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Russian-Speaking Leftists, a group based in Germany, on 19 May published this interview with a socialist activist living in Russia who, they write, “stands for revolutionary defeatism”.[1] I translated it and added the footnotes. SP. Download this article as a PDF Q: Please tell us a little about yourself. A: I am a communist. I […]

Today, Montana conservation organizations challenged the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) for dramatically weakening a core benchmark for grizzly bear conservation in Montana’s Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest. The lawsuit targets the agencies’ approval of the Larabee Hat Vegetation Project—a large-scale logging and road-building project—for abandoning the science on grizzly bear conservation to obscure the project’s significant impacts to the species.

On behalf of Native Ecosystems Council, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, and the Council on Wildlife and Fish, the Western Environmental Law Center filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana this morning.

The challenge centers on how the agencies define “secure habitat” for grizzly bears—areas free from roads and human development large enough for a bear to safely meet its daily foraging needs. For decades, science has established that secure habitat patches must provide an individual female grizzly adequate space to forage for 24-48 hours without crossing or nearing motorized routes. The scientific community agrees grizzly bears need thousands of acres to meet these daily needs.

USFS and USFWS followed the scientific consensus and used a 2,500-acre minimum secure habitat patch size when they approved the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest’s Forest Plan in 2021. But in April 2025, USFWS quietly reversed course, redefining “secure habitat” outside the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem (NCDE) grizzly recovery zone as patches of just one acre. USFS followed in May 2025, updating its internal guidance to match.

“There is no scientific support for one-acre ‘secure habitat’ patches,” said David Woodsmall, attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center. “The agencies simply redefined the problem away. A one-acre island of forest surrounded by roads isn’t secure habitat—it’s a death trap for a bear trying to survive there. Federal land managers must follow the law, even under the Trump administration, and pulling policy changes like this out of thin air is clearly outside the law.”

The stakes extend well beyond this single instance. The Larabee Hat project sits in the Divide Geographic Area, part of the only public lands corridor connecting the NCDE and Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) grizzly bear recovery zones. Genetic exchange between these two isolated populations is considered essential to grizzly bear recovery in the contiguous U.S.

“The adverse cumulative impacts of this project would be devastating to wildlife and wildlife habitat, native plants, and aquatic species, which demonstrates why this project generates absolutely no net public benefit,” said Steve Kelly with Council on Wildlife and Fish. “It makes no ecological or financial sense to degrade irreplaceable, untrammeled native forest into failed tree plantations and marginal pastureland for subsidized livestock at great taxpayer expense.”

The project proposes logging on nearly 17,700 acres, including 1,266 acres of clearcuts, more than 1,850 acres of other timber harvest, and 16.8 miles of new temporary roads over the next 15 to 20 years.

Under the old 2,500-acre definition, the Divide Geographic Area contained approximately 41,531 acres of secure habitat. Under the new one-acre definition, that number jumps to 59,143 acres—an artificial increase of more than 17,000 acres that makes the landscape appear far healthier for bears than it actually is.

“We won a court case on a similar issue last year in which the Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service tried to shrink the definition of secure habitat for grizzlies from 2,500 acres to 10 acres, which is ridiculous for these wide-ranging bears,” said Mike Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. “The Judge said in the ruling: ‘In relying on a 10-acre patch size to define grizzly bear secure habitat in the absence of any scientific evidence showing that such acreage provides adequate habitat, the Fish and Wildlife Service failed to use the ‘best available science’ in violation of the Endangered Species Act,’ adding ‘grizzly bears in other ecosystems have been found to need upwards of 2,500 acres of secure habitat.’”

“Here, the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest secretly shrunk grizzly bear secure habitat to one acre in size without telling the public,” Garrity continued. “The Larabee Hat project area is in an important corridor for grizzlies from the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem to connect with grizzlies from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.  For grizzlies to be delisted, they once again have to have one connected population in the Northern Rockies with secure habitat.”

“Changing the parameters of what qualifies on paper as habitat doesn’t make more habitat,” said Sara Johnson Ph.D., a wildlife biologist for the Forest Service for 14 years. “It just makes it easier to approve more logging and more roads while ignoring the real consequences for grizzly bears. The law doesn’t allow it, and we will apparently have to be the people who say ‘no.’”

This case builds directly on a successful 2025 legal challenge, in which a federal court struck down a similar attempt to shrink grizzly bear secure habitat patch size on the Custer-Gallatin National Forest, finding the approach scientifically unjustified and harmful to bears in fragmented landscapes.

“The court already rejected this approach once,” said Woodsmall. “These agencies are trying the same thing again in a different forest. We intend to stop it again.”

 

Contacts:

David Woodsmall, Western Environmental Law Center, 971-285-3632, woodsmall@westernlaw.org

Mike Garrity, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, 406-459-5936, wildrockies@gmail.com

Steve Kelly, Council on Wildlife and Fish, 406-920-1381, troutcheeks@yahoo.com

The post Lawsuit challenges USFS’, USFWS’ drastic redefinition of “secure habitat” slashing grizzly protections in critical connectivity corridor appeared first on Western Environmental Law Center.

Certain light-duty vehicles have the potential to earn around $3,000 per summer, and school buses $12,000, by enrolling in the state’s virtual power plant, a state program manager said.

A 70-foot geyser of toxic oilfield wastewater erupted near Loving, New Mexico, after a pipe component failed at a disposal site operated by NGL Energy Partners. Loving is located in the Permian region, which produces roughly 6.6 million barrels of crude oil per day. About 40 barrels of wastewater were released, highlighting the growing problem caused by enormous volumes of “produced water” generated during oil and gas extraction.

Produced water is highly saline and can contain petroleum chemicals and radioactive materials. The state recently banned the discharge of treated produced water to ground and surface waters. Most of it is disposed of by injecting it deep underground. However, New Mexico’s oil boom has led to rapidly increasing wastewater volumes—more than 2.7 billion barrels in 2025 alone—putting pressure on disposal systems. The state is running out of suitable injection sites, and wastewater injection has been linked to earthquakes, brine leaks, and similar blowouts. In 2024, over 4 million gallons of produced water were spilled by oil and gas companies.

The geyser incident has intensified debate over whether treated produced water should be reused outside the petroleum industry. Industry advocates say that advanced treatment could turn it into a valuable water source and reduce disposal pressures, but the water’s composition is not fully understood, large-scale treatment remains unproven, and reuse could create new health and environmental risks.

Quick hits Trump nullifies 50 years of limitations on off-highway vehicles

E&E News | Yahoo News

Public lands face increasing threats in Trump era, advocates warn

Axios

More than 95% of national refuge lands could allow more hunting

KUNC

Opinion: The Forest Service is too important to be a political pawn

Los Angeles Times

Trump’s wildfire overhaul faces a pivotal review

E&E News

Interior appeals ruling vacating endangered species regulations

Bloomberg Law

Wyoming’s ‘Path of the Pronghorn’ is a signature away from protections

WyoFile

New political players have upended a fragile peace in Colorado’s oil and gas wars

Colorado Sun

Quote of the day

If the federal government is going to move the Forest Service, reorganize its parts and further downsize this agency, every American should demand that key questions be answered first. Members of Congress should lead the charge through effective and bipartisan oversight.”

—Dan Glickman and Ann Veneman, former secretaries of Agriculture, Los Angeles Times

Picture This

@Interior

From neighborhood parks to remote wilderness, America is full of places to relax, explore, and make lasting memories. Whether you’re hiking a trail, paddling a river, or watching a sunset, everyone can celebrate Great Outdoors Month and enjoy the natural splendor of our country.

 

Feature image: Permian Basin oil and gas development; Source; SkyTruth/Flickr

The post 70-foot wastewater geyser erupts in New Mexico oilfield appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

By Cecilia Allen, Global Zero Waste Cities Program Director, GAIA

(c) Nipe Fagio

Lo que antes se consideraba un sueño de idealistas,  «basura cero» es ahora una corriente dominante. Incluso ha entrado en el lenguaje de la ONU: el organismo elaboró una resolución en la que instaba a los gobiernos a «promover iniciativas basura cero», estableció un Día Internacional Basura Cero y creó un Consejo Asesor Basura Cero; además, el PNUMA, ONU-Hábitat y otros organismos de la ONU utilizan el concepto en campañas e informes. Este año, basura cero fue nombrado una de las principales prioridades de la Agenda Global de Acción Climática. La Fundación Basura Cero de Turquía, uno de los principales promotores de estos esfuerzos, está organizando su segundo Foro Global Basura Cero bajo el lema «Camino a Antalya: basura cero como acción climática». Turquía será la anfitriona de la COP31 sobre el clima.

