Mongabay’s top 10 podcast episodes of 2023
It used to be a packed year on Mongabay’s podcast calendar, with a brand contemporary season of “Mongabay Explores” taking a deep dive into the Congo Basin. At the identical time, the Mongabay Newscast continued publishing conversations with leading researchers, authors and activists, and it introduced a brand contemporary co-host, Rachel Donald. Our top 10
- It used to be a packed year on Mongabay’s podcast calendar, with a brand contemporary season of “Mongabay Explores” taking a deep dive into the Congo Basin.
- At the identical time, the Mongabay Newscast continued publishing conversations with leading researchers, authors and activists, and it introduced a brand contemporary co-host, Rachel Donald.
- Our top 10 checklist involves examinations of the Congo Basin’s cobalt mining industry, a dialog with a Pulitzer Prize-winning creator, a botanist discussing the being concerned decline of botany education, and a Nationwide Geographic photographer’s project highlighting the major aim of veteran ecological recordsdata for Indigenous communities and conservation.
In 2023, Mongabay launched the fourth season of its serial podcast, “Mongabay Explores,” highlighting the Congo Basin. The six-share sequence takes a shut explore on the 2d-largest rainforest on this planet, the outlandish biodiversity it incorporates, and the social and ecological challenges it faces.
1. Mongabay Explores the Congo Basin: The ‘heart of the realm’ is at a turning level
Our first “Explores” episode featured guests Adamas Cassinga and Joe Eisenwho supplied deep background on the outlandish natural world and conservation challenges of the Congo Basin.
2. Congo Basin communities now not mighty by ‘fortress conservation’ battle for how lend a hand in
The 2d Congo Basin episode used to be additionally no doubt one of many most listened-to in the sequence. This frank examination of the troubling history of “fortress conservation” in the Congo Basin featured Goldman Prize winner Samuel NguiffoMongabay capabilities creator Ashoka Mukpo and Congolese tutorial Vedaste Cituli.
3. What would it price to guard the Congo Rainforest?
The fifth Congo Basin episode examined the advanced web of broken guarantees on the lend a hand of forest protection and ability pathways to getting cash the set up specialists teach it’s major. Company included Paulo Cerruti from CIFOR-ICRAF, Chadrack Kafuti from Ghent University, Wahida Patwa-Shah of the UNDP Climate Hub, and Lee White, the earlier minister of atmosphere for Gabon, quickly earlier than the nation experienced a coup d’état.
4. Botanists are disappearing at a important time
Our earliest (and most fashioned) episode of 2023 featured guest Sebastian Strouda Ph.D. candidate in metropolis ecology and botany on the University of Leeds. This charming dialogue probed the inspiring decline in botany education applications and the aptitude damage this might per chance per chance well reason in the worldwide battle against biodiversity loss and local weather alternate.
5. Goodbye to blue skies? The effort with engineered solutions
Need to the realm pump particles into the ambiance to fight local weather alternate? Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and creator Elizabeth Kolbert said we ought to be skeptical of engineered solutions devour this, and described a litany of cases the set up humanity has made ecological complications worse with tried solutions.
6. What Indigenous recordsdata can converse the realm about saving biodiversity
Photographer Wash the lock joined the podcast to talk about the price of veteran ecological recordsdata. He’s at the moment working on a media marketing and marketing campaign with Nationwide Geographic highlighting 5 areas of the realm, the Indigenous communities that steward these lands, and the recordsdata they must offer.
7. Guyana gets ‘Drilled’: Weighing South America’s most up-to-date oil command with Amy Westervelt
Award-winning investigative journalist and podcaster Amy Westervelt spoke with us about the eighth season in her acclaimed podcast sequence “Drilled,” which makes a speciality of a deal between Guyana and ExxonMobil to faucet oil reserves off the waft of Georgetown.
8.Climate alternate is now not any shaggy dog yarn for Australians, says award-winning comedian Dan Ilic
Investigative humorist and podcaster Dan Ilic shared his recipe for talking the harsh realities of local weather alternate with hope, humor, and catharsis. This candid episode recorded on-place in Sydney additionally capabilities Ilic’s insight into the dialog spherical environmental protection in Australia.
9. How our team debunked the U.N.’s local weather neutrality claims
The United Nations is now not local weather neutral, despite its claims. On this episode, Jacob Goldberg outlined how the Unusual Humanitarian and Mongabay accomplished an investigation that found a important chunk of carbon credits bought by the group don’t characterize accurate emissions reductions.
10. A honest vitality transition requires greater governance & equity in the DRC
What does a “shapely” vitality transition explore devour in the Congo Basin? Earnings made of mining important minerals in the worldwide vitality transition are largely now not making their manner to local and Indigenous populations, sources teach. Mongabay interviewed Christian-Géraud Neema Byamungu and Joseph Itongwa Mukumo for this important explore on the cobalt mining industry in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Bonus: Climate loss & injury fund ‘the furthest factor possible from a success’
Rounding out the checklist is the inaugural episode that comprises Mongabay’s contemporary podcast co-host, Rachel Donaldwho took an in-depth explore on the U.N.’s local weather loss and injury fund and the arm-twisting that came about on the U.N. Transitional Committee negotiations. This worldwide fund, originally centered spherical reparations for local weather impacts suffered by low- and heart-profits nations, now no longer mandates that wealthy industrialized countries pay into it, and the funds are to be administered as loans rather than grants. These are tendencies that guest Brandon Wu of ActionAid USA known as “the furthest factor possible from a success.”
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Rachel Donaldis an investigative reporter and journalism lecturer based mostly entirely mostly in London. She hosts the podcastPlanet: Valuableand her most up-to-date thoughts might per chance per chance well even be found on𝕏by@CrisisReportsand at Bluesky by@racheldonald.bsky.social.
Mike DiGirolamois Mongabay’s viewers engagement accomplice, based mostly entirely mostly in Sydney. He co-hosts and edits the Mongabay Newscast. Safe him onLinkedIn,Bluesky, andInstagram.
Banner Image:Larry Lucas Kaleak listens to the sounds of passing whales and bearded seals by a skinboat hump in the water. The sounds of bearded seals and bowhead whales are outlandish and distinctive, and is also with out complications heard in the vibrations of the wood hump. Image (c) Kiliii Yuyan.
