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Telegraph
24-05-2025
- Telegraph
Ambushed in the Amazon: The inside story of a British journalist's brutal murder
In a clearing in the Javari Valley, near a tiny fishing village called São Gabriel in a remote area of the Amazon rainforest, stand two roughly hewn wooden crosses. They bear the names of Dom Phillips, a British journalist, and Bruno Pereira, an expert on Brazil's Indigenous people, and mark the spot where on 5 June 2022 Phillips and Pereira were ambushed and murdered while investigating illegal fishing in the area. The Javari Valley Indigenous Reservation, 21 million acres of primary rainforest, is located on Brazil's borders with Peru and Colombia. It is home to about 7,000 Indigenous people, 2,000 of which are ' uncontacted ' – a higher concentration than anywhere else in Brazil. It is an area of ongoing, and often violent, conflict between Indigenous people and illegal loggers, poachers and fishers, a conflict made worse by traffickers, taking advantage of the lack of state enforcement to use the region's waterways as a route for smuggling drugs and guns. It is a hazardous place, but Phillips was used to hazardous places. For seven years he had been travelling throughout the Amazon, reporting on the devastating impact of illegal deforestation, mining and fishing, talking with those exploiting the Amazon's natural resources – ranchers, landowners, speculators, politicians – and the Indigenous people, environmental activists, farmers and growers who are attempting to protect and preserve the land. It was a place that Phillips had come to love – 'wild and serene in a thousand shades of green', he wrote, somewhere it 'felt like the future and past existed in the same place', its 'overwhelming sense of vastness both calming and a little unsettling' – while also reflecting in sorrow and anger on the ravages inflicted on the land and its Indigenous people. 'Its magnificence chills the stomach,' he wrote. 'Why would anyone want to destroy this? What could possibly justify such a monstrous act?' At the time of his death Phillips was writing a book that would have been the culmination of his research, provisionally titled How To Save the Amazon: Ask the People Who Know. After he died, a group of friends and fellow journalists gathered together to honour his legacy and ensure his work would not be in vain, by completing that book. It is published next week under the title How To Save the Amazon: A Journalist's Deadly Quest for Answers, and looks back on Phillips' work and the tragic and violent circumstances of his death. Phillips grew up as far away from the Amazon as can be imagined. He was born in 1964 in Bebington, Cheshire, the son of a schoolteacher mother and an accountant father. After dropping out of higher education, he travelled around the Mediterranean and lived for several years in Denmark. Returning to England, he took up music journalism, writing for and becoming editor-in-chief of the dance music magazine Mixmag. His work took him around the world covering the music scene in different countries, including Brazil. He fell in love with the country, and in 2007 he settled in São Paulo, freelancing for British newspapers and magazines and for a local wire service. Tom Hennigan, the South America correspondent for The Irish Times, became a close friend after meeting Phillips at a monthly journalists' get-together. 'We just connected straight away,' he remembers. 'He was a quietly charismatic guy who made a lot of friends. Within a year of him being here in São Paulo everyone seemed to know him.' Phillips loved the outdoors, and would organise weekend excursions with friends to hike in the rugged mountains behind the seaside town of Paraty. Hennigan went on a number of trips. 'And several people who went on one never went on another. They were pretty challenging. You really had to rough it.' In 2012 Phillips moved to Rio de Janeiro. Brazil had been awarded the 2014 Fifa World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics, and there would be an appetite for newspaper stories explaining life in the country to readers in the UK and US. In 2013, at a party, he was introduced to Alessandra Sampaio – Alê – a fashion designer. 'He called me the next day and invited me for a drink,' she tells me, on a video-call from Brazil. 'I said, no, I'm going to the beach, if you want you can come. And he said, absolutely. This charming guy. It was amazing – a magical meeting, very informal and very nice.' They married in 2015. Phillips had travelled to the Amazon for the first time in 2004 as a tourist, but in 2015 he was sent on assignment by The Washington Post to the western state of Maranhão, to report on a team of forest guardians set up by the Guajajara, an Indigenous group, to protect their land from an invasion of loggers and ranchers, driving the Guajajara into ever smaller areas of virgin forest. For Phillips it was the beginning of an obsession with the Amazon, and the threats that the destruction and exploitation of its natural resources posed to the land and its Indigenous people. When he came back, Sampaio says, he was 'absolutely in love. He was very impressed by their way of life and their culture. For Indigenous people it's not just a piece of land, it's your territory, where you have your ancestors, and the contact with nature, and nature for them is not just as we see it – it is family, you understand? You can fall in love with these people very easily. And Dom wanted more and more to know about them.' 