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Americas Editorial, Sep 24 (EFE).- The Latin American river waters that run through the region's vastness supplying life to communities are distant cousins and rarely meet. However, they share the threats that have in check the area with more freshwater worldwide, such as illegal mining, pollution, and urbanization.
This Sunday is World Rivers Day, and although Latin America has about 31% of the world's water sources, with such essential river arteries as Amazon, Orinoco, Río de la Plata, and Magdalena, human activities pollute, modify, and hinder the water.
Effects on human health, alteration of ecological functions, reduction of biological diversity, and damage to aquatic habitats are some of the consequences of water pollution.
Illegal mining and mercury
The Amazon, the most extensive river in the world at 6,997 kilometers (4347.7 miles), is Brazil's main waterway.
Although it rises in Peru and passes through Colombia, its course prevails in the Brazilian Amazon, where it is an essential source of life: some 50 million people depend on its waters, including more than half of the country's indigenous people (some 890,000, according to the 2022 census).
According to Rodrigo Leão de Moura, a biologist and professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), mercury contamination caused by illegal...