The Revelator

At the foot of Njeza Mountain in Zimbabwe’s Mutare district, newly discovered lithium deposits have turned a quiet, small-scale farming enclave into the next frontier of the country’s mineral rush.

But more than a year after residents learned of the project, it remains shrouded in secrecy and has become a source of constant anxiety for farmers living in villages surrounding the proposed mine.

“We don’t know much about this project,” says Kwadzanai Nicholas Mukundidza, a farmer in the area. “We were not consulted, and there is a lot of fear among farmers. These projects are linked to powerful people in [Zimbabwe’s ruling party] ZANU PF. We are afraid we might lose our land, our pastures, our rivers, and our water.”

Farmers were resettled in this part of the country in the early 1980s, during the first phase of Zimbabwe’s land reform program after independence from Britain.

The farmers have every reason to fear the new lithium mining project: Similar mining ventures elsewhere in the country have displaced communities from their lands, polluted water and air, and disrupted livelihoods.

Coveted Minerals, Poisoned Communities

As the world races to secure lithium for the clean energy transition, Zimbabwe has emerged as one of Africa’s largest suppliers, attracting billions of dollars in foreign investment. Chinese companies — many with close ties to Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s ruthless regime — have acquired much of the country’s lithium sector.

Although President Mnangagwa promised sweeping sociopolitical and economic reforms after seizing power from long-time dictator Robert Mugabe in a 2017 military coup, civic space continues to shrink. Activists, journalists, and community and political leaders have faced intimidation and arrests when challenging powerful political or commercial interests.

In lithium-mining communities this climate of fear has profound environmental consequences.

In Zimbabwe’s Buhera district, for example, Sabi Star Mine’s lithium project has already upended the lives of many local people. James Mupfumi, director of the investigative NGO the Centre for Research and Development, says drinking water around the lithium mine has been contaminated by chemical disposal.

Mupfumi says Zimbabwe’s Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Environment, Climate and Wildlife carried out a fact-finding mission on July 12, when community-based organizations such as Buhera Residents Network Trust gave oral evidence, including testimonies from affected villagers on the dust and water pollution and resulting health problems.

“Latest information from Tagarira [in Buhera] community leaders indicates stomach-related challenges from drinking contaminated water. The Tagarira community is the worst affected,” he says.

He adds that at least 120 30-ton trucks use the dust road daily in the area to transport lithium from Sabi Star to Beira through either Beira or Durban ports. Six villages spread along the 30-kilometer (18-mile) dusty stretch from Tagarira to Gaza in Buhera are the worst affected.

A truck carrying lithium from Sabi Star Mine in Buhera, Zimbabwe- Photo: Leonard Mabasa

“These villages have five schools, and an average of 5 to 7 pupils visit the clinic every day seeking treatment for various illnesses caused by dust pollution,” Mupfumi says.

He says there have been very few efforts at dust suppression by the mining company to alleviate the suffering of communities.

“Villages in Tagarira and Mukwasi are also affected by dust from blasting and crushing, and as soon as the dust is cleaned, it soon settles again,” he says.

Official Threats

Buhera Residents Network Trust — an organization representing the interests of local people —presented oral evidence before the Parliament Portfolio Committee on Environment, Climate and Wildlife raising concerns over environmental pollution, water insecurity, worker injuries, community displacement and mining operations at Sabi Star Mine.

The Trust’s leader, Leonard Mabasa, told legislators that the community was not opposed to mining itself and acknowledged that Zimbabwe’s mining sector remained a cornerstone of the national economy, with lithium among the country’s most valuable mineral exports.

 

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But the residents want to ensure that mining is carried out responsibly and that affected communities receive adequate protection. However, after the presentation President Mnangagwa’s spokesperson George Charamba came out swinging, warning the residents to be “very careful” and not “wreck a good thing for a dime.”

Chengxin Lithium, the company that operates Sabi Star Mine, has maintained that it undertook extensive community engagement before developing the project and provided adequate water, electricity, and sanitation facilities. The company says it compensated villagers who suffered from the mine’s activities.

Charamba’s threatening X post prompted a consortium of Zimbabwe NGOs to issue a statement condemning the intimidation and publicly rallying behind the Buhera residents.

“Communities living alongside mining operations are not enemies of development. They are constitutional rights holders entitled to safe environments, meaningful participation in decisions affecting their lives, and access to effective remedies where harm has occurred. Responsible mining cannot exist without transparency, accountability and respect for human rights,” the NGOs said in the statement.

I asked Mabasa whether he still feels safe after his presentation to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee. He says Zimbabwe Parliamentary privileges — special rights and powers granted to lawmakers so they can do their jobs safely and independently — should protect him from any threats during and after the submissions before Portfolio Committee on Environment Climate and Wildlife, “[But] what happens after that usually becomes too personal and uncontrollable. Smear campaign can make you feel insecure. Certain actions are shrewdly done to psychologically wean you off from the struggle. Safety is delicate. Physical and digital security can be issues of great concern which need not to be breached.”

Community Rights

Mabasa says the community needs to be aware of their economic social cultural rights — which include housing, health, education, and fair work — so compensation on relocation is anchored on “Free Prior Informed Consent.”

“I also think that legal support ecosystem is key for communities to be able to understand the terms and conditions of voluminous documents produced during the … Environmental Social Impact Assessment,” he says. This legal requirement, previously known as an Environmental Impact Assessment, evaluates how major projects affect ecosystems, health, and communities before they start.

Donald Nyarota, communications and advocacy officer for the Centre for Natural Resource Governance (CNRG), a Zimbabwe-based NGO, says they have observed a degree of fear and reluctance among community members in lithium producing areas to speak openly about their concerns.

“These concerns include environmental pollution, loss of agricultural lands, loss of livelihoods, water and security, particularly displacement,” Nyarota says. “These are issues that communities are afraid to speak about because [they’re linked to] very powerful government officials. Sometimes they just say ‘government officials’ — they don’t even want to name them because of the fear that they could be victimized and conflict with these powerful interests associated with mining operations.”

At CNRG, Nyarota says, they’re addressing these issues through creating spaces where communities can raise their concerns collectively and safely under their “do no harm principle,” where they protect the identity and maintain anonymity of the communities.

Nyarota says they place a lot of emphasis on community-led evidence gathering, where communities send evidence anonymously through their safe and secure social networks.

A Just Transition

Mupfumi says Zimbabwe requires a just energy transition for its green minerals such as lithium.

“There is a need to secure the supply chain from corruption and criminality that are negatively impacting the rights of host communities. These negative impacts also pose a direct threat to climate action,” he says.

Political elites’ participation in the industry, like what is happening in Buhera, Mupfumi says, seeks to mask these violations and shield extraction from accountability.

“It is therefore important that global measures, such as supply-chain exclusion under clean energy laws, are applied to companies operating in Zimbabwe,” he says.

He adds that the processed lithium from these companies enters the global electric vehicle and green-energy battery supply chains, so markets and laws must prevent automotive companies from receiving green subsidies or selling vehicles where their raw materials are linked to human-rights abuses or toxic pollution.

“For communities to fully benefit from lithium resources, extraction must be linked to human rights protection, environmental accountability, transparent supply chains and meaningful community benefits, rather than allowing communities to bear the environmental and social costs of extraction while global markets benefit from the resource,” Mupfumi says.

He says Buhera demonstrates that communities must recognize lithium as a critical mineral whose extraction should contribute to transforming host communities in line with a just energy transition, rather than leaving them to bear the social and environmental costs.

“This makes community unity, transparency and accountability critical, particularly in securing fair benefits, protecting rights and ensuring responsible extraction. Communities must also recognize their vulnerability under Zimbabwe’s insecure land regime, where state power and corporate interests can weaken their bargaining position,” he says.

At the same time, communities should organize early and seek independent legal support on compensation and relocation, ensuring that displacement only occurs when livelihoods, living conditions and adequate compensation have been properly addressed.

“Community exchange visits, such as the one already facilitated by CRD, remain critical in enabling communities to share experiences, build solidarity and learn from each other’s struggles,” Mupfumi says.

“Ultimately,” says CNRG’s Nyarota, “the issue is not whether the communities support or oppose mining. It’s about whether mining takes place in a way that respects their rights, protects the environment, and ensures that they have meaningful voices in decision-making on issues that are affecting their lands and livelihoods.”

