Sites: news | india | latam | brasil | indonesia
Feeds: news | india | latam | brasil | indonesia
topic: Health
Social media activity version | Lean version
Climate futures: What’s ahead for our world beyond 1.5°C of warming?
- This two-part Mongabay mini-series examines the current status of the climate emergency, how the global community is likely to respond and what lies ahead for Earth systems and humanity as the planet almost inevitably warms beyond the crucial 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) goal established in the Paris Agreement 10 years ago.
- For global average temperatures to stabilize at less than 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, humanity likely needs to achieve 43% greenhouse gas emissions cuts by 2030. But progress on climate action has stagnated in recent years, global GHG emissions are yet to peak and our remaining carbon budget is dwindling.
- Above 1.5°C of warming, we risk passing critical tipping points in natural Earth systems, triggering self-perpetuating changes that could shift the planet out of the habitable zone for humanity and life as we know it. Even with rapid, large-scale action on climate change, crossing some tipping points may now be unavoidable.
- However, analysts have identified positive social, technological and economic tipping points we can nurture to decarbonize far more rapidly. These include the decreasing cost of renewable energy, the rise of circular economy principles to reduce waste in industry and a societal shift to more plant-based diets.
Climate futures: World leaders’ failure to act is pushing Earth past 1.5°C
- This two-part Mongabay mini-series examines the current status of the climate emergency; how world leaders, scientists and the global community are responding; and what may lie ahead as the world warms beyond the crucial 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) limit established in the Paris Agreement 10 years ago.
- The unprecedented warming that began in 2023, continued through 2024 and extended into 2025 has caused surprise and alarm. Scientists still don’t fully understand the cause, but some fear it signals the global climate is transitioning into a new state of accelerated warming.
- 2024 was the first full calendar year to exceed 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. A recent projection finds it likely Earth will see a 20-year average warming of 1.5°C by as early as 2029, exceeding a key Paris accord goal and which could trigger self-perpetuating changes pushing Earth’s climate into a less habitable state.
- In January, President Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement, signaling that the U.S. will not lead on climate action. To date, nearly all the world’s nations have fallen far short of what is needed to stay within 1.5°C. As countries submit new U.N. carbon commitments, some fear the U.S. reversal will ripple around the world.
In Yaoundé, fecal sludge flows through ‘Caca Junction’ streets
- In Yaoundé, fecal sludge contaminates neighborhoods where locals say the combination of insufficient sanitation and the costs of septic tank service lead to dumping in the streets.
- The city has just one fecal sludge treatment plant that receives up to double its capacity every day.
- City residents pinch their noses at the smells, while water contamination poses disease risks to local residents.
- Similar situations occur in other African cities that lack sanitation facilities capable of handling the needs of growing urban populations.
Brazil rewilds urban forest with vaccinated brown howler monkeys
Following a deadly yellow fever outbreak in 2016, brown howler monkeys are slowly making a recovery through targeted vaccination and reintroduction efforts in one of the world’s largest urban forests. The recovery is detailed in a Mongabay video by Kashfi Halford and a report by Bernardo Araujo. Brown howler monkeys (Alouatta guariba) are endemic to […]
Antibiotic pollution widespread in world’s rivers, study finds
Nearly a third of all antibiotics that people consume end up in the world’s rivers, a new study finds. This could potentially harm aquatic life and impact human health by promoting drug resistance, researchers say. Antibiotics, critical for treating various bacterial infections, are widely consumed by people, livestock and aquaculture fish, but the drugs are […]
Solutions needed as climate change & land use fuel global crop pest menace
- Climate change is colliding with land use practices, deforestation and biodiversity loss to drive a rapidly growing threat of crop pests.
- Future warming of 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels (likely by the 2040s or 2050s, according to current projections) could see substantial losses of staple crop yields for wheat (an estimated 46% loss), rice (19%) and maize (31%) due to pest infestations, according to a recent paper.
- Temperate regions are likely to see the greatest increases in crop pests as warming creates conditions for migrating subtropical species to establish themselves in previously unhabitable areas.
- The authors underline the need for more pest monitoring, diversification of farmland crops and biotechnological solutions to meet this growing threat.
Wood pellet maker Drax denied pollution permit after small town Mississippi outcry
- Nearly 30 wood pellet mills operate in the southeastern U.S., with more planned. Environmental advocates have long opposed biomass for energy schemes, noting that the burning of wood pellets is a poor replacement for coal because it releases major carbon emissions, while also causing deforestation and biodiversity harm.
- But those arguments have barely moved the dial when it comes to regulating the industry or banning its lucrative green subsidies, so activist wins have been few. But the angry protests of southeastern U.S. citizens — many of them poor and Black —in rural areas where pellet mills are located have raised another big issue: pollution.
- A case in point is Drax’s Amite County plant located in Gloster, Mississippi. Drax is one of the biggest forest biomass producers in the world, but that hasn’t stopped Gloster’s citizens from opposing the company for its impacts on health and quality of life, like toxic air pollution, excessive noise and truck traffic.
- Drax has been fined twice, totaling more than $2.7 million for its pollution, with Gloster citizens recently winning over the state of Mississippi, which for now is refusing to give Drax a permit to legally pollute even more. Pollution is bad near other wood pellet plants, and forest advocates are now allying with irate citizens.
Cement factory approved inside Cambodia’s Prey Lang sanctuary despite mining ban
- Cambodian authorities have approved a new cement factory inside Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary, despite a 2023 moratorium on new mining licenses, raising concerns about enforcement and conservation integrity.
- Factory developer KP Cement, a politically connected firm previously linked to deforestation, was awarded a 50-year lease on 99 hectares (245 acres) within the ostensibly protected sanctuary and is already clearing forest near a planned limestone mine.
- Local communities have expressed alarm over environmental degradation, health risks from limestone dust, and being excluded from decision-making, saying the development benefits only elites.
- The project reflects a broader pattern of politically tied companies exploiting Prey Lang’s resources despite its protected status, with critics accusing the government of favoring industry over conservation.
15 years after the BP oil spill disaster, how is the Gulf of Mexico faring?
- The Deepwater Horizon disaster on April 20, 2010, was the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, releasing an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico over nearly three months.
- Fifteen years later, the gulf ecosystem shows a complicated picture of both resilience and lingering damage, with some species, like brown pelicans, recovering, while others, like humans, dolphins and deep-sea corals, continue to struggle with long-term health impacts.
- The disaster prompted an unprecedented legal settlement directing billions toward restoration projects, though experts debate whether these funds have been used effectively for ecosystem-scale recovery.
- Climate change remains the “800-pound gorilla in the room,” threatening the gulf’s future resilience, one expert said, with others warning that continued pressure from fossil fuel development, agricultural runoff and other threats could push the system beyond its capacity to recover.
What pushes Indigenous Munduruku people to mine their land in Brazil’s Amazon?
- The involvement of Munduruku people in illegal mining inside the Munduruku Indigenous Territory made Brazil’s efforts to stop it more complicated, federal officials said.
- Munduruku sources told Mongabay that deception, abandonment by the state and a lack of alternative income sources are what push some Munduruku people to mine.
- The recruitment of Indigenous peoples is an important mechanism used by miners to secure access to lands and gain support against government crackdowns, researchers said.
- Sources said the government should invest in public policies and alternative income projects to strengthen food security, improve health and the sustainable development of communities.
‘Plastic People’ documentary exposes the human health threats from plastic
Microplastics are a growing ecological and human health crisis: Scientist have found the tiny plastic particles everywhere they’ve looked for them, including human placentas and brains. In a new documentary, Plastic People, filmmakers Rick Smith and Peter Raymont delve into the plastic pollution that contaminates people from before birth and can bring about early death. […]
Ground-level ozone pollution poses growing threat to planetary health
- In the stratosphere, ozone acts as a protective layer. But in the troposphere, at ground level, this colorless gas is incredibly harmful to human health and the environment in ways scientists are still working to fully understand. The problem exists worldwide, but may become especially bad in tropical nations this century.
- Ground-level ozone is a major air pollutant that shortens human lives and kills thousands each year, resulting in major economic impacts. It is formed when methane, nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds (released from vehicles, industry, power plants and crops) react in the presence of sunlight.
- Climate change worsens tropospheric ozone, with higher temperatures accelerating the chemical reaction that creates it, and because stalled weather systems (especially heat domes) allow buildup of ozone in stagnant polluted air. Ozone pollution not only impacts urban area, but also rural agricultural areas.
- Ozone impacts on biodiversity are significant and growing — harming pollinators, reducing crop yields and limiting forest growth, with global implications for food security and humanity’s reliance on forests as carbon sinks. Effectively tackling climate change and reducing ozone precursors are major solutions.
Drowned lands and poisoned waters threaten Peru’s campesinos and their livestock
- Peru’s Lake Chinchaycocha, also known as Lake Junín, and its endemic species are under threat in part due to environmental problems caused by mining activities, hydroelectric power operations, the discharge of urban wastewater and the overexploitation of resources.
- Campesino communities nearby have lived for decades with this contamination, which they blame for killing so much livestock that one community had to open a cemetery specifically for animals.
- For several months a year, due to the flooding by the nearby dam, homes and pastures are inundated with contaminated water, forcing residents to migrate to higher ground.
- Studies have confirmed the presence of heavy metals in the water exceeding environmental quality standards, but there haven’t been any studies yet linking this to human and livestock health impacts in the region.
Hotter weather threatens heart health, Australian study warns
Extreme heat is putting people in Australia at serious risk of heart problems and premature deaths, according to new research. As the climate warms, rising temperatures could more than double Australia’s burden of cardiovascular diseases by 2050, unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced, and people take measures to adapt to the heat, researchers found. Cardiovascular […]
With climate change, cryosphere melt scales up as a threat to planetary health
- Earth’s cryosphere — comprised of ice sheets, glaciers, permafrost and snowfall — is in a rapid state of flux due to escalating climate change, with numerous studies underlining the grave risks posed by the thaw.
- Today, that worldwide meltdown poses new threats to human lives — endangering freshwater supplies and food security while increasing the risks of natural disasters and disease outbreaks. Cryosphere loss poses immense dangers to the environment, agriculture, economy and society according to a new report.
- If emissions continue unabated, these problems will only worsen. Scientists warn of compounding risks as cryosphere melt escalates, including sea level rise, the slowing of ocean currents, and the triggering of feedbacks that will add to climate change.
- 2025 is designated the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation. Experts are calling for drastic cuts to carbon emissions because each fraction of a degree of warming avoided counts toward the preservation of the cryosphere along with the ecosystem services that ice, snow and permafrost provide.
Microplastic within humans now a health crisis: Interview with ‘Plastic People’ filmmakers
- The documentary ‘Plastic People: The Hidden Crisis of Microplastics’ reveals microplastics have been found in human brains, placentas, and virtually every organ, highlighting a global environmental and health crisis.
- Executive producers Rick Smith and Peter Raymont explore how humans are becoming “plastic people” with microplastic contamination beginning before birth and persisting after death.
- Nations are negotiating a UN treaty on plastic pollution to address the estimated 400 million tons produced annually, with experts calling for eliminating unnecessary plastic use and banning toxic formulations.
- The film will be screened in Washington, DC, on March 29 at the 2025 DC Environmental Film Festival, where Mongabay is a media partner.
Brazil’s crackdown on illegal mining in Munduruku Indigenous land sees success, but fears remain
- Government efforts to evict illegal miners from the Munduruku Indigenous Territory in the Brazilian Amazon so far have led to a reduction in illegal mining, according to government officials and Munduruku organizations.
- Since the operation began in November 2024, agents have destroyed 90 camps, 15 vessels and 27 heavy machinery, in addition to handing out 24.2 million Brazilian reais ($4.2 million) in fines.
- While there has been some interruption to mining in the region, Munduruku organizations said the operation has not been completely effective, as there are still some invaders and machinery in certain areas of the territory.
- A Munduruku source told Mongabay they are worried that miners will return once security forces withdraw and also, without alternative income sources, Indigenous people involved in mining will have no option but to continue.
Breast milk contamination exposes Africa’s ‘forever chemicals’ problem
- Researchers warn that synthetic chemicals in various products, including carpets, clothes, furniture, adhesives, food packaging, and nonstick cookware, pose a significant threat to infants in Africa.
- Over the past two decades, the chemicals, known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), or “forever chemicals,” have become a significant public health concern in Europe and North America. Emerging data from African countries point to the pervasive nature of the problem in the continent.
- PFAS exposure is linked to liver damage, thyroid diseases, cancer, and reproductive health problems, and can be especially dangerous for infants and children, experts say.
- Countries like the U.S. are beginning to pass laws to control PFAS levels in drinking water systems. Still, regulations that target PFAS are “rare across African countries,” a recent study notes.
Dry season predictability and temperature drive dengue cases: Study
What’s new: Rising temperatures and variation in the length of dry seasons appear to influence the prevalence of dengue fever, according to a recent study conducted in the Philippines. What the study says: Cases of dengue fever are rising globally; in the Americas, they more than doubled from 4.6 million cases in 2023 to 10.6 […]
Short-term air pollution exposure impairs focus & cognitive function: Study
A growing body of research suggests that air pollution affects our brains. Lifetime exposure to poor air quality has been associated with disorders including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis. A new study finds even short-term exposure to polluted air can cause challenges for cognitive functioning, including selective attention and emotional regulation. Specifically, researchers […]
Science aside, we need art & philosophy for global change: Epidemiologist
With deforestation and declining biodiversity linked to emerging infectious diseases, one would think the world should look to science for answers. But Dr. Neil Vora, a former epidemic intelligence service officer with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), says art and philosophy are just as important. In an episode of Mongabay’s weekly […]
Declining biodiversity and emerging diseases are entwined, more study needed
- A new review study traces the complex links between biodiversity loss and emerging infectious diseases — though one doesn’t necessarily lead to the other.
- Instead, complex interactions between factors (including climate change, habitat loss, agricultural practices, and closer contact between wildlife, livestock and people) can contribute to emergent infectious diseases and new pandemics.
- It’s now well understood that human actions are causing a major increase in pandemics. To stave off future global outbreaks, researchers say we need to better understand the shared upstream drivers of both biodiversity loss and emerging disease.
- The study highlights significant gaps in the monitoring and surveillance of wildlife pathogens worldwide. It suggests that prevention and early interventions targeting locales and situations where emergent disease spillover is likely are important to avoiding future human pandemics.
A dramatic rise in microplastics found in human brains, study finds
A new study has found a dramatic increase in levels of microplastics and nanoplastics (MNPs) in human brains in recent years. MNPs have previously been detected in human lungs, intestine, bone marrow and placenta. In the new study, researchers took one tissue sample from the brain, kidney and liver of 80 people autopsied in 2016 […]
Disease surges in Indonesia community on frontline of world energy transition
- Residential areas next to a major nickel processing site on Indonesia’s Halmahera Island recorded exponential increases in diagnoses of respiratory infections between 2020 and 2023.
- During that same period, the value of nickel exports from Indonesia, the world’s largest producer of the metal, increased from around $800 million to $6.8 billion.
- Interviews by Mongabay with residents of one village in the area indicate health conditions there have deteriorated rapidly.
Expected ban on Mexican GM corn fetches praise — and worry over imports
- A constitutional ban on transgenic corn production in Mexico is expected to be approved this month and has been lauded by the government as a measure to protect the country’s native corn varieties.
- In recent years, Mexico issued controversial presidential decrees to ban human consumption of transgenic corn and its use in dough and tortillas, claiming genetically modified varieties have adverse health impacts.
- Mexico is the largest importer of U.S. transgenic corn, and in December, an independent USMCA panel ruled the claims that consumption causes negative health impacts weren’t scientifically supported.
- Mexico’s large-scale import of U.S. genetically modified corn is considered by local experts to be a risk to small and Indigenous farmers, as they say it exposes native species of the crop to potential cross-pollination with transgenic seeds.
Yanomami sees success two years into Amazon miner evictions, but fears remain
- Brazil’s federal government celebrated a decrease in deaths and the decline in gold mining two years after agents started to evict invaders on the Yanomami Indigenous territory in the Amazon.
- The Yanomami report that rivers are cleaner, and people are finally healthy enough to work in fields and resume rituals.
- Once estimated as 20,000 in the territory, hundreds of illegal miners still remain and may expand business at the slightest sign of the security forces withdrawing.
Surviving fire but not the toxins as modern homes, full of plastic, burn
The ongoing fires ravaging Los Angeles, U.S., have killed at least 25 people and burned more than 12,000 buildings. Many of the structures destroyed were homes, mansions of the rich and famous and middle-class homes alike. Irrespective of the wealth of their owners, most homes destroyed likely had one thing in common: plastic. As Mongabay […]
World’s record heat is worsening air pollution and health in Global South
- 2024 was the hottest year on record, producing intense, long-lasting heat waves. Climate change-intensified extreme events last year included the formation of vast heat domes — areas of high pressure that stalled and persisted above continental land masses in Asia, Africa, South and North America, and Europe.
- Heat domes intensify unhealthy air pollution from vehicles, industry, wildfires and dust storms. When a heat wave gripped New Delhi, India, last summer, temperatures soared, resulting in unhealthy concentrations of ground-level ozone — pollutants especially unhealthy for outdoor workers.
- When climate change-driven heat, drought and record wildfires occurred in the Brazilian Amazon last year, the fires produced massive amounts of wood smoke containing dangerous levels of toxic particulates that cause respiratory disease. Indigenous people living in remote areas had little defense against the smoke.
- Intense heat also impacted Nigeria in 2024, where major dust storms and rising temperatures created conditions that helped increased cases of meningitis — a sometimes deadly disease, especially in poor areas. Escalating climate change is expected to exacerbate pollution and worsen public health in the future.
U.S. reports first human death from H5N1 bird flu
A person in the state of Louisiana has died from avian influenza or bird flu, also known as H5N1, the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) reported on Jan. 6, marking the first recorded human fatality from H5N1 in the U.S. “The patient contracted H5N1 after exposure to a combination of a non-commercial backyard flock and […]
Shipbreaking pollutes Türkiye’s coast despite European cleanup efforts
- Over the past decade, more than 2,000 ships have been dismantled at shipyards in Türkiye’s coastal town of Aliağa, one of the world’s main destinations for decommissioned vessels.
- Locals and environmentalists alike complain of rampant water and air pollution linked to shipbreaking, among other industrial activities.
- Workers’ unions and activists have also called out substandard working conditions at the yards, recording 11 deadly accidents between 2018 and 2024.
- Efforts by the European Union to promote better practices in some yards by allowing them to dismantle European ships have had a mixed effect, according to workers and experts Mongabay interviewed, encouraging some yards to improve practices without solving the pollution problem.
Pesticide exposure drives up rural women’s cancer risk in Brazil farming belt
- A study has found that women exposed to pesticides during farm work in Brazil’s Paraná state have a 60% higher risk of developing breast cancer, and a 220% higher risk of metastasis.
- While they don’t typically spray the pesticides, these women are responsible for cleaning the equipment and clothing used to do it, during which they rarely wear personal protective equipment.
- The study found glyphosate, atrazine and 2,4-D in urine samples from rural women; health and regulatory agencies consider these three pesticides as possibly or probably carcinogenic.
- Brazil has one of the most permissive pesticide markets in the world, where levels of exposure to chemicals like glyphosate are several times higher than in more strictly regulated jurisdictions such as the European Union.
No deal to curb plastic production as latest negotiations fizzle
Negotiations for a global plastics treaty ended on Dec. 2, without a consensus on how to curb plastic pollution despite its increasing negative impacts on people and nature. The fifth meeting of the U.N. Environment Programme’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) in Busan, South Korea was expected to produce a legally binding global treaty covering the […]
Biden administration doesn’t support a cap on plastic production
The Biden administration recently clarified its position on a global treaty calling for a reduction in the amount of new plastic produced: It no longer supports production caps. Previously, the U.S. said it recognized the need to regulate plastic over its entire life cycle, including limiting its production. “So, the U.S. has been very vague,” […]
Studies link stronger dengue outbreak in Bangladesh to climate change
- A typical consequence of climate change, drier monsoons with sudden bursts of heavy rain has led to days of inundation and long periods of standing water, creating an ideal situation for breeding mosquitoes, which may be linked to the stronger outbreak of dengue.
- Bangladesh has experienced noticeable changes in the timing and characteristics of its monsoon season. Traditionally occurring from June to August, the monsoon now extends from July to early October.
- Dengue cases have risen dramatically worldwide, with Asia responsible for 70% of reported instances, according to WHO. Researchers indicate that temperatures between 27 and 32 degrees Celsius are optimal for the breeding of Aedes mosquitoes, the vectors of the viral disease.
