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THE SHELL FILES MEET THE SHELL FILES: Another Independent Investigation, Another Debate About Corporate Accountability

Different investigators. Different evidence. Different editorial perspectives. Yet the same remarkable title.

For almost forty years, this website has assembled what many readers have come to regard as “the Shell Files”—an archive of internal emails, confidential documents, court papers, whistleblower testimony and investigative reporting spanning decades of Shell’s corporate history.

Entirely independently, the respected Amsterdam-based research organisation SOMO has now launched its own investigative series under exactly the same title:

The Shell Files

The coincidence is more than merely amusing—it neatly illustrates how documentary evidence continues to shape very different investigations into the same multinational company.

The two projects are entirely unrelated. They originate from different sources, examine different issues and have different editorial objectives. Yet both rely on documentary evidence rather than corporate publicity, and both seek to illuminate aspects of Shell’s global operations that might otherwise receive less public attention.

The latest instalment of SOMO’s The Shell Files turns its attention not to transfer pricing, but to one of Europe’s longest-running industrial controversies: the Groningen gas field.

The Groningen Legacy

For decades the Groningen gas field generated enormous wealth for both the Dutch State and its partners, Shell and ExxonMobil.

It also became associated with thousands of induced earthquakes that damaged homes, disrupted communities and gave rise to one of the largest compensation programmes in Dutch history.

Gas production has now ceased.

The debate over responsibility has not.

Billions Generated – Billions Distributed

According to SOMO, Shell and ExxonMobil, through their joint venture Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij (NAM), earned an estimated €64.7 billion during nearly sixty years of Groningen gas production.

SOMO also notes that the two companies reported approximately US$51 billion in combined profits during 2024 while returning almost US$60 billion to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks.

The report argues that these shareholder distributions should be viewed alongside the companies’ remaining obligations in Groningen.

Outstanding Commitments?

SOMO contends that Shell and ExxonMobil have stopped making certain agreed financial contributions connected with earthquake recovery following closure of the gas field.

Among the figures cited are:

• approximately €550 million relating to strengthening earthquake-damaged homes;
• approximately €167 million linked to the regional Perspectief voor Groningen programme.

SOMO argues that these commitments should continue irrespective of whether gas production has ended.

The Arbitration

Adding another layer to the dispute, Shell and ExxonMobil have commenced arbitration proceedings against the Dutch State seeking compensation relating to the earlier-than-planned closure of the Groningen field.

Legally, that arbitration is separate from the compensation programmes.

Publicly, however, many observers inevitably view the two issues together: communities continue dealing with the consequences of decades of gas extraction while the companies pursue legal claims against the State.

Who is SOMO?

Readers should understand the perspective of the organisation behind this report.

SOMO (Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations), based in Amsterdam, openly describes itself as an advocacy research organisation rather than a neutral think tank. Its stated mission is to challenge what it regards as the harmful power of multinational corporations and to promote a global economic system that is equitable, democratic, transparent and environmentally sustainable.

SOMO explicitly argues that the prevailing doctrine of maximising shareholder value should give way to an economic model placing greater emphasis on workers, communities and the environment.

That philosophy naturally shapes the questions SOMO investigates and the conclusions it reaches.

However, it would be simplistic to dismiss its work on that basis alone. Like many respected investigative NGOs, SOMO’s reports are typically detailed, heavily referenced and based on documentary evidence that is open to public scrutiny.

Readers should therefore judge both the evidence presented and the organisation’s stated perspective.

Shell’s Position

Shell has consistently stated that it takes its legal responsibilities seriously and has publicly acknowledged the history of Groningen, the earthquake damage and the associated compensation and strengthening programmes.

The arbitration concerns legal and contractual issues surrounding closure of the field rather than constituting an admission of wrongdoing.

As with many long-running corporate disputes, this remains an active and contested matter.

Another Piece of a Larger Picture

What makes this report particularly interesting is that it joins a growing body of independent investigations into Shell from entirely different directions.

Recent years have seen reporting and investigations by Reuters, the Financial Times, OCCRP, numerous courts, parliamentary inquiries and now SOMO’s own The Shell Files project.

These organisations are independent of one another.

They rely on different evidence.

They pursue different objectives.

Yet collectively they demonstrate that Shell continues to attract an exceptional degree of scrutiny from journalists, researchers, regulators, campaign organisations and former insiders alike.

The Bottom Line

Whether one agrees with SOMO’s broader philosophy or with Shell’s emphasis on creating long-term shareholder value, the Groningen dispute raises legitimate questions about corporate responsibility after decades of profitable resource extraction.

The coincidence that both this website and SOMO have independently adopted the title The Shell Files is almost symbolic.

Different investigators.

Different evidence.

Different editorial viewpoints.

Yet both projects reflect the enduring importance of documentary evidence in understanding one of the world’s largest energy companies.

In the end, readers should judge the evidence—not the slogans.

THE SHELL FILES MEET THE SHELL FILES was first posted on July 23, 2026 at 10:01 am.
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World’s first commercial factory to manufacture wooden wind turbine blades takes important step closer to realisation, after being awarded funding.

The post “First of a kind” factory to mass produce wooden wind turbine blades wins critical EU backing appeared first on Renew Economy.

When Min left the hot, dusty plains of central Myanmar for its mountainous eastern border with China earlier this year, he had few options. A 2021 military coup had devastated the formal economy of the Southeast Asian country, and jobs were scarce. Min’s native Sagaing Region was at the epicenter of an armed uprising, making it a target of airstrikes and other retaliatory attacks. And the military introduced mandatory conscription in 2024, accelerating the exodus of young people from areas under its control. 

As many of his peers fled Myanmar, Min paid a broker 2,000 Chinese yuan ($290) to arrange jobs for him and his younger brother at a rare earth mining site in an autonomous region controlled by a powerful ethnic army. 

Assigned to build roads, Min and his brother each earned around 3,000 yuan ($430) a month. It was far more than they could earn in most industries, but the work came with risks. They were digging on steep slopes and Min’s brother had little experience operating heavy machinery.

Weeks after arriving, Min’s brother died in a landslide. Min’s account of the incident could not be independently verified, but local media have documented at least five fatal landslides at rare earth mining sites in Myanmar in recent years, in one case burying more than a dozen workers.

His family held religious rites without his brother’s body, which could not be transported. Min did not go home either. “Despite the risks, I continue working,” he said. “There are not many other job options.” (Editor’s note: Like other workers interviewed, Min has been given a pseudonym.)

A rare earth mining site, seen here in January 2026, near the town of Hpare in territory controlled by the Kachin Independence Organization near the border with China. Machya

Min is part of an expanding workforce enduring hazardous conditions and handling toxic chemicals to extract some of the world’s most coveted raw materials. Used in the manufacture of wind turbines and electric vehicles, the 17 elements known as rare earths are often framed as essential to fighting climate change. But they are also used in advanced weapons, elevating their geostrategic value.

Many countries consider rare earths to be ‘critical minerals’ — vital to economic and security interests but vulnerable to supply chain disruption. As competition for control over supply chains intensifies, rare earth extraction has left a wake of destruction in source countries. Myanmar, the world’s largest supplier of a particularly sought-after subset known as heavy rare earths, is now enduring a disproportionate burden.

Myanmar’s rare earth mining industry operates in secret, with no public records of active permits or companies involved. Worksites are heavily guarded, and only a handful of journalists have reported on the ground over the past decade. 

Still, news has trickled out — of poisoned rivers, forests devoid of wildlife, and farmland so toxic that growers cannot sell their crops. In May, a local human rights group reported that a Chinese rare earth mining company in Myanmar’s eastern Shan State was using prisoners and human trafficking victims for “slave labor.” It found that both the Myanmar military and United Wa State Army, an ethnic army that maintains a ceasefire with the military, were complicit.

A rare earth mining site, seen here in September 2025, in the Mong Pawk area of Shan State, Myanmar, in territory controlled by the United Wa State Army.
Gawng Loe Mu

The businesses carrying out this extraction face few consequences in Myanmar — in part because the industry operates in a legal grey area. Chinese companies extract rare earths in autonomous, militarized regions controlled by local ethnic armies, which protect mining operations while taking a cut of the profits. The mined material is then trucked across the border into China, where it is mixed and essentially laundered with rare earths from other sources and processed for use in global products.

The conflict monitoring organization Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, or ACLED, has ranked Myanmar’s war as the second-most extreme on the planet, and also the world’s most fragmented, with more than 1,200 distinct armed groups. Corruption and weak rule of law have further contributed to an explosion of criminal activity of all kinds. According to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, Myanmar has the highest levels of organized crime of any country in the world.

“External influence, such as global demand and China, play a major role in Myanmar’s rare earth extraction,” said Thaw Htoo, a pseudonym for a political ecologist from Myanmar who conducts her research anonymously for safety reasons. “Armed groups and lawlessness allow this to happen while the international community turns a blind eye. … These actors are all involved in these harmful and irresponsible practices, and ideas like responsible sourcing or a just energy transition do not reflect the reality on the ground.”

As the world’s superpowers seek control over rare earth supply chains as a means to advance their national interests, from weapons to renewable energy, their demand is indirectly funding conflict actors in Myanmar during a time of war, incentivizing rapid extraction with minimal safeguards.

Debris surrounds a damaged statue of Buddha in February 2024 following fighting between Myanmar’s military and the Kachin Independence Army in Nam Hpat Kar, Kutkai township in Myanmar’s northern Shan State. STR / AFP via Getty Images

Rare earths are common in the Earth’s crust, but their low concentration, combined with the fact that they occur in complex clays and minerals, makes them costly and difficult to mine. Researchers have found that their extraction tends to occur at the margins of state and corporate power, with those profiting from extraction often using narratives of untapped wealth and critical strategic needs to justify their expansion.

Rare earth exploration has reached Indigenous territories in the Amazon, the deep sea, and even the moon. As the United States seeks ways to reduce its dependence on China, it has made deals involving rare earths in geopolitical hotspots including Ukraine and contested regions of Pakistan, while working to extend its influence over rare earth-rich countries including Venezuela and Greenland.

Within Myanmar, these patterns are repeated along its eastern border. “The question we need to ask about rare earths is why these same regions keep getting remade as extractive sacrifice zones,” said Jasnea Sarma, an ethnographer and geographer at the University of Zurich. 

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Myanmar’s borderlands have been contested since shortly after the country, formerly known as Burma, gained independence from Britain in 1948. Ethnic groups like the Kachins that had relative autonomy under the British rose up against direct central rule by the Burman majority. The Burmese military has sought to quell these rebellions with a brutal tactic known as “four cuts” — starving opponents of food, funds, intelligence, and recruits by targeting entire communities. Now in its eighth decade, Myanmar’s civil war is considered the world’s longest.

The central military and ethnic armies holding territory along the country’s borders take taxes from resources including jade, timber, and gold. Their affiliated companies profit directly from these industries. Armed groups that agreed not to fight against the military have been rewarded with a higher degree of autonomy to do business, giving them an added layer of impunity. Their territories have become hubs for more overtly criminal industries including drug production and online scams.

Because rare earth mining in Myanmar is so secretive, data on the industry is scarce. But China’s customs reports show that from 2017 to 2024, it imported more than 320,000 tons (290,000 metric tons) of rare earths from Myanmar, or roughly two-thirds of its total imports. According to the environmental nonprofit Global Witness, Myanmar surpassed China as the world’s largest source of heavy rare earths in 2021. It is a particularly vital source of dysprosium and terbium, components of heat-resistant permanent magnets — known as neodymium-iron-boron, or NdFeB magnets — used in a range of technologies with military and civilian applications.

There is limited publicly available data on the uses of dysprosium and terbium by volume, but research by the U.S. Department of Energy found that consumer electronics and industrial motors accounted for nearly 60 percent of global NdFeB magnet demand as of 2020, while offshore wind turbines and electric vehicles accounted for an additional 20 percent. If the world speeds up its shift away from fossil fuels as predicted in a high-growth scenario, offshore wind turbines and electric vehicles would account for nearly two-thirds of global demand for NdFeB magnets by 2030, according to the Energy Department.

China, which holds more than 90 percent of the world’s rare earth processing capacity, began restricting its exports of heavy rare earths last year in response to U.S. tariffs. The shutoff left global economies scrambling to find new ways to procure them, and prompted new deals and partnerships. 

Samples of rare-earth minerals from the Bayan Obo mining district are on display at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in May 2025 in Beijing, China.
VCG / VCG via Getty Images

The highly sanctioned Myanmar military has meanwhile stepped up efforts to ingratiate itself with the Trump administration. In April, its Ministry of Information hired Roger Stone, one of America’s most notorious lobbyists, to help build ties with the U.S.