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Previously in The Revelator:

Anthrax in Zimbabwe: Caused by Oppression, Worsened by Climate Change

The post How Zimbabwe’s Regime Is Fueling a Dirty Lithium Boom appeared first on The Revelator.

Revelator readers enjoy a love of wildlife and wild places around the world. Our September Gallery showcases readers’ wildlife and landscape photos, artwork, and other creative efforts. Enjoy these beautiful images from our readers — and read to the end to find out how to submit your work for future galleries.

 

Denise Blough
American Bumblebee
Mirrorless photography
© copyright Denise Blough

American bumblebee on saltmarsh mallow. I was so surprised and pleased to find this one covered in pollen in one of the photos I took a few weeks ago of Virginia saltmarsh mallow (Kosteletzkya pentacarpos) at Audubon Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in Naples, Florida.

 

 

 

 

 

Denise Blough
Limpkin/Green Heron
© copyright Denise Blough

Limpkin/green heron: While on a casual walk with my camera, I noticed a green heron (Butorides virescens) quietly foraging atop lily pads. Suddenly, a limpkin (Aramus guarauna) flew over and picked a territorial fight with the heron, which is how I captured the resulting image. This was at Powell Creek Preserve in North Fort Myers, Florida.

 

 

 

 

Emma Smith
Waiting for Mom
Near entrance of East Glacier National Park in Montana.
Species: Grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis)
© copyright Emma Smith

My friend and I spotted a black bear before taking a hike in East Glacier. As we drove out of the park, we saw two grizzly bear cubs with this backdrop of mountains. I quickly snapped the picture, staying in the car. It felt symbolic to see two grizzly bear cubs, presumably waiting for their mom, considering we had gone hiking after seeing a bear, which is not recommended.

 

 

 

 

Emma Smith
Room With a View
Napili Beach on Maui, Hawaii
Species: Critically endangered Hawaiian monk seal (Neomonachus schauinslandi)
© copyright Emma Smith

 

I’ve come to this beach over 100 times and could likely walk it with my eyes closed. I had never seen a critically endangered Hawaiian monk seal there before. This is Kalea, a roughly 250-pound monk seal. She’s one of 10 or 11 living on the island of Maui. There are only 1,600 living in the wild. I was at the beach with my family when I first saw her. I eventually went back to the hotel, grabbed my camera, and came back to take this picture of her sleeping in “her bedroom,” according to a volunteer with the Marine Mammal Center.

 

 

 

 

Emma Smith
Line in the Sand
Species: Critically endangered Hawaiian monk seal (Neomonachus schauinslandi)
Napili Beach on Maui, Hawaii
© copyright Emma Smith

Kalea, a roughly 250-pound Hawaiian monk seal, rests on Napili Beach on Maui in Hawaii. Legally, there is a line in the sand between beachgoers and monk seals: You cannot get closer than 50 feet to the critically endangered marine mammal on land or in water. As Kalea is one of 10 or 11 living on the island of Maui, volunteers were a bit on edge.

 

 

 

 

Emma Smith
Within a Thumb’s Distance
Species: Bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis)
Highline Trail, Glacier National Park, Montana
© copyright Emma Smith

A bighorn sheep walks along the Highline Trail, an 11- to 13-mile hike in Glacier National Park. [When I was] going to college in Montana, people who grew up there taught me that you are at a safe distance from ungulates and other animals when you can visually place your thumb over them while hiking. I took this image to highlight the importance of appreciating these species from a distance, especially as national parks experience overcrowding from a record number of visitors post-COVID. My friend and I were the only people at a thumb’s distance from this bighorn sheep.

 

 

 

 

Emma Smith
River Jaws
Species: Sea lion
Willamette River, Oregon
© copyright Emma Smith

A sea lion, known as “Jaws of the Willamette River,” surfaces with a fresh bite of salmon in its mouth. Currently sea lions are being trapped and euthanized in this region to protect native salmon and steelhead populations that are being threatened with extinction. Wildlife experts have also tried relocating them to the coast but many of them swim right back to falls and continue feeding.

 

 

 

Emma Smith
Honu Rising
Species: Honu green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas)
Maui, Hawaii
© copyright Emma Smith

My love for storytelling began in Hawai‘i, where I had the privilege of growing up and snorkeling with the Honu or green sea turtle, who are sacred animals there. Each time I’ve gone, I’ve tried to capture what makes them so special. This photo I feel depicts their quiet and peaceful beauty.

 

 

 

 

Ted Zukoski
Yellow-Headed Blackbird
© copyright Ted Zukoski

Yellow-headed blackbirds are spring-summer migrants in Boulder County, Colorado, where their cheery, cacophonous calls fill the marshes. We go birdwatching at these and other nearby ponds to enjoy the sights and sounds of our avian neighbors. This one was at Teller Lake No. 5.

 

 

 

 

 

Ted Zukoski
Osprey
© copyright Ted Zukoski Osprey with dinner. Teller Lake No. 5, Boulder County, Colorado. We watched this one catch the fish in the lake and fly to this snag to consume it. Ted Zukoski
Red-Winged Blackbird
© copyright Ted Zukoski

A female red-winged blackbird in a tiny wetland in a sea of prairie on the Pawnee National Grassland, Colorado. The males are much showier, but I loved spotting the little reddish splash on the female’s shoulder. We visit the grasslands annually from our home in the foothills to be amazed by the variety of wildlife — Burrowing owls! Dung beetles! Tadpole shrimp! Pronghorn! — in this sometimes-overlooked landscape that makes up almost half the state. 

 

 

 

 

 

Ted Zukoski
Pelicans on Post
Tulum, Mexico
© copyright Ted Zukoski

Pelicans on posts. Near Tulum, Mexico. Terns perched here during the day, but toward evenings, the pelicans ruled the roost. I enjoyed the geometry of this view.

 

 

 

 

Janet DeWoskin
Close Encounter
Photograph
© copyright Janet DeWoskin

Barred owl and white-tailed deer fawn across the creek from my backyard in Durham, North Carolina. Photograph captured by my trail camera.

Curator’s question: Did the fawn get away?

 

 

 

 

Janet DeWoskin
Close Encounter 2
Photograph
© copyright Janet DeWoskin

The deer did get away! The next image one second after the previous photo shows the fawn still running and no owl! You can see the fawn has veered to its right — still running, and there is no sign of the owl. The camera was practically in my backyard and I never saw any sign of a kill or even a scuffle.

Curator: Thank goodness! I was on the edge of my seat!

 

 

 

 

Janet DeWoskin
They Wait With Bated Breath
Fish are peering out from behind coral that is starting to bleach around the edges. They wait anxiously to see what we will do.
Painted from my imagination in my art studio in Silver Spring, Maryland
Acrylic on stretched canvas
© copyright Janet DeWoskin

 

 

Guidelines to get your masterpiece into the Revelator Gallery:

• • Original photos and art from you
  • No AI-generated or enhanced images
  • Images can be horizontal, square, or vertical
  • We accept only .jpgs and .png files
  • No limit on submissions
  • No people in the images, just wildlife and landscapes (animals, plants and trees, insects, sea life…look below for examples)

Send your submissions to ccrary@biologicaldiversity.org with the following information:

• • Your name
  • Title of image (if applicable)
  • Species of wildlife
  • The location (where it was created)
  • A brief description of what inspired you to capture or create this image
  • Medium: Photography (many types, be specific), painting, drawing, pottery, sculpture, textiles/fabric art, mixed media, glass, etc.
  • Let us know if you want us to include a specific copyright notice “©”

All submissions are considered intended for publication; submission does not guarantee publication. Monthly galleries will be distributed to our partner publications under a Creative Commons license, but you retain the copyright on your individual images. There’s no prize or payment, just  bragging rights.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy.

The post The Revelator Gallery: September 2026 Exhibit appeared first on The Revelator.

By Roberto Lucchini, Florida International University

Hundreds of first responders have told me they remember exactly how they felt during the World Trade Center attacks, even 25 years on.

They tell me that they remember not being able to think, see or smell anything. They could focus only on digging and pulling debris out of the way. They could not rest because those trapped beneath the rubble could not wait. Death was all around them, and they could only do as much as they could to hold it back.

