2026-01-21 04:09:56
This story was originally published by Popular Information, a substack publication to which you can subscribe here.
During the second Trump administration, the population of migrants held at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities has exploded—from below 40,000 in January 2025 to over 73,000 today. Under the law, ICE is required to provide necessary medical care for this population.
While ICE employs some of its own medical staff, it often uses third-party providers. ICE’s Buffalo Federal Detention Facility, for example, houses over 500 detainees and has no doctor or dentist on staff.
ICE, however, has not paid any third-party providers for medical care for detainees since October 3, 2025. Last week, ICE posted a notice on an obscure government website announcing it will not begin processing such claims until at least April 30. Until then, medical providers are instructed “to hold all claims submissions.”
ICE’s failure to pay its bills for months has caused some medical providers to deny services to ICE detainees, an administration source who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press told Popular Information. In other cases, detainees have allegedly been denied essential medical care by ICE.
ICE has not yet responded to a request for comment they received on Monday.
In lawsuits, numerous ICE detainees with severe illnesses allege that they cannot obtain treatment. For example, Viera Reyes, a detainee being held at ICE’s California City Detention Facility, has symptoms and test results that suggest he has prostate cancer.
But despite often being in excruciating pain, Reyes cannot obtain a biopsy. All of his requests to see a urologist have been ignored. Without a biopsy, Reyes has no formal diagnosis and cannot begin chemotherapy or take other steps to slow the cancer’s progression. Reyes was one of seven ICE detainees to sue over inhumane conditions at the California City facility.
How did this health crisis inside ICE detention facilities begin?
Beginning in 2002, the Department of Veterans Affairs played a small but critical role in providing essential medical care to ICE detainees. When a detainee needed medication or treatment that the ICE facility could not directly provide, the VA Financial Services Center processed reimbursement claims from pharmacies and third-party medical providers. ICE paid the VA for this service—no resources were diverted from veterans.
Beginning in 2023, however, the VA’s role in administering these claims from ICE was subject to criticism by Republican officials and right-wing media outlets. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), who introduced legislation to end the practice, falsely claimed Biden was “robbing veterans to pay off illegals.”
After Trump’s election, criticism of the VA’s role quieted down until, on September 30, 2025, the Center to Advance Security in America, a small right-wing nonprofit, filed a lawsuit. The CASA lawsuit sought to compel the Trump administration to respond to a public records request for documents regarding the VA’s role in administering medical claims from ICE.
According to government documents first reported by Popular Information, the VA “abruptly and instantly terminated” its agreement with ICE on October 3. That cancellation, according to the documents, left ICE with “no mechanism to provide prescribed medication” and unable to “pay for medically necessary off-site care.” Among the services ICE said it could not provide were “dialysis, prenatal care, oncology, [and] chemotherapy.” The documents were posted to SAM.gov on November 12 as part of ICE’s effort to hire a private contractor to process medical claims in place of the VA.
The situation was described by ICE as an “absolute emergency” that needed to be resolved “immediately” to “prevent any further medical complications or loss of life.”
More than three months later, the situation is not resolved, and it is expected to last until the end of April, if not longer. The process of replacing the VA, according to the administration source, has proven very complex. Acentra, one of the companies that won the ICE contract to replace the VA, says it will not be ready to process claims until at least April 30. Even if Acentra meets that target date, which is not a guarantee, claims filed on the first day may not be paid until May 30.
In the meantime, the situation with ICE detainees has grown so dire that the VA is now working to potentially bring its claims processing back online temporarily, the administration source said.
Internal administration data obtained by Popular Information reveals a massive gap in essential medical treatment for ICE detainees. The data shows that, in 2024, the VA processed $246.4 million in medical claims related to the treatment of ICE detainees by third parties. In 2025, despite an 83 percent increase in the daily detained population, the VA processed just $157.2 million in claims. (These figures include medical reimbursements from a much smaller number of detainees held by US Customs and Border Protection.)
