CONSERVATION NEWS

Every year, up to 10 million tons of plastic end up in the world’s oceans — an amount so large it’s hard to visualize. Two journalists from Al Jazeera found that if flattened, ocean plastic today would cover an area roughly the size of Jamaica.

For years, two communities in southeast Colombia have worked to protect the black caiman — the largest predator in the Amazon River basin, which was hunted to near extinction in the area for its highly-prized skin.

As climate change accelerates, there's a growing sense of urgency to address how changes to our ecosystems can lead to conflict. For years, Conservation International has worked to bring environmental peacebuilding and conflict sensitivity to its work.

Years ahead of schedule, Bolivia has met an ambitious goal to protect 30 percent of its land — and that's thanks in large part to Amazonian towns and villages that are accelerating the pace and scale of conservation in the country.

In case you missed it: The Amazon is the ecological jewel of the world, home to nearly 400 billion trees and 10,000 species at risk of extinction. It’s also the world’s largest terrestrial carbon sink. Yet a new report shows those climate benefits are not uniformly distributed.