While what happened on 9/11 was unprecedented, similar tragedies happen quite frequently. As a physician in occupational health who works with 9/11 first responders, I can easily imagine those same thoughts from other firefighters, paramedics and construction workers trying to save lives after the deadly summer 2026 earthquakes in Venezuela, Colombia and Indonesia or the disastrous floods in Nepal.

These first responders may also need to recover human remains from the rubble. Surrounding these moments of intimate grief are dust, toxic fumes and cries for help. And this trauma takes a toll.

The destruction of the World Trade Center was unprecedented, but such disasters are not uncommon throughout the world. Mario Tama/Getty Images

Whether it’s industrial or nuclear disasters, extreme weather, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, war or terrorist attacks, first responders and affected communities can experience significant physical and mental health effects both during rescue and recovery operations and for years afterward. All are vulnerable to mental and physical harm no matter how well trained they may be.

Research from my team suggests that among these risks is post-traumatic stress disorder that may cause their brain to age faster.

PTSD Among First Responders

Post-traumatic stress disorder, also known as PTSD, is a complex mental health condition that can develop after experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event. Psychological trauma refers to the lasting emotional effects of direct or indirect exposure to life-threatening circumstances or violence.

PTSD may involve intrusive memories, avoidance, heightened alertness, sleep problems and changes in mood and thinking. Anxiety and depression commonly occur alongside PTSD.

Around 23% of World Trade Center responders have been diagnosed with PTSD. In comparison, around 6% of the U.S. general population are estimated to have had PTSD over their lifetime.

When I talk to 9/11 first responders, they describe their PTSD and cognitive difficulties as interconnected problems that continue to affect their lives today. Those traumatic memories remain vivid, and some first responders continue to experience anxiety, depression, intrusive thoughts, sleep problems and difficulty controlling their emotions.

Trauma Speeds Brain Aging

As they age, many 9/11 first responders have also noticed their memory, concentration and mental sharpness get worse. They increasingly fear losing their independence. Rather than occurring as separate conditions, physical illness, cognitive changes and emotional distress often reinforce one another.

In another study, researchers from my team monitored the cognitive function of more than 5,000 World Trade Center first responders without dementia between 2014 and 2022. Over approximately five years, 228 developed dementia before age 65. First responders with the most severe exposure to potentially neurotoxic dust and debris at ground zero had a substantially higher incidence of dementia than those with minimal exposure or who consistently used personal protective equipment such as respirators. This link remained after controlling for demographic, lifestyle, medical and genetic factors.

Before I began studying the health effects of 9/11, I was examining workers exposed to neurotoxic metals and industrial pollution in northern Italy. Knowing the harmful toxins in World Trade Center dust, I began to wonder whether 9/11 responders might face similar long-term risks to their brains. That concern grew when brain scans of both groups showed a similar increase in deposits of a protein linked to Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline called beta-amyloid.

Research from my team also found that the brains of 9/11 male responders with PTSD had MRI results consistent with older-appearing brains than those without PTSD.

In that 2025 study, we measured the brain structures using MRI scans and an AI model to estimate each participant’s brain age. The AI model had been trained to predict a person’s chronological age from the overall structure of their brain, based on data from more than 11,500 MRI brain scans from healthy people ages 5 to 95. We used the difference between a person’s predicted brain age and their actual age as a measure of accelerated brain aging.

We also saw that first responders with PTSD had brains that appeared about three years older than their chronological age. In contrast, the estimated brain age of responders without PTSD approximately matched their actual chronological age. Each additional month a first responder spent working at ground zero was associated with roughly four to five additional months of apparent brain aging, suggesting that how long they were exposed to the disaster played a key role in this aging process.

Caring for First Responders

The experiences of first responders show that the effects of 9/11 are an ongoing health issue. These health consequences evolve as people age, and they still require coordinated mental, cognitive, physical and social support decades later.

Every 9/11 anniversary brings back vivid memories of the tragedy, along with the same restlessness, frustration and pain of being there. Yet many on the front lines have told me that they feel pride and a sense of belonging with the knowledge that they helped people in desperate need. Their service remains an enduring example of human solidarity in a moment of crisis.

Honoring that legacy also means protecting those who come to our rescue during the emergency. I believe that, as a society, Americans have a responsibility to safeguard, protect and care for their health throughout their entire lives. They were there for America in one of its darkest moments; Americans must be there for them in the years to come.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Previously in The Revelator:

Dr. Green: A Wildlife Researcher Asks About Trauma and Grief

The post Toxic Dust and PTSD May Be Accelerating Brain Aging Among 9/11 First Responders appeared first on The Revelator.

To many visitors a mangrove forest appears as a stretch of trees standing between land and sea. But if you walk through the same forest with a local fisher returning with the tide, a honey collector searching for wild hives, or a boatman who has spent a lifetime navigating its creeks, another landscape comes into view. What seems to be a single landscape is understood as many. Diverse names distinguish places where fish breed, honey is gathered, storm surges lose their force, or tides behave differently.

Across the eastern and western seaboards in India, coastal communities have developed distinct names for tidal forests that reflect ecological function as much as geography. In Bengal, Sundarban evokes a forest historically associated with the sundari tree and its life-sustaining tidal ecology. Along the Godavari–Krishna delta, the Telugu expression mada vanalu refers to brackish tidal forests that nurture fisheries and soften the impact of cyclones. Tamil and Malayali people use terms built around kandal to distinguish salt-tolerant coastal habitats, while related expressions across the Konkan and Gujarat coast identify creek-edge forests, honey-collecting areas, and other ecosystems.

These names are far more than local expressions. They reflect generations of close observation about how the forest functions and how people have learned to live with it.

Much of this vocabulary is quietly disappearing. In administration, education, and even conservation practice, diverse coastal landscapes are increasingly gathered under a single term, mangroves. The forest remains, but the distinctions that once helped people recognize its ecological diversity begin to fade.

Conservation has become notably good at measuring environmental change. Forest cover, species recovery, and habitat loss are monitored with increasing precision. Still, an irony remains. Even as technologies sharpen the view of nature, the ecological languages through which Indigenous peoples have long interpreted these ecosystems and processes are becoming less visible.

Before ecosystems disappear, the ability to read them often begins to erode.

Conservation routinely monitors species richness and habitat extent but rarely asks whether the vocabulary needed to recognize those habitats is itself surviving. That is conservation’s overlooked blind spot. Protecting biodiversity is not only about safeguarding species and habitats; it also requires sustaining the languages that enable people to understand the many distinctions within an ecosystem in the first place. Conservation cannot fully succeed while the ecological languages that make landscapes intelligible continue to disappear.

When Conservation Loses Resolution

Ecologists classify habitats by their vegetation, hydrology, and species, while people who have lived in these landscapes for generations have long relied on another system of classification — language. Their vocabularies did not evolve to describe nature in the abstract. They emerged from everyday interactions. In tidal forests people learn to distinguish places shaped by tides, soils, fisheries, storms, and seasons, allow them to understand differences that matter.

The problem arises when these locally evolved classifications are absorbed into broader, standardized terminology. A common vocabulary undoubtedly makes administration, education, and scientific communication easier. Yet it also carries an unintended consequence: Ecosystems begin to appear simpler than they really are.

India’s mangrove coast illustrates this shift.

These are not simply regional names but ecolexicons that condense generations of environmental observation into everyday language.

As this mosaic of ecological vocabularies gives way to the single label mangroves, something more than linguistic diversity is lost. It’s like reducing the resolution of a satellite image: The coastline remains visible, but its finer ecological distinctions begin to disappear.

This process may be understood as linguistic flattening — not merely a dilution of linguistic richness and a loss of words, but also the gradual loss of ecological resolution. Long before a language falls silent, it can lose the nuances that once helped people read landscapes.

Language as Conservation Infrastructure

Linguistic flattening also weakens the systems that have long governed how people interact with ecosystems.

Language is often treated as a medium of communication, yet in many Indigenous societies it functions as something more fundamental. It carries practical rules, ethical obligations, and ecological boundaries that are learned not from policy manuals but through everyday speech, stories, and customary practice. In this sense, language is part of conservation infrastructure.

The Māori understanding of harakeke (New Zealand flax) offers a striking example. The central shoot, or rito, represents the child, while the surrounding leaves symbolize parents and grandparents. This is more than a metaphor. The vocabulary itself shapes harvesting practices: Inner shoots are never cut, because removing them threatens the life of the plant. Only the outer leaves are taken, allowing regeneration to continue. Even the flowering stalks (kōrari) are managed with care so that nectar remains available for native birds, supporting pollination and the wider ecosystem.