'Dom was not the kind of person who did anything lightly,' says Jonathan Watts, who first met Phillips in 2012 when Watts was posted to Rio as The Guardian 's Latin America correspondent, and became a close friend. 'When he moved to Brazil, it was heart and soul in Brazil, and once he'd set his mind on doing something about the Amazon that was it. 'Dom was a real pen and notebook guy. When you look at all the photographs of him, sitting beside Indigenous people, there he is with a ring-binder notebook, listening intently to the person he was interviewing. He would pepper you with questions, and once he'd found an interesting subject you would be grilled on that, those really blue eyes on you – question, question, question.' In 2020 his reporting on illegal deforestation was nominated for the Gabo Award for Journalistic Coverage – the most prestigious award in Brazilian journalism – and he was a finalist for the Vladimir Herzog Prize, named in honour of the Brazilian journalist and university professor, who was tortured to death by the military police in 1975. That year, as Brazil went into lockdown, he began work on his book. He and Sampaio moved from Rio de Janeiro to Salvador in the northern state of Bahia, where life was more affordable. He'd received a grant from the Alicia Patterson Foundation, and an advance from a British publisher, but that was quickly exhausted, obliging him to borrow money from his family to tide him over. 'We didn't have much money, but he said, I have to do this,' Sampaio says. 'He was very committed to the Amazon cause, and most of all he connected with the people. I think he saw that he could be an ally in some way.' An ally perhaps, but not an activist. 'He met a lot of activists and spent a lot of time with them,' Hennigan says, 'but he also wanted to speak to the people who have no option but to work in illegal activity in order to scrape a living.' Nearly half of the Amazon's 29 million residents are surviving on only $66 per month. 'That's the huge dilemma for any government trying to do something about the Amazon and deforestation. It is very difficult, while protecting the forest, to provide a sustainable living for the millions of people living there.' 'Dom had this ethical way of wanting to talk with everyone,' Sampaio says. 'He would say, Alê, who am I to judge someone for illegal activity if there is no other option to feed their family? The people who work in this illegal system know it's not good, but they have no choice.' It was precisely this determination to listen to every side of the story that, tragically, led to his death. The environmental effects on the rainforests of logging, cattle farming and mining have been catastrophic. Climate scientists talk of the 'tipping point' beyond which the Amazon region no longer produces enough moisture to maintain itself, and 'dies back' to become semi-arid savannah. By 2019, 17 per cent of the entire Amazon basin and nearly 20 per cent of the Brazilian Amazon was already deforested, bringing the tipping point to within 15 to 30 years or even less. In 2019, the Right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro, who had made climate change denial a central plank of his policies, was elected President of Brazil. His election effectively gave licence to the loggers, cattle ranchers and illegal miners and fishers to carry on their activities. 'Bolsonaro openly said that the Amazon was there to be exploited,' Hennigan says. 'He gutted all the agencies committed to protecting the environment, particularly in the Amazon. And there was an absolute boom in deforestation, mining, all of these things, and a significant uptick of violence in the region against Indigenous activists, environmentalists, and local people. So there was a feeling of impunity at that time in the Amazon.' Phillips wrote to a friend that Bolsonaro's election presaged 'a very dark and worrying period, and it's only going to get worse. My sense is that it is also going to become more dangerous for journalists.' According to the Vladimir Herzog Institute, nine reporters have been murdered and there have been 230 cases of violence against journalists in the Amazon since 2013, and incidents of violence more than doubled from 20 to 45 between 2021 and 2022, years when Bolsonaro was in office. But while violence against journalists declined in 2023, the report noted that 'The Amazon is a territory increasingly controlled by criminal organisations.' 'Brazil is a country where there are always risks,' Tom Hennigan says. 'People kill for very little. And when you go into the Amazon that risk increases, for sure. It's so vast and remote, and in many parts the state doesn't have a very strong presence. So it almost incentivises crime because people feel it's unlikely they're going to be caught.' Phillips knew the risks, 'but at the same time he was extremely cautious and meticulous about his security planning', says Andrew Fishman, another close friend, and the co-founder and president of the investigative website The Intercept Brasil. 'He knew all the tricks of the trade. If you stay at a guest house, people are going to be curious about this foreign guy with the blue eyes and a foreign accent, so never tell them what you're doing or where you're going, because that could put you in danger. 