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Now displaying: February, 2025

How corporations meet their climate targets, on paper 0

Feb 18, 2025

A paper in the journal Nature Climate Change concludes there is limited accountability for corporations that fail to achieve their climate change mitigation targets. The analysis shows 9% of company decarbonization plans missed their goals, while 31% “disappeared.”

However, 60% of companies met their targets. While this might initially seem like good news, it may not be leading to genuine climate action.

This week's podcast guest, Ketan Joshi, a consultant and researcher for nonprofit organizations in the climate sector, explains that many corporations are not actually decarbonizing their supply chains, but rather relying on buying renewable energy certificates and carbon credits to "offset" additional carbon emissions from their business.

While carbon offsets are often touted as a way to directly fund climate action on the ground, Joshi stresses there is no verifiable way to track how much is funding these projects. Typically, credits are purchased from a broker, and 90% of these intermediaries arranging such deals on the voluntary carbon market don't share their data.

Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website.

Image Credit: The 2015 Paris Agreement stipulates that countries must reduce carbon emissions in order to limit warming to 1.5°C, or at least well below 2°C. Image by jwvein via Pixabay (Public domain).

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Timestamps

(00:00) Are companies actually decarbonizing?

(16:06) The rise of climate litigation

(31:00) Carbon removal tech as an offset

(42:00) What is GreenSky?

(50:38) Credits

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Bobcats provide health benefits for ecosystems and humans, but are largely misunderstood 0

Feb 11, 2025

The bobcat population has rebounded over the past century, making it North America’s most common wildcat: as of 2011, there were an estimated 3.5 million bobcats in the United States alone, a significant increase from the late 1990s.

These intelligent felids, Lynx rufus, have benefited from conservation efforts that have increased their natural habitat. The species also thrives at the edges of towns and cities, where their presence can even reduce the spread of pathogens like Lyme disease that affect people, says podcast guest Zara McDonald, founder of the Felidae Conservation Fund.

McDonald shares her thoughts on how the bobcat manages to thrive on the edge of urban areas, the state of wildcat conservation, and what she wishes more people knew about wildcats.

Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website.

Image: A bobcat in Kalispell, Montana. Image by Outward_bound via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

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Timecodes

(00:00) Intro

(02:58) The resilience of bobcats

(08:13) The benefits of bobcats

(16:19) The Felidae Conservation Fund

(25:30) The state of wildcat conservation

(30:47) Wildfires and their impact on wildcats

(33:47) Thoughts on coexistence with wildlife

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Perceptions of law enforcement in Africa's protected areas vary 0

Feb 4, 2025

Nations across the world are working to expand their protected areas to include 30% of Earth's land and water by 2030. In Africa, this would encompass an additional 1 million square miles.

Mongabay's Ashoka Mukpo recently traveled to three nations to assess the current state of conservation practices in key protected areas, to get a better picture of what an expansion might look like, and how the crucial role of rangers in enforcing their protection is evolving. While there, he traveled with passionate and dedicated rangers, but also documented allegations of ranger involvement in violent incidents in Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda.

He joins the podcast to describe the situation, which he says is commonplace in national parks across the continent.

"The amount [of] violence and aggressive enforcement that is, I think, generally associated with wildlife rangers has led to a lot of mistrust, a lot of alienation, and a real sense that 'the purpose of these people is to kind of harass and impose a system that doesn't include us, on us,'" Mukpo says.