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Her Planet

Half the world — making things right. Follow along and join the #HerPlanet conversation on social media.

Environmentalist Emily Kelsall holds up samples of gas pump labels.

A Canadian city is putting warning labels on gas pumps

Environment

Cigarette packs have health warnings — now in one Canadian city, gas pumps have climate change warnings.

“Habitat Degradation: Ocean Acidification” contains ocean pH data from 1998 to 2012. Research on clownfish has shown that more acidic water affects their ability to detect the chemical signals that they used to find their way home.

Watercolor? Look closer. It’s a climate change graph!

Environment
Maria da Penha

Iconic activist in Rio watches as her home is bulldozed to make way for the Olympics

Global Politics
Russian President Vladimir Putin celebrates International Women's Day at the Kremlin in Moscow March 8, 2015.

Aw, thanks, Vladimir: But Women’s Day is hurting Russia’s carbon footprint

Environment
Honduran activist protest

In the world’s most dangerous nation for environmentalists, a leader is murdered

Environment
Mavis, a housekeeper from the Pretoria township of Mamelodi, depends on her garden to help provide for her five children and seven grandchildren. But with this year's region-wide drought, her garden is just a dusty patch of seedlings. “I want rain every d

For one South African house cleaner, this year’s big drought means crying, hungry children

Environment

The current drought in southern Africa is the worst in decades, and likely a harbinger of things to come as the region warms up and dries out as its climate changes. The drought is having real impact on one resident in a Pretoria township, and what governments in the region can do to help prepare for a hotter and drier future.

oil pelican

As a child, the beach was synonymous with tar on my feet

Environment

As part of our Her Planet series, we asked our readers what water means to them. To Stephanie Dube, her memories of happy trips to the ocean in the Gulf of Mexico have lost their luster with time. But the water is still her happy place.

Cup Island trash

Not many fish are left to bite in Rio’s trash-lined bay

Environment

Rio de Janeiro’s Guanabara Bay has become so polluted that catching fish is all but impossible.

Brazilians embrace at Piscinão de Ramos, an artifical lake next to Guanabara Bay.

Banned from the beach for pollution, these Brazilians brought beach culture to a lake

Culture

This Brazilian beach doesn’t bring a song to mind and it’s not in the brochures at the tourism office. But Piscinão de Ramos, or “big pool of Ramos,” is where thousands of Brazilians — prevented from accessing the actual beaches at Guanabara Bay because of the pollution — relax away their hour.

devi

She’s 23. Here’s why she’s biking around the world.

Environment

“So far I have learned this much: Slow is beautiful. Slow down,” says Devi Lockwood. “I think that North Americans are exceptional at being in a rush.”