topic: Poverty

topic: Poverty

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Urban heat islands have solutions; many tropical cities can’t afford them
- In tropical cities, urban heat islands (UHIs) exacerbate an already challenging hot-humid heat burden for residents. UHIs are formed by urban artificial surfaces like concrete and asphalt that retain heat by day and slowly release it at night, never giving cities a chance to cool.
- Natural and infrastructure solutions can be implemented to combat the UHI effect and cool cities. These include creating shade by planting trees or extending roofs; inducing wind to blow down urban streets; constructing green roofs and walls; painting roofs light colors; and changing social practices to avoid midday heat.
- But sufficient funding is needed to implement many of these changes. Wealthy cities, like Singapore, have an advantage over cities with less funding. Many tropical mega-cities, including Lagos, Mumbai, Manila, Jakarta and São Paulo, are working to reduce UHI effects, but struggle to afford full implementation.
- The 2026-2027 El Niño is now growing in strength and expected to bring record temperatures to the tropics. These extreme temperatures, combined with UHI effects and urban poverty, could prove deadly for vulnerable residents, which include the poor, young, old, those with disabilities, and those working outdoors.

Can a new methodology save the carbon market?
- A new variation of carbon credits, which puts more focus on biodiversity protection and income generation, is attempting to get the carbon market back on track.
- The methodology for the new initiative called Balance focuses on climate mitigation by making sure that the biodiversity and social aspects of carbon projects succeed first.
- The voluntary carbon market has faced widespread criticism in recent years for a lack of transparency as well as allegations of greenwashing and human rights abuses.

New study suggests Ethiopia’s protected areas may be impacting local well-being
- A Nature study finds Ethiopia’s protected areas significantly reduced deforestation and agricultural expansion between 2000 and 2020, showing stronger-than-expected conservation performance.
- The study also identifies clear “trade-offs,” with households near many protected areas reporting lower food security and well-being, while a smaller share of sites achieved “win-win” outcomes for both people and nature.
- “Win-win” outcomes that deliver better outcomes for both people and nature occurred in protected areas where conservation objectives were more closely aligned with local livelihood systems, said the authors, and is likely to require more than simply increasing protected area budgets.
- Researchers say there are some important caveats to their estimates, such as difference in time periods for environmental and well-being data and a possible missing confounder but say they believe the results are overall robust.

IMF lending programs linked with deforestation should be rethought (commentary)
- The IMF provides financial assistance to countries to balance their books but recent research by the co-authors of a new commentary shows this support comes at an environmental cost: an increase in deforestation.
- The co-authors reveal countries experience 9.2% higher annual tree cover loss during years in which they are under such programs, which is an unnecessary cost; and thus, the IMF should consider how to fix this issue while it’s currently reviewing the design of its lending programs, they argue.
- As the IMF rethinks its lending approach, these groundbreaking new findings underscore the need to deepen understanding of the impacts of forest and biodiversity loss on economic systems, the co-authors write.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Rising waters and mounting pressures collide on Kenya’s Lake Turkana
- Lake Turkana in northern Kenya has risen by as much as 10 meters (33 feet) over the past 15 years, displacing communities, flooding infrastructure and reshaping fisheries in one of the country’s most climate-vulnerable regions.
- Scientists and local residents are still debating the causes of the lake’s expansion, with theories ranging from heavier rainfall linked to climate change, to tectonic and groundwater shifts, while researchers say Ethiopia’s Gibe III Dam upstream has also altered the lake’s ecological dynamics.
- Fishers around the lake say catches have declined sharply in recent years as changing water levels alter breeding grounds and fish distribution, while drought drives more pastoralists to rely on fishing for survival.
- Researchers and local advocates say Lake Turkana suffers from decades of poorly planned development and limited scientific monitoring, though new efforts are underway to improve data collection and guide more sustainable management of the lake and its fisheries.

‘Turkana has always adapted to change’: Interview with environmentalist Ikal Angelei
- Local livelihoods around Kenya’s Lake Turkana have long shifted between pastoralism, fishing, farming and trade as people adapted to a landscape defined by fluctuation.
- But as the scale and intensity of erratic climate patterns, mounting pressure on its fisheries, and conflict over resources has increased, their space has shrunk.
- The lake has long been a place where the poorest could make a living, but as the economic value of resources here increases, there is a risk that they will be pushed out by those better placed to access infrastructure and opportunities.

In northern Kenya, a shifting Lake Turkana reshapes traditional livelihoods
- According to Kenya’s environment ministry, water levels in Lake Turkana have risen by several meters in the past decade, expanding its total surface area by around 10%.
- The rise, mainly caused by increased rainfall far upstream, has affected communities and infrastructure on the lake’s shores, as well as disrupted fishing in its changing waters.
- Extended drought in surrounding areas has drawn thousands of new fishers to Lake Turkana, sometimes sparking conflict.
- The people who have lived here the longest are negotiating their survival in what a researcher calls “a system with many variables, both natural and human.”

‘We will not know what we lost’: Conservation fallout a year after USAID shutdown
When then-U.S. president John F . Kennedy created the United States Agency for International Development in 1961, it was meant primarily to administer health and food aid around the world. In the decades since, USAID expanded to become one of the world’s largest financial contributors to conservation, providing nearly $400 million annually before the end […]
Shipping’s biofuel gamble could deepen Africa’s land squeeze and food insecurity (commentary)
- Using crops as fuel to cut emissions from the shipping sector could cause more harm than good, the authors of a new op-ed argue.
- Next month, leaders will gather at the UN’s International Maritime Organization meeting to lay down the rules for decarbonizing shipping, and African governments must ensure that crop-based biofuels are not a part of the solution, they say.
- “African states should demand that food-based biofuels are excluded from shipping’s decarbonization targets, and insist on robust sustainability criteria to prevent the conversion of forests, peatlands, and other high-biodiversity or community-managed areas into fuel plantations,” the authors say.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Climate-resilient housing models slow to gain ground in disaster-prone Bangladesh
- In one of the world’s most climate sensitive deltas, disasters are on the rise. The need for resilient housing has become a significant concern for Bangladesh.
- Amid various challenges, architectural models to promote sustainable construction materials are emerging.
- Experts recommend separate zonal building codes for specific climatic event-prone areas.

Growing number of Indigenous Twa forced out of DRC’s forests and into towns
- In the last decade, there has been a steady increase in the number of Indigenous Twa families leaving forests their ancestors relied on in the Congo Basin for urban centers in northern North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo.
- According to reports seen by Mongabay, the number of Indigenous peoples climbed by 5,000 in some small towns.
- For some Twa people, moving to the city is not only a consequence of expulsion from protected areas, but also a choice motivated by insecurity, trying to escape land conflicts with Bantu communities and finding alternative livelihoods as extractive activities take up forests.
- These displacements have profound social, cultural, and environmental consequences, say environmental activists, as Twa people severe ties with the forest, and traditional ecological knowledge built over millennia declines.

What it will take to protect the Amazon, according to Virgilio Viana
The first time Virgilio Viana saw the Amazon, he was a 16-year-old traveling with two school friends, moving along dirt roads, then continuing by boat as the forest rose around them. The trip set something in motion. It stayed with him through a forestry degree, a Ph.D. on the region, and later a professorship in […]
Lemurs are at risk. So are the people protecting them.
Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. Patricia Wright arrived in Madagascar nearly four decades ago to look for a lemur thought to be extinct. She found it, along with a new species, and then ran headlong into a broader reality: protecting wildlife would depend […]
Pioneering primatologist in Madagascar shares decades of conservation wisdom
Patricia Wright, a pioneering primatologist who established the Centre ValBio research station in Madagascar, began her work there in 1986. As the person who first described the golden bamboo lemur (Hapalemur aureus) to Western science, her contributions led to the creation of Ranomafana National Park, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. She joins the Mongabay […]
São Tomé and Príncipe commits to creating a marine protected area network
- São Tomé and Príncipe will establish eight marine protected areas (MPAs) covering 93 square kilometers (36 square miles) of coastal habitats in the Gulf of Guinea.
- The island nation aims to protect its marine environment while improving the lives of fishing communities, who rely heavily on fish for protein.
- Current challenges include the decline of pelagic fish stocks and loss of biodiversity due to indiscriminate fishing practices and climate change.
- The law designating the MPAs is expected to be enacted in September.

24 years on, part one of WTO treaty curbing fisheries subsidies takes effect
- The first part of the WTO’s treaty banning harmful fisheries subsidies, known as Fish One, entered into force Sept. 15 after more than two decades of negotiation and three years of ratification.
- It bans subsidies for IUU fishing and exploitation of overfished stocks while requiring parties to the treaty to disclose detailed data on fleets, catches and subsidy programs.
- Yet it allows certain subsidies to persist; for instance, for fishers targeting unassessed fish stocks or “managed” overfished stocks.
- The treaty will lapse in four years if no follow-up “Fish Two” deal can be reached, but negotiations remain stalled.

How will fisheries change in a hotter world? Experts share
- Fifty years from now, in 2075, global ocean temperatures are forecast to rise by between 2° and 5° Celsius (3.6° and 9° Fahrenheit). Warming is already reshaping fisheries worldwide, and even more dramatic changes are expected as fish largely move to cooler latitudes.
- These fish migrations will change ecosystem patterns and will likely have unexpected consequences even in places far from the fish themselves. They also may devastate fishing communities, both on an economic scale and a social one.
- However, there are potential solutions to avoid the most catastrophic effects for fishers and ecosystems alike, including setting aside some ecosystems as marine protected areas, changing fisheries management strategies and retraining communities to provide supplemental income.

In western Nepal, farmers switch to growing turmeric; elephants stay away
- In western Nepal’s Bardiya district, farmers from marginalized communities are replacing traditional crops with turmeric — a plant elephants avoid — dramatically reducing human-elephant conflict.
- Backed by conservation groups and supported by scientific studies, the community-led shift to turmeric farming offers a replicable model for coexistence.
- The initiative combines traditional knowledge, scientific research and targeted support to turn a long-standing conservation challenge into an opportunity for ecological and economic resilience.

Displaced and dispossessed, Cambodia’s ethnic Cham fishers struggle to survive
- Ethnic Cham fishers in Cambodia say they face repeated evictions from their floating homes, often timed with major events and justified as environmental protection.
- They report unequal treatment by authorities, with harsher crackdowns on their small-scale fishing while larger, illegal operations go unpunished.
- Displacement and enforcement have pushed many into poverty, with little access to alternative livelihoods or support systems.
- Experts and advocates warn that current policies risk erasing Cham culture and call for more equitable, historically informed solutions.

Encouraging signs from a no-fishing zone in Comoros could inspire others
- Signs of improvement in fisheries arising from a small no-fishing zone in the Indian Ocean nation of Comoros could inspire the establishment of more such zones across the archipelago.
- A fishers’ group installed the first no-take zone inside a marine protected area off the island of Anjouan in 2021. The group’s president told Mongabay fishers are now encountering more fish nearer to the shore outside the zone’s bounds.
- Buoyed by the results, a local nonprofit plans to establish five no-take zones in Anjouan over the next two years, covering 425 hectares (1,050 acres) of coral reefs.
- Earlier efforts to enforce temporary fishing closures to promote octopus fisheries for export and reduce pressure on fragile coral reef ecosystems didn’t lead to the anticipated benefits.

