On this week's episode of the Mongabay Newscast, I speak with travel writer Noo Saro-Wiwa. She has documented the violence and natural destruction that the presence of oil companies have brought to the people of the Niger Delta in her latest book, The Burning Ground: Oil and Militancy in Nigeria. Saro-Wiwa is also the daughter of the late activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was executed by the Nigerian government in 1995. Her father led a peaceful resistance against the oil companies' presence in the Niger Delta by mobilizing 300,000 people from Ogoniland in 1993. It is fair to say his activism started the movement against the destruction and exploitation led by oil companies in the nation. While peaceful at first, Noo Saro-Wiwa says many people gave up hope on peaceful resistance when the government failed to hold the companies accountable, and men turned to forming violent militant groups.  "Oil has been literally the worst thing that's happened to the Niger Delta. If I could go back in time and I had the power, I would never have allowed oil to have been discovered," she says. While her latest book chronicles the harm of oil and the resulting violence, I put it to her that it's also a story about how the absence of women's rights is destroying societies. Saro-Wiwa explains how Nigeria isn't unique in this regard, but rather a stark example of how this dynamic plays out. " Going around the Niger Delta and talking to activists like Emem Okon … I could see very clearly how women's rights directly affects the environment … and society, and how the absence of those rights feeds into this militancy which ultimately hurts men." Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast here. Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky. Banner image: A man fishes in the Niger Delta near the village of Diebu, Nigeria, Saturday, May 18, 2013. Image by Jon Gambrell / AP Photo. —— Timecodes (00:00) A heavy price to pay for oil (06:09) The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (16:17) Militancy (21:54) Governments are 'not interested in sustainable peace' (26:11) Women as a stabilizing force (29:44) Women's rights directly affects the environment (36:54) Oil has been 'the worst thing to happen to the Niger Delta'

The Mediterranean Sea accounts for less than 1% of the world's ocean surface water, but it contains roughly 18% of global marine biodiversity. It is home to 150 million people along its coastline (roughly equivalent to Russia's population). And it sequesters 17.2 million metric tons of CO2 each year. Joining the Newscast this week to talk about the unique biodiversity of the Mediterranean Sea and its threats is journalist Manuela Callari. Callari has written for Mongabay, highlighting the threats to purple sea urchins (Paracentrotus lividus) along the Italian coast. These marine invertebrates are crucial to the health of marine ecosystems, such as those in the Mediterranean, by helping regulate algal abundance and serving as food for predators. However, they are being overfished and even poached in marine protected areas due to demand for them as the primary ingredient in a popular tourist dish: spaghetti ai ricci di mare. While the situation with urchins persists, Italy has been investing in an unprecedented effort to map its entire underwater coastline using deployed sensors to better understand the marine environment and manage conservation efforts. This is allowing them to identify where meadows of the seagrass Posidonia oceanica, which are "absolutely vital" to the Mediterranean ecosystem, persist, Callari says. Overall, Callari says she wishes the rest of the world and tourists visiting the Mediterranean were more informed about the pressures the marine ecosystem faces. "I grew up here, and now that I go back to certain places where I was as a child, and they are just completely different places to me. Places that were just nature and were difficult to access. Now they have very easy access on cars, buses. You can go on boat tours very easily. And I think we don't appreciate enough the impact that has on the environment. On the sea." Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast here. Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky. Cover image: Satellite data from a study shows that the Mediterranean's average surface temperature has risen by 1.2°C (2.2°F) since the mid-1980s. Image by Katerina Katopis/Ocean Image Bank. —— Timecodes (00:00) The Mediterranean is taken for granted (07:09) Why is a tourist dish destroying marine ecosystems? (18:49) Mapping the entire Italian coast (28:19) Learning to appreciate the Mediterranean

Nearly three years ago, Newscast guest, author and journalist Ben Goldfarb discussed his book Crossings, which is about wildlife crossings and road ecology. Wildlife crossings help reconnect habitats fragmented by road networks, reducing collisions, helping protect threatened wildlife, and improving genetic diversity. Since that conversation, Goldfarb has documented the growing popularity of wildlife crossings worldwide. He returns to the Newscast to detail how, where, and why wildlife crossings are becoming increasingly funded and built. "Probably the biggest factor is that at this point, the evidence that wildlife crossing structures are effective is just overwhelming. Maybe 20 years ago, you could've theoretically said, 'Well … we don't necessarily know that …' but here in 2026, we just have a lot of scientific research basically showing that animals of all shapes and sizes use wildlife crossings," Goldfarb says. He takes us to locations in South America, North America and Europe, where this particular type of infrastructure has rare nonpartisan political support. A bill is currently before the U.S. Congress to make the Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program permanent. Public surveys show overwhelming support for wildlife crossings in the United States. Goldfarb explains that the positive reception may also be due to the visual nature of one iteration of crossings, the highway overpass, which a source of his long ago described as "billboards for connectivity." "I love wildlife crossings for … their ability to … just remind us that we're sort of global citizens of a planet that we share with wildlife." Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast here. Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky. Cover image: The first wildlife bridge in Brazil connects habitat across the coastal four-lane BR-101 highway. Saving Nature's partners, DOB Ecology and the Golden Lion Tamarin Association, are reforesting a corridor to connect a protected area to the south and forest fragments to the north of the bridge. Image courtesy of Luis Paulo/Saving Nature. —— Timecodes (00:00) Why are wildlife crossings having a moment? (06:55) North America invests in more crossings (16:25) 'Malicious restoration' & 'a bridge to nowhere' (20:38) The most permeable highway on Earth (25:17) Brazil's canopy bridges (29:32) 'Billboards for connectivity'

