Kishore Kumar Chakma, a young man from an ethnic community in Rangamati district, voluntarily guards a village common forest (VCF) so that none can hunt wild animals and fell trees from it.
Indigenous peoples in Brazil have won a new right: a share in the profits of hydroelectric plants that cause them harm when built on or near their lands.
The central role Indigenous Peoples and local communities in addressing climate change, biodiversity loss and desertification has gained widespread recognition over the past decade. Indigenous Peoples’ close dependence on resources and ecosystems, exceptional tradition, and ancestral knowledge are invaluable assets for the sustainable management of our planet’s natural resources.
The first time Jumanne Waziri tasted salt in his morning tea, he thought his wife had made a mistake.
“Why did you put salt instead of sugar?” he asked, setting his cup down in their home in Ununio, a quiet suburb north of Dar es Salaam.
The United Nations Refugee Agency faces
devastating cuts that may eliminate 5,000 to 6,000 jobs, with potentially catastrophic consequences for millions of people fleeing war, repression, hunger and climate disasters. This 75-year-old institution, established to help Europeans displaced by the Second World War, now confronts an unprecedented financial crisis, primarily due to the US foreign aid freeze – and the timing couldn’t be worse.
Sudan’s diverse crops and agricultural heritage are at risk of being lost. The ongoing conflict in Sudan is claiming lives and threatening livelihoods and food security.
In the chaos of conflict, scientists like Ali Babiker are fighting to protect Sudan’s future food security—not with weapons, but with seeds.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is urging nations to increase investments in their meteorological and hydrological services and build robust early warning systems (EWS) to safeguard communities from the mounting threats posed by climate-related disasters.
Many glaciers in the world will not survive the 21
st century, according to reports published by the United Nations. Five of the past six years have experienced the most rapid glacier retreat on record; 2022-24 was the largest three-year loss of glacier mass.
The hope of Salvadoran Cristian Castillo to harvest tomatoes in a municipality of the Central American Dry Corridor hung by a thread when his well, which he used to irrigate his crops, dried up. However, his enthusiasm returned when a regional project taught him how to harvest rainwater for when the rains begin in May.
World Water Day, celebrated on March 22 every year, raises awareness about the importance of water and advocates for the sustainable management of freshwater resources. The theme for 2025 focuses on glaciers — those grandiose ice masses that are a crucial part of the world's water resources.
World Water Day calls us all to promote the essential element of life: water. But we must also look this year at the rapidly vanishing sources of freshwater that we depend on, especially glaciers. Although glaciers may be remote for many of us, they are an essential component of the water cycle, nourishing rivers and lakes that are important for millions of people around the world. As precious resources with sources under threat, glaciers in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region are an area of focus.
While a local community prides itself on caring for a sensitive biodiverse region, and despite centuries-long stewardship of the Kaziranga, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the authorities rebuff—sometimes aggressively—their attempts to remain involved.
Women goat herders in the municipality of Ovalle, in northern Chile, are confronting climate change by defending their heritage through improvements in the quality and variety of their products, which has led some to win international awards for their cheeses.
The principle of leaving no one behind is central to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The progress toward achieving SDG 6, which aims to ensure universal access to water, sanitation, and hygiene by 2030 is increasingly under threat with recent development funding cuts posing a significant barrier.
In a world of overlapping crises, from brutal conflicts and democratic regression to climate breakdown and astronomic levels of economic inequality, one vital force stands as a shield and solution: civil society. This is the sobering but ultimately hopeful message of CIVICUS’s 14th annual
State of Civil Society Report, which provides a wide-ranging civil society perspective on the state of the world as it stands in early 2025.
The Forest Declaration Assessment Partners have called for urgent reforms to the international financial system to halt deforestation and protect biodiversity. It has also pitched for redirecting the public subsidies to mitigate the direct and indirect environmental risks from both public and private finance.
For about three years now, Argentines have been hearing almost every month that oil production is breaking new records. Looking ahead, the country is projected to become a major global supplier of what remains the most sought-after energy source.
Local communities are finally witnessing progress in their mission for justice, 36 years after the Panguna copper mine in Papua New Guinea’s Autonomous Region of Bougainville became the centre of landowner grievances about environmental damage.
Since the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan nearly four years ago, human rights have begun diminishing for over 14 million women. Heightened gender inequality has exacerbated the pre-existing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, which has been marked by conflict, displacement, climate change, food insecurity, and economic instability. In 2025, widespread cuts in humanitarian funding look to further strain the crisis.
After the controversial lifting of a six-year moratorium or temporary ban on logging activities in public and community forests by the Kenyan government in July 2023, trucks ferrying tree logs are frequently seen on major highways in total disregard of environmental concerns.
NATO geopolitical strategy has now joined the ‘coalition’ of Western geoeconomic forces accelerating planetary heating, now led again by re-elected US President Donald Trump.