Mexico: to dynamite hills or protect homes?
Over the years, homes and whole neighbourhoods have been built close to or on the tracks of a disused railway. Now the Tren Maya project threatens to evict them, while offering compensation and relocation in which they have little faith
Colombia: the power of listening
Born from a UNLive initiative aimed at utilising culture as a tool for environmental change, the Colombia-based collective Vozterra channel grassroots responses to climate change and the decline of biodiversity.
Mexico: informal workers and the pandemic
Mexico has a vast army of informal workers who receive little in the way of formal state benefits. Covid lockdowns have hit them hard and only neighbourhood cooperation is helping them survive.
Brazil: Nothing by Accident
Alistair Clark reviews Damian Platt's book about organized crime in Rio de Janeiro and asks whether it reflects Brazil more widely.
Creativity is vital in environmental research
The key question of the day was how creativity, imagination and play can help researchers both to carry out and communicate environmental research to the public. How, we asked, can collaborations between researchers and artists deepen our understanding of today’s ecological challenges?
Poisoned city: Brazil’s forgotten environmental disaster
Hundreds of tons of carcinogenic agrochemicals, including DDT, were abandoned by the Brazilian government at a factory near an orphanage on the outskirts or...
The homeless street – São Paulo during Covid-19
Homelessness has increased dramatically during the Covid pandemic in São Paulo. A film and exhibition explore the way homeless people convert the street into a place of semi-permanent dwelling.
Colombia: Cali’s community libraries
In summer 2021, a three-month national strike against Ivan Duque's right-wing government proved a remarkable time for movement-building and social change. Silvia reports on the libraries constructed by and for local communities in Cali during this period.
Building self-sufficient communities in Rio’s favelas
The favela community of Vale Encantado in Rio de Janeiro are using a biosystem for sewage treatment and solar panels to make their neighbourhood economically and environmentally self-sufficient, while facing down a long-term threat of eviction.
Buenos Aires – a riverside for the rich?
Buenos Aires' right-wing dominated city council has endorsed two major riverside developments which would reserve huge tracts of land for private luxury apartments and offices. Opposition is mounting.