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The Cobbs Creek Watershed Coalition is composed of several impactful organizations all lending stewardship and expertise to a shared vision to inspire and support the communal care of our watershed neighborhoods. Our open coalition also aims to amplify our work by coming together to offer vibrant programming and engagement to West and Southwest Philadelphia Watershed neighborhoods. Learn about our coalition members below.

Black Farmers Co‑op (see photo above) is a grassroots organization working to eliminate food insecurity and promote urban farming through cooperative growing and education in Philadelphia.

UC Green is a Philadelphia nonprofit that mobilizes volunteers and residents to plant and maintain street trees, gardens, and green spaces across West and Southwest Philly. 

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LandHealth Institute is a Philadelphia‑based nonprofit focused on environmental education and restoring local ecosystems through immersive programming and native plant initiatives. 

Riverways is dedicated to connecting people with Philadelphia’s urban waterways through education, storytelling, and environmental advocacy, with a focus on community engagement. 

Southwest CDC began in1987 and supports Southwest Philadelphia residents with services like housing counseling, workforce development, and youth programs. 

Global Thinking Initiatives is an organization with a focus on community education, and social impact initiatives. They aim to promote a culture of economic citizenship, social and financial inclusion, and educational opportunity—particularly for underserved groups—by offering scholarships, financial literacy programming, and tools to help families, students, and savers make informed economic decisions. 

Audubon is a national nonprofit protecting birds and their habitats through science, advocacy, and conservation efforts across the America.

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By Namwanga Patricia Kizito, 2025 Africa Zero Waste Participant

‘Participating in the Academy was an invaluable experience that has inspired me to pursue a personal zero-waste lifestyle and promote a zero-waste culture within my community. As I continue to learn and grow, I am eager to initiate tangible zero-waste projects and share my experiences and insights through waste education with others’.

My name is Namwanga Patricia Kizito, and I am the Programs and Communications Lead at End Plastic Pollution in Uganda. I began my transformative journey through the Zero Waste Academy in May 2025. The primary aim of the academy was to empower individuals and organisations with the skills, knowledge, and tools to champion zero-waste solutions across the continent.

The academy offered online sessions conducted through the Moodle platform. These sessions included informative tutorials that our facilitators thoroughly explained. Topics covered in the sessions included an introduction to zero waste, new strategies for waste reduction, debunking false solutions, and advocating for policy change, among others. Each session consisted of theoretical work, which was supplemented with assignments and live question-and-answer sessions with our facilitators.

In addition to theoretical learning, we participated in practical sessions where we identified different types of waste in our communities. Through the Waste Assessment and Brand Audit practical exercise, we were able to map the waste sector, both formal and informal, within our local areas. We learned about various composting techniques and strategies for reducing plastic waste, while also developing campaign strategies. Moreover, we designed project plans tailored to waste management needs in our communities.

The most fascinating part of the academy was the in-person session held from July 7 to July 11, 2025. It was truly impressive! Selected participants travelled to Durban, South Africa, for hands-on training, fieldwork, and to develop Zero Waste communication and advocacy skills. I was fortunate to be among the selected few, and this experience was truly transformative and life-changing.

Wrapping up my experience at the in-person Zero Waste Academy in Durban

DAY 1: We had inspiring sessions on Zero-Waste communication, the power of storytelling, and how our individual passions led us to the Zero-Waste movement. We shared our stories, which are now driving real action.

DAY 2: We visited the Early Morning Market, which provided an invaluable opportunity to learn how to integrate municipalities, vendors, and waste pickers into waste management systems, enabling everyone to play a role in preventing waste from ending up in landfills. We were also hosted by the Ground Work team, who champion Zero Waste in South Africa. 

At the Botanical Gardens, we received hands-on training in nature-based systems that can reduce organic waste, such as composting waste from the Early Morning Market to produce compost. We conducted soil testing and observed soil health through a microscope. Additionally, we participated in a session in the permaculture garden, where we learned how various natural plants can support one another as both pesticides and sources of nutrients. We concluded the day with a discussion focused on building a business case for organic waste diversion projects.

DAY 3: We visited the USE-IT facility, where waste beneficiation occurs. This facility demonstrates that all waste can be considered a resource and transformed into higher-value materials. We explored various activities that reduce waste, such as composting organic waste for horticulture and permaculture, raising black soldier flies from food scraps, making bricks from glass, converting wastewater to safe water, piling plastics for buy-back programs, using wood waste for children’s toys, upcycling textile waste, and witnessing the construction of an electronics recycling plant. After the tour, we engaged in discussions with waste pickers from the South African Waste Pickers Association (SAWPA). 

They explained their working relationships with the government, NGOs, and private enterprises, as well as their working conditions and the challenges they face, particularly in integrating into the formal waste management system. We concluded the day with a discussion on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), examining the measures governments are taking to hold polluting corporations accountable and the effectiveness of EPR schemes in making a difference, including how governments and NGOs are combating greenwashing.

DAY 4: We delved into the conversations surrounding the Global Plastics Treaty, discussing the progress of the treaty negotiations and the UN process. We also addressed false solutions to waste issues, emphasising the importance of intense advocacy to counter these rising challenges. Real solutions, such as reducing single-use plastics and enhancing source segregation while applying the Zero Waste hierarchy, were also highlighted to tackle the waste crisis. The day concluded with discussions about environmental justice principles and the role of Zero Waste in addressing the climate change crisis.

DAY 5: On the final day of the Zero Waste Academy, we presented our projects. Each participant had the opportunity to share, and I presented a project titled “Waste It, Sort It, and Manage It Right,” designed to address the waste management challenges in my community. We concluded the day with smiles as we graduated and received our certificates.

My Personal Key Takeaways from the Academy

Zero waste is achievable. The Zero Waste Academy provided me with the opportunity to demonstrate that a zero-waste lifestyle is possible in households throughout the community. This can be accomplished through proper waste disposal in labelled bins with a strong focus on source segregation. Additionally, practical waste reduction strategies, such as composting and minimising the use of single-use plastics, can significantly decrease the amount of waste generated.

Waste education and advocacy for policy change are essential. Emphasising waste education is vital, as many people are unaware of the various types of waste and their environmental impacts. This education fosters awareness about waste management. With informed advocacy, policy changes are highly achievable, as communication and understanding of the zero-waste concept become easier.

The integration of all stakeholders in the sector is crucial. It’s important for different stakeholders, including waste pickers, communities, households, governments, and civil society, to be involved. This collaboration enables informed decisions that recognise the roles of all parties in the waste management sector.

Beneficiation of all types of waste is achievable. All types of garbage can be viewed as resources; thus, all waste that can be recycled, repurposed, reused, or composted should be treated accordingly to reduce landfill contributions. This approach can significantly decrease waste disasters, environmental pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions.

Extended Producer Responsibility is possible. If all stakeholders, particularly governments and civil society, vocalise and take action to hold polluting corporations accountable, we can reduce greenwashing and improve the effectiveness of waste management policies.

Participating in the Academy was an invaluable experience that has inspired me to pursue a personal zero-waste lifestyle and promote a zero-waste culture within my community. As I continue to learn and grow, I am eager to initiate tangible zero-waste projects and share my experiences and insights through waste education with others. Together, we can contribute to a collective effort to reduce waste and protect our planet.

I extend my sincere gratitude to the GAIA team and all the dedicated stakeholders in this cause. Let’s work towards a waste-free tomorrow!

ENDS.

The post [Opinion] RETHINKING WASTE: My Transformative Journey to Sustainability through the Africa Zero Waste Academy. first appeared on GAIA.

This article How 12-step programs can help build healthier movements was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

The Trump administration is stoking fear by mass arresting immigrants, militarizing cities and cracking down on free speech, all while further enriching billionaires and consolidating power. If nonviolent movements are going to successfully challenge such authoritarianism they will need to draw in more people, and at the same time maintain their inner resources and resilience. Since the election, movement organizers have called for greater care for one another and making community building a larger part of organizing work and protesting.

A new 12-step fellowship program is ready for this moment. Twelve-step is a method individuals use to recover from their personal demons. It began with Alcoholics Anonymous and branched out into many programs addressing different addictions. The practice and impact of 12-step is broader, however. It is also a mutual aid model that builds and strengthens communities at the same time as restoring individual spirits, and it has been inspiring hope for 90 years. 

In addition to being mutual aid, 12-step programs are especially relevant now because recovery is resistance. Personal recovery from dysfunctional programming is recovery from authoritarianism.

I first encountered this idea in the book “When Society Becomes An Addict,” where Anne Wilson Schaef maps addiction patterns within individuals to patterns in the authoritarian political and economic system warping our society. She notes that ingestive addictions (substances) make us compliant and controllable, while process addictions (such as getting hooked on making money) “cause us to lose our moral and social perspective on a global scale,” perpetuating and expanding the dominant system. 

There is hope, though, because through 12-step participants have learned a lot about how to disentangle addiction from their thoughts and behaviors. Schaef posits that since we have small scale recovery, we can have large scale recovery. They are the same process and as the community of recovery grows, the system ruling our society loses its grip.

Personal recovery is political recovery

Most of the 12-step programs are named after identifiers such as alcohol, narcotics, overeating, underearning and codependency. For many people, coping mechanisms become doping mechanisms, take over their lives, then their identities, and run them into the ground. 

The 12 steps are a set of principles that, when activated and practiced, can restore a person’s power of choice over their life. Going through a series of reflection questions and guided actions per step teaches participants how to resist urges, refuse self-harm and embody serenity, courage and wisdom instead. The first through the fourth steps are revolutions in thought; the fifth to the ninth step transform the new thinking into new behaviors; and the 10th to 12th steps are maintenance so that owning the power of choice becomes a new way to live. 

In a hypercapitalist society, regaining any power of choice is resistance. The revolutions in thought also have to uproot specific indoctrinations. Step One is admitting we’re powerless over our coping mechanism and that we need help. Step Two is believing that help is available and Step Three is deciding to ask for that help. These three steps together are a break from rugged individualism. 

Step Four is an inventory of our personal assets and liabilities, not to be judgmental but to be liberatory. We assess what beliefs and behaviors are and are not serving us anymore, so that we can choose what to change. Often this means identifying inaccurate perceptions of ourselves, on a spectrum from grandiosity (100 percent assets) to self-loathing (100 percent liabilities). Our inaccuracies were programmed into us, usually by people who had power over us when we were kids. We needed our coping mechanisms because we couldn’t reject the programming. We coped because we couldn’t be our true selves. Right-sizing ourselves now means bucking the rules of those authorities. 

Many 12-step programs agree with the idea that addiction is a disease of isolation, of feeling so disconnected from other people that only our coping mechanism can give us solace. In response, 12-step fellowship helps people create their own tribes. This could be a helpful response to the loneliness epidemic that authoritarians are exploiting through the classic tactic of “divide and conquer.”

However, the requirement to identify as an addict or addict-adjacent can be a barrier to entry. Paul Engler and colleagues from various recovery groups have asked the question: What if we started a 12-step program that shifts the focus away from the identifiers?

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Personal recovery remix

Engler is executive director of the Center for the Working Poor and was a co-founder of Momentum, a training program for organizations on the left. A writer, strategist and licensed therapist, he has also personally worked two 12-step programs. 

Engler realized that the Gordian knot tying together all the identifiers is: We aren’t who we want to be. Authorities play God with our lives, and their programming and our resulting habits contort us into rigid boxes. Those boxes have been called our shadows, false selves, egos, personas. We know we’re trapped in them because we keep reacting to people and situations in ways we later regret. Our own reactive behaviors feel terribly wrong or they don’t get our needs met, or both.

12 Step For Everyone, the new program from Engler and his colleagues, doesn’t require labels. Instead, it offers recovery from reactivity for anyone who wants to participate.

The strengths of the mutual aid model will continue in this new iteration of the 12-step model: There is anonymity, sponsorship, small support meetings and donation-based participation so that money isn’t a hurdle or a corrupting influence. (Funding for three staffers is coming from grants.) A new guidebook describing the program’s approach, informally named the Big Book within 12-step communities, is ready and available on request. For those who are already plugged into 12-step fellowships, 12 Step For Everyone recommends continuing that work concurrently (in contrast with some programs that limit their members to one fellowship only).

A new feature in 12 Step for Everyone is the inclusion of donation-based initial trainings, which will occur every three months starting in January 2026. The traditional onboarding for a 12-step program is: A person hits rock bottom, someone suggests the relevant program, they head into a meeting metaphorically on their knees, and they sit through it confused, maybe suspicious and possibly resentful. Yet something happens to keep them coming back — a kind word, recognition of their story in someone else’s experience or simply a short rest from their personal hell. In my program (Al-Anon, for friends and families of alcoholics), I’ve heard newcomers share, “I have no idea what you all are talking about but you seem pretty happy, and I want that.”

