in the French West Indies. In January they barricaded the port until the government in Paris allocated €2m ($2.6m) in aid, which they are still waiting for. The contamination caused by chlordecone, a persistent organochlorine […]
Conservation without supervision: Peruvian community group creates and patrols its own protected area

“Rural dwellers are not passive respondents to external conservation agents but are active proponents and executers of their own conservation initiatives.”—Noga Shanee, Projects Director for Neotropical Primate Conservation (NPC), in an interview with mongabay.com. When we think of conservation areas, many of us think of iconic National Parks overseen by uniformed government employees or wilderness […]
‘Carbon bubble’ could cause next global financial crisis

The world could be heading for a major economic crisis as stock markets inflate an investment bubble in fossil fuels to the tune of trillions of dollars, according to leading economists. “The financial crisis has shown what happens when risks accumulate unnoticed,” said Lord (Nicholas) Stern, a professor at the London School of Economics. He […]
Conservation policies that boost farm yields may ultimately undermine forest protection, argues study

Rising agricultural profitability due to higher prices, improved crop productivity, and forest conservation itself could make it increasingly difficult for conservation programs tied to payments for ecosystem services to succeed, warns a study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The prediction is based on a model that forecasts […]
Proposed coal plant threatens Critically Endangered Philippine cockatoo

One kilometer off the Philippine island of Palawan lies the Rasa Island Wildlife Sanctuary; here forest grows unimpeded from a coral island surrounded by mangroves and coral reefs. Although tiny, over a hundred bird species have been recorded on the island along with a major population of large flying foxes, while in the waters below […]
Carbon Markets or Climate Finance – book review
Carbon markets or climate finance? This is the question posed by Carbon Markets or Climate Finance, edited by Axel Michaelowa. First of all, let’s define climate finance as the financial resources used to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Carbon Markets or Climate Finance reviews the decade-long experience of the United Nations Framework Convention on […]
Head of IMF: climate change is ‘the greatest economic challenge of the 21st century’

Actual global carbon emissions (in black) have tracked close to the worst case scenario (brown) laid out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Dips are related to global recessions. Graph by: Dana Nuccitelli/Skeptical Science. Climate change not debt or austerity is “the greatest economic challenge of the 21st Century,” according to Christine Lagarde, […]
Forests in Kenya worth much more intact says government report

Loita hills forest in Kenya. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Kenya’s forests provide greater services and wealth to the nation when they are left standing. A landmark report by The Kenyan Government and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) addresses the importance of forests to the well-being of the nation, putting Kenya among a pioneering […]
The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity in Local and Regional Policy – a book review
The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity in Local and Regional Policy, edited by Heidi Wittmar and Haripriya Gundimeda, provides thoughtful and actionable approaches to integrate nature’s benefits into decision-making frameworks for local and regional policy and public management institutions. Filled with numerous case studies, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity in Local and Regional Policy, […]
Paradigm shift needed to avert global environmental collapse, according to author of new book The Blueprint: Averting Global Collapse

Scientists and experts are increasingly concerned that we are entering an age of ecological collapse with untold impacts for future generations. In Daniel Rirdan’s new book, The Blueprint, he outlines how to avoid this fate. Author, global strategist, and speaker Daniel Rirdan set out to create a plan addressing the future of our planet. His […]
World has lost half its wetlands

A cow stands in Brazil’s Pantanal, the world’s largest wetland which is threatened by cattle ranching and agriculture. In 2006 it was announced that 17 percent of the Pantanal had been lost to deforestation. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Half of the worlds wetlands have been destroyed in just the last 100 years, says a […]
Investors shouldn’t ignore financial risk of environmental damage

Deforestation for a palm oil plantation in Malaysia. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Environmental damage poses a long-ignored risk to sovereign bonds, according to a new report by the UNEP FI (The United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative) and the Global Footprint Network. The report, E-RISC Report, A New Angle on Sovereign Credit Risk, finds […]
Unique program to leave oil beneath Amazonian paradise raises $300 million

Black caiman (Melanosuchus niger) with fly near its eye in an ox-bow lake in Yasuni National Park. Photo by: Jeremy Hance. The Yasuni-ITT Initiative has been called many things: controversial, ecological blackmail, revolutionary, pioneering, and the best chance to keep oil companies out of Ecuador’s Yasuni National Park. But now, after a number of ups […]
How to see the forest for the trees: new textbook helps to craft a global understanding of forest economics for all stakeholders

