Environment

The Indian Ocean Is Sounding the Alarm and Its Islands Are Among the First to Hear It

By James Alix Michel
Across this vast ocean, the latest monitoring by Mercator Ocean International shows marine heatwave conditions ranging from moderate to severe. At the same time, the World Meteorological Organization expects a strong El Niño to intensify through August to October, with a positive Indian Ocean Dipole also likely to develop. These are not distant scientific signals. They are an urgent warning that the ocean system on which millions depend is under mounting stress.

Beyond the Horizon: Raising a Generation to Protect the Blue Pacific

By Sera Sefeti
For generations, Pacific children have grown up with the ocean as part of everyday life. It is where families fish, where stories are passed down, where livelihoods begin and where cultures are rooted. Yet many young people are inheriting an ocean facing pressures unlike anything their ancestors experienced, from warming seas and coral bleaching to plastic pollution and declining marine ecosystems.

Grand Planetary Challenges Need a Grand Coalition to Solve Them

By Lulseged Tamene Desta and Cargele Masso
Several coalitions exist today to defend the territories in which people live and work. Global leaders have long understood the importance of shared responsibility for collective security and have invested significant time in establishing networks, partnerships and alliances. In 2025, global spending on defense reached a record $2.9 trillion.

The Plastics Treaty Process Needs Greatly Improved Observer Participation at this Critical Point in the Negotiations and Beyond

By Craig Boljkovac
In 2022, the United Nations Environment Assembly mandated an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) to develop a global, legally binding instrument addressing the full life cycle of plastics, from production and product design to disposal. After the resumed fifth session adjourned without consensus in Geneva in August 2025, the divided process moved into informal consultations before INC-5.4 in March 2027.

GEF Proposes $140 Million Program to Strengthen Drought Resilience

By Kizito Makoye
For pastoralists in Arvaikheer — a village in Mongolia’s dry central plains — rain can determine whether there is enough grass for cattle to roam, whether waterholes are replenished and whether families make it through another dry season. But as climate change makes rainfall increasingly unpredictable, even a wet season may no longer provide water and pasture needed to sustain people and livestock.

Indigenous Peoples Call for Meaningful Influence in Climate Discussions — Nia Tero

By Naureen Hossain
Indigenous communities have long advocated for the environment through the lens of their traditional knowledge systems and cultures. But much more work needs to be done to translate their presence into influence.

Nairobi Biodiversity Talks Set the Stage for Key COP17 Decisions

By Stella Paul
Despite record participation in global biodiversity reporting and planning processes, countries remain off track to meet the world's 2030 biodiversity goals, according to discussions that concluded this month at two key meetings under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

As Mongolia Hosts COP17, Pastoralists Demand Space to Move, Survive and Restore

By Kizito Makoye
After moving more than 6,000 km across Eurasia, the Silk Road Caravan has reached Mongolia with stories from pastoralists whose livelihoods are increasingly threatened by drought, degraded land and shrinking access to grazing areas.

Western-Led Green Revolution Failing Africa

By Timothy A. Wise and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
As AGRA turns 20, a new report exposes its worsening failure to double productivity and incomes and halve undernourishment in participating African nations as promised.

Why Dhaka Floods Every Monsoon

By Mohammad Zaman
Dhaka’s recent and recurrent flooding is often treated as a natural disaster, but rain is only the trigger. The deeper causes are political, planning and ecological failure: wetland loss, canal encroachment, unplanned growth, weak enforcement, fragmented institutions and short-term engineering fixes. Dhaka is not drowning because it rains; it is drowning because it has been built as if water had nowhere to go.

Malawi Bets on Battery Storage to Climate-Proof Its Fragile Power Grid

By Benson Kunchezera
For years, Malawi's electricity supply has been at the mercy of droughts, floods and cyclones that have repeatedly exposed the vulnerability of a power system heavily dependent on hydropower.

Resilience Is Not Enough: OCHA Sounds Alarm on Underfunded Humanitarian Crisis in Afghanistan

By Shuli Wong
“Mainly, people tell me they're exhausted. They're exhausted from being poor, from being hungry, from repeated climate shocks, mounting debt, and the daily struggle to provide for their families,” Olga Cherevko, Spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Afghanistan, told UN reporters on August 4.

The Earth Is Burning — And We Are Still Choosing to Let It

By James Alix Michel
I have spent my life on an island. From the granite hills of Mahé, one can watch the sun rise over an ocean that has fed, protected and defined the Seychellois people for centuries.

Where Some See Waste, Others See Opportunity: Young Sierra Leoneans Fight Against Electronic Waste, Plastic Pollution

By Madina Kula Sheriff
Growing up, Peter George, a young innovator in Bo District in Southern Region, Sierra Leone, watched people dump electronic waste near the farmland where his grandmother cultivated crops.

Palestinian Children Deserve Education, not Ethnic Cleansing

By Jan Lundius
World News are more or less currently fully occupied with the U.S. – Iran debacle and to a lesser degree the Gaza genocide, the on-going war in Ukraine, and to an even lesser degree the one in Sudan.

The Year of Pastoralists Must Be More Than Symbolic

By Solange Bandiaky-Badji
This is supposed to be the year the world finally sees and recognizes pastoralists. The United Nations has designated 2026 as the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, bringing long-overdue attention to communities who have sustained some of the world’s most fragile and important landscapes for generations.

New Chickpea Variety to Drive Climate Resilience in Africa

By Ignatius Banda
New chickpea seed research and production have become the new frontier of climate resilience in southern Africa as farmers battle failing cereal production.

Green transition: Pay the Least, Benefit the Most

By Michał Podolski
Inaction and maintaining the status quo of fossil fuel dependence carry significant costs. The recent closure of the Strait of Hormuz, for instance, caused enormous losses to the global economy, with many Asia-Pacific countries bearing disproportionately larger adverse impacts. Had these economies had a more diversified energy mix, they would have benefited from such resilience under current circumstances.

Climate Change Makes Sacred Ice Vanish in Kashmir, Locals Fear Loss of Livelihoods

By Umar Manzoor Shah
Every summer, before dawn breaks over the Himalayas, Bashir Ahmad leads his horses onto the narrow mountain trail that winds toward the Amarnath cave shrine. For decades, the annual Hindu pilgrimage has been the most important season of the year for his family. The money earned over two months pays for food, school fees, winter supplies, and the upkeep of his animals through the long snowbound months.

“Kingston’s Disappointment Should Not Extinguish Our Hope for the Deep Ocean”

By James Alix Michel
Earlier this year, I called publicly for a precautionary pause on deep-sea mining, arguing that it is not a rejection of progress, but a commitment to sound science.

Accepting What It Cannot Control, CARICOM Focuses on What It Can

By Alison Kentish
From wars that drive up fuel prices to supply chain disruptions, inflation and increasingly frequent climate disasters, Caribbean leaders say many of the forces shaping the region's future lie beyond their control.
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