topic: Poverty Alleviation

topic: Poverty Alleviation

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Lebanese youths take up rods and reels to learn sustainable fishing
- Lebanon’s fisheries face multiple challenges, including the prevalence of illegal and destructive practices, like dynamite fishing.
- New initiatives aim to shift mentalities, particularly among the younger generation.
- One of them, run by the Lebanese NGO Friends of Nature, aims to train 300 youths across the country in sustainable fishing methods.

A just energy transition requires better governance & equity in the DRC
- The global energy transition has increased demand for critical minerals involved in the making of products such as lithium-ion batteries, solar panels and other renewable energy sources.
- In the Democratic Republic of Congo, this demand has fueled a poorly regulated mining sector that has forced Indigenous communities off their land, polluted water and air, and given little back in the way of infrastructure or development.
- The DRC has also recently opened 27 blocks of land for oil exploration under the auspices of lifting the nation out of poverty, but our guests say the handling of these other mineral revenues doesn’t bode well for an equitable oil boom.
- Joseph Itongwa Mukumo, an Indigenous community member of Walikale in the North Kivu province and director of ANAPA-DRC, and Christian-Géraud Neema Byamungu, Francophone editor at the China Global South Project, speak with Mongabay about the impacts of mining on local and Indigenous communities and what DRC residents need for a just energy transition.

Fish deaths near Rio Tinto mine in Madagascar dredge up community grievances
- In March 2022, following the release of wastewater from the Rio-Tinto-owned QMM mine in southeastern Madagascar, thousands of fish turned up dead in neighboring lakes, sparking protests and a government investigation.
- Civil society groups say the mine’s effluent enters neighboring water bodies with alarming regularity, endangering people’s health and robbing them of their livelihoods, and that the mining company is doing little to better the lives of Malagasy people most impacted by its activities.
- The company says it is not responsible for the fish deaths and is providing water and aid to improve relations with local people.
- “If they want to maintain good relations, the first thing to do is not release untreated wastewater into the potable water of villagers,” Tahiry Ratsiambahotra, a Malagasy activist, told Mongabay.

It’s time to embrace community-led conservation vs. the colonial kind (commentary)
- Conservation NGOs often enter countries like Fiji and advise local and Indigenous communities on how to protect their land and sea territories, or worse, acquire land and preclude the traditional residents from it.
- More NGOs are embracing community-led conservation, though, and we must embrace this, a new op-ed by a former Peace Corps volunteer in Fiji argues.
- “Fiji does not need new ideas on how to protect their ‘iqoliqoli’ (marine areas). Instead, Fiji has a lot to teach the rest of the world,” the author writes.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Rio Tinto must repair the damage caused by their Madagascar mine (commentary)
- The giant mining conglomerate Rio Tinto has a large ilmenite mine which abuts wetlands and lies in the vicinity of a river and two lakes in one of the poorest regions of the fifth poorest country in the world, Madagascar.
- Though it’s a large employer in the region, activists say that the company’s Qit Minerals Madagascar mine contaminates water supplies and reduces food security for the vulnerable local population.
- “We [are] calling for the creation of a grievance mechanism which will truly respond to people’s concerns, and that complies with international standards – not only by giving them financial compensation, but by affording them their dignity,” a new op-ed says.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Mongabay Explores the Congo Basin: The ‘heart of the world’ is at a turning point
- Mongabay Explores is a podcast series exploring the world’s unique places, species and the people working to save them.
- This first episode in our fourth season explores the Congo Basin, its vast biodiversity, environmental challenges and conservation solutions.
- Home to the world’s second-largest rainforest, it also contains unique flora and fauna found nowhere else and some of the world’s most carbon-rich peatlands.
- Featured on this episode are Conserv Congo founder Adams Cassinga and Joe Eisen, executive director of Rainforest Foundation UK, who discuss the roadblocks to protecting peatlands and rainforests from resource extraction, the challenges with foreign aid and the difficult situation locals face in a nation wracked by conflict and insufficient critical infrastructure.

Agroecology is a poverty solution in Haiti (commentary)
- Haiti is facing a political and economic crisis: Functional governance that serves the interests of Haiti’s people is largely nonexistent.
- In this commentary, Cantave Jean-Baptiste, Director of Partenariat pour le Développement Local (PDL), and Steve Brescia, Executive Director of Groundswell International, argue that replacing Haiti’s extractive agricultural and economic model with one that regenerates rural communities and landscapes and promotes food sovereignty is a potential solution to problems that plague Haitians.
- Through a regenerative model of agricultural and rural development, Haiti could become “a positive example of how some of the most marginalized smallholder farmers in the world can replace the longstanding model of extractive agriculture with one that continuously regenerates their land, food production, rural economies, and dignity.”
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Sustainable fish farming & agroecology buoy Kenyan communities
- In Kenya, small-scale onshore aquaculture combined with sustainable agroecology practices is boosting food security and incomes for smallholder farmers.
- Though most of these farms are quite small, a large amount of protein can be raised in fish ponds filled with rainwater.
- Fed with combinations of food waste and crop residues from agroforestry and organic farming, fish like tilapia can be raised sustainably and profitably.
- Nine counties have invested in supporting such aquaculture projects, with an estimated 300 fish farmers in the Gatunga region of central Kenya alone.

Chile’s denial of Dominga port project is a just energy transition victory and lesson (commentary)
- Last week, Chile rejected the Dominga copper and iron mining project and its port, proposed for a location near the Humboldt Penguin National Reserve.
- Dominga’s estimated 20 to 30 years of operation would have jeopardized a marine biodiversity hotspot, along with human livelihoods and communities’ access to basic resources.
- “Dominga’s rejection is a victory for environmental justice and a lesson about the underlying tensions in the energy transition,” writes the author of a new op-ed.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Dammed, now mined: Indigenous Brazilians fight for the Xingu River’s future
- Canadian mining company Belo Sun wants to build a huge gold mine in the Big Bend of the Xingu River in the Brazilian Amazon, but faces opposition from Indigenous communities.
- In addition to the environmental impacts, experts warn of the risk of the proposed tailings dam rupturing, which could flood the area with 9 million cubic meters (2.4 billion gallons) of toxic waste.
- The same region is already suffering the impacts of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam, which diverts up to 85% of the flow of the Xingu River, leading to a mass decline in fish that traditional riverside dwellers and Indigenous people rely on.
- The Belo Sun project was legally challenged last year, prompting supporters to harass and intimidate those who oppose the mine’s construction; tensions in the region remain high.

Weakening of agrarian reform program increases violence against settlers in Brazilian Amazon
- Residents of a landless workers’ settlement in Anapu, Pará state, in Brazil’s Amazon region, accuse the federal government of favoring large landowners, land-grabbers and corporations at the expense of poor and landless peasants.
- This year, the settlers have already suffered three attacks by landowners, with houses set on fire and a school destroyed.
- In 2021, Incra, the Brazilian federal agency responsible for addressing the country’s deep inequalities in rural land use and ownership, made an agreement with the mining company Belo Sun, which ceded 2,400 hectares (5,930 acres) of an area reserved for agrarian reform for gold exploration in exchange for equipment and a percentage of mining profits.
- In protest, landless peasants occupied one of the areas included in the agreement; since then, they have been threatened and intimidated by Belo Sun supporters and armed security guards hired by the mining company.

With fracking promising a quick energy boost, can Colombia say no?
- For the first time, Colombia’s government is openly supporting a ban on fracking because of its environmental impacts, saying it plans instead to accelerate the transition to clean energy.
- According to the previous government, fracking could bring the country the equivalent of about $72 billion in additional revenue over the next 30 years; but the Colombia Free of Fracking Alliance (ACLF) says the costs to the environment and to people’s health aren’t worth the risk.
- An anti-fracking bill went through its first debate in parliament in mid-August and still needs to go through another three rounds before it goes up for a vote.
- Activists say a clear anti-fracking stance by the government could provide a very powerful message for the rest of the region.

‘Viable, just & necessary’: Agroecology is a movement in Brazil
- Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST) has been organizing landless families to occupy, settle, and farm throughout the country since the dictatorship ended in 1985.
- Agroecology–a highly sustainable form of agriculture–has become increasingly central to their platform of land reform, and it is taught in 2,000 schools that have been established in MST encampments nationwide.
- In the four decades since its creation, MST has organized more than 350,000 families to create communities, cooperatives, farms, small-scale food processing enterprises, and farmers markets increasingly based on this sustainable method of food production, which is also good for the climate and biodiversity.
- In an interview with Mongabay, three leaders of MST’s agroecology education program share their philosophy, accomplishments and goals.

Let it grow: Q&A with reforestation and land restoration visionary Tony Rinaudo
- Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) is a community-led approach to naturally restoring degraded landscapes and ecosystems, and it’s credited with reforesting many millions of hectares of degraded land, globally.
- Though FMNR has literally sprouted in many places over time, Tony Rinaudo is the best known and most vocal proponent of this technique that’s reforested an estimated six million hectares of Niger alone.
- Encouraging cleared forests to resprout makes resilient, climate-positive agroecology practices like agroforestry possible, as crops grown in the cooling shade of trees also benefit from improved soil health and water levels.
- In a wide-ranging interview, Rinaudo shares his hopes, dreams, and insights about FMNR with Mongabay readers.

Farmer-to-farmer agroecology: Q&A with Chukki Nanjundaswamy of Amrita Bhoomi Learning Centre
- The Amrita Bhoomi Learning Centre in southern India is one of dozens of education hubs around the world providing a space for farmer-to-farmer training in agroecology.
- In a wide-ranging interview with Mongabay, the center’s Chukki Nanjundaswamy discusses their model of agriculture, its Gandhian roots, and how it grew out of the rejection of Green Revolution farming techniques that rely on chemical inputs and expensive hybrid seeds.
- Nanjundaswamy shares some of their innovative approaches to growing food without inputs, plus clever techniques to thwart notorious pests like fall armyworm, which is also prevalent in Africa.

Return to agroforestry empowers women in Nepal
- Although farmers traditionally practiced agroforestry in Nepal, they gave it up with the advent of the green revolution.
- A women’s group in Kavre district decided to return to agroforestry four years ago, and they are already seeing the benefits.
- The program is not only helping conserve soil nutrition and promote food security, it is also empowering women.

Does citizen ownership of natural resources hold the key to realizing deforestation commitments? (commentary)
- The approaches to COP26’s global commitment to stop deforestation by 2030 may be inadequate, as they can only partly address the major drivers of deforestation.
- An additional approach based on transparent economic data disclosure and mobilization of public awareness could be a promising addition to that commitment.
- Such approaches that emphasize citizen ownership of natural resources, and which quantify net owner shares, losses, and the very large prospective societal returns, could work, a new op-ed argues.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Malawi steps up action against illegal charcoal trade (analysis)
- New forestry laws and improved capacity in Malawi’s courts have improved law enforcement’s ability to fight forestry-related crimes, like illegal charcoal production.
- Under a new amendment to the country’s Forestry Act, which treats charcoal as a forest product, the government now has the authority to issue stronger penalties, fines and jail sentences.
- The USAID and UKAID-funded Modern Cooking for Healthy Forests (MCHF) program supports the government in improving its capacity to investigate and prosecute these activities.
- This post is an analysis of the situation by a MCHF contractor. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Reframing trophy hunting’s socio-economic benefits in Namibia (commentary)
- Namibia is often cited as a case study to make arguments for trophy hunting, a morally contentious practice that has been adapted into a conservation strategy there by various stakeholders including community-based conservancies.
- But a 2016 study of the total revenue generated by trophy hunting revealed that 92% went to ‘freehold’ landowners, over 70% of whom are white, while less than 8% went to communal conservancies.
- If we are sincere about aligning environmental and social justice, then centering trophy hunting related debates in Namibia around racial inequalities would be an essential and meaningful step, a new op-ed argues.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Donors must rethink Africa’s flagging Green Revolution, new evaluation shows (commentary)
- A scathing new analysis of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) finds that the program is failing at its objective to increase food security on the continent, despite massive funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the US, UK, and German governments.
- On March 30, critics of AGRA will brief U.S. congressional aides about why they think it is doing more harm than good.
- As fertilizer and food prices spike with rising energy prices from the Russia-Ukraine war, African farmers and governments need the kind of resilient, low-cost alternatives that techniques like agroecology offer, a new opinion piece argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

NGOs alert U.N. to furtive 2-million-hectare carbon deal in Malaysian Borneo
- Civil society organizations have complained to the United Nations about an opaque “natural capital” agreement in the Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo.
- The agreement, signed behind closed doors in October 2021, involved representatives from the state government and Hoch Standard Pte. Ltd., a Singaporean firm. But it did not involve substantive input from the state’s numerous Indigenous communities, many of whom live in or near forests.
- The terms ostensibly give Hoch Standard the right to monetize carbon and other natural capital from Sabah’s forests for 100 years.
- Along with the recent letter to the U.N., the state’s attorney general has questioned whether the agreement is enforceable without changes to key provisions. An Indigenous leader is also suing the state over the agreement, and Hoch Standard may be investigated by the Singaporean government after rival political party leaders in Sabah reported the company to Singapore’s ambassador in Malaysia.

Podcast: Protecting New Guinea’s forests with birds-of-paradise and ecotourism
- The island of New Guinea is home to 44 species of unique birds-of-paradise that are found nowhere else on Earth.
- The EcoNusa Foundation in Indonesia and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology have partnered on a campaign called “defending paradise,” using the birds as ambassadors for the island’s biodiversity and communities.
- Home to the third-largest tract of tropical rainforest in the world, of which 80% is still intact, New Guinea is in a unique position to conserve its forest cover as part of an economy that serves its local inhabitants, rather than extracting from and deforesting these communities.
- For this episode of Mongabay Explores, we interview Bustar Maitar, founder and CEO of the EcoNusa Foundation, and Edwin Scholes, head of the Birds-of-Paradise Project at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Malaysian officials dampen prospects for giant, secret carbon deal in Sabah
- The attorney general of the Malaysian state of Sabah has said that a contentious deal for the right to sell credits for carbon and other natural capital will not come into force unless certain provisions are met.
- Mongabay first reported that the 100-year agreement, which involves the protection of some 2 million hectares (4.9 million acres) from activities such as logging, was signed in October 2021 between the state and a Singapore-based firm called Hoch Standard.
- Several leaders in the state, including the attorney general, have called for more due diligence on the companies involved in the transaction.
- Civil society representatives say that a technical review of the agreement is necessary to vet claims about its financial value to the state and its feasibility.

