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By the time Olger Kitiar reached the ridge, his shirt was wet with sweat, clinging to his back. Built with the solid frame of a linebacker, he moved through the rainforest with a quick, even rhythm that defied the steep, slick climb. 

Then he froze.

“Stop,” he hissed in Spanish, his hand snapping up.

Jhostin Antún, a few steps behind, halted mid-stride. To an outsider, the trail ahead looked like any other patch of churned Amazonian mud — slick, brown and dense enough to swallow a boot. But Olger’s eyes, trained by a lifetime in the Shuar territory of Maikiuants, saw it instantly. He squatted down, pointing to a deep, four-toed indentation. The track was fresh. And massive.

“Jaguar,” he whispered, a grin spreading across his face.

The print belonged to a cat bigger than the female they’d recorded on a camera trap in October, one month earlier. The men photographed the imprint carefully, not as a memento, but for legal evidence. 

Maikiuants, perched high in Ecuador’s southeastern Amazon highlands near the Peruvian border, sits atop copper-rich ground now claimed by Solaris Resources, a Canadian mining company seeking to gash an open-pit mine into these mountains. If extraction moves forward, the forest Jhostin and Olger were walking through — home to endangered species, waterfalls, medicinal plants, generations of Indigenous knowledge and undiscovered beings — could be permanently altered. 

The jaguar’s presence here holds weight as a matter of law. In Ecuador, endangered species — and nature more broadly — have legal rights. The government must clear a far higher bar than under conventional laws before approving projects like large-scale mining. 

Jhostin and Olger are paraecologists, people who document life in their homelands using generations of ecological expertise and scientific methods. They work with Ecoforensic, a nonprofit that trains paraecologists — paramedics for ecosystems — to document how ecosystems function and how they are harmed. Ecoforensic works in places in Ecuador like Maikiuants: biodiverse regions where scientific data is thin or nonexistent.

The data paraecologists collect, such as species inventories and water samples, is then translated into evidence that carries weight in courts. Increasingly, it’s winning cases.

In 2023, in Ecuador’s Intag Valley, community paraecologists helped halt a proposed mega copper mine by documenting threats to endangered species that the company’s environmental studies had failed to account for. The ruling hinged on Ecuador’s “rights of nature” laws, enshrined in the country’s constitution in 2008.

Those laws rewrote the legal status of ecosystems, transforming them from property or objects — like a car or a microwave — into living subjects with rights to exist, regenerate and maintain their vital cycles. Since then, courts have repeatedly applied those rights, siding with forests, rivers, marine ecosystems and wild animals, and thwarting large-scale extractive activities that judges found would harm them irreversibly. 

But like any right, nature’s rights are not absolute. 

Ecuador, among the world’s most biologically diverse countries, also holds enormous reserves of oil, copper, gold and other minerals. Global markets want them. Multinational companies are itching to dig. And a cash-strapped government is eager to sell. The legal battles are intensifying. 

Ecoforensic is helping to prove that the rights of nature can go toe to toe with those forces. The work now underway in Maikiuants may be its most consequential effort yet. 

For Jhostin, Olger and the rest of Maikiuants’ 480 residents, the outcome is existential. Protecting their territory, Jhostin explained, is inseparable from protecting their own lives — they are nature protecting nature. If the forest is destroyed, so are the people who live within it.

Their people did not migrate to this region. They are from here. Every generation before them was born on this land, a continuity that Jhostin, 21, says his grandparents impressed upon him as a responsibility. His elders’ message was simple and unambiguous: This place must be defended. 

Now, that duty rests with him.

That’s why the two paraecologists step carefully around the jaguar’s tracks and continue climbing toward a camera trap tucked deep inside their forest. The device has been silently recording for weeks and they are eager to see what it captured. 

Thousands of mining concessions

Days earlier, a white pickup truck had wound down the Amazonian mountainside above Maikiuants, its wiper blades squeaking as they swept away the rain. 

Inside, British ecologist Mika Peck tapped the brakes, peering through the windshield as dense fog closed in. His wife, Inde Kaur Hundal, squeezed the bar above her seat, bracing against a pothole the size of a bathtub. The co-founders of Ecoforensic were on their way to deliver good news: The organization will establish a permanent research station in Maikiuants.

It had been two years since they first sat down with residents there to talk about Ecoforensic. They had met in a wooden community center featuring a mural of a Shuar warrior spearing a colonist. For over an hour, the community had grilled the couple. They wanted to know what Ecoforensic would do with the data paraecologists produced — and whether Peck and Hundal were just more outsiders there to extract knowledge, then disappear with it. 

Most of all, they wanted to know how Ecoforensic could help protect their territory. 

The Ecuadorian government had been carving up Shuar territory into mining concessions since the 1990s, but the threat had been confined to maps and paperwork until 2019. That was when Solaris Resources acquired the Warintza Project. Since then, the company’s mineral exploration subsidiary has been a constant presence, scouring the region for copper and gold while attempting to win over a handful of nearby Shuar communities that would be displaced or otherwise impacted, their ancestral mountains blown up.

Maikiuants was a wall of resistance. But communities facing extractive giants fight an almost impossible battle, with financial, political and legal power stacked against them. In Ecuador’s Amazon, that’s been the story of oil for decades. Now, mining is the new frontier. 

Ecuador’s rights of nature laws offer communities a fresh and powerful legal foothold, but winning court cases requires rigorous ecological proof. That was the gap Ecoforensic was built to fill, Peck told Maikiuants’ residents during that first meeting.

Peck and Hundal were inspired by a landmark 2021 rights of nature ruling by Ecuador’s highest court, a case that defined how nature’s rights in Ecuador could be enforced. The decision centered on Los Cedros, a protected cloud forest. 

The government granted a Canadian company a mining concession in 2016 covering more than half of the forest, despite its protected status. Local residents and scientists challenged the decision using decades of ecological research.

Some of that evidence came from Peck’s own work. Through a paraecologist project he launched in 2005, local researchers documented critically endangered brown-headed spider monkeys in the region. That effort formed part of a broader scientific record showing that more than 240 near-threatened, vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered species lived in Los Cedros — many absent from the company’s environmental impact studies used to justify its operations.

That body of evidence proved decisive. In siding with the forest, the court found that mining would threaten Los Cedros’ biological integrity and disrupt evolutionary processes unfolding over billions of years.

Peck, typically stoic, cried with joy when he learned that Los Cedros had prevailed in late 2021. Then he, Hundal and their Ecuadorian colleagues went to work. 

Los Cedros had benefited from a dedicated scientific research station. But vast swaths of Ecuador are, scientifically speaking, a black box — and they are also threatened by mining. 

Peck did the math: The Ecuadorian government had granted nearly 8,000 mining concessions as of 2021. Roughly 30 percent of those overlapped with protected areas, and 20 percent overlapped with Indigenous territories. The most impacted are the Shuar. 

The need to proactively document Maikiuants’ ecosystems, Peck told the community in their 2023 meeting, was “urgent.” 

“When the threats come”

On their first morning back in Maikiuants in late November, Peck and Hundal woke to the faint scent of woodsmoke in the cool air. Outside their tent, green peaks rose skyward, shrouded with forest and clouds, making the village feel held by the landscape itself. 

Today, Peck’s work centers on the web of relationships that bind this place together — water and soil, fish and forest, and the people who depend on them. But early in his career, he was trained to see the world in fragments. He studied aquatic systems in isolation, looking at “safe” levels of contaminants in water, an approach that mirrors how conventional environmental law regulates pollution. 

But the more time he spent measuring thresholds, the more uneasy he became with the premise itself. The idea that ecosystems could absorb endless damage as long as it stayed below a regulatory line struck him as a fundamental misunderstanding of how living systems work. Nature is all about relationships.

Peck, with close-cropped graying hair and a sinewy frame, tries to live that way too. Colleagues describe him as a rare mix of intellectual rigor and emotional intelligence — someone who listens as carefully as he measures. He instinctively looks to the communities embedded in the ecosystems he studies, a perspective that runs against conservation’s prevailing top-down approach. Real change, he believes, emerges from the grassroots. 

Ecuador’s rights of nature laws took shape in much the same way, emerging from Indigenous communities who brought their legal traditions to the state and demanded recognition.

Now, a barefoot Peck, one pant leg slightly rolled up, stepped again to the front of the community center, where about 45 Shuar sat in a semi-circle. This time, the mood was light. Peck was no longer an outsider, but a trusted scientific ally. 

The first order of business was brainstorming. What should the research station look like? Where should it be built? And what are residents concerned about?

They broke into small groups, scrawling ideas with magic markers across long sheets of paper. Ángel Nantip, 63, a muscular community elder with a direct and unflinching gaze, spoke first. Nantip remembers when mining engineers and the Ecuadorian military first arrived in the 1990s to prospect for metals. They told him nothing bad would happen to the territory or the spiritual beings that live within it, he said. Only later did he learn how destructive the planned open-pit mine would be — and that it would sever the relationships among communities. 

Before anything else, Nantip told the group, the community needed a way to protect its environmental defenders.

“We need an alert system when the threats come,” he said, his angular face tightening. 

Peck wasn’t surprised when others raised the same concern. Each week, an average of three environmental defenders — people who peacefully protect ecosystems — are killed around the world, a number widely believed to be an undercount given the remote and politically repressed places where many of them work. The sector most closely linked to that violence: mining. Maikiuants was not immune.

Since Solaris arrived, the largely tranquil region had grown tense, driven by what leaders describe as a “divide and conquer” tactic. Mining companies secure the backing of certain communities or leaders with financial incentives, often filling gaps left by the state — access to schools, health clinics or basic infrastructure. Maikiuants’ school, for instance, has one teacher for about 45 students spanning all grade levels. Two nearby Shuar communities and an umbrella Shuar organization entered into various cooperation agreements with Solaris, the contents of which are confidential. 

“As independent and legally recognized communities, we have the right to seek a better quality of life for the people of our community, where our children can study, our elderly can work, and we can have access to widespread healthcare that we have never had before,” the pro-mining communities said in a court filing about their relationship with Solaris. A spokesperson for those communities did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Though the project has advanced without the consent of all impacted Indigenous groups, Solaris has likewise framed it as community-driven. 

“At Solaris Resources, we believe that sustainable mining is not just an economic endeavour; it is a journey that must include the insights and values of every stakeholder involved, especially our indigenous populations,” said company president and CEO Matthew Rowlinson in a written statement on Solaris’ website. “Their lived experiences and deep connection to the land are vital to shaping responsible mining practices.”

Solaris did not respond to multiple requests for an interview, nor did it respond to a list of questions about the project, including its impact on local communities. 