'Check in every day with your contacts to tell them your movements and what time you'll check in again. If you say at 6am, and 7am rolls around, you might be out of cell range. But if 9am rolls around and there's no word, they should sound the alarm, and this is who to call. In that town maybe the police are friends with the illegal ranchers, so calling them might make the situation worse, so you find a public prosecutor in the region who you can trust.' Phillips intended his expedition to the Javari Valley to be one of his last field trips before stopping to concentrate on finishing his book. He was travelling with Bruno Pereira, an official for the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI), the government body responsible for the welfare and protection of Brazil's native population, but who had taken leave to join forces with a local organisation, the Javari Valley Indigenous Association's Patrol Team, monitoring illegal activity in the region. The two men first met in 2018, when Pereira led Phillips on his first trip to the region. Pereira was powerfully built, knowledgeable, tough and resourceful; nobody knew the terrain, and the possible dangers, better than he did. In September 2019, Maxciel Pereira dos Santos, a uniformed officer for FUNAI, was murdered in cold blood on the streets of the town of Tabatinga, where Phillips and Pereira would set out on their journey. Pereira himself had long been the target of numerous threats from illegal loggers and miners, and had previously been shot at by an illegal fisherman. 'Dom would have known that Bruno's work helping the Indigenous community to better protect their territory would have upset some people – that's why he was going there, to write about that,' Hennigan says. On 30 May, Phillips made his last post on social media, a video clip of the lush rainforest river bank, taken from a speedboat carrying him closer to the Javari Valley, with the words 'Amazonia, sua linda ' – Amazon, you beauty. On 2 June he had what would be his last conversation with Sampaio, and a few hours later recorded a voice message, including his schedule and contacts, and promised that he would call her when he was next in cellphone range 'on the 5th or 6th at the latest'. He signed off: 'Love you, miss you.' The last picture of Phillips was taken by Pereira on 5 June, in the fishing village of São Gabriel, home to a dozen or so poor families who were illegally fishing in the area. It shows him sitting on a boat, interviewing a man named Janio Freitas. It was Freitas, police later believed, who betrayed Phillips and Pereira by radioing ahead to the next village to alert them to the fact that the men were on their way. Their ambushers were waiting for them. The pair were supposed to be making their way downriver to the municipality of Atalaia do Norte, where Pereira was scheduled to meet a local community leader. When they failed to arrive, a search team set out to find them, but when there was no sign, they were reported missing. In testimony to the police, Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira and Jefferson da Silva Lima, the men who were subsequently charged for the murders, described how Phillips and Pereira met their deaths. Following in a high-speed boat, their attackers ambushed the two men on the river, shooting Pereira three times in the back. As their boat careered into the riverbank they aimed at Phillips who put up his hands and implored 'no' before he too was shot dead. It was da Costa de Oliveira who had fired the shot at Pereira a month earlier. 'Like any journalist, Dom's job was to bear witness,' Jonathan Watts says, 'and if you bear witness to a crime that puts you at risk. Dom was killed because he was with Bruno.' It took 12 days to find the bodies in an area of flooded forest. They had been burned and buried in a shallow grave in a clumsy attempt to hide them. Months later activists from the Indigenous Association's Patrol Team returned to the scene and recovered several items belonging to the pair, including Pereira's phone, and Phillips' UK press card and two spiral notebooks. Immersion in water had rendered his last notes illegible. Phillips' body was flown to Rio, where his funeral took place. 'It was a very emotional event,' Fishman recalls. He had left instructions in his will for the music he wanted to be played: Preta Pretinha, a Brazilian song by Novos Baianos about taking the ferry to visit a pretty girl from Niterói – Sampaio is from Niterói; Lazy Eye by the indie band Silversun Pickups; and, in a nod to his Mixmag days, Good Times by Chic. 'When that last song played,' Fishman remembers, 'it turned into a joyful and tearful dance party.' After the pair went missing, a social media campaign was started by Phillips' friends to notify the world of their disappearance. The demand for government action was quickly spread, by the Brazilian footballer Richarlison, the Hollywood actor Mark Ruffalo, members of the American Congress and British Parliament. When the bodies were finally found, the murders became a cause of mourning and outrage in Brazil and beyond, intensifying the focus on the plight of the Amazon rainforest, and the dangers faced by journalists and environmental activists. 'It was extraordinary,' says Jonathan Watts. 