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Let’s establish some baselines.
Texas is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than Saudi Arabia or the global maritime industry. Its oil, gas, and petrochemical operations discharge tens of millions of pounds of toxic pollutants into the air each year, comprising almost one-fifth of such releases in the United States. It is the nation’s top emitter of the carcinogens benzene, ethylene oxide, and 1,3-butadiene.
It accounts for 75 percent of the petrochemicals made in the U.S. It is an engine of the world’s plastics industry, whose products clog oceans and landfills and, upon breaking down, infuse human bodies with potentially dangerous microplastics.
Despite all of this, the state’s commitment to fossil fuel infrastructure is unwavering, driven by economics. Oil and gas extraction, transportation, and processing contributed $249 billion to the state’s gross domestic product and supported 661,000 jobs in 2021, according to the most recent reports from the Texas Economic Development & Tourism Office. An industrial construction spurt is well into its second decade**,** with little sign of slowing.
Since 2013, 57 petrochemical facilities have been built or expanded in the state, according to the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project’s Oil & Gas Watch, which tracks these activities. Over half are in majority-minority neighborhoods, the group’s data show.
Over the next five years, 18 new plants and 23 expansions are planned or are already under construction. Twelve of these projects collectively will be allowed to release the same amount of greenhouse gases as 41 natural gas-fired power plants, according to the companies’ filings with the state. Emissions estimates for the other projects were not available.
All 41 petrochemical projects will also be permitted to release 38.6 million pounds of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s highest-priority pollutants, including carcinogens and respiratory irritants, according to company filings. Places like Jefferson County, in far southeastern Texas, and Harris County, which includes Houston, could see their air quality deteriorate, putting the public at increased risk of cancer, respiratory illness, reproductive effects, and other life-altering conditions. Five projects are to be sited within a 5-mile radius of Channelview, an unincorporated part of Harris County plagued by extremely high levels of cancer-causing benzene and a surge in barge traffic — an underappreciated cause of air pollution — on the San Jacinto River.
Companies have announced dozens more projects, including seven near Channelview, but haven’t begun the process of obtaining permits from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, or TCEQ, which will allow them to construct facilities that release pollutants into the air.
The odds are in their favor: In the past quarter-century, the TCEQ has denied less than 0.5 percent of new air permits and amendments, often required for plant expansions.
For six months, Public Health Watch has been reviewing TCEQ permits, analyzing air quality and census data and talking to scientific experts, advocates, elected officials, industry representatives, and residents of Harris and Jefferson counties to try to capture the scope and potential health consequences of the petrochemical buildout.
Here are 3 out of 13 scenes from that buildout. View the full interactive feature at publichealthwatch.org.
Andy Morris-Ruiz
Home of Spindletop booms again: Jefferson County
Jefferson County has a quarter-million residents and stretches from Beaumont in the northeast to McFaddin National Wildlife Refuge on the Gulf of Mexico. Its Spindletop field birthed Texas’ first full-scale oil boom in 1901; today, it is once again an axis of industry zeal.
Just off Twin City Highway, where Nederland meets Beaumont, cranes are assembling a plant that will produce anhydrous ammonia and other chemicals used to make fertilizer and alternative fuels. According to state permits issued to owner Woodside Energy, the facility is authorized to annually add almost 80,000 pounds of nitrogen oxides, which can cause acute and chronic respiratory distress, to Nederland’s air. Nitrogen oxides also contribute to ground-level ozone pollution, the primary component in smog. Uncontained, ammonia can sear the lungs and kill in sufficient concentrations.
Four people formally objected to the facility’s expansion last summer but were unable to stop it. Officials in Jefferson County embraced the plant, granting Woodside a 10-year property-tax exemption and a $209 million tax abatement from the Beaumont Independent School District.
About 2 miles to the southeast of Woodside, Energy Transfer wants to erect a large ethane cracker on the Neches River. The hulking plant will heat ethane, a component of natural gas, to extremely high temperatures, “cracking” the molecules to make ethylene, a building block for plastics. According to Energy Transfer’s permit application, the cracker would be allowed to release nearly 10 million of pounds of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, which contribute to ozone and can cause effects ranging from throat and eye irritation to cancer, along with nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide, another smog-forming chemical that interferes with the body’s oxygen supply.