The new program includes a training session partly because in the switch away from identifiers, newcomers may not have hit bottom in a recognizable way. The training is meant to explain what this version of recovery is and why it’s worth starting now.

Training will also share guidance around God and prayer language that unfortunately, not all programs communicate. I’m in New York City where many people work their programs without an institutional God, so we help newcomers understand that spiritual doesn’t mean religious, and a “higher power” doesn’t have to mean superhuman. 

The other new feature of this program is that it’s overtly politically progressive. It’s starting in partnership with movement organizations on the left, such as unions and nonprofits, and the training will include political analysis. Twelve-step programs codify what they call “traditions,” which structure practices for all the small groups within a program. These usually include a rule against groups having opinions on outside issues. 12 Step For Everyone will have a new set of traditions because, as Engler says, “We consider the crisis of our culture, community and the world not to be an outside issue.” 

Recovery benefits from political context because the authorities who program us sometimes use mechanisms like internalized racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia and every other weapon of oppression. Recovery also requires safety. For example, a trans person should not have to deal with another member questioning their right to exist. Partnering with movement organizations means members will already share fundamental respect for each other. Ideally we would be living in a society where we could take that for granted, but we don’t.

This isn’t the first time the 12-step model has been adapted to include political alignment. The polar opposite program is called Celebrate Recovery, or CR. It was founded by a white evangelist at the Saddleback megachurch as “a biblically-based approach” to recovery.

Engler researched the extent of CR’s influence after starting 12 Step For Everyone, and he is adamant that CR is supporting people in their sobriety and meeting their basic need for community. 

CR has gatekeepers, though. According to the “DNA of Celebrate Recovery” document, a CR small group can only exist as a ministry within a local church and “should follow the policies of the local church.” 

Community recovery

The left is not toothless at this critical moment in U.S. history. The record-breaking protest marches, the pushbacks against ICE, a democratic socialist blowing past the establishment to win the New York City primary for mayor, and Tesla Takedown are all signs of hope, determination and new recruits. But the left has problems with onboarding, toxicity, unity and continuity. 

Onboarding into organizations on the left still mostly relies on friendliness, adrenaline and the importance of the work to keep people in community. In the face of increasing aggression these motivations might fail, and being inspired by the mission doesn’t prevent or heal burnout. As life gets tougher, we need stronger ties with each other as soon as possible. 

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In 12-step groups, sponsorship creates those bonds. A sponsor is a member of the program who a sponsee can contact when they’re worried, overwhelmed, in pain or (as my sponsor just reminded me) to share victories. Critically, nobody needs to make friends first to access this level of support. I had barely spoken to my sponsor before I asked her to guide me in my recovery work.

Imagine being a newcomer to the left, to activism or to community, and connecting with a seasoned activist who will respond to your call or text when you’re shaking over the latest ICE kidnapping or Supreme Court decision. You aren’t stranded alone with harmful thoughts no matter when the next meeting or march is scheduled. Meanwhile, your sponsor isn’t burning out because they understand they don’t have to solve problems or take control. They simply share experience and provide perspective. I haven’t seen the equivalent of this support in movement spaces yet.

Division and toxicity make it hard for people to stay organized on the left as well. Disagreement is essential for a healthy community, and if we bring in the numbers of people we need to win a liveable future, it should be a regular occurrence. Disagreement doesn’t have to blow up into division but it can be difficult to know where to draw the line and agree to disagree, versus identifying a problem for the group that needs resolution. In 12-step programs, participants are free to say what they think while sharing in small groups, and crosstalk, criticism and gossip regarding shares are strongly discouraged. Disagreement occurs without reactivity all the time. Meanwhile, a structure of business meetings, votes and ad hoc committees resolves problems as they occur. 

Staying organized isn’t always the right answer and organizations fold for healthy reasons as well as tragic ones. It’s part of adapting to circumstances. But there is a shortage of continuous, durable home organizations on the left that activists can plug into regardless of burnout, illness, changing focus or life circumstances. I learned the hard way that if you’re not on a committee somewhere, you can get lost, because the concept of community has been beaten out of our organizations and society at large.

When you take stock of all these problems that plague movement spaces, imagine how different it could be if colleagues were working on being less reactive together. With all our different reasons for reactivity and different weapons we pick up when we’re reacting, the process of recovery would be the same and shared. We would be regularly feeling empathy and pride for each other — and practicing gentleness with each other and with ourselves. If anyone had to take a break or if an organization needed to recalibrate, members wouldn’t lose connection with the tribe because they could still come to recovery meetings. And we wouldn’t be subject to our own harsh knee-jerk reactions when disagreements arise. 

Twelve-step doesn’t work for every person who tries it. Reasons vary for this, from the conduct of particular small groups to the practice of losing your “day count” after a slip (for example, a person who has been in AA for 10 years takes one drink and their count of days sober resets from thousands to one). Holly Whitaker criticizes this mechanism as unhelpfully punitive in her book “Quit Like a Woman.” 

The left hasn’t worked for every person who tried it either, partly because we tend to organize people using expectations instead of support. We expect people to stay in community for the mission and we assume that any personal bonds that happen to form will carry us through any challenge.

This is not accidental. The dominant system wants us to forget, or never learn, how to build lasting tribes. But 12-step mutual aid has provided reliable support at scale, over time, regardless of circumstances. With millions of members, it’s popular at a level the U.S. left needs. And because it uproots authoritarianism deep within us, it might help achieve not just a victory over one tyrant, but a society that doesn’t foster and elevate tyrants at all.

This article How 12-step programs can help build healthier movements was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

This morning, corporate lobbyist turned U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi faces Senate Judiciary Committee questioning for the first time since her confirmation. The hearing comes as “[m]ore than 275 former Justice Department employees are demanding Congress increase oversight of the department following a mass exodus of career officials who question the integrity of the department's work.” Beyond these concerns from former colleagues over Bondi’s unwillingness to put the constitution above her loyalty to President Donald Trump, the Attorney General has also validated concerns raised in January over her inability to put the public interest before her former lobbying clients and wealthy friends.

During Bondi’s confirmation process, government watchdog Accountable.US revealed that at least five of Bondi’s direct lobbying clients have faced DOJ fines, investigations, or related scrutiny that could pose serious conflicts should they have business before Bondi’s DOJ. Bondi’s clients included Amazon, General Motors, The GEO Group, Uber, and Major League Baseball.

Now, in her first months as Attorney General, Bondi’s lobbying work continues to pose a wide variety of conflict of interest concerns, an Accountable.US review found—with Ballard Partners seeing a surge in DOJ lobbying work since her confirmation; with Bondi’s DOJ scuttling a major antitrust challenge in favor of a new Ballard Partners client; and with Bondi’s DOJ facing a lawsuit over a memo she signed allowing Trump to accept a $400 million jet from Qatar, who she represented while at Ballard Partners.

“In her eight months as Attorney General, Pam Bondi has confirmed all warnings about her treating the office as an enforcer for Donald Trump’s personal whims while also acting as a walking conflict of interest for her former lobbying firm and clients,” said Accountable.US Executive Director Tony Carrk. “It says it all that the former Qatar lobbyist Bondi penned a DOJ memo – i.e. corruption ‘get out of jail free card’ – allowing Donald Trump to use a gifted luxury super jet from the nation he’s doing billions of dollars in crypto business with during and after his presidency. During her first Senate hearing, will Bondi answer for all these sweetheart deals she’s supporting for the President and former lobbying clients while millions of working Americans are asked to choose between a continued government shutdown or losing their health care?”

HERE’S HOW BONDI’S CONFLICTS OF INTEREST ARE ALREADY COMPROMISING THE AMERICAN PUBLIC INTEREST:

• Since Pamela Bondi became Attorney General, Ballard Partners has become “the highest-paid lobbying shop” in Washington D.C. On top of this, Ballard has represented 10 different clients directly before Bondi’s DOJ in the first months of the second Trump administration—more DOJ clients than it had in the first Trump and Biden administrations combined.
  
• In March 2025, shortly after Bondi’s confirmation, Ballard Partners registered as a lobbying firm for American Express Global Business Travel, which paid the firm $200,000 to exclusively lobby Bondi’s DOJ in the first half of 2025 alone. Notably, in July 2025, Bondi’s DOJ dismissed the Biden Administration’s challenge against a $540 million merger that would have allowed American Express GBT to “eliminate its second-largest rival” CWT Holdings.
  
• While she was with Ballard Partners, Bondi was a foreign lobbyist for the nation of Qatar. Once she became Attorney General, Bondi “personally signed” a DOJ legal memo approving the legality of Qatar’s royal family gifting a $400 million “palace in the sky” jet to the Trump administration, for Trump to use as Air Force One. In July 2025, Bondi’s DOJ was sued by the Freedom of the Press Foundation for refusing to release the memorandum Bondi reportedly signed approving the gift.
  
  
  • Meanwhile, the Trump Organization announced its first foreign deal in Trump’s second term, a new luxury golf resort in Qatar developed in partnership with a Qatari government-owned company.

Today Attorney General Pam Bondi is testifying before Congress amid mounting concerns that the Justice Department under her leadership is being weaponized to go after President Trump's perceived enemies.

Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, issued the following statement in response:

“The abuse of the Justice Department under Bondi’s watch has been rampant, including the recent high profile and scandalous move to secure an indictment against former FBI Director Jim Comey after the President publicly demanded they do so, and despite the previous prosecutor's claims of insufficient evidence.

“The DOJ has been in constant turmoil since Bondi took the helm, firing prosecutors who worked Capitol riot cases or investigated Trump and pushing out senior officials at the FBI.

“At the same time, under her leadership, the Public Integrity Section of the DOJ, the section dedicated to fighting corruption from federal officials, has been reduced from a total of thirty-six employees to two. The Department of Justice is intended to be independent from the White House, not its revenge arm. Her tenure shows they have become exactly that.”

Two years after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, the U.S. government has spent a total of $31 billion combined on military aid to Israel and U.S. military operations in the region, according to the latest research from contributors to the Costs of War project, housed at Brown University’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs. The research series reveals that this U.S. spending in the post-10/7 wars has come with an extensive human toll: over ten percent of the population of Gaza has been killed or injured, while at least 5.27 million people have been displaced in Gaza and the wider region.

As of October 3, 67,075 people in Gaza have been killed and 169,430 people injured according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, out of the approximately 2.2 million people living there in July 2023. These 236,505 casualties (people who have been killed and injured) constitute more than 10 percent of the pre-war population of Gaza. The research underscores that the Gaza Ministry of Health numbers are “not an exaggeration,” as some critics argue; they are likely an undercount.

“Most of the deaths in Gaza have been civilians, many of them children,” said Neta Crawford, co-founder of Costs of War and author of the new report, The Human Toll of the Gaza War: Direct and Indirect Death from 7 October 2023 to 3 October 2025. “The pace and scale of direct killing and injury by the Israel Defense Force bombs and bullets will only be exceeded by the long-term death and misery due to starvation, displacement, destruction of health care facilities and the inadequate level of humanitarian assistance.”

Between October 2023 - September 2025, the U.S. spent $21.7 billion on military aid to Israel. This figure does not include the tens of billions of dollars in arms sales agreements that have been committed for weapons and services that will be paid for and delivered in the years to come. During the same period, an additional $9.65 - $12.07 billion was spent on U.S. military operations in Yemen, Iran and the wider region, totaling $31.35 - $33.77 billion in U.S. spending on the post-10/7 wars.

“The devastating damage the current Israeli government has done to Gaza and its people would not have been possible without U.S. financing, U.S.-supplied weapons, and U.S. assistance with spare parts and maintenance,” said Bill Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and author of the new report, U.S. Military Aid and Arms Transfers to Israel, October 2023 – September 2025, co-published with the Quincy Institute. “But despite this dependence, neither former President Joe Biden nor current President Donald Trump have used Israel's reliance on U.S. weapons as a tool to pressure Tel Aviv to change its conduct.”

“The American public has a right to know how U.S. funding is used in conflict, and to recognize that our military activities in the Middle East carry significant costs that are often hidden,” said Linda J. Bilmes, the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Public Finance at the Harvard Kennedy School and author of the new report, Costs of United States Military Activities in the Wider Middle East Since October 7, 2023. “These financial and social costs should be weighed alongside policy decisions.”

