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‘City slicker’ payments swell to $2.6B with Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill and farm bailouts Anthony Lacey July 8, 2026

More than 92,000 “city slickers” living in some of the biggest metropolitan areas in the U.S. took in over $2.6 billion in farm subsidies between 2020 and 2025, even though many of these people don’t live or work on farms, a new EWG analysis finds.

The soaring payouts went to 13,000 more city slickers compared to last year’s analysis, that looked at payments through 2024, EWG found. At the same time, farm bankruptcies have recently reached new heights.

EWG analyzed Department of Agriculture data and found that between 2020 and 2025, $2.6 billion in farm subsidies went to 92,766 residents of Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and 197 other major metro areas – with many never setting foot on farmland.

These payments averaged more than $28,000 per person between 2020 and 2025, or just over $4,700 each per year, EWG’s analysis found.

Even more taxpayer funds are going to city recipients this year after Republicans in Congress pushed through President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The law enlarged loopholes that make it easier to qualify for the payouts and get more money.

It hiked payment limits from $125,000 to $155,000 per person, letting every member of some farms collect up to $155,000 a year each, even if they don’t live or work on a farm, as long as it is organized as a pass-through entity, such as a joint venture, S corporation or limited liability corporation.

EWG compiled a list of the 200 biggest metro areas, along with the number of urban recipients and the total farm subsidies they received between 2020 and 2025, including many new recipients in those areas possibly benefiting from the expanded loopholes:

200 largest metro areas with city slicker subsidy recipients

Image Record subsidy amounts

The U.S. is reaching record levels of agricultural industry bailouts, exceeding $25 billion since early 2025, with even more taxpayer-funded handouts still being requested. And these latest bailouts follow payouts from multiple disaster programs in the first and second Trump administrations.

The subsidy increases were paid for with cuts to Medicaid totaling nearly $1 trillion and $187 billion in cuts to hunger assistance programs. These reductions have led to hospital closings and the loss of hunger assistance for over 4 million Americans, including more than 800,000 children. 

As more and more funding is made available for farm subsidies, many recipients benefit from rules that allow people not involved in day-to-day life on the farm to collect payments.

Farm subsidy recipients must be “actively engaged” in farming. 

But it’s very easy to qualify as “actively engaged,” even for someone who never lives or works on a farm. The farm bill’s loopholes allow urban residents to get farm subsidies, even if they do not live or work on a farm. The Government Accountability Office in 2018 found that roughly one-fourth of farm subsidy recipients do not contribute any personal labor to farms.

Another GAO report, issued last month, examined improper payments made to the agriculture industry. It found that a tariff relief program from Trump’s first term had an improper payment rate of 19.3%. A USDA disaster program made improper payments at a rate of 45.2%.

The White House recently requested $11 billion to once again bail out the agricultural industry over the rising costs of fertilizer and fuel from Trump’s war with Iran. This would drive up total farm safety net spending to over $55 billion in 2026 alone.

The proposed “Farm Bill 2.0” making its way through the Senate this month will do nothing to fix these problems. Instead it will maintain the status quo and send billions of dollars in subsidies to city slickers who have nothing to do with farming.

Locating city slickers

For the analysis, EWG identified city slickers living in ZIP codes in the 200 most populous metro areas. Using existing datasets, EWG identified city slicker subsidy recipients as those living in areas with a population density greater than 3,000 people per square mile within census-designated metro areas. 

To rule out non-urban areas, the methodology looked at places the USDA doesn’t consider rural as well as ZIP codes that are outside a distance to a city center dictated by the city’s population size. The methodology also looked at other metrics to determine an area's rural status.

This analysis updates and builds on previous EWG estimates of city slickers, which included only recipients who lived within city limits. The updated methodology seeks to capture urban sprawl, which has changed how certain areas are defined, and to foster a better understanding of how many subsidy recipients live in urban areas.

Areas of Focus Farm Subsidies Over 13,000 more urban-area residents took in farm subsidies in 2025 than in 2024 Authors Jared Hayes July 9, 2026

A new analysis from clean energy think tank Energy Innovation finds that the Trump administration's rollback of clean energy policy will add more than half a trillion dollars to American households' collective energy costs by 2040, even as it publicly promises lower bills. 350.org says the findings confirm what millions of Americans are already living through this summer: a sudden AI-driven electricity crunch colliding with policy choices that are making the problem worse, not better.

