Failed rains and a dire El Niño threaten the waterway that sustains the country, with farmers selling cattle to survive

The cattle should be ambling, grazing contentedly, through Robert Delgado’s fields. Instead, the animals slump in the shade, tongues lolling, in futile attempts to avoid the blistering heat. Soon it will matter little whether their appetite returns, for there will be no grass left to graze.

In Azuero, an agricultural region in Panama’s Arco Seco (Dry Arc), the summer is generally relentless and unforgiving. But this year, the crucial rainy season that precedes it – typically from May to December – has brought little rain to parched fields. The watering holes, streams and rivers that farmers rely on have not been replenished, and pastures – the vital source of animal feed during the dry months – have not regenerated themselves.

As civil war has left their country in ruins, many young Sudanese have turned to artisanal mining. An airstrike on a mine last week killed more than 100 and has provoked anger against Egypt, seen as the most likely suspect

Torches still fixed on their heads but tools cast aside, the Sudanese goldminers of the North Valley had already mounted an impromptu rescue operation by the time Ammar* arrived at the site of a suspected Egyptian airstrike.

At least 114 were killed, according to the Sudanese rights group Emergency Lawyers, in the strike on Saturday 10 October on an artisanal goldmine brimming with young Sudanese trying to eke out a living in a country where the economy has been shattered by three years of war.

The country’s far-right president is courting billionaire investors by removing a block on foreign ownership of land and natural resources

On 19 September, Marta Sahores, an 84-year-old chemistry professor and activist who has mobilised against mega-mining projects for more than two decades, took to the streets in Argentina. Alongside workers, retirees, students, Indigenous groups and human rights organisations, Sahores was there to protest against the country’s far-right president, Javier Milei. During the marcha de la bronca – the “march of anger” – protesters held signs reading, among other rallying cries, “The land is not for sale”.

Marching in Esquel, a town nestled in the foothills of the Andes in Chubut province, she also held up a sign defending the country’s water resources against what she called the government’s “handover” to investors.

Congolese photographer Pamela Tulizo uses costume and vivid scenery to celebrate women’s strength and give a new perspective on slavery

Pamela Tulizo’s latest series of photographs started with a question. “I asked myself, why are women in my community in particular, and African women in general, so strong?” says Tulizo, an artist and photographer from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “Where does this strength come from?”

Growing up in Goma in eastern DRC, Tulizo was informed and inspired by the women she was surrounded by, including her mother, her sisters, her mother’s friends and her neighbours.

Women are placed at the centre of the series of 23 staged photographs

As gold prices surge, illegal mining has laid waste to swathes of Tambopata National Reserve’s rainforest

“Halt, stop right there,” shouts a Peruvian Navy Seal, firing warning shots into the air. But the fleeing man pays no attention, scrambling up to the rim of a football pitch-sized crater and disappearing into the dense rainforest as the commandos give chase, swearing and shooting.

Meanwhile, other marines set dynamite charges on a makeshift wooden raft that floats in the crater, which is essentially an enormous pit of opaque, stagnant water. The raft has a diesel-fuelled suction pump motor with thick plastic tubing used to suck up and sift through river sediment for tiny particles of gold.

A fossil gas boom that lifted millions out of poverty has collapsed and inflation is rising – but not everyone believes selling gold and soya is the answer

Once hailed as the “energy heart of South America”, Bolivia’s economy was buoyed up by a fossil gas boom from 2006 to 2014. At its height, then-president Evo Morales commissioned a gleaming presidential skyscraper and installed the world’s longest urban cable car network in La Paz, the seat of government.

Flush with cash, the country grew its GDP, expanded social programmes and halved poverty rates. But then commodity prices plummeted and gas reserves started to dry up, bringing Bolivia’s “economic miracle” crashing down. Inflation – once the region’s lowest – has soared.

After losing much of its forests in recent decades, the country’s people have led the way in planting saplings across the country as part of the government’s Green Legacy Initiative

When Halima Kedir first began planting trees, she was met with scepticism and even mockery. “My neighbours discouraged me,” she recalls, sitting on a wooden chair in her garden, which is lush with the trees and fruits she has planted – banana, olive and grevillea among them.

“They thought I was striving for nothing, but with time, many are realising that trees can be part of the solution to our problems as a way to fight climate change and food insecurity,” she says.

Centuries-old wells restored to provide drinking water as parts of the country head towards “day zero” when no water will be available

A loud cheer and sounds of clapping reverberated around Bansilalpet, a neighbourhood in Hyderabad, when the first trickle of clean water dribbled out of the ground. After an 18-month effort to clear out 3,000 tonnes of rubbish and restore the stone walls and adjacent area, the 17th-century Bansilalpet stepwell had become a source of clean drinking water for the first time in four decades.

“It was such a joyous moment to see water collecting into the stepwell after clearing 40 years of garbage,” says Hajira Adeeb, a 45-year-old resident of Bansilalpet, who grew up seeing the well become transformed from the community’s water source to a dumping ground. “I visit almost every day. The area is clean and lit up in the evenings. I enjoy sitting there.”