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.
The Caribbean island is currently being convulsed by a wave of civil unrest and gang violence, immediately triggered by soaring gas prices. But a dire environmental crisis underlays and feeds Haiti’s socioeconomic and political disorder.
ASUNCIÓN MITA, Guatemala – Cecilia López and Luz Elena González were in good spirits as they left, walking beneath blue and white plastic streamers strung across the school property in…
In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic consumed humanity’s attention, our species ran through 4.5 trillion doses of myriad pharmaceuticals. In India alone, one drug, paracetamol — a pain reliever used to treat…
Water management experts have derided as “a drop in the ocean” an agreement between Bangladesh and India to share water from the Kushiara River, a minor waterway out of the…
OCOTLÁN DE MORELOS – “Look up to the El Peral mountains. That is where we do our ritual ceremony to call for rain,” says Josefina Santiago, 43, a Zapotec Indigenous…
OLENGURUONE, Kenya — Mau Forest covers some 2,700 square kilometers (1,042 square miles) in western Kenya, making it the largest native montane forest in East Africa. The forest is also…
MARERENI, Kenya — It’s mid-morning in April, and Ngombo Tsuma is seated under a lone neem tree by one of his two grass-thatched huts. His wife sits by the door…
CAJIBIO, Colombia – From a birds-eye view, greenery expands far into the tropical Andean horizon in Colombia’s department of Cauca, easily confused with a sprawling native forest. However, for the…
As freshwater “Day Zero” looms for the climate change-stressed Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality, home to 1.28 million people, officials face a difficult choice: risk failure of short-term groundwater supplies or seek long-term solutions.
KATHMANDU — Thousands of farmers in Nepal's fertile southern plains, the country’s rice bowl, face a double whammy of a fertilizer shortage and inadequate monsoon rains. This is likely to…
DHAKA — Bangladesh is looking to recharge its aquifers with storm water, reclaimed water, desalinated water and potable water, in an effort to ward off the depletion of this precious…
Spanning more than 1,600 square kilometers (620 square miles), the Ulu Muda rainforest is one of the last large, continuous tracts of forest in the Malay Peninsula, and provides vital…
While modern water infrastructure assets such as dams and aqueducts have provided human civilization with electricity and potable water for a long time, it has also deprived us of it…
Since February of this year, a tailings dam at the QMM mine in Madagascar has failed at least twice. Hazardous mine wastewater overflowed and contaminated the surrounding lagoon system relied…
High levels of food, water and energy insecurity brought on by socioeconomic issues and exacerbated by climate change have been driving research groups to find new solutions. A 2020 study…
CUARIRENDA, Bolivia — In October 2020, residents of a Mennonite colony began clearing a road through the forest in the Cordillera province of the Bolivian department of Santa Cruz. By…
GORO, New Caledonia – Known widely as the “Madagascar of the Pacific,” New Caledonia is coated in remnant Gondwana rainforest and surrounded by reefs rich in marine life that constitute one…
GORO, New Caledonia — On the south side of Grand Terre, the largest and principal island of New Caledonia in the south Pacific, mountains rise like a spine out of a…
Freshwater’s life-giving benefits are being gravely threatened by humanity’s manipulations of the hydrological cycle, impacting the climate and biodiversity, and undermining Earth’s operating system.
The largest freshwater fish ever recorded was captured in the Mekong River last week by a fisher collaborating with researchers to document the river’s biodiversity in northern Cambodia. The 4-meter…
It was over twenty years ago when locals in Bolivia’s northern plains told archaeologist Heiko Prümers, with the German Archaeological Institute in Bonn, about mysterious mounds of earth in the…
ANGAHUAN, Mexico — "Cuchita is the fourth-generation herb collector of our family," says Juana Bravo, 45, pointing to a photo of her niece. "Look here: she was picking medicinal plants…
KATHMANDU — The list of bird species found in Nepal has now grown to 891, after a bird never before seen in the country was spotted at a national park…
In Africa and beyond, large-scale agricultural investment projects have often been promoted as a means to increase food security and boost economies in the face of drought and famine, increasing…
Surf enthusiasts and volunteers are mapping out hotspots of a spectacular form of surfing on Brazil’s northern coast, in a bid to both preserve the practice and help boost tourism…
KATHMANDU — In a “historic announcement,” Nepal’s Supreme Court has ordered the government not to build a controversial international airport in the country’s south. The order comes four years after…
An underwater expedition has confirmed the presence of some of the world’s largest and most threatened freshwater fish in a remote and barely studied stretch of the Mekong River in…
PASURUAN, Indonesia — Farming and other water-based industries thrive in Pasuruan, a fertile rice-growing district in Indonesia’s East Java province that’s home to active volcanoes and rich aquifers. Thanks to…
A reassessment by an international group of scientists finds that human-caused destabilization of the water cycle is seriously impacting global soil moisture, with knock on effects for forests and other ecosystems.