Assuming the medical needs of a typical ICE detainee remain constant, the data suggests a nearly $300 million gap between needed care from third-party providers and what ICE paid. This gap is a combination of unpaid bills since October 3 and ICE detainees who are simply being denied necessary medical treatment.
An investigation by Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) identified “85 credible reports of medical neglect, including cases that reportedly led to life-threatening injuries and complications,” among ICE detainees between January 20 and August 5, 2025. The incidents included “a heart attack after days of untreated chest pain, complications from untreated diabetes, and denial of necessary medications and associated complications.”
After October 3, medical care for ICE detainees almost certainly became much worse. And it is not likely to improve anytime soon.
2026-01-20 20:30:00
This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
The US Senate passed a limited spending package on Thursday that will largely fund several science- and land-related agencies, including the Department of Interior, the US Forest Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the US Environmental Protection Agency, at current levels. Having passed the House on January 8, the bill now heads to President Donald Trump, who is expected to sign it.
The bill was, in many ways, a congressional rebuke of Trump’s request to drastically cut critical federal services related to the environment.
“It really shows that our public lands are meant to be managed for everyone in this country and not just private industry looking to turn a profit,” said Miranda Badgett, senior government relations representative for The Wilderness Society. “This bill really rejected some of the reckless budget cuts we saw proposed by the administration that would impact our national public-land agencies.”
Still, to conservation and science advocates, the bill is a compromise between Republican and Democratic priorities: It trims slightly 2025 budget numbers, including millions of dollars cut from NASA, the EPA and the US Geological Survey. It also doesn’t account for inflation, said Jacob Malcom, executive director of Next Interior, which advocates for the Interior Department.
“This is part of that long-running plan: ‘We’ll make services worse and then they won’t have popular support.’”
The Senate also rejected nearly 150 budget riders placed by the House that would have dramatically hamstrung agencies, Badgett said. Rejected riders included prohibiting the Bureau of Land Management from spending money to enforce the Public Lands Rule that was finalized in 2024 (which the Trump administration is currently trying to repeal), requiring quarterly oil and gas lease sales in at least nine states, and prohibiting any implementation of the BLM’s Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Rule that, among other things, boosted the royalty rates oil and gas companies must pay the federal government.
The biggest blow to the West, climate science and the nation’s health and safety, however, are potential cuts to the National Center for Atmospheric Research, based in Boulder, Colorado. The center creates the modeling and analysis that underpins the weather forecasting people around the world depend on for their lives and work. But instead of including a line item to fund NCAR in this budget, the bill simply tells the National Science Foundation, which oversees the center, to continue its functions.
This leaves the center with a shaky future in light of the administration’s stated desire to dissolve it, said Hannah Safford, associate director of climate and environment for the Federation of American Scientists. Colorado Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper fought unsuccessfully to include NCAR-specific funding in the bill.
Unless politicians find a workaround, climate science at the center will be destabilized, Safford added, but what that will look like on the ground is still uncertain. “It’s unlikely to manifest as a sudden loss of a particular service, but it might cause weather forecasting to be more unreliable,” she said.
It’s unclear if the current administration will follow the will of Congress and implement the budget as it’s written, Badgett said, though it includes directives that require federal agencies to receive approval from the House and Senate Appropriations Committees if they significantly change staffing or how the money is spent.
“I personally have concerns,” she said. “But I’m glad to see there are various guardrails to safeguard the agencies and our public lands and the folks who work hard to do the work at the agencies.”
In addition, Malcom said, most environmental agencies were already chronically underfunded. An agency like the US Fish and Wildlife Service, for example, only receives a fraction of the money that’s needed to recover threatened and endangered species. And that’s been the case for years. When agencies are underfunded and under resourced, he said, the public lands and water they oversee will continue to suffer along with the critical research done to prepare people for climate change.