- As of Nov. 18, the death toll from the dengue outbreak in Bangladesh is 415, with around 80,000 infected, while the country recorded 1,705 dengue-related deaths in 2023.
Microplastics are sickening and killing wildlife, disrupting Earth systems
- Animals across the spectrum of life are eating, breathing and ingesting plastics that leach toxic chemicals and have been shown to alter the function of organs and even cells in humans. Petroleum products — mostly oil and natural gas — are plastic’s base ingredient.
- As plastic breaks down to micro and nano size, it easily enters the bodies of all living things. It takes 500-1,000 years for plastic to break down, and scientists now question whether it ever fully degrades.
- Health studies on wildlife are extremely difficult and costly, but plastics are thought to threaten living thing, from zooplankton, insects, rodents, rhinos and frogs to clams, whales, snakes, wildcats and a host of migratory animals.
- Next week, the world’s nations meet to hopefully finalize a U.N. plastics treaty. After a brief unexplained policy flip-flop, the Biden administration continues siding with Russia, Iran and other fossil fuel-producing nations, and with the petrochemical industry, in opposing binding regulations limiting global plastics production.
Overuse of antibiotics in Bangladesh aquaculture raises health concerns
- A recent study in Bangladesh reveals high rates of antibiotic resistance in pabda fish (Ompok pabda) bred by farmers through aquaculture.
- Consumption of antibiotic-resistant pabda fish may lead to the development of antibiotic resistance in humans as it exposes the food chain to multi-drug resistant (MDR) bacteria.
- Pabda aquaculture in Bangladesh produces around 20,000 metric tons annually, some of which is exported.
- Researchers are advocating educating farmers on the correct usage of antibiotics with the intervention of fisheries experts.
The plastics crisis is now a global human health crisis, experts say
- Plastics can contain thousands of different chemicals, many of them linked to cancer and reproductive harm, and many never tested for safety.
- Multiple studies are now finding these chemicals, along with microplastics, throughout the human body, raising alarm among scientists about widespread health effects, including reduced fertility and increased obesity.
- Research points to a correlation between the presence of microplastics and endocrine disrupting plasticizers in the human body and a variety of serious maladies, but tracing a direct causal line is very difficult given the complexity and number of plastics and the industry’s lack of transparency regarding its products.
- Many scientists and nations are calling for a binding plastics treaty to limit global plastic production. But this week the U.S. took a weaker position; it now supports a policy in which nations set their own voluntary targets for reducing production. Negotiations to determine the final treaty language begin at a UN summit in Busan, Korea, running Nov. 25 – Dec. 1.
DRC mines might be poisoning pregnant women
KOLWEZI, Democratic Republic of the Congo – A Mongabay investigation found that industrial and artisanal mining of cobalt and copper in the Democratic Republic of Congo could pose risks to women’s reproductive health. Both cobalt and copper are critical minerals in demand for their essential role in battery-powered technologies, including renewable energy technologies. We collected […]
Cobalt Capital
Cobalt is a critical mineral for lithium-ion batteries that power a range of renewable energy storage systems, including electric vehicles and consumer electronics. In the heart of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s cobalt capital, southeastern Katanga Province, mining pollution is increasing and polluters often fail to respond properly, in accordance with Congolese law. According to […]
As global fire risk rises, modern homes become toxic plastic traps
- In the 21st century, petrochemical-based building materials and furnishings have replaced traditional wood, fabric and metal materials in homes worldwide. But plastics are more flammable and release persistent toxic chemicals when burned or exposed to high heat.
- Also over the last 25 years, wildfires have multiplied and intensified due to global warming, and often now jump the wildland-urban interface, burning whole neighborhoods and leaving behind a dangerous toxic home legacy.
- Homeowners whose houses survive such wildfires are often stunned to learn that their homes are a toxic health threat, unlivable and a total loss.
- The multibillion-dollar production and wide-ranging export of plastic building materials and home furnishings, and the dramatic surge in wildfires, has made this a global problem impacting communities in the U.S., China, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Portugal and beyond.
Fresh calls for oil giants to pay $12 billion for Niger Delta pollution
The governor of Nigeria’s Bayelsa state has renewed calls for oil companies like Shell and Eni to pay $12 billion to clean up the pollution from their operations in the state over the past 50 years. The call comes more than a year after a Bayelsa state-appointed commission released its report in May 2023 detailing […]
Brazil sets a date to remove illegal miners from Munduruku land, more details await
- There’s a planned start date to remove illegal gold miners from the Munduruku Indigenous territory, where they have long decimated the Munduruku people’s health and the Amazon ecosystem with mercury contamination, prosecutors share with Mongabay.
- The date and removal operation remains confidential, with government sources gathering data on the areas most affected in the region. The government may share more information during a press briefing in early November, while some news sites suggest the operation will begin in a few days and involve the defense ministry.
- The Supreme Court and Indigenous peoples have called for the removal of the miners from the region for years, to little avail. Meanwhile, other sources say the government had to prioritize crises in other Indigenous lands like the Yanomami territory.
- According to a researcher, the expulsion of gold miners from another Munduruku territory, the Sawré Muybu Indigenous land, cannot begin until the president recognizes the territory.
Polar bears are suffering paw injuries likely driven by the warming Arctic: Study
What’s new At least two populations of polar bears in the high Arctic are developing paw injuries, possibly because of shifting sea ice conditions in a warming environment, according to a new study. Such injuries have not been reported in these areas previously, the study’s authors write. What the study says Between 2012 and 2022, […]
The Panamanian shamans working to save their ancestral medicinal plants
- In Santa Marta, a small village in Panama’s Ngäbe-Buglé Indigenous region, aging shamans are seeking to preserve and pass down knowledge of traditional medicinal plants.
- Village members say knowledge of how to identify and use local sacred medicinal plants has assisted the community to treat illnesses and viruses, such as COVID-19.
- Fearing this ancestral knowledge will be lost, Santa Marta’s shamans made a book with photos, names and information about the curative properties of local plants.
- In 2022, researchers from the Technological University of Panama published an ethnobotanical study on the species of Santa Marta’s traditional medicine plants in an effort to safeguard this sacred knowledge.
Why the Maxakali people are calling on their spirits to recover the Atlantic Forest
- Self-identified as Tikmũ’ũn, the Maxakali people now live in a small fraction of their original territory, which extended across the northeastern hills of Minas Gerais state.
- Confined to four small Indigenous reserves taken over by pasture, the Maxakali suffer from hunger, diseases and high mortality rates; they also lack the Atlantic Forest, essential for maintaining their rich and complex cosmology.
- To reverse deforestation and ensure food sovereignty, the Hãmhi project has been training Maxakali agroforestry agents to create agroforests and reforestation areas; the presence of the yãmĩyxop, the spirit-people, has been essential in this process.
Alan Dangour on reframing climate change as a health crisis
- Alan Dangour, Director of Climate and Health at Wellcome, is working to highlight the profound links between climate change and human health, moving beyond traditional climate metrics to focus on lives at risk.
- Wellcome’s Climate and Health program aims to strengthen the evidence base on climate-sensitive health issues, such as heatwaves and the spread of infectious diseases, while translating research into practical, policy-driven solutions.
- Dangour emphasizes the need for interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers, policymakers, and communities to develop real-world interventions, such as cooling strategies during extreme heat and addressing maternal health risks.
- Wellcome seeks to leverage technology, such as AI, to enhance research dissemination and build a thriving, global field of climate and health research, ensuring health is central to climate action policies.
Aluminum and steel take environment and health toll, even as demand grows
- Steel and aluminum are two of the world’s most in-demand materials, feeding numerous sectors — including construction and transportation — with demand forecast to grow in the coming decades.
- Aluminum in particular will see a major surge in demand to supply the clean energy transition, with the metal used in lightweight electric vehicles and renewable infrastructure.
- But both these metals already carry a heavy environmental burden. Mining causes deforestation and toxic pollution with serious human health and social impacts, while refining generates major emissions contributing significantly to the climate crisis.
- Cleaning up these industries and practices is essential, say analysts. A circular economy approach holds promise but comes riddled with challenges and uncertainties.
25-fold surge in malaria at Indonesia gold frontier raises deforestation questions
- Diagnoses of malaria in Pohuwato district on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi soared by more than an order of magnitude in 2023, a health department official told Mongabay Indonesia.
- The rise in the disease has been linked to deforestation in the district as well as its large trade in alluvial gold.
- Global incidences of malaria have declined markedly since the 1990s after the Gates Foundation and other donors poured money into prevention programs, but progress in eradicating the disease has slowed in recent years.
As bird flu outbreak kills myriad wildlife species, virologists eye threat to humans
The current outbreak of H5N1, as reported by Sharon Guynup for Mongabay, is the “fastest spreading” and “largest ever” outbreak of the disease better known as “bird flu.” It’s what experts refer to as a panzootic — a widespread outbreak of a zoonotic disease affecting a broad swath of species. It has already spread across […]
Can nations ever get artisanal gold mining right?
- For at least 16 million people worldwide, artisanal small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is a pillar of stability and opportunity, particularly in rural, impoverished communities. But the industry is responsible for a great deal of environmental damage, such as deforestation and contamination.
- Mining requires the use of harmful chemicals such as mercury, which pollutes air, soil and water, threatening biodiversity and human health.
- The U.N. Minamata Convention on Mercury, an international treaty to regulate and eradicate mercury use, came into force in 2017, but its success depends on effective implementation and enforcement by nation-states.
- Countries such as Ghana, which ratified the agreement in 2017, have laws to regulate the industry and safeguard the environment, but implementation has been weak, according to industry experts.
‘Polycrisis’ threatens planetary health; UN calls for innovative solutions
- Rapidly converging environmental, technological and social changes at the global level indicate the world has entered a “polycrisis,” according to a new U.N. Environmental Programme (UNEP) report. The polycrisis has major implications for Earth’s climate, biodiversity, pollution and health, according to the authors.
- Eight major shifts — including competition for natural resources, the rapid advance of new technologies such as AI, mass forced displacement and growing inequalities — are overlapping and synchronizing, intensifying the polycrisis.
- The U.N. report also identifies 18 “signals of change” on the near horizon that need to be monitored closely, many of which could cause major disruptions that would impact planetary health.
- These looming issues include new infectious diseases linked to climate change, deployment of climate-altering geoengineering technologies and an increase in “uninhabitable places.” The report underlines the need for monitoring, rapid response and inclusive decision-making to deploy a range of innovative solutions.
Animal apocalypse: Deadly bird flu infects hundreds of species pole-to-pole
- The world is currently seeing the fastest-spreading, largest-ever outbreak of H5N1, a highly contagious, deadly strain of avian influenza. Scientists say this virus now presents an existential threat to the world’s biodiversity, with the risk to humans rising as it continues to leap the species barrier, reaching new host species.
- H5N1 has already impacted at least 485 bird species and 48 mammal species, killing seals, sea otters, dolphins, foxes, California condors, albatrosses, bald eagles, cougars, polar bears and a zoo tiger. Since it broke out in Europe in 2020, this virus has spread globally. Carried by birds along migratory pathways, it has invaded six continents, including Antarctica.
- This current H5N1 animal pandemic (or panzootic) was caused by humans: A mild form of avian flu carried by wild birds turned deadly when it infected domestic poultry. Many industrial-scale poultry farms adjoin wetlands where migrating birds congregate, facilitating rapid spread.
- The toll on some bird and mammal populations has been devastating. With continued outbreaks, some imperiled species could be pushed to the brink, with wildlife already fighting to survive against a changing climate, disappearing habitat and other stressors.
As climate change shakes up global map of venomous snakes, health risks abound
- Researchers assessed the impacts of climate change on 209 species of venomous snakes from now until 2070, and concluded that while some may disappear from their range, others are likely to expand to new areas.
- Venomous snakes are among the most dangerous animals on the planet, responsible for at least 80,000 deaths a year, mostly in low-income countries with limited access to antivenom.
- Another impact on public health is the reduction in drug development: snake venom has great pharmacological potential, contributing to the production of medicines used to treat illnesses ranging from cancer to heart failure.
- Ecosystems will also face an imbalance as new species move in and existing ones go extinct, since snakes play a critical role in controlling the population of other animals such as rodents, which are also disease vectors.
In the wake of Bangladesh’s deadliest dengue outbreak, researchers respond
- In 2023, Bangladesh experienced the deadliest outbreak of dengue fever in the country’s history.
- Climate change will likely make severe disease outbreaks more common.
- Common prevention strategies, like insecticides, are becoming less effective as mosquitoes gain resistance and the nature of disease changes.
- In response, researchers, nonprofits and Bangladeshi residents are searching for ways to protect their communities and families.
How an international effort is keeping North America free of a deadly amphibian disease
Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans, better known as Bsal, is a fungal pathogen that causes chytridiomycosis, a deadly disease that’s contributing to an amphibian decline across most of the world. But it hasn’t reached North America. A new paper published by scientists from the North American Bsal Task Force confirms that after a decade of testing and monitoring, there’s […]
Indigenous midwives in Panama strive to preserve traditional medicine for maternal health
- An organization of midwives from Panama’s Ngäbe-Buglé Indigenous group use traditional medicinal plants endemic to the region to assist women with pregnancy and childbirth.
- Known as ASASTRAN, the organization trains midwives and traditional medicine doctors to provide health services to remote villages where hospitals and clinics aren’t accessible.
- Deforestation has reduced the availability of medicinal plants in the Ngäbe-Buglé territory, and ASASTRAN is seeking more government assistance to preserve the curative plants.
- For some Ngäbe-Buglé women, traditional curative plants are the only healing options during childbirth, as Western medicine is often unavailable.
Animal welfare advocacy must include wildlife & invertebrates (commentary)
- Broadening the scope of animal advocacy to include wild and intelligent animals, as well as invertebrates, is more than an ethical imperative, it is a practical necessity.
- “The interconnectedness of all life forms means that these animals’ well-being directly impacts the health of all beings, including humans, as well as ecosystems,” a new op-ed argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Ugandan chimps are eating bat guano, raising concerns over human epidemics
- Wildlife like chimpanzees have started consuming bat excrement — guano — in the Budongo Forest, Uganda. After analyzing samples, scientists found that the guano not only held high concentrations of minerals but was also full of viruses, including a cousin to SARS-CoV-2.
- Researchers say the weird feeding behavior may be because the animals have lost a primary source of dietary minerals from native trees to tobacco farming.
- Worryingly, some of these viruses can be transmitted to humans, meaning that if wild animals become more exposed to bat-borne viruses, so could humans.
- The scientists underline that social forces like the market and resource extraction can lead to such unintended consequences.
Study to benchmark water quality finds key Amazon tributary in good shape
- Researchers have found that water quality in Brazil’s Negro River, the second-largest tributary of the Amazon, remains largely excellent, the result of a sparse human presence and strong conservation measures.
- The sampling of 50 sites along the main stream of the blackwater river was carried out to develop a water quality index (WQI) for this type of Amazonian river, which hasn’t been done before.
- In August, the research group will present this new WQI to the Amazonas state water resources council; if approved, the index will be used as the model for monitoring blackwater rivers in the state.
- The project on the Negro is the first of the program, which aims to develop a WQI for each of the largest rivers in Amazonas state, such as the Madeira, Solimões and Purus, and establish continuous monitoring during the wet and dry seasons.
As the world burns, can we learn to live with wildfire health risks?
- Climate change is driving or contributing to increased risk of extreme wildfires in many parts of the world, and experts say urgent action on climate change is needed.
- Finding ways to better manage land use can help reduce the likelihood and severity of wildfires: In landscapes where fire is natural, experts say we should bring back historic fire regimes through cultural burning and prescribed burns.
- Experts say more needs to be done to protect vulnerable populations from wildfire smoke, such as those with preexisting medical conditions, pregnant women, children and seniors, who may be impacted even thousands of miles from a fire’s source.
- Smoke prediction apps, early-warning systems and air filtration systems can help people reduce smoke exposure.
The health impacts of escalating megafires are everyone’s problem
- Increases in extreme wildfires in many parts of the world are fueling concerns over the impacts of smoke on human health, with global warming, forest management and land-use change the primary drivers of increasing wildfires.
- Similar to other types of air pollution, wildfire smoke is associated with a wide range of short-term health impacts, especially for vulnerable groups such as the elderly and people with preexisting medical conditions.
- Wildfire smoke is increasingly adding to the cumulative air pollution burden experienced by modern industrial societies — even in remote or rural areas.
- Emerging evidence also suggests wildfire smoke may have long-term health impacts and contribute to increased risk of chronic conditions.
Impunity and pollution abound in DRC mining along the road to the energy transition
- In the DRC’s copper belt, pollution from the mining of cobalt and copper, critical minerals for the energy transition, is on the rise and polluters are ignoring their legal obligations to clean it up.
- Cases of pollution have caused deaths, health problems in babies, the destruction of crops, contaminated water and the relocation of homes or an entire village, residents and community organizations say.
- Mining is the economic lifeblood of the region and the state-owned mining company, Gécamines, is a shareholder in several other companies — some accused of these same rights abuses.
- Mongabay visited several villages in Lualaba province affected by pollution and human rights violations to assess the state of the unresolved damage — and whether companies are meeting their legal obligations.
Warming climate threatens to worsen air quality in already polluted Kathmandu
- In the period between winter and spring each year, Kathmandu faces severe air pollution that affects thousands of residents with health problems like burning eyes, respiratory discomfort, and even death.
- Local sources like vehicle emissions and construction dust, compounded by Kathmandu’s geography, are the main drivers of the pollution, and rising global temperatures threaten to worsen the situation.
- Changes in weather patterns, including reduced rainfall and prolonged dry periods are among the changes that could make air pollution an even more severe problem than it already is.
- Wildfires, both natural and human-induced, contribute significantly to air pollution in Kathmandu, especially during the transition period between weather systems, which could become longer due to rising temperatures.
Research links deforestation in Cambodia to stunting in kids, anemia in women
- An analysis of public health data in Cambodia has found increased rates of malnutrition among children born in areas where deforestation had recently occurred.
- It also found that pregnant women in these areas were more likely to suffer from anemia, a condition that often correlates with incidences of malaria.
- Cambodia has lost nearly 30% of its forest cover this century, while more than 30% of its children under 5 have stunted growth due to malnutrition.
- The study illustrates how deforestation and the ecological disruptions it causes can compound previously existing rural health issues.
Beneath the surface, a toxic tide threatens Bangladesh’s water lifeline
- Despite widespread water access, millions in Bangladesh lack safe drinking water due to contamination by arsenic, salinity and heavy metals as unveiled by the nation’s first comprehensive report on groundwater quality assessment.
- Depletion of groundwater, driven by irrigation and exacerbated by climate change, intensifies contamination, particularly affecting coastal areas with saltwater intrusion and surpassing safe limits in certain regions.
- Freshwater pockets and deep aquifers provide temporary relief, but experts emphasize that long-term strategies are imperative to address the problem in coastal districts.
- The Bangladeshi government’s commitment to water issues is evident, but urgent global cooperation, improved infrastructure and data-driven solutions are essential for ensuring safe water access nationwide.
Biomass-burning coal plants leave the air even dirtier, Java communities say
- PLTU 1 Indramayu, a 13-year-old coal power complex, has begun adding biomass to the coal it burns on the north coast of West Java province.
- Indonesia’s state electricity firm said its 43 coal units nationwide consumed 1 million metric tons of biomass across in 2023, a 71% increase over 2022, as it seeks ways to trim emissions.
- In Indramayu, local people fear coal plants are endangering public health.
Sumatra firefighters on alert as burning heralds start of Riau dry season
- On the northeast coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island, the first of two annual dry seasons led to a spike in wildfires in some peatland areas in February.
- In the week ending March 2, Indonesian peatland NGO Pantau Gambut said 34 hotspots, possibly fires, were identified by satellite on peatlands in Riau province.
- Emergency services in the province have been concentrated to the east of the port city of Dumai, where a fire started in the concession of a palm oil company, according to local authorities.
Scientists and doctors raise global alarm over hormone-disrupting chemicals
- Endocrine-disrupting chemicals, which harm the human body’s regulation of hormones, have become ubiquitous in consumer products, food, water, and soil, says a new report, leading to serious global health impacts.
- There are some 350,000 synthetic chemicals and polymers used worldwide, and thousands may be endocrine disruptors. Most were not studied for their human health effects before being marketed. Known and suspected endocrine disruptors are found in pesticides, plastic additives, cosmetics, and waterproofing finishes.