A book review of: William F. Hyde’s The Global Economics of Forestry Jungle in Malaysian Borneo. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Environmental economics is similar to other expanding fields, it turns out. For example, Tauhid Zaman, assistant professor of operations management at the MIT Sloan School of Business, lamented that network analytics far too often […]
Tanzania weighs new soda ash plant in prime flamingo territory

Lesser flamingoes in Kenya. One third of the world’s lesser flamingoes nest in Tanzania’s Lake Natron. Photo by: Steve Garvie. In a choice between flamingoes and a soda ash plant, a new report shows that local residents near Lake Natron, Tanzania prefer flamingoes. This is good news for conservationists as the area is the most […]
Over 100,000 farmers squatting in Sumatran park to grow coffee

Motorbikes carrying coffee bags out of Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park. Photo courtesy of Patrice Levang. Sumatra’s Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park—home to the Critically Endangered Sumatran rhinos, tigers, and elephants—has become overrun with coffee farmers, loggers, and opportunists according to a new paper in Conservation and Society. An issue facing the park for decades, […]
Saving the world’s species from oblivion will cost around $80 billion a year, but still a good deal

The mongoose lemur (Eulemur mongoz) is listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN Red List. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. If the world is to conserve its wealth of life—species great and small, beautiful and terrible, beloved and unknown—it will cost from $3.41-4.76 billion annually in targeted conservation funds, according to a new study in Science. […]
First REDD Textbook – Forest and Climate Change: The Social Dimensions of REDD in Latin America – Book Review

Rainforest in Borneo. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Thank you Professor Anthony Hall. After many years, we finally have a REDD textbook that can be used in the undergraduate and graduate classroom. Professor Hall has produced an excellent contribution to the growing Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) literature. He has written both […]
Conflict and perseverance: rehabilitating a forgotten park in the Congo

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)’s last herd of zebra run free in Upemba. Photo courtesy of the FZS. Zebra racing across the yellow-green savannah is an iconic image for Africa, but imagine you’re seeing this not in Kenya or South Africa, but in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Welcome to Upemba National Park: […]
Mangrove deforestation 3x worse for climate than rainforest loss

Mangroves in Panama Degradation and destruction of the world’s seagrasses, tidal marshes, and mangroves may generate up to a billion tons in carbon dioxide emissions annually, reports a new study published in the journal PLOS ONE. The research looked at the world’s 49 million hectares of coastal ecosystems and attempted to estimate emissions from conversion. […]
Human society surpasses ‘nature’s budget’ today

Deforestation for oil palm plantations in the Malaysian state of Sabah on Borneo. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. As of today, August 22nd, humanity has overshot the world’s annual ecological budget, according to the Global Footprint Network, which tracks global consumption related to resource availability and sustainability. The organization looks at a variety of data […]
Guyana rainforests secure trust fund

Aerial view of Kaieteur Falls, Guyana. Photo © Conservation International/John Martin. The nation of Guyana sports some of South America’s most intact and least-imperiled rainforests, and a new $8.5 million trust fund hopes to keep it that way. The Guyanese government has teamed up with Germany and Conservation International (CI) to create a long-term trust […]
Making reforestation work in abandoned pasturelands

Pasture with rainforest behind in the Lacandon rainforest. Photo by: Alejandro Linares Garcia. Tropical reforestation is not easy, especially in abandoned pasturelands. But a new study in mongabay.com’s open access journal Tropical Conservation Science finds that removing grasses prior to and after planting native tree seeds significantly improves the chances of forests to take root. […]
Ten African nations pledge to transform their economies to take nature into account

African elephants at Chobe River in Botswana. Photo by: Tiffany Roufs. Last month ten African nations, led by Botswana, pledged to incorporate “natural capital” into their economies. Natural capital, which seeks to measure the economic worth of the services provided by ecosystems and biodiversity—for example pollination, clean water, and carbon—is a nascent, but growing, method […]
Scientists: if we don’t act now we’re screwed

Aerial view of the infamous Río Huaypetue gold mine in the Peruvian Amazon. This remote but massive gold mine is known for the destruction of primary rainforest, widespread mercury pollution, and child and slave labor. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Scientists warn that the Earth may be reaching a planetary tipping point due to a […]
Want to stop climate change: buy fossil fuel deposits

Coal truck in western China. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Governments, NGOs, and others fighting climate change should consider buying coal and oil deposits—not to exploit them, but to keep them from being exploited, according to a bold new policy paper in the Journal of Political Economy. Economist Bard Harstad with the Kellogg School of […]
Consumption, population, and declining Earth: wake-up call for Rio+20

