Karen Coates

Jan 7, 2025 | southafricatoday.net | Karen Coates

The Indonesian company PT Mayawana Persada has shifted focus from clearing peatlands in western Borneo to planting acacia on previously cleared lands in defiance of a government order to restore damaged peatlands. The lands are home to the critically endangered Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus), and any habitat loss pushes the animal closer to extinction.

Dec 20, 2024 | envirolink.org | Karen Coates

JAKARTA — In recent United Nations biodiversity conferences, global leaders have championed Indigenous peoples as critical partners in achieving conservation goals. Indonesia, as a signatory to an international treaty on biodiversity protection, pledged to uphold these principles.

Dec 19, 2024 | envirolink.org | Karen Coates

Climate change is not an equal player; neither is environmental degradation. Research shows that both disproportionately affect populations that are already vulnerable. The effects of floods, fires, heat waves and droughts are all more likely to hit harder in communities living under the poverty line or on society’s socioeconomic fringes. And gender is a critical factor. Globally, women and girls suffer the effects of climate change more than men.

Dec 12, 2024 | news.mongabay.com | Karen Coates

Extreme rainfall and flooding across Sudan, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria and Chad this year led to thousands of deaths and millions of displacements, mirroring what occurred in the region in 2022. Research by World Weather Attribution shows that such extreme floods, linked to anthropogenic climate change, are likely to become more intense and frequent in the future.

Nov 3, 2024 | envirolink.org | Karen Coates

RUKHA, Bhutan — The Oleps, the last remaining hunter-gatherers living within Jigme Singye Wangchuck National Park, take pride in their ancestry as Bhutan’s first inhabitants. With the kingdom’s modernization in the 1960s, these nomadic hunters, once practicing slash-and-burn cultivation in the Jowo Durshing (Black Mountain) area, settled permanently in the Rukha Valley in the 1970s, in the southern part of Wangdue Phodrang district.