News Feeds

We are excited to share with you a new toolkit for civil society produced by our allies at HOME Alliance that unpacks the realities of land-based geoengineering.

As the climate crisis intensifies, dangerous distractions and false solutions are gaining ground. Land-based geoengineering schemes are increasingly being promoted as a “solution,” but behind these lie serious risks to ecosystems, communities, biodiversity, and climate justice.

Read in the newly launched toolkit:

• What these technologies are
• The environmental and social risks they pose
• The projects and actors driving their expansion
• Why these approaches threaten real climate solutions

At a time when urgent, just, and proven climate action is needed, geoengineering deflects and misdirects attention from real solutions and shifts attention away from phasing out fossil fuels and systemic change.

This toolkit is designed for climate justice groups or civil society networks, campaigners, activists, and researchers. It brings together critical analysis, accessible explanations, and evidence to support resistance against risky technological schemes.

Download and share the toolkit: https://tinyurl.com/landGEtoolkit

Read previously launched geoengineering, marine, and solar geoengineering toolkits here.

What can you do to support?

• Keep learning: Stay informed about geoengineering and its developments to build a critical understanding.
• Take a stand: Include the rejection of geoengineering and support for resistance efforts in your campaigns and advocacy.
• Spread the word: Share this toolkit within your networks. Geoengineers often erase & trivialise critical civil society perspectives.
• Endorse the manifesto: Become a signatory to  the HOME Alliance manifesto, rejecting geoengineering

With a lack of major storms in 2025, our team saw encouraging results for many coastal bird species all around the Sunshine State, thanks in large part to the dedication of our incredible shorebird...

If you every have the good fortune to taste honey from the remote Philippine island of Palaui, chances are you will be savoring the flavor of an endangered tree.

That’s what scientists working on Palaui learned when they studied wild honey collected by Indigenous Agta people there. That honey, prized for its supposed medicinal qualities, bore a chemical fingerprint suggesting it came almost exclusively from a single species of tree, the endangered Pterocarpus indicus, or narra.  

Think of it as the honey equivalent of what wine connoisseurs call terroir, the idea that the specifics of a place, such as soil chemistry, shape the flavor of a bottle. While this might just sound like airy food snobbery, it turns out the terroir of honey can tell you a lot about the surrounding landscape and the health of the forest. It can even underscore the importance of conserving endangered species.

“It demonstrates how important narra trees are for local biodiversity and for the Indigenous community that depends on harvesting this honey,” said Merlijn van Weerd, an ecologist at the University of Leiden and co-author of the recent study in Scientific Reports.

You don’t have to live in the Philippines for these lessons to apply. Honey from wild hives anywhere could offer a glimpse into the surrounding ecosystem. The story of the narra-loving bees shows how that might work.  

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that bees on Palaui were drawn to the narra, the national tree of the Philippines. When it blooms, the hardwood jungle tree is festooned with sprays of orange, nectar-rich blossoms.  But its dense wood also made it a staple of the furniture industry, driving logging that wiped it out in much of the island nation before cutting the tree became illegal. Remote Palaui is one of the few places where the trees escaped that fate.

Still, van Weerd and collaborators at the University of the Philippines say they were startled that the narra tree was such a dominant feature of the island honey.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:The circular economy comes for chocolate. . . and honey

 

The discovery came as the scientists studied the chemical makeup of honey there to understand what it might say about the surrounding forests and to see what made this wild honey distinct. This “fingerprinting” of the honey could also enable scientists to distinguish wild, sustainably harvested honey from commercial knock-offs adulterated with cane or corn syrup, a common problem in honey marketed as being from the Philippines.

Their primary tool was a set of machines that separated the honey into its chemical constituents, then identified the individual molecules, a process known as liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. In 2021, they collected honey from various sites on the island, then put it through this treatment to see what it contained.

One standout was an abundance of the amino acid hypaphorine. Conversations with a local source in the Agta community led the researchers to zero in on the narra as a likely source. Analysis of pollen from the tree also revealed high levels of hypaphorine. The role of this species in the honey was confirmed by the discovery of narra pollen grains in the honey.

The sensitivity of honey to the surrounding plants was reaffirmed by the discovery of caffeine in some honey gathered at hives close to a coffee farm.

“The honey reveals which plant species occur in the area: a kind of chemical fingerprint of the local flora,” said van Weerd.

For van Weerd, the results are confirmation of the importance of conserving existing forests, clarifying the link between the trees, the bees and traditional Indigenous practices.