- The new report examines four sources of endocrine-disrupting chemicals: plastics, pesticides, consumer products, and PFAS. Rising rates of cancer, infertility, and obesity are suspected to be at least partially attributable to the presence of endocrine disruptors in the human body.
- The Endocrine Society and International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN), which co-authored the new report, are calling for legally binding global treaties to restrict and ban endocrine disruptor production and use.
Agroecological solutions better than pesticides in fighting fall armyworm, experts say
- Fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda) is an invasive agricultural pest, which first hit West Africa in 2016 and quickly spread across the continent.
- Experts have now found that the pest’s impact on maize yields is no longer as severe as initially feared.
- An integrated pest management approach, prioritizing nontoxic control measures, is the best way to tackle the infestation, improve yields and protect human health, according to experts.
Agrochemicals take a big toll on Global South, new Atlas of Pesticides shows
- Recently launched, the Atlas of Pesticides compiles work by Brazilian and foreign scientists on the impacts of pesticides on soil, water and society.
- Brazil tops the list of countries that import and consume the most agrochemicals in the world: There are more than 3,000 registered agrochemicals, 49% of which are considered highly dangerous to health.
- Although the European Union has approved measures to control the use of pesticides, the atlas reveals that toxic residues have been found in the food consumed there — a reflection of the contamination present in the commodities exported by countries like Brazil.
Herbicide used in Bangladesh tea production threatens biodiversity & health
- Tea is Bangladesh’s second-largest cash crop after jute, producing more than 60,000 tons (60 million crore kilograms) annually.
- To rid tea gardens of weeds, producers are using the harmful chemical glyphosate, mainly under the brand name Roundup, as an herbicide; the chemical is banned in 33 countries due to its negative impacts on biodiversity.
- Despite concern among agriculturists and environmentalists, the government has yet to take any initiative to control the use of harmful chemicals.
Climate change, extreme weather & conflict exacerbate global food crisis
- Global food insecurity has risen substantially since pre-pandemic times, exacerbated by extreme weather, climate change, war and conflict.
- What the U.N. World Food Program calls “a hunger crisis of unprecedented proportions” plays out differently around the world.
- In this story, three of Mongabay’s Y. Eva Tan Conservation Reporting Fellows detail the local situation in their region – from rising inflation and flooding in Nigeria to diminished local food production in Suriname and the environmental and socioeconomic effects of commercial food production in Brazil.
- “If we do not redouble and better target our efforts, our goal of ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030 will remain out of reach,” write the authors of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 2023 report on global food security and nutrition.
As climate disasters claim their children, Bangladeshi mothers seek safety in bigger families
- Climate change is exacerbating child mortality in flood-prone areas of Bangladesh, prompting mothers to have larger families as a response to the fear of losing children to disasters.
- Studies indicate an 8% surge in infant mortality risk in flood-prone regions, resulting in more than 150,000 lives lost between 1988 and 2017.
- While Bangladesh has seen improvements in disaster management, reduced cyclone deaths, and progress in health for mothers and children, climate change poses new threats, especially to vulnerable coastal communities lacking adequate protection.
- A National Adaptation Plan offers solutions such as water conservation and livelihood opportunities, but challenges like funding, coordination and transparency need attention for effective implementation, experts say.
Cornell receives $35m gift for research at nexus of wildlife and health
- Our newfound global awareness that human health, animal health and the health of the planet are inextricably linked has underscored the importance of research at the interface of wildlife and health.
- Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine has announced a donation of $35 million to support its work in this burgeoning field of research.
- The Cornell K. Lisa Yang Center for Wildlife Health aims to use the funds to further its research on how disease interactions affect wildlife, domestic animal and human health, and translate its findings into policy and action to protect wildlife and wild places.
‘Healthy humans without a healthy planet is a logical fallacy’: Interview with Dr. Sakib Burza
- Brought up watching nature’s grandeur in Indian Kashmir, Dr. Sakib Burza’s early inspiration in medicine began at home before he went on to work with Indigenous and local communities in tropical forest regions.
- Having worked in communities responding to the impacts of droughts and climate shocks, he says improved planetary health is crucial for better human health, and that health problems are often the symptoms of climate change or environmental problems.
- At Health In Harmony, he leads medical projects with rainforest communities through the concept of radical listening and supporting their medical needs and livelihoods.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Dr. Burza lays out his argument for how and why the health of people and the planet are connected, and actions that can improve the state of both.
Bangladeshi farmers eye moringa as a climate and economic solution
- Farmers in Bangladesh are increasingly turning to the fast-growing, drought-resistant moringa (Moringa oleifera) tree, which is indigenous to South Asian nations such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
- Researchers say moringa is beneficial for human health, as both the leaves and the fruits are rich in nutrients and minerals.
- Researchers also suggest that moringa cultivation could be a part of smart agriculture as climatic patterns change, as the plant can tolerate extreme heat and cold.
- A Bangladeshi entrepreneur has been working to create a social movement and entrepreneurship in moringa cultivation and marketing since 2017; so far, he has engaged some 5,000 farmers in 20 districts of Bangladesh.
Civil-backed proposal seeks to address root causes of Thailand’s choking haze
- Policymakers in Thailand have begun proceedings on a new Clean Air Act to address seasonal air pollution that blankets parts of the country every dry season, presenting what experts describe as severe health risks for citizens.
- Agricultural burning and industrial emissions, both locally and in neighboring countries, are the main sources of air pollution levels that annually exceed WHO safe limits, often making Thailand among the most polluted places in the world.
- Several draft versions of clean air legislation have been presented for parliamentary approval, including a citizen-backed proposal that focuses on empowering local action and addressing the root causes of the choking haze.
Amazonia in flames: Unlearned lessons from the 2023 Manaus smoke crisis (commentary)
- In 2023 the city of Manaus, in central Amazonia, found itself covered in dense smoke from burning rainforest, with levels of toxic PM 2.5 particulates even higher than those experienced that year during the pollution crisis in New Delhi, India.
- The governor of Brazil’s state of Amazonas, where Manaus is located, blamed the neighboring state of Pará for the smoke, a politically convenient theory we show to be false.
- The fires responsible for the smoke were south of Manaus in an area of Amazonas impacted by the notorious BR-319 highway, where a proposed “reconstruction” project would have disastrous environmental consequences by opening vast areas of rainforest to the entry of deforesters.The BR-319 highway project is a top priority for politicians in Amazonas, who take pains not to admit to the project’s impacts. The project’s environmental license is not yet approved, and the Manaus smoke crisis should serve as a warning as to how serious those impacts would be.
- This text is a commentary and does not necessarily reflect the views of Mongabay.
As the world swims in plastic, some offer an answer: Ban the toxic two
- Anti-plastic campaigners have achieved limited initial success in passing bans based on the toxic health effects of some plastic types, especially those that contain known carcinogens and hormone-disrupting chemicals.
- Some activists say that two of the most toxic types of plastic, polystyrene and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) should be completely banned. But so far, bans of polystyrene in Zimbabwe, Scotland and elsewhere have focused only on certain products, such as takeout containers.
- PVC is used in medical devices and children’s products, despite its well-known toxicity. PVC and polystyrene are both used in consumer construction, where they can leach chemicals into water or home air, or release particles into the wider environment.
- The U.S. EPA is reviewing vinyl chloride, PVC’s main ingredient and a known carcinogen, but the outcome won’t be known for several years and may only affect U.S. production, not imported products made of PVC. More than 60 nations want a ban on “problematic plastics” by the global plastics treaty now being negotiated.
Long-term wildlife impacts at Chornobyl, Fukushima may yield ‘a new ecology’
- The world’s worst nuclear power plant accidents to date, at Chornobyl, Ukraine, in 1986, and Fukushima, Japan in 2011, and the human exclusion zones created around them have given scientists a unique opportunity to study the effects on wildlife of radiation and of reduced pressure from people.
- Chornobyl disaster findings regarding the impacts on exclusion zone organisms vary: Some point to a resurgence of the studied wildlife in the absence of humans, while others indicate radiation negatively impacting certain animal populations.
- Fukushima radiation impacts are statistically harder to detect. But scientists have made similar observation to Chornobyl: Some, but not all, species appear to thrive from reduced human pressure.
- Radioactive contamination moves in ecosystem-specific ways, depending on factors such as water flow. A combination of radioactive contamination and reduced human activity in nuclear exclusion zones may be giving rise to “a new ecology,” with nature overall neither suffering nor thriving, simply different in the impacted areas.
Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran & petrochemical industry stall plastics treaty: Critics
- In March 2022, the world’s nations met to launch negotiations for a global plastic treaty with the goal of achieving final treaty language by 2025. That effort came as the planet drowns in a tidal wave of plastic waste, polluting oceans, air and land.
- That treaty goal and deadline may have been put at risk this month as the United Nations Environment Programme’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution (INC) met in Nairobi, Kenya for its third session.
- There, three of the world’s biggest petrostates — Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran — began obstructing the process in an attempt to stall the negotiations, according to environmental NGOs that attended the meeting. More than 140 lobbyists at the November conference represented the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries.
- While a coalition of more than 60 high-ambition nations is seeking a binding international treaty that regulates cradle-to-grave plastics production, the resisters argued for treaty language that would focus on recycling rather than production, would not regulate plastic toxins and would allow nations to set individual goals for plastics regulation.
Study links pesticides to child cancer deaths in Brazilian Amazon & Cerrado
- According to new research, for every 5 tons of soy per hectare produced in the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado, an equivalent of one out of 10,000 children under 10 succumbed to acute lymphoblastic leukemia five years later.
- 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.
- Experts say that the research is just the tip of the iceberg, and many other diseases and deaths may be associated with chemicals used in crops; further studies are needed.
Poisoned for decades by a Peruvian mine, communities say they feel forgotten
- Communities in Cerro de Pasco, Peru, have been living for decades with contamination from mining activities, which has had serious health consequences, ranging from chronic to fatal diseases.
- Repeated environmental samplings have shown that heavy metal levels surpass by hundreds of times national and World Health Organization safe limits; the most recent research by the NGO Source International reveals persistently high levels of contamination in Cerro de Pasco’s waters and soils.
- IQ levels in children living in Cerro de Pasco have been significantly impacted by exposure to heavy metals.
- Both the Peruvian government and Volcan, the mining company operating in Cerro de Pasco, have done little to nothing to remediate contamination and respond to the communities’ pleas for help.
Microplastics pose risk to ocean plankton, climate, other key Earth systems
- Trillions of microplastic particles in the ocean threaten marine life, from huge filter-feeders to tiny plankton. Although not lethal in the short term, the long-term impacts of microplastics on plankton and marine microbes could disrupt key Earth systems such as ocean carbon storage and nitrogen cycling.
- Oceans represent Earth’s largest natural carbon store and are crucial to mitigate atmospheric CO2 increase. Carbon taken up by plankton and stored in the deep ocean — known as the biological carbon pump — is a major process in ocean carbon storage. Microplastics may “clog” this pump and slow ocean carbon uptake.
- Microplastics in marine sediments alter microbial communities and disrupt nitrogen cycling, potentially magnifying human-caused problems like toxic algal blooms. Changes in plankton communities at the ocean surface could exacerbate deoxygenation driven by climate change, starving marine organisms of oxygen.
- Small plastic particles are impossible to remove from the oceans with current technology, so stopping pollution is a priority. Plastic production continues to soar year-on-year, but a U.N. treaty to address plastic pollution could offer a glimmer of hope that the international community is ready to take action.
Indonesian children locked out of school as El Niño haze chokes parts of Sumatra & Kalimantan
- Poor air quality over several Indonesian cities and outlying rural areas has forced local authorities to cut class times or close schools altogether.
- Air pollution on Oct. 5 in one area of Palangkaraya far exceeded the level at which air quality is classified dangerous to human health.
- The government of Jambi province has closed schools until Oct. 7, after which it will review whether to reopen for in-person teaching.
Court order fails to stop poison fishing in Bangladesh Sundarbans
- According to the Bangladesh Forest Department, the Sundarbans mangrove forest in Bangladesh shelters about 210 species of white fish, 24 species of shrimp, 14 species of crabs, 43 species of mollusks and one species of lobster.
- About 1.7 million locals living adjacent to the mangrove forest directly or indirectly depend on forest resources, including fish and crabs, for their livelihood due to the region’s growing unemployment rate.
- Among them, some fishers have been using poison to catch fish, even during the banned period, which eventually damages forest ecology and the health of those who consume the fish caught with poison.
- Considering these damages to the world’s single largest mangrove forest as well as to human health, the Bangladesh High Court issued a verdict responding to a writ petition to stop the heinous practice in September 2021, though the practice is still ongoing.
Energy company evades oil clean up as spills continue to contaminate Colombian town
- Oil activity in the town of Puerto Boyacá in Colombia is responsible for 109 contaminated sites, 37 of which have been caused by the company Mansarovar Energy, according to data from Colombia’s National Authority for Environmental Licencing (ANLA).
- Mongabay Latam and Rutas del Conflicto carried out a visit to the region to see the damage firsthand and hear stories of local inhabitants.
- Oil spills have polluted an important wetland, led to a 90% loss in fish and contaminated farmland — sparking a legal backlash by fishers and farmers who say their livelihoods have been gravely impacted.
- Although lawsuits over the damage caused to the local ecosystem and the region’s bodies of water have been filed by local inhabitants, fishers, farmers and even the municipal authorities of Puerto Boyacá, no work has yet been carried out to restore the contaminated sites by the company.
Zika, dengue transmission expected to rise with climate change
- 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.
- Deforestation also favors the spread of these illnesses because biodiversity-rich forests with more predators tend to inhibit mosquito populations.
- Brazil set a historic record in 2022, when more than 1,000 deaths resulting from the dengue virus were reported.
Rio de Janeiro’s defender of mangroves
- Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro has suffered for decades from inefficient sewage treatment, oil spills and mangrove deforestation.
- For more than 30 years, biologist Mario Moscatelli has been fighting to reverse this process and revitalize the landscape.
- For denouncing corruption, environmental crimes and government inaction, he faced intimidation and even death threats.
Nepal’s climate change adaptation strategy needs One Health approach (commentary)
- It is expected that climate change will adversely affect Nepalese biodiversity, human well-being, and economy, from a retreat of glaciers, agricultural losses, and impacts on tourism.
- The spread of infectious diseases can also be fueled by rising temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns.
- “Given the simultaneous exposure of animal and human populations to climate change impacts such as floods and landslides, proactively preparing for and combating ensuing issues like epidemics are best tackled using an integrated One Health approach,” a new op-ed argues.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.
The endless struggle to clean up Rio de Janeiro’s highly polluted Guanabara Bay
- 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 fishers now survive by picking up the garbage that floats in the bay.
- Faced with failed promises of de-pollution by the government, civil society organized itself, creating areas of environmental protection and pressuring the companies responsible for basic sanitation in the state, which is still deficient today.
- On the shores of the Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon, a biologist started replanting the mangroves; life returned and the site has become a model of what can be done to save the Guanabara Bay.
Muslim women’s group to reopen oxygen homes if Indonesia wildfires intensify
- In 2019, volunteers with the environmental wing of Indonesia’s largest Islamic women’s organization, ‘Aisyiyiah, operated “Rumah Oksigen,” homes equipped with air purifiers and first aid.
- This year as El Niño strengthens, ‘Aisyiyah will advise members to reopen the facilities for the young, old and those most susceptible to air pollution generated by wildfires.
- The volunteers will also work to raise awareness in the community on how families can best protect themselves.
Bangladesh ramps up freshwater fish conservation in bid for food security
- Bangladesh is reviving 39 native freshwater fish species through hatchery breeding, in an effort to secure stocks of commercially important fish.
- A quarter of the freshwater fish found in Bangladesh are threatened with extinction, according to a 2015 assessment, largely as a result of habitat loss, overfishing and pollution.
- In response to the decline, the Bangladesh government is breeding several species in captivity and distributing the fry for free to fish farmers.
- Bangladesh produces 4.6 million metric tons of fish a year, and is the No. 3 producer of freshwater fish globally.
Not so fast, experts warn as Dhaka tries to clear the air with car tax and bus ban
- With one motor vehicle for every one of its more than 20 million inhabitants, Dhaka has grown into one of the most polluted and congested cities in the world.
- Policymakers want to change this with a pair of proposals: Slapping a carbon tax on multiple car ownership, and removing aging buses and trucks from the city’s roads.
- However, experts and studies point out that the biggest contributor to the city’s dire air quality isn’t vehicle emissions, but the burning of straw for brick kilns.
- They also warn that abruptly slashing the city’s bus fleet would severely impact residents, for whom the bus network is the main mode of transportation.
Landfill in Colombia continues to pollute protected wetlands despite court-ordered clean-up
- A landfill near Barrancabermeja, in Santander, Colombia, has been leaking heavy metals and other pollutants into the water since 2015, according to a report from Global Witness.
- The landfill sits in the middle of the San Silvestre wetlands, a 69,959-hectare (172,872-acre) protected area that serves as part of a regional jaguar corridor.
- French utilities company Veolia took over the site in 2019 but has continued to store contaminated chemicals irresponsibly and operate heavy machinery in a buffer zone meant to prevent leakage into water sources, according to a Global Witness report.
UN Paris meeting presses ahead with binding plastics treaty — U.S. resists
- At a May-June meeting in Paris, the United Nations Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) agreed to create, and submit by November, a first draft of an international plan to end plastic pollution by 2040.
- The United States declined to join the 58-nation “High Ambition Coalition” to create a legally-binding cradle-to-grave plan to address plastic production and use. The U.S. continues to hold out for a volunteer agreement that would focus on recycling.
- Delaying tactics by Saudi Arabia and other oil and plastics producing nations used up much time at this second international plastics treaty meeting, but these efforts were beaten back at least temporarily. The next international plastics treaty meeting will be in Kenya this November.
- Some activists pointed to the imbalanced representation at the Paris meeting, where about 190 industry lobbyists were allowed to attend, while communities, waste pickers, Indigenous peoples, youth and other members of civil society most impacted by plastic pollution had very limited opportunities to be heard.
Citizens demand sustainable solution to haze crisis in northern Thailand
- Citizens in northern Thailand have mounted a legal challenge against the prime minister and several government departments for inaction to tackle air pollution that experts say reduces people’s life expectancy and violates basic human rights.
- Air pollution levels in the northern city of Chiang Mai exceeded WHO guideline standards more than twentyfold earlier this year, ranking it among the most polluted places in the world.
- The sources of pollution are mainly from agricultural burning, both locally and in neighboring countries, a practice that coincides each year with the dry season. Air quality is also affected by forest fires that have taken a toll on the region’s landscapes and wildlife in recent years.
- Observers say the legal challenge is an example of civil society’s growing awareness of the right to use litigation avenues to hold companies and government departments accountable to their environmental commitments.
As Shell, Eni quit Niger Delta, state-backed report describes legacy of carnage
- A new report commissioned by the governor of Bayelsa state in Nigeria said that over the course of 50 years, oil companies spilled 10-15 times as much oil as the Exxon Valdez disaster in the small riverine state.
- Researchers also took blood and tissue samples from 1,600 people across Bayelsa and found that in some areas the concentration of lead and cadmium was as much as six times higher than the safe limit.
- Ninety percent of the oil spills in Bayelsa took place at facilities owned by just five oil companies: Shell, Eni, Chevron, Total and ExxonMobil.
- The report is the first to be produced with local government backing in Nigeria, and called for oil companies to create a $12 billion fund for cleanup and health services in Bayelsa.
For weary Niger Delta residents, shocking oil pollution report offers little hope
- A new report commissioned by the Bayelsa state government in Nigeria holds international oil companies like Shell, TotalEnergies, and ExxonMobil responsible for spilling at least 110,000 barrels of oil there over the past 50 years.
- Researchers found alarming levels of toxic chemicals in soil, water, and in the air. Blood and tissue samples taken from residents found elevated levels of heavy metals including lead, nickel and cadmium.
- The report calls for extensive cleanup and recovery efforts, as well as sweeping changes to oil industry regulations and the setup of a $12 billion fund for remediation, paid for by the oil companies.
- Activists and residents say they’re largely skeptical of any meaningful changes arising from the report, including the prospect of compelling oil majors to pay into a remediation fund.
Crud-to-crude: The global potential of biofuels made from human waste
- Creating liquid biofuels from human waste shows promise as a way to meet one of alternative energy’s greatest challenges: reducing the transportation sector’s heavy carbon footprint. The good news is there is a steady supply stream where waste is treated.
- Humanity produces millions of tons of sewage sludge annually via wastewater treatment. Existing disposal methods include landfilling, application on agricultural land, and incineration; each with social and environmental consequences.
