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A federal appeals court has used a decades-long water crisis in one of the Blackest cities in America to rule that the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee Americans the right to clean and safe drinking water.

The September 4 ruling came even after Jackson, Mississippi, residents alleged officials knew the water was contaminated and assured the public it was safe. To this point, the appellate court also ruled that the Constitution does not offer citizens the “right to truthful information from officials during a public health crisis.”

The ruling signals that Black residents may face the most serious consequences of unsafe or failing water systems while having limited ability to seek a remedy through the Constitution. At the same time, the federal Environmental Protection Agency has already determined that the city could not receive support through the Civil Rights Act of 1965.

What is happening in Jackson matters because federal data shows Black communities are more likely than white communities to be served by water systems with health-based Safe Drinking Water Act violations. Research has also found that systems in communities with larger Black populations take much longer to be fixed or improved. 

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“Jackson residents did everything this country tells poor people to do. They organized, they testified, they boiled their water, they filed suit, they trusted the courts. And at every step the answer has been no,” said Danyelle Holmes, a senior national organizer with Mississippi’s Poor People’s Campaign.

Jackson is more than 80 percent Black and has a poverty rate that is more than double the national average.

“What it signals is that the law has told a majority-Black capital city that its suffering is real but its remedy does not exist,” Holmes added.

How did the court come to this decision? 

The lawsuit that spurred the federal appeals court ruling was first brought by Jackson residents who alleged that city officials knowingly allowed lead-contaminated water to reach their homes and then misled the public about whether it was safe to drink. The suit also alleged that state authorities violated civil rights law by repeatedly sending federal money earmarked for drinking water safety to white communities rather than Jackson.

The plaintiffs sued Jackson and former Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba in 2022, arguing that the city’s actions violated their constitutional right to bodily integrity under the 14th Amendment. They sought damages and changes to how the city manages and communicates about its water system.

“Nearly all of the residents of Jackson have watched brackish, dirty, impure, and undrinkable water trickle from their taps. At times, some have had no water at all,” Jackson residents said in 2022. 

In the September 4 ruling, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of the case. Judge Kurt Engelhardt wrote that while access to safe water is “important,” it is not a right “deeply rooted in our Nation’s history and tradition,” the standard the court used to decide whether it is protected by the Constitution.

Jackson residents also argued that the alleged false assurances by officials about the water violated their right to make informed decisions about their health. Engelhardt rejected that claim, writing that “lying about the presence of lead in the water is a far cry from the state’s physically extracting evidence from a criminal suspect or conducting an invasive medical procedure without consent.” 

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Engelhardt acknowledged the alleged harm, but wrote: “The Constitution does not provide redress for every governmental wrongdoing.” 

Judge Catharina Haynes dissented in part, arguing that the residents had plausibly alleged that Jackson violated their right to bodily integrity by knowingly placing them in danger.

“They did not say the water was safe. They said even if everything the residents alleged is true, the Constitution owes them nothing,” Holmes said about the ruling.

In response to the ruling, John Horhn, Jackson’s mayor, said in a statement: “We are pleased that the Fifth Circuit upheld the dismissal of these claims. The City remains committed to the health, safety, and well-being of every Jackson resident.”

What exactly is wrong with Jackson’s water? 

As Capital B has documented, Jackson’s water crisis has plagued the city long before it made national headlines in 2021. Residents like Brooke Floyd, who as a child watched her grandmother complain about the water decades ago, have said that the water contamination has impacted their families for generations. 

“I do think the ruling would’ve been different if the majority of our city looked different, was in a different tax bracket, and had a different ZIP code, but alas, we probably wouldn’t have had the problems to begin with,” Floyd told Capital B after the ruling. “The problem the rest of America needs to worry about is, while they were making sure not to guarantee me my rights, they were quietly taking yours, too.”

Others, like Gwendolyn Reed-Davis, have spent years driving long distances to family members’ homes to wash clothes and bathe. 

Reed-Davis attributes her school-age children’s learning problems and her kidney infection to decades of exposure to the city’s contaminated water. Dozens of studies have shown that lead exposure leads to cognitive impairment for life, even decades after initial exposure. And the biggest factor for lead poisoning in America is race, namely being Black, even more so than poverty.

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Time and time again, Floyd said, Jackson has been left to fend for itself and had its issues downplayed by government bodies. 

“Isn’t that how it goes? The oppressor telling the oppressed that they haven’t been discriminated against,” she told Capital B in 2024.

The failures are the result of decades of deferred maintenance, aging treatment equipment, leaking and breaking water mains, staffing shortages, and a shrinking revenue base that left the city unable to keep pace with needed repairs. 

The EPA warned in a March 2020 emergency order that conditions in Jackson’s system presented an “imminent and substantial endangerment” to residents, citing problems with treatment and distribution infrastructure. Then, in February 2021, severe winter weather froze equipment and ruptured lines, leaving tens of thousands of residents without running water for weeks. A year later, flooding and failures at the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant triggered another citywide emergency, prompting federal intervention and the appointment of a third-party manager to rebuild the system.

As the city attempts to strengthen its water system, residents are increasingly being asked to finance the improvements. JXN Water, the federally appointed manager overseeing the city’s water and sewer system, says it has improved operations and brought in more revenue, but the utility remains under federal oversight. 

In March, a court-approved rate increase of about 12 percent raised the average residential water-and-sewer bill by roughly $8.88 a month, to about $88. JXN Water’s financial plan now proposes an added 10 percent increase in spring 2027, followed by proposed hikes of 9 percent in 2028 and 8 percent in 2029. That adds up for a city with so many residents living in poverty. 

“We are organizing, we are marching to the polls, and we are not waiting on a court to tell us our lives are worth clean water,” Holmes said in response to the cascading rulings and water issues. “As the Poor People’s Campaign teaches us, this is not about left and right. It is about right and wrong, and everybody knows which one Jackson has received.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Federal court rules there is no constitutional right to safe drinking water on Sep 19, 2026.

Iran has experienced multiple crises over the past few years, including economic challenges and war. So far, however, these have not appeared to affect one of the most practical initiatives developed by local conservation leaders in northern Iran: Gavbangi.

In Farsi Gavbangi refers to the call of the maral (also known as Caspian red deer, Cervus elaphus maral), who live in the green mountains in northern Iran from early September to early October. Maral habitat in Iran spans forests from the Azerbaijan-Iran borderland in the northwest to Golestan National Park in the east.

In autumn the forests in the north display beautiful, colorful leaves, and local people commonly hear a sound like a cow that they call Gav (cow) bangi (call). It is both inspiring and reassuring to hear the charismatic calls of deer echoing through the forests, a reminder of a functioning ecosystem. As a former conservation volunteer in Iran and a current Ph.D. student in natural resources at the University of Vermont, I experienced Gavbangi in northern Iran’s protected areas. During that time I witnessed firsthand the vital role of community collaboration in maral’s conservation.

I have also seen the importance of this collaboration: Poachers know this is the ideal time to find deer, specifically males.

A herd of maral in Kiasar National Park, Iran. Photograph by Hamed Tizrooyan. Used with permission.

Maral are a protected species in Iran, but according to the Iranian Department of Environment they face two main threats: habitat loss and poaching. During Gavbangi volunteer conservationists collaborate with rangers and protected area managers to address both threats in protected areas and potential habitats.

Volunteers stay in scheduled locations across the habitat, listening to deer calls and ensuring that poachers do not take advantage of this vulnerable period. Volunteers are divided into small groups assigned to remote areas that are difficult to monitor with a small number of rangers. Their visible presence alone acts as an obstacle, discouraging poachers from entering.

These days economic pressure may be driving an increase in poaching, although there is no reliable data. Human development like expanding road networks also makes these efforts more critical than ever.

A male Maral pictured by Hamed Tizrooyan at Kiasar National Park, Iran, Photo by: Hamed Tizrooyan. Used with permission.

Social media and wildlife photography have played a significant role in promoting awareness of species and habitat protection in Iran. Many young volunteers became interested in conservation activities by seeing the beauty of nature and its residents.

The most interesting social aspect of Gavbangi is how volunteers gather. In my experience social media, activists, and the role of wildlife photographers are crucial, as they showcase the beauty of nature and its diverse forms. These individuals typically work closely with rangers to manage volunteers and identify the best locations. This is an excellent example of collaboration between the public sector and volunteer conservationists, which began around 15 years ago.

A group of volunteers at Gavbbangi, Kiasar National Park, Iran, 2025, Photo by Amirhossein Gohardehi (used with permission)

Many experts say it’s necessary to see interested individuals as an opportunity to preserve biodiversity. The main advantage of these activities is that they involve more people in conservation, which could lead to more effective conservation of the red deer.

There is an ongoing debate among conservationists about whether participation in Gavbangi should remain purely voluntary or be integrated into ecotourism programs, where participants pay to join. Although hosting a tour can bring money to the area and invest it in conservation, it can attract irresponsible individuals and increase the human population, which can negatively affect the project’s goal and compromise the area’s safety.

To me another aspect of Gavbangi is that it provides amateur volunteers with the opportunity to explore the ecosystem in the wild, which could be an excellent driver for enhancing conservation.

As a former volunteer turned professional conservationist, I feel it essential that volunteer initiatives like Gavbangi be closely monitored as they grow to ensure they stay on the right path, especially in engaging younger generations in protecting the Maral during its most vulnerable period. To achieve this, it would be beneficial if local conservation groups collaborate with conservation experts to train the volunteers. And Gavbangi leaders can benefit greatly from engaging local residents on conservation efforts.

Based on my conversations with several experts involved in Gavbangi, Iran’s ongoing challenges have not had a direct impact on the event so far. However, conservationists in the country are under considerable pressure, and we may see the effects of these crises in the next Gavbangi event.

It is our collective responsibility to ensure that future generations can still hear the haunting call of the deer echoing through the northern forests of Iran.

References:

Hadi Pourmosa, S. M. G. (2024). Habitat suitability modeling of the Caspian Red Deer (Cervus elaphus maral) in the central zone of the Hyrcanian region: Identification of priority conservation areas. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.13823908

Kiabi, B. H., Ali Ghaemi, R., Jahanshahi, M., & Sassani, A. (2004). Population status, biology and ecology of the Maral, Cervus elaphus maral , in Golestan National Park, Iran. Zoology in the Middle East, 33(1), 125–138. https://doi.org/10.1080/09397140.2004.10638071

Kolahi, M., Sakai, T., Moriya, K., Yoshikawa, M., & Esmaili, R. (2014). From paper parks to real conservations: Case study of social capital in Iran’s biodiversity conservation. https://www.sid.ir/en/VEWSSID/J_pdf/108220140111.pdf

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Previously in The Revelator:

Incredible Journeys: How Hoofing It Helps Deer and Caribou

The post Gavbangi: Iran’s Long-Running Conservation Effort Relies on Volunteers — and Turns Them Into Habitat Protectors appeared first on The Revelator.

Türkiye and Australia risk losing their credibility as hosts of this year’s COP31 UN climate summit if they keep betting on fossil fuels at home, climate policy experts have warned. 

As governments are expected to continue fraught talks over how to advance the global transition away from oil, coal and gas in Antalya this November, both of the co-host countries are pursuing fossil fuel expansion at home, without a national timeline to phase out their use.

Türkiye has accelerated its rollout of wind and solar energy in recent years. But that progress has yet to make a dent in the country’s dependence on fossil fuels for power, as demand growth has outpaced the renewables build-out, new analysis by Climate Action Tracker (CAT) has found.

The share of electricity generated by burning coal and fossil gas – 56% in 2025 – has barely changed since 2019, and total fossil fuel use in the power sector, and the emissions it produces, are still rising, according to the report released on Friday.

The Turkish government has also signalled that fossil fuels will remain a central component of its energy mix and has outlined plans to expand the country’s burgeoning domestic gas production in the Black Sea. 

‘Need to demonstrate seriousness’

Australia, which will chair the Antalya negotiations, relies on fossil fuels for over 60% of its electricity, with coal alone still supplying 45%. According to experts, it lacks an ambitious plan to shift away from fossil fuels at home, relying heavily on carbon offsetting to reach its climate targets. 

Australia is also the world’s third-largest fossil fuel exporter and has plans to expand its coal and gas production, which is backed by significant government subsidies. It recently upset climate groups by approving an extension of the Saraji open-cut coal mine in Queensland.  

Türkiye says it has “final decision” at COP31 despite Australia running negotiations

Jennifer Morgan, a senior fellow with the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and former climate envoy for Germany, said Türkiye and Australia need to demonstrate their seriousness about their COP presidency roles by leading by example on the energy transition.

“They have made progress in renewable energy,” she told reporters this week. “But I think their credibility – and their ability to therefore bring momentum and good outcomes to the COP – will depend on their taking further action at home.” 

Türkiye’s electrification homework

The co-hosts’ fossil fuel policies are being scrutinised in the run-up to the annual UN climate summit, with much riding on the signal climate diplomacy sends on the energy transition.

