Water

Intag communities in Ecuador are resisting development of a copper mine at Llurimagua, proposed by Enami and Codelco. In Peru, residents of Aquia, Ancásh, accuse the Antamina mine of encroaching on their land without consultation.

The Guapinol Eight have been in detention for close to two years now, a situation denounced as illegal by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. ‘There is no legal basis for having detained the defenders and even less so for continuing to detain them’.

Residents of Cuenca, in Azuay province, voted overwhelmingly in a 'consulta popular' to ban mining that would affect key water resources. Incoming president Guillermo Lasso may find it hard to ignore this result.

Five water defenders from Santa Marta, Cabañas, El Salvador have been arrested in connection with the 1989 murder of a woman in their community. However, their active membership of an organisation opposed to mining and strong signs that the government wants to subvert the country's mining ban suggest another motive for their persecution

In Guatemala, environmental defenders are criminalised, evicted, beaten, imprisoned and sometimes killed. It is one of the most dangerous places in the world for those who seek to defend their communities, lands and environment.

It's not all plain sailing for mining companies. Communities at Cerro Colorado in Chile have put up stiff opposition to BHP, whose mine threatens water supplies from a key a key aquifer. And peasants in Huamachuco, Peru, staged a massive protest against mining in their province.

Honduran environmental defender Berta Cáceres was brutally murdered in 2016 because of her opposition to the construction of the Agua Zarca dam, which threatened indigenous Lenca communities. This podcast series examines her life and death.

Members of the collective Ocupe e Abrace are opposing a new 22 storey block of flats, to be built next to Praça Homero Silva...

An attempted assassination, criminalization, and violent eviction in 2014 didn't stop the Peaceful Resistance of La Puya in Guatemala, which won legal action suspending harmful mining activities.

In Mexico, a university-educated, small-scale peasant farmer came up with an untried innovative solution that not only restores degraded land to productivity, but also greatly enhances soil carbon storage, provides a valuable new crop, and even offers a hopeful diet for diabetics.