This appears to be a biocultural expression but in practice is a sophisticated system for managing relationships between people and nature. The language does not simply describe ecological relationships; it instructs people how to behave within them.

Similar patterns are found across Indigenous societies, where names, stories, and customary expressions regulate seasonal harvesting, identify sensitive habitats, and define responsibilities towards land and water.

Conservation recognizes the value of Indigenous knowledge, yet it often overlooks the languages through which that knowledge is organized, remembered, and transmitted. Protecting place-based knowledge while allowing the languages that sustain it to disappear is rather like preserving a library after removing its catalogue. The books may still exist, but their meaning becomes increasingly difficult to recover.

Vanishing Languages, Vanishing Environmental Archives

Modern conservation depends heavily on data. Satellite imagery tracks forest loss, climate models project future change, and ecological surveys measure species abundance with precision. Yet most of these records span only a few decades. They rarely capture and interpret the much longer histories through which communities have understood environmental changes.

That longer record often survives in language. Across Indigenous societies, names for plants, animals, winds, tides, and seasons are not arbitrary labels but accumulated observations refined over generations. They preserve knowledge of when rivers shift their course, when particular fish arrive, how flowering responds to rainfall, which plants indicate groundwater, or where storms repeatedly reshape the coast. Much of this information was never written down because it did not need to be. It remained alive in speech, memory, and everyday practice.

When a language slips away, the environmental archive becomes fragmented, and we lose part of nature’s archive. Individual observations may still be recorded by researchers, but the wider system that connected them — linking species, habitats, seasons, and human experience — is gradually lost.

Conservation then faces an unusual paradox. We invest heavily in collecting new ecological data while allowing centuries of carefully accumulated environmental knowledge to disappear unnoticed.

Seen in this light, language loss is not simply a cultural concern. It also represents the quiet erosion of one of conservation’s oldest and least recognized ways of understanding nature. Protecting biodiversity therefore also means sustaining the living archives that have preserved ecological memory across generations.

Conservation Literacy Beyond Species Lists

Conservation governance has made important progress globally in recognizing Indigenous peoples as partners in biodiversity protection. The Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework calls for respecting and applying traditional knowledge in biodiversity governance, while IPBES has repeatedly shown that indigenous and local knowledge strengthens conservation outcomes. Likewise, UNESCO’s International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022–2032) emphasizes that these languages sustain knowledge systems shaped through long relationships with place.

Yet an important gap remains. Conservation frameworks celebrate traditional knowledge but rarely ask how that knowledge survives across generations. Knowledge does not exist independently of the language through which it is observed, evolved, organized, and passed from one generation to the next. A conservation strategy that values Indigenous knowledge while overlooking Indigenous languages risks protecting the product while allowing the process that continually renews it to fade.

This calls for a broader understanding of conservation literacy. Alongside species inventories, habitat maps, and ecological monitoring, conservation should also recognize the value of ecolexicons, the place-based vocabularies that enable Indigenous communities to distinguish habitats, seasonal change, and ecological processes.

Supporting community-led language documentation, multilingual ecological education, and regional diversity of Indigenous vocabularies are therefore not simply a cultural exercise. It strengthens the knowledge infrastructure of future generations to interpret and care for the landscapes they inherit.

Reading Nature Before It Falls Silent

Biodiversity conservation has long measured success in hectares restored, species recovered, and habitat protected. These remain essential benchmarks. Yet this understanding argues that another measure deserves attention: whether the languages that enable communities to understand, interpret and care for those landscapes are also surviving.

A forest is more than the trees it contains. It is also the vocabulary through which generations have learned to read its tides, seasons, species, and silences.

The next frontier in conservation is not simply protecting more land but protecting the many ways in which people understand that land. Every ecological language that survives preserves a way of noticing what others might overlook while their disappearance reduces the world’s ability to see nature in all its complexity.

Conservation cannot claim to protect the living world if it allows the languages that have long interpreted that world to disappear unheard.

Long before a forest falls silent, its words often do.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Previously in The Revelator:

The Extinction of Languages Is an Environmental Issue

The post Conservation’s Blind Spot: Why Language Matters for Biodiversity appeared first on The Revelator.

Twenty years ago this summer, Al Gore delivered environmentalists a jolt of energy with the release of his climate change documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. The film was an unlikely blockbuster — who knew a slideshow could be so gripping? — that became a commercial and critical success, eventually earning Gore an Oscar and the Nobel Peace Prize. His 100-minute monologue helped catapult global warming to the center of the political discourse.

But if the film landed with bang, it ended with something of a whimper. As the credits rolled, the filmmakers offered the audience some ideas for how they could help combat climate change. The top suggestion for “changing the way you live” was to “buy energy-efficient appliances: lightbulbs.”

The best thing we could do to stop sea-level rise and the eventual inundation of lower Manhattan was to swap out our lightbulbs? To many environmentalists, it felt like bringing a squirt gun to a world war.

The gap between the problem at hand and the proffered solution was “enough to sink your heart,” as author Michael Pollan put it in a 2008 essay for The New York Times Magazine.

The criticism of the film’s final minutes was so withering that eventually Gore himself would have to backpedal and began frequently telling people that it was just as important to “change laws” as change lightbulbs. Twenty years on, “change your lightbulbs” has become a metaphor for a wan kind of environmentalism, an easy punchline for greens trying to make a point.

But here’s the thing: In the decades since An Inconvenient Truth was released, Americans did, in fact, swap out their lightbulbs. As they did, they helped to check U.S. electricity-demand growth for the better part of a generation and avoided the release of many hundreds of millions, if not billions, of tons of heat-trapping carbon pollution.

When it came to lightbulbs, Al Gore was right. Changing tens of millions of lightbulbs, it turns out, helped change the real world.

The story of how Americans made a remarkably swift and widespread switch from inefficient incandescent lightbulbs to compact fluorescents and LEDs offers important lessons for climate activists today. The experience supplies a proof of concept for how engineering innovations can overwhelm an entrenched technology. It’s an example of how basic household economics — or if you prefer, the market — can shift an entire sector in a virtuous direction.

And, perhaps most importantly, it’s evidence that individual actions do make a difference — as long as they are taken collectively and at scale.

“I think this is one of the least appreciated, most important energy innovations of recent history,” says Lucas Davis, a professor of energy economics at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.

From 2005 to 2020, U.S. electricity demand growth was essentially flat, according to the Energy Information Agency. During that same period, the U.S. population grew by more than 30 million people and economic growth was relatively steady (minus, of course, the dip of the Great Recession). Yet all those new people and all that additional economic activity required almost no new electricity. To some environmentalists, it seemed the United States had reached the long-sought goal of decoupling electricity consumption from economic activity.

A primary cause of the plateau in electricity usage was the significant decline in residential electricity consumption. That decline was driven by several factors, including an across-the-board improvement in the efficiency of household appliances.

But the drop in lighting’s share of electricity demand was particularly sharp. In a remarkably short period, households and businesses swapped out their inefficient incandescent bulbs (which wasted most of their electricity as heat and which had barely changed since the days of Thomas Edison), for CFLs (a technology that’s now on the decline) and LEDs. When Gore made his movie, illumination accounted for about 15% of home energy use. Today it’s about 6% — roughly two-fifths of what it used to be. That’s a big deal.

“The really striking thing about LED lightbulbs is the large percentage reduction in consumption,” says Davis, who charted the transformation in a 2017 paper. “Imagine you were driving a car that gets 30 miles per gallon and you were able to trade it in for one that gets 300 miles per gallon.”

New lightbulbs cut illumination’s electricity usage on a bulb-by-bulb level by roughly 90%. If you’re wondering why lighting’s total share of electricity demand only dropped by 60-some percent, it’s because as lighting got cheaper, people used more of it. Even so, no other electricity-end-use innovation of the 21st century comes close.

“Refrigerators have become massively more energy efficient,” Davis explains, “but today’s refrigerators don’t use 90% less than the incumbent technology. So it’s a big change.”

