Water

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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

'The Government is responsible for these two murders, and Xiomara Castro must provide an explanation,’ declared ERIC-SJ researcher Joaquín Mejía Rivera, in the wake of the killing of two environmental defenders in Guapinol.

The Indigenous Comcaac community of northwestern Mexico is working to preserve eelgrass and promote the renaissance of the grain they obtain from it.