Environment Archive

Zimbabwe’s informal mining sector is in the spotlight after an accident at a gold mine killed at least 24 people last month. As many as 70 informal miners were believed to be working inside two abandoned mineshafts near the town of Battlefields, southwest of Harare, when the underground tunnels were flooded by water from a burst dam. Eight miners were rescued but others are unaccounted for and feared dead, as authorities struggled to drain water from the shafts. President Emmerson Mnangagwa officially declared a state of disaster and pledged all available government resources for rescue efforts. According to many mining […]

Peruvian authorities are touting an aggressive new military-led effort aimed at eliminating widespread illegal gold mining activities, which have caused massive deforestation and pollution in the fragile Amazon rainforest. But this kind of militarized environmental management could further complicate an already messy situation in Peru. On March 5, senior Peruvian defense officials inaugurated the first of four new military bases near the remote Tambopata National Reserve—part of their new campaign, codenamed Operation Mercurio, or Mercury, focused on restoring order and eliminating illegal mining in the southeastern region of Madre de Dios, the epicenter of illegal gold mining in Peru. President […]

Last week, Japan marked the eighth anniversary of the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that hit the country in 2011, leaving more than 18,000 people dead or unaccounted for and triggering the Fukushima nuclear disaster, one of the worst nuclear accidents in modern history. A moment of silence was observed across the country at 2:46 p.m. on March 11, the time the earthquake struck. Sports teams interrupted their practice to pray for the souls of those who perished. “We must never let the valuable lessons that we have learned from the enormous damage caused by the disaster to fade away,” Prime […]