The EU remains committed to burning forests to make energy, despite conclusive scientific evidence of its climate destabilizing impacts. In a new strategy, forest advocates plan to take the EU to court to fight that policy.
175 nations have unanimously agreed to a landmark UN framework to fight global plastic pollution. Though this is a huge environmental win, the devil is in the details to be hammered out over the next two years.
A tiny, poppy seed-sized particle of plastic might seem innocuous on its own. But when a speck of plastic is coupled with organic pollutants, the chemical makeup of that plastic…
Of the nine critical planetary boundaries that humanity is transgressing, climate change is the best known and understood, while atmospheric aerosol pollution may be the least, but aerosols are already having climate impacts and polluting Earth’s skies, killing millions.
In June 2016, Corporación Autónoma de Santander (CAS), one of the environmental authorities in the northeastern Colombian department of Santander, found toxic waste was flowing from a palm oil mill…
Years of artisanal mining along the Madre de Dios River and its tributaries have left their marks, both seen and unseen. Miners, swarming to the region in a modern-day goldrush,…
ABUJA, Nigeria — On Feb. 3, the Trinity Spirit, a floating production, storage and offloading vessel, caught fire off the coast of Nigeria. Seven of 10 crew members were killed.…
BANGKA BELITUNG, Indonesia — A conflict that flared up at the start of the year between traditional fishers and illegal miners in Indonesia’s Bangka-Belitung Islands has once again highlighted the…
On February 11, 2022, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro published a decree establishing the Program for Supporting the Development of Artisanal Mining (Pró-Mape), which aims to “stimulate” this type of mining…
Caffeine isn’t only the most consumed psychostimulant in the world, it’s also one of the most ubiquitous of pollutants in the world’s rivers, says a new global study of pharmaceutical waste. It’s also impacting marine ecosystems, says another new study.
Very reclusive and hard to research, the world’s 33 species of small cats are already under pressure due to habitat loss and human-wildlife conflicts, while being increasingly threatened by climate change and pollution.
MAKENI, Sierra Leone — Residents of Koidu, in eastern Sierra Leone, are pursuing a class-action lawsuit against the operators of a diamond mine they say has dumped toxic mine waste,…
HALMAHERA, Indonesia — Yoksan Jurumudi came home with a long face after spending the whole day looking for fish in the waters off the Obi Islands in Indonesia’s North Maluku…
Modeling shows microplastics can be trapped in river sediments for up to 7 years posing unknown and unstudied risks to biodiversity and human health.
Marine experts in Thailand have warned that a recent oil spill off the country’s east coast could impact sensitive underwater ecosystems that underpin local livelihoods in a nearby marine park.…
This is the second in a two-part series. Read Part One. Palm oil, a popular cooking oil as well as an ingredient in an ocean of products ranging from cookies to cosmetics,…
This is the first in a two-part series. Read Part Two. San Javier de Cachaví is a small village of some 120 families in Ecuador near the Colombian border. The…
A February U.N. meeting will address the urgent need for a treaty to control plastics pollution, but whether the forthcoming draft agreement will regulate global plastics supply chains from cradle to grave, or be limited to protecting oceans, is unknown.
For Indigenous tribes living in Alaska’s remote Yukon-Kuskokwim region, southwest of the state, the future is bleak and uncertain. Tribal councils worry that plans to construct a 6,474-hectare (15,990 acres)…
On Oct. 23, 2021, the bulk carrier NS Qingdao, carrying 1,500 metric tons of fertilizers and industrial reagents, docked in South Africa’s Indian Ocean port of Durban. During offloading, rainwater…
7.8 billion people produce a lot of waste, but governments, entrepreneurs and NGOs are developing a host of technologies that work with nature to transform a dirty problem into a suite of elegant sustainable solutions.
Initiatives to inject billions of aerosol particles into the stratosphere to deflect solar rays and cool Earth are too risky to go forward; governments must act fast to rein in potentially disastrous planetary-scale solar geoengineering, say critics.
Three years after the collapse of a mining dam forced them from their homes in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state, a small community of Pataxó and Pataxó Hãhãhãe Indigenous peoples face…
Illegal mining in protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon saw as much as a fivefold increase since 2010, a gold rush driven largely by surging prices in international markets. Over…
Many thousands of human-made chemicals and synthetic pollutants are circulating throughout our world, with new ones entering production all the time — so many, in fact, that scientists now say…
Pesticides have been dropped from planes and even helicopters with the aim of evading IBAMA, the Brazilian environmental agency, for years as a method to clear remote and hard-to-reach areas…
When we routinely flush a toilet, the waste is hurled away so quickly that most of us don’t give it a second thought. But that waste, despite our inclination to…
Once the epicenter of the global trade in gold, illegal mining is once again surging across the Amazon. Its extraction and trade is not only fueling corruption, money laundering and…
On Dec. 9, the Ugandan parliament passed a bill allowing the controversial East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) to proceed. Construction can now begin according to the agreement signed between…
It doesn’t get talked about much, but 7.8 billion humans make a lot of waste, and a lot of it is flowing into the planet’s rivers, estuaries and oceans, with major impacts on clean water, biodiversity and public health.