Podcast: ‘Carbon cowboys’ and illegal logging
- Papua New Guinea has been the world’s largest tropical timber exporter since 2014. More than 70% of the timber produced in the country is considered illegal.
- Despite two government inquiries finding the majority of land leases on which logging occurs to be illegal, these land leases still remain in force today.
- While carbon trading has been touted as a solution, activists, journalists and even a provincial governor have expressed concerns over its economic benefits and the continued loss of customary land rights.
- For this episode of Mongabay Explores we interview Gary Juffa, governor of Oro province in Papua New Guinea, and investigative journalist, Rachel Donald.

Podcast: Exploring New Guinea’s extraordinary natural and cultural richness
- New Guinea is one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet. Making up less than 0.5% of the world’s landmass, it is estimated to contain as much as 10% of global biodiversity.
- The dense mountainous region creates barriers to development and conservation alike, but has contributed to preserving 80% of the island’s forest cover which still remains intact.
- However, experts are worried that extractive industries threaten not just its vast biodiversity but the human knowledge, culture, and livelihood of its original inhabitants, which represent more than 1,000 different languages across the island.
- Mongabay Explores is an episodic podcast series exploring unique people, places, and stories from around the globe in-depth. You may be familiar with our previous seasons on “The Great Salamander Pandemic,” and “Sumatra.”

Indigenous leader sues over Borneo natural capital deal
- An Indigenous leader in Sabah is suing the Malaysian state on the island of Borneo over an agreement signing away the rights to monetize the natural capital coming from the state’s forests to a foreign company.
- Civil society and Indigenous organizations say local communities were not consulted or asked to provide input prior to the agreement’s signing on Oct. 28.
- Further questions have arisen about whether the company, Hoch Standard, that secured the rights under the agreement has the required experience or expertise necessary to implement the terms of the agreement.

Bornean communities locked into 2-million-hectare carbon deal they don’t know about
- Leaders in Sabah, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo, signed a nature conservation agreement on Oct. 28 with a group of foreign companies — apparently without the meaningful participation of Indigenous communities.
- The agreement, with the consultancy Tierra Australia and a private equity-backed funder from Singapore, calls for the marketing of carbon and other ecosystem services to companies looking, for example, to buy credits to offset their emissions.
- The deal involves more than 2 million hectares (4.9 million acres) of forest, which would be restored and protected from mining, logging and industrial agriculture for the next 100-200 years.
- But land rights experts have raised concerns about the lack of consultation with communities living in and around these forests in the negotiations to this point.

Plantation giant Socfin accused of dodging taxes in Africa
- A new report by Bread for all, Alliance Sud, and the German Network for Tax Justice has accused Belgian-French multinational Socfin, which operates rubber and palm oil plantations across West Africa, of shifting profits from Africa to Switzerland.
- According to Socfin’s corporate filings, of 600 million euros in revenues booked in 2020, 100 million euros were said to have been generated in Europe, despite the fact that it does not produce commodities there.
- The use of “transfer pricing” to avoid taxation is common among multinationals operating in Africa, depriving low-income governments of badly needed revenue.

Forests falling for cashew monocultures: A ‘repeated mistake’ in Côte d’Ivoire (commentary)
- Savannas and dry forests in vast parts of Côte d’Ivoire are being transformed into orchards of cashew trees, just as large areas of its rainforest have fallen for cocoa.
- Grown in extensive monocultures, cashew has raised incomes but led to deforestation and incursions into protected forests, as major stakeholders overlook the loss of trees and agro-biodiversity.
- Pollination and human diets are suffering, too: nature-based approaches like agroforestry are needed to create a diversified landscape that can make cashew sustainable in the long run.
- The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

For Costa Rica’s Indigenous Bribri women, agroforestry is an act of resistance and resilience
- In Costa Rica’s Talamanca region, Indigenous Bribri women are championing sustainable agroforestry practices in a tradition that stretches back for millennia.
- Known as fincas integrales, it’s a system that mimics the diversity and productivity of the forest: timber trees provide shade for fruit trees, which in turn shelter medicinal plants, amid all of which livestock and even wildlife thrive.
- One of the few matrilineal societies in the world, the Bribri women are taking back their leadership after decades of decline and social problems in the community.
- Talamanca is also home to vast monoculture plantations of crops like bananas, a completely different farming system that relies on the heavy use of pesticides — a practice that the Bribri women say destroys the land.

Shea trees are falling fast across Africa, victims of new pressures (commentary)
- Despite the seeming bounty of shea butter products in markets and on beauty counters globally, little known threats to shea trees are looming.
- In April, the Vice President of Ghana declared the threat to shea parklands — the agricultural landscapes dotted with shea trees in grain fields — a national priority.
- But pressures on land and gender roles are changing long-standing practices that govern land use which long favored the valuable trees.
- The views expressed are of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Study shows how sustainable livelihood programs for Indonesian fishers can succeed
- Projects offering alternative livelihoods to fishers in Indonesia tend to succeed when they work closely with local NGOs and link participants to markets where they can sell what they produce.
- That’s the finding of a new study that looks at what makes successful sustainable livelihoods interventions tick, including partnership with local people to develop their skills and leverage traditional resource-management knowledge.
- Projects that failed tended not to understand the social context in which they were situated, including gender dynamics, resource and land-tenure systems, and the desires of local fishers.
- The study authors say the findings highlight best practices for alternative-livelihoods projects and are important given that communities with negative past experiences of such projects are less likely to engage with them again in the future.

Scientists call for solving climate and biodiversity crises together
- A new report from United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) highlights the importance of confronting climate change and biodiversity loss together.
- Global climate change and the unprecedented loss of species currently underway result from a similar suite of human-driven causes, the report’s authors write.
- As a result, solutions that take both issues into account have the best chance of success, they conclude.

A tale of two seas: Closed season is a mixed bag for Philippine sardines industry
- Since 2011, the Philippine government has imposed a closed fishing season on various major fishing grounds during the sardine spawning season.
- Implemented during the tail end of the year until March the following year, the closed fishing season has been both a boon and bane for communities.
- In the sardine capital of the Zamboanga Peninsula in the country’s south, the ban has boosted catch sizes for artisanal fishers, while in the Visayan Sea in the central Philippines, catches have dwindled.
- Experts point to different implementations of the fishing ban in the two regions and highlight the need to assess the economic implications of the measures, particularly to marginalized fishers.

Teachers create lasting change for people and primates via clean cookstoves (commentary)
- Kibale National Park has the highest diversity of primates in the world and 300+ species of birds, but wildlife are threatened by habitat degradation from activities like firewood collection.
- Fuel-efficient cookstoves can be used to reduce wood consumption, improve cook times, and mitigate smoke inhalation associated with cooking on open fires.
- Many such projects fail over time, but a new project involves the multiplicative effect of involving teachers in educating the community about their usefulness, since a single teacher can influence many students.
- This article is a commentary and the views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Investment in Indigenous peoples’ knowledge can drive their economic growth (commentary)
- Three shifts in investment practices could yield more sustainable, organic outcomes while honoring and empowering Indigenous communities.
- From valuing traditional knowledge to creating learning networks and structural mechanisms, Indigenous communities can be empowered and improve their livelihoods.
- Initiatives that are not built upon existing Indigenous knowledge and connections in their regions are unlikely to succeed, as was the case with the Biotechnological Center in the Amazon.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Podcast: With just 10 years left to save Sumatran elephants, what can be done now?
- In Sumatra, elephants’ forested habitat has been replaced recently at a rapid pace for commercial activities like oil palm plantations, pulp and paper production, and other uses.
- The total Sumatran elephant population was estimated to be no more than 2,800 individuals in 2007, but they likely number about half that now.
- It’s been said that there’s just 10 years left to save this critically endangered species, and experts that Mongabay spoke with say that this is probably optimistic: however, taking the meaningful actions they suggest could succeed during that time and would have additional benefits for other wildlife plus human communities, too.
- This podcast is the latest in the Mongabay Explores series, taking a deep dive into the fascinating wildlife and complicated conservation issues of this giant Indonesian island.

Nature-based solutions needed to enhance climate resilience in Southeast Asia (commentary)
- Developing nature-based solutions (NBS) is necessary to address the climate emergency and enhance resilience of biodiversity, ecosystems, and communities.
- This has been recognized globally, with NBS being one of the five primary themes of focus on the road to the 2021 UN climate conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland.
- Southeast Asia is one of the most vulnerable regions to the impacts of climate change, and would enjoy an outsized benefit from robust investments in nature-based solutions.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Podcast: Sumatra’s deforestation demystified
- Sumatra contains some of the largest tracts of intact rainforest left in the world, which are relied upon by Indigenous and local peoples plus a massive diversity of wildlife found nowhere else.
- These vast forests are under threat from the rapid expansion of industrial-scale agribusinesses that market both palm oil and pulp and paper products to the global market.
- To understand the causes of the threat better, this episode of the podcast interviews Nur Hidayati, director of top Indonesian environmental group Walhi, and Mongabay editor Philip Jacobson.
- They share that while there are some signs of progress, corruption and a lack of corporate transparency must be dealt with, and alternatives to the production of commodities like palm oil should be pursued.

Conservation must be primary goal of great ape tourism, despite COVID-driven recessions (commentary)
- The months-long closure of national parks and continued travel restrictions due to COVID-19 has disrupted a critical revenue source for great ape conservation: sustainable tourism.
- Countries which rely on tourism as a significant source of their GDP must continue to place biodiversity principles at the heart of recovery efforts, and explore alternative livelihood options for local communities.
- Where great ape tourism is concerned, conservation must always be the primary goal of any endeavor.
- This article is a commentary, the views expressed are not necessarily those of Mongabay.

Gorongosa National Park is being reforested via coffee and agroforestry
- Gorongosa National Park is reforesting itself with the help of shade-grown coffee and other agroforestry crops.
- Marketed internationally, Gorongosa Coffee and other related ventures employ many local and indigenous people via this regenerative form of agriculture.
- The park’s plantings are beneficial to wildlife, too: in addition to birds that frequently visit the agroforests, these plots are home to numerous species including a couple new-to-science ones which have just been described, including a species of bat.
- Agroforestry is the intentional planting of crops like coffee and cashew among other woody perennials such as rainforest trees, in this example: this kind of agriculture also sequesters much carbon from the atmosphere, which helps slow climate change.

In Sumatra, forest edge communities must be at the center of conservation efforts (commentary)
- Forest-edge communities in North Sumatra, Indonesia, are on the front lines when it comes to nature conservation efforts, and require greater support and social protection from the government and NGOs.
- With the failure of ecotourism in the wake of COVID-19, safeguarding community well-being requires more focus on diversification of sustainable livelihoods, and a sound strategy for the prevention of human-wildlife conflict.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Protecting African wildlife: A defense of conservation territories (commentary)
- W National Park, so named for its shape, spans Benin, Niger, and Burkina Faso, and has been called a ‘paper park.’
- Along with the adjacent Pendjari National Park, it represents one of the last best refuges for wildlife in western Africa.
- African Parks Network recently announced it would formally take over the management of the Benin side of W. To succeed, it must learn from the past and consider deploying fences and fines.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

New road cutting into Manu Biosphere Reserve in Peruvian Amazon sparks debate, fears and a film
- A new documentary film about a road project in the Manu Biosphere Reserve in Peru’s southeastern Amazon chronicles an Indigenous community’s debate about its future.
- With the road will likely come new opportunities and problems: the area is already beset by illegal logging and narco-trafficking.
- Some in the community fear the problems will worsen and their culture will erode further, others say it’s the only way for the community to survive.
- The Peruvian government has prioritized road building in this area, and just announced that this road will be connected to the Interoceanic Highway, which will perhaps magnify the problems inside Manu.

Madagascar minister calls protected areas a ‘failure,’ seeks people-centric approach
- Madagascar’s environment minister has criticized the way protected areas are managed in the country, setting the stage for a potential overhaul of the system to make conservation more people-centric.
- The stand has flustered some in the conservation community in Madagascar because it could mean reorienting their efforts in one of the planet’s most biodiverse countries, which is also extremely poor with high rates of environmental destruction.
- At a two-day meeting in late June, protected area managers, including a quasi-governmental agency and several international and local NGOs, shared details of their work, financial position, and challenges, with ministry officials.
- The ministry is expected to collate and analyze this information as a first step toward a broader evaluation and potential overhaul of the protected area system that could happen this year.

Though forests burn, trees retake farmland globally as agroforestry advances
- Agroforestry is an ancient agricultural technique being rediscovered all over the world as limitations of the globe’s highly industrialized agriculture become obvious.
- On the old and exhausted soils of Africa, trees’ power to nourish life is potentially integral to a reboot of the continent’s agriculture.
- Agroforestry is the intentional combination of woody perennials like trees and shrubs with crops and also livestock to create a resilient “food ecosystem” that benefits farmers, biodiversity and the climate.
- In an analysis for Mongabay, agroforestry expert Patrick Worms suggests that while news reports show forests burning in many places, one can take heart from the fact that trees are busily taking root upon the world’s vast swaths of farmland.

Helping the poor can protect forests too, Indonesian welfare program shows
- A study has found that a poverty-alleviation program in Indonesia was just as successful as dedicated conservation programs in reducing deforestation.
- The researchers attribute this to the program serving as a sort of insurance against harvest failures, by guaranteeing rural communities cash transfers and making it less likely they will cut down forests as a source of income.
- The study calculates that the economic benefit from the avoided carbon emissions alone could be (at maximum) 10 times greater than the cost of administering the program.
- The researchers have called for similar studies to be done in other tropical rainforest countries, and insist that poverty alleviation and forest conservation aren’t mutually exclusive goals.

