Mongabay Newscast

Aimee Roberson, executive director of Cultural Survival, joins Mongabay's podcast to discuss how her organization helps Indigenous communities maintain their traditions, languages and knowledge while living among increasingly Westernized societies.

As a biologist and geologist with Indigenous heritage, Roberson is uniquely suited to lead the organization in bridging these worlds, including via "two-eyed seeing," which blends traditional ecological knowledge and Western science to increase humanity's ways of knowing, toward a view of people as active participants in shaping the natural world.

Cultural Survival also sees radio as a critical tool for keeping communities together and fostering a relationship with the land. Roberson shares how their robust radio project is specifically designed to train and empower Indigenous media creators to share local news and cultural information of critical importance, in multiple languages across the world.

"It's something that's [a] core part of what we do. Some people are like, 'Ah, radio, you know, this is 2025. Who cares about radio?' But Indigenous people really care about radio because it keeps our communities together. It's a primary form of communication."

Find the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify. All past episodes are also listed here at the Mongabay website.

Image Credit:

Lolita Cabrera (Maya K'iche'), an Indigenous rights activist from Guatemala. Photo by Jamie Malcom-Brown/ Cultural Survival.

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(00:00) A bridge between two worlds

(09:28) The fallacy of 'Objectivity'

(17:20) The Indigenous Kinship Circle

(22:24) We all have Indigenous roots somewhere

(28:19) Indigenous led local radio

(37:55) AI cannot substitute the human experience

An international tribunal of environmental rights activists recently found extensive evidence that the Canadian mining sector is "guilty for the violation of Rights of Nature across South America and Serbia." The guest on this episode of Mongabay's podcast corroborates these accusations, and describes human rights abuses in South American nations that she has seen in her reporting, too.

Brandi Morin, a Cree-Iroquois-French environmental journalist and freelancer for Mongabay, discusses how Canadian mining projects impact ecological health and the rights of Indigenous communities in places such as Ecuador and Bolivia.

"Canada is the mining giant of the world, and around the world, they're getting away with atrocities. They aren't regulated very well to hold them to account. It's a free-for-all out there," she says.

Find the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify. All past episodes are also listed here at the Mongabay website.

Image Credit: Intag community members block security guards hired by the mining company Copper Mesa Corporation (at the time a Canadian firm) from entering Junin Reserve in Ecuador in 2006. Image courtesy of Elisabeth Weydt.

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Time codes

(00:00) Canadian mining in South America

(15:39) A 'green transition'?

(23:50) A mining state in Ecuador

(28:19) The International Rights of Nature Tribunal

(35:00) You can't protect the Earth by destroying the Earth

The recent advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on states' obligations regarding climate change was celebrated globally for providing clarity on countries' legal obligation to prevent climate harm, but was also appreciated by island nations for its additional certainty on their maritime boundaries remaining intact regardless of sea level rise.

This week on Mongabay's podcast, environmental lawyer Angelique Pouponneau, a Seychelles native and lead negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), explains these victories, their legal implications, and how they matter for small island nations.

She says Small Island Developing States (SIDS) face a multitude of, "one of which [was] this idea of the shrinking exclusive economic zones."

Exclusive economic zones are the waters that lie within the jurisdiction of a nation, usually 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from its shore. With the ICJ advisory opinion, there's now legal certainty that this zone will remain within the jurisdiction of a state, even if its shoreline shrinks as a result of rising seas due to climate change.

"What island nations were trying to guard against through state practice was essentially if there were ever to be loss of territory, it would not mean loss of exclusive economic zone," Pouponneau says.

Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website.

Mike DiGirolamo is a host & associate producer for Mongabay based in Sydney. He co-hosts and edits the Mongabay Newscast. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

Image Credit: Island in the South Pacific, Fiji. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

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Timecodes

(00:00) The importance of the SIDS alliance

(10:09) 'Wins' in the ICJ advisory opinion

(17:38) What about enforcement?

(21:29) Maritime boundaries will remain (27:38) What are sustainable 'blue economies?'

(32:32) Concerns about development & 'debt for nature'

(42:12) Frustrations with Global Plastic Treaty negotiations

(45:50) Looking to the BBNJ treaty

Wealth inequality is a primary culprit behind the ecological and environmental collapse of societies over the past 12,000 years, which have come to be dominated by a small circle of elites hoarding resources like land, research shows. Today, instead of an isolated collapse, we face a global one, says Luke Kemp, a researcher at the University of Cambridge's Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.

On this episode of Mongabay's Newscast, Kemp explains how wealth inequality is not just tied to, but may be the very cause of the ecological destruction we are witnessing today, and how tackling that is key to how we solve all these challenges, as he recently told The Guardian.