On the ground, the divisions sown by the company’s presence are stark. It’s turned neighboring villages into adversaries, with pro- and anti-mining communities’ disputes with one another spilling into court battles, military deployments and threats. 

In 2022, members of the two pro-mining communities filed a criminal complaint against three Maikiuants residents, including Nancy Antún, a leader of the Maikiuants women, alleging they planned an attack on a mining camp in the region. All three fiercely denied the allegation. Antún said people from pro-mining communities have themselves made multiple threats against her, including that they will burn her house down while her children are inside. 

Another prominent Shuar leader said she received a death threat from a Solaris executive — an allegation the company denies. Amidst the turmoil, the government deployed military forces to protect the concession, including on Maikiuants’ territory, which Ecuador’s Constitution recognizes as self-governing. In response, community guards detained several soldiers and now face criminal charges. 

Similar disputes elsewhere in Ecuador have escalated into violence. In recent years, Indigenous leaders who opposed extractive projects — including A’i Cofán leader Eduardo Mendúa and Shuar leader José Isidro Tendetza Antún, a relative of multiple Maikiuants residents — have been killed, cases that rights groups say underscore the risks faced by environmental defenders in the region. 

Back in the community center, as the morning meeting ended, the path forward was clear — and fraught. In Maikiuants, building the evidence needed to defend the forest carries risks. There would be no separating the science from the struggle. 

The monkey’s axe

In many ways, Ecoforensic shouldered the work the Ecuadorian government was meant to do: protect its people, uphold the constitution and ensure companies followed the law. Instead, successive administrations deployed the military to suppress protests over pollution, shielded foreign firms from liability for massive toxic dumping and weakened civil society’s ability to resist. 

Under President Daniel Noboa, an ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, those pressures intensified. In recent months, his administration froze the bank accounts of prominent Indigenous leaders and environmentalists — including one belonging to a lawyer for Maikiuants — while dismantling the environment ministry and imposing sweeping restrictions on nongovernmental organizations.

The crackdown has made coalitions essential. Communities, lawyers and scientists are banding together as they push back against Noboa’s drive to accelerate mining and oil extraction.

Now, as the afternoon meeting got underway, Peck invited an aquatic ecologist to the front of the room: Edwin Zárate, a lanky, soft-spoken biology professor at the University of Azuay in Cuenca. In Maikiuants, Zárate was quietly helping to build the scientific record of how the territory works as a living system — supporting paraecologists, establishing an agro-ecology program and setting up a meteorological station to track the climate in real time.

Peck moved through the room, handing out spiral-bound packets thick with color photographs — frogs no larger than a thumb, fish flecked with purple and green, each image paired with a short description.

“These are the species paraecologists have documented so far,” Peck said, as pages rustled open. “And they’re discovering more.”

“Every time we do new studies, we find new species,” Zárate added. Some, he said, were unknown to science — like the one paraecologists had recently found, a frog with skin as dark as night, speckled with iridescent blue dots, like a tiny galaxy.

Maikiuants, Zárate explained, sits in the rugged transition zone where the high Andes meets the tropical lowlands. It is a landscape defined by ancient upheaval: millions of years ago, colliding tectonic plates forced the Pacific seabed upwards. Each ridge and fold created its own microclimate, isolating species in narrow ecological niches. Here, extinction can come suddenly. Destroy a single slope, he said, and an entire evolutionary lineage can disappear with it.

That fragility has legal implications. Ecuador’s Constitution gives special protection to species with unique evolutionary paths — those that exist nowhere else on Earth, representing a “one-of-a-kind” branch on the tree of life.

“Some species are more important for rights of nature cases than others,” Peck said. “Those at risk of extinction are very important — and species that exist only here.” 

He turned next to keystone species, animals whose influence ripples through entire ecosystems. Jaguars, for instance, regulate prey populations, shape plant growth and feed scavengers through their kills. When keystone species disappear, food webs unravel. “The future of other species depends on them,” Peck said.

“The condor is another,” Zárate added. With wingspans stretching up to 12 feet, Andean condors are among the largest flying birds in the world. They are critically endangered in Ecuador, with fewer than 150 remaining, largely due to poaching and agricultural expansion. As scavengers, they play a vital role in disease control. A rapidly emerging threat: habitat loss from mining.

The information in the packets, Peck and Zárate explained, could give the landscape a voice, grounding nature’s constitutional rights in ecological data. 

Using a small projector powered by a cable threaded through a gap in the wall, Peck cast a diagram of Ecuador’s rights-of-nature framework onto a poster affixed backward to the wall as a makeshift screen. The government’s duty to prevent species extinction appeared on an infographic, circled in red, adjacent to other constitutional guarantees.

Peck pointed to the protections for biocultural heritage — the inseparable ties between communities and the plants and animals they live with. That was something science alone couldn’t document.

“We need your stories,” he told the room. “Which species matter most to you? Why?”

The room erupted into conversation. Lead paraecologist Claudio Ankuash Nantip, who goes by Pinchu, pointed to a photograph of a capuchin monkey.

“When people die, they don’t disappear,” he said. “They return as animals.”

Those who lived badly might come back as creatures of fear. Others return as protectors.

“Like the monkey,” he said.

Nearly a century ago, Pinchu said, a demon terrorized the community with an axe, killing people. It was the monkey who defeated it, burying the axe deep inside a mountain. 

Elders once saw the species often. Now it is almost gone. Paraecologists have so far been unable to document it.

“Now,” Pinchu said, “the company wants to dig the axe up.” 

Dreams of a father

The next morning, Peck, Hundal and Zárate pulled on knee-high rubber boots and tried to keep pace with a group of Shuar heading into the forest to scout sites for the research station. The group was led by Jorge Antún, 60, a lifelong resident of Maikiuants and the father of paraecologist Jhostin Antún. 

Compact and powerfully built from decades in the forest, Jorge moved easily along the trail. His long-sleeved beige shirt, visibly stained with mud and sweat in the warm, humid air, clung to his torso as he climbed.

Minutes in, he stepped off the path. Reaching into the vines, he plucked a leaf and held it up. 

“This is good medicine for insects that burrow into your skin,” he said, explaining how the leaves are cooked into a paste and applied to the body.

Every few steps, the forest offered another lesson. Berries used as dish soap. Plants that calm sunburn. Ants whose bites burn like fire.

“The forest,” Jorge said, his eyes bright, “is our own storage unit for food and medicine.”

That is not how mining firms see it. 

Companies’ environmental impact studies — required before permits are granted — are meant to assess a project’s social, cultural and ecological risks. In practice, lawyers say, Indigenous ecological knowledge is hardly ever included. Also absent are mentions of communities’ spiritual relationships to the land, like Maikiuants’ waterfalls, which residents view as sacred temples of spiritual renewal where their futures are revealed.

Companies’ science can also fall short. Ecoforensic’s review of Solaris Resources’ environmental impact assessment identified what it called “critical deficiencies,” including the omission of 91 at-risk or endangered species and scant attention to fish — an especially glaring oversight in an industry notorious for contaminating waterways. Mining has left a global legacy of heavy-metal pollution, acidic runoff and depleted aquifers.

The assessment also had mistakes, such as its failure to include the vulnerable-to-extinction giant anteater and bush dog. Paraecologists had already documented both species on Maikiuants’ lands.

More broadly, the document never analyzed whether the project could violate Ecuador’s rights-of-nature laws. That requires evaluating impacts on ecosystem functions (the work ecosystems do to keep themselves alive, like a tree converting sunlight into oxygen and wetlands filtering dirty water); on life cycles (think of a frog’s journey from egg to tadpole to adult); and on evolutionary processes (the long-term change of life over millions of years as it adapts for survival).

Now, as Peck followed Jorge down the trail toward his home, it was hard for the ecologist to imagine company contractors producing the kind of patient, place-based knowledge needed to truly understand an ecosystem. The thought lingered as he ducked through the low doorway of the Antún family’s traditional hut.

Inside, the oval structure was meticulously kept: a swept dirt floor, a long wooden table with benches, a smoldering fire at its center. Pots, pans and a rifle hung from the walls. On a bench, two relatives, one in a dark T-shirt with her hair pulled into a loose bun and the other in a sage-green blouse, shelled peanuts into a large container while another lifted a squirming child from a colorful activity seat and brought the baby to her breast.

Jorge’s wife, Ilda Chias Nakaim Antún, handed out glasses of fresh pineapple juice and steaming plates of yucca and plantains, alongside hard-boiled eggs served with chili-flecked salt. But for the salt, everything came from the land around them.

Over the meal, Jorge spoke quietly about ideas for sustainable businesses: fish farming, fruit cultivation, even a local variety of vanilla. 

“We want alternatives to mining,” he said. “We can be an example for others.”

His family is firmly opposed to the mine. His daughter Marcia Antún, the young mother, worried about air and water contamination. 

“The company could force us to leave,” she said. 

As the conversation turned back to economic possibilities, they discussed precedents. A cocoa project tied to paraecologists’ work on the brown-headed spider monkey helped farmers triple their incomes by pairing market access with forest protection. Other communities turned to ecotourism. In West Papua, Indonesia, where Peck helped develop paraecology initiatives, one of the first paraecologists went on to earn a Ph.D. and now leads the Binatang Research Center, Papua New Guinea’s leading conservation research institute.

In each case, the model produced something durable: livelihoods tied to ongoing scientific work, not extraction.

Reliable internet, now possible through satellite services, could open paths to e-commerce. The University of Azuay’s business school might help with planning. Jorge also imagined sharing the Shuar’s medicinal knowledge with the world, on their own terms.

“I have dreams for my family,” he said. “But I’m afraid I won’t be able to fulfill them because of the company.”

Time was not on their side. Solaris Resources’ final operational approval was expected within months.

Sustaining life 

Later that day, lead paraecologist Pinchu, who told the story of the monkey’s axe, set out on a narrow trail climbing out of Maikiuants, his 10-year-old son Kirup and Zárate following close behind. The forest tightened around them, the canopy draping over the path like a botanical cloak that choked out the midday sun, the air warm and faintly sweet with the scent of ripening fruit. They walked in silence until Pinchu signaled for everyone to stop.

A five-foot-long snake, no thicker than a golf ball, lay stretched across the path, its dark body blending into leaves like a shard of obsidian.

“It’s sleeping,” Pinchu whispered. 

He picked up a fallen branch and shook it above the snake. Unhurried, the animal stirred, slid off the trail and vanished into the undergrowth.

Farther on, the forest began to open. Sunlight pierced the canopy in narrow shafts, and then, suddenly, the trail opened into a hidden alcove. A waterfall spilled over a jagged ledge of dark rock, unraveling in thin silver strands into a lagoon below. Thick vines draped overhead like green tresses.