'There was the Dom who I and all of his friends knew – lovely, kind, generous with his ideas, a really diligent journalist that we could go drinking or hiking with. And then suddenly there was the Dom that became an icon after his death – this steely-eyed figure that stares down at you from posters in remote Amazon meetings, on wall murals in São Paulo and on protest banners and carnival floats in Rio; the Dom who was the symbol of these really big, important causes, carrying on the work that he'd started in life.' A year after Phillips' death, Watts travelled to the remote area of Anapu, in Pará state – a site of massive forest clearance, where the liberation theology Catholic nun and environmental campaigner Dorothy Stang was murdered in 2005, and where Phillips had visited in August 2021. Each year a ceremony is held there to commemorate Stang's life. 'And there on the wall was a picture of Dom and Bruno,' Watts says. 'They now have joined the ranks of the Amazonian forest martyrs – and that's very much how people see it.' Among Phillips' journalist friends and colleagues there was shock and disbelief at his murder, but also a collective determination, as Watts says, to complete the book that he had started but would never finish. 'We needed to continue Dom's legacy and to amplify the messages that he was exploring and cared about.' When Sampaio flew from her home in Bahia for her husband's funeral, she brought a suitcase containing 30 of his notebooks, his computers, cell phones and hard drives and handed it to Andrew Fishman. 'There were various drafts of chapters, and notes on subjects that he'd intended to shape into chapters, all of varying levels of complexity and completion,' he remembers. Dividing the subjects between them, the contributors started what Fishman calls 'ghost whispering', picking up the threads of where Phillips left off, exploring the role of international financing in perpetuating the exploitation of the rainforests, positing the solutions that might be found in agroforestry and the need to pay heed to the wisdom and traditional practices of the Indigenous peoples. In May 2024, Sampaio travelled for the first time to the place in the Javari Valley where her husband and Pereira died, to launch the Dom Phillips Institute, which she founded, along with a group of environmentalists and educators. 'I'm not an expert, I'm not a journalist,' she says. 'But I think it's really important for me now to do my part in preserving Dom's legacy, to save the Amazon. To do that you need to learn more and more about it, and that's what I'm doing. 'We need stricter laws and national and international agreements, to protect the rainforests and the people who live there. We need to look to the knowledge of the Indigenous people, and to research more about the ecosystem and what nature provides. But instead we destroy. No! This is insane.' She talks of being with a threatened Indigenous community in the state of Bahia. 'I asked the chief, how can you live with this threat to your life? And he said, it's simple – we are struggling to protect nature, and nature is life, and we don't have the option to give up on protecting life. 'My friends say, 'You're crazy, all you talk about is the Amazon' – and it's true.' She falls silent for a moment. 'I'm like Dom now.' How To Save the Amazon, by Dom Phillips & Contributors (Bonnier, £22), is out on 27 May
BBC News
24-05-2025
- General
- BBC News
'If we can come back from that, we can come back from anything': The burning river that fuelled a US green movement
Ohio's Cuyahoga River used to be so polluted it regularly went up in flames. Images of one dramatic blaze in 1952 shaped the US's nascent environmental movement, long after the flames went out. The last time Ohio's Cuyahoga River notably caught fire was 22 June 1969. At midday, debris floating in an oil slick on the river ignited after sparks fell from a nearby passing train. While locals reported the flames reached five stories high, firefighters extinguished them in less than 30 minutes. Two railroad trestles sustained a total of $50,000 in damage ($428,500 in today's money, or £321,000). But the event was over before reporters could arrive. "All we have photographically of the Cuyahoga fire in '69 is pictures of firemen mopping up, spraying the trestle, and then Carl Stokes, the mayor, on the tracks the next morning talking to the press about it," says David Stradling, professor of history at the University of Cincinnati, US. Earlier images of fires on the same river, such as that pictured above in 1952, nevertheless began to be circulated when the 1969 blaze occurred. And yet, this short-lived fire on the Cuyahoga River became a powerful moment in the growing environmental activism movement in the United States. The images of the river's previous fires ignited national conversations on pollution and social justice, just as the US's nascent environmental movement was gathering pace. The history of the river's dire pollution stretches back long before its final blaze. By the late 1800s, Cleveland and the Cuyahoga had become a hub for the Industrial Revolution. Stradling says it started with steel mills towards the head of navigation (the farthest point upstream on a river where boats can travel, often defined by a dam or other physical barrier). The river made it easy for boats to transport ore. "Once the steel industry became established in Cleveland, all these other ancillary industries were good to have nearby," he says. With all of this steel production came excess chemicals and grease, says Stradling, and since there were virtually no environmental regulations at the time, a lot of it ended up