INDRAGIRI HILIR, Indonesia — Dahniar starts worrying after a few days without rain during the dry season here on the northeast coast of Sumatra. Traders selling water will complain of…
Imagine a mother in a rural village drawing water from a well with her pitcher. This seemingly ordinary water holds her family's future — for drinking, cooking and bathing. But…
Nitrogen pollution from agriculture and human waste, along with other pollutants including plastics, could make clean water scarce in many watersheds worldwide, potentially contributing to declines in public health.
Ocean rise and changes in the Amazon River are ruining the way of life in an archipelago close to where the Amazon River runs into the Atlantic.
A recent study found that high-altitude ecosystems in the Andes, known as the páramo, managed by eight communities in Ecuador have led to a reduction in soil and vegetation decline,…
Xalapa, Veracruz, MEXICO — In April 2023, Julia Martínez was washing her two children when she turned on the tap, but no drops came out. She did her best to…
Water bodies across the Brazilian state of Roraima have shrunk in area by half over the past 20 years, according to research from the mapping collective MapBiomas.
More than a year and a half since the iron ore mining stopped, the lives of Vanusia Souza dos Santos and her community in the heart of Brazil’s Bahia state…
POLEWALI MANDAR, Indonesia — Over the past three decades, the residents of Mampie village have watched their homes and farmland vanish from the west coast of Indonesia’s Sulawesi Island. A…
La Guajira, COLOMBIA — On Oct. 9, Colombia’s first wind farm, Jepírachi, officially reached its end of life after running for almost two decades in Uribia, in the northeastern region…
The COP28 U.N. climate summit, which begins in just a couple of weeks, aims to make water more of a priority than it was in past COPs, with host country…
A new study foresees a 20% increase in cases of viruses like dengue, Zika and chikungunya over the next 30 years due to climate change. Higher temperatures are already causing the diseases carried by the Aedes aegypti mosquito to spread in cooler regions like southern Brazil and southern Europe.
Guanabara Bay, the historic gateway to Rio de Janeiro, is both a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most polluted coastal ecosystems in the world. It sees 18,000…
Once a nursery for marine life, Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro is now dying from the dumping of thousands of liters of sewage into its waters; artisanal fishermen now survive by picking up the garbage that floats in the bay.
Macarena Martinic wasn’t surprised earlier this year when the Chilean government said yes to extending the life of Los Bronces, a large, centuries-old open-pit copper mine in the Andes, an…
JAMBI — A quintet of Jambi residents gathered one morning in May at the home of Leni Haini, an Indonesian environmental activist who last year received a prestigious award from…
Oil and gas companies, led by Shell, Eni, Chevron, Total and ExxonMobil, spilled 110,000 barrels of oil into Nigeria’s Bayelsa state over the past 50 years, a new report says.…
"Our cries over frequent oil spills that threaten our livelihoods have fallen on deaf ears."
Last year, a car fueled by human waste toured the European countryside, covering more than 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles). It was the culmination of To-Syn-Fuel, a pathfinding project using technology…
On April 4, a large fire gutted thousands of shops at a popular clothing market named Banga Bazar in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka. Firefighters complained of water scarcity as a…
LIMURU, Kenya — Kiambu County in Kenya is facing a major water scarcity crisis that is threatening not only people’s livelihoods but also biodiversity. Rivers and wetlands that were once…
The vulnerabilities in our global food system have never been more apparent than they are right now, during a moment some have described as a “poly-crisis.” Between international conflict in…
More than a decade ago, Bolivia pioneered an innovative conservation project. For the very first time, inhabitants of the same watershed, both those living in rural areas and in cities,…
The tiny droplets of condensation in the canopies of the world’s cloud forests are just the first link in a life-giving chain. That water replenishes rivers, streams and reservoirs, filters…
This story was produced with the funding support of the Rainforest Journalism Investigations Network (RIN) of the Pulitzer Center. WAIKAS, Brazil — From up above, long, massive, yellowish stains tear apart…
“We always grew native products that come from here, like corn, beans, potatoes or lulos,” says Don Danilo, a longtime farmer near Sonsón, a small municipality in the Colombian state…
On October 18, 2022, Ugandan President H.E. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni delivered a keynote address during African Energy Week which took place in Cape Town, South Africa between October 18 and…
KATHMANDU — Hindus in Nepal marked Tihar this past week, the festival of lights that takes place at the same time as the better-known holy day of Deepavali. But for…
Trees and plants along the banks of waterways are more than picturesque. They serve as a line of defense, absorbing pollutants and keeping harmful runoff out of rivers and streams.…
The July 2021 rupture of a tailings dam at a diamond mine in Angola killed off much of the aquatic life in the Lova, Tshikapa and Kasai rivers. Twelve people…