Last year, Mongabay launched a brand-new bureau dedicated to covering the African continent daily in French and English. The team is led by veteran Cameroonian journalist David Akana, who chats with co-host Mike DiGirolamo about the importance of covering the African continent and why news that happens there is of keen interest to audiences worldwide.
Akana details his team's coverage priorities, including solutions-oriented stories, which he says are vital to delivering a fair picture of the continent.
"The bottom line here is that whatever happens – whether it's in the business of forests [or] biodiversity or climate change in the Congo Basin [it] has linkages to anywhere else in the world," he says.
View all of Mongabay Africa’s coverage at its website, here.
Read a related Q&A with David Akana here.
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If you enjoy the Mongabay 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, mongabay.com, or follow Mongabay on any of the social media platforms for updates.
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Image: David Akana giving an interview at COP 28 in Dubai, UAE. Image courtesy of David Akana.
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Timecodes
(00:00:00) Introduction
(00:02:18) David's Journey to Mongabay
(00:06:28) Focus Areas of Mongabay Africa
(00:10:46) Challenges in African Media Coverage
(00:12:09) A Multilingual Reporting Strategy
(00:15:27) Engaging With African Audiences
(00:18:46) Making An Impact in the Congo Basin
(00:22:40) Importance of Congo Basin Coverage
(00:26:16) Future Vision for Mongabay Africa
(00:29:40) Why Everyone Should Be Reading African News
(00:33:23) David's Favorite Spot In Nature
The biotic pump theory has been controversial in the climate science community ever since Anastassia Makarieva and Victor Gorshkov published their paper about it to the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics in 2010.
If true, the theory sheds light on how the interior forests of vast continents influence wind and the water cycles that supply whole nations, flipping traditional hydrological and atmospheric science on its head.
Anastassia Makarieva joins this episode to discuss the theory and its implications for future climate modeling with co-host Rachel Donald.
Want more? Read a related Amazon-specific interview with Makarieva and Antonio Nobre here.
Love this conversation? Please share it with a friend!
And if you really enjoy the Mongabay 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, mongabay.com, or follow Mongabay on any of the social media platforms for updates.
Please send your ideas and feedback to submissions@mongabay.com.
Image: Physicist Anastassia Makarieva co-developed the biotic pump theory of how forests direct the movement of moisture. Image 
ZED/Grifa Filmes.
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Timecodes
(00:00:00) Introduction
(00:02:41) Understanding the Biotic Pump Theory
(00:09:38) Tipping Points
(00:15:31) The Climate Regulating Function of Ecosystems
(00:25:51) Lagging Behind the Data
(00:33:20) Building a Different Climate Model
(00:41:04) Addressing the Controversy
(00:45:41) Territory, Boundaries and Water
(00:52:13) Credits
Burning wood to generate electricity – ‘biomass energy’ – is increasingly used as a renewable replacement for burning coal in nations like the UK, Japan, and South Korea, even though its emissions are not carbon neutral.
On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, reporter Justin Catanoso details how years of investigation helped him uncover a complicated web of public relations messaging used by industry giants that obscures the fact that replanting trees after cutting them down and burning them is not carbon neutral or renewable and severely harms global biodiversity, and forests.
Catanoso lives near biomass industry giant Enviva in North Carolina and has reported on their practices extensively, including the claim that they only use sustainable wood waste in their product, which his investigation disproved. Though it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this year, it remains the single largest producer of wood pellets globally.
“When those trees get ripped out, that carbon gets released. And that comes before we process this wood and ship it…then we burn it and don't count those emissions. This is just [an] imponderable policy,” he says in this episode.
Read Justin's coverage of the UK biomass firm Drax and their attempt to open two large wood pellet plants in California to ship 1 million tons annually to Japan and South Korea, where they will be burned in converted coal plants.
If you enjoy the Mongabay 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, mongabay.com, or follow Mongabay on any of the social media platforms for updates.
Please send your ideas and feedback to submissions@mongabay.com.
Image: Wood pellets for biomass energy. Image courtesy of Dogwood Alliance.
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Timecodes
(00:00:00) Introduction to Biomass and Carbon Emissions
(00:03:08) Understanding the problems with biomass fuel
(00:08:18) Clear-Cutting in North Carolina and British Columbia
(00:12:48) Physics Doesn't Fall for Accounting Tricks
(00:19:55) Understanding the Arguments from the Industry
(00:25:30) Picking Apart the Logic
(00:28:26) Why We Don't Have Long-term Solutions
(00:34:27) Overcoming an Impossible Situation
(00:39:55) Post-chat
(00:49:28) Credits
Putting a dollar amount on a single species, or entire ecosystems, is a contentious idea, but in 2023, the New York Stock Exchange proposed a new nature-based asset class which put a price tag on global nature of 5,000 trillion U.S. dollars.
This financialization of nature comes with perverse incentives and fails to recognize the intrinsic value contained in biodiversity and all the benefits it provides for humans, argues Indigenous economist Rebecca Adamson, on this episode.
Instead, she suggests basing economies on principles contained in Indigenous economics.
"The most simple thing would be to fit your economy into a living, breathing, natural physics law framework. And if you look at Indigenous economies, they really talk about balance and harmony, and those aren't quaint customs. Those are design principles," she says.
Hear a related Mongabay podcast interview on the connection between nature and financial systems with author Brett Scott, here. We also recently spoke with National Geographic photographer Kiliii Yuyan about what Indigenous knowledge has to offer conservation, here.
If you enjoy the Mongabay 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, mongabay.com, or follow Mongabay on any of the social media platforms for updates.
Please send your ideas and feedback to submissions@mongabay.com.
Image: The doll orchid. Image courtesy of Bhathiya Gopallawa.
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(00:00:00) Introduction
(00:01:30) The Financialization of Nature
(00:07:35) Indigenous Economic Principles
(00:14:04) Can Putting a Price on Nature Save it?
(00:27:15) Redistribution and Reciprocity
(00:33:15) The Ubiquity of Violence
(00:38:37) The Wealth Gap and Its Implications
(00:41:31) The Power of Shareholder Activism
(00:44:36) Indigenous Economic Systems and Modern Applications
(00:51:57) A Critical Analysis of the Financialization of Nature
(01:00:27) Religious Perspectives on Environmental Awareness
(01:04:24) Credits