Mangrove forest restoration boosts Costa Rica communities (commentary)
- Mangrove forests are key ecosystems that host high levels of biodiversity, temper storm surges, and sequester large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere.
- Despite their importance, mangrove forests endure high levels of deforestation for coastal development, charcoal production, and shrimp farms.
- For World Mangrove Day on July 26, we share a report on an ambitious mangrove restoration effort in the Terraba Sierpe National Wetland in Costa Rica.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

World Bank-backed attempt to commercialize Madagascar’s beef industry falters
- In 2018, the IFC, the arm of the World Bank that invests in the private sector, approved a $7 million investment in a company that wanted to buy zebu cattle from farmers in Madagascar and export the beef mainly to rich Middle Eastern countries.
- The BoViMA project hit a major roadblock when Malagasy President Andry Rajoelina banned the export of zebus last year, and has failed to recover.
- Despite being aimed at reducing poverty, the project has invited scrutiny for its potential impacts on food security, especially the sourcing of human-edible crops for cattle feed in one of the poorest and most water-scarce regions in the world.
- When fully operational, the slaughterhouse and feedlot would require 120,000 tons of feed and 150 million liters of water a year.

Mozambique’s trailblazing Gorongosa Park celebrates 60th anniversary, announces 60 new schools (commentary)
- July 23, 2020 marks the 60th birthday of Mozambique’s flagship national park: Gorongosa. The official ceremony featured just 20 guests due to the pandemic, but one of them was the President of Mozambique, Filipe Nyusi.
- Once at the center of the country’s civil war, the park emerged battered but has recovered remarkably in recent decades, and is now recognized as a place where successful restoration is benefitting nature, wildlife, and humans.
- The park’s strong focus on employment and education of local people is a cornerstone of its redevelopment, so it is fitting that the construction of 60 new schools was announced during the anniversary ceremony.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

One-two punch of drought, pandemic hits Madagascar’s poor and its wildlife
- Because of the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, for the first time in years poverty is rising in Madagascar, already one of the poorest countries in the world.
- Near Tsimanampesotse National Park in the southwest of the country, the loss of tourists has coincided with a disastrously dry rainy season, and restrictions associated with the pandemic are adding to rural distress; an estimated half a million people will need food aid in the coming months.
- Erratic rainfall patterns and food scarcity don’t just affect humans but also the lemurs living in the park, according to Lemur Love, a nonprofit that works in Tsimanampesotse National Park.
- The hunger crisis created by the drought and compounded by the pandemic could force people to lean even more heavily on nature; to impinge on forests and consume more wild meat to survive.

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.

It’s time to implement solutions that make the bushmeat trade unnecessary (commentary)
- Since the coronavirus emerged, there has been public outcry demanding the closure of wildlife markets that seem likely to have caused the global health crisis.
- So far, though, the highly destructive and ongoing mass trade of wildlife by bushmeat hunters in rural communities has stayed largely outside of the debate.
- There is an opportunity now to address the health and environmental issues the bushmeat trade presents, and to put forward solutions that will relegate it to the history file.
- This article is a commentary and does not necessarily reflect the views of Mongabay.

Market-based solutions cannot solely fund community-level conservation (commentary)
- In the last two decades, conservation and the market economy merged into what is called “neoliberal conservation,” where economic growth and the protection of nature are thought to be essentially compatible.
- However, conservation in places like North Sumatra will be last on the agenda when markets tumble and the economic system that people are now addicted to – in even the most remote places – collapses.
- Schemes like ecotourism and payment for ecosystem services should be paired with programs like sustainable local agriculture to prevent the re-emergence of poaching and illegal logging, and to ensure that conservation-oriented behaviors persist when markets fail.
- This article is a commentary and does not necessarily reflect the views of Mongabay.

Silvopasturing improves ranches and the environment in Panama
- Ranching in Panama dates back to the 1500s, when Spanish settlers decided that cattle were the agricultural commodity that grew best in the tropical climate.
- This tradition has severely deforested the tropical nation and depleted its soil resources too, twin problems that are worsening in tandem with the effects of climate change.
- However, the agroforestry technique of silvopasture ranching, where trees and woody shrubs are planted into livestock pastures, is gaining ground here.
- Not only is it much more profitable than conventional ranching, but the system also provides habitat for monkeys, insects, birds and more while sequestering carbon from the atmosphere.

COVID underscores the urgency of holistic community-based approaches to conservation (commentary)
- The Covid-19 pandemic throws existing environmental crises into even sharper relief, and highlights the critical importance of agile, human-centered approaches to conservation that bolster the resilience of vulnerable populations.
- In this commentary, Alasdair Harris, Executive Director of Blue Ventures, explains how his organization and its partners are mobilizing to respond to the looming public health emergency in these remote, under-served communities.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Positive ways forward for chocolate industry tainted by deforestation and child labor (commentary)
- The world’s major chocolate companies have for years vowed to rid their supply chains of child labor and deforestation without much success.
- Marianne Martinet at the Earthworm Foundation argues that there are solutions to the issue.
- One way forward that also strengthens cocoa farmers’ resilience is agroforestry, the planting of useful trees and shrubs on, around, and among cocoa trees.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

$65 million deal to protect Congo’s forests raises concerns
- The Central African Forest Initiative negotiated a deal with the Republic of Congo for $65 million in funding.
- The aim of the initiative is to protect forest while encouraging economic development.
- But environmental organizations criticized the timing and the wording of the agreement, which they argue still allows for oil drilling and exploration that could harm peatlands and forest.
- Two companies in the Republic of Congo recently found oil beneath the peatlands that could nearly triple the Central African country’s daily production.

Notes from the road: 5 revelations from traveling the Pan Borneo Highway
- Construction of the Pan Borneo Highway will add or expand more than 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) of roadway in Malaysian Borneo.
- Mongabay staff writer John Cannon spent several weeks traveling the proposed route in July 2019 to understand the effects, both positive and negative, the road could have on communities, wildlife and ecosystems.
- The project is designed to energize the economies of the region, and though officials have responded to entreaties from NGOs to minimize the harmful impacts of the road, they remain singularly focused on the economic benefits that proponents say the highway will bring.

REDD+ more competitive than critics believe, study finds
- Critics have argued that the strategy known as REDD+, or reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, hasn’t adequately slowed emissions from forest loss in developing countries in the way it was intended.
- Introduced in 2007, REDD+ is meant to help individual countries earn money for development when they lower the amount of released carbon from clearing and degrading forests.
- In a recent paper focused on the South American country of Guyana, a team of researchers argues that the problems with REDD+ stem from its implementation at the project level.
- REDD+ implementation across the jurisdiction of an entire country would address nearly all of the problems with individual REDD+ projects, and societies would benefit more financially than they currently do from commercial forest uses such as gold mining and logging, the researchers say.

The end of the road: The future of the Pan Borneo Highway
- The construction of more than 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) of road for the Pan Borneo Highway across Malaysian Borneo holds the promise of spurring local economies for its proponents.
- But from the outset, conservationists and scientists voiced concerns that the road would displace people, harm sensitive environments, and threaten Borneo’s splendid diversity of wildlife.
- As construction moves forward, these groups are working with planners to find a way for the highway’s construction to avoid the worst environmental damage.

The Pan Borneo Highway on a collision course with elephants
- Out of the controversy surrounding the Pan Borneo Highway and its potential impacts on the environment has arisen a movement to bring conservationists, scientists and planners together to develop a plan “to maximize benefits and reduce risks” to the environment from the road’s construction.
- The chief minister of the Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo has called for the highway to avoid cutting through forests.
- But a planned stretch would slice through a protected forest reserve with a dense concentration of elephants.
- A coalition of scientific and civil society organizations has offered an alternative route that its members say would still provide the desired connection while lowering the risk of potentially deadly human-wildlife conflict.

Aimed at linking communities, Malaysian highway may damage forests
- Leaders hope that the construction of a road linking the Pan Borneo Highway between the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak will connect remote communities to markets and to each other.
- But conservationists warn that the highway will cut through some of the last remaining dense forest in Sarawak.
- In addition to the challenges of building in a rainy tropical environment, the mountainous terrain will make construction and maintenance difficult, skeptics of the road say.

Connecting an island: Traveling the Pan Borneo Highway
- The Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah are in the midst of building more than 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) of the Pan Borneo Highway.
- The goal is to boost the states’ economies and connect them with the Indonesian provinces on the island of Borneo as part of the Trans Borneo Highway.
- Advocates of the highway, including many politicians, say the upgraded, widened and in some places entirely new stretches of highway will link markets and provide a jolt to the promising tourism sector in Malaysian Borneo.
- But skeptics, including scientists and conservationists, argue that parts of the highway cut through ecologically sensitive areas and that planning prior to construction didn’t adequately account for the damage that construction could cause.

As climate chaos escalates in Indian Country, feds abandon tribes
- South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Oglalla Sioux Indian Reservation is one of the most impoverished places in the U.S. But in 2018 and 2019, the reservation was struck by two horrific storms — with economic harm to their homes and livelihoods that the community’s low income residents have found it extraordinarily difficult to absorb.
- High Plains weather has been getting more variable, erratic and destructive: in 2011 came severe drought and wildfires, followed in 2012 by severe flooding. Sometimes these oscillations take the form of high-powered storms, with a rash of tornadoes in 2016, a destructive ice storm in 2018, and a bomb cyclone in 2019.
- According to the National Climate Assessment issued at the end of 2018, “Climate change is expected to exacerbate these [extreme weather] challenges.” But starting with Bill Clinton and continuing under Donald Trump, the federal government has severely slashed federal aid to Indian reservations and their low income residents.
- As a result, Pine Ridge is increasingly forced to rely on its own resources and on creative solutions, including crowdfunded local and national volunteer teams who have risen to the challenge and helped the communities repair storm damage. But as extreme weather intensifies on the High Plains, surviving there will get tougher.

Dam in Ethiopia has wiped out indigenous livelihoods, report finds
- A dam in southern Ethiopia built to supply electricity to cities and control the flow of water for irrigating industrial agriculture has led to the displacement and loss of livelihoods of indigenous groups, the Oakland Institute has found.
- On June 10, the policy think tank published a report of its research, demonstrating that the effects of the Gibe III dam on the Lower Omo River continue to ripple through communities, forcing them onto sedentary farms and leading to hunger, conflict and human rights abuses.
- The Oakland Institute applauds the stated desire of the new government, which came to power in April 2018, to look out for indigenous rights.
- But the report’s authors caution that continued development aimed at increasing economic productivity and attracting international investors could further marginalize indigenous communities in Ethiopia.

Altered forests threaten sustainability of subsistence hunting
- In a commentary, two conservation scientists say that changes to the forests of Central and South America may mean that subsistence hunting there is no longer sustainable.
- Habitat loss and commercial hunting have put increasing pressure on species, leading to the loss of both biodiversity and a critical source of protein for these communities.
- The authors suggest that allowing the hunting of only certain species, strengthening parks and reserves, and helping communities find alternative livelihoods and sources of food could help address the problem, though they acknowledge the difficult nature of these solutions.

World Agroforestry Congress gathers huge group of global boosters in France
- The 4th World Agroforestry Congress is this week and aims to bridge the gap between agroforestry science and its practical implementation worldwide.
- Over 1,200 attendees from all over the world are here presenting new research and sharing ideas for implementation of this agricultural technique that is good for food security, biodiversity, the climate, and more.
- One topic gaining extra attention at this Congress is the involvement of the private sector in boosting agroforestry’s implementation worldwide, because it can be quite profitable to do so while also supporting people and planet.
- Agroforestry combines trees alongside shrubs, crops and livestock in systems that produce food, support biodiversity, build soil horizons and water tables, and sequester carbon from the atmosphere. Mongabay has been publishing a special series on its implementation and impact worldwide.

Coops, community, and agroforestry: Q&A with coffee entrepreneur Dean Cycon
- Agroforestry is an agricultural technique that combines trees with shrubs, crops and livestock in a system that produces food, supports biodiversity, builds soil horizons and water tables, and sequesters 45 gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere worldwide.
- Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee has become a successful marketer of organic beans grown in agroforestry systems across the tropics, and has won several international sustainability awards for its direct, people-centered approach to development.
- The company sources organic beans from farmer cooperatives who have implemented agroforestry systems that provide shade for the coffee plus fruit and timber trees that are also useful to people, bugs, birds, and other animals.
- The 2019 World Agroforestry Congress in Montpellier, France, from May 20-22, aims to bridge the gap between agroforestry science and its practical implementation worldwide.

Global warming is exacerbating global economic inequality: Study
- New research finds that global warming has exacerbated global economic inequality, making already-wealthy nations even richer while slowing economic growth in poorer countries.
- According to the study, published in PNAS late last month, between 1961 and 2010 rising temperatures led to a 17 to 30 percent decrease in per-capita wealth in the world’s poorest countries. Meanwhile, the wealthy countries that are the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters have seen their per-capita GDP grow about 10 percent higher today than they would have in a world without warming.
- Poor countries that, by and large, have not enjoyed the benefits of fossil fuel energy have been made relatively poorer by the energy consumption of wealthy countries — but renewable energy sources might offer a partial solution to both the climate crisis and global inequality.

’Unprecedented’ loss of biodiversity threatens humanity, report finds
- The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services released a summary of far-reaching research on the threats to biodiversity on May 6.
- The findings are dire, indicating that around 1 million species of plants and animals face extinction.
- The full 1,500-page report, to be released later this year, raises concerns about the impacts of collapsing biodiversity on human well-being.

Community buy-in stamps out elephant poaching in Zambian park
- No elephants were poached in Zambia’s North Luangwa National Park in 2018, and the surrounding area had a 50 percent decrease in poached carcasses found.
- The North Luangwa Conservation Programme, a partnership between the Frankfurt Zoological Society and the country’s Department of Parks and Wildlife, has been around since the late 1980s and has focused its efforts on community involvement in stopping poachers from going after elephants, rhinos and other wildlife in the park.
- Staff of the program say the participation of the communities living near the park’s borders is critical to protecting the elephants of North Luangwa.
- The broader Luangwa ecosystem is home to more than 63 percent of Zambia’s elephants.

Deforestation diminishes access to clean water, study finds
- A recent study compared deforestation data and information on household access to clean water in Malawi.
- The scientists found that the country lost 14 percent of its forest between 2000 and 2010, which had the same effect on access to safe drinking water as a 9 percent decrease in rainfall.
- With higher rainfall variability expected in today’s changing climate, the authors suggest that a larger area of forest in countries like Malawi could be a buffer against the impacts of climate change.