Si bien este avance es emocionante, las palabras importan. Cuando los mismos organismos de la ONU que se supone deben promover basura cero reconocen las plantas de incineración de residuos para generar energía y la reutilización de las cenizas volantes altamente tóxicas de los incineradores como una solución basura cero, significa que algo anda mal. Del mismo modo, cuando Pakistán afirma que busca una economía “basura  cero” al aumentar la capacidad de conversión de residuos en energía, las alarmas suenan entre los defensores de basura cero en todo el mundo: la incineración es un oxímoron para basura cero. Lo que nos muestran estos ejemplos es que es necesario adoptar y defender enérgicamente una verdadera definición de basura cero.

¿Qué es basura cero?

El concepto «basura cero» surgió hace 30 años al adaptar objetivos de fabricación como el de «cero defectos» a los residuos sólidos. Basura Cero es tanto una visión como un plan de acción. Como plan de acción, incluye estrategias para eliminar la idea de «basura»: prevención de residuos, rediseño, reutilización, cambios en los patrones de consumo, reciclaje, compostaje y otros métodos para re procesar la materia orgánica. Basura Cero se guía por el objetivo de reducir progresivamente el vertido en vertederos e incineradoras, un criterio para juzgar la eficacia de los programas y políticas de residuos.

Como visión, su objetivo final es cambiar la forma en que producimos, consumimos y procesamos los desechos para que nuestra economía de materiales se ajuste a los límites planetarios. Esto no solo se refiere a los materiales, sino a nuestra relación con ellos, con el medio ambiente y entre nosotros. Es por eso que «basura cero» tiene sus raíces en la justicia ambiental: apoya el florecimiento de todos, independientemente de la raza, la clase o cualquier otra identidad, y los derechos de la naturaleza. Los sistemas basura cero se basan en la comunidad, reconocen a los recolectores de residuos como trabajadores, eliminan las «zonas de sacrificio» que suponen una carga desproporcionada para las comunidades pobres y marginadas, y sitúan a las personas en el centro de las soluciones.

Esa es la belleza del sistema basura cero: ofrece una alternativa alentadora a un sistema lineal que perpetúa la eliminación, el agotamiento de los recursos, el cambio climático y la contaminación que amenazan la salud pública y el bienestar. No sucederá de la noche a la mañana, pero establece una dirección clara.

Defender basura cero

Existen múltiples debates dentro del movimiento ambientalista sobre la cooptación del concepto basura cero. ¿Debemos dejarlo pasar? ¿Defenderlo? Hay argumentos sólidos en todos los lados de la mesa. Pero nuestro objetivo es expandir el verdadero basura cero a nivel mundial. La generalización significa que las ideas se aceptan como normales porque la mayoría de la gente las comparte; eso es por lo que miles de comunidades, funcionarios gubernamentales y empresas han trabajado durante décadas. Luchar contra esta apropiación es, por lo tanto, una parte inevitable de la generalización.

Cada vez que se presenta un proyecto de conversión de residuos en energía o de plásticos en combustible como «basura cero», las autoridades en la materia deben aclarar las cosas. La incineración de residuos para generar energía perpetúa la generación de residuos porque requiere materia prima para quemar, compite con la reutilización y el reciclaje por materiales de alto poder calorífico, depende de materias primas de origen fósil como los plásticos, produce emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero y genera residuos peligrosos. Nada de eso podría estar más lejos del concepto basura cero.

Lo más importante es que el concepto basura cero no es solo un concepto abstracto.

Durante más de tres décadas, cientos de ciudades, miles de comunidades y muchos profesionales del sector de los residuos han liderado la transición hacia él. Han demostrado que es posible lograr más del 90% de separación en origen, tasas de desvío del 80% o más, mejores condiciones de trabajo para los recolectores de residuos y economías locales basadas en la reparación y la reutilización. También demuestran que seguir la jerarquía de residuos crea más empleos, reduce más las emisiones de metano y mejora la salud pública.

Facilitar la implementación de la iniciativa «basura cero» 

En los últimos años, más gobiernos, instituciones financieras, universidades y profesionales del sector de los residuos han adoptado la visión «basura cero» y han priorizado las medidas en las etapas iniciales por encima de la eliminación. Eso es alentador, pero se necesita mucho más. Por ejemplo, solo el 1 % de la financiación internacional destinada a la reducción de metano en el sector de los residuos se destina a estrategias «basura cero», como el compostaje.

Si los bancos multilaterales de desarrollo y otras instituciones financieras internacionales destinaran el 99 % restante, en lugar de a sistemas nocivos de tratamiento final como incineradoras y megavertederos, a la prevención y recuperación de residuos orgánicos a nivel comunitario, se nivelaría el campo de juego: habría más incentivos para un cambio en los patrones de producción y consumo, y los gobiernos locales y las comunidades acelerarían la transición hacia basura cero. Si los gobiernos que afirman perseguir basura cero actuaran en consecuencia, liderarían la transición e inspirarían a otros.

Los organismos de la ONU, como el PNUMA, ONU-Hábitat y el Consejo Asesor Basura Cero, tienen la responsabilidad especial de establecer una visión clara para los gobiernos y las instituciones, y promover una agenda auténtica basura cero para impulsar la sostenibilidad ambiental, la equidad social y los sistemas económicos que respeten los límites naturales.Mientras continuamos trabajando hacia un futuro basura cero, honremos su verdadero espíritu, que impulsa el cambio de los sistemas. Y apoyemos y ampliemos los programas y políticas de eficacia probada que los gobiernos, las comunidades, los recolectores de residuos, las ONG y las empresas están sosteniendo. Protejamos el término y honremos la práctica: pongamos en práctica el verdadero basura cero.

Rommel Cabrera/GAIA, 2019. Waste pickers collecting separated waste from households. Tacloban City, the Philippines.

The post En defensa del verdadero espíritu  «basura cero» first appeared on GAIA.

This factsheet shows that Ontario can easily accommodate enough solar and wind installations to meet the projected provincial demand for electricity in 2050.  These options will be lower cost and faster to deploy than new nuclear. Read the factsheet

The post Does Ontario Need New Nuclear to Keep its Lights on in 2050? appeared first on Ontario Clean Air Alliance.

FEDERAL AND PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENTS’ legal obligation to consult and accommodate Indigenous nations has been confirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada for over 20 years. The duty to consult is triggered when a government’s action may affect Indigenous Nations’ rights. An action that could severely impair Indigenous Nations’ exercise of their rights entails accommodation measures to mitigate negative effects. Additionally, British Columbia in 2019 passed legislation committing the government to align its laws with the United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). UNDRIP affirms Indigenous Nations’ right to self-determination, including the right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) to make decisions that affect Indigenous lands. Prior to 2023, British Columbia’s mineral claims regime violated both the imperative to consult Indigenous Nations and the principles of UNDRIP. In the previous system, individuals or companies with a Free Miner Certificate could pay a nominal fee to register a mineral or placer claim through B.C’s Mineral Titles Online. These claims confer a priority right to subsurface minerals and the exclusive ability to pursue further permits to conduct significant exploration work. First Nations had no role in the claims registration process and were only consulted during the later permitting stage. This “free entry” system would have likely remained in place if not for litigation that challenged its constitutionality. 

Gitxaała vs. British Columbia (2023)

The Gitxaała Nation and Ehattesaht First Nation first successfully challenged the “free entry” system in 2023, with the British Columbia Supreme Court confirming that it violated the duty to consult. The B.C. government was ordered to reform the regime to implement consultation processes, which was rolled out in March 2025. However, it took an appeal to produce an additional ruling from the B.C. Court of Appeal in 2025 that confirmed the previous mineral claims regime was also inconsistent with FPIC, as incorporated by the B.C. government’s legislation. This judicial acknowledgement that the Mineral Tenure Act is inconsistent with Indigenous nations’ rights under UNDRIP must thus be addressed in subsequent consultative forums and reforms, which could be subject to future litigation. The B.C. Court of Appeal’s decision is being appealed by the B.C. government on the grounds that it is creating “confusion” over the legal status of UNDRIP in Canada (Depner 2026). 

