Despite court ruling, Yaqui water rights abuses ignored
YAQUI VALLEY, Mexico – More than a decade after a court ruling that an aqueduct violated the Yaqui tribe’s rights, the Mexican government has done nothing in response, say locals.…
Water News
Community-led wetland restoration may hold key to Harare’s water crisis
HARARE — By 6 a.m. on Sunday, the line at a water well in Harare’s Budiriro suburb is already long. It snakes all the way into a nearby street, and…
Ever-smarter consumer electronics push world toward environmental brink
In recent decades, the electronics industry experienced meteoric growth as it swiftly invented and marketed a galaxy of novel products for consumers hungry for the next innovation, better performance and…
Record-breaking floods in northern Thailand intensify scrutiny of Mekong dam project
In the aftermath of Typhoon Yagi, communities in northern Thailand’s Chiang Rai province are taking stock of the toll wreaked by heavy rains and rising rivers. At least 33 people…
Bangkok turns to urban forests to beat worsening floods
“I remember when I was a young child in Bangkok, we used to sail our boat on the clean floodwater,” says landscape architect Kotchakorn Voraakhom. “Flooding was fun.” But when…
Lack of research as contaminated Yaqui River poses health risks
YAQUI VALLEY, Mexico — In June, residents of communities along the Yaqui River found various dead tilapia, carp and catfish floating on the banks of the river. According to Guadalupe…
Drought forces Amazon Indigenous communities to drink mercury-tainted water
River levels in parts of the Brazilian Amazon are even lower than in 2023, when the region experienced its worst drought.
Crop fields make way for profitable orchards in Bangladesh, imperiling food security
In the last few years in mid-western Bangladesh, the trend of planting different types of fruit orchards, like mango, lychee and papaya, has gone up in three districts together commonly…
Conserving & restoring waterways can mitigate extreme urban heat in Bangladesh
DHAKA — In pre-monsoon the heat of May, five teenage boys used a rope with knots in it to scale a wall and enter the national botanical gardens in Dhaka,…
Acre’s communities face drinking water shortage amid Amazon drought
Acre's population experienced a flood at the start of 2024 and is now suffering from water shortages due to the severe drought.
Uttarakhand villagers thirst for water as tourism, temps & development rise
With heat waves becoming a significant struggle, especially in urban India, many people are moving to hill stations with work-from-home options, seeking respite in states like Uttarakhand, at the seat…
Holistic care for an Ethiopian lake system: Interview with Redwan Mohammed
Ethiopia's Abijata-Shalla Lakes National Park is set in a semiarid landscape of grassy plains, hills scattered with acacia trees, and ravines cut by seasonal streams. Spanning 887 square kilometers (342…
Small steps towards larger goal of protecting East African wetlands
Three years into an ambitious wetland restoration project in East Africa, conservationist Julie Mulonga says she’s learned the value of small steps. The Source to Sea project set out to…
Cerrado’s current drought impossible without human-caused climate change: Study
Under severe drought for decades, Brazil’s Cerrado is experiencing an ongoing water crisis. Its aquifers are losing water faster than they can replenish, rivers are running thin and those living…
Indigenous communities in the Bolivian Amazon combat droughts and floods
Luis Fernando Pumuy turns on the spigot outside of his house and splashes water onto most of his body, trying to cool off from the unrelenting heat in the Indigenous…
Loss of water means loss of culture for Mexico’s Indigenous Yaqui
YAQUI VALLEY, Mexico — Without the Yaqui River, survival is almost impossible for the Yaqui tribe in the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora. A lack of water affects the food…
Study to benchmark water quality finds key Amazon tributary in good shape
Researchers have found that water quality in Brazil’s Negro River, the second-largest tributary of the Amazon, remains largely excellent, the result of a sparse human presence and strong conservation measures.
Cambodia’s Funan Techo Canal project: A catalog of worries (analysis)
Cambodia is pushing ahead with plans to link the nation’s capital, Phnom Penh, to its coast with a canal running 180 kilometers, or 110 miles. According to Cambodian leaders, 51%…
As drought parches Mexico, a Yaqui water defender fights for a sacred river
YAQUI VALLEY, Mexico — On Sept. 11, 2014, Mario Luna Romero was arrested by state judicial police in Obregón, a city on the periphery of his tribe’s territory in Sonora,…
Global migratory freshwater fish populations plummet by 81%: Report
A new global report reveals a stark reality: populations of migratory freshwater fish species, including salmon, trout, eel and sturgeon, are declining dramatically. The 2024 update on the Living Planet…
Activists blame policy failures over climate change for Nepal Terai’s water crisis
KATHMANDU — Until a few years ago, villagers in Siraha in Nepal’s Madhesh province accessed water by digging a few meters into the ground, as this method was easier than…
‘Water grabs’ pose big threat to farmers amid water crises
A new report has found that investors and agribusiness in Latin America are increasingly buying up small parcels of land with abundant water access, thus securing control over the vital…
Photos: Exploring Mexico City’s Aztec-era farms, the chinampas
XOCHIMILCO, Mexico — Xochimilco is known for its beautiful flowers. From the trumpet-shaped brugmansia to the sun-loving bushy dahlia, it’s no surprise that the word xochimilco means “place of the…
Ancient farming system and campesino livelihoods at risk in Mexico City
XOCHIMILCO, Mexico — In the 70 years Miguel del Valle has worked on his family’s chinampa in Xochimilco, a neighborhood in the south of Mexico City, he has witnessed a…
Water is key as study shows restoration of drained tropical peat is possible
JAKARTA — In 2015, Indonesian forestry giant Asia Pulp & Paper announced it would retire thousands of hectares of its commercial timber plantation in Sumatra, with the ultimate goal of…
An ancestral solution ensures water for Peruvian alpaca farmers, but is it enough?