In other words, the budget is, he said, “not as bad as it could be, but it’s also not as good as it needs to be.”
Jonathan Gilmour, cofounder of The Impact Project, a data and research platform focused on the value of public service, worries that agencies won’t have the staffing after last year’s layoffs and deferred resignations to continue necessary projects. He hopes the new budget will allow them to rehire or hire new employees to fill critical roles, though whether that happens remains to be seen.
While this bill doesn’t include draconian cuts, those who live, work and recreate in the West will likely continue to notice services decline, Malcom said. “Watch for things to get worse. This is part of that long-running plan at least since the Reagan years of, ‘We’ll make services worse and then they won’t have popular support, and then it will make it easier to cut further because there’s not popular support,’” he said. “This will just be heading in that direction.”
2026-01-19 20:30:00
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Russian authorities have detained an Indigenous climate advocate, accusing her of participating in a terrorist organization in what international observers are calling “retribution” for her United Nations advocacy on behalf of Indigenous peoples.
Daria Egereva, an Indigenous Selkup woman from the city of Tomsk in western Siberia, has been involved in international advocacy at the United Nations for several years and has been a co-chair of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change since 2023—an official forum that facilitates the participation of Indigenous peoples in UN meetings and gatherings, including the annual Conference of the Parties climate change conventions. During COP30 in Brazil, Egereva advocated for the inclusion of Indigenous women in climate negotiations. “If we don’t protect women, we don’t have a future,” she said in a video published on social media on November 21.
In addition to her work at COP, Egereva advocated for better inclusion of Indigenous peoples at the United Nations and researched the effects of the green transition on Indigenous communities. “The transition to a green economy without an appropriate framework or with disregard for the rights of Indigenous peoples will continue to result in historical injustices, marginalization, discrimination, and dispossession of their lands and resources,” she wrote in a 2024 report that criticized the lack of inclusion of Indigenous peoples in the green transition.
According to the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change, on December 17, Russian authorities searched Egereva’s home, confiscated her digital devices, and arrested her, in what the organization called “a direct retaliation for her Indigenous rights advocacy,” which included her work at COP30.
“These reprisals are part of a broader pattern of repression affecting Indigenous peoples across the globe, and are an unacceptable attack on the right of Indigenous peoples to engage in the global human rights and climate change processes,” said Sineia Do Vale, who is Wapichana from Brazil and co-chairs the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change along with Egereva.
“I believe I am being persecuted for my activism.”
A 2023 UN report concluded that advocates from multiple countries have been discouraged from participating in UN processes because of fear of reprisals. In 2024, the Indigenous Peoples and Minorities Section at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reported an increase in the number of cases of reprisals, but did not publish specific numbers. More than 2,000 environmental and land defenders were killed or disappeared for their work between 2012 and 2024, nearly a third of them Indigenous, according to Global Witness.
In October, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution criticizing the Russian Federation’s designation of 55 Indigenous organizations and other groups as “extremist organizations,” and calling on the country to abide by international human rights law.
Luda Kinok, a Yupik woman from Russia who spoke to Grist as a friend of Egereva’s, said that Egereva is expected to be detained until her next court hearing on February 17, after which she could be sentenced to as long as 20 years in prison.
Kinok said Egereva was targeted in part because of her affiliation with the Aborigen Forum network, a group of Indigenous advocates that was designated as an “extremist” organization by the Russian Federation in July 2024. The forum advocated for the protection of Indigenous peoples’ rights as countries sought to develop the Arctic. Egereva was also a member of the Centre for Support of Indigenous Peoples of the North, which Russian authorities shut down in 2019.
Valentina Vyacheslavovna Sovkina, a Saami advocate based in Russia and one of 16 members of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, said through an interpreter that she was also subjected to a search by Russian authorities the same week that Egereva was arrested.
