Far-right congressman Jair Bolsonaro, whose hostile campaign rhetoric has earned him comparisons to U.S. President Donald Trump, won Brazil’s presidential election Sunday, a development that has raised concerns about the future of human rights and environmental action in the world’s sixth-largest greenhouse gas emitter, CNN reported. Like Trump, Bolsonaro has made homophobic, sexist and racist […]
The launch of an online crowdsourcing database for seagrass hopes to breathe new life into efforts to conserve the underwater flowering plants, which act as both important habitats for marine species and a major store of carbon dioxide. Patchy mapping of seagrass meadows has hampered efforts to protect the plants (which are distinct from seaweed) […]
Maybe you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but two recent studies revealed that old forests around the world are full of surprises. In Europe, scientists working to complete the first ever map of the continent’s old growth forests discovered there were more of them than previously believed. And in South America, a study […]
Scientists are increasingly realizing the importance of biodiversity for sustaining life on earth. The most comprehensive biodiversity study in a decade, published in March by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), warned that the ongoing loss of species and habitats was as great a threat to our and our planet’s wellbeing […]
Scientists have discovered another factor that might interact with rising carbon dioxide emissions to influence climate change—tropical forests. In a study published in Nature Climate Change Friday, researchers found that the way tropical forests interact with increased atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide could alter rainfall patterns, drying out the Amazon rainforest and increasing precipitation in […]
The UK supermarket Iceland has announced it will remove palm oil from all its own brand products by the end of the year due to the belief there is no such thing as “sustainable” palm oil. Increasing demand for palm oil is still having devastating effects on wildlife, habitats and people where it is grown, […]
It was 10 years ago that Greenpeace first published an investigation into Indonesia’s palm oil industry. We showed that the world’s biggest brands got their palm oil from companies destroying Indonesia’s rainforests—threatening local people as well as tigers and orangutans. As people learned the truth about their shampoo, cosmetics and chocolate bars, brands and their […]
The World Wildlife Fund announced Friday that the Program for Protected Areas of the Amazon (ARPA), a joint venture with the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment, has reached the goal of protecting a network of conservation units of at least 60 million hectares in the Amazon. This effort represents the conservation of 15 percent of […]
Between Aug. 21 and Sept. 5, conflict palm oil grower PT. Tualang Raya cleared another 18 hectares of critical lowland rainforests inside the Leuser Ecosystem. This rogue actor has continued razing forests with impunity despite Rainforest Action Network exposing its ongoing destruction since September 2015. PT. Tualang Raya is clearing in disregard of a government […]