- Harnessing the carbon-rich potential of sludge as a transportation fuel for planes, ships and trucks is part of a drive toward zero waste and creating a circular economy, say experts. A host of projects are underway to prove the effectiveness of various methods of turning all this crud into biocrude.
- Some techniques show promise in lab and pilot tests, but large-scale industrial plants have yet to be built. Using pollutant-laden sewage sludge as a biofuel comes with its own environmental concerns, but lacking a silver-bullet solution to the human waste problem, it could be part of a suite of best alternatives.
Ethiopia used chemicals to kill locusts. Billions of honeybees disappeared
- Kenya and Ethiopia sprayed millions of hectares of cropland and pastures with chemical pesticides in response to massive locust swarms that emerged between 2019 and 2021.
- In Ethiopia, around 76 billion honeybees died or abandoned their hives during this period, a new study estimates, arguing that chemical spraying was most likely to blame.
- The researchers said Somalia’s use of a biopesticide, on the other hand, was a better approach and that chemical pesticides banned in the EU and the U.S. because of harmful effects on the environment and human health cannot continue to be used in other parts of the world.
- Advocates for integrated pest management say that countries should track and manage locust upsurges before they reach threatening proportions.
Ecuador banned gas flaring over a year ago. Why is it still happening?
- In September 2021, a provincial court gave oil companies 18 months to eliminate gas flaring in the Amazon because of its role in spiking cancer rates among local residents.
- That deadline expired in March, but today oil companies continue to use gas flares more than ever. Before the court ruling, there were an estimated 447 gas flares in the country. Today, there are 475.
- Activists say they still have some legal avenues for pressuring the government to enforce the ban, including impeaching ministers that fail to comply with the court’s order.
Indigenous Amazon forests absorb noxious fumes and prevent diseases from wildfires, study suggests
- A new decade-long study estimates forests in Indigenous lands in the Brazilian Amazon can potentially prevent about 15 million cases of respiratory and cardiovascular infections each year by absorbing thousands of tons of dangerous pollutants emitted by forest fires.
- Forest fires are mainly caused by deforestation to clear the land, releasing noxious fumes which contain carbonaceous aerosol, the main component of fine particulate matter which enters the bloodstream and can cause heart disease and lung cancer.
- Health impacts from forest fires are not only restricted to nearby populations. Intense smoke can travel hundreds of kilometers away from the point of origin.
- The researchers say the study’s findings demonstrate the need for Brazil’s government to resume Indigenous territories’ demarcations and public policies.
Is it safe to eat? Bangladesh fish exposed to hormones, antibiotics and toxic waste
- Bangladesh has recently achieved remarkable success in freshwater fish production, with more than 1.25 million metric tons of freshwater fish produced in 2020.
- The use of antibiotics in fish culture and hormones in artificial fish breeding bring into question the safety of Bangladesh’s food supply, as exposure to high levels of these substances can harm human and environmental health.
- Research shows that 88% of fish farmers do not have proper knowledge of antibiotics use, and 81% are unaware of effective chemical dosages in fish farming.
- In addition, toxic industrial wastes containing heavy metals released into the aquatic environment may enter the food chain through biomagnification and may cause various health problems in humans.
Sagarmatha microbes may survive harsh conditions for decades
- Researchers have found microbes on Mount Everest that can survive harsh winds and conditions at some of the world’s highest elevations.
- The research comes at a time when scientists say melting glaciers and permafrost could reawaken viruses and bacteria as the climate warms.
- However, the microbes found on Mount Everest, which were possibly transported by humans through their coughing and sneezing, are unlikely to grow and reproduce, said University of Colorado Boulder scientist Steve Schmidt, a co-author of a new study on the team’s findings.
Brazil tackles illegal miners, but finds their mercury legacy harder to erase
- As the details of the humanitarian crisis in the Yanomami Indigenous Territory unfold amid action to remove illegal miners, mercury left by the rampant gold mining in the area will remain a lingering toxic legacy.
- A range of solutions is needed to support communities at risk, monitor the situation, assist in the remediation of forests, and prevent continued pollution, experts say.
- New technologies that can filter mercury are under development and testing, but are still far from being viable solutions at the scale that the problem inside the Amazon calls for.
Lula government scrambles to overcome Yanomami crisis, but hurdles remain
- Within weeks of taking office, the new Brazilian government began an emergency operation to provide health care assistance to Indigenous people in the Yanomami territory and remove the 20,000 illegal gold miners there who have sparked a humanitarian and environmental crisis.
- So far, over 6,200 Yanomami people have been treated and more than 100 health care personnel have been recruited. However, a lack of health care workers, deteriorating infrastructure and minimal support from the military is preventing access to communities most in need.
- As miners have begun to flee the area and environmental authorities seize and destroy their equipment, some Indigenous leaders say important progress is underway but more remains to be done.
Pollution and climate change set stage for rise in antimicrobial resistance
- A new report from the United Nations Environment Programme illustrates the role that pollution, climate change and biodiversity loss can play in the development of antimicrobial resistance.
- The compounds used to treat bacterial, viral, parasitic and fungal infections have saved countless lives, but their overuse and their presence in the environment from human waste, agriculture and effluent from the pharmaceutical industry and places like hospitals has given rise to resistance to these chemicals in potentially harmful microbes.
- If this resistance continues to increase, experts warn that an additional 10 million people may lose their lives by 2050 — about the same number who died of cancer in 2020.
- The report’s authors recommend stronger safeguards around industrial runoff, better sanitation and more judicious use of antimicrobials to address this potential crisis.
Illegal mines and “floating towns” on the Puré River leave uncontacted Indigenous peoples at risk
- The Yurí-Passé are at risk of coming into contact with illegal miners and drug traffickers, which violates their right and deliberate decision to live in isolation from the Western world.
- According to one study, mercury levels in the blood of communities living along the Caquetá river and its tributaries, such as the Puré River, are much higher than the average.
- Although the Puré River area is located in a protected area, mining activity has increased following a number of threats made against park rangers and an arson attack on a cabin belonging to Colombia’s Natural National Parks authority (PNN) by FARC dissidents. Despite military operations, mining activities continue, with dozens of dredgers thought to be operating on the river.
Pollinator declines linked to half million early human deaths annually: Study
- A new modeling study finds that half a million people are currently dying prematurely every year due to global insect pollinator decline because of lack of availability and/or high price of healthy foods such as nuts, legumes, fruits and vegetables.
- Robust epidemiological research has linked higher fruit, vegetable and nut intake to lowered mortality from many major chronic diseases like heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes.
- Researchers assessed the problem nationally: Middle-income countries, including Russia, China and India, are among the hardest hit, as are Indonesia, Vietnam and Myanmar, though surprisingly, parts of Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa were among the least affected. Wealthy nations were more immune from pollinator decline.
- Experts say multiple solutions are readily available: Wild pollinators can be significantly increased by protecting existing, and creating new, pollinator habitat at the farm and national level, by reducing and eliminating the use of harmful pesticides like neonicotinoids, and by effectively combating climate change.
Yanomami health disaster prompts outrage as Lula vows to tackle crisis
- An average of three Indigenous Yanomami infants have died every week over the past four years in Brazil from diseases that are considered treatable, an investigation shows alongside shocking pictures.
- Experts say that decades-long invasions by illegal miners in the Yanomami Indigenous Territory and the dismantling of health care systems under the administration of Jair Bolsonaro have caused a spiral of malnutrition and disease within the Yanomami population.
- Official complaints from Indigenous rights advocates and allies from at least 2018 have been systematically ignored, leading to a worsening of the problems.
- Brazil’s new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has called the crisis a genocide and vowed to tackle the problem with a series of immediate and long-term action plans.
Poisoned by pesticides: Health crisis deepens in Brazil’s Indigenous communities
- A recent report reveals communities in Brazil’s Mato Grosso region are contaminated by the agriculture industry’s increasing use of pesticides. About 88% of the plants collected, including medicinal herbs and fruits, on Indigenous lands have pesticide residue.
- Samples discovered high levels of pesticides in ecosystems and waters far from crop fields, including carbofuran — a highly toxic substance which is banned in Brazil, Europe and the U.S.
- Experts blame the lack of control by government officials for widespread environmental damage and an escalating health crisis among Indigenous populations, as communities report growing numbers of respiratory problems, acute poisonings and cancers.
- A spokesperson for the biggest agrochemical companies operating in Brazil disputes the findings of the report and numbers of people far from crop regions affected by pesticide usage.
Shadows of oil in Peru: Shipibo people denounce damage, contamination left by company
- Community members guided a team of journalists to the creeks and land of Canaán de Cachiyacu and Nuevo Sucre, in the district of Contamana in Peru’s Loreto region, to demonstrate how they have been affected by the various spills attributed to the Maple Gas oil company for over 25 years.
- Shipibo community members say that due to contaminated water, they still suffer from illnesses and their farms no longer produce crops. The contract established that the company must comply with environmental protection laws, but Perupetro confirmed that it simply abandoned its operations.
- Mongabay Latam traveled to two Indigenous communities on the banks of the Ucayali River and listened to the concerns of their residents regarding the serious environmental impact that they claim was caused by the operations in Block 31-B and Block 31-E.
Tobacco: Vaping and smoking drive environmental harm from farm to fingertip
- Electronic cigarettes heavily marketed via single-use flavored products are increasingly popular. These products require disposal of large amounts of hazardous waste, including huge quantities of lithium, a resource in demand for electric car batteries and rechargeable electronics for laptops and mobile phones.
- Even as vaping use grows, an estimated 6 trillion “traditional” cigarettes are still smoked annually; 4.5 trillion are thought to be discarded into the environment each year. Researchers and activists emphasize that the tobacco industry is responsible for considerable harm to nature and human health.
- Traveling along the supply chain, tobacco production and consumption has consequences for forests, oceans, the climate, and for farmers and their families who produce the crop — all to an extent not yet fully known or understood.
- Efforts are underway to rein in some of these negative impacts against the backdrop of an industry accused of consistently greenwashing to conceal an environmental footprint that is harming both nature and public health.
Ebola-like African primate viruses ‘poised for spillover’ to humans, study finds
- A family of viruses that causes Ebola-like symptoms in African primate populations is “poised for spillover” to humans, a new study shows.
- Researchers say these arteriviruses, already a threat to macaques, use a specific receptor to enter and invade the body; humans have a similar form of the receptor, called CD163.
- Although there is no evidence of these viruses infecting humans to this point, researchers say they found similarities to the viruses that gave rise to HIV.
- Conservationists say the risks of animal-human disease transmission increase as human populations continue to encroach on wild animal spaces.
Better livestock health reduces carbon emissions (commentary)
- One direct, humane, and cost-effective way to bring down carbon emissions associated with livestock that few people are talking about is improving animal health.
- Lethal or not, diseases are directly responsible for driving up emissions from animal agriculture because farmers wind up raising more animals and using more resources to produce the same amount of food, fuel or fiber.
- Healthy animals can act as a potent tool in our global response to climate change – but only if policymakers act to better integrate animal health into climate strategies under the interconnected principles of ‘One Health,’ a new op-ed argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
“Sinchiurco is coated with oil”: The Kichwa people going up against Petroecuador
- In 1985, a road opened through the Kichwa community of Sinchiruco, in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon. With it came the Guanta 1 oil platform, which would lead to repeated complaints of human and environmental rights violations.
- Until 1990, Guanta 1 was operated by Texaco. Texaco and the companies that came later have been accused of oil and diesel spills, creating crude oil pools, and accidents that led to the death of a child and the loss of one girl’s sight.
- The platform was later managed by Petroamazonas and PDVSA. Now run by Petroecuador, the surrounding communities are still demanding compensation for previous spills and repairs to partially fixed pipelines that, they claim, continue to cause spills. After 37 years, the community is saying that enough is enough.
Dhaka’s ailing sewage system threatens human and environmental health
- Existing sewage treatment plants in Dhaka treat only 30% of all sewage waste.
- Emerging pollutants such as antibiotics, microplastics, detergents, toothpastes, shampoos and lotion are found in Dhaka’s urban rivers and lakes.
- Microplastics are also found in fish, snails, crabs and sediments of the Buriganga River in Dhaka.
- City authorities suggest installing small treatment plants in residential buildings.
In Bangladesh, popular eggplant comes with a side of lead. And cadmium
- New studies have highlighted potentially cancer-causing levels of chemicals such as lead and cadmium in food crops grown across Bangladesh, and in particular in eggplants, one of the most widely consumed vegetables in the country.
- Researchers attribute the contamination to excessive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides by farmers, as well as industrial pollution.
- Also affected are fish caught in the Buriganga River in the capital, Dhaka, and cow’s milk sold in the city.
- Regulators have acknowledged the problem, and say they’re working on efforts to reduce agrochemical use across the country and crack down on industrial pollution.
Sulawesi nickel plant coats nearby homes in toxic dust
- The Bantaeng Industrial Estate is a 3,000-hectare ore processing zone in Indonesia’s South Sulawesi province.
- President Joko Widodo has banned exports of raw mineral ores to compel companies to construct smelters to produce value-added nickel.
- But South Sulawesi communities living alongside the smelters report health impacts from pollution generated on site. Relocation plans have yet to be enacted.
Another winter of discontent as Kathmandu braces for deadly air pollution
- As winter sets in, residents of Kathmandu are bracing for worsening air pollution levels that can exceed by a hundredfold the safe limit prescribed by the WHO.
- The sources of the pollution are both local — vehicle exhaust fumes and burning of garbage — and from further afield, including firecracker residue from festivities in neighboring India.
- A recent study says these combine to give Nepal the highest death rate from chronic lung disease of any country — a problem that experts say the government has repeatedly failed to recognize.
In temperate Nepal, climate change paves way for tropical dengue fever
- Nepal is experiencing its worst outbreak of dengue fever in recorded history, which health experts attribute in part to a changing climate.
- Wetter monsoons and warmer temperatures have made for ideal breeding conditions for the mosquitoes that carry the virus.
- Poor water and waste management are also factors, allowing for water to stagnate for long periods and giving the mosquitoes a place to lay their larvae.
- Experts say it will take a combination of personal responsibility — to eradicate mosquito-breeding grounds — and government leadership — to coordinate the public health response — if dengue is to be eradicated in Nepal.
Bangladesh e-waste rules hang in limbo as electrical goods companies ask for delay
- The Bangladesh government has failed to implement electronic waste management regulations a year after introducing a new rule that was a decade in the making.
- Countries with large stakes in Bangladesh’s electrical goods market are reportedly lobbying the World Trade Organization for a one-year delay in the implementation of e-waste regulations; meanwhile, the WTO has raised several issues with the new rule, including a reduction in the standard for lead.
- As the process stalls, e-waste continues to pile up, as the Bangladesh electrical market experiences a massive boom.
- According to a 2010 report of the Environment and Social Development Organization, more than 15% of child recycling workers in Bangladesh die during and after the effects of handling e-waste each year, and more than 83% are exposed to toxic substances.
Plastic impacts a grossly underestimated ‘one-two punch’ for seabirds: Study
- That plastic pollution is harmful to marine life, including seabirds, is well known, but recent research finds that the impacts may be “grossly underestimated” and that plastics can affect multiple organs.
- A new study investigated plastic ingestion by flesh-footed shearwaters and found that — as was determined in past research — initial consumption can harm the stomach. New evidence also showed that impacts are far more expansive, and may cause ongoing health problems distributed throughout body organs.
- Some forms of tissue damage detected by the new research suggest that plastic particles may also act as chemical pollutants, though this requires further study.
- Plastic pollution is a massive growing problem for the world’s oceans and marine life. Earlier this year, researchers announced that the global planetary boundary for novel entities — including plastics — has been surpassed, threatening Earth’s operating systems and life as we know it.
Severe malaria cases in rescued orangutans raises concerns for wild populations
- Researchers in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, sampled orangutans and found a high prevalence of malaria.
- In some cases, malaria resulted in severe illness among the great apes, causing concern about the conservation implications for the animals.
- On the plus side, all of the orangutans inflicted with severe illness responded well to treatment and recovered.
- Some experts says these findings underline the need for a precautionary principle when translocating or reintroducing orangutans that test positive for malaria.
As climate risks intensify in Brazil, election rivals offer few solutions
- Extreme weather events have intensified in Brazil in recent years, claiming hundreds of lives and taking a massive toll on the environment.
- A study documents more than 50,000 natural disasters, mostly caused by severe climate events, between 2013 and 2022, causing losses of $64 billion.
- Experts attribute the toll to the government repeatedly ignoring warnings about climate-related risks and failing to invest in adaptation and prevention measures.
- As the country prepares to elect a president at the end of this month, neither candidate has offered any concrete proposals for the prevention and management of climate disaster risks.
Wild cats threatened by ‘underrecognized’ risk of spillover disease
- Researchers warn that disease spillover from livestock and domestic animals represents a serious conservation threat to wildlife, including felids in tropical areas around the world. Spillover is most likely to occur on rapidly advancing forest-agricultural frontiers or within fragmented habitats.
- Tracking the spillover and spread of diseases from humans and domestic animals to wildlife is extremely challenging, particularly among wild felid species, which tend to be secretive and solitary, making ongoing observation difficult.
- Possible cases of disease spillover have been documented in wild cats in India, Malaysian Borneo, Thailand, Brazil, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Russia and Nepal. These are likely the tip of the iceberg, say scientists, who believe much disease among wild species is going undetected, with case numbers and outbreaks unknown.
- Scientists stress the need for greater health monitoring of wildlife to reduce this “invisible threat.” But funding for health testing is often scant, and treatment difficult. One researcher sees disease transmission from domestic animals to wildlife as perhaps the most “underrecognized conservation threat today.”
Element Africa: Diamonds, oil, coltan, and more diamonds
- Offshore diamond prospecting threatens a fishing community in South Africa, while un-checked mining for the precious stones on land is silting up rivers in Zimbabwe.
- In Nigeria, serial polluter Shell is accused of not cleaning up a spill from a pipeline two months ago; the company says the spill was mostly water from flushing out the pipeline.
- Also in Nigeria, mining for coltan, the source of niobium and tantalum, important metals in electronics applications, continues to destroy farms and nature even as the government acknowledges it’s being done illegally.
- Element Africa is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin rounding up brief stories from the commodities industry in Africa.
Pluspetrol Norte: A history of unpaid sanctions and oil spills in the Peruvian Amazon
- The Kichwa community of 12 de Octubre in Loreto experienced multiple oil spills earlier this year due to activities in the region by the oil and gas producing company Pluspetrol Norte.
- The company has received 73 sanctions imposed by Peru’s Environmental Evaluation and Enforcement Agency (OEFA) between 2011 and 2021, with fines totaling over $47 million.
- Pluspetrol Norte has pending trials with the Peruvian government for attempting to liquidate the company and for not taking responsibility for their environmental liabilities.
Humans are dosing Earth’s waterways with medicines. It isn’t healthy.
- Medicines, chemical formulations that alleviate much human suffering, can also be significant pollutants, with active ingredients often excreted from the human body and entering waterways. However, the intensity of this contamination and of its impacts has not been well researched.
- A study published in June analyzed samples from 1,000 sites along waterways in more than 100 nations, looking for 61 active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). Their results suggest that concentrations of at least one API breached safe levels for aquatic life at nearly 40% of sites tested globally.
- Some pharmaceuticals are endocrine disruptors (EDCs), which mimic hormones and interfere harmfully with the endocrine system in various organisms, while other drugs are linked to antimicrobial resistance (AMR), considered one of the biggest threats to human health and well-being today.
- Despite growing awareness among scientists, there is no systematic reporting of waterway pollution by medicines, or impacts on ecological health. Currently, many human-excreted pharmaceuticals enter directly into waterways, or pass through existing wastewater treatment facilities. Fixing the problem will be very expensive.
Is having fewer kids the answer to the climate question? | Problem Solved
- The human population is expected to reach 8 billion literally any day now, and nearly 10 billion people some time this century.
- With the planet also swiftly approaching 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) of warming above pre-industrial levels, activists and scientists are urging any solution to keep temperatures from shooting higher into the danger zone.
- Research suggests that the single biggest thing anyone can do to reduce their impact on the environment, and the climate, is to choose to have one less child. But that simple solution is complicated by thorny economic, ethical, social and political issues.
- On this episode of Problem Solved, we unpack the research, and examine this sensitive and controversial question: Is choosing collectively to have fewer children really a viable solution to our climate change and/or resource overuse crises?
Chinese companies criticized for mercury pollution in Cameroon
- Civil society groups have raised the alarm over pollution of rivers in eastern and northern Cameroon by gold mining companies.