Davis is an economist, and so naturally he views this success story through a market lens. When consumers were offered a product (LEDs) that could perform the same function as the old technology (incandescents) and which were much more durable and therefore cheaper than replacing your lightbulbs every few months, consumers quickly made the switch. According to Davis, between 2008 and 2016 — the flick of a light switch in macroeconomic time — the price of LEDs plummeted by 94%, making them something of a no-brainer.

It’s true that energy efficiency standards put in place by the Biden administration effectively banned the old-fashioned incandescents. But — and this needs to be emphasized — consumers had already made the switch before the government mandate. In 2020 nearly half of American homes were using LEDs for all or most of their lighting; by 2024, that number was almost two-thirds.

Ultimately, the economic gravity of a superior product was implacable.

That’s a happy takeaway for climate activists. You don’t have to squint hard to see how the lighting success story could be applied to other modern necessities.

Take heating and cooling, which gobble up nearly a third of all electricity used by American households. Heat pumps are far more efficient than oil or gas furnaces and standard air conditioning, and consumers are starting to notice. For four years straight, heat pumps have outsold gas furnaces, and last year, for the first time ever, heat pumps accounted for more than half the heating-and-cooling technology in new apartment construction. The heat pump tipping point doesn’t seem far away.

Or take transportation, the largest source of U.S. carbon pollution. You can think of electric vehicles as the LEDs of the auto sector. EVs are obviously vastly more efficient than internal combustion engine models, and EVs easily outmatch gas-powered vehicles on performance metrics like acceleration and handling. It’s true that EVs are pricier upfront, but they’re cheaper in the long run due to lower fuel costs and minimal maintenance costs. Even though Americans have been slow to adopt EVs, sales in the rest of the world are booming. As the EV cost curve bends downward, the internal combustion engine will succumb to the same economic gravity that dragged down the incandescent bulb. Quality trumps ideology or nostalgia.

Beyond the lessons of technology and markets, the lightbulb conversion story offers climate activists another, more profound teaching, one that has to do with the role of individual action in making broad social change.

In some circles, it’s become fashionable to dismiss the role of individual action as a solution to our environmental woes. According to this view, individual action is, at best, performative virtue-signaling and, at worst, lets the oil and gas companies off the hook for their primary role in fueling the climate crisis. The carbon footprint calculator is a Big Oil scheme — didn’t you know?

The lightbulb story offers a real-life rebuttal to the view that individual action is a distraction in the effort to fight climate change. Sure, if you’re the only person to switch a lightbulb, nothing much happens. But swap a billion lightbulbs and the world begins to look different.

“The individual choices added up to a lot because there were so many of them,” says Amory Lovins, a cofounder of the clean energy think tank RMI who also teaches energy efficiency at Stanford. “Doing many small things with very large numbers of diverse actors can be faster than doing a few big things requiring specialized institutions.”

This is not to say that policy action is unnecessary. The transition to heat pumps and EVs may be implacable in the long run. But, famously, in the long run we’re all dead — which is why we need smart policy to spur those transitions at the speed and scale required.

Truly, social change is an alloy: Lasting progress requires a combination of policy making and individual citizen action. The Inflation Reduction Act — the American climate movement’s signature policy achievement to date — reflected this wisdom. The law (which has been largely dismantled by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans) briefly created the political and economic conditions for accelerating the clean energy transition. It offered households financial incentives for installing rooftop solar, putting in heat pumps, and purchasing electric vehicles.

But those government nudges toward a clean energy economy could only accomplish their goals if people decided to take advantage of them. Without individuals’ commitment to climate action, policy levers would be useless.

The carrot only works if someone snatches it.

It can seem as if those who pooh-pooh the power of individual action or who blithely dismissed Gore’s lightbulb moment have never encountered a get-out-the-vote campaign. As any veteran of a get-out-the-vote push knows, elections are a team sport. And at the same time, every door knocked is an attempt to get an individual voter to the polls.

Similarly, building a truly sustainable society will require countless individual actions — votes, as it were, in the form of personal behavior. Stabilizing the climate and protecting biodiversity require that each of us eat less meat, fly fewer miles, install some rooftop solar, and trade in the gas-guzzler for an electric vehicle — and that we do these things not as atomized solo actors, but as individual members of a collective movement.

Ultimately, individual climate action in the absence of robust government climate policy is little more than moral drudgery. Climate policy that makes no demands for individual behavior change is just a political mirage. But policy that’s linked to individual agency, individual commitment, and individual action — well, that’s the hope of the world.

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Insects Are Disappearing — Here’s How to Help

 

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About a decade ago, I traveled through the Rasuwa region of Nepal as a conservation and environmental protection worker. I remember looking at the Himalayas with a kind of pride that is difficult to explain to someone who has never stood beneath them. The mountains seemed eternal. The glaciers looked like frozen rivers from another age. The valleys seemed impossibly deep, the rivers impossibly powerful. I felt proud that these mountains were part of my country. I felt proud that Nepal, a small and economically poor nation, held a landscape so important to the world.

Today, when I look at the photos and videos coming out of Rasuwa after the region’s devastating and deadly floods, that pride is mixed with grief. The mountains I once saw as a symbol of Nepal’s strength are becoming a symbol of our vulnerability. People have died. Homes and livelihoods have been destroyed. Roads and bridges have disappeared. Communities have been cut off. Families are searching for loved ones.

And behind the immediate tragedy are questions that I cannot escape:

Did the people of Nepal do something to deserve this? Did a Nepali farmer cause the glaciers to melt? Did a Nepali child cause the atmosphere to warm? Did a family living in a remote Himalayan village build the coal-fired power plants that have powered the industrial world for generations? Did the people now mourning their dead choose the fossil-fuel economy that has transformed the planet?

If not, why are they being asked to pay the price?

This is where the story of Rasuwa becomes larger than Nepal. It becomes a story about climate justice. The Himalayas are warming rapidly. Glaciers are retreating. Snow and ice are changing. Permafrost and mountain slopes are becoming increasingly unstable. Warmer air can hold more moisture, while a warming cryosphere can create new hazards and amplify existing ones. Climate change is altering the conditions under which Himalayan disasters occur.

But that scientific reality should not result in political blindness. The immediate cause of the disaster must be investigated carefully. Scientists must determine the precise sequence of geological, hydrological, and climatic events that produced the destructive flood.  At the same time climate change should not be used to overlook other factors such as unchecked development or poor planning that may have contributed to this disaster.

The question, then, is not whether climate change alone caused Rasuwa. The more important question is this: What kind of world have we created when people who contributed least to climate change are increasingly exposed to its most dangerous consequences?

Nepal is one of the clearest examples of this injustice. Its contribution to global carbon dioxide emissions is tiny. Its per-person emissions are among the lowest in the world. Yet its geography places it directly in the path of a warming climate. Nepal has glaciers that are retreating, mountains that are becoming increasingly unstable, rivers that can turn violently destructive, and communities with limited financial resources forced to prepare for what is coming.

The average American produces more than 20 times as much carbon dioxide than the average Nepali. China’s per-capita emissions are many times higher than Nepal’s. India’s are also substantially higher. China is now the world’s largest annual emitter, while the United States remains one of the world’s largest emitters and carries an enormous share of historical responsibility for the carbon accumulated in the atmosphere since industrialization. Yet the atmosphere does not send the bill back to the country that emitted the carbon. It sends the bill everywhere. And in places like Nepal, the bill can arrive as a flood.

This is the great moral failure at the heart of the climate crisis.

The people who benefited most from fossil-fuel-driven economic growth generally have the greatest financial and technological capacity to protect themselves from climate impacts. Those who contributed little often have the least capacity to adapt. That is not merely an unfortunate coincidence. It is an injustice.

For decades, the global economy treated the atmosphere as if it were an unlimited dumping ground. Coal could be burned. Oil could be extracted. Gas could be consumed. Factories could grow. Cars could multiply. Cities could expand. The benefits were measured in economic growth. The costs were pushed into the future.

That future has arrived in the Himalayas. It has arrived in the Pacific islands. In drought-stricken Africa. In South Asian floodplains. And it is arriving in the homes of people who never had a meaningful share in creating the problem.

The Himalayas deserve particular attention because what happens there will not remain there.

The mountains are often described as the roof of the world. They are also one of Asia’s great water towers. Their glaciers, snow and rivers support hundreds of millions of people across Nepal, India, China, Bhutan and Bangladesh. They feed agriculture, drinking-water systems and hydropower. They sustain forests, wetlands, wildlife and entire human cultures.