Additionally, mass population displacement has been a significant feature of the violence experienced in Gaza, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, the West Bank, and other parts of the Middle East since October 7, 2023, where at least 5.27 million people have fled or been forced to leave their homes (as of early September 2025). This total includes an estimated 1.85 million displaced children under 18 years old. Some of these people have since returned home, while many others have not. (This figure does not include Syria and Yemen, where there is a lack of data documenting how the post-10/7 wars have caused displacement.)

“The displacement of over 5 million people to date plus the potential displacement of millions more underscores the urgency of ending the violence as quickly as possible, of allowing the displaced to return home as international law requires, of ensuring reparation for the displaced, and of holding the perpetrators accountable for crimes committed,” said David Vine, political anthropologist and longtime Costs of War contributor, and author of the new report, Mass Displacement since October 7, 2023: Flight from War, Genocide, and Expulsion in Gaza, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, and the West Bank.

“For well over a decade, the Costs of War project has shed light on the costs of the so-called U.S. ‘war on terror’; now we’re examining the devastating costs of U.S. military spending and operations in the post-October 7 wars – which in the case of Gaza, many experts call a genocide,” said Stephanie Savell, Director of Costs of War. “Our research highlights numbers, but we must never lose sight of this key fact: what we’re talking about is human suffering. This research shows that the suffering is unthinkably vast. The research will inform efforts to stop the mass killing and displacement, move beyond the war paradigm, and explore true solutions towards peace.”

The post Letters to the Editor: This is far from the first El Segundo oil refinery fire. Can anything be done? appeared first on Last Chance Alliance.

The UK’s Climate Change Act is a landmark piece of legislation that guides the nation’s response to global warming and has proved highly influential around the world.

Increasingly, the law has come under attack from right-wing politicians, who want to scrap the UK’s net-zero target and the policies supporting it.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has announced that her party would “repeal” the Climate Change Act entirely, if her party is able to form the next government.

The opposition leader said she still believed that “climate change is real”, but offered no replacement for the legislation that the Conservatives have backed since its inception.

Her proposal drew intense criticism from scientists, business leaders and even senior Conservatives, who argued that abandoning the act would harm the UK economy and drive more climate extremes.

Meanwhile, the hard-right populist Reform UK party – which is currently leading in the polls – has also rejected climate action and promised to “ditch net-zero”.

Below, Carbon Brief explains what the Climate Change Act does – and does not – mean for the UK, correcting inaccurate comments as the UK’s political right veers further away from the previous consensus on climate action.

• Why does the UK have the Climate Change Act?
• What does the Climate Change Act require?
• The costs and benefits of the Climate Change Act
• How nearly 70 countries followed the UK’s Climate Change Act
• What comes next under the Climate Change Act?
• What would happen if the Climate Change Act was repealed?

Why does the UK have the Climate Change Act?

It is well-known that the Climate Change Act was voted through the UK parliament with near-unanimous cross-party support. In October 2008, some 465 MPs voted in favour, including 263 Labour members, 131 Conservatives, 52 Liberal Democrats. Just five Conservatives voted against.

Less widely appreciated is the fact that the Labour government only agreed to legislate in the face of huge public and political pressure, including from then-Conservative leader David Cameron.

Jill Rutter, senior fellow at thinktank the Institute for Government (IfG), tells Carbon Brief that the Conservatives “can also claim significant credit for the Climate Change Act”.

This is at odds with comments made by Badenoch, who described it as “Labour’s law”, when pledging to repeal it if she were ever elected as prime minister.

In early 2005, two Friends of the Earth campaigners – Bryony Worthington and Martyn Williams – had drafted a Climate Change Bill, inspired by the “worsening problem of climate change and the inadequacy of the government’s policy response”, according to a 2018 academic paper.

Worthington tells Carbon Brief they had “decided [the government’s plan] was rubbish and we needed a different approach”, based on five-yearly carbon budgets rather than single-year goals.

Their draft was introduced into parliament that July, as a private members’ bill, by high-profile backbench MPs from the three main political parties: Labour’s Michael Meacher; the Conservatives’ John Gummer (now Lord Deben); and Norman Baker for the Liberal Democrats.

This was the centrepiece of Friends of the Earth’s “Big Ask” campaign, gaining huge public support and backing from more than 100 other NGOs, 412 MPs and celebrities such as Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke.

Then, in December 2005, Cameron was elected Conservative leader, using support for climate action as part of his efforts to “‘decontaminate’ the Tory brand”, according to an IfG retrospective.

With the Labour government still resisting the idea of new climate change legislation, Cameron made what the IfG called a “really significant political intervention” on 1 September 2006, throwing his weight behind the “Big Ask” and publishing his own draft bill, on green recycled paper.

Former UK conservative leader David Cameron and his wife Samantha at Friends of the Earth’s “Big Ask” Benefit Concert, 2006.
Credit: PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo

As the Guardian reported at the time, a letter from Cameron and others “call[ed] on the government to enshrine annual targets for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions into a bill, to be introduced in the next Queen’s speech…the government believes a bill is unnecessary”.

At prime minister’s questions on 25 October 2006, Cameron continued to press Labour prime minister Tony Blair, who was still not committed to legislation.

Cameron went beyond the “Big Ask” draft by calling for an independent commission with executive powers, able to adjust the UK’s climate goals. Cameron asked Blair:

“Are we getting a bill: yes or no?…Will it include the two things that really matter: annual targets and an independent body that can measure and adjust them in the light of circumstances?”

The IfG says a former aide to David Miliband, who was then environment secretary, “remembers him commenting that Labour could not get into the position of being the only major party not in favour of the proposed bill”.

Finally, in November 2006, the Labour government confirmed in the Queen’s speech that it would introduce a new climate change bill.

Emphasising the cross-party consensus, Lord Deben tells Carbon Brief: “It was the Tories who wrote it and it was the Labour Party who accepted it – and all parties supported it.” He adds:

“It’s not just that every Tory leader since [then] has supported climate change, the Climate Change Act [and the] Climate Change Committee, but it’s simply that, actually, they ought to, because they invented it.”

The Labour government published its own draft climate change bill in March 2007 and this, after lengthy negotiation, went on to become the 2008 act.

Cameron continued to campaign for “independent experts, not partisan…ministers” to set the UK’s statutory climate targets, but this responsibility was, ultimately, left to the government.

Rutter tells Carbon Brief that, in pledging to repeal the 2008 act, Badenoch is “rejecting” a Conservative “inheritance” on climate change that runs back to Margaret Thatcher. She says:

“One of the defining features of climate policy to date in the UK has been the political consensus that has underpinned it. That may have been because Margaret Thatcher was the first leading world politician to draw attention to climate change in 1989 [via a speech at the UN in New York].”

Rutter adds that David Miliband had only been able to convince then-chancellor Gordon Brown to accept legally binding targets as a result of Cameron’s enthusiasm for the cause. She says:

“Although it was Labour legislation, brought forward by David Miliband (though implemented by brother Ed), the reason Miliband was…able to convince a sceptical Gordon Brown at the Treasury that the UK should set legally binding targets, was the enthusiasm with which new Conservative leader David Cameron embraced the Friends of the Earth ‘Big Ask’ campaign as part of his moves to detoxify the Conservative party after its 2005 defeat. Theresa May then increased the target [in 2019] from 80% to net-zero as part of her legacy. It is that long Conservative inheritance on climate action that Badenoch is now rejecting.”

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What does the Climate Change Act require?

The Climate Change Act sets out an overall “framework” for both cutting the UK’s emissions and preparing the country for the impacts of climate change.

At its heart is a legally binding goal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Originally envisaged as a 60% reduction on 1990 levels, this was quickly increased to 80%.

In 2019, amid a surge in concern about climate change, the then-Conservative government strengthened the target again to a reduction to “at least 100%” below 1990 levels, more commonly referred to as net-zero.

Section 1 of the Climate Change Act. Source: UK government.

On the pathway to this long-term goal, the act also requires the government to set legally binding interim targets known as ”carbon budgets”. These must be set 12 years in advance, to allow time for the government and the rest of the economy to plan ahead.

The carbon budgets set limits on emissions over five-year periods, providing greater flexibility than annual goals, while tackling the cumulative emissions that determine global warming.

Section 13 of the act specifies that the government has a “duty to prepare proposals and policies for meeting carbon budgets”. There is also a requirement for the government to explain how its actions will achieve its climate goals.

(In addition, the act requires the government to set out a programme of measures for climate adaptation and how it intends to meet them.)

The final key pillar of the act is the creation of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), an independent advisory body. The CCC advises – but does not decide – on the level at which carbon budgets should be set and the climate-related risks facing the UK. 

The committee also produces annual assessments of “progress” and recommendations for going further, which the government is obliged to respond to, but not to accept.

Each time the secretary of state sets out their plan for a new carbon budget – taking the CCC’s advice into account – or responds to a progress report from the committee, parliament scrutinises the government’s activities.

Contrary to recent criticisms from the opposition Conservatives and the hard-right populist Reform UK, however, the act says nothing at all about how the government should meet its targets.

The only requirement is that the government’s plan should be capable of meeting its targets.

Moreover, it was the Conservatives under Cameron that had wanted to give the CCC executive and target-setting powers. This was opposed at the time by the then-Labour government.

Rachel Solomon Williams, executive director of the Aldersgate Group, notes on LinkedIn that this was a “closely debated” issue, but that, ultimately, the act puts the government “in control”:

“A closely debated aspect of the bill at the time was whether the CCC should have an executive or an advisory function. In the end, it was appointed as an expert advisory committee and the government remains entirely in control of delivery choices.”

The Conservative press release announcing Badenoch’s plan to “repeal” the act is, therefore, incorrect to state that the legislation “force[s]” governments to introduce specific policies.

(Speaking at the 2025 Conservative party conference, shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho caricatured what she called “Ed Miliband’s…act” as requiring “1970s”-style “central planning” that “dictate[s] what products people must buy, and when”.

Just 18 months earlier, she, as energy secretary, had written of her “government’s unwavering commitment to meeting our ambitious emissions targets, including the legislated carbon budgets and the net-zero by 2050 target”.)

The press release also falsely describes the targets set under the act as “arbitrary” and falsely suggests they were set without consideration for the impact on jobs, households and the economy.

(In 2021, Badenoch herself, then a government minister, told parliament: “We will put affordability and fairness at the heart of our reforms to reach net-zero.”)

Specifically, section 10 of the act lists “matters to be taken into account” when setting carbon budgets, including the latest climate science, available technologies, “economic circumstances”, “fiscal circumstances” and the impact of any decisions on fuel poverty.

As for the net-zero target, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that reducing emissions to net-zero is the only way to stop global warming. The target was set on this basis, following detailed advice from the CCC that took climate science, economic and social factors into account.

The Conservatives have also taken aim at the CCC itself as part of their rejection of the Climate Change Act, highlighting the committee’s advice on meat consumption and flying. 

In an echo of widely circulated conspiracy theories, Badenoch even told the Spectator that the CCC “wants us to eat insects”. This is not true.

Despite the framing by right-leaning media and politicians, the CCC’s recommendations for contentious topics such as meat consumption and reductions in flight numbers are modest. 

The committee notes that “meat consumption has been falling” without policy interventions and says this will help to free up land for tree-planting.

While the CCC advises that action should be taken to prevent a large increase in flights, it sees passenger numbers remaining roughly the same over the next decade. It notes that “additional demand management measures” to curb flight numbers further “may” be needed, but only if other efforts to decarbonise aviation fail.

More importantly, the government decides how to meet the carbon budgets. It can – and often does – ignore recommendations from the CCC, including those on diets and airport expansion.

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The costs and benefits of the Climate Change Act

The debate over whether to tackle climate change, how quickly and to what extent has almost invariably centred on the costs and benefits of doing so.

Those opposed to climate action have, in general, sought to exaggerate the supposed costs, while playing down the losses and damages already being caused by global warming.

Yet serious efforts to weigh up the costs and the benefits have concluded – again and again and again – that it would be cheaper to cut emissions than to face the consequences of inaction.

Indeed, this was precisely the conclusion of the landmark 2006 Stern Review, to which the 2008 Climate Change Act partly owes its existence. The review said:

“[T]he evidence gathered by the review leads to a simple conclusion: the benefits of strong and early action far outweigh the economic costs of not acting.”

More specifically, it said that the cost of action “can be limited to around 1% of global GDP [gross domestic product]”, whereas the damages from climate change would cost 5% – and as much as 20% of GDP.

When the act was passed in 2008, it was again estimated that the UK would need to invest around 1% of GDP in meeting its target of cutting emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.

Since then, estimates of the cost of cutting emissions have fallen, as the decline in low-carbon technology costs has outperformed expectations. At the same time, estimates of the economic losses due to rising temperatures have tended to keep going up.