Some Americans have already lobbied for the U.S. to pursue access to Myanmar’s rare earths. Such a pursuit would most likely involve collaboration with India, Myanmar’s western neighbor and China’s rival in the region; analysts warn it would face immense logistical and geopolitical hurdles. 

Whether these hurdles will stop the U.S. from trying remains unclear. In May 2026, the Trump administration signed a deal with India to cooperate in securing supplies. Days later, Myanmar junta leader Min Aung Hlaing visited India and met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, discussing “ways to deepen cooperation” in rare earths among other topics, even though extraction areas are outside the military’s control.

A recent report by Forest Trends, a conservation-focused nonprofit, found that nature crimes — the illegal extraction and trade of natural resources — are “deeply embedded within broader illicit economies” across Southeast Asia’s Mekong Region, and that global demand for rare earths may intensify not only extraction in Myanmar, but associated conflict and crime. 

Although legality in Myanmar is complicated by the military’s illegitimate claim to power and its involvement in criminal enterprises, Myanmar’s role as a hub for environmental exploitation is undisputed. According to Forest Trends, this activity provides military and criminal groups with revenue outside formal banking systems that can fund other illicit operations.

These extractive industries are highly lucrative, in some cases generating billions of dollars annually. The military claims the profits benefit the public, though many of the military’s conglomerates are sanctioned by the U.S. and other Western countries for funding human rights abuses. Groups fighting against the military, meanwhile, use narratives of revolutionary struggles and ethno-territorial rights to justify claims to land and resources, without taking responsibility for the harmful impacts. 

“Everyone’s talking about rare earths now, and understandably so. But the story didn’t start there, and it won’t end there either,” said Sarma of the University of Zurich. “People are finally paying attention to the slow, perpetual violence that’s been unfolding here for decades beneath layers of extraction.”

An unexploded projectile sits on the roof of a house in February 2024 following fighting between Myanmar’s military and the Kachin Independence Army in Nam Hpat Kar, Kutkai township in Myanmar’s northern Shan State.
STR / AFP via Getty Images

China once mined most of the world’s supply of rare earths domestically. In the Bayan Obo district of Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region of northern China, open-pit mining in the 1990s and early 2000s scarred the landscape with massive tailings ponds and poisoned the air and water. 

Bayan Obo is mainly a source of light and medium rare earths. Heavy rare earths are scarcer and more difficult to extract, and are typically mined in Myanmar through a process called in-situ leaching. It involves dispersing acid and chemical solvents through mountains, leaching out the rare earths in chemical pools, and burning them in furnaces.

The method carries substantial environmental and public health risks, according to Regan Kwan, a research analyst at the Stimson Center who studies the impacts of rare earth mining in Southeast Asia — particularly when pollution makes its way into water. “Chemical leaks and wastewater discharge can turn rivers toxic, reduce biodiversity, and expose communities to elevated levels of rare earth elements and heavy metals in crops,” he said. “On a human level, chronic exposure can affect the brain, liver, bones, and immune systems, and can be extremely detrimental during childhood development.”

China initially endured the consequences of in-situ leaching in its southeastern provinces, but eventually, the harms reached a tipping point. In 2012, the government found that rare earth mining had caused “great damage” to public safety, health, and the environment, and vowed to overhaul the industry. It has since drastically tightened regulations, driving the shift into Myanmar. 

“Regulations were looser,” said Ryan Castilloux, the founder and managing director of the critical minerals strategy firm Adamas Intelligence. “Chinese companies or interests could take their expertise and get production going quickly.”

Thai activists gathered outside the embassy of The People’s Republic of China in Bangkok in July 2026 to demand China address pollution affecting the Kok, Sai, Ruak, and Mekong rivers due to cross-border pollution linked to mining in Myanmar.
Peerapon Boonyakiat / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images

The origin story of rare earth mining in Myanmar is difficult to pinpoint, but satellite images and Chinese import data show that it reached an industrial scale around 2017. 

By 2022, satellite images showed hundreds of rare earth mining sites in Myanmar’s northernmost Kachin State. Most of these sites spread out from the border town of Pangwa, which served as the headquarters for a warlord named Zahkung Ting Ying. 

A former member of the Kachin Independence Army, or KIA, one of Myanmar’s oldest and strongest ethnic armed forces, he established his own rival army in 1989. He signed a ceasefire with the military the same year; in return, it designated his territory as a Special Region, an administrative status conferring a high degree of autonomy.

Ting Ying’s army is one of several to benefit from this arrangement. According to Kevin Woods, a political ecologist and research associate at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, the military and ethnic armies on Myanmar’s border with China have used ceasefires as a deliberate means of generating wealth from natural resources while asserting control over land and people — part of a strategy he calls ceasefire capitalism.

In Ting Ying’s territory, the strategy was a success. Over three decades, he cultivated relationships with the military and Chinese investors while opening his territory for business. It became a hub for logging, poppy cultivation, banana plantations, and various types of mining. When China began looking for new places to source rare earths, his territory was a natural fit. 

Zahkung Ting Ying, center, leader of the New Democratic Army-Kachin, attends the Kachin State Special Region 1 People’s Conference on March 20, 2006 in Panwa, Kachin State Special Region 1 of Kachin State, Myanmar. China Photos / Getty Images

Kachin’s rare earth mining boom coincided with a political transition in Myanmar. In 2011, the military began handing over power to a civilian government following a half-century of direct rule. Five years later, it took a back seat to the elected democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

Although her party initiated reforms seeking to strengthen natural resource governance and curb corruption during its five-year term, it ultimately faced criticism for its limited achievements. While activists accused it of suppressing independent voices and walking back protections for customary land ownership, the civilian government also lacked independent access to Myanmar’s Special Regions like the one set up for Ting Ying, hindering its ability to monitor some of the worst environmental offenses.

Still, Aung San Suu Kyi’s party was easily reelected in November of 2020. The military refused to accept the results, however, and on February 1, 2021, it arrested Aung San Suu Kyi and other members of her party and took power in a coup. Widespread nonviolent protests followed; when the military cracked down with lethal force, many protesters turned to armed resistance.

Hundreds of new armies emerged with a shared aim of overthrowing the military and establishing a democracy, but their goals went further. They also sought a federal political system that granted autonomy to ethnic states — a goal that brought them in step with some of the country’s most powerful ethnic armies. The Kachin Independence Army is one of several that sided with the resistance, hedging its bets that victory would bring it closer to the self-determination it had been seeking since the 1960s.

Armed and trained by the KIA and other established forces, Myanmar’s anti-junta resistance has made significant gains. The military, backed by Russia and China, has retaliated with a heavy hand, killing thousands of civilians and displacing millions. United Nations investigators have accused it of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. In 2025, the U.N. found that Myanmar was facing a polycrisis that had pushed millions into poverty and “reshaped every aspect of life.”

An anti-coup protester holds a banner during a peaceful protest in Yangon, Myanmar in March 2021.
Hkun Lat / Getty Images

A scramble for resources followed the coup, offering armed actors and their business partners new opportunities to make money. “There has been less rule of law since the coup, and a much stronger demand for revenue generation among a proliferation of armed groups,” said Woods, the political ecologist. “That has created a context, especially along the China border, that has little remaining accountability.”

In Kachin, Ting Ying initially experienced a windfall. As war raged across the country, his territory remained peaceful, and rare earth mining expanded. Chinese customs data shows that China imported $3.6 billion worth of rare earths from Myanmar from 2021 to 2024, out of a total of around $4.3 billion since 2017. The vast majority of rare earth mining sites in Myanmar were in Ting Ying’s territory at the time.

Then in late 2024, the KIA defeated Ting Ying’s army. Ting Ying was initially rumored to have fled to China, but has since been cozying up to Myanmar military officials and Chinese diplomats. In his former territory, now controlled by the KIA, rare earth mining has been slow to resume. Some reports indicate the KIA has faced pressure from China, which typically prioritizes its own business interests in the country. Since the coup, China has repeatedly pushed ethnic armies supporting the pro-democracy movement to cease fighting the military or withdraw from territory they control.

To keep business flowing amid the volatility in Kachin, Chinese companies expanded rare earth mining southward into Myanmar’s Shan State — particularly areas bordering China, controlled by ethnic armies that signed ceasefires with the military. 

“China’s rising demand, coupled with uncertainty in Kachin, has shifted investment,” said Xu Peng, a political scientist at the University of Manchester. “With high margins and reliable tax take, rare earths have become a key, competing extractive resource for ethnic armed organizations, reinforcing today’s rapid growth.”

A drone shot taken in September 2025 of a rare earth mining site near the town of Hpare in territory controlled by the Kachin Independence Organization near the China border.
Machya

Five rare earth mining workers based in areas controlled by the KIA and United Wa State Army in Shan State described exploitative and risky conditions. All of them have been given pseudonyms.

Kaung worked his way up from a laborer to a supervisory role over five years, but quit his job earlier this year due to feelings of discrimination by his Chinese employers. He said they underpaid him, and walked back their offer of a commission based on mining output. “Because there were no written contracts, they claimed they had no obligation to pay,” he said.

He and other workers from Myanmar said that Chinese nationals held almost all senior positions, and that even when workers from Myanmar were promoted, they were still under Chinese bosses. “There were many structural challenges,” said Kaung. “Working under Chinese management meant that all work depended on their decisions and authority.”

Without written contracts, workers had little recourse from dismissal. Women faced particular risks. “Some Chinese supervisors sought second wives, and if female workers refused their advances, they were dismissed from their jobs,” said Kaung.

He added that even the value set for a worker’s life differed by nationality. “If a Myanmar worker dies, compensation is limited to between 80,000 and 100,000 yuan,” he said. “If a Chinese national dies, compensation can exceed 1 or even 2 million yuan.”

Pann Ei fled her village in Shan State as fighting escalated in 2023. Now a cook at a rare earth mining site, she typically works 10 hours a day, with only two rest days a month. “Most workers don’t stay long because of problems like not receiving salaries regularly or having deductions,” she said. “Even though the jobs are dangerous, salaries are still uncertain.”

Si Thu, a laborer at another site, works similar hours for daily wages. “When I arrived here, I found that the work is not done under a formal contract,” he said. “There are no fixed rest days. We can take leave if we request it, but the missed days are deducted from our pay.”

His job is to dig boreholes and install pipes for dispersing chemicals through the mountains. “It’s like injecting medicine into a patient’s vein,” he said. “We drill holes into the mountain and inject liquid acid through the pipes so that it seeps into the ground.”

Mi Mi, who works as a cook, said her company provided protective gear for laborers, but that people would sometimes take off their gloves and boots due to the heat. She witnessed the consequences for a Chinese worker who handled acid without wearing gloves. “It caused burns on his hands, leaving red, blister-like marks,” she said.

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Research by Tanapon Phenrat of Thailand's Naresuan University found that water samples taken from areas of extraction in Kachin State were severely contaminated with radioactive elements, toxic heavy metals and other harmful substances, representing levels that would “substantially exceed” regulatory thresholds in China.

Kaung, the site supervisor, said he had little choice about the water he used in daily life. “Drinking water is taken from mountain sources through pipelines connected to areas where there are no rare earth mines. We boil the water before drinking it, and the same water is used for bathing,” he said. “Even though the water is sourced from non-mining areas, I believe it may still be contaminated.” 

While he has not identified any discernible consequences on workers’ health, he said that supervisors of rare earth-burning furnaces had heard of infertility problems among both male and female workers — an impact of rare earth exposure that has been identified in some laboratory research and studies of other contexts. 

Workers in Myanmar also described severe environmental destruction. “The water is lifeless, and the mountains have been badly damaged,” said Kaung. “Plants and trees can no longer grow. … Wild animals have lost their habitats due to extensive drilling and the digging of boreholes.”

According to Mi Mi, companies abandon mining sites after depleting their resources. “No one takes responsibility for what happens to the land,” she said. “Despite this, we have no choice but to rely on this work for our livelihoods.”

Nyi Tun, a man in his 50s who has also been given a pseudonym, described major impacts in his village. His family has survived generationally through hill cultivation and raising livestock, but this way of life is now under threat. “In the past, this area was very pleasant to live in,” he said. “It is not good to live in anymore. There is a lot of mining across the mountains, including rare earth mining.”

People stand next to debris in the aftermath of a landslide in a mining area in Pangwa in Myanmar’s northern Kachin State in June 2024.
STR / AFP via Getty Images

The problems started around six years ago, when Chinese businessmen and local officials informed village leaders that they would soon begin mining rare earths just a few miles away. “No one asked for the villagers’ opinions,” said Nyi Tun.

Destruction followed. “The soil color has changed; it used to be rich and reddish, but now the environment is dry, like the soil from the desert, and it looks pale and yellowish,” he said. “Dirty water, polluted water, and waste from rare earth mining in the mountains flow into our streams and creeks.”