in the river, along with raw sewage. "We didn't treat our wastewater, so anything that you flushed down the toilet was piped straight into the river," says Adam Schellhammer, Mid-Atlantic regional director of the non-profit, American Rivers. Then, in the early 1900s amid World War One, industrialisation ramped up and the river pollution got worse. "With that uptick in manufacturing, these rivers were bearing the brunt of all that, and there were no restrictions on what went in," says Schellhammer. By the 1930s, the Cuyahoga had essentially become an open sewer, infamous for its foul smell and telltale sheen of oil slick. Unsurprisingly, the fauna that typically reside in and around the river steered clear, or died. "The Cuyahoga was a completely dead river for decades," says Stradling. "There were no fish, no water fowl." Those who lived nearby cautioned that if you fell in, you had to be rushed to the hospital. And, occasionally, the massively polluted river burned. The first fire on the river was in 1868, and there were at least 12 subsequent fires, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The biggest ones occurred in 1936, 1941, 1952 and 1969. Local protests and dogged advocacy by Mayor Carl B. Stokes had already led to a $100m bond for river cleanup passing in 1968 (equivalent to more than $900m today). When the river burned again in 1969, Stokes acted quickly. "It was a right place, right time situation," says Anne Vogel, former director of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and current EPA region 5 administrator. "Cleveland was also a place, at the time, where environmental and social situations intersected." Stokes was the first black mayor of a major city in the US, and he was acutely aware of how racial inequality in the industrialised parts of Cleveland was reflected in the water pollution issue since poorer, predominantly black communities lived in those areas. "He's a black man in a majority white city surrounded by almost entirely white suburbs," says Stradling. "So he doesn't have a whole lot of political allies, but he could have allies in the press who can get things before the people and talk about the Cuyahoga as a regional problem, not just Cleveland's problem." Connecting the social and environmental challenges of the area marks him out as forward-thinking in his work on what came to be called environmental justice, says Stradling. "There's no point in working on public health if you're not going to solve water and air pollution problems." To drive the point home, Stokes gave a much-photographed pollution tour to reporters the day after the 1969 river fire. The tour went beyond Cleveland's confines to showcase the surrounding area's sewer system. He was making it abundantly clear that in order to clean up the Cuyahoga, the city would need help from its neighbours and the federal government. Convincing the neighbouring suburbs was the real challenge, says Stradling, since they weren't as aware of the pollution accumulating downstream. On that tour was Betty Klaric, one of the US's earliest specialist environmental reporters, writing for the Cleveland Press, who dedicated much of her career to reporting on the health of the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie, which the river feeds. Her reporting of the 1969 fire was resurfaced several times by more prominent, national publications. Stradling recalls a compelling photo of Stokes and reporters standing on a railroad bridge after the fire, its metal distorted from the heat. In the image, Stokes is talking to Klaric. "There are a whole bunch of other press around, including the television [crews] with their cameras, but I just love that that photograph is of him talking to Betty, because I think he knew that she was the most important person besides him on that bridge," he says. The story reported by Klaric and others was soon picked up nationally. A 1969 Time magazine spread on water pollution reproduced images of the earlier blaze on the river in 1952 – a menacing frontline of flames and black, billowing smoke engulfing a tug boat as it fights to contain a raging fire on the oil-slicked water (the same 1952 image is reproduced at the start of this article). Long, powerful streams of water from firefighters on a nearby bridge cascade over the river, offering backup. "It was late summer when Time magazine ran a story about water pollution in the United States," says Stradling, who co-wrote Where the River Burned, a history of the infamously polluted Cuyahoga, with his brother Richard Stradling. "[The article] mentioned lots of places, but one that was mentioned most frequently was the Cuyahoga River and how it had become a fire hazard." The book notes that Time did not clarify that the photos of the fire had been taken 17 years prior, and it remains unclear whether the publication "mistakenly used the older photo or did so deliberately, perhaps thinking the more dramatic scene would grab readers' attention". (Time magazine was contacted for clarity on the matter, but did not respond by the time this article was published.) The photo of the 1952 fire came to symbolise how waterway pollution in the US had grown out of control, and it fed the flames of public outcry over environmental crises. "It was a culmination of events, and the Cuyahoga [fire] was so visible that the calls for unified approaches to environmental protection could not be ignored any longer," says