After the Storm, Malawi’s Farmers Face a Precarious Future
It takes Ellen Sinoya, 43, two days to walk to work. She leaves her three children with their grandmother at home in Mwenye, a small village in southern Malawi’s Machinga…
‘Green Roads’ Are Plowing Ahead, Buffering Drought and Floods
Makueni County, a corner of southern Kenya that’s home to nearly a million people, is a land of extremes. Nine months a year, Makueni is a hardened, sun-scorched place where…
After Comeback, Southern Iraq’s Marshes Are Now Drying Up
Three years ago, the vast marshlands of southern Iraq’s Dhi Qar province were flourishing. Fishermen glided in punts across swathes of still water between vast reed beds, while buffalo bathed…
In Mongolia, a Killer Winter Is Ravaging Herds and a Way of Life
The temperature was minus 45 degrees F when Uuganaa, a 27-year-old nomad with a wife and two children, woke to the howling winds outside his “ger,” a felt-covered traditional Mongolian…
Will UN Carbon Market Work? Indonesia Will Provide First Test
The United Nations’ market for carbon trading will soon be open for business. Approved at the U.N. climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, last month, it will for the first time…
Lauded as Green Model, Costa Rica Faces Unrest in Its Forests
Costa Rica has a green halo. In recent decades, the small Central American nation has transformed itself from a notorious hotspot for deforestation into a beacon of reforestation that is…
How a Solar Revolution in Farming Is Depleting World’s Groundwater
There is a solar-powered revolution going on in the fields of India. By 2026, more than 3 million farmers will be raising irrigation water from beneath their fields using solar-powered…
In a Dammed and Diked Mekong, a Push to Restore the Flow
We depart from Can Tho, the bustling heart of Vietnam’s Mekong River delta, before sunrise, heading south to an aquaculture farm in coastal Cà Mau province. The farm, I’m told,…
On Navajo Lands, Ancient Ways Are Restoring the Parched Earth
Here in Burnt Corn Valley, smack in the middle of the Navajo reservation’s vast Black Mesa region, the hilly land both craves water and is brutalized by it. The sandy…
With CO2 Levels Rising, World’s Drylands Are Turning Green
Southeast Australia has been getting hotter and drier. Droughts have lengthened, and temperatures regularly soar above 95 degrees F (35 degrees C). Bush fires abound. But somehow, its woodlands keep…