Rhett Ayers Butler
Last December, delegates from nearly 200 governments adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal, Canada. This agreement aims to conserve 30 percent of the earth by 2030 – a goal colloquially known as “30×30”. But it’s one thing to set aside areas for conservation and another to [Continue reading]
In 2021, Canadian technology entrepreneur and activist Dax Dasilva launched “Age of Union” with a $40 million donation to support high impact conservation projects. Operating on the conviction that conservation has the potential to make major contributions toward addressing both climate change and the extinction crisis during this critical decade, Dasilva quickly committed all the [Continue reading]
Among the planetary challenges we face, biodiversity loss often takes a back seat to climate change. However, interest in “nature-based solutions” is rising as more people recognize the opportunities presented by protecting and restoring natural ecosystems. For example, restoring a degraded tract of mangroves can sequester vast amounts of carbon while simultaneously buffering against storm [Continue reading]
Next month BirdLife International, a global partnership of 115 organizations working to protect birds and their habitats, will mark its 100th anniversary by holding the BirdLife World Congress in London. The event will bring together scientists, conservationists, and other stakeholders from around the world. BirdLife has a lot to celebrate on its 100th birthday. It counts [Continue reading]
The concept of “biocultural diversity” has gained wider prominence in recent decades as academics, institutions, and practitioners have expanded cross-disciplinary work at the intersection of human culture and biological diversity. Within the conservation realm, this trend has helped raise the profile of issues like Indigenous rights and traditional knowledge, especially since the mid-2010s as many [Continue reading]
As a best-selling author, the co-founder of the award-winning Amazon Conservation Team, and an acclaimed public speaker, Mark Plotkin is one of the world’s most prominent rainforest ethnobotanists and conservationists. Plotkin has worked closely with Indigenous communities–including traditional healers or shamans–since the 1980s, first as an academic, then as a member of a large conservation [Continue reading]
Research published in recent years has shown that Indigenous territories have experienced substantially lower rates of forest loss than non-Indigenous lands. Given that Indigenous territories account for at least 36% of the world’s “intact forests” and Indigenous Peoples and local communities (ILPC) live in or manage about half of the planet’s lands, these areas play [Continue reading]
In 1986 a 24-year-old from Ohio named Daniel Katz set out to save tropical rainforests by creating a way for consumers to directly support more eco-conscious approaches to producing products from forests. With four others, he co-founded the Rainforest Alliance to develop a global certification standard for forest products and crops, which he hoped would create a [Continue reading]
Between the global pandemic, the accelerating impacts of climate change and environmental degradation, and the conservation sector’s reckoning with its colonial past, 2020 and 2021 have been a tumultuous time for efforts to conserve the planet. As an organization that has extensive field operations in about 60 countries and runs a network of zoos and [Continue reading]
For at least the past 20 years, there has been regular talk about the need to break down silos in conservation. The argument is straightforward: to be successful, the field must be interdisciplinary and inclusive to address the myriad issues that impact a range of stakeholders. For example, protecting an area is rarely as simple [Continue reading]
Since the early 2000s, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has invested more than half a billion dollars into efforts to protect the Amazon, making it the largest private donor of conservation efforts for Earth’s largest rainforest. The foundation has supported a range of interventions, including establishing protected areas and Indigenous territories, using technology to [Continue reading]
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic went global just over a year ago, there had been a notable shift in messaging from some of the world’s largest companies around their responsibility beyond profit maximization. A growing number of firms were making commitments to reduce emissions, diversify their leadership, and eliminate environmental degradation and human rights abuses [Continue reading]
Shortly ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Mongabay spoke with Antha N. Williams, the head of the environment program at Bloomberg Philanthropies, the foundation launched by businessman and former New York city mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. During the interview, Williams discussed how Bloomberg puts data at the center of its programs, which on the environmental front [Continue reading]
A decade ago, the idea of using the financial resources of university endowments, religious institutions and philanthropic foundations as a mechanism to advance action on climate change was still in its relative infancy, mostly limited to college campuses. While divestment has been long used as a tool for activism, in the early 2010s, plenty of [Continue reading]
Conservation is complex. If it were easy, problems like the extinction crisis, human-wildlife conflict, overexploitation of forests and oceans, and habitat degradation and loss would be resolved already. Conservation’s complexity arises from the need to address multiple, often conflicting, objectives that span disciplines from ecology to economics to human welfare. Something that may seem straightforward [Continue reading]
This week, scientists from James Cook University in Australia announced the discovery of a previously unknown detached coral reef in the Great Barrier Reef. It was the first new reef to be discovered in the area since the late 1800s. The discovery was made by an underwater robot launched by a team aboard the Falkor, a research [Continue reading]
2020 was supposed to be the year that the world assessed progress on a decade’s worth of effort to stave off the sixth mass extinction — the first extinction driven by the activities of a single species — and set ambitious new targets for conservation. But the COVID-19 pandemic intervened, leading to postponement of the [Continue reading]
Bloomberg Philanthropies, the foundation launched by businessman and former New York City mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, is one of the world’s largest charitable organizations. According to the Foundation Center, the foundation’s $7.15 billion in assets in 2015 made it the 10th largest foundation in the United States that year. Bloomberg says it distributed $3.3 billion [Continue reading]