According to the report, the cumulative impact of the administration's actions, including the repeal of clean energy tax credits, new barriers to permitting wind and solar, and a tilt toward more expensive coal-fired power, will raise the average household's energy costs by $460 by 2035, rising to $490 a year by 2040. That comes on top of electricity rates that have already spiked 7.4% nationwide since last fall, with more than a dozen states seeing double-digit increases, driven in part by the explosive growth in data center electricity demand.

The findings land just as households across the eastern US are living the consequences directly. A "heat dome" and severe storms over the Fourth of July weekend left almost a million households without power across more than a dozen states, and sent wholesale electricity prices up more than 240% in New England and doubled in New York City. Detroit was among the hardest hit: roughly 350,000 people lost power, some for four to five days, with outages still ongoing for some. Detroit's utility, DTE, ranked among the worst-rated in the country, has pushed through repeated rate hikes even as reliability has failed to improve, including a $242.2 million increase approved in February during a deadly cold snap, and a further request in April for up to $474 million, an 11% increase.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has intervened in DTE and Consumers Energy's current rate cases over the pattern, saying DTE continues to treat Michigan families like an open checkbook to satisfy its shareholders, whether through massive rate hike requests or secret data center contracts.

Candice Fortin, US Campaigns Manager at 350.org, said:

"This report puts numbers on something households are already feeling in their bills and their blackouts. We were told cutting clean energy would lower costs. Instead, we're seeing the opposite: rates spiking, grids failing under record heat, and households paying more while data centers' electricity use explodes. You can't fix an affordability crisis by blocking the cheapest, fastest power we have to build. The fossil fuel industry and this administration's policies are adding fuel to the fire, and ordinary ratepayers are the ones getting burned."

The Trump administration disputes the report's findings, with the White House and Department of Energy characterising Energy Innovation's analysis as partisan and arguing that rolling back clean energy regulation will ultimately lower prices by letting market forces determine new generation. Energy Innovation and other independent analysts maintain there is a direct line between the administration's policies and rising bills, pointing to the growing gap between the promise of cheaper energy and the reality households are experiencing this summer.

Meta’s latest AI image generation feature raises serious privacy concerns by automatically allowing public Instagram profiles to be used in AI-generated images unless users actively opt out. The new “Muse Image” model enables users to generate AI images using another person’s likeness simply by tagging their public Instagram account in a prompt. Consumers are not affirmatively asked for permission, are not notified when their images are used, and AI-generated images already created from their content will remain even if they later disable the feature. While Meta says users can opt out through account settings, those controls require users to navigate multiple layers of settings rather than obtaining clear, affirmative consent before their likeness is used.

J.B. Branch, director of federal AI governance and technology policy at Public Citizen, issued the following statement:

“Meta has once again chosen the creepiest possible path. People should not wake up to discover their face has become raw material for someone else’s AI experiment. This is another invasion of consumers’ privacy. Instead of asking for meaningful consent, Meta quietly defaults users into the system and buries the opt-out in account settings. It’s a playbook we’ve come to expect from a company with a long history of putting its business interests ahead of the public.

“Unfortunately, we’ve reached a point where many technology companies treat every piece of our personal information—our photos, our voices, our biometric identifiers, even our relationships—as raw material to fuel their AI ambitions. Privacy has already been eroded in countless ways, but allowing companies to appropriate people’s likenesses without meaningful, affirmative consent crosses what should be a brightline. If our faces can be repurposed for AI simply because we posted a public photo, then very little remains off limits. Congress should establish clear privacy protections that require affirmative consent before companies can use a person’s image or likeness for AI products.”

View the full size guide with clickable links here.

Welcome!

The guide has been compiled with the intention of increasing public access to services that are free or low-cost in the New Orleans area. Most listings are for services located in Orleans & Jefferson parishes, although select state and nationwide services have also been included.

Listed resources were contacted by phone and asked to verify the information listed. Organizations were specifically and intentionally asked about funding options for uninsured patients, the availability of Spanish translation services, and their ability to provide services for transgender and non-binary patients. Available transgender and non-binary services have been incorporated throughout and can also be found in a dedicated section of this guide.