In the dry season, trucks transporting rare earths to China blow up dust and damage the roads. The hot season feels hotter than in the past, while the rainy season brings deadly landslides and floods. “Crop yields are lower now,” said Nyi Tun. “We can only farm enough for our own consumption; the yield isn’t good enough to produce a surplus to sell.”

As the conditions worsen, young people are migrating to cities and towns in search of work. “I am not educated, but I know and understand how this village began and the current situation,” said Nyi Tun. “Some people call this development, but I don’t see it that way. I feel sad seeing our ancestral lands and farms damaged.”

These impacts point to a double standard. While China now mandates that companies mining rare earths within its borders adhere to strict environmental regulations, it doesn’t require the same compliance abroad, according to Xu Peng of the University of Manchester. “The regulatory framework governing overseas extraction, including in Myanmar, remains comparatively vague,” she said. “There does not appear to be a clear, directly enforceable Chinese legal restriction specifically prohibiting environmental harm from rare earth mining overseas, including in Myanmar.”

Once these rare earths cross into China, processing is highly centralized. Castilloux of Adamas Intelligence compared China’s rare earth processing industry to a coffee grinder, so thoroughly blending together material from different sources that the individual components are nearly impossible to trace to their origin countries. “Unless you’re on the floor and you can kind of track the molecules down the separation line and then follow it to a metals plant, it becomes really, really tricky,” he said.

Still, he asserted that based on proportionality, companies using heavy rare earths in their products could be sure that their supply chain, at least a portion of it, is tied to Myanmar. “If you’re buying magnets from China, or let’s say Japan with inputs from China, there is some portion of that material in those magnets … that has certainly come from Myanmar, in every case,” he said.

According to Ben Hardman, Mekong legal director at the environmental nonprofit EarthRights International, companies are aware of the problem but are skirting responsibility. “I think companies are consistently using Myanmar as a sacrifice zone,” he said.

He called on companies that rely on heavy rare earths in their supply chains to both reduce this dependence and engage with local civil society groups and ethnic armed organizations controlling rare earth mines in Myanmar, in order to mitigate and remedy the harms. “It’s not acceptable for companies to say, ‘We are going to keep sourcing magnets that include these heavy rare earths but we can’t do anything about it because it’s complex,’” he said.

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Julie Michelle Klinger, a geographer and associate professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison warned that rare earths’ other applications — including their use in petrochemical refining, nuclear, and hydropower, as well as weapons — are often overlooked. “There are currently no measures in place to track, much less ensure, that mines opened ostensibly to meet the growing demand for renewable energy technologies actually serve that purpose,” she said. “In the context of global rearmament, it is reasonable to guess that an even smaller share of global rare earth output is actually going toward technologies that might be used in an energy transition.”

While accountability remains near-absent in Myanmar, the problems continue, and are spreading to other countries. In neighboring Thailand, water testing over the past year has revealed toxic contamination of rivers from rare earth extraction and other forms of mining in Myanmar. Local advocates in Thailand are calling on the Thai government to take action, even though it does not formally engage with the ethnic armies controlling areas of Shan State where the rivers originate, and where civic space is minimal.

In Kachin, a sliver of hope has emerged since the KIA took over rare earth mining areas in 2024. The Kachin Independence Organization, or KIO, which oversees the KIA, has a history of engagement with civil society, but has long struggled to balance its dependence on resources with its accountability to the public. Since the coup, it has come under renewed pressure to reform its approach to resource governance, but its response has been mixed.

In a landmark case in 2023, it canceled plans to mine rare earths at one site following widespread protests, only to later allow mining in the same area. In another case, it dispersed protests at a planned site and detained more than 20 people, effectively silencing local activism. With independent media unable to visit the area, it is unclear whether the mining proceeded. 

A civilian living in Kachin, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that locals were being paid to allow rare earth mining on their land, but lacked the conditions enabling them to make free and informed decisions. “There is no formal consultation, information sharing, or public announcement process with communities,” he said. At the same time, he remained fearful of expressing this or other concerns directly to the KIO. “Raising the topic of rare earth mining is still very sensitive,” he said.

Lahkyen Roi, a Kachin scholar-activist, is speaking out using a pseudonym. “Even if these mines are providing vital revenue for the war against the military, the KIO should place a moratorium on these extractive activities for now, considering short- and long-term implications on the local communities, local economy, and environment,” she said. “With rare earth exploration expanding across many ethnic territories to exploit the current sociopolitical instability, the industry is headed toward a ‘race to the bottom.’”

Whether in Kachin or Shan, workers face pressure to keep their heads down. “If information related to rare earth mining is posted online, monitoring becomes stricter and more vigilant,” said Min. 

After his brother’s death, his employers urged him to refrain from posting about the incident on social media, while offering him compensation amounting to around a year’s worth of wages. Ultimately, he accepted the offer, sent the money home to his family, and continued his work. “There is no freedom to speak openly about rare earth mining,” he said. “Workers simply work, rest when their shifts end, and receive their salaries when the time comes.”

Additional reporting by Gawng Loe Mu

toolTips('.classtoolTips2','A group of 17 soft gray metals including lanthanides, scandium, and yttrium, so-called rare earths form key parts of the magnets in wind turbines and are used in high-tech products ranging from consumer electronics to defense satellites.'); toolTips('.classtoolTips8','A lightweight, silvery-white alkali metal with properties that allow it to store large amounts of energy. Lithium is a key component of many batteries, including those that store renewable energy and power electric vehicles.'); toolTips('.classtoolTips10','A conductive and heat-resistant metal that forms a key part of many battery cathodes, which allow electric charges to flow. It is used in the lithium-ion batteries that power many EVs as well as solar energy systems and wind turbine components.'); toolTips('.classtoolTips11','A scarce blue metal that helps battery cathodes store large amounts of energy without overheating or collapsing. It is a key component of lithium-ion batteries. ');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How war in Myanmar is driving a deadly rare earth mining boom on Jul 23, 2026.

After more than a decade of nurturing, it had come time to infect this 28-acre grove of American elms with a disease that would almost certainly kill them. Dressed in hunter-green muck boots, grey pants, and a brown Nature Conservancy T-shirt, Gus Goodwin knelt down to give the first tree its shot. Using a bamboo stake marked at 12 inches as a gauge, he measured that far off the ground, held his drill at a slight downward angle, and pulled the trigger. 

“We need to create a wound,” Goodwin, the conservancy’s director of science and technology advancement in Vermont, said as the tool began to whir. He bore an inch-deep hole into the tree, the bit sending shavings spiraling out behind it. Putting the drill aside, he took a blue pipette from his tool box and injected 2 teaspoons of a clear solution containing roughly 100,000 spores of the fungus that causes Dutch elm disease. 

“That’s it,” he said. “Pretty simple.”

One by one, row by row, the plan was to stick nearly all of the 5,300 or so elms at the sprawling site in southern Vermont, save the few that received a squirt of water as a control. In the coming weeks, most of the trees would doubtlessly succumb to the pathogen that has already killed tens of millions of their ancestors and made Ulmus americana an endangered species. The ones that live, however, could help save the species.

A research specialist with the University of Vermont records information young elm trees that have been inoculated with Dutch elm disease on May 19, 2026. Jessica Rinaldi / The Boston Globe via Getty Images

This project is the most promising attempt yet in the decades-long effort to restore a crumbling pillar of American forests. If successful, it could spawn the largest, healthiest, most genetically diverse population of disease-tolerant elms North America has seen in more than a century. Those trees would provide shade and elegance wherever they cast shadows and support the creatures, like double-toothed prominent moths, specifically adapted to them. “Their life is so tightly tied to the species that they evolve to look like the edge of the leaf,” Goodwin said, explaining how the caterpillar camouflages neatly with the stegosaurus-like ridges along the edge of an elm leaf. “If you substitute another species in, you kind of pull the rug out from under that.”

American elms also help mitigate flooding, which climate change is making more frequent, intense, and devastating. It’s a threat that Vermont knows well, having experienced two 100-year deluges since 2023. According to one study, bolstering the state’s floodplains could avoid as much as $1 billion in property damage over the next century. Similar logic applies across New England and beyond. “There’s no other floodplain tree that’s shade tolerant, flood tolerant, and long-lived,” said Goodwin. The hope is to bring that buffer against climate disasters back. 

If, of course, any of the trees here survive.

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After Goodwin injected his first sapling, he marked it with a dab of orange paint to show that it had been jabbed. He then opened an app detailing this research plot, and looked up the tree. Elm number 439 is the offspring of Valley Forge, a nursery strain bred to be disease-tolerant, and an individual called Damon from the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts. Survivor tree 31, as the latter is known, measures more than 7 feet around and is one of about 50 potentially hearty parents represented in this research plot. Those with the most resistant and genetically diverse progeny will be cloned and moved to the new seed orchard of “super trees.”  

Goodwin also recorded where sprouts, called epicormic shoots, had popped out of number 439. Knowing this was important because, if more of them appeared later, it could be an indicator of stress. With that done, he moved to the next elm, then the next, a trail of orange paint in his wake. In the coming days, as many as six crews would descend on the grove to finish the task. After each tree-tap was registered in the app, the icon went from red to green.

“I get the satisfaction of watching that dot turn color,” said Goodwin, who was eager to see which trees would start to die. In a few weeks, trees without resistance would begin to develop symptoms — wilting, discolored leaves, or an outburst of epicormic shoots. Only then would the researchers know if their plan for a reinvigorated army of elms might work. “We’re at a really exciting milestone in the project.”

Researchers inject experimental elms with Dutch elm disease at a test site in Benson Vermont. The Nature Conservancy

The American elm is remarkable. Its branches arch upward and outward, forming a cathedral-like canopy of green that can stretch more than 100 feet above the forest floor. Each autumn, the leaves turn a vibrant golden-yellow. “The elm is a tree which can be distinguished farther off perhaps than any other,” 19th-century naturalist Henry David Thoreau wrote in his journal. “It is beautiful alike by sunlight and moonlight.” 

These fecund specimens achieve their mature height and vase-like shape in as little as 15 years and, unencumbered, can live as long as 300. With their expansive native range and a love of moist, fertile soil, the trees used to dominate river valleys and floodplains from the Canadian maritimes to East Texas. For Indigenous populations, they were meeting places, signposts and council trees around which important gatherings revolved. As the New World became America, settlers began clearcutting across New England, with forests giving way to sheep pastures. Elms, however, have a tendency to warp that makes them nearly worthless as lumber. This spared the trees from the worst of the denuding.

Instead, elms were often celebrated as shade givers, with particularly stately examples known by name: the Washington Elm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for instance, under which George Washington is said to have assumed control of the Continental Army in 1775. The Deerfield, Pittsfield, Wethersfield, and Concord elms were after the New England towns where they once stood.

An 1853 colored engraving of the Washington Elm in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Bettmann / Getty Images

It wasn’t until the mid-19th century, though, that the elm grew into a cultural icon. Spurred by a twin push to uplift native tree species and beautify neighborhoods, the fast-growing and vast trees become a go-to for arborists. “They’re kind of like junkyard dogs. They can grow in really tough locations and be perfectly fine,” said Stephanie Adams, a tree pathologist at Texas A&M University. “That’s why you see pictures of Main Street, USA back in those times and all the streets are just lined with American elms.” Thousands of roadways still bear the tree’s name, and what else would Wes Craven call his 80’s slasher classic but A Nightmare on Elm Street. 

“The American elm is a symbol for American history,” said Doug Still, an arborist and host of the podcast “This Old Tree.” “Until, of course, Dutch elm disease wiped them out.”

The aptly abbreviated DED kills with incredible efficiency. While it likely originated in Asia, Ophiostoma ulmi was first observed in northern Europe around 1910 and Dutch scientists officially described it in 1922. The fungus that causes it soon arrived in North America, reportedly on logs imported to make veneer, and native elm bark beetles carried it on their backs as they burrowed into their hosts. The afflicted tree mounts an aggressive immune response, trying to stop the invader by deploying balloon-like plugs called tyloses that prevent transmission through the xylem, which shuttles water and nutrients from its roots to its leaves. These arteries eventually clog, and the tree essentially starves. Death can come in as little as a year.

Rings are pictured in the trunk of an elm tree in Boston in 2017. Planted in the 1880s, the tree was taken down after succumbing to Dutch elm disease.
David L. Ryan / The Boston Globe via Getty Images

The impact on the American landscape was immediate. Trees suspected of having the disease were quickly felled to curb the plague, and, by 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had allotted $2.5 million to the effort. Culling intensified, but instead of stemming DED it may have hastened its expansion. “The only tool we had in our toolbox at the time was a chainsaw, and when that’s the case, everything looks like a removal,” said Adams, explaining that, once introduced, the disease can move from one elm to another through their interconnected roots. “We didn’t know that removing before severing the root grafts actually exacerbated and sped up the spread.” 

The 1940s brought more setbacks. America’s entry into World War II diverted attention and resources away from the elm war. Then a far more aggressive strain — Ophiostoma novo-ulmi — arrived, turning the epidemic into what one researcher, in 2017, deemed “arguably the most significant event in the history of urban forestry.” This potent variant raced through the country, killing as many as 100 million trees.

Though the percentage of elms lost is murky, the impact is unmistakable. Trees came down by the thousands in cities and towns nationwide. New Haven, Connecticut, once known as “Elm City,” was almost entirely stripped of its namesake. The population on the University of Illinois campus tumbled from 1,850 to 92 in a little over a decade. By the 1970s, Minneapolis was taking down more than 20,000 of its roughly 400,000 elms each year, estimated Ryan Murphy, who leads the elm selection program at the University of Minnesota. A mere 35,000 remain in the city, and statewide the devastation is even worse, with the plague claiming 95 percent of the elm population. “In some communities in Minnesota there are just a few American elm left in the entire city,” he said. “And the disease is still killing trees.”

The easiest way to find the plot of dying elms in Benson, Vermont is to put “Preserving God’s Creation Taxidermy” into a GPS, and cross the street when you get there. The business is in some ways emblematic of what scientists are doing in the field below — ensuring that people can continue enjoying a species. And like taxidermy, it requires that individuals die. “I feel like we should warn them and apologize to them because we’re torturing them,” said Leila Wilson, a research ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service, as she set out to start injecting another young elm. She cringes each time, knowing the consequences. “I don’t like that part. But they’re serving the greater good.” 

In an era of high-tech fixes, Wilson, Goodwin, and their colleagues are doing little more with their elms than Gregor Mendel did with his peas: crossbreeding them. The idea isn’t new; such efforts began almost as soon as scientists learned of the disease, but no one has had much success. Between 1937 and 1965, scientists at Cornell University and the Boyce Thompson Institute grew, infected, and tested 21,000 seedlings. Only 16 survived, and many of those couldn’t pass along their genetic resistance. None made it to nurseries for distribution. That failure, among others, dampened the appetite to fund such costly, long-term research. “So many false hopes have been raised that there is apathy in some quarters about the outcome of our battle against this disease,” the author of a 1975 scientific paper on the subject wrote. But, he added, “surely it is worth the trouble.”

“Trouble” implies inconvenience and feels insufficient for the toils of restoring elms. By one estimate, only about 1 in 100,000 elms are truly tolerant to DED rather than simply lucky. But just what makes those survivor trees special remains a bit of a puzzle. Unlike the American chestnut, which was similarly ravaged by a blight, there isn’t a clear genetic marker that points to exactly what allows some elms to stave off DED more effectively than others. That makes gene editing moot and breeding the only option.  

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After earning his doctorate in forest genetics and plant breeding in 1969, Alden “Denny” Townsend found a job at the U.S. National Arboretum’s Agricultural Research Service in Ohio. The young scientist’s work spanned a range of species and projects, including an American elm program that had lain mostly dormant for years. The assignment came as DED rampaged, and pessimism about the species was nearly as pervasive. “American elms were dying everywhere,” said Townsend. “I thought there was hope.” 

Townsend, though, inherited something of a mess. His predecessors had, fortunately, planted around 70,000 American elms at the Ohio research station that had grown to 40 or 50 feet and were available for testing. But with no proper accounting of where the trees came from, Townsend started infecting them en masse to see what would happen. Slowly, he identified tolerant elms, then cloned or bred them to generate versions with even greater resistance. After more than two decades, he eventually ended up with one variant — dubbed “Valley Forge,” after George Washington’s Revolutionary War encampment — that was fit enough to send to nurseries. He identified another survivor along a road in Ohio that also proved exceptional and the arboretum eventually released it too, as New Harmony.

A conservation information manager for The Nature Conservancy injects a young elm with Dutch elm disease on May 19, 2026.
Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Since those breeds went on sale in the late 1990s, others have joined the fray. The Jefferson elm, for instance, is essentially a copy of a tree that grows on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., which boasts one of the largest remaining stands of mature American elms in the country. But there are still only a handful of cultivars available, and they have quirks. Some, for instance, have weaker crotches and snap more easily during storms. “They are probably better suited in parks or country clubs or where there’s lots of land,” said Townsend. “If these trees do get Dutch elm disease, they’re gonna be a real hazard.” 

They have another drawback too: limited genetics. There simply aren’t enough reliably tolerant strains to provide the genetic diversity needed for the widespread floodplain repopulation that Goodwin envisions. “It’d be like starting a population over again with six individuals,” he said. But Townsend said previous efforts like his should be considered building blocks rather than failures. “Mistakes were made,” he acknowledged with a chuckle. But he’s optimistic that the funding and scientific rigor being applied to the problem this time around will drastically improve the odds. “I’m glad to hear the Forest Service is continuing to work on it,” he said. “Diversity is the key.”

Christian Marks started working at The Nature Conservancy in 2007 as an ecologist studying floodplains along the Connecticut River. He knew the dwindling ecosystems act as vital sponges when the water runs high, absorbing the torrent and preventing inundation downstream. The more he learned, the more he realized the peril these New England bulwarks were in. Because they rely on just a handful of species to function, the loss of even one could be devastating — and most of them are faltering.

Like Townsend, Marks thought elms stood the best chance of recovery, as long as their tolerance could be boosted. While he said the roughly 90 percent survival rate often seen among cultivars might look impressive, floodplain elms should ideally live for well over a century, during which they will probably be exposed to the DED pathogen repeatedly. “You have to be able to survive many times,” said Marks. That requires trees that survive closer to 97 out of 100 times, a standard that could mean the difference between a tree living 50 years or 150 years. “It’s a much more rigorous test,” Marks said.

An old-growth elm trees that survived Dutch Elm Disease grows in Castine, Maine, as seen in February 2022.
Tristan Spinski for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Ironically, earlier failures to stop DED were one reason Marks was confident he could do better. In the decades since Townsend’s work, millions more elms had died, making it far more likely that those left standing were actually DED-tolerant rather than lucky. “You need to have enough trees die for the ones with resistance to become apparent,” said Marks.  

But, although well-versed in floodplain elms, he had no experience breeding them and reached out to Jim Slavicek, a research biologist at the U.S. Forest Service’s Northern Research Station in Ohio. The latest federal elm project had started in 2003 and Slavicek had helped set up a handful of test sites across the Midwest. The two scientists went about trying to establish one in New England too.

The first thing they needed was more survivor trees, and Marks knew where to find them. Starting around 2010, he went around New England, clipping samples and sending them to Slavicek. One of the first he collected was the Rainbow Beach elm in Northampton, Massachusetts, which is over 3 feet in diameter and, he recalled, “magnificent.” Eventually they amassed enough cuttings to raise 53 elms, and the Forest Service began crossbreeding them. By 2018, their offspring were rising from soil at test sites in Ohio and Vermont. Within a decade the trees stood about 8 feet tall, then 12, and soon they were ready for testing. Although Marks recently left The Nature Conservancy, he remains invested in the results. “This is the playoffs,” he said. “What you’ve been preparing for.”

The Benson test site is surrounded by a 10-foot wire fence intended to keep the deer from making a buffet of the elms inside. Chris Hansen and John Butnor had parked their white Dodge Ram with U.S. Forest Service logos on the doors and government plates on the bumpers right outside the gate. It was early July, and the first time they’d come since helping with the inoculation in May. “This guy right here is completely gone. It’s not got a living branch,” Hansen, a researcher at the University of Vermont, said, standing beside a tree with shriveled brown leaves. Then he pointed to a perky green specimen. “This tree right next to it seemingly has nothing going on, which is pretty cool.”

Butnor, a plant physiologist with the Forest Service, checked the tag at the bottom. “Thirty-eight,” he announced, reading the survivor elm’s parent aloud. Goodwin joined him, and the trio walked among the saplings. Each time Butnor saw a healthy-looking tree, he excitedly called out the identity of its parent. Thirty-six. Twenty-five. Three. Another 38 — suggesting it may be a particularly strong donor. “You hear us throw around the words resistance and tolerance, and I think most of the time we should actually be saying tolerance,” said Hansen. “There’s plenty, as you’re seeing.” 

An initial accounting of the plot revealed a range of responses to injection, including about 800 trees that aren’t yet showing signs of DED. “It’s too early to make predictions about individual trees,” stressed Goodwin, who, along with his colleagues, will monitor the elms for another two years before deciding which of their parents are most suitable for planting in the new superseed orchard. From there it’ll take another 10 to 15 years before the new trees bear seed. So far, though, the results are promising.

A land management fellow with Thee Nature Conservancy walks down a row of young elms as she works to inoculate each one with Dutch elm disease on May 19, 2026.
Jessica Rinaldi / The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Any campaign to make elms great again will, and should, run into limits. No one particularly wants to completely revive the species, which in some cities dominated the urban canopy. “One lesson we learned from Dutch elm disease devastating the urban tree canopy was not to plant a monoculture of trees,” said Doug Still, the arborist, citing the more recent plight of emerald ash as another example of why overreliance can be a problem. Today, urban planners tend to be much more restrained, said Ryan Murphy, the elm expert in Minneapolis. “Diversifying your tree population is a sort of a safeguard or hedging your bets against future pests or disease coming through,” he said. “We’ve learned the hard way.”

Some people ask whether the quest to save the American elm is worth decades of effort and millions of dollars in funding, especially when Asian elms are naturally much more tolerant to DED. But Hansen emphasized that such inquiries are rare, and come primarily from journalists and scientists, not the public, which is generally excited about the prospect. “Even people who aren’t necessarily interested in trees know that elm shape,” he said. Goodwin sees a philosophical element to the work too. “There’s kind of like a moral injury of extinction,” he said. “This is a way to try to repair that.” 

The price of not doing this work is evident on the hills surrounding the grove, which are spotted with dead and dying elms. Many look like they’re choking on epicormic shoots. “They’re probably not healthy,” said Hansen. Although no one has tested them, Dutch elm disease is likely the culprit. As he walked back toward the truck, he stopped in a patch of shade and looked up at least 50 feet into the canopy of a middle-aged elm. 

“It’s called the Benson tree,” he said. It’s imperfect — the limbs are haphazard and, as Butnor described them, “a little unruly.” But the vase-like shape is unmistakably an elm and, at somewhere between 50 and 100 years old, one that has long outlived its peers. Hansen isn’t sure if it’s a survivor or simply lucky. There’s a chance Dutch elm hasn’t reached it, though now that the field it abuts is infected, that probably won’t last.

Like the younger elms, the Benson tree awaits its fate. In the meantime, it stands watch over the scientists trying so hard to save its kind.

Correction: This story originally misstated the century in which Henry David Thoreau lived.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The deadly experiment that could save the American elm on Jul 23, 2026.

Tadej Pogačar is expected to ride to victory on the Champs-Élysées in Paris when the Tour de France ends Sunday. While his commanding performance has left little doubt about the outcome, the journey to the finale has been remarkable for another reason: climate change. 

The grueling 23-day trek through France has seen a barrage of emissions-driven extremes, from wildfires to blistering heat. It was so dry at one point that organizers banned TV crews from a French pastime, smoking. Pogačar even suggested that the race, which has almost always spanned late June and early July, no longer occur during the summer. 

“If I had the power,” he said, “I would change all the calendar and not race in July and August in hot places.” 

The trouble started earlier this month when wildfires threatened the Pyrénées-Orientales region during the third stage, as each day’s race is called. Organizers considered cancelling it, but decided it would continue. Still, they limited the caravan that typically follows it to essential vehicles. They also asked fans, a fixture along every route, to stay away from the last 27 miles of the day’s 121-mile race.

“We invite the public not to come to the edge of the race or to the finish site,” race director Christian Prudhomme told France TV. “With exceptional fires, exceptional measures on the Tour, the first thing is the protection of the people.”

The more persistent problem has been a record-breaking European heatwave. According to ProCyclingStats.com, the first two weeks of the Tour brought the highest average temperature of the past two decades: 87 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to 79 degrees in 2022. 

Paul Seixas and his teammates wear vests dotted with ice packs to cool down at the start of the ninth stage of the race. Ann-Christine Poujoulat / AFP via Getty Images

“I’ve never seen weather conditions this hot every single day,” said XDS-Astana Team sports director Yvon Ledanois. “It isn’t a case of having one extremely hot day and then returning to normal conditions the next.”

Enduring such heat for one race would be rough, but each of the 21 stages is effectively a race of its own. Competitors ride an average of about 100 miles daily for the better part of three weeks, and it isn’t unusual to see them maintain speeds around 30 mph for hours at a time. Much of the Tour crosses the Alps and Pyrenees, with treacherous climbs. Through it all, riders get just two days of rest.

