According to UN-Habitat, a global housing affordability crisis is underway, with 1.6 billion people currently in need of adequate, affordable homes. That number could rise to three billion in just a few years. Home prices in urban markets have reached "impossible" levels of unaffordability while temperatures continue to rise as a result of climate change. On this third episode of the Mongabay Explores podcast season on the circular economy — the effort to design goods to be less resource-intensi...
Dec 03, 2024•47 min•Season 5Ep. 3
In 2016, Finland became the first nation to design a circular economy roadmap, in an effort to design goods to be less resource-intensive, from their manufacture to disposal and recycling. Tim Forslund of the Finnish Innovation Fund (SITRA) was one of its architects and joins this episode of Mongabay Explores to detail his nation’s circularity plan and the challenges ahead. Over 50 nations now have such plans in development, and while Finland is years ahead of them all, it hasn’t yet seen a redu...
Nov 19, 2024•38 min•Season 5Ep. 2
The fifth season of Mongabay Explores dives into the circular economy: the effort to design goods to be less resource intensive, from their manufacture to disposal and recycling. In this episode, we speak with circular economy researcher and policy expert Jessika Richter , associate senior lecturer at Lund University in Sweden, who discusses the environmental and social impacts of electric vehicles (EVs), and what we can do to mitigate them. As she says, any conversation about solving transporta...
Nov 04, 2024•37 min•Season 5Ep. 1
In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), pollution from extracting minerals commonly used in the energy transition like cobalt and copper is on the rise, and miners generally ignore their legal obligations to clean it up. Cases of such pollution have killed and displaced people and caused major health problems, say residents and community organizations. The DRC is estimated to hold 64% of the world's cobalt reserves (3.5 million tons of cobalt, plus 31 million tons of copper) and could benefit...
May 13, 2024•12 min•Season 4Ep. 7
The African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) plays a critical role in shaping the Congo rainforest, experts say. Though they represent incalculable and intrinsic value, there is much scientists still do not know about this critically endangered species of megafauna. On this final episode of the Congo Basin season of Mongabay Explores, Fiona "Boo" Maisels , a conservation scientist at the Wildlife Conservation Society, and Andrew Davies , assistant professor of organismic and evolutionary bio...
Nov 07, 2023•38 min•Season 4Ep. 6
How much does it cost to protect the Congo Rainforest? The world's second-largest rainforest provides critical ecological services that millions of people and myriad species rely on. It is also a massive carbon sink, storing tens of billions of tons of carbon in its trees, soils and peatlands. One would think protecting it would be an international priority, and yet funding commitments have historically struggled to adequately finance forest protection in the region. Experts say many commitments...
Aug 29, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Season 4Ep. 5
The global 'just energy transition' has increased demand for critical minerals – such as cobalt and copper – for products like lithium-ion batteries, solar panels, and other renewable energy sources. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which produces nearly 70% of the global supply of cobalt, has a poorly regulated mining sector that's fueled by demand for these natural resources and which has forced Indigenous communities off their land and otherwise done little to lift millions of Congoles...
Jul 19, 2023•49 min•Season 4Ep. 4
Recent research shows that great apes of the Congo Basin stand to lose up to 94% of their habitat due to climate change. In the world's only habitat of bonobos and mountain gorillas, time (and land) is running out to save them. Hunting, natural resource extraction, disease, and other human impacts threaten their prospects. On this episode of the Mongabay Explores podcast, we speak with Terese Hart , a researcher with the ICCN (the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature); Gladys Kalem...
Jun 28, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Season 4Ep. 3
The debate about how to best protect the Congo Basin's rainforest increasingly finds experts and Indigenous leaders arguing that it's time for a change, one that brings local and Indigenous people into the conversation. Fortress conservation, a model exported to Africa during the colonial era, typically expels local people from land they once relied on for food, fiber and medicine, but experts argue the concept that this model uses – that of a 'pristine wilderness' untouched by humans – is a fla...
May 15, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Season 4Ep. 2
The Congo Basin contains the world’s second-largest rainforest, a staggering 178 million hectares: containing myriad wildlife and giant trees plus numerous human communities, it is also one of the world's biggest carbon sinks. On this first episode of a new season of Mongabay Explores, we take you to the Congo Basin and begin with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which contains 60% of central Africa's forest, but which also aims to open up protected areas and forested peatlands to oil...
Apr 26, 2023•1 hr•Season 4Ep. 1
Leif Cocks returns to the podcast to discuss the status of the Sumatran elephant, a critically endangered species that we discussed with him in season 2, which is estimated to have less than 10 years to find a conservation solution or face extinction: he says the ranks of passionate, young Indonesian conservationists he's recently met that are working for the iconic animals' future gives him great hope. He also shares an update on the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan, whose land is threa...
