People & Population

"Tuomas Siilasjoki and Minna Näkkäläjärvi say they were taken by surprise when a mobile drill rig one day appeared in the horizon. Nobody had asked them about exploring for minerals inside their siida, a reindeer foraging area, in northern Finland. The Sámi families here in Tarvantovaara wilderness area fear the world's hunger for metals to ramp up the green economy will destroy their indigenous way of life."

"Formosa Plastics, a Taiwanese plastics company, intends to build a complex St. James Parish, Louisiana, a region already known as "Cancer Alley." Environmental activist Anne Rolfes faces criminal charges for a protest action she took to call attention to the company's history of harm." "From Southeast Asia to the United States, activists have called attention in recent years to the harmful impact of chemical companies such as Formosa Plastics Corporation, a Taiwanese petrochemical company that operates throughout the world, including the US."

"Millions of acres in the eastern half of Oklahoma remain part of a Native American reservation for criminal law purposes, the Supreme Court said today in a sharply divided ruling that could have implications for oil and gas development in the state."

"A new genetic study suggests that Polynesians made an epic voyage to South America 800 years ago."

Racial disparities in who contracts the virus have played out in big cities like Milwaukee and New York, but also in smaller metropolitan areas like Grand Rapids, Mich., where the Bradleys live."

"For the first time, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has included climate change in its annual report laying out what events cause refugees to flee. It signals a growing consensus around the risks climate poses, even if it doesn’t change much for the people actually forced to flee their homes after a cyclone or hurricane hits."