Türkiye has so far stopped short of putting any overt political capital behind the fossil fuel transition itself. It has instead been rallying support for a new global electrification target of 35% by 2035, seen as the centrepiece of this year’s non-negotiated Action Agenda put forward by Ankara.

Electrification emerges as COP31 priority

COP31 president Murat Kurum said last week the push to electrify economies – through measures like electric vehicles and heat pumps – will “automatically” lead to a reduction in the use of fossil fuels.

Türkiye’s own energy plan projects the country’s electrification rate would fall short on the global target and only hit 25% by 2035, according to the CAT report, which called for a “substantial step-change” in electrification policies and the deployment of more renewable power and grid infrastructure. 

Coal still dominant

CAT’s analysts also warned that, without a parallel phase-out of fossil fuels, rising electricity demand risks being met in part by coal and gas, failing to deliver the emissions reductions the electrification target is meant to achieve. 

Türkiye has had some success in its clean energy build-out: the share of electricity generation from wind and solar rose to 22% in 2025, up from 12% in 2020, according to the CAT report.

But coal’s role in Türkiye’s electricity mix has also grown, in both its share and absolute terms, over the past decade. And while reliance on fossil gas has declined overall, it still plays an important role in Ankara’s energy policy, which is pushing to boost domestic gas production in the Black Sea.

Pilot boats assist the Osman Gazi as it navigates the Bosphorus on its way to the Black Sea on May 29, 2025 in Istanbul, Turkey. The platform will dock at the Filyos Port in the Black Sea and will stay for a 20 year mission and will provide double the natural gas intake of Turkey to 20 million cubic meters per day. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images) Pilot boats assist the Osman Gazi as it navigates the Bosphorus on its way to the Black Sea on May 29, 2025 in Istanbul, Turkey. The platform will dock at the Filyos Port in the Black Sea and will stay for a 20 year mission and will provide double the natural gas intake of Turkey to 20 million cubic meters per day. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

Dr Niklas Höhne from the NewClimate Institute said the government could demonstrate leadership as COP31 president by building on its recent successes in increasing its renewable energy capacity and announcing targets and plans to phase out coal and gas ahead of the summit. 

According to CAT, Türkiye should phase out coal by 2040 and fossil gas by 2045 at the latest to align its power sector with global efforts to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5C above preindustrial times. 

Türkiye quiet on fossil fuel roadmap

Ümit Şahin, coordinator of climate change studies at the Istanbul Policy Center (IPM), said Türkiye’s strategy is to approach the fossil fuel debate exclusively from the “end-use point of view”. 

“I don’t expect any push from the Turkish presidency to the producer countries in terms of fossil fuel production,” he told reporters. 

Neither does Şahin believe the Turkish presidency will throw its political weight behind another big-ticket item for COP31: a new global roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels. 

Brazil took on the responsibility to voluntarily draft this document outside of the formal negotiations as a way to break the deadlock at last year’s UN summit in Belém when governments clashed over whether to develop one. 

The outgoing COP30 presidency will deliver the roadmap in early November – but it will be up to Türkiye and Australia to guide countries towards a decision on how the blueprint will be taken forward, either inside or outside the negotiations.

Leadership needed

Australia’s Chris Bowen, COP31’s president of negotiations, promised to lobby producing countries to deliver a “meaningful step forward” on the fossil fuel transition in an interview with The Guardian earlier this year. But he has been quiet on the role Australia sees for the fossil fuel transition roadmap. 

Natalie Jones, senior policy advisor at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), said the COP31 co-presidents “must provide clear leadership” on this process. 

“This roadmap cannot be left in a dusty drawer,” she told journalists. “Rather, it must be translated into action, with all countries identifying what elements they can adopt or develop in their own national roadmap.”

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Like Türkiye, Australia has yet to produce a national blueprint for winding down coal, gas and oil. Rather than moving toward a phase-out, state and federal governments have kept expanding fossil fuel licensing over the past year, according to a new analysis published this month by Climate Analytics. 

Under existing policy, both coal and gas are on track to remain in Australia’s power system as late as 2050 – a trajectory the report defines as incompatible with the 1.5C limit the country says it’s committed to. 

No binding end dates for the Netherlands

Analysts are watching out for national transition roadmaps as a bellwether for governments that claim to be leaders in the global shift away from fossil fuels.

The climate and environment ministers of Colombia and the Netherlands, which are co-hosting the Santa Marta conference, embrace on the podium during the high-level segment in Santa Marta, Colombia, April 28, 2026 (Photo: Colombia Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development) The climate and environment ministers of Colombia and the Netherlands, which are co-hosting the Santa Marta conference, embrace on the podium during the high-level segment in Santa Marta, Colombia, April 28, 2026 (Photo: Colombia Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development)

The Netherlands, which co-hosted the first fossil fuel transition conference in Santa Marta this year, published its own domestic roadmap earlier this week. The document followed through on a pledge that “leadership on transitioning away from fossil fuels must be backed by concrete action, not just ambitious words”, said a spokesperson for Stientje van Veldhoven, the Dutch minister for climate policy.

But experts criticised the plan for failing to set a binding end date for the country’s fossil fuel production and use. While targeting a rapid increase in renewables capacity, the Dutch government only commits to phasing out oil, gas and coal “in the energy and feedstock system to eventually zero, and to minimise fossil use” by 2050. 

Yvo de Boer, a former Dutch diplomat and executive secretary of the UN climate body, said the Dutch roadmap falls short of what’s needed to give industry the confidence to deploy capital in support of the energy transition with greater predictability. 

“Ultimately, a roadmap without deadlines is nothing more than a footpath paved with good intentions,” he added, writing on LinkedIn. 

The post Fossil fuel expansion threatens COP31 hosts’ credibility, experts warn appeared first on Climate Home News.

Despite millions of dollars in grants and technical help for African businesses to power farming and other food production activities with renewable energy, most efforts remain stuck at the early stages because they struggle to find the investors, markets and expertise they need to grow.

This was the message from a coalition of global institutions working on energy, water and agriculture at this month’s Africa Food Systems Forum in Kigali, Rwanda.

“Energy, agriculture, water and nutrition actors rarely design solutions together,” the Agri-Energy Coalition said in a Call to Action on powering food systems with clean energy.

Using more renewables – especially solar power – to drive food systems would reduce food losses, ensure year-round availability and affordability of healthy foods, and improve productivity, income and resilience among farmers, food processors and other small enterprises, the coalition added. 

In an interview with Climate Home News at the forum, Olamide Niyi-Afuye, CEO of the Africa Minigrid Developers Association (AMDA) – a body representing private-sector developers of small-scale, off-grid electricity systems across the continent – said its members are starting to recognise this interdependence and are increasingly considering businesses that combine energy with agricultural activities.

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This, Niyi-Afuye added, could lead to greater supply and use of clean power for key processes like irrigation, food processing and storage, creating new sources of revenue for both sectors. 

CHN: Conversations at the Africa Food Systems Forum highlighted how organisations working in energy and agriculture often operate in silos. What has hampered their collaboration, and how has that affected Africa’s economic development?

A: Most mini-grid companies in Africa were primarily incentivised to achieve connections. If you look at some ongoing projects, you see a cost-per-connection model [of revenue]. When a subsidy is tied to achieving a connection, regardless of whether it is a productive connection, you might not notice the problem until five years down the line, when you realise the cash flows are not what you projected.

Despite African walkout, fractious land COP ends without drought deal

So now we’re in a “come-to-Jesus moment” as an industry, where we’re righting the wrongs and adjusting our business models to make sure companies do not go bust and there is some level of sustainability over the long term.

The saying is not wrong that we’ve been working in our own silos because we’ve focused on the smaller things instead of the helicopter view. There needs to be cross-pollination [between the energy and agriculture sectors] because, if we are thinking about industrialisation, energy is a key driver of industrialisation. We will not achieve that if we’re not in the room and part of those conversations.

CHN: Productive use of energy is intended to ensure electricity access goes beyond lighting homes to improving livelihoods, creating jobs and powering equipment. But what happens when farmers cannot afford the equipment they need to do that? How can energy, agriculture and equipment players work together to make the transition more accessible?

A: That’s why we’re having conversations with companies set up to de-risk the agriculture sector. By leveraging that connection, we’re able to aggregate potential energy needs and develop instruments that make equipment more affordable through bulk procurement.

We can have arrangements that make it easier for farmers and food producers to lease equipment and eventually own it over a period. There’s no real pressure to recover the capital very quickly because you’re looking at scale.

Rice farmer Danjuma Okuwa adjusts his newly installed electric rice milling machine at his compound in Rukubi, Nasarawa, Nigeria, September 27, 2022. (Thomson Reuters Foundation/Afolabi Sotunde) Rice farmer Danjuma Okuwa adjusts his newly installed electric rice milling machine at his compound in Rukubi, Nasarawa, Nigeria, September 27, 2022. (Thomson Reuters Foundation/Afolabi Sotunde)

There is a whole lot across the agricultural value chain that needs energy, from farming and harvesting to food processing and value-addition. We need to understand the energy needs across the value chain and bring our members in to provide solutions.

Developers do not necessarily need to provide every productive-use solution themselves. They can partner with equipment suppliers, financiers, agribusinesses and other service providers to enable customers to use electricity productively. The objective is simple: do not just electrify communities; enable economic activity that uses that electricity.

CHN: When Africa’s industrialisation is discussed, you hear things like renewables cannot provide enough baseload, while some food processors are sceptical about switching to renewable energy because of these concerns about reliability. What is your response?

A: It’s not a controversial statement to say that a typical baseload is usually from the grid, and it’s usually from multiple sources including renewable energy. For large-scale operations, we can look at blending multiple sources of energy. But how do we solve the problem of a mid-sized farmer? We can solve it with a mini-grid using renewable energy.

Comment: Every country needs a model to help optimise its energy transition

If you go to a small farmer in a rural area, they don’t care about what source of energy they’re getting. They just want something that can help them get from A to B. If you look at the direct energy needs of farmers and food processors, I’m sure 90 percent of their consumption can be solved by renewable energy. Let’s start with that problem first. Then, as they scale, they might need to ramp up, and we can start talking about a bigger baseload.

CHN: How much agricultural value is lost because farmers and food businesses lack reliable, affordable electricity?

A: If you look at, for example, the fact that we need to maybe plant tomatoes or strawberries in Jos before it gets to Lagos [Nigeria], which most likely is by road, I can assure you that a good chunk, if not stored properly, would be bad by then. So the fact that we do not have energy is in itself a lost opportunity to maximise the potential of the agriculture sector. So until we’ve solved the energy problem, we will not salvage waste – and for me that is a lost opportunity. 

CHN: AGRA, an institution focused on scaling agricultural innovations to help smallholder farmers, estimates a massive shortfall between current investments in the continent’s food systems and what is actually needed to build a resilient, profitable agricultural economy – to the tune of $180 billion per year. Can integrating energy into food systems help bridge that gap?

A: Yes – if energy can help unlock the potential to earn more money, investors will follow the money. Investments go where there is certainty, and until there is certainty around cash flow and revenue, investment will be limited.

My vision is to see more Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) being signed between energy players and the agriculture sector. We can start by getting people into the room, understanding their pain points, crafting a framework and documentation that works for both parties, and then seeing deals happen.

This interview was shortened and edited for clarity.

The post How clean energy can boost business for Africa’s food producers appeared first on Climate Home News.

Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio is a senior advisor on adaptation and resilience with the United Nations Foundation and Mattias Söderberg is global climate lead at Danish NGO DanChurchAid.

Recent extreme events – from wildfires and heatwaves in Europe to flash flooding following a glacier collapse in Nepal – have shocked and devastated communities, bringing years of warnings about such climate impacts to the doorstep of communities around the world.

One thing is certain: the new climate reality is here – and the adaptation strategies designed for yesterday’s world are no longer sufficient.

Attribution science has since shown that the hotter and more frequent heatwaves we’re experiencing around the world would have been virtually impossible without today’s high concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Climate shocks are now so severe that they reverberate through supply chains, food and water systems, financial markets and the movement of people.

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They must be a catalyst for a new way of thinking about adaptation and resilience, and how we finance solutions that work. A failure to invest in adaptation in one region can create costs far beyond it, which is why the concept of shared resilience is critical for leaders to grasp.

Investment not charity

At the UN General Assembly (UNGA 81) this month, leaders have an opportunity to translate today’s urgency into concrete commitments on adaptation and loss and damage finance ahead of COP31.

Those commitments are needed to underpin global stability, shared prosperity and human security. Governments should use this moment to show what a new response looks like: finance that reaches communities faster, supports locally grounded solutions, strengthens national systems, and helps countries prepare before the next shock arrives.

If we want sustained economic growth, food and water security, and resilient and prosperous societies across every region, adaptation must be at the heart of today’s development and security agenda. It cannot be just a future planning consideration or a narrow issue for climate ministries. Adaptation is now everyone’s business – and it must be financed fast and fair.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has repeatedly framed climate finance as an investment rather than charity, warning that “a world in climate chaos cannot be a world at peace” and describing human security as freedom from the chronic and sudden disruptions that climate change multiplies.