It is worth pausing here to further examine the B.C. government’s position. The B.C. government accepted the need for reforms aimed at incorporating Indigenous consultation to meet both their duty to consult under Canadian common law and the standards of UNDRIP as affirmed in B.C. legislation. However, the B.C. government is challenging the position that inconsistencies between the Mineral Tenure Act and other B.C. laws and UNDRIP are justiciable. The B.C. government is arguing against judicial forms of accountability over how UNDRIP is implemented.

The rejection of judicial intervention over UNDRIP implementation would mean that only the duty to consult creates a justiciable standard of honourable state conduct towards Indigenous Nations, leaving UNDRIP and legislation affirming it to be treated as an aspirational framework.

A similar challenge by the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories is being made to the Federal Court of Appeal after the Federal Court in early 2025 ruled that UNDRIP serves as an interpretative lens that changes the standards of Indigenous consultation. 

Legitimacy Deficits

Excluding the judiciary as a venue to challenge the state’s implementation of UNDRIP is the latest demonstration of the state’s preference for controlling processes of decision-making, particularly over land and waters. The evolution of the duty to consult is illustrative of what happens when the judiciary permits the state to use existing decision-making processes that simply integrate additional steps to include Indigenous consultation. In Process as Power, I analyze how the duty to consult’s obligations as outlined in Canadian common law permits Canadian governments to consult Indigenous Nations without adapting to Indigenous standards of good governance. The judiciary did not compel Canadian governments to restructure the process of decision-making, only that Indigenous Nations must be formally included in pre-existing models with the final decision-making power residing with a minister.

The consequences of perfunctory consultation are enduring legitimacy deficits throughout state decision-making, contributing to continuing Indigenous-state conflict and litigation. 

Such legitimacy deficits arose when B.C.’s mineral claims regime was reformed to conform to the duty to consult standard. In a six-month review of those reforms, a majority of First Nations survey responses revealed that they perceived the decision-making process to lack transparency and produce only weak accommodation measures. Despite formally meeting the duty to consult, these consultative processes overburden Indigenous communities to review numerous applications because no additional supports are provided (Ministry of Mining and Critical Minerals 2025, 16); they do not clearly demonstrate how Indigenous feedback was considered and were even perceived to ignore First Nations (Ibid, 17); and they produce unresponsive accommodation measures (Ibid, 18). These results are striking because they closely mirror issues present in other decision-making processes related to reviewing industrial activities. Process as Power includes an examination of B.C.’s Environmental Assessment process and the same state-driven unilateralism permeates that forum as well. I trace how these deficiencies are tied to the ways in which the duty to consult case law over time permitted state-led decision-making designs while narrowly defining what Indigenous Nations can raise in consultative forums. 

Implementing UNDRIP?

UNDRIP fundamentally departs from the duty to consult standard because it presents an Indigenous-driven framework through FPIC that respects Indigenous self-determination. The fact that governments like B.C., Canada, and the Northwest Territories have passed UNDRIP-affirming legislation showed promising signs that reconciliation politics was backed by some action. But UNDRIP’s implementation was always going to be the real test of these governments’ commitments. In the context of the B.C. Environmental Assessment process, I find that reforms starting in 2018 have made some progress to improve the capacity of Indigenous Nations to review applications and to consistently respect the rights-holding status of Indigenous Nations. Other developments are more concerning, like how decision-making power continues to reside with a minister who is not bound by any party, including a new dispute resolution facilitator. Crucially, in this particular policy area, ongoing nation-to-nation negotiations are being pursued to advance additional reforms to uphold UNDRIP (Environmental Assessment Office 2025). 

Combatting the state’s asymmetrical hold over decision-making in matters that affect Indigenous Nations would be completely undermined if governments could unilaterally decide how to implement UNDRIP. The Eby government’s attempted volte-face to suspend parts of their UNDRIP-affirming legislation in response to the mining litigation is not only a political betrayal to the Indigenous Nations in that province working to advance UNDRIP but also conflicts with the direction established in recent appellate decisions. Canadian appellate courts have explained that legislative commitments, like those aimed at implementing UNDRIP, engage the Crown’s honour, which compels these governments to act upon their declarations. The Crown being bound to fulfill legislative promises related to the goal of reconciliation has been affirmed in other Indigenous rights contexts like the C-92 Reference decision (2024) concerning Indigenous child welfare. As explained in Gitxaała v. British Columbia (2025), the B.C. government’s legislative “affirmation…amounts to a binding Crown promise, namely, that the Crown will act as though the existing legal rights, obligations, principles, minimum standards and goals expressed in UNDRIP in specific relation to Indigenous peoples apply to British Columbia laws, including the common law” (at para. 161). 

Thus, the appeal of the Gitxaała v. British Columbia decision shows that legal uncertainty stems more from the state’s intransigence to maintain its decision-making processes than UNDRIP’s status in Canadian law. Unfortunately, the lack of cooperation on UNDRIP’s implementation may also produce a chilling effect that prevents the passage of UNDRIP-affirming legislation in other jurisdictions.

The conflict over process rights is just beginning and will continue to entwine both legal and political developments.

Endnotes

Depner, W. (2026, February 7). B.C. seeks to challenge landmark court ruling over mineral rights and DRIPA. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/eby-dripa-gitxaala-ruling-challenge-mineral-rights-9.7078151

British Columbia Environmental Assessment Office. (2025, September). Review of the 2018 Environmental Assessment Act [Backgrounder]. Government of British Columbia. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/environment/natural-resource-stewardship/environmental-assessments/act-review/eao_act_review_backgrounder.pdf

British Columbia Ministry of Mining and Critical Minerals. (2025, December). Mineral Claims Consultation Framework—6 month review. Government of British Columbia. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/environment/natural-resource-stewardship/environmental-assessments/act-review/mineral_claims_consultation_framework__6_month_review.pdf

Gitxaała v. British Columbia (Chief Gold Commissioner), 2025 BCCA 430.

Citation:

Do, Minh. “The Politics of Process: B.C.’s Mineral Claims Regime and the Threat of an FPIC Freeze,” Yellowhead Institute. June 02, 2026. https://yellowheadinstitute.org/2026/the-politics-of-process-b-c-s-mineral-claims-regime-and-the-threat-of-an-fpic-freeze

The post The Politics of Process: B.C.’s Mineral Claims Regime and the Threat of an FPIC Freeze appeared first on Yellowhead Institute.

Con el objetivo de fortalecer y dar visibilidad a experiencias locales que promueven la prevención y gestión responsable de residuos, la iniciativa Rutas basura cero seleccionó una serie de recorridos presenciales ejecutados por organizaciones locales en distintos países de América Latina. 

La propuesta surge en un contexto de creciente preocupación por la crisis de los residuos y los impactos ambientales, sociales y económicos asociados al actual modelo de producción y consumo. Frente a este escenario, las estrategias de basura cero han demostrado ser una alternativa efectiva para reducir la generación de residuos mediante prácticas de reducción, reúso, reciclaje y compostaje, al tiempo que promueven la justicia ambiental y el fortalecimiento de las economías locales.

En particular, los sistemas de reúso y rellenado están cobrando cada vez más relevancia como soluciones replicables y escalables para avanzar hacia comunidades más saludables y sostenibles. Sin embargo, muchas de estas experiencias continúan siendo poco conocidas fuera de sus zonas, lo que limita su potencial de incidencia y réplica.

Para revertir esta situación, el proyecto Rutas basura cero impulsa recorridos presenciales coordinados por organizaciones locales, que permiten a tomadores de decisiones, representantes de gobiernos, académicos, líderes sociales y otros actores clave conocer de primera mano iniciativas exitosas en funcionamiento.

Las rutas incluyen visitas a proyectos con al menos un año de trayectoria y resultados comprobables, vinculados a prácticas como el rellenado de envases, el lavado y reutilización de utensilios, el compostaje descentralizado y el cooperativismo. Además, cada experiencia es documentada mediante registros audiovisuales que pasan a integrar una base regional de casos de éxito.

La iniciativa busca generar espacios de intercambio entre experiencias consolidadas y actores estratégicos, así como producir materiales que contribuyan a la difusión y sistematización de aprendizajes sobre modelos basura cero en la región.

A continuación, compartimos las organizaciones e iniciativas seleccionadas que forman parte de esta primera edición de Rutas basura cero:

Quito, Ecuador: https://youtu.be/zAfFljwO-uU

Entrejardines nos lleva a la compostera y huerta comunitaria del barrio La Floresta en Quito, luego pasamos por Pure!, una empresa de turismo que comparte cómo ha adoptado prácticas de reúso y segregación en origen dentro de su oficina, y terminamos en el restaurante Pim’s donde conocemos cómo gestionan sus residuos sólidos y orgánicos. 

Zona de los Santos, Costa Rica: https://youtu.be/VTS_io9FWok

La Asociación Defensores Monumento Zona de los Santos, nos muestra cómo están trabajando para preservar una zona de alta biodiversidad a través del manejo de residuos de subproductos de procesos de cultivo de café como el que hacen en Coope Tarrazu y Coopedota. Luego terminamos con una parada en el Centro de acopio Preserve Planet (CAPP) para saber más sobre segregación de residuos y recuperación de tapas de refrescos.

Magallanes, Chile: https://youtu.be/fOl7LHwXlEg

Fundación Lenga nos traslada a la zona más austral del Chile donde iniciamos el recorrido en Compost Coiron y su proyecto de gestión de residuos orgánicos, donde además nos cuentan cómo el turismo influye en el colapso del vertedero municipal de Puerto Natales. En Punta Arenas, conocemos el laboratorio textil Puro Viento, una iniciativa de reuso que utiliza residuos textiles y gigantografías publicitarias para hacer artículos como mochilas, estuches, entre otros. Finalmente, llegamos a Puerto Williams para saber más sobre la iniciativa municipal de gestión de residuos. 

This post is based on a talk I gave at the Ecosocialism conference in London on Saturday 30 May, about the Fare Free London campaign, in which I participate, and the wider movements of which it is part. I was on a panel on “Organising the climate movement” with Tyrone Scott of War on Want […]

The  California High-Speed Rail Authority’s Board of Directors on Monday voted to elevate board member Stephen Kawa, a longtime former aide to Gov. Gavin Newsom, to become the governing body’s new board chair. Read more.

VENTURA, Calif. — A new daily AMTRAK Pacific Surfliner train is now connecting Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo early every morning, giving commuters an additional option, especially those traveling from Ventura to Santa Barbara Counties for work. Read more.

Once Tap Plus launches later this year, it will be available on the agencies that operate roughly 95% of public transit trips in California, but there are some notable laggards… Read more.

Check out “Censored News” coverage of May 16

Protest in Utah against Energy Fuels uranium mines and mill

“CENSORED NEWS: Shut Down Energy Fuels — Uranium Mining and Radioactive Dumping on Native People”

By KAY MATTHEWS

Kit Carson Electric Cooperative CEO Luis Reyes just announced that the company has hired GZA GeoEnvironmental/Glorieta Geoscience (GZAGeoEnvironmental recently acquired Geoscience, which is based in Santa Fe) to conduct a water study of the proposed hydrogen facility in Questa. Kit Carson has only contracted for Phase 1 of that study, that states it will “assess the influence of pumping the Chevron production well (RG-14117-POD-18) on the groundwater flow conditions in the Questa, NM area.” However, the Phase I study will only develop a “three-dimensional visualization model,” which doesn’t involve well testing, drilling flow logs, measuring the rates of aquifer replenishment, and other critical water studies. If requested, Phase 2 would create “a groundwater flow model, calibrate the model, and prepare a report that summarizes the groundwater modeling work.” 

The Questa Watershed Coalition has received a detailed letter from a local hydrologist that lays down the details and requirements that a competent water study must include. The letter begins with this statement: “This will be a critically important study, and it is paramount that it be technically sound, comprehensive, and independently and impartially reviewed and validated.” The hydrologist emphasized that both Phases, 1 and 2, are necessary to “adequately predict hydrologic impacts. The visualization model should be accompanied by a conceptual model (which is basically a qualitative description of the flow system) and a quantitative water budget for all relevant hydrologic components (recharge, flux, discharge to rivers and wells, etc.) along with a clear statement of the objectives of the modeling exercise. He also stated that the 100 afy extraction rate is probably inadequate and 250 afy, the well’s adjudicated capacity, will be more likely needed. The Coalition will use the input in the letter to help assess the GeoScience study.

Questa Watershed Protectors have been asking Reyes for a comprehensive water study for months, as concerns over drought and the climate crisis are exacerbated by this year’s extreme situation. Snowpack measurements for the Sangre de Cristos are the lowest ever recorded, and both of the Questa acequias, Cabresto Lake Irrigation Community Ditch Association and Llano Community Ditch, have seen a significant loss of irrigation water. The well that will provide water for the hydrogen project is a Chevron exploratory well that they call the tailings facility water well. It’s 500 feet deep and will supposedly supply clean water for the project (the OSE will have to provide an assessment). A mile-wide study was done that said four other wells could be affected by the Chevron well, but Questa’s wells are not within that one-mile radius. A two-mile radius could affect 58 wells, including the many private wells in the community.

While GeoScience promotes its hydrogeology analyses and has worked all over the state, the president and senior hydrogeologist, Jay Lazarus, has an extensive history in the Taos area that may not bode well for an unbiased, comprehensive study of water quantity and quality in the Questa area that could be affected by the hydrogen facility. He’s been a longtime consultant for the Abeyta Water Rights Adjudication (Taos Pueblo) that resulted in a settlement in 2013. As such, he was a vocal opponent of the Public Welfare Statement that was drafted by a group of citizens as part of the Taos Regional Water Plan, back in 2006. The statement laid out the criteria for determining whether proposed water appropriations or transfers from the Taos Region to other regions and within the Taos Region from one sub-watershed to another are consistent with the public welfare.

Public welfare is one of the criteria the Office of the State Engineer is supposed to use to determine whether to approve a water transfer, but has rarely done so. That’s why the citizen committee urged that the Public Welfare Statement be incorporated into the Taos Regional Water Plan. But the parties to the Abeyta settlement raised objections to the proposed PWS, claiming it would prevent the implementation of the settlement and that it was contrary to state law. They, represented by Lazarus, wanted nothing to interfere with whatever transfers might be necessary for implementation of the controversial Abeyta Settlement.

In 2013, when Blackstone Ranch, which had acquired the historic McCarthy Ranch, “Taos’s last great grasslands” on Upper Ranchitos Road, applied to transfer just under 12-acre feet per year of surface water rights from the Alamitos Acequia to a groundwater well to irrigate landscaping around the “main-house,” a small orchard, gardens, greenhouse, and “fire-prevention pond”—which translates to 6 afy of groundwater. Their hydrogeologist, Jay Lazarus, was quite frank about the reason for the transfer: it would ensure the ranch irrigation water when there isn’t enough water in the acequia. This, of course, sets a bad precedent: As surface water continues to dry up more and more irrigators will want to pump groundwater instead. It’s already happening in southern New Mexico—and on a much larger scale than 12 afy of water—as farmers dependent on Elephant Butte Irrigation District for irrigation come up short and pump groundwater to save their crops. Texas sued, and a settlement agreement will require the retirement of thousands of acres of farmland to provide Texas with its allotted water rights under the Rio Grande Compact.

Finally, in 2025, at a public meeting about Sipapu Ski Area and Resort expansion plans, Lazarus was confronted in two claims he made as the ski area’s consultant on water quality monitoring. When asked about the ingredient surfactant, or Drift, used in snowmaking, Lazarus said that a New Mexico Environment Department study had found no impact on downstream users. The representative from the NMED corrected him that the agency was unable to test for snowmaking because surfactant is already present in the agency’s lab.

Lazarus was also challenged by Robert Templeton, a parciante from Dixon, when he made the often-touted claim that ski areas act as water reservoirs and help downstream users when the snow is released into the watershed in the spring. Templeton argued that stored water is only available during the spring runoff when the river flow is at or approaching flood conditions and is of no use to irrigators. The time that the “potentially stored” water is used for snowmaking is the exact moment when the water is needed in the river for recharge of wells and the sub-surface lands along the river’s course after the irrigation season.

.In a Taos News article Reyes was asked about allocating such a large amount of water during a time of extreme drought. His response was, “I’ve never seen it, living here [that] in a year we’ll get so much snow that it undoes, you know, 10 or 15 or 20 years of drought, but we’re not using [the water] for a while,” Reyes said. “I have faith that, like any cycle, we’ll start to get rains and moisture back, hopefully, like we did in the old days.”

The people of Questa would rather rely on a scientific assessment of what the water situation is right now before a water-guzzling project moves forward. Hopefully, that’s what they get.

This article Resistance is only half the equation was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

We no longer live in a world where courts reliably enforce limits on executive power; where media calls out abuse as abuse or where politicians depend on legitimacy to hold power. These conditions are eroding, and power is becoming more and more centralized. 

In the U.S., the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States in 2024 significantly expanded presidential immunity for official acts, raising concerns about accountability. Globally, ruling parties in Hungary and Poland have reshaped judicial systems through court-packing and disciplinary regimes that weaken independent checks on executive authority. And in countries such as India, new laws restrict freedom of the press. 

In response, we see a grinding pattern of reaction from pundits and resisters, but the power of centralized authority remains. Trump has retained power despite his involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, as well as his name being all over the Epstein files. Leaders in Turkey and Egypt have been accused repeatedly of inciting democratic backsliding, yet they maintain power. At the same time, ecological, economic, cultural and political crises expand. 

This moment demands more than opposition. What is needed is not just resistance against corrupt centralized systems, but to create new, local systems that restructure power so it is dispersed throughout society. Because the problem is not only that those in power abuse it. The problem is that power is concentrated in the first place.

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The work of Gene Sharp stands apart in the field of nonviolent theory for one central reason: his understanding of power. For Sharp, justice, equality, freedom and any meaningful form of democracy do not exist simply as ideals or constitutional rights. They exist only when power is actually dispersed throughout society — embedded in the daily practices, institutions and relationships of ordinary people. Without that dispersion, democracy is little more than a substanceless claim.

Many nonviolent activists and scholars have embraced part of Sharp’s insight. They recognize that governments do not rule by force alone, but by the cooperation and support of institutions, organizations and individuals. From this perspective, power is contingent. If people withdraw their cooperation strategically and nonviolently, regimes can be forced to concede, reform or even collapse. This understanding has shaped movements across the world, from civil resistance campaigns to election protection efforts.

And yet, there is an equally important part of Sharp’s insight they are missing.

The problem of concentrated power

We are seeing how deeply dependent we have become on centralized systems that do not have our best interests in mind. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed how centralized healthcare and supply chains have become, leaving many without timely access to care and essential goods. And recurring, large-scale electrical outages, such as the 2021 Texas power crisis, show how dependent millions are on centralized grids that can fail. 

When power is concentrated — whether in governments, corporations or some fusion of the two — corruption is not an accident. It is a structural inevitability. Systems organized around concentrated power will, over time, bend toward the interests of those who hold it. Policies, resources and decision-making processes become oriented toward preserving and expanding that power, often at the expense of the broader population.

Previous Coverage

Will the real Gene Sharp please step forward?

Even the most well-intentioned leaders operate within structures that reward consolidation, control and self-preservation. For example, in an effort to make the U.S. government more efficient and effective, President Barack Obama reinstated presidential authority, ushering in an era of consolidated executive power. The result is an unfortunate recurring pattern: Inequality deepens, accountability weakens and public institutions drift away from the people they are meant to serve.

When decision-making is centralized, the distance between those who hold power and those affected by it widens, often to the point where meaningful feedback becomes filtered, delayed or ignored altogether. Over time, this creates an environment where leaders are not only insulated from consequences, but are also operating with an increasingly distorted understanding of reality. Citizens, in turn, become disengaged or disempowered, sensing that their voices carry little weight within systems designed to concentrate authority rather than distribute it. The result is not just corruption in the traditional sense, but a deeper erosion of responsiveness, adaptability and trust — conditions without which meaningful reform from within is exceedingly difficult.

Activism as external correction

In response to the erosion of democracy and the increasing inaccessibility of necessities like food, healthcare and housing, activists organize. They build networks to monitor elections, serve as watchdogs on corporate behavior, defend civil rights and provide essential services where governments fail. These efforts are vital. They protect people from immediate harm and at times, win meaningful reforms.

But rather than transforming how power is organized within society, these efforts often function as external correctives. They attempt to restrain abuse, mitigate harm and fill gaps left by failing institutions. In doing so, they implicitly accept the continued existence of centralized power structures, even as they resist their consequences.

This creates a paradox. Activists devote enormous energy to building parallel systems. Yet the underlying structures that concentrate that power remain largely intact.

The burden of endless resistance

Over time, this dynamic places an unsustainable burden on civil society. Activists become responsible for preventing abuse by those in power, holding institutions accountable and providing services that those institutions fail to deliver.

This is, in effect, a permanent state of resistance. It is also a reactive posture. Each new harm requires a new response, a new organization, a new campaign. The work expands endlessly, while the root cause — the concentration of power — remains unaddressed. 

One example of this is the environmental justice movement, particularly the coordinated pushback against federal rollbacks. Coalitions such as We Are Still In and the U.S. Climate Alliance mobilize states, municipalities, businesses and civil society to uphold the commitments of the Paris Agreement. Additionally, environmental groups repeatedly challenge deregulation, while states advance their own regulations. This created a multi-level infrastructure of resistance. Yet, even these efforts are forced into a constant defensive posture, expending vast energy to block or mitigate harms rather than dismantling underlying structures that enable federally sanctioned reversals of policy. 

While it’s true that it matters who holds office — we know that Trump’s policies are far more harmful to the environment than were Biden’s — this distinction does not resolve the deeper problem. The structure of centralized power remains unchanged, meaning that environmental policy can be rapidly advanced or dismantled with each shift in administration. As a result, even hard-won gains remain fragile. This volatility prevents the kind of long-term, consistent action required to address the climate crisis at scale. 

The question that follows is both simple and profound: Why do we accept a system in which people must constantly organize to defend themselves against the very structures meant to serve them?

Reimagining the mainstream structure

If we take Sharp’s theory of power seriously, the answer cannot lie solely in resistance.

Withdrawing cooperation from unjust systems is a vital tool. But it is only half of the equation. The other half is construction: building a society in which power is distributed from the outset, rather than concentrated and then contested.

Previous Coverage

Why building inspiring alternatives is necessary to counter authoritarianism

This requires a shift in orientation. Instead of asking how to better monitor and constrain centralized power, we must ask how to redesign the structures that produce it. What would it mean to organize political, economic and social systems so that decision-making authority is broadly shared? So that communities have direct control over the conditions of their lives? So that power is not something granted from above, but something exercised collectively?

In such a system, the need for vast external networks of resistance would diminish. Not because injustice would disappear, but because the mechanisms for addressing it would be built into the fabric of society itself.

And this is key. When power is disbursed throughout society into local communities — for example, when food is grown locally, housing is owned by cooperatives, health care is operated by neighborhood clinics, and so on — then community members can withdraw from or reduce their dependence on centralized, mainstream agribusinesses or real estate corporations or medical institutions. Empowering communities to take care of more and more of their own essential needs is a grassroots process that restructures how power is distributed in society. And the more communities that are empowered by these local initiatives, the more dispersed and decentralized power becomes. 

Addressing concerns of centralized power

The task ahead then is not only to resist concentrated power, but to replace it with distributed forms of governance and organization. To shift from a model of external oversight to one of internal design. In other words, the goal is not merely to challenge power, but to reconfigure it.

Around the world, communities are already doing this. They are realizing Sharp’s theory of decentralized power. By developing community gardens, housing coops and health centers, people can opt out of mainstream institutions and systems, greatly weakening the power those systems have over them. This is not merely an effort to fill in gaps. Instead, it deliberately shifts how power is distributed in society. Because, as dependency decreases, so does the ability of centralized authorities to command compliance. What emerges is not a parallel safety net, but a reconfiguration of power itself, one in which legitimacy flows from local and collective production and governance rather than from those who live far away.  

In the examples below, we see communities around the world building local control over essential needs such as housing, food, health care, energy, technology and safety. Each project that enables people to meet these needs locally — rather than through international corporations or federally controlled institutions — is a step toward local empowerment. As more communities adopt this approach, power becomes increasingly distributed across society.

