New research suggests that plastic recycling facilities could be releasing wastewater packed with billions of tiny plastic particles, contributing to the pollution of waterways and endangering human health. A team…
JAKARTA — The ongoing development of Indonesia’s new capital city, Nusantara, in eastern Borneo has raised alarm bells among environmentalists and human rights defenders around the world as the region…
LA PAZ — At dawn in Apolobamba, in the Bolivian highlands, groups of vicuña and alpaca — some sheared, some shaggy — amble around looking for scrub to graze on,…
Between 2019 and 2021, swarms of desert locusts̨ swept across the Horn of Africa and East Africa. In response, the worst-affected countries, Kenya and Ethiopia, sprayed millions of hectares of…
Rio Tinto’s sprawling Qit Minerals Madagascar (QMM) mining operation is situated in one of the poorest regions of the fifth poorest country in the world. It lies in an area…
AMBOHITSY HAUT, Madagascar — Etsizakay, 40, stood amid the rugged knolls of his village, Ambohitsy Haut, and pointed right. “That’s where my brother is buried,” he said. “There ahead are…
As 175 countries prepare to gather in May to move ahead on a global plastics treaty, the world’s plastic-producing and plastic-polluted countries remain divided on whether the agreement should be mandatory or voluntary, among many other issues.
A new wave of land conflicts between a major palm oil company and local communities has recently broken out in the Brazilian Amazon, raising concerns about escalating violence in the…
MPUMALANGA, South Africa — Living surrounded by 22 coal mines, women in the small town of Carolina illustrate both the urgency and the difficulty of a just transition to clean…
This story is published as part of the Global Indigenous Affairs Desk, an Indigenous-led collaboration between Grist, High Country News, ICT, Mongabay, and Native News Online. NEW YORK — When…
KATHMANDU — Nepal hasn’t had an environment minister since October last year — a vacuum that could be either good or bad, depending on how one looks at it. The…
Around 15 million people across the globe are working at artisanal and small-scale gold mining sites, nearly a third of them women and children. Instead of operating advanced equipment supplied…
SÃO PAULO—A new study published in Nature estimates that forests in Indigenous lands in Brazil’s Amazon have the potential to absorb over 7,000 tons of noxious fumes from forest fires…
BALIKPAPAN/JAKARTA — A clearing for the ramp to a new toll road in the Indonesian Bornean city of Balikpapan gapes open on the side of a paved highway as big…
KATHMANDU — On an early spring afternoon on the fringes of Nepal’s Chitwan National Park, smoke fills the air and the smell of burning grass is overpowering. As flames rage…
At the start of the 2000s, the search for a “miracle” biofuel led to a stubby Latin American tree. But jatropha’s boom went bust when high yields and big eco benefits failed to materialize. Now some say it’s set for a return.
For most of us, it seems quite obvious that doing harm leads to consequences. It’s only fair after all – if your actions hurt someone, you get held to account…
One dead, four injured as Ghana gold miner moves to evict artisanal miners BENSO, Ghana — Police killed one person and injured four others while attempting to clear trespassing miners…
Revisions to the long-debated European Union Renewable Energy Directive (RED) have been approved. Those policies still support the burning of wood pellets to make energy, despite evidence of harm to forests and climate, say NGOs.
While in some corners of the world, the clean energy revolution conjures up images of electric vehicles and expansive wind farms, in countries with mineral reserves critical for producing that…
A Mongabay investigation into land-grabbing in the Brazilian Amazon has led to the suspension of the sustainability certificate of the country's second top palm oil exporter, as shown in email correspondence…
KATHMANDU — The B.P. Koirala Memorial Cancer Hospital in Nepal’s central Bharatpur city, Chitwan District, bustles as patients, most of them from the country’s northern hilly areas, line up for…
Last year, farmer protests erupted throughout the Netherlands, riding a wave of rural anger at government plans to drastically halve nitrogen emissions by downsizing and closing farms. This quickly swept…
DHAKA – Bangladesh has recently achieved remarkable success in freshwater fish production due to its fast-growing aquaculture, securing third place in global freshwater fish farming. The country produced more than…
KATHMANDU — The South Col in the Sagarmatha (Mount Everest) region faces blasts of unrelenting winds that sweep away almost everything in their path, including snow. Located nearly 8,000 meters (26,000…
Biofuels have long been held up as a viable high-tech climate solution, but in practice they’ve often not lived up to their promise, causing environmental harm and in some cases being more carbon-intensive than fossil fuels.
A recently opened salmon processing plant in southern Chile is raising concerns about whether environmental regulations were properly carried out to prevent contamination of marine ecosystems and clean drinking water.…
Reverse logistics, a principle introduced in Brazil in 2010 in the Brazilian government’s National Policy for Solid Waste (PNRS), is an approach that seeks to minimize levels of waste generated…
KISUMU, Kenya — At Dunga Beach on the shores of Lake Victoria, numerous varieties of fish, such as tilapia, Nile perch and mudfish, are processed for consumption and distribution. Every…
In 2015, researchers in Brazil started a project to address a tricky challenge: Reducing exposure to mercury contamination in the region of the Tapajós River, a major tributary of the…