Sep 14, 2022•23 min•Season 3Ep. 9
Indonesia's Ministry of Environment and Forestry recently announced the birth of an incredibly rare Sumatran rhino calf at a captive breeding facility at Way Kambas National Park in Indonesia's Lampung province. For this bonus episode of Mongabay Explores, we speak with Mongabay's senior staff writer for Indonesia, Basten Gokkon . He explains the significance of this event, the difficulty in breeding Sumatran rhinos, and what this birth means for the future of this critically endangered species....
May 11, 2022•16 min•Season 3Ep. 8
By 2025 the global, edible nut industry will be worth an estimated $2 billion. In Papua New Guinea (PNG), the traditional and plentiful staple, the galip nut ( Canarium indicum ), holds promise of tapping into that demand. Its relative ease of access for smallholder (non-commercial) farms means a new source of income for thousands of farmers across PNG. On this episode of Mongabay Explores, we speak with Dorothy Devine Luana, an entrepreneur from the province of East New Britain, whose company g...
Apr 27, 2022•48 min•Season 3Ep. 7
The Tanah Merah project sits in the heart of New Guinea covering 2,800 square kilometers (1,100 square miles). Roughly twice the size of Greater London, it threatens not only dense, primary, tropical rainforest and Indigenous land, but also could release as much carbon as the U.S. state of Virginia emits by burning fossil fuels for an entire year. However, the true owners of the project have been hidden by a web of corporate secrecy for more than a decade. We speak with Philip Jacobson , senior ...
Apr 13, 2022•48 min•Season 3Ep. 6
New Guinea's dense tropical montane forests are home to 12 of 14 tree kangaroo species. Over the past couple of decades, conservationists have leveraged these charismatic, intelligent marsupials to spearhead community development, conservation efforts, and the establishment of protected areas. In Papua New Guinea, the Torricelli mountain range is home to three species of tree kangaroo, including the critically endangered tenkile. This mountain range sits in the crosshairs of a road project threa...
Mar 16, 2022•58 min•Season 3Ep. 5
Spanning over 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) and being built over the course of decades, the Trans-Papua Highway cuts across the entire length of Indonesian New Guinea’s two provinces, including 7 key protected areas. While the project is nearly complete, experts warn it will cost billions annually to maintain, and threaten to open up untouched rainforest to palm oil expansion contributing an additional 4.5 million hectares of deforestation by 2036. For this episode, we interviewed David Gaveau,...
Mar 02, 2022•46 min•Season 3Ep. 4
New Guinea is home to the third-largest tropical rainforest in the world—of which 80% is still intact. The two-nation island also contains 44 species of unique birds-of-paradise and dense biodiverse regions unlike anywhere else on the planet. Because of its one-of-a-kind biodiversity, and relatively undeveloped landscape, New Guinea is in a unique position to conserve its forest cover as part of an economy that serves its local inhabitants, rather than extracting from and deforesting these commu...
Feb 16, 2022•52 min•Season 3Ep. 3
Since 2014, Papua New Guinea has been the world’s largest tropical timber exporter: more than 70% of that is considered illegal. Timber companies continue to possess land originally owned by local Indigenous communities through legal loopholes: while the carbon market has gained popularity as an alternative source of revenue for Indigenous communities, it suffers from some of the same land rights abuses as timber extraction. For this episode of Mongabay Explores we interview Gary Juffa, governor...
Feb 01, 2022•54 min•Season 3Ep. 2
New Guinea is one of the most most biodiverse regions on the planet and also the world's largest tropical island. It makes up less than 0.5% of the world’s landmass, but is estimated to contain as much as 10% of global biodiversity. To unpack the vast biodiversity of New Guinea, conservation policy, and NGO efforts to protect land, culture and Indigenous rights, we spoke with Rodrigo Cámara-Leret , of the Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich, C...
Jan 05, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Season 3Ep. 1
'I'm amazed how resilient, adaptable and optimistic the people of Sumatra are,' conservationist and HAkA Sumatra founder Farwiza Farhan says in the first moments of this episode about the women and communities she works with during the final episode of Mongabay's special series on Sumatra. The giant Indonesian island of course faces many environmental challenges, but there is also tremendous hope and good progress thanks to the work of people like her and educator Pungky Nanda Pratama , who also...