“We are involved in reforestation projects, in which planting narra trees plays a central role,” he said. “In addition, we assist in securing land rights for Indigenous communities, enabling them to become stewards of their land and better protect it.”

The knowledge of what goes into the honey there, and elsewhere, could help make the prospect of saving endangered trees and the surrounding forests that much sweeter.

Molino et. al. “Multi‑omics and palynology of selected Philippine forest honey.” Scientific Reports. Feb. 4, 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

The US Constitution Betrayed the Revolution is the fourth video in our America 250: A Revolutionary Perspective series. In 2026 we are being called to celebrate something that didn't happen 250 years ago. 

The post What is America 250: The US Constitution Betrayed the Revolution appeared first on CELDF - Community Rights Pioneers - Protecting Nature and Communities.

Headline News:

• “UAE Leaves OPEC, Citing National Interest In ‘A New Energy Age'” • The United Arab Emirates announced that it will leave the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries effective 1 May. The UAE’s decision signals a reshape of the global energy interactions, just as the global energy crisis is escalating over blockades of the Strait of Hormuz. [Euronews]

Dubai, UAE (Nick Fewings, Unsplash)

• “Chinese Iron Flow Storage Battery Is 80 Times Cheaper Than Lithium” • Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences say they developed an all-iron flow battery electrolyte that sustains more than 6,000 charge/discharge cycles without any capacity loss. The material costs roughly 80 times less than lithium-based alternatives, they claim. [CleanTechnica]
• “‘Unequivocal Evidence’: Europe’s Climate Crisis Threatens Food, Health And Economy” • In Europe, very few places in escaped rising heat, as Europe battled new extremes in 2025. At least 95% of the continent recorded above-average temperatures, according to the latest European State of the Climate report from Copernicus. [Euronews]
• “Off-Grid Gold Mine Achieves Record 93.8% Renewables Share Over Whole Month” • The off-grid Bellevue gold mine, which sits in a remote part of Western Australia, has established a new benchmark for its renewable hybrid power supply. It set a record for the best share of wind and solar at 93.8% over the month of February. [Renew Economy]
• “Massachusetts Triggers Vineyard Off-Take Contract” • The state of Massachusetts has activated its contracts with the 806-MW Vineyard Wind array from developers Iberdrola and CIP. The 20-year PPAs are projected to save Massachusetts ratepayers $1.4 billion over the lifetime of the contracts, according to the office of Governor Maura Healey. [reNews]

For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

Socio-ecological Transition: Rooted in Resistance HOMEF, Nigeria

What does transition truly mean when the word has been hijacked by the very forces destroying the planet? What does justice look like for a people whose land is still poisoned, whose heroes were martyred, and whose struggle the government wants to bury under fresh oil wells? And when dysfunction becomes so normalised that we can no longer see it clearly, what do we call it, and what do we do about it?

HOMEF reflects…

HOMEF’s Word of the Month is “Transition”.

Transition describes the process of moving from one system, state, or set of conditions to another, and in the environmental context, it is one of the most contested words of our time.
At its most urgent, ‘transition’ refers to the shift away from fossil fuel dependence toward energy systems that do not cook the planet, poison communities, or fund the wars of extractive empires. But we must understand that ‘transition’ is not simply a technical or infrastructural project, but rather a political one. The question is never only what we are transitioning to, but who decides, who benefits, and who bears the cost.

But the word has been captured by corporations that built their fortunes on extraction, and they now deploy “transition” as a branding exercise: offering carbon credits, false solutions, and green-painted versions of the same destructive logic. A “just transition” in their hands becomes a managed handover that preserves existing power structures while communities continue to suffer the consequences of decades of ecological destruction without remedy or reparation.

But a genuine transition is far more radical than whatever they propose. It demands the restoration of community sovereignty over land, seeds, water, and energy. It requires the recognition that the Global South did not create this crisis and cannot be asked to absorb its costs. It insists that transition must be rooted in indigenous knowledge, ecological integrity, and the rights of nature.

Transition is not a destination, but a direction. And the path there must be walked by the people most affected, on their own terms, and at a pace that leaves no one behind.

 

 

This article is part of Food Tank’s primer series, “Food Tank Explains.” Each installment unpacks the ideas, innovations, and challenges shaping today’s food and agriculture systems, offering clear insights into complex topics. To explore more articles in the series, click here.

Carbon farming refers to agricultural practices designed to remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it in soils and plants. By increasing carbon sequestration, carbon farming aims to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while improving soil health and adaptability.