This guide is a 2026 update based on information compiled by staff and volunteers for the REACH NOLA/Common Ground Health Clinic Community Resource Guide from 2006-14, and working directly from the 2025 edition, which sourced information compiled by volunteers at the Center for Ethical Living & Social Justice Renewal, as well as the Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming NOLA Resource Guide produced by Dr. Jennifer Glick and Dr. Robin Ivester.

In response to the world around us this year, we have added a new immigration section and have expanded the food and mental health sections.

This edition has been produced in partnership with Imagine Water Works as a public service by volunteer community members and is available free of charge to all people.

Download a free copy for printing here. This version saves paper and can be folded into a booklet. We encourage people and organizations to print your own copies as needed. Copies should remain unedited. Please do not add logos or remove the front page, credit pages, resource pages, or ISBN#.

If you are an organization and would like to partner with us to print copies of your own with your logo and can share or cover printing costs, email klie@imaginewaterworks.org. We are happy to work with your team to make this information available to all.

HELP US PRINT COPIES: DONATE TO THE NOCRG Acknowledgements:

Many people did the work of making this edition of the resource guide possible!

Thanks to the entire Imagine Water Works team for partnering on this project and hosting our volunteers so hospitably, to Antigravity and Imagine Water Works for digital distro, and to many New Orleanians committed to community care and harm reduction, including but not limited to: Klie Kliebert, Carly Ry, Sana Fujimora, Ben Collongues, Virginia Gregory, Elizabeth Gelvin, Sarah Watson, Angelique Thomas, everyone who came out to our volunteer call-a-thons, and even more lovely folks who wish to remain anonymous, and probably you.

Finally, love and appreciation to Harriet Burbeck for the cover art. Beauty matters!

Contact us with questions, additions, requests, and offers to volunteer or collaborate:
Coleen Murphy, coordinating organizer, at NOLAresourceguide@gmail.com

The post New Orleans Community Resource Guide 2026 appeared first on Imagine Water Works.

The debate over building energy codes, and energy efficiency in general, often centers on upfront cost. But energy efficiency more than makes up for that incremental cost with longer-term savings that add up over time, like the power of compounded interest.

A recent Department of Energy (DOE) release estimates that adopting the 2024 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) would increase residential construction costs by $9.2 billion annually, or up to $14,000 per home. Rather than focusing on the headline figure alone, it is useful to examine the estimate in the context of overall home costs and long-term homeowner economics.

Put the cost in context

Since the IECC is an energy code for residential buildings, let’s focus on single-family homes. Adding multifamily homes would only strengthen the following cost argument.

The U.S. builds roughly one million new single-family homes each year. Spread across those homes, DOE’s $9.2 billion figure implies about $9,200 per home.

Now compare that to actual home costs. Using data from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB):

• Average construction cost: $428,000
• Total price including land and soft costs: $665,000

That means that the  $9.2 billion headline represents:

• 2.15% increase relative to construction cost
• 1.38% increase relative to full home price

In other words, even under DOE’s assumptions, energy codes raise total home costs by around one to two percent. That is small relative to normal year-to-year swings in material costs, interest rates, or land prices.

It is also far below the $31,000 figure often cited in industry testimony.

What do homeowners get in return?

The key question is not cost alone. It is cost versus savings.

DOE’s analytical framework recognizes this. It evaluates:

• upfront incremental cost
• annual energy savings
• payback period
• life-cycle cost over a 30-year mortgage
• annual cash flow to the homeowner

This matters because homeowners do not experience costs in isolation. They generally experience monthly cash flow. Lower energy consumption can also improve long-term affordability by reducing exposure to future energy price volatility while supporting a more efficient and reliable energy system.

Independent analysis from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) shows that the 2024 IECC:

• reduces household energy costs by 6.8% on average
• produces positive cash flow in year one
• yields about $144 in net savings in the first year

Even if the upfront cost were $9,200, the structure of mortgage financing means:

• the incremental monthly mortgage cost is modest
• energy savings offset that cost immediately
• households come out ahead from the start

Looking Beyond Simple Payback DOE’s press release emphasizes long “payback periods,” suggesting some exceed 10 years. But simple payback may not be the strongest for housing decisions:

1. Because Most Homes are financed. Buyers do not pay $9,200 upfront in cash. They typically finance it over 30 years.
2. Cash flow matters more than payback. DOE’s methodology highlights “years to positive cash flow” as a key metric. = On that basis, IECC performs well.
3. Homes last decades. Efficiency improvements in the building envelope deliver savings over the life of the home, not just a short payback window.