- The Centre for Environment and Development says two Chinese companies, Mencheng Mining and Zinquo Mining, are allowing significant amounts of mercury and cyanide to spill into watercourses in the East Region.
- Amalgamation, the process of using mercury to separate gold from the alluvial mud it’s found in here, is commonplace in Cameroon and elsewhere, despite the extreme toxicity of this chemical.
- CED says the run-off from gold-washing is putting the health of miners, including many young children, as well as local residents at risk.
Weak waste management leaves Dhaka communities at risk from landfill sites
- The four major waste landfills in Dhaka have left a serious environmental impact on the soil and groundwater of surrounding areas through leachate pollution, a study shows.
- It found levels of toxic metals in the surface and groundwater and in vegetable and rice crops in the vicinity of the landfill sites that were higher than prescribed safe limits.
- Experts have called on the authorities to improve waste management, including better coordination between municipal and national authorities, as well as better-engineered landfill sites that minimize the chances of leaching hazardous waste.
- Municipal authorities deny the pollution near the landfills is due to the waste leakage alone, and say they plan to expand the city’s largest landfill site, both aboveground and underground.
Drought-beset South African city taps aquifer, shirks long-term solutions: Critics
- A major coastal city located in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province is facing a total water cutoff for about 500,000 residents, almost half its population, following a prolonged drought.
- Disaster relief hydrologists have begun drilling boreholes to access groundwater so that hospitals and schools can stay open during the emergency in Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality.
- But critics say the city administration has failed to develop a long-term plan to support water harvesting from intermittent rains and construction of desalination plants.
- They also point out that overreliance on boreholes drilled near the sea could lead to saline water intrusion into the aquifer, contaminating groundwater and rendering borehole water undrinkable.
In Brazil’s Amazon, traditional midwives push for greater recognition
- Aptam was created in 2018 as the first and only association of traditional midwives in Brazil’s Amazonas state, where it works to counter negative perceptions of midwives, which come mostly from the medical profession.
- In remote areas of the Amazon, where there’s a lack of government presence, midwives work on the front lines to help unassisted women give birth in places where doctors will not go.
- Amazonas has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in Brazil, along with onerous restrictions on midwives working in hospitals, which midwives say denies women access to holistic care during childbirth.
- Aptam and its supporters are calling for greater recognition of the role of midwives in community health, as well as official support for their work.
For residents of Jakarta’s port district, coal is the neighbor no one wants
- Residents, officials and experts blame dust from a coal storage facility in Jakarta’s port district for a spate of health problems in a neighboring community.
- Children in Marunda ward have been hit particularly hard, suffering from eye and skin problems and respiratory infections, in a city already notorious for its dirty air.
- City authorities inspecting the facility run by KCN, a public-private joint venture, have found several violations and revoked the company’s environmental permit.
- While KCN has offered to provide residents with free medical checkups, it has not acknowledged a link between its operation and residents’ health problems.
For women on Bangladesh’s coast, rising seas pose a reproductive health dilemma
- In coastal areas of Bangladesh, where poor families often can’t afford menstrual pads, women and adolescent girls are compelled to use cloth rags that they wash in water that’s becoming increasingly saline.
- This has led to a spate of uterine diseases, prompting many women and girls to misuse birth control pills in an effort to stop their menstrual cycles altogether.
- Health experts say this practice, carried out without medical advice, poses both short- and long-term risks to their reproductive and mental health.
- The root of the problem is the ever-worsening intrusion of saltwater into the water table, driven by a combination of rising sea levels, seepage from shrimp farms, and falling levels of the Ganges River.
As Jakarta chokes on toxic air, Indonesian government stalls on taking action
- Jakarta’s air pollution has been worsening recently, with the Indonesian capital routinely ranked top of the list of the world’s most polluted major cities.
- Much of the pollution is generated outside the city, in the industrial estates and coal-fired power plants in neighboring provinces, but there’s been no effort by the national government to coordinate action on this transboundary pollution.
- Activists say the national government hasn’t done much at all to address the problem, instead opting to appeal against a court ruling ordering it to tackle the air pollution.
For Brazil communities along a mining railway, impacts outweigh any benefits
- In Brazil’s Maranhão the state, which has the lowest household income in Brazil, communities face the impacts of a railroad built and operated around the clock by mining company Vale.
- The Carajás Railroad runs 892 kilometers (554 miles) from the world’s largest open-pit iron ore mine to the port of Ponta da Madeira on Brazil’s Atlantic coast, contributing to Vale’s record $24 billion profit in 2021.
- Residents living near the railroad report a long history of health problems, structural damage to their houses, people hit by trains, deaths, and lack of dialogue with the company.
- With their grievances going ignored and their freedom of movement curtailed, these impoverished communities say they don’t see the benefits from the mining money.
World’s worst air pollution slashes 7 years off life expectancy in Bangladesh
- Air pollution in Bangladesh is the worst in the world, a new study shows, reducing the average Bangladeshi’s life expectancy by 6.7 years.
- Another study estimates there were 24,000 premature deaths as a result of air pollution in the country’s capital, Dhaka, from 2005 to 2018.
- Brick-burning kilns, vehicle exhausts, various industries, open waste burning, and large-scale construction work are key sources of air pollution, according to the Department of Environment.
- The draft Clean Air Act 2019 has yet to be enacted into law, which proponents say is needed to boost institutional action to tackle the air pollution problem.
Even Antarctic snow can’t escape the plastic peril, study shows
- A study presents new evidence that microplastics are present in snow in Antarctica, one of the remotest places on Earth.
- Researchers collected snow samples at 19 sites across the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica, and found 29 microplastic particles per liter of melted snow — a higher amount than what was found in marine samples in Antarctica.
- The microplastics found in samples close to research stations were three times higher than what was found at other locations, prompting researchers to conclude that much of the plastic was coming from local clothing and equipment.
At 30, Brazil’s Yanomami reserve is beset by mining, malaria and mercury
- When the Yanomami Indigenous Territory, the world’s biggest, was designated 30 years ago, the Brazilian army cleared out the illegal gold miners operating there.
- Today, miners are back in force, encouraged by the anti-Indigenous and anti-environment rhetoric of President Jair Bolsonaro, who has vowed to open up the reserves to mining.
- The illegal activity has destroyed forests and contaminated rivers with mercury and has also brought with it violence, disease and death for the 27,000 Yanomami living in the heart of the Amazon.
- As it marks the 30th anniversary of its establishment, the Yanomami reserve faces of the prospect of losing up to a third of its area to mining — a very real prospect if a key Bolsonaro bill clears Congress.
Legal and illegal cannabis: A cause for growing environmental concern
- Legalization of cannabis for medicinal and recreational use is an expanding global trend in the U.S. and globally, while the illicit market continues to feed large swaths of demand.
- Both the legal and illegal markets are linked to environmental challenges such as freshwater use, land-use change, toxic and nutrient pollution, and climate change-contributing CO2 emissions.
- Emerging legal cannabis businesses in the U.S. are subject to strict regulation, but many operate in ways that can contribute to environmental harms.
- While the scope of damage from booming legal growing operations is now being better assessed, the impacts of illicit clandestine operations remain mostly undetermined.
Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ 60 years on: Birds still fading from the skies
- Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” catalyzed the modern environmental movement and sparked a ban on DDT in the U.S. and most other nations, though DDT has since been replaced by a growing number of other harmful biocides.
- Now, 60 years later, birds may face more threats than any other animal group because they live in — or migrate through — every habitat on Earth. Birds are impacted by land-use changes, pollution (ranging from pesticides to plastics), climate change, invasive species, diseases, hunting, the wildlife trade, and more.
- The 2022 update to the “State of the World’s Birds” report notes winners and losers amid increasing human alteration of the planet, but documents a continuing downward trend.
9m deaths a year from pollution, the ‘largest existential threat’ to humans
- A new report has found that pollution is responsible for 9 million premature deaths per year, the majority of them caused by air pollution.
- While deaths associated with household pollution and water quality have decreased, deaths related to industrialization and urbanization have increased.
- It’s estimated that lead and other chemical pollutants are responsible for about 1.8 million deaths, but the authors say this is likely to be an undercount.
- The authors argue that more needs to be done to address the issue of pollution, which would also help mitigate the impacts of climate change.
Scientists uncover widespread declines of raptors in Kenya
- New research has found a steep decline in numbers for Kenya’s raptors over the past 40 years.
- Encounters with 19 of 22 species studied using road surveys fell during that period, 14 of these declining by 20-95% when compared to the 1970s.
- The study’s findings underlined the importance of protected areas for Kenya’s raptors as populations declined less severely inside parks and reserves.
Thai gold mine blamed for sickening local villagers is set to reopen
- The Chatree mining complex, owned by a subsidiary of Australia’s Kingsgate Consolidated Ltd., began operations in 2001 and was closed by Thailand’s ruling junta in 2017.
- Villagers say the environment and their health has suffered as a result of the operations; mass blood tests found that the majority of children and adults tested exhibited elevated levels of heavy metals, including arsenic, manganese and cyanide.
- The mining company denies allegations that its operations have caused health problems, and in 2017 sued the Thai government for shutting down the mine, seeking “very substantial damages.”
- In January 2022, the government gave permission for the mine to reopen.
Tropical mammals under rising chemical pollution pressure, study warns
- Pesticides, pharmaceuticals, plastics, nanoparticles, and other potentially toxic synthetic materials are being released into the environment in ever greater amounts. A recent study warns that action is needed to better monitor and understand their impacts on terrestrial mammals in the tropics.
- Mortality and mass die offs could result, but sublethal effects — such as reduced fitness or fertility — are perhaps of greater concern in the long-term, warn experts.
- In the research, scientists raise concerns over an increasing load of chemicals released into the tropical environment, with little monitoring conducted to understand the impacts on wildlife.
- Another study released this year reported that the novel entities planetary boundary has been transgressed. Novel entities include pesticides and other synthetic substances. The boundary was declared breached because scientific assessments can’t keep up with new chemicals entering the environment.
Unseen crisis: Threatened gut microbiome also offers hope for world
- Plants and animals provide a home within themselves to an invisible community of microbes known as the microbiome. But these natural microbial communities are being degraded and altered by human-caused biodiversity loss, pollution, land-use change and climate change.
- On the macro level, habitat loss and diminished environmental microbe diversity, particularly in urban environments, is altering the gut microbiomes of humans and wild animals. Studies have linked microbiome changes to higher risk of chronic and autoimmune diseases.
- Coral bleaching is an extreme example of climate stress-induced microbiome dysfunction: During heat waves, beneficial microbes go rogue and must be expelled, leaving the coral vulnerable to starvation. Microbiome resilience is key to determining corals’ ability to acclimate to changing ocean conditions.
- There are solutions to these problems: Inoculating coral with beneficial microbes can reduce bleaching, while the restoring natural green spaces, especially in socioeconomically deprived urban areas, could encourage “microbiome rewilding” and improve human and natural community health.
Indonesia’s Riau province declares state of emergency ahead of fire season
- Almost every year vast swaths of Southeast Asia are covered in toxic haze, which causes air quality to reach hazardous levels and creates major health, environmental and economic problems.
- Recorded since the early ’70s, the smoke is almost entirely a result of large forest and peatland fires in Indonesia that are often illegally started to clear land for oil palm plantations.
- The governor of Indonesia’s Riau province in Sumatra, which, along with Borneo, is a primary location of the fires, has declared an emergency alert status to increase and expedite prevention and extinguishing efforts ahead of this year’s fire season.
- A national environmental NGO says the alert status shows the government has again failed to prevent the fires, and that the existing mitigation efforts fail to tackle the root of the problem.
Chemical recycling: ‘Green’ plastics solution makes more pollution, says report
- The plastics industry claims that ‘chemical recycling’ or ‘advanced recycling’ technologies, which use heat or solvents to convert waste plastic into chemical feedstocks that can potentially be further processed into new plastics, are a green alternative to mechanical recycling.
- But according to a new report, five out of eight U.S. facilities assessed use chemical processes to produce combustible fuel, not new plastics. In addition, facilities are disposing of large amounts of hazardous waste which in some cases includes benzene — a known carcinogen — lead, cadmium and chromium.
- Critics say the chemical recycling industry’s multi-step incineration processes are polluting and generating greenhouse gases without alleviating virgin plastic demand. Environmental permits for six U.S. facilities allow release of hazardous air pollutants that can cause cancer or birth defects.
- A new UN framework to fight global plastic pollution could offer nations flexibility over how they meet recycling targets, potentially allowing the industry to lobby for policy incentives and regulatory exemptions for plastic-to-fuel techniques — policies that may threaten the environment and public health, say experts.
Pharmaceutical water pollution detected deep in the Brazilian Amazon
- Major rivers in the Amazon Basin of Brazil are contaminated with a wide range of pharmaceuticals as well as with sewage and wastewater, largely coming from urban centers in the region, according to recent research.
- Water samples taken along the Amazon, Negro, Tapajós and Tocantins rivers, and small urban tributaries that pass through the region’s cities, including Manaus, Santarém, Belém and Macapá contained 40 pharmaceuticals out of 43 in concentrations that have the potential to affect 50-80% of the local aquatic species.
- Experts explain that a major cause of freshwater contamination is the Amazon Basin’s rapidly growing population along with the government’s failure to provide adequate sanitation infrastructure — even though that has long been promised. Most of the region’s sewage is untreated, a solvable problem if properly funded.
WWF report calls forests a vital public health solution
- A new report from WWF lays out the evidence for how forests directly impact public health.
- Forests not only act as reservoirs for potentially contagious diseases, but also filter water and air pollution that can otherwise lead to illnesses like cancer and diabetes.
- The report makes a case that forests also help alleviate food insecurity and malnutrition while improving mental health, among other benefits.
- It calls on conservationists and public health experts to work more closely and view forests as a public health tool.
The world says yes to a cradle to grave plastics treaty: Now the work begins
- 175 countries unanimously agreed last week on a United Nations framework to fight global plastic pollution from cradle to grave. Reluctant nations, including India and Japan, sought a far more limited agreement only dealing with ocean plastic pollution. But they acquiesced in the end.
- A committee will shortly begin work on drafting the treaty, determining global rules, and financing and enforcement mechanisms, with a goal of finishing by the end of 2024.
- While many crucial details remain to be worked out over the next two years, the UN resolution calls for a combination of required and “voluntary actions” to address the cradle to grave plastics crisis. The document even addresses the extraction of chemicals used in production, meaning the final treaty could seriously impact the oil industry.
- Also, wealthier nations may be called on to provide assistance to less developed ones. Environmental groups are pleased with the agreement, though caution that much work lies ahead. The plastics industry had hoped for a far more limited agreement and it is expected to offer input on the final shape of the treaty.
Microplastics plus organic pollutants equals 10 times the toxicity, study finds
- A new study has found that interactions between microplastics and organic pollutants in aquatic environments can increase the toxicity of microplastics by a factor of 10.
- The researchers found that some “weathered” microplastics tended to absorb and release more contaminants than pristine microplastics, posing a threat to human health if these microplastics are ingested.
- Nations this week agreed to negotiate a global treaty that addresses the entire life cycle of plastics in an effort to suppress the harm it does to the environment and human health.
Aerosol pollution: Destabilizing Earth’s climate and a threat to health
- Aerosols are fine particulates that float in the atmosphere. Many are natural, but those haven’t increased or decreased much over the centuries. But human-caused aerosols — emitted from smokestacks, car exhausts, wildfires, and even clothes dryers — have increased rapidly, largely in step with greenhouse gases responsible for climate change.
- Aerosol pollution kills 4.2 million people annually, 200,000 in the U.S. alone. So curbing them rapidly makes sense. However, there’s a problem with that: The aerosols humanity sends into the atmosphere presently help cool the climate. So they protect us from some of the warming that is being produced by continually emitted greenhouse gases.
- But scientists still don’t know how big this cooling effect is, or whether rapidly reducing aerosols would lead to a disastrous increase in warming. That uncertainty is caused by aerosol complexity. Atmospheric particulates vary in size, shape and color, in their interactions with other particles, and most importantly, in their impacts.
- Scientists say that accurately modeling the intensity of aerosol effects on climate change is vital to humanity’s future. But aerosols are very difficult to model, and so are likely the least understood of the nine planetary boundaries whose destabilization could threaten Earth’s operating systems.
In a biodiversity haven, mining drives highest ever recorded levels of mercury
- A recent study has found that forests in the southwestern Peruvian Amazon collect mercury from the atmosphere that’s used in artisanal small-scale gold mining in the Madre de Dios region.
- The study’s authors found “the highest ever recorded” levels of mercury from the “throughfall” that ends up on the forest floor when the leaves fall or rain washes the mercury from their surfaces.
- Mercury is highly toxic, causing neurological and reproductive problems in humans and other animals.
- Organizations are looking at different ways to reduce or even eliminate the use of mercury, which miners use to bind the flecks of gold found in the region’s riverine silt.
Call for COVID rules that reduced infections in gorilla parks to remain
- Respiratory infections recorded among mountain gorillas in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park dropped from a pre-pandemic average of 5.4 outbreaks among family groups to just 1.6 per year since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.
- Conservation group Gorilla Doctors, whose Rwanda team recorded the decrease in infections, says the decline correlates with lower visitor numbers to the park as well as masking requirements and an increase in the distance tourists must stay from habituated apes.
- In a recent letter in the journal Nature, Gorilla Doctors and the park’s chief warden called for these stricter measures to be kept in place permanently.
Caffeine: Emerging contaminant of global rivers and coastal waters
- Caffeine is the most consumed psychostimulant in the world, and a regular part of many daily lives, whether contained in coffee, chocolate, energy drinks, or pharmaceuticals.
- Partially excreted in urine, it is now ubiquitous in rivers and coastal waters. So much so that its detection is used to trace wastewater and sewage pollution. A new study found it to be in more than 50% of 1,052 sampling sites on 258 rivers around the globe. Another new study enumerates caffeine harm in coastal and marine environments.
- This continual flow of caffeine into aquatic ecosystems is causing concern among scientists due to its already identified impacts on a wide range of aquatic life including microalgae, corals, bivalves, sponges, marine worms, and fish. Most environmental impacts — especially wider effects within ecosystems — have not been studied.
- Soaring global use of products containing caffeine means the problem will worsen with time. Untreated sewage is a major source. And while some sewage treatment facilities can remove caffeine, many currently can’t. Far more study is needed to determine the full scope and biological impacts of the problem.
Brazil agrochemical bill nears passage in Bolsonaro’s ‘agenda of death’
- A bill loosening regulations on agrochemicals has been approved by Brazil’s lower house of congress and now goes before the Senate, prompting concerns that it will unleash environmental destruction and threaten consumer health.
- The bill is one of several in the list of priority legislation for 2022 that environmentalists and Indigenous groups say underscore President Jair Bolsonaro’s anti-environmental and anti-Indigenous agenda.
- If approved, the slate of proposed bills would allow companies to exploit Indigenous territories for resources and further impede Indigenous people from staking a claim to their traditional lands.
- Other bills in the works include one that would effectively facilitate land grabbing, and another that would do away with environmental licenses. Bolsonaro has already issued a decree encouraging small-scale gold mining, raising further concerns for the Amazon and its Indigenous inhabitants.
Sierra Leone lawsuit against diamond mine runs up against corporate opacity
- Residents of Koidu, in eastern Sierra Leone, are suing the operators of a diamond mine they say has polluted the environment, damaged homes, and cost many their livelihoods.
- The mine’s owners, Octea Ltd., say their contracts and obligations are to the Sierra Leonean government and the case should be dismissed.
- Further complicating matters, Octea is part of a complex web of companies ultimately owned by the troubled mining giant BSG Resources, which filed for bankruptcy in 2019.
Tiny plastic particles accumulating in river headwaters: Study
- Researchers modeled the journey of microplastics released in wastewater treatment plant effluent into rivers of different sizes and flow speeds, focusing on the smallest microplastic fragments — less than 100 microns across, or the width of a single human hair.
- The study found that in slow-flowing stream headwaters — often located in remote, biodiverse regions — microplastics accumulated quicker and stayed longer than in faster flowing stretches of river.
- Microplastic accumulation in sediments could be the ‘missing plastic’ not found in comparisons of stream pollution levels with those found in oceans. Trapped particles may be released during storms and flood events, causing a lag between environmental contamination and release to the sea.
- A few hours in stream sediments can start to change plastics chemically, and microbes can grow on their surfaces. Most toxicity studies of microplastics use virgin plastics, so these environmentally transformed plastics pose an unknown risk to biodiversity and health.