Human activities have increased GHG emissions—particularly carbon dioxide, the primary GHG emitted through human activity—intensifying the greenhouse effect and raising global temperatures.

Agriculture and land-use change are major drivers, and global food systems are responsible for about one-third of annual GHG emissions.

One of the agrifood system’s largest contributions to carbon emissions is soil organic carbon (SOC) loss. Soils have a tremendous capacity to store carbon and can function as either carbon sinks or carbon sources. “If soil is a bank account, soil organic carbon is the currency,” Rattan Lal, Distinguished University Professor of Soil Science at the Ohio State University and a Goodwill Ambassador for the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, tells Food Tank.

But modern agricultural practices have caused soils to emit more carbon than they retain. Soil organic carbon levels hover between 0.05 percent and 0.10 percent, well under the roughly 2 percent threshold that Lal identifies as necessary to sustain healthy, productive soils.

Converting forests or grasslands to farmland, and practices like over tillage, monocropping, heavy machinery use, overgrazing, and removing crop residues disturb soil structure, expose SOC to water and oxygen, and lead to SOC loss. Lower SOC levels weaken soil structure and diminish microbial activity and biodiversity.

Over the past 12,000 years and particularly in the last two centuries, agriculture has released about 133 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from soils, and in some areas, soils have lost up to 70 percent of their original SOC. Soils emit around ten times more carbon dioxide than fossil fuels.

Because of their capacity to store carbon, soils also have significant potential to help mitigate climate change. Research suggests that improved land management could enable croplands to sequester up to 1.85 gigatons of carbon per year, roughly equivalent to the annual emissions of the global transportation sector.

And soils in good condition could capture a meaningful share of the emissions reductions needed to keep global warming below 2°C. What we have taken from the land, Rattan Lal says, we can put back.

By increasing soil carbon storage and reducing the release of carbon into the atmosphere, carbon farming aims to shift soils from carbon sources to carbon solutions.

Carbon farmers earn credits for sequestering carbon, with each credit representing a measurable reduction or removal of GHGs. Carbon credits can be sold in carbon markets to companies or other buyers seeking to offset their emissions and meet climate goals. Companies like Grassroots Carbon are helping operationalize this model, recently delivering 1.9 million tons of verified carbon removals. Ranchers participating in these programs report generating meaningful new income streams and reducing operational costs while also improving soil health.

One common carbon farming approach involves adding organic materials to the soil, such as compost or biochar, increasing soil organic matter which in turn increases soils’ carbon storage capacity.

Planting perennial crops, which remain in the ground year after year, can also help store carbon. Their deeper and longer-lasting root systems allow more carbon to accumulate in the soil compared with annual crops that are replanted each season.

Another widely used practice is cover cropping. Farmers plant crops during periods when, or in areas where, fields would otherwise remain bare. These plants not only protect soils from water and air erosion, but they also capture carbon dioxide and transfer some of that carbon into the soil through their roots and plant residue. Cover crops add additional organic matter to soils when they decompose.

Other carbon farming strategies focus on minimizing the carbon that is released into the atmosphere by reducing soil disturbance, particularly through practices that minimize plowing or tilling.

In addition to mitigating GHG emissions, practices that increase or maintain SOC levels enhance soil structure, fuel microbial activity, and improve fertility. By improving overall soil health, these practices can increase agricultural yields while reducing the need for agricultural inputs.

And carbon-rich soils are generally more resilient to environmental pressures. Higher levels of soil organic carbon improve water holding capacity and infiltration, helping farmland better withstand both drought and flooding. “If your neighbor’s land has twice as much carbon as yours, their land will sequester twice the amount of water as your land,” Peter Byck, Arizona State University Professor and Director, Producer, and Writer of Carbon Nation, tells Food Tank.

They also support more active microbial communities, boosting biomass by 40 to 70 percent, and stronger soil structure, enabling soils to absorb shocks and sustain productivity under stress.

Despite its potential to reduce emissions and nourish soils, carbon farming remains the subject of ongoing debate among scientists and policymakers. There is currently no universally accepted system for measuring, reporting, and verifying soil carbon credits, creating confusion for farmers entering carbon markets.

And significant uncertainty remains about how much carbon agricultural soils can store and how accurately sequestration can be measured. Because soil carbon levels can change quickly in response to management practices or weather, stored carbon may also be released back into the atmosphere, complicating efforts to treat soil carbon as a long-term or permanent climate solution.