(Some years after the review’s publication, Stern said he had “got it wrong on climate change – it’s far, far worse…Looking back, I underestimated the risks.”)

When it recommended the target of net-zero by 2050, the CCC estimated that the UK would need to invest 1-2% of GDP to hit this goal. It later revised this down to less than 1% of GDP.

Most recently, the CCC revised its estimates down once again, putting the net cost of reaching net-zero at £116bn over 25 years – roughly £70 per person per year – or just 0.2% of GDP.

In July 2025, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) went on to estimate that the UK could take an 8% hit to its economy by the early 2070s, if the world warms by 3C.

It concluded that while there were potentially significant costs to the government from reaching net-zero, these would be far lower than the costs of failing to limit warming.

Despite all this, Conservative leader Badenoch has falsely argued that the UK’s net-zero target will be “impossible” to meet without “bankrupting” the country and that the the Climate Change Act has “loaded us with costs”.

Her party has also pledged to “axe the carbon tax” on electricity generation – a significant source of government revenue – claiming that this “just adds extra costs to our bills for no reason”.

Prof Jim Watson, director of the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, tells Carbon Brief that the costs of climate policies are “sometimes exaggerated” and are not the main reason for high bills:

“Policies that are in place to meet the UK’s carbon targets have costs, but these costs are sometimes exaggerated. These policies are not the primary cause of the energy price shock businesses and households have experienced over the past three years.”

Watson says that high gas prices were the “main driver” of high bills and adds that shifting away from fossil fuels “will also reduce the UK’s exposure to future fossil-fuel price shocks”.

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How nearly 70 countries followed the UK’s Climate Change Act

In the interview announcing her ambition to scrap the Climate Change Act, Badenoch falsely told the Spectator that the UK was “tackl[ing] climate change…alone”. She said:

“We need to do what we can sensibly to tackle climate change, but we cannot do it alone. If other countries aren’t doing it, then us being the goody-two-shoes of the world is not actually encouraging anyone to improve.”

This is a common claim among climate-sceptic politicians and commentators, who argue that the UK has gone further than other nations and that this is unfair. Badenoch’s predecessor, Rishi Sunak, used similar reasoning to justify net-zero policy rollbacks.

The UK has indeed been a leader in passing climate legislation, but it is far from the only country taking action to tackle climate change.

The Climate Change Act was among the first comprehensive national climate laws and the first to include legally binding emissions targets.

It has inspired legislation around the world, with laws in New Zealand, Canada and Nigeria among those explicitly based on the UK model.

Indeed, 69 countries have now passed “framework” climate laws similar to the UK’s Climate Change Act, as the chart below shows. This is up from just four when the act was legislated in 2008. Of these, 14 are explicitly titled the “climate change act”.

Cumulative number of countries with “climate change framework laws”, as defined by the Climate Change Laws of the World database. When countries have updated laws or introduced additional framework legislation, duplicates have been removed. Source: Climate Change Laws of the World.

The UK was also the first major economy to legislate a net-zero target in 2019, but since then virtually every major emitter in the world has announced the target. (Not all of these targets have been put into law, as the UK’s has.)

When the UK announced its target in June 2019, around 1% of global emissions were covered by net-zero targets. By the end of that year, France and Germany brought this up to nearly 4%.

Over the following years, major economies including China and India announced net-zero targets, meaning that around three-quarters of global emissions are now covered by such goals, as the chart below shows.

(This figure would be even higher if the Trump administration in the US, which accounts for around a tenth of annual global emissions, had not abandoned the nation’s net-zero target.)

Global greenhouse gas emissions covered by national net-zero targets (dark blue) and those that remain uncovered (light blue). Shares of emissions are derived from a 2024 dataset that includes both fossil-fuel and land-use emissions. Source: Net Zero Tracker, Jones et al (2024).

While it is true that the UK is “only responsible for 1% of global emissions”, as Badenoch has also noted, this does not mean its actions are inconsequential. Around a third of global emissions come from countries that are each responsible for 1% of global emissions or less. 

Moreover, as a relatively wealthy country that is responsible for a large share of historical emissions, many argue that the UK also has a moral responsibility to lead on climate action.

This historical responsibility is implicitly invoked by the Paris Agreement, which recognises countries’ “common but differentiated responsibilities” for current climate change.

Finally, Badenoch’s position diverges from that of recent Conservative leaders.

Theresa May and Boris Johnson spoke positively of the UK “leading the world” in low-carbon technology and expressed pride about the nation’s climate record. 

They framed the UK’s success in tackling climate change as a good reason to do more, rather than less. “Green” Conservatives also argue that the UK should race to gain a competitive advantage in producing low-carbon technologies domestically.

Responding to Badenoch’s plan to scrap the act, May issued a statement criticising the “retrograde step” following nearly two decades of the UK “[leading] the way in tackling climate change”.

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What comes next under the Climate Change Act?

The debate over the future of the Climate Change Act, triggered by the Conservative pledge to repeal it, comes ahead of two key moments for the legislation.

First, the government has until the end of October 2025 to publish a new plan for meeting the sixth carbon budget (CB6), covering the five-year period from 2033-2037. 

In 2021, the then-Conservative government passed legislation to cut emissions to 78% below 1990 levels during the sixth carbon budget period, centred on 2035. The government set out its “carbon budget delivery plan” for CB6 in October 2021, as part of a wider net-zero strategy.

In July 2022, however, this plan was ruled unlawful by the High Court for failing to publish sufficient details on exactly how the target would be met. The revised plan, published in March 2023, was once again found unlawful by the High Court in May 2024.

The High Court then gave the government a deadline of May 2025 to publish another version, later extended to October 2025 as a result of last year’s general election.

Second, the government has until June 2026 to legislate for the seventh carbon budget, covering the period 2037 to 2042. This legislation will be subject to a vote in parliament.

In February 2025, the CCC advised the government to set this budget at 87% below 1990 levels, in order to stay on track for the goal of net-zero by 2050, as shown in the chart below.

UK greenhouse gas emissions, including international aviation and shipping (IAS), MtCO2e. Lines show historical emissions (black) and the CCC’s “balanced pathway” to reaching net-zero. Legislated carbon budgets levels are shown as grey steps. The first five budgets did not include IAS, but “headroom” was left to allow for these emissions (darker grey wedges). Source: CCC.

Both the CB6 delivery plan this October and the parliamentary vote over CB7 next June are likely to be hotly contested, with the Conservatives and Reform having come out against climate action.

After publishing two unlawful carbon budget delivery plans and ahead of a widely anticipated election loss, the Conservatives began calling for greater scrutiny around carbon budgets in 2023.

Then-prime minister Rishi Sunak said in September of that year that parliament should be able to debate plans to meet the next carbon budget, before voting on the target. He said:

“So, when parliament votes on carbon budgets in the future, I want to see it consider the plans to meet that budget, at the same time.”

Then-secretary of state Coutinho subsequently wrote that a draft delivery plan for CB7 should be published alongside draft legislation setting the level of the carbon budget. She also argued that CB7 be debated on the floor of the House, rather than in the “delegated legislation committee”.

In response, the current government has pledged to provide “further information” to parliament, ahead of the vote on CB7. In a July 2025 letter to the chair of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC), energy secretary Ed Miliband wrote:

“Prior to parliament’s vote, we will publish an impact assessment which will clearly articulate the full range of benefits and costs of the government’s chosen CB7 target and the cross-economy pathway to deliver it.”

However, Miliband said the government would not publish a CB7 delivery plan until “as soon as reasonably practicable after” the parliamentary vote on the level of the budget.

The EAC itself is holding an inquiry on the seventh carbon budget and how the “costs of delivering it will filter through to households and businesses”. It is likely to report back in February 2026.

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What would happen if the Climate Change Act was repealed?

If any future government wanted to repeal the Climate Change Act and its legally binding net-zero goal, it would not be a straightforward process.

The government would need to introduce a new bill in parliament just to repeal the act.

This process would involve seeking approval from both the House of Commons and the House of Lords before receiving Royal Assent to become law. Within the make-up of the current UK parliament, it is likely that such a bill would face significant challenges. 

Any new law repealing the Climate Change Act would need to introduce new climate commitments of a similar nature – or else the UK would be in breach of several international laws and treaties, explains Estelle Dehon KC, a barrister specialising in climate change. She tells Carbon Brief:

“In short, repeal of the Climate Change Act without any replacement commitments of a similar type would be in breach of the UK’s international obligations under: the climate change treaties (so UNFCCC, Kyoto and Paris); international human rights law and customary international law, as well as specific sources like UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.”

Under the Paris Agreement, the UK has made pledges to cut its emissions by 2030 and 2035, known as “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs).

The UK’s NDCs are directly informed by its domestic emissions-cutting targets, known as carbon budgets. The act specifies that the government has a “duty to prepare proposals and policies for meeting carbon budgets”.

Any move in breach of international laws and treaties could be vulnerable to legal challenges, particularly in light of a recent opinion on climate change by the International Court of Justice.

Repealing the Climate Change Act could also put the UK in opposition with its international trade agreements.

The most recent trade agreement between the UK and the EU states that each party “reaffirms its ambition of achieving economy-wide climate neutrality by 2050”.

It also contains rules on “non-regression” in relation to climate protection.

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The post Factcheck: What the Climate Change Act does – and does not – mean for the UK appeared first on Carbon Brief.

For electric car users, minimizing costs of charging and minimizing emissions are in conflict, a new analysis reveals. For car-share users, it can be even more difficult to align charging times with low-carbon electricity – but advancing technology and smart public policy can bridge the gap.

Electric vehicles (EVs) and car sharing “play complementary roles in the transition toward sustainable mobility,” says study team member Elliot Romano, a renewable energy systems scientist at the University of Geneva. “EVs address the energy source of transport, while car sharing targets the number of vehicles on the road.”

Many studies of the climate impact of EV charging use a fixed value for electricity-related emissions. But the mix of energy sources used to generate electricity varies from hour to hour throughout the day.

So does the price of electricity. And EV owners typically use price to decide when to charge their car.

In the new study, Romano and his colleagues calculated the cost, emissions, and grid consequences of EV charging in Switzerland, modeling a nationwide fleet of electric cars depending on different charging behaviors and private versus shared ownership models.

Always charging at the cheapest time reduces charging costs by 21% compared to prioritizing low emissions, the researchers report in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. By contrast, always charging at the most climate-friendly time can reduce emissions by up to 82%.

“At first glance, this seems counterintuitive, one might expect cleaner electricity to be cheaper, not more expensive,” says Romano. The pattern reflects the peculiarities of Switzerland’s electricity system – when prices are high, the country tends to generate and export hydropower; when prices are low, the country imports fossil-generated power from neighboring countries. But a similar mismatch has been seen elsewhere.

 

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“The balance between saving money and cutting emissions varies by country, and the trade-off becomes sharper when energy prices and carbon signals don’t move in sync,” Romano says.

What’s needed instead is a system where it pays to charge your car in the most climate-friendly way.

To help accomplish this, the researchers recommend a dynamic carbon tax on electricity. Just 30 cents per kilogram of carbon dioxide would align price and emissions signals, the team found – as long as the carbon price reflects real-time emissions from electricity generation.

Such a policy would need to be combined with technology like smart meters and apps to give the public real-time updates on the electric grid. “Transparent information is key: consumers need to know not only what they’re paying for electricity, but also how clean that electricity is at any given moment,” says Romano.

Additionally, as more solar power is added to the grid in the future, cheap electricity and clean electricity will likely coincide to a greater extent.

Car sharing adds another wrinkle to the problem. The researchers used a database of 1.5 million car-sharing reservations in Switzerland to understand when and where shared cars tend to be used and charged.

Shared vehicles spend more time on the road than private vehicles, especially during the day. So they’re likely to need to be charged at night, when electricity tends to be more carbon-intensive. Still, short charging sessions throughout the day kept total emissions and costs of charging comparable to private vehicles, the researchers found.

In the future, fast-charging infrastructure will make it easier to optimize for both emissions and costs.

The shift to electric vehicles requires investments in the electric grid, the analysis also showed. If all private cars were electric in 2050, Switzerland would face an electricity shortfall of 1.3 terawatt hours per month during the winter. Even with optimized charging times and with car sharing reducing the number of vehicles on the road by 25%, the shortfall would still be 1.0 terawatt hours. More research is necessary to figure out how to ensure an adequate electricity supply while keeping emissions minimal, Romano says.

Source: Romano E. et al. “Emission-Responsive Charging of Electric Cars and Carsharing to Improve the Security of Electricity Supply for Switzerland.” Environmental Science & Technology 2025.