Suburban sprawl in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The average American’s ecological footprint is the fifth highest in the world. Photo by: Jeremy Hance. Human society is consuming natural resources as if there were one-and-a-half Earths, and not just a single blue planet, according to the most recent Living Planet Report released today. If governments and societies […]
For Earth Day, 17 celebrated scientists on how to make a better world

Observations of planet Earth from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on July 11, 2005. Photo by: NASA. Seventeen top scientists and four acclaimed conservation organizations have called for radical action to create a better world for this and future generations. Compiled by 21 past winners of the prestigious Blue Planet Prize, a new paper […]
Smoking gun for bee collapse? popular pesticides

A honeybee tagged with an RFID microchip for tracking its movements. Photo © Science/AAAS. Commonly used pesticides may be a primary driver of the collapsing bee populations, finds two new studies in Science. The studies, one focused on honeybees and the other on bumblebees, found that even small doses of these pesticides, which target insect’s […]
As world bodies dally, private sector, local governments forge ahead on valuing nature

Shifts in the carbon market, according to Forest Trends. Click image to enlarge Despite slow progress via the U.N. process and other intergovernmental bodies, national governments, municipalities, and the private sector are moving ahead with initiatives to measure and compensate the value of services afforded by ecosystems, said a leading forestry expert speaking on the […]
Komitmen-komitmen kertas untuk industri Indonesia

Kelompok Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) Indonesia telah menjadi sasaran banyak LSM selama bertahun-tahun karena dugaan dampak negatif terhadap hutan tropis. Hal ini memuncak dalam kampanye spektakuler yang diluncurkan oleh Greenpeace pada tahun 2011 berdasarkan Ken Barbie “dumping”. Alasannya adalah bahwa mainan bermerk Mattel dituduh menggunakan produk kertas APP yang terkait dengan tebang habis hutan […]
Innovative program seeks to safeguard Peruvian Amazon from impacts of Inter-Oceanic Highway

An interview with Arbio Left bank: Arbio’s concession area. Photo by: Arbio. Arbio was begun by Michel Saini and Tatiana Espinosa Q. in the Peruvian Amazon region of Madre de Dios. The project focuses on a protective response to the increased encroachment and destructive land use driven by development. The recent construction of the Inter-Oceanic […]
Tourism for biodiversity in Tambopata

Map, Bahuaja Sonene National Park, Grasshopper Mimicking a Wasp. Photo by: David Johnston. Research and exploration in the Neotropics are extraordinary, life-changing experiences. In the past two decades, a new generation of collaborative projects has emerged throughout Central and South America to provide access to tropical biodiversity. Scientists, local naturalists, guides, students and travelers now […]
Innovative conservation: wild silk, endangered species, and poverty in Madagascar

Moth larvae munching on a host plant. Photo by: Tom Corcoran. For anyone who works in conservation in Madagascar, confronting the complex difficulties of widespread poverty is a part of the job. But with the wealth of Madagascar’s wildlife rapidly diminishing— such as lemurs, miniature chameleons, and hedgehog-looking tenrecs found no-where else in the world—the […]
California cap-and-trade law spurs U.S. forest carbon projects

Male lion in the Okavango Delta. © National Geographic Entertainment. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Now that California’s carbon market has arrived, an Australian-based company that specializes in forest carbon offsets has jump started two forest projects with private landowners in the western U.S. The new company, Forest Carbon Partners, will make the projects available […]
Tropical ecologist: Australia must follow U.S. and EU in banning illegally logged wood

Illegally logged tree in Indonesia. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Australia should join the widening effort to stamp out illegal logging, according to testimony given this week by tropical ecologist William Laurance with James Cook University. Presenting before the Australian Senate’s rural affairs committee, Laurance argued that the massive environmental and economic costs of illegal […]
Black Swans and bottom-up environmental action

“History does not crawl, it jumps.”- Nassim Nicholas Taleb “This is an opportunity for greatness which has never been offered to any civilization… in human history before – to act as a generation to do the right thing – and if we fail to receive that opportunity to act on it then my feeling is […]
Wall Street Journal under attack for climate op-ed
The Wall Street Journal is under scrutiny for publishing an op-ed attacking climate science last Friday, while turning down another op-ed explaining climate change and signed by 255 researchers with the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, which was eventually published in the journal Science. The op-ed last Friday first garnered attention because it was signed […]
Brazilian mining company connected to Belo Monte dam voted worst corporation