Concerns about carbon farming also include rebound effects: if certain practices reduce yields, farmland expansion elsewhere could generate emissions that offset the original climate gains. Evidence also shows that widely used no-till systems often rely on herbicides for weed control, accounting for roughly one-third of U.S. pesticide use in corn and soy production.

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo courtesy of Sohail Shaikh

The post Food Tank Explains: Carbon Farming appeared first on Food Tank.

Elise Thorburn is an emergency physician and an organizer in St. John’s, NL. She grounds her practice in anti-imperialist Marxist politics, and operates within a...

The post From Newfoundland to Palestine: Building power through health sovereignty and solidarity first appeared on Spring.

As geopolitical shocks drive jet fuel price volatility and emissions rebound, alternative aviation fuels are increasingly presented as the solution. But can they realistically hedge fuel risk and deliver decarbonisation—or do they introduce new financial and policy vulnerabilities?

This webinar cuts through the hype, using market data, policy analysis, and lifecycle evidence to assess the true scale, cost, and sustainability of alternative jet fuels. The goal is not to dismiss them, but to recalibrate expectations, challenge overreliance, and position alternative fuels as one tool among many in aviation’s transition.

What you’ll leave with:

• A clear understanding of why truly sustainable fuels face structural limits.
• Insight into where alternative fuel investment makes sense—and where it doesn’t.
• A stronger basis for allocating capital and policy across aviation decarbonisation options.

The post Fuel Disclosure appeared first on Carbon Tracker Initiative.

El Niño is temporary, but scientists warn that its climate impacts are not.

Read more on E360 →

On a Tuesday night in April, beneath a sky mottled with clouds, a slick stretch of road in Cumberland, Maine, erupted in sound. It started with a few high-pitched chirps, like the coos of chicks. Within minutes, dozens, then hundreds more joined a chorus punctuated by low clucks. By the time the sun dipped below the horizon and rain began to splatter the pavement, the sound had risen to a din. Cars stopped on the shoulder and people spilled onto the road wearing neon vests and waving bright flashlights. They fanned out, and raised their voices as they spoke, like guests at a bustling cocktail party.

“I got a big one!” called a youngster in a yellow raincoat. She held out her hand for other volunteers who crowded around her. A yellow-spotted salamander about 9 inches long stretched across her gloved palm, its slick tail draped between her fingers.

Each year in New England, on the first warm, wet night of spring, when the ground has thawed, and the temperature is just right, armies of frogs and maelstroms of salamanders emerge from the woods. They hop and undulate through the night, following the same routes their ancestors traveled to the vernal pools of their birth, where they lay their eggs, chirping and clucking all the while.

“They’re calling to the ones that are still in the woods, telling them to come,” said Penny Asherman, who leads the Chebeague and Cumberland Land Trust.

For the past decade, “Big Night” has drawn dozens of people who drop everything at a moment’s notice to help the amphibians migrate safely. But climate change is scrambling that ancient trek. The journey begins less predictably, has grown deadlier, and become more tenuous as the seasonal wetlands they depend on are transformed by climate change. That has prompted the volunteers to become citizen scientists, tracking when the animals emerge and how many survive. Coordinated by Maine Big Night, the effort, which came on April 14 this year, is generating data that is reshaping how communities think about culverts, road maintenance, and other infrastructure.

Volunteers hold a yellow spotted salamander after ferrying it across the road. Grace Benninghoff

In the past, these amphibian protectors were little more than crossing guards, shepherding the tiny creatures to safety. But a nonprofit formed in 2018, Maine Big Night, has asked them to meticulously document what happens along these migration paths. This year, more than 1,200 observers at 650 migration sites statewide submitted observations.

Tim Kaijala has been a regular for seven years along with his children, Theo, 10, and Kai, 8. “The data side is pretty cool,” he said. “When we first came, it was just bringing frogs and salamanders over, but the last couple years it’s been more about counting and keeping track.”

As he spoke, Theo and Kai peered into a pool, watching a wood frog they’d helped across the road kick through the clear water. “Remember that one time, Theo,” Kai said, looking at her brother.

“Oh yeah,” he said.

“Tell it,” she urged.

“One time there was a car coming down, and I ran out and saved the peeper,” he paused, solemnly. “I do not want any peepers to die. If I stepped on one, I would never forgive myself.”

When data last year showed that eight out of 10 amphibians were hit by motorists in Orono, at the state’s most ecologically diverse migration site, Big Night worked with city officials to secure a grant for cameras and fencing that guide the animals toward an existing culvert beneath the road. When the group also saw rising numbers with edema linked to road salt runoff, it pushed for alternative deicing methods, including pickle juice.

