17
submitted 5 days ago by girlfreddy@lemmy.ca to c/world@lemmy.world

Sediment and pebbles are all that’s left on the earth around much of Bernardino Mosquera’s small riverside community in northwest Colombia’s Choco region.

Just a year ago, healthy shrubs and trees filled this important biodiversity spot teeming with species native to the land. But then illegal miners arrived, using their heavy machinery to dredge the riverbeds for gold.

“It’s just desert here,” said Mosquera. “Illegal mining affects the ecosystem in every way … it leads to degraded land. There are no trees. The water sources are drying up, it’s polluted by mercury.”

Mosquera is a river guardian, a title bestowed upon him and 13 others. The unpaid guardians serve as the eyes and ears of the Atrato River: They liaise with government institutions on environmental and social issues in the face of aggression from armed groups and hope to reverse the devastation they see along the river. But after eight years, they are increasingly disenchanted by the lack of support from institutions and growing threats from armed groups that control the region.

top 1 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] MediaBiasFactChecker@lemmy.world -3 points 5 days ago

Associated Press - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)Information for Associated Press:

MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: High - United States of America
Wikipedia about this source

Search topics on Ground.Newshttps://apnews.com/article/atrato-guardians-illegal-mining-contamination-threats-choco-977ad1e171715b8f7fb20a8ac6b9e149
Media Bias Fact Check | bot support

this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2024
17 points (100.0% liked)

World News

38824 readers
2308 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS