Environment

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[archived[(https://web.archive.org/web/20250522010549/https://news.mongabay.com/2025/05/tropical-forest-loss-hit-new-heights-in-2024-fire-a-major-driver-in-latin-america/) (Wayback Machine)

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The aquifer under Fish Lake Valley feeding the groundwater-dependent ecosystem is heavily over-appropriated, meaning more water is taken out of it than goes into it each year. One acre foot of water is the equivalent to 325,850 gallons, or enough to supply two to three homes for a year, and the basin has a perennial yield of just 30,000 acre feet, according to state documents. But more than that is pumped out each year, and even more water is allocated on paper than what is currently taken.

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Ibama approves Petrobras plan for Foz do Amazonas that allows oil exploration

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archived (Wayback Machine): - Mongabay article - report cited

Archived copies of the article: * archive.today * ghostarchive.org * web.archive.org

The world’s biggest polluters are also the most protected from the environmental harm they helped create, a new study finds.

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Nonrecyclable food and beverage packaging dominates the trash littering the Indian Himalayas, according to a recent report. Since 2018, regional alliances Zero Waste Himalaya  and Integrated Mountain Initiative have organized an annual campaign during the last week of May called The Himalayan Cleanup. Volunteers from schools and civil society organizations clean up sites across the Himalayas, followed by an audit identifying waste types and associated brands. In 2024, more than 15,000 volunteers across nine Indian Himalayan states collected 121,739 pieces of waste. Of this, 106,856, or nearly 90%, was some sort of plastic. Food and beverage packaging made up 84.2% of all plastic waste, of which 77% was nonrecyclable multilayered plastics, including food wrappers, beverage bottles, juice boxes, bottle caps, sachets, cutlery, bags, straws and lollipop sticks. Being nonrecyclable, these plastics hold no value for waste pickers and scrap dealers, so they are “strewn across the Himalayas and piling up in the landfills,” Kapil Chhetri, from Zero Waste Himalaya, told Mongabay by email.

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Nevada’s congressional delegation, environmental groups, tribes and local officials see the late-night amendment to House Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill as a threat to the state's water resources, tribal sovereignty and public engagement.

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You’re helping nature — but nature also has ways to help you, make you more resilient, and relieve the stress caused by environmental destruction.

The Brazilian government blocked 545 rural properties in the Amazonian state of Pará from selling crops and livestock both domestically and internationally, citing illegal deforestation, according to a May 6 announcement by the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change.

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The authors caution that the assumptions behind these scenarios are ambitious. "Systems are slow to change and we're modeling near-universal shifts—like widespread dietary changes—which may be overly optimistic given current global trends," they note.

Antibiotics, antidepressants and other drugs frequently leach into the environment, where they can impact ecosystems and human health.

In a recently published study, researchers offer a new tool to compare how different crops affect the environment in different regions.

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Shell reported a malfunction April 25, and the company was later issued a notice of violation. Residents are still looking for answers.

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In April this year, Mozambican President Daniel Chapo announced the launch of a national petrochemical city project in Mavanza village in Vilankulo district of Inhambane province. The coastline of Inhambane province, or the Inhambane seascape, is a globally important area that conservation groups have previously urged the government of Mozambique to protect for its threatened marine mammals, seabirds and sharks.

In Morovis, a town in the center of Puerto Rico’s main island, lies the Las Cabachuelas nature reserve, a green labyrinth of approximately 1,950 acres. This place — known for its numerous caves — holds pre-colonial stories, rock art and petroglyphs, plants studied by paleobotanists, unique Caribbean fauna, and many other stories of what life was like in Puerto Rico before Spanish colonization and subsequent industrialization.

Paper in Nature Climate Change journal reveals major role wealthy emitters play in driving climate extremes

Exposure to either wildfire smoke or extreme heat poses a significant threat to health. When they occur together, it may amplify the health risks of exposure.

For the last week, Indigenous leaders from around the world have converged in New York for the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, or UNPFII. It’s the largest global gathering of Indigenous peoples, and the forum provides space for participants to bring their issues to international authorities, often when their own governments have refused to take action. This year’s forum focuses on how U.N. member states have, or have not, protected the rights of Indigenous peoples, and conversations range from the environmental effects of extractive industries to climate change and violence against women.

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As government regulators focused on reigning in air pollution, companies were busy generating new sources of pollution, including plastics and PFAS, the so-called forever chemicals. PFAS, which stands for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a large group of compounds used, among other things, to make fabric stain-resistant and pans nonstick.

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Archive link: https://archive.is/4y4Mo

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The European Commission’s new plan to overhaul the EU’s main chemical regulation, REACH, risks undoing two decades of progress in protecting people and nature from toxic substances.

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Humid heat is related to heat stress, occurring when environmental conditions overwhelm the body's ability to cool itself. Severe heat stress leads to an increase in the core body temperature of 3°C or more and can cause confusion, seizures, and loss of consciousness. If not treated promptly, severe heat stress can lead to muscle damage, major organ failure, and death.

When the Vietnam War finally ended on April 30, 1975, it left behind a landscape scarred with environmental damage. Vast stretches of coastal mangroves, once housing rich stocks of fish and birds, lay in ruins. Forests that had boasted hundreds of species were reduced to dried-out fragments, overgrown with invasive grasses.

Vultures have an image problem. Seen as ugly and associated with death, they are among the least loved animals in the world. But conservationists in Africa are trying to change that.

In Ecuador, Indigenous communities are fighting for stronger safeguards to protect their sovereignty as more oil drilling looms. A right to say no to unwanted development could revolutionize a consultation process used around the world.