Greg LeClair founded Maine Big Night. By day, he’s a municipal planning biologist for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. He started the organization because he knew data collection would be essential for protecting the amphibians he’s adored since childhood.

A wood frog considers taking a leap into a vernal pool after being helped across the road. Grace Benninghoff

It’s easy to see why. Wood frogs are palm-sized, dappled brown creatures with dark markings smattering the skin around their wide eyes. Spring peepers are the size of a thumb and camouflage so well with the leaf litter of the forest floor that they’re nearly invisible until they unleash calls that echo through the night. 

But loving them and saving them are two different things.

“I knew that in order to make change, you needed data, especially when we’re talking about critters folks aren’t as keen on,” LeClair said. Conserving land and installing culverts, two effective ways to protect the amphibians, aren’t cheap. “Nobody will give you the money unless you have data,” he said. “That money for infrastructure and conservation is not just floating around.”

Trouble is, little data exists on amphibian migration patterns. They’re small, spend most of the year burrowed in the woods, and are hard to track. “Any time anyone has a collision with a deer or moose and an insurance claim is filed, a data point is collected, but nobody files an insurance claim when they hit a frog.”

Good data does more than help amphibian advocates win protections. It ensures conservationists spend limited resources where they’ll do the most good. The fencing project in Orono is one example. For years, scientists thought specialized culverts were the only reliable way to get the hoppers and creepers off roads. But cameras there have already captured frogs and salamanders using an existing crossing. If the new fencing the town recently installed proves nearly as effective, it could save tens of thousands of dollars.

Protecting amphibians matters far beyond frogs and salamanders themselves. They are foundational to New England’s food web. Eggs, larvae, and adults all sustain a surprising range of animals from owls and herons to foxes and even moose. “If you remove one piece of the puzzle or two, you don’t know which piece could kick the whole system out of whack,” said Sally Stockwell of Maine Audubon. “But there are huge trickle-down impacts when you lose the base of the food chain.”

Amphibians are also particularly vulnerable to climate change. They can’t regulate their body temperature, and they need moisture to move. In the winter, when they burrow into the soil to stay warm, dwindling snowpack can leave them without enough insulation, and they freeze to death. Unusually warm winter days can draw them out of their hiding places, and the return of freezing temperatures kills them. A dry spring or sudden heatwave can dry out the vernal pools where they lay their eggs, killing the next generation.

As the climate warms, fungi adapted to warmer, drier conditions are becoming a greater threat. Among them is the deadly chytrid fungus, which grows on amphibians’ skin, impairs their ability to breathe, and has been seen more frequently in recent years.

Yet we remain their greatest threat. Development eliminates their habitat, and cars kill untold numbers of them. That is why data is so important: It reveals what would otherwise go unseen. In Cumberland this year, volunteers counted 10 species crossing, including more than 100 spring peepers, 34 wood frogs, and 18 spotted salamanders. Just nine amphibians were found dead. “Anything we can do to reduce mortality is a benefit,” said Stockwell.

And on that rainy night in April, volunteers did all they could. Until nearly midnight, children and parents, college kids, and retirees patrolled the road and forest beyond, jotting notes on clipboards and ferrying frogs to safety in Tupperware. They paused only to watch as the tiny cold-blooded critters stretched their limbs and swam, sometimes bobbing at the surface to call — at shocking volume — to the ones still in the woods.

A father and son look for amphibians to assist. Grace Benninghoff

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline One night a year, humans command this march of frogs and salamanders on Apr 29, 2026.

The right of peoples to define their own food systems, to grow food in ways that are ethical, ecologically sound and socially just, to not be held hostage to the Strait of Hormuz or the profit margins of Cargill or Nutrien — is not a romantic fantasy. It is a material, political project.

The post War, Fuel, Fertiliser, and the Food System: Who Bears the Cost of Empire? appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Billions of dollars have been pledged to fight the climate crisis, but almost none is reaching Indigenous peoples, even as world leaders credit them as essential to solving it. “From the Amazon to Australia, and Africa to the Arctic, you are the great guardians of nature, a living library of biodiversity conservation, and champions of climate action,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York City last week. 

But global funding hasn’t followed those words. Multi-billion-dollar financial institutions set up to address the climate crisis have largely failed to deliver money to Indigenous communities, or even track whether they’re benefiting. At the Permanent Forum, Indigenous advocates described how their communities have been devastated by flooding and wildfires and called on governments and global funds to provide direct access to climate finance. 