Kirup grasped one of the vines and slid smoothly down to the lagoon, diving in. Zárate and Pinchu followed, wading toward a small island carpeted in soft green moss. There, Pinchu pulled out a container of tobacco leaves steeped in water. Among the Shuar, the mixture isn’t smoked but inhaled as a tea — a practice Pinchu said brings calm and sharpens his connection to the forest, helping him listen and feel more deeply.

Waterfalls hold deep spiritual significance for the Shuar. When life’s challenges arise, they follow protocols refined over generations, preparing carefully before visiting, communing with and leaving these places. 

Only recently has Western science begun to affirm what many Indigenous communities have long understood. Time spent in nature has been shown to lower stress hormones, reduce inflammation, strengthen immune response and sharpen focus.

Yet the places where such scientific findings carry the greatest authority are often those most disconnected from the natural world — and whose consumption is driving the destruction of ecosystems like this one. 

The copper beneath these mountains would likely be shipped to the United States and other wealthy countries, feeding the expansion of military hardware, energy transitions and infrastructure behind the artificial-intelligence boom, such as data centers. 

A conventional data center can require up to 15,000 tons of copper. Facilities built to power AI systems can demand more than three times that amount, driving prices to record highs.

Those artificial worlds feel impossibly distant here, where now, a dripping wet Zárate emerged from the lagoon. This marked the 12th trip he’d made to Maikiuants, each one reinforcing for him the importance of scientists stepping out of walled offices and learning from other knowledge systems.

“We have to be more holistic,” he said. 

The industrialized world, Pinchu added, has “a different way of viewing nature — only thinking about money.”

He dreams of a future in which his people can evolve and develop without losing the essence of who they are.

“We have ways of living that are also valuable,” he said. “Our ancestral knowledge is valuable, and it’s not about money — it’s about sustaining life.” 

Love and hope

With the fresh jaguar tracks documented, Jhostin Antún and Olger Kitiar quickened their pace toward the camera trap, anticipation building with every step. They were high in the mountains now, far above the waterfall where Pinchu had taken Zárate.

The camera was fastened to a tree washed in sunlight — a deliberate choice, since it ran on solar power. When Olger reached for it, pure delight sparked in his eyes.

“I love this,” he said. “I love seeing all the animals — sometimes there are things we haven’t seen in real life.”

He began transferring the data to his phone using Bluetooth, a 10-minute process that felt far longer. To pass the time, they scrolled through older recordings: pig-like peccaries rooting through the undergrowth, a spectacled bear lumbering past, turkeys, a species they call wild dogs, perdiz birds — and a jaguar, caught once, briefly, slipping through the frame. 

This camera was one of two they maintained on their territory. The other required an eight-hour hike each way and an overnight stay in the forest.

“It’s still as exciting as it was in the beginning,” Olger said. “We’re learning more and more and discovering new species.” 

Jhostin had been part of the team that discovered an unknown frog, soon to be named the Maikiuants frog.

His work, he said, was both fun and deeply serious. Gesturing with his hands, he described the rhythms of daily life — planting, harvesting, eating what the forest provides. Agriculture, for his community, is not a commercial activity but a way of sustaining the body and spirit. 

“Ecoforensic gives me hope that this way of life can still be protected,” Jhostin said. 

He wants children someday, and he wants them to live in the forest without fear, free of contamination. Without territory, he said, you cannot teach children who they are. You cannot teach them the forest.

He wants a future of buen vivir — living well, living in balance. His father, Jorge, taught him the forest by walking through it, by explaining what each plant and river meant. His grandfather did the same, offering guidance not through lectures but through nature itself. That, Jhostin said, is where wisdom comes from.

And that is what he is trying to protect.

Olger signaled that the data had finished loading. The footage showed a lone tinamou, a chicken-like bird. 

Their task finished, the two paraecologists walked back to the village — crossing a gushing, pristine river on the way, its banks alive with hundreds of iridescent blue butterflies rising and falling in slow waves. 

On a narrow bank of stones and sediment in the middle of the river, where the water divided and came together again farther down, Jorge Antún sat quietly, taking in the sweep of forest and sky. Jhostin spotted his father and smiled. He and Olger crouched at the river’s edge, splashing the cool water over their faces before cupping their hands to drink, the current threading around them as it always had.

TriplePundit]]> Andrew Kaminsky https://triplepundit.com/?p=70625 2026-04-14T15:57:04Z 2026-04-13T13:00:00Z

A Canadian mining giant is using a $20 billion lawsuit to pressure Panama into reopening a controversial copper mine. The case exposes how international investment agreements can undermine democracy, and why experts are calling for fairer investment frameworks worldwide.

TriplePundit]]>

This article is part of our series on responsible mining solutions. The push for clean energy is fueled by a growing demand for minerals, but conventional mining has a track record of harmful social and environmental impacts. Rethinking international investment agreements is another potential solution to that problem.

Public outrage and mass protests shut down Central America’s largest copper mine two years ago. In 2025, the Panamanian government was coerced back to the negotiating table by a $20 billion lawsuit from the mining company, First Quantum Minerals, despite the fact that the project’s contract was ruled unconstitutional in 2017, and again in 2023.

This type of lawsuit from a foreign company against a government is called an investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), and it plays out in international arbitration court. First Quantum Minerals’ case against Panama is a prime example of how ISDS provisions in international trade agreements can limit a country’s sovereignty and leave them vulnerable to exploitation.

The risk of international lawsuits has countries backing out of trade agreements with ISDS provisions, while international law experts suggest alternative methods to ensure that foreign investment works for all parties. Some worry this could turn mining companies, and the economic benefits they bring, away. But most studies find that the presence of ISDS provisions has little impact on foreign direct investment, anyway.

What’s happening in Panama?

To oversimplify a very complex topic, ISDS is a type of protection for foreign investors. If they feel the government of a country they are investing in does something that may reduce their returns, they can sue that government in international arbitration court. (We have an in-depth explanation of ISDS, how it’s used, and why countries are backing out in our previous coverage here.)

Even if the foreign investment project breaks domestic laws, harms communities or destroys the environment, governments that try to remedy or prevent those issues with changes in legislation can face lawsuits in the billions. That’s how Panama wound up staring down the barrel of a $20 billion lawsuit.

“The [Panama] mine was allowed to start with an unconstitutional contract. If that doesn’t tell you this is a risky project as an investor, I don’t know what does,” said Jamie Kneen, national program co-lead at MiningWatch Canada. “But ISDS helps investors override that kind of concern. It essentially de-risks otherwise extremely risky investments.”

The Cobre Panama mine, run by Canadian-based First Quantum Minerals, is the largest copper mine in Central America. Operating from 2019 to 2023, it accounted for about 5 percent of Panama’s GDP.

Despite being declared unconstitutional in 2017, it wasn’t until mass protests five years later that the Supreme Court ruled the mine must be shut down. A few months later, First Quantum launched an ISDS case against Panama. Now that Panama is entertaining contract renegotiation in light of the case, First Quantum paused the lawsuit. The mine seems set to resume some operations, but Panama will make a decision on whether to fully reopen the mine this summer.

“The company and a number of its investors and suppliers are threatening to sue the pants off of Panama to make up for lost profits or to pressure the government into ignoring its people and restarting the mine,” said Jen Moore, associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.

This raises questions about the benefits of ISDS for governments. Critics of ISDS argue that disputes can be resolved in other ways and host countries don’t need ISDS to attract investment.

Does ISDS actually attract investment?

Proponents of ISDS claim that having these provisions in trade agreements entices foreign investment by providing a safety net for investors against government maltreatment.

“ISDS provisions boost investor confidence by offering legal protection against expropriation or discriminatory acts,” said Attorney Davy Karkason, founder of Transnational Matters International Law Firm. “My foreign direct investment clientele rely on these provisions for risk mitigation.”

But the data on the influence of ISDS provisions on foreign direct investment does not paint a clear picture.

A 2022 study by the United States International Trade Commission found that binding ISDS provisions result in an increase of foreign investment by 22 percent, but it concedes that evidence in the literature continues to be mixed with little consensus.

Meanwhile, a 2020 meta-study on investor protections in international investment agreements found that the effect on foreign investment was, “so small as to be considered zero.”

“Even if there is a marginal correlation in some cases, the costs of ISDS — financially, legally and politically — are significant and woefully underappreciated,” said Lisa Sachs, director of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment.

Politically, ISDS can cause “regulatory chill,” where governments avoid enacting environmental, social or tax laws for fear of costly ISDS lawsuits.

“Most of the time, mining executives’ decisions are made based on the nature of the resource, the legal and regulatory frameworks, and the certainties around development,” explained Kneen of Mining Watch Canada. “ISDS coverage comes out as kind of a bonus point, but not a crucial decision making factor.”

Based on the Panama situation, I ran a rudimentary analysis to see what changed in foreign direct investments when other countries removed ISDS clauses from trade agreements. Here are three of those cases.

Ecuador

In 2017, Ecuador terminated 16 trade agreements after their government determined ISDS provisions were not attracting investment.

In the following five years, Ecuador received $1 billion per year in foreign direct investment, compared to $830 million annually in the five years prior, according to data from Macrotrends. While many factors affect foreign investment, the termination of ISDS-laden agreements did not appear to deter it.

ISDS clauses may have helped attract investment initially when they were first introduced in 1993, but once investment was established in Ecuador, the removal of ISDS clauses did not deter additional investment.

South Africa

South Africa let several ISDS treaties expire in the early 2010s and replaced them with its own national program called the Protection of Investment Act in 2018. The act still provides some investor protection, but now cases are heard within South Africa’s own legal system, not international arbitration in Washington.

In the five years preceding 2012, when South Africa started to distance itself from ISDS, its average annual foreign direct investment inflows were $6.4 billion, according to data from Macrotrends. From 2012 to 2016, foreign direct investment averaged $4.5 billion per year.

Since South Africa enacted its national investor protection act in 2018, foreign direct investment averaged $5.1 billion annually. (This omits $41 billion of foreign investment in 2021, which was largely the result of corporate restructuring.)

Again, many factors affect these investments. After cancelling ISDS treaties, South Africa’s foreign direct investments dropped at first, then climbed back up after enacting the national protection program.

India

After facing multiple billion-dollar ISDS cases in the 2000s, India terminated over 50 trade agreements in 2016 and 2017. In the five years preceding the 2016 changes, India saw $33.5 billion in annual foreign direct investment inflows, according to data from Macrotrends. In the five years following, that increased to $48.3 billion.