That kind of prolonged exertion during extreme heat can be dangerous, even for athletes with the specialized training required to complete the Tour. Pogačar reported having a “full headache” at the start of Stage 4 as temperatures topped 100 degrees. Officials relaxed their rules around food and hydration, and one team said each of its riders was drinking around 28 bottles of water every day, which is several times the norm. Many also wore “ice vests” before the start of each day’s ride, and “ice socks” during it. Things got so bad that race organizers shortened one leg for the first time in Tour history when they cut 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) from Stage 9. The government told regional officials they could cancel them entirely in the event of a red heatwave alert. 

Even when the sun went down, the respite was minimal. Temperatures didn’t ease much, and many European hotels do not have air conditioning. “When we have these high nighttime temperatures, the body isn’t able to recover sufficiently,” Kurt Shickman, who works on heat issues at the World Resources Institute, told Grist when asked about early July’s heatwave. “They’re going into the next hot day with a couple strikes against you from a health perspective.”  

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Recent research has shown these hazards are growing more frequent and intense. “My co-authors and I have been following the heat during this Tour with horror,” Ivana Cvijanovic, a climate scientist at the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development and the paper’s lead author, told TIME. “This summer is clearly extreme — there was simply no opportunity to be lucky as France and Spain have been under heat wave warnings for weeks.”

The brutal conditions have sparked a discussion about the Tour’s support from fossil fuel companies. French oil giant TotalEnergies sponsors a team and has signed a three-year deal to underwrite the race. Australian energy company Santos has long backed the Tour Down Under. While their funding helps finance riders and events, these companies are driving climate change, which threatens the viability of cycling and other sports, including the World Cup — where Saudi oil giant Aramco was a major advertiser. 

“It’s almost impossible to avoid becoming a billboard for them,” one anonymous rider told Cycling Weekly. “I’d go further and say that, concerning the climate crisis, and professional cycling’s addiction to sponsorship from oil companies, airlines, and car manufacturers, there is a rule of silence, as deeply rooted in cycling culture as the old omertà about doping.”

Whether and how the Tour adjusts to climate change remains to be seen. Pogačar’s suggestion that the race be held at a different time of year would upset the traditional order of the sport’s three grand tours. A number of other solutions have been proposed, including altering start times. But even small changes can be a big problem given the complex logistics and broadcast schedules involved. 

In the meantime, the Tour is racing toward its inevitably sweaty conclusion.

Correction: The average temperature for the first two weeks of the Tour de France has been changed. It was 87 degrees Fahrenheit, not 90 degrees F.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The year climate change came for the Tour de France on Jul 23, 2026.

In a talk on "community wealth" at the Ecovillage Findhorn, Guy Dauncey shares how kinder, community-based economies can create lasting shared prosperity for people and nature.

The passage of New York's statewide moratorium marks the speed at which the movement is growing — and winning — in both blue and red parts of the country.

A recent report from Brazil’s national space agency showed that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is the lowest it’s been in a decade. The news made headlines and was lauded as an example of the progress President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had made toward his promise of eliminating illegal deforestation there by 2030. Since taking office in 2023, Lula’s administration has ramped up environmental policies aimed at making the country’s beef industry more transparent, such as increasing policing and remote monitoring of forest lands.     

But some of that progress is at risk of being undone, say environmental experts. 

In January, a number of agrifood groups left a voluntary trade agreement known as the Amazon Soy Moratorium, which had been highly effective at curbing deforestation for the sake of cultivating soybeans. The pact prohibited members from buying soy grown on lands deforested after July 2008. When the moratorium fell apart earlier this year, researchers and advocates expected it to usher in a rise in deforestation for soy cultivation. Now, thanks to a group of scientists working in both the U.S. and Brazil, we have an initial expectation of how much deforestation is likely to occur in the coming years. 

In a new paper published last week in Science, researchers say that the Amazon forest is at risk of losing 1.4 million hectares — or the equivalent of about 2 million soccer fields — to deforestation over the next 10 years. 

Before the moratorium was in place, soy cultivation was one of the main drivers of deforestation in the Amazon; for example, in Mato Grosso, Brazil’s leading soy producing state, a quarter of soy production from 2001 to 2005 came from clearing forested lands. After a widespread public campaign led by Greenpeace, public and private sector actors working in the Amazon forest came together to create the soy moratorium. “People generally followed it,” said Lisa Rausch, one of the authors of the Science paper. “There weren’t many violations of it, especially in the early days and years. This created a situation where land deforested after 2008 was no longer valuable to soy traders.”

Ane Alencar, a director of science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, or IPAM, agreed that the soy moratorium was a “very important private policy mechanism” for curbing deforestation. She also argued that without it, lands deforested after 2008 that are currently used for things like raising cattle will now be converted to soybean production — and that the cattle ranching will move to “new frontiers,” likely leading to deforestation elsewhere in the Amazon. 

Area that has been cleared for soy cultivation in the Amazon rainforest near the Brazilian city of Belém. Larissa Schwedes / picture alliance via Getty Images

The new research on soy-driven deforestation in the Amazon also comes at a time when private commitments from major food groups to clean up their supply chains have been flagging. This month, JBS, the world’s largest meat producer, publicly walked back its so-called promise to reach net-zero deforestation by 2040. The news shouldn’t necessarily come as a surprise, as last year, the company’s chief sustainability officer admitted in an interview with Reuters that the pledge was always purely aspirational.  

Alencar believes that the private sector still has a role to play in disincentivizing deforestation, and that companies like JBS are still susceptible to consumer pressure to do the right thing. “They are very reactive to the public opinion,” she said, “so maybe there is a need for more campaigns asking for these companies to be more responsible in the Amazon.”

Other forest countries in Latin America are working on curbing deforestation. Colombia recently passed a first-of-its-kind law aimed at increasing traceability within its beef industry. Over the next two years, government agencies must work with cattle ranchers to ensure they are not raising herds on illegally deforested lands — as well as bring in slaughterhouses, meat processors, cattle auctioneers, and exporters to make sure they are not moving or selling products from these areas. Rausch called this development a strong signal, but said much remains to be seen about how Colombian authorities will accomplish these goals. 

And there are still other agreements in place that aim to restrict deforestation in Brazil — such as the nation’s Forest Code, which limits how much land can be cleared for any type of agricultural production. When lands are deforested outside of these limits, the owners receive a fine and then the land in question is placed under embargo, meaning it cannot be used for any commercial agricultural use. 

But Rausch argued the Forest Code does not go far enough to protect forested land. Her paper found that 20 percent of soy farms in the Amazon have embargoes against them for illegal deforestation. “The economic incentives for deforestation are still there,” she said, while adding that the latest deforestation update from Brazil’s space agency is welcome news. “But unless there are new things brought to the table, this will be a temporary drop, and it will creep back up for sure.”

Alencar also finds the future outlook of deforestation in the Amazon “worrisome.” With Lula up for reelection — and facing off against Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro — Alencar fears that progress could be undone. 

“I’m afraid that all of these results that we have achieved,” she said, “they’ll really be in danger if the government becomes more anti-environmental.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Without stronger government action, Brazil’s low deforestation in the Amazon is unlikely to last on Jul 23, 2026.

The distribution of medicines follows a priority logic defined by MINSAP itself—Dirección General de Salud Pública de La Habana (the Cuban Ministry of Public Health).

The post Brazil: “Ajude Cuba” Solidarity Campaign by MST Sends More Than 7 Tons of Medicines to Cuba appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

The tribunal was convened by a diverse group of farmers’, peasants’ and Indigenous organisations along with community networks.

The post Declaration: From the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (Costa Rica), in Defense of Seeds appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Last week, something incredible happened. On 15 July 2026, more than 50 of our partners, friends and comrades from across the movement gathered to discuss a bold new vision for South Africa’s energy future. Our message is already loud and clear: “Asinimali Kodwa Sinelanga!” — we have no money, but we have the sun. The struggle to afford the basics of life, including electricity, continues in South Africa, but there are opportunities to help solve the crises we face. We must take them!

A crisis we can’t ignore

If we’re being honest about the situation: it’s grave. Since 2007, electricity prices in South Africa have skyrocketed by 1,172%, rising six times faster than inflation. Today, nearly 60% of households live below the poverty line, and many families are forced to make the impossible choice between buying maize meal or keeping the lights on.

The government’s current Free Basic Electricity (FBE) grant of 50-60 kWh is symbolically insufficient. It might power a lightbulb, but it won’t run a fridge, a stove, or a heater. Meanwhile, our reliance on ageing, fragile coal plants is costing the public R960 billion (US$55.2 billion) a year in health impacts alone.

The vision: 350 kWh of clean, public power

Our demand is clear: we want a 350 kWh FBE grant generated with publicly financed renewable energy. This isn’t just a number we pulled out of a hat. Based on the recommendations of experts from the Public Affairs Research Institute (PARI) and other economic justice organisations, 350 kWh is the Minimum Threshold Level of Consumption required for a family to reach basic developmental standards. Data from the Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity group (PMBEJD) shows that even households with only one person working for a minimum wage already purchase an average of 350 kWh just to survive. By securing this grant, we enable bulk food refrigeration, hot water, and the “micro-business capability” needed to break the cycle of poverty.

As massive investments from the Just Energy Transition Investment Plan (JET-IP) and other international sources flow into the country, it only makes sense that this money is first spent where it matters most. These funds must be directed toward programs that directly alleviate poverty and support economic activity in our most underresourced communities. This is a necessary step to finally reducing the historical inequalities that continue to hold us back. By shifting the R118 billion (US$6.8 billion) currently spent on annual fossil fuel subsidies, we can begin public funding of clean, affordable power for households across the country.

 

Building our campaign community

The meeting was a generous and celebratory start to this journey. We heard from researchers, media experts, and grassroots organisers from organisations across the country. We’re moving forward strategically. Our eyes are on the local government elections on 4 November 2026. We’re going to use this moment to demand that every candidate pledges to support 350 kWh of FBE from municipal solar power.

Get involved

We need everyone in this fight. There are two ways you can help right now:

1. Join a Working Group: If you represent an organisation or have specific skills to offer, please sign up for a working group and join our next planning meeting on 29 July 2026.
2. Join the Campaign for Affordable Electricity. Get campaign updates and action alerts by signing up to our email list.

Together, we can secure the clean, affordable power our communities deserve.

In solidarity, 

Ferron Pedro
Senior Campaigner, 350.org South Africa

 

The post Asinimali Kodwa Sinelanga: Taking Our Next Steps Towards Climate & Economic Justice appeared first on 350.

Take a walk on the wild side Channel News brendan 23rd July 2026 Teaser Media

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The post A List of the Best Types of Tangandewa Online Slot Games appeared first on HAMBACHFOREST.

• Angry drivers in cities worldwide have been so mad about getting speeding tickets that, instead of slowing down, they’re destroying cameras that are proven to save lives. The response is bulletproof cameras resistant to vandalism. (Jalopnik)
• Now that the Biden administration’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is expiring, states are looking to new methods for funding infrastructure. (Pew)
• It looks like the House version of a new five-year surface transportation funding bill is DOA in the Senate. (Smart Cities Dive)
• Through technology, tactical urbanism can now provide data for transportation planners. (Norwegian SciTech News)
• Lloyd Alter continues his series on how the suburbs are not well suited for older residents who can’t or shouldn’t be driving anymore. (Carbon Upfront)
• Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava is proposing cutting 12 bus routes in the name of a balanced budget, even though her overall budget is $1 billion higher than the current one. (Miami Times)
• The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority is trying to convince voters to raise its share of sales tax revenue and avoid service cuts. (Signal Cleveland)
• Who is Nathaniel Ford, the recently departed Jacksonville transit chief and frontrunner to lead Dallas Area Rapid Transit? (D Magazine)
• Cal Matters says California is making a mistake by looking to repeal requirements for EV chargers at new apartment buildings to address housing costs.
• Velo Micromobility unleashed 1,000 new e-scooters on Salt Lake City (KSL). We’ll see how that goes…
• Honolulu cut the speed limit in school zones to 20 miles per hour, but didn’t bother to change the signs. (Civil Beat)
• A proposed Greenville, South Carolina penny sales tax for transportation would devote 90 percent of the revenue to roads. (Greenville News)
• A UK study found that, while micromobility does compete with buses, more importantly it does also replace car trips. (Route One)
• Queensland, Australia is testing whether AI traffic sensors can reduce congestion and improve pedestrian safety. (The Conversation)

Are Waymo cars safer? Maybe. But will they make our streets and neighborhoods more livable? Way no.

If unleashed in New York City, autonomous taxis will dramatically increase the amount of congestion on our streets, according to a report released on Monday by the Sam Schwartz Transportation Research Program at Hunter College in collaboration with Open Plans.