“The demand for direct access to finance by Indigenous peoples is a matter of right. It’s actually explicitly mentioned in the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that because of the historical injustices and the need for us to develop, we need direct access to finances,” said Joan Carling, who is Indigenous Kankanaey Igorot from the Philippines, a former expert member of the Permanent Forum and executive director of the organization Indigenous Peoples Rights International. 

An analysis by the Rainforest Foundation Norway estimates that between 2011 and 2020, Indigenous peoples and local communities involved in land tenure and forest management received less than 1 percent of global funding for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Indigenous peoples are often combined with “local communities” in conservation spaces, despite calls from Indigenous U.N. experts to distinguish them. 

“We are not asking for charity. We are not asking for privilege,” Carling continued. “This is a matter of right for us because it’s a matter of social justice. It’s just enabling us to adapt to the impacts of climate change that we did not create in the first place.”

The climate crisis is forcing many Indigenous leaders to make painful choices: rebuild homes after major disasters or relocate entire villages from ancestral lands. Those decisions are made harder by a lack of financial resources and despite international court rulings affirming the right to reparations for those harmed by climate change.

“We are protecting forests, we are protecting biodiversity,” said Deborah Sanchez, who is Indigenous Miskito from Honduras. Sanchez is the director of the Community Land Rights and Conservation Finance Initiative, which was created in 2021 to address the need for more direct climate financing. “Once the rights are realized for the communities, that’s the basis where everything can really be sustainable over time.”

The Green Climate Fund, or GCF, the official global climate fund designated by the Paris Agreement, has a portfolio of $20 billion. But not a single Indigenous peoples organization has been accredited to receive money from it, according to Helen Magata, who is Indigenous Kadaclan Igorot and serves on the fund’s Indigenous advisory committee, established in 2022. “That goes without saying that access to the fund by Indigenous peoples is near to nil,” said Magata.

Getting accredited involves meeting stringent criteria — financial management and accounting standards, environmental and social safeguards — and can take years. The fund’s minimum grant of $10 million can also be difficult for smaller communities to manage. “We have to jump through hoop after hoop in order to even qualify,” said Janene Yazzie, who is Diné and a member of the climate finance working group of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change. “They literally created a problem that is on us to prove our capacity to solve.” 

A 2025 report by the fund’s Independent Evaluation Unit found that “the Green Climate Fund has not actively pursued a portfolio with Indigenous peoples” and that its processes lacked the flexibility to serve them. “For Indigenous peoples, this challenge is often compounded to the point of being insurmountable,” the report concluded, recommending the fund create a dedicated funding window for Indigenous peoples.

Magata said the fund also lacks a mechanism to track how much money Indigenous peoples actually receive. Funding recipients may claim their projects will serve Indigenous peoples, but it’s often unclear what percentage of the money reaches those communities. “If you don’t have a framework like that, then how could you say how much Indigenous peoples are really benefiting or not?” she said. 

Rebecca Phwitiko, a communications specialist for the Green Climate Fund, acknowledged in an email that the fund does not yet have “a dedicated marker to track funding flows specifically to Indigenous Peoples’ organisations.” She said the fund has revised its accreditation process and supported projects benefiting Indigenous peoples in the Amazon, Australia, and the Pacific.

“Strengthening tracking, reporting, and accountability around Indigenous Peoples-related finance is an area GCF recognises as important and is continuing to work on,” she said. The fund recently held its first-ever Indigenous peoples conference in South Korea and last year accredited the International Land and Forest Tenure Facility, which works to secure land tenure rights for Indigenous peoples and local communities.

The Global Environment Facility, another major international climate fund, has disbursed more than $27 billion over three decades, including $50 million in dedicated funding for Indigenous peoples and local communities over the past eight years. Adriana Moreira, the fund’s head of partnerships, said it plans to increase that to $100 million for the next four-year funding round and intends to partner with five Indigenous-led trust funds. “We are constantly seeking to learn and improve,” she said.

Unlike the Green Climate Fund, the Global Environment Facility doesn’t require an extensive accreditation process and offers $75,000 capacity-building grants to Indigenous-led organizations. It has also set a goal of directing 20 percent of all its funding to Indigenous peoples and local communities. But like the Green Climate Fund, it is still working on ways to verify whether money actually reaches those communities. Sarah Wyatt, a senior biodiversity specialist at the fund, said it recently tested a new tracking method within one program and plans to expand it. “It is admittedly not going to be an exact science,” Wyatt said. “But still, if you don’t count, you can’t try to improve, right?”

