[posted by Paul Hockenos on YaleEnvironment360, May 8th, 2018]   Day and night, visitors to the mountain village of Kruš?ica in central Bosnia and Herzegovina — a speck on the map about 40 miles west of Sarajevo — encounter local women sentinels. The women have set up camp on the left bank of the Kruš?ica River in front of a narrow, rough-hewn wooden bridge, above which hangs a Bosnian flag and banners that declare “Bridge of the...

[posted by Ben Chapman on Independent, May 13th, 2018]   Royal Dutch Shell, Italian oil giant Eni and a number of senior executives at the two firms face trial in Milan on Monday over corruption charges relating to a $1.1bn (£800m) deal for a Nigerian oil block. The Milan public prosecutor alleges that $520m from a 2011 deal to buy rights to a vast oil block off Nigeria’s coast was converted into cash and intended to be paid to...

[posted by Alice Facchini and Sandra Laville on The Guardian, May 17th, 2018]   UK demand for fruit increased by 27% last year alone, prompting accusations that growers are illegally diverting rivers and leaving locals without water   British supermarkets are selling thousands of tonnes of avocados produced in a Chilean region where villagers claim vast amounts of water are being diverted, resulting in a drought. Major UK...

[posted by Chris Mooney on The Washington Post, 16th May, 2018]   A 14-year NASA mission has confirmed that a massive redistribution of freshwater is occurring across Earth, with middle-latitude belts drying and the tropics and higher latitudes gaining water supplies. The results, which are probably a combination of the effects of climate change, vast human withdrawals of groundwater and simple natural changes, could have...

[posted on Climate Home news, May 2nd, 2018]   At UN climate talks in Bonn, governments must find sources of finance to support the victims of climate disaster, write officials from four vulnerable countries   A few months ago, Hurricane Maria caused economic losses and damages of 226% of Dominica’s GDP. Only two years before, Tropical storm Erika cost Dominica 90% of GDP, and Tropical Cyclone Pam battered Vanuatu, costing...

[posted by Jonathan Watts on The Guardian, May 10th, 2018]   The Tanzanian government is putting foreign safari companies ahead of Maasai herding communities as environmental tensions grow on the fringes of the Serengeti national park, according to a new investigation. Hundreds of homes have been burned and tens of thousands of people driven from ancestral land in Loliondo in the Ngorongoro district in recent years to benefit...