Malaysian state chief: Highway construction must not destroy forest
- The chief minister of Sabah, one of two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo, said that the Pan Borneo Highway project should expand existing roads where possible to minimize environmental impact.
- A coalition of local NGOs and scientific organizations applauded the announcement, saying that it could usher in a new era of collaboration between the government and civil society to look out for Sabah’s people and forests.
- These groups have raised concerns about the impacts on wildlife and communities of the proposed path of the highway, which will cover some 5,300 kilometers (3,300 miles) in the states of Sabah and Sarawak.

‘The ultimate agricultural practice’: Q&A with organizers of World Agroforestry Congress 2019
- Agroforestry is an agricultural technique that combines growing trees alongside shrubs, crops and livestock in a system that produces food, supports biodiversity, builds soil horizons and water tables, and sequesters carbon from the atmosphere. Mongabay has been publishing a special series on its implementation and impact worldwide.
- The 2019 World Agroforestry Congress in Montpellier, France, from May 20-22, aims to bridge the gap between agroforestry science and its practical implementation worldwide.
- Mongabay interviewed two of the key people involved, including congress organizer Emmanuel Torquebiau, who is also a senior scientist with the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD).
- Keynote speaker Christian Dupraz is a senior scientist at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) and also shared his thoughts about the goals and potential of the event.

Proximity to towns stretches giraffe home ranges
- A recent study found that female giraffes that live close to towns have larger home ranges than those living further afield.
- The study’s authors believe that large human settlements reduce giraffes’ access to food and water.
- The team cites the importance of understanding the size of the area that giraffe populations need to survive to address the precipitous decline in the animal’s numbers across Africa in the past 30 years.

Illegal gold mining destroys wetland forest in Madagascar park
- Over the last two years, small crews of miners using rudimentary hand tools have made repeated incursions into Ranomafana National Park in southeastern Madagascar, to dig hundreds of shallow pit mines.
- The wave of mining coincides with a steadily worsening security situation in the area, complicating attempts at enforcement and limiting researchers’ ability to quantify the problem.
- In a new paper, authors used satellite imagery to analyze changes in forest cover and drone photography to survey the wetlands in the heart of Ranomafana.
- The area affected is still relatively small, but experts fear the problem could easily become much worse.

Saving the forests of the Congo Basin: Q&A with author Meindert Brouwer
- Central African Forests Forever, first published in 2017, takes readers to the heart of the continent, introducing them to the people and wildlife of this region.
- Its author, independent communications consultant Meindert Brouwer, says the book also functions as a tool for sharing information about efforts to address poverty and environmental issues in the region.
- Mongabay spoke with Brouwer to learn more about his motivations and the reception of his work in Central Africa.

Agroforestry empowers Morocco’s mountain women
- Morocco’s mountain people have grown olive trees since ancient times, but unstable weather due to climate change has recently placed that heritage in jeopardy.
- Growing olives in agroforestry systems, where olive, fig and carob trees prevent erosion and provide cover for vegetable, fruit and herb plants that grow below, has provided better harvests for a group of women’s cooperatives.
- The cooperatives, called Femmes du Rif, have boosted the value of the 328 members’ olive oil, leading to remarkable social impacts ranging from better education for their children to improved infrastructure and even promotion of some members to regional and national political positions.
- Climate variability has caused an unprecedented and ongoing delay in the cooperative’s current olive harvest, underscoring the need to continually adapt to changing conditions through techniques like agroforestry.

Agroforestry helps Tajikistan farmers overcome resource pressures
- Tajikistan is a dry and mountainous country where agroforestry is helping to stabilize soils degraded by decades of monoculture farming during the Soviet era, while growing food and providing cover for wildlife.
- “Alley cropping” is an agroforestry technique being increasingly used in the Fergana Valley, in which vegetable crops or grains are grown between rows of fruit or nut trees that shield the tender annuals from incessant wind and sun.
- Farm sizes are generally small and the population is increasing, but farmers visited by Mongabay report multiple harvests annually with alley cropping and other environmentally friendly techniques.
- Agroforestry also sequesters carbon from the atmosphere in the woody trunks and limbs of trees and vines: it’s estimated that there are currently 45 gigatons of carbon sequestered by these agricultural systems worldwide.

Amazon soy boom poses urgent existential threat to landless movement
- Brazil’s 1988 constitution and other laws established the right of landless peasants to claim unused and underutilized lands. Thousands, with the support of the landless movement, occupied tracts. At times, they even succeeded in getting authorities to set up agrarian reform settlements.
- Big landowners always opposed giving large tracts of land to the landless but, until roads began penetrating the Amazon making transport of commodities such as soy far cheaper, conflict over land was less intense.
- As new Amazon transportation projects are proposed – like the planned Ferrogrāo (Grainrail), or the BR-163 and BR-319 highway improvements – land thieves increasingly move in to steal the land, with hired thugs often threatening peasant communities, and murdering leaders.
- An example: a landless community leader named Carlos Antônio da Silva, known as Carlão, was assassinated by armed gunmen last April in Mato Grosso state. The rise of Jair Bolsonaro, who has repeatedly threatened the landless movement with violence, has residents of Amazon agrarian reform settlements deeply worried.

PNG farmers use agroforestry to fight crop diseases and reduce labor
- Papua New Guinea’s predominantly agricultural society practices agroforestry — the cropping of useful fruit and nut trees with understory vines, shrubs and vegetables in a forest-mimicking system — widely.
- The practice produces a wide array of products for farmers, from areca nuts to coconuts and cacao, and is seen as a tool to address the country’s issues of rapid population growth and shrinking land resources.
- Farmers in the eastern province of Morobe are experimenting with different combinations of cash crops and trees to deal with disease challenges and to reduce labor.
- Agroforestry also sequesters carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and provides homes and forage for wild creatures here, ranging from boars to bandicoots.

Ethiopia: Khat farming threatens food security, biodiversity, women, and agroforestry
- Southern Ethiopia has long been a stronghold of an ecologically sound version of agriculture, agroforestry, which yields food and medicine crops year round while benefiting a diversity of wild species.
- In recent decades farmers have moved toward growing only khat, a drug banned in most countries but still legal in Ethiopia and neighboring countries, on their small farms.
- The transition has led to greater farmer incomes but also declines in food security, biodiversity, soil health, and women’s empowerment.
- Researchers and activists are advocating for returning such farms at least to modified agroforestry systems of khat intercropped with food crops in the event of a massive crop failure or outright ban of the drug.

‘We see its value’: Ugandan communities benefiting from agroforestry
- Farming communities in the western Ugandan highlands of Butanda have for generations practiced agroforestry, intercropping fruit, grains and vegetables with medicinal plants, trees and grasses on their land.
- The practice allows them to harvest food throughout the year, both for sustenance and to sell, provides them with timber and other resources, and prevents soil erosion while boosting water conservation.
- A local NGO is working to promote the practice to other communities in the region, including to cattle farmers, who have often overlooked the importance of trees in providing shade and protection for their herds.
- Experts say there’s much to learn from the indigenous communities that have long practiced some form of agroforestry, and have stressed the importance of heeding this valuable store of knowledge.

Agroforestry ‘home gardens’ build community resilience in southern Ethiopia
- The village of Bule is believed to be the birthplace of traditional “home garden” agroforestry in Ethiopia.
- Farmers here practice this ancient multi-storied agroforestry system — the growing of trees, shrubs and annual crops together in a forest-mimicking system — around their homesteads, hence the name home garden.
- Trees provide fruit, timber, fodder or soil-building properties and shade for mid-story crops like coffee and enset, with vegetable and medicinal herbs growing on the forest floor.
- Farm families are more food secure, because the system provides economic, ecological and environmental attributes and provide year-round and marketable harvests.

Photos: Indian tribe revives heirloom seeds for health and climate security
- The Dongria Kondhs, devotees of their mountain gods in the remote hills of eastern India, are custodians of dozens of vanishing seed varieties.
- With the region in an agrarian crisis due to recurrent droughts and erratic rainfall, the tribe is on a mission to return to its farming roots and resuscitate long-lost heirloom crops.
- The tribe hopes the effort will help it overcome malnutrition and climate distress.
- Journalist Sonali Prasad and photographer Indrajeet Rajkhowa captured a glimpse of this effort for Mongabay.

Smallholder farmers defy cocoa’s production model in Brazil
- Filha do Combu, a family-run chocolate factory in the Amazon makes tree-to-table organic chocolate and is an exception to this model.
- Using an agroforestry system, smallholder farms like Filha do Combu can now produce their own chocolate, which allows them to have more autonomy and control over their quality of life.
- When cocoa is grown within an agroforestry system, it helps preserve the forest by reducing erosion and the use of pesticides, as well as preserving biodiversity.
- However, there is still a lack of support from the public sector for these smallholder farmers.

Agroforestry supports food security and conservation in Papua New Guinea
- Papua New Guinea’s predominantly agricultural society practices agroforestry (the cropping of useful fruit and nut trees with understory vines, shrubs, and vegetables in a forest-mimicking system) widely.
- The practice produces a wide array of products for farmers, from betel nut to coconut and cacao, and is seen as a tool to address the country’s issues of rapid population growth and shrinking land resources.
- The diverse and predictable harvest provided by agroforestry also allows the community of Gildipasi the additional luxury of putting aside nearby areas of forest for conservation: 2,000 hectares (4,940 acres) of forested areas and a marine zone have been protected in the last 18 years.
- Agroforestry also sequesters carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and provides homes and forage for wild creatures here, ranging from cockatoos to bandicoots.

Agroforestry saves soil and boosts livelihoods in Tajikistan
- Tajikistan is a dry and mountainous country where agroforestry is increasingly stabilizing soils degraded by decades of overgrazing, while growing food and providing cover for wildlife.
- “Alley cropping” is the main agroforestry technique used in the area of Faizobod, in which crops or grains are grown between rows of fruit or nut trees that shield the tender annuals from incessant wind and sun.
- Farm sizes are generally small, but farmers whom Mongabay visited enjoy multiple harvests annually, including 4 to 5 tons of apples a year in some cases.
- Agroforestry also sequesters carbon from the atmosphere in the woody trunks and limbs of trees and vines: it’s estimated that there are currently 45 gigatons of carbon sequestered by these agricultural systems worldwide.

Business and biodiversity benefit from Kyrgyz agroforestry systems
- In the arid Kyrgyz border region of Batken, farmers grow agroforestry gardens of pomegranate, peach, apple, apricot, and cherry trees which provide shade and moisture to intercropped vegetables and low fruit crops like strawberry and raspberry.
- Because irrigation water is limited, agroforestry allows farmers to grow many crops in close proximity, rather than monocrops of grain or hay as one sees in neighboring areas.
- Farmers enjoy diverse harvests for a longer period of time each year, from Spring to Autumn, and their forest-mimicking gardens are home to biodiversity too, like hedgehogs, hares, and lynx.
- Agroforestry also captures carbon dioxide from the air and stores it in branches, trunks, and soil, making it a useful solution to climate change, one which also boosts soil horizons, groundwater levels, and biodiversity.

Traditional Kyrgyz walnut-apple forests provide map for sustainable future
- In the Kyrgyz mountain town of Kyzyl-Unkur, farmers grow mixed forests of walnut, apple, apricot, pear, almond and cherry trees in a traditional system of agroforestry that stretches back centuries.
- Beneath the fruit and nut trees, honey from beehives and mushrooms are collected, and hay is mown for livestock, providing multiple products for sale and consumption during the seasons.
- Kyrgyzstan currently has numerous environmental challenges such as land, forest and pasture degradation, which agroforestry could alleviate.
- Agroforestry also sequesters atmospheric carbon in trees and soil, and provides habitat for wild creatures.

Agroforestry ‘a good investment’: Mongabay’s Washington Post op-ed (commentary)
- Mongabay’s Erik Hoffner is editing a series on agroforestry, the practice of growing useful trees with shrubs, crops, and herbs in a system that produces food, supports biodiversity, builds soil horizons and water tables, and captures carbon from the atmosphere.
- Using what he’s learned from editing the series so far, he wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post’s global edition.
- Below is an excerpt of the feature, arguing for greater investment in and deployment of agroforestry globally to benefit both people and planet.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Farmers see promise and profit for agroforestry in southern Kenya
- In Kenya’s Rift Valley, rural communities are implementing agroforestry to boost incomes and forest cover.
- Native plants like enset, a type of wild banana, and trees are being cultivated in combination with crops, which benefit each other and provide a diversity of produce.
- “Farmers are looking for new ways to widen their farm revenue as food markets become unpredictable. They are finding these answers in agroforestry,” says an official with the Kenya Forestry Service.
- Agroforestry is also a main facet of Kenya’s goal to reduce carbon emissions under the Paris climate treaty, since it sequesters a large amount of carbon in woody plants both above and below ground.

Bandits raid village near Madagascar park, killing conservation worker
- Armed bandits attacked a village on the edge of Ranomafana National Park in southeastern Madagascar in late July.
- They robbed residents and killed a technician for the Centre ValBio research institute.
- The incident is part of a growing pattern of banditry, both in the Ranomafana area and across Madagascar, where instability has increased in the run up to presidential elections scheduled for later this year.

Farmer-managed natural regeneration: the fastest way to restore trees to degraded landscapes?
- Farmer-managed natural regeneration (FMNR) is the encouragement of regeneration and then the management of trees and shrubs that sprout from tree stumps, roots and seeds found in degraded soils, such as those currently in agricultural production.
- Trees and crops grown in combination like this is called agroforestry and provides multiple benefits to farmers, crops, climate, and wildlife.
- FMNR has been successful in Niger, with 5 million hectares of formerly treeless cropland found to have re-greened via the practice.
- Cathy Watson of World Agroforestry Centre interviewed two of her colleagues currently conducting research on FMNR to hear what they’re learning and to ask if it’s the fastest (or the easiest) way to re-green degraded croplands.

