Water Pollution News

A spate of mass toxic poisonings in the Cambodian provinces of Kratie and Mondulkiri have hospitalized hundreds and killed at least 16 people since May. Although the causes of the…

KUALA LUMPUR — By 2012, when then-prime minister Najib Razak formally launched the River of Life project to improve water quality and restore the aesthetic virtue of the Klang River,…

JAKARTA — Dolphins haven’t had it easy in Bali, a resort island in Indonesia that’s massively popular with tourists. They’re often held captive in chlorinated pools for traveling circuses; a…

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Fishermen and environmental activists in Indonesia are demanding accountability after a barge spilled 7,000 tonnes of coal off the Sumatra coast, polluting beaches, damaging coral and…

Prior to the back-to-back bleaching events that hit the Great Barrier Reef in 2016 and 2017, the UNESCO World Heritage Site had suffered two other bouts of extensive bleaching in…

Humans have wiped out most of the pristine parts of the world’s oceans, a new study has found. In the first global mapping of human impacts on marine environments, a…

JAKARTA — Suryadi, a cashier at a convenience store in Jakarta, says he prepares some 400 plastic bags every morning for the day’s shoppers. Sometimes he runs out before the…

KUCHING, Malaysia — Conservationists have called on governments and the private sector to do more to mitigate the impact of global shipping activities on marine ecosystems and communities in the…

KUCHING, Malaysia —  As governments in Southeast Asia target economic growth through infrastructure development, China, the world’s second-largest economy, has emerged as a ready funder for some of the most…

TOULOUSE, France — Solving the problem of the growing amount of plastic in the ocean requires rethinking how we use and design plastic products, a group of scientists said at…

Five people suspected of illegal gold mining in Peru are in custody after indigenous community members used a system called ForestLink to alert authorities to the activity. “Communities are the…

JAKARTA — Environmental officials have warned of the potentially catastrophic impact of a planned gold mine in a conservation zone in eastern Indonesia, amid mixed signals from the district chief…

Several mines around the world dispose of potentially toxic mine waste directly into the ocean. Environmentalists have criticized the practice, arguing that the waste smothers ocean habitat and leaches harmful…

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government expects to take a controlling stake in the operator of the world’s biggest copper and gold mine this month, even as sanctions it imposed for…

Away from the frenetic tourism development that has taken over the beaches of southern Bali, the Indonesian resort island’s northern coast remains largely rural and agrarian. Per capita income here…

LANGKAWI, Malaysia – In Kilim Karst Geoforest Park, part of Langkawi UNESCO Global Geopark, a man in T-shirt and shorts laughs with his friends as one of the long-tailed macaques…

A small community, far from Venezula’s Orinoco Mining Arc, discovers gold, leading to an incursion by illegal miners, environmental devastation and an allegedly deadly army raid.

The $1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative promises new ports, roads, railways, dams and an energy grid reaching from China across Asia to Africa, but at what environmental cost?

The Goldman Environmental Prize, the world’s most prestigious award for grassroots environmental activism, has announced seven winners this year. Six of the winners are women. Dubbed the Green Nobel Prize,…

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government is preparing to punish state-owned oil and gas firm PT Pertamina over a major oil spill stemming from one of its undersea pipelines in eastern…

In early March, an Anglo American Brasil pipeline rupture spilled 318 tons of iron ore into a local river. Now a second spill of 647 tons has occurred polluting the Santo Antônio do Grama River .

Denis Hayes was the principal national organizer of the first Earth Day in 1970, and he took the event to the international stage in 1990. He is board chair of the…

JAKARTA — A highly contentious set of revisions to Indonesia’s Criminal Code threatens to undermine the fight against environmental offenders and polluters, activists warn. Deliberations on the new draft are…

JAKARTA — An oil spill in Borneo that began over the past weekend has now spread across an area greater than the city of Paris and is heading out to…

UPDATE (Apr. 4, 2018): Pertamina admitted responsibility for the oil spill because its pipes broke and leaked.  JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has launched an investigation into a major oil…

A gold mine in the remote northern Cambodian province of Preah Vihear is being opposed by local people who claim they have lost their land and are being manipulated by…

The great mass of castaway plastic collecting in the northern Pacific Ocean is much larger than past estimates, and it’s growing, according to a new study. As a species, we…

DENPASAR, Indonesia — Tilapia is a mainstay of Balinese cuisine, but hundreds of thousands of the freshwater fish choke to death regularly in the resort island’s largest lake, for reasons…

The Interior Dept. is holding the biggest oil lease sale ever next week, and trying to extend drilling to all U.S. coasts, but experts say Trump’s plan for “energy dominance” is economically and environmentally flawed.

GAZA CITY – Red-faced and with his hair still wet, Hani Abu Amirah's grandson sobbed as he shuffled over to where she sat, looking out on the Mediterranean Sea from…