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For many years, companies have utilised carbon offsets to boost their green credentials. Yes, there are some greenhouse gas (GhG) emissions that we have not been able to eliminate, goes [...]

The year was 2022, and news from the war in Ukraine dominated headlines. Shock at the full-scale invasion of a European country, combined with footage of airstrikes, missiles and fighting [...]

Adevastating war to the north; the poorest country in the world to the south; and in the middle, a forgotten territory where tribal warfare, natural disasters and a decline in [...]

INFINITE LIFE A revolutionary story of eggs, evolution and life on Earth By Jules Howard Elliott & Thompson * The egg (an organic vessel grown by an individual to carry [...]

EVE How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution By Cat Bohannon Penguin * Cat Bohannon introduces various Eves. 'Morgie', the Morganucodoin, a weasel-mouse who scuttled beneath [...]

MOUNTAINS BEFORE MOUNTAINEERING The call of the peaks before the modern age By Dawn L Hollis The History Press * Twenty-first century humans love mountains. We have, and still do, [...]

I think it's really important that we are using more of the periodic table than we've ever used before,' says Kathryn Moore, senior lecturer in critical and green-technology metals at [...]

WHERE ARE YOU FROM? NO. WHERE ARE YOU REALLY FROM? By Audrey Osier Virago * Audrey Osier, a professor of citizenship and human rights education at the University of Leeds, [...]

Ahydrothermal vent is an inhospitable place; one of searing temperatures, toxic minerals and, if you're unlucky enough to get near a black smoker, plumes of dark, sulfurous 'smoke'. They form [...]

TIME AND TIDE The Long, Long Life of Landscape by Fiona Stafford John Murray Academic and author Fiona Stafford sets out to convey the sweeping changes that have impacted the [...]

LOCAL A Search for Nearby Nature and Wildness By Alastair Humphreys Eye Books * In Local, adventurer and writer Alastair Humphreys spends a year roaming the area around his home, [...]

It's something we spend a great deal of time thinking about, here at Geographical: how to tell the world's stories at a time of increased conflict and increasing temperatures without [...]

When Istanbul-based photographer Bradley Secker heard about a press-trip to a number of 'halal-friendly' hotels, opened in recent years along Turkey's sunny southern coastline, he was intrigued--both by the idea [...]

Sub-Saharan Africa has an electricity problem. While the world as a whole has made great strides when it comes to providing access to electricity (the world average is now 90 [...]

It could happen out in the field, perhaps in a steamy jungle or a parched desert or deep beneath the ocean surface where few people have been before. Or it [...]

Thirty-one years ago, the May 1990 edition of this magazine featured the headline 'Geography of homosexuality'. The relevant article, written by Lawrence Knopp, then an assistant professor in the department [...]

We hear so much these days about the people who leave their homes in the Middle East or Africa to seek a better life in Europe that it's easy to [...]

All too often, it feels as if human innovation comes at the expense of nature. Take one of our most important inventions: the electric light. Life-giving in many ways, it [...]

The concept of a North-South divide, a line that dissects England, rendering the two halves economically, socially and culturally different, permeates English history. It also leaks into the very idea [...]

Two-minute instant noodles--hardly a nutritious dinner, and not the first thing anyone thinks of when considering the effects of a global pandemic. Yet, according to Dr Jaeyeon Choe, a senior [...]

The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement set what now appears to be a very bold target--to hold the rise in global average temperature to well below two degrees Celsius and to [...]

Traditional methods of design and construction have led to a built-world of inefficient, unsustainable materials and structures. By unpicking nature's secrets and copying them, scientists in the field of biomimetics [...]

I think we have to start with the idea that there has never been any such thing as a just transition in the US,' says Phil Smith, director of communications [...]

Peter Morris opens a sturdy industrial door and a few stray locusts hop out the way as he strides down the corridor. They're escapees, but that's not a huge concern [...]

Of all the difficulties facing the residents of India's slums, many are obvious on first sight. Dwellings are hemmed in, without access to water or electricity. Rubbish piles up, children [...]

