What on Earth?

On the third anniversary of the Myanmar military seizing power, the country has effectively seen a return to the violence, plunder and human rights abuses of the former dictatorship in pursuit of control and hard currency. Despite international sanctions, the current regime still seeks to fund itself through illicit exports of valuable commodities, especially of precious teak which is much sought...

More than two years ago, EIA unveiled our Environmental Crime Tracker, an open access online tool to help analyse and better understand wildlife and forest crime around the world. Recently, we expanded its capabilities even further with a new dashboard to help assess the prosecutions of environmental crimes. In this episode, Data Manager Royce To and Data Analyst Shaliza Malik from EIA’s Intellige...

Palm oil is cheap, versatile and used widely in countess thousands of products and in biofuels, but its production has been linked to human rights abuses, illegal logging and deforestation, causing considerable harm to indigenous peoples and the habitats of endangered orangutans. In this episode, EIA Forests Campaigner Siobhan Pearce talks to Senior Press and Communications Officer Paul Newman abo...

The terrible scale of our planet’s plastic pollution crisis has been making headlines in recent years, as have a number of apparent technological solutions to the problem – but can we really rely on physical ocean clean-ups to sort out the mess for us? Special guest Ewoud Lauwerier, Plastic Policy Expert with OceanCare, and EIA Ocean Campaigner Jacob Kean-Hammerson join EIA Senior Press and Commun...

EIA’s Ocean campaigners were among the first to spot the rising crisis of plastic pollution and we’re proud to have helped lead the call for a new Global Plastics Treaty to tackle it. This month we’ll be in Nairobi to attend the third session of the UN’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee working out the detail. In this episode, EIA Ocean Campaign Leader Christina Dixon and Ocean Campaigner J...

Illegal wildlife trade is happening on a large scale to supply the parts and products of protected species such as leopards, pangolins, rhinos and tigers to serve as ingredients in some traditional Chinese medicines. In this episode, EIA Legal and Policy Specialist Avinash Basker talks to Senior Press & Communications Officer Paul Newman about the findings of our new report, Investing in Extin...

In this episode, we take a look at the work of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, which has just met in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and discuss what happened – and what didn’t happen – at the meeting and how World Heritage Sites can be an important tool when it comes to bolstering protection for endangered species and unique habitats. EIA Senior Wildlife Campaigner Lindsey Smith was keeping close tabs...

Much of the past decade has been a tough time for endangered rhinos, to judge from the recorded seizures of rhino horn being smuggled around the world – but it’s not all bad news for this threatened species … In this special episode for World Rhino Day, EIA Senior Wildlife Policy Analyst Taylor Tench talks with Senior Press & Communications Officer Paul Newman about the current state of rhino...

After spending most of the summer in port, Iceland’s last whalers have been given the green light by their Government to resume the hunting and killing of endangered fin whales. In this episode, EIA’s Senior Ocean Adviser Clare Perry and Senior Ocean Campaigner Sarah Dolman talk to Senior Press and Communications Officer Paul Newman about what this development might mean for whales and what likeli...

The UN Environment Assembly is in the process of negotiating a new Global Plastics Treaty, with the second phase of talks kicking off at the end of May to hammer out the detailed needed to properly address the fast-rising threat of plastics pollution. In this episode, EIA Ocean Campaign Leader Christina Dixon and Ocean Campaigner Jacob Kean-Hammerson talk about their preparations for the second me...

The plastics used in agricultural production – commonly called agriplastics – account for only 3.5 per cent of the plastic used around the world each year, but they directly pollute the human food chain and harm the wider environment. As EIA releases the first of a new series of reports on the problems with agriplastics, EIA Ocean Campaigner Lauren Weir joins Senior Press & Communications Officer...

The European Union has ambitious plans to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 per cent by 2030 – but one major problem is its reluctance to address the huge amount of harmful methane released into the planet’s warming atmosphere from the its imports of coal, gas and oil. In this episode, EIA Climate Campaigner Kim O’Dowd joins Senior Press and Communications Officer Paul Newman to t...

In partnership with the UK’s Alan Turing Institute, EIA is currently working on an ambitious project to create a database of tiger stripe patterns – as individual as human finger prints – to help identify and trace animals in the wild and in illegal trade. In this latest episode, EIA Senior Press & Communications Officer Paul Newman is joined by Shaun Buckley, a Data Scientist at the Turing Instit...

In March this year, the United Nations Environment Assembly agreed to forge ahead with a new Global Plastics Treaty and next week sees work start in earnest to get the detail in place to address the fast-rising threat of plastics pollution. In this episode, EIA Ocean Campaign Leader Christina Dixon and Ocean Campaigner Jacob Kean-Hammerson talk about why work on this treaty is so important and wha...

One of the biggest dates in the environmental calendar is happening in November when the 19th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora – aka CITES – opens in Panama City. But just what is CITES? Justin Gosling, the Senior Project Coordinator for EIA's Securing Criminal Justice projects in West and Central Africa talks with EIA...

On 16 September, the United Nations marks the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer – and for EIA’s Climate team, it’s an opportunity to look back at the Montreal Protocol as it marks its 35th anniversary and to consider its role in addressing present and future challenges to the planet.   In this episode, EIA Climate Campaigner Sophie Geoghegan talks to Senior Press & Communic...

Today (7 September) is the UN International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies and Climate Campaigner Kim O’Dowd talks about the dangerous impacts of methane pollution on climate change as well as on human health and what EIA is doing about it.

This episode, EIA Forests Team Leader Faith Doherty and Kaoem Telapak’s Mardi Minangsari talk with Senior Press & Communications Officer Paul Newman about the reasons for embarking on a major documentary project, the obstacles overcome and the special relationship that has been built between both organisations over two decades of campaigning.

Last week, Zimbabwe hosted what it called an ‘Elephant Summit’ for itself and several other African nations – including Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia – with the aim of restarting the legal international trade in ivory and selling off their stockpiled elephant tusks. And in sharp juxtaposition to this potentially lethal movie, the UK Ivory Act is due to come into effect next...

In this edition, special guest Wilson Ogoke, Wildlife Policy Coordinator with the Africa Nature Investors Foundation, talks with EIA Wildlife campaigners Philip Rekret and Justin Gosling about the country’s new environmental crime strategy and how effective it may prove to be.

Billions of tonnes of plastics have been produced by human beings and it can be found polluting every corner of the planet, from the highest mountains to the deepest seas. New research has just revealed that it’s also present in human blood. In this edition, we’re delighted to be joined by special guest Ben Jack, Programme Director of Common Seas, to talk about his organisation’s ground-breaking f...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change this week published its latest report pulling together all the latest data on global warming and its impacts and it makes for particularly harrowing reading. In this edition, EIA Climate Campaigner Sophie Geoghegan unpacks the main findings of the report and explains why, despite a grim outlook, it’s not a future we have to be locked into.

In just a few days, the United Nations Environment Assembly is due to start work on the creation of a global plastics treaty to tackle the very real planetary emergency of plastic pollution. In this edition, Christina Dixon, EIA Ocean Campaigns Deputy Leader, talks about why the world so urgently needs an international agreement to tackle the plastics crisis and how close we may be to achieving on...

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.

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.