Environmental Justice

"It was just before dawn when the Ashaninka people, wearing long, tunic-like dresses, began singing traditional songs while playing drums and other instruments. The music drifted through Apiwtxa village, which had welcomed guests from Indigenous communities in Brazil and neighboring Peru, some having traveled three days. As the sun rose, they moved beneath the shadow of a huge mango tree."

"Thanks to $500 million in funding from the Environmental Protection Agency, a new initiative called the Green Bank for Rural America could help channel money to nonprofit lenders like the Mountain Association to support community solar arrays, apprenticeships in renewable energy fields, electrified public transit, and other projects."

"Twenty-one young people on Thursday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to revive a novel lawsuit claiming the U.S. government's energy policies violate their rights to be protected from climate change."

"Drinking water contamination is a chronic, insidious threat in California’s rural communities. Some have been waiting for clean water for years."

"A two-year long drought in the semi-desert municipality of Colón, in the central Mexican state of Querétaro, has left many struggling with dead crops and water rationing. But at the same time, the local government in Querétaro is giving incentives to companies to build data centres that generally use large amounts of water to cool their servers."

"Senate Foreign Relations Chair Ben Cardin of Maryland is calling on Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev and his government to release multiple political prisoners before COP29 gets underway this November in the city of Baku."

"Colombia, host nation for this year's United Nations COP16 biodiversity conference, was the deadliest country for environmentalists and land rights defenders in 2023, with a record 79 killed, according to UK advocacy group Global Witness."

"Louisianans say a major accident at a sprawling Marathon refinery caused health issues. The company insists there were ‘no offsite impacts’"

"The family placed flowers by a pair of weathered cowboy boots, as people quietly gathered for the memorial of the soft-spoken tribal chairman who mentored teens in the boxing ring and teased his grandkids on tractor rides. Left unsaid, and what troubled Marvin Cota’s family deep down, was that his story ended like so many others on the remote Duck Valley Indian Reservation. He was healthy for decades. They found the cancer too late."