What’s more, adaptation delivers a real return-on-investment, with researchers estimating that every dollar invested produces $10 in benefits, saving lives, protecting livelihoods, and reducing the costs of future disasters.

Hitting adaptation limits

The urgency to scale adaptation systematically is growing. The newly released “Limiting Overshoot” report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) confirms what scientists have long warned: exceeding global warming of 1.5C is now unavoidable under current policies. Yet, how high temperatures rise – and how long the world remains above the 1.5C threshold – will determine whether communities, economies and entire ecosystems can keep pace.

There are limits to adaptation. When we breach those limits, lives and livelihoods are lost, and people and ecosystems suffer greatly. We cannot simply build yesterday’s infrastructure a little stronger and assume it will be enough.

Nepal flood destruction shows “limits to adaptation”, scientists say

We need to fundamentally change the systems that determine how societies anticipate, absorb and recover from both immediate and evolving non-linear climate shocks. This includes transforming physical systems, such as infrastructure, and the governance systems that affect where and how we live to how we maintain our health and wellbeing.

Finance today is nowhere near the scale of the challenge.

The UNEP “Adaptation Gap Report 2025” estimates the shortfall in adaptation finance in developing countries at $284 billion–$339 billion a year – roughly 12 to 14 times current international public flows of around $26 billion. That gap is a development, economic and human security problem, especially for the most vulnerable populations who have contributed the least to causing the climate crisis.

Building resilience into financial systems

There are already signs of what a more systemic adaptation response could look like. Communities around the world are delivering practical solutions at local level, even as adaptation finance remains notoriously, and appallingly, difficult to access. Cyclone-resistant homes, local forecasting capacities, drought-resistant crops, heat insurance for pregnant informal workers and mangrove restoration are rooted in local knowledge and lived experience, while delivering benefits far beyond the communities where they originate from.

But local innovation alone is not enough; the systems around it need to be resilient too.

Jamaica offers one example. The country has built a multi-layered disaster-risk financing framework, including a catastrophe bond and contingency funds, through sustained fiscal discipline and proactive investment. Its debt-to-GDP ratio fell from around 147% in 2012 to around 62% in 202-25. That groundwork matters when disaster strikes.

Hurricane Melissa’s destruction shows need for climate resilience push

Following Hurricane Melissa, Jamaica was able to secure billions of dollars in reconstruction financing from multilateral banks – finance that might otherwise have been much harder to access. The lesson is clear: resilience can be built into the financial architecture of a country before a crisis arrives. That is the shift we now need to make at scale.

The foundations already exist – in Kingston’s fiscal reforms, in early-warning systems from the Sahel to the Pacific, and in every community that adapted before disaster struck. What is still missing is the political will, and the finance, to take what works and put it to work everywhere, at the speed our world’s new climate reality demands.

To hear more on this issue from high-level officials and experts, sign up for this event during Climate Week NYC, at 8am EDT on September 24 (in person or online), moderated by Climate Home News Editor Megan Rowling: Adapting to the New Climate Reality: Why Accelerating Impacts Demand New Responses.

The post Human security relies on adapting to the world’s new climate reality appeared first on Climate Home News.

Microplastics act like a “Trojan horse,” delivering pollutants, pesticides, and bacteria through the soil, a five-year multinational research project has found.

Read more on E360 →

As the executive director of the Living Independent Network Corp, Jeremy Maxand does what he can to help people who don’t drive get around in southern Idaho. As in most of rural America, public transit options are limited.

The nonprofit organization, which serves those with disabilities, receives $100,000 annually from the state through a federal appropriation. The money finances cards riders use to pay for transportation, but Maxand described the region’s transit as a “bare-minimum lifeline service” and “piecemeal.” 

And yet, even that could soon worsen. 

The surface transportation programs authorized by the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed by President Joe Biden in 2021, expire by the end of the year. Lawmakers are hammering out the details of the bipartisan BUILD America 250 Act, which would reauthorize those programs. Transportation advocates say the Biden-era legislation failed to broaden Americans’ mobility options beyond cars, but they see the proposed BUILD Act as a significant step backward.

That’s because the bill would authorize $16.5 billion less for public transit than its predecessor, with $103.3 billion over five years compared with the baseline of $119.9 billion in the Jobs Act, according to the American Public Transportation Association. When adjusted for inflation, the BUILD Act would need an additional $24 billion to match that level, according to the Urban Institute. Every state would receive at least $10 million less in formula funding over the five years the law would be in effect.

“There would be a large decline in funding for public transit, and that would especially be true for projects that require what’s called capital investment funding — projects that require major investments for new lines,” said Yonah Freemark, a researcher with the organization.

Freemark said the effects would extend well beyond major cities. “Public transit is often portrayed as something that is subways in New York City,” he said. “The reality is that millions of people rely on public transit in a lot of smaller communities, including a lot of rural communities and tribal communities around the country. … Those rural transit systems are much more reliant on federal support to provide the service that they offer than are the urban transit agencies.”

Many public transit agencies have been struggling financially since ridership plummeted during the pandemic, exacerbating years of underinvestment. Further cuts could have severe effects, particularly in rural areas, transit advocates and experts said.

The cuts could be particularly painful in Idaho, which the Urban Institute estimates would see the nation’s biggest percentage drop in federal formula transit funding, at 18 percent. Maxand noted that local governments have limited ability to raise money for public transportation. 

“When the federal funding goes away, everything goes away,” he said. That could leave those with disabilities socially isolated, only able to leave their homes for medical needs. 

Maine faces a similar problem. The Urban Institute estimates its federal formula funding would fall 16 percent. Josh Caldwell, a co-facilitator of Transportation for Maine who also works for the Natural Resources Council of Maine, said the state’s transit system already needs improvement.

“Nowhere in the state do we have service that is at the standard that we’d like to see, which is a regularity of every 15 minutes,” he said. 

The state receives about 38 percent of its funding from the federal government. The Maine Department of Transportation already faces a $400 million transportation funding shortfall because gas tax revenues have decreased thanks, in part, to the state’s decision to freeze the tax relative to inflation in 2011.

Though less rural than Maine, Indiana would see a comparable decline in federal formula transit funding under the BUILD Act. Austin Gibble, a transit planner in Indianapolis, said the cuts could lead the region’s transit agency IndyGo to delay bus purchases, forcing it to rely on older, less reliable vehicles.

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Gibble is more concerned about what the cuts might mean for less populated areas. “Rural agencies in Indiana are already horrifically oversubscribed,” he said. In Hamilton County, the largest county in Indiana without fixed route transit service, Gibble said the waitlist for rides on Hamilton County Express, which requires a reservation, can be weeks long. 

The impacts aren’t limited to rural America. The Urban Institute estimates that New York City would lose $2.3 billion over five years. Representative Jerry Nadler, who represents parts of the city, was the lone Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to oppose the bill. 

“It continues a familiar pattern: Highways are treated as the default national priority, while rail and transit are left fighting for insufficient resources, despite carrying millions of people, supporting regional economies, and reducing congestion,” Nadler said in a statement. 

Danny Pearlstein, the policy and communications director at Riders Alliance, said Democrats should think bigger when it comes to transportation legislation. 

“The Biden infrastructure bill was not the high water mark,” he said. “We could do much better than that in a variety of different ways, and we shouldn’t hold up bipartisanship as a core value of how we fund transportation when we have such sharply diverted views of the role of government to invest in people and communities.”

LeeAnn Hall, the campaign manager of the Alliance for a Just Society’s National Campaign for Transit Justice, said the debate is also about affordability. Transportation is the second-highest cost in Americans’ household budgets.

Reduced transit service could push some households toward another car, Hall said. “They have to pay more for gasoline. They’re going to be paying more for insurance. They have to think about parking. They have to think about maintenance and repair,” she said. “It’s expanding their household budget.”

Hall argued that investing in transit benefits people whether they use it or not. “Every dollar that we invest in public transit reduces congestion numbers, makes driving safer, and creates opportunities for families to have options,” she said. 

As for residents of southern Idaho, Maxand hopes to provide them with as many transit options as possible, but they’re all getting more expensive to run, especially as fuel prices continue rising. He expects federal cuts to hit seniors and people with disabilities the hardest. 

“It’s like saying you’re not going to pay for electricity to power the ventilator, but you’re going to leave the ventilator,” he said. “What are we doing here? This is not sustainable.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Federal transit cuts could hit rural America hardest on Sep 18, 2026.

Georgia’s Public Service Commission, or PSC — the group that has final say over how the state’s largest electric utility generates electricity and how much it charges customers — regularly hears from members of the public during its meetings. But because those meetings are almost always in Atlanta, many of the commenters typically come from the metro area. 

Since the spring, commissioner Alicia Johnson, one of two recently-elected Democrats, has been pressing the commission to meet in a different part of the state as a way to open the floor to different commenters. On Tuesday, the PSC finally did that.

“For over 100 years, the Public Service Commission has met in Atlanta and rarely, if at all, has meetings across the state,” Johnson, whose PSC district includes Chatham and Effingham counties, said. “This was an opportunity for me to have our commissioners come out and actually speak with their constituents outside of Atlanta to move away just from hearing the voices of interveners or advocates.”

The commissioners traveled to Savannah to hear from coastal residents. Following a brief administrative meeting and a presentation on the PSC’s recent actions on data centers, including approval of Georgia Power’s contract with OpenAI and new protections for regular customers, the floor opened for public comments. 

Many of those who spoke voiced concerns over the OpenAI data center that is planned for Effingham County, just outside of Savannah, and called for more transparency around the company’s contract with Georgia Power — the largest for a single customer since the utility started reporting its contracts in 2024.

“There’s a reason you’re named the Public Service Commission and not the Georgia Power service commission or the OpenAI service commission,” said Bill Wright of Pooler, a city northwest of Savannah. “Your name tells you where your loyalty should lie.”

The commissioners clarified the limited scope of their involvement with data centers: They oversee the making and selling of electricity only if a data center chooses Georgia Power as its utility. They encouraged attendees to take up their concerns with local elected officials.

Commenters also criticized the commission over power bills. 

Michael Hawthorne, an organizing strategist with the Sierra Club, argued the commission is supposed to set reasonable rates for electricity. Then he posed a question to the room at large.

“Does anybody feel like everything’s reasonably priced?” he asked.

The audience replied with a resounding “No.”

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The frustration and anger from the Savannah crowd wasn’t surprising, Johnson said.

“It’s what I’ve heard since running for office, and so I’m just glad that our other commissioners got to hear some of it, too,” she said.

Jason Shaw, a Republican from a south Georgia district and the PSC chair, said the meeting reinforced what he’s heard from constituents as well. In an interview after the meeting, Shaw said transparency has been a core issue with the OpenAI data center in particular, starting at the local level. But he said Georgia Power needs to share more information about its data center contracts, too.

“We’ve got to do a better job of forcing the company to be able to present more to us that’s not redacted,” he said. “And I think that’s something that we’re working really closely on.”

Some commenters accused the commissioners of failing to represent the interests of the public that elected them — and reminded them another election is coming up in November.

“If you truly want to be on this board, it’s time to step up and protect the people,” said Corey Foreman, a candidate running for the state senate from a coastal district. “If you can’t do that, I will be more than happy to help remove you.”

All five members of the PSC were Republicans from 2006 until the start of this year, when Peter Hubbard and Johnson took office after unseating two Republican incumbents in an election that focused largely on power bills and the commission’s recent history of rate increases. The two Democrats have cast dissenting votes several times and closely questioned Georgia Power officials. But both have also been candid that their ability to shift policy on emissions, rates, data centers, and other issues is limited while they are in the minority on the PSC.

The District 3 seat currently held by Hubbard and the District 5 seat recently vacated by Republican Tricia Pridemore are both on the ballot in November. If the Democratic candidates win both seats, the party would hold a majority on the commission for the first time in decades.

Hubbard was elected to a one-year term last year and is now facing former Republican commissioner Fitz Johnson in a rematch election for a six-year term. In District 5, Democrat Shelia Edwards is running against Republican Josh Tolbert. While the candidates have to live in their districts, both races are statewide.

Early voting begins October 13.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In Savannah, Georgia’s utility regulators faced public wrath over data centers on Sep 18, 2026.

The Endangered Species Act has stood as a pillar of conservation in the United States since 1973, bringing animals like bald eagles, manatees, and humpback whales back from the brink of extinction. 

But now, the Trump administration has taken its boldest step yet in an effort to strip legal protections for endangered species. Starting this week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says that it now considers it legal to kill a federally protected animal, as long as it wasn’t on purpose.

The directive comes after another recent revision to these legal protections went into effect this week, saying that damaging an animal’s habitat is no longer considered “harming” it. The two changes in combination take the teeth out of the Endangered Species Act and pave the way for industries to log, mine, pollute, or travel through areas without regard for what lives there.

The fate of the country’s rarest creatures could come down to the meaning of two seemingly simple words: “harm” and “take.” In this case, “take” refers to killing an animal. 

