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Last Updated on January 17, 2026 Miri, Sarawak — Logging operations by Borneoland Timber Resources (“Borneoland”) in the highly contested Upper Baram region have been temporarily halted, marking a significant victory for the Indigenous Penan community of Sawa Ali, who have steadfastly resisted the company’s encroachment onto their ancestral lands. After months of sustained resistance, […]
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Iran’s regime has survived war, sanctions, and uprising. Environmental crises may bring it down.
(grist.org)
The anti‑government protests sweeping across Iran, from major cities to rural towns, are fueled by anger over economic collapse and political repression. But beneath the headlines of currency devaluations and street clashes lies a deeper, more permanent driver of dissent: ecological calamity.
Decades of ignoring scientists, persecuting activists and greenlighting corrupt development schemes have triggered a water crisis so severe that President Masoud Pezeshkian warned in November that Tehran’s residents may eventually have to evacuate the capital city, which is sinking as dried-up aquifers give way.
The devastation extends far beyond Tehran. Lake Urmia, once one of the world’s largest salt lakes, has shriveled to less than 10 percent of its volume, while the iconic Zayandeh River has sat dry for years. Wildfires have ravaged the parched Hyrcanian forests, a UNESCO World Heritage site. In the oil-rich Khuzestan province, home to Iran’s Arab minority, state-led water diversion has devastated the local economy and inflamed ethnic grievances.
Iranians, and many experts, blame the government, one of the world’s most repressive regimes.
Environmental issues tie “into all the other grievances that activists and citizens and protesters have over economic and political issues,” said Eric Lob, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Program and an associate professor at Florida International University. “It’s all interconnected.”
The human cost is staggering. Crumbling infrastructure, poorly designed irrigation systems, and overdrawn aquifers have left farmers unable to plant crops and cities forced to ration supplies. Tens of thousands of people, including children, die prematurely each year from severe air and water pollution. Water shortages and power outages have shuttered businesses and left ordinary Iranians “worried about whether they’ll have enough water for drinking, bathing, and cleaning,” Lob said.
Read Next
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Water stress has also become a source of political contention and a tool of political control, he said. Ethnic minority regions on Iran’s periphery have seen their water supply diverted to central provinces dominated by the Persian majority, creating environmental “winners and losers” and deepening resentment.
In Khuzestan, for example, national government policies have diverted water from the Karun River to central plateau provinces, reinforcing perceptions that Tehran prioritizes politically connected agriculture and industrial interests over local needs.
Gregg Roman, executive director of the Middle East Forum, pointed to recent protests over water access in the Sistan and Baluchestan province, where demonstrators in 2023 marched with signs reading “Sistan is thirsty for water, Sistan is thirsty for attention.”
“These aren’t separate from the current uprising,” Roman said of past water protests. “They’re precursors. Economic and environmental grievances are inseparable when your tap runs dry and your crops die.”
Student groups have also identified Iran’s ecological emergencies as driving unrest.
“Today, crises have piled up: poverty, inequality, class oppression, gender oppression, pressure on nations, water, and environmental crises. All are direct products of a corrupt and worn-out system,” student activists said in a December statement.
The current protests, which erupted in late December, are the largest since 2022-2023. The government has responded with a communication blackout, cutting off internet access nationwide, and violent crackdowns. Human rights organizations estimate thousands have been killed, and even more arrested. Iran has a history of executing protestors, often by public hanging.
Lob traced a direct line between today’s uprising and the regime’s historical environmental failures.
Since the 1979 revolution, he said, the government has used rural development projects to increase political legitimacy and popular support — a process that gave rise to a “water mafia” within the military establishment and the construction of hundreds of dams across the country.
“Organizations close to the government and military were able to get contracts for these projects,” Lob said. “The goal was power and profit-seeking over environmental protection and sustainability.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Iran’s regime has survived war, sanctions, and uprising. Environmental crises may bring it down. on Jan 17, 2026.
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Mary Annette Pember
ICT
The Michigan Attorney General’s office has launched an investigation into Indian boarding schools and other institutions to see if crimes were committed in the state.
The office is seeking to identify, document, investigate and prosecute instances where crimes are believed to have occurred at the institutions, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced recently.
To support the effort, investigators are asking survivors, witnesses, and others who may have firsthand knowledge to come forward and share information.
“This investigation seeks to bring truth and accountability to a painful chapter in our state’s history,” Nessel said in a statement. “My office is committed to ensuring that survivors’ voices are heard and that any criminal acts uncovered are thoroughly investigated and, when possible, prosecuted.”
Michigan is home to 12 federally recognized tribes, and eight schools and institutions have been identified as operating in the state beginning in 1823, with some functioning until 1983. Five of the institutions were boarding schools and received federal subsidies, according to the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report released in 2022.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel pauses during an interview with The Associated Press on Nov. 21, 2024, in Philadelphia. Credit: AP Photo/Matt Slocum
Researchers say that nearly 250 children are believed to have died at the most notorious school, the Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School, which operated from 1893 to 1934.