Nov 01, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Season 2Ep. 10
Once drained for palm oil or other agricultural uses, Indonesia's peatlands become very fire prone, putting people and rich flora and fauna--from orchids to orangutans--at risk. Over a million hectares of carbon-rich peatlands burned in Indonesia in 2019, creating a public health crisis not seen since 2015 when the nation's peatland restoration agency was formed to address the issue. To understand what is being done to restore peatlands, we speak with the Deputy Head of the National Peatland Res...
Nov 01, 2021•48 min•Season 2Ep. 9
The Sumatran rhino is a ridiculously cute but cryptic species that teeters on the brink: with an estimated 80 individuals left in the wilds of its super dense rainforest home, experts are also divided on *where* they are. With conflicting and sometimes misleading data on their whereabouts, it is exceedingly difficult to track them down, and to therefore protect them. To discuss this 'rhino search and rescue' as she calls it, host Mike DiGirolamo contacted repeat guest Wulan Pusparini , who studi...
Nov 01, 2021•25 min•Season 2Ep. 8
The Sumatran orangutan is a lowland species that has adapted to life among this Indonesian island’s highlands, as it has lost favored habitat to an array of forces like deforestation, road projects, plus the trafficking of young ones to be sold as pets, so this great ape is increasingly in trouble. On this episode, Mongabay speaks with the founding director of Orangutan Information Centre in North Sumatra, Panut Hadisiswoyo , about these challenges plus some hopeful signs. His center is successf...
Nov 01, 2021•48 min•Season 2Ep. 7
The Sumatran elephant is a small species of Asian elephant whose numbers are dwindling as their lowland forest habitats are converted to crops like oil palms. Experts say that Indonesia has 10 years to turn this trend around and save them from the eternity of extinction--and that doing so will have many additional benefits for human communities and wildlife. To explore the issues surrounding the species' conservation, we spoke with 3 guests: Leif Cocks , the founder of the International Elephant...
Nov 01, 2021•43 min•Season 2Ep. 6
The wildlife rich island of Sumatra is experiencing a road building boom, causing some of its iconic creatures to be seen by construction workers: a photo of a Sumatran tiger crossing a highway work-site went viral this summer, for example. This smallest of all tiger subspecies still needs its space despite its stature: up to 250 square kilometers for each one's territory. A single road cut into their forest habitat encroaches on these key areas, where less than 400 of these critically endangere...
Oct 27, 2021•43 min•Season 2Ep. 5
North Sumatra is home to 1 of only 8 known great ape species in the world, the newly described Tapanuli orangutan, first classified in 2017 after its habits and DNA proved them to be unique. As with many animals in Sumatra, they are amazing creatures that are critically threatened, with a maximum of 800 individuals estimated to be living in an increasingly fragmented habitat. Now a hydroelectric dam proposed for the center of the animals' tiny territory further challenges this special species' c...
Oct 27, 2021•44 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Sumatra contains some of the largest tracts of intact rainforest left in the world, but it's at the center of a complicated web of deforestation drivers, many of which began during the Dutch colonial era and are now spurred further by corruption and the global demand for cheap palm oil used in a wide range of consumer products. To understand the rapid expansion of industrial-scale agribusinesses that market both palm oil and pulp & paper to the global market from this, the largest island in ...
Oct 27, 2021•47 min•Season 2Ep. 3
Sumatran rhinos are unlike anything else in this world: small in stature and docile by nature, they sport a coat of fur and sing songs reminiscent of a dolphin. In other words, this ancient species surprises and enchants anyone lucky enough to encounter it. But Sumatran rhinos are also one of the most endangered large mammals on the planet. While its population is difficult to pinpoint, experts estimate there could be as many as 80 – or as few as 30 – still in the wild, leaving their future in d...
Oct 27, 2021•55 min•Season 2Ep. 2
"Sumatra is like a fossil relic of rare species...a giant, rhino horn-shaped island blanketed in the richest rainforest you can imagine...there's nothing like it," one of our guests declares. The 6th largest island in the world and the 2nd largest economy in Indonesia, Sumatra is the only place in the world where you can you find tigers, elephants, rhinos and orangutans all living together in an incredibly rich landscape of rainforests that, until recently, were largely untouched by human activi...
Oct 27, 2021•49 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Hellbenders are North America’s largest salamanders, living in rivers and growing to an incredible length of over two feet. Eastern newts are tiny and terrestrial, but both are susceptible to a fungal pathogen called Bsal. While Bsal has yet to make an appearance in the global hotspot of salamander diversity that is North America, it has wreaked havoc on populations in Europe, so biologists worry its impact could be even worse if it does. Eastern newts' susceptibility to Bsal coupled with their ...
Oct 07, 2021•52 min•Season 1Ep. 6
