Portside

If ordinary people can overcome powerful companies to protect their water in a poor country like El Salvador, imagine what their counterparts can do here.

The stakes for environmental racism need to be even higher than jail time. What if any company responsible for major ecological devastation was dissolved? Or politicians colluding with or enabling environmental destruction could not hold office?

Last April, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order that barred water shutoffs. At least 1.6 million California households, or one in eight, have water debt, and they could face shutoffs when Newsom ends the state of emergency.

More than 600 environmental, rights and religious groups to present draft order amid widespread shutoffs despite pandemic

A new survey shows arsenic levels in public water are disproportionately high in certain U.S. communities, despite national regulatory standards designed to protect people from the harmful chemical.

The upcoming Biden administration must take action to protect the air, water, land and health of rural communities overrun and bankrupted by factory farms. Joe Biden’s plan for rural America does not mention any kind of comprehensive farm reform.

For the first time California water futures will be traded on Wall Street. Utility companies and agribusiness will be the main purchasers of these water futures, while vulture capitalists rush to find increasingly scarce water for giant water users.

The complicity of Western governments such as the US, UK and the European Union allows Israel’s “crimes against a captive civilian population” in Gaza to proceed with impunity.

Global South communities affected by mining face multiple pandemics — not just of disease, but of violence, exploitation, and corporate capture.

“The global struggle against the pandemic has little chance to succeed if personal hygiene, the main measure to prevent contagion, is unavailable to the 2.2 billion persons who have no access to safe water services.”