Category: 9. Environment

Indigenous experts from leading Indigenous organizations and the U.N. share their list of the top 10 Indigenous news stories from 2023. This year saw many emerging trends, including the creation of funding mechanisms led by Indigenous organizations, criticism of carbon markets, record-breaking heat, and Indigenous women’s growing role as leaders. While the presence and recognition…

The COP28 climate summit in Dubai was a mixed bag for forest conservation as climate mitigation. The final text included the goals from the 2021 Glasgow Declaration, which calls for halting deforestation by the end of the decade. However, the summit failed to make progress on paying countries to keep forests standing to offset emissions…

As the 2030 deadline to prevent the worst impacts of climate change looms ever closer, changing direction from business as usual and tackling critical environmental issues need to become the norm, numerous experts Mongabay interviewed over the past year have stressed In Latin America, the specter of the Amazon hitting its tipping point, corporations expanding…

Home to the third-largest expanse of tropical rainforest and some of the world’s fastest-growing economies, Southeast Asia has seen conservation wins and losses over the course of 2023. The year was characterized by a rising trend of repression against environmental and Indigenous defenders that cast a shadow of fear over the work of activists in…

From hispid hares to otters and a critically endangered lizard, Nepal’s lesser-known wild animals live under the shadow of the iconic tiger. Officials and conservation stakeholders are yet to come up with concrete plans to save many of these species even as they face the threat of extinction due to habitat loss and fragmentation. Other…

A new oak species has been described from the forests of northern Sumatra, the first of its kind found on the island in more than 10 years. The two lone trees are located in the remote Batang Toru forest, the only known habitat of the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan, which was itself only described in…

This aerial photo taken from a seaplane shows tourist boats sailing on the waters of Ha Long Bay on December 28. Vietnam’s Ha Long Bay is losing its famous turquoise hue as pollution and over-development threaten its wildlife and picture-perfect image. The UNESCO site is one of Vietnam’s most popular tourist destinations, with more than…

Oil sludge is seen on a beach near the El Palito oil refinery in Venezuela’s Carabobo state on December 27, 2023. An oil spill is sloshing tarry ooze onto beaches in the state of Carabobo along Venezuela’s western coastline, several environmental groups said on Wednesday. The spill was first detected on Tuesday, Yohan Flores, a…

Ghanaian fisheries observer Samuel Abayateye’s decapitated body was discovered floating in a lagoon nearly six weeks after he was reported missing from the tuna trawler he was assigned to. Abayateye’s death follows the 2019 disappearance at sea of another fisheries observer, Emmanuel Essien, whose body has still not been found. Police and the Ghana Fisheries…

A network of district governments across Indonesia is working on transitioning away from commodity-based economic development to sustainable, nature-based solutions. Many of these districts are heavily reliant on monoculture plantations like palm oil, or other extractive industries like oil and gas, and are making the shift to better preserve forests and peatlands, as well as…