Even if both funds improve their processes, neither can reach Indigenous peoples in the Global North. Both rely on governmental contributions classified as “official development aid” — funding that flows exclusively from wealthy countries to developing ones. At the U.N.’s annual climate conference in 2022, Yazzie was part of a caucus of Indigenous peoples who called on states to recognize the “false dichotomy of developed and developing countries in regard to funding initiatives and actions directed to Indigenous Peoples.”

At the Permanent Forum, delegates from Indigenous nations in North America described how melting ice and rising seas are causing irreversible harm to their traditional homelands — communities excluded from the current global climate financing structure. “We are dealing with the same issues and same forms of disenfranchisement across those global barriers,” said Yazzie. “It actually invisibilizes the way that the so-called ‘developed North’ profits from the theft of lands of Indigenous peoples within their own territories. To demand that those flows only go to the South is a continuation of those same colonial policies.”

Yazzie also criticized the widespread use of the phrase “Indigenous peoples and local communities,” which U.N. experts have called on climate treaties to abandon. Representatives from the Global Environment Facility said they use the description of local communities in the Convention on Biological Diversity, which describes local communities as embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity. “So you see how much more narrow that truly is,” said Wyatt from the Global Environment Facility. “But I would give the example actually in the Pacific, where folks may not always call themselves Indigenous, but they would fit that type of definition.” She added the term also helps channel funding to communities in countries that don’t formally recognize Indigenous peoples — but acknowledged they don’t know what share of their grants go to Indigenous communities specifically versus local communities more broadly. 

The challenge of receiving global climate finance is pushing some groups to build alternatives. “We were in the communities, we saw that the funding didn’t go to the ground,” said Sanchez from the Community Land Rights and Conservation Finance Initiative, whose organization draws mostly from private philanthropy to provide grants to Indigenous peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant organizations.

Magata remains hopeful that the major funds can change. “At the end of the day, the ultimate objective is we want to bring as much money as near to the ground as possible,” she said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Indigenous peoples bear the brunt of climate change — and get almost none of the money to fight it on Apr 29, 2026.

In the creeks and rivers of southern Illinois, a school of bigeye shiners darting along the edge of a stream is a sign of healthy water. The freshwater fish, which is on the state’s endangered species list, has managed to survive despite habitat loss driven by decades of construction and industrial farm runoff. But an ongoing dispute between two state agencies over state species protections is testing how the tiny fish will endure. 

Last summer, the state’s top wildlife regulators faced resistance from the Illinois Department of Transportation, or IDOT, when trying to protect the shiner. The Illinois Department of Natural Resources, or IDNR, recommended that the transportation agency crews mapping out construction at a site in Union County should first survey the area and find out if the shiner was present. If so, IDNR would ask them to apply for a permit to minimize impacts to the paper clip-sized fish before proceeding.

IDOT declined. The department’s reason, among others, was simple: “Fish swim away.” 

The standoff between the two agencies, outlined in internal documents obtained by WBEZ and Grist, is at the center of an ongoing clash that broke out last year after the transportation department repeatedly ignored recommendations from state experts to pursue permits designed to protect imperiled species during road, bridge, and other transportation work. The transportation department, which is the state’s largest public landowner, may have overridden Illinois’ Endangered Species Protection Act in 11 cases in the past year, according to public records.

Endangered species laws are meant to shield imperiled animals and plants from publicly funded projects. The federal Endangered Species Act, which was passed in 1973, currently safeguards nearly 1,700 species in the United States and has saved close to 300 species from extinction. Almost every state has its own version of the law for protecting critters within its borders. The Illinois Endangered Species Act, which predates the federal act, operates similarly, protecting 513 species, including federally listed species like the rusty patched bumblebee, piping plover, and gray wolf. The safeguards, often criticized as slow and pricey, block crews from breaking ground on nearly any project until they first minimize harm to listed species. 

Despite massive popularity, the federal law, which has been credited with resuscitating the bald eagle, grizzly bear, and gray wolf populations, is under attack by Congress and the Trump administration. On Earth Day last week, House Republicans tried and failed to pass a bill that would’ve shredded those protections at the federal level. Weeks earlier, after Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, President Trump convened the “God Squad,” a committee of high-ranking officials across his administration to bypass the Endangered Species Act entirely and open the Gulf of Mexico for oil drilling. The Trump administration also recently unveiled a proposed rule to revoke the federal law’s definition of “harm” to species.