Schellhammer. While the first Earth Day, on 22 April 1970, is considered the official start of the environmental movement in the US, the idea had been planted years earlier in 1962 with the release of Rachel Carson's book on the misuse of pesticides, Silent Spring. Eight years later, when 20 million people marched to advocate for nationwide environmental protections, US President Richard Nixon responded by establishing the EPA. Two years after that, the Clean Water Act followed, which laid the groundwork for the restoration of the Cuyahoga. While not a direct cause and effect, the river fires are often cited as the prime example of water pollution at its worst in the US. The Cuyahoga River in particular, Schellhammer and others note, comes up time and again in this context. But Stradling adds that it was far from alone – as the Clean Water Act was being formulated, most members of Congress named a river in their jurisdiction that needed protection. What the Clean Water Act did The Clean Water Act was actually an amendment to the existing Federal Water Pollution Control Act, which was passed in 1948, but the changes to the framework were so significant that it took on a new name. "It put restrictions and parameters on what could be discharged," says Schellhammer. "There was a set limit. Out of that [came] the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, also enacted in 1972, which framed what the entire area needed to do to clean up that river." Schellhammer says the Clean Water Act also acknowledged the need for wastewater treatment, which was virtually nonexistent before then. One new initiative that stemmed from the Act was connecting more of Cleveland's suburbs to an expanded sewage treatment plant, something Stokes had long argued for. Then, the industries in the city began to clean up their act. "Mills were already investing in some technologies that would dramatically decrease the amount of problematic effluent that went into the river, so that was really helpful," says Stradling. "A lot of the most problematic industries [like oil refinement] simply closed and left in Cleveland." The new environmental restrictions played a significant part in shuttering the factories that supported the steel industry in Cleveland. "It [was] this balance of regulatory framework, legal precedence and public outcry," Schellhammer saysof the industrial retreat. Despite these developments, river cleanup on the Cuyahoga was gradual from the 1970s to the late 1980s. "Water quality definitely improved; we wouldn't call it restored," says Schellhammer. Some of the river's more significant restoration projects have been dam can be major impediments to the health of a river. They act as bottlenecks, limiting fish migration and increasing turbidity. In 2020, the Brecksville Dam, which was initially built to move water into the Ohio and Erie Canals, was taken out. "It was pretty straightforward, but really awesome to show the benefit of that dam removal, because basically you're connecting the water and fish populations of Lake Erie to more upstream habitats," says Jennifer Grieser, director of natural resources for Cleveland Metroparks and Cuyahoga Area of Concern board member. "We immediately started to see more species recruitment throughout the whole length of the river." The next big project on the docket is the removal of the over 100-year-old Gorge Dam, considered the largest remaining impediment to the Cuyahoga River's health. Grieser has overseen the removal of five impairments in the Cuyahoga's Area of Concern, including lifting restrictions on consuming fish from the river in 2019, and also the 50-year anniversary of the 1969 fire. She has four left, which she aims to complete within the next five years. Yet people are already enjoying the cleaner state of the river. It's now considered a water trail, often dappled with kayakers, anglers and birdwatchers hoping to see blue herons or bald eagles, which returned to the area in 2006. The water is not considered pristine yet, but the "crooked river" has come a long way since it caught on fire over half a century ago. "That's the amazing thing about this restoration story:i t happened in a lifetime," says Grieser. Today, the US is at another pivotal point for the future health of its natural resources. In March, the Supreme Court weakened the reaches of the Clean Water Act, and the EPA cancelled over 400 grants. "Federal investments played a huge role in why [the Cuyahoga] River is functional again," says Schellhammer. The BBC contacted the EPA for comment but did not receive a response by the time this article was published. The Cuyahoga may have represented how bad water pollution can get, but it became the ultimate comeback story. "If we can come back from that, we can come back from anything," says Schellhammer. -- For essential climate news and hopeful developments to your inbox, sign up to the Future Earth newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights twice a week. For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
'Leave our marshes alone': Iraqis fear oil drilling would destroy fabled wetlands
