Nepali residents look at floodwaters after the Balkhu River overflowed following monsoon rains at the Kalanki area of Kathmandu on July 12. PRAKASH MATHEMA / AFP / Getty Images
Monsoon flooding in India, Nepal and the surrounding region has killed at least 90 and displaced more than one million.
People in Chennai gather near the metro water supply tanker to collect the water for their daily usage on June 29. Atul Loke / Getty Images
A special train loaded with 2.5 million liters (approximately 660,000 gallons) of water reached the parched Indian city of Chennai Friday, The Times of India reported. The water was sent to relieve India's sixth-largest city, which is running out of water due to lack of rain.
The train left the station in Jolarpet around 7:10 a.m and arrived in Chennai around noon, where it was greeted by state ministers.
In this photo taken on June 20, Indian worker carry the last bit of water from a small pond in the dried-out Puzhal reservoir on the outskirts of Chennai. ARUN SANKAR / AFP / Getty Images
In this picture taken on June 4, an Indian boatman walks amid boats on the dried bed of a lake at Nalsarovar Bird Sanctuary, on the eve of World Environment Day. Sam Panthaky / AFP / Getty Images
By Julia Conley
Nearly 50 people died on Saturday in one Indian state as record-breaking heatwaves across the country have caused an increasingly desperate situation.
A solar power plant in the state of Telangana, India. Thomas Lloyd Group / Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 4.0
India needs power. Good thing it's moving away from coal and honoring its commitment to use renewables. And now, for the first time, India's 2018 investment in solar power outpaced coal, according to a report by the International Energy Agency.
Brick factories in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which is the world's most polluted country on average, according to a new report. Andre Vogelaere / Moment Open / Getty Images
The latest data on the world's most polluted cities is out, and confirms that Asia has a major crisis on its hands when it comes to air pollution.
The report, released by Greenpeace and software company IQAir AirVisual, shows that 22 of the world's 30 most polluted cities are in India. Five are in China, two in Pakistan and one is the capital of Bangladesh: Dhaka.
The Kalakad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve is a mosaic of primary, old-growth forest and plantations. Vignesh Kamath
By Shreya Dasgupta
Eucalyptus plantations in southern India that were abandoned and left to recover for nearly 40 years are still far from resembling the primary forest surrounding them, a new study has found. This, researchers say, suggests that once disturbed for long, forests may never bounce back to their original forms.
In India, eucalyptus has often been the tree of choice when it comes to restoring degraded forests: it grows quickly, is hardy, and requires little care. But can these plantations, when left alone and allowed to regenerate, grow into the forests they replaced?
A man photographing a landscape in Brazil, where environmental journalism is under pressure. Cesar Okada / iStock / Getty Images Plus
By Kaamil Ahmed
A pair of "French spies" had infiltrated India by sea to commit a "treasonous conspiracy," an Indian minister claimed in late November. In reality, they were two visiting journalists, and their mission was an investigation into allegations of illegal sand mining in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. They had merely tried and failed to visit the site of a major mining company through legal means.
Their presence set off alarm bells among some connected to the industry, and the fallout has been significant. It's included a police investigation, a politically fueled propaganda campaign and the arrests of two local translators who had been working for them.
An especially sanguine view of the Amazon jungle in Peru on Oct. 12, 2018. Kjell Eson / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
By Genevieve Belmaker and Joseph Charpentier
Throughout 2018, forests continued to be threatened and destroyed. From the Amazon, to the Congo Basin, to the Mekong Delta and scores of places in between—journalists reporting for Mongabay filed hundreds of stories about the world's forests.
Although the significance of any one story is difficult to gauge in the short-term, several Mongabay reports from 2018 stood out. These pieces dealt with illegal timber trafficking, advances in technology-based environmental protections and human rights protections for the people doing environment-defense work—formal and informal.