Housing: Community control over land and shelter A Zapatista slogan on a mural in the autonomous town of Marinaleda, Spain, translates “the land belongs to those who work it.” (Turismo de la Provincia de Sevilla)

In southern Spain, the town of Marinaleda has created a radically different housing model. Following the election of Mayor Manuel Sánchez Gordillo — a labor leader pivotal to the town’s fight for self-governance — Marinaleda expropriated a significant amount of land from the state and launched a de-commodified housing system. Residents build their homes on collectively owned land; the town supplies construction materials and labor while occupants pay minimal mortgage payments tied to maintenance rather than profit. While operating within a broader national system, the town has effectively removed housing from market forces, placing control in the hands of the community itself.

In Jackson, Mississippi, Cooperation Jackson is working to build a solidarity economy rooted in worker ownership and community land control. Based on the model of Mondragon, Spain, residents are reducing dependence on both state and corporate systems.

Food: Feeding communities without external control

Few examples demonstrate community power more clearly than the Zapatista Autonomous Communities in Chiapas, Mexico. There, Indigenous communities have built autonomous systems of governance and agriculture, producing food collectively on communal land. In food forests, families and collectives farm milpa plots (corn, beans and squash) alongside cooperative coffee production. These systems operate independently of state programs and corporate supply chains, ensuring that communities can feed themselves on their own terms.

Community control goes beyond food. Volunteer medical professionals provide training for locals and help operate small community clinics that provide basic care, vaccinations and maternal support. Local community-run schools provide education that includes Indigenous languages, history and agroecology. And security as well as justice issues are brought before community assemblies. 

Power is dispersed by rooting it in the community itself and sustaining it through ongoing practice rather than reliance on institutions organized and controlled far from the people they are meant to serve. This reduces residents’ vulnerability to political shifts, market fluctuations and external control. Participation is embedded into daily life, making autonomy a lived reality rather than an abstract ideal. 

Likewise, in India, Navdanya, a woman- and Earth-centered movement to protect biodiversity, supports networks of farmers who preserve and share native seeds, rejecting dependence on corporate-controlled agriculture. Though funded in part by donations from corporate partners, they maintain seed sovereignty, which allows them to retain control over the very foundation of food production.

Health care: Care as a collective practice

Across many Indigenous communities, healers and midwives operate within community structures where knowledge is passed through generations. Care is often relational, land-based and spiritually integrated. For example, within the Navajo Nation, Diné traditional healing is an active, community-embedded system. And in Maya Ixil regions, comadronas (traditional midwives) guide pregnancy, birth and postpartum care using herbal remedies and spiritual practices. While outside funding supports this work, it nevertheless provides examples of how traditional and alternative healing can replace total dependence on mainstream health care systems. 

These health care practices are examples of mutual aid networks — many of which have expanded rapidly in recent years — in which communities can organize care without institutional backing. Funded through direct contributions and relationships of trust, these networks provide medical support, caregiving and essential supplies outside formal systems.

Energy and technology: Infrastructure in community hands

Energy and technology are often treated as inherently centralized, but communities are challenging that assumption. For example, Barefoot College trains local residents in the Global South — often women — to build and maintain solar infrastructure themselves, placing both knowledge and power in community hands.

Digital infrastructure is also being reclaimed. Community-built mesh networks, such as Guifi.net, provide locally owned internet systems governed by its users rather than corporate providers. These networks demonstrate that even complex technological systems can be decentralized and collectively managed.

Safety: Community-based security and governance

In the Indigenous Mexican town of Cherán, residents expelled external political authorities and established their own system of governance and security. Community patrols replaced state police, and decision-making shifted to local assemblies.

Similarly, within Zapatista communities, systems of justice and conflict resolution are handled collectively, without reliance on external courts or enforcement structures. Safety, in these contexts, emerges from shared responsibility rather than imposed authority.

From meeting needs to redistributing power

It’s worth noting that not all community-based efforts are entirely self-sufficient. Some, like community land trusts, rely heavily on ongoing government funding. And Germany’s energy democracy movement makes use of public grants and corporate support. Additionally, community safety groups provide programs that interrupt violence and reduce harm, but still depend on local police. Yet, they are models for systems and structures that can and sometimes do transition to total independence.

What unites these examples is not perfection but a desire to reduce their dependence on centralized institutions. They demonstrate that communities can meet essential needs through systems they control. That reduction matters because dependence is the mechanism through which power is maintained.

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A fair critique of decentralizing power is that it can fragment capacity and deepen inequality between communities. Not all localities begin with the same resources, skills or cohesion, and without coordination, decentralization can produce uneven outcomes, duplication of effort or gaps in essential services, especially in moments that require large-scale response. It can also risk exclusion or local capture if decision making is dominated by a few voices. 

These are real concerns. But they point to the need for networking, not isolation. They reveal the importance of shared standards, mutual aid across communities and federated structures that allow coordination without recentralizing authority. In this model, power is distributed, but not disconnected. Communities retain control over their systems while participating in broader networks that pool knowledge, redistribute resources and maintain accountability.

When communities no longer rely on governments or corporations for housing, food, energy or care, their participation in those systems diminishes. And their withdrawal is not merely tactical. Rather, it becomes a condition of life that rebuilds societal power structures from the ground up. 

And when this is multiplied across communities, something larger begins to emerge: a society in which power is not concentrated and contested, but dispersed and practiced. This is what it means to take Gene Sharp seriously — not only to withdraw cooperation from unjust systems, but to build the capacity to live without them. 

This article Resistance is only half the equation was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

How the Bamako Convention Can Drive Real Implementation of the Basel Convention in Africa

By Gilbert KUEPOUO, Executive Director of Centre de Recherche et d’Education pour le Developpement (CREPD)

The African continent has historically been a dumping ground for hazardous chemicals, technologies, and waste from the global north and from countries such as China, India, and Turkey.

This dumping is the result of brute economic forces, often characterized as “toxic colonialism,” as evidenced by the recent case of Italian waste dumped in Tunisia. The real costs of waste disposal are shifted onto the recipient population and environment, transferring negative externalities born in the global north and other countries onto the African continent. 

As African civil society strives to drive action on waste trade as an urgent environmental and social justice issue in Africa during Africa Day, it is important to examine the global and regional instruments that govern waste trade, their weaknesses, and areas of complementarity and effectiveness. 

At the global level, the Basel Convention on the transboundary movement of hazardous waste and its disposal, adopted in 1989 and entered into force in 1992, regulates the global trade in hazardous and other waste.

While the Basel Ban Amendment (Article 4a of the Basel Convention), adopted in 1995 and entered into force relatively recently on 5 December 2019, prohibits the export of hazardous waste from developed countries (Annex VII) to developing countries (non-Annex VII), it is not applicable to countries that have not ratified it, including many African countries.

Further, the Basel Ban Amendment does not apply to Basel’s Annex II waste, which includes household waste, mixed plastic waste, and non-hazardous e-waste, nor does it apply to as defined by the African Bamako Convention. It is therefore vital for all African countries to ratify both the Basel Ban Amendment and the Bamako Convention.

The Bamako Convention, which I like to refer to as the “African dam regulation”, is a treaty of African nations, created by Africans for Africans, that entered into force in 1998 and is intended to protect the continent against the dumping of hazardous and other waste.

It is a regional agreement accepted by the Basel Convention under its Article 11, which allows legal waste trade agreements that are no less environmentally sound than the Basel Convention, and can, for example, in particular interests of developing countries, be stronger than the Basel Convention. For example, the Bamako Convention offers stronger protections than the Basel Convention in the following ways: 

1. The Bamako Convention considers any waste containing either listed hazardous substances or listed hazardous characteristics as hazardous wastes. The Basel Convention, on the other hand, requires both a hazardous substance and a hazardous characteristic at the same time to qualify as hazardous waste. 

2. The Bamako Convention considers all chemicals, whether they are factually waste or not, as hazardous waste if they are banned or severely restricted for environmental or human health reasons anywhere in the world. The Basel Convention does not consider these banned or severely restricted chemicals as wastes subject to control in Africa. 

3. The Bamako Convention uniquely considers nuclear wastes of all kinds (Y0), as well as wastes collected from households, and incinerator ashes from the burning of wastes collected from households (Y46 and Y47) to be hazardous wastes. The Basel Convention does not consider these wastes to be hazardous waste.