Preventing the next pandemic is vastly cheaper than reacting to it: Study
- A new study emphasizes the need to stop pandemics before they start, stepping beyond the quest for new vaccines and treatments for zoonotic diseases to also aggressively fund interventions that prevent them from happening in the first place.
- Researchers estimated that based on Earth’s current population and on past pandemics, we can expect 3.3 million deaths from zoonotic diseases each year in future. COVID-19 pushed numbers in 2020-21 even higher. These outbreaks are now happening more frequently, and their cost is calculated in trillions of dollars.
- Addressing the main drivers — deforestation, the wildlife trade and burgeoning agriculture, especially in the tropics — could prevent future pandemics, save lives and catastrophic societal disruptions.
As world drowns in plastic waste, U.N. to hammer out global treaty
- After years of largely neglecting the buildup of plastic waste in Earth’s environment, the U.N. Environment Assembly will meet in February and March in the hopes of drafting the first international treaty controlling global plastics pollution.
- Discarded plastic is currently killing marine life, threatening food security, contributing to climate change, damaging economies, and dissolving into microplastics that contaminate land, water, the atmosphere and even the human bloodstream.
- The U.N. parties will debate how comprehensive the treaty they write will be: Should it, for example, protect just the oceans or the whole planet? Should it focus mainly on reuse/recycling, or control plastics manufacture and every step of the supply chain and waste stream?
- The U.S. has changed its position from opposition to such a treaty under President Donald Trump, to support under President Joe Biden, but has yet to articulate exactly what it wants in an agreement. While environmental NGOs are pushing for a comprehensive treaty, plastics companies, who say they support regulation, likely will want to limit the treaty’s scope.
Innovative sewage solutions: Tackling the global human waste problem
- The scale of the world’s human waste problem is vast, impacting human health, coastal and terrestrial ecosystems, and even climate change. Solving the problem requires working with communities to develop solutions that suit them, providing access to adequate sanitation and adapting aging sewage systems to a rapidly changing world.
- Decentralized and nature-based solutions are considered key to cleaning up urban wastewater issues and reducing pressure on, or providing affordable and effective alternatives to, centralized sewage systems.
- Seeing sewage and wastewater — which both contain valuable nutrients and freshwater — as a resource rather than as pollutants, is vital to achieving a sustainable “circular economy.” Technology alone can only get us so far, say experts. If society is to fully embrace the suite of solutions required, a sweeping mindset change will be needed.
The thick of it: Delving into the neglected global impacts of human waste
- Though little talked about, our species has a monumental problem disposing of its human waste. A recent modeling study finds that wastewater adds around 6.2 million tons of nitrogen to coastal waters worldwide per year, contributing significantly to harmful algal blooms, eutrophication and ocean dead zones.
- The study mapped 135,000 watersheds planetwide and found that just 25 of them account for almost half the nitrogen pollution contributed by human waste. Those 25 were pinpointed in both the developing world and developed world, and include the vast Mississippi River watershed in the United States.
- Human waste — including pharmaceuticals and even microplastics contained in feces and urine — is a major public health hazard, causing disease outbreaks, and putting biodiversity at risk. Sewage is impacting estuary fish nurseries, coral reefs, and seagrasses, a habitat that stores CO2, acting as a buffer against climate change.
- Waste is often perceived as mostly a developing world problem, but the developed world is as responsible — largely due to antiquated municipal sewage systems that combine rainwater and wastewater in the same pipes. As a result, intense precipitation events regularly flush raw sewage into waterways in the U.S., U.K. and EU.
Mali’s centuries-old pastoralist traditions wilt as the climate changes
- As the world rediscovers the ingenuity of nature-based solutions, a detailed FAO report published this year highlights the traditions of nomadic pastoralists in Mali who have sustained an eco-friendly lifestyle over centuries.
- The Kel Tamasheq people, living amid the Saharan sands near Timbuktu, eat primarily local produce, generate little waste, and boast a negligible carbon footprint.
- The community’s world revolves around a transhumance tradition that follows seasonal movement; during the dry season, which lasts for more than six months of the year, the pastoralists migrate south with their livestock in search of grazing land and water.
- Climate change and increasing desertification have heavily impacted the food system of the Kel Tamasheq, especially the withering of Lake Faguibine, intensifying the community’s dependence on markets.
Mongabay’s top Amazon stories from 2021
- The world’s largest rainforest continued to come under pressure in 2021, due largely to the policies of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
- Deforestation rates hit a 15-year-high, while fires flared up again, combining to turn Brazil’s portion of the Amazon into a net carbon source for the first time ever.
- The rainforest as a whole remains a net carbon sink, thanks to conservation areas and Indigenous territories, where deforestation rates remained low.
- Indigenous communities continued to be hit by a barrage of outside pressure, from COVID-19 to illegal miners and land grabbers, while community members living in Brazil’s cities dealt with persistent prejudice.
As the Amazon burns, its Indigenous inhabitants choke on the haze
- Forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon increased this year, with much of the smoke generated concentrating in the state of Acre and disproportionately affecting the health of Indigenous people.
- At the peak of the fires, in July and August, a total of 88,400 hectares (218,400 acres) of land burned, a 20% increase from the 76,400 hectares (188,800 acres) burned in the same period in 2020.
- Recorded cases of respiratory disease increased by almost 8% from June to September 2021 over the previous year, according to data from the Acre state health department.
- Indigenous people, who have lower immunity and a higher incidence of pre-existing medical conditions, are among the most at-risk groups to the smoke pollution, compounded by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Lockdown underscores Uganda’s overreliance on tourism to fund conservation
- When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in March 2020, Uganda quickly shut down parks like Bwindi Impenetrable National Park to protect the gorillas and chimpanzees from getting infected.
- Tourism provides up to 60% of the Uganda Wildlife Authority’s operating revenue and is also an important source of income for communities living around Bwindi.
- Poaching in Bwindi rose sharply during lockdown in 2020 as some villagers entered the park to hunt for food or an income.
- One NGO reinforced its programs supporting public health and livelihoods in an attempt to reduce this pressure.
Uganda’s ‘Dr. Gladys’ honored by U.N. for work linking conservation and health
- The United Nations on Dec. 7 recognized Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka as one of its “champions of the Earth” for promoting the One Health approach to conservation in Africa.
- The Ugandan conservationist, a trained wildlife veterinarian, established the NGO Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH) in 2003 to ensure better health care access for communities living around Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and to lower the risk of human pathogens jumping to mountain gorillas.
- UNEP selected Kalema-Zikusoka for its science and innovation category; the other awardees were Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, Kyrgyz youth activist Maria Kolesnikova, and the nonprofit Sea Women of Melanesia.
- “If you make the community feel that you care about them, then there’s less need to fight them,” Kalema-Zikusoka said.
In a warming world, deforestation turns the heat deadly, Borneo study finds
- New research identifies how rising localized temperatures driven by deforestation and global warming are increasing heat-related deaths and creating unsafe working conditions in Indonesia.
- In the Bornean district of Berau, 4,375 square kilometers (1,689 square miles) of forest were cleared between 2002 and 2018, contributing to a 0.95°C (1.71°F) increase in mean daily temperature across the district, according to the study.
- It concluded climate change temperature increases in the region caused an 8% rise in mortality rates in 2018, or more than 100 deaths annually, and an additional almost 20 minutes per day of unsafe work time.
- Based on the 2018 data, a projected 2°C (3.6°F) global temperature increase in deforested areas could result in a 20%increase in all-cause mortality — an additional 236-282 deaths per year — and almost five unsafe work hours per day.
Primary-colored poison: Lead paint still a major threat to Indonesian kids
- Nearly 70% of commercially available paints in Indonesia contain levels of lead higher than the regulatory safe limit of 600 parts per million (ppm).
- That’s the finding from an analysis of solvent-based paints in 10 Indonesian cities, which also estimates that 33 million children are exposed to lead paint on a daily basis.
- The association of paint manufacturers says it may consider adopting a safe limit of 90 ppm, the same as the World Health Organization prescribes, but that many of the small manufacturers that still use lead aren’t part of the association.
- Advocates have called for stronger regulations governing sales of lead-based paints, including lead content information to be published on paint cans.
‘To change policies, insert yourself in them’: Q&A with biologist Liliana Dávalos
- Colombian biologist Liliana Dávalos has combined conservation research with evolutionary ecology from her laboratory at Stony Brook University.
- Dávalos was one of the first scientists to warn, in 2001, about the environmental risks that an eventual end to the civil war in Colombia would have — a scenario that is now playing out as Colombia’s forests are being opened up for commercial activity.
- Bats are another of Dávalos’s subjects of study: In addition to deciphering their genome to understand their evolution in space and time, more recently Dávalos has studied the relationship of these flying mammals with pathogens such as coronaviruses.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Dávalos, who is openly gay, also talks about attitudes in academia toward women and lesbians, and sends a message to young researchers not to be blinded by the awareness of obstacles.
Poisoned city: The story of Brazil’s forgotten environmental disaster
- Hundreds of tons of carcinogenic agrochemicals, including DDT, were abandoned by the Brazilian government at a factory near an orphanage on the outskirts or Rio de Janeiro in the 1960s.
- The factory had produced the pesticides as part of the government’s push to eradicate malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
- After it shut down, the residents, unaware of the dangers of the chemicals, continued to use them, even applying the dust directly to their children’s hair to kill head lice.
- More than half a century later, residents continue to suffer from the impact on their health, with 73% of those tested having high levels of contamination in their bodies.
In harm’s way: Our actions put people and wildlife at risk of disease
- While global attention is currently focused on COVID-19 and other zoonotic diseases that jump from animals to humans, diseases that breach the species barrier also pass from people and domestic animals to wild species.
- Human alteration of the planet — the felling of forests, the legal and illegal wildlife trade, climate change, and other disruptions — is driving escalating unnatural interactions between species, allowing diseases to mutate and infect new hosts.
- Infectious disease poses a serious threat to tigers, chimpanzees, Ethiopian wolves, African wild dogs and a host of other threatened species. Viral diseases spread by humans, livestock and other domestic animals could serve as the knockout punch to endangered species already teetering on the edge of extinction.
- There’s growing support for a One Health strategy, which recognizes that human health, animal health and the health of the planet are inextricably linked — that protecting the planet is crucial to the health of all.
Tanzanian gold miners ten times more likely to die from road injuries, study finds
- Miners were 10 times more likely to die of traffic-related injuries than people who did not work in mining, a study that looked at Tanzania’s two biggest gold mines found.
- Africa has a third of the global stock of metals and minerals and hosts around 700 active large-scale mining sites, with more in the pipeline as the world’s appetite for these resources grows.
- Of the 186 people of working age who died in five wards around the two mines in a year, about half were miners, reflecting the higher risks miners faced, especially men.
- The study authors say that interventions should be designed to prevent road injuries in the wider community, not just at the mine sites, and the definition of safety in mining areas needs to be broader.
Biosurveillance of markets and legal wildlife trade needed to curb pandemic risk: Experts
- Almost 90% of the 180 recognized RNA viruses that can harm humans are zoonotic in origin. But disease biosurveillance of the world’s wildlife markets and legal trade is largely absent, putting humanity at significant risk.
- The world needs a decentralized disease biosurveillance system, experts say, that would allow public health professionals and wildlife scientists in remote areas to test for pathogens year-round, at source, with modern mobile technologies in order to help facilitate a rapid response to emerging zoonotic disease outbreaks.
- Though conservation advocates have long argued for an end to the illegal wildlife trade (which does pose zoonotic disease risk), but the legal trade poses a much greater threat to human health, say experts.
- Governments around the world are calling for the World Health Organization to create a pandemic treaty. Wildlife groups are pushing for such an agreement to include greater at-source protections to prevent zoonotic spillover.
Extreme heat exposure in cities tripled in less than 35 years, study finds
- Exposure to dangerously high temperatures in cities nearly tripled between 1983 and 2016, according to a study that considered both warming and population growth.
- Cities are hotter than their surrounding areas because they are densely populated and tend to generate and trap more heat.
- The decade starting 2011 was the warmest in recorded history, and the proportion of the global population exposed to extreme heat is expected to multiply in the coming decades.
- Excessive warming of urbanized areas and the relentless influx of people points to an urgent need for policies that protect city residents, especially in developing countries.
Rio Tinto-owned mine is polluting Malagasy water with uranium and lead, NGOs say
- Some sites near a Rio Tinto-owned mine in Madagascar have recorded uranium and lead levels 52 and 40 times in excess of WHO safe drinking water standards, a recent analysis found.
- Around 15,000 people in Madagascar’s Anosy region depend on these water sources, including for drinking, a coalition of NGOs in the U.K. and Madagascar, pointed out, calling on the company to provide safe drinking water to the communities.
- Mine operator QIT Madagascar Minerals (QMM), which is 80% owned by Rio Tinto, extracts ilmenite at the mine, a process that generates wastewater rich in minerals like uranium and lead, according to a report commissioned by the Andrew Lees Trust UK.
- QMM in its response to the NGOs indicated that the high concentrations were naturally occurring and denied that it was polluting the water.
In Brazil’s Acre, smoke from fires threatens health, could worsen COVID-19
- Fires are gaining momentum in Acre, a state in southwesten Brazil 80% covered in old-growth Amazon rainforest, where a historic drought and high levels of deforestation have experts worried that this will be a bad year for fires
- Wildfires generate small particulate matter which, when inhaled, can travel into the lungs, bloodstream, and vital organs, causing serious damage, akin to cigarette smoke.
- Data from Acre’s air-quality monitoring network, the largest in the Amazon, show that during the peak burning seasons in 2019 and 2020, the rates of particulate matter hovered well above the level recognized by the World Health Organization as clean and safe for breathing
- Wildfire smoke has been linked to higher COVID-19 mortality rates, threatening to compound what is already one of the worst burdens of coronavirus infections and deaths in the world. At particular risk are Indigenous populations, who suffer mortality rates 1.5 times the average in Brazil.
Black Death aside, we know surprisingly little about rodents and disease
- Rodents make up 40% of all mammal species on the planet, and an estimated 10.7% of them are known hosts of zoonotic diseases, such as cat scratch disease, bartonella, hantavirus, Lyme disease, leishmaniasis, leptospirosis, and the plague.
- A recent letter in the journal Conservation Biology calls for more attention and funding to be directed toward studying small rodents, “the wildlife species most likely to be abundant, come into contact with humans, and be potential reservoirs in future zoonotic outbreaks.”
- Controlling and mitigating the risk of zoonotic diseases through rodent control is another area that lacks research, with the current approach of killing and poisoning rodents in urban areas actually posing the risk of causing more disease.
- Experts call for evidence-based, whole-system approaches to control rodents and champion the One Health approach to address zoonotic disease, acknowledging that human, environmental, and animal health are all interconnected.
Address risky human activities now or face new pandemics, scientists warn
- The new, highly-contagious Delta variant — spread with the ease of chickenpox — is causing COVID-19 cases to skyrocket across the globe as health officials respond with alarm. “The war has changed,” said a recent internal U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) document.
- Globally, numerous infectious diseases are being transmitted between wildlife, livestock and humans at escalating rates, including outbreaks of COVID-19, Ebola, dengue, HIV and others, as the threat of new emergent zoonotic diseases grows ever greater. The cost is huge in lives lost and ruined economies.
- The driver: human activities, particularly intrusion into wild landscapes and eating and trading wild animals. Bringing people, domestic and wild animals into unnatural proximity exposes all to pathogens for which they lack immunity. International travel and a booming global wildlife trade quickly spread viruses.
- Experts say that a “One Health” approach is urgently needed to prevent future pandemics — simultaneously addressing human, animal and ecosystem health, protecting humanity and nature, and incorporating disease risk into decision-making.
Ethnic communities in Myanmar opposing a coal plant see their fight get harder
- In Myanmar’s ethnic areas, Indigenous people have faced the loss of their lands, community forests, and deteriorating health conditions.
- In Tigyit in Shan state, Indigenous communities have never seen any compensation for land confiscated on the order of the ruling generals two decades ago to build a coal-fired power plant and nearby coal mine.
- Reforestation plans, although welcomed by the Indigenous people, have not proved to be successful, as the mine continues to expand.
- In the face of the political crisis unleashed through the military power grab of February 2021, civil society organizations have become fearful of arrests over their environmental activism.
Eight of the 10 nations most at risk from climate and toxic pollution in Africa: study
- Of 176 nations considered, the top 10 found to be most vulnerable to both climate change impacts and environmental pollution are in Africa and South Asia, with the Democratic Republic of Congo being the worst off, according to a new study.
- Toxic pollution in the environment, be it dirty air, contaminated water or unhealthy soils, and climatic shifts resulting in warmer temperatures, extreme weather or land degradation, can all endanger human health.
- The study shows that tackling both kinds of risk together might be a good strategy for some countries like Singapore, Rwanda, China and India.
- It also highlighted the unequal toll of environmental destruction among nations: the 60 most vulnerable countries are home to two-thirds of the planet’s population.
For Malaysia’s Indigenous Penan, vaccine doubt is part of historic govt distrust
- Decades of marginalization and dislocation have made many of Malaysia’s indigenous Penan people mistrustful of both state and federal officials.
- This mistrust, along with anti-vaccination propaganda and structural issues like lack of identity cards, have led to vaccine hesitancy in Penan communities on the island of Borneo.
- Penan leaders say many in their communities are more concerned with long-term issues, like forest loss and lack of identity cards, than they are with COVID-19.
Indigenous communities in Brazil reinvent grief in the time of COVID
- Indigenous communities across Brazil have had to abandon long-held aspects of their funerary traditions when dealing with the deaths of family members from COVID-19, due to the restrictions imposed by the pandemic.
- Traditional rituals important to Indigenous experience and belief systems, especially those involved with death and grieving, have been affected.
- The imposition of health protocols without accounting for Indigenous traditions is harmful to indigenous peoples’ autonomy and ancestry, leaders say, and compounds the government’s failure protect these vulnerable communities from COVID-19.
- In this special report, Mongabay spoke with leaders of the Yawalapiti in the Xingu; the Xavante in Mato Grosso; the Yanomami in Roraima; the Tupinambá in Bahia; the Guarani Mbya in São Paulo; and theTukano in Amazonas, to learn how they are adapting to the new normal.
Mining exposes Indigenous women in Latin America to high mercury levels
- A study carried out by the International Pollutant Elimination Network (IPEN) and the Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI) analyzed the levels of mercury in the bodies of 163 Indigenous women of childbearing age.
- The study authors found considerably high levels of mercury in women from two Indigenous groups in Bolivia who base their diet mainly on fish they obtain from rivers near gold mines.
- According to the researchers, mercury in the mother’s body can put their health and that of their fetuses at risk.
- Communities evaluated in Brazil and Venezuela also had mercury in their bodies; in Colombia, Indigenous groups without nearby gold mining and with non-fish-based diets had the lowest levels of mercury.
Connecting kids and ourselves to nature
- On today's episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we discuss the latest research showing how important it is to connect kids to nature and educate them about the environment.
- We're joined by author and journalist Richard Louv, who created the 'nature deficit disorder' concept in 2005 to facilitate discussion of the impacts our disconnectedness from nature has on human health and wellbeing. His latest book is Our Wild Calling: How Connecting With Animals Can Transform Our Lives — and Save Theirs.
- We're also joined by Megan Strauss, an editor with Mongabay Kids, who tells us about how the site delivers the news and inspiration from nature's frontline for young readers and discusses the importance of environmental education.
Without room to expand, mountain gorillas’ population growth could backfire
- Mountain gorilla populations have grown steadily in recent decades, thanks largely to intensive conservation efforts in Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- But the species’ entire population is confined to protected parks in these countries, with limited room to expand, and as the population has grown, so too has population density.
- A new study that tracked the incidence and intensity of parasitic infections across the mountain gorilla’s range suggests that greater population density correlates with greater susceptibility to parasites and other health problems.
Amazon dams: No clean water, fish dying, then the pandemic came
- Villagers living near the Teles Pires and São Manoel dams in Brazil’s Mato Grosso state — including the Apiaká, Kayabí and Munduruku peoples — attest to poor water quality, lack of potable water, increased malaria and rashes since the dams were built on their river. They also say there has been little response from the dam companies.
- Indigenous peoples say the Brazilian hydroelectric projects have altered river ecology along with thousands of years of cultural practice, especially their fishing livelihood. Migratory fish and other game fish have been greatly diminished, so residents must now resort to fishing at night.
- Once the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the region, lack of clean water for bathing became even more urgent, while disappearing fish in daily diets made it harder to get food or isolate in riverside villages. Only under judicial order did dam companies recently improve water supply infrastructure.
