Water Pollution News

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…

In the two decades since the Franco-British multinational Perenco established operations at Muanda, at the mouth of the Congo River, surrounding communities have suffered the loss of the natural resources…

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.

The World Bank continues to indirectly finance some of Asia’s largest coal developers despite its pledges to stop doing so and align with the Paris Agreement, according to a new…

The more we learn about plastic, the more we find it everywhere. Research has shown that tiny microplastic particles litter the world’s oceans and rivers, from the Arctic and Antarctic.…

More than 2,800 kilometers (1,740 miles) of pipelines run through the Amazon and along the coasts of Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia. These hundreds of pipelines transport millions of liters…

Rapidly transitioning the world’s vehicle fleet to fully electric could significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, but also dramatically increase demand for critical battery metals like lithium, nickel and…

Escalating geopolitical tensions, a weakening dollar, and growing distrust in financial markets has triggered a tropical rush for gold, diamonds and precious metals that’s doing serious ecological damage to Earth’s rivers.

Aguaragüe National Park, located in southern Bolivia, is suffering from hydrocarbon exploitation, which has been carried out in this region for more than 100 years. The park’s soils and water…

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…

The arrest of five environmental activists fighting water pollution and mining in El Salvador is drawing international criticism following questionable developments in court proceedings that suggest the case against them…

JAKARTA — Uncontrolled burning of plastic waste on Indonesian beaches has given rise to plastic-rock hybrids that deposit in and may pollute coastal ecosystems and fisheries, a new study has…

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.

WEST SERAM, Indonesia — It’s a sunny day off the coast of Piru village on the island district of West Seram, in Indonesia’s Maluku province. La Samiun and his wife…

Anyone living near the Paraopeba River, which runs through the state of Minas Gerais, remembers what happened to its waters. Along its 510-kilometer (317-mile) stretch, the river still passes through…

KOLAKA, Indonesia — Ansal grabbed a makeshift raincoat, an empty rice sack, and ran home as the rain began to pound the fields of Pomalaa. A few hours later, after…

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.

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…

In southeast Alaska, people and bears alike come to the shore of the Chilkat River to catch salmon beside evergreen trees and mountains with snow-covered stony summits. Five species of…