Agroforestry gives Kenyan indigenous community a lifeline
- The Cherangani people of Kenya were for generations reliant on the forest for hunting, gathering and agroforestry — a way of life that was curtailed by the colonial government.
- Today, Cherangani communities living on the edge of the forest have returned to their traditions, intercropping avocado, bean and coffee plants among trees that help reduce water runoff and soil erosion, and improve nutrient cycling.
- The return to agroforestry has had wide-ranging benefits, from helping the communities improve their livelihoods, to minimizing human-animal conflicts by providing a buffer of fruit trees between the farms and forest.
- The project has received $5 million in funding, which is expected to provide training to more than 2,000 households on forest conservation and agroforestry techniques.

Lessons for developing countries in expansion of Madagascar’s protected area network
- Between 2003 and 2016, protected area coverage in Madagascar was quadrupled, from 1.7 to 7.1 million hectares. Whereas most protected areas (PAs) established in Madagascar prior to 2003 were managed solely by the Malagasy government, post-2003 PAs adopted a variety of new management and governance systems.
- The aggressive growth of Madagascar’s PA system and the diversity of approaches employed make for a particularly poignant case study, according to the authors of a recent paper published in the journal Biological Conservation that looks at what other developed countries can take away from Madagascar’s experience.
- The researchers hope that the successes achieved and the challenges identified via their examination of Madagascar’s efforts to expand its PA system might help inform how global protected area coverage continues to expand.

Cooperative agroforestry empowers indigenous women in Honduras
- The Lenca indigenous group in a dry region of Honduras has practiced agroforestry for millennia, planting timber and fruit trees over food and medicine crops to provide shade that increases soil humidity.
- Recently a group of women formed a cooperative to market their coffee grown in the shade of these trees as organic and fair trade, and they have enjoyed a sizable price increase.
- The Lencas’ agroforestry system also provides fruit and timber products that are ready for sale or trade during times of the year when the coffee crop is not ripe.
- Agroforestry is beneficial to the climate because it sequesters carbon from the atmosphere, and it also benefits biodiversity: the village has observed an increase in populations of animals like opossums, snakes, hares, armadillos, squirrels, birds and coyotes as the agroforestry plantings expand.

Red Cloud’s Revolution: Oglalla Sioux freeing themselves from fossil fuel
- Henry Red Cloud, like so many Oglalla Sioux young men, left the reservation to work in construction. When he returned home in 2002, he needed a job, and also wanted to make a difference. He attended a solar energy workshop and saw the future.
- Today, Red Cloud runs Lakota Solar and the Red Cloud Renewable Energy Center, which have become catalysts for an innovative new economic network – one that employs locals and connects tribes, while building greater energy independence among First Nations.
- The company is building and installing alternative energy systems, and training others to do the same, throughout remote areas of U.S. reservations, thus allowing the Sioux and others to leap past outdated fossil fuel technology altogether.
- Henry Red Cloud’s company has another more radical purpose: it helps provide energy to remote Water Protector camps, like the one at Standing Rock protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Solar power and other alternative energy sources are vital at such remote sites, as they power up cellphones, connecting resistors to the media and outside world.

Trumping Colombia’s peace: U.S. drug war threatens fragile accord, forests
- President Donald Trump has brought new tension to U.S.-Colombian relations, threatening to cut crucial funding at a pivotal moment in Colombia’s peace process and to decertify that agreement for a perceived failure to tackle the drug trade.
- According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, Colombian coca production has risen to an all-time high, with around 90 percent of cocaine entering the U.S. coming from that Latin American country.
- U.S. officials blame the cocaine resurgence on Colombia’s decision to halt aerial spraying of Monsanto’s glyphosate herbicide – a controversial tactic considered to have serious health and environmental impacts by some, but rejected by others.
- Now, with Colombia’s fragile internal truce taking hold, the Trump administration’s stance – reminiscent of the War on Drugs strategy of the 80s and 90s – could be a great hindrance to peace, with knock-on negative effects for Colombia’s rural population and world-renowned biodiversity.

IUCN, UN, global NGOs, likely to see major budget cuts under Trump
- President Donald Trump has proposed cutting foreign aid funding to nations and inter-governmental organizations by 32 percent, about $19 billion – cuts the U.S. Congress has yet to vote on. Voting has been delayed since September, and is next scheduled for 19 January, though another delay may occur.
- One inter-governmental organization on Trump’s cutting block is the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) best known for its global Red List, the go-to resource for the status of endangered species planet-wide. Over the past four years the U.S. contributed between 5 and 9 percent of the IUCN’s total framework funding, and 4 to 7 percent of its programmatic funding.
- Currently it remains unclear just how much, or even if, the IUCN budget will be slashed by Congress, leaving the organization in limbo. Another organization potentially looking at major cuts under Trump is TRAFFIC, the international wildlife trade monitoring network.
- Also under Trump’s axe are the UN Population Fund ($79 million), the Green Climate Fund ($2 billion, which no nation has stepped up to replace), and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ($1.96 million annually, funding already replaced by other nations for 2018).

Chainsaws imperil an old-growth mangrove stronghold in southern Myanmar
- Tanintharyi, Myanmar’s southern-most state, is home to the country’s last remaining old-growth mangrove forest. The trees support village life and a booming fishing industry up and down the coast.
- But logging for charcoal and fuel wood, much of it illegal, is taking a toll. Studies show that roughly two-thirds of the region’s remaining mangrove forests have been degraded, with consequences for people and wildlife.
- Conservationists are attempting to expand community forestry and set up mangrove reserves to combat the widespread degradation.

So long, UNESCO! What does U.S. withdrawal mean for the environment?
- Since 2011, the U.S. has refused to pay its agreed to share to UNESCO as a Member Nation who has participated in and benefited from the organization’s scientific, environmental and sustainability programs. Now, President Trump has announced U.S. withdrawal from UNESCO, effective at the end of 2018.
- Experts say the pullout won’t in fact do any major damage to the organization, with most of the harm done to UNESCO when the U.S. went into arrears starting in 2011, with unpaid dues now totaling roughly $550 million. However, America’s failure to participate could hurt millions of Americans.
- UNESCO science initiatives are international and deal multilaterally with a variety of environmental issues ranging from basic earth science, climate change, freshwater, oceans, mining, and international interrelationships between indigenous, rural and urban communities.
- Among the most famous of UNESCO science programs are the Man and the Biosphere Programme and the World Network of Biosphere Reserves, now including 669 sites in 120 countries, including the United States.

Trump family planning policy may increase population, hurt women and environment
- In January, U.S. President Donald Trump reinstated the global gag rule, first introduced under Ronald Reagan. It requires foreign NGOs receiving U.S. global family planning assistance to certify that they will not “perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning” with non-U.S. funds.
- According to Marie Stopes International (MSI), the gag rule could result in a minimum of 2.2 million abortions from 2017-2020, with 21,700 women dying as a result. And that only accounts for services lost from MSI.
- Research shows that the gag rule is also likely to increase population growth in the developing world by reducing the ability of organizations to provide family planning services. This could endanger the environment in a variety of ways. For example, population growth puts more pressure on forests and wildlife.
- A lack of family planning can lead to large families, with women spending more of their time on childrearing, largely leaving them out of any active role in community sustainability and conservation projects, as well as education programs that train them in sustainable livelihoods.

Trump budget undercuts U.S. commitment to global wildlife conservation
- President Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 budget would make extensive cuts to already underfunded programs to combat wildlife trafficking and to aid African and Asian nations in protecting elephants, rhinos, tigers, pangolins and other endangered wildlife.
- Trump’s budget proposes a 32 percent across-the-board cut in U.S. foreign assistance, affecting hundreds of sustainability, health and environmental programs.
- Major cuts would come to the Department of State, USAID, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service programs.
- Congress needs to approve a 2018 budget by December, and no one knows if it will approve the president’s desired deep cuts. However, hostility from the administration and many in the GOP to wildlife programs is unlikely to go away any time soon, with more and larger reductions in years to come.

Conservation in a weak state: Madagascar struggles with enforcement
- In the years since Madagascar’s 2009 coup d’état, the area around Ranomafana National Park has faced security threats from illegal gold miners, armed cattle rustlers, and bandits that have made it increasingly difficult to operate parts of the park.
- Elsewhere in the country illegal logging and mining, corruption, impunity and other breaches threaten to undermine conservation efforts, and limited funds make enforcement difficult.
- The problem underscores a broad challenge for conservationists across Madagascar: how to make progress on a set of environmental goals that depend fundamentally on the rule of law?
- This is the second story in Mongabay’s multi-part series “Conservation in Madagascar.”

Communities struggle to save Sabah’s shrinking mangroves
- A development plan establishing shrimp farms and timber plantations begun purportedly to reduce poverty in northern Sabah, Malaysia, has attracted criticism from local communities and NGOs, which say the project is ignoring communities’ land rights.
- Satellite imagery shows the clearing of large tracts of mangrove forest for shrimp farms. Critics of the development say this is depriving forest-dependent local communities of their livelihoods as well as threatening mangrove wildlife.
- Several communities have banded together and are together petitioning the government to officially recognize their rights to the remaining mangroves and prevent further clearing for development.

Kenyans fear proposed Trump cuts could threaten elephants, ranger jobs
- In March, President Trump proposed cuts to the 2018 USAID global budget totaling 40 percent, a recommendation Congress isn’t required to follow, but which the legislature won’t likely vote on before October 1st.
- As a result, nations in the developing world are in limbo over cuts, and worried they’ll lose vital USAID funds. Trump’s budget is only slated to reduce USAID to Kenya by 10 percent, but officials and NGOs there still fear environmental programs will be slashed.
- They worry USAID funds to protect elephants and curb trafficking, to pay community ranger salaries, and to keep East Africa’s only wildlife forensics lab open will be lost. There are no known plans to cut these programs at present, but rumors abound, with many rangers disheartened and “losing motivation to work” according to one observer.
- An unnamed U.S. embassy official in Nairobi told Mongabay that the Trump administration has, however, taken one action that could harm environmental research, with 34 visas denied to Kenyan scientists wishing to travel to the United States.

Trump budget threatens Zimbabwe climate change resilience programs
- President Trump has threatened to cut U.S. aid to developing nations by a third. This could impact Zimbabwe which receives $150 million annually to decrease food insecurity for 2.1 million people.
- Aid to Zimbabwe is important to rural farmers, victims of escalating drought due to climate change. USAID finances dams and irrigation projects, making agriculture sustainable.
- The 2018 budget isn’t due to be finalized by Congress until October 1, 2017, leaving Zimbabwe’s people in uncertainty as to the direly needed aid.
- What seems certain is that the climate resilience program will not be expanded to meet the needs of yet to be served Zimbabwean communities.

Environmental costs, benefits and possibilities: Q&A with anthropologist Eben Kirksey
- The environmental humanities pull together the tools of the anthropologist and the biologist.
- Anthropologist Eben Kirksey has studied the impact of mining, logging and infrastructure development on the Mee people of West Papua, Indonesia, revealing the inequalities that often underpins who benefits and who suffers as a result of natural resource extraction.
- Kirksey reports that West Papuans are nurturing a new form of nationalism that might help bring some equality to environmental change.

Scrapping Nigerian superhighway buffer isn’t enough, say conservation groups
- The superhighway project, intended to stimulate the Cross River state economy, will no longer include a 20-kilometer-wide buffer zone along its 260-kilometer length.
- The NGO Wildlife Conservation Society said minimizing the destruction necessary for the buffer zone was an important step, but that it will still disrupt communities and wildlife.
- Representatives of the Cross River governor, Ben Ayade, told the media that they intended to move forward with the superhighway despite the criticism.

Lakes in community hands spur gains for people and fish
- In an 8-year study covering a 500-kilometer stretch of a tributary to the Amazon, a team of scientists from Brazil and England found that the often-overfished arapaima came back in community-managed lakes.
- Protected lakes had populations more than 30 times those where commercial fishing was allowed.
- The team estimates that each protected lake is worth about $10,000 per community in revenue from arapaima stocks annually.

World Bank lifts freeze on Cambodia loans amid protests
- The Bank froze new loans to Cambodia in 2011 after an evictions scandal in the capital.
- A Cambodian official said the government would do its best to ensure the funds did not contribute to new land conflicts.
- Activists remained skeptical, calling on the Bank to address existing compensation claims of dispossessed Cambodians before restarting loans.

Photos: Can helping local people save an embattled Nigerian park?
- Gashaka-Gumti national park is home to diverse habitats and wildlife, but illegal poaching, logging, and herding, all driven by grinding poverty, are straining the park’s ecosystems.
- The Gashaka Biodiversity Project is a nascent effort to improve the wellbeing of people living in and near the park, in hopes of reducing pressure on its wildlife and natural resources.
- Some experts believe that tending to human problems will make conservation more viable, and they are now calling for a greater debate about how parks across Africa can better coexist with their human residents.

Overcoming poverty through ‘regreening’
- Regreening is the regeneration of natural vegetation on previously cleared land.
- A recent report shows success in large-scale, farmer-managed regreening in parts of Africa.
- The authors say regreening could be used to improve local economies and even reduce refugee migration.

How solar thermal curbs pollution and improves health

GoSol.org’s work in Mexico Modern environmental crises of global resources often threaten both human health as well as biodiversity. Many of these concerns have consistently escaped remediation by public health institutions and mainstream environmental organizations. The compounding severity of these threats requires solutions that are cheap, local, scalable, easily replicated and immediately beneficial to local […]
Initiative to restore 50M acres of degraded Latin American ecosystems by 2020

Rainforest in Costa Rica. A coalition of governments and organizations today pledged to restore 20 million hectares (50 million acres) of degraded forests and ecosystems across Latin America by 2020 under an initiative that aims to curb boost rural incomes, fight climate change, and increase agricultural production. The effort is backed by $365 million from […]
Scientific association calls on Nicaragua to scrap its Gran Canal

ATBC warns about canal’s impact on water security and indigenous people A volcanic island rises from Lake Nicaragua. Photo by Aaron Escobar/Creative Commons 2.0 The Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC)—the world’s largest association of tropical biologists and conservationists—has advised Nicaragua to halt its ambitious plan to build a massive canal across the country. […]
The Gran Canal: will Nicaragua’s big bet create prosperity or environmental ruin?