In two of these three cases, removing ISDS clauses was not followed by reduced investment. In one country, it was. This inconclusivity is in line with what larger academic studies find. Whether ISDS attracts investment or not is up for debate, but the financial and political costs that countries face from the ISDS system likely outweigh any boost to foreign investment.

How to make foreign investment work for all parties

“Instead of relying on ISDS, we need more balanced and mutually beneficial investment frameworks — ones that support sustainable development and fair dispute resolution,” said Sachs of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment.

The International Institute of Sustainable Development recently released a report that provides recommendations on how to improve foreign investment agreements. It includes rewriting or ending old agreements that prioritize investor protections and refinding and processing minerals domestically.

Processing and refining minerals domestically adds more suppliers to the market and derisks concentrated global supply chains from external shocks and geopolitical market manipulation, said Isabelle Ramdoo, director of the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals and Sustainable Development.

“Keep in mind that if you remove ISDS, investors still have recourse. They have national courts and regional courts that can play that role,” said Suzy Nikièma, an author of the report and director of sustainable development at the International Institute of Sustainable Development.

In fact, many international law experts say that domestic courts should be the place to settle investor-state disputes, while others worry that domestic legal systems may not be equipped to handle them.

“Domestic courts, particularly in developing countries, have the reputation of being inefficient, weak or problematic,” Nikièma said. “But ISDS is not better. If you decide to prioritize domestic courts, you could put in the effort to improve them and make sure they can handle this type of dispute properly.”

It should be a requirement to at least start a case in domestic courts before elevating a dispute to other regional or international courts, she added.

“A final element is to bring more inclusivity in the system for local communities,” Nikièma said. “A sort of compliance mechanism is needed for communities to raise concerns about project impacts and to have a collaborative approach with the investor or state to adjust and comply with investment obligations.”

Feature image credit: AnyGang/Wikimedia Commons

TriplePundit]]> Adesewa Olofinko https://triplepundit.com/?p=70609 2026-04-14T15:57:27Z 2026-04-10T13:00:00Z

Women make up about 27 percent of Africa’s online gig workforce. They're part of a generation redefining what work looks like across continent.

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This story originally appeared on Global Voices.

At 9:00 a.m. in Lagos, Nigeria, when traffic starts easing from its daily rush-hour gridlock, Vivian opens her laptop.

Her commute is just twelve steps from her bedroom to the adjoining room that doubles as her office. Inside, a large desk anchors the space, paired with an ergonomic chair, a gaming computer, a wide monitor and two compact laptops.

She does not clock in, and there is no supervisor waiting behind a glass partition. Instead, there is a dashboard with Slack notifications from a U.S.-based startup she supports as an operations manager, a ClickUp dashboard waiting for updates from Singapore, a Trello board with tasks that must be cleared before California wakes up, and an app tracking how long she stays “active.”

Vivian’s workday will stretch across time zones. She will answer emails for a company whose headquarters she has never seen and negotiate electricity outages with a 3.5 kWh inverter with batteries loaded behind her door. By evening, she will have earned in dollars what amounts to a dozen times Nigeria’s minimum wage.

Vivian is part of a generation redefining what work looks like across Africa — independent, connected and unmistakably global.

At 6 a.m., before the humidity settles over Ghana’s capital of Accra, Diana Akumkadoa starts her car and opens her ride-hailing app. She steps into a job that still surprises people. Even though ride-hailing has become a familiar part of life in many African cities, women behind the wheel remain rare globally. Diana describes the brief pause when riders realize their driver is a woman. Then the ride begins, and the surprise usually turns into conversation.

By mid-morning, she has already spent hours navigating traffic that surges and stalls without warning. On some days, she drives 14 hours. On others, cancellations stack up, and she closes the app and goes home.

“It gives me a chance to be independent,” says Diana. “But it comes with its own risks. If something happens to you, you are on your own.”

For Diana, flexibility means she can structure her hours around her child’s school schedule. It also means absorbing the costs of fuel, maintenance, and platform commissions, which can reach 30 percent per trip. However, she says driving allows her to “earn on her own terms” while navigating the demands of life in a fast-growing city.

Gig work in Africa

Online gig work began gaining real traction around 2015 due to widespread smartphone adoption across Africa. The transformation accelerated dramatically from 2020 onward, when the COVID-19 pandemic further pushed millions toward digital gig work.

Estimates from the World Bank suggest that more than 21 million Africans now earn part- or full-time income through gig work, with growth rates of roughly 11 percent each year, outpacing most other regions. The global industry is valued at US$556.7 billion as of 2024, and projected to triple to US$1.8 trillion by 2032.

Cities like Lagos, Accra, and Nairobi, Kenya, have become regional hubs for both in-person gig work, such as delivery, logistics, and transport, and borderless digital labor, including design, marketing, coding, and virtual operations, for companies around the world. In Nigeria, 35 percent of young people are engaged in freelance work in some capacity.

Africa’s workforce is remarkably young, with many of its platform workers under the age of 30. Women make up an increasingly visible part of this shift, accounting for about 27 percent of the continent’s online gig workforce.

Cindy Sally’s path to gig work

In Accra’s City Galleria Mall, Cindy Sally leads a finance team for a U.S.-based firm operating partly in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Her “office” is a rented desk at a co-working hub, where she pays 200 Ghanaian cedi (about US$18.50) per day. Her colleagues exist mostly as rectangles on a screen.

Unlike Diana, Cindy Sally earns in foreign currency. Her workday begins late morning to accommodate U.S. time zones and often stretches into the evening.

Her path to global gig work began after leaving a demanding role at a local firm in Ghana, where she says the pace, economic uncertainty, and heavy workload made the job unsustainable.

She then turned to freelance platforms and began building a client base abroad through Upwork. That shift would eventually allow her to earn in dollars while living in Accra.

Online gig work has grown continuously across Africa’s digital workforce. As global companies grow more comfortable hiring remotely, a new generation of African professionals is collaborating with teams thousands of miles away while remaining firmly based at home.

The price of going global

Gig platforms make global work possible, but they also take their share.

On sites like Upwork, freelancers can lose 10 to 15 percent of their earnings in platform fees, according to Faith Abiodun Uwaifo, a Nigerian virtual assistant who transitioned into remote work after five years in journalism.

She manages projects for clients spread across the United States, Canada, Thailand and the United Kingdom. Like many freelancers, her workday runs from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. in Nigeria, aligned with clients based in Pacific Standard Time.

Moving money across borders also introduces another layer of deductions. Even the tools required to stay competitive, like high-speed internet, cloud services, and digital productivity platforms, represent a constant cost. She recalls upgrading from a 3G hotspot to a 5G router just to keep her jobs: “Some clients won’t even consider you if your connection isn’t strong.”

Despite those challenges, she describes the experience as transformative. Working with clients across continents, she says, has reshaped how she thinks about work itself.

Faith describes the psychological strain of platform work, such as the silence after submitting proposals, the weight of negative reviews, and the awareness that some clients associate Nigerian IP addresses with fraud.

“Sometimes you feel like you’re fighting stereotypes before you even start the job,” she says.

To cushion against uncertainty, she runs a small food-processing business on the side, a diversification strategy common among gig workers who understand that digital income can fluctuate abruptly.

Women, work and the borderless future

Africa’s population has grown from 283 million in 1960 to more than 1.5 billion today, and is projected to reach 2.5 billion by 2050. Every year, an estimated 10 million young people enter the labor market, far more than the available traditional jobs.

For decades, economic opportunity was often tied to migration. Today, millions of Africans are plugging directly into global commerce from their homes and building careers that span continents.

For women in particular, gig work offers entry without permission. It gives flexibility and access to global markets that once seemed out of reach.

This reporting project was supported by Africa No Filter.

TriplePundit]]> Tina Casey https://triplepundit.com/?p=70645 2026-04-09T20:13:19Z 2026-04-09T20:13:07Z

The Trump administration’s support for the notorious herbicide glyphosate shocked voters attracted to Make America Healthy Again messaging during the 2024 election. That anger could ripple into midterms.

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The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement finds itself at a crossroads. Despite campaigning for United States President Donald Trump and earning his vigorous seal of approval, MAHA’s purported mission to free health care from “corporate control” conflicts directly with the president’s mission to support corporate profits, as recently underscored by an Executive Order involving the notorious herbicide glyphosate amid ongoing litigation. 

When corporate profits beat public health

Glyphosate is a ubiquitous herbicide commonly known as the primary ingredient in Roundup brand products manufactured by the global pharmaceutical corporation Bayer. 

When Bayer acquired the agrochemical company Monsanto and its Roundup brand in 2018, evidence already pointed to human health risks associated with direct exposure to glyphosate on farms and during yard work. Those studies were followed by more convincing evidence in the years to come, with the cancer non-Hodgkin lymphoma being a particular area of concern among farmworkers and others exposed to the herbicide regularly.

Last year, the mounting evidence led to a landmark decision against Bayer by a jury in Georgia. The plaintiff — John Barnes, who used Roundup at his home and workplace for decades before developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma — alleged that Bayer was aware of the health risks but failed to warn consumers. 

The jury ordered Bayer to pay him more than $2 billion in “the largest single-plaintiff verdict in Georgia history,” the business publication Exec Edge reports. 

The history-making verdict against a powerful corporation was widely cheered by the MAHA movement, which had identified glyphosate as a chief target for action against the chemical industry. 

The verdict was further validated in December when the decades-old research that initially determined glyphosate was safe to use was retracted by the journal that published it, after Monsanto’s influence on the results came to light during litigation. Last month, a newly published review of the literature further described “consistent, coherent and compelling evidence” that glyphosate and related chemicals are a cause of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Barnes’ case in Georgia is one of thousands as people seek relief from Bayer after falling ill. “Between 2023 and 2025, plaintiffs have won nearly $5 billion in verdicts, though some were later reduced by judges,” Exec Edge reported last week. “As of January 2026, approximately 65,000 Roundup lawsuits remain pending, with new cases still being filed. The company has reportedly set aside $16 billion to settle the remaining cases.” 

Bayer continues to push to end the wave of litigation. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the company’s case arguing that federal pesticide labeling laws shield it from pending lawsuits. In February, Bayer agreed to pay $7.25 billion to settle tens of thousands of its outstanding suits in a move reportedly driven by the upcoming Supreme Court case. 

In a call announcing the settlement, Bayer CEO Bill Anderson called the agreement complimentary to the case, adding that offering some compensation to plaintiffs alongside a win in the Supreme Court is “the tightest possible form of containment” for future litigation, The New York Times reports. 

At the same time, Bayer is campaigning for policies across the U.S. that opponents say will shield pesticide companies from liability for failing to warn the public about the health risks associated with its products, including the most recent draft of the federal farm bill. Bills backed by the company passed in North Dakota and Georgia last year, and lawmakers are debating a third bill in Kansas. A similar pesticides rider was dropped from a spending bill in Maine in December after campaigning from local representatives and MAHA. 