The TCEQ told Public Health Watch in an email that the project “is protective of human health and the environment and no adverse effects are expected to occur.”
There were seven formal objectors to the ethane cracker, among them Reanna Panelo, a lifelong Nederland resident who was 23 when she wrote to the TCEQ two years ago. “It is not fair nor is it morally right to build such a monstrous and horrendous plant designed to kill the surrounding area, residents, and environment, for company gain,” wrote Panelo, who said generations of her family had been tormented by cancer. The TCEQ executive director is processing Energy Transfer’s permit application, despite comments submitted in October by the Environmental Integrity Project alleging the project could violate ambient air quality standards for particulate matter — fine particles that can exacerbate asthma, cause heart disease, and contribute to cognitive decline. The Nederland Independent School District authorized a $121 million tax break for Energy Transfer.
Nine miles south of Nederland, in Port Arthur, two ethane crackers are poised for expansion and three new petrochemical facilities are planned, according to Oil & Gas Watch.
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“It’s the worst possible situation you can imagine,” said John Beard, a Port Arthur native and founder of Port Arthur Community Action Network, an environmental advocacy group. “You’re living in a toxic atmosphere that with every breath is potentially killing you.”
Air quality in Jefferson County has improved over the years — mostly a product of stricter regulation — but is still far from pristine. The American Lung Association gave the county an “F” for ozone pollution in its 2025 State of the Air Report Card.
A pungent haze occasionally envelops the county, portions of which have some of the highest cancer risks from air toxics in the nation, according to the Environmental Defense Fund’s Petrochemical Air Pollution Map. Indorama Ventures in Port Neches is one of the main drivers of risk — it makes the potent carcinogen ethylene oxide and releases more of the gas into the air than any other facility in the U.S., federal data show. Peter DeCarlo, an atmospheric chemist and a professor at the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering, and a team of fellow scientists recently drove an air monitoring van through neighborhoods bordering Indorama. They measured levels of ethylene oxide “greatly exceeding what is acceptable for long-term exposure,” DeCarlo told Public Health Watch.
The county’s level of particulate matter already exceeds national air quality standards. Jefferson County spent 18 years in violation of the standard for ground-level ozone, but improved after 2009. Now, the county’s ozone levels are creeping upward again. DeCarlo said that the new sources of pollution slated for the region could push the county over the limit again — subjecting it to tougher oversight — and worsen its fine-particle problem.
In a statement to Public Health Watch, Woodside said its ammonia plant is 97 percent complete and represents “a $2.35 billion investment in American energy, supporting approximately 2,000 construction jobs and hundreds of permanent ongoing jobs. … Once operational [it] is expected to increase U.S. ammonia production by more than 7 percent, strengthening domestic agriculture, food production, and manufacturing, while potentially doubling U.S. ammonia exports.”
The company said it met with four residents who filed comments with the TCEQ and appreciated “the strong community support for the project.”
Energy Transfer and Indorama Ventures did not respond to requests for comment.
Andy Morris-Ruiz
Historic Black neighborhood threatened with extinction: Beaumont, Jefferson County
The Charlton-Pollard neighborhood, on Beaumont’s south side, was established in 1869 by freed slave and school founder Charles Pole Charlton. In the mid-20th century it was a cultural hub — home to Beaumont’s “Black Main Street” and some of the oldest Black churches and schools in the city. It was part of the Chitlin’ Circuit, a group of performance venues during the Jim Crow era that hosted James Brown, Ray Charles, and other luminaries.
Segregation, disinvestment, and expanding industrial operations — railways, an international seaport, and a petrochemical complex — gradually eroded Charlton-Pollard’s rich culture and institutions. Stores, schools, and a hospital have closed, and now the buffer between the north end of the neighborhood and advancing industrial development is thinning.
The Port of Beaumont has acquired 78 parcels in Charlton-Pollard’s sparsely populated northeastern corner since 2016, property records show. This year it paved a lot the size of 18 football fields in their place, where it plans to store cargo, including building materials for new and expanding petrochemical plants. The lot lies across the street from the 97-year-old Starlight Missionary Baptist Church and two blocks from Charlton-Pollard Elementary School.