Discussions about housing affordability often focus on reducing upfront construction costs. When asking how we can improve affordability for homeowners, an equally important consideration is the long-term cost of owning and operating a home. Building energy efficiency can help lower energy bills over decades, making it an important part of the affordability conversation.

As policymakers, builders, and consumers evaluate future building energy codes, the discussion should consider both upfront costs and long-term value. Looking at both sides of the equation provides a more complete picture of how energy efficiency can support housing affordability over the life of a home.

As energy demand continues to grow from new housing, transportation, manufacturing, and data centers, improving building efficiency can help reduce unnecessary energy demand while supporting affordability and system reliability. Using energy more efficiently remains one of the lowest-cost strategies for reducing waste and managing long-term energy costs.

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

Functional foods are generally those that contain naturally occurring or added compounds, providing health benefits beyond basic nutrition. While research suggests functional foods may support long-term health when consumed alongside a balanced diet, questions remain about the extent of their benefits.

Communities around the world have long used food, herbs, and spices to treat illness and promote well-being. Ancient civilizations in India, Greece, and Egypt used moringa to support skin health and mental fitness. Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine practices incorporated turmeric as an anti-inflammatory and tea as an antioxidant. Foods like ginger and peppermint have long been used to relieve nausea and facilitate digestion.

The modern concept of functional foods emerged in Japan. In 1991, the country introduced its Foods for Specified Health Uses (FOSHU) program, creating one of the first regulatory systems for foods with scientifically supported health claims. Since then, consumer interest in functional foods has steadily grown.

“The push for functional foods gets stronger every year,” says Dr. Marion Nestle, the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, Emerita, at New York University. According to Fortune Business Insights, the global functional food and beverage industry is projected to grow from US$437.62 billion in 2026 to US$983.17 billion by 2034.

Government agencies, researchers, and international organizations generally define functional foods as those with health benefits beyond basic nutrition, but they differ on which foods belong in that category.

Some definitions of functional foods, including those used by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Royal Society of Chemistry, include naturally functional foods, such as berries rich in antioxidants, oats containing cholesterol-lowering soluble fiber, fatty fish high in omega-3 fatty acids, fermented foods with probiotics, and nuts rich in unsaturated fats and other beneficial nutrients.

Others, including the Institute of Food Technologists, research published in Frontiers in Nutrition and Nutrients, and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, also apply the term to foods that have been fortified, enriched, or enhanced to provide a specific health benefit. Common examples include vitamin D milk, calcium-fortified orange juice, probiotic yogurt, and margarine containing plant sterols.

Academic, government, and private research institutes around the globe are currently conducting extensive research on functional foods’ health impacts. Some researchers have linked some functional foods to lower cholesterol, improved gut health, reduced inflammation, and better blood sugar control, suggesting they may hold promise for public health.

But scientists warn that functional foods are not a cure-all. No single food can cure or prevent diseases, and functional foods cannot replace medical treatments, according to the Mayo Clinic. Researchers emphasize that functional foods further health when they complement, not replace, a balanced, nutritious diet.

Researchers also warn that functional food marketing can create a health halo, leading consumers to perceive products as healthy based on a single health claim, rather than all product ingredients and processing.

There are also significant socioeconomic barriers to equitable access. Functional foods often cost three to five times more than conventional products, and research suggests that higher household income levels are often associated with more functional food purchases.

Regulatory approaches also vary widely around the world. The European Union requires manufacturers to submit scientific evidence before health claims can appear on food labels. In contrast, the United States has no formal legal definition of a functional food, instead regulating these products under existing food and labeling laws. As a result, consumers may encounter different products and health claims depending on where they live.

As research on functional foods continues to evolve, experts emphasize that realizing their public health potential will require stronger evidence and clearer standards. “Food quality data, grounded in comprehensive and standardized molecular analysis, must become a central metric for how we measure, manage, and build value across food and health systems,” according to Selena Ahmed, the Executive Director of The Periodic Table of Food Initiative and Dean of Food EDU at the American Heart Association, John de la Parra, Director of the Food Initiative at The Rockefeller Foundation, Justin Siegel, Faculty Director of the Innovation Institute for Food and Health at the University of California Davis, and Roy Steiner, Senior Vice President of the Food Initiative at The Rockefeller Foundation. “Without knowing what’s actually in our food, the tens of thousands of molecules, we cannot design food systems that sustain health.”

