news.mongabay.com

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/17077

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/17116

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/32243294

CW: brief endorsement of animal abuse

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Brazil’s Senate approved an environmental licensing bill that could expedite major infrastructure projects, including paving a highway that cuts through one of the most intact parts of the Amazon Rainforest in northwestern Brazil.

Brazil’s lawmakers have voted, by an overwhelming majority, to weaken the nation’s environmental licensing system, overturning key protections that Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had vetoed earlier this year.

As winter closes in across much of North America, migratory birds are heading south to warmer climes and more abundant food. But until recently, scientists didn’t have a good understanding of exactly where they went.

The European Union has voted to postpone implementing a key antideforestation law for the second year in a row, citing technical concerns. Critics of the move warn that a delay and other proposed changes will further weaken the law.

A new report by the Forests & Finance Coalition finds that despite years of voluntary climate commitments, banks and other financial institutions have continued to increase their investments in companies linked to deforestation. The value of investments in these companies — in industries such as beef, soy, palm oil and paper — has increased by almost $8 billion since the Paris Agreement was signed a decade ago, the report finds.

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As French oil and gas giant TotalEnergies prepares to resume work on its multibillion-dollar offshore gas project in northern Mozambique, it faces a criminal complaint back home over its role in funding an army unit accused of torturing and executing dozens of civilians in 2021.

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A new Global Justice Now report has found that nearly one-fifth of minerals labeled “critical” by the U.K. aren’t actually essential for the green energy transition, but are instead needed for the aerospace and weapons industries. (…)

A new study warns that deforestation across Ghana, Niger and Nigeria is intensifying West Africa’s water crisis, threatening the health and livelihoods of more than 122 million people.

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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/29768007

Rescue operations intensified Friday across central Vietnam as floodwaters receded after days of record rain and deadly landslides that left at least 13 people dead, 11 missing and tens of thousands displaced.

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Earlier in 2025, political and administrative leaders in Senegal gathered to plant trees in a forest in the country’s northwest to mark National Tree Day. They took advantage of the ceremony to call for action towards a greener, more resilient and sustainable country. Senegal is one of 11 countries participating in Africa’s Great Green Wall (GGW) initiative which aims to achieve these goals. However, a newly published study finds the GGW has not delivered ecological benefits on the scale promised by pledges of more than $20 billion in support.

Tásmam Koyóm, a high Sierra meadow in California, U.S. returned to the Mountain Maidu people in 2019, is once again wet where once it had been dry. Rivulets now snake through hip-high grasses and willow thickets, feeding a beaver pond where a family of beavers released in 2023 has built a chest-high lodge. This was California’s first beaver translocation in decades, part of a tribal effort to restore the health of the landscape, reports Mongabay’s John Cannon after a site visit.

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Global deforestation hasn’t slowed in any significant way in the four years since 127 countries pledged to halt and reverse forest loss and degradation by 2030. The newly published 2025 Forest Declaration Assessment shows that nations are 63% off track from meeting their zero-deforestation target.

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According to this, the New South Wales government has unveiled plans for the Great Koala National Park, a 475,000-hectare reserve to safeguard an estimated twelve thousand of my brethren and dozens of other threatened species, which is definitely good as they need this for their safety, survival, and well-being.

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In 2024, the Amazon Rainforest underwent its most devastating forest fire season in more than two decades. According to a new study by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, the fire-driven forest degradation released an estimated 791 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2024, a sevenfold increase compared with the previous two years.

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Brazil’s antitrust regulator, CADE, on Sept. 30 decided to suspend the Amazon soy moratorium from Jan. 1, 2026. Depending on the probe’s course of action, this could dismantle one of the nation’s most important private sector pacts credited with slowing deforestation of the tropical rainforest for soy plantations.

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Plastic pollution is widespread across the Amazon Rainforest’s rivers, plants and animals, according to a recent study.

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The European Commission has proposed pushing back the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) for another year, to December 2026, citing concerns that its IT system is not yet ready to handle the demands that the regulation would place on it.

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Maan Tagnan has planted several varieties of fertilizer trees in her field, including Albizia stipulata, Ferruginea and white acacia (Faidherbia albida). The acacia, known locally as zaanga, is revered by agroforesters, Zouré says. “It’s an off-season tree that sheds its leaves during the rainy season and provides shade in the dry season, making it essential for maintaining soil fertility in agroforestry systems,” he says.

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More than 100,000 people marched through Cuenca, a city in southern Ecuador, on Sept. 16, demanding that federal authorities revoke an environmental license for a gold mining project that may impact an important freshwater source.

More than 100,000 people marched through Cuenca, a city in southern Ecuador, on Sept. 16, demanding that federal authorities revoke an environmental license for a gold mining project that may impact an important freshwater source.

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New satellite analysis shows that wells and roads for a project in Uganda feeding Africa’s longest heated oil pipeline have progressed significantly within a protected area and near a critical wetland.

New satellite analysis shows that wells and roads for a project in Uganda feeding Africa’s longest heated oil pipeline have progressed significantly within a protected area and near a critical wetland.

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In Pará, Brazil’s top palm oil-producing state, Indigenous and traditional communities face mounting threats as companies expand into contested lands. Between 2021 and 2023, Mongabay’s Karla Mendes reported from the region, where the expansion of oil palm plantations has triggered pollution, deforestation and violent land conflicts. This series exposes how some of Brazil’s leading palm oil firms stand accused of pollution, land grabbing, and repression of Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian Quilombola communities. Cited in court rulings and prompting international certification suspensions, the reporting reveals the systemic failures that have enabled these abuses — and the growing calls for justice from communities on the frontlines.

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The team from Nanjing University, China, and the University of Leeds, U.K., analyzed how deforestation in the states of Rondônia and Mato Grosso — which together are responsible for about 30% of all deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon in recent decades — affected the atmospheric water cycle between 2002 and 2015. They found that a 3.2% mean loss of forest cover led to a 5.4% reduction in dry season rainfall, highlighting that precipitation in the Amazon is highly sensitive to changes in forest cover.

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