“During the search, they seized technical equipment and searched the premises, folders, books, and boxes for four hours. They compiled a report without leaving a copy and without allowing me to call a lawyer,” she said. “I believe I am being persecuted for my activism and my steadfast commitment to protecting the rights of Indigenous peoples.”
Egereva’s arrest has been decried by several Indigenous international organizations, including Cultural Survival, the SIRGE Coalition, and the International Indian Treaty Council. The IITC called the situation “a grave case of intimidation and reprisal against an Indigenous leader in direct connection with her participation in the UNFCCC process,” referring to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The Basmanny District Court of Russia and the United Nations did not respond to messages seeking comment on Egereva’s case.
2026-01-19 06:09:10
As the Trump administration’s deportation campaign continues to bring fear and upheaval to Minneapolis, more immigrants are sharing their stories of detainment and harsh treatment when being apprehended at their homes, while driving, and at work. Tensions continue to rise as federal immigration agents target people who they claim are in the country without legal status, as well as protestors filling the streets to demand accountability for Homeland Security’s often violent tactics, including ICE agent Jonathan Ross’ killing of Renée Good in her car.
This week, according to reporting from the Minnesota Star Tribune, federal agents detained three workers from a family-owned Mexican restaurant hours after the agents themselves dined at the establishment. The agents reportedly followed the workers after the workers closed up for the night and took them into custody. That was not the first time ICE agents have gone to a local business as customers before arresting someone who works there.
“They took trophy pictures with their personal phones,” a man detained by ICE says.
During a Saturday press conference, a recently released man described a different form of callousness by ICE. Garrison Gibson, 38, said that agents showed up to his house multiple times, eventually smashing open the door with a battering ram. After armed agents took him from his home Gibson says, they reveled in his detainment.
“They took trophy pictures with their personal phones,” he said, adding, “like one stood by me on the right side of me. One stood on the left side of me. And they went, like, thumbs up and took pictures with their personal phones.”
According to reporting from Minnesota Public Radio, the federal agents “did not let Gibson change into warm clothing or put on a coat before taking him out into the 16-degree winter air.” Gibson was sent to El Paso, Texas, before being returned to Minnesota, due to a federal judge’s intervention.
He made it back home just in time for his daughter’s birthday, but Gibson is still fighting the government’s efforts to deport him to Liberia, “a country he hasn’t visited since he fled a civil war there when he was 6 years old,” reported MPR.
Another troubling account comes from a husband and wife who were pulled over by federal agents while on the way to the hospital. According to reporting from Sahan Journal, Bonfilia Sanchez Dominguez was experiencing back pain and was being driven to the emergency room by her husband, Liborio Parral Ortiz, when ICE agents stopped the car. The couple’s daughter, who says she was on the phone with Ortiz during the interaction, said that ICE “started opening their doors and pulling them. They were not asking them any questions, they just started grabbing them.”
Ortiz was taken into custody and quickly sent to El Paso, Texas, according to the family and ICE’s detainee locator system. According to the daughter, ICE agents and hospital staff have been restricting access to her mother at the hospital, even turning away the family’s pastor and lawyer.
“They were just racially profiled and picked up and kidnapped without a destination,” the daughter told Sahan Journal.
2026-01-19 04:12:14
In an interview on Fox News Sunday, US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Shannon Bream that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is not, nor are they planning to, investigate Jonathan Ross—the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot and killed Renée Nicole Good in her car in Minneapolis earlier this month.
“We don’t just go out and investigate every time an officer is forced to defend himself against somebody or putting his life in danger,” said Blanche, formerly President Donald Trump’s personal attorney. The Trump administration began asserting immediately after the killing that Good was a “rioter” who committed an “act of domestic terrorism,” continuing a long pattern of responding to deadly tragedies by making baseless and false claims.
“We investigate when it’s appropriate to investigate and that is not the case here, it wasn’t the case when it happened, and it’s not the case today,” Blanche insisted. “If circumstances change, and there’s something that we do need to investigate around that shooting or any other shooting, we will,” he said, adding, “but we are not going to bow to pressure from the media, bow to pressure from politicians.”
