Mongabay

Today we’re taking a look at how agroforestry, an ancient indigenous technology that is increasingly being adopted by farmers around the world, can help solve many of the major environmental issues we’re facing, from deforestation and biodiversity loss to…

France has rolled out a new initiative to fight deforestation and promote sustainable development. Under the initiative, announced in Ecuador in early December 2020, the South American country will be the first regional beneficiary of the related pilot…

In 2005, farmers in Antananarivo discovered an unfamiliar creature in their rice paddies. It was a crayfish unlike any other in Madagascar, and it soon spread throughout the country’s central highlands. When a team of researchers at the German Cancer…

JAMBI, Indonesia — Armed with a flashlight, 43-year-old Musadat walks slowly through the thick and dense Harapan forest, one of the last remaining expanses of lowland tropical rainforest on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Musadat suddenly stops and…

MANILA — Knowledge of the Philippine pangolin, the only pangolin species in the country, is scant. Sightings of the animal are rarer still. But unlike other pangolin species around the world that teeter on the brink of extinction, a new study suggests that…

In the skies above far-flung corners of the Brazilian Amazon, a small plane aims laser beams down at the treetops to create a real-time topography down to the ground. Its goal is simple: find gaps in the forest. “It may sound like a Star Wars movie, but this…

How can we support Indigenous communities in using their current knowledge and knowhow to improve their living standards? Three shifts in investment practice could yield more sustainable, organic outcomes while honoring and empowering local and traditional…

Few figures have championed the cause of Indonesia’s farmers and rural communities more than Gunawan Wiradi, who has died aged 88. Born in Solo, a mid-size city in Indonesia’s Central Java province, Gunawan authored several influential books and, in 1994,…

An intergovernmental organization representing countries that produce the bulk of the world’s timber has thrown its support behind a decade-long effort to protect the last remaining primary forest in the Malaysian state of Sarawak. In its November 2020…

Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting one of the world’s largest pheasants: the great Argus pheasant. The great Argus pheasant (Argusianus argus) lives…

Indonesia’s Kerinci Seblat National Park is the largest national park on the island of Sumatra and the second-largest park in Southeast Asia. It is home to a wide variety of jungle cat species and is considered one of the world’s last great strongholds for…

“Disasters and emergencies do not just throw light on the world as it is. They also rip open the fabric of normality. Through the hole that opens up, we glimpse possibilities of other worlds.” – Peter Baker, in The Guardian, March 30, 2020 The year of…

Chances are, the works of the world’s insects touch your lips every day. The coffee or tea you savor, both are insect pollinated. Apples, oranges, cabbages, cashews, cherries, carrots, broccoli, watermelon, garlic, cinnamon, basil, sunflower seeds, almonds,…

Tropical forests are guardians against runaway climate change, but their ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is wearing down. The Amazon, which accounts for more than half of the world’s rainforest cover, is on the verge of turning into a…

When Súlhlima Morris was a girl, in the days when the Tl’ches archipelago was still inhabited, the tide pools were full of urchins. The Songhees Nation elder, who also goes by the English name Joan, learned from her own elders how to harvest the plentiful…

Covering around 13% of Earth’s surface and harboring an estimated 83% of its endangered wildlife, protected areas are tasked with an outsize responsibility to safeguard vulnerable species, as well as many Indigenous communities. But mounting evidence…

Two miniature sculptures sold on eBay in December 2020: a tiny egg with a chick hatching through the shell, and an intricately carved man in traditional Japanese dress with a rat perched on his shoulder. The egg sold for $195 and the figure for $1,345. But…

The Roraima state bill legalizing garimpo prospecting, if signed into law by the governor, could put the Yanomami reserve and other Indigenous territories at greater risk of invasion and COVID-19 infection.

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has denied that deforestation for oil palm plantations and coal mines contributed to a recent deadly flood in southern Borneo. At least 21 people died and more than 256,000 were affected in what President Joko Widodo has…

MANILA — Indigenous youths harboring from a military-led counterinsurgency in the Philippines may soon lose the only safe space they have known for the past two years. Under a nearly 40-year pact, the 17 campuses of the University of the Philippines are…