Mining

A major iron mining project in eastern Guinea may be at risk as its owner, the U.S. firm HPX, is reportedly running into trouble with its plans to ship ore through neighboring Liberia. HPX’s mining concession in Guinea has raised alarm among environmentalists, who say that if it reaches the production stage, its close proximity […]

Panama is still trying to understand the extent of the violence that took place during the massive, nationwide protests last year. Groups from all corners of the country, from teacher unions to hospital workers to Indigenous communities, were targeted by law enforcement while speaking out against pollution, deforestation and water shortages allegedly caused by the […]

OAK GROVE, Ala.—Clara Riley thought she was having a heart attack.  As an Alabama mine has slowly approached the coal seam under her home, Riley’s anxiety has sometimes gotten the best of her. In late April, after a mine representative visited her home, the 90-year-old said she broke down. She could feel the weight of […]

The Pan Amazon is a significant source of several key industrial commodities. Global markets are not overly dependent on the region; nonetheless, production from Amazonian mines is not insignificant. Development of mineral resources is a decades-long process and, if the extractive sector were to abandon the region, as proposed by some environmental advocates, the global […]

Floodplains are extraordinarily productive because they are the interface between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. They are remarkably diverse because they integrate a mosaic of lakes, marshes, palm swamps and inundated forests, which create the complex food webs that support fish populations. Floodplain habitats are socially and economically vital because tens of thousands of families depend […]

More than eight years after the Mariana dam disaster, Indigenous Krenak people remain scarred by the memories of one of the worst environmental disasters in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state. Living on the banks of the Doce River for generations, the Krenak peoples were among the most impacted by the rupture of the Fundão iron mine […]

In Luzerne County, in northeast Pennsylvania, the Nanticoke Creek is dry most of the time because unless there’s a major storm, any water that flows into it disappears into underground voids created by coal mines that operated there for decades until the 1960s. The creek has long been a target for restoration by Earth Conservancy, […]

Africa’s great apes—from gorillas to chimpanzees and bonobos—are under far greater threat than scientists previously realized, a new study suggests.  While primatologists and conservationists have long tracked great ape populations and the human activities that negatively impact them—from poaching to expanding agriculture and oil drilling—there has historically been a dearth of information on the location […]