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COP30 signals a new era for landscapes, Indigenous knowledge, and rights-based climate action precisely because the trajectory of earlier COPs left critical gaps that now demand correction. COP21 in Paris established the temperature goals but treated ecosystems largely as carbon reservoirs rather than living climate systems. COP26 in Glasgow brought forests into global headlines through the Forest Declaration, yet the pledge remained voluntary, and deforestation continued apa

When the UN decided to hold COP30 in Belém, it quietly changed the geometry of climate diplomacy. For the first time, negotiators gathered not in a distant capital but at the mouth of the Amazon itself, arguing over finance and emission targets while surrounded by the rainforest they were promising to protect (Reuters, 2025a). In the official narrative, it quickly became a “forest COP”: a summit defined by the launch of a vast new fund for tropical forests, fresh pledges for

Welcome back, eco-enthusiasts! Today’s episode dives into a world where landscapes shift faster than policies. Nature Insights sits down with Earth herself to talk quakes, cracks, and the consequences of human appetite. Spoiler: Earth has receipts, and she’s done being subtle.  Nature Insights: Hey Earth, looking a little… shaky today. Everything alright? Another tectonic stretch? Pilates for continence?  Earth: Oh, nothing serious. Just releasing some stress. You’d crack t

A Planet That Is Forgetting Its Shape At sunrise, Arabia’s dunes breathe—intact, self-regulating, timeless. Yet just beyond, concrete corridors and grids cleave habitats honed over millennia, a pattern mirrored from Amazonian forests to African savannas. Nearly 75% of Earth’s terrestrial surface has been altered by human systems (IPBES, 2018), eroding not only biodiversity but also the ecological “memory” that landscapes need to regenerate. Deserts are pushed into cities, for

A landscape is never just a backdrop; it is a living record of Earth’s forces. It shifts through three core elements of geomorphology: the landforms we see (river valleys, beaches, and uplands), the processes that shape them from the outside, such as wind, water, and climate, and the forces that work from within the planet, like tectonics and volcanic activity. Over time, these interacting forces create an evolving terrain. Because geomorphology is tightly connected to hydrol

Everyone knows that the Amazon is the largest rainforest in the world, often called the “lung of the earth.” But how many of us have heard that the war-torn African continent is also the home of the “second lung of the earth,” known as the Congo Basin? The Congo Basin The Congo Basin is the second-largest rainforest in the world after the Amazon. It spans across six African countries: Cameroon, the Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Eq

The Sahara Desert, covering over 9.2 million square kilometers across 11 countries between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea, is the largest hot desert on Earth. While often perceived as a uniform expanse of sand, the Sahara is a region of considerable ecological and geological diversity. Its landscape includes dunes (ergs), solid rock plateaus (hamadas), gravel plains (regs), volcanic massifs, mountain ranges such as the Ahaggar and Tibesti, and some of the driest hyper-ari

When night falls across the world’s deserts, a transformation unfolds. The air, thick with shimmer by day, cools until silence settles on dunes, stony plateaus, salt flats, and rocky escarpments stretching impossibly to the horizon. For the untrained eye, deserts are nature’s blank pages: empty, lifeless, and unyielding. But scientific eyes know better: deserts, in all their forms, are vital theaters of survival, innovation, and history, teeming with secrets waiting to be rev

When we imagine the climate crisis, our minds drift toward the cinematic: the roar of a cyclone flattening a city, the orange glow of a wildfire consuming a forest, or floodwaters sweeping away cars. We have been trained to fear the spectacle. Yet, some of the most profound devastation is unfolding without a sound. It is happening grain by grain, crack by crack, in a process known as "slow violence."  This is the force of weathering—the relentless grind of heat, salt, wind, a

(A Nature Insights Therapy Session)   Welcome back, eco-enthusiasts. Today, Nature Insights is hosting an emergency therapy session, not for humans, but for something far more stressed: the Weather .  This month, as complaints about “unusual weather” flood our timelines faster than our streets, we decided to do the responsible thing: book Weather a therapy session. Not to fix it, but to finally listen.  Once predictable, politely seasonal, and rarely invited into policy discu

There was a time when my small talks began with:  “The weather is nice today, no?”  I don’t say it so casually anymore. I think I am privileged, so my weather is still “nice.” I can regulate it with fans, heaters, AC, or simply step indoors. But is the weather nice for everyone?  Back in my childhood I remember that Bangladesh’s summers meant load-shedding. Generators were rare, IPS was a luxury, fans stopped mid-rotation like paused moments. Even then somehow, the heat was t

Climate change and food insecurity are two of the most pressing sustainable development challenges of our time. Yet agricultural policy keeps chasing long-term climate change targets while the real threat to farmers and rural communities goes largely unaddressed. That threat is the wild swings in weather: sudden floods wipe out the season’s rice, heatwaves scorch wheat before it ripens, and droughts turn soil to dust almost overnight. These shocks destroy harvests, spike food

