Two pairs of environmentalists are being awarded the prestigious Heinz Award for the Environment this year. Each duo will receive an unrestricted, shared cash award of $250,000 and the Heinz Awards medallion. Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett Ayers Butler received the award in 2022.
Among the 2024 winners are Amira Diamond and Melinda Kramer, co-founders of Women’s Earth Alliance (WEA). They are being recognized for empowering thousands of grassroots women leaders globally to protect the environment.
“What we have seen to be true through the almost two decades of WEA’s work is that networks of women community leaders are the lifeblood of this time,” Diamond said in a statement. “And when we are being pummelled by compounding crises — wars, floods, fires, earthquakes and pandemics — these women’s networks kick into gear with brilliance and foresight.”
WEA has worked in 31 countries with more than 52,000 women, including those from Indigenous and local communities. These women lead a wide range of initiatives, including clean water projects, more environmentally responsible farming, protecting habitats, and defending land rights and ancestral ways of life.
“From championing new land, water and agricultural practices to advancing eco-enterprises, Amira and Melinda are showing that together we can turn from centuries of exploitation to embrace new methods of cultivating and living on our land,” Teresa Heinz, chair of the Heinz Family Foundation, said in the statement.
The other two recipients are Scott Loarie and Ken-ichi Ueda, founders of iNaturalist. The popular citizen-science platform has enabled millions of people globally to share more than 200 million plant and animal observations. The observations have contributed to the identification of dozens of new species, rediscovery of species not seen for a long time, and improved understanding of species ranges in response to climate change. In all, users of iNaturalist have logged nearly a quarter of all named species on Earth, according to the Heinz Family Foundation.
“For the general public, iNaturalist provides a gateway to expert knowledge and a meaningful way to engage with nature through biodiversity monitoring and stewardship,” Loarie said in the statement. “For researchers, it offers a global network of ‘eyes and ears,’ enabling the collection of extensive data that would be impossible to gather independently.”
Teresa Heinz added that through iNaturalist, Loarie and Ueda have advanced citizen science “at a remarkable scale, enabling people from all walks of life, communities and backgrounds to connect with the wonder of nature.”
Teresa Heinz established the Heinz Awards in 1993 to honor the memory of her late husband, U.S. Senator John Heinz III. The award is given annually to individuals who make outstanding contributions to the arts, the economy and the environment.
Just 0.7% of the world’s land surface is home to one-third of the world’s most threatened and unique four-legged animals, a recent study has found.
In the vast evolutionary tree of life, some animals, like rats, have many closely related species that are at no immediate risk of extinction. But others, like the red panda (Ailurus fulgens), have no close relatives and are the only species in their family, Ailuridae. You would have to travel back 24 million years on the tree of life to find the red panda’s nearest common ancestor with another living species, a group of animals that includes weasels and racoons. Red pandas are listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List, so if they go extinct, an entire branch on the tree of life would be wiped out.
Researchers set out to find the most taxonomically unique and endangered species living in areas where human pressure may force them into extinction, like the red panda. They wanted to identify so-called EDGE Zones, or places with evolutionarily distinct (ED) species that are globally endangered (GE).
The researchers focused on tetrapods — vertebrates with four legs. They investigated more than 33,000 species worldwide and identified 25 priority tetrapod EDGE Zones across 33 countries. Together, these EDGE Zones account for just 0.72% of the world’s land surface, but they harbor around one-third of the world’s EDGE tetrapod species. Roughly half of those species are endemic, found nowhere else on Earth.
Many EDGE Zones for tetrapods are in the tropics and on islands: Costa Rica, Peninsular Malaysian, Cameroon and Hispaniola top the list. But the most, 10% or roughly 3,000 EDGE species, are found on the island of Madagascar, home to a wide variety of ecosystems including rainforests, deserts, coasts and mountains more than 2,800 meters (9,000 feet) high.
“It’s a whole world in an island,” Sebastian Pipins, the study’s lead author and a Ph.D. candidate with the Imperial College London, U.K., told Mongabay by phone. “It’s also an island that’s been separated for tens of millions of years from any other area. And so, the diversity there has been able to evolve in isolation, which has led to all of these remarkably unique forms. And then when you bring in the human element and the fact that now a lot of these species are threatened, that means they tick both the boxes to qualify as an edge species, being both unique and imperiled.”
As countries work toward the biodiversity conservation goal of protecting 30% of the world’s land and ocean by 2030, Pipins said his research shows that concentrating efforts on a small portion of the world can have a huge impact toward saving our shared evolutionary heritage.
“Not all species extinctions equate to the same thing. Some result in a larger loss of diversity, and that’s something that we need to consider and account for,” he said.
