Throughout 2022, Colombian authorities identified the presence of 40 dredgers on the Colombian side of the Puré River, with another 200 operating on the Brazilian side, where it is known…
Zambians launch lead poisoning lawsuit against mining giant Anglo American A group of 140,000 women and children from Zambia’s Kabwe district is seeking to bring a class action lawsuit against…
The indiscriminate use of gillnets by fishers in Bangladesh has become a major threat to the two freshwater dolphin species found there: the Ganga River dolphin (Platanista gangetica) and the…
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,…
Large hydropower dams that obstruct the Amazon basin have long come under fire for their environmental and cultural impact — Belo Monte being the most prominent example. Yet a bigger…
Dom Roque Paloschi, president of the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) and archbishop of Porto Velho in the state of Roraima, Brazil, has been under attack because he denounced Indigenous people’s rights violations. In 2021, 355 attacks against Indigenous people were reported in Brazil — the most since 2013, according to a CIMI report.
ALTO ACARÁ, Brazil — “The right of those who used to live here to access the cemetery is in the [Brazilian] Constitution. … The cemetery is a sacred place,” sociologist…
On an iron grill, six catfish are almost ready to eat. Hilda Rodríguez crouches to move the firewood and stoke the fire. She flips over the inguiris — green bananas…
JAKARTA — One of the most threatened population of Irrawaddy dolphins in Asia is set to get a much-needed reprieve as officials in Indonesia roll out a ban on unsustainable…
ALTO ACARÁ, Brazil — In November 2021, I went to Pará state, in the Brazilian Amazon, to investigate claims of land grabbing in traditional territories, leveled against one of Brazil's…
Although 13 biodiversity hotspots in Bangladesh have been declared Ecologically Critical Areas (ECA) by the government, very few steps have been taken on the ground to protect them. While some…
ALTO ACARÁ, Brazil — With trembling hands, Raimundo Serrão lights candles for his grandmother at the Livramento Cemetery's cross on the Day of the Dead because he couldn't find her…
KALUMPANG, Indonesia — In January, as representatives of a hydropower company explained their plan to dam the river near his home, Kasman wondered if he was staring at annihilation. Kasman…
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…
DHAKA — Md. Dulal Mia, 50, ferries passengers in his small boat from one end of the Buriganga River to the other. He has been living along the river for…
SANTA BÁRBARA, Chile — The Bío Bío River is the second-longest in Chile, forming in the Andes near the Argentine border and running 380 kilometers (240 miles) northwest before emptying…
SANTA BÁRBARA, Chile — For the last 30 years, more and more hydroelectric power plants have been popping up along Chile’s Bío Bío River, the second-largest in the country. Every…
It’s a stunning landscape with a prophetic name: Lisima lya mwono, or “the source of life” as it’s known in the language of the local Luchaze people. But that’s not…
LA PAZ — Gold is Bolivia’s second-biggest export, valued at more than $1 billion annually and employing hundreds of thousands of people in the country. But much of that gold…
The Halda River — the world’s only gene bank for pure Indian carp fishes such as ruhi (Labeo rohita), catla (Labeo catla), Mrigal (Cirrhinus cirrhosus) and Kalibaush (Labeo calbasu) —…
It may look like a nondescript silvery fish, but hilsa, or Tenualosa ilisha, accounts for an eighth of Bangladesh’s total fish catch, and more than 1% of the country’s economic…
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.…
More than 14 years after being forcibly relocated from their ancestral villages to make way for mining in one of the world’s largest diamond-producing projects, residents of Arda Transau in…
DHAKA – Khalilur Rahman, 65, has been fishing in a tributary of the old Brahmaputra River in Kishoreganj for 50 years. Nowadays, he often returns home empty-handed. “The river has…
"It might be the highest density of trout species on Earth," says podcast guest Ulrich Eichelmann of Balkan countries' riverine legacy, which has become threatened by a tsunami of hydroelectric…
NDJI, Cameroon – Batchenga, 65 kilometers (40 miles) northeast of Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé, is slowly reopening. After serving as a ramp at the start of a national road linking the…
From oil to diamonds, offshore prospecting looms over South African fishing town DORINGBAAI, South Africa — On Sept. 23 and 24, 150 women in the small fishing town of Doringbaai,…
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…
In 2006 and 2010, Congolese researcher Raoul Monsembula collected catfish and other species from the rivers in Salonga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Then he hopped…
A 2020 move to open a futures water market on the Chicago exchange has resulted in a heated conflict between those who say monetizing is a positive step, and those who see speculation as bad for the environment and traditional peoples.