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear Bayer’s case later this month. If the company can’t contain the lawsuits, it may stop selling Roundup altogether, Anderson previously told reporters. 

But all this news didn’t seem to reach supposed MAHA ally Donald Trump. In February, President Trump issued an executive order “protecting the health and safety of Americans,” but not by taking action to reduce glyphosate hazards. Instead, the order increases those risks by protecting corporations from liability and providing federal resources that support domestic herbicide producers and the domestic phosphorus mining industry. Last month, the Department of Justice followed up by filing a brief with the Supreme Court in support of Bayer’s argument in its upcoming case.  

Making MAHA angry again

Adding insult to injury, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy swiftly moved to forestall criticism among the MAHA rank and file. In a lengthy February social media post, he touted the executive order as improving national security, blamed glyphosate on the agricultural system Trump inherited, and insisted it is a positive step toward reform … eventually. “President Trump has opened the door to this debate and backed meaningful change — not only in policy, but in the national conversation about health and agriculture,” Kennedy concluded.

That’s quite a turnaround for the former trial lawyer. Kennedy had long roots as a trusted name in the battle against glyphosate, having worked for the plaintiffs in a groundbreaking glyphosate case that resulted in a $298 million jury verdict against Monsanto in 2018.

While Kennedy’s messaging resonated among some MAHA activists, the rank-and-file were not buying it. In particular, the executive order drew the wrath of the prominent glyphosate-focused, MAHA-affiliated Moms Across America Movement. “WE DO NOT CONSENT TO BEING POISONED,” the organization told its Facebook followers in February.

“This is not ‘national security.’ True national security is healthy families, thriving children, and a future free from chronic disease,” the organization continued, providing a link to an online petition calling on the president to phase out glyphosate among other demands, including an end to vaccine mandates.

What went wrong?

The glyphosate betrayal may have shocked voters who were attracted to Trump by MAHA messaging during the 2024 election. But months before Election Day, signs were already emerging that the MAHA segment of the wellness movement was serving Republican political interests, not genuine public health goals.

The MAHA message is credited with rallying Independent and Democratic voters to re-elect President Trump in 2024, despite his catastrophic record on left-leaning issues during his first term. However, MAHA is not a politically neutral movement: MAHA PAC is the name of a right-wing political action committee formerly known as American Values super PAC. MAHA PAC describes itself as “the political arm of the Make America Healthy Again movement, dedicated to electing candidates who will fight for a healthier America.”

“We exist to elect Republicans to the House and Senate who will champion the MAHA agenda in 2026 and beyond,” it adds.

The nonprofit MAHA Action also launched in 2024 with an affiliation to then-candidate Kennedy, but it devoted funds in support of Trump’s MAHA programs after the election. Despite Trump’s support for glyphosate production and use, MAHA Action continues to describe its mission as “driving advocacy and activism for the Make America Healthy Again movement to revitalize a healthier America, liberated from corporate control.”

Both organizations are focusing their attention on winning the midterm elections. Their success depends on whether MAHA activists can convince bipartisan wellness voters that Republican candidates are serving their interests, and President Trump’s executive order on phosphorus and glyphosate herbicides is just the latest in a series of actions that raise hurdles for that argument.

Last summer, The New Yorker took note of proposed rollbacks in Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) guidelines for pesticides among other examples of corporate support over public benefit. In December, MAHA activists launched a petition to urge the president to fire EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, arguing he prioritizes chemical corporations over the well-being of families and children. 

A new poll of self-identified MAHA supporters commissioned by the news organization Politico indicates that anger within the wellness movement could ripple into the midterm elections. Trump is not on the ballot, but Congress is. “Some congressional Republicans have moved to protect pesticide makers from legal liability in the farm bill, further angering MAHA,” Politico reports. Half of the MAHA supporters polled said limiting pesticide use is a core value of the movement. 

During a campaign rally in 2016, Trump famously said that he “wouldn’t lose any voters” if he stood in the middle of a bustling city street — 5^th Avenue in New York — and shot someone. That statement has met the test of time until now. Coupled with the unspooling scandal of the Jeffrey Epstein files and the catastrophic decision to launch a war against Iran, could the glyphosate order prove to be the final straw? 

Featured image credit: Jammer Gene/Adobe Stock

TriplePundit]]> Farai Shawn Matiashe https://triplepundit.com/?p=70574 2026-03-31T19:41:12Z 2026-04-06T13:00:00Z

Grandmothers are the custodians of culture in Zimbabwe. For generations, people sought advice from grandmothers across the country. Now, they're training in talk therapy to offer free mental healthcare on public benches.

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Content warning: This story includes accounts of suicidal thoughts and domestic abuse.

A young mother sat crying during a counseling session with Elizabeth Mudzenge in Kuwadzana, a populous suburb of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. Seated upright on a wooden bench outside of the local clinic, 66-year-old Mudzenge tried not to get emotional, instead listening to her client’s struggles and offering guidance through a problem-solving therapy process called “opening the mind.”

Mudzenge is one of the many local grandmothers who are part of Friendship Bench Zimbabwe, an NGO providing free mental healthcare to communities across the country.

“Trained grandmothers guide clients to define their problems, set achievable goals and identify practical action steps,” said Thandiwe Mashunye, head of programs at Friendship Bench Zimbabwe. They offer brief, structured talk therapy on simple wooden benches placed at clinics and in community spaces. Sessions typically last 15 to 45 minutes and continue over several weeks.

Still seated on the bench, Mudzenge gave her client a tissue to wipe her tears. The young mother, whose name is omitted for privacy, endured abuse from her husband and had purchased poison to end her life. “I asked her who would care for her children when she dies,” Mudzenge told TriplePundit. “She told me she had not thought about her children. She started crying. I left her for a few minutes to cry.”

During this counseling session, Mudzenge asked if she had reached out to her husband’s relatives for help. By the time the client came back to the bench after reaching out to a family member, her thoughts of suicide had gone away.

“I was so happy,” Mudzenge said of the young woman’s experience. It’s an example of Friendship Bench’s “opening the mind” method in practice.

Psychiatrist Dixon Chibanda started the Friendship Bench in 2006 by training local women, now popularly known as grandmothers, in evidence-based problem-solving therapy. Today they play an important role in providing mental health in a country experiencing an economic crisis and high levels of unemployment and substance abuse amid an acute shortage of psychiatrists. Fewer than 20 psychiatrists serve Zimbabwe’s 15 million residents.

People in Zimbabwe consider grandmothers the custodians of culture and respect them highly. For generations, many people sought help and advice from grandmothers around the country. That existing social role is why Friendship Bench focused on training women who are 50 years old and above.

“They are respected elderly women embedded in local communities, often recruited through primary health facilities and community leadership structures,” Mashunye said. “Grandmothers are rich in wisdom, lived experience, respected members, widely trusted, have time to volunteer and are seen as non-judgmental confidantes. Their cultural knowledge reduces stigma and improves acceptability.”

Mudzenge has been a community health worker for the past 40 years and joined the program a decade ago to broaden her knowledge in mental health. After five days of training, she did a one-month internship at the council-owned Kuwadzana Polyclinic.

“I have always had an interest in mental health, but I did not have the skills and knowledge. When the opportunity came, I grabbed it,” she said, seated at one of several wooden benches at the Friendship Bench Zimbabwe offices in Harare. “We sit on a bench with my clients who have anxiety or depression. I call them my grandchildren.”

The grandmothers handle cases involving emotional and relationship issues, trauma and violence-related stress, substance use, behavioral health problems, physical distress and other mental health conditions.

Zimbabwe also has one of the highest suicide rates in Africa, according to the World Health Organization, and the grandmothers address the topic often.

Annamore Mupfungidza, another grandmother who joined the program in 2016 and lives in Kuwadzana, worked with several people who wanted to commit suicide. The 57-year-old grandmother of five said most of her clients are young women who are physically and emotionally abused by their husbands.

“I see my client as my grandchild,” said Mupfungidza, who is also stationed at the Kuwadzana Polyclinic. “Women do not share their problems. I encourage them to always talk about it.”

The grandmothers are taught to recognize the severity of a client’s situation through a screening tool that flags conditions beyond their training, like psychosis, severe substance use or acute suicide risk, Mashunye said. They refer these cases to professional mental health nurses, psychologists, or psychiatrists within the public health system.

Friendship Bench Zimbabwe says it has reached more than 1 million people over the past 20 years, 69 percent of whom are women.

The initiative works in partnership with the Ministry of Health, University of Zimbabwe and World Health Organization on mental health programs. It receives funding from international philanthropic organizations and donors, but it still faces financial limitations.

Mudzenge said she is supposed to follow up when clients miss their appointments but cannot do so because of resource constraints, and some of the organization’s activities outside of counseling have been cut. “We used to have resources to support some clients in establishing businesses, but these days resources are a challenge,” she said.

Mashunye, Friendship Bench’s head of programs, agrees. “There is a lack of sustained funding and logistics for continued training, supervision, and data systems as the model scales nationally and internationally,” she said.

At the same time, broader socioeconomic challenges like unemployment, poverty, and post-traumatic stress are driving demand beyond the initiative’s available capacity, Mashunye said.

The limited resources available for mental health places growing pressure on community-delivered care options like Friendship Bench Zimbabwe. But stories like Mudzenge’s show the model can work, and other countries are catching on.

The Friendship Bench was replicated in Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Botswana and the United States.

In 2024, HelpAge USA, an international nonprofit that champions the welfare of older people in more than 80 countries, launched the program in Washington, D.C. It is now available at 14 locations, including schools, senior wellness centers, recreation centers, library branches, social services organizations and a church. To date, more than 20 U.S. grandmothers trained by the team from Friendship Bench Zimbabwe have organized over 500 sessions there.

TriplePundit]]> Johnny Sturgeon, Inside Climate News https://triplepundit.com/?p=70591 2026-04-02T16:43:14Z 2026-04-03T13:00:00Z

A doubling of fish biomass along Asia’s longest river shows hope for large-scale conservation efforts and a lifeline for the endangered finless porpoise.

TriplePundit]]>

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

Flowing almost 4,000 miles from the Tibetan Plateau to the East China Sea, the Yangtze is China’s “Mother River.” From the emerald-green rice paddies of Hunan to the industrial hubs of Wuhan and Shanghai, the river basin generates 40 percent of the nation’s economic output. Yet, 70 years of rapid development had, until recently, wreaked havoc on its delicate marine ecosystem.