The reason? Waymo cabs spend far more time driving around without passengers than comparable human-driven Uber and Lyft cabs. In California, where Waymo’s autonomous taxis have been operating and churning out trip data for years, a Waymo will travel 0.71 miles empty for every one mile. But in New York City, so-called high-volume taxis — Uber, Lyft and the like — drive empty for 0.49 miles for every one mile with a passenger.

That 14.8-percent gap would translate to tens of thousands of additional vehicle miles every single day.

The amount of additional miles depends on the extent to which robotaxis replace existing taxi trips — and the report offers a range. If robotaxis are deployed and only add to existing taxi trips, obviously, the additional number of VMTs will be much higher than if robotaxis slowly replace existing taxi trips.

Under both scenarios, VMTs increase. If 2,000 new autonomous taxis show up in New York City and there is no commensurate decrease in taxi trips, suddenly there will be 293,800 more vehicle miles traveled in New York City every day. No, that’s not epic, glacial congestion, but it is the equivalent of more than 3,750 trips around Manhattan every day.

In the more-likely scenario that robotaxis slowly replace human-driven Uber and Lyft trips, there will still be an increase in vehicle miles traveled because of that 14.8-percent higher “deadheading” rate for robotaxis.

“As it stands, replacing a HV-FHV with a robotaxi would increase VMT and congestion,” the report states.

But wait, there’s more: In California, robotaxis spend roughly 58 percent of their empty time in a parking space. But analysts at the Sam Schwartz program and Open Plans say it’s far less likely in New York that a robotaxi would be able to find an empty space between rides. The report states that for every 1-percent decrease in parked time, the robotaxi would experience a 1.5-percent increase in deadheading.

How much deadheading again depends on how few parking spaces are available to robotaxis: If, for example, robotaxis in New York were parked just 25 percent (vs. the 58 percent of the time in California), it would translate to roughly another 62,000 vehicle miles traveled every day in New York.

So the increase in traffic is not massive, but it’s still frustrating because deadheading is just dumb. “Deadheading is particularly impactful in urban areas,” the report states. “While an empty mile and an occupied mile impose similar per-mile costs on roadway congestion and safety, deadheading represents VMT added without any corresponding transportation benefit.”

Sara Lind, co-executive director of Open Plans, said her group’s report is not meant to be a condemnation of autonomous, but merely a wake-up call to their unintended consequences.

“While robotaxi technology is groundbreaking, the underlying reality perpetuates our current system: a focus on single-use vehicles over public transportation and active mobility,” said Lind, whose organization shares a parent company with Streetsblog. “Not only would robotaxis continue trends of increasing driving and congestion, they may very well exacerbate these issues. Cities should use this moment to update parking policies, explore fees on vehicle miles traveled, and pursue people-centered planning.”

Waymo pushed back on the report, saying that the company’s deadheading in California is “decreasing over time as we increase the efficiency and utilization of our fleet.”

“The premise put forward by the report — that the New York City [taxi] fleet could fully turn over to Waymo vehicles — is also inaccurate,” company spokesman Ethan Teicher said. “Waymo vehicles make up a fraction of the total ride-share vehicles on the road in the places where we operate, and that would also be true of New York City. For example, we have more than 3,500 vehicles in our fleet nationwide, whereas there are more than 100,000 for-hire-vehicle drivers operating in New York City alone.”

But Teicher did agree that the company is keenly interested in making sure its robotaxis will be able to store themselves at the curb rather than deadheading.

“Research has shown that Waymo vehicles’ ability to park at the curb when not serving a passenger is important for reducing empty VMT,” he said. “This study correctly identifies parking as a challenge in New York City, presenting an opportunity for renewed focus on municipal curb management. We’d be thrilled to share our experience with city leaders.”

After all, he added, Waymo’s business model is dependent on reducing empty models because unlike other taxi fleet, the company owns the vehicles in its fleet.

But even the company statement reminds anew that the robotaxi industry in general, as well as Waymo specifically, is a very small business right now.

“Waymo is like a rookie hitter who goes two for five in his first game and claims to be a .400 hitter,” Schwartz told Streetsblog. “Let’s see what he does over a season and lifetime. Waymo has driven about 200 million miles over past six years. Over that period, Americans alone drove almost 20 trillion miles, so Waymos made up just one-thousandth of a percent. Waymo may be a candidate for Rookie of the Year, but it is still a rookie!”

The mayor of Milwaukee is abandoning a proposal to scrap a half-century-old freeway out of fear of upsetting the region’s motorists, setting aside years of findings that highway removals help revitalize Rust Belt downtowns for the 21st century.

Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson announced on July 8 he wanted to maintain the elevated Interstate 794 known as the Lake Interchange, which stretches between the Marquette Interchange and the Hoan Bridge and is approaching the end of its useful life. State transportation officials have been weighing alternative proposals for fixing or removing the freeway.

A waterfront city hemmed in by highways. This is Downtown Milwaukee (with the I-784 corridor highlighted).

Johnson rejected replacing the highway with at-grade boulevards that connect to the street grid because he worried drivers would get stuck in traffic.

“Any mayor across the country would love to have this same thing,” Johnson said at a press conference. “However, given the challenges that I mentioned, given the decades of established traffic patterns here, I think it makes it a little more difficult for us to be able to accomplish what some have imagined could be accomplished with taking the freeway down.”

But Milwaukee Common Council members Alex Brower, Robert Bauman and Sharlen Moore argued that a highway-to-boulevard option would benefit residents by generating thousands of new homes and increasing city tax revenues.

“This is a generational opportunity for our city, and we should not bristle at the idea of freeway removal simply because it represents the greatest departure from the current status quo,” the officials said in a joint statement released on July 13. “We should embrace the change that will yield the greatest long-term benefit for Milwaukee, rather than settling for less because of established traffic patterns.”

And members of Rethink 794, a volunteer transportation advocacy group, lambasted the mayor for doubling down on congestion that will hamper the city’s ability to grow in the future.

“It seems like the priority for folks who [want] to save five minutes on their commute, but the tradeoff is opportunity for housing development, retail development, public space, economic development,” said Raphie Torralba, lead advocate on the Rethink 794 campaign.

The controversial span has divided Milwaukee since its erection in 1969. Commuters from suburban Waukesha, Racine, and Kenosha counties take I-794 to get to work and access the Brew City’s top attractions. By 2022, roughly 78,000 vehicles per day traveled east of the Marquette Interchange, 73,500 vehicles drove across the Milwaukee River and 42,500 motorists crossed the Hoan Bridge, a Wisconsin DOT traffic study found. 

But the interstate served as a barrier separating Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward from other downtown neighborhoods and discouraged residents in the region from using Milwaukee’s Amtrak station, which transported 555,000 riders last year.

This century, razing an elevated highway is no longer a radical idea. Several cities have successfully ditched elevated interchanges slicing through their downtowns including Boston, San Francisco, Portland, Ore., and Syracuse, NY, which will begin tearing down a stretch of Interstate 81 later this year. Even Milwaukee saw the benefits two decades ago of turning Park East Freeway into a six-lane boulevard that opened up 24 acres to new development.

As I-794 approached its golden anniversary, parts of its spans began to crumble, prompting state officials to develop a long-term plan to fix it. In April, the Wisconsin DOT held open houses on four proposals to rebuild the interchange, slim it down, or replace it entirely, with another option to conduct routine maintenance and put off significant repairs. (Meanwhile, Milwaukee urbanists released their own vision for razing the interchange in order to transform the surrounding neighborhood into thousands of homes with new schools, libraries, and roads.)

It seems likely that there’s a better use for this central Milwaukee land.

Each alternative came with a different price tag while generating additional land for the city to develop by 2050. 

Rebuilding the highway ranged between $425 million and $575 million while the proposal enabled the city to build on a 2.7-acre site created during a reconfiguration. One design would reduce the highway with right-side ramps purported to cost between $725 and $1 billion while another was estimated between $675 and $900 million. Both opened up 5.1 acres of land.

Finally, replacing the span with a boulevard reportedly cost between $850 million and $1.25 billion while freeing up 16 acres of property to be converted into housing and other development, which could produce $16 million in property tax revenue each year, plus ancillary economic benefits to the city and its people. 

Advocates argued state officials overestimated the cost of dismantling highways and building new roads, and underestimated the benefit on downtown neighborhoods if boulevards were built instead.

“They are predicting much of the same traffic will end up on city streets, whereas we know that will not be the case in removals in other parts of the country and even our own city,” Torralba said. “One-third of current traffic that uses the stretch of freeway is using it to go across but the majority of it is already ending up downtown.”

State Department of Transportation officials expect to choose a design by 2027, begin construction about three years later, and complete the project by 2038, although funding has not been officially allocated.

Political tea

The issue could become part of Wisconsin’s contentious gubernatorial race since the next governor will choose a new transportation secretary and have an effect on the direction of state infrastructure projects. 

Democratic candidates Francesca Hong and David Crowley expressed support for the benefits of replacing the highway with new housing development, according to Rethink 794 advocates. Republican Andy Manske told Streetsblog he wants to see a temporary closure of I-794 to see if it would result in “widespread chaos and delays” and wanted to ensure that new housing would be managed closely and not by an institutional investor (Democratic candidate Mandela Barnes and Republican candidate Tom Tiffany did not respond to emails).

Torralba said the climate advocates have been navigating has been complicated. 

“The highway’s removal is a question of political will,” she said. “Candidates understand the benefits of the idea, but the political power [to advance] that decision is another thing entirely.”

Following the 2015 Paris Accords, the climate movement rode a wave of cultural and political momentum, culminating in the European Green Deal. But war, inflation, and a resurgent fossil fuel-aligned Right have triggered a fierce backlash against climate action in all its forms. To win this fight, Florent Marcellesi argues, Europe must treat energy sovereignty and climate justice as two sides of the same battle.

The economy works in a series of cycles. Be they short (according to Joseph Kitchin), medium (as per Clément Juglar), or long (as Nikolai Kondratieff declared), periods of recovery, of creation, of boom and bust, or of destruction follow one another. The cycle begins anew, in infinite loops that are never quite the same.

Similarly, the just and green transition faces its own distinct historical cycles. Since environmental awareness emerged as a political movement in the 1960s and 1970s, it has gone from being an outsiderissuefor socially conscious minorities to becoming – following the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, the focal point of the socio-political mainstream. Today, however, mercilessly besieged by resurgent imperialisms whose interests align with those of fossil fuel capitalism, the transition faces an enormous backlash. It is waging an fierce struggle against the “fossil fuel empire”, gasping for air so that the existential threat that it currently faces does not turn into destruction. But how can the just transition withstand this backlash and consolidate itself within the new world (dis)order? And, how can it defeat the fossil fuel empire?

The birth of a new hegemony

2015 was no ordinary year in our recent history. On 12 December of that year, the Paris Agreement was unanimously adopted at COP21. Although it was by no means a perfect climate accord, by enshrining in an international treaty the 1.5°C global warming limit that humanity must not exceed, this agreement marked a turning point in climate action. The Paris Accords were driven by a broad coalition of aligned nations (the Pacific Islands, the EU, Obama’s United States, etc.), a Vatican motivated by Pope Francis’ Laudato si’, and a civil society keen to turn the page on the failed COP15 summit in Copenhagen.

2015 represented the start of a new cycle in which climate was no longer a subordinate and secondary issue but the centre of media attention, a political and social priority, and the new driving force behind an emerging economy centred on the transition and on renewables. Put another way, the year marks the start of a period with a profound capacity for structural transformation and for reshaping collective principles, guided by the climate narrative in public opinion, institutions, and the business world: climate cultural hegemony.

After years of recession and social and economic austerity, this shift in hegemony had a tremendous impact on several fronts. On the one hand, activism played a key role in the cultural and social dynamics in favour of climate action, thanks to the quantitative and qualitative presence of the youth climate movement. Behind Greta Thunberg, the central figure of the climate movement – someone with an almost messianic quality and a source of global inspiration for an entire generation – lay an unprecedented visibility of the climate cause in the media and on the streets. This movement positioned the climate as an existential issue – for young people and any group or nation directly suffering its impacts – and a matter of the highest socio-political priority. As hundreds of thousands of people filled the streets of Berlin, Brussels, Melbourne, New York, Vancouver, and Madrid in 2019, the climate cause seeped into the recesses of European and global collective consciousness.

2015 represented the start of a new cycle in which climate was no longer a subordinate and secondary issue.

Following the path opened by Paris, activism began to reflect on in politics and institutions. On 5 December, 2016, the Darebin in Australia became the first city in the world to declare a “climate emergency”. In May 2019, the UK Parliament became the first national parliament to do so, while Spain officially followed suit following a cabinet decision in January 2020. To date, nearly 2,400 local authorities across 40 countries, covering a population of up to one billion citizens, have declared a climate emergency, making climate change one of the top political priorities in the years following 2015. Inevitably, this social and institutional visibility also had its impact at the ballot box: in the 2019 European elections, riding and simultaneously pushing the climate wave, Green parties achieved a historic result, securing more than 80 seats and transforming their eco-social agenda into a driving force within the European Parliament.