Holy Childhood School of Jesus in Harbor Springs, which opened in the 1880s, was operated by the Sisters of Notre Dame until 1983 and was known for harsh treatment of students, according to researchers at the University of Michigan.
The investigation could uncover records and evidence that may not have previously been disclosed, since the attorney general’s office has the ability to issue subpoenas and obtain search warrants if approved by a judge.
investigative subpoena power which includes the authority to obtain search warrants if probable cause can be demonstrated to a judge. If sufficient evidence exists, the agency will support charges according to information on the attorney general’s website.
Notably, the latest version of the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding Schools Act pending in Congress was amended to remove subpoena power from the authority that would be authorized for the proposed commission after complaints by some lawmakers. The act was approved in the U.S. Senate, but the House did not agree to include it in the sweeping National Defense Authorization Act approved in December 2025.
Michigan could be restricted by legal limits on how long prosecutors may wait before filing charges. The law allows survivors to raise issues up to 10 years after they turn 18, and in Michigan, a suppressed memory exception allows victims up to their 48th birthday.
Unlike some states, however, Michigan does not have a so-called look-back law. Fifteen states have laws that allow extended limits or no limits for raising criminal allegations or filing civil lawsuits for some or all child sexual abuse.
And approximately 30 states have look-back windows for civil lawsuits that allow abuse survivors to file suit regardless of when the abuse occurred.
More info
Individuals with information about abuse or potential crimes at Indian boarding schools may contact the Michigan Attorney General’s Office via email or by phone at (517) 897-7391. Tips can be left anonymously. More information is available at the Native Boarding School Investigation.
The post Michigan announces criminal probe of boarding schools appeared first on ICT.
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Trump says he may punish countries with tariffs if they don’t back the US controlling Greenland
(ictnews.org)
Daniel Niemann and Darlene SupervilleAssociated Press
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — U.S. President Donald Trump suggested Friday that he may punish countries with tariffs if they don’t back the U.S. controlling Greenland, a message that came as a bipartisan Congressional delegation sought to lower tensions in the Danish capital.
Trump for months has insisted that the U.S. should control Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark, and said earlier this week that anything less than the Arctic island being in U.S. hands would be “unacceptable.”
During an unrelated event at the White House about rural health care, he recounted Friday how he had threatened European allies with tariffs on pharmaceuticals.
“I may do that for Greenland too,” Trump said. “I may put a tariff on countries if they don’t go along with Greenland, because we need Greenland for national security. So I may do that,” he said.
He had not previously mentioned using tariffs to try to force the issue.
Earlier this week, the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland met in Washington this week with U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
That encounter didn’t resolve the deep differences, but did produce an agreement to set up a working group — on whose purpose Denmark and the White House then offered sharply diverging public views.
European leaders have insisted that is only for Denmark and Greenland to decide on matters concerning the territory, and Denmark said this week that it was increasing its military presence in Greenland in cooperation with allies.
A relationship that ‘we need to nurture’
In Copenhagen, a group of senators and members of the House of Representatives met Friday with Danish and Greenlandic lawmakers, and with leaders including Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen.
Delegation leader Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, thanked the group’s hosts for “225 years of being a good and trusted ally and partner” and said that “we had a strong and robust dialog about how we extend that into the future.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, said after meeting lawmakers that the visit reflected a strong relationship over decades and “it is one that we need to nurture.” She told reporters that “Greenland needs to be viewed as our ally, not as an asset, and I think that’s what you’re hearing with this delegation.”
The tone contrasted with that emanating from the White House. Trump has sought to justify his calls for a U.S. takeover by repeatedly claiming that China and Russia have their own designs on Greenland, which holds vast untapped reserves of critical minerals. The White House hasn’t ruled out taking the territory by force.
“We have heard so many lies, to be honest and so much exaggeration on the threats towards Greenland,” said Aaja Chemnitz, a Greenlandic politician and member of the Danish parliament who took part in Friday’s meetings. “And mostly, I would say the threats that we’re seeing right now is from the U.S. side.”
Murkowski emphasized the role of Congress in spending and in conveying messages from constituents.
“I think it is important to underscore that when you ask the American people whether or not they think it is a good idea for the United States to acquire Greenland, the vast majority, some 75 percent, will say, we do not think that that is a good idea,” she said.
Along with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat, Murkowski has introduced bipartisan legislation that would prohibit the use of U.S. Defense or State department funds to annex or take control of Greenland or the sovereign territory of any NATO member state without that ally’s consent or authorization from the North Atlantic Council.
Inuit council criticizes White House statements
The dispute is looming large in the lives of Greenlanders. Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said on Tuesday that “if we have to choose between the United States and Denmark here and now, we choose Denmark. We choose NATO. We choose the Kingdom of Denmark. We choose the EU.””