Blanche used a remarkable rationale. He said the FBI didn’t need to investigate, in part, because “what happened on that day has been reviewed by millions of Americans because it was recorded on phones when it happened.”
Such footage appears in video investigations, including from the New York Times and Bellingcat, that undercut the administration’s message that Ross was acting in self-defense. The Times found that “the visual evidence shows no indication that the agent who fired the shots, Jonathan Ross, had been run over” and “also establishes how Mr. Ross put himself in a dangerous position near her vehicle in the first place.” As Mother Jones reported last week, many Americans do not buy the Trump party line about what eyewitness videos show.
While the Department of Justice and FBI decline to investigate Ross, they have reportedly been investigating Good’s wife, Becca Good, as well as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. And they also shut out state and local law enforcement:The day after Ross killed Good, Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension announced that the US attorney’s office was preventing it from participating in any investigation.
The Trump administration’s investigation into Good’s family—and lack thereof into the shooter—prompted the resignation of several federal prosecutors in Minnesota, with more poised to resign soon, according to reporting from my colleague Samantha Michaels.
On Friday, the DOJ announced it is investigating Gov. Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey, alleging that they are conspiring to impede federal immigration agents.
“This is an obvious attempt to intimidate me for standing up for Minneapolis, our local law enforcement, and our residents against the chaos and danger this Administration has brought to our streets,” Frey said in a statement to CBS News. “I will not be intimidated. My focus will remain where it’s always been: keeping our city safe.”
Days earlier, Blanche had accused the two men of “terrorism.”
“Minnesota insurrection is a direct result of a FAILED governor and a TERRIBLE mayor encouraging violence against law enforcement. It’s disgusting,” he wrote on X on Wednesday. “Walz and Frey – I’m focused on stopping YOU from your terrorism by whatever means necessary. This is not a threat. It’s a promise.”
On Friday, Walz responded to the DOJ probes into him and Frey: “Weaponizing the justice system against your opponents is an authoritarian tactic.”
“The only person not being investigated for the shooting of Renee Good,” Walz continued, “is the federal agent who shot her.”
2026-01-18 21:00:00
This story was originally published by Yale e360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Maurice Manishimwe runs a small garage beside a fuel station in Musango village, just outside the Rwandan capital of Kigali, in a nation known as the land of a thousand hills. Sandwiched between one of those hills and the Nyabugogo River, his workshop hums with activity as people arrive with cars and equipment to be tested and repaired.
But this busy location comes at a cost: When rainstorms hit, water running off the hillsides and rising river levels flood the streets and spill into Manishimwe’s workplace. “Our shops were submerged and our goods were destroyed,” says the 30-year-old, speaking about a December 2023 storm that surrounded his garage with knee-high water. He says the flood cost him thousands of dollars in lost inventory and tools.
Manishimwe built a higher step into his workshop to protect his brake pads and taillights, laid new tiles, and replaced his wooden shelves. Still, he worries that heavy rains could once again wreck his shop.
“The project represents a rare, citywide effort to rebuild nature-based infrastructure.
Kigali, a city of 1.7 million, has historically seen an average of nearly 40 inches of rain a year. But rainy seasons in Rwanda are becoming both “shorter and more intense,” according to the Rwanda Environment Management Authority (REMA). Since 2017, East Africa’s spring rains have shown record-breaking extremes as warmer air and ocean surfaces load storms with more moisture.
Forty years ago, Kigali was protected from stormwaters by extensive wetlands at the base of its many hills. The wetlands soaked up rain, slowed floods, and filtered runoff. But decades of degradation, including informal agriculture, sand mining, and industrial dumping in these areas have reduced the wetlands’ ability to perform these essential ecological functions.
