Environment & Sustainability
AQ Top 5 Urban Visionaries: Jhony Fernando Fernández
A young man from Cali, Colombia, goes from gang member to community leader and peacemaker.
AQ Top 5 Urban Visionaries: Raisa Banfield
A Panama City TV host-turned politician raises her voice in defense of the environment.
How the Caribbean Can Prepare for More Violent Hurricanes
This article has been updated The hurricanes that battered the Caribbean this summer left few communities untouched. But the approximately 4.4 million people living in low-elevation coastal zones (LECZs), coastal areas less than 10 meters above sea level, paid a particularly heavy price. Hurricane Irma, for example, destroyed homes throughout the Turks and Caicos, where … Read more
Moira Birss: Colombia’s Government Hasn’t Taken Responsibility on Deforestation
For our latest print issue on Colombia, we asked experts, executives, politicians and everyday people about the biggest issue facing Colombia’s next president. See all of their answers here. If life on our planet is to survive climate change, we must drastically and urgently slash greenhouse gas emissions and conserve forests. Colombia’s next president will face many … Read more
Rodrigo Uprimny: Reviving Aerial Coca Spraying Would Be a Mistake
For our latest print issue on Colombia, we asked experts, executives, politicians and everyday people about the biggest issue facing Colombia’s next president. See all of their answers here. Colombia’s next president will have to resist internal and external pressures to reactivate aerial spraying of illicit crops. Between 2002 and 2015, some 3.8 million acres of coca … Read more
Brazil’s Rollbacks Jeopardize the Amazon’s Future
Brazilian President Michel Temer’s June 26 indictment on corruption allegations marked a new peak in the country’s political crisis. While the charges grabbed global headlines, they also overshadowed the environmental crisis unfolding in the Brazilian Amazon, where vast tracts of protected forests and indigenous territories are under growing threat. Brazilian forests are being felled … Read more
Why Central America’s Drought Is Harder On Women
Over the past 18 years, Rosalita García has nursed all 10 of her children back to health after bouts of malnutrition. But her three-year-old son’s recent hospital visit in Chiquimula, Guatemala has the 37-year-old mother more worried than usual. “I was able to feed my kids better before because it rained,” García told AQ. “But … Read more
Threats to Environmental Activists Put Colombia’s Indigenous at Risk
While Colombia has made remarkable strides in reducing violence over the last two decades, the country remains a dangerous – and even deadly – place for environmental activists. According to a report released June 20 by the advocacy group Global Witness, at least 26 land and environmental activists were killed in the country in 2015. … Read more
How Surfing Helps El Salvador’s Economy
At the onset of the 1980s, surf tourism in El Salvador seemed like a fading pipe dream. The country’s fledgling industry, which had shown some potential in the 1970s, stalled as Salvadorans braced for civil war. For the next 12 years, as battles raged between the right-wing government and political dissidents of the Farabundo Martí … Read more
Former UN Climate Talks President Says Latin America Has Much to Gain at Paris Conference
On the opening day of international climate change talks in Paris this week, Manuel Pulgar Vidal, Peru’s environment minister, officially handed over the presidency of the United Nations Conference of Parties (COP) to French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. AQ sat down with the minister to talk about Latin America’s role in climate negotiations in Paris … Read more
Garbage Is Choking the Amazon’s Biggest City
Maria da Conceição Peixote has lived in a floating house on the Igarapé do Quarenta, one of the two longest waterways in Manaus, for most of her life. “I can’t afford to move,” says the 63-yearold housekeeper. “But it’s hard.” Da Conceição and her husband, Natanel Baima de Oliveira, 60, a produce vendor, are among … Read more
Innovators
Three social entrepreneurs working in different ways to improve life in the Amazon.
Hello! from the Amazon’s Noise Capital
A visitor to the Amazon rain forest might expect to hear the call of birds, the buzz of insects and the screech of monkeys — but probably not car horns and roaring motors. Yet those are the predominant sounds echoing through the streets of Iquitos, a metropolis deep in the Peruvian Amazon. Iquitos has a … Read more
Turning a Slash-and-Burn Capital into One of the Amazon’s Greenest Places
In 2007, the Brazilian government named the municipality of Paragominas, in Pará state, one of the biggest culprits for deforestation of the Amazon. Ranchers there were responsible for the loss of 156 square miles of forest per year. But just a few years later, Paragominas was being hailed as a model for sustainable development in … Read more