To host UN climate talks, Brazil chose one of its poorer cities. That’s no accident
NEW YORK (AP) — This year’s United Nations climate conference in November is in Belem, Brazil, a city facing high poverty and infrastructure challenges. It’s a location chosen in part to highlight the urgent need for climate action. COP30 President-designate André Corrêa do Lago said in an interview with The Associated Press that it’s important […]
A forest garden project attempts to expand into the Sahel
- A project in the Sahel and East Africa claims to fight both soil erosion and poverty through regenerative agroforestry.
- U.S.-based NGO Trees for the Future (TREES) trains farmers in what it calls the forest garden approach, an ancient model to plant diverse species next to each other.
- The approach is one of seven selected by the U.N. as a world restoration flagship program and aims to scale up massively to plant a billion trees by 2030.
- However, some experts say the potential for scaling up is limited, especially in the semiarid Sahel region, given the need for easily accessible sources of water.

After USAID cut, Ethiopia’s largest community conservation area aims for self-sufficiency
- The abrupt end of USAID funding has disrupted conservation progress in Ethiopia’s Tama Community Conservation Area (TCCA), where community-led efforts had curbed illegal hunting and led to an increase in elephant and giraffe populations.
- In response, local leaders and communities are working to become financially self-sufficient by establishing income-generating initiatives.
- But progress is hindered by the lack of a functioning office, expert staff, and basic operational resources.
- While experts recognize the area’s strong potential for ecotourism and community benefit, they warn that poverty, conflict and climate challenges, combined with weak infrastructure, make external technical and financial support critical for a successful transition to self-reliance.

Indigenous forest stewards watch over one of the world’s rarest raptors
The Philippine eagle is considered one of the world’s rarest birds of prey, with roughly 400 breeding pairs left in the wild. Amid ongoing threats from logging and hunting, Indigenous forest rangers are helping conservationists protect the species’ nests and habitat, Mongabay contributor Bong S. Sarmiento reported last year. Datu Julito Ahao of the Obu […]
Extreme heat, violent storms: How Rio de Janeiro is facing its new climate reality
- Extreme weather in Rio de Janeiro is getting worse: recent years have brought record-breaking heat and rainfall to Brazil’s second-largest city, intensifying the risk of floods and landslides, particularly in vulnerable urban areas.
- Experts warn of “climate gentrification,” where urban development and inequality amplify disaster risk; more than 20% of Rio’s homes are in high-risk areas, many in precariously built communities on hill slopes or low-lying flood zones.
- Disaster prevention measures exist but fall short; while sirens provide some early warnings, experts stress the need for comprehensive urban reform, nature-based solutions like the “sponge city” design, and greater community involvement to truly mitigate risks.

Viral standoff at Philippines’ Mt. Pinatubo exposes decades of Indigenous exclusion
- On April 18, Indigenous Aeta protesters blockaded the trail to the Philippines’ Mount Pinatubo, a popular tourist attraction in an area recognized as Aeta ancestral land.
- Aeta leaders say their communities have been deprived of their rightful share of tourism revenues.
- While businesses and tours catering to travelers have flourished and the local government collects fees, Indigenous locals are engaged as freelance guides for less than minimum wage.

Palm oil company uses armed forces, tear gas against protesting villagers in Cameroon
- Cameroonian villagers protesting on March 25 against plantation company Socapalm’s replanting of oil palm trees on disputed land were dispersed with tear gas by local law enforcement.
- Socapalm rejects the villagers’ claim that the company was supposed to return this land following an amendment to its lease, explaining that this part of the plantation is not leased.
- Gendarmes escorted Socapalm workers despite a local official’s previous statement that replanting required an agreement with villagers.
- Socfin, Socapalm’s parent company, has been accused of land grabbing and human rights abuses, with investigators confirming many community grievances at its Cameroon plantations.

New allegations of abuse against oil palm giant Socfin in Cameroon
- For several years, coastal communities in Edéa, Cameroon, have been campaigning for the return of land they say Socapalm, a subsidiary of Luxembourg-based Socfin, illegally seized from them.
- Now a series of reports published by environmental consultancy the Earthworm Foundation in February have substantiated new allegations land grabbing and of sexual harassment on Socapalm’s oil palm plantations.
- The Socfin group requested Earthworm’s investigations of its subsidiaries’ operations in Cameroon and elsewhere; following the release of the latest findings, the group has announced the launch of quarterly action plans aimed at addressing the rights violations.
- Financial institutions that have backed Socfin declined to say how they will in their turn respond to findings that show that guidelines for ethical investment have not been effective across Socfin’s operations in West and Central Africa, as well as Asia.

‘Degrowth’ gains a foothold in Barcelona and support internationally
With the purchasing power of middle and working-class citizens shrinking as billionaires hoard ever more wealth, many people are searching for a new economic reality in line with their ecological values and planetary boundaries. “People are really hungry for solutions [and] really hungry to find alternatives,” says Alvaro Alvarez, a journalist and filmmaker of the […]
Global South’s urban poor burn plastic as fuel, researchers say
Plastic is increasingly being used for fuel by much of the world’s urban poor, to the detriment of the health of local people and their environment, researchers argue in a new commentary. As of 2021, roughly 56% of the world lives in an urban area. At the same time, nearly half a billion tons of […]
Coffee companies are readier for the EUDR than they claim (commentary)
- Major coffee companies and industry groups attempted to weaken the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), delaying its implementation until 2025 despite its goal of curbing deforestation and human rights abuses.
- The EU’s coffee imports contribute significantly to deforestation, child labor, and slavery, with millions of workers trapped in extreme poverty and forests being cleared for plantations, especially in Brazil, Vietnam, and Indonesia.
- Despite industry complaints, compliance costs are minimal, and coffee supply chains are simpler than other regulated commodities; companies must take responsibility without shifting the burden onto vulnerable farmers and workers.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Environmental & rights activists flee and hide as M23 captures DRC’s cities
- In January and February 2025, Goma, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s North Kivu province, and Bukavu, the second-largest city in the country, fell to the rebel armed group M23 (the March 23 Movement). The group also captured the town of Minova.
- Human rights and environmental activists who were among the few to denounce illegal extractive activities and protect natural resources in the mineral-rich region are now hiding out of fear for their lives due to the nature of their work. Some conservationists have also lost their salaries as the U.S. government freezes USAID foreign aid.
- The spread of the armed conflict is accentuating the illegal exploitation of natural resources in the entire region by multiple actors, environmentalists say, contributing to deforestation and erosion of biodiversity.
- It’s also documented that the M23 is earning a substantial amount of money by illegally smuggling and laundering minerals, like tantalum, from the DRC.

Amid bombs and chaos, Goma’s displaced residents share their fears and hopes
- Fighting between the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the M23 armed group around Goma has displaced and upended life for hundreds of thousands of people.
- Many have fled camps for internally displaced people and taken refuge in host families’ homes, schools and churches amid widespread looting and killing.
- Still, many residents in and around Goma say they maintain hope for a peaceful future.

The key factors fueling conflict in eastern DRC
- The eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has witnessed armed conflicts running for decades, with a recent onslaught by M23, a Rwanda-backed rebel force, displacing hundreds of thousands of people.
- Conflicts in eastern DRC stem from ethnic tensions linked to the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, political and corporate corruption, and the lingering effects of Western colonialism, exacerbated by natural resource extraction.
- Experts say that minerals are a significant factor in violence, but not the sole cause, even as armed groups like M23 have used their trade for financing operations.
- The ongoing instability in the eastern DRC necessitates a comprehensive approach beyond addressing conflict minerals and delving into the historical roots of the conflict, says an expert.

Uganda community group restores shea groves and livelihoods
- In northern Uganda’s Pader district, a women-led cooperative is leading efforts to replant shea trees, restore deforested land and improve local livelihoods through the processing and sale of shea products.
- The Pader Shea Nut and Agro-processing Society, which started with just six members in 2004, has grown to more than 1,400 members.
- Through agroforestry techniques and Indigenous knowledge, the group has restored more than 500 hectares (1,240 acres) of degraded land, planting shea and other native tree species.
- Their efforts face challenges from charcoal production, land grabbing and climate change, but the women remain determined to preserve their natural heritage for future generations.

Shea’s silent guardians restore Uganda’s traditional parklands
- In Uganda’s Pader district, communities are reviving shea parklands — traditional agroforestry systems where farmers have maintained shea trees alongside crops for generations.
- These managed landscapes support both farming and biodiversity while providing crucial ecosystem services through carefully spaced trees and traditional management practices.
- Drawing on Indigenous agricultural knowledge, farmers are integrating shea trees with food crops through methods proven to improve soil health and yields.
- While their efforts show promise, charcoal production and agricultural expansion threaten these traditional systems and the communities that depend on them.

In the Pan Amazon, inequality and informality fuel informal economies
- In the mid-twentieth century, the combination of poverty and inequality generated political instability that gave rise to socialist and nationalist movements in different Amazonian countries.
- In societies as stratified as those of the Pan Amazon, shaped by class, ethnicity and geography, inequality is sustained by very real and concrete structural barriers.
- This has resulted in the exponential growth of the informal economy, in which people do not pay taxes to their governments. Irregularities extend to the rural economy, in which smallholder farmers and miners operate without regulation, often damaging ecosystems.

Climate change forces Jakarta fishing families to marry off young daughters
Climate change is driving families on Indonesia’s northern Javanese coast toward child marriage as a survival strategy amid dwindling fish stocks and increasing economic hardships, two Mongabay reports show. Mongabay contributor Maulia Inka Vira Fendilla traveled to North Jakarta’s Kalibaru neighborhood in 2023 and met Janah and Jaroh, sisters who were both married off at […]
In the battle against plastic pollution, Asia’s informal workers are critical allies (commentary)
- Southeast Asia is the source of over half of the world’s ocean plastic, due to inadequate waste management infrastructure in many emerging economies.
- Developing the waste management infrastructure needed to slow this worsening plastic pollution crisis will take time and resources, and until then, ‘informal’ workers like waste pickers will be crucial to the effort.
- “In the meantime, it’s clear that Asia’s informal waste workers are indispensable, and their rights and livelihoods must be protected and harnessed at a greater scale for the benefit of people and the planet,” a new op-ed states.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Global ‘Slow Food’ movement embraces agroecology (commentary)
- This week, Slow Food convenes its celebrated annual gathering, Terra Madre, in Italy, and a major focus will be the importance of expanding agroecology globally.
- There, the leading ‘good food movement’ organization officially launches its new program, Slow Food Farms, to educate its global members about the power of agroecology to feed the world sustainably and to connect farmers via a community of learning.
- “It is more important than ever to bring farmers together in a large network [where] the protagonists of the food system can come together to raise their voices, share their experiences and work more closely together towards an agroecological transition,” the president of Slow Food writes in a new op-ed.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

$35m debt-for-nature deal aims to protect Indonesia’s coral reefs
- A $35 million debt-for-nature swap between Indonesia and the U.S. aims to conserve coral reefs in eastern Indonesia over the next nine years, with the funding offset by canceled sovereign debt payable to the U.S.
- Indonesian conservation groups and their international partners will implement ground programs to protect reefs in key areas, strengthen marine protected areas and support community livelihoods under the deal.
- While environmentalists welcomed the funding, some argued debt swaps were insufficient to address the larger environmental and development challenges faced by countries in the global south.