The chair of the Nuuk, Greenland-based Inuit Circumpolar Council, which represents around 180,000 Inuit from Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Russia’s Chukotka region on international issues, said persistent statements from the White House that the U.S. must own Greenland offer “a clear picture of how the US administration views the people of Greenland, how the U.S. administration views Indigenous peoples, and peoples that are few in numbers.”
Sara Olsvig told The Associated Press in Nuuk that the issue is “how one of the biggest powers in the world views other peoples that are less powerful than them. And that really is concerning.”
Indigenous Inuit in Greenland do not want to be colonized again, she said.
Superville reported from Washington. Emma Burrows in Nuuk, Greenland and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.
The post Trump says he may punish countries with tariffs if they don’t back the US controlling Greenland appeared first on ICT.
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The Miccosukee Tribe blocked Alligator Alcatraz. Then Trump blocked a bill to return their land.
(ictnews.org)
This story was originally published by Grist.
Miacel Spotted Elk
Grist
On Jan. 8, Republicans in the House failed to override President Donald Trump’s first two vetoes in office: a pipeline project that would bring safe drinking water to rural Colorado, and another that would return land to the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians in Florida. Their inability to block the president’s move signals their commitment to the White House over their prior support for the measures.
The Miccosukee have always considered the Florida Everglades their home. So when Republicans in Congress voted to expand the tribe’s land base under the Miccosukee Reserved Area Act — legislation that would transfer 30 acres of land in the Everglades to tribal control — the Miccosukee were thrilled. After years of work, the move would have allowed the tribe to begin environmental restoration activities in the area and better protect it from climate change impacts as extreme flooding and tropical storms threaten the land.
“The measure reflected years of bipartisan work and was intended to clarify land status and support basic protections for tribal members who have lived in this area for generations,” wrote Chairman Cypress in a statement last week, “before the roads and canals were built, and before Everglades National Park was created.”
The act was passed on December 11, but on December 30, President Donald Trump vetoed it; one of only two vetoes made by the administration since he took office. In a statement, Trump explained that the tribe “actively sought to obstruct reasonable immigration policies that the American people decisively voted for when I was elected,” after the tribe’s July lawsuit challenging the construction of “Alligator Alcatraz,” an immigration detention center in the Everglades.
“It is rare for an administration to veto a bill for reasons wholly unrelated to the merits of the bill,” said Kevin Washburn, a law professor at University of California Berkeley Law and former assistant secretary of Indian affairs for the Department of the Interior. Washburn added that while denying land return to a tribe is a political act, Trump’s move is “highly unusual.”
When a tribe regains land, the process can be long and costly. The process, known as “land into trust” transfers a land title from a tribe to the United States, where the land is then held for the benefit of the tribe and establishes tribal jurisdiction over the land in question. When tribal nations signed treaties in the 19th century ceding land, any lands reserved for tribes — generally, reservations — were held by the federal government “in trust” for the benefit of tribes, meaning that tribal nations don’t own these lands despite their sovereign status.
Almost all land-into-trust requests are facilitated at an administrative level by the Department of Interior. The Miccosukee, however, generally must follow a different process. Recognized as a tribal nation by the federal government in 1962, the Miccosukee navigate a unique structure for acquiring tribal land where these requests are made through Congress via legislation instead of by the Interior Department.
“It’s ironic, right?” said Matthew Fletcher, a law professor at the University of Michigan. “You’re acquiring land that your colonizer probably took from you a long time ago and then gave it away to or sold it to someone else, and then years later, you’re buying that land back that was taken from you illegally, at a great expense.”
While land-into-trust applications related to tribal gaming operations often meet opposition, Fletcher says applications like the Miccosukee’s are usually frictionless. And in cases like the Miccosukee Reserved Area Act, which received bipartisan support at the state and federal levels, in-trust applications are all but guaranteed.
On the House floor before the vote, Florida’s Democratic Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz said, “This bill is so narrowly focused that [the veto] makes absolutely no sense other than the interest in vengeance that seems to have emanated in this result.” The bill’s sponsor, Republican Representative Carlos Gimenez of Florida, did not respond to requests for comment. In July last year, Gimenez referred to the Miccosukee Tribe as stewards of the Everglades, sponsoring the bill as a way to manage water flow and advance an elevation project, under protection from the Department of the Interior, for the village to avert “catastrophic flooding.”
What you’re asking is for people in the same political party of the guy who just vetoed this thing to affirmatively reject the political decision of the president,” Fletcher said.
The tribe is unlikely to see its village project materialize under Trump’s second term unless the outcome of this year’s midterms results in a Democratic-controlled House and Senate. Studies show that the return of land to tribes provides the best outcomes for the climate.
The post The Miccosukee Tribe blocked Alligator Alcatraz. Then Trump blocked a bill to return their land. appeared first on ICT.
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