Banner image: Flickr via Pexels (Public domain).
A judge in Brazil has imposed fines totaling 4.2 million reais, or $762,000, against two beef producers and three ranchers for deforestation in a protected part of the Amazon Rainforest.
The Sept. 4 ruling was in response to illegal cattle ranching in the Jaci Paraná Extractive Reserve in Rondônia state. The companies fined were Frigon and Distriboi, whose slaughterhouses took in cattle raised illegally inside the reserve.
Jaci Paraná is designated for sustainable extraction of resources such as latex and fruits, with only local rubber tappers allowed to live in the 197,000-hectare (488,000-acre) reserve. Since 1996, however, some 80% of the reserve has been deforested, largely for cattle pasture; today, an estimated 216,000 head of cattle graze there illegally. Families with legal rights to settle there have been repeatedly threatened and violently ousted from the land.
“The slaughterhouses benefited from the illegal exploitation of the area by purchasing cattle raised in the reserve, so they are indirectly responsible for the damage, as they encouraged environmental degradation,” Judge Inês Moreira da Costa wrote in her ruling.
She went on to stress the services provided by forests, including climate balance, biodiversity protection, and protecting the water supply. “The law mandates preservation for sustainable use, which did not occur in this case,” she added.
In separate ruling, a fourth rancher was fined 21.5 million reais ($3.9 million) for razing an additional 500 hectares (1,235 acres). Environmental fines in Brazil are rarely paid in full, if at all, but recent legal actions targeting slaughterhouses and illegal ranching could signal stronger enforcement efforts.
The court allocated 453,000 reais ($82,300) of the fines to reforest 232 hectares (573 acres) of degraded land. If the defendants do not comply, the ruling states, additional charges and damages may apply.
Frigon, headquartered less than 300 kilometers (185 miles) from the Jaci Paraná Extractive Reserve, owns the largest beef-processing unit in Brazil, with a capacity to slaughter 3,600 cows a day.
Neither Frigon nor Distriboi responded to Mongabay’s emailed requests for comment. The defendants may still appeal the judge’s decision.
As Brazil intensifies its crackdown on companies tied to illegal deforestation, this ruling could help pave the way for future legal action, including against JBS, the world’s largest meat-processing company.
“I feel proud to see the justice system defending nature,” Ivaneide Bandeira, coordinator of the profit Kanindé Association, a local nonprofit, told Mongabay in an audio message. “We are living through an environmental crisis that slaughterhouses, and even the state, are contributing toward.”
However, she said she has doubts about how effective the decision will be without the political will to remove the ranchers and cattle from the reserve and begin its restoration: “I need to see it to believe it.”
Banner image: Since 1996, around 80% of the Jaci-Paraná Extractive Reserve in the state of Rondônia, Brazil, has been lost, mostly to illegal cattle ranches. Image by Mongabay.
Underwater noise from ships is making it tough for killer whales, or orcas, to find and catch their favorite fish, a recent study has found.
Orcas (Orcinus orca) rely heavily on sound to hunt. They emit ultrasonic echolocation clicks that bounce off objects. By listening for the echoes of these clicks, the orcas can identify objects that are around, including prey like salmon.
Since orcas “see” with sound, researchers wanted to understand how ship noise in the Salish Sea, off the west coast of the U.S. and Canada, affects their hunting. So they tagged 25 orcas from two threatened populations: the northern resident killer whales and the southern resident ones. The tags, deployed between 2009 and 2014, tracked the orcas’ movements and recorded underwater sounds, including noise from ships that can get louder than a rock concert.
The study found that the louder the ship noise, the longer orcas spent searching for fish, and with less success. This is likely because vessel noise interferes with orcas’ abilities to receive the returning echoes of their echolocation clicks, causing them to miss important information, Jennifer Tennessen, the study’s lead author from the University of Washington, U.S., told Mongabay.
“The noise is analogous to foggy conditions where the whales are unable to see as far using echolocation,” Dimitri Ponirakis, a noise analyst at Cornell University, U.S., who wasn’t involved in the study, told Mongabay in an email. “This means that they must expend more energy to find the same amount of prey as they would under normal ambient conditions.”
Male and female orcas also responded differently to ship noise, the study found. Females, particularly those with calves, tended to forgo foraging in noisy waters, while males continued to search for fish despite lower success rates. This could be because males are larger in size, meaning they need to consume more energy than females daily, Tennessen said.
Continuing to chase fish in a noisy environment is a risky trade-off, she added. Vessel traffic has increased since the tags were deployed on the orcas.