A one-time illegal logger grows back a forest for his people in Sumatra
- Efron Simanjuntak, once a successful illegal logger in Sumatra, became a committed forest protector after realizing the impact logging had on the livelihoods of villagers and the environment.
- After serving time in prison, Efron began replanting trees that produce resin, such as frankincense and pine, as part of his efforts to restore the damaged forest and ensure a sustainable income for his community.
- Efron credits being indebted to his ancestors and his role in protecting his family’s frankincense-farming heritage as key to his desire to protect the forest.
- Along with civil society organizations, Efron fought for the recognition of his village’s customary forest by the government, which was finally achieved in August 2024, giving his community stronger legal status to protect their forest from outside threats.

Rio’s grassroots agroforestry sustains birds, bees & communities
- In 2017, some residents of the Rio de Janeiro neighborhood of Governor’s Island spontaneously started tending a neglected garden that originated from a brief corporate event.
- Lacking ongoing governmental or corporate support, the initiative shifted toward agroforestry — a sustainable agroecology system where fruit trees, shrubs, medicinal plants and vegetables are grown in combination to benefit each other — inspiring a dozen more such projects across the island.
- These agroforests have reshaped the urban landscape and now attract an array of fauna, from birds to bees and even fireflies, drawn by the diversity of plant life thriving on improved soils.
- Perhaps most importantly, the agroforests offer free food and medicines to residents in need, plus shade and educational opportunities for the whole community, from schoolchildren to university students and residents.

Agroforestry offers Thai rubber farmers a pathway to profit and sustainability
- Rubber farmers in Thailand are increasingly adopting agroforestry as a more climate-friendly and sustainable way of cultivating the commodity, which ranks among the world’s largest drivers of tropical deforestation.
- Much of Thailand’s lowland tropical forests were cleared decades ago to make way for the booming rubber industry, transforming the landscape into a patchwork of monoculture plantations and turning the nation into the world’s top rubber producer.
- But cultivating rubber in an agroforestry system is not only better for the environment and wildlife compared to monocultures, it also supports livelihoods by giving Thai farmers greater profits plus a wider array of produce to sell over a longer span of time each year.
- To help more farmers make the switch, government agencies, trade groups and key parts of the rubber supply chain are backing agroforestry as an alternative to monoculture by providing trainings and price premiums, though experts say additional supports like policy changes are needed.

Sundarbans fisherfolk are battered by cyclones amid fishing bans
- Fishers in the Bangladesh Sundarbans have been struggling with income due to damage caused to the mangroves by the recent tropical cyclone Remal and also the seasonal ban on resource hunting from June to August.
- In every disaster, poor fisherfolk are entangled more in a complex debt trap for moving on, and this year, the situation is more aggravating as the cyclone hit just before the fishing ban started.
- Nonetheless, the government is adamant on continuing the ban for the sake of forest resource conservation.
- At the same time, the government is still in the planning stage of providing people food support during the ban period, as has been provided to sea-bound fishers during the hilsa harvest ban period.

Can Vietnam’s forests survive the spread of acacia and eucalyptus plantations? (commentary)
- The large-scale planting of acacia and eucalyptus monoculture plantations in Vietnam raises concerns about their long-term environmental impact on soil health and biodiversity.
- This aggressive expansion also leads to fierce competition for land, often displacing local communities with limited resources.
- “Fostering a spirit of cooperation between companies and farmers is essential to ensure that the Vietnamese forestry industry thrives while promoting the livelihoods of both parties,” a new op-ed states.
- This post is a commentary, the views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Fishers left with no land, no fish, in fire sale of Cambodian coast
- Coastal communities in Cambodia are facing a double threat, from land and sea, as developers evict them from their homes and farms, and trawlers encroach on their nearshore fishing grounds.
- Illegal fishing, chiefly embodied by rampant, unchecked trawling in protected and prohibited waters, has devastated fish stocks, trashed marine ecosystems and left coastal communities in dire poverty.
- At the same time, the land is being sold out from under them: Nearly half of Cambodia’s coast has been privatized since 2000, with a slew of new projects tied to politically connected wealthy investors announced in the last five years, displacing families and closing off access to the sea.
- This is the second part of a Mongabay series about challenges faced by Cambodia’s small-scale fishers along the coast.

As catches fall, Sierra Leone’s artisanal fishers turn to destructive practices
- Sierra Leone’s fish stocks have been under severe strain in recent years due to intensive industrial fishing and a growing population of artisanal fishers, with fishers consistently reporting falling catches.
- This has triggered heightened competition for increasingly scarce yields.
- To secure their livelihoods, artisanal fishers have turned to unsustainable fishing gear, such as undersize-mesh nets, and target fish breeding and nursery grounds, disrupting the fish reproductive cycle.
- The crisis is fueled by the ready availability of illegal nets, weak law enforcement and widespread economic hardship.

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

Research links deforestation in Cambodia to stunting in kids, anemia in women
- An analysis of public health data in Cambodia has found increased rates of malnutrition among children born in areas where deforestation had recently occurred.
- It also found that pregnant women in these areas were more likely to suffer from anemia, a condition that often correlates with incidences of malaria.
- Cambodia has lost nearly 30% of its forest cover this century, while more than 30% of its children under 5 have stunted growth due to malnutrition.
- The study illustrates how deforestation and the ecological disruptions it causes can compound previously existing rural health issues.

Report shows dire state of Mekong’s fish — but damage can still be undone
- A recent report by 25 conservation organizations raises alarm about the state of fish in the Mekong River, determining that at least 19% of species are threatened with extinction.
- The report calls for the global “Emergency Recovery Plan” for freshwater biodiversity to be implemented in the Mekong, with an emphasis on letting the river and its tributaries flow more naturally, improving water quality, protecting and restoring critical habitats and species, and curbing unsustainable resource extraction.
- Despite the threats, the report notes conservation bright spots, including the discovery of new species, and emphasizes that it is not too late to protect the river, its fish, and the millions of people who depend on it.

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.

In climate-related flooding, a Ugandan river turns poisonous
- Uganda’s Nyamwamba river, in the Rwenzori Mountains, has begun to flood catastrophically in recent years, partly due to climate change.
- Along the river are copper tailings pools from an old Canadian mining operation, which are becoming increasingly eroded by the flooding.
- According to a series of studies, these tailings have been washing into the water supply and soil of the Nyamwamba River Basin, contaminating human tissue, food and water with deadly heavy metals.
- Cancer rates are higher than normal near the tailings pools, and scientists fear that as the flooding continues to worsen, so will the health crisis.

Climate change brings a river’s wrath down on western Uganda
- Since the 1960s, Uganda’s climate has warmed by an average of 1.3°C (2.3°F).
- The warming is partly responsible for an increasing number of catastrophic floods on the Nyamwamba River, in western Uganda’s Rwenzori Mountains.
- In 2020 alone, 173,000 people were affected by flooding in Kasese district, when 25,000 houses were destroyed.
- Many of those rendered homeless by the floods continue to languish in temporary housing camps four years on.

As climate disasters claim their children, Bangladeshi mothers seek safety in bigger families
- Climate change is exacerbating child mortality in flood-prone areas of Bangladesh, prompting mothers to have larger families as a response to the fear of losing children to disasters.
- Studies indicate an 8% surge in infant mortality risk in flood-prone regions, resulting in more than 150,000 lives lost between 1988 and 2017.
- While Bangladesh has seen improvements in disaster management, reduced cyclone deaths, and progress in health for mothers and children, climate change poses new threats, especially to vulnerable coastal communities lacking adequate protection.
- A National Adaptation Plan offers solutions such as water conservation and livelihood opportunities, but challenges like funding, coordination and transparency need attention for effective implementation, experts say.

Labor abuse and work accidents on plantations of Cameroon’s largest sugar producer
- Industrial agriculture companies, considered drivers of economic growth in Cameroon, are also a source of conflict for workers and farmers following an increase in workplace accidents and the growing impact this industry has on the environment.
- With increasing accidents over the years, the industrial agriculture sector alone accounted for 26.4% of work-related accidents recorded in Cameroon in 2020, according to an estimate by the Cameroonian institution overseeing social protection, the CNPS.
- According to estimates from the seasonal workers’ union, the Cameroon Sugar Corporation (SOSUCAM), which holds a monopoly on sugar production in the country, is responsible for about a hundred accidents per year, some leading to death, on its plantations and in its factories.
- Local NGOs also accuse the company of polluting rivers and soil as well as destroying village plantations. Above all, the company is notorious for its glaring violations in applying Cameroonian labor, social security, and environmental protection legislation.

Cambodia’s Indigenous communities renounce communal land titles for microloans
- Indigenous rural communities in northeastern Cambodia are struggling under debts that have ballooned from modest microloans with high interest rates.
- Microlending as a means of increasing communities’ access to finance is strongly supported by the World Bank, but runs counter to efforts to grant communal land ownership of homes, farmlands and sacred forests — another World Bank initiative.
- Entire villages have opted out of the communal land titling program because it would prevent them from using this land as collateral for microloans and selling land to outsiders, often to repay debt.
- This project was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Journalism Fund.

Study: Fishing with pesticides and dynamite puts Ecuadorian Amazon in peril
- Illegal fishing with agrochemicals and explosives across several of Ecuador’s Amazonian states is an uncontrolled problem, causing long-lasting, irreversible damage to aquatic ecosystems, recent research has shown.
- The study links high levels of poverty to the wider practice of unsustainable fishing, and calls for tighter controls on the sale and availability of agrochemicals and dynamite across the country.
- Fish caught using toxic chemicals can be dangerous for human consumption, the study warns, and says there should be more action to help educate communities about these dangers.

Poverty and plantations: Nigerian reserve struggles against the odds
- Located in southern Nigeria, Oluwa Forest Reserve is supposed to be a bastion for the region’s wildlife – which includes critically endangered Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees.
- But the influx of thousands of settlers into the reserve is coming at the cost of its rainforests, with satellite data and imagery showing ongoing clearing into primary forest.
- Palm oil companies are also establishing industrial plantations in the reserve.
- Conservationists and officials warn that vulnerable wildlife populations may be wiped out if forest loss and bushmeat hunting continues at its current rate.

‘It’s a real mess’: Mining and deforestation threaten unparalleled DRC wildlife haven
- The Okapi Wildlife Reserve in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo protects unique biodiversity, including approximately one-fifth of the global okapi population, the country’s largest forest elephant and chimpanzee populations and 17 primate species, and it safeguards forest access for the Indigenous Mbuti and Efe peoples.
- Deforestation in the reserve is accelerating, according to data from Global Forest Watch.
- Artisanal and semi-industrial mining is a grave threat to the reserve, leading to deforestation and pollution of waterways, particularly in the south of the reserve along the Ituri River and the National Road 4.
- A disagreement over the boundaries of the reserve between park authorities and the mining cadastre complicates law enforcement and requires resolution at the ministerial level.

