A study conducted by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources showed that 180 of 421 rivers and other bodies of water nationwide are so heavily polluted they may soon be declared biologically dead. The DENR study showed that the biggest culprit was domestic sewage followed by commercial and industrial wastes.

If the Philippines will not protect its rivers and rehabilitate those dying and dead ones, the people will definitely face a dire consequence: ecological catastrophe and economic debacle.

Kampala. Advocates for Natural Resources and Development, an advocacy organisation, have blamed government for licensing quack Chinese investors who have invested in mineral extraction activities that have caused environment destruction and affected surface rights of people whose land falls within licensed areas.
This was revealed during a training of judicial officials at the Judicial Training Institute (JTI) in Kampala yesterday to equip them with knowledge on how to dispense justice in cases relating to extractive activities and environment.

Escalation of violence against indigenous groups in Brazil pushes growing number of native women to lead the movement.

Sao Paulo, Brazil - Celia Xakriaba was 13 years old when she joined the fight for indigenous rights. Her indigenous Xakriaba community is one of the few who survived the advancement of colonisers and missionaries in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais during the 18th century.

Systematic racism and the failure of governments to recognize and respect land rights are at the root of violence leading to the murder of Indigenous peoples around the world, said Vicky Tauli-Corpuz, U.N. special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples on Tuesday. 

For Ashton Janvier, land and water are the portals to teaching and preserving the Denesuline language, which he says originates from the environment. 

“In my culture, everything that we talk about and everything that we teach one another has to do with the land,” said Janvier, an educator and filmmaker from La Loche community near the Clearwater River Dene Nation in Canada’s province of Saskatchewan.

Earth’s cornucopia of life has evolved over 550 million years. Along the way, five mass extinction events have caused serious setbacks to life on our planet. The fifth, which was caused by a gargantuan meteorite impact along Mexico’s Yucatan coast, changed Earth’s climate, took out the dinosaurs and altered the course of biological evolution.

• The Wampis is an indigenous group comprised of thousands of members whose ancestors have lived in the Amazon rainforest of northern Peru for centuries.
• Mounting incursions by loggers, miners and oil prospectors, as well as governance changes that favored industrial exploitation, left the Wampis increasingly worried about the future of their home. Representatives said they realized that only by developing a strong, legal organizational structure would they have a voice to defend their people and the survival of their forest.

Indonesia - In Kalibiru, a national park in the Menoreh mountains to the west of Yogyakarta, tourists scale precarious-looking ladders up timber trees to take Instragrammable photos of themselves on treetop wooden platforms overlooking lakes and lush forest.

Peru - To legally obtain title to their community lands, indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon must navigate a maze of legal paperwork and technical steps that can take as long as a decade to complete. The process is frustrating not only for the villagers, but also for the government officials, as discovered in a study by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).

A quarter of a century ago, Cameroon passed a law which gave people living on the edge of forests the right to own and manage forest areas. These communities depended on the forest for livelihood activities, like agriculture, hunting, fishing and non-timber forest products – like fruits or medicinal plants.

JAKARTA, Indonesia — When Joko “Jokowi” Widodo was elected in 2014, he ran on bold promises to ensure higher economic growth, reduce environmental impact, reform land laws, and improve both human rights and public health in Indonesia. Elected as the country’s first outsider president — not connected to the military or the founding aristocracy — there was much optimism that he could fulfill his promises.

The Sixth Global Environment Outlook (GEO-6), the most comprehensive environmental assessment produced by the UN in five years, brought us both good and bad news.

The environment has continued to deteriorate since the first GEO-6 report in 1997, with potentially irreversible impacts if not effectively addressed. But pathways to significant change do exist, and a sustainable future is still possible.