A group of more than 40 researchers spent 20 months devising a plan for the world to achieve ecological sustainability within planetary boundaries, all while seeing incomes rise for 98% of the global population and reducing working hours for everybody by half to two and a half days a week. The plan to achieve this by 2100 is laid out in the recent "Global Justice Report." If it sounds utopian, Lucas Chancel, the co-director of the World Inequality Lab and editor of the report, is the first person to acknowledge this, but explains why it's not only possible — there's even historical precedent for many of the measures the report outlines. Achieving this plan rests on three pillars: decarbonization and the energy transition; a shift towards "sufficiency," defined here as the reduction of labor and production of superfluous products not needed for human survival; and a "drastic reduction in inequality of income, wealth and power." "Basically, our plan is thought in a way that it can work with [an] incomplete coalition of actors," he says. "That is, you can start to implement it even though you don't have a global wealth tax. But our argument is that progressively, more and more countries [are] doing exactly these things." Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast here. Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky. Cover image: Bay near Pulau Rayo, Raja Ampat, Indonesia. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay. —— Timecodes (00:00) A habitable, equitable world is possible (14:19) How we accomplish it (30:56) Rebutting the arguments against it (40:15) 98% of the world would see their income rise (44:55) Gender equality is at the heart of it

Theonila Roka Matbob grew up next to what was — at the time — the world's largest open-pit mine in Bougainville, an autonomous island in Papua New Guinea, operated by a subsidiary of Rio Tinto. This mine wrought environmental and social devastation on the community of Panguna for decades. And many of these impacts carry on today, says Roka Matbob, who is an Indigenous Nasioi woman and politician. With the help of Jubilee Australia and the Human Rights Law Centre, Roka Matbob was able to file a legal complaint with Australia's National Contact Point for Responsible Business Conduct. As a result, Rio Tinto signed a memorandum of understanding with the Bougainville government to remediate the impacts of this mine. For this legal achievement, Roka Matbob was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize. However, she is skeptical that remediation for these impacts will occur. She joins the podcast this week to tell the Bougainville story and what she wants people to understand about mining's impacts on the autonomous region and her community. " The Bougainville story is a result of Australia's political decision through Papua New Guinea government now implemented on Bougainville and leaving behind a toxic legacy that is already been kind of fenced out, not to have a forum to talk about," she says. "So my intention is for us to start telling this story." Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast here. Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky. Banner image: Theonila Roka Matbob in Papua New Guinea's Autonomous Region of Bougainville in January 2026. Photo by Goldman Environmental Prize. —— Timecodes (00:00) The Bougainville story (12:11) Seeking justice (22:38) Cleaning up a 'toxic legacy'

Katharine Wilkinson has a Ph.D. in geography and the environment, is well known for being a co-author of the book Drawdown and co-founder of The All We Can Save Project. She joins the Newscast this week to discuss her latest book Climate Wayfinding: Healing Ourselves and the Planet We Call Home. As a journalist, it's unhelpful for me to divorce myself from the topic of this interview, as I have experienced, time and again, the sense of "murky overwhelm" this book is specifically designed to address. But Wilkinson didn't just write this book for journalists like myself who cover ecological crises for a living. She wrote it for readers and listeners like you. "I think we're all in our own ways grappling with this increasingly mapless time, right? And that is quite literally true," Wilkinson says. "'Is there hope?' and 'What can I do?' I think these are fundamentally navigational questions as much as they are questions of action." What Climate Wayfinding does that I think is unique is it directly addresses the reader and takes them through a process of self-examination. Of sitting with the uncomfortable emotions one feels about our ecological crises, without judgment. And from that self-compassion, asking the reader to imagine the world they want to see instead and encouraging them to map out how they see themselves working to achieve it. Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast here. Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky. Thumbnail image: Climate Wayfinding with a design background. Image by Amerpsand, courtesy of Katharine Wilkinson. —— Timecodes (00:00) Facing our increasingly 'mapless' time (09:43) Following our emotions (15:07) "I don't feel hopeful today" (18:22) Possibilities that become reality (25:32) Culture as an accelerator for change (35:17) A crisis of leadership (41:40) To love something instead of fixing something