- Experts trace these adverse impacts back to the dams’ planning stages: with the construction companies skipping legally mandated steps, not consulting Indigenous peoples as required, and failing to calculate cumulative impacts of multiple dam projects. Villagers are now monitoring impacts — and some are studying the law.
Cleaning up Cambodia’s kitchens could curb deforestation, climate change
- NGOs and companies across Cambodia are taking action in response to the mass use of charcoal and forest biomass in household and restaurant kitchens countrywide. The shift away from these polluting fuel sources to cleaner energy alternatives is being sparked by health and environmental concerns.
- Education is a key strategy for implementing the shift away from charcoal and wood, as their use is ingrained in the culture, with many Cambodians saying food doesn’t taste as good when cooked with other fuels.
- One innovative solution is turning the country’s coconut husks into “green charcoal,” which is already earning the nation recognition for being a global leader within the sustainable charcoal sector.
- Cambodia’s farmers are also moving away from using forest biomass for energy, and are instead utilizing biodigesters to turn household and farm waste into biogas for cooking and to make organic fertilizer.
Rush to turn ‘black diamonds’ into cash eats up Uganda’s forests, fruits
- As recently as 2018, only a little over 42% of Ugandans had access to electricity — many were too poor to afford it. As of 2016-17, 90% of all households burned wood fuel for cooking, with just 15.5% using charcoal in rural areas, but 66.4% of urban households using it.
- Those using charcoal account for roughly 23% of the country’s total population, which means that some 10.7 million citizens in a nation of 46.8 million rely on charcoal to cook their meals, based on recent U.N. data.
- Charcoal producers are working hard to meet this exploding demand, degrading and depleting the nation’s forest reserves, and now buying up fruit trees on private lands to make into briquettes. Many charcoal producers lack the licenses required by the government, so are cutting trees and making charcoal illegally.
- The surging charcoal industry is destroying Uganda’s forests and biodiversity, while briquette burning is also causing respiratory and other health problems, and its carbon emissions are adding significantly to global climate change.
Declining fish biodiversity in Peruvian Amazon affecting human nutrition
- Declining fish diversity in the Peruvian Amazon could affect nutrition for many of the region’s 800,000 people, according to a new study.
- In Loreto region, fishers have been catching fewer large migratory fish species, which are being replaced by smaller fish. Although protein levels are roughly the same, smaller fish contain more omega-3 fatty acids but less iron and zinc, overall—an issue in a region where people already have high rates of anemia and malnutrition.
- Inland communities are already transitioning toward eating more farmed fish and chicken, but these foods may not be an adequate replacement for the range of nutrients these communities get from a diverse diet of wild fish.
- Although this study focused on regional fish, other wild foods such as plants, insects and bushmeat are an important source of nutrition across the globe. Therefore, policies and practices that preserve biodiversity are not only important for conservation but also a means towards greater food security and public health.
Illegal miners fire shots, burn homes in Munduruku Indigenous Reserve
- Illegal gold miners set fire to homes of several Indigenous leaders in the Munduruku Indigenous Reserve in the Brazilian Amazon this week, before attempting to destroy police equipment used to expel outsiders, authorities and activists say.
- Indigenous groups say the attack was in retaliation to police operations aimed at expelling illegal gold miners from the Munduruku reserve, which is supposed to be under federal protection.
- The Munduruku people have been battling invasions for decades but miners have grown bolder amid expectations that the federal government may legalize wildcat mining on Indigenous lands; police forces withdrew from the region following the attacks, leaving Indigenous people vulnerable to further violence, federal prosecutors say.
- The attacks in the Munduruku reserve follow a wave of violence in the Yanomami reserve, where 700 hectares (1,730 acres) of land have been degradaded since January, according to a recent aerial survey, setting the stage for a new record for deforestation in the reserve.
We can prevent the next pandemic (commentary)
- Research has shown that agriculture, urbanization, and other human activities that degrade forests and other ecosystems can trigger viruses to jump from other species into humans, a process known as “spillover.”
- In this commentary, Prevent Pandemics at the Source co-founders Sonila Cook and Nigel Sizer argue that “it’s only when we prevent new diseases before they start — at the source, where humans and animals come into close contact – that we will become less vulnerable to pathogens.”
- Cook and Sizer say that prevention is much less costly than fighting pandemics once they start. “We can protect forests, clean up and reduce wildlife trade, improve farming practices and expand surveillance to detect spillovers as they are occurring for about $10 billion per year,” they write. “Compared with the massive human and economic cost of another pandemic, this price tag is tiny.”
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.
Momentum is building for a ‘robust’ biodiversity framework: Q&A with Elizabeth Mrema
- One of the many impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic has been to rally global ambition for a biodiversity framework that sets the world on a path to a sustainable future, says Elizabeth Maruma Mrema.
- Mrema, executive secretary of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), says there’s growing awareness of the importance of biodiversity for everything from food security to the regulation of water and air quality, to pest and disease regulation.
- “World leaders fully recognize that the continued deterioration and degradation of Earth’s natural ecosystems are having major impacts on the lives and livelihoods of people around the world,” she says.
- In an interview with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler, Mrema talks about building a robust post-2020 framework after the Aichi Biodiversity Targets fell short, how the conservation sector has changed over her career, and her hopes for the CBD summit coming up later this year.
South Korea faces a public reckoning for financing coal plants in Indonesia
- The coastal town of Suralaya in Indonesia’s West Java province has eight coal-fired power generating units in its vicinity, which residents blame for respiratory ailments and declining fish catches.
- South Korean public financial institutions are financing the expansion of the Suralaya facility through the construction of two new units that will be built by South Korean firm Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction and operated by a power company partly owned by a South Korean public utility.
- Support for the project is ongoing, despite South Korea’s own domestic transition away from coal power and attempts by some lawmakers to bar public funds from being directed to the coal industry.
- Activists view the South Korean government’s support for the project as an attempt to prop up the ailing Doosan, and to boost its ties with countries in Southeast and South Asia amid tensions with China.
As climate change brings more floods, mosquito numbers could swell: Study
- Flooding boosts Aedes aegypti mosquito populations, a new study from Kenya has found.
- With a changing climate and extreme weather like floods expected to become more frequent and intense, this could mean more outbreaks of mosquito-borne disease such as dengue in the coming years.
- Dengue already afflicts millions of people every year, almost all of them in tropical countries, where the A. aegypti mosquito thrives.
- Though the new paper did not find a greater abundance of mosquitos leading to greater infection risk, the link between larger mosquito populations and disease outbreaks warrants further investigation, the authors said.
Never mind the mercury: Indonesia says coal ash isn’t hazardous
- The Indonesian government has taken fly ash and bottom ash from coal burning out of its list of hazardous waste.
- The distinction is crucial as the handling of “hazardous” waste is subject to different and far more stringent regulations than non-hazardous waste.
- The delisting comes in response to lobbying efforts by industry groups, which want to be allowed to sell coal ash to the construction industry.
- Indonesia is one of the world’s top coal producers, and the fossil fuel accounts for the majority of the country’s power generation.
Ecuador court orders end to gas flaring by oil industry in Amazon
- In the Ecuadoran Amazon, at least 447 flares have been burning gas for decades.
- Local communities say these flares are responsible for the high cancer rates in the area.
- The Sucumbíos Provincial Court ruled in January that the Ecuadoran state had ignored the rights of nine girls to live in a healthy environment.
- It also found that the government had violated their rights to good health by not providing clean technologies that would avoid contamination.
Brazil’s BR-319: Politicians capitalize on the Manaus oxygen crisis to promote a disastrous highway (Commentary)
- Brazil’s proposed reconstruction of the formerly abandoned BR-319 highway is notorious for its potential impact on Amazonian deforestation and indigenous peoples.
- The highway would connect Manaus, in the center of the Amazon, to the “arc of deforestation” in the southern part of the region, opening vast areas of forest to invasion.
- The current oxygen crisis in Manaus has been a windfall for politicians promoting the highway project, using the false argument that BR-319 is needed to supply oxygen to the city.
- This text is translated and expanded from the first author’s column on the Amazônia Real website. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.
In ‘dire’ plea, Brazil’s Amazonas state appeals for global COVID assistance
- In a letter describing pandemic conditions as “dire,” the government of Brazil’s Amazonas state is pleading for urgent medical assistance from the international community. The authenticated letter apparently bypassed the Bolsonaro administration which critics say has been ineffectual in dealing with COVID-19.
- Manaus, the Amazonas state capital, was overwhelmed by the coronavirus last April, but this second wave, according to state authorities is far worse, impacting not only the city, but increasingly, the state’s rainforest interior. The soaring number of cases and deaths statewide is yet to be fully tallied.
- According to authorities, medical facilities in Manaus and Amazonas are presently being utterly overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases, with hospitals and clinics lacking beds, oxygen and other vital resources, resulting in deaths. The disease’s rapid spread may be the result of the P.I. viral lineage variant newly detected in Brazil.
- “The situation is dire, and our fear is that the same situation we are seeing in the capital Manaus will reach the inland of Amazonas, the traditional and indigenous populations that are in situation of greater vulnerability,” said the letter sent to international NGOs. The international response isn’t yet known.
Brazil’s collapsing health service, new COVID variant, raise Indigenous risk
- The city of Manaus made world headlines last April when a first wave of the coronavirus swept through the city. Now that city, and the entire state of Amazonas, is being swept by a second wave of the pandemic, which is shaping up to be far worse than the first.
- Indigenous people are especially vulnerable, with their mortality rate from COVID-19 at least 16% higher than the Brazilian average. Now, São Gabriel da Cachoeira, located 852 kilometers (529 miles) from Manaus, near the Colombia-Venezuela frontier, is being heavily impacted.
- São Gabriel has a large Indigenous population, and while it escaped the worst of the first wave of the pandemic, its meagre health system resources are now being overwhelmed. The state of Amazonas lacks sufficient hospital beds, its ICUs are overrun, and medical facilities lack sufficient oxygen.
- Of extreme concern is a new Brazilian coronavirus variant called P.1, which recently appeared in Amazonas state. While more research is needed, one possibility is that P.I. is bypassing the human immune response triggered by the initial coronavirus lineage that ravaged Manaus last year. This means people could be reinfected.
‘Great concern’ as study finds microplastics in human placentas
- A new study has found microplastics present inside human placentas, which could potentially affect fetal health and development.
- The microplastics probably entered the women’s bodies through ingestion and inhalation, and then translocated to the placentas, the study suggests.
- While further research needs to be done on the subject, it is believed that these microplastics could disrupt immunity mechanisms in babies.
Brazilians impacted by mining assert: ‘Genocide legalized by the state’
- Residents of traditional communities in the Brazilian Amazon municipality of Barcarena, near the mouth of the Amazon River, say that their subsistence and commercial livelihoods, and their health, have been destroyed by an invasion of mining companies which began in the mid-1980’s.
- Among the gigantic companies moving into the region were Brazil’s Vale, Norwegian-Japanese Albrás, Norway’s Norsk Hydro, and France’s Imerys Rio Capim Caulim. Community complaints say that the firms allegedly stole community land and polluted land, water and air.
- Meanwhile, according to residents, the government rewarded the companies with subsidies, looked the other way when community lands were appropriated and pollution occurred, and paid for mining firm infrastructure, including the Tucurui mega-dam; port of Vila do Conde, and a network of new roads.
- Also, a string of mining disasters punctuated the years, with the worst by Norsk Hydro in 2018 at the Hydro Alunorte facility. Though local waters, blood and hair have proven to be contaminated with mining-related toxins, the companies defend themselves by saying no particular firm can be pinpointed with the harm.
Dogs in Brazil are being trained to sniff out COVID-19 in humans
A Brazilian study turns dogs into advanced students in training to identify people infected with the coronavirus
Coronavirus risk grows as animals move through wildlife trade
- Animals consumed by people in Vietnam are increasingly likely to carry coronavirus as they move from the wild to markets to restaurants, a new study shows.
- The animals with the highest rates of infection are most likely to come into contact with humans.
- When animals are confined in crowded and stressful conditions, it makes it even easier for the virus to spread.
Coal stockpiles threaten public health, ancient temple, in Indonesian village
- For years, the residents of Muara Jambi village on the Indonesian island of Sumatra have had to breathe air polluted with coal dust from nearby storage facilities.
- The residents have complained of acute respiratory infections, and some have had coughs for months and have not yet recovered.
- The coal dust also threatens the Muaro Jambi temple complex, a Hindu-Buddhist compound constructed from the 7th-14th centuries and vulnerable to premature weathering because of the dust.
- To reduce the impact of coal dust, coal piles should not exceed 7 meters (23 feet) in height, but some piles in the area exceed 10 meters (33 feet). The local government says it is monitoring the situation.
Madagascar’s top court criticizes government handling of mining project
- Australian firm Base Resources has been trying to develop a large mineral sands mining project in southwest Madagascar.
- A year ago, the project appeared close to securing the permits it needs to break ground, but its fortunes changed when the government suspended the project last November.
- Now, a branch of Madagascar’s Supreme Court has issued a report on the governance of the project that cites irregularities in the issuance of permits, the transference of land rights, the management of a protected area, and the consultation process with local people.
- Civil society groups are calling for the government to cancel the project, but it’s not yet clear when the government will make a definitive decision or how much the court’s report might influence it.
Research links industrial pig farming and virus outbreaks
- Researchers have found a surprising correlation in Brazil, the U.S. and Germany: areas with more pigs also have higher COVID-19 infection rates.
- In Brazil, more than 70% of pigs are raised in confinement, without access to sunlight and fed with transgenic soybean-based animal feed.
- Pigs can catch avian flu and other human influenza viruses at the same time, resulting in novel combinations that make pig farms potential laboratories for the emergence of new diseases.
- Record pork exports from Brazil signal even greater deforestation in the country, as land is cleared to grow the soybeans used in animal feed.
Amazon meatpacking plants, a COVID-19 hotspot, may be ground zero for next pandemic
- The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that slaughterhouses are among the outbreak hotspots for the disease because of the low temperatures and crowded production lines.
- But slaughterhouses are also ideal locations for the emergence of new viruses due to the contact between humans and the blood and entrails of cattle.
- Nearly a third of cases where diseases spread from animals to human beings occurred because their natural environments were invaded and destroyed, which puts Brazil’s beef industry, centered in the Amazon, at particularly high risk.
- Yet despite the economic fallout from the pandemic, the financial market keeps ignoring this risk and supporting the beef companies most exposed to deforestation in the Amazon.
For European chemical giants, Brazil is an open market for toxic pesticides banned at home
- In 2018, Brazil used more than 60,000 tonnes of highly hazardous pesticides banned in the European Union.
- Three Europe-based multibillion-dollar companies control 54% of the world market.
- They include German agrochemical giants BASF and Bayer, as well as Swiss company Syngenta, one of whose pesticides still being sold in Brazil has been banned in its home country for more than 30 years.
Mercury from gold mining contaminates Amazon communities’ staple fish
- The four species of fish most commonly consumed by Indigenous and riverine people in the Brazilian state of Amapá contain the highest concentrations of mercury.
- In some species, researchers found levels of mercury four times in excess of World Health Organization recommendations.
- The mercury comes from gold-mining activity, where it’s used to separate gold from ore before being burned off and washed into the rivers.
- The health impacts of mercury contamination are well-documented, and include damage to the central nervous system, potentially resulting in learning disabilities for children and tremors and difficulty walking for adults.
Survival of Indigenous communities at risk as Amazon fire season advances
- The number of major Amazon fires this year has more than doubled since August 13, with most of those fires being illegal. 674 major fires were detected between May 28 and September 2, with a sharp increase inside Indigenous territories in the last two weeks, raising concerns among Indigenous leaders.
- Indigenous groups are being left to fight the fires on their own, without support from government institutions. IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency has been largely stripped of funds and lacks adequate equipment to fight the blazes, while the Army, sent to the Amazon in May, is reportedly failing to suppress most fires.
- Combined with COVID-19, smoke from fires poses a serious threat to Indigenous health. Native peoples have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, and have weaker immune systems for respiratory disease. A recent study shows that Indigenous hospitalizations for respiratory disease coincide with deforestation rates year-by-year.
- Isolated Indigenous groups are especially under threat as fires put their food sources at risk. Experts say that isolated and uncontacted groups, to fend off hunger, are sighted more often roaming during Amazon fires, potentially risking exposure to Western diseases.
A mysterious heart bone in chimps points to cardiac disease
- Chimpanzees and other great apes are widely afflicted by heart disease; three-quarters of chimps that die in captivity have been found to suffer from heart disease, and up to 90% of captive chimps could have it.
- Using high-resolution 3D imaging, a team of researchers discovered that some chimp hearts contain a tiny bone known as an os cordis.
- Researchers do not yet know how, or why, the bone forms in chimps, but it appears to be more prevalent in those with heart disease.
- Researchers hope this finding will help conservationists keep captive chimps healthy, and increase broader knowledge of chimpanzee pathology.
Lockdown should have cleared up Jakarta’s air. Coal plants kept it dirty
- Cities around the world have seen an improvement in air quality as a result of lockdowns and restrictions imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but Jakarta has been a notable exception.
- A new study shows that persistently high levels of PM2.5 air pollutant in the Indonesian capital come from coal-fired power plants within 100 kilometers (60 miles) of the city.
- Indonesia is set to build more coal-fired power plants in the vicinity of Jakarta in the coming years while maintaining emissions standards that are much laxer than regional or global standards.
- Air pollution has a significant impact on public health and the economy, with studies linking it to higher rates of COVID-19 infection.
Favoring ayahuasca over hospitals, Indigenous Kokama see COVID-19 deaths drop in the Amazon
- The Kokama were the first Indigenous group in Brazil to be infected with COVID-19, and to date there have been more than a thousand confirmed cases and 60 deaths within the community.
- Wary of Western medicine and of the prejudice and neglect they say they suffer at hospitals, the community decided to turn to traditional healing practices, administered by shamans. Their weapon in the fight against the coronavirus is the ayahuasca ritual, considered by the Kokama their most powerful cure.
- In the past six weeks, the community has recorded just four deaths from COVID-19, compared to 56 during the previous two months, when they were still seeking hospital treatment.
- The reduction in the death rate is the result they say they expected when they shunned regional hospitals, many of which have struggled to treat patients in the midst of the pandemic and where indigenous peoples have fared particularly poorly, in favor of their traditional medicines combined with hygiene practices and social distancing.
For the Philippines’ Mangyans, COVID-19 extends a long history of discrimination
- A case of coronavirus in a remote Philippine tribe has highlighted the threats that the pandemic poses to a group that already suffers poor access to health care.
- This Mangyans of the island of Mindoro have a long history of being discriminated against and being forced off their land by business interests and security forces.
- During the pandemic and lockdown, they have also reportedly been denied government aid, prompting calls for all governments to ensure Indigenous rights are respected and adequate resources are allocated to Indigenous communities throughout the COVID-19 crisis.
Deaths of Yanomami babies from COVID-19 bring anguish to mothers
- Three indigenous babies from the Yanomami Indigenous group who died with suspected COVID-19 infection were buried in a cemetery in the city of Boa Vista, in Brazil’s Roraima state, far from their villages.
- Their mothers don’t speak Portuguese and likely had no understanding of what would happen to their children’s bodies.
- It is a Yanomami tradition to cremate their dead, and the ritual can take more than a year to complete.
- Indigenous people are now reluctant to seek medical treatment for fear that their bodies will not be returned to the community if they die. A local NGO says the handling of the case shows continued disrespect for Indigenous culture.
‘Our life is plasticized’: New research shows microplastics in our food, water, air
- Microplastics, plastic pieces smaller than 5 millimeters, have become increasingly prevalent in the natural world, and a suite of studies published in the last three years, including several from 2020, shows that they’ve contaminated not only the ocean and pristine wildernesses, but the air, our food, and even our bodies.
- Past research has indicated that 5.25 trillion plastic pieces are floating in the ocean, but a new study says that there are 2.5 to 10 times more microplastics in the ocean than previously thought, while another recent study found that microplastic “hotspots” could hold 1.9 million pieces per square meter.
- Other emerging research suggests that 136,000 tons of microplastics in the ocean are being ejected into the atmosphere each year, and blowing back onto land with the sea breeze, posing a risk to human health.
- Microplastics are also present in drinking water, and edible fruits and vegetables, according to new research, which means that humans are ingesting microplastics every day.
‘In the plantations there is hunger and loneliness’: The cultural dimensions of food insecurity in Papua (commentary)
- Sophie Chao is an anthropologist who has spent years studying the Marind people of southern Papua.
- As palm oil companies take over their land, the Marind, she writes, are struggling to feed themselves.
- Photographs in this article feature Marind, Mandobo and Auyu tribespeople in southern Papua and were taken by Albertus Vembrianto.