“A vessel that inadvertently strikes a whale has not taken it, because the vessel’s course was not set against the whale,” said the memo, signed by Brian Nesvik, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service. “Felling a tree is not a take of the bats roosting in it unless the tree was felled for the purpose of killing or capturing them.”

Legal experts say this is an unprecedentedly narrow view of what these words mean in the Endangered Species Act, and that the moves are sure to be challenged in court. Almost two dozen states recently sued the Trump administration over changes to the law, and more lawsuits from environmental groups are expected to come. And if history is any indicator, the agency could soon find itself on the losing side of an old argument — one that’s been heard in courts before. 

“They are trying to disregard 50 years of the act, and how the agency — and everybody — has always interpreted this word,” said Ryan Shannon, an attorney at Defenders of Wildlife, a conservation nonprofit that has long spearheaded endangered species recovery efforts. “This is not a bunt — they are really swinging for the fences with this.”

That’s because the words “harm” and “take” are at the core of what makes the Endangered Species Act so effective. 

Efforts to protect the northern spotted owl are one such example. Decades of logging in the Pacific Northwest had eliminated much of its forest habitat. But after the species was listed under the act in 1990, cutting down those trees was considered to be harming the owl, and therefore illegally “taking” it.

The law has been a thorn in the side of industries for decades. Environmentalists have often sued companies that want to log, mine, or build in a particular area, using the Endangered Species Act to make their case.

Now, “the administration is telling every industry in America that killing endangered wildlife is fine as long as it wasn’t their primary goal,” said Andrew Wetzler, an executive at the Natural Resources Defense Council, in a statement. “But unintentional harm is exactly what is driving many species towards extinction.”

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The Supreme Court has considered these words and their meanings before. In a 1995 case, Babbitt v. Sweet Home, it ruled that modifying a creature’s habitat — such as logging the forest where spotted owls live — counts as harming it. In a dissenting opinion, the late Justice Antonin Scalia argued that “take” means to directly kill or injure wildlife. The Trump administration’s new memo uses Scalia’s interpretation — even though the majority of the court disagreed with Scalia back then. 

Earlier this summer, in a revision that changed which actions it considers to be “harming” an animal, the Trump administration argued that there’s a “traditional meaning” of the word “take,” meaning “to kill or capture a wild animal.” But the verb “take” is so notoriously difficult to define that it’s been tormenting dictionary editors for more than a century. In 2001, the lexicographer Kory Stamper spent weeks trying to capture all the senses of the word, and she reflected that the ordeal “unspooled” her sanity, leading to panic and despair.

In 2024, the Supreme Court ruled that courts — not agencies — have the power to interpret the law. That decision was generally seen as a blow to environmental efforts, but in this case, it might mean the Trump administration doesn’t have final say in how it interprets the Endangered Species Act.

All these factors make the Fish and Wildlife Service’s memo legally flimsy, if not illegal, according to Brett Hartl, director of government affairs at the Center of Biological Diversity, an environmental nonprofit. 

The memo is “essentially performative cruelty for the sake of it” and “barely worth the paper it’s printed on,” Hartl said. “They’re trying to turn it into an anti-poaching statute, but it’s actually supposed to be the strongest conservation law in the world.”

Ironically enough, the administration’s rewrite may leave companies in a tougher spot than before, Shannon said, because it blows up the settled rules they’d been following for decades. Corporate attorneys now have to choose between telling clients to take advantage of the agency’s new approach, or holding off in case a court or new administration puts the old protections back into place.

For companies that actually want long‑term regulatory certainty, like timber corporations and real estate developers, Shannon said that this deregulatory swing may be “more than they ever really would have asked for.”

If the courts do end up siding with the Trump administration, some species will suffer more than others. Those listed as endangered in more recent decades were given “critical habitat protections,” which provided an extra layer of scrutiny to activities that could harm animals and were made mandatory for all newly listed animals.

But many of the species listed during the Endangered Species Act’s early years — including the Florida panther and the California sea otter — never received those protections. Instead, they depend on broader language in the law, like “harm” and “take.” That means the animals America once wanted to protect the most could now be the most exposed.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The fate of the Endangered Species Act rests on 2 simple words on Sep 18, 2026.

Bird book tops pecking order Channel News brendan 18th September 2026 Teaser Media

Lidy Nacpil is the coordinator of Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD).

Recent reporting on international climate negotiations has highlighted a sharpening divide within civil society and multilateral diplomacy. A troubling, simplistic narrative has taken root: that the UN climate process is witnessing a binary struggle between defenders of science and those attacking it.

This framing is not only inaccurate; it is dangerous. Characterising a substantive methodological and political debate in these terms misdiagnoses the stakes and stirs conflict instead of clarity.

No one disputes that climate action must rest on science. Science tells us what has led us to the climate crisis – the accumulation of historical emissions – and how much carbon budget remains if we are to keep temperature rise below 1.5C. It tells us how much global emissions must drop, and how fast. Science is also essential in assessing each country’s historical contribution to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Responsibility, however, must also be based on capacity. For those who generated the largest share of historical emissions, that capacity includes the enormous wealth and economic power accumulated through the same fossil-fuel-intensive development that generated those emissions.

As science comes under attack at UN talks, climate movement splits over how to respond

While principles that should guide human action aren’t scientific questions – they are matters of values – applying them to real-world problems requires scientific grounding. Equity recognises the scientifically established reality of differentiated responsibilities among countries and within societies. Putting equity into practice demands scientific rigour.

Scrutiny of IPCC models

Today, critics are scrutinising the assumptions and frameworks behind the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), used to project future scenarios and map global mitigation pathways. These concerns centre squarely on equity and justice.

The economic, technological and policy assumptions used in IAM scenarios are normative choices rather than scientifically prescribed or neutral facts. These include choices about discount rates, economic growth, energy demand, technology costs, carbon prices, land availability and the regional location of mitigation. Many IAM scenarios reproduce existing global inequalities rather than transform them. Questions about transparency, representativeness and diversity in the scientific process are deeply urgent.

Most IAM scenarios are built primarily around global cost-effectiveness – directing emissions reductions to places where mitigation is modelled as cheapest rather than allocating effort according to historical responsibility, capacity and development needs.

The resulting pathways allow developed countries to retain disproportionately high levels of energy and fossil-fuel consumption while requiring developing countries to undertake substantial mitigation and carbon removal, including land-based measures that threaten food security and local development.

Northern models often assume uniform access to cheap financing. In reality, Global South economies face far higher capital costs, driving up the price tag of rapid infrastructure shifts. 

Constraints on development space

Scenario constraints also limit the development space poorer nations need without guaranteeing adequate climate finance. When models treat profoundly unequal starting points as uniform baselines, policy pathways lock in global inequality under the banner of scientific objectivity.

Pointing out these structural flaws isn’t rejecting science. It is essential scientific scrutiny aimed at producing stronger, fairer, and more actionable results.

Science ‘under attack’ from fossil fuel interests at UN climate talks

The fight is not about whether we want to keep temperature rise below 1.5C, but about how we get there. A pathway can be technically compatible with 1.5C or 2C while still being deeply unequal in who gets to consume energy, who must reduce emissions, and whose development is constrained. Temperature compatibility alone does not make a pathway fair.

Critiquing IAM scenarios from an equity perspective is neither an attack on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) nor an attack on science. Rigorously examining IPCC reports – their substance, assumptions, and processes – is an acknowledgement of the IPCC’s importance and entirely consistent with scientific method.

Tensions over AR7 timing

There is a separate but related tension over the cycle and timeline of the IPCC’s Seventh Assessment Report (AR7).  Some governments and civil society voices advocate completing its Working Group reports in time to feed directly into the UN’s Second Global Stocktake in 2028. 

The motivation makes sense: policymakers need timely science. But several developing-country negotiators and researchers have warned that meeting that deadline could severely disadvantage the Global South.

Funding gap threatens next round of IPCC climate science reports, chair warns

Global North authors and institutions remain disproportionately represented in the research underlying IAM assessments. Developing-country researchers often work with fewer institutional resources, smaller research budgets, and less administrative support. Accelerated publishing and assessment schedules can further limit their ability to generate, submit, and peer-review research in time for inclusion.

The AR7 timeline concerns boil down to inclusivity, representation, and equity. Requiring the IPCC to meet tight political calendars without ensuring meaningful support and participation for developing-country researchers risks reproducing the very inequalities being challenged.

Cooperation requires equity

Political interests are indeed at work in UNFCCC negotiations and must be surfaced. Bad-faith actors seek to evade fossil-fuel phase-outs or shirk climate-finance obligations. Many developed country parties are guilty of both, including those who style themselves as “Friends of Science.”

We must not lump legitimate scientific critiques raised by several Global South researchers and many civil society organisations concerning representation, economic assumptions and fair-share accounting together with obstructionism. Doing so risks misrepresenting and delegitimising critical scientific work and Global South equity and justice perspectives.

The climate movement is strongest when it aligns rigorous science with global equity and justice. Achieving the Paris Agreement’s goals requires robust science that fully integrates the experiences, economic realities and academic contributions of the Global South. Effective climate action also requires international cooperation, and without equity, such cooperation cannot be sustained. We do not have to choose between science and equity. We need both.

The post Framing the climate science debate as a binary battle isn’t just wrong – it’s dangerous appeared first on Climate Home News.

As a cofounder of Native Species Network, I’m grateful for those who go beyond treasuring native plants and actually get out in the field to do the hard work of clearing away undesirable alien plants. But I have concerns about how some projects are affect the larger landscape, including the animals who live there.

For instance, when I taught an animal-tracking class in Point Reyes National Seashore this past June, I was surprised to find that someone had uprooted all the cakile (sea rocket) in my favorite tracking spot on the open sand at Abbots Lagoon. And they had also removed the few harmless foxgloves that managed to grow along the trail, as well as some ice plant and a few other nonnatives.

Tracking is an integrated practice in which we study all the visible lifeforms in certain areas and how they interact. In Sonoma County, where I’m based and have studied wildlife for virtually all of my 90 years, we like to see cakile because it has become a major food source for mice and voles, which themselves are a major food source for raptors, herons, foxes, bobcats, coyotes and weasels. Pipits, plovers, sand pipers and other insectivore birds like it because it harbors a rotating zoo of insects. Plus, it provides cover. At the end of the annual cycle, if there are any geese around, they graze the plant nearly to the ground, occasionally killing it.

If ever there are any non-native plants welcomed into our biosphere, cakile should be among them. The California Invasive Plant Council acknowledges it is an invasive non-native, but is generally not a problem, and they do not recommend a removal plan. Plus, it is an attractive flowering plant for people, many of whom have tasted the peppery leaves. To my eye this plant is integrating productively into the landscape. There are a few places where it displaces natives, and in those locations, it could easily be controlled by selective hand pulling a few times a year.

Ice plant is another plant that looks different through a tracker’s eye. We know that deer eat it a lot. Rabbits and voles eat it occasionally, as do some other critter we have not yet identified that takes the very tips of the leaves…maybe an insect. What seems to be the case around here is that in places where ice plant is getting enough moisture, like on the ocean facing side of Bodega Head, it becomes more invasive and displaces especially desirable, often uncommon, native plant life. But further inland, along the drier coastal terraces, it seems more like a hundred-year struggle is raging in slow motion between the ice plant and the natives. Ice plant thrives and spreads with damp weather, but in dry locations in the hind dunes, it dries out and dies back massively every summer. Now that the climate is warming, the natives are winning more battles. It makes me smile to find a waist-high yellow lupine blooming in a 20-foot circle of dead, black ice plant.

I say, sure, pull out the ice plant, especially where it’s doing harm. But treat it as an actor in the larger landscape. On Bodega Head, for example, the summers are tough on deer. As the milk herd, with 20 or so does, forms up in the fall, forage becomes precious. Among invasive plants that helps sustain them, in addition to ice plant and nonnative forbs, are the nonnative wild radish/mustards. By fall their leaves are almost stripped bare, but in the moist air they grow small new leaves that are eaten by the deer. Recognize, too, that many native plants are unpalatable to native herbivores.

I would like to see invasive plant priorities determined place by place, based on the role they now play in the local ecology. It seems pretty narrow for people to just pick projects based on the single principle that it’s good to eliminate any nonnative under all conditions, even where the species in integrating well. Removing a plant species is an intervention with impact on the local balance of nature that radiates out some distance. If we want to intervene, we should understand what we are doing not only to the species, but to the local environment. This is something you have to spend quite a bit of time in the landscape to learn to recognize. Trackers call this “dirt time.”

In Sonoma County, we track a lot in the Salmon Creek estuary. This tidal creek snakes lazily down out of the coastal hills and makes a 90-degree bend on the south bank a hundred or so yards before the ocean, then runs north almost a quarter of a mile, before bending 90 degrees again into the sea. The peninsula dunes that formed between the creek and the ocean is composed of dune grass, ringed on three sides by patches of cakile and various native plants. Mice, voles, rabbits, and gophers colonized the area. Geese and occasionally ducks nested there. Otters cross it as a shortcut from the creek to the ocean. There were always large open sandy patches, with a few natives. It was a great place to track because in that small, but productive area, we reliably found coyote, bobcat, fox, rabbit, skunk, raccoon, mice, and vole tracks, plus birds ranging from geese to sparrows and pipits. To us, this was a thriving ecozone.