Read Next Trump’s ‘God Squad’ blocks endangered species protections in the Gulf of Mexico Jake Bittle

Species protections aren’t just breaking down on the federal level. States like Illinois are also failing to keep up with local rules to protect species from disappearing forever.

In response to the transportation department’s handling of species protections, IDNR ended a decade-old agreement with the agency last fall that allowed it to fast-track environmental reviews. The agency’s impact assessment manager, Bradley Hayes, pointed to “IDOT’s apparent automatic response to decline ITA recommendations” in his cancellation letter obtained by WBEZ and Grist.

An ITA, or incidental take authorization, is a permit that allows for the accidental harm of a protected species during the construction of an approved project, such as building a road or fixing a bridge. These permits involve lengthy reviews in which applicants must outline potential impacts to listed species, require a public comment period, and incorporate feedback from conservation specialists. The entire process can take at least five to six months. 

Still, experts say these permits are crucial because they minimize harm to protected species and provide legal cover from criminal charges that can accompany the unintentional killing of a state-listed species. 

IDOT’s Jack Elston responded to the termination letter at the end of last year disputing the  initial allegations from the environmental regulators, saying that the agency “does not make automatic responses regarding the IDNR recommendation for an ITA.” 

In a joint statement from IDOT and IDNR to WBEZ and Grist, IDOT spokeswoman Maria Castaneda said, “IDOT continues to consult with IDNR and considers recommendations from IDNR along with multiple other factors, including known information about the species, other environmental surveys, engineering, costs, and public safety.”

Castaneda added that the agencies are currently drafting a new agreement and that the agreement on file was outdated. “Updated language was needed,” she said.

Despite the agreement expiring at the beginning of 2019, IDOT continued to conduct environmental reviews until lDNR stepped in to stop them last fall. 

Email exchanges between IDNR officials obtained by WBEZ and Grist show concern about how IDOT was conducting its environmental reviews.

Last December, IDOT’s Elston wrote that “fish swim away from construction noise” as justification for several projects that could harm fish and molluscs, like the harlequin darter and the American brook lamprey, which are found in rivers and streams in southeastern and northeastern Illinois, respectively. In another instance, Elston wrote that the relocation of state-endangered mussels in White County was unnecessary and would delay a project by at least a construction season and add about $2 million in costs.

But internal emails show that IDNR officials were increasingly concerned by that rationale. The American brook lamprey, for example, spends much of its life burrowed in sediment, dies not long after spawning, and is unlikely to simply swim away

“We are the experts,” wrote Todd Strole, IDNR assistant director, in an email earlier this year preparing for a meeting with IDOT. “Fish are not the same, some don’t swim away.”

In another email, Ann Holtrop, head of IDNR’s division of natural heritage, wrote: “We are open to professional dialogue with IDOT, but planning and engineering needs don’t negate or override the recommendations by scientists.”

The Illinois dispute reflects a broader erosion of species protections nationwide, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Rebecca Riley. During his first term, President Donald Trump advanced new guidance that undercut species protection. The Biden administration undid the Trump-era rules, but the Trump administration has yet again proposed a new rule to weaken the federal law.  

WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times reached out to Governor JB Pritzker’s office for comment on how the state’s internal dispute fits into the Trump administration’s ongoing rollback of federal species protections; however, the Governor’s office offered no comments beyond the statement from IDOT and IDNR.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Illinois is feuding with itself over endangered species protections on Apr 29, 2026.

As housing costs rise and populations age, underused space in existing homes offers an overlooked solution. In-home suites can provide affordable housing, support aging in place, and strengthen community ties while making better use of what we already have.

The global food system is both essential and unsustainable, locked into patterns that resist meaningful reform. Real change, the author argues, lies in rebuilding local, regenerative food systems that can gradually replace what no longer works.

PRESS CONTACT: Hannah Lawrence, +436706504192, press@stay-grounded.org 29th April 2026 – 95+ groups, including Extinction Rebellion, Friends of the Earth and Scientist Rebellion, today launched a manifesto demanding a sharp reduction of aviation to halt climate collapse. The manifesto, “A Red Line for Airports”, signed by groups from 25 countries worldwide, and coordinated by the Stay…

Source

Ryan Gosling's flight of fancy Channel Comment brendan 29th April 2026 Teaser Media

Regional residents have expressed outrage at the NSW government’s decision to open up vast areas of the state to gas extraction, warning it puts communities, water and agriculture at risk. 

In our latest, Scott discusses the roots of populist politics in American history, from the anti-robber baron movements of the Gilded Age to the New Deal era to the current…