Planet: Critical

In December, Mongabay's Montreal-based editor Latoya Abulu attended the 15th meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity, where the historic Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Framework was signed by nearly 200 countries.

While the agreement was lauded by scientists, advocates, and Indigenous leaders, others say that there are some concerning omissions from the text, and worrying inclusions of "biodiversity credits" sought by corporations. Click play to hear Latoya share details from her time in the conference halls, what was included in the final text of the agreement, and what was left out.

Related reading on the event:

Nations adopt Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework

Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, or download our free app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Store to get access to our latest episodes at your fingertips.

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Reintroducing rescued anteaters from hunters in northern Argentina into the country's Iberá reserve is no small task. However, In 2007, the first pair was reintroduced by the Conservation Land Trust (now known as the Rewilding Foundation).

14 years on, the program has taken this success and used it as a framework for subsequent reintroduction of other native species.

Click the play button to hear the popular Mongabay article by Oscar Bermeo Ocaña aloud: 

Giant anteaters lead biodiversity resurgence in Argentina’s Iberá

Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts or download our free app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Store to have access to our latest episodes at your fingertips.

If you enjoy this series, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps!

See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Photo Credit: The giant anteater paved the way for many other reintroduction programs in Iberá. Image courtesy of the Rewilding Foundation.

Please send feedback to [email protected], and thank you for listening.

After 6 years and nearly 160 episodes, podcast host Mike Gaworecki is putting his microphone down. The show will go on, but we will miss his expertise and command of conservation science's myriad facets!

One of his favorite topics to cover on the show has been bioacoustics, the use of remote acoustic recording technology to study the behavior, distribution, and abundance of wildlife.

For his final time hosting the Mongabay Newscast, Mike shares an array of his favorite bioacoustics interviews that illustrate the breadth and potential of this powerful conservation technology.

Listen to his bittersweet farewell thoughts, and a range of recordings—from forest elephants to the Big Apple’s dolphins—that he shares, and hit play on these episodes for more goodness:

• How listening to individual gibbons can benefit conservation

• What underwater sounds can tell us about Indian Ocean humpback dolphins

• The superb mimicry skills of an Australian songbird

• The sounds of tropical katydids and how they can benefit conservation

Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, or download our free app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Store to get access to our latest episodes at your fingertips.

If you enjoy the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps!

See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Please share your thoughts and feedback! [email protected].

In July, I recorded a roundtable with six of my former guests. The aim was to create an interdisciplinary assessment of the climate crisis, and what to do about it. Today, you can listen to the roundtable here, or watch it on Youtube.

There were six fascinating presentations, each followed by a round of questions. This is what to expect:

Maximum Power Principle in Biology & EconomicsCarey King, research scientist and Assistant Director at the University of Texas Energy Institute

Global Climate CompensationHenrik Nordborg, Physics Professor and Renewable Energy and Environmental Technology Program Director at the Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences

MEER & Warming MitigationYe Tao, Physicist and Founder

Carbon Credit CurrencySteve Keen, Economist and Academic

Economy 3.0: Networked Societies & Energy StandardChris Cook, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Security and Resilience Studies at University College London

Oligarchy & Energy Systems PrinciplesSally Goerner, Director of Edinburgh University’s Planetary Health Lab

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© Rachel Donald

We all send our recycling somewhere for proper handling, but the operations of one such handling center in Poland makes one ask, is it being done right, or at all? 

The European Commission estimates that the illegal handling of such waste represents around 15-30% of the total EU waste trade, generating EUR 9.5 billion in annual revenues.

So in part 3 of our investigative podcast series, the team dispatches Outriders journalist Eva Dunal to visit one such recycling facility in the pretty town of Zielona Góra close to the Polish-German border, and finds out just how unpopular it is with the neighbors, and especially the city council. They also speak with Jim Puckett, the 'James Bond of waste trafficking' at Basel Action Network, who reveals that much recycling is being 'laundered' via the Netherlands and shipped on to countries where such resources are often dumped, not recycled.

In a three-part, “true eco-crime” series for Mongabay’s podcast, our hosts trace England’s – and Europe's – towering illegal waste problem: investigative environmental journalists Lucy Taylor and Dan Ashby follow this illegal 'waste trail' from their quiet English town to the nearby countryside and as far away as Poland and Malaysia.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, or download our free app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Store to get access to our latest episodes at your fingertips.

This episode is "The Wastelands" and is part three of the investigative podcast series, "Into the Wasteland," developed with the support of Journalismfund.eu.

Banner image: The shuttered Eurokey plant in the town of Zielona Góra. Image by Eva Dunal/Outriders.

If you enjoy the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps!

See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Please share your thoughts and feedback! [email protected].

Wendy Schultz is an academically trained futurist with over thirty-five years of global foresight practice. Director at Infinite Futures, she has designed futures research projects for NGOs, government agencies, and businesses.

Wendy and I discuss the Law in the Emerging Bio-Age report she recently published, which asked how legal structures can support second chances at improving human relations with living systems and our planet. We also discuss how to bridle the finance industry to support a just transition, the role of activism, governments’ relationship to information, and, more generally, how to solve wicked problems.