A new Glimpact study reveals that 90% of a garment's environmental impact happens before it's made, focusing on raw materials and manufacturing.

In brief: - A new “natural capital account” for Colombia’s Upper Sinú Basin calculates the economic value of its natural ecosystems’ erosion control services to the energy and water sectors at $100 million (1.7% of the region’s GDP). An aqueduct under consideration to support increased coastal tourism would increase the value by 12%. - This is one of the first times outside Europe such an account has been created with locally validated models and data following the UN System of Environmental-Economic Accounting – Ecosystem Accounting framework. - This paper’s methodology offers a practical way to develop and apply such accounts regionally, laying the groundwork for compensation programs that protect nature and support livelihoods.

Large regions in northern, southern, and central-western Africa, as well as northern Madagascar, are experiencing severe drought conditions due to two or more years of lower-than-average rainfall and higher than usual temperatures. These are the findings of a new report from the Copernicus Global Drought Observatory, run by the European Commission's Joint Research Center (JRC).

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🚨 BREAKING: The Trump administration just hid data that lets communities know about dangerous chemical facilities in their midst.

MEXICO CITY — Officials have acknowledged the environmental damage caused by Tren Maya, and say they’re exploring ways to restore cenotes and rainforests disrupted by the railway’s construction through the Yucatán peninsula.

Offshore jurisdictions—commonly known as tax havens—play a central role in sustaining the fossil fuel industry through legal, financial, and regulatory frameworks. Over 68% of fossil fuel financing by the world’s 60 largest banks flows through secrecy jurisdictions. These jurisdictions serve as critical nodes in the global economy, shielding corporations from accountability from environmental and labor regulation, transparency and disclosure requirements, and banking and investment protections. This secrecy provides a veil of sovereignty for fossil fuel profits and hinders corporate accountability for environmental harms.

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Cities having higher ambient temperatures than rural surroundings (known as the urban heat island effect) could offset some of the negative effects of increased heat-related mortality by reducing the number of deaths associated with cold exposure in some global cities, according to a study in Nature Climate Change. These findings highlight the importance of developing region- and season-specific strategies to mitigate the urban heat island effect.

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...at least on paper.

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In 2024, Bolivia’s state-owned lithium company, signed contracts worth a combined $2 billion with Russian and Chinese companies to mine lithium from Salar de Uyuni in the country’s southwest.

The world’s largest meat company, JBS, looks set to break its Amazon rainforest protection promises again, according to frontline workers.

Shrouded in the lush vegetation of the páramo, the Andean tundra landscape, the quiet wetlands and moorlands of Quimsacocha in southern Ecuador are at the center of a dispute. Hortensia Zhagüi, a water defender and leader of the Tarqui community in the country’s Cuenca canton, said members of her community have campaigned against a mining project on these lands for the last three decades.

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Like giant bones planted in the earth, clusters of tree trunks, stripped clean of bark, are appearing along the Chesapeake Bay on the United States’ mid-Atlantic coast. They are ghost forests: the haunting remains of what were once stands of cedar and pine. Since the late 19th century, an ever-widening swath of these trees have died along the shore. And they won’t be growing back.

The UN’s International Maritime Organization [IMO] has just agreed to start charging ships for the greenhouse gases they emit. After decades of ineffective incremental tweaks to shipping emissions, the breakthrough came on April 11 at a summit in London. It makes shipping the first industry subject to a worldwide – and legally binding – emissions price.

In the Amazon, gold mining is a thriving business, pushing deep into the rainforest and indigenous lands. Small-scale operations set up primarily illicitly and operated in the shadows use mercury, a substance with neurotoxic properties, for gold extraction. Now, a team of researchers examined if trees native to the Peruvian Amazon could be used as biomonitors for gold mining activities. By examining mercury concentrations in tree rings, they concluded that some species could bear witness to illegal mining activities.

After floods devastate Congo, scientists say climate change is making heavier rains more likely and call for better data to better prepare

Extra-hot oceans could spawn monster storms. Researchers worry that cuts at the agency will interrupt the flow of data for forecasts.

On February 18, a dam failed and a Chinese-owned copper mine spilled 50 million liters of acidic effluent into the Kafue River, damaging the lives of millions of people as pollution was detected at least 100 kilometers downstream.

A sandstorm in central and southern Iraq sent more than 1,800 people to hospitals with respiratory problems on Monday, health officials said.

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European State of the Climate report ‘lays bare’ impact of fossil fuels on continent during its hottest 12 months on record

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China recently approved the construction of the world’s largest hydropower dam, across the Yarlung Tsangpo river in Tibet. When fully up and running, it will be the world’s largest power plant – by some distance.

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Amid all the bad climate news flowing out of the Trump administration, you might have missed a quiet new consensus congealing in think tanks and big business. The targets set out by the Paris climate agreement, they argue—to limit global temperature rise to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit)—are a lost cause. It’s time to prepare for a world warmed by at least three degrees Celsius.

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This indirect use of palm oil is often overlooked in the zero-deforestation accounting process, despite its growing use, according to a report by U.S.-based advocacy group Rainforest Action Network (RAN). The report found that palm oil-based animal feed is now the single largest palm oil product category imported by the U.S., accounting for 36% of all palm oil imports into the country by weight.

A marine rewilding initiative to restore an underwater kelp forest in West Sussex is celebrating "remarkable" results, a wildlife trust has said.

Thorn forest once blanketed the Rio Grande Valley. Restoring even a little of it could help the region cope with the impacts of climate change

Plectranthus barbatus grows to its full height in 1-2 months from a cutting and the cutting itself costs around 50 Kenyan shillings ($0.37).