Even though child marriage might seem like a thing of the past for some of us, one in five girls globally are still married off under the age of 18. This means that for millions of these child brides,their childhood, education and future have been stolen forever. Uneducated women often end up having worse health and economic outcomes and their families are more vulnerable to climate change. To free girls from this nightmarish practice, Ugandan activist Joan Kembabazi has been challenging...

If we truly want to liberate women, access to contraception is just the tip of the iceberg. We also need to feel comfortable talking about our bodies, our sexuality and sensuality, menstruation, post-partum depression, parental burnout and menopause. Because if we feel ashamed or embarrassed about these topics, we’re still being repressed. That’s just one of many life lessons that Nadine Goodman has learned over the last 40 years running CASA, an impactful nonprofit that helps 80,000 people...

To have a large family, and at least one son, are such strong cultural and religious norms in Nigeria that when women don’t meet them they’re often considered failures. Not only is this unfair to women, it’s also becoming nearly impossible to provide for a big family in Nigeria, where poverty is rampant and the cost of living has recently tripled.  Chidera Benoit, a teacher and Executive Director of ⁠Population Explosion Awareness Initiative⁠, explains why it’s essential to change harmful...

Imagine that you were a 14-year old girl, and instead of chatting with friends or monitoring Instagram, you’d be married off to an elderly man and expected to run a household. Imagine that you gave birth to your first child, a cute baby girl, and instead of receiving cheerful reactions, people would start crying and feeling sorry for you.  Imagine that throughout your lifetime you would have to give birth to 9 children, undergo several miscarriages and see a few of your children die.  THIS...

800,000 native trees. This is how many seeds of hope conservationists from Brazilian nonprofit REGUA have planted on degraded lands in the Atlantic Forest over the last two decades  – one of the biologically richest forests in the world. And that’s not all! The dedicated team managed to buy land that once used to be a farm and patch up fragmented pieces of forests to create an 11,000 hectare nature reserve. In this interview, Micaela Locke, the Research and Communications Coordinator at...

Being able to make decisions about when or whether to have children is among the most fundamental human rights.  Yet when it comes to women and their bodies, suddenly so many people – complete strangers – feel they have the right to tell women what to do, like, “Contraceptive use is against our religion! “Abortion is a sin!” And so on. And even though having bodily autonomy makes women healthier, happier, and wealthier, we’re still living in a world where we deny 44% of women autonomy over...

In Madagascar, where people depend on natural resources to survive, yet 75% live in extreme poverty, protecting nature is a big challenge. That's why conservation organizations are starting to realize that they can't only protect animals but must also address the well-being and health of communities living nearby protected areas.  Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust provides a wonderful example of the holistic approach to conservation. By improving food security, financial independence and...

Getting access to birth control — or any reproductive healthcare in a country in shambles — is harder than you can imagine. And that is especially true for families that live hand to mouth. But nothing is impossible, especially when there’s good will and a great team. Turimiquire Foundation has been able to help low-income women in northeastern Venezuela get better access to family planning as well as education and sustainable livelihoods. Steven Bloomstein, the co-founder, president, and...

It’s not easy being a woman in Niger. The odds are especially high for women to drop out of high school, get married young (17 is the average age), or be displaced due to climate change, insecurity or humanitarian crisis! What happens to women in Niger, though, doesn’t stay in Niger alone. It impacts the whole region and ultimately, the global fight for women’s rights and climate justice. Together with Sani Ayouba Abdou (Director of Young Volunteers for the Environment in Niger) and Lou...

Uganda’s first wildlife vet and award-winning conservationist, Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, shares her personal story about how her organization “Conservation Through Public Health“ has contributed to a steady growth of mountain gorillas in the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda. That’s in addition to a major improvement in community health, a threefold increase in family planning use, and new opportunities for people living around the park to thrive in coexistence with gorillas and other...

Natural conservation and making improvements in the health and livelihoods of our communities are not at odds, although sometimes it feels this way. In reality, they are inherently connected. For example, in many rural communities where access to quality health services is low and jobs are few and far between, poverty-stricken people depend on exploiting natural resources to survive, which actually harms their quality of life long-term. Luckily, there is a better way of doing things that...

Many people feel desperate about the state of the world today. It’s no wonder because the number of negative news we hear is endless – biodiversity loss, resource depletion, increasing inequality, wars, and so on. The more informed we are, the more helpless we feel, thinking, “How can I make a difference?” It turns out that all of us can make a difference if we take a solutionary approach to our work. No matter what you do - a biologist, a teacher, a gardener - you can tackle big issues  and...