The world’s second largest mining company, Vale, has been given the dubious honor of being voted the world’s most awful corporation in terms of human rights abuses and environmental destruction by the Public Eye Awards. Vale received over 25,000 votes online, likely prompted in part by its stake in the hugely controversial Brazilian mega-dam, Belo […]
Economic slowdown leads to the pulping of Latvia’s forests

Aerial view over Latvian forests—please note almost all cutting patches are fresh, not yet regenerated. Photo by: R.Matrozis, 2007. The economic crisis has pushed many nations to scramble for revenue and jobs in tight times, and the small Eastern European nation of Latvia is no different. Facing tough circumstances, the country turned to its most […]
Recognizing value of nature could boost income for the world’s poor

The rural poor would substantially boost their income if the ecological services of the ecosystems they steward were valued and compensated by the rest of the world, claims a new study published in the journal Bioscience. The study assessed the value of benefits from receive from healthy and functioning ecosystems — including crop pollination, foods […]
One company behind U.S.’s top three biggest greenhouse gas emitters
The Atlanta-based Southern Company owns the top three biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. according to recent data released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Three of Southern’s coal-fired plants—two in Georgia and one in Alabama—account for around 64.74 million metric tons of total greenhouse gas emissions, higher than all of Finland’s […]
How much is the life of a whale worth?

Minke whale kabob served up at the Sea Baron restaurant in Reykjavik Harbour area, Iceland. Photo by:Thjurexoell. How do you end a decades-long conflict between culture and conservation? How do you stop a conflict where both sides are dug in? A new paper in Nature proposes a way to end the long and bitter battle […]
Indonesia could earn billions from well-designed deforestation-reduction program, finds study

Indonesia could have earned $5 billion in revenue and avoided 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions between 2000 and 2005 had a reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+) program been in place, reports an assessment published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Jonah Busch, a forest economist for Conservation […]
Eco-toilets help save hippos and birds in Kenya

The common hippo (this one in Botswana) is considered Vulnerable to extinction. Photo by: Tiffany Roufs. It may appear unintuitive that special toilets could benefit hippos and other wetland species, but the Center for Rural Empowerment and the Environment (CREE) has proven the unique benefits of new toilets in the Dunga Wetlands on Lake Victoria’s […]
Ecuador makes $116 million to not drill for oil in Amazon

A possibly ground-breaking idea has been kept on life support after Ecuador revealed its Yasuni-ITT Initiative had raked in $116 million before the end of the year, breaking the $100 million mark that Ecuador said it needed to keep the program alive. Ecuador is proposing to not drill for an estimated 850 million barrels of […]
Earth systems disruption: Does 2011 indicate the “new normal” of climate chaos and conflict?

Before and after satellite images of flooding in Ayutthaya Province, Thailand. Photo by: NASA. The year 2011 has presented the world with a shocking increase in irregular weather and disasters linked to climate change. Just as the 2007 “big melt” of summer arctic sea ice sent scientists and environmentalists scrambling to re-evaluate the severity of […]
Issues of the Day: 100 Commentaries on Climate, Energy, the Environment, Transportation, and Public Health Policy: Book Review
Issues of the Day: 100 Commentaries on Climate, Energy, the Environment, Transportation, and Public Health Policy is a wonderful overview of 100 different issues presented in two-page briefs by teams of expert individuals. With 100 articles on Global Environmental Challenges, Energy Policies, National Environmental Policies, Managing Natural Resources, Transportation and Urban Policies, Public Health Policies, […]
Carbon Coalitions: Business, Climate Politics, and the Rise of Emissions Trading: Book Review

Jonas Meckling, PhD., writes the first critical analysis demonstrating how various types of not-for-profit, governmental and for-profit coalitions over the past couple of decades have led to the development of the global carbon market, valued in 2010 at US$ 142 billion. Through clear examples explaining the impact of early chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and leaded gasoline USA […]
Paper commitments for the Indonesian industry

The Indonesian group Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) has been the target of many NGOs for years due to its alleged negative impacts on tropical forests. This culminated in a spectacular campaign launched by Greenpeace in 2011 based on Ken “dumping” Barbie. The rationale was that toy brand Mattel was accused of using APP paper […]
Mixed reactions to the Durban agreement