“The port recognizes the deep history of Charlton-Pollard and remains committed to operating responsibly and respectfully within that framework,” said Chris Fisher, the port’s director and CEO. He said he and his team have been transparent with the Charlton-Pollard Neighborhood Association, only developing in a specially zoned “transitional area” in the northeastern corner. In the 1990s and early 2000s, some residents asked the port to buy their properties, Fisher said. Later, after plans for the paved lot were solidified, the port began offering property owners 50 percent to 100 percent above appraised value and, in some cases, $15,000 relocation allowances, he said.
“We kind of made sure that everybody that we dealt with was better off than before we did anything,” Fisher said. The port condemned properties when owners couldn’t be located or had unpaid taxes, he said.
The neighborhood association’s president, Chris Jones, a 45-year-old former Beaumont mayoral candidate, said the port’s acquisitions are “the continuation of a long pattern: One where Black neighborhoods were first under-documented, then underinvested, and ultimately treated as expendable in the path of industry.”
When residents sold their properties, they “were navigating declining property values, loss of services, and the clear signal that the area was being prioritized for industrial use,” Jones said. “In that context, selling is often less about choice and more about survival.”
He worries that the removal of trees and the addition of pavement will intensify heat and worsen noise pollution for those left in the neighborhood. Rail traffic supporting local industry has already increased, he said, and his status as an Army veteran makes him “vexed at the sound of a horn.” Jones and some allies hope to win historical designations for several churches in Charlton-Pollard to stave off further industrial encroachment.
Environmental hazards are not new to Charlton-Pollard. A refinery now owned by Exxon Mobil was built less than a mile away in 1903. Almost a century later, residents filed a complaint with the EPA’s Office of Civil Rights, accusing the TCEQ of allowing the company to pollute above safe levels, increase emissions without public input, and exceed permitted limits without penalty. The case was settled in 2017 after the TCEQ agreed to install an air monitor near the site and hold two public meetings. Charlton-Pollard still lies within the 99th percentile nationwide for cancer risk from air pollution, according to the Environmental Defense Fund.
In addition to the refinery, Exxon Mobil now operates a chemical plant, a polyethylene plant, and a lubricant plant within the complex; last year the company said it plans to build a chemical-recycling facility there as well. Six more petrochemical projects are planned by other companies within 5 miles of Charlton-Pollard.
In short, anyone who hasn’t been bought out by the port may breathe increasingly dirty air. Jefferson County is already violating the EPA’s standard for particulate matter, and diesel-burning trains and maritime vessels accommodating the industry expansion are large emitters of fine particles, as well as smog-forming nitrogen oxides.
Most infuriating, Jones said, is the idea that industrial development in Jefferson County is being underwritten in part by tax breaks even as Beaumont’s basic infrastructure — roads, sewage treatment — crumbles. Not long ago, he said, he saw “fecal waste” collecting in the Irving Avenue underpass. “The shit just rolled onto the street.” (Voters approved a $264 million bond package in November to improve streets and drainage.)
Andy Morris-Ruiz
Fine particles, ozone, and the body
In addition to spewing carcinogens like benzene and 1,3-butadiene, petrochemical plants release large amounts of “criteria pollutants” — the six common airborne substances the EPA regulates most closely. Regions across the country struggle to meet federal air quality standards for two of these in particular: ground-level ozone and particulate matter.
Dr. John Balmes, a professor emeritus at the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health, is a physician advisor to both the EPA and the California Air Resources Board, which regulates air quality in a state that’s had serious ozone and particulate-matter problems for years. He’s researched the effects of both pollutants on the body and helped craft EPA standards for them. Balmes said plant emissions will represent only a portion of particulate and ozone pollution from the petrochemical expansion in Texas. Transportation — diesel trucks, trains, and ships — will add to the burden, he said. (Rail yards and ports are often located in low-income and minority neighborhoods, like Charlton-Pollard.)
Particulate matter and ozone can wreak havoc on the body, Balmes said.
