The ‘quiet revolution’ inspired by Delhi’s urban wildlife
Mongabay Newscast
In her upcoming book, , conservation biologist Neha Sinha takes readers to the hidden and not-so-hidden ecosystems of India’s largest city. And while the book expertly details the biodiversity, I believe its greatest strength lies in connecting with the reader emotionally through powerful stories from her personal life. On this week’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, Sinha explains why nature in cities isn’t just important from an ecosystem health perspective, but necessary for the emotional life of all people. Sinha describes the difficulty of caring for her ailing father, and how this...
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Why are forests in Liberia disappearing?
Mongabay Newscast
On this week’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with features writer Ashoka Mukpo, who traveled to southeastern Liberia to investigate what satellite images indicated was a spike in deforestation over a relatively concentrated period. Along with video production coordinator Juan Maza, Mukpo illegal cacao plantations in the rainforests in the county of Grand Gedeh. In this interview, he explains how and these plantations are appearing now in Liberia. “What we saw … probably the best metaphor for it is that there's a kind of gold rush happening in this part of Liberia, except...
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Oil has brought destruction to the Niger Delta; women and human rights may save it
Mongabay Newscast
On this week’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, I speak with travel writer . 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, . 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...
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The Mediterranean Sea’s beauty hides an ecosystem under pressure
Mongabay Newscast
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 to purple sea urchins (Paracentrotus lividus) along the Italian coast. These marine invertebrates are...
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Wildlife crossings are having a moment
Mongabay Newscast
Nearly three years ago, Newscast guest, author and journalist Ben Goldfarb 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 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...
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The radical plan to rethink work, wealth and planetary well-being
Mongabay Newscast
A group of more than 40 researchers spent 20 months devising a plan for the world to achieve ecological sustainability within , 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 “.” If it sounds utopian, Lucas Chancel, the co-director of the 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....
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Addressing the ‘toxic legacy’ of mining in Bougainville
Mongabay Newscast
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...
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Healing the planet requires healing ourselves, says Katharine Wilkinson
Mongabay Newscast
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 . She joins the Newscast this week to discuss her latest book . As a journalist, it’s unhelpful for me to divorce myself from the topic of this interview, as I have , 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...
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A ‘coalition of the willing’ to urge the world to drop fossil fuels
Mongabay Newscast
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 . 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 , a medical doctor, activist and member of the , a network of experts advocating for the as a measurement framework....
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Australia claims it’s ‘on track’ to meet its environment targets. Scientists disagree
Mongabay Newscast
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 . 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 the Australian federal government’s claim that it’s “on track” to meet most of its targets under the agreed upon at the U.N. biodiversity summit in 2022. This week on the Mongabay Newscast, , a professor of wildlife...
info_outlineOn this week’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with features writer Ashoka Mukpo, who traveled to southeastern Liberia to investigate what satellite images indicated was a spike in deforestation over a relatively concentrated period. Along with video production coordinator Juan Maza, Mukpo documented illegal cacao plantations in the rainforests in the county of Grand Gedeh. In this interview, he explains how and why these plantations are appearing now in Liberia.
“What we saw … probably the best metaphor for it is that there's a kind of gold rush happening in this part of Liberia, except it's not gold that people are after, it's cocoa,” Mukpo says.
“And this makes sense, given the context that in the last few years there was a huge price spike for cocoa, and this had to do with a lot of factors, including climate change and a poor harvest in Côte d'Ivoire. And so that's pushing this huge number of migrant workers from Côte d'Ivoire into Grand Gedeh.”
At the end of the year, the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) is set to take effect. The EU legislation would ban the importation of certain commodities produced via deforestation, and one of those commodities is cocoa. And much of the cocoa being grown in Liberia right now would potentially fall under this ban, Mukpo says. Furthermore, setting up the tracking infrastructure to ensure commodities meet EUDR standards is expensive. While nations like Côte d’Ivoire have already invested in this, Liberia has not. That leaves a lot of farmers who are betting on this commodity vulnerable.
“A lot of farmers are gonna suffer just from lack of clarity. And I could see a scenario where suppliers choose to just not buy from Liberia because if there's no way for them to know where these beans are coming from, they could get in a lot of trouble if they do buy, and I think that's the real concern,” Mukpo says.
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Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky.
Cover image: A young cacao tree in Grand Gedeh, Liberia. Image by Ashoka Mukpo/Mongabay.
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Timecodes
(00:00) Why are forests disappearing in Liberia?
(10:56) Communities struggling to make a living
(21:18) Perspectives from conservationists
(25:38) The EUDR may impact these farms
(32:07) ‘No clear villain’