Rapid urban growth has placed additional pressure on the wetlands. The city’s population has risen by 4 percent each year since 2020, and open space continues to be replaced with impermeable concrete, which sends ever more runoff downhill. The flooding erodes soil, destroys buildings and infrastructure, and causes tens of millions of dollars’ worth of damage a year, according to Teddy Kaberuka, a Rwandan economist.
Eager to protect its citizens and property, create green space for communities and wildlife, and curb financial losses, Kigali began working nearly a decade ago to restore its natural defenses. In just a three-year period, the city converted a degraded swamp into a functioning wetland—featuring a series of ponds, a riverine forest, and a savanna—that stores carbon, controls floods, filters pollutants, and enhances biodiversity. Building on that success, the city is now reforesting hillsides and restoring an integrated wetland system that will eventually span more than 18,000 acres. The ambitious project will ultimately reshape one of Africa’s fastest growing capitals.
As wetland loss accelerates worldwide, few cities have the space, resources, or political will to restore nature at this scale. Kigali’s project cannot stop floods on its own or reverse climate change, but it represents a rare, citywide effort to rebuild nature-based infrastructure—offering one of the continent’s clearest models for urban areas seeking to boost their resilience.
Kigali sits within what was once an exceptionally soggy and verdant landscape, with 37 interconnected wetlands covering almost 23,000 acres, or 12.5 percent of the city’s land mass. These weren’t small urban ponds with patches of swampland but broad, saturated expanses teeming with vegetation that supported birds, reptiles, amphibians, and small mammals.
The city’s wetlands functioned as a vast natural sponge, soaking up excess water, reducing flooding, trapping sediment, and filtering pollutants before they reached streams and rivers. Wetlands also cool surrounding neighborhoods through moisture release and shading and, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency, support a diverse array of wildlife in their reedbeds and grasslands, and store carbon in their soils and vegetation.
But in Kigali, explained Gloriose Umuziranenge, a senior lecturer in the Department of Urban and Environmental Management at Protestant University Rwanda, urban expansion—including the construction of new roads, housing estates, commercial developments, and hillside settlements—as well as the pasturing of livestock and dumping of waste gradually degraded the city’s wetlands.
At least 50 percent of Kigali’s wetlands have lost their ecological character, according to the World Bank, meaning these wetlands have lost their “capacity to absorb and store excess rainwater,” Umuziranenge said. This local trend reflects a global pattern: about 22 percent of the world’s wetlands, around 1 billion acres, have been lost since 1970, and 25 percent of the remainder are degraded.
Eastern Kigali’s Nyandungu wetland is a case in point. The formerly lush area had been despoiled by decades of sand mining, stony quarrying, and cattle grazing. It frequently flooded the nearby roadway, jamming up traffic and endangering lives. In response, REMA—with support from the World Bank, Global Environment Facility, and Rwanda Green Fund—began in 2016 to transform this wasteland, at a cost of $5 million, into a biologically productive landscape.
Today, the 400-acre Nyandungu Eco-Park is alive with marshes, ponds, and more than 200 species of birds. “From the time [the wetland] was restored,” said park manager Ildephonse Kambogo, “there was no more flooding.”
The success of the Nyandungu pilot project reshaped national thinking about other wetlands, said Richard Mind’je, an environmental studies lecturer at the University of Lay Adventists of Kigali. “After having this benefit, Rwanda said, ‘Why can’t we now restore other wetlands from Kigali so that we can keep benefiting from these services?’”
Today, cranes and diggers are working amid the bustle of Kigali’s streets— crowded with buses, moto taxis, shops, and homes—to restore and reshape five more degraded wetlands, covering 1,200 acres. Hundreds of workers are reshaping the land, creating islands, lakes, and ponds, clearing water channels, planting indigenous species, removing invasives, and establishing reed beds.
“If you’re deforesting the catchment, no amount of wetland is going to make much difference.”