This, in turn, triggered greater environmental momentum. Under the combined pressure of activists on the street and of voters, and despite the fact that it was not even part of the European People’s Party’s electoral priorities at the time, the newly appointed European Commission under the first presidency of the conservative Ursula Von der Leyen, put its main response on the table: the Green New Deal,or the European Green Deal. The debate no longer revolved around whether or not we needed a climate policy, but rather the level of ambition it should have. Although the deal fell short of what the environmental movement and scientific community were calling for, it was far ahead of anything proposed by other geopolitical blocs. The EU established itself as a climate leader, committing to reducing its emissions by at least 50 per cent by 2030, whilst making the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 legally binding.

What is more, all European policies – whether in energy, industry, or agriculture – were required to integrate or align, at least in spirit, with climate priorities. In this climate-friendly environment, the economy felt the winds of change from the energy transition and sustainability, the cornerstones of post-Paris business. The end of coal mining in Spain and its phasing out across Europe, the accelerated roll-out of renewable energy, the boom in electric cars, the decarbonisation of industry, and the greening of agriculture: the green economy and green jobs experienced a golden age, whilst the just transition was gaining ground. Paris, the youth climate movement, and the electorate made their mark; climate cultural hegemony was at its zenith.

But every golden age comes to an end, and every high-water mark is followed by a decline. The first blow came from Covid-19. The health crisis, along with its lockdowns, brought the “climate generation” to a screeching halt, and since 2020, there has not been another mass climate demonstration. Despite depriving it of one of its most powerful means of expressing itself, the pandemic did not stop the European Green Deal from becoming the EU’s guiding light. On top of that, thanks to the social and political capital accumulated in previous years, and despite the emerging opposition from the radical right in Hungary and Poland or the anti-climate presidency of Trump’s first administration, the green transition was established as one of the pillars of the NextGenerationEU Recovery Funds. Of the 275 billion euros in capital investment, 42 per cent of the funds were to be allocated to tackling the climate crisis. This represented a tangible investment in the great transformation from a fossil fuel system to a renewable one.

But soon after the first blow of the pandemic came a second one in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. Apart from exposing Putin’s imperialist ambitions and Europe’s dependence on Russian gas, the war also triggered a surge in energy prices and the cost of living, in turn fuelling social unrest. Reactionary and denialist forces smelt blood. The European Green Deal was still alive, but through the wounds of the pandemic and war in Ukraine, the anti-climate and anti-ecological transition narrative was seeping in, establishing itself as a key pillar of the fossil fuel backlash.

The empire strikes back

Whether at the political, cultural or economic level, we have entered a new cycle: that of the ecological backlash, countering progress on environmental issues. It is the era of the crusade against and relentless attack on a just transition, as the empire of dirty energy and its political network make every possible attempt to reinforce their foothold. In other words, fossil fuel capitalism, in collaboration with a reactionary and denialist international movement, has declared a war –  an almost holy war – against ecological progress in all its forms.

While environmental activists are branded as “terrorists” or “climate fanatics” and climate change is, according to Trump, nothing more than “a hoax”, green policies are constantly under fire from climate-sceptic and far-right organisations. Alongside immigration, they have made the Green New Dealtheir enemy to be defeated in Spain, Brussels, and internationally. They portray, against all evidence, environmental policies as responsible for the more than 200 deaths caused by the 2025 storm in Valencia. They also attack renewables every day, whether during the 2025 blackout on the Iberian Peninsula or by fuelling local opposition to wind and solar energy.

In this context of constant disinformation and attacks, where the far right provokes and the Right reaps the rewards (and part of the Left flirts with reactionary attitudes towards it), ecological setbacks are rife within institutions. For example, in Europe, where the dividing line between conservatives and neo-fascists has been growing increasingly thin since the 2024 European elections,1 environmental commitments have been scaled back. This includes sustainability requirements in the Common Agricultural Policy, as well as environmental restrictions for large companies and the ambition to phase out fossil-fuelled cars.

At the same time, environmental deregulation – which allows for more products that are harmful to nature and health but economically competitive and good for the coffers of large multinationals – is gaining momentum. What is more, in an Orwellian move, the US Government, having once again withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and from any international political or scientific institution fighting for climate action, has even banned the terms “climate change” and “emissions” in federal agencies and official national documents. This includes revising educational programmes. Beyond politics, the cultural battle is all-out.

The ecological backlash is proving to be an attempt at a fossil fuel restoration in the face of the 21st-century renewable energy revolution.

After years of climate hegemony, the backlash has been and continues to be inversely proportional to the progress of the ecological transition in recent years. Indeed, just as the restoration of the monarchy was a response to re-establish the interests of the nobility in the face of revolutionary and republican ideas in the 19th century, the ecological backlashis proving to be an attempt at a fossil fuel restoration in the face of the 21st-century renewable energy revolution. This is an unmistakable sign that the just ecological transition has hit a nerve. For fossil fuel capitalism, the ecological transition was tolerable as long as it remained sectoral and socio-economically marginal. But today it has become a major obstacle to its businesses, which are currently worth 97 trillion dollars – almost as much as global Gross Domestic Product. It also represents a threat to part of the global elite and population whose way of life and values, based on fossil fuels and the fantasy of unlimited growth in production and consumption, remain non-negotiable.

In this regard, the 2025 US National Security Strategy (NSS) is emblematic of the attempt to return to the fossil fuel-based world order. As well as reverting to imperialist ideological and geopolitical doctrines based on hard power and spheres of influence, authoritarianism, and Western supremacism, the document does not beat about the bush or use euphemisms. In opposition to “the disastrous ideologies of ‘climate change’ and ‘net zero’”, its aim is to “restore US energy dominance (in oil, gas, coal and nuclear power)” and “expand US access to critical minerals and materials”. In this context, the military operation in early 2026 in Venezuela has been the US’s first test of ideological hegemony and control over natural resources within its sphere of influence. Emboldened by the apparent success of this strategy, Trumpist imperialism has stepped up the pace, attempting to subdue the Iranian regime as well, which, incidentally, controls the Strait of Hormuz through which 20 per cent of the world’s oil and gas passes.

But this process of political, territorial, and energy neo-colonisation is not confined solely to the US’s historical enemies; Europe is also in its crosshairs. As the NSS argues that the “US objective must be to help Europe correct its current course” through “patriotic parties” – now veritable Trojan horses of this neo-imperialism within the EU – we are witnessing, live and in plain sight, external interference in European internal affairs. In the ideological vision of the reactionary international, the European Union project is superfluous. Despite the EU’s contradictions and double standards in international conflicts, the reactionary right has no need for its founding values based on international law, multilateralism, cooperation and continental solidarity. And, aligning their interests with those of fossil fuel capital, they have no need for the EU’s commitment to the energy transition.

Inevitably, the energy transition clashes with fossil fuel imperialism. Beyond calling into question the enormous profits of the fossil fuel sector, it also reshuffles the geopolitical deck. Whilst the US, Russia and the Gulf states base much of their power on their position as the world’s leading oil producers, the EU – but above all China, the new great power of green capitalism – has accelerated the shift towards renewables. In this new “ecological Cold War”, the marked differences are becoming increasingly acute between the old petro-states that do not want to die and the aspiring electro-states that have not yet been born.

In this sense, those who commit to the energy transition are, in effect, committing to reducing their dependence on fossil-fuel capitalism – whether corporate or state-led – and to strengthening their sovereignty in all its dimensions in the face of imperialism, whether Trumpist or Putinist.2 For Europe, therefore, in addition to all the ethical and climate-related reasons inherited from the Paris Agreement, which are as relevant today as they were in 2015, the ecological transition can also be viewed politically as a powerful tool of sovereignty against fossil fuel vassalage. Turning Europe into an electro-continent and its member states into electro-states is one of the central pillars of global geopolitics in the coming years.

For Europe, the ecological transition can also be viewed politically as a powerful tool of sovereignty against fossil fuel vassalage.

Eco-socialism in the new world (dis)order

Looking ahead, we are witnessing a profound shift in the underlying logic of the just transition. Since the Paris Agreement, this was the executive arm of “climate cultural hegemony”, driven above all by ethical and solidarity-based motives of caring for the planet, future generations, or the Pacific islands. Today, however, the energy transition is taking place mainly in Europe for geopolitical reasons of national and continental sovereignty. Through the electrification of everything everywhere – the still-emerging “electric hegemony” – the energy transition is being reframed within an “independence versus empire” context. Without abandoning the progress of the previous decade, this new landscape compels all actors to rethink their vision, strategies, and alliances.

Yet there is a trap that we must avoid. It is true that climate action is no longer an end in itself, but rather a possible consequence of the quest for sovereignty, yet this does not detract in the slightest from the climate emergency. The environmental reasons for a transition remain as relevant as ever, if not more so, in the face of the serious and ongoing global warming that is causing ever-increasing social, economic, labour, and environmental devastation. Downplaying it, prioritising competitiveness over sustainability, deregulating and dismantling the European Green Deal under pressure from certain economic sectors, or treating issues of sovereignty and climate in a non-complementary manner would be grave errors and own goals.3

Today, the energy transition is doubly urgent. Added to the climate emergency is the urgency of building sovereignty through the transition. The latter does not replace the former; both are equally relevant and are two sides of the same coin. Any backtracking on climate policy represents a short-term gain for competitiveness and a long-term loss for sovereignty and resilience.

Furthermore, given that we face both climate and geopolitical emergencies there is a need for Europe, to push towards the energy transition swiftly and at a large scale. Whilst they remain important, the time has passed for confining ourselves to think tanks and the “small is beautiful” ethosof the 1970s. Fighting the tide of climate denial and – as wars in Ukraine and Iran drive up the price of the fossil fuels on which we still so heavily depend – speeding up the energy transition requires greater political, industrial, and social impetus. This should come through major public and private investment, reducing energy demand, and rapidly transforming mass consumption to make it renewable and sustainable. As activist and reporter Gorka Laurnaga suggests, “If climate change [and, I would add, geopolitics] is a macro-problem, it cannot be solved with micro-responses.”

To this end, it is essential to overcome the contradictions of the energy transition at a local level, where alliances between a romanticised view of the countryside and agriculture, nimbyism, doomsday thinking, and climate denialism are hindering the renewable energy projects needed for these new times. There is no room for leniency towards unscrupulous multinationals or local corruption, and participatory and environmental safeguards should be vehemently upheld. Such an effort should include committing to socio-economic and employment benefits for affected communities, so that no land is sacrificed and the transition is fair. Although it is good to strive for aesthetic and cultural harmony, and the large-scale and massive is not necessarily beautiful, large projects like these will save lives in the face of the major climate and geopolitical challenges of today and the coming decades.

However, for the energy transition to take place, essential raw materials are also needed. Whether we are talking about lithium, cobalt, or rare earth minerals,4 all these materials are used in batteries, wind turbines, solar panels, or heat pumps and are essential for Europe’s electrification and decarbonisation. However, 10 out of 26 critical raw materials are entirely imported from outside the EU, and none of the rare earths used in the EU are processed internally. In other words, the bloc is highly dependent on third countries – especially China – for access to or the processing of critical raw materials essential to its energy transition. Without strategic resources directly exploited and controlled throughout the entire value chain by the EU, strategic autonomy is an empty slogan and the energy transition as a vehicle for sovereignty is a pipe dream.

In addition to a structural and long-term reorientation of production and consumption in post-growth terms as well as a firm industrial commitment to the recycling of raw materials, this also entails an inevitable relocation of extraction to European territory. On the road towards decarbonisation, we cannot expect to maintain high levels of welfare and public services and bring about a successful ecological transition unless we relocate closer to home some of the negative impacts of our way of life. These impacts are currently outsourced to countries with lighter social, labour and environmental protections. There can be no sovereignty without a minimum level of extraction on European soil. What matters is that this is done in accordance with democratic rules, strict limits, social, climate, and biodiversity protections, and humane labour conditions. It must also bring benefits for the local populations involved.

Today, the energy transition is doubly urgent. Added to the climate emergency is the urgency of building sovereignty through the transition.

Sovereignty through alliance

At the same time, sovereignty is never absolute. Even though globalisation is undergoing severe turbulence, there are and will continue to be many economic, social, and ecological interdependencies in the coming decades in a highly interconnected world. To avoid falling into energy vassalage under the US, Russia, or the Gulf states, Europe must commit to further diversifying its strategic alliances. As spheres of influence return, diversification should involve the staunch defence of multilateralism and the ability to strike agreements of various kinds with different countries, with a central focus on energy and raw materials.

