Along with environmental strategies from the Americas to North Africa, we highlight legal advances in India and the United Kingdom that help correct errors of the past.

1. United States

New Orleans residents are banding together to build green infrastructure, preventing flooding before storms hit. Chronic flooding has long been a problem across the Gulf South, and climate change is making matters worse. Experts say New Orleans’ public infrastructure, including its levee system, isn’t enough to keep flooding at bay. That’s why the nonprofit Water Wise Gulf South is helping communities in marginalized areas design and build alternatives to traditional “gray” infrastructure, using a water management approach that protects, restores, or mimics the water cycle in nature.

So far, over 500 residents have taken part in workshops to learn how to implement do-it-yourself projects at home, and many of them have participated in “Visioning Workshops” to plan community infrastructure. In the 7th Ward, residents have installed 25 rain barrels, eight French drains, seven rain gardens, and two permeable parking pads, and planted more than 500 trees. Last fall, they began work on their first bioswale, a vegetated stormwater runoff system that captures and filters water. “Government is slow and we can’t wait for government to catch up to us,” says 7th Ward resident Angela Chalk, who helped install the bioswale. “All of us in these communities realize we have to get this right and that climate change is not waiting. We can’t wait.”
Next City

2. Mexico

The tequila splitfin – once declared extinct – has been reintroduced in the wild. The orange-tailed fish, which fits in the palm of a hand, was nicknamed “little rooster” before it disappeared from the Teuchitlán River in central-western Mexico in the 1990s, likely due to pollution, poaching, and the construction of a dam.

In 1998, Chester Zoo in England offered Michoacana University of Mexico five pairs of the splitfins from collectors’ aquariums, whose offspring scientists cared for over the next 15 years. Following a promising test in large artificial ponds, scientists released 1,500 of the fish into the river – first in floating cages, then in the open. Now, the population continues to expand.

Researchers employed a local education campaign including puppetry, games, and facts such as the fish’s efficiency in keeping dengue-carrying mosquitoes under control. Residents, many of them children, are calling themselves “river guardians” and helping keep the river clean. “We couldn’t have done this without the local people – they’re the ones doing the long-term conservation,” said Professor Omar Dominguez from Michoacana University. The project is a 2018 International Union for Conservation of Nature case study in successful reintroductions.
BBC, The Associated Press