New Future
A kind of feed reader
PARACAS, Peru — As the sun set over Paracas Bay on April 7, 2023, a beachside hotel flashed with the lights of an electronic music party. Seen from afar, the building was a fluorescent dot twinkling in the darkness. The event started at 2 p.m. and continued into the night, sending thumping bass frequencies into […]
The Philippines experienced an increase in “Christmas typhoons” and tropical cyclone-induced rainfall over the last couple of decades, according to the country’s latest climate report.
Forests. We can’t live without them. If they burn, we die. Many forests are at risk today. The Amazon has been so damaged that it may shift from being a carbon sink to a carbon source and morph into a savanna. Scientists overwhelmingly tell us that if humanity wants a future on a habitable planet, we must […]
AGUÁN VALLEY, Honduras — In the years after 2018, during periods when the threats subsided and the paramilitary gunmen didn’t show up, nights in the village of Panamá were peaceful. People meandered freely through the dirt roads of the community, wedged against an ocean of reclaimed, reoccupied African palm plantations on the remote northern coast […]
YAQUI VALLEY, Mexico – More than a decade after a court ruling that an aqueduct violated the Yaqui tribe’s rights, the Mexican government has done nothing in response, say locals. The Independencia Aqueduct, which supplies water to several cities in the state of Sonora, is one of several projects the government has constructed along the […]
HARARE — By 6 a.m. on Sunday, the line at a water well in Harare’s Budiriro suburb is already long. It snakes all the way into a nearby street, and some people have begun fighting over who should get water first. If they’re lucky, they get clean water once a week. In other suburbs of […]
Wildfires have scorched millions of hectares of forest across South America so far this year. From Bolivia to Brazil, Peru to Argentina, the continent has been gripped by one of its worst fire seasons in decades, with deforestation and drought fueling the flames. “The Amazon is not burning because it wants to burn, it is […]
The combined effects of humanity’s actions are making ecosystems less resistant to change, and threatening the vital ecosystem services humanity relies upon, according to a study published in Nature Geoscience. It’s already well known that humanity is driving myriad systemic environmental changes: altering the climate, converting forests to farmland, polluting the oceans with plastics, diminishing […]
With recent conservation efforts and the involvement of Indigenous peoples and local communities in managing protected areas, forest elephant populations are on the verge of stabilizing,in at least one national park. This is, among other things, what WWF Africa said during a recent press briefing for the launch of the Living Planet Report. Elephant populations, […]
Scores of tiny shrimplike crustaceans make a nightly pilgrimage from underwater caves out to feed in the open sea. Bellies full, they find their way back, homing in on their specific cave over vast distances. (Vast for a shrimp.) How these millions of miniscule mysids find their way back home has been largely a mystery […]
What’s new: A recent study reveals that the icy Antarctic Peninsula, the northernmost part of mainland Antarctica, has experienced a nearly twelve-fold increase in plant cover over the last 35 years. The greening, driven primarily by the spread of mosses, has accelerated notably since 2016, researchers found. “The landscape is still almost entirely dominated by […]
BATAM, Indonesia — A major Chinese solar panel manufacturing development on an Indonesian island saw renewed clashes in September between a company allegedly controlled by an Indonesian household name and the island’s Indigenous communities resisting eviction. Siti Hawa, a 66-year-old grandmother, suffered a broken wrist after she stepped in to prevent a security guard from […]
Nigeria’s anti-corruption body is partnering with the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) to address wildlife trafficking. The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and EIA signed a memorandum of understanding Sept. 20, which will allow the two bodies to work together and develop a strategy to combat environmental crime. “The EIA will […]
The announcement of tin and coltan deposits potentially worth tens of billions of dollars “discovered” beneath a forest reserve has taken Burundi by storm, raising questions about its veracity and concerns about the communities and wildlife that would be displaced in an effort to start mining. The news was presented by executives at the Burundi […]
PARACAS, Peru — As the sun set over Paracas Bay on April 7, 2023, a beachside hotel flashed with the lights of an electronic music party. Seen from afar, the building was a fluorescent dot twinkling in the darkness. The event started at 2 p.m. and continued into the night, sending thumping bass frequencies into […]
The Philippines experienced an increase in “Christmas typhoons” and tropical cyclone-induced rainfall over the last couple of decades, according to the country’s latest climate report.
Forests. We can’t live without them. If they burn, we die. Many forests are at risk today. The Amazon has been so damaged that it may shift from being a carbon sink to a carbon source and morph into a savanna. Scientists overwhelmingly tell us that if humanity wants a future on a habitable planet, we must […]
AGUÁN VALLEY, Honduras — In the years after 2018, during periods when the threats subsided and the paramilitary gunmen didn’t show up, nights in the village of Panamá were peaceful. People meandered freely through the dirt roads of the community, wedged against an ocean of reclaimed, reoccupied African palm plantations on the remote northern coast […]
YAQUI VALLEY, Mexico – More than a decade after a court ruling that an aqueduct violated the Yaqui tribe’s rights, the Mexican government has done nothing in response, say locals. The Independencia Aqueduct, which supplies water to several cities in the state of Sonora, is one of several projects the government has constructed along the […]
HARARE — By 6 a.m. on Sunday, the line at a water well in Harare’s Budiriro suburb is already long. It snakes all the way into a nearby street, and some people have begun fighting over who should get water first. If they’re lucky, they get clean water once a week. In other suburbs of […]
Wildfires have scorched millions of hectares of forest across South America so far this year. From Bolivia to Brazil, Peru to Argentina, the continent has been gripped by one of its worst fire seasons in decades, with deforestation and drought fueling the flames. “The Amazon is not burning because it wants to burn, it is […]
The combined effects of humanity’s actions are making ecosystems less resistant to change, and threatening the vital ecosystem services humanity relies upon, according to a study published in Nature Geoscience. It’s already well known that humanity is driving myriad systemic environmental changes: altering the climate, converting forests to farmland, polluting the oceans with plastics, diminishing […]
With recent conservation efforts and the involvement of Indigenous peoples and local communities in managing protected areas, forest elephant populations are on the verge of stabilizing,in at least one national park. This is, among other things, what WWF Africa said during a recent press briefing for the launch of the Living Planet Report. Elephant populations, […]
Scores of tiny shrimplike crustaceans make a nightly pilgrimage from underwater caves out to feed in the open sea. Bellies full, they find their way back, homing in on their specific cave over vast distances. (Vast for a shrimp.) How these millions of miniscule mysids find their way back home has been largely a mystery […]
What’s new: A recent study reveals that the icy Antarctic Peninsula, the northernmost part of mainland Antarctica, has experienced a nearly twelve-fold increase in plant cover over the last 35 years. The greening, driven primarily by the spread of mosses, has accelerated notably since 2016, researchers found. “The landscape is still almost entirely dominated by […]
BATAM, Indonesia — A major Chinese solar panel manufacturing development on an Indonesian island saw renewed clashes in September between a company allegedly controlled by an Indonesian household name and the island’s Indigenous communities resisting eviction. Siti Hawa, a 66-year-old grandmother, suffered a broken wrist after she stepped in to prevent a security guard from […]
Nigeria’s anti-corruption body is partnering with the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) to address wildlife trafficking. The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and EIA signed a memorandum of understanding Sept. 20, which will allow the two bodies to work together and develop a strategy to combat environmental crime. “The EIA will […]
The announcement of tin and coltan deposits potentially worth tens of billions of dollars “discovered” beneath a forest reserve has taken Burundi by storm, raising questions about its veracity and concerns about the communities and wildlife that would be displaced in an effort to start mining. The news was presented by executives at the Burundi […]