Plans to drill for oil in the protected Mesopotamian Marshes of southern Iraq have galvanised villagers and activists determined to save the mythical wetlands already battered by years of drought. "We will never accept it," marshes activist Murtada al-Janubi told a meeting, seeking to reassure anxious residents gathered in a traditional hall made of woven reeds from the wetlands, to discuss the government's plans for the UNESCO-listed area that is their home. Everyone nodded in approval. If they fail to save the Huwaizah Marshes, "a historical era... with its heritage and southern identity will vanish for ever", Janubi, 33, told AFP during a tour of the wetlands that straddle the Iraq-Iran border. The millennia-old history of the marshes -- the reputed home of the biblical Garden of Eden -- "would end with this oilfield", said the moustached, tanned activist. In 2023, as China became a major player across various sectors in Iraq, the oil-rich country awarded a Chinese firm the rights to explore the Huwaizah field. Several residents of Abu Khsaf, the village in Missan province where the meeting with activist Janubi was held, said that at the time they did not fully grasp the implications. Only this year, when heavy machinery was brought in to conduct seismic studies and open a new road, did the residents say they recognised a "threat" to the swamplands that have sustained their traditional way of life. The government says that the oil and environment ministries are collaborating closely to avoid endangering the wetlands, and that any activity would occur near, not inside, the marshes. Satellite images of the area from March, which AFP obtained from Planet Labs, show tracks left by heavy vehicles. Wim Zwijnenburg of Dutch peace organisation PAX said the images point to the "rapid" construction of "a 1.3-kilometre-long dirt road in the vegetation of the marshes". - 'All we want is water' - Missan province already has several oilfields, including one just kilometres (miles) from the marshes. Its emissions fill the sky with heavy grey smoke, and its gas flares can be seen from the fishing boats that roam the depleted marshes, suffering after years of harsh drought and dwindling water supplies. Nestled between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the Mesopotamian Marshes depend on rivers and tributaries originating in neighbouring Turkey and Iran. Sparse rainfall and reduced water flows blamed on climate change, upstream dams and government rationing have created shortages with severe impacts on the marsh ecosystem. Residents expect the marshes to dry up in summer, hoping for a long-absent good rainy season to revive them. The current water level in many areas is less than a metre (three feet) deep. Um al-Naaj lake, once teeming with fish, is now just three metres deep, compared with at least six before the drought. Rowing his boat on the lake, fisherman Kazem Ali, 80, said that while the new project may create some jobs, "we, the average people, will not benefit". "All we want is water," he said. Rasul al-Ghurabi, a 28-year-old buffalo farmer, said he would never quit "the marshes and the freedom that comes with them" even if the oil company offered him a job. - Protected core - One cool March morning, as he led his buffaloes to the marshes to graze, Ghurabi was surprised to see workers laying cables and drilling holes. A cable caused one of his animals to stumble, he said. The marshes contain a core area that serves as a habitat for numerous species, including migratory waterbirds, surrounded by a buffer zone for protection. Activists have accused authorities of conducting seismic studies within the core, which the state-owned Missan Oil Company denies, saying that the vehicles spotted in the area were carrying out work for a separate field nearby and had since left. The Huwaizah oilfield was discovered in the 1970s, and Iraq shares it with Iran, which has been extracting oil for a long time. The Missan Oil Company says that 300 square kilometres (116 square miles) of the field's area overlap with the marshes' buffer zone, but that the oilfield does not encroach on the core. An environmental impact assessment concluded in 2024 would provide "the baseline for work in the field", the company said, adding that exploration would take place "without harming the natural habitat". According to environment ministry official Jassem Falahi, the protected status of the marshes does not bar development projects. "But investment is subject to specific conditions and standards that must not disturb the core area... or affect the site and its biodiversity," he told AFP. - Balance - Iraqi activist Ahmed Saleh Neema, a vocal advocate for the protection of the marshes, expressed concerns that oil companies might not adhere to regulations and further drain the marshes. A UNESCO spokesperson told AFP that "concerns have been raised in recent years" over the potential impact of oil-related activities on the marshes. Across the border in Iran, local media have long warned against the environmental impact of oil projects. In a report earlier this year, two decades into oil activities in the wetlands known in Iran as Hoor al-Azim, the Tasnim news agency said energy companies had obstructed water flows and drained areas to build infrastructure. Tasnim also said that oilfields have polluted water resources. Environmental activist Neema said authorities should strike "a balance between two great resources: the oil and the marshes". Iraq is one of the world's largest oil producers, and crude sales account for 90 percent of state revenues. But while oil is financially vital, the marshes represent the livelihood of its people and "the heritage, the folklore, and the reputation of Iraq", Neema said. Back in the village of Abu Khsaf, Janubi said: "Our region is already teeming with oilfields. Isn't that enough?" "Leave our marshes alone." rh/ami/srm/rsc