Image: © Anthropocene Magazine

Headline News:

• “Renewables Overtake Coal But Growth Slows: Reports” • Solar and wind farms generated more electricity than coal for the first time, though US and Chinese policy shifts are slowing growth and put a global 2030 target out of reach. Renewables’ share of global electricity rose to 34.3% in the first half of the year, while coal fell to 33.1%, according to Ember. [Yahoo]

Wind turbines (American Public Power Association, Unsplash)

• “Rising Sea Levels Threaten Over 100 Million Buildings” • A study published in Urban Sustainability explores scenarios of sea level rise between 0.5 and 20 meters. It found even the lowest increase (predicted to occur even if emissions are significantly cut) would result in around three million buildings being flooded regularly in the Global South. [Euronews]
• “Nordex Wins 126-MW Turbine Haul From wpd” • Nordex Group has orders from wpd totalling over 125 MW for six wind projects in Germany. The orders, placed in late September, are for 21 turbines, including six N163/6.X, eleven N149/5.X, two N163/5.X, and two N133/4.8 units. The package includes a 15-year premium service contract. [reNews]
• “BYD-Led Consortium Awarded Contract For Autonomous Buses In Singapore” • A consortium of BYD, MKX Technologies, and Zhidao Network Technology won a contract for autonomous buses to start driverless public operation in the second half of 2026 in Singapore. BYD has over 300 electric buses in operation or on order in Singapore already. [CleanTechnica]
• “OW vs ‘Bad Faith’ Trump Attack” • Ocean Winds attacked the “bad faith” litigation of the Trump administration in an ongoing court challenge to the developer’s federal construction permit for the  SouthCoast Wind. “This overt litigation tactic is made in bad faith without any legal authority or regard for the impact on SouthCoast Wind or the public at large.” [reNews]

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

This piece is part of the weekly series “Growing Forward: Insights for Building Better Food and Agriculture Systems,” presented by the Global Food Institute at the George Washington University and the nonprofit organization Food Tank. Each installment highlights forward-thinking strategies to address today’s food and agriculture related challenges with innovative solutions. To view more pieces in the series, click here.

In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to embrace remote learning models, we had to decide what to do with the food hubs and farms at the University of the District of Columbia (UDC). We couldn’t tend to the produce from our homes, but we realized what we were doing was too important to stop. Lines at food banks were getting longer and the need from the community was only growing. We chose to keep the farms rolling. Each week, we loaded up UDC’s food truck with our produce and delivered it to our partners at the nonprofit Martha’s Table and local D.C. churches, who then distributed it to keep our neighbors—and our city—fed. 

Today, 55 percent of the world’s population lives in an urban environment, and this is projected to increase to almost 70 percent by 2050, according to the United Nations. But limited food access and nutrition security, rising food costs, limited space for local food production, and—from my personal standpoint—low or nonexistent urban farming literacy are pushing the urban environment to its limits.

To nourish a growing urban population, we need the same social values—dignity, equity, political awareness—that we upheld in our D.C. community during the pandemic. The good news is that urban agroecology (UA+) offers an ecologically sound and socially just framework to reshape food systems in cities in this way. 

Both Urban Agriculture (UA) and UA+ can increase food production in urban areas by enhancing food and nutrition security. But UA—like agriculture—is a broad term that can include subsistence, organic, and industrialized ways of growing food. In contrast, agroecology is a movement and practice that prioritizes diversity, knowledge co-creation, economic and social well-being, and food culture. When applied in cities, UA+ addresses the need for equitable food systems in which people can exercise choice over what they eat and how and where it is produced. 

Put simply: UA+ makes the urban environment more resilient because it is run for and by the people who reside there.

There are many challenges to scaling UA+, including limited land access, a lack of economic resources, and bureaucratic barriers. Urban land remains limited and expensive, and cities tend to prioritize housing, retail and commercial development due to their ability to generate immediate tax revenue. This means that urban food producers are priced out, even if their work contributes to better living standards.

In Washington, D.C., the Urban Farming and Food Security Amendment Act of 2016 was enacted to enable qualified residents to lease vacant, District- and privately-owned land for urban farms.The owners of the property could then pay reduced property taxes. But the number of vacant plots is limited and access to them is inequitable. Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) farmers are less likely to receive loans, grants, capital, and investments to start their farms. And most importantly, they are often left out of the urban planning processes, which means their food needs are not centered in policy decisions.

But we need UA+ more than ever. One reason why: in the US, science is increasingly mistrusted and under threat, which can lead to weakened food systems and poor public health outcomes. UA+ offers an antidote to this, as it creates hands-on and personal relationships with science. Composting, crop rotation, soil testing, pest control, and crop biodiversity are all examples of science in action.

This year, UDC’s Center for Urban Agriculture and Gardening Education implemented a new program called the Citizen Science and Food Systems Project. This project recruits people from the community, who may not have the time or space to tend to an urban garden, to participate in the science of UA+. In June, the program kicked off at our food hub sites, where we are looking at container crop production. Participants are able to collect yield data, monitor pests, manage nutrients, and select crops specific to this way of growing food. 

We may start talking about a bambino eggplant and other crops that grow well in small spaces, but it’s a domino effect. UA+ helps to build ecological literacy, which helps humans mitigate climate instability such as urban heat, flooding, fire, and water shortages. We are educating people for sustainability in the 21st century. 

Fortunately, this is also a model that can be replicated. When we teach communities to embrace the values and practices of UA+ and apply these in their own cities, it can help them create independent, sustainable cooperatives. And this, in turn, can support community-controlled food systems, foster economic self-reliance, and promote collective ownership and decision-making. 

Urban agroecology is not a cure-all. But it is a crucial piece of the food systems puzzle. If embraced equitably and ecologically, it offers the urban environment a path toward greater resilience, justice, and sustainability.

Photo courtesy of Che Axum

The post The Promise of Urban Agroecology to Enhance Food and Nutrition Security in the 21st Century appeared first on Food Tank.

STARTING IN 2023, Canada began the process of restitution to First Nations in Northern Ontario and the Prairies for their failure to honour the “Cows and Plows” elements of the Numbered Treaties. Restitution in these cases has involved significant specific claims settlements, resulting in debate among communities about whether to accept their terms. While some have done so, others are still considering their options. 

So, what does “Cows and Plows” mean for communities? What are the legal implications of settlement? And is this really the treaty relationship that Indigenous peoples expect with Canada? 

What is “Cows and Plows”?

”Cows and Plows” is a term that refers to the process of settling unfulfilled promises related to agriculture and livelihood under Treaties 1 to 11, known collectively as The Numbered Treaties. Made between 1871 and 1921, these post-confederation agreements between Indigenous peoples and Crown representatives allowed newcomers to share and settle on lands that would become part of Canada.

Within the text of each of the Numbered Treaties, various provisions are made to assist First Nations in learning about new livelihoods by providing farm animals and implements while also providing protections to ensure the continuity of our existing ways of life.

Those provisions often include agricultural equipment, animals, and seed. The Canadian federal government refers to these components of the Numbered Treaties as Agricultural Benefits. In many cases, those promises have gone unfulfilled or have been only partially fulfilled, and many First Nations are negotiating settlements for compensation. Allegations about the Crown’s failure to fulfill these promises are known as Agricultural Specific Claims, and are also informally called “Cows and Plows.” 

Before 2023, ”Cows and Plows” claims were adjudicated under the general specific claims process. But, in early 2023, the federal government introduced an Expedited Resolution Strategy to move these claims forward (Government of Canada 2025a). 

 Cows, Plows, and Specific Claims

In Canada, Specific Claims are a category of land claim that deals with breaches of treaty obligations and generally relate to the mismanagement of reserve lands and other First Nation assets. For example, a specific claim could relate to a shortfall in reserve land allocation, mismanagement of Indigenous assets, or breaches of the Crown’s responsibilities under the Indian Act (Government of Canada 2025c).

Once a specific claim is filed, it is considered “under assessment.” This stage includes “research and analysis” carried out by the Government of Canada, followed by the Justice Department preparing a legal opinion on the specific claim. At the next stage of the process, depending on the Justice Department’s opinion, the First Nation that filed that claim is “invited to negotiate” with the federal government. Once an agreement is reached, the specific claim is considered “settled through negotiations.”

While many specific claims in Canada are rejected, some claims are successfully negotiated. Others are pursued through litigation, and the specific claims process itself is changing. Based on extensive engagement conducted with First Nations in 2019-2021, the Assembly of First Nations forwarded their Specific Claims Reform Proposal. The proposal calls for establishing an independent specific claims process, which is now undergoing development between the Assembly of First Nations and the Government of Canada (Assembly of First Nations, 2025). According to the Government of Canada, the intent of the resolution process is to address the Crown’s failure to provide agricultural benefits in relation to the Numbered Treaties. 

All treaties include some form of reference to agricultural benefits and/or assistance. While the written text outlining specific agricultural items varies slightly from Treaty to Treaty, they express similar terms. First Nations had expectations when they agreed to share the land with settlers. For example, Treaty 7 states:

“Her Majesty agrees that the said Indians shall be supplied as soon as convenient, after any Band shall make due application therefor, with the following cattle for raising stock, that is to say: for every family of five persons, and under, two cows; for every family of more than five persons, and less than ten persons, three cows, for every family of over ten persons, four cows; and every Head and Minor Chief, and every Stony Chief, for the use of their Bands, one bull; but if any Band desire to cultivate the soil as well as raise stock, each family of such Band shall receive one cow less than the above mentioned number, and in lieu thereof, when settled on their Reserves and prepared to break up the soil, two hoes, one spade, one scythe, and two hay forks, and for every three families, one plough and one harrow, and for each Band, enough potatoes, barley, oats, and wheat (if such seeds be suited for the locality of their Reserves) to plant the land actually broken up. All the aforesaid articles to be given, once for all, for the encouragement of the practice of agriculture among the Indians” (Government of Canada 2013).

Indigenous Interpretations of the Numbered Treaties

It is important to note that we are in this process because Canada has, in fact, violated its commitments regarding livelihood and agriculture under the Numbered Treaties on an ongoing basis. By way of resolution, Canada has consistently taken the position that its failure to fulfill commitments can be addressed through a one-time settlement. This position is based on a one-sided view of treaties as transactions involving the exchange of land for material goods. But this approach privileges the written text of treaties recorded by the Crown and obscures Indigenous knowledge of treaties as agreements to share, rather than cede, the land. 

Indigenous visions of treaties understood the Crown’s agricultural obligations as intended to support Indigenous peoples in learning about new livelihoods. But this commitment was not frozen in time nor was it limited to the exchange of a scant number of material items; rather, the relationship and associated supports for treaty partners were intended to grow and be regularly renewed through ongoing dialogue and negotiation.

This is consistent with a relational approach to treaties that flows from their spirit and intent, and understands them to be mutually beneficial and lasting relationships that would endure as long as the sun shines, the grass grows, and the rivers flow. 

Oral histories and Indigenous knowledge of treaties do not conceptualize the Crown’s treaty commitments in the area of agriculture as one-time exchanges of animals and agricultural items. Instead, these commitments are symbols of a lasting, reciprocal, and mutually beneficial relationship intended to help mitigate the impacts that settler colonialism, and specifically the presence of permanent settler populations, would have upon Indigenous peoples and lands. Importantly, the intent was for the relationship to be revisited and re-assessed as economic times and environments changed (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000). 

For Indigenous Peoples, agricultural commitments are related to the Queen’s offer of protection and benevolence, as well as promises related to future livelihood and the preservation of a way of life. Crown treaty commissioners assured Indigenous Peoples that the Crown would ensure our welfare better than the Hudson’s Bay Company, that our existing way of life would not be disturbed, and that we would be provided with the means to adopt agriculture if we wished (Office of the Treaty Commissioner 1998, 24). 

According to Indigenous knowledge holders, the true nature, spirit, and intent of treaties were meant to ensure that both First Nations and settlers benefited equally from the agreement to share the land. Elders have also observed that the written texts of treaties often distorted or misrepresented First Nations’ expressions of treaty relationships, omitting many oral promises and, in some cases, including written terms that were never discussed during treaty negotiations (Carter, First Rider & Hildebrandt, 1996).

“When Elders describe the wealth of the land in terms of its capacity to provide a livelihood, they are referring not simply to its material capabilities but also to the spiritual powers that are inherent in it. This includes all the elements of Creation that the Creator gave to the First Peoples: Mother Earth, the sun, air, water, fire, trees, plant life, rocks, and all the animals” (Cardinal & Hildebrandt 2000, 43).