4. The Bamako Convention bans the import of all hazardous wastes into the continent of Africa, as well as the ocean dumping in the waters under the jurisdiction of African States. There are no such provisions under the Basel Convention.

In light of these stronger protections, the Bamako Convention is truly a regional dam treaty to prevent hazardous and other waste, including chemicals banned or severely restricted by governments around the world, from crossing the sovereign borders of the African continent and causing further harm. It provides African countries with strong protections against environmental injustice and exploitation, and gives them future opportunities to self-regulate and set stronger trade bans or controls than the Basel Convention, keeping regional needs top of mind.

For example, the Bamako Convention plays a major role in preventing plastic and electronic waste from being exported to the African continent. It is also well-positioned to prevent toxic technologies, such as the chemical recycling of plastics and waste incineration, from being moved to the African continent from the Global North.

However, while in legal force for 29 African countries, Bamako is not yet fully functional as intended.  

First, the Convention needs to be fully ratified by all 54 member states of the African Continent. To date, only 25 countries, including those regularly targeted for hazardous waste dumping, such as Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya, have not ratified the Bamako Convention. 

Second, and of critical importance, is the mobilization of resources to allow for a steady source of funding, for adequate operationalisation, and to hold regular meetings, as any Convention must have in order for it to function. An initial step toward this was taken during the last BRS COP through a decision calling for communication and synergies with Basel, aiming for a stronger partnership.

The AMCEN-20 (African Ministerial Conference on the Environment) decision on Bamako also calls for ratification and the convening of the next COP—COP4 of the Bamako Convention — with the support of the African Union and UNEP (United Nations Environment Program).   

We must collectively call on UNEP, AMCEN, the GEF (Global Environment Fund), and all national governments of Africa to ratify the Bamako Convention if they have not, and, moreover, to explore ways to overcome these critical institutional challenges and gaps to finally achieve a functional regional convention on chemicals and waste. The most important job is finished—we have a convention. It is now our time to breathe life into it so it can fulfil its promise of protecting Africa, now and for its future generations.

The post Why Africa’s Own Treaty May Be the Key to Fixing Global Waste Trade Rules first appeared on GAIA.

President Donald Trump rescinded two executive orders on Friday evening that aimed to balance off-road vehicle (OHV) use on public lands. The 1972 and 1977 orders, signed by Presidents Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, required federal agencies to minimize ecological damage, harassment of wildlife, and recreational conflicts due to OHV use on public lands. Repealing the orders prioritizes motorized recreation and resource extraction over conservation, increasing the risk of widespread environmental degradation.

The White House called the rescinded orders “outdated and burdensome” hurdles to energy and timber production. Without this guidance, fragile ecosystems—including those inside national parks—are at risk of unmitigated OHV use, which can degrade streams, displace wildlife, and significantly damage soil and vegetation. Beyond ecological damage, allowing more OHV use in the backcountry will increase dust and noise pollution and lead to conflicts between off-roaders and other user groups, like hikers and rafters.

“Rescinding guidance meant to reduce conflicts in the backcountry and protect wildlife habitat isn’t popular; that’s why Trump tried to bury it by putting this order out on a Friday evening,” Center for Western Priorities Communications Director Kate Groetzinger told the New York Times.

Wildfire experts warn of dire fire season to come

Historic drought conditions and an exceptionally light mountain snowpack have left much of the West vulnerable to wildfire this year. Simultaneously, fire experts are deeply concerned about federal management shifts and significant personnel losses within agencies like the Forest Service and Interior department. “I think this is going to be the year,” warned Timothy Ingalsbee, co-founder and executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology. “The conditions are just ripe for some really bad outcomes.”

Quick hits USGS rolls out national map of public lands and waters

E&E News

Trump Interior Secretary Doug Burgum says says MAGA rally for America’s 250th will be ‘nonpartisan’

Yahoo News

Here’s where the Trump administration plans to allow hunting, fishing on refuge and park service lands

Outdoor Life

Park Service officials raised alarms over Trump administration’s tennis center plan

Washington Post

Forest Service delays public rollout of its proposed repeal of Roadless Rule

Lookout Eugene-Springfield | Bloomberg

How to define ‘access’? Bitterroot property swap sparks public land debate

Missoulian

Column: Make grazing great again?

High Country News

UFC White House fight and race cars take over National Park Service land

Los Angeles Times

Quote of the day

Essentially, this is a hijacking of one of America’s oldest and most well-respected conservation organizations… There are so many very good people at the foundation, with so many years doing real work on behalf of America’s national parks, it’s heartbreaking to watch.”

—Aaron Weiss, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, Los Angeles Times

Picture This

@mypubliclands

Hey parents! Did you know your fourth-grade student is eligible for an annual pass to America’s public lands? With school almost out for the summer, it’s the perfect time to get the pass.

The Every Kid Outdoors pass allows fourth graders and their families to receive free entrance to federal public lands and waters during their fourth grade school year (September-August).

To do this, log on to everykidoutdoors.gov with your student, complete an activity and then download and print your pass voucher. Redeem the printed voucher for the pass at thousands of federal public land sites throughout the country.

 

Feature image: Radar Hill OHV Area, Oregon; BLM/Flickr

The post Trump repeals rules governing off-roading on public lands appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

En un Haití sin Parlamento, el nuevo decreto minero abre la puerta a la industria extractiva

Claudia Alavez

Samuel Nesner

El 30 de marzo de 2026, el gobierno haitiano publicó en Le Moniteur un nuevo decreto minero que reorganiza las reglas para la prospección, exploración y explotación de minerales en el país.

A primera vista, el decreto parece técnico. Pero detrás de ese lenguaje jurídico se encuentra una decisión profundamente política: reorganizar el territorio y el marco legal para una nueva etapa de expansión minera en Haití.

El decreto  establece mecanismos para otorgar permisos de prospección, exploración y explotación, y crea un sistema más estructurado de control territorial mediante un “catastro minero”, administrado por el Bureau des Mines et de l’Énergie en su calidad de Autorité Minière Nationale (AMN).

El artículo 7 establece precisamente la creación de este “catastro minero”, concebido como un sistema centralizado de registro y cartografía de títulos mineros, autorizaciones y perímetros de explotación. Administrado por la AMN, este dispositivo organiza el territorio mediante coordenadas, polígonos y zonas clasificadas: —disponibles, reservadas o prohibidas—.

Para ello, el decreto define unidades territoriales específicas —“carrés” y “périmètres”— destinadas a delimitar el espacio minero. El “carré” aparece como la unidad mínima indivisible del territorio minero, mientras que el “périmètre” corresponde a conjuntos de zonas continuas sujetas a permisos o títulos de explotación.

Aunque el decreto utiliza constantemente la noción de “Autorité Minière Nationale”, el texto no define completamente si se trata de una entidad autónoma o del propio Bureau des Mines et de l’Énergie ejerciendo funciones ampliadas bajo una nueva denominación jurídica. En la práctica, una misma institución concentra competencias estratégicas sobre permisos, registros y control territorial del sector.

Haití no parte de cero. Desde hace más de una década, diferentes empresas nacionales y extranjeras han mostrado interés en el potencial minero del país, particularmente en zonas del Norte y Nordeste. Proyectos vinculados a exploración de oro y cobre han sido asociados a empresas como VCS Mining, SOMINE y Eurasian Minerals.

En territorios como Kadouch, en la comuna de Quartier-Morin, apartamento Norte del país, ya existen permisos relacionados con actividades de exploración minera. Para muchas comunidades, la minería no es una posibilidad abstracta o futura: es un proceso que ya comienza a acercarse al territorio.

La dimensión territorial del proyecto tampoco es menor. El decreto permite la constitución de perímetros mineros organizados mediante bloques territoriales y coordenadas geográficas que pueden abarcar extensas superficies. En un país pequeño y densamente habitado como Haití, estos espacios no representan territorios vacíos: son zonas agrícolas, áreas habitadas y regiones atravesadas por fuentes de agua fundamentales para las comunidades rurales.

La perla de las Antillas ¿para quién?

Uno de los aspectos más delicados del decreto no está solamente en su contenido, sino en la forma en que fue aprobado.