A group of 57 nations mostly from the Global South, describing themselves as "coalition of the willing" intent on making the Transition Away From Fossil Fuels, or TAFF, convened in the Colombian city of Santa Marta, from April 24-29, 2026, for the inaugural TAFF summit. Also referred to as the "Santa Marta Coalition," this group of countries met to discuss and develop frameworks and pathways for nations to phase out fossil fuel dependency. Joining the Mongabay Newscast this week is Mamphela Ramphele, a medical doctor, activist and member of the Planetary Guardians, a network of experts advocating for the planetary boundaries as a measurement framework. Ramphele explains the highlights of the conference, which included the unveiling of a dedicated scientific panel to advise nations on developing road maps to transition off fossil fuels. The science panel includes experts such as Carlos Nobre from Brazil and Johan Rockström from Sweden, who pioneered the planetary boundaries concept. The conference also saw the establishment of "workstreams" to help nations connect their phaseout road maps to their emissions reduction targets as part of their U.N. climate commitments; leverage support to change their financial systems for the transition; and reform trade systems. Two nations in attendance, Colombia and France, announced their own phaseout road maps at the conference. Ramphele, from South Africa, suggests that as countries in the Santa Marta Coalition develop and implement their own road maps, other nations not yet on board will eventually be pressured to follow. Until a legally binding agreement, such as the one advocated for by the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, this is the most immediate path forward, Ramphele says.  "We champion for a legally binding agreement. We get the coalition of the willing to start implementing, and by both positive stories that come out of it and moral suasion, we get people to buy into it." Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast here. Image Credit: Creek in the Colombian Amazon. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay. ——- Timecodes (00:00) A 'coalition of the willing' emerges (12:13) Nations begin to announce phaseout roadmaps (20:48) The pathway to a legally binding fossil fuel phaseout (23:38) Looking ahead to the next conference

Australia is one of 17 "megadiverse" countries that account for 70% of Earth's biodiversity. However, Australia is unique in having the highest mammalian extinction rate in the world. That makes conservation on the island continent, where most of the wildlife is found nowhere else on Earth, all the more urgent. Conservation and environmental scientists have come out against the Australian federal government's claim that it's "on track" to meet most of its targets under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework agreed upon at the U.N. biodiversity summit in 2022. This week on the Mongabay Newscast, Euan Ritchie, a professor of wildlife ecology and conservation at Australia's Deakin University, and a councilor with the Biodiversity Council, an academic alliance in the country, argues why conservationists say the Australian government is failing its commitments. "The short answer, unfortunately, is that Australia is doing terribly in terms of honoring its international obligations to meet those targets in the agreement. If we look at the number of threatened species in Australia, it's more than 2,200 now, and that list continues to increase," Ritchie says. Despite being a relatively wealthy nation by gross domestic product per capita, Australia funds conservation at a diminutive scale compared to other industrialized countries. The latest annual budget allocates 0.06% of federal spending to nature. Ritchie and some 60 fellow experts suggest that it would only take about 1% of the federal budget to save most threatened species and restore soils and rivers. In 2024, the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists published its findings, which took six years to complete. The Biodiversity Council has separately found that around 95% of Australians surveyed would support increased spending on the environment. "Essentially, the federal government is ignoring a majority of Australians by not doing that," Ritchie says. He argues the money to fund conservation already exists — or at least could easily exist by reducing subsidies for harmful industries (such as the fossil fuel industry), which currently amount to around A$26 billion ($19 billion) a year. Separately, a 25% tax on liquefied natural gas exports could generate A$17 billion ($12 billion) a year, a move nationwide polling suggests is supported by 70% of Australians. Despite the perceived strong public support, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has ruled out a 25% tax on gas exports for the time being, which Ritchie says is very hard to understand, pointing to countries like Norway, which built its own sovereign wealth fund off similar measures. As of this writing, the Australian government has lost about A$70 billion ($50 billion) in revenue it could have collected had it taxed these resources, according to an online tracker by the Australia Institute, an independent think tank. "We could bring in tens of billions of dollars in additional revenue if we taxed the resources that we are giving away, essentially in many cases for free," Ritchie says. Instead of increasing direct conservation funding, the Australian government intends to close the gap by launching a "Nature Repair Market," a voluntary biodiversity offset scheme. It's essentially a way for industry and private investors to pay for the damage they cause. Research indicates this is unlikely to protect endangered wildlife and biodiversity without taxpayer funding. Other researchers from the University of Melbourne and the University of New South Wales have also weighed in, explaining that a biodiversity market is unlikely to work. Ritchie says this is problematic for a number of other reasons, ranging from the complexity of biodiversity itself, to the way the government intends to measure environmental impacts from various projects. Currently, the national environmental standards in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC) doesn't "account for cumulative impacts," Ritchie says. "So if you imagine that you're a threatened species and you're widely distributed … Individual projects are not being assessed in relation to other projects that may also impact on that same species," he says. "So it is literally death by a thousand cuts." Listen to a conversation on biodiversity offsets in Australia with Yung En Chee here. Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast here. Image Credit: Black-flanked rock wallaby (Petrogale lateralis) in Cape Range National Park, Western Australia, Australia. The Australian government has classed the species as endangered under the EPBC Act. Image by Dsyzdek via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). —- Time codes (00:00) 'Failing miserably' on the environment (10:21) A 'Nature Repair Market' is not a solution (23:47) New nature reform laws passed (29:44) Plentiful sources of funding (35:37) Native forest logging harms