Chinese consortium pushes new canal through Nicaragua, threatening indigenous people, environment. A stealthy jaguar moves across a camera trap in Bankukuk, Nicaragua along the path of the Gran Canal. Conservationists fear the impact of the canal on Nicaragua’s already-imperiled wildlife, including far-roving jaguars. Photo by: Christopher Jordan. A hundred years ago, the Panama Canal reshaped […]
Booming populations, rising economies, threatened biodiversity: the tropics will never be the same

For those living either north or south of the tropics, images of this green ring around the Earth’s equator often include verdant rainforests, exotic animals, and unchanging weather; but they may also be of entrenched poverty, unstable governments, and appalling environmental destruction. A massive new report, The State of the Tropics, however, finds that the […]
Next big idea in forest conservation? Linking public health and environmental degradation

Innovation in Tropical Forest Conservation: Q&A with Dr. Chris Golden Members of the MAHERY (Madagascar Health and Environmental Research) team that includes social surveyors, lemur researchers, tenrec researchers, veterinarians and human health professionals. Photo courtesy of: Christopher Golden. Dr. Christopher Golden is an explorer on a mission. As both an epidemiologist and ecologist, he is […]
Vazaha is Malagasy for ‘gringo’: Conservation, national identity, and conflicting interest in Madagascar

Ring-talked lemur: the national animal symbol of Madagascar. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. In the fight for conservation Madagascar is without a doubt on the front lines. Not only are most of its forests already destroyed—with a mere 10% of intact forest remaining at best—but there’s still much to lose in what remains. Madagascar is […]
Seeing the Forest for the Trees: How ‘One Health’ Connects Humans, Animals, and Ecosystems

This article first appeared on the May 2014 cover of Environmental Health Perspectives and was funded under Mongabay.org’s Special Reporting Initiative: Innovation in tropical biodiversity conservation. A gossamer mist settles over the jagged peaks of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, a 318-square-kilometer park on the eastern flank of the Albertine Rift in southwest Uganda. It’s a […]
Richest countries spent $74 billion on fossil fuel subsidies in 2011, eclipsing climate finance by seven times

In 2011, the top 11 richest carbon emitters spent an estimated $74 billion on fossil fuel subsidies, or seven times the amount spent on fast-track climate financing to developing nations, according to a recent report by the Overseas Development Institute. Worldwide, nations spent over half a trillion dollars on fossil fuel subsidies in 2011 according […]
Solving ‘wicked problems’: ten principles for improved environmental management

As agriculture continues to expand at the expense of forests in the tropics, humanity struggles to meet environmental protection goals. Despite global efforts towards sustainable agriculture and some progress towards the gazetting of protected areas, there are as yet no general and effective solutions for meeting both conservation goals and food needs, and thus the […]
Building a new generation of local conservationists: how improving education in Uganda may save one of the world’s great forests

The 2013 Zoos and Aquariums: Committing to Conservation (ZACC) conference runs from July 8th—July 12th in Des Moines, Iowa, hosted by the Blank Park Zoo. Ahead of the event, Mongabay.com is running a series of Q&As with presenters. For more interviews, please see our ZACC feed. Students learn about sustainable farming. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth […]
Saving Gorongosa: E.O. Wilson on protecting a biodiversity hotspot in Mozambique

If you fly over the Great African Rift Valley from its northernmost point in Ethiopia, over the great national parks of Kenya and Tanzania, and follow it south to the very end, you will arrive at Gorongosa National Park in central Mozambique. Plateaus on the eastern and western sides of the park flank the lush […]
NGO: conflict of interests behind Peruvian highway proposal in the Amazon

As Peru’s legislature debates the merits of building the Purús highway through the Amazon rainforest, a new report by Global Witness alleges that the project has been aggressively pushed by those with a financial stake in opening up the remote area to logging and mining. Roads built in the Amazon lead to spikes in deforestation, […]
Innovative idea: wildlife income may help people withstand drought in Africa

Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe. Getting local people to become invested in wildlife conservation is not always easy, especially in parts of the world where protected areas are seen as taking away natural resources from local communities. This tension lies around Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe, where a growing population of livestock herders competes with […]
Investors beware: global land grabbing ends in ‘financial damage’ and human rights violations

A fence keeps locals from their traditional lands in Liberia, where Sime Darby has planted a contested palm oil plantation. Photo courtesy of the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI). Investing in companies that flout local community rights in developing countries often leads to severe economic losses, according to a new report from the Rights and […]
Forests, farming, and sprawl: the struggle over land in an Amazonian metropolis

An interview with Karimeh Moukaddem, a part of our on-going Interviews with Young Scientists series. Typical farmhouse outside of Parauapebas. Photo by: Karimeh Moukaddem. The city of Parauapebas, Brazil is booming: built over the remains of the Amazon rainforest, the metropolis has grown 75-fold in less than 25 years, from 2,000 people upwards of 150,000. […]
A new way to rescue Africa’s struggling soils: Planting perennials with crops

Groundnut breeder Albert Chamango grows tall perennial pigeon peas alongside his low-growing legumes to increase crop yields. Chamango works with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in Malawi. Photo credit: Jim Richardson. It sounds counter-intuitive: Grow more food by planting less. But it’s a plan that scientists think will produce enough crops […]
Wolves, mole rats, and nyala: the struggle to conserve Ethiopia’s highlands

Gaysay Grasslands in Bale Mountains National Park. Photo courtesy of the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS). There is a place in the world where wolves live almost entirely off mountain rodents, lions dwell in forests, and freshwater rolls downstream to 12 million people, but the place—Ethiopia’s Bale Mountains National Park—remains imperiled by a lack of legal […]
One in eight people suffer from malnutrition worldwide

Girl in village in Madagascar. One of the world’s poorest countries, it has been estimated that about 70 percent of Malagasy people suffer from malnutrition. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. In a world where technology has advanced to a point where I can instantly have a face-to-face conversation via online video with a friend in […]
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: […]
Soccer lights up kids’ lives: new technology produces cheap, portable power

SOCCKET: the soccer ball that produces electricity. Photo courtesy of Uncharted Play. Recently, Jessica O. Matthews and Julia Silverman, both Harvard graduates, were awarded Harvard Foundation’s Scientists of the Year award for their invention of a soccer ball that converts kinetic energy to electricity. The two women, who were both social science majors, came up […]
Wealthy consumption threatens species in developing countries

Deforestation of tropical forests for oil palm plantations in Sabah, Malaysia. Palm oil is one of over 15,000 commodities in a recent study that have been linked to biodiversity loss in developing countries connected to consumption abroad. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Consumption in wealthy nations is imperiling biodiversity abroad, according to a new study […]
Poaching in the Serengeti linked to poverty, high legal hunting prices

Lion with kill in the Serengeti ecosystem. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. In the effort to protect the Serengeti—arguably Africa’s most famous ecosystem—one of the major problems is the bushmeat trade. Population growth, little available protein, poverty, and a long-standing history of hunting has led many communities to poach wildlife within Serengeti National Park. Interviewing […]
Cowards at Rio?: organizations decry ‘pathetic’ agreement

A Malagasy girl. While Madagascar faces widespread deforestation and erosion, it is estimated that 70 percent of its people suffer from malnutrition. The Rio+20 Summit is attempting to tackle both environmental degradation and poverty, but civil groups say the agreement falls far short of what is needed. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. As world leaders […]
Experts: ignoring climate change at Rio+20 makes other goals “meaningless”

Turkana children from northern Kenya, a region which suffers prolonged and extreme droughts. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. The Climate Change Task Force (CCTF)—made up of 30 climate scientists, other experts and world leaders—warned today that sidelining climate change at the Rio+20 Summit on Sustainable Development threatened progress on the conference’s other goals, which includes […]
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 […]
Charting a new environmental course in China

An interview with the Nature Conservancy’s China Program. TNC staff and volunteers repairing signage at Meili Snow Mountain National Park in northwest Yunnan. Community benefits and ecotourism are at the heart of TNC’s program to establish national parks in China. Photo by: Tang Ling. Founded in 1951, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) works in more than […]
High-tech hell: new documentary brings Africa’s e-waste slum to life

Keyboard finds its way to Agbogbloshie. Photo by: David Fedele. Shirtless boys rapidly pull the computer apart, discarding bits and pieces, until they expose the wires, yank them out, and toss them into a fire. Acrid, toxic smoke blooms as the boys prod the wires and the fire strips the plastic around the wires, leaving […]
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 […]
Scientists say massive palm oil plantation will “cut the heart out” of Cameroon’s rainforest

Aerial photographs of Talangaye oil palm nursery in Nguti subdivision of Herakles Farms planned oil palm plantation. Photographs taken in February 2012. Photographer wishes to remain anonymous. Eleven top scientists have slammed a proposed palm oil plantation in a Cameroonian rainforest surrounded by five protected areas. In an open letter, the researchers allege that Herakles […]
Without data, fate of great apes unknown

Improving the evidence base for African great ape conservation: An interview with Sandra Tranquilli. Silverback gorilla in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Our closest nonhuman relatives, the great apes, are in mortal danger. Every one of the six great ape species is endangered, and without more effective conservation measures, they […]
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 […]
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 […]
New book series hopes to inspire research in world’s ‘hottest biodiversity hotspot’

Pristine coastal vegetation: Misool island, Raja Ampat. Photo by: Dimtry Telnov, 2009. Entomologist Dmitry Telnov hopes his new pet project will inspire and disseminate research about one of the world’s last unexplored biogeographical regions: Wallacea and New Guinea. Incredibly rich in biodiversity and still full of unknown species, the region, also known as the Indo-Australian […]
How lemurs fight climate change

An interview with Kara Moses, a part of our on-going Interviews with Young Scientists series. Kara Moses with the ruffed lemurs at Dudley Zoo, conducting undergraduate research. Kara Moses may have never become a biologist if not for a coin toss. The coin, which came up heads and decided Moses’ direction in college, has led […]
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 […]
Cultural shifts in Madagascar drive lemur-killing

The indri lemur is one of the most commonly hunted for bushmeat, though it is listed as Endangered. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler . Conservationists have often found that some cultural norms, religious beliefs, and taboos play a role in holding back traditional peoples from overusing their environment. Examples of such beliefs include days wherein […]
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 […]
Fertilizer trees boost yields in Africa

Fertilizer trees—which fix nitrogen in the soil—have improved crops yields in five African countries, according to a new study in the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability. In some cases yields have doubled with the simple addition of nitrogen-soaking trees. The research found that fertilizer trees could play a role in alleviating hunger on the continent […]
Palm oil, poverty, and conservation collide in Cameroon
- Industrial palm oil production is coming to Africa, its ancestral home. And like other places where expansion has occurred rapidly, the crop is spurring hope for economic development while generating controversy over its potential impacts.
- The world’s most productive oil seed has been a boon to southeast Asian economies, but the looming arrival of industrial plantations in Africa is raising fears that some of the same detriments that have plagued leading producers Malaysia and Indonesia—deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, conflicts with local people, social displacement, and poor working conditions—could befall one of the world’s most destitute regions.
- While there is no question that oil palm is a highly lucrative crop that can contribute to economic development, there is also little doubt that conversion of native forests for plantations exacts a heavy toll on the environment.

Green Jobs? New program to compensate poor for environmental protection

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has introduced a new program, Bolsa Verde (Green Allowance), to compensate the poor for environmental protection, reports Globo News. Eighteen thousand families living in extreme poverty in the Brazilian Amazon are expected to benefit in the first stage of the program. “We are guardians of the forest, but this will only […]
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. […]
Saving (and studying) one of Nigeria’s last montane forests

The Nigerian Montane Forest Project’s field station set in the Ngel Nyaki Forest. Photo by: Pierre-Michel Forget. Between 2000 and 2010, Nigeria lost nearly a third (31 percent) of its forest cover, while its primary forests suffered even worse: in just five years (2000 to 2005) over half of the nation’s primary forests were destroyed, […]
Viable population of snow leopards still roam Afghanistan (pictures)

Snow leopard in the Wakhan Corridor caught on camera trap. Photo by: Wildlife Conservation Society. Decades of war and poverty has not exterminated snow leopards (Panthera uncia) in Afghanistan according to a new paper in the International Journal of Environmental Studies, written by researchers with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). Instead the researchers report a […]
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 […]
Richard Leakey: ‘selfish’ critics choose wrong fight in Serengeti road

To read more about Tanzania’s recent announcement related to the Serengeti road: Unpaved road through Serengeti to progress. The controversial Serengeti road is going ahead, but with conditions. According to the Tanzanian Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Ezekiel Maige, the road will not be paved and it will be run by the Tanzanian park […]
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 […]
How do we save Africa’s forests?

Africa’s forests are fast diminishing to the detriment of climate, biodiversity, and millions of people of dependent on forest resources for their well-being. But is the full conservation of Africa’s forests necessary to mitigate global climate change and ensure environmental stability in Africa? A new report by The Forest Philanthropy Action Network (FPAN), a non-profit […]
Poverty doesn’t drive deforestation, argues new survey

Income from forests and other ecosystem generates a significant proportion of household income in developing countries, finds a six-year survey of 8,000 families from 60 sites in 24 countries. The research, which will be published by the Poverty and Environment Network, found that income from forest use accounts for more than 20 percent of rural […]
Could palm oil help save the Amazon? (2011)

Google Earth image showing deforestation frontier in the Brazilian Amazon.

This article is a longer version of story that appeared at Yale e360: In Brazil, Palm Oil Plantations Could Help Preserve Amazon. For years now, environmentalists have become accustomed to associating palm oil with large-scale destruction of rainforests across Malaysia and Indonesia. Campaigners have linked palm oil-containing products like Girl Scout cookies and soap products […]
Could palm oil help save the Amazon?
- For years now, environmentalists have become accustomed to associating palm oil with large-scale destruction of rainforests across Malaysia and Indonesia.
- Campaigners have linked palm oil-containing products like Girl Scout cookies and soap products to smoldering peatlands and dead orangutans.
- Now with Brazil announcing plans to dramatically scale-up palm oil production in the Amazon, could the same fate befall Earth’s largest rainforest? With this potential there is a frenzy of activity in the Brazilian palm oil sector.
- Yet there is a conspicuous lack of hand wringing by environmentalists in the Amazon. The reason: done right, oil palm could emerge as a key component in the effort to save the Amazon rainforest. Responsible production there could even force changes in other parts of the world.

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 […]
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 […]
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?