The smell of the sea wafts by the second you step off the train at Margate, carrying with it all the nostalgia of a day at the seaside on which [...]

Carbon offsetting is a practice used by companies to claim "net zero" greenhouse gas emissions by financially contributing to projects that reduce emissions elsewhere. While the practice is unregulated and has faced scandals and complications, it has gained prominence in policy discussions. Some see offsetting as a useful tool in tackling climate change, especially for industries unable to eliminate emissions completely. However, there are problems with accounting, controversies surrounding specific schemes, and a lack of international oversight. Despite its flaws, carbon offsetting can have multiple benefits, such as reducing air pollution and supporting biodiversity and communities. Better regulation and oversight are needed to ensure credibility, as the recent COP28 conference failed to establish a formal trading scheme for offsets. Companies should prioritize emissions reductions and view offsetting as a supplementary strategy within a comprehensive net-zero plan. [Extracted from the article]

The winners of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry owe their success to jellyfish. Specifically, to Aequorea Victoria (or the crystal jellyfish), a delicate, translucent species whose organs emit light. [...]

In 1569, the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator made a decision that changed the way we view the world. In flattening the planet onto a two dimensional surface he chose to [...]

Little known in the West, the grasspea is a lifesaver. A hardy pulse grown in pockets in south Asia, southern Europe and the Horn of Africa, it is often consumed [...]

The year was 1919 and the First World War had just come to an end, when the Admiralty decided to tackle an issue that had proved a thorn in its [...]

The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics By Adam Rutherford W&N * Adam Rutherford's latest book is split in half. Part one is a fairly straightforward history of the [...]

Influence good and bad Not long ago, we viewed the oceans as such vast and impenetrable places that we presumed them immune to human influence. Today, we know we were [...]

Landscapes all over the world are changing rapidly. Sometimes it's the result of direct human intervention, sometimes climate change is to blame - more often than not both collide. Such [...]

THE HEARTBEAT OF IRAN Real Voices of a Country and Its People By Tara Kangarlou Ig Publishing * Twenty-four characters make up The Heartbeat of Iran, Tara Kangarlou's book about [...]

Living a comfortable life in the West, it can sometimes seem that things largely stay the same. It takes a seismic event to remind us that our environment can and [...]

A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FUTURE What the Laws of Biology Tell Us About the Destiny of the Human Species By Rob Dunn Basic Books * In A Natural History [...]

INSIDE QATAR Hidden Stories from One of the Richest Nations on Earth By John McManus Icon Books * How much do most of us really know about Qatar? One of [...]

It's easy to both underestimate the extent of the world's oceans, and overestimate their ability to withstand change. The oceans cover about 70 per cent of Earth's surface. They are [...]

CROSSED OFF THE MAP Travels in Bolivia By Shafik Meghji Latin American Bureau Salt flats and soaring cities might be all many of us know of Bolivia. 'Crossed off the [...]

There are very few people left on Earth today who live self-sufficiently; who aren't reliant in some way on imports from far-flung lands--there are certainly none in the UK. It [...]

WOODSTON The biography of an English farm By John Lewis-Stempel Doubleday Woodston Farm, on the Herefordshire/Worcestershire/Shropshire border sounds about as good as farms come today. Typically English, surviving in a [...]

We talk a lot about conservation in the pages of Geographical, and sometimes the right thing to do is very clear. It might be a simple case of preserving a [...]

Change comes to us all, and never more so than today, with technology dramatically and speedily altering lives. It can be a good thing - providing people with more time [...]

Our most surprising story this month comes from South Africa, and the peculiar landscape of Knersvlakte Nature Reserve, a huge expanse of quartz gravel, and very little else (page 26). [...]

BEING A HUMAN Adventures in 40,000 Years of Consciousness By Charles Foster Profile Books * Being a Human is a hard book to review because it's so downright unusual. Author [...]

Life Along the Russia-China border By Franck Bille and Caroline Humphrey Harvard University Press * The border between Russia's far east and China's north east stretches for more than 4,000km [...]

When it comes to climate change, we all want things to be simple. And it can be easy to assume they are. Stop subsidising fossil fuels, stop digging up fossil [...]