When the Himalayas become unstable, the consequences travel downstream. A mountain disaster can become a water crisis. A glacier crisis can become an energy crisis. A flood can become an economic crisis. And repeated climate disasters can eventually become a migration and security crisis.

The world should therefore stop treating Himalayan climate risk as a remote Nepalese problem. It is a global problem with a Himalayan address.

This is also why China and India cannot be left out of the conversation. China is the world’s largest current annual emitter, but it is also a country that has lifted hundreds of millions of people from poverty and is investing heavily in renewable energy. India faces a different but equally difficult dilemma: It must expand energy access and economic opportunity for a huge population while trying to avoid locking itself into decades of high-carbon development.

The answer cannot be to tell developing countries that they are forbidden from pursuing the prosperity that wealthy countries achieved through fossil fuels. That would be hypocritical. But neither can the developing world repeat the same carbon-intensive development pathway and expect the poorest and most vulnerable countries to absorb the consequences.

Every country has a responsibility. But every country does not have the same responsibility.

That distinction is at the heart of climate justice. The United States, Europe and other historically high-emitting economies have an enormous obligation to reduce emissions rapidly and provide financial and technological support to vulnerable countries. China has a responsibility commensurate with its present influence on the climate system. India and other rapidly growing economies have a responsibility to pursue development without reproducing the most destructive elements of the old fossil-fuel model.

And Nepal has a responsibility too. We must protect our forests. We must build safer infrastructure. We must stop treating fragile mountain slopes as empty spaces for roads and construction. We must strengthen disaster preparedness. We must invest in science. We must listen to local communities. But Nepal cannot adapt its way out of a crisis created by a warming planet.

There is a limit to what a small country can do when the atmosphere continues to heat because of decisions made elsewhere. That is why climate finance must stop being treated as charity.

Nepal does not need pity. Nepal needs justice.

It needs predictable resources to monitor glaciers and glacial lakes. It needs early-warning systems capable of reaching remote communities before floodwaters arrive. It needs high-altitude scientific research. It needs resilient roads, bridges and hydropower systems. It needs access to satellite data and international scientific networks. It needs effective mechanisms for loss and damage when climate-driven disasters destroy lives and development gains.

Justice also includes recognition that the people standing beneath melting glaciers are not merely victims waiting for international assistance. They are citizens of a world whose climate system is shared by everyone. The international community should establish stronger Himalayan climate cooperation involving Nepal, India and China. Glaciers do not recognize political boundaries. Rivers do not stop at checkpoints. Atmospheric warming does not respect national sovereignty.

The countries that share the Himalayas therefore have a common interest in monitoring its transformation and protecting the people downstream. But this responsibility must extend beyond Asia. The countries that have historically emitted the most carbon cannot simply send condolences after every disaster. They must help prevent the next one. Every country should have measurable climate obligations. Every government should be accountable for meeting them. Every major emitter should be required to do more, not less. And the countries with the greatest historical responsibility should contribute proportionately.

Climate agreements should not become annual rituals in which leaders make promises, take photographs and return home to business as usual. The world needs climate protocols with consequences. It needs transparency. It needs accountability. It needs finance that actually reaches vulnerable communities.

Most of all, it needs recognition that climate responsibility is not simply about tons of carbon. It is about people. It is about the child in Rasuwa who no longer has a home. It is about the mother searching for a missing family member. It is about the farmer whose land disappeared in a flood. It is about the community whose road to the outside world vanished overnight. It is about the people who did almost nothing to heat the planet but are now being forced to live with a climate they did not choose.

When I think back to that journey through Rasuwa more than a decade ago, I remember how proud I felt standing beneath the Himalayas. I still feel that pride. But now it is accompanied by other emotions. Fear. Not only fear for the mountains, but fear for the people who live among them. And anger. Not anger at one country or one government, but at a global system that has allowed responsibility and vulnerability to become so badly separated.

The question I asked myself after seeing the destruction in Rasuwa was painfully simple: Why should Nepal pay for a crisis it did not create?

I do not think Nepal is asking the world to answer with sympathy. I think Nepal is asking the world to answer with responsibility. The Himalayas belong to Nepal, but they are not only Nepal’s. The water they store sustains Asia. The climate they are experiencing is the product of a global atmosphere. And the consequences of their destabilization will eventually cross every border that politics has drawn across the mountains.

For years, the world has described Nepal as a vulnerable country. Perhaps that language needs to change.

Nepal is not simply vulnerable. Nepal is exposed. Exposed to a crisis created by a global system in which it had almost no voice.

The people of Rasuwa did not choose the carbon economy. They did not burn the coal. They did not fill the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. They did not decide how fast the planet should warm. Yet they are the ones standing in the floodwater. That should trouble every government on Earth.

Because if climate justice means anything, it must mean this: No country should be left to bear alone the consequences of a crisis it did little to create. And if the world continues to ignore that principle, the Himalayas will not be the last place to send us the bill. They may simply be one of the first places where the bill has become impossible to ignore.

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The Last Breath of the Himalayas: Can We Stop the Collapse?

 

The post The Himalayas Didn’t Cause the Climate Crisis. Why Are Nepalis Paying the Price? appeared first on The Revelator.

The sound of rubber sandals crunching on dry bamboo leaves echoes in the fading light of Sumur Bendung. Maia Ruda, a 58-year-old mother, walks down a steep, tricky path toward a narrow riverbed in Gunung Batur village, Cilegon, carrying an empty 15-liter (4-gallon) plastic jug on her back. The path gets slipperier and more dangerous as it winds down the valley, where it cuts through mossy stone and damp earth.

Photo: Garry Lotulung

As the sun sets, other women with their own 15-liter jugs are already waiting, talking in Javanese as they gather around small drips of water coming from the rocks. The villagers use hollow bamboo stalks and large antap (Sterculia oblongata) leaves to guide the trickle into their containers. Filling a 15-liter jug takes a difficult 30 minutes.

Photo: Garry Lotulung

For Maia and her neighbors, waiting for water at dusk is now part of daily life. Since there are no wells nearby, they rely completely on this underground water and spend hours in the gorge to collect enough water for their families.

“We’ve been living like this for the past four months,” Maia tells me in early August, resting briefly while her container fills. “We have to walk a kilometer from our village down a steep, slippery path to reach this riverbed source. And as we enter August, the water is dripping slower and slower.”

She explains that they use old mineral water containers because they’re light, strong, and can be carried home in cloth without breaking on the sharp rocks. By nightfall she will carry eight heavy jugs back up the cliff, enough to last her family almost a week.

As things get harder, the community has had to ration water strictly. At the local Al-Ma’ruf prayer house, a schedule called the sif system controls water collection. Groups of 15 households take turns in 12-hour shifts, from dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn. Each week a family might get just two turns, one in the morning and one at night, approved by the neighborhood chief.

But the situation is getting worse every day. Four months ago a family could collect 20 gallons each turn. Now the water flow is so low that they get barely eight. “By September we don’t know what we’ll do if the water stops dripping altogether,” says Ali Asmudin, another resident.

Villagers get a small government relief package of two gallons per week, but this is far from enough for their daily needs. A permanent pipeline is still just a dream for a community that has faced droughts for many years.

The Rings of Fire and a Looming Super El Niño

While places like Gunung Batur are rationing every drop, meteorologists warn that this local hardship is just a sign of a much bigger climate problem.

Across Indonesia worsening water shortages are expected to deepen significantly in the coming months. The stakes this year extend far beyond crippled agricultural yields. As the drought intensifies, it threatens water supplies, compromises hydropower generation, and drastically increases the risk of widespread forest and land fires.

According to the Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency, the country is bracing for a drier-than-normal season, with 437 seasonal zones — nearly half of Indonesia’s total land area — predicted to endure an unusually long and severe drought.

In June the World Meteorological Organization officially announced the start of El Niño, a major climate phenomenon where tropical Pacific waters warm significantly, disrupting weather worldwide. Current measurements show ocean temperatures are running far above average, officially placing this El Niño in the “strong” category with the potential to trigger severe droughts, heat, and extreme weather in the coming months. The announcement warned countries everywhere to prepare for record heatwaves, severe droughts, and more extreme weather.