Click to enlarge. Early Sunday morning over 190 of the world’s countries signed on to a new climate agreement at the 17th UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Durban, South Africa. The summit was supposed to end on Friday, but marathon negotiations pushed government officials to burn the midnight oil for about 36 […]
Yasuni ITT: the virtues and vices of environmental innovation

Collared puffbird (Bucco capensis) in Yasuni National Park in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Photo by: Jeremy Hance. As the 17th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is taking place in Durban, Ecuador has embarked on the development of a project presented as highly innovative. This project targets Yasuni […]
Civilization shifting: a new leaderless era

Self-organizing networks and open-source ventures in the age of global disruption “The American Empire, and the global political economy it has spawned, is unraveling—not because of some far-flung external danger, but under the weight of its own internal contradictions. It is unsustainable—already in overshoot of the earth’s natural systems, exhausting its own resource base, alienating […]
Featured video: could a forest be worth more than a gold mine?
Jason A. Sohigian, the Deputy Director of the Armenia Tree Project (ATP), presents at TEDx on the often-unacknowledged economic value of forests, including wildlife habitat, safeguarding watersheds, soil health, and tourism. In Amerina, Sohigian estimates the economic value of forests to be between $7 million to $1.1 billion annually, if not more. “I’m suggesting that […]
11 challenges facing 7 billion super-consumers

The Turkana tribe of northern Kenya are buffeted by constant drought and food insecurity, which recent research says may be worsening due to climate change. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Perhaps the most disconcerting thing about Halloween this year is not the ghouls and goblins taking to the streets, but a baby born somewhere in […]
New study: price carbon at the point of fossil fuel extraction

Global carbon emissions are a complicated matter. Currently, officials estimate national fossil fuel-related emissions by what is burned (known as production) within a nation, but this approach underestimates the emissions contributions from countries that extract oil and oil for export. Is there a better way to account for a country’s total climate change footprint? A […]
Putting people to work: restoring our ecosystems, sequestering carbon

Richard Blaustein is a freelance environmental journalist writing primarily on climate change, biodiversity, and genetic resource issues. He has written articles for BioScience, World Watch and Ecosystem Marketplace, and other publications. Reforestation project in Madagascar. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. President Obama’s sole focus of his September 8th speech to the United States Congress was […]
Forest carbon projects rake in $178 million in 2010

An aerial view of an Amazon tributary in Peru, one of the top countries for projects in the young forest carbon market. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Investors funneled $178 million into forest carbon projects intended to mitigate global climate change last year, according to a new report by Forest Trends’ Ecosystem Marketplace. By trading […]
Panama canal drives forest conservation, offers insight on value of ecosystems

Rainforest in the Panama Canal Zone. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. As demonstrated by growing enthusiasm for conserving forests and the rise of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) program, the public is increasingly aware of the role forests play in delivering ecosystems services — like clean air and water — that benefit […]
Conservationists renew push for ‘rainforest bonds’

The Amazon rainforest. Photo by Rhett A. Butler Conservationists are renewing a push for a special class of ‘rainforest bonds’ to fund efforts to conserve tropical forests. WWF, the Global Canopy Programme (GCP) and the Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI) will on Monday issue a report arguing that forest bonds could mobilize private-sector money to augment […]
UN: private sector engagement needed to save forests
Reversing global forest decline will require private sector engagement and finance, argues a new report published by the United Nations and a coalition of more than 200 financial institutions. The report, “REDDy-Set-Grow Part II: Recommendations for international climate change negotiators,” [PDF] urges negotiators meeting at this December’s UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in […]
Conserving and Valuing Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity: Economic, Institutional and Social Challenges
Conserving and Valuing Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity: Economic, Institutional and Social Challenges provides a much needed survey reflecting upon recent institutional experience yielding analysis that concludes that there exists financially rigorous rationale to justify conservation of biodiversity for economic reasons, above and beyond the usual rationale of conservation only for biodiversity, spiritual or ethical reasons. […]
Children on the frontlines: the e-waste epidemic in Africa

A boy pushing a shopping cart load of wires going for burning in the Agbogbloshie ghetto in Accra, Ghana. Photo by: Kwei Quartey. In Agbogbloshie, a slum outside the capital city of Accra, Ghana, tons of electronic waste lies smoldering in toxic piles. Children make their way through this dangerous environment, desperate to strip even […]
Sowing the seeds to save the Patagonian Sea