One day, going on three years ago, we were astonished to find a crew completely digging out all the dune grass from this entire peninsula. I talked to the supervisor, and he explained they had gotten a contract to remove the dune grass. There was quite a bit of community opposition. It was further explained that Cal Trans wanted to open a channel directly through the peninsula to protect the north cliff faces from potential erosion, which had never happened yet. I was never able to determine who let the contract. And as far as I know there was never any community outreach for such a large, high-impact project. I told the contractor that dune grass roots go down 10 feet and will probably resprout, which is now happening even though a few clusters of natives have taken hold. One or two maintenance visits were undertaken, but I suspect that is all that the contract covers.  Personally, I think this was perfectly good grant money down the drain.

Now all the predators, except for the otters and a couple of foxes, have disappeared — not only from that location, but in large measure from the adjacent mainland for a half mile or so south of the creek. What we see now are only occasional forays into the old hunting grounds.

I tell this story for two reasons: One, to encourage native plant people to notice and account for the larger biological accommodations that the animals are making. Two, to show that removal projects at scale can affect not only the animals but the local human communities.

A third consideration involves failure to plan for maintenance. I’m not sure there’s a gain in removing ice plant, say, only to let wild nonnative grasses and forbs take over. Anybody who’s been involved in broom removal, for instance, knows that success requires years and years of maintenance to deal with the long-lasting seed bank. One project near Ft. Bragg, some time ago, involved an expensive, massive, and welcomed removal of Scotch Broom, followed up with five years of contracted maintenance. In the sixth year it all came back, thicker than ever.

And lastly, I want to mention priorities. In the Bodega Dunes and along the coast there have been several expensive campaigns to remove pampas grass, but now it’s returning. It would make sense to take it out now, while it’s relatively easy, rather than to wait until the infestation is unbearable. I think the parks understand this, but they’re starved for funding. This is much harder work than removing ice plant, but probably more important. Also, in addition to nonnative grasses, there are many other exotics that are at least as harmful as ice plant, ranging from poison hemlock to Monterey pines, and are seldom dealt with.

I’m not against intervention. I’m suggesting we need to understand what our objectives are. Even native plants should sometimes be controlled. Meadows, which are rich in both plant and animal diversity, are also said to be better carbon sinks than conifer forests, which support very restricted levels of wildlife. Yet many meadows in my area are being overrun by Doug firs, eucalyptus, coyote brush, coffee berry, poison oak, and blackberries. The local Pomo and Miwok treasured the open grasslands and meadows and kept them vital by burning. We should control them, too. To this end, the natural succession in this coastal area has already been interrupted for ten thousand years by burning the coast facing hillsides. In years past, grazing performed some of that job. But now chaparral is forming, and Doug firs are working their way downhill, while invasive Monterey pines are working uphill. Without intervention, redwoods will probably ultimately crowd all the way to the beaches, destroying the beautiful, open and fruitful habitat that characterizes the south Sonoma County landscape.

The most advanced regional resource I know of for science-based research into all of these problems is Pepperwood Preserve. I urge those who want to volunteer their efforts to acquaint themselves.

All of that said, I don’t want to discourage the good work being done by native plant activists. But realistically, we will never be able to eliminate more than a fraction of the nonnative species that always accompany the expansion of human population. Moreover, the worst is still to come, as climate change increasingly alters the environments that native plants evolved to thrive in.

I don’t have a solution to all of this, but I can attest that it’s rewarding to get out in the field and pay close attention to the struggles plants and animals are engaged in as they try to survive the epochal changes that characterize our era. I think we’ll make better choices if we respect some of the accommodations being made.

The post Is Removing All Nonnative Plants Always the Answer? appeared first on The Revelator.

Two years ago, John Lowrey woke to the roar of water surging into his home. The 65-year-old retiree and father of five rushed toward his basement just as a 3-foot wave slammed through the door, tearing it from its hinges.

Water crashed through his bay windows, drowning the family’s piano and heirloom cedar chests. His 29-year-old daughter piled family photos on a bed until it started floating. The inundation ruined documents, appliances, and insulation, and repairs cost the family $150,000. “We lost everything,” Lowrey said.

What Lowrey didn’t know then was that the flood that wrecked his home would return the following summer. And the summer after that.

Alaska is warming at two to three times the global average, and the changing climate poses a particular risk to Juneau. Since 2011, meltwater and rain collecting in a basin beside the Mendenhall Glacier have periodically flooded neighborhoods along the Mendenhall River. For more than a decade, the floods remained relatively small. Then, in 2023, the river reached a record high of nearly 15 feet. New benchmarks followed in 2024 and again in 2025.

Another flood came last month. Scientists expect them to return annually for decades to come.

That has forced Juneau to confront a problem that communities around the world are increasingly facing: How do you prepare for a natural disaster when you know it will come back?

The Mendenhall Glacier overlooks a residential neighborhood in Juneau. Marina Lopes

Juneau is beginning to find an answer. Scientists and local officials are putting increasingly sophisticated flood forecasts directly into the hands of residents. The online dashboard rolled out in 2025 translates complex glacier and hydrology data into information they can use to decide when to protect their belongings, prepare for rising water, or leave their homes.

The forecasts are changing how Juneau responds to the threat by providing officials and thousands of people in the flood zone more time to act before the water arrives. The approach could offer lessons far beyond Alaska as communities elsewhere contend with floods, hurricanes, and other climate-driven disasters that strike again and again.

Juneau sits amid the mountains and wilderness that define much of southeast Alaska. Although it is the state capital and home to 32,000 people, it is accessible only by air or sea. Lowrey’s family has deep roots in this rugged landscape. He recounted his story standing beneath the hide of a brown bear his grandfather shot decades ago. Still, the flood traumatized his family. His daughter tears up thinking about it. 

“We didn’t know anything,” he said. “We didn’t understand the nature of the basin. We thought it was a 100-year flood.”

They quickly learned otherwise. Each summer, the basin beside the Mendenhall Glacier fills with meltwater and rain. The glacier acts as a dam until enough water accumulates to trigger a flood downstream. In 2023, one of those floods inundated roughly two dozen homes, sweeping a house into the river and causing millions of dollars in damage. A year later, another flood damaged nearly 300 homes.

John Lowrey points to how high floodwaters rose inside his home in Juneau during a glacial flood. Marina Lopes

Glacial outburst floods are not unique to Juneau. They occur in Iceland, the Alps, the Himalayas, and other regions with glaciers. In Alaska’s capital, however, residential neighborhoods sit directly in the flood’s path, leaving thousands of residents exposed to the recurring threat.

“For Sale” signs dot the valley, but it’s a buyer’s market in the flood zone. Those within it have had little choice but to adapt to the annual floods. Some have dug moats. Others have raised their houses several feet above the ground. The city has built roughly 6 miles of barriers between the Mendenhall River and residents’ homes. 

Amid the uncertainty, the dashboard has become a source of comfort. Mark Miller, 75, checks it every day, waiting for the warning he knows is coming. “It’s pretty much on my mind constantly,” he said.

Two years ago, the sound of water pouring into the crawl space beneath his home jolted Miller awake in the wee hours. When he ventured into the garage and opened the door, a wall of gray slush surged toward him.

By the time the water receded, 16 inches of water filled the garage and mud and silt streaked the walls. Setting it all right took seven months and cost $35,000. Tears still fill his eyes at the memory of it all. Now, he prepares for each flood by placing sandbags on both sides of his doors to hold them in place against the water’s pressure. He turns to the dashboard to understand what happened and what is coming. 

“It can accurately predict the height of [glacial] floods within hours, which is pretty amazing,” he said.

Barriers, installed by the city of Juneau with help from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, line the Mendenhall River to protect residential neighborhoods from recurring glacial floods. Marina Lopes

Last year, more than 15,000 people accessed the dashboard for real-time updates on the floods. In addition to flood maps and forecasts, it offers an interactive explanation of how the basin formed and how glacial outburst floods happen.

It was there that Miller learned the science behind the water that invaded his home.

The Mendenhall Glacier peeks out behind verdant mountains in the summertime, a vast block of ice streaked with blue and gray that has long drawn tourists and scientists to Alaska’s capital.

The basin beside the glacier is known as Suicide Basin. As the water accumulates, the pressure can lift the expanse of ice, creating a drain that sends a torrent rushing toward the Mendenhall River. During a large outburst flood, the basin can release upward of 15 billion gallons, enough to fill 22,000 Olympic-size swimming pools.

Mendenhall Valley first flooded in 2011, but scientists had no idea why. They hopped in a helicopter and discovered that water in the basin behind the glacier was leaking.

Looking for a way to communicate directly with residents, researchers at the University of Alaska Southeast and the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center collaborated with the city to develop the dashboard. They then worked with residents to distribute flyers and magnets with QR codes that directed people to the dashboard.

Residents created and distributed flyers with a QR code to the flood dashboard. Marina Lopes

Eran Hood, one of the environmental scientists who developed the tool, said he sees a broader lesson in Juneau’s experience.

“You can do the same thing with hurricanes, storm surges,” he said. “You could do the same thing with floods on rivers like the Mississippi.” The goal, he said, is to “find the best way to provide people with information that gives them the power to make decisions. That to me is the biggest lesson from this.”

The flood data and forecasts are also shaping the city’s response. In 2024, officials started studying them to determine where to build miles of temporary walls along the Mendenhall River to protect homes from future floods.

On a rainy July afternoon, Nate Rumsey, deputy director of engineering and public works for the city, stared up at stacks of army-green, dirt-filled barriers lining the river to protect residents from a deluge that came on August 13.

Another severe flood “could put the viability of our community at risk,” he said.

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The defenses, known as Hesco barriers, snake through town, behind the library and elementary school and past homes, sometimes coming within inches of windows. The fabric-lined wire-mesh baskets, which are filled with sand and gravel, connect like Legos, stacked two, three, or four high. Rumsey spent months working with the Army Corps of Engineers to map out and oversee their installation.

The dashboard helped homeowners watching soldiers carry barriers into their backyards understand the threat they faced and the city’s response, Rumsey said.

“We recognized early on that the community needs to have information pertinent to this available to them for their own decision-making,” he said.

Residents could use the online tool to see how high the water might rise on their property without the barriers, and understand what those defenses were designed to prevent.

Sandbags are deployed by residents to protect their homes in anticipation of the next glacial flood in Juneau. Marina Lopes Flood barriers line the Mendenhall River, coming within inches of some homes. Marina Lopes

The dashboard has also changed how residents understand the landscape around them. 

Alyssa Fischer never gave much thought to the glacier towering over her house until she woke at 2 a.m. to find her street had turned into a river.

As the water rolled into her garage and swept away her front porch, the 33-year-old single mother decided it was time to go. She grabbed her 8-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son and carried them through knee-deep, icy water, shouting to wake her neighbors. She put her pet duck, quail, and goose in the bed of her red pickup as water rose above the wheels.

Alyssa Fischer stands in her backyard with her pets. A glacial flood destroyed part of her home. She carried her children through the icy current and put her pet duck, quail, and goose in the bed of her pickup as water rose above the wheels. Marina Lopes

Like so many residents in Juneau, Fischer now speaks the language of the scientists studying the ice above her. She talks about how rainfall can change a flood’s timeline and how many cubic feet of water could spell disaster for her and her neighbors. During flood season, she checks the dashboard hourly.

“Before it impacted my life, it was, like, ‘Oh, that’s interesting,’” she said. “Now, I want to know what’s happening.” That knowledge shapes decisions about her home, her children, and her future. “It’s your life,” she said. “It’s your money and your investment, and understanding what’s actually happening in the world around you and how it’s going to affect you.”

Armed with a radio, flashlights, and the dashboard, she awaits the next flood.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Juneau can’t stop the floods, but it’s learning to see them coming on Sep 17, 2026.

More than 300,000 solar panels and 120 battery containers are helping to power Africa’s largest copper mine with continuous clean energy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as miners turn to solar as an alternative to expensive diesel and energy imports.

The project at the Kamoa Copper mine in the south of the DRC, which became operational last month, is one of the largest solar and battery facilities generating baseload power on the continent.

The clean electricity is displacing millions of litres of polluting diesel and costs less than a fifth of the price of generator power per kilowatt hour, the mining company said.

The project is part of a massive solar deployment across the continent. Recent data from global energy think-tank Ember found record solar capacity of 17 GW will be installed in Africa this year – a 45% rise from 2025.

Installed by CrossBoundary Energy, a developer of distributed renewable energy systems, the solar-battery facility at the DRC mine is “proof of concept” that solar and battery systems can provide the reliable power at scale needed by remote industrial operations, Annebel Oosthuizen, managing director at Kamoa Copper, told Climate Home News in an interview.

“There’s always been this perception in the DRC that solar isn’t ideal because it is raining half of the year. But it’s perfectly ideal. We are seeing a lot of interest from other mines that are still depending on generators and power imports,” she said.