When soap operas are designed in a way that they not only entertain people but also educate about social issues, they can have a huge positive impact on society and the environment. This type of approach is called entertainment education and is at the core of what Population Media Center does. Through hot TV soaps and radio dramas, this non-profit draws attention to family planning, gender equality, domestic violence, girls’ education, children’s health and education, and conservation. Since...

Even though people mostly view fish as tasty food on their plates, freshwater fish species are in desperate need of our attention and action. They are the world’s most threatened taxon, due to pollution, aquatic habitat loss, invasive species, overharvesting and water flow changes. Fish are at risk worldwide, but Southeast Asia is one of the key areas where fish are suffering with more than 80 different fish species currently on the brink of extinction. In this episode, Nerissa Chao (a...

When Colombian conservationist Sara Inés Lara started helping women from rural communities access family planning and education and become guardians of their own environment, she got a lot of pushback from local men and conservation colleagues. After all, it was a taboo to address environmental protection, women’s empowerment and population. Seventeen years later, her NGO Women for Conservation has reached more than 2,000 women and helped the recovery of the yellow-eared parrot, which was...

While in most places, we hear about rhinos and elephants being killed, in North Luangwa National Park in Zambia, one of the most untouched wilderness sanctuaries in Africa, the situation is quite the opposite. This little-known park is home to Zambia’s only black rhino population, which continues to show one of the highest growth rates in Africa, and Zambia’s largest, most stable and ever-increasing elephant population. On this episode, Claire Lewis, a British conservationist who manages the...

With fewer than 50 animals in the wild, saola is possibly the most threatened mammal on the planet. Even though it was discovered in 1992, very little is known about it, as no biologist has ever seen it in the wild and there are only a handful of photos of it from camera traps – last one from 2013. To save the animal from extinction, the Saola Foundation for Annamite Mountains Conservation wants to lead an intensive search for the last saolas in order to capture them for a breeding program....

The impact of our growing population on nature is such a sensitive topic that nobody really dares talk about it. Better sweep it under the carpet and forget about it, right? Well, not necessarily. If you think it through, the solution is really simple and beautiful: give women full rights, opportunities and access to family-planning methods. In this interview with Paul R. Ehrlich, the Bing Professor Emeritus of Population Studies at Stanford University, we talk about: What is a...

For 7.8 billion people to live sustainably on the planet, everyone would have to be a vegetarian; never drive a car or fly in an airplane; live in a one-room apartment with minimal electricity and no heat, hot water, washing machine, dryer, or dishwasher; and have only a few sets of clothes and pairs of shoes. Sounds crazy, right? But what's even crazier is that nobody, including environmentalists, really wants to talk about our growing population and consumption. With 7.8 billion people on...

Even though the elephant population decline is a gigantic problem – only 415,000 elephants remain compared to 10 million in 1930 – there are ways to protect this iconic species. The nonprofit Save Elephants, in collaboration with EAGLE Network (organizations fighting corruption and wildlife crime), have seen some success protecting elephants in Congo, Cameroon and Chad.  On this episode, Arthur Sniegon, the founder of Save Elephants, talks about:   why elephants are being killed in Africa...

In this episode, I am talking to Luis Mazariegos and Stuart Pimm about their successful conservation project in Western Andes Cloud Forest, in Colombia, one of the most biodiverse spots on the planet. Since 2008, The Hummingbird Conservancy, with financial support from Saving Nature has restored 3,500 hectares of degraded land and connected about 100 km2 of intact forest with the main Andean chain into a land corridor. Together we talk about:  Why the Western Andes Cloud Forest is so...

Lisa Carne is a marine biologist and founder of Fragments of Hope, a community-based organization that stands behind the most successful coral reef restoration project in the Caribbean. Dr. Maya Trotz is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of South Florida and a board member of Fragments of Hope.  Together we talk about:  - How Lisa started coral reef restoration in the Laughing Bird Caye National Park in Belize  - How coral reef restoration works (methods,...

Annette Arjoon-Martins is a Guyanese conservationist and pilot who founded the Guyana Marine Conservation Society, an NGO that originally started with protecting sea turtles on Shell Beach and now aims to protect mangrove forests and marine habitats in general. Ivana Thompson is a young marine biologist who has recently joined the organization to deepen the scientific knowledge about sea turtles.  Together we talk about:  - Protecting of sea turtles on Shell Beach - Working with...

Hana Raza is a Kurdish wildlife conservationist who rediscovered the Persion leopard, once thought to be extinct, in the mountains of Kurdistan in 2011. She dedicated her career to establishing a program for conserving this globally endangered species.  In 2017, she was awarded the prestigious award of Future for Nature. Together we talk about: Why it is important to protect the Persian leopard What the main threats that this animal faces in Iraq are What it’s like to be a woman...