Kenya’s Lake Victoria floods leave orphaned children to run their households
- Beginning in 2019, devastating floods on the shores of Kenya’s Lake Victoria have inundated homes, displaced families and left some orphaned children in charge of caring for their siblings and running the household.
- Many families continue to live in makeshift camps, hoping to rebuild and renew their lives; the effects of the flooding have been particularly harsh on children who have had to drop out of school or work to ensure the family’s survival.
- Experts attribute the floods to a combination of factors, including climate change, increased rainfall and lack of vegetation to control runoff; in 2015, an international research team predicted swiftly rising waters that could harm the region.
- UNICEF reports a concerning increase in the number of children affected by flooding in recent years, as climate change leads to more crises that can disrupt education, destabilize families and leave long-term effects on child development and psychosocial well-being.

Cut down once again: Uncontrolled logging puts new Sahel reforestation projects at risk
- Reforestation projects to restore degraded lands in Chad and Cameroon, like the “Great Green Wall” and the “Reforestation 1400” projects, are facing increasing pressure from logging activity.
- Facing poverty, war and corrupt local authorities, locals and refugees are cutting trees in new protected areas for firewood or to sell charcoal.
- Local environmental defence organizations, officials and administrations who lead these reforestation projects are raising the alarm about the extent of deforestation which is contributing to desertification in these areas.
- Despite alternative solutions to excessive logging being proposed and implemented, locals are still harvesting from reforested areas.

On Jakarta’s vanishing shoreline, climate change seen abetting child marriages
- Marriage before the age of 18 is classified as a form of gender-based violence by the United Nations, but is commonly practiced in low-income communities to mitigate household economic pressures.
- On Jakarta’s northern coastline, child marriage is common in fishing communities responding to inflationary pressures and declining stocks of fish in near-shore waters.
- Janah, now 23, fears she lacks the agency to break a cycle that saw her married at the age of 16.

Elephants invade as habitat loss soars in Nigerian forest reserve
- Elephants straying out of Afi River Forest Reserve in the Nigerian state of Cross River are reportedly damaging surrounding farms.
- This uptick in human-wildlife conflict comes as satellite data show continuing and increasing deforestation in the Afi River reserve and other protected areas.
- The habitat in Afi River Forest Reserve provides a crucial corridor that connects critically endangered Cross River gorilla populations in adjacent protected areas.
- As in other Nigerian forest reserves, agriculture, poverty and a lack of monitoring and enforcement resources are driving deforestation in the Afi River reserve.

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.

West African fishers strike for fair wages and ‘respect’ on EU-owned vessels
- African fishers, mostly from Senegal and Ivory Coast who work on dozens of EU vessels that operate in West Africa and the Indian Ocean, took part in a strike that lasted from June 5-8, alleging wage violations.
- Vessels owned by EU companies are allowed to fish in foreign countries’ waters through agreements between the EU and the host nations. However, a third of such vessels operating in West Africa use flags of other countries and evade labor rights provisions agreed to under these pacts.
- Fishers who participated in the strike told Mongabay they were fighting for more than fair wages, saying that African sailors were not treated with respect on European boats despite doing some of the most arduous jobs.
- Seafarers’ unions called off the strike after the Senegalese government initiated negotiations with vessel owners and unions. Talks are expected to conclude in five months.

Forests in the furnace: Cambodia’s garment sector is fueled by illegal logging
- An investigation has found factories in Cambodia’s garment sector are fueling their boilers with wood logged illegally from protected areas.
- A Mongabay team traced the network all the way from the impoverished villagers risking their lives to find increasingly scarce trees, to the traders and middlemen contending with slim margins, up to the factories with massive lots for timber supplies.
- The garment industry association denies that any of its members uses forest wood, but the informal and opaque nature of the supply chain means it’s virtually impossible to guarantee this.
- This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn was a fellow. *Names have been changed to protect sources who said they feared reprisals from the authorities.

Can community payments with no strings attached benefit biodiversity?
- A recent study published in the journal Nature Sustainability examines the idea of a “conservation basic income” paid to community members living in or near key areas for biodiversity protection.
- The authors argue that unconditional payments could help reduce families’ reliance on practices that could threaten biodiversity by providing financial stability and helping them weather unexpected expenses.
- But the evidence for the effectiveness of these kinds of cash transfers is scant and reveals that they don’t always result in outcomes that are positive for conservation.

For urban poor in Global South, nature-based solutions have always been a way to get by
- Nature-based solutions are increasingly being seen as a way of providing societal benefits and conserving biodiversity.
- Informal settlements, which lack necessary infrastructure and are often at the forefront of climate change and other natural disasters, can benefit from nature-based solutions and improve residents’ quality of life.
- A recent study explored the different forms of nature-based solutions in practice in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, their benefits and disadvantages, and identifies factors that make them successful.
- While the term “nature-based solutions” has recently been popularized in the Global North, researchers note that communities in many parts of the world have engaged in these practices for centuries.

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.

Small farmers in limbo as Cambodia wavers on Tonle Sap conservation rules
- In 2021, Cambodia’s government began enforcing a ban on farming in designated conservation zones around the Tonle Sap wetland, moving to protect the health of this vital fishery but also disrupting the lives of thousands of farmers who live around the lake.
- With general elections scheduled for July, authorities now appear to be taking a softer line on enforcing the ban; in December 2022, Prime Minister Hun Sen ordered the boundaries of the conservation zone be redrawn by the end of May this year.
- Subsistence farmers, who experts say have been given little support to find alternate forms of livelihood, wait as their futures hang in the balance.
- This story was produced in partnership with fellows of the Global Reporting Program at the University of British Columbia’s School of Journalism, Writing, and Media, and won a silver prize in the 2023 Canadian Online Publishing Awards for the best feature article in the academic category.

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.

‘During droughts, pivot to agroecology’: Q&A with soil expert at the World Agroforestry Centre
- As the unabating drought in Kenya persists, pastoralists in the region are struggling as millions of their livestock perish and vast swaths of crops die. About 4.4 million people in the country are food insecure.
- International food agencies are calling it a dire humanitarian situation and highlight the vital need to build communities’ resilience to adapt and cope with drought.
- Mongabay speaks with David Leilei, a Kenyan soil biologist at the World Agroforestry Centre, on the agroecological techniques and strategies pastoralists and the government can use to restore healthy soils to promote productive farming.
- Mary Njenga, a research scientist at the World Agroforestry Centre who works with 1,200 households in northern Kenya, also speaks with Mongabay on climate-resilient strategies.

Herders turn to fishing in the desert amid severe drought, putting pressure on fish population
- As Northern Kenya’s unabating drought continues, a growing wave of pastoralists are finding it challenging to keep their livestock alive and are switching to fishing in Lake Turkana, the world’s largest desert lake.
- However, environmentalists, fishing authorities, and some fishers worry that potential overfishing and increased pressures on fish populations will cause a collapse in fish stocks and the lake’s ecosystem.
- Authorities are also concerned about the rampant use of illegal fishing gear, such as thin mesh nets that catch undersized fish in shallow breeding zones, and an illegal tilapia smuggling network draining the lake by the tons.
- Though no studies have yet been done to assess fish populations, some environmentalists and fishers are calling for better enforcement of regulations to keep livelihoods afloat.

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.

Changing circumstances turn ‘sustainable communities’ into deforestation drivers: Study
- Subsistence communities can drive forest loss to meet their basic needs when external pressures, poverty and demand for natural resources increase, says a new study unveiling triggers that turn livelihoods from sustainable into deforestation drivers.
- The impact of subsistence communities on forest loss has not been quantified to its true extent, but their impact is still minimal compared to that of industry, researchers say.
- Deforestation tends to occur through shifts in agriculture practices to meet market demands and intensified wood collecting for charcoal to meet increasing energy needs.
- About 90% of people globally living in extreme poverty, often subsistence communities, rely on forests for at least part of their livelihoods—making them the first ones impacted by forest loss.

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.

A Philippine resin trade proves sustainable for forests, but not tappers
- Almaciga resin, also known as Manila copal, is used as an additive in industrial products like varnish and linoleum, as well as traditionally for starting fires, caulking boats and fumigating against mosquitoes.
- If practiced responsibly, harvesting almaciga resin offers an ecologically sustainable income stream for the Indigenous people and local communities best positioned to protect the Philippines’ diminishing natural forests.
- However, a string of middlemen, little transparency about pricing, and lack of access to formal financial institutions means that the communities that rely on tapping resin for cash remain mired in poverty.

Saving the economically important hilsa fish comes at a cost to Bangladesh fishers
- Many fishers across Bangladesh say they still haven’t received the compensation promised by the government during a three-week ban on fishing of hilsa, the country’s most important fish.
- The ban ends on Oct. 28, and the government was supposed to hand out 40-kilogram (88-pound) rice packages to eligible fishers at the start of it, but some of the aid may have allegedly been embezzled by local officials.
- Almost half a million fishers are directly involved in the hilsa fishery in Bangladesh, with another 2 million indirectly involved; hilsa accounts for an eighth of total fish production and more than 1% of GDP in Bangladesh.
- In light of the fish’s importance, the government has since the 2000s enforced two bans a year, to allow the fish to breed and to protect the juveniles.

Broken houses and promises: residents still in poverty near massive diamond project
- More than 14 years since the discovery of the Marange diamond fields, one of the world’s largest diamond-producing projects, relocated residents and locals living near the mines are still living in poverty.
- The government and mining companies promised homes, electricity, water, employment, social services and compensation, but residents and civil society organizations say they have still not received many of these promises since Mongabay last reported on the project in 2016.
- Rivers, which residents rely on for their livestock, vegetable plots and cleaning, are polluted and silted by artisanal miners seeking additional income and opportunities to escape poverty.
- Previously, foreign companies in Zimbabwe had to either give the majority of their shares to locals or divest money into community trusts. However, this promise has fallen short since current president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, reversed the law.

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.

Mangrove restorers in Haiti bet on resilience amid rising violence
- Haiti is one of the most deforested countries in the world today, with its mangroves in particular now dotting just 30% of its coastline, much of it in thin, fragmented pockets.
- The main threat to the mangroves is the cutting of the trees to produce charcoal, an important fuel for cooking in a country where only a quarter of the population has access to electricity.
- Several mangrove restoration projects have been initiated over the years, and many abandoned due to waning community interest, natural disasters, or poor planning.
- More recently, rising rates of violence have prevented restoration teams from going to the field and coordinating with one another, but some are hopeful that communities remain receptive to mangrove restoration despite all the other hardships they’re experiencing.

Haiti: An island nation whose environmental troubles only begin with water
- As Haiti plunges into the worst social unrest the nation has seen in years, shortages abound. One of these is water. But in Haiti, water scarcity has deeper roots, that connect to virtually every other aspect of the environment. Haiti’s ecosystems today, say some, are under stress due to regional and global transgressions of the nine planetary boundaries.
- The planetary boundary framework originated in 2009 to define required limits on human activities to prevent collapse of vital Earth operating systems. They include biodiversity loss, freshwater, air pollution, climate change, high phosphorus and nitrogen levels, ocean acidity, land use changes, ozone layer decay, and contamination by human-made chemicals.
- Scientists defining the global freshwater boundary warn that tampering with the water cycle can affect the other boundaries. Haiti, as a small isolated island nation, suggests a laboratory case-study of these many interconnections, and offers a graphic example of the grim results for humanity and wildlife when freshwater systems are deeply compromised.
- Haiti today is plagued by an extreme socioeconomic and environmental crisis. As it fights climate change, freshwater problems, deforestation and pollution, it may also be viewed as a bleak bellwether for other nations as our planetary crisis deepens. But scientists warn that research on applying planetary boundary criteria on a regional level remains limited.