After signing the treaties, Indigenous understandings were overwritten by various laws and policies that limited or controlled the transition to agriculture for those interested. These included, but were not limited to, those imposed through the Indian Act 1876, and its numerous amendments, as well as the reserve and pass systems. Many First Nations had little choice in where reserves were located, and reserve land was often unsuitable for farming. Indigenous people also could not farm or get credit or capital outside the reserve. Additionally, our ability to sell produce and to buy and stock goods was heavily regulated by external parties (Carter 1989).

Settlement Certainty, Finality & Indemnification

Today, many of our communities are considering whether to negotiate and accept Agricultural Benefits, or “Cows and Plows” settlements. Not only is the history of Indigenous-settler treaty relations contentious, so too is the specific claims process. This is driving much of the debate among communities that are questioning the settlement. There are several important considerations and complexities relating to the Agricultural Benefits claim process. 

First, the Agricultural Benefits Specific Claims process treats violations of the Treaty as isolated, one-time events. It fails to consider the ongoing, cumulative, and future impacts of Crown neglect related to agriculture, livelihoods, and the broader treaty relationship. The process only includes past breaches of agricultural items and benefits listed in the text of treaties recorded by the Crown (claims that are over 15 years old). First Nations cannot file a specific claim related to current or future treaty obligations under the Specific Claims Policy and the Specific Claim Tribunal Act. And, once signed, the “Cows and Plows” settlements limit the ability of First Nations to pursue future forms of redress or compensation for the Crown’s failure to enact its treaty obligations to agriculture through release and indemnification clauses. 

The Canadian federal government clearly states that when accepting expedited agricultural settlements, First Nations must “provide the federal government with a release and an indemnity with respect to the claim, and may be required to provide a surrender, end litigation or take other steps so that the claim cannot be re-opened at some time in the future” (Government of Canada 2021).

Because First Nations must agree to release and discharge Canada from any ongoing liability or future proceeding regarding agricultural benefits promised under the treaty, the settlements extinguish our ability to advance future claims relating to the Crown’s related treaty commitments. This finality conflicts with Indigenous understandings of treaty relationships and the agricultural and livelihood provisions that were intended to be living and subject to regular renewal.

Release clauses mean that once the claim is concluded, Canada is released from any future claims or liabilities related to the provision of agricultural implements and assistance.

First Nations are still free to pursue modern or historical claims against the Crown concerning any other legal issue, but not in the areas covered by the claim. Compensation is a one-time payment that can never be revisited, even to account for inflation or changes in legal and political standards and processes over time. 

As Canada notes, “If the Tribunal decides that a specific claim is invalid or awards compensation for a specific claim,

(a) each respondent is released from any cause of action, claim or liability to the claimant and any of its members of any kind, direct or indirect, arising out of the same or substantially the same facts on which the claim is based; and

(b) the claimant shall indemnify each respondent against any amount that the respondent becomes liable to pay as a result of a claim, action or other proceeding for damages brought by the claimant or any of its members against any other person arising out of the same or substantially the same facts.”

Related to the Release Clause is the Indemnity Clause. Indemnity means that if Canada is sued again for a similar claim in the future, it will not be responsible for the risks and costs of that lawsuit. In the event of such a case, the First Nation would be responsible for defending and paying Canada’s legal fees and expenses. 

Second, restitution via compensation is a narrow and limited form of reparation that provides economic incentives to First Nations, effectively absolving the Crown of its liabilities. It is important to interrogate whether this form of settlement represents a substantive form of justice and accountability, or whether it reproduces a transactional approach to treaties and only offers a partial remedy for the Crown’s violations of its obligations relating to livelihood and assistance. From a relational view of treaties, the “Cows and Plows” settlement process can be seen as a containment strategy relative to broader possible forms of political and legal transformation, aligning with the Canadian federal government’s ongoing efforts to offload its liabilities under the Numbered Treaties and reduce treaty implementation to Indigenous participation in Canadian economic development schemes. 

A third consideration is the nature of the compensation offered. Under the agricultural benefits expedited resolution strategy, compensation is based on literal interpretations of the treaty terms recorded by the Crown. Agreeing to submit a claim under the Specific Claims process almost always requires First Nations to suppress their own interpretations and rely on the written, transactional text. Additionally, the process only considers a limited amount of financial harm; it does not account for inflation in the value of recorded agricultural items or for the non-financial harms caused by the Crown’s failure to support Indigenous transitions to a new way of life. 

Finally, it offers no remedy for the wider harms that First Nations have suffered and continue to endure as a result of the Crown’s ongoing violation of the treaty relationship generally, as well as in other specific areas. Failure to enact part of a treaty impacts the entire treaty relationship. Livelihood and way of life obligations do not exist in a vacuum; they are interconnected with other aspects of the treaty and cannot be reduced to the exchange of agricultural tools. Livelihood must be understood in relation to many other dimensions of treaties, such as Indigenous peoples’ commitment to share (not cede) the land while holding some back for the exclusive use of Indians, as well as Crown commitments to protect and not interfere with Indigenous peoples’ existing ways of life, limit the harmful effects of increased settler presence, and only bring changes that would improve (and not diminish) the lives of future generations of Indigenous peoples.

Compensation does not deal with related matters of land and resource theft, or Indigenous legal and political subordination, which have historically restricted and continue to impact our ability to learn about and share in new livelihoods, in addition to practicing existing ones. 

All of this being said, it is important to recognize that First Nations entitled to agricultural settlements hold diverse opinions, and the decision to accept or reject a settlement is part of each community’s self-determination. For Nations that have accepted settlements, some explain that they see it as one step closer to Canada fulfilling its treaty promises (English River First Nation, Government of Canada 2024b), as a way to secure a better future for Nations and their members (Chief Tammy Cook-Searson, Lac La Ronge Indian Band), or as enabling Nations and their members to decide what will work best in today’s economic realities (Chief Derek Nepinak, Minegoziibe Anishinabe, Pine Creek First Nation). Regardless, no settlement should absolve the Crown of its treaty obligations in any area forever, as this would violate the ongoing, living nature of the treaty relationship as understood by Indigenous peoples. 

The Numbered Treaties: Living Agreements or Transactions?

The most immediate limitation of the Agricultural Benefits claims process is that it favors and relies on the Crown’s narrow written record of treaties. In contrast, Indigenous knowledges and histories of treaties include a broader range of oral obligations and commitments related to the nature of the intended relationship, which were not included in the text.

Settlements for agricultural benefits claims can reinforce an understanding of treaties as one-time transactions of material items rather than living agreements to be revisited and renewed. This gives the Crown’s account of treaties greater authority than Indigenous ones. The intent of the process is for the Crown to gain “certainty” — settlements expunge current and future liabilities and ensure the finality of these claims. 

This sense of finality is a challenge. Social and legal standards and precedents are constantly evolving, and the current resolution process restricts the opportunity for First Nations to advance claims related to agriculture and livelihood in more substantive ways in the future. Say, for instance, that a First Nation wanted to advance a future claim concerning agriculture based on oral histories and the spirit and intent of the treaty rather than the written text of items recorded. In this case, the Crown may be indemnified against such an action. Or, consider that a First Nation were to advance a broader claim relating to way of life in the future, the Crown could be indemnified against all or part of that claim since it could argue that its obligations and responsibilities relating to “way of life” end with the provision of agricultural benefits. 

Ultimately, discussions about “Cows and Plows” agricultural settlements reflect different interpretations of treaties. While Indigenous peoples view treaty relationships as ongoing land-sharing agreements meant to benefit both First Nations and settlers as social and economic conditions continue to evolve and shift, Canada’s settlement process represents one-time compensation that aims to absolve it of its failure to uphold treaty promises and minimize its future liabilities. 

These are the risks that we take by accepting the “Cows and Plows” settlement. As we have mentioned above, some will accept those risks in order to receive long-overdue and owed restitution for generations of injustice. Others may not. Ultimately, it is up to First Nations to decide what is best for their families and communities. Our hope is that this resource provides insights, considerations, and questions to help communities make informed decisions.

Acknowledgment

We want to acknowledge the critical on-the-ground advocacy and educational work that Indigenous women such as Deanne Kasokeo and Rachel Snow have done to share knowledge about how Agricultural Benefits Agreements impact treaties at a community level. 

Appendix A: Settlement Amounts (by calendar year)  Settlement Year No. of First Nations No. of Claims Total amount of Settlements 2017 8 8 $198,235,954.00 2018 11 11 $827,425,361.00 2019 1 1 $239,422,052.00 2021 5 5 $601,438,555.00 2023 6 6 $401,406,628.00 2024 18 18 $2,844,772,003.00 2025 22 23 $3,041,703,390.00 Total 71 72 $8,154,403,943.00 Number of Settlements by Treaty Area  Treaty No. No. of Agreements No. of Bands 

in Treaty Area Percent of FNs with 

Completed Agreements 1 0 7 0 2 0 9 0 3 0 27 0 4 13 33 39 5 1 40 2.5 6 31 47 66 7 0 8 0 8 27 40 67.5 9 0 36 0 10 4 7 57 11 21 0 Totals 71 275 26 Endnotes

Ahluwalia, Harjaap. “Canada First Nation secures $601.5M settlement for Treaty 6 agricultural promises.” JURISTnews, August 27, 2024. https://www.jurist.org/news/2024/08/canada-first-nation-secures-601-5m-settlement-for-treaty-6-agricultural-promises/ 

Assembly of First Nations. “Holding the Federal Government accountable for the failure to uphold and fulfill First Nations treaty rights.” Land Rights & Jurisdiction, 2025. https://afn.ca/environment/land-rights-jurisdiction/specific-claims-policy-reform/ 

Baxter, Dave. “Manitoba First Nations community clears final hurdle in $200M “cows and plows” settlement with feds to right century-old wrong.” In The Canadian Press. Canadian Press Enterprises Inc. March 4, 2024. 

Cardinal, Harold, and Walter Hildebrandt. Treaty elders of Saskatchewan : our dream is that our peoples will one day be clearly recognized as nations. University of Calgary Press, 2000. 

Carter, Sarah. “Two Acres and a Cow: ‘Peasant’ Farming for the Indians of the Northwest, 1889–97.” The Canadian Historical Review 70, no. 1 (1989): 27–52. https://doi.org/10.3138/CHR-070-01-02.

Carter, Sarah, Dorothy First Rider, and Walter Hildebrandt. The True Spirit and Original Intent of Treaty 7. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996.

Government of Canada. 2024a. “Canada settles Agricultural Benefits specific claims with nine First Nations under Treaties 5, 6, and 10.” Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, October 18, 2024. https://www.canada.ca/en/crown-indigenous-relations-northern-affairs/news/2024/10/canada-settles-agricultural-benefits-specific-claims-with-nine-first-nations-under-treaties-5-6-and-10.html 

Government of Canada. 2024b. “English River First Nation and the Government of Canada sign agreement on Canada’s failure to uphold the cows and ploughs promise in Treaty 10.” Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, March 14, 2024. https://www.canada.ca/en/crown-indigenous-relations-northern-affairs/news/2024/03/english-river-first-nation-and-the-government-of-canada-sign-agreement-on-canadas-failure-to-uphold-the-cows-and-ploughs-promise-in-treaty-10.html 

Government of Canada. 2025a. “Canada Settles Agricultural Benefits Specific Claims with Fourteen First Nations under Treaties 4 and 6.” Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, February 21, 2025. https://www.canada.ca/en/crown-indigenous-relations-northern-affairs/news/2025/02/canada-settles-agricultural-benefits-specific-claims-with-fourteen-first-nations-under-treaties-4-and-6.html. 

Government of Canada. 2025b. “Specific Claims Tribunal Act (S.C. 2008, c. 22).” Legislative Services Branch, July 31, 2025. https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/S-15.36/FullText.html. 

Government of Canada. 2025c. “Specific Claims.” Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, February 5, 2025. https://rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1100100030291/1539617582343. 

Government of Canada. 2021. “The Specific Claims Policy and Process Guide.” Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, June 4, 2021. https://rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1100100030501/1581288705629.

Government of Canada. 2013. “Treaty Texts: Treaty and Supplementary Treaty No. 7.” Government of Canada; Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, August 30, 2013. https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1100100028793/1581292336658.

Office of the Treaty Commissioner. Statement of Treaty Issues : Treaties as a Bridge to the Future. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan: Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, and Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 1998.

Starblanket, Gina and Courtney Vance. “The ‘Cows and Plows’ Treaty Settlement: Overview and Implications,” Yellowhead Institute. 07 October 2025. https://yellowheadinstitute.org/2025/the-cows-and-plows-treaty-settlement-overview-and-implications/URL SlugURL SlugURL Slug

Artwork: Cash Crop (2025), Bailey Bornyk

The hand stitched quilt portrays an aerial view of the prairies that, over time, have been surveyed and divided into private sections of monoculture. An overlay of red beadwork echoes traditional design language among Michif people on the plains. The piece explores themes of land displacement, agriculture, and the persistence of Indigenous connection to ancestral land.