Fish biomass in the Yangtze has now more than doubled while endangered species are making a return, according to research released in February in Science. These early signs of recovery follow an unprecedented decade-long commercial fishing ban introduced in 2021. The findings suggest similar bold policies could catalyze ecological recovery in other large-scale rivers like the Mekong or the Amazon.

“I am always impressed by the resilience of nature when given space and time to recover,” said Steven Cooke, a fisheries professor at Carleton University and study co-author. “There have been other ‘restoration’ projects on rivers in the past but none have included a total fishing ban. That is unique.”

The Yangtze River Protection Law implemented a 10-year ban, running the length of the river, until 2030. It followed decades of biodiversity loss and the disappearance of 135 freshwater species — including the iconic Yangtze River dolphin and Chinese paddlefish.

Assessing fish stocks before and after the ban, an international team of researchers compared biomass and diversity across 57 sections of the river. They found a 209 percent increase in overall fish biomass and a 13 percent increase in species richness.

Larger fish — those longer than 7.5 inches — appear to have benefited the most, with their numbers increasing at the highest rates. This included species like the valuable black Amur bream — well-stocked apex predators are a critical indicator of a healthy food web. Migratory species like the slender tongue sole also appeared to be rebounding, finally able to reach critical habitats without being intercepted by nets.

For endangered species like the Yangtze sturgeon and Chinese sucker, the ban brought immediate stock improvements. However, researchers were most excited by the Yangtze finless porpoise. The culturally significant marine mammal saw its population jump from 445 to 595.

“The improvements of conditions include both habitat and food for the iconic Yangtze finless porpoise,” said lead author and fisheries researcher Fangyuan Xiong. With more free space and prey, this mascot of environmental conservation and subject of ancient Chinese poetry appears to be benefiting most from the first-of-its-kind ban.

While the rise is primarily linked to reduced fishing mortality, other pressures have eased. Researchers highlighted improved water quality and a significant reduction in underwater noise from boat propellers.

However, despite the positive data, the report was clear that the long-term detrimental impacts of river fragmentation — caused by sizable dams like the Gezhouba and Three Gorges — will remain challenging for migratory species. Similarly, microplastics that flow freely into the river from highly populated areas present continued threats to biodiversity.

The success also came at a human cost. The ban required recalling 111,000 fishing boats and resettling 231,000 fishermen who had long depended upon the Yangtze for life.

“The biggest take home is let’s do a better job of managing our freshwater rivers so we never have to consider full fishing bans as the medicine,” said Cooke. “Although this seems to have been effective here, the collateral damage to fishing communities is immense.”

Now entering its sixth year, the ban is not a permanent fix nor a cure to all ecological issues. Yet the doubling of biomass is a historic milestone.

“This is not comparable to any other conservation measure because it is the first basin-wide initiative on a large river,” said Sébastien Brosse, from the Center for Research on Biodiversity and the Environment in Toulouse. “Strong political decisions in favor of the environment have a marked and rapid benefit for biodiversity and ecosystem health.”

Nineteen years since the first seasonal fishing ban was implemented to protect spawning fish in the Yangtze, the extension through 2030 remains a bold strategy to restore one of the Earth’s most significant waterways, the study’s authors concluded.

Feature image credit: Yux Xiang/Unsplash

TriplePundit]]> Tina Casey https://triplepundit.com/?p=70598 2026-04-02T18:20:33Z 2026-04-02T18:20:30Z

No Kings has organized millions, but protest marches are only part of a grassroots movement. The 1980s organization ACT UP New York offers a powerful example of how to follow marches with the sustained pressure and direct action needed to truly influence change.

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The No Kings movement has organized millions of people across the United States to take to the streets in protest of federal government overreach under President Donald Trump. The question is what comes next. Protest marches are only part of a grassroots movement for change. Personal forms of direct action are also needed, and the 1980s organization ACT UP New York is applying those methods once again to focus attention on the hidden levers of power that control access to health care.

Government failure breeds grassroots action

The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, was formed in New York City in 1987 out of anger and desperation. AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) was first observed in 1980, hitting New York City particularly hard. Previously healthy people suddenly fell ill and died of rare cancers and infections with no discernable cause. Over the following years, grassroots community groups formed in New York City to raise awareness, gather funds, and provide services to those affected.

But public health officials were slow to respond. AIDS was not named as a condition until 1982, and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was not identified as the cause until two years later. Then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan reinforced the moral stigma surrounding AIDS as a gay disease, undeserving of federal attention. He refused to acknowledge the AIDS crisis by name until 1985 when the cumulative death toll from AIDS had already surpassed 12,000 in the United States.

By 1987, New York City accounted for almost a third of all U.S. AIDS cases, registering thousands of deaths a year, a COVID-level crisis that still lacked an appropriate response. That year, ACT UP launched with a march on Wall Street to protest the high cost of AIDS treatment. At the time, the U.S. median individual income was around $18,000, but AZT, the only approved AIDS drug, cost $10,000 a year.

The group followed up with a series of personal actions, focusing on the role of financial institutions in blocking access to treatment. In 1988, an “ad hoc group” of more than a thousand ACT UP members occupied and shut down the Maryland headquarters of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to demand more investment in AIDS treatment research. A year later, just seven members created outsized attention by chaining themselves to the balcony of the New York Stock Exchange to protest the high price of AZT.

ACT UP takes on tech giants

Membership in ACT UP dwindled over the years as treatment and prevention improved, but HIV continues to circulate disproportionately among minority populations in the United States. In 2016, members of ACT UP joined with the organization Rise and Resist to protest Trump’s racist rhetoric and meetings with anti-LGBTQ hate groups during his first term. Now, the two groups are once again cooperating, this time targeting powerful leaders in the tech sector for their role in destroying federal healthcare resources.

At the start of last year, billionaire and high-profile Trump supporter Elon Musk was put in charge of the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Staffed by young tech workers with no public policy experience, the newly established agency (named after a memecoin backed by Musk) set about eliminating what they called “wasteful” government spending.

As a result, the Trump administration canceled funding for almost 200 HIV studies and slashed $1.5 billion for AIDS-related programs administered by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Globally, it cut funding for the longstanding President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and fully dismantled USAID.

In response, last week ACT UP marked its 39th year with a rally at the New York City AIDS Memorial in Greenwich Village under the theme: “Money for AIDS and Healthcare, Not for ICE and Warfare.” Even as it guts life-saving programs, the Trump administration has pledged $40 billion to convert warehouses across the U.S. into industrial detention centers for immigrants and is requesting another $200 billion for the war in Iran. The loss of USAID alone, which had an annual budget of $40 billion, is projected to cause more than 9 million deaths worldwide by 2030.

Hundreds of rally-goers marched in protest from the AIDS Memorial to the New York offices of Palantir, a data mining company owned by another Trump-supporting tech mogul, Peter Thiel. Among other U.S. government contracts, last year Palantir won a $30 million deal to develop an AI-enabled surveillance program for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

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Dozens of ACT UP demonstrators laid themselves on the busy street for a “die-in” in front of Palantir’s office to focus attention on the company’s connection to ICE atrocities, including the denial of health care to detainees.

“The Trump administration is spending more money on war than they are on health care. They’re spending more money on ICE than they are on AIDS care …We think those priorities are way out of line with American priorities,” said event organizer and ACT UP founding member Eric Sawyer, as cited by Gay City News.

“Speakers emphasized the continued need for in-person activism, even as HIV treatment has improved,” noted GCN reporter Dashiell Allen. “Organizers said the protest is part of an ongoing effort to influence voters ahead of upcoming elections and push for policies supporting health care and social programs.”

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Health care is a top concern for Americans

Trump and his Republican allies are not listening to that message, and they probably never will. However, health care has already resonated among voters as Trump’s public approval continues its slide to historic lows. In a new Gallup poll, voters cited health care as their top concern, over the economy, crime, illegal immigration and other major issues.

Voters have also become sensitized to the disruptive influence of tech firms, including social media addiction and artificial intelligence. In particular, the AI boom — where both Musk and Thiel are stakeholders — has raised concerns over worker displacement and anxiety on the job. Data centers are also routinely blamed for pushing up the cost of electricity for ordinary ratepayers, and communities have begun organizing against new data center proposals.

The bloom has come off the tech rose in other ways, too. President Trump swept to victory in 2024 with the support of young men entranced by the online world of masculine aspiration, with Musk wielding his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) as a powerful megaphone while top podcaster Joe Rogan lent crucial online support through his mainly younger, male and Republican audience.

Now Rogan has publicly regretted his endorsement, and Musk has left the reputation of his Tesla brand in tatters.

The time is ripe for a new social movement that reclaims the normal workings of democratic governance for the benefit of ordinary people. No Kings has roused the numbers, and now direct action groups like ACT UP and Rise and Resist are adding a crucial example of personal action.

Image credits: Michael Fleshman/Flickr, MACMILLAN/Wikimedia Commons

TriplePundit]]> Amy Brown https://triplepundit.com/?p=70553 2026-03-30T16:27:48Z 2026-03-30T16:27:35Z

California increased the hourly pay for incarcerated firefighters to $7.25 last year. It's a bittersweet victory for many, and the fight for fairness and more equitable conditions continues.

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Incarcerated people in California have lived at fire camps in the forest since the 1910s, fighting fires side by side with the rest of the state’s force. In 2024, incarcerated fire crews were responsible for 42 percent of California’s total emergency response hours, the highest ever recorded by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Yet until last year, California’s incarcerated wildland firefighters earned $5.80 to $10.24 per day — often less than a dollar an hour — while working and training, according to the department. When responding to active emergencies, they received just $1 per hour more.

The state has come to rely on the critical support of incarcerated firefighters, especially with the increasing frequency and severity of wildfires in California, but the program has long raised ethical concerns. Those advocating for higher wages for incarcerated firefighters had not made much progress until recently.

A California law (AB 247) enacted in October ensures that incarcerated people on firefighting crews are paid the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour when assigned to an active incident. Assembly member Isaac Bryan, a Democrat from Culver City who authored the bill, initially pushed for $19 per hour, as earned by entry-level firefighters with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE). Nonprofits like the Center for Employment Opportunities, labor unions and celebrities rallied behind him in the push to pay incarcerated firefighters fairly.

While negotiations ultimately landed on using the federal minimum wage, Bryan still called it a momentous achievement. “The governor signing the bill is an incredibly powerful reminder that all labor is dignified and anybody who is willing to put their lives on the line deserves our gratitude,” he told CalMatters.

Advocates have called it a bittersweet victory.

It means the fight for fairness and more equitable conditions for incarcerated firefighters will go on, said Simone Price, director of organizing for the Center for Employment Opportunities, a nonprofit that provides services and advocates for people recently released from incarceration.