Traditional villages dread living in shadow of Amazon tailings dams
- Mineração Rio do Norte (MRN), the world’s fourth largest bauxite producer, encroached on riverine communities beside the Trombetas River in the Brazilian Amazon in the 1970s. Over the years, MRN became notorious for its contamination of local waters with bauxite mining waste, residents say.
- To resolve that problem, the company built 26 tailings dams. The largest of these waste-holding impoundments covers 110 hectares (270 acres). The entire system for managing mining waste encompasses 1,700 hectares (4,200 acres) and is located within a national protected area.
- Brazil has suffered two catastrophic mining tailings dam collapses since 2015, leaving Trombetas riverine community residents concerned about the 26 MRN dams.
- Brazil’s National Agency of Mining has rated one of MRN’s dams as “high risk.” Fourteen more, should they fail, possess “social, environmental, economic and mortality risk.” MRN says its dams are safe. Locals are also worried over possible water contamination and loss of traditional livelihoods
The sponge with the secret recipe: A cancer-fighting chemical
- Scientists have discovered that a common sea sponge growing in Indonesian waters produces a chemical called manzamine A that has been shown to fight cervical cancer cells in the lab.
- They say that if it can be produced at scale, manzamine A could be used to fight a wider variety of cancers as well as infectious diseases.
- Cultivating the sponge Acanthostrongylophora ingens at scale would also be beneficial to coastal communities and the Indonesian economy at large, the scientists say.
- And because the sponge has a high tolerance for poor-quality water, its cultivation can help purify contaminated water, buffer unspoiled reefs from pollution, and otherwise enhance the marine ecosystem.
Court forces Ecuador government to protect Indigenous Waorani during COVID-19
- A provincial court ruled that the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Social Inclusion must better communicate and coordinate with Waorani leaders to get more COVID-19 tests, food and other necessities to communities.
- It also ordered the Ministry of Environment and Water to send a report detailing how it is monitoring illegal mining, logging and drug trafficking activities in the region, and to provide information on COVID-19 protocols for oil companies operating there.
- The lawyer for the Waorani called these industries “vectors of contagion” in the Amazon, as they never stopped during quarantine.
Brazil’s indigenous hit especially hard by COVID-19: why so vulnerable?
- At least 78 indigenous peoples in the Brazilian Amazon are infected by COVID-19, with 3,662 individuals testing positive and 249 dead among 45 of those peoples. Detailed data is lacking for the other 33 peoples. Experts say poverty, poor resistance to Western diseases, and lack of medical facilities may explain high vulnerability.
- The Coordination of Indigenous Organizations in the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB), which gathered and tallied this data, expects cases and deaths are underreported. Many leaders and elders continue dying among indigenous people, including elders of the Munduruku, Kayapó, Arara, Macuxi, and Tuyuka peoples.
- COVID-19 has now penetrated the Xingu river basin, a vast area south of the Amazon River in Pará and Mato Grosso states. The Arara people there were devastated by disease and violence in the 1980s. Now, of 121 remaining Arara, almost half have tested positive for the coronavirus.
- Of the 1,818 Xicrin in southwest Pará state, 270 (15%) have tested positive, with seven deaths. Analysts speculate this high infection and death rate (higher than Brazil’s general populace, and even many other indigenous groups), may be due to poor underlying health due to water allegedly polluted by a Vale nickel mine.
Mercury with that? Shark fins served with illegal doses of heavy metals
- A new study has found that most processed shark fins have mercury and methyl-mercury levels five to 10 times higher than the legal maximum amount of 0.5 parts per million, as specified by the Centre for Food Safety (CFS) in Hong Kong.
- The research team tested shark fins from nine of the most common species used in shark fin soup, including blue sharks, silky sharks and great hammerheads.
- While little is known about the impacts of mercury on sharks themselves, humans can suffer serious health problems when they consume mercury-rich foods over a long period of time.
- The research team say they hope the Hong Kong government will begin its own testing processes and generate accurate warnings about the mercury levels in shark fins.
COVID-19 and rainforest fires set up potential public health crisis
- Peaking fires in the world’s rainforests combined with the global COVID-19 pandemic threaten to create a devastating public health crisis, experts warn.
- The fires typically follow recent deforestation, as farmers and ranchers burn brush and trees to make way for crops and livestock.
- Soot from the fires causes severe respiratory problems and exacerbates existing conditions, health researchers say. The uptick in the need for treatment could overwhelm already-strained hospitals in the Amazon and Southeast Asia.
- Researchers say that solutions exist, involving government enforcement, consumer demand for deforestation-free products, and company commitments to halt the destruction of forests. Now what’s needed is political will.
Amazon poor go hungry as Brazil slashes social safety net, cuts forests: Study
- Living along the rivers of the Amazon rainforest, many imagine, would make for a sustainable diet packed full of freshwater fish. But a recent study finds this is not the case. A combination of interacting factors is now causing many poor families in riverine communities to go hungry.
- Researchers found that Amazon fish catch rates are naturally 73% lower in the highwater season. In the past, this lull was supplemented by hunting. But Brazilian deforestation, increased under former Pres. Michel Temer and now under Pres. Jair Bolsonaro, has replaced biodiverse forests with soy and other kinds of plantations.
- Add to this Bolsonaro’s and Temer’s rapid deconstruction of internationally-lauded social welfare programs, implemented by Presidents Lula and Rousseff and their Workers’ Party, which fed many riverine families when fish catches dropped.
- Figure in climate change too: its deep droughts harm forest and river diversity, while extreme floods keep stream levels high and fish catches low, and for longer. Now, COVID-19 has come to the Amazon, with food shopping trips made from rural riverine settlements to cities now requiring a serious element of risk.
‘Every time an elder dies, a library is burnt’: Amazon COVID-19 toll grows
- COVID-19 kills the elderly, those with underlying health conditions, the poor and vulnerable. It is now doing so in the Brazilian Amazon where the virus killed nine Munduruku indigenous elders in just a few days. Forest people elders are typically leaders and keepers of culture, so their loss is especially destabilizing.
- Officially, 218 indigenous people had died of COVID-19 and 2,642 were infected as of 7 June. But experts say that the numbers are at least three times higher, with poor government recordkeeping and Amazon community remoteness resulting in a severe undercount.
- The Munduruku, Kokama, and Xavante groups are already seeing cases, with the virus now threatening Brazil’s two largest indigenous territories: Yanomami Park and Javari Valley Indigenous Territory. These two reserves are home to most of Brazil’s uncontacted peoples. COVID-19 spread there would be a disaster.
- Indigenous groups are pursuing independent efforts, such as setting up COVID-19 communication websites, to protect their communities. In response to what they call government inaction, indifference and blundering, advocates remind the Brazilian government and the world that “indigenous lives matter.”
MRN bauxite mine leaves legacy of pollution, poverty in Brazilian Amazon
- Mineração Rio do Norte (MRN) arrived in the Trombetas River basin in the 1970s with plans to mine bauxite on a gigantic scale. Today, MRN is the fourth largest producer of bauxite in the world, providing the valuable aluminum ore to nations and manufacturers around the planet.
- On arriving in the Amazon, MRN immediately annexed lands from the traditional riverine community of Boa Vista, reportedly displacing 90 families to build its port company town. Boa Vista is a quilombo, a community of Afro-Brazilians (known as quilombolas), the descendants of runaway slaves.
- While MRN says it provided jobs, education and health services, quilombo residents report a decade of horrendous water pollution from mine waste — never cleaned up — the loss of fisheries and hunting grounds, rampant poverty, a lack of electricity, health services, and proper sanitation.
- The harm done by industrial mining to Boa Vista, and lessons learned, and not learned, over the last 40+ years, are especially relevant today, as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro aggressively pushes forward his agenda to open indigenous reserves and other Amazon conserved lands to industrial mining.
For Amazon indigenous facing COVID-19, distance to ICU beds poses dire threat
- Remote indigenous communities deep in the Brazilian Amazon lack access to the ICU beds and pulmonary ventilators that have become essential during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new mapping initiative shows.
- More than half of the 3,141 villages analyzed are more than 200 kilometers (120 miles) from an ICU bed, and 10% of these villages are more than 700 km (435 mi) away.
- A case in point: The Yanomami people of Maturacá village would need to travel three hours by plane to a health facility that has a ventilator; in some of the most distant villages, travel by river can take more than a week.
- Even when they reach a health facility, there are fewer than 5,000 ventilators across Brazil’s entire Amazon region, and more than half of municipalities — home to more than 8 million inhabitants, including 203,000 indigenous people — don’t have one at all.
Coronavirus puts Brazil’s quilombos at risk; will assistance come?
- The Boa Vista Quilombo in Oriximiná, Pará state, is like many Brazilian quilombola communities. Quilombolas are Afro-Brazilian runaway slave descendants, and point to centuries of inequality and neglect by the government. Quilombos often lack running water, basic sanitation and health services.
- In the 1970s, Mineração Rio do Norte (MRN) annexed much of Boa Vista’s land and established the world’s fourth largest bauxite mine, along with a company town, Porto Trombetas, built on the former quilombo property; MRN also polluted local fisheries and provided mostly badly paid menial jobs to residents.
- Now, the pandemic is exacerbating fundamental governmental and corporate inequalities, say residents. MRN, for example, asked Boa Vista residents to clean a quarantine facility used by new arrivals. The residents refused. Meanwhile, the mine is fully operational, with planes and ships coming and going regularly.
- MRN says it has implemented strong preventative measures against the virus. But residents point out that the company’s hospital has just six intensive care beds; they fear, in keeping with past inequities, these beds would be reserved for MRN employees, leaving infected quilombolas without care.
As COVID-19 pandemic deepens, global wildlife treaty faces an identity crisis
- The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) is a global environmental agreement of great consequence: it regulates the global trade in some of the most threatened species on Earth.
- While many conservation groups jumped at the chance the COVID-19 pandemic offered to highlight the link between pandemics and wildlife exploitation, the CITES Secretariat appeared to distance itself from the crisis, drawing criticism and scrutiny.
- The treaty, one of the few binding environmental conventions, should be part of the solution, many believe, but it would need to expanded and strengthened to respond to new challenges like COVID-19.
- Doing this and tackling larger issues of biodiversity and habitat loss would require leadership from the countries that are party to this and similar conventions, experts say.
Get sick or go hungry? Workers face dilemma at Freeport’s Grasberg mine
- U.S.-based miner Freeport McMoRan is continuing operations at its Grasberg mine in the Indonesian province of Papua, despite 56 of its employees testing positive for COVID-19.
- Workers say that if they opt to leave the site over health concerns, they won’t get paid and risk losing their job.
- The company says it has redoubled health protocols at the mine to a level that its CEO says is “more advanced” than in many communities in the U.S.
- The Papua deputy governor says the province may consider ordering a halt to operations if the trend worsens over the next three weeks.
From writing to VR, finding ways to connect to nature during isolation
- Therapists, scientists and creative workers are finding ways to tap into the positive mental health benefits of being in green spaces.
- From mindful bird listening to virtual reality interactions, they’re showing that staying in doesn’t have to mean shutting off.
Trendy, cheap, and dirty: Fashion is a top global polluter
- The fashion industry is a major global polluter and source of greenhouse gas emissions, driven in large part by the “fast fashion” business model that treats cheap clothing as a perishable good that can be disposed of after brief use.
- Globalization has aided this trillion-dollar trend, allowing brands to outsource different links of their supply chains to countries with little to no environmental and labor protections in order to keep costs down.
- That has led to widespread pollution and labor rights abuses, particularly against women workers, epitomized by the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh on April 24, 2013, in which more than 1,134 workers were killed. This week, to marks the seventh anniversary of the tragedy and advocates for a return to a more sustainable “slow fashion” model have launched the “Fashion Revolution Week.”
- A newly published review paper in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment highlights the environmental consequences of fast fashion, fashion’s complex international supply chain, and proposes solutions to bring us into a cleaner fashion future.
COVID underscores the urgency of holistic community-based approaches to conservation (commentary)
- The Covid-19 pandemic throws existing environmental crises into even sharper relief, and highlights the critical importance of agile, human-centered approaches to conservation that bolster the resilience of vulnerable populations.
- In this commentary, Alasdair Harris, Executive Director of Blue Ventures, explains how his organization and its partners are mobilizing to respond to the looming public health emergency in these remote, under-served communities.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Madagascar’s president promotes unproven herbal cure for COVID-19
- Madagascar’s president, Andry Rajoelina, unveiled an unproven cure for COVID-19 that is derived from a plant, Artemisia annua.
- His comments at a launch of the herbal remedy on April 20 suggested that the remedy, called COVID-ORGANICS, would act both as a cure and a vaccine.
- No evidence from any clinical trials was shared to back up the claims.
- The World Health Organization did not respond to Mongabay’s questions about COVID-ORGANICS, but the agency has warned against the spread of misinformation and purported miracle cures.
How to prevent the next COVID-19? Conservationists weigh in
- As the death toll from COVID-19 crosses 140,000 and cases surpass the 2 million mark there are growing calls for a permanent ban on trade in wild animals for human consumption.
- The available evidence suggests that a wet market in Wuhan, China, where live animals were bought and sold, was the site where the novel coronavirus jumped to human hosts from animals.
- Conservationists, however, are urging for a broader examination of the factors that led to the emergence of COVID-19 and a careful evaluation of measures that could prevent the next zoonotic pandemic.
- One Health, the idea that the well-being of humans is inextricably linked to the health of the planet, is gaining currency and could emerge as the guiding principle for international agencies and national governments in their fight to avert another COVID-19-like crisis.
As Indonesia fights COVID-19, warmer temperatures drive up dengue cases
- Dengue fever has been on the rise in Indonesia this year, even as the country focuses on dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Experts have attributed the increase to warmer average temperatures and unsanitary conditions that allow the mosquitoes carrying the virus to thrive.
- Authorities have ordered fumigation drives in response to the outbreak, but health experts warn the mosquitoes are developing a resistance to the insecticides used.
Will the next coronavirus come from Amazonia? Deforestation and the risk of infectious diseases (commentary)
- Many “new” human diseases originate from pathogens transferred from wild animals, as occurred with the COVID-19 coronavirus. Amazonia contains a vast number of animal species and their associated pathogens with the potential to be transferred to humans.
- Deforestation both brings humans into close proximity to wildlife and is associated with consumption of bushmeat from hunted animals.
- Amazonian deforestation is being promoted by the governments of Brazil and other countries both through actions that encourage clearing and by lack of actions to halt forest loss. The potential for releasing “new” diseases adds one more impact that should make these governments rethink their policies.
- The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.
Tax exemptions on pesticides in Brazil add up to US$ 2.2 billion per year
- Aside from saving from generous discounts or total exemptions on taxes, multinational giants in the pesticides sector also receive millions in public resources to fund research through the BNDES [Brazil’s National Development Bank]
- The amount that the Brazilian government fails to collect because of tax exemptions on pesticides is nearly four times as much as the Ministry of the Environment’s total budget this year (US$ 600 million) and more than double what the nation’s national health system [SUS] spent to treat cancer patients in 2017 (US$ 1 billion).
- Tax exemptions related to pesticides are upheld by laws passed decades ago, which view these products as fundamental for the nation’s development and that, because of this, need stimulus—like what happens with the national cesta básica [basket of basics] food distribution program.
- The scenario that benefits pesticide companies could change, as the Federal Supreme Court [STF] is expected to soon judge a Direct Action of Unconstitutionality comparing pesticides to categories like cigarettes, harmful to health and which generate costs that are paid by the entire population—and for which reason are subject to extra taxes instead of tax breaks.
Indigenous people are most vulnerable to the spread of coronavirus in Latin America
- Indigenous people are a high-risk group in the face of the coronavirus due to malnutrition, disease and poor health services.
Ending illegal deforestation is good for our health (commentary)
- The threat of COVID-19 has led humanity to curl up into a little ball, blind to the continued ravaging of what’s left of the planet’s tropical forests—and the resulting surge in contact between people and animals that leads to new viruses, from avian bird flu to zika, when the trees are gone.
- Without forests as a buffer, hunting, mining, and logging exposes people to animals. These interactions lead to the spread of animal diseases to humans, known as “zoonotic diseases.” We’ve seen this with Zika, Avian Bird Flu, Ebola, and SARS, as well as Nipah, which leads to respiratory problems similar to those from COVID-19, and Kyasanur Forest Disease, spread by ticks.
- Ending illegal deforestation offers a solution for safeguarding forests for the sake of human health. Countries that both supply and import products stemming from unlawful forest loss—whether it’s beef, soy, palm oil, or wood products—must act to end this trade. Producers, traders, and sellers of illicit products also have a role to play.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Chinese government reportedly recommending bear bile injections to treat coronavirus
- The London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) reported today that a list of recommended treatments for the novel coronavirus disease COVID-19 published by the Chinese government earlier this month includes injections of a traditional medicine called “Tan Re Qing,” which contains bear bile.
- Last month, China adopted a comprehensive ban on trade and consumption of wildlife in response to the growing COVID-19 outbreak, which scientists believe originated in a market in the Chinese city of Wuhan where wild animals and bushmeat are sold. But the ban does not prohibit the use of wildlife products in traditional Chinese medicine or as ornamental items.
- EIA wildlife campaigner and China specialist Aron White noted the irony in the country recommending a treatment that relies on trade in wildlife in response to a global disease pandemic born from the wildlife trade.
Amazon indigenous put at risk by Brazil’s feeble Covid-19 response: Critics
- Brazil’s indigenous movement is vigorously reorganizing its tactics in response to what it sees as the government’s ineffective response to the coronavirus. Indigenous leaders have also been forced to cancel the April Free Land Encampment in Brasília, at which they annually publicize their grievances to a large international audience.
- The cancelation was carried out to prevent activists from contracting Covid-19 in the city and carrying it back to Brazil’s remote Amazon indigenous communities. Indigenous peoples in Brazil historically have little resistance to new infectious diseases, and particularly respiratory diseases.
- Especially now at risk are isolated peoples in the western Amazon. Such groups are extremely susceptible to disease, but analysts fear that Bolsonaro will end the government’s “no contact” rule, practiced successfully for the past thirty years. If contacted, isolated groups could easily be infected and decimated by Covid-19.
- The indigenous movement is swiftly adopting new communication strategies, utilizing technology and social media to press forward with online meetings and awareness campaigns. There are grave disease concerns in Amazonas and Mato Grosso do Sul states, which have the biggest indigenous populations in Brazil.
Response to one pandemic, COVID-19, has helped ease another: Air pollution
- Air pollution has significantly decreased over China amid the economic slowdown caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, signaling unanticipated implications for human health.
- It is estimated that air pollution caused an extra 8.8 million premature deaths globally in 2015 alone, representing an average of a three-year shortening of life expectancy across the human population, and shortening lives on a scale greater than malaria, war and violence, HIV/AIDS, and smoking.
- The two-month drop in pollution may have saved the lives of 4,000 children under the age of 5 and 73,000 adults over the age of 70 in China, according to environmental resource economist Marshall Burke — significantly more than the global death toll from the COVID-19 virus at the time of calculation.
- Burke says we should not think of this as a “silver lining” or a “benefit” of the pandemic, given that COVID-19’s impact on public health and the broader disruption it is causing — lost incomes, inability to receive care for non-COVID-19 illnesses and injuries, etc. — could have far-reaching implications.
Peruvian women unite against toxic metals pollution (commentary)
- In Peru, communities in the Andes and the Amazon have come together to defend the health of people and families affected by pollution from toxic metals. To achieve this, they have formed the National Platform of People Affected by Toxic Metals, which was recently awarded Peru’s National Human Rights Prize.
- Indigenous, rural and urban women are especially affected by this daily struggle and are now determined to end the contamination affecting their bodies, their rivers, and their land. They demand that the state determine responsibility and provide immediate solutions.
- The National Platform of People Affected by Toxic Metals represents affected people from 12 regions of Peru and demands effective implementation of a national policy and plan to address human and environmental health problems caused by toxic metals. The Platform also urgently demands the creation of a high-level multisector commission that prioritizes this serious problem.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.
Complaint alleges oil company left Peru communities’ environment in ruins
- Indigenous communities and human rights NGOs contend that Pluspetrol violated a set of business standards issued by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
- The complaint, delivered March 11 in the Netherlands, says the company has avoided paying taxes and has failed to address damage to the environment in the Peruvian Amazon caused by its oil-drilling activities through 2015.
- The groups allege that the release of toxic heavy metals into the water supply have caused numerous health problems for community members.
Feeds: news | india | latam | brasil | indonesia