Environment

Written by: Kimberly White  China has announced a new plan to tackle plastic pollution. On January 19th, the National Development and Reform Commission unveiled the plan to begin rapidly phasing out single-use plastics.  Plastic pollution has become one of the most...

Written by: Laurel Sutherland  For Indigenous tribes living in Alaska’s remote Yukon-Kuskokwim region, southwest of the state, the future is bleak and uncertain. Tribal councils worry that plans to construct a 6,474-hectare (15,990 acres) open-pit gold mine near the Kuskokwim River watershed...

Written by: Michael Beck The news is grim: According to a report compiled by hundreds of scientists from 50 countries, Earth is losing species faster than at any other time in human history. Thanks to climate change, coastal development and...

Written by: Saidia Ali, Policy Options In a time of rapid urbanization, cities and nature are often seen as incompatible: either biodiversity suffers as cities grow or cities are contained to protect nature. There is no question that human activities impact...

Written by: Kimberly White  Companies, government agencies, and NGOs across the United States have come together in a new initiative to combat plastic pollution- the U.S.Plastics Pact.   Led by The Recycling Partnership and the World Wildlife Fund, the national initiatives aims...

Written by: Martha O'Hagan Luff Despite its green image, Ireland has surprisingly little forest. Across Europe, nations average around 35 percent forest cover but in Ireland the figure is just 11 percent, one of the lowest on the continent. This hasn’t always been the...

Courtesy of Forests News Written by: Julie Mollins An innovative community-based forest management policy has resolved a long-simmering land-use conflict between migratory yak herders and sedentary residents in a remote area of Bhutan. Where once grazing livestock nibbled vegetation and trampled seedlings,...

Written by: Pete Smith, Camille Parmesan, and Mark Maslin A landmark report by the world’s most senior climate and biodiversity scientists argues that the world will have to tackle the climate crisis and the species extinction crisis simultaneously, or not at all. That’s because Earth’s land and...

Written by: Aida Cuní Sanchez, Martin Sullivan, and Phil Platts Tropical forests are well known for being the “lungs” of our planet. Through photosynthesis, the trees in these forests produce oxygen and remove enormous amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, helping to mitigate...

Written by: Kimberly White A "first-of-its-kind" study from the University of Queensland and the Wildlife Conservation Society has found that protecting Indigenous Peoples' land is essential to combat global biodiversity loss.  Researchers overlaid habitat data for nearly 4,500 IUCN-assessed mammal species...