Mining drives solar and battery surge

Like Kamoa Copper, a growing number of miners in the DRC are looking to solar power to compensate for the country’s chronic energy deficit at a lower cost as global diesel prices hit record highs amid ongoing attacks on oil infrastructure in the Middle East.  

As a result, the mining sector has become a key driver of the country’s growing clean energy demand and one of the biggest importers of large-scale solar equipment.

Ember found the DRC is set to install a record 1.7 gigawatts (GW) of solar panels this year – a 544% increase compared to 2025 and the equivalent of adding more than 60% of the country’s entire 2023 grid capacity.

The deployment of combined solar and battery storage solutions to deliver stable energy supplies to mines has also caused battery imports to surge. In dollar terms, the DRC’s imports of batteries from China far exceeded that of solar in the year to June 2026, according to Ember.

A crippling power deficit

The DRC holds significant energy resources and some of the world’s largest reserves of the minerals required to manufacture clean energy technologies. It is the world’s largest producer of cobalt, which is needed to make batteries, and Africa’s top producer of copper – a metal sought after for its electrical conductivity which is pivotal to the world’s electrification efforts.

Yet just 22.5% of the DRC’s population had access to electricity in 2024 – one of the lowest rates in the world, according to the World Bank. And as mining expands and more of the minerals extracted are being processed in the country, unreliable power supply has become a major constraint for the sector, which contributed to more than a quarter of the country’s GDP in 2024, excluding oil and gas.

The country has enormous hydropower potential, with the hydroelectric potential of the Congo River estimated at around 100 GW. But only a fraction is being harnessed.

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Still, virtually all of the DRC’s grid-connected electricity is generated by hydropower by the state-owned utility, Société Nationale d’Électricité (SNEL).

The electricity then has to be transported more than 1,500 kilometres to reach the mining belt in the south – a challenge made more difficult by ageing grid infrastructure and limited transmission capability. SNEL did not respond to a request for comment.

“It is estimated that there’s around a 1 GW energy deficit for the DRC mining sector,” said Matt Tilleard, CEO of CrossBoundary Energy, which owns the solar and battery equipment at the Kamoa Copper mine and provides the power as a service.

“The interest in solar from the mining industry is not theoretical – it is already translating into large-scale solar and battery procurement for mining operations in the region,” he added.

Solar displaces gas, saves energy costs

The facility installed by CrossBoundary is part of a plan by Kamoa Copper to supply more of the electricity it needs with solar energy and batteries as its operations expand, a faster solution than relying on harder-to-build hydropower projects.

“Our processing capacity has increased drastically over the last couple of years. We’ve constructed the largest copper smelter in Africa and that is so power-intensive,” said managing director Oosthuizen.

A joint venture between Canadian firm Ivanhoe Mines, Chinese company Zijin Mining Group and the DRC government, the mine needs 235 megawatts (MW) of power, which is expected to nearly double to 450 MW in the next five years.

Kamoa Copper currently receives 100 MW from state utility SNEL – “and the rest we have to find a solution for”, said Oosthuizen.

Aerial view of a vast solar park and battery storage containers powering the Kamoa Copper mine in southern DRC (Photo: Kamoa Copper SA)

Another 30 MW solar and battery baseload facility is expected to come into operation this month, enabling around 25% of the mine’s power needs to be generated by solar energy. An additional 60 MW of continuous solar power will be added by the end of 2027, and the company is exploring options for more solar capacity and two hydropower projects.

The operational 30 MW of clean electricity provided by CrossBoundary Energy will power pumps that prevent 400 million litres of water from flooding the underground mine every day.

In August alone, the facility has reduced the mine’s diesel consumption by around four million litres, generating an estimated $11 million dollars in savings at current diesel prices, Oosthuizen said.

The mine still relies on generators to meet a 20-40 MW deficit and to power the trucks used in the mine, which Oosthuizen said would be difficult to electrify in the next five years because the technology isn’t yet ready to operate in the mine’s tough and wet conditions.

Avoiding a two-speed transition

To prevent a major imbalance between industrial players’ access to clean, reliable energy and the millions of Congolese who remain without power, the government requires private electricity producers to reserve at least 10% of their generated power for local communities living near rural production sites.  

Delivering this, combined with rural electrification, mini-grid development and national grid expansion, is critical to prevent a two-speed energy transition that leaves people behind, said Catherine Mukobo, head of ACERD, the Congolese Association for Renewable and Decentralised Energies.

“Without implementing these policies, the DRC could get in a situation where mines have access to abundant modern energy while a large part of the population remains without electricity,” she said.

The post DR Congo’s power-hungry mining sector drives record solar surge appeared first on Climate Home News.

In 2023, under the bright lights of the Expo City Dubai, almost 200 nations adopted an agreement to dramatically alter the world’s relationship with energy.

The deal at the COP28 climate summit promised to triple the amount of renewable electricity capacity to at least 11,000 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, and double the rate of energy efficiency improvements from 2% to 4%. Taken together, these two commitments have the potential to usher in a new global economy that is cleaner and smarter. 

Research suggests the world is on course to meet the renewable energy target, with an annual growth rate of nearly 30% between 2023 and 2025. The same cannot be said of energy efficiency, where growth fell to 1% in 2024, but has since climbed to 1.8%, according to estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The IEA attributes this poor performance to a number of factors: strong growth in industrial energy demand, policy gaps, greater access to inefficient air conditioners, and an overall growth in energy demand which renewables have not been able to meet. 

Air conditioning units lined up outside a building in Hong Kong. (Image: Unsplash) Air conditioning units lined up outside a building in Hong Kong. (Image: Unsplash)

Global electricity demand is predicted to grow by 3.8% in 2027, up from 3% in 2025. According to researchers, this demand is primarily being driven by heavy industries – steel, chemicals, cement – which overwhelmingly still use fossil fuels to power their energy-intensive factories. 

In addition, the explosive growth of AI has led to the development of new data centres which require huge amounts of electricity. Under conservative scenarios, data centres could double their electricity consumption by 2030, and those dedicated to servicing AI needs could see a 30% annual increase over the same period. The more these trends continue, the greater the cost of transitioning to cleaner, more efficient technologies.

Taking the right policy direction

While both old and new technologies put added pressure on the electricity system, the targets set in recent years remain the same. This presents policymakers with a challenge and an opportunity.

Policy is often designed to be responsive to the world around it. When the EU’s Energy Efficiency Directive was first adopted in 2012, the world was a very different place. That is why it has since been updated, twice, in 2018 and 2023.

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Mario Giordano, global head of public and government affairs at lighting multinational Signify, calls this piece of legislation “market transformational” as it created “long-term certainty through binding targets, energy saving obligations, and renovation requirements”. This, in turn, allowed businesses to plan investments and start to innovate with the stability the directive created. 

The legislation has been credited with improving efficiency rates across the bloc. According to Eurostat, the EU used a record low amount of energy in 2024, 20% less than in 2006, an historic high point.

One of the next steps on that journey for Europe is the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive which seeks to upgrade old buildings and introduces a zero-emissions standard for new public ones.

“It is a huge opportunity to renovate the continent’s building stock, and lighting is everywhere,” said Giordano. “There will need to be a massive overhaul from conventional lighting to LEDs, targeting the worst-performing buildings,” he added. This bold legislative approach could provide a template for other countries to develop energy policies with maximum impact on efficiency rates.

How to get to 4%

Jérôme Bilodeau, energy efficiency programme manager at the IEA, told Climate Home News “the world is not currently on track” to meet the COP28 efficiency goal but agreed it was achievable with the right policies in place.

“Nine out of 10 countries have achieved a rate of improvement of 4% at least one year over the past decade,” he said.

“There are many examples of effective energy efficiency policies across the world, and governments are introducing new ones regularly,” he added, pointing out that countries representing 85% of global energy demand had announced hundreds of new or updated policies in 2025 alone.

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In addition, the global energy crisis caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has turbocharged the policy environment with a suite of new policies from dozens of countries now in place to reduce energy demand.

The IEA recommends closing policy gaps and raising the ambition of existing ones to help achieve the 4% energy efficiency improvement target. These policy gaps can be quite straightforward to address – for example, creating efficiency standards for new buildings, something the IEA says is lacking in almost half of all countries. And as technologies improve, policies need to be updated.

“In some countries, a building that meets the local efficiency standard may in fact be using three times as much energy as one in another country with a similar climate but with higher efficiency standards,” Bilodeau added. 

One integrated system

Giordano argues that a whole system view is needed: “Across different industries, there is a growing consensus that energy efficiency, electrification and renewable energy are not separate policy tracks, but one integrated system,” he said.

He believes that lighting can make a serious contribution to this system as a scalable and cost-effective efficiency measure. As lighting is a mature technology that is installed almost everywhere, from small buildings to city streets, it can be upgraded faster and provide immediate savings.

“You can reduce emissions, free up electricity for electrification purposes, and also save money that can be invested elsewhere,” he added.

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The latest figures show lighting accounts for around 8% of global electricity demand, and Signify estimates that switching to efficient LED technologies could save enough electricity to power up to 300 million heat pumps, or 400 million electric vehicles worldwide.

The focus on lighting would form part of a wider policy push to upgrade each country’s energy system where efficient appliances and processes are powered by renewables. And using energy more intelligently and flexibly, for example, by incentivising demand when renewable generation is higher, will greatly improve efficiency rates.

The English city of Liverpool is an example of one place seeking to use electricity in this way. A recent project, completed in 2026, saw the installation of ‘traffic adaptive lighting’ on key routes between a new football stadium and the city centre. The council can now respond to real-time fluctuations in demand, such as increased usage on match days, to meet people’s needs. This new approach could offer up to 30% in cost savings over the next decade, according to Signify.

Making energy work harder

An oft-repeated phrase in energy circles is that the greenest electron is the one you don’t use. The world is making steady progress on the challenge of transitioning away from fossil fuels. New wind and solar power installations continue to grow at record rates, with widespread coverage across continents. But in the headlong rush to build out capacity, governments and business may at the same time be taking a step backwards by paying insufficient attention to energy efficiency.

The positive work in renewables could easily be undone without a coordinated effort to make energy go further and work harder than it currently does. Experts in these circles agree that stronger, targeted policies are an important first step to achieving the world’s energy efficiency goals. But time is quickly running out to do so.

Adam Wentworth is a freelance writer based in Brighton, UK.

The post The overlooked shortcut to meeting the world’s energy goals appeared first on Climate Home News.

For much of his career, Carlos Santos’ job involved being stranded in the middle of the Amazon. Santos is a truck driver on the BR-319, a hazardous dirt highway in Brazil that cuts through a critical part of the rainforest. “You knew when you were going in,” he said of the road. “But you never knew when you’d come out the other side.”

It once took Santos 22 days to cross the 540-mile route. An unexpected rain pounded the highway during the dry season, leaving large pools of mud that mired convoys of trucks. “It’s a survival test in the jungle,” he said. “Time moves slowly. You have to ration food and water.” At night, Santos would hang a hammock in his truck cabin and watch as jaguars, tapirs, and snakes crossed the road in front of him. For weeks, he dug vehicles out of ditches, bathed in nearby rivers, and waited for heavy machinery to pull rigs from the mud one by one.

Carlos Santos has been driving a truck since he was 18 years old. Joaquim Salles

When he finally got home, Santos rested for a few days and then returned for another haul down the 319. “I went back because I enjoy it,” he said. “It’s one hell of a challenge.”

But there’s another reason such conditions are endured aside from a penchant for adventure. The BR-319 is the only road connecting the state of Amazonas, home to 4.2 million people and twice the size of Texas, to the rest of Brazil. Now, after decades of court battles and challenges by environmental groups and regulators, sections of the highway are being asphalted, and plans to pave the entire route are moving forward. 

Asphalting the 319 is a long-held demand of many in the region, who feel their isolation hinders economic development. “Why should we be forgotten?” Santos asked. “Why doesn’t the state of Amazonas have the right to be connected to the rest of the country?”

But the decision isn’t so straightforward. Scientists warn that paving the road will connect previously inaccessible regions of the Amazon to its most under-pressure areas, leading to a deforestation boom with dire consequences for the global climate. The biome currently holds an estimated 150 to 200 billion tons of carbon in its plants and soils, helping to offset greenhouse gas emissions from activities like burning fossil fuels. When the forest is cleared and burned, that stored carbon is released back into the atmosphere, fueling climate change. Indigenous groups that live in the area also say the project poses an existential threat to their communities. 

A sign marking the start of the unpaved section of the BR-319. Joaquim Salles

This May, before the paving went into full swing, I joined Santos on his route to observe how the 319 and the forest it traverses are already changing. We met at 3 a.m. at a distribution center on the outskirts of Manaus, the capital of Amazonas and home to over 2 million people. Despite its isolation, Manaus is a major manufacturing hub, the legacy of tax incentives that have attracted industry since the 1960s. The vast majority of goods currently enter and leave the city by boat or by air. Proponents of asphalting the 319 argue this dependence raises costs, lengthens delivery times, and leaves the region vulnerable to river-navigation interruptions brought on by severe droughts, which have become more common. 