El texto fue adoptado por decreto en un contexto donde el Parlamento haitiano no está funcionando. Esto significa que una decisión con profundas implicaciones territoriales, ambientales y sociales fue tomada sin debate parlamentario nacional.

Y eso importa porque la minería involucra cuestiones que van mucho más allá de la economía: el control de los recursos, el uso de la tierra, el acceso al agua y el futuro ambiental del país.

En un contexto de fragilidad institucional y desconfianza hacia el Estado, la ausencia de consulta pública alimenta la percepción de que decisiones estratégicas están siendo tomadas lejos de las comunidades que vivirán sus consecuencias directas.

El decreto incorpora referencias a “protocolos de desarrollo comunitario” y menciona estudios de impacto ambiental y social, planes de gestión ambiental y programas de rehabilitación de sitios mineros. Sin embargo, el texto parece privilegiar mecanismos de acompañamiento e información más que procesos sólidos de consentimiento comunitario .

El decreto contempla estudios de impacto ambiental y social, así como ciertas restricciones para zonas protegidas. Sin embargo, muchas de esas disposiciones quedan formuladas de manera general o sujetas a reglamentos posteriores.

Eso deja abiertas preguntas fundamentales: ¿Qué territorios estarán realmente protegidos? ¿Cómo se controlará la contaminación?¿Qué pasará con las fuentes de agua? ¿Quién supervisará efectivamente a las empresas? ¿Qué mecanismos existirán para sancionar incumplimientos?

En Haití, donde amplias zonas rurales ya enfrentan erosión, escasez de agua y vulnerabilidad climática, estas preguntas adquieren una dimensión especialmente sensible.

Por eso, más allá del lenguaje administrativo del decreto, será fundamental observar de cerca su implementación, los permisos que comiencen a otorgarse y las regiones que entren progresivamente dentro del nuevo mapa minero haitiano. Porque, retomando las palabras del sociólogo haitiano Jean Casimir, la llamada “Perla de las Antillas” rara vez ha pertenecido realmente a quienes la habitan. En un país marcado por siglos de extracción, ocupación y dependencia económica, el avance de la minería vuelve a abrir una vieja pregunta: quién decide sobre el territorio haitiano y quién termina beneficiándose de sus riquezas.

Claudia Alavez, integrante de colectivo latinoafricano, coordinadora de la UNIR en Haití, radicada en Haití desde hace 6 años.

Samuel Nesner, abogado haitiano, coordinador de SOKIJA (Asociación Cultural de Jóvenes Haitianos), militante e investigador en defensa del territorio frente a megaproyectos.

**Este artículo es la cuarta entrega de la «Serie: La minería en Haití — contexto, riesgos y debates», construida en el marco del Programa de Defensa y Resistencias de Territorio de la Universidad Itinerante de la Resistencia en Haití.

 

By Cecilia Allen, Global Projects Advisor, GAIA

(c) Nipe Fagio

Once seen as the domain of dreamers, zero waste is now mainstream. It has even entered the language of the UN: the body created a resolution urging governments to “promote zero‑waste initiatives,” an International Day of Zero Waste, and a Zero Waste Advisory Board, and UNEP, UN‑Habitat and other UN bodies use the concept in campaigns and reports. This year, zero waste was named one of the top priorities on the Global Climate Action Agenda. Türkiye’s Zero Waste Foundation, a leading promoter of these efforts, is organizing its second Global Zero Waste Forum under the motto Road to Antalya: Zero Waste as Climate Action. Türkiye will be the host of climate COP31. 

While this progress is exciting, words matter. When the same UN bodies that are meant to promote zero waste recognize waste-to-energy incineration plants and reuse of the highly toxic incinerator fly-ash as a zero waste solution, it means something is off. Likewise, when Pakistan claims to pursue a “zero waste” economy by increasing waste-to-energy capacity, alarm bells go off among zero wasters worldwide: Incineration is an oxymoron to zero waste. What these examples show us is that a true definition of zero waste needs to be adopted and vigorously defended.

What is zero waste?

The concept of “zero waste” emerged 30 years ago by adapting manufacturing targets such as “zero defects” to solid waste.  Zero waste is both a vision and an action plan. As an action plan it includes strategies to design out the idea of “waste”: waste prevention, redesign, reuse, changes in consumption patterns, recycling, composting, and other methods to reprocess organic material. Zero waste is guided by the goal of progressively reducing disposal in landfills and incinerators, a yardstick for judging the effectiveness of waste programs and policies.

As a vision, its ultimate objective is to change how we produce, consume and process discards so our materials economy fits within planetary boundaries. This concerns not only materials but our relationship with them, the environment, and one another. That is why zero waste is rooted in environmental justice– supporting the flourishing of everyone regardless of race, class, or any other identity, and the rights of nature. Zero waste systems are community‑based, recognize waste pickers as workers, eliminate “sacrifice zones” that disproportionately burden poor and marginalized communities, and put people at the center of solutions.

That is the beauty of zero waste: it offers an encouraging alternative to a linear waste system that perpetuates disposal, resource depletion, climate change and pollution that threaten public health and well-being. It will not happen overnight, but it sets a clear direction.

Defending zero waste

There are multiple conversations within the environmental movement about the co-option of the zero waste concept. Should we let it go? Defend it? There are solid arguments on all sides of the table. But our objective is to expand true zero waste worldwide. Mainstreaming means ideas become accepted as normal because most people share them — that is what thousands of communities, government officials and businesses have worked toward for decades. Fighting this co‑option is therefore an inevitable part of mainstreaming.

Every time a waste‑to‑energy or plastics‑to‑fuel project is presented as “zero waste,” authorities in the field must set the record straight. Waste‑to‑energy incineration perpetuates waste generation because it requires feedstock to burn, competes with reuse and recycling for high‑calorific materials, relies on fossil‑based feedstocks such as plastics, produces greenhouse gas emissions, and creates hazardous residues. None of that could be farther from zero waste. 

Most importantly, zero waste is not just an abstract concept. For over three decades, hundreds of cities, thousands of communities and many waste practitioners have led the transition toward it. They have shown that it is possible to achieve over 90% source separation, diversion rates of 80% and higher, improved working conditions for waste pickers, and local economies based on repair and reuse. They also demonstrate that following the waste hierarchy creates more jobs, reduces more methane emissions, and improves public health.

Enabling zero waste implementation 

In recent years more governments, financial institutions, universities, and waste practitioners have embraced the zero waste vision and prioritized upstream measures over disposal. That is encouraging, but much more is needed. For example, only 1% of international finance aimed at methane abatement in the waste sector goes to zero waste strategies such as composting.

If multilateral development banks and other international financial institutions directed the remaining 99% shifted from harmful end‑of‑pipe systems like incinerators and megalandfills to community‑based organic waste prevention and recovery, the the playing field would level: there would be more incentives for a shift in production and consumption patterns, and local governments and communities would speed up the zero waste transition. If governments that claim to pursue zero waste acted accordingly, they would lead the transition and inspire others.

UN bodies such as UNEP, UN‑Habitat and the Zero Waste Advisory Board have a special responsibility to set a clear vision for governments and institutions, and promote an authentic zero waste agenda to advance environmental sustainability, social equity and economic systems that respect natural boundaries.

As we continue the work toward a zero waste future, let us honor its true spirit that drives systems change. And let us support and scale up the proven programs and policies that governments, communities, waste pickers, NGOs, and businesses are sustaining.  Let us protect the term, and honor the practice: put real zero waste into action.

Rommel Cabrera/GAIA, 2019. Waste pickers collecting separated waste from households. Tacloban City, the Philippines.

The post Defending the Real Spirit of Zero Waste first appeared on GAIA.

 

Backbone Intern Giacomo Moody's Story Map for We the People is now LIVE!.

The Story Map traces the journey of this Iconic image, from its 2007 debut at Seattle Center to its current deployments in pro-democracy protests around the country. Check out Giacomo's great work and the amazing fruits of our collective labors.

Learn more about joining us in DC or pitching in to support our team going to Washington, DC to mark the 250th Birthday of this country. We'll once again take the streets in a defiant and beautiful expression of common cause and our shared commitment to fulfilling mission of creating a more just, sustainable, and democratic nation, and a future we can be proud to hand our children.

Check out the We the People Story Map at BackboneCampaign.org/WeThePeople.