 

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Teuku Faisal Fathani, head of Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysical Agency, points to alarming macro-indicators. “Based on our monitoring, current El Niño conditions have reached a strong category, driven by sea surface temperature anomalies.”

Adding to these worries, climate researchers from China’s State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment Dynamics and Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency have found a new weather pattern. Warming is happening at the same time in three Pacific regions — near Indonesia, Central America, and South America — creating a large “warm ring” that covers areas usually kept cool by ocean currents.

“We have not observed a pattern this intense in the past 40 years,” says Dr. Widodo Setiyo Nugroho, a senior climate researcher at BRIN.

Ghosts of the Past Re-emerge From the Depths

About 99 kilometers (61 miles) from the capital of Jakarta, the disappearing water reveals strange reminders of past projects. As reservoirs shrink across Banten Province, pieces of human history are reemerging from the bottom of the lakes.

At the Somang pier in Lebak Regency, boatman Hussein waits for passengers who want to see what remains of the past. Since June falling water levels at the large Karian Dam have uncovered the remains of villages.

Photo: Garry Lotulung

Built between 2015 and 2024, the Karian Dam project flooded 11 villages in four sub-districts: Sajira, Cimarga, Maja, and Rangkasbitung. People were moved to make way for a 1,773-hectare (7-square-mile) artificial lake meant to supply water to Jakarta and its suburbs. Now, as water levels drop by one to three meters (up to 10 feet), the roofs and yards of these submerged villages are starting to appear again.

Hussein steers his small wooden boat past brick foundations that stick out of the water. “I’ve lived here since I was a child,” he says quietly, watching a motorboat take visitors to see what remains of Somang. “Four years ago, we had to leave when our homes were flooded. For the past two years, I’ve worked as a ferryman, charging people five to ten thousand rupiahs to see what’s left of our old lives.”

Photo: Garry Lotulung

Where families once farmed and children played, people now use the shrinking edges of the reservoir to wash clothes because their wells have dried up. Below the water, only brick foundations are left. Wooden doors, windows, and roof tiles were removed before the valley was flooded.

A Bleak Horizon

The problems seen in Cilegon and Lebak are expected to get much worse. Erma Yulihastin, a climate researcher from the National Research and Innovation Agency, says that models predict a Super El Niño from late 2026 to early 2027, which will supercharge global weather systems and trigger severe storms, droughts, and wildfires. Forecasts from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts show the peak will come in December 2026, with sea surface temperatures rising more than 4 degrees Celsius.

“Even February 2027 will still classify as super,” Yulihastin warns. If these predictions come true, Indonesia could face a long seven-month struggle with poor crop yields, serious food shortages, and high wildfire risks.

For people like Maia Ruda in Gunung Batur and Hussein, who watches his old village reappear in Somang, that future is already here, seen in every drop of water that grows scarcer.

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Photo Essay: Climate Change and Deforestation Collide in Indonesia’s Deadly Floods

The post Photo Essay: As a Super El Niño Looms, Indonesia’s Crippling Drought Deepens appeared first on The Revelator.

What whale are we talking about this month?

Today we’re looking at the elusive narwhal (Monodon monoceros), the “unicorn” of the sea.

Oh, come on. There’s no way those are real.

I get your skepticism, but narwhals exist. They live in the Arctic, where relatively few people see them. And yes, just as you might see in cartoons, male narwhals have a single spiraling “horn” on the front of their faces. Technically it’s called a tusk, but it’s actually a really long tooth.

 

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Only males? Unfair, if you ask me.

It’s not completely exclusive. A few female narwhals have been documented with tusks, although it’s rare.

If it’s any consolation, male narwhals take about twice as long to reach maturity as females — as much as 20 years.

That tracks. So what are the tusks for?

Biologists are still not entirely sure. Some sources say the tusks help to attract mates or achieve dominance among males (who often cross tusks like two swordsmen preparing to duel, a behavior known as “tusking”).

 

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Other research points out that they’re jam-packed with nerve endings — millions of ’em — that may help narwhals understand what’s going on around them, especially temperature changes.

Still other sources say tusks are for fighting or feeding.

Feeding? Do they spear their prey?

No — it would be hard to get a fish back off the tusk to eat if they did that. But the reality is even weirder: Some narwhals have been observed whacking cod with their tusks, stunning them or knocking them out and making them easier to eat.

We learned about that in 2016 — after 400 years of wondering what the tusks are for — thanks to drone-mounted remote cameras, which continue to help with narwhal research. A 2025 study observed narwhals chasing an Arctic fish species called char and “using their tusks to hit, manipulate, and influence the behavior of fish.” Some of this could almost be described as playing with your food. They didn’t always get to eat the char, though; gulls sometimes stole the fish, a behavior called kleptoparasitism.

That should be on one of those word-a-day calendars. Hey, what’s the deal with narwhals’ name? It’s kinda different from most other whales.

“Narwhal” comes from their Old Norse name, nárhval, which translates to “corpse whale.” It seems their gray, mottled skin resembles … well, you can probably connect the dots.

Gross.

Well, that’s the Vikings for you.

That Norse name seems to have stuck in the public consciousness worldwide, but these whales had a few other names around the Arctic. The Inuit call them tuugaalik, qilalugaq, or qilalugaq qernertaq.

You said people don’t see them very often. Why not?

Well for one thing, they live in remote, ice-covered parts of the Arctic: central Canada, Greenland, and Russia. The mostly Indigenous peoples in those regions have long traditions of living with narwhals — they figure into a lot of cultural traditions dating back millennia. But the Arctic’s still not a popular tourist destination (although several narwhal sightseeing tours operate on Baffin Island and other Arctic sites).

They’re also deep divers and have been known to swim more than 7,000 feet below the surface, which isn’t exactly hospitable territory for you and me.

And, of course, narwhals — like all whales — don’t do well in captivity, so if you don’t see one on TV you’re probably not going to see one. The few attempts to display them in aquariums ended in tragedy (some might say predictably) more than 50 years ago.

That sucks. Are they endangered?

Not officially. The IUCN, which assesses the extinction risk of species around the world, used to list them as “near threatened.” The latest assessment, published in 2017, moved them up the scale to “least concern,” with an estimated global population of at least 123,000 mature individuals. But that report cautioned that we don’t know the health of several subpopulations, especially in Russia.

A more recent study published in 2022 found that one narwhal population in Greenland shrank between 2007 and 2019. This is one of the few areas where narwhals have experienced much hunting, and that’s caused a decline in the percentage of females (who are slower and easier to catch) and juveniles (who need moms to begin with, obviously).

It’s great they’re not at risk right now. Still, climate change must pose a threat for an Arctic species like this.

Most likely. Narwhals live in icy environments. We just don’t know how well they’ll fare if ice patterns keep changing. Research suggests they’ll be vulnerable, though. A 2010 paper found that they species’ “extreme morphological and physiological adaptations enabling year-round Arctic residency … limit behavioral flexibility for responding to alternations in sea ice.” Specifically, the paper found narwhals have a narrow temperature preference — they avoid areas about 35 degrees (2° C). They can also only travel about nine-tenths of a mile before coming up for air, which is fine under “normal” conditions, but climate change could cause more ice to break free and congregate into large, impenetrable masses. If climate change alters temperature levels and changes ice patterns, the whales could be in trouble.

More recent research, published in 2020, studied narwhal genetics and found that they have low genetic diversity, presumably due to geographic constriction during the last glacial period. That suggests they’ll be vulnerable in the future.

Right now, though, the biggest threats to them seem to come from oil and gas development and commercial shipping. Human activities like this really stress them out — and narwhals don’t do well under stress.

That sounds like the other whales we’ve discussed. Any other cool facts to share?

A few! They’re closely related to beluga whales — in fact, if you take off the tusk and paint a narwhal white, they’d look pretty much the same.

(PS: Don’t do that.)

One of their physical similarities between the two species is their large melons, a mass of fatty tissue seen in all toothed whales (including dolphins and porpoises, who aren’t really whales, but don’t get me started).

The melon remains a bit of a mystery, but scientists have linked it to communication, which for narwhals includes echolocation.

Like bats?

Yup. It helps them find prey and avoid barriers — a useful tool deep underwater, past where the sun can reach.

Narwhals also have a wide range of other vocalizations, and they’re one of the whale species that seem to have different calls from pod to pod, a sign that they have learned behaviors that might be akin to culture in humans.

