The world lost a Belgium-sized area of primary rainforests in 2018

By Mikaela Weisse and Liz Goldman 25 April 2019 (Global Forest Watch) – The tropics lost 12 million hectares of tree cover in 2018, the fourth-highest annual loss since record-keeping began in 2001. Of greatest concern is the disappearance of 3.6 million hectares of primary rainforest, an area the size of Belgium. The figures come […]

Due to humans, extinction risk for 1,700 animal species to increase by 2070 – “Losses in species populations can irreversibly hamper the functioning of ecosystems and human quality of life”

By Kendall Teare 4 March 2019 (Yale News) – As humans continue to expand our use of land across the planet, we leave other species little ground to stand on. By 2070, increased human land-use is expected to put 1,700 species of amphibians, birds, and mammals at greater extinction risk by shrinking their natural habitats, […]

Children suffer most from deadly coal pollution in one of Earth’s most polluted cities – “I no longer know what a healthy lung sounds like”

By Beth Gardiner 26 March 2019 Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia (National Geographic) – Coal is everywhere in Mongolia’s frigid capital. It sits beneath the towering smokestacks of power plants in piles as big as football fields. Drivers haul it through town in the open beds of pickup trucks. Vendors stack yellow bags of the stuff along roadsides, […]

Smuggled orangutan seized at Bali airport – Two-year-old male was found drugged inside a rattan basket

23 March 2019 (BBC News) – A Russian man has been arrested in Bali on suspicion of trying to smuggle a young orangutan out of Indonesia. The two-year-old male was found drugged inside a rattan basket when Andrei Zhestkov was stopped at security at Denpasar airport on Friday night. Mr Zhestkov is said to have […]

2018 was the fourth-costliest year since 1980 in terms of insured losses – Camp Fire in California caused highest overall wildfire loss on record

By Petra Löw8 January 2019 (Munich Re) – When compared with the record losses of the previous year from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, the indications at the start of 2018 were that it would be a more moderate year. However, the second half of the year saw an accumulation of billion-dollar losses from floods, […]

Journalists reporting on the environment faced increased dangers in 2018

By Kaamil Ahmed4 January 2019 (Mongabay) – A pair of “French spies” had infiltrated India by sea to commit a “treasonous conspiracy,” an Indian minister claimed in late November. In reality, they were two visiting journalists, and their mission was an investigation into allegations of illegal sand mining in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. […]

An economist’s take on the Poland climate conference: The glass is more than half full

By Robert Stavins 18 December 2018 (The Conversation) – The global climate change conference in Katowice, Poland, that wrapped up on Dec. 15 had a challenging mission. Three years ago in Paris, 196 countries and regions agreed to curb global greenhouse gas emissions Now they had to agree on rules and guidelines for how to […]

Why the rise of populist nationalist leaders rewrites global climate talks

By Arjuna Dibley 5 December 2018 (The Conversation) – The election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil not only marks the rise of another populist nationalist leader on the world stage. It’s also a turning point for the global politics of climate change. When the new president takes office in January 2019, by my estimate at […]

Palm oil was supposed to help save the planet – Instead, it unleashed a catastrophe

By Abrahm Lustgarten 20 November 2018 (The New York Times) – The fields outside Kotawaringin village in Central Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo, looked as if they had just been cleared by armies. None of the old growth remained — only charred stumps poking up from murky, dark pools of water. In places, smoke […]

Dead whale washes ashore on Indonesia beach, with six kilograms of plastic in its stomach

By Jessica Taylor 19 November 2018 (Evening Standard) – Distressing photos have emerged online of a beached whale in Indonesia that was found to have almost six kilograms of plastic in its stomach. The sperm whale washed up on the shore of Kapota Island, in the Wakatobi Archipelago of Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia on Monday, 19 […]

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