Microfinance loans were meant to offer a pathway out of poverty in countries like Nigeria, particularly for women. But as climate change makes weather patterns more unpredictable, the risk of falling into further debt falls onto the shoulders of women farmers who face not just erratic farming conditions but social stigma from default.
Arrests of high-profile campaigns suggest that even those working on government-approved green initiatives with international backing aren’t safe from Vietnam’s crackdown on environmental activism. But some warn that staying below the radar can be even more dangerous.
After a Canadian mining company challenged a Zapotec community’s Indigenous identity, recalling the ancestral names of sacred landmarks helped reinvigorate their connection to the land – and defend it from extractive industries.
In a remote community enveloped in cloudforest, a whistled form of the Indigenous Chinantec language is perfectly adapted to the land and its weather. But who needs whistles when you can use WhatsApp?
Medicinal wisdom is embedded in Indigenous Mixe languages. By sustaining their mother tongue and practices involving herbs and healing rituals, Mixe people keep alive a cosmovision in which they speak to Mother Earth.
When foreign companies restarted mining operations that had been shuttered since the breakup of Yugoslavia, Vareš had high hopes of economic revival. But as the state fails to take a stand against pollution and deforestation, optimism has given way to nostalgia for the socially owned mines of the communist era.
In communities shaped by redlining and disinvestment, the only places to shop are often dollar stores – stocked with plastic goods that have crossed oceans on container ships and rolled across states on eighteen-wheelers. These journeys are long, carbon-heavy, and almost invisible, but their impact is felt from Suzhou to Chicago, from the global climate to the human body.
This year’s COP, the UN’s 30th global climate summit, is hosted by Belém. The Brazilian media has become obsessed with Belém’s poverty and underdevelopment – shortcomings that weren’t deemed newsworthy until the urban Amazon became a focus of the world’s attention. But what does it mean to be prepared? For whom?
While European cities face record-shattering heat due to climate change, not all residents are affected equally. Indoor heat sensors show scorching temps in areas with lower-income housing, compounded by neglectful urban planning and pollution- a combination that is creating health risks in urban peripheries.
For decades, Moroccan immigrants have called La Cañada Real home. Now, real estate speculators are closing in on the informal settlement. Authorities are starving the community of basic infrastructure and demolishing homes. But women are pushing back against eviction and uniting against oppression from outside their community and within.