The coastline of the ‘Patagonian Sea’ covered with seabirds and seals. Photo by: W. Conway. Claudio Campagna will be speaking at the Wildlife Conservation Network Expo in San Francisco on October 1st, 2011. With wild waters and shores, the Patagonia Sea is home to a great menagerie of marine animals: from penguins to elephants seals, […]
Organic farming can be more profitable in the long-term than conventional agriculture

Organic farming is more profitable and economically secure than conventional farming even over the long-term, according to a new study in Agronomy Journal. Using experimental farm plots, researchers with the University of Minnesota found that organic beat conventional even if organic price premiums (i.e. customers willing to pay more for organic) were to drop as […]
Controversial study finds intensive farming partnered with strict protected areas is best for biodiversity

Tropical forest in Ghana, an irreplaceable habitat for many species. Photo courtesy of Ben Phalan. Given that we have very likely entered an age of mass extinction—and human population continues to rise (not unrelated)—researchers are scrambling to determine the best methods to save the world’s suffering species. In the midst of this debate, a new […]
World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse
World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse clearly describes in terms of national and social security how the looming current threat to our collective global future is not from catastrophic war as many describe in hindsight the 20th Century, rather from cataclysmic climate change, biodiversity loss, and water degradation. A world […]
National parks do not contribute to poverty, finds decade-long study

A new study of Uganda’s Kibale National Park refutes the conventional wisdom that parks cause poverty along their borders. “Apparently the park provides a source of insurance; [locals] can hunt, or sell firewood or thatch from the park,” explains Jennifer Alix-Garcia, co-author of the study, with the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “It’s misleading. If you […]
Innovative program saves wildlife, protects forests, and fights poverty in Africa

Rice for market in the Luangwa Valley. Photo by: Julie Larsen Maher/WCS. Luangwa Valley in Zambia is home to stunning scenes of Africa wildlife: elephants, antelopes, zebra, buffalo, leopards, hyena, and lions all thrive in Luangwa’s protected areas, while the Luangwa River is known for multitude of snapping crocodiles and its superabundant herds of hippos. […]
The importance of recognizing viewpoints in a rapidly changing world

Part two of two Is this palm oil plantation good, bad, or something else altogether? Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Is oil palm bad? Is protecting tropical forests more important than converting them for economic development? Should we spike trees to make sure no one cuts them down? Answers to these questions depend on which […]
Adaptation, justice and morality in a warming world

The Turkana people of northern Kenya are currently being hard hit by hunger and drought, which some experts say could have links to climate change. Observers have long warned that the world’s poor and marginalized will suffer the most from climate impacts even though they are the least responsible. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. If […]
REDD calculator and mapping tool for Indonesia launched

Researchers have launched a new tool to help policy-makers, NGOs, and landowners evaluate the potential benefits and costs of Indonesia’s reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+) program at provincial and district levels. The REDD calculator, developed by Lian Pin Koh of ETH Zurich, Holly K. Gibbs of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Peter Potapov […]
Australia launches limited carbon tax
Australia’s 500 largest polluters will pay AU$23 ($24.60) per ton of carbon dioxide emitted beginning July 2012 under a plan announced by Australian prime minister Julia Gilliard. The carbon tax is expected to curb emissions 5 percent relative to 2000 levels by 2020, a target well below goals set by European countries. However the Australian […]
South Sudan’s choice: resource curse or wild wonder?

This commentary was originally published in February, but given that South Sudan has just celebrated independence over the weekend, we thought it apt to re-publish. Oryx and WCS Cessna shadow, Boma National Park. Photo by Paul Elkan and J. Michael Fay. ©2007 National Geographic/ Wildlife Conservation Society. After the people of South Sudan have voted […]
Apakah Indonesia kehilangan asetnya yang paling berharga?

Berikut ini adalah versi asli satu editorial, berjudul Will Indonesia lose the next oil palm?, yang muncul hari ini di the Jakarta Post. Hutan hujan Indonesia di Kalimantan. Foto oleh Rhett Butler, Maret 2011 Jauh di hutan hujan Kalimantan Malaysia di akhir tahun 1980-an, para peneliti mendapat penemuan luar biasa: kulit dari sejenis pohon rawa […]
Germany backs out of Yasuni deal

Germany has backed out of a pledge to commit $50 million a year to Ecuador’s Yasuni ITT Initiative, reports Science Insider. The move by Germany potentially upsets an innovative program hailed by environmentalists and scientists alike. This one-of-a-kind initiative would protect a 200,000 hectare bloc in Yasuni National Park from oil drilling in return for […]
Environment versus economy: local communities find economic benefits from living next to conservation areas