When production or recycling is not possible in Europe, the EU should never be reliant on a single source. Let Russian gas or the political unreliability of the United States serve as a lesson. One condition should always be clear: bilateral agreements should be built under the umbrella of the Paris Agreement and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the International Labour Organization, and the 2030 Agenda, and necessitate the same labour and environmental standards in the country of production as in Europe.

Beyond that, we need to reflect deeply on our complex relationship with China. The Asian giant, which controls much of the rare earths needed for renewable energy, has become a driving force behind the green transition. The rapid electrification of its economy and industry potentially puts it on a path to becoming an “electro-state”. It is a central player in the ecological transition and an indispensable partner in countering the fossil fuel empire. Like it or not, at climate summits and beyond, the global climate coalition must go through China. At the same time, as well as being a deeply authoritarian and repressive state, China is a fierce competitor with the capacity to undermine large parts of Europe’s ecological transition by flooding the markets with its overproduction. This applied a decade ago with solar panels, and it applies now with electric cars or batteries.

Ultimately, with China, the aim is to strike a dynamic balance between a firm defence of European economic sovereignty – our “Made inEurope” green transition – and our democratic values, whilst at the same time opening up and strengthening channels of geopolitical and commercial collaboration to support and drive the global fight against climate change.

Without strategic resources directly exploited and controlled by the EU, strategic autonomy is an empty slogan and the energy transition as a vehicle for sovereignty is a pipe dream.

But the question of alliances also arises at a domestic level. Considering the green transition not merely as an ethical-climate issue but also as a matter of geopolitics and sovereignty can help us broaden the range of political alliances to achieve it. Alongside the usual progressive and environmentalist partners (parties, trade unions, NGOs, businesses, etc.), there are liberal currents with a strong pro-European and supranationalist ideology, as well as other conservative and patriotic currents, with a strong emphasis on the state and fierce protection of their homeland. In fact, the prospect of colonisation and external interference represents a serious ideological rift for some European nationalist-denialist currents, turning their worldview into a “confused patriotism”. By vehemently opposing the Green New Dealand, in doing so, defending the fossil fuel empire politically and economically, they create a profound internal contradiction: one can hardly defend one’s homeland whilst simultaneously selling it to foreign powers and becoming mere vassals to them. Whilst we clearly need to put our finger on the nationalist-denialist sore spot, it is time to strengthen traditional alliances centred on the ethical-climate axis and forge more uncomfortable ones, this time centred on the energy sovereignty axis.

This is not the time to remain self-absorbed. Beyond defending what has been achieved over the last decade, we must now adapt to the new context and strategically reposition ourselves to regain the initiative. For the sake of sustainability and sovereignty, the just transition can and must win the cultural and political battle against the fossil fuel empire.

This article was originally published in Spanish in the magazine Gaceta Sindical. Reflexión y Debate (CCOO), Issue 42, May 2026. It is republished here with permission.

Translated by Albie Mills |Voxeurop

1. For example, in 2025, the European People’s Party broke through the cordon sanitaire surrounding the environmental sustainability of large corporations in the European Parliament for the first time. See: https://elpais.com/internacional/2025-11-23/el-acercamiento-de-la-derecha-a-los-ultras-tensa-la-cuerda-en-bruselas.html ︎
2. The similarities between Putin and Trump, beyond the political currents they represent, are becoming increasingly evident. Ideologically, they are defenders of “traditional values”, rooted in a Christian and white world that must be saved from decline, with an obsession against the LGBT community and feminism, whilst in political practice they systematically employ lies and contempt for liberal and parliamentary democracy. ︎
3. Let us not confuse simplification with deregulation. Whilst it is always possible to improve administrative efficiency by simplifying processes and laws (for example, for SMEs), this is not the same as deregulation, the aim of which is to weaken legal safeguards, almost always in favour of big business. ︎
4. These 17 chemical elements are in fact metal oxides that are insoluble in water; in the 18th century, the term “earth” was used to refer to oxides. Many are not in fact “rare” elements (they may even be more abundant than lead or copper) but are classified as “rare” because it is very uncommon to find them in a pure form. ︎

Plastic has a negative impact throughout its entire life cycle, from the extraction of raw materials to its end of life. In grassroots communities, plastic pollution is often perceived only as visible waste in the environment, but it also represents a broader and silent threat to human health,  linked to our daily exposure to plastics and the toxic substances they contain.

I am Anas SEKO, a specialist in communication on plastic pollution and a mobile photographic artist in Benin that envisions sparking the interest of communities and authorities through a photographic project called “The Taste of Plastic.” It is a visual documentation project which explores the role of plastic in primary school food practices.  Students are daily exposed to this toxic material and use it through the containers in which their meals are served.

Observations with plastic food contact materials were conducted during recess in the canteen of Cocotomey Public Primary School, from 10:16 a.m. to 10:35 a.m. on Monday, March 16, 2026, using direct field observation and mobile photography. Within this brief 19-minute period, numerous children between the ages of 5 and 10 were potentially exposed to microplastics and harmful additives through the transfer of substances from plastic containers to food, the consumption of hot meals served in plastic packaging, and direct oral contact with plastic materials. Through these documented images, the project seeks to highlight a reality that often goes unnoticed, the day-to-day exposure to microplastics and toxic chemicals, and invites a closer examination of the use of plastic, while questioning possible alternatives. For a long time, I witnessed the use of plastic in my community, and being aware of the impact of microplastics and additives on human health, I was shocked to see that, from childhood, students are exposed to plastic both at school and in their daily life. This stands in contrast to traditional practices in many African communities, where food was commonly served in clay dishes and wrapped in natural materials such as leaves and calabashes before plastic became widespread.

Hot Akassa, hot plastic | Akassa is a traditional food paste made from fermented maize, widely consumed in several West African countries, particularly in Benin.

Bissap and microplastics | The red bissap juice held in the student's hand is a traditional West African beverage made by infusing the dried calyces of the hibiscus flower.

My hot porridge | A traditional West African porridge made from fermented and granulated maize flour.

From its very design, plastic incorporates a multitude of chemical additives, including flame retardants, plasticizers, and stabilisers, among others, some of which are recognized as endocrine disruptors. According to the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), this exposure to plastic is associated with effects on the renal, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, neurological, reproductive and respiratory systems; impacts include cancer, diabetes, and developmental toxicity. Children are particularly vulnerable to the toxic effects of plastic, as exposure during early stages of life can cause impacts that are less reversible than in adults such as hormonal disruption and developmental effects. As concerns over plastic pollution and human exposure continue to grow, BFFP and its members need to push for a drastic reduction of plastic production, full transparency on chemicals in plastics and its elimination, while prioritizing reuse and refill systems over single-use plastic. We also call for plastic producers to be held accountable for the full lifecycle of their products, through the polluter pays principle.

Around the world, activists, volunteers, and grassroots organizations are leading the fight to end plastic pollution. For me, the next step is to advocate to the government for the elimination of plastic in student’s food practices through policy regulation and reforms.  I also plan to mobilize funding to co-create plastic-free solutions such as reuse and refill, in the school where the photos were taken, starting from the next school year. Phasing out plastic is an urgent priority to protect human health and the environment, and we cannot remain silent in the face of this growing crisis, fueled by the petrochemical industries.

Please find the following link to download my proposal: 

- French version : https://forms.gle/tb5xQ1244WUoCdAe9

- English version : https://forms.gle/E1Kc2uhkGyAnrszC9

The Lock the Gate Alliance is calling for scrutiny over Origin Energy's plan to drill gas wells and spread chemical-laden waste directly onto the land as part of a giant gas project under development in Tara. 

Section 4 was recirculated for public comment on July 22, 2026.
New close of Public Comment period is Friday, August 21, 2026 at 5pm.

Gualala Redwood Timber’s 167-acre Card Timber Harvest Plan (THP 1-26-00021-SON) is located in the floodplain on the west side of the South Fork Gualala River, from confluence of the North and South Forks, down past Buckeye Creek. The plan was submitted to Cal Fire on February 20, 2026, but Cal Fire determined that the plan was unacceptable due to required information which was missing. GRT re-submitted the plan on March 26, 2026.

The Public Comment period closed on July 6, 2026 but was re-opened on July 22 for comments on Section 4 (cumulative impacts). New close of Public Comment period is Friday, August 21, 2026 at 5pm.

This is essentially ‘Dogwood West‘ – the Dogwood THP was entirely in the floodplain on the east side of the South Fork (except for a few acres on the south side of the main stem of the Gualala River). The Card THP is entirely in the floodplain on the west side of the South Fork.

Read Friends of Gualala River’s July 6, 2026 comments on this THP.

Aerial view of the watershed (blue outline), the proposed Card THP harvest area (orange), and prior approved THPs (red). Fill opacity reflects harvest intensity – a heavier fill indicates a higher Equivalent Clearcut Area multiplier.

Note: CalFire’s standard procedure is to print out the plan documents, scan them, and post the images to their publicly accessible database, CalTREES. As a result, it is impossible to search for text in the documents, because there are no words in the documents posted, only images of words. In order to make the documents more useful, whenever possible we have used optical character recognition (OCR) on the documents posted below, so that you can search them.

Card Timber Harvest Plan documents

(Re-submitted 3/26/2026)

Card THP Section 1 – [3 MB, 11 pages] Legal description: Cover pages, signatures.

Card THP Section 2 – [14 MB, 103 pages] Operations: Silviculture, yarding, erosion hazard rating, winter operations, roads & landings, watercourse & lake protections, alternative watercourse & lake protections (in lieu of standard rules), biological resources, maps.

Card THP Section 3 – [3 MB, 24 pages] Supporting materials: General site description, analysis of alternatives, discussion and justification of in-lieu and/or alternative watercourse and lake protection practices, cultural resources.

Card THP Section 4 – [40 MB, 165 pages] Cumulative Impacts: Past, present and future projects, assessment of cumulative watershed effects, soil productivity, biological resources, recreational, visual, traffic, greenhouse gas impacts, wildfire risks.

Section 4 was recirculated for public comment on July 22, 2026.
New close of Public Comment period is Friday, August 21, 2026 at 5pm.

Card THP Section 5 – [20 MB, 147 pages] Attachments: Including soil erosion hazards, Erosion Control Plan, culvert sizing, botanical surveys, geology report, Northern Spotted Owl information, road work.

Card THP Section 6 – [1 MB, 1 page] Archeological information: (confidential)

Additional Documents

Card THP – Response to 1st Review Questions, by Registered Pro. Forester
[4/2/26, 13 MB, 51 pages]

Card THP – Pre-Harvest Inspection, by Dept. of Fish and Wildlife
[4/28/26, 0.1 MB, 7 pages]

Card THP – Pre-Harvest Inspection, by Cal Fire
[4/30/26, 1.4 MB, 17 pages]

Card THP – Pre-Harvest Inspection, by Regional Water Quality Control Board
[5/1/26, 0.3 MB, 6 pages]

Card THP – Response to Agency Recommendations, by Registered Pro. Forester
[6/2/26, 33 MB, 54 pages]

Card THP – 2nd Review Recommendations, by Dept. of Fish and Wildlife
[6/17/26, 0.1 MB, 3 pages]

Card THP – 2nd Review Questions, by Cal Fire
[6/18/26, 1 MB, 3 pages]

Card THP – Response to 2nd Review Questions, by Registered Pro. Forester
[6/19/26, 2.5 MB, 28 pages]

Card THP – Recommended for approval, by Cal Fire
[6/25/26, 1 MB, 1 pages]

Card THP – Comments by Jeanne Jackson
[7/1/26, 1 MB, 2 pages]

Card THP – Comments by Chris Poehlmann
[7/2/26, 1 MB, 2 pages]

Card THP – Comments by Friends of South Fork Gualala
[7/6/26, 1 MB, 2 pages]

Card THP – Comments by Friends of Gualala River
[7/6/26, 16 MB, 36 pages + 100 pages of attachments]

Card THP map, northern portion

Card THP map, southern portion

All documents regarding this logging plan are available in the new CalTREES system.

Unfortunately, CalTREES is not easy to use, so FoGR has compiled some
basic instructions for use of CalTREES to help you navigate the system.

To download additional documents for this logging plan,
if you want to follow the back & forth as agencies ask questions and the RPF replies,
visit the Card THP page on the CalTREES website.

Below are instructions on how to submit comments during the public comment period.

Public Comment period closed on July 6, 2026 but was re-opened
on July 22 for comments on Section 4 (cumulative impacts).
New close of Public Comment period is Friday, August 21, 2026 at 5pm.

To submit your comments on a logging plan, email your comments to: santarosapubliccomment@fire.ca.gov
or send your comments via U.S. Mail to:

Forest Practice
California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection
135 Ridgway Ave.
Santa Rosa, CA 95401

In the subject line of your email message, or at the top of your letter,
be sure to reference the THP number and name, for example:
THP 1-26-00021-SON “Card”