Fine particles, known as PM2.5, are about 20 times smaller than a human hair. When they’re inhaled, they don’t break down, and the body’s immune cells remain in a heightened state of response. Their ability to fight off infection is weakened.
Fine particles often make their way into the bloodstream and trigger cardiovascular problems, such as heart attacks and congestive heart failure. They can also accumulate in the brain, contributing to cognitive decline and strokes.
A 2023 analysis conducted for Public Health Watch by two researchers estimated that 8,405 Texans died from fine-particle pollution in 2016. Exposure to the particles also led to thousands of new cases of Alzheimer’s, asthma, and strokes, the researchers found.
In 2024, an EPA advisory board, on which Balmes served, recommended tightening the National Ambient Air Quality Standard for PM2.5. The EPA said the new standard would prevent 4,500 premature deaths and yield $46 billion in net health benefits over more than a decade. According to federal data, 16 Texas counties, including Jefferson, violate the new standard, which the Trump administration has vowed to abandon**.**
Environmental groups and regulators have been fighting ozone pollution for more than 70 years.
Ozone gas is formed when two pollutants — VOCs and nitrogen oxides — are released from stacks and tailpipes and react in the presence of sunlight. When ozone enters the body, it chemically burns the respiratory system, leading to inflammation. It’s so caustic that it can break down synthetic rubber. Acute exposure can worsen asthma; chronic, high-level exposure can cause permanent lung damage.
The eight-county Houston-Galveston-Brazoria area, with roughly 7.2 million people, has been under continual threat from ozone for two decades. It spent over half of that time classified as being in “serious” or “severe” violation of the EPA’s eight-hour standards. Still, 35 petrochemical projects in the region have been announced or permitted by the TCEQ.
“Adding 35 petrochemical plants to a region that is already in serious ozone [violation] is the wrong way to go in terms of public health,” Balmes said.
Explore all 13 scenes from Texas’ petrochemical expansion at publichealthwatch.org.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Texas clears the way for petrochemical expansion as experts warn of health risks on Jan 7, 2026.
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Deusdedit RuhangariyoICT
Around the world: Honoring Māori leadership through collective memory and service; Cree fashion designers stitch ancestry into modern expression; Nicaragua forest falls as Indigenous lands are breached; Tamworth Festival amplifies Aboriginal voices; and Nepal Indigenous communities resist development without consent.
NEW ZEALAND: Honoring Māori leadership
The New Year Honours list in New Zealand has brought renewed attention to Māori leadership, language preservation, and community service, recognizing individuals whose work has strengthened not only institutions, but the cultural and moral fabric of the nation itself, RNZ News reported on Jan. 2.
The honors span multiple levels of the New Zealand Order of Merit and the King’s Service awards, reflecting decades of commitment across education, governance, health, arts, conservation and cultural revitalization.
Minister for Māori Development and Māori Crown Relations Tama Potaka described the recipients as exemplars of intergenerational service — people whose achievements are inseparable from the whānau, hapū, and iwi that sustained them. He emphasized that while honors are conferred upon individuals, their impact is collective. Behind every recognized leader stands a network of families, mentors, elders and communities whose quiet labor makes visible success possible.
Among the most significant recognitions was the appointment of Professor Thomas Charles Roa as a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Māori language and education.
A professor of Māori and Indigenous Studies at the University of Waikato, Roa has been a central figure in the revitalization of Māori for more than five decades. As a founding contributor to Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori in the 1970s, his work helped shift Māori language from the margins toward national consciousness.
Roa himself rejected the idea of singular achievement, noting that his journey rests on the teachings and sacrifices of elders who came before him. He spoke of standing “on the shoulders of giants,” naming respected Māori leaders and scholars whose influence shaped his path, according to RNZ News. His remarks echoed with a recurring theme throughout the honours: recognition as remembrance, not elevation.
The list also acknowledged Māori excellence across diverse fields. Leaders in business, technology, governance, women’s health, disability advocacy, conservation, education and the arts were honored for weaving cultural values into modern institutions. From rugby to environmental stewardship, from visual arts to governance reform, the recipients’ work demonstrates how Indigenous knowledge systems continue to guide contemporary leadership.
