Climate Connections

Calling out to plant parents, as well as those thinking of getting succulents to spruce up your homes! 

Increasingly, many popular ornamental plants are plucked from their natural habitats instead of being grown in nurseries. The consequences of this go beyond our living rooms, impacting entire landscapes and the livelihoods of communities that depend on them.

The highest number of native succulent species - drought resistant pla...

Have you been to Phillip Island Nature Parks in Australia? 

It’s home to the largest little penguin population - better known as fairy penguins - globally. They’re the smallest penguin species in the world. 

But today’s focus is on another seabird - short-tailed shearwaters that use Phillip Island as their breeding grounds! From this week, four-month old fledglings are starting their migration and the Phillip Island Nature Parks ...

Quite unsurprisingly, demand for batteries is expected to increase 30% each year until 2030.

A greater need for batteries to power more electric vehicles means increased demand for metals like lithium, a finite resource whose extraction has raised ecological and human rights issues. 

Lithium mining takes a heavy toll - trees are often cut down to make room for mines, chemicals used in the process can poison waterways, and meanwhi...

Rice is a key staple in many diets around the world. But did you know that rice production accounts for over 10% of global methane emissions? These emissions in turn contribute to climate change.

Bali is an Indonesian island known for its stunning landscapes, famous for its terraced rice fields that cascade down hillsides, creating a picturesque environment. But beyond aesthetics, the Bali rice fields and the Subak system are clos...

Ice-cold, juicy oysters definitely sound like a good idea, as we search for ways to beat the heat in recent weeks! But have you ever wondered what happens to the oyster shells afterwards?

On this episode of Climate Connections, we feature two local ecologists - Yukie Yokoyama and Erika Ng from Witteveen+Bos - who are giving discarded oyster shells a new lease of life in Singapore by creating the country's first artificial oyster r...

Plastic consumption has increased exponentially in recent years.

When plastics enter the ocean, microorganisms attach to and colonise them, forming an ecological community known as the ‘Plastisphere’.

But we don’t really know much about these colonies. What we know, is that plastics can be silent killers of marine life.

Plastics also carry other chemical compounds called additives in addition to the polymer resin, and these mate...

The Andes stands out for its striking species richness and endemicity that characterise many emblematic Neotropical clades distributed in or around these mountains. It's also a vital region, with its highland forests providing water for millions of people downstream. 

However, this rich ecosystem is increasingly threatened by rapid development, mining and climate change.

With the glaciers melting and forests disappearing, 2023 Ea...

In the heart of Sumatra lies the Leuser Ecosystem - the last place on Earth where several of the key Sundaland mega-fauna species can still be found together: the tiger, orangutan, elephant, and rhino. But all that are under extreme threat due to unsustainable development. 

In the spirit of International Women’s Day, on this episode of Climate Connections - we feature the Chairperson & Co-Founder of Forest Nature and Environme...

What does sustainability mean to you? Challenges surrounding going green often involve an intricate web of complex problems that are interlinked.

On this episode of Climate Connections, 11-year-old Aurvi Jain, Eco Warrior & TEDxSingapore Speaker explains why every single little action counts more than age. She also lets us in on a little secret project that she worked on together with renowned filmmaker Damon Gameau, that will...

Life in oceans has evolved for three times as long as life on land, and it holds clues to four billion years of our evolutionary heritage.

But although an estimated 2 million species inhabit our oceans, up to 90% remain undescribed. This longstanding void in the knowledge and observation of marine biodiversity is a growing worry, with potential unrecorded extinctions and declines aggravating the prevailing biodiversity crisis. 

O...

We’re just hours away from ringing in the Chinese New Year, and also the Year of the Dragon.

It’s also typically a time when many might consider getting a pet that coincides with the zodiac for the year for good luck - bearded dragons in this case, even though they might be prohibited, depending on where you live. Chinese families will also be feasting on a range of delicacies like abalone and sea cucumbers. 

But before you do an...

Today marks World Wetlands Day. 

The swamp forests, reedbeds and flooded grasslands of the Lower Mekong basin form one of the most biologically important regions on the planet. But these ecosystems are vanishing at an alarming pace, along with riverbank collapse, which has led to coastal communities losing their homes.

Researchers believe that this is because the Vietnam Mekong Delta is currently being robbed of its very foundati...

Soil is often an overlooked aspect of nature. Now, if you dig deeper, you’d realise that healthy soils serve not just as the backbone of safe and sustainable agriculture, but also helps with carbon sequestration. 

In many parts of the world however, poor management and climate change have led to soil degradation and a huge amount of carbon released by the top layer soil over the past 12,000 years.

On today’s Climate Connections, ...

Through half a million years of isolation, primates of the Mentawai Islands evolved into five distinct species, totally different from their relatives on the nearest mainland, Sumatra. These endemic species include the pig-tailed snub-nosed langur, Mentawai gibbon, Mentawai langur, Pagai macaque, and Siberut macaque. Except for the last, the other four species are Critically Endangered or Endangered, as red-listed by the IUCN.

And...

Difference in standards across countries and regions can sometimes make sustainability reporting tricky. So how can such differences be better reconciled? 

Simon Schillebeeckx, Founder & Chief Strategy Officer, Handprint and Ramki Ramakrishnan, Managing Director, Temenos APAC share about the challenges involved in collecting, streamlining and ensuring quality of ESG data, and how knowing how to identify impact projects can hel...

Changes in climate and the effects resulting from climate change control how plants grow, how animals behave, which organisms thrive, and how they interact with the physical environment, especially within forests.

Through the fossils that ancient forests left behind, scientists who have tracked their movements over decades say that heat stress is one of key factors pushing forests to migrate. But with global warming rising at an u...

Did you know that cows burp and fart just like humans? 

Each time a cow burps or passes out gas, a little puff of methane wafts into the atmosphere. In fact, a single cow can produce 70 to 120 kg of methane a year. 

On this episode of Climate Connections, we shine a spotlight on 2023 Earthshot Prize Finalist Sam Elsom, Co-Founder and CEO of Sea Forest - a climate startup that has come up with a way to utilise red seaweed to reduc...

Hotels or lodging are an essential part of travel, which is seeing a rise once again as the pandemic retreats into the shadows. As you wind down this year-end, perhaps take some time to think about how much carbon footprint you contribute when it comes to where you stay on your travels.  

With the voice on climate change growing louder, some hotels have joined the bandwagon to do their part for the environment. In this episode of ...

A little climate threat lurks in the form of a substance with a sight and smell that we are hardwired to be disgusted with - sewage.

Little is known about the real extent of industrial discharge that ends up in our wastewater systems, but researchers have found that untreated sewage discharge brings more harm to the environment and living communities than surrounding land use. But, wastewater management isn’t always affordable or ...