"Imperial overexpansion, depleting the natural environment, having elite competition and popular immiseration, all [are] just simply the natural effect of inequality. All is driven by growing concentrations of power and wealth inequality," he says.

Humans are not naturally like this, Kemp explains. Rather, for the vast majority of their existence, they have coexisted in nomadic, interconnected societies, functioning in a largely egalitarian fashion. Until the discovery that grain could be harvested — and therefore also stolen and hoarded with violence — humans did not dominate one another, as we do today.

As mentioned in the episode, you can read a recent opinion piece on what listeners and readers can do overcome despair in the face of existential threats such as climate change and biodiversity loss.

Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website.

Image Credit: Statue of Queen Hatshepsut, Egypt. Photo by Rhett Butler/Mongabay.

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Timecodes

(00:00) Why humans are egalitarian

(08:06) Why authoritarianism is so pervasive

(14:12) How and why societies fall

(20:58) Our global society is at risk

(24:22) How we solve it

(30:25) Capping wealth at 10m

(37:54) Citizen juries and how they work

(45:11) Could a 'ministry for the future' work?

(46:54) Lessons from the Khoisan Peoples

(51:00) Democracy isn't just a 'left-wing' idea

On this episode of the Newscast we take a look at Natalie Kyriacou's widely praised new book, Nature's Last Dance: Tales of Wonder in an Age of Extinction, whose high-profile fans, like Paris climate agreement architect Christiana Figueres, call it a "lyrical call to awaken our love for the wild before the music stops."

Kyriacou, the founder of the environmental organization My Green World, shares her aim of the book, her thoughts on real solutions to our ecological problems, what she wishes more people understood about nature, and why they need to fall in love with it.

"If there's one simple thing that we can do, it is to just step outside and feel that wonder and look up and appreciate it … if we are going to protect nature, to protect something, you need to fall in love with it."

Always honest and often humorous, this deeply researched volume clearly outlines the economic, political and cultural drivers of our most significant ecological problems, and what the reader can do to effect meaningful change.

Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website.

Image Credit: Natalie Kyriacou. Photo by Chloe Paul.

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Timecodes

(00:00) Making nature mainstream

(04:28) Challenging bias about nature

(12:38) Stories of recovery

(16:23) How we all depend on nature

(21:55) Porches and peacocks

(27:03) Your actions are a vote

(35:18) Inspiration from Costa Rica

(38:55) Lessons from the Montreal Protocol

(45:08) To protect it, you have to love it

Rewilding advocate, financier and host of the popular podcast Rewilding the World, Ben Goldsmith, joins Mongabay's podcast to discuss nature restoration in his home country of England, where a significant cultural change is taking hold toward reviving biodiversity, such as beavers. Once seen as a nuisance there, many farmers and planners now embrace the rebound of the huge rodent, thanks to its impressive ability to mitigate flooding events that the island nation now experiences with regularity, due to climate change.

"If you stop a random person on the street now, in the city or in the countryside, they know that beavers are back, that [they] are native species, that they play a vital role in managing our rivers," he says.

However, he argues that while there has been some rewilding momentum in England, it's not happening fast enough, particularly for larger carnivores like wolves.

"The idea of reintroducing them is considered madness. Even though there are news reports of swelling populations of deer and growing incidents of Lyme disease and road traffic collisions and a disequilibrium in our forests," Goldsmith says.

Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website.

Please send questions, feedback or comments to podcast[at]mongabay[dot]com.

Image Credit: Chrome Hill in Yorkshire, England. Image by Tim Hill via Pixabay (Pixabay free content license).

Timecodes

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(00:00) "We don't have wildlife here"

(11:46) England's rewilding comeback

(15:05) Cultural and economic shifts

(25:24) Changing environment policy

(30:52) Nitrogen and pollinators

(37:43) Getting along with 'difficult' wildlife

(47:51) Rewilding the World

On this week's episode of Mongabay's podcast, best-selling author Alan Weisman details the people and places he visited in reporting his new book, Hope Dies Last, a chronicle of miraculous accomplishments and resilience of the book's protagonists, many of whom are working to solve humanity's most intractable ecological problems.

The book's impetus was an accumulation of despair at the state of the world and how humanity treats it. "I started this book because I was really, really, really depressed about how I saw systems breaking down," Weisman says.

But as he uncovered each story, Weisman's tune changed. He explains the ingenuity and bravery of the people and projects he visited that altered his perspective on what is possible.

"By the end of this book, I was so uplifted by all these people — and by the variety of people — that I found, in the most extraordinarily different circumstances, each of them daring to hope and oftentimes succeeding, that I'm there with them. This ain't over."

Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website.