Several recipients were recognized for work supporting vulnerable populations, including people with disabilities, blind and low-vision communities, and those historically excluded from decision-making. Others were honored for advancing Māori participation in education and governance, reinforcing cultural continuity while navigating modern challenges.
What distinguished this year’s honors was not merely the breadth of contributions, but the clarity of a shared ethic: service grounded in responsibility to future generations. As Potaka noted, the work of today’s leaders is ultimately measured by what is preserved, taught, and passed on to mokopuna yet unborn.
In this sense, the new year honors function less as a ceremonial endpoint and more as a public affirmation of values — language as survival, leadership as stewardship, and recognition as a collective act of memory.
CANADA: Cree fashion designers stitch ancestry into modern expression
For two Cree fashion designers in Canada, creativity is not a departure from tradition, but a continuation of it — stitched together through memory, resilience and family inheritance. Their journeys into fashion reveal how Indigenous identity, when nurtured rather than suppressed, can evolve into powerful contemporary expression, CBC News reported on Jan. 2.
Brandon Morin Fox, a Two-Spirit emerging designer from Piapot First Nation, grew up in Regina’s North Central neighborhood in a household shaped by music, artistry and loss. After losing both parents in his early teens, Morin Fox remained anchored by the creative encouragement they instilled in him. His father, a drummer and singer, affirmed individuality as strength — a foundation that later allowed Morin Fox to pursue fashion, not as hobby but as vocation.
At age 23, he enrolled in Toronto Metropolitan University’s fashion design program, drawn by its Indigenous fashion community and mentors who demonstrated that Indigenous aesthetics belong in high-fashion spaces. Morin Fox describes his work as a dialogue between tradition and modernity, blending ancestral adornment with contemporary luxury. His designs reject the idea that Indigenous fashion must be confined to the past, instead asserting its relevance in global creative economies.
Recognition followed sooner than expected. His garments caught the attention of international musicians and creatives who trusted his vision without demanding extensive credentials. For Morin Fox, that trust represented something deeper than professional validation — it affirmed that Indigenous artistry carries authority on its own terms.
Alongside him, another Cree designer, Moody, followed a different but equally intentional path. Leaving his home community seven years ago, he became the first among his siblings to do so, determined to turn spoken dreams into lived reality. While working as a youth support worker in Winnipeg, he was invited to share cultural teachings — a moment that catalyzed his journey into textile work.
With basic skills learned from his grandmother and online tutorials, Moody taught himself sewing. His first ribbon skirt took four hours; today, it takes one. Each piece incorporates medicine colors representing the seasons, embedding cultural meaning into wearable form. For Moody, fashion is not only aesthetic — it is ceremonial, educational and relational.
As a Cree man in a field where such representation remains rare, Moody embraces learning as responsibility. He views design as a skill meant to circulate within Indigenous communities, not be hoarded. His work bridges generations, translating teachings from elders into garments that move through contemporary life.
Together, these designers illustrate how Indigenous fashion operates as cultural infrastructure. It carries grief and healing, memory and adaptation. Their work challenges narrow definitions of success, proving that creative careers rooted in ancestry can flourish without abandoning community.
In their hands, fashion becomes language — one that speaks of survival, continuity and the quiet power of self-determination.
NICARAGUA: Forest falls as Indigenous lands are breached
Nicaragua’s Bosawás Biosphere Reserve, the largest protected rainforest in Central America, is undergoing an accelerating ecological and human crisis. Spanning approximately 7,400 square kilometres (2,857 square miles) along the Honduran border, Bosawás is home to extraordinary biodiversity and to the Miskito and Mayanga Indigenous peoples, whose lives and identities are inseparable from the forest. Despite its UNESCO designation, more than 30 percent of Bosawás’s primary forest has disappeared since 2000, Mongabay reported on Dec. 31.
Satellite data reveal that 2024 marked a devastating turning point. Roughly 10 percent of the reserve’s total land area was cleared in a single year, with fire accounting for over a third of the destruction — a 700 percent increase from the previous year. Preliminary data from 2025 indicate that deforestation continues, advancing deeper into old-growth rainforest.