South China Morning Post
18-05-2025
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
Victory for free speech in Indonesia as court curbs defamation law
A landmark court ruling in Indonesia barring public officials, groups and corporations from filing defamation suits against their critics has been hailed by rights groups as a step forward for free speech – though concerns remain over other laws still used to suppress dissent in the world's third-largest democracy. On April 29, the Constitutional Court partially granted a petition by environmental activist Daniel Frits Maurits Tangkilisan, who had challenged a controversial defamation provision in the country's Electronic Information and Transaction (ITE) Law. Critics have long argued that the law is too broad and has been used to stifle public criticism of those in power. Tangkilisan was sentenced to seven months in prison in April last year over Facebook comments criticising the environmental impact of a shrimp pond development in the Karimunjawa Islands, off the northern coast of Central Java. Local residents filed the complaint collectively, saying they were offended by Tangkilisan's posts, leading to his prosecution under the ITE Law. He was later acquitted on appeal. Daniel Frits Maurits Tangkilisan was sentenced to seven months in prison for Facebook comments criticising shrimp pond development but was later acquitted on appeal. Photo: Facebook/Daniel Frits Maurits Tangkilisan In its ruling last month, the Constitutional Court stated that defamation charges under the ITE Law could only be brought by individuals, not by 'government agencies, groups of people with specific or particular identities, institutions, corporations, professions or positions'.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
John Bryson, Former Edison International Chairman and CEO, Dies at 81
Successfully Led Company Through California Electricity Crisis in Early 2000s Remarkable Career Spanned Environmental Activism and Public Service ROSEMEAD, Calif., May 17, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The entire Edison International, Southern California Edison and Trio community is deeply saddened to learn of the passing of John Bryson, who served as Edison International's chairman and CEO from 1990 to 2008. John passed away Tuesday, May 13 at age 81. He was a groundbreaking leader whose remarkable career ranged from a founding role in the environmental movement to public service as the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. "Our industry has lost a true legend, and I have lost a mentor," said Pedro Pizarro, president and CEO of Edison International. "John's steady leadership during the California electricity crisis and the industry's restructuring two decades ago set a guiding model for me as we navigate a changing utility landscape." After graduating from Stanford University and Yale Law School, John co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1970. He was one of the earliest to sound the alarm about the impacts of climate change and was a vocal advocate to advance energy efficiency, renewable energy and electric transportation. He later chaired the California State Water Resources Board (1976-79) and served as president of the California Public Utilities Commission (1979-82). John joined SCE in 1984 as senior vice president for legal and financial affairs. His first major assignment was to analyze whether the company should develop a competitive power business, newly permitted under changes in federal law, which would be independent of the utility. John strongly recommended its development. Subsequently, the company developed a series of successful cogeneration projects in California and the western United States; created a new parent company, Edison International; and formed a new subsidiary that became Edison Mission Energy. As chairman and CEO during the 1990s and early 2000s, John's background as a regulator and environmentalist benefited the company through California's utility deregulation and electricity supply crisis, while prioritizing customer and shareholder interests. John also helped clear a path for Edison's leadership role in today's clean energy transition. Under his direction, Edison Mission Energy grew from a small operation with about 300 people to a major part of Edison International's business — one that employed 1,900 people and contributed more than $500 million to the parent company's earnings. It was the sale of most of EME's international assets that enabled Edison International to return to financial health following the collapse of the independent power producers' market in 2002. SCE soon became one of the nation's leaders in supporting the growth of renewable energy. "John worked tirelessly with state officials and other stakeholders to achieve legislative and regulatory changes in the public interest that strengthened Edison and California's entire economy," Pizarro said. After retiring from Edison International, John later served as U.S. Secretary of Commerce under President Barack Obama from 2011 to 2012. Our most heartfelt sympathy goes out to John's wife, Louise, their four daughters and their families. He will be deeply missed. View source version on Contacts Media Relations: (626) 302-2255 News@ Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