Program that cuts illegal logging by providing high quality health care in Borneo wins major conservation award

The co-founder of an initiative that discourages illegal logging by bringing affordable, high quality health care to impoverished communities in Indonesian Borneo has been recognized with a prestigious conservation award. Dr. Hotlin Ompusunggu, co-founder of Alam Sehat Lestari (ASRI), was this week awarded the £30,000 Whitley Award during a ceremony hosted in London by Princess […]
Cambodia’s wildlife pioneer: saving species and places in Southeast Asia’s last forest
- Suwanna Gauntlett has dedicated her life to protecting rainforests and wildlife in some of the world’s most hostile and rugged environments and has set the trend of a new generation of direct action conservationists.
- She has designed, implemented, and supported bold, front-line conservation programs to save endangered wildlife populations from the brink of extinction.
- When she first arrived in Cambodia in the late 1990s, its forests were silent.

Distressed Place and Faded Grace in North Sulawesi

A massive tree in Nantu Wildlife Reserve. Photo by: Tim O’Brien. A Contested Vision The Nantu Wildlife Reserve is located in northern Sulawesi’s Minehasa Peninsula, in Gorontalo Province. Sulawesi is among the largest of Indonesia’s some seventeen thousand islands. Its shape is bizarre: a sinuous sprawling monkey, with lavish tail, poised to leap the straits […]
Conservation organizations ask Tanzania to reconsider UNESCO status for Eastern Arc Mountains

Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete has recently stated he would withdraw the application to list two Eastern Arc Mountains as UNESCO World Heritage sites: Udzungwa and Uluguru Mountains. However, ten NGOS, both local and international, have asked the president to reconsider, according to The Citizen. President Kikwete had said the withdrawal was necessary because the mountains […]
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 […]
New eco-tour to help save bizarre antelope in ‘forgotten’ region

Saiga calves. Photo by: Igor Shpilenok. Imagine visiting a region that is largely void of tourists, yet has world-class bird watching, a unique Buddhist population, and one of the world’s most bizarre-looking and imperilled mammals: the saiga. A new tour to Southern Russia hopes to aid a Critically Endangered species while giving tourists an inside […]
Rise in wildlife tourism in India comes with challenges

A line of tourist jeeps clogs the road in a dry forest, as all eyes—and cameras—are on a big cat ambling along the road ahead; when the striped predator turns for a moment to face the tourists, voices hush and cameras flash: this is a scene that over the past decade has becoming increasingly common […]
Scientists urge Papua New Guinea to declare moratorium on massive forest clearing

Forests spanning an area larger than Costa Rica—5.6 million hectares (13.8 million acres)—have been handed out by the Papua New Guinea government to foreign corporations, largely for logging. Granted under government agreements known as Special Agricultural and Business Leases (SABLs), the land leases circumvent the nation’s strong laws pertaining to communal land ownership. Now, the […]
From the Serengeti to Lake Natron: is the Tanzanian government aiming to destroy its wildlife and lands?

Thousands of lesser flamingoes (Phoenicopterus minor) crowd in Lake Bogoria in Kenya. Nearly all of these flamingoes will breed in Tanzania’s Lake Natron, now a proposed site for soda ash mining. Photo by: Steve Garvie. What’s happening in Tanzania? This is a question making the rounds in conservation and environmental circles. Why is a nation […]
New organization seeks to make biofuels sustainable, but is it possible?
Not too long ago policy-makers, scientists, and environmentalists saw biofuels as a significant tool to provide sustainable energy to the world. However, as it became clear that biofuels were not only connected to deforestation, pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions (sometimes exceeding fossil fuels), but also competed with the global food supply and water sources, biofuels […]
5 million hectares of Papua New Guinea forests handed to foreign corporations

Papua New Guinea, as viewed from Google Earth, covers the eastern half of the island of New Guinea, as well as other Pacific Islands. During a meeting in March 2011 twenty-six experts—from biologists to social scientists to NGO staff—crafted a statement calling on the Papua New Guinea government to stop granting Special Agricultural and Business […]
New road project to run through Laos’ last tiger habitat

A new road project in Laos will run through the nation’s only protected area inhabited by breeding tigers, Nam Et Phou Louey National Park, reports the Vientiane Times. With only about two dozen tigers (Panthera tigris) left in the nation, conservationists fear that the road will harm the fragile population, which is known to be […]
Women are key to global conservation
Anne Hallum is founder of the Alliance for International Reforestation and for her work was recently named a “CNN Hero.” Her daughter, Rachel Hallum-Montes has been planting trees with her mother since the age of 12 and she is now a sociologist. In 1991, my nine-year-old daughter Rachel traveled with me to Guatemala where we […]
Great Green Wall gets go ahead
Spanning the entire continent of Africa, including 11 nations, the Great Green Wall (GGW) is an ambitious plan to halt desertification at the Sahara’s southern fringe by employing the low-tech solution of tree planting. While the Great Green Wall was first proposed in the 1980s, the grand eco-scheme is closer to becoming a reality after […]
2% GDP could turn global economy green

Investing around $1.3 trillion, which represents about 2% of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP), into ten sectors could move the world economy from fossil-fuel dependent toward a low carbon economy, according to report by the UN Environment Program (UNEP). In addition, the investments would alleviate global poverty and keep stagnating economies humming, while cutting […]
Saving Madagascar’s largest carnivorous mammal: the fossa

The fossa. Photo © Nick Garbutt . An interview with Mia-Lana Lührs, a part of our Interviews with Young Scientists series. Madagascar is a land of wonders: dancing lemurs, thumbnail-sized chameleons, the long-fingered aye-aye, great baobab trees, and the mighty fossa. Wait—what? What’s a fossa? It’s true that when people think of Madagascar rarely do […]
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 […]
Leaked government study: road will damage Serengeti wildlife, despite president’s assurances

Tanzania’s President, Jakaya Kikwete, today gave promises that his proposed road project, which will bisect the Serengeti plains, would not hurt one of the world’s most famed parks and one of its last great land migrations. “The Serengeti is a jewel of our nation as well as for the international community. […] We will do […]
Better protection of cultural heritage sites could generate $100B in poor countries

Cultural heritage sites could play a key role in efforts to alleviate poverty provided they are protected from a growing range of threats, says a new report published by the Global Heritage Fund (GHF). The report, Saving Our Vanishing Heritage: Safeguarding Endangered Cultural Heritage Sites in the Developing World, assesses 500 major archaeological and heritage […]
Corporations, conservation, and the green movement

The rise of industrial deforestation and its implications for conservation. The image of rainforests being torn down by giant bulldozers, felled by chainsaw-wielding loggers, and torched by large-scale developers has never been more poignant. Corporations have today replaced small-scale farmers as the prime drivers of deforestation, a shift that has critical implications for conservation. Until […]
Environmentalists must recognize ‘biases and delusions’ to succeed

As nations from around the world meet at the Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya, Japan to discuss ways to stem the loss of biodiversity worldwide, two prominent researchers argue that environmentalists and conservationists need to consider paradigm shifts if biodiversity is to be preserved, especially in developing countries. Writing in the journal Biotropica, Douglas […]
The ultimate bike trip: the Amazon rainforest

An interview with Doug Gunzelmann. Like all commercial roads through rainforests, the 5,300 kilometer long Rodovia Transamazonica (in English, the Trans-Amazonia), brought two things: people and environmental destruction. Opening once-remote areas of the Amazon to both legal and illegal development, farmers, loggers, and miners cut swathes into the forest now easily visible from satellite. But […]
Can ’boutique capitalism’ help protect the Amazon?

An interview with Katherine Ponte, founder of Ecostasy. Most companies talk green, but few—almost none in fact—actually walk the walk. Sustainable design company, Ecostasy, not only walks the walk, but actually seeks out among the most challenging places to work: the imperiled Brazilian Amazon. Specializing in hand-crafted products by indigenous groups—such as jewelry, pots, and […]
Losing nature’s medicine cabinet
- In all the discussions of saving the world’s biodiversity from extinction, one point is often and surprisingly forgotten: the importance of the world’s species in providing humankind with a multitude of life-saving medicines so far, as well as the certainty that more vital medications are out there if only we save the unheralded animals and plants that contain cures unknown.
- Already, species have provided humankind everything from quinine to aspirin, from morphine to numerous cancer and HIV-fighting drugs. “As the ethnobotanist Dr. Mark Plotkin commented, the history of medicine can be written in terms of its reliance on and utilization of natural products,” physician Christopher Herndon told mongabay.com.
- Herndon is co-author of a recent paper in the journal Biotropica, which calls for policy-makers and the public to recognize how biodiversity underpins not only ecosystems, but medicine.

The true cost of the Commonwealth Games

UK newspapers have been flooded this week and last by reports of the Commonwealth Games’ venue literally caving in and collapsing, athletes have deemed their village accommodation “filthy” and terrorists have apparently threatened attacks. Thanks to the late monsoon this year, floods are now a fear, and the Games’ venue has been choked by a […]
Berantas Pemburu, Lakukan Penyamaran, Selamatkan Hewan Liar: Semua dalam Satu Hari Kerja Arief Rubianto

Arief Rubianto akan berbicara di Wildlife Conservation Network Expo di San Francisco, 3 Oktober 2010. Arief Rubianto, kepala satuan anti-perburuan di Pulau Sumatera, Indonesia, mendeskripsikan kehidupan sehari-harinya dengan ini: “seperti Mission Impossible”. Tidak percaya pada saya? Rubianto telah bertarung melawan penebang liar, baku tembak dengan pemburu, berhasil bertahan selama 4 hari di hutan tanpa makanan, […]
Fighting poachers, going undercover, saving wildlife: all in a day’s work for Arief Rubianto

Arief Rubianto will be speaking at the Wildlife Conservation Network Expo in San Francisco on October 3rd, 2010. Arief Rubianto, the head of an anti-poaching squad on the Indonesian island of Sumatra best describes his daily life in this way: “like mission impossible”. Don’t believe me? Rubianto has fought with illegal loggers, exchanged gunfire with […]
Could industrial interests ruin payments for environmental services?

One of the biggest ideas in the conservation world over the past decade is Payments for Environmental Services, known as PES, whereby governments, corporations, or the public pays for the environmental services that benefit them (and to date have been free), i.e. carbon, biodiversity, freshwater, etc. For example, Reducing Emissions through Deforestation and Forest Degradation […]
Threatened on all sides: how to save the Serengeti

Tanzania’s plan to build a road through the Serengeti has raised the hackles of environmentalists, conservationists, tourists, and wildlife-lovers worldwide, yet the proposed road is only the most recent in a wide variety of threats to the Serengeti ecosystem. A new study in mongabay.com’s open-access journal Tropical Conservation Science looks at the wide variety of […]
Financial crisis pummels wildlife and people in the Congo rainforest

Spreading over three central African nations—Cameroon, Central African Republic, and Republic of Congo—the Sangha tri-national landscape is home to a variety of actors: over 150,000 Bantu people and nearly 20,000 pygmies; endangered species including forest elephants and gorillas; and, not least, the Congo rainforest ecosystem itself, which here remains largely intact. Given its interplay of […]
Into the Congo: saving bonobos means aiding left-behind communities, an interview with Gay Reinartz

Gay Reinartz will be speaking at the Wildlife Conservation Network Expo in San Francisco on October 3rd, 2010. Unlike every other of the world’s great apes—the gorilla, chimpanzee, and orangutan—saving the bonobo means focusing conservation efforts on a single nation, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While such a fact would seem to simplify conservation, […]
Dapatkah Biochar Selamatkan Dunia?

Sebuah wawancara dengan Laurens Rademakers dari Biochar Fund. Biochar – penggunaan arang yang diproduksi dari membakar biomassa untuk pertanian – mungkin merupakan saru dari revolusi lingkungan dan sosial yang terpenting di abad ini. Praktek yang sepertinya sederhana ini – sebuah teknologi yang kembali ke ribuan tahun yang lalu – memiliki potensi untuk membantu mengurangi sebagian […]
Could biochar save the world?

An interview with Laurens Rademakers of Biochar Fund. Biochar—the agricultural application of charcoal produced from burning biomass—may be one of this century’s most important social and environmental revolutions. This seemingly humble practice—a technology that goes back thousands of years—has the potential to help mitigate a number of entrenched global problems: desperate hunger, lack of soil […]
Camp merges technology and conservation for local students

From July 23-25, Taiwanese undergraduates held a camp in Bukit Lawang, Sumatra, that taught local high school students to use technology as a conservation tool. The Taiwanese volunteers aimed to help local people in this popular rainforest tourism destination to use the Internet to research and promote sustainable tourism practices. The high school students, who […]
If Madagascar’s biodiversity is to be saved, international community must step up

The international community’s boycott of environmental aid to Madagascar is imperiling the island’s unique and endangered wildlife, according to a new report commissioned by the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Bureau of Africa. International aid to the desperately poor nation slowed to a trickle after a government coup last year, including a halt on […]
Controversial changes to Brazilian forest law passes first barrier

An amendment to undermine protections in Brazil’s 1965 forestry code has passed it first legislative barrier, reports the World Wide Fund for Nature-Brasil (WWF). Yesterday the amendment passed a special vote in the Congress’s Special Committee on Forest Law Changes. Pushed by a bloc of Brazilian legislatures known as the ‘ruralistas’, due to their ties […]
Amazon and Atlantic Forest under threat: politicians press to dilute Brazil’s forestry law

A group of Brazilian legislatures, known as the ‘ruralistas’, are working to change important aspects of the Brazil’s landmark 1965 forestry code, undermining forest protection in the Amazon and the Mata Atlantica (also known as the Atlantic Forest) and perhaps heralding a new era of booming deforestation. The ruralistas, linked to big agribusiness and landowners, […]
PBB Peringatkan Harga Makanan Dapat Meningkat hingga 40 Persen
Sebagian harga makanan pokok dapat naik hingga sebanyak 40 persen di dekade ke depan, menurut laporan baru oleh Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) PBB. The Agricultural Outlook 2010-19 menemukan bahwa harga makanan global gandum dan padi-padian dapat melompat antara 15 dan 40 persen dari tingkat 1997-2006, setelah krisis pangan dunia di tahun 2007. Minyak sayur […]
UN warns food prices could rise by 40 percent