 

The post The “Cows and Plows” Treaty Settlement: Overview and Implications appeared first on Yellowhead Institute.

Russia has exploited Ukraine’s centralised, fossil fuel-dependent energy system to weaken Kyiv’s defensive capabilities. But while the war continues to devastate public infrastructure, it also provides an opportunity to spur a green transition that will make Ukraine more resilient in the long term.

More than three years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an end is nowhere in sight. At least that is the mindset of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who in a recent interview said: “I’m mentally preparing myself for the fact that this war could drag on for a long time.” Despite Ukraine fighting an asymmetric war against a stronger enemy, the strength of its resistance, coupled with the weapons’ systems it has received from Western allies, has enabled the country to regain large parts of territory occupied since February 2022. However, Russia is again slowly advancing.

To the surprise of many, this conflict has descended into trench warfare, with no significant territorial gains. Despite being the most technologically sophisticated war in history, one that is dominated by drones, both sides are using strategies of attrition to slowly deplete the other’s morale, manpower, economy, and political will, as was the case in World War I. But this time, the endgame may look very different.

Under current circumstances, neither a military solution nor a long-lasting peace settlement may be a realistic scenario. In many respects, the war in Ukraine is unprecedented, fusing modern technologies such as drones with traditional military strategies: to maintain an edge in the attritional war, the authoritarian Russian state treats its population as an infinite supply of cannon fodder, as old regimes did. Geopolitically, everyone is watching closely, trying to learn their lessons because the future of warfare is being written on the Ukrainian frontlines.

According to Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian minister of defence, there may not be a “day after” the war for his country. Regardless of any possible peace settlement and security guarantees, it is expected that Ukraine will live under “constant military pressure” for the foreseeable future. While the conflict may change form over time — from hot to cold, to hybrid warfare and back — the security threat will persist, as will the need to contain it. Zagorodnyuk further argues that when neither a military nor diplomatic solution is viable, Ukraine (and its Western allies) need to shift their efforts towards “strategic neutralisation” of Russia.

One idea he puts forward in pursuit of this is to turn Ukraine into a “steel porcupine” — a heavily defended, militarised, impenetrable fortress that will aim for “functional defeat” of the Russian military. Compared to the attrition strategy that attempts to deplete the enemy, or the conventional military success that follows destruction of the opposing side, functional defeat aims to create a situation “where a military capability is not completely destroyed but rendered irrelevant.” In other words, it “ensur[es] that Russia’s presence, though intact, yields no strategic gain.”

The green porcupine

That has profound implications for Ukraine’s approach to climate goals and the green transition. First, acknowledging the likely prolongation of the conflict cannot be postponed indefinitely to a “day after” that may never come. Second, although sustainability and climate ambitions may not feel like the most pressing issues to many Ukrainians, they may surprisingly help to deal with the security threats their country faces. In fact, in many cases, the security and climate issues are intertwined.

Making the environmental and climate agendas relevant for Ukraine means finding ways to integrate them into the “strategic neutralisation” pathway. Rebuilding damaged Ukrainian infrastructure, as well as decarbonising military technologies, can be a vital part of it.

For example, the steel porcupine strategy requires making Ukrainian defences nearly impenetrable. Ukraine’s flat topography means that most fighting happens on terrain that lacks natural defences. As a result, defensive structures – trenches, minefields, basements in abandoned villages, or more recently, bogs and marshes – often need to be sought out or artificially created by both sides.

At the beginning of the Russian full-scale invasion in 2022, a dam on the Irpin river north of Kyiv was blown up. As a result, the river basin flooded and the area became a vast plain of muddy terrain that slowed down the advance of Russian heavy machinery.

This tactic has served as an inspiration for wider defensive strategies not just for Ukraine but for NATO’s eastern flank, with countries like Poland and Finland reportedly considering the restoration of their dried-up marshes to deter potential Russian invasion. Importantly, bogs and marshes are also great natural carbon sinks, and their restoration would thus play a role in meeting Europe’s climate targets.

Rebuilding from debris

At the same time, there are many damaged sectors of the Ukrainian economy and society for whom the green transformation would also mean improving their resilience in wartime. Among the many broken things that need to be repaired — from energy infrastructure to public utilities — are the very buildings to live in.

According to the Low Carbon Ukraine initiative, residential buildings have suffered more than 54 billion euros’ worth of damage since the beginning of the Russian full-scale invasion. Whole villages and cities have been flattened and turned from once flourishing centres to piles of rubble.

But this war debris can be upcycled and reused in reconstruction efforts, thus making it a sustainable building material. This is the goal of the Safe, Sustainable, and Swift Reconstruction of Ukraine project. Transforming war debris into a building material for future use helps to mitigate the impacts of Russian aggression while at the same time providing the foundation for sustainable and resilient construction practices.

The war has also exacerbated Ukraine’s energy insecurity, reinforcing the case for energy-efficient buildings in place of energy-intensive Soviet-era buildings. In this context, green reconstruction becomes a matter of pragmatic policymaking: apart from reducing reliance on fossil fuels and enhancing energy resilience, it can provide improved living conditions for Ukrainians displaced by war, by reducing their energy poverty and their reliance on centralised, vulnerable energy systems.

Green reconstruction can provide improved living conditions for Ukrainians displaced by war by reducing their energy poverty and their reliance on centralised, vulnerable energy systems.

In a country devastated by war and economic decline, fighting energy poverty is of crucial importance. Poor insulation, high energy prices and outdated heating systems are among the key challenges here. The combination of better insulation that reduces heat loss, energy-efficient windows and doors that prevent drafts, and smart heating controls optimising energy use can significantly help to lower energy bills for Ukrainians.

There are many promising examples already, such as the energy-saving renovations in the cities of Zaporizhia, Kamianske and Lutsk, funded by the European Investment Bank. Or the reconstruction of a multi-family building in Trostanyets powered by geothermal and solar energy, as well as heat pumps. Similarly, a project funded by Finland through the Green Recovery Programme for Ukraine rebuilt several war-damaged schools as nearly-zero energy buildings.

Such thermal modernisation of Ukrainian buildings, combined with their integration into renewable energy infrastructure, also supports Ukraine’s accession to the European Union and integration into the European energy grid. It aligns with key EU building legislation such as the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) and the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD). This is also confirmed by last year’s approval of Ukraine’s Building Thermal Modernisation Strategy 2050, developed by the Ministry for Communities, Territories and Infrastructure Development.

Resilient renewables

Another vulnerability of Ukraine is its fossil fuel energy infrastructure, which is centralised and hard to defend against attacks, the consequences of which are significant (Russia suffers from this vulnerability too). The shift from centralised fossil fuels to a decentralised power grid based on renewables would provide Ukraine with not only clean energy but also the resilience to withstand continuous military pressure.

There are already promising examples. The collaboration between UK-based Octopus Energy Group and Ukrainian energy company DTEK seeks to raise 100 million euros to fund up to 100 solar and battery projects in Ukraine. These technologies are also important in a decentralised grid, powering key infrastructure such as hospitals or schools. Here, the Ray of Hope project, where solar energy powers hospitals in Kyiv, serves as another example of building energy resilience through decentralisation.

Last but not least, making local communities more self-sufficient through new energy infrastructure and less vulnerable to missile attacks, sabotage, or cyberattacks through improved defence capabilities could give Ukraine a strategic advantage over Russia, whose centralised energy system, largely reliant on gas power plants, is an easy target for Ukrainian deep strikes and sabotage.

Making local communities more self-sufficient could give Ukraine a strategic advantage over Russia, whose centralised energy system is an easy target for Ukrainian deep strikes and sabotage.

Challenges on the path

Needless to say, Ukraine faces specific challenges to make such a transformation a reality. The shortage of skilled workers is a severe issue, given that a significant part of the country’s workforce has either been drafted into the military or has left the country. As a result, the construction sector currently lacks adequately trained professionals specialising in energy-efficient technologies and sustainable building materials. While educational programs and retraining may help in the long run, it is increasingly obvious that Ukraine can’t make it without foreign assistance, investment, and skilled workers.

Here, the legislative framework for green (re)construction is crucial for attracting international financial institutions as well as private investors. Key institutions such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the World Bank have already expressed interest in supporting green construction initiatives and aligning their goals with the Paris Agreement.

According to the think-tank BPIE, which is focused on the energy performance of buildings, if Ukraine is to build back better (and greener), it needs multilateral investment in its green reconstruction efforts. There are positive examples in European countries like Germany, Italy, and Croatia, which rebuilt damaged buildings in a sustainable way in the aftermath of major natural disasters, thus speeding up their energy transition and decarbonisation.

And there are already promising examples of sustainable construction in Ukraine. The Energy Map project, a data resource developed by Ukrainian and international partners, provides valuable insights into the energy performance of buildings across the country.

Among many others, a pioneering project that can pave the way for Ukrainian green resilience is the invention of “post-frame construction”, which dramatically reduces the use of very carbon-intensive brick and cement materials, and emphasises wooden materials. According to Transform Ukraine, such buildings can also serve as carbon capture and storage technology (CCS) if the wood used for them is harvested sustainably.

Greening the military?

Of course, reconciliation between ecology and defence will not always be easy. Militaries are still among the largest consumers of fossil fuels, while their emissions are largely exempt from international climate reporting (it has been estimated that military activities account for almost 5.5 per cent of annual greenhouse gas emissions globally). The best way to decarbonise the army is by downscaling – and that will not happen anytime soon.

Instead, as a response to the Russian threat, NATO is moving rapidly in the opposite direction. In June this year, NATO countries declared their commitment to increasing their spending on defence to 5 per cent by 2035. Some 3.5 per cent is reserved for core defence (such as troops, weapons and overall readiness), and 1.5 per cent for defence infrastructure and resilience.

That leaves the project of military decarbonisation with two options: technological transformation and carbon offsetting. The use of both is the most likely scenario for now: to evolve military technologies into their low-carbon alternatives wherever possible, and to seek ways to offset the remaining emissions for areas such as military aviation or heavy machinery.

And there is no other place in the world where military technologies are evolving more rapidly than on the Ukrainian battlefield. Here, the electrification of military technologies (for instance, Ukrainian drones are connected to operators via fibre optic cables, meaning Russia is unable to sabotage drone capabilities via the jamming of radio frequencies) is happening alongside the expansion of drone usage, which is radically transforming the character of modern war. However, in its current form, it also leaves Ukrainian land covered with tangled cobwebs of cables, leading to significant plastic pollution and long-term threats to wildlife.

Needless to say, there is no war that is not damaging to the environment. In fact, destroying the environment is oftentimes part of military tactics, which has led to initiatives calling for legal recognition of the crime of ecocide. Although it may sound absurd to demand decarbonisation of warfare rather than to simply stop warfare altogether, the geopolitical situation does not seem to be in favour of peaceful disarmament anytime soon.

If supported with green investments and policies, Ukraine’s reconstruction could set a precedent by demonstrating how security and sustainability go hand in hand.

War ecology of Ukraine

Ukraine may pursue a path that is a variation of what French philosopher Pierre Charbonnier labelled as “war ecology”. Here, the green transformation does not compete with defence spending over a constrained state budget. Instead, it plays a vital role in achieving defensive resilience and making one’s country impenetrable to enemy forces.

Decentralising the energy grid through renewables, upcycling of debris, low-energy buildings, electrification of warfare or restoration of marshes are just some examples of how a state can pursue war ecology as its defensive strategy, and in the process gain an advantage over an aggressive petrostate.

The war has already reshaped Ukraine’s energy and economic landscape, forcing a rethink of its development trajectory. If supported with green investments and policies, its reconstruction could set a precedent — well beyond its borders — by demonstrating how security and sustainability go hand in hand.

Out of the ashes of war, a new, green Ukraine has the potential to rise — one that not only rebuilds what was lost but lays the foundation for the new and better life that Ukrainians deserve: green, European and safe.

Esperanza Martínez

The Yasuní struggle in Ecuador embodies a historic challenge to extractivism by crystallizing the demand to “leave oil underground” into a national referendum victory in 2023. Despite government resistance and partial non-compliance, the vote opened new legal, political, …

A new report from the EAT–Lancet Commission outlines a roadmap for global dietary transformation. The report sets scientific targets for healthy diets and sustainable food production, and it outlines strategies for addressing the interconnected challenges of human health, environmental sustainability, and food and nutrition insecurity.

