DEDURU OYA, Sri Lanka – On April 16, eight members of Priyantha Kumara’s family including his wife, son, brother, father-in-law, and four other relatives were swept away by strong currents in the Deduru Oya, a river in Sri Lanka’s North Western province. Sri Lanka Police reported more than 30 drowning deaths between April 12 and 21 this year, underscoring the risks posed by flooding rivers. Sri Lanka Police media spokesperson Udaya Kumara Wootler told Mongabay that 376 individuals have died due to drowning in rivers last year while 595 fatalities were reported in 2024. Buddhika Sampath, spokesperson for the Sri Lanka Navy told Mongabay that the Navy Diving Unit recovered 148 bodies of people between May 2022 and May 2023. While the police are yet to disclose official statistics of deaths due to drowning from January to May 2026, the number of reported incidents show over 50 fatalities. Kumara is a resident of Gopallawa in the northwestern district of Kurunegala. His son had requested that they all go for a bath in the river. The group had been bathing at a popular spot named Kuriyagas Mankada when they met the tragedy. “My son was only 13 years old, and he was a bright student,” Kumara told Mongabay. “My brother was about to hold a housewarming ceremony at his newly built house. But all these dreams were shattered within seconds. My father used to take us to this same spot to bathe when we were young. But the river has changed…This article was originally published on Mongabay

BANGKOK — More than 600 residents of Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai provinces embarked May 31 on a roughly 68-kilometer, six-day ‘peace walk’ to demand the Thai government take action on the river pollution crisis that has seen Thai rivers polluted with heavy metals. The ensemble of affected residents, civil society groups, monks and students marched from Tha Ton subdistrict in Chiang Mai to the city of Chiang Rai in northern Thailand, reaching their destination on June 5, World Environment Day. For more than a year, Thailand’s Pollution Control Department has reported dangerous levels of arsenic, mercury, cadmium and other heavy metals in rivers across northern Thailand, with mining operations across eastern Myanmar suspected to be responsible for the pollution. “We are walking because our rivers are slowly dying,” Pianporn Deetes, executive director of the Rivers and Rights Foundation, which helped to organize the peace walk, told Mongabay by phone. “Toxic contamination from unregulated mining upstream is already affecting water, fish, food, livelihoods, and public health. We do not want to wait until more people become sick. This is an emergency.” Pianporn said the walk (42 miles) was about taking collective action to share information, document impacts and build public pressure in a bid to force the government to address the issue, which Pianporn said has, so far, been lacking. “Monitoring has improved, but action has not matched the scale of the crisis,” she said. “We need urgent diplomatic engagement with neighboring countries, stronger health monitoring, transparency, and action to…This article was originally published on Mongabay