One afternoon earlier this year, Mridula collapsed on the floor of the Dhaka garment factory where she works, overcome by dizziness in the heat. The 20-year-old sewing operator, who works at a factory in Mirpur, northwest Dhaka, said summer heat often leaves her restless and “physically uncomfortable.” “The heat can be very difficult to tolerate,” said Mridula, a pseudonym. Co-workers with high blood pressure seem to struggle even more during the hotter months, she has noticed. After she collapsed, she was taken to the factory’s medical room. She said the doctor told her to rest, then sent her home. “He gave me leave from work,” she said. Mridula was eventually diagnosed with jaundice, which can be exacerbated by dehydration and physical exertion. As temperatures climb, heat is becoming a serious concern for Bangladesh’s garment industry. Dhaka’s summers are setting new records. On April 15, 2023, the city reached 40.6°Celsius (105° Fahrenheit), then its highest temperature in decades, according to World Weather Attribution. Then, the following year, the country sweltered through a heat wave that lasted 30 days without a break. A 2025 report by the World Bank shows that Bangladesh’s maximum temperature has risen about 1.1°C (about 2°F) since 1980. Meanwhile, researchers are increasingly concerned about the health and economic consequences of rising temperatures, particularly for workers exposed to prolonged heat. For Bangladesh’s 4.2 million garment workers, approximately 60% of whom are women, who work indoors, rising temperatures raise urgent questions about occupational health and workplace safety. Factory workers operate…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Anna Fatuma is a 31-year-old woman who runs a kibandaski in Tumboni village, Kitui county in eastern Kenya. Kibandaski is Kenyan urban slang for an affordable, open-air urban eatery, often a small shack made of iron sheets, 3-ply wood or canvas. They are popular with low-income customers. Inside, smoke from firewood beneath simmering pots hangs in the air, while dark stains from settled soot mark the walls around cooking areas. The heat from the food, the smoke and the cramped space make the kibandaski humid and uncomfortable. Fatuma’s kibandaski is one of these small roadside eateries. She opens every day at 6 a.m., cooking and serving meals until about 8:30 p.m. The most expensive meal on her menu costs 250 Kenyan shillings, about $2. She started the business in 2024, hoping it would improve her financial situation and that of her husband, Sam. “Cooking gas is expensive. I can’t afford to buy and use it here,” she says. “Kuni, firewood is easier to find and cheaper to use. Charcoal is my preferred option, though it is expensive.” Fatuma often collects the firewood herself. The work leaves her with a persistent backache. On some days, she pays someone to collect it so she can arrive early enough to open the “hotel,” as she calls it. “Kamgongo kanauma. My back aches,” she says. “Paying someone to collect firewood isn’t ideal, but sometimes I am forced to. It’s also to make sure I open the hotel early.” Her routine might seem far removed…This article was originally published on Mongabay

PITHORAGARH, Uttarakhand, India — The world comes alive during summers in Himalayan states like Uttarakhand. The forests are budding with new green leaves, and almost every trail is lined on both sides with flowers of many shapes, sizes and colors. With the flora, fauna comes to life as well. Saraswati Devi, 80, sits in her courtyard with bees buzzing in and out of the wall hive where the colony lives in her home. “Bees are considered so sacred and an important part of people’s lives that we have faag songs about them,” Saraswati says. Faag are traditional songs sung at joyous and auspicious occasions like weddings and festivals in the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand. She and her fellow women hum a melody that Saraswati sang at weddings. Bees come to those homes where children play; But at homes with no children, the bees won’t stay. For centuries here, people’s lives have been intertwined with the bees, creating a unique interdependence. In rural Uttarakhand, many households share their homes with an indigenous species, Apis cerana indica, commonly known as the Indian honey bee or Himalayan honey bee. However, factors like climate change, introduction of new bee species for more honey production, habitat fragmentation and inadequate nutrition are among the reasons for a decline in their population. As rearing bees is a natural part of household duties, women’s role becomes central in the conservation of this species. Saraswati Devi, along with her family, standing beneath the opening of the wall hive, with…This article was originally published on Mongabay

