Charles Alexie and Gerald Tom near visible coastal erosion that encroaches on Newtok village in Alaska, on 16 August 2024. Erosion and melting permafrost have largely destroyed Newtok, eating about 70 feet (21.34 meters) of land every year. Photo: Rick Bowmer / AP

Climate change destroyed an Alaska village. Its residents are starting over in a new town – “Alaska Native economic, social, and cultural ways of being, which have served so well for millennia, are now under extreme threat due to accelerated environmental change”

By Rick Bowmer and Mark Thiessen 28 September 2024 MERTARVIK, Alaska (AP) – Growing up along the banks of the Ninglick River in western Alaska, Ashley Tom would look out of her window after strong storms from the Bering Sea hit her village and notice something unsettling: the riverbank was creeping ever closer. It was […]

Myanmar’s rare earth mining industry has become the world’s largest supply, yet the mines’ toxic by-products are poisoning nearby waterways, wildlife, and communities. Photo: Global Witness

Transition minerals: A climate solution that could cost the earth – “We need a just, fair, and equitable transition from fossil fuels to renewables”

10 July 2024 (Global Witness) – Renewable energy is often hailed as a panacea for the energy crisis. But without better consultation and regulation, plans to expand mining for minerals central to the energy transition could be disastrous for people and the planet. To tackle the climate crisis, we need to transition away from fossil […]

Aerial view of an illegal gold mine surrounding Yanomami Indigenous huts in Yanomami Indigenous land, Brazil, 10 January 2024. Photo: Ueslei Marcelino / REUTERS

Gold miners bring fresh wave of suffering to Brazil’s Yanomami – “This is war because people are dying. Hundreds of Yanomami have died in the humanitarian crisis, and they are Brazilians too.”

By Ueslei Marcelino and Anthony Boadle 18 January 2024 (Reuters) – Brazil is losing the upper hand in its battle to save the Yanomami Indigenous people, who are dying from flu, malaria, and malnutrition brought into their vast, isolated Amazon rainforest reservation by resurgent illegal miners. A year after President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva […]

A church is surrounded by water in a flooded neighborhood in Kherson, Ukraine, following the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in June 2023. Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka / Associated Press

Water increasingly at the center of conflicts from Ukraine to the Middle East – “It’s very disturbing that in particular attacks on civilian water infrastructure seem to be on the rise”

By Ian James 28 December 2023 (Los Angeles Times) – Six months ago, an explosion ripped apart Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine, unleashing floods that killed 58 people, devastated the landscape along the Dnipro River and cut off water to productive farmland. The destruction of the dam — which Ukrainian officials and the European Parliament blame on Russia, […]

An Ogiek home in Kenya’s Mau Forest that has been set on fire to illegally evict hunter-gatherers from their ancestral lands to profit from carbon offsetting schemes. Photo: OPDP / BBC

Kenya’s Ogiek people being evicted for carbon credits – “The Ogiek are on the front line of a false climate solution that is used to justify ongoing evictions and emissions”

By Claire Marshall 9 November 2023 (BBC News) – Kenya’s government is illegally evicting hunter-gatherers from their ancestral lands to profit from carbon offsetting schemes, human rights lawyers say. Hundreds of members of the Ogiek community are being evicted from the Mau Forest, say their representatives. Ogiek leader Daniel Kobei said armed forest rangers were […]

Aerial view of the Panamanian island of Carti Sugdupu. Hundreds are preparing to leave the island in the face of rising sea levels. Photo: Luis Acosta

“We’re going to sink”: hundreds abandon Caribbean island home – “Almost all the islands are going to be abandoned by the end of this century”

By Juan José Rodríguez 6 September 2023 (AFP) – On a tiny Caribbean island, hundreds of people are preparing to pack up and move to escape the rising waters threatening to engulf their already precarious homes. Surrounded by idyllic clear waters, the densely populated island of Carti Sugtupu off Panama’s north coast has barely an […]

Iranian-Canadian artist Simin Keramati sits in the PaykanArtCar during its unveiling at the Oslo Freedom Forum on 13 June 2023. The car is adorned with women's hair, serving as a visual representation of support for the “Women, Life, Freedom” protest movement against Iran’s Islamist regime. Photo: Fredrik Naumann / AP Images / PaykanArtCar

Activists say the human rights movement is failing – “Back in the day, human rights groups were ahead of the curve. But autocratic regimes have learned from that. They’re investing in their tactics, and they’re coordinating.”

By Nahal Toosi 18 June 2023 OSLO, Norway (POLITICO) – Gatherings of human rights activists tend to feature commitments to the cause mixed with a lot of gallows humor — after all, many such advocates have survived and persisted in their roles despite imprisonment, torture and surveillance by authoritarian regimes. But on a sunlit June […]

Composite image of Bruno Araújo Pereira, a renowned defender of the rights of Brazil’s Indigenous peoples, and Guardian reporter Dom Phillips. Both were murdered on 5 June 2022 for exposing organized crime committing acts of deforestation in Brazil. Graphic: Guardian Design / WWF / Getty Images / AP / AFP

One year after they were murdered, their work must go on – Forest defender Bruno Araújo Pereira and journalist Dom Phillips were assassinated in Brazil on 5 June 2022

By Katharine Viner 1 June 2023 (The Guardian) – Forest defenders should not be killed for exposing crimes. Journalists should not be killed for reporting facts. But, one year ago, the Guardian was devastated by the awful news that in the Amazon rainforest, two lives had been taken on the frontline of the battle to protect the […]

Trucks transport bauxite on a red-dirt mining road in the Boké region of Guinea. Photo: Chloe Sharrock / MYOP / The Washington Post

On frontier of new “gold rush” quest for coveted EV metals yields misery – “I am frustrated. But even more than that, I have lost hope.”

By Rachel Chason and Chloe Sharrock 27 April 2023 KAGBANI, Guinea (The Washington Post) – One of the poorest countries on Earth has become a crucial player in the world’s green-energy transition. Guinea, a West African nation of more than 13 million people, is home to the world’s biggest reserves of bauxite — a reddish-brown […]

Percentage of U.S. high school students who experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness during the past year, 2011–2021. Graphic: CDC / Youth Risk Behavior Survey

Teen girls in U.S. report highest levels of sadness and sexual violence in a decade, CDC Says – “It’s just devastating to think about the young women in our lives that we know”

By Madison Muller 13 February 2023 (Bloomberg) – Almost three in five U.S. teen girls reported feeling sad or hopeless in 2021, the highest level seen in a decade and nearly twice the rate among teenage boys. Rates of reported sexual violence and suicide risk rose among teen girls during the same year, according to […]

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