“This past year created a lot of very overdue attention and a need to demonstrate that this is a job that is dangerous and necessary, and that folks who are incarcerated working alongside other firefighters should be doing a little better than five dollars a day,” Price told TriplePundit.

The devastation of the 2025 wildfire season, including fires in Los Angeles among the worst in the state’s history, had the unexpected result of shining a light on the huge portion of firefighters who are incarcerated, Price said. “It made a big difference for a lot of folks who maybe weren’t aware of this situation or taking it as seriously as they should have,” she added.

The program has historically recruited volunteer inmates from state prisons. For many, firefighting is a source of pride and a career opportunity. “In our advocacy work, there’s a lot of respect for these firefighters,” said Price. “Sometimes it was their first job because of how young a lot of us are when we are first incarcerated. It took a lot of dignity to be able to provide that service, and it’s a skill they want to continue to provide on the outside.”

In 2021, AB 2147 went into effect to help make that possible. The California law enables people who participated in California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation firefighting efforts to have their records expunged, removing a barrier to seeking firefighting jobs in their communities.

The bill made a big difference to those in prison serving on the firefighting crews, Price said. But in practical implementation, formerly incarcerated firefighters continue to face barriers to employment in the field.

“It paved the way for a limited pool of people to potentially go through the course to have their records expunged and perhaps qualify for the necessary certification and EMT certification to become a firefighter,” Price said. “But that’s been very difficult. It’s not a seamless process.”

One of the limitations of AB 2147 is that it only applies to those who served in a firefighting role at the state level through CAL FIRE. “Unfortunately, most of these jobs are at the county level,” Price said. “But we’re hopeful that the legislative wins we are having now will create a bigger pathway for actual job opportunities for folks who want to continue to be firefighters.”

Alongside pay and opportunity barriers, incarcerated firefighters face daily risk of injury. As several studies have documented, including a 2025 investigation by Georgetown Law, incarcerated firefighters have no equivalent pension or health benefits yet are more likely to suffer injuries and to find conditions for medical treatment limited.

Sergio Maldonado, a formerly incarcerated firefighter who is now an advocate with the Center for Employment Opportunities, was injured while fighting fires. But he said he doesn’t regret firefighting.

“Standing shoulder to shoulder with my crew, facing walls of flame that seemed impossible to overcome, I found something I never expected in prison: pride in protecting communities and saving lives,” Maldonado said in a statement. “AB 247 recognizes what I learned on the fire line — that our humanity and contributions matter more than our mistakes. The teamwork, discipline, and sense of accomplishment fostered personal growth and rehabilitation that traditional incarceration rarely provides. This firsthand experience underscores why fair compensation matters.”

Like Price, Madonado works to help people translate their firefighting skills to civilian jobs. The reality, however, is that even those who do find jobs as firefighters after incarceration are often paid less and face limited advancement opportunities compared to colleagues without criminal records, despite having the same experience. Earning higher wages while incarcerated can help them make restitution payments, support their families, and build savings essential for successful reentry.

Like a fire that’s still smoldering, advocates like Price and Maldonado continue to push for the comprehensive reform that will address all the systemic barriers preventing formerly incarcerated firefighters from pursuing careers in the field where they’ve already proven their capabilities and commitment.

Image credit: California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection/Wikimedia Commons

TriplePundit]]> Tina Casey https://triplepundit.com/?p=70529 2026-03-25T22:08:54Z 2026-03-25T20:51:34Z

U.S. immigration authorities are using so many charter planes that university teams playing in March Madness are competing with the government for bookings. The surrounding discourse puts pressure on the companies profiting from escalated immigration activity.

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Corporate America has remained mostly silent in the face of U.S. President Donald Trump’s cruel and largely illegal immigration crackdowns, but a growing segment of communities is pushing back. With protests emerging against federal deportation flights, the NCAA March Madness tournament creates a new opportunity to raise awareness and advocate for change.

March Madness puts a spotlight on charter airlines

The National Collegiate Athletic Association’s March Madness tournament is an annual rite of spring for millions of college basketball fans and sports bettors. This year’s tournament includes 136 teams competing in an elimination series televised from March 15 to April 6.

“The first two days of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament have become like national holidays in American culture,” Madison Williams of Sports Illustrated observed this week.

This year’s tournament already broke viewership records while registering 36 million brackets for fans to forecast the final outcome. “March Madness has become more than a tournament. It is a shared experience that pulls in casual fans, office pools and social conversations, making participation feel almost expected,” the editorial board of TribLive, a Pennsylvania sports publication, reported yesterday.

Given the public profile of March Madness, the potential for immigration enforcement to disrupt the games has become a matter of public concern.

Over the past year, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security deployed federal immigration agents in a series of violent extrajudicial campaigns in communities across the country, with international students among the high-profile targets. Around 25,000 international athletes competed in NCAA sports last year, where revenue-generating events could violate their visa rules, the higher education publication The EDU Ledger reported.

The NCAA also drew attention to a shortage of charter flights that could disrupt March Madness. The DHS bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) flew more than 13,000 flights in 2025, including over 8,500 flights shuffling detainees from state to state and more than 2,200 deportation flights, according to the watchdog organization Human Rights First. ICE is using so many charter planes that NCAA leadership said teams are competing with the agency for bookings.

“One of the things that I’ve heard is ICE is taking up a lot of charter planes,” Keith Gill, NCAA Division I men’s basketball committee chair, told reporters earlier this month, Front Office Sports reported.

“The NCAA is advising member schools to brace for potential travel issues with March Madness, especially during the first week of the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, in part because of a shortage of charter aircraft,” The New York Times reported through its The Athletic digital sports branch.

A perfect storm hits airlines as deportation flights draw ire and TSA shortages cause chaos

The Athletic previously reported on the intersection of NCAA charters with ICE deportation flights last June, naming the Miami charter company GlobalX among others. The NCAA has a running $5 million contract with GlobalX, which also operates more than half of federal deportation flights, The Athletic reported.

“The airline regularly shuttles deportees to Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and elsewhere, sometimes on the same planes that only hours or days earlier carried sports teams,” investigative reporters Nathan Fenno and Carson Kessler wrote. Last year, the relationship included four dedicated GlobalX aircraft for NCAA Tournament teams.

That story failed to resonate among the broader public at the time, but much has changed since June. Opinion polls show widespread disapproval of Trump’s immigration policy following the lethal violence in Minneapolis and elsewhere. His plan to spend more than $38 billion in taxpayer money to acquire warehouses and convert them into immigrant detention centers has garnered outrage in communities across the political spectrum.

In Congress, Democrats held out for a partial government shutdown rather than approve new funding for ICE without guardrails to rein in agents’ behavior. While ICE salaries are protected during the shutdown thanks to $75 billion approved in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year, other DHS employees have been working without pay for over a month.

Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) personnel are among those who remain unpaid, leading to staff shortages and long security lines at U.S. airports during the busy spring break travel season. Instead of agreeing to common-sense reform of ICE, Republicans continue to refuse funding for TSA staff, as well as those working in disaster response at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other essential DHS functions.

Adding fuel to the fire, Trump ordered ICE agents to report to airports beginning on Monday. The move backfired spectacularly within hours, as millions of frustrated travelers were treated to the spectacle of elaborately equipped ICE officers meandering about with nothing to do, even as TSA agents continued to labor without pay.

Activists urge colleges and the NCAA to stop using charter companies that profit from deportation flights

Now that Trump himself has underscored the connection between ICE and air travel, the protests against charter airlines have more opportunities to break through the media clutter.

The “De-ICE These Flights” campaign organized by the Service Employees International Union calls on the NCAA to drop contracts with GlobalX and other charter companies that make money from ICE flights, such as Eastern Airlines based in Kansas City and Omni Air International out of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

“American universities have the power to choose ethical partners,” a campaign petition page reads. “Tell university presidents and trustees to commit to not using ICE-contracted charter flights for March Madness or any event.” Service Employees International, which represents more than 2 million U.S. service and care workers, already gathered thousands of signatures from union members last year to pressure charter companies to stop working with ICE.

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The organization Arsenal PAC, which develops digital tools and cybersecurity defenses for activists and journalists, launched a similar “Don’t Fly With ICE” petition urging the NCAA to drop its contract with GlobalX.

“A plane carries 157 people to a detention camp in chains. Hours later, a college basketball team boards the same plane, buckles into the same seats, and flies to March Madness,” the petition page reads. “When our universities use airlines that carry out ICE deportation flights, it tells us that the dignity and worth of those communities — our communities — is not a priority.”

More than 24,000 people signed the petition by Friday, triggering nearly a million emails to five NCAA leaders and 35 university athletic directors, The Houston Chronicle reported.

The campaigns also attracted interest among students, and some are putting the pressure on their schools to stop contracting with companies that operate ICE flights. “Some college students are urging the Houston Cougars and other March Madness teams not to fly with charter airline GlobalX,” the Chronicle reported this week.

In response to inquiry about GlobalX contracts, Tim Buckley, NCAA senior vice president of external affairs, told the Chronicle in a statement: “In order to move all teams to tournament sites safely and on time, the NCAA has to work with all available, FAA-approved carriers.”

The University of Colorado also faced criticism. “Immigrant rights advocates on Tuesday renewed their calls for the University of Colorado to end its relationship with Colorado-based Key Lime Air over its operation of detainee transport flights for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” The Daily Sentinel reported.

What happens next?

In widely reported news over the weekend, Trump rejected a bipartisan compromise to pay TSA agents, all but guaranteeing that chaos at the nation’s airports will continue into the near future.

The surrounding discourse calls attention to how the administration’s hardline immigration policies impact everyone and puts pressure on the companies profiting from escalated ICE activity. The next nationwide No Kings Day mass protest against federal government overreach under the Trump administration is scheduled for Saturday, March 28, where immigration is set to be a key issue for demonstrators.

Trump’s unforced error on ICE airport deployments is already having an impact as well. Instead of directing blame for the partial government shutdown toward Democrats in Congress, Trump only succeeded in focusing more attention on his own role in the debacle.

On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer took the floor with a reminder. “Every time a traveler walks to their gate, or stands in line at security, and sees an ICE agent lurking about, they are going to be reminded of Donald Trump’s chaos,” Schumer said. “They’re going to be reminded of Minneapolis. And they’re going to think ‘the chaos is now coming to my city too.’”

Now, if only corporate America would wake up from its stupor and exercise its voice as well. After all, corporations are people, too.

Image credits: Todd Greene/Unsplash, Michael Hanscom/Flickr, Hillel Steinberg/Flickr

TriplePundit]]> Emily Senkosky, High Country News https://triplepundit.com/?p=70518 2026-03-23T16:16:54Z 2026-03-23T16:16:41Z

‘We live at the backbone of the world, where the water begins.’