For Nyaradzo Auxilia Hoto, one of the most memorable moments of becoming a wildlife ranger was a trip to town. She and her fellow recruits walked through the streets in their new uniforms, on their way to open bank accounts. Soon, they would receive their first salaries. For a woman who had struggled to make ends meet in rural Zimbabwe, it was an extraordinary moment. “We were very proud,” she recalled. Hoto, 34, grew up in Huyo, a village in Zimbabwe’s Lower Zambezi Valley, where her family depended largely on growing and selling vegetables. Money was scarce, and although she had done well at school, she could not afford to continue her education beyond secondary school. Marriage, she hoped, might offer a better life. Instead, she says, she endured nearly four years with a violent husband before deciding to leave. She returned to her parents’ home with her young daughter and resumed working in the family garden. Her fortunes changed in 2017, when the International Anti-Poaching Foundation began recruiting local women for Akashinga, a new wildlife protection initiative. Hoto was among 16 women selected from roughly 100 applicants. Many men in her community doubted that women could confront poachers or withstand the demands of ranger work. She went anyway. Within a few years, she had become a ranger sergeant, leading other women on patrol. She later returned to university, graduating in 2023 with a degree in wildlife, ecology and conservation. Today, she works as a biodiversity officer with Akashinga, using…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Every year between February and May, when mahua flowers begin to fall, Mamta Tigga collects them. Mamta comes from a village in Gumla in the Indian state of Jharkhand and has been collecting mahua (a flower from Madhuca longifolia), gethi kanda (or air potato, Dioscorea bulbifera) and tendu leaves from the Indian ebony tree (Diospyros melanoxylon) for the past three years. All of these plants are important sources of food, medicine and other traditional uses in her culture. Mamta is not just a tribal gatherer, but a homemaker and a mother of two children. Over the years, she has noticed a change in what the forest gives her. “There is less mahua than before,” she says, and the amount changes with the weather. When there is more heat, more mahua falls and when it rains, the mahua flower sheds off. “This year there was less mahua, between March to April we usually collect around 4-5 quintal [100 kilograms or 220 pounds] but this time due to excessive rain we got around 25 kg of mahua.” Forest produce is an essential source of income for families like Mamta’s. Her husband is a driver, and often, when they are short on money, the funds collected by selling mahua help them survive. But what happens when the resources people depend on begin to change, while the demand for those products continues to grow? A recent review in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems examines this question in the Indian states of Jharkhand…This article was originally published on Mongabay

TSHAKHUMA, South Africa — Divhani Rashaka moved up and down the yard of the homestead he has looked after for 26 years, looking toward the Tshamugwana River. He recounted experiencing several floods in the time he has lived here. The riverbed, a few meters from his house in the Tshakhuma area of Limpopo province in the north of South Africa, is now covered with tall grass and bushes. Channels carved into the ground during the January floods show where water found its way toward the house. Rashaka, who is a resident of Tshiswiswini village, has placed stones along some of the channels in an effort to slow or redirect the water if heavy rains return. Farther up the yard, between his house and his neighbor’s, the grass had also grown thick, but Rashaka and his neighbor cleared the area to allow water to pass through more easily. Beyond these small measures, Rashaka has no formal plan for protecting his homestead, should it flood again. In January, floods affected communities across Limpopo, killing people, damaging homes and infrastructure, washing away food and disrupting schooling and access to some areas. Tshakhuma was among the communities badly affected. During these floods, 21 families whose homes were badly damaged were relocated to temporary accommodation at a lodge in Nkuna village, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) away, while temporary residential units were being prepared. If another flood comes, Rashaka said, he will have to rely on those around him. “I can seek shelter from my…This article was originally published on Mongabay

PORT LOKO, Sierra Leone — When the tide pulls away from the beach in the agricultural regions in Mahera in Lungi, about 27 kilometers (17 miles) across the sea from the country’s capital, Freetown, the digging commences. Young men shovel sand into cement bags and carry them to a flat open area to pile sand into heaps to be sold by local women to truck drivers. These women are dedicated sand sellers. They negotiate prices, buy sand from the shovelers and sell to heavy-duty truck drivers to be transported to Lungi, Port Loko and other areas. The income helps pay for food, school fees and other basic needs of their families.  However, their work relies heavily on the seasonal tide: The sellers can buy sand during low tide but are banned from doing so during high tide. In Mahera, the sand trade began as a survival strategy for 14 women who became family breadwinners, mostly due to absent partners. Aminata Kargbo is the chairperson of the sand sellers in the locality in Mahera, and entered the business to support her seven children after her husband’s death. “Most of these women have lost their husbands, and the money we make goes to support our children,” she said. She oversees about 19 sand sellers, the majority of them women. Many of these women have become widows after losing their husbands to Sierra Leone’s civil war (1991-2002) and various illnesses. Aminata Kargbo, chairperson of the sand sellers in Mahera, stands in front of…This article was originally published on Mongabay