Santos was born and raised in Manaus and has been driving a truck since he was 18 years old. “I was never a fan of being locked in a room in front of a computer,” he said. Now 45, he is affable with an easy smile. His belly comes close to touching the steering wheel, and his trimmed salt-and-pepper beard matches the remaining hair on the sides of his head. A long career driving the potholed roads of Amazonas has left him with a bad back.

Carlos Santos says he enjoys driving the BR-319, though “it’s one hell of a challenge.” Joaquim Salles

We pulled out of the distribution center in an immaculate bright blue semi-truck, smaller and more nimble than some of the larger rigs that are regularly seen stranded or capsized amid the mud of the 319. The truck belonged to Bemol, a leading retailer in the Amazon region, and carried large kitchen appliances, furniture, and medicine. Our destination was Porto Velho, the capital of Rondônia, which sits at the other end of the highway.

Santos has been driving on the 319 since 2015, when it reopened after decades of disrepair. Back then, he said, mud pools would stretch for dozens of yards during the rainy season, and potholes were the size of small craters. He was recounting this as we crossed the Rio Negro on a ferry, with dozens of other vehicles. The sun began to rise as we passed the famous meeting of the waters, where the dark, Coca-Cola-colored Rio Negro meets the murky brown Solimões, and the two rivers flow side by side without mixing. An hour later we were off the ferry and onto the highway. It would be a two-day trip with an overnight stop, but that was not guaranteed. The speed of travel on the 319 is highly dependent on the conditions of the road on any given day.

“You never know what to expect,” Santos told me.

In many ways, the history of deforestation in the Amazon is a history of road-building. 

In the 1970s, Brazil’s military dictatorship pursued an aggressive policy of constructing roads and encouraging settlement in the Amazon region. Since then, an area roughly the size of Spain has been deforested — 94 percent of which sits within 3 miles of a road. Often the mere possibility that a road will be built or paved is enough to increase deforestation in a given area.

The BR-319 was fully paved when it opened in 1976, but maintaining it proved too costly. It runs through a low-lying part of the forest and over the years, the grinding conditions of the rainy and dry seasons eroded the asphalt. Bus companies ceased service along the route, and businesses stopped using it to ship goods. The trees closed in on the highway and by 1988 it was virtually impassable, with only the ends still covered with asphalt. 

For years it was left to the forest, used only by the handful of communities that still lived along its route and the occasional adventurer passing through. The trees blocked the sky for long sections of the road, and the wood bridges rotted away. In 2015, federal regulators issued a license for the cleanup and maintenance of the roadway, though not its repaving. Crews worked to clear the trees and repair the more than 50 bridges that run along the road. Conditions remained precarious, but traffic returned. 

When Jair Bolsonaro was elected president in 2018, he gutted environmental regulations and announced he would pave the BR-319 once again. A far-right former army captain, Bolsonaro had campaigned on a platform friendly to loggers, miners, and agribusiness. The promise alone drove a 122 percent rise in deforestation in the area surrounding the highway between 2020 and 2022, greater than the already high deforestation rate for the Amazon as a whole during the same period. 

Brazil’s federal courts blocked the project due to inconsistencies in the environmental licensing process, but in 2025, years after Bolsonaro had left office, Brazil’s pro-agribusiness Congress passed a law that said work on existing roads could bypass licensing altogether. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or Lula, tried to veto parts of the bill but was overruled by Congress. In May, the government opened bidding for paving contracts. “By the end of June,” George Santoro, the Minister of Transportation, announced, “the entire BR-319 will be under construction.” 

After the ferry, the BR-319 continues on potholed asphalt for 120 miles, the final remnants of the original 1970s road. As we drove through the district of Careiro, the first on the 319 after Manaus, the landscape varied between forest and pasture, with modest, scattered homes on the side of the road. “Houses used to be a rare sight,” said Santos. “You’d see one here and another way off in the distance. Not anymore.”

It’s typical of a region in the early stages of deforestation. First, speculators and loggers clear public land. Once the timber is extracted, ranchers move in. They might live on the land themselves, but often they’ll hire someone to live there for them and tend the livestock. The ultimate goal is to petition the government for a formal land title which, if granted, can be resold once the road is fully paved and the land worth far more. The process of land regularization in Brazil is slow, bureaucratic, and rife with irregularities. Occupation is often a first step towards legal recognition, even when the initial clearing was illegal.

Cows in a pasture in the district of Careiro. Joaquim Salles

For three months in 2023, Manaus was shrouded in a thick cloud of smoke, ranking it among the cities with the worst air quality in the world. The governor of Amazonas at the time blamed the crisis on forest fires in the neighboring state of Pará. Research using satellite imagery and atmospheric data has since shown that while some of the smoke was indeed coming from Pará, much of it originated from forest-clearing blazes in districts at the start of the BR-319, like Careiro. 

As the old asphalt continues, the pastures become less frequent and the landscape progressively more wild. Then, all of a sudden, the asphalt turns into a reddish, iron-rich clay. It’s a surface that is rock-hard when dry and extremely slippery when wet. The rainy season brings mud and a slickness that causes trucks to glide out of control. The dry season brings clouds of dust that reduce visibility to just a few yards. This constant wetting and drying causes the dirt to form small ridges that drivers have come to call “cow ribs.” They rattle trucks like never-ending rumble strips.

Compared to what the highway was like in the recent past, this is a minor nuisance. “For the veterans around here, the road is a cakewalk now,” Santos said. The BR-319 may not be paved yet, but maintenance on the route has intensified in the past few years.

We encountered a road crew just a few miles after hitting dirt. To keep the highway passable, crews work daily on different sections, flattening uneven terrain, packing the ground, and adding gravel. Areas that easily flooded just a few years ago have been raised, bridges repaired or rebuilt entirely. (Environmentalists claim that much of this work goes beyond the maintenance license that was issued in 2015.) The road is still mostly used by trucks, but new companies can now be seen on the route, mostly transporting consumer goods, some coming from as far as São Paulo, 2,400 miles away.

A maintenance crew at work on the BR-319. Joaquim Salles

Traveling the 319 with Santos means listening to an unbroken catalogue of accidents he’s witnessed. A truck that rolled into a ravine here, dropping brand new washing machines into the river. Another that tumbled over there, spilling gallons of milk onto the road. Even today, it is not uncommon for Santos to encounter a capsized truck, sometimes more than one in a single journey. 

As we ventured deeper down the highway, lush forest occupied both sides of the road. “It’s every shade of green you could think of,” Santos remarked. He had a point. One hectare of Brazilian Amazon holds more species of trees than all of the continental United States and Canada combined.

About eight hours in, we reached the settlement of Iguapó-Açu. The town is home to some 75 families who live in stilt houses with tin roofs. It serves as a final rest stop for truck drivers before they face the BR-319’s middle stretch, where it cuts through 250 miles of dense forest with virtually nothing else around. Residents of Iguapó-Açu live on subsistence farming, fishing, and by operating a sluggish barge that drivers must take across a narrow river to continue on their way down the 319. 

While waiting for the barge, I spoke to residents who were eating freshly-caught fish stew on the porch of one of the houses. Raimunda de Sá Assunção, 53, moved to the town as a child and still remembers when the road was paved. She also remembers the years when the road fell into disrepair, many families left, and the drive to the nearest hospital could take days. Now the drive can take as little as two hours. She remains skeptical whether the road will ultimately be paved. “My hair’s turned white, and nothing’s happened. All they do is plug holes,” she said. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Raimunda de Sá Assunção is a long-time resident of Iguapó-Açu. Joaquim Salles​

A spot just a few miles north of Iguapó-Açu was the site of a presidential photo-op in late May. As Lula posed with a road crew working on the 319, he painted a rosy picture of the future. “We will set an example of how to build a road,” he said, adding that the paved highway would be “the most beautiful and most preserved road in the world.” 

Lula was elected in 2022 by a broad anti-Bolsonaro coalition. Among those who buoyed him to victory was Marina Silva, the politician and environmental activist who is one of the Amazon’s most respected defenders. To get her support, Lula put the environment at the forefront of his campaign, pledging to put Brazil on a road to end deforestation by 2030.

He’s had mixed results. Deforestation rates are significantly down from the Bolsonaro years, but the government has had little success in stopping a barrage of anti-environment legislation coming from Congress, including the licensing reform that cleared the path for the paving of the 319. Now running for office again, Lula has thrown his support behind the paving, knowing that not doing so will cost him votes in the Amazon region. Silva has since left the Lula government to run for Senate in the upcoming elections. She has long been seen by many in the Amazon as an obstacle to paving the BR-319. In reality, she has never opposed the road outright, only insisted that it proceed with adequate environmental safeguards in place.

The week of the photo-op, in closed meetings with environmental groups, the government said a portion of the highway’s R$1.5 billion ($300 million) construction budget would also go towards an environmental governance plan. It would involve the creation of protected areas, wildlife bridges, and a ramp-up of environmental monitoring in a 60-mile buffer zone along the entire route. The main criticism from environmental groups is that these measures should have been implemented before any paving takes place. Instead, they are still in the discussion stage while the BR-319 is actively being asphalted.

“The plan being drawn up needs to be translated into documents with feasible, credible targets,” said Suely Araújo, Public Policy Coordinator at Observatório do Clima, a coalition of Brazilian civil society organizations focused on climate. “You need structural measures that are actually implemented. Not just promised.”

On September 8, Lula announced the formal creation of four protected areas around the BR-319, encompassing 2,600 square miles, well below the nearly 14,000 square miles the government had promised in closed meetings months earlier. 

“On one side were people who thought it was off-limits to undertake a project on a road that had already been built, connecting two state capitals,” Lula said in a speech during the announcement ceremony. “On the other were people who thought we should do it haphazardly, without any environmental-preservation criteria, without properly demarcating the relevant areas, turning it into a way for a few people to get rich by buying and selling land. We insisted that it was possible … We found a way to demarcate whatever needed to be demarcated.”

As it stands, most of the land around the BR-319 remains undesignated public land, the most attractive target for land-grabbers. It’s unclear if the government plans to announce additional conservation units. There is speculation that it might do so next year if Lula wins reelection in October. Polls show him neck-and-neck with Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro.

While research shows that giving an area protected status is a powerful deterrent to deforestation, it is by no means a silver bullet. “It’s far from enough. Many conservation units exist only on paper.” said Araújo. “The plan for the region hasn’t been formalized yet. What we’ve seen is a Power Point presentation.” 

The whole notion of whether the Brazilian state is capable of closely monitoring an area as large as the one impacted by the BR-319 is up for debate. Araújo told me there is no historical precedent for it in Brazil. IBAMA, the main agency responsible for environmental enforcement, is chronically understaffed. The area around the BR-319 almost entirely lacks state presence. Authorities that attempt to enforce environmental regulations in the region are often met with hostility. There are no police checkpoints and no bases for any of Brazil’s environmental monitoring agencies along the 319, though the government had pledged to establish them in the future. 

The main risk is what experts call the “fishbone phenomenon,” a pattern seen from above in many parts of the Amazon. Highways serve as a main corridor from which illegal side roads opened by loggers, land-grabbers, and wildcat miners branch out. The highways are the spine of the fish and the side roads are the ribs. It is from these unauthorized roads that much illicit activity takes place.

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The BR-319 is only in the early stages of this process, which picked up when the road reopened in 2015 and intensified during the Bolsonaro years, but it already has more miles of side roads than the length of the highway itself. Follow one of those through satellite images and inevitably you’ll find large, recently cleared areas in the middle of the rainforest. 

Phillip Fearnside, a biologist at the National Institute of Amazonian Research, or INPA, has studied the region for decades. “You have a huge area that could be deforested very quickly,” he said. 

Researchers have used complex modeling to simulate how the paving of the BR-319 and the proliferation of side roads — both legal and illegal — will impact the forest. One study, led by Britaldo Soares-Filho of the Federal University of Minas Gerais, found that if the road is asphalted, the resulting deforestation in the region would emit 8 billion tons of carbon dioxide by 2050, four times more than if the highway remained unpaved but maintained. A separate study projected that deforestation will be 60 percent greater by 2100 under a paved scenario. 

Fearnside argues the impact would extend far beyond the 60-mile buffer zone that the government has pledged to monitor because the asphalt would connect the mostly untouched central Amazon — “the last big stretch of forest,” as he described it — to deforestation hotspots in the south. “It would be enough to push climate past the tipping point where warming gets out of control,” he said.

The threat is not only theoretical or in the future. Indigenous communities in the highway’s reach are already feeling the consequences. There have been several reports of illegal side roads encroaching into Indigenous territory. The Mura people in the region of Lago Capanã Grande have been under growing threat from land-grabbers since 2020, as conditions on the 319 improved and traffic increased. There is evidence that the toxic chemical 2,4-D, one of the main components of Agent Orange, was used to deforest land the Mura use to harvest Brazil nut, a key food source in the region. The waste was then dumped into rivers relied on by the community and made 20 people ill.