‘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.

For lightning-prone communities in Bangladesh, new warning system may not be enough
- An average of four people a week are killed by lightning in Bangladesh, and the problem is expected to get worse as climate change increases the frequency of lightning strikes.
- Most of the victims tend to be farmers and fishers, who, like members of other poor communities around the world, are bearing the brunt of climate change impacts.
- The Bangladesh Meteorological Department has rolled out an early-warning system, based on modeling developed in collaboration with NASA, that it says will provide up to 54 hours’ warning of potential lightning strikes.
- But experts say the communities most in need of these alerts are those who don’t have access to the technology, and have called for other measures, such as building lightning arresters in open fields and wetlands, to protect vulnerable communities.

Human pressures strain Lake Tanganyika’s biodiversity and water quality
- As fishing pressure has increased on Lake Tanganyika, its level has also been rising, inundating shoreline communities.
- Sedimentation as a result of farming, infrastructure projects and deforestation is causing the water level to rise and the lake to expand.
- This has not led to an increase in fish populations, however, and what little data exist suggest that the lake’s overall biodiversity–probably including hippos and Nile crocodiles–is declining.
- An EU-funded plan to coordinate management of the lake by all countries that share it aims to address some of the knowledge gaps, but is itself hobbled by budget constraints.

The Western Indian Ocean lost 4% of its mangroves in 24 years, report finds
- Analysis presented in a new report finds the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) region lost around 4% its mangrove forests between 1996 and 2020.
- The WIO region includes the coastal areas of Kenya, Tanzania, Madagascar and Mozambique, which together account for 5% of the world’s mangroves.
- The report finds the majority of WIO mangrove loss was driven by unsustainable wood extraction, land clearance for agriculture and the impacts of storms and flooding.
- Mangroves provide vital ecosystem services to coastal communities and habitats, and sequester large amounts of carbon.

On the frontlines of drought, communities in Mexico strive to save every drop of water
- Sixteen Indigenous Zapotec communities in Mexico have created over 579 water infrastructure projects, including absorption wells, small dams and water pans, to conserve water in the Oaxaca Valley – a region impacted by recurrent droughts.
- Significant success in harvesting water has been realized, however, farmers still struggle to have enough water due to lack of rain – making water conservation efforts largely fall to dust.
- Last year, the Mexican government recognized their efforts and gave communities a concession to manage water resources locally. Communities are still waiting to know when they will officially receive the concession.
- Just a few women hold leadership positions in these communities, including Josefina, Esperanza and María. They have been involved in water conservation projects since a severe drought hit the region 17 years ago and hope to enhance gender equality in the region.

Fisheries crackdown pushes Cambodians to the brink on Tonle Sap lake
- A ban on illegal fishing in Tonle Sap, Cambodia’s largest lake, is hitting local communities hard — even those engaged in legal fishing.
- “By continuing to fish, we are forced into hiding, we are forced into crime,” one fisher told Mongabay, describing a climate of fear amid a heavy law enforcement presence.
- Another says the crackdown is being prosecuted with impunity: officers “will confiscate anything from anyone and then say ‘It’s illegal’” in an alleged ploy to solicit a bribe.
- This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn is a fellow.

Niger Delta mangroves in ‘grave danger’ from oil spills, poverty, invasive species
- Southern Nigeria’s vast Niger Delta boasts Africa’s most extensive mangrove forests — and some of the world’s largest fossil fuel reserves.
- Efforts to extract oil and gas have resulted in numerous oil spills, which have damaged the region’s biodiversity, as well as the livelihoods of coastal communities.
- Niger Delta mangroves are also affected by logging, farming and urban expansion, and are being replaced by invasive nipa palm.
- Research suggests Niger Delta’s mangroves could be gone within 50 years at the current rate of loss.

How a rare Colombian flower cultivated with Indigenous know-how is changing lives
- The Inírida flower, known as flor de Inírida, grows in a small area along the Colombian-Venezuelan border.
- An Indigenous leader and botanist successfully worked together to domesticate this rare and little-known flower.
- Its conservation helps ensure the long-term protection of other species while offering potential bioremediation against contaminated soil.
- Inírida’s commercialization plays a vital role in the region’s green economy, bringing in revenues for Indigenous families.

As their land and water turns saline, Kenyan communities take on salt firms
- Between 1977 and the 1990s, the Kenyan government allocated thousands of hectares of land to salt mining companies along the country’s north coast.
- People had been living on that land for generations, despite its being officially gazetted as public land by the government.
- Following the allocation of land, local people have complained of harassment and violent evictions by the salt companies, as well as soil and waters rendered too salty to farm, drink, or fish.
- In 2020 groups representing these communities filed a lawsuit against the companies and government that consolidates many complaints and aims to provide recourse for loss of land and livelihoods and damage to the environment. The case is due before a judge in October.

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.

In Sumatra, rising seas and sinking land spell hard times for fishers
- Fishers operating near the port of Belawan on the Indonesian island of Sumatra are reporting declining catches and a hit to their livelihoods from tidal flooding.
- The flooding has grown more frequent and severe, exacerbated by rising seas and the clearing of mangrove forests for oil palm plantations.
- Traders who buy local catches have also been affected by the flooding, which can cut off commercial transport routes.
- This region of northern Sumatra is one of the areas targeted by the Indonesian government for mangrove restoration, but until that yields results, the fishers say they’re essentially helpless.

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.

For women on Bangladesh’s coast, rising seas pose a reproductive health dilemma
- In coastal areas of Bangladesh, where poor families often can’t afford menstrual pads, women and adolescent girls are compelled to use cloth rags that they wash in water that’s becoming increasingly saline.
- This has led to a spate of uterine diseases, prompting many women and girls to misuse birth control pills in an effort to stop their menstrual cycles altogether.
- Health experts say this practice, carried out without medical advice, poses both short- and long-term risks to their reproductive and mental health.
- The root of the problem is the ever-worsening intrusion of saltwater into the water table, driven by a combination of rising sea levels, seepage from shrimp farms, and falling levels of the Ganges River.

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.

A conservation failure in Sumatra serves a cautionary tale for PES schemes
- A World Bank-funded conservation project in Indonesia led to higher rates of deforestation after the project ended, a new study shows, serving as a cautionary tale about the risks of failing to sustain such initiatives over a long enough time period.
- The payment for ecosystem services project was supposed to reward villages for halting deforestation and taking up sustainable livelihoods from 1996-2001.
- In the years after the project ended, however, participating villages that had received the payments lost up to 26% more forest cover from 2000-2016 than non-participating villages, the study shows.

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.

In Sierra Leone, local fishers and foreign trawlers battle for their catch
- At wharfs across the Freetown peninsula in Sierra Leone, local fishers say in recent years it’s become harder to get a good catch. They blame foreign trawlers for overexploiting the country’s fish stocks.
- Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources says it has systems meant to curb illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, but enforcement remains a challenge.
- In 2019, China signed a fisheries agreement with Sierra Leone that includes a promise to build a $55 million harbor, but some fishers say boats owned by its citizens are among the worst offenders.

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.

Boom and bust on Lake Victoria: Q&A with author Mark Weston
- In a new book, British author Mark Weston examines an environmental crisis on East Africa’s Lake Victoria that’s been a century in the making and stems from the introduction of the non-native Nile perch to the lake in the 1950s.
- Weston lived on Ukerewe, the lake’s largest island, for two years, and relates the knock-on legacy of the fish’s introduction through the experiences of the people he met there.
- The boom and bust of the fishery brought about a surging population, deforestation, declining land fertility, and increased pollution in the lake.
- With Nile perch catches down precipitously and little else to sustain the economy of Ukerewe, residents struggle through poverty, lack of opportunity and a trickling exodus from the once-prosperous community, in search of a better life for themselves and their families.

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

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.

Cradle of transformation: The Mediterranean and climate change
- The Mediterranean region is warming 20% faster than the world as a whole, raising concerns about the impacts that climate change and other environmental upheaval will have on ecosystems, agriculture and the region’s 542 million people.
- Heat waves, drought, extreme weather and sea-level rise are among the impacts that the region can expect to see continue through the end of the century, and failing to stop emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases could make these issues worse.
- Charting a course that both mitigates climate change and bolsters adaption to its effects is further complicated by the Mediterranean’s mix of countries, cultures and socioeconomics, leading to wide gaps in vulnerability in the region.

Analysis: Myanmar’s gemstone riches bring poverty and environmental destruction
- Myanmar is endowed with rich reserves of jade, rubies and other gemstones, but endemic corruption and poor regulation mean little wealth has flowed to ordinary citizens.
- The jade-mining hotspot of Hpakant, in Kachin state, is emblematic of the problem: There are currently no licensed mines in the area, but jade extraction nonetheless continues at a massive scale.
- The speed and size of these poorly regulated operations results in both massive environmental damage and human casualties, as scavengers flock to unstable dumpsites to hunt for jade left behind by machines.

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.

Patrols work, but community-based conservation needs a rethink, study shows
- A recent study from Uganda’s Kibale National Park found that nine mammal species, including five monkey species, have grown in abundance over the decades, suggesting that conservation efforts are working.
- Patrolling appears to deter poachers from laying down traps, which often unintentionally ensnare the park’s threatened chimpanzees and other primate species.
- But the prosperity of neighboring communities and a better relationship between park managers and people didn’t translate into a reduction in illegal activities like poaching or firewood removal.
- “In the next 10 years, we need to come up with new ways of community engagement so that conservation plans remain a success,” first author Dipto Sarkar said.

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.

UK trophy hunting import ban not supported by rural Africans (commentary)
- While a UK bill to ban the import of hunting trophies enjoys popular support there, rural Africans directly affected by such decisions are voicing opposition.
- Researchers tasked by the Namibian government surveyed local people and conservation leaders with insight on the challenges and benefits of elephant conservation.
- Animal rights campaigners “must take responsibility for the damages caused by elephants. They should come and experience what is happening on the ground. It is not easy to live with wild animals and not benefit from them,” one respondent argues.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.

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.

‘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.

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.”

Endangered chimps ‘on the brink’ as Nigerian reserve is razed for agriculture, timber
- As rainforest throughout much of the country has disappeared, Nigeria’s Oluwa Forest Reserve has been a sanctuary for many species, including Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees – the rarest chimpanzee subspecies.
- But Oluwa itself has come under increasing deforestation pressure in recent years, losing 14% of its remaining primary forest between 2002 and 2020.
- Oluwa’s deforestation rate appears to be increasing, with several large areas of forest loss occurring in 2021– including in one of the last portions of the reserve known to harbor chimps.
- Agriculture and timber extraction are the main drivers of deforestation in Oluwa; smallholders looking to eke out an existence continue to move into the reserve and illegally clear forest and hunt animals for bushmeat, while plantation companies are staking claims to government-granted concessions.

