International Conservation & Development

In the southern Pacific Ocean, off south-central Chile, is a wind-swept island with a mountain blanketed in old-growth forest. This mountain is inhabited by 70% of the world’s Pink-footed Shearwaters, a globally threatened seabird related to albatrosses. The island is called Isla Mocha (pronounced with a hard “ch”: Mo-cha), and is also home to around 600 Mochanos—residents who live in the plains below the mountain, harvesting shellfish and seaweed, grazing cattle and sheep, and fishing in the ferocious currents that roil around the island.

Approximately 95 percent of global fishing is conducted in small-scale boats, often unequipped with AIS (Automated Identification System) technology. As a result, most small-scale fishing activity goes untracked. Transparency in fishing behavior provides both benefits to the environment and economic advantages for fishermen and communities that depend on fish resources.

The U.S. is one of the largest consumers of wood and paper products. Recent investigations into illegal logging in Russia, the Amazon, South East Asia and Africa indicate it’s a widespread and highly lucrative enterprise. It’s also highly destructive – causing the loss of ancient forests and habitats critical to wildlife. And chances are American consumers are unwittingly contributing to the problem. Some environmentalists believe one solution is to track every step of the supply chain to ensure products that make it to the American market come from legal wood.

As the Arctic warms faster than any other place on the planet and sea ice declines, there is only one sure way to save polar bears from extinction, the government announced Monday: decisive action on climate change.

In the early 1960s, a young ornithologist successfully persuaded Vietnam’s top leaders, including its founding president, Ho Chi Minh, to designate a tract of land near the capital as the country’s first national park.

Fellow Daniel Orenstein writes that scientists, educators and researchers have to become leaders, both advancing the state of knowledge about global climate and the impacts of human activities, and strengthening the ecological literacy of youth. Education will be key in pushing back the damage that the Trump presidency is already causing, he says.

Karen Merritt, public health educator, street photographer and SEA Semester alumna (W-98), has been selected to receive this year’s Armin E. Elsaesser Fellowship award. Karen plans to use the award to investigate and document the “invisible history” of 16th and 17th century mercury and silver mining in Spain and Mexico, which she describes as one of the “longest continuous maritime transport endeavors in history.” ...

In several interviews with prominent media outlets, Climate Interactive’s Andrew Jones and MIT’s Prof. John Sterman elaborated the potential effect of president-elect Trump pulling out of the Paris climate agreement.

A new world of global climate action is coming into view here in Morocco – a world without US leadership on the issue. The test now is whether global cooperation can proceed and grow at a time when America – in recent years a leader in the push to reduce carbon emissions – has a president-elect who opposes the very concept of climate response.