By mid-2026, according to the city’s restoration blueprint, the restored sites—Gikondo, Rwamperu, Kibumba, Nyabugogo, and Rugenge-Rwintare—will link up, forming a continuous ribbon of wildlife corridors, parks that contain 36 miles of walkways and bike lanes, and wetlands that guide stormwater safely downstream. With wetlands under threat across the continent, the project has the potential to serve as a model for other African cities, said Julie Mulonga, East Africa director for Wetlands International. Its design, financing, and community engagement are all elements “that can be replicated,” she said.
Yet challenges remain as Kigali expands. The city must balance new green spaces for flood protection and climate resilience with residents’ need for agricultural land. Many of the areas now set aside for restoration have been used informally for generations—to grow food, graze cattle, and fish. According to a 2019 report by the Albertine Rift Conservation Society, 53 percent of Rwanda’s wetlands had, by 2015, been converted to agriculture. The land is government-owned, and its use has, so far, been tolerated, as these wetlands are clearly spaces that people have come to depend on.
The Kigali Master Plan 2050 aims to restore and protect 18,000 acres of wetlands that thread between the city’s hills, said Emma Claudine Ntirenganya, a spokesperson for the City of Kigali, but more than 14,000 farming households could lose access to these areas if the city’s restoration ambitions proceed as planned. Nyandungu, for example, no longer allows agricultural activity, its grounds are fenced, and entry now requires a fee.
Park manager Kambogo acknowledged that informal use has continued in Nyandungu, including illegal fishing and collecting grass for cattle. He said some breaches, such as fence cutting, incurred fines and that it was important to engage with and educate the local community until they “understand the importance of having the wetlands.”
Emphasizing conservation and tourism over agriculture, said Alan Dixon, a professor of sustainable development at the University of Worcester, in the UK, risks creating “spaces of exclusion.” Ultimately, he said, “people have just got to feed themselves. Everywhere else is drying up, the weather is becoming less predictable, so wetlands are the last place in the catchment that people can [use].” The dilemma for governments, planners, and conservationists, he added, is “how do you allow people to use these areas while also retaining the environmental integrity?”
Christian Benimana, a Rwandan architect and the founding director of the African Design Centre, emphasized the importance of monitoring social impacts as Kigali restores its wetlands. So far, among the six wetlands restored to date, he said, displacement hasn’t yet occurred, “but it’s something that might happen.” Gentrification is also a concern. “Before, you were living close to makeshift car shops, and all of a sudden it’s a beautiful park,” he said. “Is it bad that it makes these people’s property more valuable? I don’t think so. Is it bad if it leads to some form of negative gentrification? I think so.”
For some residents, relocating from the wetlands has been a relief rather than a loss. Athanase Segatsinzi, 60, head of Runyonza Village in Nyandungu, spent decades farming and grazing cattle in the flood-prone area.
“When heavy rains came, the wetland overflowed and destroyed our crops,” he recalled. “Even after the water receded, everything was ruined.” In 2019, he says, farmers and herders using the wetland were resettled in Rwanda’s Eastern Province, where the government gave his family 15 acres to farm. “Milk production increased because my cows now graze on a much larger area without the risk of losing pasture to floods,” he said.
But wetlands alone cannot protect the capital from flooding as temperatures rise, rainfall intensifies, and deforestation of the city’s slopes compounds the city’s challenges. “If you’re deforesting the catchment,” Dixon said, “no amount of wetland is going to make much difference.”
In response, the City of Kigali last year launched a community campaign that aims to plant 3 million trees over five years, creating a continuous network of forest that links the restored wetlands.
Gatsata Hill, the steep slope that channels torrents of water into Maurice Manishimwe’s workplace, is currently being reforested, and the wetland in front of his garage is being restored. Together, these interventions will create a buffer that fills him with optimism.
“Once the reforestation is complete and the trees take root, the water that used to rush downhill will slow,” he said. “And when the Nyabugogo wetland restoration is finished, the flooding problem will be solved for good.”