In total, there are 69 Indigenous territories in the region impacted by the BR-319, including some groups living in voluntary isolation. Together, these territories are inhabited by at least 13 different ethnicities comprising over 18,000 people. Although Brazilian law requires that Indigenous groups be consulted on large infrastructure projects that could impact them, there is no evidence this has happened in this case. 

“Consultation must happen before any decision is made, with real dialogue and the possibility of influence, including the right to say ‘no.’ What is happening is the opposite,” Mariazinha Baré told the Brazilian website Nexo. Baré is a coordinator at APIAN, a coalition of Indigenous groups from Amazonas. “BR-319 is not just infrastructure; it is an instrument of death that threatens the existence of Indigenous peoples and weakens the Amazon,” she said.

The middle stretch of the BR-319, where the road cuts through 250 miles of dense forest with virtually nothing else around. Joaquim Salles

After Iguapó-Açu, the 319 enters its wildest section. We stopped so I could get an aerial view using a drone. At 400 feet, nothing but thick, impregnable forest stretched to the horizon in every direction, except for the distinct red gash of the highway.

Since there is no cell service, truckers going in opposite directions often stop to swap notes on road conditions and weather. It wasn’t long after we started driving again that a passing trucker warned of rain ahead.

It began as a soft patter but quickly turned torrential. “While it’s raining, it’s best to push on,” Santos said. It’s the hours after the downpour, when the ground is drying but still slick, that are the most dangerous for drivers. It was getting late, and we still had 100 miles to go before reaching the town of Realidade, where we’d spend the night.

Large puddles began pooling across the road, and the ground turned to sludge. A few miles later, we encountered a stranded truck, a flatbed carrying generators that had drifted to the road’s soft shoulder and listed sharply to one side. “Welcome to the BR-319!” Santos laughed.

A truck stuck in the mud in the middle stretch of the highway. Joaquim Salles

The sun set and soon we could only see what was illuminated by the headlights. The rain continued relentlessly. At times our speed was reduced to just 5 miles per hour. Santos pressed on, passing other stranded trucks and crossing rickety wooden bridges that creaked under the wheels. Many hours later, we came to a town that appeared seemingly out of nowhere. The muddy streets were deserted and dark as we pulled into a bright orange motel called La Kazita.

It was 11 p.m., 20 hours after our departure from Manaus.

The largest settlement on the unpaved part of the 319, Realidade is a dusty outpost typical of Amazonian boom towns. Its population has swelled from just 800 people in 2010 to 7,000 today. The town lives and dies by the highway.

Many of its original residents were workers who built the road in the 1970s. When the route closed in 1988, Realidade became a virtual ghost town. Landless farmers from out of state arrived in the region in 2004 and were granted settlement rights under a federal land-reform program. Since then, a steady stream of land-grabbers, loggers, and cattle-ranchers have poured in.

Exploring Realidade, the impression is that the people arrived before the government did. The town has no police station and only a small health post, but numerous cattle-ranching supply stores. The dynamic has been the same throughout the modern history of the Amazonian frontier: People come in search of land and the riches of the forest; the state then scrambles to catch up with basic services and the rule of law.

A cattle-ranching supply store in the town of Realidade. Joaquim Salles

At La Kazita, Santos and I were eating a breakfast of plain bread when the manager began telling us how two nights before he had been paid R$600 ($115) to drive some logging workers to Humaitá, a mining town southeast of the 319. They had just come out of the forest after weeks of work felling trees. Flush with cash, they wanted to party.

Data from Simex, a system that uses satellite images to monitor logging, show that 16 square miles of land were illegally logged between 2021 and 2024 in the municipality that includes Realidade.

“All the money flowing through the region is rooted in illegal logging and land grabbing,” Lucas Ferrante, a researcher at the University of São Paulo who has studied the area extensively, told me.

The scenery around Realidade is a far cry from the lush forest I had driven through the day before. Illegal side roads abound, sawmills dot the side of the highway, and native forest is interrupted by swaths of pasture. I stopped by one of the largest ranches in the region.

Eliane Jesus Pereira, 33, lives in a ramshackle wooden house at the edge of an expansive pasture. She sells cheese made out of buffalo milk while her husband tends to the cattle. The couple moved to the farm from Realidade in 2021 when her husband was hired as a ranch hand. The owner of the land lives in Manaus. Since she has been living on the farm, she’s seen a marked improvement on the road. “Sometimes my daughter couldn’t go to school because the bus got stuck in the mud,” she said. “Now it’s better.”

Eliane Jesus Pereira lives on a ranch a few miles north of Realidade. Joaquim Salles​

It’s consensus among the scientific community that paving the BR-319 without environmental safeguards will lead to drastic consequences. Realidade might well be a vision of the future of the entire highway. Beyond the immediate impacts, studies suggest that the deforestation the asphalt could trigger may disrupt key hydrological cycles within Brazil that, in the long run, will lead to severe water shortages in large cities like São Paulo. And if Amazonas, with its size and its 97 percent forest coverage, goes the way of other Brazilian states, like Rondônia, which has lost more than a third of its native vegetation, the climate implications would be global in scale.

On the local level, it is hard to begrudge the people of Amazonas for wanting a paved road connecting them to the rest of the country, particularly in a nation as rich as Brazil. A 2025 poll by the Instituto de Pesquisa do Norte showed that 9 in 10 Amazonenses were in favor of the BR-319 being asphalted. The state has the 25th lowest GDP per capita among Brazil’s 26 states and the federal district. It ranks well below the national average in most developmental metrics, including access to education and healthcare.

“We have the sense that the region is subordinate to Brazil, like an invaded territory, a colony,” said Augusto Rocha, an engineering professor and logistics expert at the Federal University of Amazonas. “Infrastructure is a way of reducing this inequality.” Rocha is in favor of the road being paved, but warns that without environmental controls, deforestation will increase.

“We don’t deny the importance of the road,” said Suely Araújo. “The problem is building it without the necessary social and environmental conditions in place.”

Whether environmental governance is possible along the BR-319 is an open question. In the spectrum of opinions surrounding the road and development in the Amazon as a whole, there are those who would just shut it all down and leave the forest intact. On the other end, there are those who believe the forest is there to be exploited, and that the preservationist approach is to blame for the economic woes of the region. In the middle, there are those who believe that sustainability with development is possible, even if the history of the Brazilian Amazon has not yet provided a large-scale model to follow. And there are the Indigenous peoples who are too often an afterthought.

As we grew closer to Porto Velho, the dirt turned to asphalt again. I was relieved to finally be on a smooth surface after two days of bumpy, uneven terrain. The truck, now caked in dried mud from top to bottom, picked up speed for the first time since the previous morning. During the whole ride I had not seen a single instance of roadkill. But just minutes into the asphalt I did — a bright green snake and a few miles later an anteater strewn across the highway.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A trip down the road that will determine the fate of the Amazon on Sep 17, 2026.

As researchers around the world begin work on the next U.N. climate assessment, fears are growing that the Trump administration could meddle with critical U.S. climate data. In response, scientists are preparing to transfer vast troves of that data to repositories in Germany.

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Scientists push for fungi protection Channel News Catherine Early 17th September 2026 Teaser Media

There is very little authorities in Nepal could have done to prevent the deaths and devastation caused by the flash flood on its border with Tibet in late August, scientists with the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group have said.

Launching a study that highlighted the role of climate change in causing the glacial rock and ice collapse that triggered the Himalayan flood, WWA co-founder Friederike Otto told reporters that “no amount of local adaptation can fully shield vulnerable people downstream from this scale of destruction”.

The findings released on Thursday are likely to strengthen Nepal’s case for emergency support from the UN’s Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage. Its board members met informally on Wednesday to discuss whether to grant the country a maximum of $20 million towards its estimated $4.8 billion cost of recovery and reconstruction, but no decision has yet been taken.

Nepal’s foreign minister Shisir Khanal told Climate Home News last week that the destructive flood was “exactly the kind of climate-driven catastrophe the Fund was created to address”.

Hard to predict

The WWA study found that rock-ice avalanches are very hard to predict and that moving people out of areas vulnerable to such floods is difficult as their livelihoods revolve around the rivers along which the floods travel.

The recent disaster began on the morning of August 26, when an avalanche started falling beneath a glacier. This caused huge amounts of rocks and glacier ice to fall over a kilometre to a valley floor, where they then picked up more rock and ice and became a flood of debris heading downhill and downstream along the border of Nepal and Tibet.

The torrent entered the narrow Lhende Khola gorge and crashed through the busy Gyirong port border crossing at 170 kilometres an hour. It continued many kilometres downstream before eventually turning from rock and ice to water and slowing down.

The flood swept through villages, roads, bridges and hydropower stations, killing over 1,300 people in Nepal with more than 5,000 still missing. The flood also killed at least 40 people in Chinese-run Tibet.

Those on higher ground away from the river mainly survived but the flood’s speed meant that many people received no warning to seek higher ground or shelter.

While Nepal has early warning systems for flooding caused by rain and glacial lake outbursts, the WWA study noted that rock-ice avalanches are complex and understudied, with methods to monitor them still being explored.

Co-author Walter Immerzeel, mountain hydrology professor at Utrecht University, told journalists that with current methods, the disaster could not have been predicted.

But, he said, in the future it may be possible to use remote sensing techniques to analyse glaciers and rocks to generate a warning before a collapse occurs.

A technique called radar interferometry can detect hotspots which should be monitored with field-based sensors and drones, he said, adding that early warning systems could be installed in these areas using seismometers, water-level measurements and CCTV.

Because doing this for thousands of glaciers across the Himalayas would be difficult, authorities could monitor only the rock and ice faces that are a danger to the river valleys with the most people and infrastructure in them, he added. But this would still require lots of investment together with international collaboration and coordination, he warned.

The study found that another potential adaptation strategy – restricting development in flood-prone river valleys – is socially, economically and politically difficult.

The scientists said habitable land is scarce in these steep river valleys and economic activities like transport and hydropower generation are dependent on the river itself.

Madhab Uprety, a Nepali scientist from the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said that, while new development should assess the risks of floods, many existing communities and buildings are already at risk.

Loss and damage

Otto said the flood should be discussed in the context of loss and damage as “there is no doubt that climate change is one of the drivers” and “it’s also one of the types of events that are absolutely outside of the limits we can possibly adapt to”.

As well as the deaths, a Nepali government’s assessment has found that a large amount of infrastructure was damaged, including more than 7,500 homes, 105 bridges, 48 public buildings, 47 cultural heritage assets, 18 schools, 13 hydropower facilities, seven health facilities, and numerous shops, hotels, restaurants, irrigation systems and farms. Over 30,000 people were affected.

Developing countries have called for the loss and damage fund’s board to hold an emergency meeting to discuss how to respond to Nepal’s request for funding. Instead of a full board meeting though, board members met only informally and online on Wednesday, Climate Home News understands. A source with knowledge of discussions said the informal nature of the meeting meant they were not able to take decisions or agree on next steps, which have been left up to the board’s co-chairs.

• Sep 9, 2026 Finance Foreign minister: Nepal needs “meaningful” international support to face climate threats Following its recent Himalayan flooding disaster, the South Asian nation is seeking urgent help from a new UN climate fund, appealing for “stronger global solidarity” Read more
• Sep 2, 2026 Finance Loss and damage fund urged to hold crisis meeting on Nepal The new fund is coming under pressure from developing nations to respond quickly to climate disasters rather than just financing longer-term projects Read more
• Apr 2, 2026 News Nepal’s EV revolution pays off as oil crisis causes pain at the pumps Import subsidies, abundant hydropower and charging investments have spurred EV adoption, with electric vehicles now making up about three-quarters of new car sales Read more

Speaking before that meeting started, Nepali climate negotiator Manjeet Dhakal said he had “heard of an extremely positive response” to Nepal’s request from board members. “Hopefully there will be something – a decision that the fund will do for exactly the reason that the fund was established,” he said.

Ajay Mathur, former Indian climate negotiator and now head of The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, told a separate press briefing on Wednesday that the Nepal flood disaster would push loss and damage higher up the agenda of international climate talks, particularly if the United Nations Secretary-General decides to champion the cause at the UN General Assembly in New York next week.

Murat Kurum, Turkish environment minister and president-designate of COP31, told Climate Home News last week that he would be “pleased” if the fund could support Nepal and that he will keep calling in every speech for countries to give money to the loss and damage fund.

Jennifer Morgan, former German climate envoy and now a senior fellow at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, called for the loss and damage fund – which currently has around $630 million in contributions – to be topped up with new pledges from governments as well as solidarity levies on things like luxury air travel, super-rich individuals and fossil fuel firms’ windfall profits.

The post Nepal flood destruction shows “limits to adaptation”, scientists say appeared first on Climate Home News.

At least 124 people were murdered last year for defending their forests, farms, or waterways from destruction or degradation, according to a stark new report. Its authors say that deep cuts to foreign aid by wealthy nations have weakened human rights groups that support environmental defenders. 

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