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The U.K.’s Environment Agency calls waste crime — where instead of delivering recycling or rubbish for proper disposal, companies simply dump it in the countryside — “the new narcotics” because it’s so easy to make money illegally. It’s estimated that one in every five U.K. waste companies operates in this manner ('fly-tipping'), and the government seems powerless to stop it: it’s so easy to be registered as one of the government’s recommended waste haulers that even a dog can do it — and at least one has, as this episode shares.

In part 2 of our new investigative podcast series, the team also speaks with a lawyer who describes her year-long campaign to get the government to deal with a single illegal dump site, but they fail to act before it catches fire, in an emblematic 'trash fire' for this whole issue. They also speak with a former official at Interpol who shares that his agency also lacks the resources to tackle the problem.

In a three-part, “true eco-crime” series for Mongabay’s podcast, our hosts trace England’s towering illegal waste problem: investigative environmental journalists Lucy Taylor and Dan Ashby follow this illegal 'waste trail' from their quiet English town to the nearby countryside and as far away as Poland.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, or download our free app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Store to get access to our latest episodes at your fingertips.

This episode is "The Jungle" and is part two of the podcast series, "Into the Wasteland," developed with the support of Journalismfund.eu.

Banner image: The U.K.’s recyclables, plastic packaging and waste soils the countryside across the country and as far away as Turkey (pictured). Image courtesy of Caner Ozkan via Greenpeace Media Library.

If you enjoy the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps!

See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Please share your thoughts and feedback! [email protected].

“The public do trust science and scientists more than probably any other social group, according to social surveys. The public have expectations on scientists that they will speak out if they see issues of national or social concern because they expect that scientists are working in the public good.

“So what’s the responsibility on us as academics then, knowing what we know, knowing that we're heading for disaster, knowing that that governments aren't doing nearly enough to avert it, in fact are actually pouring fuel on the fire? What do we do? And I think for us to not then speak out about that, to not resist, that would be to really fail in our duty, both as scholars, but also as citizens.”

Aaron Thierry is an ecologist and environmental activist. After spending years on the frontline of the climate crisis in the Arctic, Aaron now researches the communication strategies of activist organisations, examining the interplay between reason and emotion in the climate emergency movement.

Aaron joins me to discuss his research, explaining the positive impact of scientists rebelling against government inaction, and why all academics must broaden their understanding of their role as educators to warn their students of the realities of the crisis. Aaron explains the benefits of a decentralised activist movement sharing one single coherent message—and, in doing so, reveals the true sunken cost of fossil fuel infrastructure that will likely send us well over the 1.5 degree limit.

Planet: Critical is 100% independent and reader-funded. If you value it, and have the means, become a paid subscriber today!

© Rachel Donald

The British countryside is increasingly under siege from a scourge of illegal waste dumping – polluting both water and air – but one man is bravely taking the criminals on, staking out their sites with night vision goggles, drones and more.

In a three-part, 'true eco-crime' podcast series for the Mongabay Newscast, investigative environmental journalists Lucy Taylor and Dan Ashby trace this illegal 'waste trail' from their quiet English town to the nearby countryside, and as far away as Poland.

Threatened, chased, but undeterred, waste investigator Martin Montague has also established a website, Clearwaste, to document incidents of 'fly-tipping' as the practice is known, and people use it daily to report tens of thousands of incidents all over the country, where illegal landfills are also on the rise.

Episodes two and three will air in the coming weeks and take the issue to a wider European scope, discussing it with Interpol and visiting a destination for U.K. waste in Poland.

Banner image: A mountain of UK plastic waste near Wespack Recycling Factory in Malaysia, via Greenpeace Media Library.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, or download our free app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Store to get access to our latest episodes at your fingertips.

This episode is "The Waste Mountain" and is part one of the podcast series, "Into the Wasteland," developed with the support of Journalismfund.eu.

If you enjoy the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps!

See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Please share your thoughts and feedback! [email protected].

Host Mike G. speaks with Mongabay reporters whose new investigations reveal a major and illegal shark finning operation by one of China’s largest fishing fleets, and the role of a giant Japanese company, Mitsubishi, in buying that fleet’s products.

Through an exhaustive interview process with deckhands who worked throughout the company’s fleet, Mongabay's Phil Jacobson and Basten Gokkon revealed that Dalian Ocean Fishing's massive operation deliberately used banned gear to target sharks across a huge swath of the western Pacific Ocean.

The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission is currently meeting to discuss policies that would crack down even further on use of this gear, and we speak with Jacobson who is there covering the event.

We also speak with Japan-based reporter Annelise Giseburt who was able to verify that the illegal operation benefited greatly from selling a massive share of its tuna catch to the Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi.

The investigations:

• Exclusive: Shark finning rampant across Chinese tuna firm’s fleet
• How Mitsubishi vacuumed up tuna from a rogue Chinese fishing fleet

Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, or download our free app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Store to get access to our latest episodes at your fingertips.

If you enjoy the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps!

See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Please share your thoughts and feedback! [email protected].