Environment

As Yerevan prepares to welcome the world's largest biodiversity summit, an investigation reveals a stark contradiction: Armenia remains a key transit point for endangered wildlife. Mariam Tashchyan traces the legal, commercial and institutional failures enabling the trade to persist.

Examining how Armenia’s conservation priorities overlook invertebrates, despite their vital ecological roles, Anahit Ghazakhetsyan explores barriers of stigma, weak research and habitat loss, urging narratives that value the “unloved” species sustaining ecosystems.

Yerevan’s worsening air pollution has moved from background concern to a public health emergency. Hovhannes Nazaretyan examines the main drivers including construction, quarries, transport and waste and why government responses have so far fallen short.

Armenia’s most vital aquifer is collapsing under decades of unchecked fish farming, illegal drilling and political neglect. The Ararat plain’s groundwater, critical for drinking water and agriculture, is being drained faster than it can recover, forcing the government into a race against ecological collapse. Hovhannes Nazaretyan explains.

A royal visit spotlighted Armenia’s forests, but also exposed how bureaucracy, competing land interests, and weak governance continue to undermine reforestation. As Armenia prepares for COP17, ambitious pledges collide with stalled permits, mining pressures and a system struggling to turn promises into forests. Hranoush Dermoyan reports.

In Teghut, Armenia, as mining transforms forests into pits and rivers into waste, villagers like Yegishe mourn landscapes lost to industry, naming their sorrow solastalgia—the homesickness felt while still at home.

Armenia is rapidly embracing solar power, with rooftop and utility-scale projects driving energy independence and sustainability. Hovhannes Nazaretyan examines the country’s growing capacity, landmark farms like Masrik-1, future wind ambitions, and the challenges of integrating renewables into the national grid.

Armenia’s winemaking renaissance faces a new challenge: climate change. From shifting harvests to genetic research on native grapes, winemakers and scientists are adapting—experimenting with higher-altitude vineyards, irrigation methods, and biodiversity to preserve a six-millennia-old tradition.

As peace negotiations with Azerbaijan and regional integration projects advance, biodiversity corridors could become vital connectors across fractured landscapes and divided societies. With Armenia preparing to host COP17, the urgency of protecting its extraordinary biodiversity amid mounting ecological and political threats takes center stage.

Could Armenia’s mineral wealth, long dominated by Russian companies, emerge as a strategic asset in the global race for critical minerals? Gibran Caroline Boyce explores how mining now intersects with economic independence, national security and Armenia’s geopolitical diversification.