The environmental impacts caused by invasive alien species are more severe in poor countries of Global South than wealthy countries of Global North, a new study finds. The study shatters a long-standing assumption that wealthier Global North countries suffer the worst effects of invasive alien species (IAS) and highlights weak governance and insufficient management capacity as some of the reasons for greater severity of impacts in the Global South. The study published in Science in July employed a method involving the assessment of the average impact of severity, which uses a different approach from previous research. Instead of focusing on numbers of invasive species, this method focuses on how serious the level of impacts caused by invasive species are. Previously, impacts of IAS have been regarded more of a problem in the Global North because fewer large impacts were reported from the Global South, Sven Bacher, professor of ecology at University of Fribourg and the lead author of the research, told Mongabay by email. “We show that this is due to uneven reporting, and that the average impacts are actually higher in the GS [Global South]. This even holds for impacts of the same IAS introduced to both the GS and the GN [Global North]: on average their impacts are larger in the GS,” he said. Among the paper’s key findings, the scientists identified weak governance and limited management capacities as two major factors contributing to the Global South’s greater vulnerability. Some of the impacts of IAS can include damage…This article was originally published on Mongabay

For decades, the global outlook for food and agriculture has brought heightened concerns  as climate patterns create a mix of droughts and floods across the world. Consequently, fears of diminishing crop yields and livestock shortages have dominated the headlines. Amid the ensuing food security crisis, scientists are wondering if communities can turn toward local plant diversity as insurance against subsequent food shocks. A recent study published in People and Nature examines how pastoralist communities in a Ugandan subregion contend with food shortages by adopting previously unused wild edible plants. The study comes on the heels of 2024 research on wild edible plants by local NGOs in Karamoja, a semiarid region in northern Uganda. That earlier study found “that people had developed uses for plants they had not used before,” Emiel De Meyer, a postdoctoral researcher at the State Natural History Museum in Germany, explained by email. Spurred by this discovery, De Meyer led a team of researchers across five agro-pastorialist communities in Karamoja, interviewing members of the local communities on their knowledge of edible wild plants. Through a mix of qualitative and statistical methods, the researchers also probed the reasons behind the adoption of particular plants and how this knowledge was transmitted. In the five villages covered in the study, the authors recorded 27 plant species previously unused as food and now eaten as leafy vegetables. Of these, 20 were reported to be indigenous to Uganda. Although all these plants were mostly harvested during the wet season, at least three…This article was originally published on Mongabay

MALALA DRIFT, South Africa — In Malala Drift, near the town of Musina in South Africa’s Limpopo province, drought and unreliable access to water are threatening the livelihoods of farmers. Some have abandoned crop production after struggling to secure enough water, while others continue farming under increasingly difficult conditions. The farms lie along the Limpopo River, which separates South Africa from Zimbabwe. But even with a major river nearby, access to reliable water supply is not guaranteed. Farmers say rainfall has become increasingly unpredictable in the past decade, and when the river level falls, they sometimes pay an excavation company to dig into the riverbed to reach water, adding to the cost of keeping their farms operating. The effects of the water scarcity are visible at one of the farms Mongabay visits. Poles that once supported tomato plants are scattered across the property, while irrigation pipes are obscured by overgrown grass. No crops are growing. Kanny Ndou, who used to work here as a laborer and now takes care of the property, said the farm previously produced potatoes, butternut squash and tomatoes for sale in Musina. But after 10 years, Ndou said, the owner stopped farming in 2025 because of unreliable water supply. “We used to grow a variety of vegetables for sale in Musina, but due to inconsistent water supply, the farm decided to stop farming last year,” he said. For years, farmers had faced unpredictable outcomes: a good harvest one season, a bad one the next, he said. Some…This article was originally published on Mongabay