Forest temple in protected area in Thailand. Photo by: Katharine Sims. While few would question that conserving a certain percentage of land or water is good for society overall, it has long been believed that protected areas economically impoverish, rather than enrich, communities living adjacent to them. Many communities worldwide have protested against the establishment […]
Despite setbacks, voluntary carbon markets booming
The voluntary carbon market posted a 34 percent gain in 2010, trading a record 131 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtC02e). While the US accounted for the majority of trading activity, worth $424 million in total, market growth was strongest in developing countries. The news comes from Back to the Future: State and Trends […]
Dengan Moratorium Indonesia menuju pertumbuhan ekonomi rendah karbon

Artikel ini adalah versi asli editorial Tempo. Kalimantan Barat Pada akhir 1980 di pedalaman hutan Malaysia, peneliti menemukan sejenis tanaman yang hidup dirawa gambut yang mengandung serum anti HIV. Selang setahun kemudian, ketika para peneliti itu kembali untuk mengambil contohnya, tanaman tersebut telah raib. Raibnya tanaman tersebut menimbulkan kepanikan untuk segera menyimpan spesimen yang ada […]
Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet
Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet challenges us to imaging a world where growth and unmitigated consumption do not equal development. In fact, as clearly described throughout, countries with unmitigated consumption are the underdeveloped countries of the 21st Century expanding our global ecological debt at the expense of countries who are more sophisticated […]
Nobel laureates: ‘we are transgressing planetary boundaries that have kept civilization safe for the past 10,000 years’

Last week the 3rd Nobel Laureates Symposium on Global Sustainability concluded with participants—including 17 past Nobel Prize winners and 40 other experts—crafting and signing the Stockholm Memorandum. The document calls for emergency actions to tackle human pressures on the Earth’s environment while ensuring a more equitable and just world. “Science makes clear that we are […]
Is Indonesia losing its most valuable assets?
- Deep in the rainforests of Malaysian Borneo in the late 1980s, researchers made an incredible discovery: the bark of a species of peat swamp tree yielded an extract with potent anti-HIV activity.
- An anti-HIV drug made from the compound is now nearing clinical trials. It could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year and help improve the lives of millions of people.
- This story is significant for Indonesia because its forests house a similar species. In fact, Indonesia’s forests probably contain many other potentially valuable species, although our understanding of these is poor.
- Given Indonesia’s biological richness — Indonesia has the highest number of plant and animal species of any country on the planet — shouldn’t policymakers and businesses be giving priority to protecting and understanding rainforests, peatlands, mountains, coral reefs, and mangrove ecosystems, rather than destroying them for commodities?

Valuing Ecosystem Services: The Case of Multi-functional Wetlands
Valuing Ecosystem Services: The Case of Multi-functional Wetlands provides the clearest guide yet to describing and implementing in a systematic fashion payments for ecosystems services (PES) strategies for wetland protection mechanisms. By focusing initially on frameworks and obstacles to implementation of wetland protection strategies such as property rights, measuring and monitoring, behavior and compensation, cultural […]
Left alive and wild, a single shark worth $1.9 million

Tourism in Palau makes sharks worth more alive than dead finds a new study. Here a diver in Palau swims with five reef sharks. Photo by: Todd Essick. For the Pacific island nation of Palau, sharks are worth much more alive than dead. A new study by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) has […]
Archbishop Desmond Tutu: ‘quest for profit subverts our present and our future’

As the honorary speaker at an event celebrating fifty years of the conservation organization World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Archbishop Desmond Tutu stated that overconsumption and obsession with economic growth were imperiling the global environment and leaving the poor behind. “Our desire to consume everything of value, to extract every precious stone, every drop […]
What does Nature give us? A special Earth Day article
- Yet we have so disconnected ourselves from the natural world that it is easy—and often convenient—to forget that nature remains as giving as ever, even as it vanishes bit-by-bit.
- The rise of technology and industry may have distanced us superficially from nature, but it has not changed our reliance on the natural world: most of what we use and consume on a daily basis remains the product of multitudes of interactions within nature, and many of those interactions are imperiled.
- Beyond such physical goods, the natural world provides less tangible, but just as important, gifts in terms of beauty, art, and spirituality.