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This story was originally published by High Country News.

Under the subdued gray light of the winter sun, Germaine White, enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT), reminisced about the Jocko River slowly meandering in the shadow of the Mission Mountains in Northwestern Montana. Once, the river — nisisutetkʷ ntx̣ʷe in the Séliš-Ql̓ispé language — was laden with bull trout, and its plentiful tributaries provided abundant fresh cold water every spring.

“We live at the backbone of the world, where the water begins,” said White. “Scientists call it a ‘resource,’ but we call it the source.”

The Jocko River is fundamental to CSKT life, but over the last century the watershed became disconnected from its floodplain, leveled and channelized when agriculture moved onto the Flathead Indian Reservation. After a decade of negotiations, however, one of the most significant tribal settlements in U.S. history created the 2015 Confederated Salish and Kootenai-Montana Compact Water Rights Compact. Effective in 2021, the compact reauthorizes tribal water rights promised in the 1855 Hellgate Treaty, while also protecting existing water users through a joint state-tribal water management system. The combination of Indigenous-led restoration, shared management structures and targeted funding may help the tribe recover the rivers and the lifeways inextricably intertwined with them.

The aboriginal territory of the Selis, Ksanka and Qlispe tribes covered 22 million acres of western Montana and extended into Canada, Idaho and Wyoming. The three tribes coexisted in a rich landscape, amid over 980 miles of rivers and streams — a natural abundance that explains why Salish elder Mitch Smallsalmon famously called the tribes “wealthy from the water.”

But the tribes lost some of that wealth when the 1855 Hellgate Treaty was signed. And in 1887, the Dawes Act, determined to assimilate Indigenous people into settler society, opened parcels of the CSKT reservation to homesteaders. Even though the reservation comprised only about one-twentieth of the tribe’s original homeland, the act further divided the landscape, creating a patchwork of private and tribal lands. Many of the place names around the Mission Valley were lost, replaced by the settlers’ versions.

“Place names are so profoundly important; they’re the oldest words in our language,” said White. “They came from our creation stories and the making of this place. In recent times, the land has been altered so dramatically that it no longer resembles the place names.” 

The legal term “prior appropriation,” colloquially known as “first in time, first in right,” underlies water rights in the West. Prior appropriation hinges on the idea that whoever first claims water and puts it to “beneficial use” holds first rights to it among subsequent users. During Westward expansion, settlers believed that water was an infinite resource, and water rights were given away freely and gluttonously consumed. But the commodification of water severed tribes from their lifeways. 

“We look at the waterways — the veins of our Mother Earth — as a way of life,” Sadie Peone-Stops, CSKT member and director of the Séliš-Ql̓ispé Culture Committee, said. “Water gives all life. If people can understand that, they can understand what wealth means to the tribe.”

Throughout the 20th century, tribal reservation rights, including fishing and hunting rights, often overlapped with the prior appropriation rights given to white settlers on the reservation, resulting in a quagmire of conflicting rights. Stakeholders raced to the courthouse to have their water rights solidified before their rivals set precedent.

Eventually, the Montana Legislature recognized the need for a system to determine all outstanding water rights, and the Montana Water Court was born. This specialized part of the judicial branch is tasked with untangling the more than 219,000 water rights claimed in Montana prior to 1973. Through a unitary system and the adjudication process, the court works to determine water rights across every river basin in the state. It is also charged with reviewing and ruling on objections to negotiated compacts with the state’s tribes and federal agencies. Colorado and Idaho are the only other Western states with water courts.

About three decades ago, a series of cases filed on behalf of the CSKT by the federal government sparked the tribes’ fight for quantifiable water rights and eventually led to what is now the Water Compact. The CSKT-MT Compact quantified the tribes’ reserved and aboriginal water rights, recognizing existing tribal cultural and religious uses and protecting other existing water rights, regardless of their basis in state or federal law.  

But by the time the compact was settled, over 100 years of industrialism had left their mark on watersheds in and around the reservation. Montana’s history of mining and milling poisoned rivers, while development fragmented watersheds and drained aquifers.

The compact’s final decree is still being determined by Montana’s Water Court, but it recognizes the tribes’ reserved and aboriginal water rights and their existing tribal cultural and religious uses. The compact also protects tribal instream flows, existing uses and historic deliveries to irrigators. The compact’s co-management plan uses both Western science and tribal knowledge to recover waterways and manage them more strategically.

The compact’s implementation phase is led in part by CSKT’s Division of Engineering and Water Resources, which expanded in 2020 to meet the compact’s needs. Over a dozen activities were outlined to reauthorize tribal water rights while fulfilling the reservation water uses provided by the Flathead Indian Irrigation Project (FIIP).

The FIIP was constructed in 1908 as part of the Dawes Act to help move water across the reservation for agriculture. The project has more than 1,000 miles of canals, irrigates nearly 130,000 acres and has 14 major reservoirs that feed its web of crisscrossing channels.

“The FIIP was ostensibly for the benefit of the Indian,” said Casey Ryan, a tribal member and manager of the tribe’s Natural Resource Department’s Division of Engineering and Water Resources. “There were so many changes that our tribe was trying to navigate … and despite all that, we were highly successful at incorporating agriculture.”

Still, the project warped the Mission Valley watersheds, and its antiquated infrastructure showed its inefficiencies as it aged. So federal legislation stemming from the compact prioritized rehabilitating FIIP’s infrastructure and repairing the damage it caused. 

The notion of “beneficial use” of water was so powerful in the 20th century that any water left in FIIP’s irrigation canals was regarded as “waste.” The Jocko River, the second-largest river on the reservation, was drastically disfigured — confined to a channel as straight as a bowling lane and severed from its natural meanders, floodplain and side channels, which once supported a flourishing ecosystem. According to Ryan, as early as the 1930s, water surveys showed that FIIP was a deficit irrigation project, meaning that in most years, the water supply was insufficient to meet potential crop needs.

“There are over 34 creeks that come out onto the valley floor, and of those, most die in the canal that runs along the base of the Mission Mountains,” said Ryan. “We even have staff that can remember when the Jocko would run dry during the irrigation season.”

Restoration on the Jocko started even before the compact was signed, thanks to funds the CSKT won in a pivotal case in the 1980s known as the ARCO lawsuit. Mining and milling on the Upper Clark Fork River Basin had left the river — formerly the tribes’ hunting and fishing grounds — so polluted that it became one of the nation’s largest Superfund sites. 

The $187 million ARCO settlement was used by the tribes and state to finance cleanup efforts. But the lawsuit also demonstrated the weight of the rights outlined in the CSKT’s treaty, as well as the tribes’ prowess in wielding the law to enforce environmental reclamation. The tribes — determined to save the bull trout, a culturally significant fish — concentrated on restoring the South Fork of the Jocko because it had the same hydrological profile as the Clark Fork.

The bull trout was listed on the Endangered Species Act in 1998, and the Jocko is its final stronghold, home to its last remaining migratory population. According to White, the bull trout had been a vital tribal food source when reserves were low and game was scarce. The fish sustained the people in time of need, enabling the CSKT to avoid the starvation that plagued other tribes during long harsh winters.

“We always had that incredible gift of the water, and with it, the gift of the bull trout,” said White, who managed the education and information pieces for the Jocko River Restoration Project. 

The Restoration Project worked to stem further damage by purchasing private land and removing houses from the floodplain while creating an interdisciplinary team to conduct environmental restoration. Today, the CSKT owns over 70 percent of its reservation, wielding tribal sovereignty to protect lands — including the first tribally designated wilderness area in the nation. The tribe also made the South Fork a primitive area available only to tribal members to preserve its cultural and recreational value. But funding from the ARCO case eventually ran out, leaving the lower reach of the Jocko still channelized and trapped against the Bison Range.

“When we got the Water Compact, the last block clicked into place,” said White.

The compact’s implementation phase has picked up where the Jocko River Restoration Project left off — with “adaptive management” underpinning the effort. By reconnecting the river to its floodplain and allowing water to slow, spread and seep back into the land, tribal crews are monitoring and evaluating how the river heals. Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge has also been integrated into its recovery. In low-lying areas, tribal crews have created natural filtration zones using cattails and other wetland plants — living buffers that capture agricultural runoff before it reaches the river. 

The project’s overall goal is to find ways to align agriculture needs with ecological practices. More efficient water delivery can reduce losses and still leave water for instream flows — and, according to Ryan, has already resulted in more bull trout returning to their native streams. Healthier rivers, in turn, support soil, recharge groundwater and stabilize the broader watershed that farming requires.

“One of the beautiful things about the compact is it recognizes that water is a unitary resource, and that it needs to be managed as such,” said Ryan. “FIIP’s rehabilitation has been good for fish and farmers.”

The compact’s foundational measures — including the rehabilitation of FIIP’s infrastructure, restoration of environmental damage and improved water management — are essential, but cultural preservation is equally important.

“The restoration’s importance cannot be overstated,” said Peone-Stops. “It’s going to bring back life, and with plant and animal life, it could bring life back to the culture in new ways.”

The CSKT’s Séliš-Ql̓ispé Culture Committee, guided by the wisdom of a board of tribal elders, has been at the heart of the tribes’ efforts for 50 years, helping to guide the ground-floor application of every project. Besides restoring the landscape, the compact is bringing jobs and reconnecting members to tribal lifeways. According to Peone-Stops, this helps the tribe re-establish its belief that every natural resource is a cultural resource.

“The Water Compact is helping us to continue our mission: to preserve, protect and perpetuate the Selis and Qlispe culture, language and history,” said Peone-Stops. “It’s not a one-and-done thing. It will help us continue to serve our membership into the future.”

In 2021, the CSKT also established the Lower Flathead River as a cultural waterway through its “Cultural Waterway Ordinance,” which mirrors the provisions in the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act that protects a river’s free-flowing nature from development. According to Peone-Stops, the tribe also plans to preserve and protect other waterways in the future.

“When I think about this compact, it’s not about control or greediness. It’s so that the water — and everything connected to it — is protected,” said Peone-Stops. “We adapt with what we have to, but our tribal practices, caring for the land in the way we know how, has always been the same.”

Liz Dempsey contributed reporting to this story. Dempsey is a descendant of the Salish and Lakota Sioux. She currently works for Char-Koosta, the tribal newspaper located on the Flathead Indian Reservation.

This story is part of High Country News’ Conservation Beyond Boundaries project, which is supported by the BAND Foundation.

We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.

This article appeared in the March 2026 print edition of the magazine with the headline “The wealth of rivers.”

This article first appeared on High Country News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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