Underground ecosystems are everywhere. From gargantuan lightless mazes to pore-sized bedrock gaps inhabited by microfauna — super tiny animals — these ecosystems are believed to be the most widespread nonmarine…
The climate emergency has affected development and violated the rights of children and adolescents around the world, and in Brazil. In addition to fires, prolonged, extreme droughts make access to…
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…
Shifting monsoonal climate patterns that affect the availability of water in the Mekong River Basin are raising questions among experts about the sustainability of hydropower as a long-term energy solution…
A recent study found that high-altitude ecosystems in the Andes, known as the páramo, managed by eight communities in Ecuador have led to a reduction in soil and vegetation decline,…
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…
KATHMANDU — The start of 2024 has brought some good news, tempered with warnings, for Nepal’s critically endangered gharials, the fish-eating crocodiles with the comically bulbous snouts. Officials at Chitwan…
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.…
The Mexico-U.S. border wall has interrupted the ecological connectivity of a nature reserve that’s a World Heritage Site, and should be addressed to remedy the situation, according to UNESCO. Without…
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.
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…
JURUTI, Pará — As we approach the airport in Santarém, Pará, astonishment echoes loudly throughout the plane as its passengers see the extent of the drought below. Through the tiny…
Water bodies across the Brazilian state of Roraima have shrunk in area by half over the past 20 years, according to research from the mapping collective MapBiomas.
“They are going to flood the Tapayuna people’s history,” says Yaku Suya, a 43-year-old Indigenous leader from the village of Tyrykho, in Xingu Indigenous Park in the heart of the…
Water is essential for all forms of life. It also underpins food security, economic prosperity and public health. This is especially so in Thailand, a country transited by some of…
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…
PALAWAN, Philippines — At dawn, a breathtaking orange glow bathes Tatandayan, a secluded sitio, or hamlet, on the slopes of the bioculturally rich Mount Mantalingahan Protected Landscape. Under towering trees…
The Indigenous residents of the highlands of southeastern Angola have long lived there with a light touch. Ironically, with the end of the country’s civil war and the slow return…
La Guajira, COLOMBIA — On Oct. 9, Colombia’s first wind farm, Jepírachi, officially reached its end of life after running for almost two decades in Uribia, in the northeastern region…
Crucial industries and supply chains worth billions of dollars are threatened by impacts from hydropower development along the Mekong River, according to a new report from WWF. The report reveals…
SUMEDANG, Indonesia — Udit Surdiat only became a boat driver after he lost the rights to his farmland. The 63-year-old used to farm a hectare of land in Sumedang district,…
New satellite data analysis reveals that Mau Forest in Kenya, the largest montane forest in East Africa, is continuing to lose tree cover, likely due to illegal logging and agricultural…
Protests are arising in South American communities as Google, Microsoft and other tech giants build water-hungry computer data centers in increasingly drought-besieged nations, including Uruguay and Chile.
A professor at the University of Florida, Michael Heckenberger has been visiting and studying Indigenous peoples at the Upper Xingu River for decades and says the Amazon is already facing its tipping point: “It’s a tipping event.”