“This past spring and summer, vessel traffic from tankers into and out of the Salish Sea more than tripled in number due to the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline sending oil from Alberta, Canada, to a terminal in Burnaby, British Columbia,” Tennessen said. “Additional port expansions are planned throughout the Salish Sea, which are expected to draw additional tanker and cargo ship traffic.”
Both the northern and southern resident orcas have struggled to recover since historic hunting and culling. Anything that interferes with how they find food can further hamper their recovery.
Ponirakis said that since both the orca populations in the Salish Sea are threatened, the U.S. and the Canadian authorities must work together to manage ship noise and minimize any risk to the orcas.
Banner image of an orca courtesy of Candice Emmons/NOAA Fisheries.
The Amazon Rainforest’s main rivers are drying out due to an unprecedented drought exacerbated by climate change. Levels have continued to drop since Mongabay’s Sept 9. feature by Fernanda Wenzel.
Major rivers such as the Madeira and Negro continue to beat record lows, disrupting life for Indigenous communities and raising concerns about economic and environmental impacts.
On the 1,450-kilometer (900-mile) Madeira River, responsible for 15% of the water in the Amazon Basin, levels dropped to just 53 centimeters (21 inches) on Sept. 16 in Rondônia state in northwest Brazil, well below previous records. At the end May, the river held 9.6 meters (31.5 feet) of water.
Three other large rivers — Negro, Solimões and Purus — are also heavily impacted by the extended drought. On Sept. 16, the Purus River, which runs from Peru to northwest Brazil, was more than 2 m (7 ft) below its previously held 1983 historic low.
“This could be the most serious drought the Amazon has ever experienced,” Adriana Cuartas, a hydrology researcher at Brazil’s National Center for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters (CEMADEN), told Mongabay.
Low water levels have isolated riverine and Indigenous communities, forcing people to walk long distances along dried riverbeds instead.
The drought is impacting hydropower, pushing up electricity prices, while respiratory issues rise due to poor air quality and low humidity. Shipping disruptions may also cause local prices for basic amenities to spike.
Experts warn that conditions could worsen in the coming months, as no significant rainfall is in sight.
“More records will be broken,” Ana Paula Cunha, a drought researcher also from CEMADEN, told Mongabay. “The next round of rain is expected to be delayed, so you can expect more rain only in November, or even later.”
The crisis is also raising fears of another dolphin die-off. In 2023, 209 dolphins died as water temperatures suddenly spiked.
Brazil is facing its worst fire season in 19 years, with wildfires raging across two-thirds of the country and covering the continent in smoke. Scientists blame deforestation, global climate change and changes in ocean temperatures for the worsening situation.
Amazon’s drought and fires are part of a broader climate shift that could become the “new normal,” Cunha told Mongabay, with severe droughts and floods becoming more frequent across Brazil.
Banner image: Indigenous Tikuna families struggle to reach their villages as boats get stuck in the almost-empty rivers. Image courtesy of Márcio Correa Cumapa/Amaturá civil defense.
Three Pacific island countries have formally requested the International Criminal Court to recognize “ecocide,” or mass environmental destruction, as an international crime alongside genocide and war crimes.
The proposal, submitted by Vanuatu and co-sponsors Fiji and Samoa on Sept. 9, seeks to amend the ICC’s Rome Statute, which currently allows for the prosecution of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression. If successful, ecocide would become the fifth recognized international crime.
“This historic bid by Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa to make ecocide an international crime represents our best hope of securing a livable planet for current and future generations,” Monica Lennon, a Scottish politician who introduced an ecocide-prevention bill in Scotland in November 2023, told Mongabay in an email.
Vanuatu, an island nation that has seen devastating effects of climate change, first called for the inclusion of ecocide as a crime at the ICC’s 2019 annual assembly. While not a formal proposal, it triggered discussions around ecocide, Jojo Mehta, co-founder of the Netherlands-based NGO Stop Ecocide International (SEI), told Mongabay over a Zoom call.
In 2021, SEI convened an international panel of lawyers that defined ecocide as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.”
Since then, several countries have taken steps to include ecocide in their laws. For instance, Belgium has introduced ecocide as a domestic crime, while Chile and France have also added elements of ecocide in their laws. Countries like Scotland, Brazil, Mexico and Peru have proposed ecocide-related bills.
Vanuatu’s formal proposal to the ICC now aims to make ecocide an international crime by amending the Rome Statute, the treaty that undergirds the ICC. “The Rome statute taps into what are considered to be the most serious crimes, the ones that affect the international community as a whole,” Mehta said.
This means individuals, including heads of companies and states, could be prosecuted by the ICC for acts of ecocide, such as large-scale deforestation or industrial pollution, similar to how war crimes and genocide are currently treated. Having an international ecocide law could act as a strong deterrent against severe environmental destruction, which Lennon said is currently lacking.