Indigenous advocates identify cattle ranching as a primary driver. Ranchers clear vast tracts of forest to feed Nicaragua’s beef industry, displacing wildlife and severing Indigenous communities’ access to hunting grounds, fishing waters, and clean drinking sources. Gold mining poses an additional threat, with more than two-thirds of the reserve overlapping with metallic mining concessions.
The consequences extend beyond environmental loss. Indigenous residents report escalating violence, intimidation and displacement as outsiders encroach upon their territories. Conservation initiatives have collapsed under the weight of human rights violations, including the cancellation of a major climate-funded forest protection project in 2024.
For Indigenous communities, the forest is not a resource but a relative — a living system that provides sustenance, protection and meaning. Leaders describe Bosawás as Mother Earth herself, underscoring that her destruction constitutes cultural erasure as much as ecological harm.
An international investigation released in late 2025 revealed that beef produced through illegal deforestation — termed “conflict beef” — continues to enter global supply chains, mixed with legally produced exports. Environmental organizations have urged importing countries and retailers to enforce strict traceability and sourcing policies, warning that consumer markets are indirectly financing deforestation and human rights abuses.
Bosawás now stands as a test case for global environmental accountability. Its destruction exposes the limits of paper protections without enforcement, and the dangers of treating Indigenous territories as expendable zones of extraction. What is lost here cannot be replaced: endemic species, irreplaceable carbon stores, and cultures that have safeguarded these forests for generations.
AUSTRALIA: Tamworth Festival amplifies Aboriginal voices
The Tamworth Country Music Festival, one of Australia’s most prominent music events, is once again hosting the Aboriginal Cultural Showcase — a First Nations-led program dedicated to elevating Indigenous artists, stories and cultural expression, National Indigenous Times reported on Jan. 2.
Fourteen Indigenous performers have been announced for the 2026 showcase, which runs from Jan. 16 to 25 and forms a vibrant counterpoint to the festival’s mainstream programming.
Backed by a three-year sponsorship package from the NSW Aboriginal Land Council, the showcase reflects a long-term commitment to Indigenous cultural infrastructure rather than symbolic inclusion. The council has supported the event since 2016, providing staging, lighting and organizational resources that allow Aboriginal artists to perform on their own terms.
The lineup spans generations and nations, featuring respected headliners alongside emerging voices. Artists from Gomeroi, Arrernte, Wiradjuri, Yamatji, Murrawarri, Dharug, Yorta Yorta, Kalkadoon, Kuku-Yalanji, Ngarrindjeri and other nations will share the stage, creating a convergence of musical traditions, languages and lived histories.
For many performers, Tamworth is more than a venue — it is a site of memory. Nathan Lamont recalls first performing at the festival as a child and describes his return as a continuation of a lifelong journey. Others, like Aimee Hannan and Kyla-Belle Roberts, speak of the showcase as a festival highlight, a space where Aboriginal excellence is centered rather than peripheral.
The program also acknowledges the networks that sustain Indigenous talent. Alongside the NSW Aboriginal Land Council, sponsors include Aboriginal Employment Strategy – Tamworth, Tamworth Aboriginal Medical Service, and the Aboriginal Regional Arts Alliance NSW, all contributing to the Buddy Knox Talent Contest and broader cultural development.
Importantly, the showcase is not framed as a cultural add-on but as an integral component of Australia’s contemporary music landscape. It affirms that Aboriginal music is not confined to heritage categories — it is evolving, experimental and deeply relevant.
By bringing artists together during a nationally significant festival, the Aboriginal Cultural Showcase creates a space where Indigenous voices are not merely heard but amplified. It invites audiences to engage with Aboriginal culture as living practice — one that honors the past while shaping the future.
NEPAL: Indigenous communities resist development without consent
Throughout 2025, Indigenous peoples and local communities in Nepal found themselves at the center of escalating conflicts over development projects that threatened land, livelihoods and sacred ecosystems, Mongabay reported on Dec. 29.
From hydropower dams and cable cars to mining concessions, infrastructure expansion increasingly collided with Indigenous rights — particularly the right to free, prior and informed consent.
