The high court in India's Uttarakhand state ruled that the Ganges and Yamuna are "living entities," giving a legal voice to these rivers that have seen years of ecological damage.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization warned that the Middle East and North Africa risk becoming uninhabitable in a few decades, with water reserves falling dramatically.
Ecuador's government has deployed drones and helicopters to the Amazon village of El Tink, where indigenous residents are blocking roads in a dispute over a mining project.
Some 70,000 are displaced and at least 70 dead as Peru's heaviest rains in two decades—linked to an "abnormal" El Niño—unleashed flash-floods and landslides across the country.
Somalis who captured an oil tanker later released it with no ransom paid, and said they had seized it to protest toxic waste dumping and over-fishing in their waters.
More than 40 Somali refugees were killed when an Apache helicopter fired on a boat in the Red Sea off war-torn Yemen, but the Saudi-led coalition denies responsibility.
Mural in the town of Cinquera, El Salvador. Communities in northern El Salvador continue to organize referendums in an effort to keep their territories free of mining. Established by the country's Municipal Code as a mechanism for community participation, the "consulta… Read moreCommunity power against mega-mining in El Salvador
Campesinos and environmentalists held a national mobilization demanding that Colombia establish a Truth Commission for environmental crimes as part of the peace process.
A Colombian cartel operative who established Central America's remote and lawless Miskito Coast as a major cocaine transfer point was arrested by Nicaraguan authorities.
Killings, forced recruitment and other grave violations against children in Syria were the highest on record in 2016, said UNICEF in a grim assessment as the war reaches six years.
A new Qaeda affiliate in Syria has claimed responsibility for a double bomb attack targeting Shi'ite pilgrims near a shrine in Damascus that killed at least 40 Iraqis.
Hundreds of peasant coca-growers shut down a main highway through southern Colombia to oppose the government's renewed "forced eradication" campaign in the region.
