What on Earth?

A climate for action – as the dust settles on CoP26, what’s next in the fight against climate change?

The UN CoP26 climate change summit threw an international focus on global warming and what needs to be done to mitigate its worst potential impacts – but was the conference a success or a failure? And what needs to happen next to avert catastrophe?

Climate campaigners Sophie Geoghegan and Kim O’Dowd join Paul Newman to reflect on the outcomes of CoP26 and discuss what needs to happen next.

Plastic waste: ‘A terrible and insidious threat to human and environmental health’

Following the launch of the new EIA report The Truth Behind Trash, Ocean campaigners Tom Gammage and Lauren Weir talk about the scale and impact of the problem and what EIA is doing to help address it.

A dam too far – playing destructive power politics in the heart of a World Heritage wilderness

EIA’s Elephant Campaign Team has called for the Selous to be stripped of its World Heritage status due to the damage caused by construction of a massive hydropower project, but the World Heritage Committee stopped far short of taking such a step.

Wildlife Campaigner Rachel Mackenna explains why we were pressing for delisting and talks about what actually happened at the meeting and what might be next for the Selous.

The chilling illegal trade that’s helping to dangerously heat up the world

As another major bust of 17 tonnes of illegal HFC gases is made in Europe just days after the release of our new report Europe’s Most Chilling Crime, Climate Campaigner Sophie Geoghegan discusses the findings of our undercover investigations and looks at what needs to be done to tackle the illegal trade.

 

Read and download the report and watch our shocking short film.

How our new global Tracker zeroes in on environmental crime data

Plundering the world’s precious natural resources is a multi-billion dollar business and, as such, keeping on top of the facts, statistics, seizures and trends of environmental crime means understanding huge amounts of raw data – data which can now be much more easily managed with EIA’s new Global Environmental Crime Tracker.

This week, Mel Butler, our Senior Intelligence Analyst, talks about this innovative, first-of-its-kind tool, who will be able to use it and plans to expand it in the near future.

But don’t just take our word for the benefits of the Tracker – come and see for yourself when we host a live, free online public demonstration of its capabilities at 1.30pm BST on Tuesday, 15 June!

Sign up now to participate in the demo, which will feature a Q&A session after Mel has introduced the Tracker.

Africa’s epicentre of pangolin scale and ivory trade – tackling the drivers of wildlife crime

Just a few short years ago, pangolins were said to be the most trafficked species you’ve never heard of, poached for their meat and scales, but they became much more famous after they were potentially connected to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic and, most recently, EIA’s investigations revealed that West and Central Africa have become the epicentre for pangolin scale trafficking to Asia.

Chris Hamley, EIA’s Senior Pangolin Campaigner, takes a look at the issues with two of our in-country partners, Adams Cassinga, the Founding Director of Conserv Congo, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Vincent Opyene, the CEO and Founder of the Natural Resource Conservation Network, in Uganda.

Myanmar: ‘Anybody investing in the natural resource sector is, in essence, supporting the military’

EIA’s Forests team has been working on the ground in Myanmar since the country began to emerge from under the shadow of brutal military dictatorship in 2011, exposing illegal timber trade and helping to provide the tools for meaningful reform of its natural resources sector – but all that changed with the coup on 1 February.

Faith Doherty, our Forests Campaigns Leader, and Alec Dawson, Forests Campaigner, give an overview of the situation and look at the implications for those seeking to import precious teak from the country.

Intelligence Week special - meet the team behind the scenes of so much of our success!

As part of our special Investigator Week to celebrate the team’s work, in this episode we get to talk with Mel, our Senior Intelligence Analyst, and her two colleagues, intelligence analysts Martina and Denitsa, about what they do and why it’s key to our success.

 

Checking out on plastics - are the top UK supermarkets doing enough in the fight against plastic pollution

Whether it’s in the oceans or on the land, the scale of plastic pollution is increasingly impossible to ignore and there’s a rising tide of tide of public opinion wanting to see it tackled.

Christina Dixon, EIA Senior Ocean Campaigner, reflects on the findings of our recent survey of UK supermarkets and talks about what’s been achieved – and what more needs to be done.

Exposing the nexus of environmental crime – where the illegal wildlife and timber trades intersect

James Toone, a Senior Campaigner who works across our Wildlife and Forests projects, talks about how timber and wildlife crimes actually have much in common.

 

To tackle environmental criminals more effectively, it’s important to know how they operate and new EIA research has shown major crossovers between wildlife and forest crime.

 

Our campaigners have conducted a major review of the extensive data gathered in the field and via research to examine the relationship between the different crime streams, with their findings highlighted in the new report Double Impact: The nexus where wildlife and forest crime overlap.