‘Unprecedented’ fires in Madagascar national park threaten livelihoods and lemurs
- Ankarafantsika National Park protects an oasis of dry forest in northern Madagascar, providing vital habitat to critically endangered lemurs and other wildlife.
- In September and October, fires raged across the southern portion of the park, burning more than 40 square kilometers (15 square miles).
- While fire is a natural part of Ankarafantsika’s ecosystems, researchers say fire on this scale is “unprecedented” and amounting to a “conservation crisis.”
- The fires are also drying out the landscape and reducing neighboring communities’ crop yields, which conservationists warn could have knock-on effects for nearby forests as people turn to natural resources to survive.

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.

Allegations of displacement, violence beleaguer Kenyan conservancy NGO
- The California-based Oakland Institute published a report on Nov. 16 alleging that the Kenya-based nonprofit Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT) keeps pastoralists and their herds off of their ancestral grazing areas.
- The institute’s research relied on petitions, court cases and in-person interviews with community members in northern Kenya, with report lead author Anuradha Mittal alleging that NRT’s model of “fortress conservation” exacerbates interethnic tensions and prioritizes the desires of wealthy tourists over the needs of the Indigenous population.
- Tom Lalampaa, NRT’s CEO, denies all allegations that the organization keeps communities from accessing rangeland or that it has played any role in violence in the region.
- Lalampaa said membership with NRT provides innumerable benefits to community-led conservancies, which retain their legal claim to the land and decide on how their rangelands are managed.

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.

Deforestation soars in Nigeria’s gorilla habitat: ‘We are running out of time’
- Afi River Forest Reserve (ARFR), in eastern Nigeria’s Cross River state, is an important habitat corridor that connects imperiled populations of critically endangered Cross River gorillas.
- But deforestation has been rising both in ARFR and elsewhere in Cross River; satellite data show 2020 was the biggest year for forest loss both in the state and in the reserve since around the turn of the century – and preliminary data for 2021 suggest this year is on track to exceed even 2020.
- Poverty-fueled illegal logging and farming is behind much of the deforestation in ARFR. Resource wars have broken out between communities that have claimed the lives of more than 100, local sources say.
- Authorities say a lack of financial support and threats of violence are limiting their ability to adequately protect what forest remains.

Deprived of their forests, Uganda’s Batwa adapt their sustainable practices
- Three decades since the Batwa people in Uganda were evicted from their ancestral lands to create national parks, members of the group live in poverty and marginalization at the fringes of society.
- Lack of land rights and access to natural resources has eroded traditional knowledge in the hunter-gatherer community, especially concerning herbal medicine and endemic plant species.
- Despite these circumstances, some Batwa groups are adopting new conservation practices involving regenerative agriculture on small plots of land donated to them by the United Organisation of Batwa Development in Uganda (UOBDU).

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.

Conservation after coronavirus: We need to diversify and innovate (commentary)
- Protected areas, the ecotourism industry, and many conservation initiatives and communities, which depend on international tourism, took a financial hit as COVID-19 lockdowns started. As poverty swelled in these regions, there’s been an increase in poaching in Africa’s protected areas, including Zambia’s Kafue National Park.
- Long before the emergence of COVID-19, the conservation community has suffered from a chronic dearth of resources; with the pandemic, protected areas and related communities experienced a sharp retraction in investment.
- With examples from across the world, philanthropist Jon Ayers and Panthera CEO Frederic Launay call for diversified and innovative steps to increase funding and support for conservation communities.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those 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.

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

A world of hurt: 2021 climate disasters raise alarm over food security
- Human-driven climate change is fueling weather extremes — from record drought to massive floods — that are hammering key agricultural regions around the world.
- From the grain heartland of Argentina to the tomato belt of California to the pork hub of China, extreme weather events have driven down output and driven up global commodity prices.
- Shortages of water and food have, in turn, prompted political and social strife in 2021, including food protests in Iran and hunger in Madagascar, and threaten to bring escalating misery, civil unrest and war in coming years.
- Experts warn the problem will only intensify, even in regions currently unaffected by, or thriving from the high prices caused by scarcity. Global transformational change is urgently needed in agricultural production and consumption patterns, say experts.

Study puts 2050 deadline on tipping point for Mekong Delta salinity
- The increasing salinity in Mekong Delta is currently being driven by the building of dams upstream and sand mining downstream, but climate change will likely be the predominant factor by 2050, a new study shows.
- The Mekong Delta is a key farming region, and already more frequent and extensive saltwater intrusion is killing off large swaths of crops with greater frequency.
- The study’s authors say regional stakeholders need to address the anthropogenic drivers of saltwater intrusion in the delta now, before climate change makes it a global problem.
- The study also has implications for other delta systems across Asia, which face similar pressures, both anthropogenic and climate change-driven.

Turning Kenya’s problematic invasive plants into useful bioenergy
- The shores of Lake Victoria are clogged with water hyacinth, a South American invasive plant that is hurting Kenya’s freshwater fishery, economy and people’s health. While manual removal is effective, it is labor intensive and can’t keep up with the spreading plant.
- Kenyans are innovating to find ways to reduce water hyacinth by finding practical uses for the invader. In 2018, a program was launched to turn the exotic species into biogas which is then offered to economically vulnerable households to use as a biofuel for cooking.
- One proposal being considered: a scaled up industrial biogas plant that would use water hyacinth as a primary source of raw material. Efforts are also underway to convert another invasive plant, prickly pear into biogas used for cooking. A biocontrol insect is also proving effective, though slow, in dealing with prickly pear.
- These economically viable and sustainable homegrown solutions are chipping away at Kenya’s invasive species problem, though to be truly effective, these various projects would need to be upscaled.

Cleaning up Cambodia’s kitchens could curb deforestation, climate change
- NGOs and companies across Cambodia are taking action in response to the mass use of charcoal and forest biomass in household and restaurant kitchens countrywide. The shift away from these polluting fuel sources to cleaner energy alternatives is being sparked by health and environmental concerns.
- Education is a key strategy for implementing the shift away from charcoal and wood, as their use is ingrained in the culture, with many Cambodians saying food doesn’t taste as good when cooked with other fuels.
- One innovative solution is turning the country’s coconut husks into “green charcoal,” which is already earning the nation recognition for being a global leader within the sustainable charcoal sector.
- Cambodia’s farmers are also moving away from using forest biomass for energy, and are instead utilizing biodigesters to turn household and farm waste into biogas for cooking and to make organic fertilizer.

Deforestation spikes in Virunga National Park, DRC
- Satellite data has detected several dramatic spikes in deforestation activity in Virunga National Park in 2021.
- Virunga National Park is situated in the northeastern portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), right over its border with Uganda.
- Virunga is home to many endangered species and subspecies, including mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei).
- The park’s major threats include logging for charcoal production and clearing for agriculture, both of which are driven by poverty.

Rush to turn ‘black diamonds’ into cash eats up Uganda’s forests, fruits
- As recently as 2018, only a little over 42% of Ugandans had access to electricity — many were too poor to afford it. As of 2016-17, 90% of all households burned wood fuel for cooking, with just 15.5% using charcoal in rural areas, but 66.4% of urban households using it.
- Those using charcoal account for roughly 23% of the country’s total population, which means that some 10.7 million citizens in a nation of 46.8 million rely on charcoal to cook their meals, based on recent U.N. data.
- Charcoal producers are working hard to meet this exploding demand, degrading and depleting the nation’s forest reserves, and now buying up fruit trees on private lands to make into briquettes. Many charcoal producers lack the licenses required by the government, so are cutting trees and making charcoal illegally.
- The surging charcoal industry is destroying Uganda’s forests and biodiversity, while briquette burning is also causing respiratory and other health problems, and its carbon emissions are adding significantly to global climate change.

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.

An engaged society is key for the future of African conservation, says WWF Africa’s Alice Ruhweza
- Protecting Africa’s charismatic megafauna often come first to mind when Westerners think about conservation in Africa, but this is a narrow view that doesn’t capture the range of issues involved in conservation efforts across the continent.
- Alice Ruhweza, the regional director for Africa for WWF, says conservation in Africa is about about ecosystems and people: “As the home of humankind, Africa and its ecosystems have evolved together with people. When we talk about conservation in Africa we are really talking about people and nature.”
- Ruhweza says that growing recognition of this connection is driving “a shift to a more people-centered and rights-based conservation,” including within WWF.
- Ruhweza spoke about these issues and more during a recent interview with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler.

Saving our ‘Beloved Beasts’: Q&A with environmental journalist Michelle Nijhuis
- Environmental journalist Michelle Nijhuis explores the history of the conservation movement in her new book, “Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction.”
- The book traces the successes and missteps of conservation through the people who influenced the movement.
- Along the way, Nijhuis shares a guarded sense of optimism that humans can positively influence the future of all life on Earth.

Momentum is building for a ‘robust’ biodiversity framework: Q&A with Elizabeth Mrema
- One of the many impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic has been to rally global ambition for a biodiversity framework that sets the world on a path to a sustainable future, says Elizabeth Maruma Mrema.
- Mrema, executive secretary of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), says there’s growing awareness of the importance of biodiversity for everything from food security to the regulation of water and air quality, to pest and disease regulation.
- “World leaders fully recognize that the continued deterioration and degradation of Earth’s natural ecosystems are having major impacts on the lives and livelihoods of people around the world,” she says.
- In an interview with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler, Mrema talks about building a robust post-2020 framework after the Aichi Biodiversity Targets fell short, how the conservation sector has changed over her career, and her hopes for the CBD summit coming up later this year.

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.

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.

Pet trade relies on ‘disposable’ wild chameleons from Madagascar
- Despite being difficult to keep alive and healthy, chameleons are among the most popular reptiles in the exotic pet trade.
- Each year hundreds of thousands of these slow-moving reptiles are taken from the wild, both legally and illegally, many of them from threatened species living in the forests of Madagascar.
- Observers say the international trade in chameleons must be changed to avoid harming wild populations and improve the well-being of animals during transit and captivity.
- They also point to the need to make the trade fairer and more transparent, so local people can benefit from it.

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.

Liberia gave villagers control over their forests. Then a mining company showed up
- After Liberia’s civil war ended, the country overhauled its forestry laws, including passing legislation that gave impoverished rural communities the right to manage large tracts of rainforest.
- The reforms were part of the international community’s postwar reconstruction agenda, and donors have spent millions of dollars helping to implement them.
- Some of the new “community forests” were set up in the remote northern Nimba county, one of the densest biodiversity hotspots in West Africa.
- In 2019, a Swiss-Russian mining company arrived in one of them with a dubious exploration permit, exposing cracks in the reforms and raising questions about their future.

Brazilians impacted by mining assert: ‘Genocide legalized by the state’
- Residents of traditional communities in the Brazilian Amazon municipality of Barcarena, near the mouth of the Amazon River, say that their subsistence and commercial livelihoods, and their health, have been destroyed by an invasion of mining companies which began in the mid-1980’s.
- Among the gigantic companies moving into the region were Brazil’s Vale, Norwegian-Japanese Albrás, Norway’s Norsk Hydro, and France’s Imerys Rio Capim Caulim. Community complaints say that the firms allegedly stole community land and polluted land, water and air.
- Meanwhile, according to residents, the government rewarded the companies with subsidies, looked the other way when community lands were appropriated and pollution occurred, and paid for mining firm infrastructure, including the Tucurui mega-dam; port of Vila do Conde, and a network of new roads.
- Also, a string of mining disasters punctuated the years, with the worst by Norsk Hydro in 2018 at the Hydro Alunorte facility. Though local waters, blood and hair have proven to be contaminated with mining-related toxins, the companies defend themselves by saying no particular firm can be pinpointed with the harm.

