Carbon Emissions

South America has suffered through an intense and often record-breaking heatwave this year. Chile saw temperatures surpass 35°C (95°F) in August despite it being winter. In Bolivia it was 45°C (113°F). And in Brazil it was over 38°C (100.4°F). Climate change and El Niño are the main forces behind the heat. The spiking temperatures across […]

Rapidly transitioning the world’s vehicle fleet to fully electric could significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, but also dramatically increase demand for critical battery metals like lithium, nickel and cobalt, according to a new study in the journal Nature Communications. Researchers from Cornell University and the Paul Scherrer Institute modeled different scenarios where major […]

How much does it cost to protect the Congo Rainforest? Where does the money come from? Who pays and how is that money used? What models of forest protection work? These are all questions examined on the latest episode in the Mongabay Explores podcast series on the Congo Basin. To get a better understanding of […]

JAKARTA — Indonesia’s deal with industrialized countries for the latter to channel $20 billion in funding to help speed up the former’s energy transition is hitting a snag due to captive coal-fired power plants. Indonesia is among the world’s biggest consumers of coal, the single largest energy source of planet-heating carbon dioxide. Last year, Indonesia […]

JAKARTA — An eight-year effort by Indonesia to protect its remaining forests contributed just 4% of its emissions reduction target, yet still yielded carbon savings worth far more than it was paid under a deal with Norway. That’s the finding from a new study, which calls for better carbon pricing and financing at the global […]

JAKARTA — A plan to clear forests in Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua for food crops will release as much greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as Australia emits in an entire year, according to a new analysis. This will spell disaster for Indonesia’s commitments to tackling climate change by reducing emissions from the forestry and […]

JAKARTA — In 2019, fires raged through Indonesia’s rainforests and peatlands, sparked by the deliberate burning of land for agriculture, and fanned by an El Niño system bringing drier-than-usual weather conditions. Ultimately, the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry would put the total affected area at 1.64 million hectares (4.05 million acres), an area half […]

In November 2020, Peruvian cacao company Tamshi filed a lawsuit against Mongabay Latam staff reporter Yvette Sierra Praeli for “aggravated defamation” over her reporting of a government investigation into the firm’s activities in the Peruvian Amazon. While the case was formally dismissed by a Peruvian court last month, it wasn’t the first time that Tamshi […]

International forest and climate experts have released a “playbook” for ecosystem restoration with a set of 10 principles that they say, if followed, could be a game-changer. The Political Ecology Playbook, published in the journal Global Environmental Change, recognizes that issues such as climate change and forest loss are not just biophysical and environmental problems, […]

More than 100 scientists have issued a letter urging U.S. President Biden and Congress to remove provisions promoting logging, forest biomass and fossil fuels from the multitrillion-dollar infrastructure and reconciliation (Build Back Better) bills.