FAO highlights the need for better food safety frameworks as new functional products enter the market. Researchers call for larger clinical studies involving more diverse populations, along with greater multidisciplinary collaboration between nutrition science, medicine, and the food industry.

Consumers should “just be aware of what you’re actually putting into your body, because not all products that are labeled ‘functional’ are truly effective,” says Grace Derocha, a nutritionist who is also a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

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

Photo courtesy of Ash Kanis, Unsplash

The post Food Tank Explains: Functional Foods appeared first on Food Tank.

CALGARY — David Pickup, director of the Pembina Institute’s Electricity program, made the following statement in response to the government of Alberta’s announcement that Meta will build its first Canadian data centre in Alberta. “Today’s...

As EV sales boom and grids seek more energy storage, researchers are racing to develop batteries that are cheaper, more powerful, and less reliant on hard-to-source materials. Lithium-ion still dominates, but sodium-ion and solid-state technologies are moving from lab to market.

Read more on E360 →

As governments and institutions pledged billions for offshore wind, cleaner shipping and marine protection at last month’s Our Ocean Conference in Mombasa, countries are increasingly turning to the ocean as a source of jobs and climate action.

But civil society groups warn that the push to expand the “blue economy” may reproduce familiar inequalities unless coastal communities have a greater say in how projects are designed, financed and governed. 

Neville van Rooy from The Green Connection in South Africa, which works with coastal communities who rely directly on the ocean for their livelihoods, said local people were frequently unaware of proposed developments until civil society groups alerted them. 

“Communities need to be taken seriously,” van Rooy told delegates at the Mombasa conference held on the shores of the Indian Ocean. 

“Just because they are often struggling does not mean they do not have a vision of development. Inclusivity needs to be at the centre and development pathways must build on communities’ own experience, including indigenous knowledge systems rooted in harmony with nature.” 

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Ocean investment flowing in

The value of the blue economy—the sustainable use and protection of marine resources—doubled from $1.3 trillion in 1995 to $2.6 trillion in 2020 and is projected to quadruple by 2050, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The scale of ambition in Mombasa was clear, with governments, institutions, companies and civil society groups announcing 320 commitments worth $6.4 billion.

The largest share went to sustainable blue economy projects, with 86 commitments worth $2.86 billion, followed by sustainable fisheries with $1.75 billion and ocean-climate action with $1.18 billion.  

The pledges included support for ocean startups in Africa, coastal ecosystem restoration across the Indian Ocean, marine research and policy, recycling discarded fishing nets, sustainable livelihoods in Timor-Leste and planning tools for offshore wind.  

Cynthia Barzuna, global deputy director of the Ocean Program at the World Resources Institute, said there are signs that blue finance and ocean planning are moving closer to coastal communities, particularly through the development of sustainable ocean plans.  

In 2020, a group of 14 countries – co-led by Australia and Chile – pledged to manage their oceans sustainably, by jointly drawing up plans with coastal communities to shape how marine resources are managed and where investments should go.

“Once communities are involved in the planning, bring in their knowledge, and participate in designing, developing and implementing a sustainable ocean plan, it puts us on the right path,” Barzuna told Climate Home News on the sidelines of the conference. 

Yet some of those countries – including Kenya, Australia and Mexico – have embarked on a new wave of offshore oil and gas projects, threatening key biodiversity hotspots, according to a recent report by a group of environmental NGOs.

When projects go wrong

Civil society groups say lessons need to be learnt from failed blue economy projects too. 

In Kenya, a proposed coal-fired power plant at Lamu Port – a fragile coastal ecosystem and a UNESCO World Heritage site – was challenged by residents and campaigners who cited little consultation and threats to fishing, tourism, culture and public health. 

In 2019, Kenya’s National Environment Tribunal revoked its environmental licence, citing inadequate public participation and flaws in the environmental assessment – a decision later upheld by the courts.  

“It is not enough to say that whatever you are doing is in the name of the communities, their livelihoods and whatever else you want to improve”, but that they should be directly involved in projects from the start, said Omar Elmawi, a Kenyan climate activist and Convenor of the Africa Movement of Movements. 