Bug bites: Edible insect production ramps up quickly in Madagascar
- In the last two years, two insect farming projects have taken off in Madagascar as a way to provide precious protein while alleviating pressure on lemurs and other wild animals hunted for bushmeat.
- One program, which promotes itself with a deck of playing cards, encourages rainforest residents in the northeast to farm a bacon-flavored native planthopper called sakondry.
- Another program focuses on indoor production of crickets in the capital city, Antananarivo.
- Both projects are on the cusp of expanding to other parts of the country.

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.

In Guatemala, refugees find new calling as park rangers
- In recent years, the number of migrants and refugees entering Guatemala after fleeing violence at home has grown.
- FUNDAECO, a local conservation NGO, has partnered with UNHCR and other groups to find jobs for some refugees working as park guards in Guatemalan biodiversity hotspots.
- Fifty-five refugees have been employed in the “Green Jobs” program so far, with FUNDAECO hoping that number will reach at least 100.

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.

Madagascar reopens national parks shuttered by COVID-19
- On Sept. 5, Madagascar began reopening all its national parks. They’d been closed since March because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- The pandemic has been devastating for local economies, which depend heavily on tourism.
- Madagascar authorities also announced further easing of restrictions throughout much of the island nation and the resumption of limited international flights.

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.

Life among the turtles: Traditional people struggle inside an Amazon reserve
- The Brazilian Amazon’s Trombetas River is well known for its exceptional biodiversity, including nesting turtles. In 1979, to protect flora and fauna there, the REBIO Trombetas was founded; it’s a highly restrictive form of conservation unit where today only very limited economic activity is permitted.
- The two traditional communities inside the reserve — the Último Quilombo and Nova Esperança Quilombo (Afro-Brazilian communities of runaway slave descendants) — complain that the government has unfairly penalized them for conducting forest and river livelihoods including Brazil nut collecting and fishing.
- Local residents also contend that while they’re fined for such minor infractions, MRN, the world’s fourth largest bauxite mining company, located near the REBIO, has done extensive ecological damage due to ore ship traffic and water pollution, which severely impacts turtle populations.
- In fact, MRN’s mines, ore processing and bauxite waste lagoons are located inside the Saracá-Taquera National Forest, a protected area known as a FLONA, on the Trombetas River. MRN has been fined often for its environmental violations there, fines it has appealed and not yet paid; the firm says it’s operating within the law.

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.

Risking death and arrest, Madagascar fishers chase dwindling sea cucumbers
- For centuries, Chinese people have sought sea cucumbers as an ingredient in traditional medicine or as a high-status food.
- In recent decades, skyrocketing demand and prices have led to a marine gold rush for sea cucumbers around the world.
- In Madagascar, as elsewhere, wild sea cucumbers are declining.
- Fishers are venturing further out to sea and into deeper waters to pursue them illegally using unsafe SCUBA gear.

Brazil’s indigenous hit especially hard by COVID-19: why so vulnerable?
- At least 78 indigenous peoples in the Brazilian Amazon are infected by COVID-19, with 3,662 individuals testing positive and 249 dead among 45 of those peoples. Detailed data is lacking for the other 33 peoples. Experts say poverty, poor resistance to Western diseases, and lack of medical facilities may explain high vulnerability.
- The Coordination of Indigenous Organizations in the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB), which gathered and tallied this data, expects cases and deaths are underreported. Many leaders and elders continue dying among indigenous people, including elders of the Munduruku, Kayapó, Arara, Macuxi, and Tuyuka peoples.
- COVID-19 has now penetrated the Xingu river basin, a vast area south of the Amazon River in Pará and Mato Grosso states. The Arara people there were devastated by disease and violence in the 1980s. Now, of 121 remaining Arara, almost half have tested positive for the coronavirus.
- Of the 1,818 Xicrin in southwest Pará state, 270 (15%) have tested positive, with seven deaths. Analysts speculate this high infection and death rate (higher than Brazil’s general populace, and even many other indigenous groups), may be due to poor underlying health due to water allegedly polluted by a Vale nickel mine.

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.

MRN bauxite mine leaves legacy of pollution, poverty in Brazilian Amazon
- Mineração Rio do Norte (MRN) arrived in the Trombetas River basin in the 1970s with plans to mine bauxite on a gigantic scale. Today, MRN is the fourth largest producer of bauxite in the world, providing the valuable aluminum ore to nations and manufacturers around the planet.
- On arriving in the Amazon, MRN immediately annexed lands from the traditional riverine community of Boa Vista, reportedly displacing 90 families to build its port company town. Boa Vista is a quilombo, a community of Afro-Brazilians (known as quilombolas), the descendants of runaway slaves.
- While MRN says it provided jobs, education and health services, quilombo residents report a decade of horrendous water pollution from mine waste — never cleaned up — the loss of fisheries and hunting grounds, rampant poverty, a lack of electricity, health services, and proper sanitation.
- The harm done by industrial mining to Boa Vista, and lessons learned, and not learned, over the last 40+ years, are especially relevant today, as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro aggressively pushes forward his agenda to open indigenous reserves and other Amazon conserved lands to industrial mining.

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.

As visitors vanish, Madagascar’s protected areas suffer a ‘devastating’ blow
- The country has lost half a billion dollars in much-needed tourism revenue since the start of 2020 because of the COVID-19 crisis, according to official estimates.
- Tourism contributes toward funding conservation efforts in Madagascar’s network of protected areas; those protected areas that rely heavily on foreign visitors have been hit worst by the crisis.
- There are also fears that international funding, the primary support for conservation efforts in Madagascar, could be jeopardized as big donors face economic crises in their home countries.
- Greater impoverishment could hurt communities living near the protected areas and lead to even more unsustainable exploitation of forests and natural resources.

Feed your neighbor, solve big problems (commentary)
- Rich countries must quickly invest in tropical forest nations if they expect them to keep their forests standing in the name of fighting climate change, argues Darrel Webber, managing director of global forest strategies for the nonprofit Earth Innovation Institute.
- Market actors too have a role to play.
- Attempts to “flatten the curve” during the ongoing coronavirus outbreak may hold lessons in this regard.
- This post is a commentary and does not necessarily reflect the views of Mongabay.

No tourism income, but this Philippine community still guards its environment
- Communities in the biodiversity haven of Palawan in the Philippines earn millions in tourism-related services annually, but the industry has been paralyzed due to a lockdown aimed at suppressing the spread of COVID-19.
- The lockdown, in effect since March 17, has forced close tourist sites in the province, which has affected thousands of families dependent on tourism.
- Despite this, these communities continue to look after their protected areas, making sure that illegal logging and fishing activities do not proliferate during the lockdown period.
- Owing to proper handling of finances, these community organizations can sustain themselves and the areas they look after for a year, but interventions and support are necessary to keep these areas protected in the long run.

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-19 will hurt Madagascar’s conservation funding: Q&A with Minister Vahinala Raharinirina
- There is growing concern that the COVID-19 crisis will enfeeble conservation efforts across the globe, particularly in developing countries.
- The concern is acute for Madagascar, one of the poorest nations in the world, which relies heavily on foreign funds to implement conservation programs.
- The disappearance of tourism revenue in the short term and the possible drying up of international funding and deepening impoverishment in the coming months and years could grievously endanger Madagascar’s unique biodiversity, Madagascar’s environment minister told Mongabay.

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.

For nesting hawksbill turtles, this Philippine community is a sanctuary
- For centuries, hawksbill sea turtles have returned to a shoreline in the eastern Philippines to lay their eggs, even as the human community has expanded along the same stretch of beach.
- Hawksbill sea turtles’ low survival rates in the wild are caused by natural predators and, recently, exacerbated by rising sea levels. Another key threat is poaching for their meat and shells.
- Despite the lack of financial support, locals continue to look after the eggs, coming up with their own ways to protect them until the hatchlings are ready to be released back into the sea.

A new dawn: The story of deforestation in the next decade must be different to the last (commentary)
- 2020 was to be the year when the bold commitment made by hundreds of companies to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains was met. Instead, the failure to achieve this goal can be measured by the sharp rise in deforestation since 2014.
- Yet despite this bleak picture – and the need to act being more urgent than ever – there’s another story to tell about the last decade.
- It’s the story of how the pledge to eliminate deforestation from supply chains by 2020 was doomed to fail. It’s also – perhaps surprisingly – about the immense journey some companies, NGOs, and institutions have made in that time and how the path to remove the stain of deforestation from the products we consume is now clearer than ever.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

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

What makes community ecotourism succeed? In Madagascar, location, location, location
- For the past two decades, donors and international NGOs have worked with the Malagasy government to create thousands of local associations to manage and conserve parcels of forest.
- Ecotourism ventures, along with farming support, are often presented as an important way to overcome the loss of income that usually accompanies new restrictions on how local people can use their land.
- Successful ecotourism ventures are few and far between, but a common factor is also something that’s hard to replicate: proximity to highways and other tourist destinations.

$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.

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

Demand for charcoal threatens the forest of Madagascar’s last hunter-gatherers
- The Mikea, who number around 1,000 people, are facing what many of them say is an existential environmental problem.
- Their ancestral forest in southwestern Madagascar is partly protected inside a national park.
- However, it is rapidly being chopped down to supply a growing demand for charcoal, the country’s primary source of cooking fuel.
- Some Mikea, having lived their entire lives hunting and gathering, are facing a shortage of game and other food and are now considering whether they must abandon the forest, and their way of life, for good.

Manila’s informal settlers face relocation in exchange for clean bay
- The Philippine government has begun the process of relocating more than 200,000 families living along waterways to restore Manila Bay, the main body of water in the capital.
- Some residents worry about their impending displacement, citing a lack of jobs in resettlement sites.
- Relocating informal settlers is part of a seven-year program to rehabilitate Manila Bay, one of the most polluted bodies of the water in Metro Manila.
- Increased rainfall due to extreme weather events poses threats to informal settlers in the area as it could cause landslides and flooding.

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.

Pan Borneo Highway development endangers the Heart of Borneo
- The construction of the Pan Borneo Highway in the Malaysian state of Sabah could disrupt the connections between wildlife populations and appears to run counter to the state’s conservation commitments, according to a new study.
- Passages under the highway and the rehabilitation of key forest corridors could lessen the impacts of the road, but the authors of the study caution that these interventions are expensive and may not be effective.
- They argue that planners should consider canceling certain sections of the road with the greatest potential for damaging the surrounding forest.

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.