Weather is a complicated, interconnected system that goes way beyond the local prediction. The distinction between the transient weather conditions and the more stable context of climate is inherent: whereas weather can change within hours, climate changes within decades. One of the most impressive examples of this difference is the El Nino-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO a natural and periodic process within the Pacific Ocean, that alternates between warm (El Nino) and cold (L

When the cold season hits Bangladesh in November-February every winter, the skies in Dhaka, Chattogram, Narayanganj, Gazipur and other large cities of the country appear perfectly familiar and at the same time terribly threatening. The cityscape is regularly blanketed with a heavy and gray blanket. It might seem to the careless eye an air of mist or fog, but this haze of seasonal fog is much darker. It is smog, a heavy layer of air pollutants that suffocates millions of peopl

On a winter night at high latitude, the sky feels close, almost tangible. People travel thousands of kilometers for this moment, eyes lifted, breath visible, waiting for the aurora to appear. Yet long before the Sun sends charged particles racing toward Earth, the outcome has already been decided much closer to the ground. The weather, not space, is the gatekeeper.  Auroras are born far above the clouds, where solar particles collide with Earth’s magnetic field and excite oxy

For this issue’s  interview,  we are  honored  to have Dr. Rashed Chowdhury, Applications Scientist - Water, Climate, and Society. Dr. Rashed Chowdhury is a climate scientist and research faculty member at Arizona State University (USA) who works at the intersection of water, climate, and society. His research is driven by a strong interest in applying climate science to real-world challenges. He is a 2021 U.S. Fulbright Teaching Scholar and a postdoctoral researcher at the I

Pakistan sits at the top of an extraordinary geological endowment. Underneath its soil, more than 90 different minerals have been identified, ranging from copper, gold, lithium and cobalt to critical rare earth elements (REEs) required for the 21st-century economical, digital, energy and defense architecture. Various estimates have placed the potential value of Pakistan’s minerals between USD 50 trillion and USD 68 trillion. Yet mining contributes only 3.2 per cent to Pakista

To walk across the Earth is to walk across a battlefield. We tend to view our planet as a static stage—solid rock, immovable mountains, permanent coastlines. But this is an illusion of time. To a geologist, the Earth is a churning, volatile entity caught in a state of  dynamic equilibrium .  Every valley and peak you see is the result of an ancient, silent war between two colossal forces. From below, endogenic forces (driven by the planet’s internal heat) shove the crust upwa

“We've got this one beautiful blue and green planet, and we have to get together and do something to protect it before it's too late.”- Jane Goodall (1934-2025)  Credit: UN Photo/Michos Tzovaras The Pursuit of Climate Action   Since its inception in 1995, the Conference of the Parties (COP) has become the stage for global climate diplomacy under the UNFCCC member states. Through negotiations, framework agreements, and discussion, COP has slowly turned big promises into polici

In this interview, Shahin , a young climate activist from Bangladesh, shares his reflections on attending last year’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP). Speaking from firsthand experience as a youth activist and also a victim of climate change-induced adversities, he highlights the gap between global discussions and local realities - and what must change to make climate conferences truly impactful.    Era: When you went to the last COP, what do you think was the outcome of

Figure: Tohoku Earthquake of Japan Earth holds the record of all violent things it has gone through. Disasters do not occur in a normally tranquil planet; rather, they are geologic chapters. Valleys are raised by earthquakes, islands are formed by volcanoes, shorelines are redrawn by tsunamis, and mountainsides are cut along landslides. These abrupt breaks, which have been piled up over millions of years, are what have formed the landscapes that we recognize nowadays. Learnin

Figure: Aerial Photograph of the Damage of the Atomic Bombing in hiroshima Land normally changes with patience. Mountains rise slowly, rivers wander inch by inch, and forests thicken over centuries. The Earth edits itself in small strokes. War ignores that rhythm. In moments of violence, landscapes are remade with a speed that feels unnatural, as if time itself has been forced to sprint. Wherever armies move and bombs fall, the land becomes a witness and a casualty.  Imagine

The atmosphere will be one of urgency and symbolism when the world convenes in Belém, Brazil, to COP30. The Amazon, also known as the lungs of the planet, serves as a reminder as well as the backdrop of what is at stake. It is a victim and an essential ally in combating the climate crisis. With the world leaders, scientists, activists, and communities coming together, the demands are evident: this must be the summit, which will go beyond the promises and start acting.  A Clim

Climate change poses growing risks to the world’s landscapes, deeply influencing economic opportunities and community resilience across regions.  Rising temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns have led to dramatic effects on landforms—altering growing seasons, increasing wildfire risk, and reducing ecosystem services in drylands and coastal zones. For example, reductions in crop and livestock productivity are already being observed, with projections showing worsening