Please send questions, feedback or comments to podcast[at]mongabay[dot]com.

Image Credit: Kicker Rock in the Galápagos, Ecuador. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

Timecodes

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(00:00) The Mesopotamian Revitalization Project

(07:56) Why does Hope struggle against itself?

(13:27) Creating food from thin air

(24:06) Suing the government to protect species

(31:03) The most dangerous country Alan visited, the U.S.

(35:54) New forms of energy

(45:39) Power is the most addictive drug

(51:53) This ain't over

The Nature Of is a new podcast series from the nonprofit nature and culture magazine Atmos that speaks with prominent figures in conservation and culture about how humans relate to the natural world, and how they might heal and strengthen that relationship.

On this episode of Mongabay's podcast, its host and Atmos editor-in-chief Willow Defebaugh details the series' resulting revelations and why her publication covers the environment through the lens of community, identity, arts and culture.

"From the beginning, we knew that we wanted to invite creative storytellers and artists into this conversation alongside scientists and journalists," she explains.

Storytelling and the arts, she says, house rarely tapped potential for helping people place themselves in the context of nature: "I think that what we need is to be changing people's hearts, not just minds."

Defebaugh also highlights how little individual action is actually needed to inspire greater collective action among the public, a fact that Harvard researchers revealed: only 3.5% of the public needs to be engaged in non-violent resistance for a movement to succeed.

Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website.

Please send questions, feedback or comments to podcast[at]mongabay[dot]com.

Image Credit: Willow Defebaugh, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Atmos. Image courtesy of Camila Falquez/Atmos.

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Timecodes

(00:00) The nature of relationships

(11:24) Why science and empathy go together

(16:23) On 'spiritual ecology'

(20:43) Meditations on how humans see nature

(23:41) Willow's inspiration

(26:10) Identity, community & nature

(28:43) Art & culture

(31:10) Biomimicry

(36:38) Collective vs individual action

(43:14) Speaking of solutions

Singapore has come a long way since the 1880s, when only roughly 7% of its native forests remained. Since the 1960s, when the city-state gained independence, it has implemented a number of urban regreening initiatives, and today, nearly 47% of the city is considered green space, providing numerous benefits to human residents and wildlife, like heat mitigation, freshwater conservation and cleanliness, carbon sequestration, coastal climate adaptation, biodiversity protection, and public enjoyment.

To discuss his city's regreening efforts — from the philosophical to the practical applications of methods and mindset shifts that have allowed the city to revitalize its urban wildlife interface — Anuj Jain, director and principal ecologist at the biomimicry consultancy bioSEA and an adviser to BirdLife International, joins Mongabay's latest podcast.

" Through the greening initiatives in Singapore, it's attracted a lot of species, many of which actually had declined before, some even had gone extinct, or locally extinct," Jain says.

Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website.

Please send questions, feedback or comments to podcast[at]mongabay[dot]com.

Image Credit: Supertree grove is part of the Gardens by the Bay (GBTB) urban park in Singapore, covering 105 hectares (260 acres). Image by Tien Tran (tientran0019) via Pixabay (Pixabay Content License).

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Timecodes

(00:00) Making the 'city in a garden'

(10:01) What Singapore looks like today

(13:51) The many benefits of urban greenery

(20:53) Ecology and biomimicry design

(24:30) Cleaner, more plentiful water

(25:55) Urban regreening in the Middle East

(29:16) To densify, or not to densify?

(33:04) Where Singapore still struggles

(36:33) Living more harmoniously with wildlife

Narratives help shape our society, culture and environment, entrenching beliefs that can help — or harm — our planet and human rights. Tsering Yangzom Lama, story manager at Greenpeace International, joins Mongabay's podcast to explain how dominant narratives — stories shaped by existing power structures and institutions — often undergird destructive industries and favor the powerful and the wealthy, and to discuss what people can do to counter such narratives.

In this interview, she expands upon thoughts shared in the essay "How to Reject Dominant Narratives," from the new book Tools to Save Our Home Planet, published by Patagonia Books.

"A dominant narrative in reality would be anything that supports the status quo … what we have right now is a system in which we're trashing the world in which a small minority is profiting off of that destruction, and in which the vast majority of humanity does not have the basic necessities for a dignified human existence," she says.

Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website.

Please send questions, feedback or comments to podcast[at]mongabay[dot]com.

Image Credit: Emergent tree in the Amazon Rainforest, Ecuador. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

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Timecodes

(00:00) What is a dominant narrative?

(08:04) Understand how they work

(12:56) Countering the narrative

(17:56) Making a more compelling appeal

(20:31) The real goal is to change our conditions

(23:32) When movements get co-opted

(26:20) Conversation is key

(28:49) Creating a narrative where none exists