On a more physical level, narwhals are uniquely adapted to Arctic life, with slow-twitch muscles that reserve oxygen — I’ve seen them described as “greyhound-like” — and a thick blubber that protects them from the cold.

So what’s your favorite thing about narwhals?

Well, for me, it’s just that they’re so damn easy and fun to draw. They don’t have prominent dorsal fins (or many other extraneous details), they have big goofy heads, and the tusks are just magical. I’ve drawn them as cartoons and done several narwhal paintings, which always lead to fun conversations about whales and conservation in general.

 

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Go figure! So what whale are we talking about next month?

Haven’t decided yet. There are just so many interesting whale species, both in the news and out of the public eye. I guess you’ll just have to wait and see…

Can I sing the narwhal song now?

Sure, just wait for me to leave the room.

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Whale of the Month: Minke Whale

The post Whale of the Month: Narwhals appeared first on The Revelator.

The change of seasons gives us a chance to reflect on the environmental issues that affect us all.

Here are several new books about wildlife, climate change, and biological diversity that offer intriguing insights into the transformations occurring in our world and ways we can enjoy, protect, and observe the transformation from summer to autumn.

We’ve adapted the books’ official descriptions below, and the link in each title goes to the publisher’s page. You can also find any of these titles through your local bookseller and library.

The Savage Landscape: How We Made the Wilderness

by Cal Flyn

From the black sand beaches of Iceland and rivers of the Amazon to the barren beauty of Antarctica, wildernesses make up some of the world’s more alluring natural landscapes. Flyn sees a powerful, ancient concept at the intersection of landscape, philosophy, and ecology. For thousands of years, people have sought out uncharted nature in search of religious epiphany, self-actualization, and an escape from daily life. More recently these “pristine” places have been seen as the subject of a last effort to repair a planet imperiled by humans.

This book takes us into the breathtaking wilds — dark forests, mountaintops, and the hearts of deserts — asking provocative questions about the nature of wilderness, its preservation, and its meaning.

Recomposed: Music, Climate, Crisis, Change

by Kyle Devine

Can music save the world? We’re witnessing a climate-oriented transformation of what music is and how it comes to be. Recomposed shows how musicians around the world are using the cultural power of music to link climate awareness to climate action.

Award-winning author and academic Kyle Devine profiles EarthPercent, founded by Brian Eno and others to help funnel money from the music business to climate causes. Devine enrolls in a course led by ClimateEQ, which teaches carbon literacy for the music industry. He investigates a platform to help musicians finance solar energy and embeds himself in a dynamic cast of manufacturers and inventors seeking ways to make records more sustainable, from recycling old vinyl to making discs from bioplastic. At the center of this multifaceted story is the climate impact of music festivals and touring musicians.

End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World

by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor

As the planet burns and shared reality melts, a new iteration of the far right is on the march. How can we understand this dangerous new development, and what resources can we draw on to resist it? In their assessment of the contemporary scene, activists and authors Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor explore how the religious fundamentalists, Silicon Valley technologists, and ethno-nationalists who make up this apocalyptic alliance share more than one might think: They’re united in their belief that some kind of cleansing cataclysm is coming, whether through the manifestation of messianic prophecy, the rampages of a resource- and job-consuming artificial intelligence, or the purported existential threat of immigration and cultural replacement. Rather than avoiding this conflagration, they welcome it, convinced they’ll be among the saved on the other side.

End Times Fascism is the ideology of the actors who strive to make the world unlivable and then seek to protect themselves from the fallout — whether by repairing to luxurious private islands, rocketing off to Mars, or bunkering the nation to keep their enemies at bay. The new survivalists have accumulated power, but they are far from impregnable. As Klein and Taylor show via original reporting and analysis, their many internal conflicts and contradictions and their nihilistic inability to envision a shared future, even for their ostensible allies, leave them vulnerable to a new kind of “pro-life” politics — rooted in reverence for our shared existence and regard for the earth we inhabit and must protect.

Water Lines: A Life on Marshes, Rivers, Seas and In the Rain

by Riverhorse Nakadate

A collection of essays from Riverhorse Nakadate — angler, musician, conservationist, and lifelong nomad — whose devotion to wild places and the healing power of water pulses through every page. For readers of Edward Abbey, Barry Lopez, Mary Oliver, and Jim Harrison, this book is a soulful invitation to step off the grid and into the current.

Across 32 essays Nakadate paddles, hikes, casts, surfs, and canoes through landscapes as varied as the alpine lakes of Colorado, the salt marshes of his native Texas, the trout streams of Minnesota, and the mangrove swamps of the Yucatán. Whether he’s chasing redfish in a hurricane, rescuing baby squirrels or migrating monarch butterflies, or honoring his mother’s legacy with a canoe ride and a slice of sweet potato pie, Nakadate reflects on solitude, friendship, loss, and the quiet heroism of those who strive to protect our wild spaces. A celebration of living deliberately and listening deeply to the rhythms of the earth.

The Shell Seeker: Encounters With Thirty Seashells

by Juli Berwald

Seashells are marvels; beachcombing adults and children alike are transfixed by their natural beauty and striking architecture. Discover all the incredible details of these stunning homes for mollusks and other marine life. Renowned science writer Juli Berwald draws on her passion for the ocean and its great treasures to reveal the remarkable and surprising features of 30 shells found on the shorelines of North America and oceans around the worl

Books for kids and young readers, including titles that can be paired with several of the selections above.

The Green Kids Club Books

Kids will love this collection of engaging wildlife-centered stories that help them understand the importance of nurturing our planet and its animal inhabitants. Founder Sylvia M. Medina saw a need to introduce kids to a range of animal species from around the world, exploring real issues related to habitat protection, wildlife survival, and the people working to help them.

This eye-opening book collection features stories from the wolf matriarchs of Yellowstone to a family of red foxes in the San Juan Islands to a baby elephant in Botswana and lion cubs in the African savanna. Many of the books are based on true stories, including the popular Grizzly 399 titles, one of the most famous and heavily reported-on bears in the world. All Green Kids Club titles include a science section in the back with photos and animal facts. Many have documentary films for kids to watch in synch with reading the books. The company also offers books that use Noah Text® to help make the stories accessible to all kids, including those with dyslexia as well as young English language learners.

This Book Will Make You a Scientist

by Dr. Sheila Kanani, with Ellen Surrey (Illustrator)

This book encourages kids to get excited about and become scientists by exploring 25 different scientific concepts inspired by ground-breaking scientists through history.

Children can learn to measure the speed of light like Albert Einstein, or train to be an astronaut like Mae Jemison and communicate with chimpanzees like Jane Goodall. This fact-filled book of step-by-step science experiments for kids are easy to try at home so children can explore subjects like DNA, electricity, evolution and gravity. This imaginative book is jam-packed with ideas for aspiring scientists everywhere.

Felix Powell, Boy Squirrel

by Erin Entrada Kelly and illustrated by Erin Entrada Kelly

Felix Powell loves to climb trees. He loves to run and jump and hide. But he’s never shoved acorns into his cheeks. He’s never gnawed at twigs to build a nest. And he’s certainly never worried about being eaten by hawks. Until now.

When his magic blanket turns Felix from an eight-year-old aspiring zoologist into a squirrel, Felix discovers that there’s more to squirrelhood than meets the eye. Will Felix triumph, avoiding predators and helping his new squirrel friend? Will he learn to jump and leap and climb? And will he turn back into a boy in time for dinner with his grandmother?

We Are the Keystones: Animals That Hold Habitats Together

by Katy S. Duffield with Hannah Salyer (Illustrator)

Meet keystone species — the hidden heroes of the natural world — and learn about the ecosystems they support in this marvelous nonfiction picture book.

Keystone species are plants, animals, or other organisms that have a huge effect on the environments around them. From beavers to elephants, alligators to hummingbirds, keystones help themselves and other species survive. Whether it’s creating habitats for themselves and other animals, leaving behind leftovers that fertilize the soil, or clearing out harmful algae, keystones live up to their name in their essential contribution to the harmony of our natural world.

That’s it for this month, but you can find hundreds of additional environmental book recommendations in the “Revelator Reads” archives to help make the end of summer fun and engaging for yourself and the young people around you.

And let us know what you’re reading: Drop us an email to ccrary@biologicaldiversity.org

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