In late December 2023, when communities in the southeastern Peruvian province of Cotabambas received a copy of proposed modifications to the Las Bambas copper mine, they were at first surprised,…
PACITAN, Indonesia — Parno looked weary at he stared out over his rice field, occasionally shaking his head as he considered prospects for the coming harvest. “How can I not…
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.
A vessel carrying thousands of tons of fertilizer has sunk in the Red Sea, raising fears of an environmental disaster in a part of the ocean known to harbor some…
KATHMANDU — Fifty-six year-old Kaluram Bote has awaited the end of February, which marks a crucial time for gharial breeding in Chitwan, between Nepal’s Terai and hilly regions. Rowing his…
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.
KATHMANDU — The Bagmati River, coursing through Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, has transformed into a sewer canal in recent decades, with untreated raw sewage discharged into its waters. Officials are now…
JAKARTA — The construction of Indonesia’s new capital city on the island of Borneo may destabilize the current stable population of endangered proboscis monkeys, a study has warned. President Joko…
BOGOR, Indonesia — At the age of 60, Siti Salamah started making changes at her family home in the city of Bogor, just south of Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital. “We always…
PHNOM PENH — In late December 2023, on a remote island in Preah Sihanouk province, off the southwest coast of Cambodia, a team of conservationists uncovered nine nests belonging to…
Chitwan, NEPAL — Rajendra Aryal (45) likes visiting the tourist town of Sauraha on the fringes of Chitwan National Park in Nepal. He enjoys the wilderness, the jungle safaris and…
PEKALONGAN, Indonesia — For decades, Sobirin provided for his family by picking flowers here on the north coast of Indonesia’s Java Island. Now in his 70s, much of the farmer’s…
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…
Yuly Velásquez grew up on the banks of the Magdalena River near the Colombian city of Barrancabermeja, an area surrounded by a large network of swamps, lagoons and tropical forests.…
An unprecedented time-series study in the basin of the Tapajós River, a major tributary of the Amazon, assesses the level of degradation of small rivers threatened by agribusiness expansion.
How do you identify microplastics in wastewater? When Wayne Parker started out researching the issue, the existing techniques were time-consuming and cumbersome. For a long time, optical or infrared microscopes…
Even before sunrise, along the beaches of the rivers and lakes of Xingu Indigenous Park in the Brazilian Amazon, a series of bonfires appear on the horizon to warm the…
This story has been supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. Carrying a shovel on her shoulder, Nely Flores walks quickly on the beach. “Before the guards from the mine…
Colombia’s environmental authorities plan to take new steps this year to restore an important national park hit hard by deforestation and pollution, most of it from illegal gold mining. Farallones…
VERDE ISLAND, Philippines — Working together to lift an outrigger from the clear, teal water onto a white sand beach, a group of fishers had just returned home to Verde…
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…
MRN, a mining company and aluminum producer, denied consultation rights to long-established Amazon riverine communities when it launched a new mine, impacting their way of life, say local people.
With their shiny black tops and pure white undersides, the killer whales, or orcas, are the sleekest hunters in the ocean. But being apex predators comes with a great cost.…
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.
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…
This story is the second in a three-part mini-series surveying the range of impacts by the fossil fuel industry on the global environment. Part one and part two review harm…
Fossil fuels have done great good for humanity, but they are now not only threatening our planet’s climate, but also taking a terrible toll on the global environment, putting at risk Earth systems vital to life as we know it. Part 1 of a three-part miniseries.
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…
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…