Some staple food prices could rise by as much as 40 percent in the next decade, according to a new report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The Agricultural Outlook 2010-19 found that global food prices of wheat and coarse grains could jump between 15 and 40 percent from 1997-2006 levels, prior to […]
Inga alley cropping: a sustainable alternative to slash and burn agriculture

It has been estimated that as many as 300 million farmers in tropical countries may take part in slash and burn agriculture. A practice that is environmentally destructive and ultimately unstable. However, research funded by the EEC and carried out in Costa Rica in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Mike Hands offers hope […]
One man’s mission to save Cambodia’s elephants

Since winning the prestigious 2010 Goldman Environmental Prize in Asia, Tuy Sereivathana has visited the US and Britain, even shaking hands with US President Barack Obama, yet in his home country of Cambodia he remains simply ‘Uncle Elephant’. A lifelong advocate for elephants in the Southeast Asian country, Sereivathana’s work has allowed villagers and elephants […]
Collapsing biodiversity is a ‘wake-up call for humanity’

A joint report released today by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the UN Environment Program (UNEP) finds that our natural support systems are on the verge of collapsing unless radical changes are made to preserve the world’s biodiversity. Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Ahmed Djoghlaf, called the bleak report “a […]
Farming snails to save the world’s rarest gorillas

In a place of poverty and hunger, how do you save a species on the edge of extinction? A difficult question that conservationists have long-been working to tackle, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has come up with a new plan to protect the world’s most endangered gorilla, the Cross River gorilla, from poachers by providing […]
Food crisis in Niger occurring “out of the public eye”

The West African nation of Niger is facing an increasingly alarming food crisis as the UN announced it would double the number of people it was feeding today despite continuing budget shortfalls in its World Food Program (WFP). Failing rains have caused crop yields in Niger to decline, while food prices are rising and livestock […]
World failing on every environmental issue: an op-ed for Earth Day

The biodiversity crisis, the climate crisis, the deforestation crisis: we are living in an age when environmental issues have moved from regional problems to global ones. A generation or two before ours and one might speak of saving the beauty of Northern California; conserving a single species—say the white rhino—from extinction; or preserving an ecological […]
Jane Goodall renews her faith in nature and humanity during the “Gombe 50” anniversary, An interview with Dr. Jane Goodall

Celebrating 50 years of pioneering research and sharing an inspiring vision for our future, world-renowned primatologist and conservationist Dr. Jane Goodall renews her faith in nature and humanity during the “Gombe 50” anniversary. 2010 marks a monumental milestone for the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) and its founder, Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE. Fifty years ago, Goodall, […]
Cochabamba Climate Conference: the Coca Contradiction

In the high stakes game of geopolitics, the small and economically disadvantaged Andean nation of Bolivia has little clout. Now, however, the country’s indigenous president Evo Morales wants to establish more of a significant voice on the world stage. Recently, he has turned himself into something of a spokesperson on the issue of climate change. […]
Women in Bangladesh help biodiversity with homegardens

Overpopulated, largely poor, and environmentally degraded, the nation of Bangladesh has known its share of woes. Yet even in face of struggles, including a forest loss of over 90 percent, the women of Bangladesh are aiding the country’s struggling people and biodiversity through the establishment of some 20 million homegardens. Long-neglected by the government and […]
Just how bad is meat-eating for the environment?

While livestock may emit a smaller share of global greenhouse gases than thought, it’s overall environmental impact remains significant. Meat is booming. In the past thirty years, livestock production has increased threefold. In many parts of the world where incomes are expanding, meat, once a delicacy, is now eaten regularly and voraciously. But what are […]
Where two worlds collide: visiting Tabin Wildlife Reserve

The vehicle stopped on the way into Tabin Wildlife Reserve as a troop of pig-tailed macaques began making their way across the road. In a flash a domestic dog, which may or may not have been ‘ownerless’, ambushed the group. Chaos erupted as the big predator fell upon the community. As quickly as it began […]
How free trade has devastated Africa’s farmers and poor

A push in the mid-1980s for Africa to embrace free trade to aid its economies backfired in many of the continent’s poorest countries, argues a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Africa was pushed to rollback government involvement in development and instead to rely on the private sector: government […]
Will it be possible to feed nine billion people sustainably?

Sometime around 2050 researchers estimate that the global population will level-out at nine billion people, adding over two billion more people to the planet. Since, one billion of the world’s population (more than one in seven) are currently going hungry—the largest number in all of history—scientists are struggling with how not only to feed those […]
Forgotten species: discovering the shimmer of Maathai’s Longleg

Everyone knows the tiger, the panda, the blue whale, but what about the other five to thirty million species estimated to inhabit our Earth? Many of these marvelous, stunning, and rare species have received little attention from the media, conservation groups, and the public. This series is an attempt to give these ‘forgotten species‘ some […]
Dams a ‘monument of corruption’: Baru Bian, new leader of Sarawak’s People’s Justice Party

In an interview with the Bruno Manser Fond, the new leader of the Malaysian state Sarawak’s People’s Justice Party (PKR), Baru Bian, spoke out against the state government’s plans for mega-dams in the middle of the rainforest, as well as continued rainforest destruction and corruption. Baru, a lawyer by trade, stated that the indigenous communities […]
Bolivia’s President blames capitalism for global warming

The President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, clearly frustrated with the progression of talks at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, today blamed capitalism for global warming. “Who is responsible? The responsibility lies on the capitalist system—we have to change the capitalist system,” he said. His remarks clearly outlined the gulf between wealthy northern countries and […]
Is the US sinking climate change talks at Copenhagen?

While it’s difficult to know what’s truly going on inside the Bella Center at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, a pattern seems to be emerging of the United States being unwilling to compromise on, well, anything. Last week instead of moving talks forward, the United States appeared to spend much of its time […]
Pope Benedict: environmental crisis requires review of world’s economic model

Pope gives advice on how to move forward at Copenhagen. Pope Benedict XVI has released a message linking world peace with preserving the environment for the World Day of Peace, which will be held on January 1st 2010. In it Benedict calls for a “long-term review” of the world’s current economic model, including “[moving] beyond […]
Well-known climate change denialist labels activists in Copenhagen ‘Hitler Youth’
Prominent climate change denialist and past advisor to Margaret Thatcher, Viscount Christopher Monckton, has persisted in labeling protestors in Copenhagen ‘Hitler Youth’ despite little historical connection. The initial exchange between Monckton and climate change activists occurred when activists with the nonprofit group SustainUS and other organizations briefly gate-crashed a meeting of the global warming skeptical […]
US think-tank: islands affected by global warming should wait for trickle-down money

Poor island nations threatened by rising seas should wait for money through trickle-down economics, according to the founder of the US-based Competitive Enterprise Institute. The free-market think tank believes that curbing greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change will be too costly to the US and global economies. “If the focus in this century is […]
Profile of the carbon footprint of the global poor: the challenge of alleviating poverty and fighting global warming

Two of the world’s most serious issues—poverty and climate change—are interconnected. With a rise in one’s income there usually comes a rise in one’s carbon footprint, thereby threatening the environment. Wealthy nations have the highest per capita carbon footprints, while developing nations like India and China—which are experiencing unprecedented economic growth—are becoming massive contributors of […]
World requires radical new economic models to fight poverty and mitigate global warming

A new report calls for a radical re-envisioning of current economic models in order to tackle poverty, mitigate and adapt to climate change, and solve other environmental problems. The report was crafted by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and was supported by The Working Group on […]
Oil palm workers still below poverty line, despite Minister’s statements

On October 19th, Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Tan Sri Bernard Dompok told parliament that oil palm harvesters and rubber tappers are living above Malaysia’s national poverty line, according to a story in the Malaysian Insider. But now representatives of the workers are saying Dompok lied. “It is a blatant lie and it has been […]
Using fish as livestock feed threatens global fisheries

Fish doesn’t just feed humans. Millions of tons of fish are fed every year to chickens, pigs, and even farmed fish even in the midst of rising concerns over fish stocks collapses around the world. Finding an alternative to fish as livestock feed would go a long way toward preventing the collapse of fish populations […]
Declaration calls for more wilderness protected areas to combat global warming

Meeting this week in Merida, Mexico, the 9th World Wilderness Congress (WILD9) has released a declaration that calls for increasing wilderness protections in an effort to mitigate climate change. The declaration, which is signed by a number of influential organizations, argues that wilderness areas—both terrestrial and marine—act as carbon sinks, while preserving biodiversity and vital […]
200 million more people going hungry

The war on hunger is becoming a rout—and we’re losing. The UN World Food Program (WFP) announced today that during the last two years 200 million more people are going hungry. Josette Sheeran, executive director of the WFP, said that a number of factors have led to the continuing rise of hunger in the world, […]
“Money is not a problem,” palm oil CEO tells conservationists during speech defending the industry
- Earlier this month at a colloquium to implement wildlife corridors for orangutans in the Malaysian state of Sabah, Dr. Yusof Basiron, the CEO of Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC), told conservationists and primate experts that the palm oil industry was ready to fund reforestation efforts in the corridors.
- “We can raise the money to replant [the corridors] and keep contributing as a subsidy in the replanting process of this corridor for connecting forests,” Basiron said in response to a question on how the palm oil industry will contribute.
- “Money is not a problem.”

Kenya’s pain, part two: decades of wildlife decline exacerbated by drought
- Not many years ago if you were planning a trip to Africa to see wildlife, Kenya would be near the top of the list, if not number one.
- Then violent riots in late 2007 and early 2008 leaving a thousand dead tarnished the country’s image abroad.
- When calm and stability returned, Kenya was again open for tourism, and it’s true that most travelers were quick to forget: articles earlier this year announced that even with the global economic crisis Kenya was expecting tourism growth.
- However, a new disaster may not be so quickly overcome.

Palm oil industry pledges wildlife corridors to save orangutans

In an unlikely—and perhaps tenuous—alliance, conservationists and the palm oil industry met this week to draw up plans to save Asia’s last great ape, the orangutan. As if to underscore the colloquium’s importance, delegates on arriving in the Malaysian State of Sabah found the capital covered in a thick and strange fog caused by the […]
Could agroforestry solve the biodiversity crisis and address poverty?, an interview with Shonil Bhagwat

Sixth in a series of interviews with participants at the 2009 Association of Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) conference. With the world facing a variety of crises: climate change, food shortages, extreme poverty, and biodiversity loss, researchers are looking at ways to address more than one issue at once by revolutionizing sectors of society. One […]
Working to save the ‘living dead’ in the Atlantic Forest, an interview with Antonio Rossano Mendes Pontes

Fourth in a series of interviews with participants at the 2009 Association of Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) conference. The Atlantic Forest may very well be the most imperiled tropical ecosystem in the world: it is estimated that seven percent (or less) of the original forest remains. Lining the coast of Brazil, what is left […]
After declining 95% in 15 years, Saiga antelope begins to rebound with help from conservationists

An interview with Elena Bykova, founder of the Saiga Conservation Alliance In a decline on par with that suffered by the American bison in the Nineteenth Century, in the 1990s the saiga antelope of the Central Asian steppe plummeted from over one million individuals to 50,000, dropping a staggering 95 percent in a decade and […]
Kenya’s pain: famine, drought, government ambivalence cripples once stable nation

Part one in a two part look at the crisis in Kenya. The next article will focus on how the drought is impacting wildlife. Kenya was once considered one of Sub-Saharan Africa’s success stories: the country possessed a relatively stable government, a good economy, a thriving tourist industry due to a beautiful landscape and abundant […]
Alleviating poverty and saving biodiversity are inherently linked argue scientists

Twenty-nine scientists argue in Science today that the world will not be able to lift up the world’s poor unless it also addresses global biodiversity loss. They say that the same underlying problems—exploitation of resources, unsustainable overconsumption, climate change, population growth—are exacerbating global poverty and the extinction of species. “Action is urgently needed to identify […]
Innovative reforestation project threatened by ‘regime change’ in Madagascar, an interview with Rainer Dolch

Third in a series of interviews with participants at the 2009 Association of Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) conference. In Madagascar the TAMS Program (Tetik’asa Mampody Savoka, meaning “the project to bring back the forest”) is under threat due to the new government’s unwillingness to provide funding. The current government, after gaining power in a […]
Saving gorillas by bringing healthcare to local people in Uganda, an interview with Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka

How can bringing healthcare to local villagers in Uganda help save the Critically Endangered mountain gorilla? The answer lies in our genetics, says Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, wildlife veterinarian and director of Conservation through Public Health (CTPH). “Because we share 98.4% genetic material with gorillas we can easily transmit diseases to each other.” Therefore, explains Kalema-Zikusoka […]
Economists, scientists warn that world crises require new order of international cooperation and enforcement

A group of environmental scientists and economists warn that under current governing models the number and scale of human-caused crises are “outrunning our ability to deal with them”. The researchers, writing in Science, say that “energy, food and water crises, climate disruption, declining fisheries, ocean acidification, emerging diseases and increasing antibiotic resistance are examples of […]
Guatemala latest country to declare food crisis: nearly half a million families face food shortages
The President of Guatemala, Alvaro Colom, has announced a “state of public calamity” to tackle food shortages throughout the Central American nation. The failure of bean and corn crops from drought, which cut the yields of these staple crops in half, has brought the crisis to a head. In addition, prime agricultural land in Guatemala […]
Concerns over deforestation may drive new approach to cattle ranching in the Amazon

As the world’s biggest cattle producer, Brazil braces for change While you’re browsing the mall for running shoes, the Amazon rainforest is probably the farthest thing from your mind. Perhaps it shouldn’t be. The globalization of commodity supply chains has created links between consumer products and distant ecosystems like the Amazon. Shoes sold in downtown […]
The Pope: “creation is under threat”
Pope Benedict XVI spoke today on environmental issues, singling out the importance of a September U.N. summit in New York to work on negotiations for an international framework to tackle global warming, preparing for the U.N. Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen in December. The Pope said that he wishes “to encourage all the participants […]
Record hunger: one billion people are going hungry worldwide

A new estimate by the UN FAO estimates that one billion people are currently going hungry: the highest number in history. Largely exacerbated by the global economic crisis, the number of the world’s hungry has risen by 100 million people. The economic crisis has led to more hunger due to lower wages and layoffs worldwide. […]

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