In Ayacucho province in Peru’s southern Andes, a three-hour drive from the provincial capital, Huamanga, stands the snowcapped mountain of Rit’ipata, popular among tourists. Every January, high summer in the…
In a village divided, farmers stall massive copper mine in Colombian Andes
JERICÓ, Colombia — Argirio Tobón Tamayo tugs down the top branch of a coffee tree covered in waxy green leaves, bending it back to reveal coffee cherries in shades of…
Yucatán Peninsula’s hidden underground life tracks changes at the surface
Beneath the Yucatán Peninsula, in southeastern region of Mexico, lies a vast network of flooded tunnels and caves. These intricate and shadowy labyrinths serve as subterranean rivers, constituting the sole…
In Brazil’s Cerrado, aquifers are losing more water than they can replace
Aquifers are vital for balanced ecosystems and human existence. While only 3% of the water on Earth is freshwater, almost 99% of that unfrozen volume is located in these geological…
Will the Mekong and Salween pay the price of China’s energy transition?
The energy sector is the single largest source of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, spurring plans the world over to transition the sector away from fossil fuels and toward renewables. While…
Beyond deforestation, oil palm estates pose flood and water contamination risks
JAKARTA — Briantama Asmara first visited the village of Kais in Indonesian Papua, on the island of New Guinea, in 2017 as an university researcher. The village lies two time…
Banks backing Mekong hydropower failing on due diligence, report reveals
Major banks operating in Thailand and Vietnam aren’t doing enough to address the environmental and human rights consequences of their investments in large-scale hydropower dams along the Mekong River, according…
Special series
Forest Trackers
- In Brazil’s Amazon, land invasions — and fires — threaten a protected reserve
- A Guatemalan reserve turns from civil war refuge to deforestation hotspot
- Narco activity takes heavy toll on Colombia’s protected forests, satellite data show
- Photos confirm narcotraffickers operating in Peru’s Kakataibo Indigenous Reserve
Oceans
- As tidal power rides a wave of clean energy optimism, pitfalls persist
- Plan for close season rings alarm bells for Liberia’s artisanal fishers
- Lab-grown corals resisted bleaching during Caribbean’s worst marine heat wave
- Six months after first Houthi ship sinking, attacks slick Red Sea with oil
Amazon Conservation
- ‘World’s largest’ carbon credit deal in the Amazon faces bumpy road ahead
- New conservation model calls for protecting Amazon for its archaeological riches
- Brazil dredges Amazon rivers to ease drought isolation, raising environmental concerns
- ‘We need white men on our side to save the Amazon from destruction,’ 92-year-old Indigenous Chief Raoni says
Land rights and extractives
- Peruvian logger loses FSC label after latest clash with isolated Mashco Piro
- In the DRC, a government commission is taking funds owed to people relocated by mines
- A national park and its rangers in Bolivia endure persisting road construction, illegal mining
- Can nations ever get artisanal gold mining right?
Endangered Environmentalists
- Vietnam sentences yet another energy expert over renewables research
- Mother Nature Cambodia activists sentenced to prison — again
- Mongabay video screening at Chile’s Supreme Court expected to help landmark verdict in Brazil
- Indonesian activist freed in hate speech case after flagging illegal shrimp farms
Indonesia's Forest Guardians
- On a Borneo mountainside, Indigenous Dayak women hold fire and defend forest
- Fenced in by Sulawesi national park, Indigenous women make forestry breakout
- In Borneo, the ‘Power of Mama’ fight Indonesia’s wildfires with all-woman crew
- Pioneer agroforester Ermi, 73, rolls back the years in Indonesia’s Gorontalo
Conservation Effectiveness
- How effective is the EU’s marquee policy to reduce the illegal timber trade?
- How sharing and learning from failures can transform conservation (commentary)
- Is planting trees as good for the Earth as everyone says?
- Failure in conservation projects: Everyone experiences it, few record it
Southeast Asian infrastructure
- Study: Indonesia’s new capital city threatens stable proboscis monkey population
- Indonesia’s new capital ‘won’t sacrifice the environment’: Q&A with Nusantara’s Myrna Asnawati Safitri
- Small farmers in limbo as Cambodia wavers on Tonle Sap conservation rules
- To build its ‘green’ capital city, Indonesia runs a road through a biodiverse forest