The Commission, co-chaired by Shakuntula Thilsted, Walter Willett, and Johan Rockström, convened 37 scientists from 16 countries with the goal of setting universal scientific objectives for the food system. The Commission’s report includes targets with substantial ranges to maximize flexibility and choice, Willett tells Food Tank. But feeding the expected population of 2050 will not be possible if only part of the global population achieves something close to the targets, Willett says.

Building on its 2019 report, the Commission again recommends what it calls a “planetary health diet”—a flexible eating pattern designed to reduce environmental harm while improving nutrition worldwide. According to the report, food is the single most powerful tool for improving both planetary and human health.

Without action, the Commission warns, the world risks failing to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement. The Commission estimates that transitioning to healthier diets and more sustainable food systems could help avoid approximately 11 million deaths each year.

The report sets out five core strategies to enable this transformation including international commitment to implementing updated dietary guidance, coordinated global governance of land use and ocean management, prioritizing nutrition rather than volume in agriculture, and action to reduce food loss and waste. Packages of strategies are likely to be more effective than the sum of the individual strategies, Willett explains.

The updated dietary guidance remains largely consistent with the 2019 framework. It recommends doubling global consumption of fruits, vegetables, legumes, and nuts, while reducing red meat and sugar. It suggests modest amounts of animal products and emphasizes flexibility across cultures and individual preferences.

The latest analysis has also an added emphasis on food system equity. “The most distinctive advance” of the report, according to EAT–Lancet Commissioner Jessica Fanzo, “is its centering of justice.” It aims to account for cultural acceptability, nutritional adequacy, and accessibility of the recommended dietary patterns across diverse communities.

The 2019 EAT–Lancet report faced pushback from the livestock industry, friends of the industry, international organizations, and some governments. Some industry experts questioned the strategy’s affordability and whether diets limiting or excluding meat would be appropriate in many parts of the world. Others raised concerns regarding the data and modeling used to calculate estimates.

However, a recent Changing Markets Foundation investigation points to evidence that some of the backlash was fueled by coordinated disinformation campaigns. These efforts, according to the investigation, used social media tactics, misleading health claims, and targeted messaging to discredit the Commission’s work and influence policymakers.

In response to renewed criticism from groups like Quality Meat Scotland, which argue that meat-reduction messages may harm nutrient intake, the Commission emphasizes that the planetary health diet is not intended to be prescriptive but to serve as a global reference point, highlighting the need for dietary transitions that are aligned with local contexts. The Commission report includes targets broad goals to ensure a versatile and agile framework, Willett says.

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 Andy Arbeit, Unsplash

The post Report Links Diet, Climate, and Equity in New Global Targets appeared first on Food Tank.

News from Circular Materials, Glass Packaging Institute and more

The Can Manufacturers Institute launched its Million Cans Recycling Contest. Canadian producer responsibility organization Circular Materials will publish a harmonized material list for recycling for Ontario in 2026, including new materials like coffee cups, toothpaste tubes and black plastic containers. …

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The post News from Circular Materials, Glass Packaging Institute and more appeared first on Resource Recycling News.

It’s the 40th anniversary of the founding of Rainforest Action Network. So we’re reposting this 2021 interview with RAN co-founder Randy “Hurricane” Hayes.  The 1980s saw a new consciousness of…

Colorado approval signals path forward for PRO choice

Although a designated producer responsibility organization (PRO) receives much of the attention for any state's emerging extended producer responsibility (EPR) plan for packaging, independent PROs quietly address more specialized needs.

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The post Colorado approval signals path forward for PRO choice appeared first on Resource Recycling News.

Registered nurses from across the United States and 28 other countries will take part in the “Democracy Is Not for Sale” march in San Francisco on Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2025. The march is intended to highlight the international resistance to billionaire agendas that deprive tens of millions of people across the world from access to health care, educational and employment opportunities, and safe environments to live and raise families.

This article Why fandom organizing is a powerful strategy for movement building was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

In the original “Star Wars” movie, Princess Leia receives the Death Star plans thanks to the sacrifices of fellow rebels like Cassian Andor. Unsurprisingly, when Disney+ premiered a prequel series about Andor in 2022, its showrunners focused on the triumphs and sacrifices of everyday people and leaders like the eponymous character, as they spark the early rebellion against the Empire.

Knowing “Star Wars” fans would be primed to take real life action for freedom from fascism and white supremacy, our movement group — Get Free — decided to give them an organizing home to learn and plug into movement strategy. So, we created Project Fulcrum, which we kept active after the second season of “Andor” ended in May. As a result, our community was ready to join the fray when people like Nelini Stamp at the Working Families Party began offering concrete ways to boycott and resist Disney/ABC taking Jimmy Kimmel’s show off the air last month.

After just a few days, nearly 1.7 million subscribers dropped Hulu and Disney+ streaming services at a $3.5 billion price tag for Disney/ABC, which soon folded and reinstated Kimmel. From there, we called on fans to amp up the pressure on media companies Sinclair and Nexstar, which continued to block Kimmel on the many local stations they owned. This culminated in a series of “Andor”-inspired fan pickets on Sept. 26, outside their corporate headquarters, alongside members of 50501 and the Writers Guild of America. By nightfall, Sinclair and Nexstar caved.

Writer and organizer adrienne maree brown says “organizing is science fiction — that we are shaping the future we long for and have not yet experienced.” This effort prevailed in part because of months and years of a small number of activists experimenting with a new frontier of organizing: tapping into fandoms and turning popular online communities into new movement bases. In many ways, fandoms are the modern-day houses of worship for many young people. It’s where they hang out on and offline, make meaning, and debate politics, identity and issues. 

Unfortunately, before groups like ours were able to get the support needed to do this work, the right-wing received deep-pocket funding (often undeclared) to intervene in pop culture spaces with targeted attacks on diverse casting and storylines, which turned these fandoms into battlegrounds.

Our country has experienced the ramifications of their successful recruitment of new members — particularly isolated young men — to their white supremacist and fascist movements, riding grievance to power. We’ve seen this play out in our own beloved “Star Wars” community, particularly during the right-wing cancellation of another Disney+ show, “The Acolyte,” and previous attacks on people of color, women, and LGBTQ cast members like Ahmed Best, Kelly Marie Tran and John Boyega from previous films. “Andor” presented lifelong fans like us an opportunity to turn the tide.

“Star Wars” is inherently political. George Lucas has always been clear about that point. As a drama about everyday people and leaders who stood up to imperial supremacy and sparked a galaxy-wide rebellion, “Andor” delivered a story that mirrored our own history and reality in a country not so far away. Showrunners like Tony Gilroy studied revolutionary history and primed audiences to resist authoritarian divide-and-conquer politics. Organizers just needed to build a culturally-relevant vehicle for large numbers of fans across races, backgrounds and genders to come together and take nonviolent action in real life. 

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Welcome to the Rebellion

We kicked off the project at Star Wars Celebration — the global fandom convention hosted by Lucasfilm — and collaborated with progressive content creators on TikTok and Instagram to recruit young Black and brown nerds to sign up for Get Free’s new organizing endeavor, Project Fulcrum, a reference to the codename for rebels like Cassian Andor and Ahsoka Tano. By becoming a “Fulcrum” with Get Free, fans would get access to a Discord server of like-minded people and receive a weekly newsletter called Nemik’s Manifesto (inspired by the fallen rebel philosopher in season one of “Andor”), which provides analysis of the latest episodes, political education on how it connects to current events and history, and calls to action for how to make a difference in real life. 

We were impressed by the initial burst of new members signing up. Some days we had hundreds of people joining us on Discord and waiting for the next manifesto. For the four weeks of the show’s run, we built a team of Get Free staff members, avid “Star Wars” fans already in Get Free’s membership, and contracted fandom content creators to introduce us to prominent voices and reach larger audiences. For about 10 weeks, we met weekly to discuss what we would include in the newsletter and how we could keep leveling up the education and training of our new online choir on Discord, so they would want to stay and be active in Get Free’s campaigns for reckoning and repair. 

These efforts didn’t end with the season finale. Unlike normal news cycles, the lifecycle of fandom content and discussion can go on long after a show has ended. And that was certainly the case with “Andor.” We leveraged this by pitching “Star Wars” podcasters and influencers, along with pop culture journalists, to interview our leaders, host them on live or recorded discussions, and create joint pieces of content aimed at bringing more fans into our movement. We then gave fans the first opportunity to join in person direct actions during our Too Hot for a Fascist Future summer campaign arc, which included turning out members to banner drops at the Smithsonian to combat whitewashing and the Supreme Court to call out attacks on birthright citizenship. 

In between our initial online and offline mobilizations — and the most recent boycott campaign — we engaged with the peaks and valleys of fan engagement by deepening our Discord community, giving new members opportunities to join in-person podcasts of Get Free or online teams like the new volunteer-led Discord moderator crew. We also offered trainings and watch parties of non-”Andor” “Star Wars” content like (the highly popular and political) animated series “The Clone Wars.”

Project Fulcrum proved that fandom organizing is one of organizing’s most underappreciated yet powerful strategies. Because we already did months of groundwork beforehand, we were able to activate our base and recruit more when we hit a new moment of opportunity like the boycott. At Get Free, we now include fandom organizing and seizing pop culture opportunities as a key pillar of our movement-wide campaign plans and are exploring further opportunities to reach Gen Z and Millennials, particularly those involved in other online communities like Dungeons and Dragons table-top roll playing games, the Beyhive (Beyonce fans) and more. 

“Andor” fan organizing worked because we had leaders — including volunteers, paid staff and consultants — who were authentically part of the “Star Wars” community. We could then be effective messengers to fans and create opportune strategies for seizing moments for organizing. We could translate nuanced political analysis and campaign calls to action into language that mirrored what fans were used to seeing on “Andor” or in their Discord threads. Having at least one of the drivers of a given campaign be well-informed of the fandom you’re engaging in is critical for success. 

Because of our deep familiarity with the lore, we were then able to shape the discourse. There are parts of “Andor” that could lean towards fatalism or all-or-nothing thinking. Our interventions steered fans toward constructive nonviolent action. We helped people talk about how to learn from losses in both the series and in real social movements. We also added to the series discourse on how the show addresses repair and reckoning with truth, while connecting the dots between the Empire’s strategy and the white supremacist faction’s agenda in real life (see our discussion of genocide on Ghorman here).

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Donate Lessons for the sequels

It’s fine to joke about the popular meme that highlights how activists often waste too much time attacking each other, but we also have to overcome the deeply held cynicism that prevents people from getting involved in our movements. We must inspire them to action. 

Posting “Star Wars” content also helped our nonfandom communications perform better. We’ve seen a massive increase in average views on Instagram, for example, compared to the 90 days before the Project Fulcrum launch. We increased both our new fan followers and non-”Star Wars” audiences engaging in our bread and butter campaign content (like this one) on how the Trump administration is trying to take away children’s freedom to learn the truth of our history. As mentioned earlier, influencing the conversations people are already having in their fandom can drastically help our ability to break through the noise and build the narrative power movements need to win in the political realm. 

Highly online fandoms tend towards being “indoors people.” “Andor” and “Star Wars” fans like hanging out online, so we were able to escalate their engagement on digital actions. However, converting people to field action and connecting them to our more “outdoors people” proved difficult, with some exceptions like the Disney/ABC boycotts. We attracted people from all over the country and world, which is a great strength — but it can also make in-person events a challenge if people live in far flung parts of the U.S. One of the ways we grew the leadership of members who arrived via Project Fulcrum was by deputizing them as Discord moderators. This has been a powerful, meaningful growth opportunity for members who prefer online activism. It takes some patience and lots of creativity to figure out where you can move communities on the internet.

Just like any other base-building and campaign strategy, fandom organizing takes time, resources and capacity. Raising funds to compensate subject matter experts and trusted voices within the fandom was key to understanding the landscape quickly, and going wider and faster in our reach. Our compressed timeline from ideation to launch meant it took away some bandwidth for other ongoing projects. It benefits everyone to plan further out and see which upcoming shows, films and pop culture opportunities a team can staff and take on efficiently. 

The persistence of authoritarian divide-and-conquer politics requires us to adapt winning strategies from our ancestors, interrupt where our opponents are extracting their own sources of power, and apply our organizing talents where tons of people exist for much of their days and nights. That means taking fandom organizing seriously and figuring out how it fits into your organization’s plans and the wider movement’s goals of actually realizing a country where freedom and equality are for all. We saw an opportunity in the final season of “Andor” and now many more people across races, backgrounds and genders have joined our ranks for truth and reparations — and have already dealt major blows to the MAGA regime’s agenda. The boycott wins show us that we did, we can and we will prevail. 

As Nemik’s Manifesto read,  “Remember this: Try.”

This article Why fandom organizing is a powerful strategy for movement building was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.