Beehive fences can help mitigate human-elephant conflict
- Crop-raiding by elephants can devastate small farmers, leading to food insecurity, lost opportunity costs, and even death, as well as negative attitudes towards elephants, but finding effective and inexpensive solutions has proven extremely difficult.
- Beehive fences—surrounding crops fields with beehives attached to fence posts and strung together with wires—may serve as a humane and eco-friendly way to protect crops from elephants.
- Repeated farm-level trials have demonstrated benefits to farmers of using beehive fences, including fewer elephants approaching their fields and, for communities willing to manage the bees, production of “elephant-friendly” honey. However, the strategy doesn’t work everywhere: it requires management by farmers and willingness of bees to occupy at least some of the hives, and appropriate length and positioning to dissuade elephants from just walking around them.
- Beehive fences have benefited farmers in several East African countries, and projects elsewhere have begun to test them as well, but several uncertainties, including their success at a scale that doesn’t just displace the elephants to the first unfenced farm, suggest they should still be used with other techniques as part of a toolkit to reduce human-elephant conflict.

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.

Madagascar: What’s good for the forest is good for the native silk industry
- People in the highlands of central Madagascar have long buried their loved ones in shrouds of thick wild silk, typically from the endemic silkworm known as landibe (Borocera cajani).
- With support from NGOs, traditional silk workers have widened their offerings to include scarves made of wild silk for sale to tourists and the country’s elites.
- In recent years, the price of raw materials has shot up as the forests the landibe grows in succumb to fire and other threats, making it difficult for silk workers to continue their craft.
- However, where there are forest-management challenges, there is also opportunity: the silk business provides an incentive for local people to protect their trees. Some well-organized and well-supported community groups are cashing in on conservation, in spite of the broader silkworm recession.

Making room for wild foods in forest conservation
- The first-ever FAO report on the importance of biodiversity for food and agriculture warns that the abundance of our food supply is diminishing — with worrisome consequences for global food security.
- The report also looks at the decline in wild foods, an underreported but essential component of food security, especially for forest dependent communities.
- While wild foods make up less than 1 percent of global caloric intake, they provide essential micronutrients to hundreds of millions of people.
- Acknowledging the role that wild food plays for forest-dependent communities, and the right of access to those foods, could be an important contribution to the debate around forest conservation.

Eat the insects, spare the lemurs
- To solve the twin challenges of malnutrition and biodiversity loss in Madagascar, new efforts are promoting edible insects as a way to take pressure off wildlife that people hunt for meat when food is scarce.
- Insects are widely eaten in Madagascar. They are also incredibly nutritious and one of the “greenest” forms of animal proteins in terms of their land, water and food requirements and their greenhouse gas emissions.
- One program is testing the farming of sakondry, a little-known hopping insect that tastes a lot like bacon. Another is setting up a network of cricket farms.
- Other attempts to reduce reliance on forest protein include improving chicken husbandry in rural areas.

Chimps in Sierra Leone adapt to human-impacted habitats, but threats remain
- Western chimpanzees are adapting to survive in severely degraded habitat, a new study says.
- However, the study also finds the abundance of western chimpanzees in Sierra Leone is impacted by even secondary roads.
- Ensuring the long-term survival of western chimps calls for changes in agriculture, roads and other development, researchers say.

In Nigeria, a highway threatens community and conservation interests
- Activists and affected communities in Nigeria’s Cross River state continue to protest plans to build a major highway cutting through farmland and forest that’s home to threatened species such as the Cross River gorilla.
- The federal government ordered a slew of measures to minimize the impact of the project, but two years later it remains unclear whether the developers have complied, even as they resume work.
- Environmentalists warn of a “Pandora’s box” of problems ushered in by the construction of the highway, including illegal deforestation, poaching, land grabs, micro-climate change, erosion, biodiversity loss and encroachment into protected areas.
- They’ve called on the state government to pursue alternatives to the new highway, including investing in upgrading existing road networks.

In India’s Sundarbans, communities shrink as their island sinks
- In India and Bangladesh, millions of people live in the Sundarbans islands and face losing their homes to rising seas caused by climate change.
- The region was the first in the world to record an unfolding climate refugee crisis as people fled an island lost to the sea. More islands remain at risk of succumbing to the rising waters.
- The government has long relied on building embankments to keep the seawater out, but in a report it co-wrote in 2014 it acknowledges that this measure is no longer sufficient.
- One expert calls for restoring the Sundarbans’ original mangrove habitats to both mitigate the impacts of rising seas and storm surges, and to serve as a carbon sink in the fight against greenhouse gas emissions.

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.

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

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.

Western chimp numbers revised up to 53,000, but development threats loom
- A new survey of data from the IUCN’s Apes Database indicates that there are nearly 53,000 western chimpanzees in West Africa.
- The number is significantly higher than previous estimates, which placed the population closer to 35,000, but the subspecies remains categorized as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List.
- The authors of the study say their findings can help governments in the region ensure that proposed infrastructure projects do as little harm to the remaining chimpanzee populations as possible.

That Malagasy forest featured in Netflix’s ‘Our Planet’? It’s vanishing fast
- Parts of the Netflix series “Our Planet,” released this month, were shot in Kirindy Forest in the Menabe Antimena protected area in western Madagascar.
- It’s a biodiversity-rich area that supports plant and animal species found nowhere else, including baobabs, lemurs and fossas.
- Between the shooting for the series in 2016 and its release in 2019, a large patch of the forest was lost, including areas where filming took place.
- This reflects a larger trend of deforestation in the area and in Madagascar, which is experiencing massive deforestation pressure.

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 corn farming menaces a Madagascar protected area
- Deforestation within Menabe Antimena Protected Area, a large swath of unique dry forest ecosystem on Madagascar’s west coast, has increased dramatically in recent years.
- Slash-and-burn agriculture is the primary driver. Unlike in most places in Madagascar, it isn’t done for subsistence farming but to plant corn, a cash crop traded by a powerful local elite.
- Conservation groups have teamed up to organize raids that have resulted in a number of arrests, and are making inroads into the corn distribution networks.
- So far, however, only impoverished laborers have been held to account, many of them new arrivals to the area who have fled drought in southern Madagascar; none of the well-connected backers of the deforestation have been touched.

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.

In the Solomon Islands, making amends in the name of conservation
- The Kwaio people of the Solomon Islands have been working with scientists to protect their homeland from resource extraction and development.
- But violent clashes in 1927 between the Kwaio and the colonial government created a rift between members of this tribe and the outside world.
- To heal those old wounds and continue with their conservation work, a trio of scientists joined the Kwaio in a sacred reconciliation ceremony in July 2018.
- Kwaio leaders say that the ceremony opened the door to a more peaceful future for their people.

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.

‘There are no laws’: Cattle, drugs, corruption destroying Honduras UNESCO site
- Poverty and political violence are driving Hondurans into Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO World Cultural and Natural Heritage site holding some of the region’s largest tracts of old growth rainforest.
- Local conservation and agroforestry organizations say the settlers are contributing to deforestation in the reserve. However, research indicates illegal ranching is the biggest deforestation driver in the area.
- Locals say many illegal cattle ranchers maintain ties to the drug business. They claim government corruption and apathy are also contributing to the situation.
- An investigation found criminal groups are able to operate with impunity in Honduras because of an ineffective justice system and corrupt security forces.

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.

Group helps illegal bird traders transition into different lines of business
- Instead of focusing on putting bird poachers and illegal traders behind bars, an NGO in Indonesian Borneo is creating incentives for them to stop.
- It’s a unique approach in the Southeast Asian country, where conservation efforts have tended to focus on calls for tighter law enforcement and more rigorous punishment.
- The group, Planet Indonesia, has identified more than 100 small bird shops in and around Pontianak, the biggest city in western Borneo, and says many of them are pondering changing professions. It’s know-how and capital that’s holding them back.

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.

The river of blood (insider)
- Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler’s account of his trip down the Manambolo River in Western Madagascar where he was nearly attacked by bandits.
- This post is insider content, which is available to paying subscribers.

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.

‘Punished’: Bolivian communities opposed to highway cry foul over neglect
- Indigenous leaders from 14 villages settled within the TIPNIS nature reserve say that government programs and public works have not reached their areas because they are opposed to a planned highway running through the park.
- The inhabitants of Trinidadcito complain that the health post is not used because there’s no resident doctor and that their school doesn’t have walls.
- In the community of Nueva Galilea, an indigenous leader says a public pool and a school that the government claims to have built are among the “phantom” public works projects that were paid for but never built.

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.

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

In a first, DRC communities gain legal rights to forests
- Provincial authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo have approved forest concessions for five communities.
- Following the implementation of a new community forest strategy in June, this is the first time the government has given communities control of forests.
- Sustainable use of the forest is seen by conservation and development organizations as a way to both combat rural poverty and fight deforestation.

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

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.

‘Not doing anything is no longer acceptable’: Q&A with Alice Thomas, climate refugee expert
- Mongabay spoke with Alice Thomas, an expert on climate refugees, about the growing impact of climate change on the refugee crisis worldwide.
- To date, no one has been able to claim asylum due to climate change because the official definition of a refugee does not allow for climate-induced migration.
- One of the least-understood aspects of climate migration, however, is that most migrants won’t be leaving their country, but will be moving within their national borders.
- Smarter, better policies could not only mitigate such migrations, but allow communities to adapt to ongoing changes due to climate change, Thomas says.

Forest communities pay the price for conservation in Madagascar
- In a two-year investigation of a REDD+ pilot project, a team of researchers spoke with more than 450 households affected by the establishment of a large protected area called the Ankeniheny-Zahamena Corridor, a 3,820-square-kilometer (1,475-square-mile) tract of rainforest in eastern Madagascar.
- The REDD+ project, supported by Conservation International and the World Bank, was aimed at supporting communities by providing support for alternative livelihoods to those communities near the Ankeniheny-Zahamena Corridor protected area.
- They found that the REDD+ project’s preliminary studies identified less than half of those negatively affected by the Corridor’s designation.
- The team also discovered that the value of the one-off compensation, in the form of support to pursue other livelihoods, fell far short of the opportunity costs that the communities are likely to face as a result of losing access to the forest in the coming decades.

Angry farmers set fire to offices of Madagascar eco group, gov’t agency
- Large swaths of forest inside northwestern Madagascar’s Bongolava Forest Corridor, a protected area, have been burned to make way for commercial corn farming, raising the fortunes of many residents accustomed to living on the edge of subsistence.
- Last month, angry farmers armed with sticks and machetes stormed into the northwestern city of Boriziny, also known as Port–Bergé, to demand the release of people arrested for illegally clearing farmland inside the protected area.
- The group destroyed the offices of the local nonprofit that manages the protected area and set fire to the building it shares with an outpost of the environment ministry, as well as to the homes of the group’s coordinator and the government administrator for the area.
- The episode highlights the difficulty of achieving meaningful conservation in an area where the populace largely views ecological goals as conflicting with an important source of income.

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.

Primate-rich countries are becoming less hospitable places for monkeys, apes and lemurs
- New research shows that many of the 65 percent of the world’s primate species found in four countries — Brazil, Indonesia, Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of Congo — face the threat of extinction.
- The scientists involved in the study used maps of primate ranges and information on the threats they face to predict what might happen to the animals through the end of the 21st century.
- They found that increases in the amount of land turned over for human food production could cause the primate habitats to shrink substantially in these countries.
- However, the team also found that intensive conservation measures could dramatically reduce the loss of primate habitat by 2100 and potentially avert the mass extinction of these species.

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