PEKANBARU, Indonesia — Emergency workers and community firefighters battled isolated fires in Sumatra’s Riau province in late February as the onset of the region’s first dry season of 2024 sparked…
A new report strongly links endocrine disruptors to diseases, from the devastating, like infertility, to the deadly, like cancer and heart disease. The report calls for global treaties to restrict and ban their production and use.
In 2016, an infestation of fall armyworms hit a vast swath of Africa, alarming farmers and governments. Eight years on, experts say that crop losses from the agricultural pest are…
Brazil tops the list of the countries that import and consume the most pesticides in the world. At the end of 2023, Bill 1459/2022, known among environmentalists as the "Poison…
Tea has been an integral part of Bangladeshi life for long. From breakfast to evening chat, tea is a favorite drink to serve. Besides Bangladesh, tea is among the most…
In the past year, international agencies worldwide have continued to sound an alarm over surges in food insecurity that are plunging millions of people into extreme hunger, malnutrition and threats…
DHAKA — Jhinuk recalls screaming as water rushed into her hut in northeastern Bangladesh last August. “Four children clung, two stumbling toddlers. Fear choked me, air like ice, but I…
If there’s one field of research that speaks to humanity’s relationship with the natural world, it’s the interface between wildlife and health. Human alteration of the planet through deforestation, climate…
Dr. Sakib Burza says his fondest memories are climbing the majestic pine trees in the Kashmir Valley where he spent most of his childhood with his family. On a normal…
In Bangladesh, farmers are increasingly tapping into a growing global market for moringa, a tree prized for its nutritional value and potential as a climate solution. The fast-growing, drought-resistant moringa…
Thailand’s government began deliberations last week on a new Clean Air Act to address the nation’s annual haze crisis that chokes the country during the dry season months, typically between…
From September to November 2023 Manaus, a city located in the relatively intact forest area in the central part of Brazilian Amazonia, was surprised to find itself under a dense…
Scientists have found many plastics are toxic, but activists say two ubiquitous polymers are the worst of all: polystyrene and PVC. Some are calling for not only a national ban on these two, but for a global ban enshrined in a plastics treaty.
The world’s two worst nuclear accidents, in Ukraine and Japan, along with the human exclusion zones around them, are informing scientists about radiation effects, and how ecosystems evolve with less pressure from people.
The early optimism that launched plastic treaty negotiations in 2022 was stymied at talks this month in Nairobi at which large petrostates stonewalled against creating a binding international treaty that would regulate cradle-to-grave plastics production.
The researchers estimate that 123 childhood deaths during the 2008-19 period are associated with exposure to pesticides from the soy fields, amounting to half the deaths of children under 10 from lymphoblastic leukemia in the region.
CERRO DE PASCO, Peru — The open-cast crater seems ready to swallow the city whole. Mud-brick houses with corrugated iron roofs teeter on the edge of the massive Raúl Rojas…
Research finds impacts by tiny plastic particles on marine plankton and microbes could disrupt carbon and nitrogen cycling in the world’s oceans, possibly putting Earth’s operating system and the planet’s habitability at risk.
Regional governments in wildfire-hit Indonesia shuttered schools in the first week October, as sickly air pollution continued to cloak several population centers in Kalimantan and Sumatra. Local authorities in Central…
It’s long been known that many people depend on the world’s single largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans, for their livelihoods, as the forest naturally provides resources including fish, crabs, honey…
José Celestino Trujillo is a fisherman who lived for nearly 80 years in the same rural district in central Colombia. For decades, he had borne witness to the transformations that…
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…
Nepal is a small biodiversity-rich country that is subjected to climatic vagaries: conditions range from tropical in the south to alpine in the north. While Nepal contributes ~ 0.027% of…
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.
Indonesia’s oldest women’s Islamic organization will prepare volunteers in Kalimantan and Sumatra to open clean air sanctuaries, should a strengthening El Niño accelerate wildfires over the coming months. “We will…
DHAKA — The Bangladesh government is ramping up efforts to boost populations of commercially important freshwater fish species, including captive breeding of species at threat of extinction. Fish like tengra,…
DHAKA — Authorities in Bangladesh have rolled out two schemes to combat air pollution in the capital Dhaka, one of the world’s fastest growing mega cities and one of the…
The takeover of a polluting landfill in Colombia was supposed to help clean up the area for residents falling sick from exposure to toxic chemicals, but years later they say…
In a May-June meeting 135 nations agreed to press forward and write a draft of a strong international treaty regulating plastics, though some nations including the U.S., China and Saudi Arabia resisted a binding agreement.