Overworked, underpaid and lonely: Conservationists find a new community online

Evidence continues to build that humans are contributing to a climate change issue that is nothing but bad news for the planet. Hopeful stories from seven countries, including India, Indonesia, and China, show that efforts to combat climate change might finally be working.

Israel has grappled with crippling drought for years. But people have learned to use Mediterranean sea water and recycled wastewater to provide the country with enough water for all its needs.

The minimum wage issue has been debated endlessly, with arguments both for and against its effectiveness. An increase, tested in some states and enacted in others, immeasurably betters the quality of life for low-income families.

Bangladesh has often struggled maintaining safety in the workplace. But a new effort ensures that Bangladeshi workers are trained about how to better follow security and safety restrictions to create a safer working environment.

In the past five years, as federal and state minimum wage levels failed to keep pace with the cost of living, and as the recession took its toll, the living wage movement has accelerated. Across the United States, more than 125 cities and counties have enacted ordinances or passed ballot initiatives to lift the wages of the working poor.

As a state with robust populations of wildlife, Montana has had its share of roadkill. Its Department of Transportation developed animal shelving, a type of wildlife crossing, to enable safe passage for small animals who need to cross the road. The measure, combined with other types of crossings, has reduced animal-vehicle collisions by half.

After years of banning labor unions in Bangladesh, garment workers unionized to fight for higher wages and safer working conditions. For women, this isn't traditionally a space they were welcomed in, but now they’re holding their own meetings to ensure women’s safety is ensured on the job.

For decades, migrant workers in Florida have been employed under dreadful conditions, picking produce without breaks under extreme temperatures and women being sexually harassed. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has demanded that growers increase wages, mandate rest breaks, and prohibit sexual harassment. The Coalition has partnered with big food companies, notably McDonald’s, Yum Brands, and Walmart, which have pledged to buy only from growers who follow these standards.

In a country of limited resources — and perhaps for that very reason — preparing for natural disasters is top of the agenda in Bangladesh. Various grassroots, collaborative programs have been put in place over the years to help address many facets of the calamities caused by cyclones, from improved emergency shelters to long-term support for those who lose their livelihoods in the storms.

Warming water has led to the collapse of coral reef systems in the western Indian Ocean, essential to fisheries, protecting shorelines, and reducing beach erosion and sea-level rise. Marine scientists from Nature Seychelles, as part of an international project to protect and restore the reefs, are promoting varieties of coral that they have found to be resistant to the rise in temperature.