"[The]cruel irony here [is] that the world cannot get its act together to address these threats … people are dying, animals are suffering, we're losing rainforest … these are all interconnected threats," Neil Vora tells me on this week's episode of the Mongabay Newscast, just a day after the World Health Organization (WHO) reported more than 80 deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo from an outbreak of the Ebola virus. Vora is a former U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) epidemic intelligence service officer who deployed to the DRC to combat Ebola. He says the current strain, the Bundibugyo virus, is particularly dangerous because there is no current approved treatment or vaccine for it. While neither this virus nor the Andes virus, a type of hantavirus that originated in Chile and Argentina and killed three people on a cruise ship, is likely to cause a pandemic, says Vora, he stresses member states of the WHO are unprepared to address a pandemic should one occur. According to Vora, the WHO could have achieved a pandemic agreement to better address the threats pandemics pose. But that fell short when nations failed to adopt a system to equitably share tools such as vaccines. " And now those discussions on the pandemic agreement have stalled, and days later, we have these two outbreaks of zoonotic viruses." Neil Vora is the executive director of the Preventing Pandemics at the Source Coalition. Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast here. Image Credit: Minks at a Swedish fur farm in 2009. Living in small cages very close to each other makes for easier transmission of pathogens. Image courtesy of Jo-Anne McArthur/Djurrattsalliansen/We Animals Media. —- Timecodes (00:00) Two outbreaks (07:55) Fur farms present a pandemic risk (15:17) Banning fur farms in the EU (23:10) 'We're hurting ourselves' (29:29) Preventing Pandemics at the Source Coalition

"We are experiencing what some people call sort of a shutdown of the public square in the United States and around the world," says veteran environmental activist André Carothers. Along with the former executive director of Greenpeace US, Annie Leonard, the two have co-authored a new book about the history of protest, why it works, and why it's under attack. Protest: Respect It. Defend It. Use It. was written to "remind readers about the role protests played in gaining a lot of the progress that we take for granted today," Leonard says. Earth Day 1970 famously saw around 10% of the U.S. population actively participating in one of the largest demonstrations in the nation's history. This led to a number of landmark environmental laws that are arguably taken for granted today. Protest highlights how movements begin, and ultimately shape public discourse leading to these significant victories. The authors also highlight how some in society often lionize protest movements of the past, while condemning ones of the present, forgetting that at their inception, protests and the movements they represent are often unpopular. Leonard and Carothers point to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose approval rating never went above 50% in all his years as a civil rights leader. His disapproval rating stood at 75% the year he was assassinated. "There's something about the gymnastics of history that allows us to honor these people well after they're dead, but not when it's happening right in front of them," Carothers says. You can find a copy of Protest: Respect It. Defend It. Use It. at theprotestbook.com. Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast here. Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky. Image Caption: Photographer Jonathan Bachman was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for capturing a photograph of Ieshia Evans being arrested in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It was Ieshia Evans first protest, and Bachman's first time covering one. The photo was included in The New York Times' "The Year in Pictures 2016," among other honors. jonathan bachman / reuters. Shepard Fairey—a prolific artist and activist who often addresses social and political issues in his work—was invited by the authors of 'Protest' to interpret Bachman's photograph for the book. Image credit to Shepard Fairey. Image Courtesy of Patagonia Books. —- Timecodes (00:00) The attack on protesters (10:32) Combatting vilification of protesters (16:27) Amplifying messaging through art (21:05) Why non-violence works (32:04) A red line has been crossed (36:56) How students are stopping a pipeline (39:46) Earth Day 1970 (42:48) Protest is not enough