Multiple legal challenges underscored this tension. Indigenous Bhote-Lhomi Singsa communities refiled petitions against a hydropower project accused of submitting flawed environmental impact assessments while continuing construction. Communities reported tree felling far exceeding approved limits and demanded project cancellation.
In Nepal’s far west, Indigenous and local residents resisted what was promoted as the country’s largest iron mining project. Approved without community consent, the operation threatened rivers, forests, farmlands and ancestral territories. Despite agreements to halt progress, documents showed mining approvals advancing over hundreds of hectares.
Sacred landscapes were also targeted. The Pathibhara cable car project, planned within a forest revered by the Yakthung (Limbu) community, drew widespread opposition after assessments failed to document key species. Community estimates suggested tens of thousands of trees were cut. Protests escalated into clashes, prompting the Supreme Court to order an immediate halt.
Political instability compounded these struggles. Before being ousted, Nepal’s previous government granted national priority status to several controversial cable car projects, including one within a protected conservation area. Indigenous leaders and conservationists warned that these decisions bypassed judicial safeguards and community consultation.
Development banks came under scrutiny as well. The Tanahu Hydropower project, financed by international institutions, generated a disproportionate number of complaints related to environmental damage, land rights violations, and inadequate compensation. Critics argued that lenders failed to exercise due diligence, leaving communities exposed.
Amid these conflicts, one story offered cautious hope. A reforestation initiative integrating Indigenous ecological knowledge demonstrated measurable success. Communities planted over 130,000 native trees across multiple sites, and satellite imagery later confirmed significant vegetation recovery — evidence that development aligned with local knowledge can succeed.
Nepal’s experience in 2025 revealed a stark truth: development imposed without consent fractures trust and destabilizes both ecosystems and societies. Where Indigenous knowledge was ignored, conflict followed. Where it was respected, regeneration occurred.
My final thoughts
Across five continents, these stories converge on a single, urgent lesson: Indigenous peoples are not resisting progress — they are resisting erasure. Whether through honors lists, fashion studios, rainforests, music festivals, or courtrooms, the struggle is fundamentally about who defines value, whose knowledge counts, and what kind of future is being built.
In New Zealand, recognition of Māori leadership affirms that cultural continuity is not nostalgia; it is national strength. In Canada, Cree designers demonstrate that creativity rooted in ancestry can shape global aesthetics without surrendering meaning. In Nicaragua, the destruction of Bosawás exposes the catastrophic cost of ignoring Indigenous stewardship in the name of export economies.
In Australia, the Aboriginal Cultural Showcase proves that when Indigenous culture is resourced rather than tokenized, it flourishes. In Nepal, legal battles and protests reveal the consequences of development divorced from consent — and the promise of alternatives grounded in local knowledge.
What links these stories is not geography, but ethics. Indigenous communities consistently articulate a relational worldview: land as living system, leadership as service, creativity as inheritance, and progress as responsibility to future generations. Where institutions listen, resilience grows. Where they do not, conflict escalates.
This is not a cultural issue alone — it is a governance issue, an environmental issue, and a moral issue. Global systems continue to extract from Indigenous lands, knowledge, and labor while offering recognition, protection, or consent as afterthoughts. The result is predictable: biodiversity collapse, social unrest, and broken trust.
Yet these stories also show pathways forward. Honor can be collective rather than symbolic. Fashion can carry memory without fossilizing it. Conservation can succeed when Indigenous peoples lead. Development can regenerate rather than dispossess.
The question facing governments, corporations, and global institutions is no longer whether Indigenous voices matter. That has been answered repeatedly. The real question is whether power is willing to change its behavior accordingly.
History will remember not only who spoke, but who listened — and who refused to.
The post GLOBAL INDIGENOUS: New Zealand honors Māori for leadership, preserving culture appeared first on ICT.
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Guarded by Ancestors, Threatened by Extraction: Akan Resistance to Bauxite Mining in Ghana’s Atewa Forest
(icmagazine.org)
Last Updated on January 7, 2026 I grew up hearing stories about the land as a living being, one who remembers the humans who are part of it. But today, my people’s lifeways are threatened by extraction. State-led mining interests clash with Akan land guardianship, revealing the unequal power dynamics behind the language of “development.” […]
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