“There is also the aspect that when a country ratifies something at the International Criminal Court, the likelihood is it will then be included in a similar form in its own domestic legislation as well,” Mehta added.
Vanuatu’s proposal submission will be followed by discussions by member states, although there’s no time limit on the negotiations. “The ICC does not move quickly but when it comes to the climate and nature crises there is no time to waste,” Lennon said. “As well as supporting Vanuatu, Samoa and Fiji at the ICC, countries should work at speed to pass their own ecocide laws.”
Banner image of Deepwater Horizon oil spill by SkyTruth via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).
Investment managers with a combined $8 trillion in assets under management are urging the banks in their portfolios to eliminate deforestation from their lending and investment practices. The new guidelines call for banks to assess their ties to deforestation, set policies to reduce harm, and track their progress.
The Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC), working with the Finance Sector Deforestation Action (FSDA) initiative, says it wants banks to make their “best efforts” to eliminate deforestation caused by high-risk commodities no later than the end of 2025.
Banks expose themselves to risk by continuing to finance companies involved in deforestation associated with the production of commodities such as palm oil, soy and livestock, according to a report published Sept. 3 by the IIGCC and FSDA. These risks include damage to infrastructure and other assets from increasingly frequent and severe climate-driven disasters and market shifts toward sustainability.
Today, deforestation accounts for approximately 11% of global carbon emissions.
Experts have praised the initiative for laying out more detail than previous investor-led attempts to stop funding deforestation, but warn that the report’s guidelines for banks, which are voluntary in nature, may not bring real change without stronger rules in place.
“In theory, there should be conditions on any future financing. In reality, I’m a bit more skeptical,” Alex Helan, a senior researcher on forests and finance at the U.S.-based NGO Rainforest Action Network, told Mongabay by phone. “If these investors essentially continue to have a very similar portfolio … that would be a sign that it’s just lofty language with a bit more detail.”
The guidelines urge banks to publicly disclose policies to help investors track improvements. However, that allows companies to self-report on their progress and doesn’t require open and public access to traceability data.
Until financial regulatory instruments are introduced with strict controls, Helan said, real-world impacts will be limited.
“Voluntary commitments massively underperform,” Helan told Mongabay. “Even some of the groups in the private sector are saying that they need greater guidance from regulators.”
Banner image: Commodities such as corn, cattle and soy are major drivers of deforestation yet receive heavy financing from banks. Image © Marizilda Cruppe/Greenpeace.
To meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement and avoid the worst outcomes of climate change, the world needs to rapidly reduce carbon emissions. Identifying effective policies to reach national climate goals has been challenging, but a new study published in Science examined 1500 climate policies implemented over the last two decades, and found 63 that were successful. Researchers have outlined those policies in the paper, so other countries and regulators can emulate their success.
Using advanced statistical analysis, the researchers compared carbon dioxide emissions from 41 countries with those from analogous countries to control for extenuating circumstances like the global pandemic or fluctuations in energy prices. The scientists were looking for “breaks” or sudden changes in emissions that couldn’t be accounted for by anything other than policy interventions.
The study found the most effective way to lower emissions for industries in developed countries is to make producing carbon emissions more expensive. That could take the form of a tax on carbon or removing subsidies for fossil fuels.
“It turns out that pricing is particularly effective in those sectors where you have a lot of profit maximizing companies, and that of course applies to industry and the electricity sector, in industrialized countries with a strong economy,” Nicolas Koch, co-author of the study and researcher with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany, told Mongabay in a phone call.
Many developing countries, however, have state-owned energy companies with regulated prices and energy inputs. For these countries, the researchers found a combination of tactics working in tandem was the most effective approach.
Koch gave China’s cap-and-trade scheme as an example. “China introduced pilot emission trading schemes putting a price on carbon for industrial firms in seven provinces of China.,” he said. On top of the carbon pricing China also reduced fossil fuel subsidies and gave financial incentives for energy efficiency measures.
The same tandem approach also works for reducing emissions from buildings. In Sweden regulators introduced subsidies to make it easier for homeowners to improve the efficiency of their homes. Many countries have done that, but Koch said what made Sweden successful was also telling homeowners that the price of heating fuel, both oil and gas, was about to more than double.
Most of the successful policies in the study took this carrot and stick approach. They make carbon emissions expensive and energy efficiency affordable. Koch said he hopes this study will provide regulators with guidance for future emissions reduction strategies.
“We hope that this really applied evidence for very specific cases, looking at your neighbor countries or looking at your peer countries, learning about successes in that way, perhaps that might be helpful,” Koch said.
Banner image: by Pixabay via Pixels
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