Election cycle linked to deforestation rate in Indonesia

Study confirms links between deforestation and local elections in Indonesia. Politicians in forest districts appear to often rely on funding from loggers, plantation developers, and miners to fund their campaigns. Increased fragmentation of political jurisdictions and the election cycle contribute to Indonesia’s high deforestation rate according to analysis published by researchers at the London School […]
Vanishing mangroves are carbon sequestration powerhouses

Mangroves may be the world’s most carbon rich forests, according to a new study in Nature Geoscience. Measuring the carbon stored in 25 mangrove forests in the Indo-Pacific region, researchers found that mangroves forests stored up to four times as much carbon as other tropical forests, including rainforests. “Mangroves have long been known as extremely […]
World Bank proposes to limit funding to coal plants

Following years of criticism from environmentalists and some governments the World Bank has proposed new rules regarding carbon-intensive coal plants, reports the Guardian. The new rules would allow lending for coal-fired plants only to the world’s poorest nations and would only lend after other alternatives, such as renewable energy, had been ruled out. World Bank […]
Bats worth billions

US agriculture stands to lose billions in free ecosystem services from the often-feared and rarely respected humble bat. According to a recent study in Science bats in North America provide the US agricultural industry at least $3.7 billion and up to a staggering $53 billion a year by eating mounds of potentially pesky insects. Yet […]
Sustainability takes only cents
Real economic global results from decoupling economic growth from unsustainable natural resource management and inefficient industrial processes are the central themes of Cents and Sustainability. Implementing wealth creation strategies at the local, national, and international level is the primary economic theme, or modus operandi, of the 21st Century, as opposed to 20th Century wealth appropriation […]
Environmental sustainability—the new economic bottom line
That’s the message in Accounting for Sustainability: Practical Insights. The book represents the compilation of a five-year project—nicknamed “A4S”—sponsored by Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, that examined the feasibility of factoring industries’ impact on the environment into their economic spread sheets. Using case studies and interviews with leaders at major accounting firms, Accounting For Sustainability […]
Stopping export logging, oil palm expansion in PNG in 2012 would cost $1.8b, says economist
Stopping logging for timber export and conversion of forest for oil palm plantations would cost Papua New Guinea roughly $1.8 billion dollars from 2012 to 2025, but would significantly reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new analysis published by an economist from the University of Queensland. Writing in Pacific Economic Bulletin, Colin […]
Coal’s true cost in the US: up to half a trillion
According to the global market coal is cheap, yet a new study in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences finds that the hidden costs of coal are expensive, very expensive. Estimating the hidden costs of coal, such as health and environmental impacts, the study found that burning coal costs the US up […]
Environmentalists and locals win fight against coal plant in Borneo

Environmentalists, scientists, and locals have won the battle against a controversial coal plant in the Malaysian state of Sabah in northern Borneo. The State and Federal government announced today that they would “pursue other alternative sources of energy, namely gas, to meet Sabah’s power supply needs.” Proposed for an undeveloped beach on the north-eastern coast […]
Selling the Forests that Saved Britain

Glenn Hurowitz is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC. You can join the campaign to protect England’s forests through the impressive Save Our Woods organization. I confess that British Prime Minister David Cameron’s proposal to auction off all 650,000 acres of England’s national forests to the highest bidder came […]
Rhino horn price matches cocaine

As a rhino poaching epidemic continues throughout Africa and Asia, the price of rhino horn has matched cocaine, according to the UK’s Daily Mirror. The price of illegal powdered rhino horn—obtained by killing wild rhinos and sawing off their horns—has hit £31,000 per kilo or nearly $50,000 per kilo. The price has already topped that […]
As South Sudan eyes independence, will it choose choose to protect its wildlife?

After the people of South Sudan have voted overwhelmingly for independence, the work of building a nation begins. Set to become the world’s newest country on July 9th of this year, one of many tasks facing the nation’s nascent leaders is the conservation of its stunning wildlife. In 2007, following two decades of brutal civil […]
Prince Charles: ‘direct relationship’ between ecosystems and the economy

At an EU meeting in Brussels, dubbed the Low Carbon Prosperity Summit, the UK’s Prince Charles made the case that without healthy ecosystems, the global economy will suffer. “We have to see that there is a direct relationship between the resilience of Nature’s ecosystems and the resilience of our national economies,” he told Members of […]
Is Obama’s clean energy revolution possible?

Recent studies point to the feasibility of a global clean energy revolution. Last night US President Barack Obama called for a massive green energy make-over of the world’s largest economy. Describing the challenge as ‘this generation’s Sputnik moment’ the US president set a goal of producing 80 percent of America’s energy by clean sources by […]

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