He said another lesson learnt was that environmental impact assessments must not only be completed, but “must be done rigorously” and that the process has to be transparent so that people feel involved and that their views are being counted. 

Blue transition

Blue carbon schemes can also attract finance, but campaigners said communities that have long protected mangroves, seagrasses and salt marshes must be treated as rights-holders, not just beneficiaries. In some past projects, they said, communities were asked to provide labour, attend consultations or receive small payments, while outside developers retained control over carbon revenues and decisions over how ecosystems were managed.

Similarly, offshore wind and marine protected areas can bring climate and conservation gains, but if poorly planned, they can disrupt fishing grounds, marine species and small-scale fishers’ access to the sea, added campaigners. 

Farida Aliwa, executive director of Natural Justice, said the answer was not to halt ocean-based development, but to put in place stronger safeguards before projects are approved, financed and expanded. 

Aliwa said legal frameworks across Africa were evolving, with strategic litigation increasingly being used to hold governments accountable for environmental, climate and human rights impacts related to new projects.  

But she warned that communities and coastal defenders still face shrinking civic space, and said any shift to renewable energy must be designed responsibly. 

“As we work on alternatives, we need to ensure that renewable projects benefit communities,” she said. 

The post As blue economy gathers pace, communities must benefit from ocean boom, activists say appeared first on Climate Home News.

As countries gathered in Geneva this week for the first UN dialogue on the governance of artificial intelligence, campaigners said the debate around the fast-evolving technology has overlooked the potential harm it could cause to nature and biodiversity.

Not only has nature been absent from discussions on the environmental impacts of AI data centres, which focus mainly on carbon emissions and water use, there has also been no consideration of how AI deployment by industry could gobble up more natural resources, activists warned.

Brian O’Donnell, director of the Campaign for Nature, said that while AI can help protect wildlife and forests, the broader boost it will give to economic growth poses a far bigger threat than expected benefits.

“We’ve seen over $250 billion of private capital go into AI in 2024 alone – and almost all of that is seeking an economic return, and the money follows commercial value,” he told journalists. “Extraction, industrial farming, resource logistics, and the engines that drive ever more consumption are all activities that contribute to biodiversity loss.”

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The leading conservationist added that the policy documents produced by leading AI companies do not address the downstream effects of their technology for nature and biodiversity, focusing more on employment and other social issues.

Some have firms have put small sums towards projects that support conservation, he noted, but none are addressing the issue in a serious way or have included nature in the safety rules for their models.

“The living world that all of this rests upon – nature being the foundation of our economies, our societies, all life on earth – is not a primary concern in the governance of AI, as proposed by the corporates of AI,” O’Donnell said.

Positive uses steal the show

Last month, UN chief António Guterres launched an initiative to hold major AI firms accountable for their exploding environmental impacts, including carbon emissions, the amount of water and land used for data centres, and the energy they consume.

The UN boss also wants big players to commit to power all data centres with renewable energy by 2030. On Monday in Geneva, in a wide-ranging speech, he again raised his proposed “AI Environmental Transparency Initiative”. But nature has not featured in his comments on the issue.

UN asks AI companies to reveal full environmental impacts

In addition, the preliminary report of the newly formed Independent International Scientific Panel on AI – which assesses the opportunities, risks and impacts of AI – mentions environmental concerns only briefly.

The report, which examines available scientific evidence and was presented to governments at the Geneva dialogue, does not highlight any threats to nature and biodiversity but cites a study showing how AI has been used to track and reduce conflict between humans and wildlife.

O’Donnell pointed to “some really important technological uses of AI for biodiversity” such as monitoring species, forest damage and tree cover and using camera traps to see what kind of wildlife migrates in a particular area. But, he added, these get a disproportionate amount of attention compared with the threat from more rapacious resource extraction which he perceives as far greater.

By making commercial operations cheaper, quicker and more efficient, and opening access to untapped areas of land and sea, AI could drive biodiversity loss through increased over-exploitation of fish, wildlife and timber, worsening pollution and spreading invasive species on faster trade networks, he added.

Indigenous concerns

Indigenous peoples are also worried that their lands, critical mineral reserves and knowledge will be appropriated by AI and the accelerated economic development it fuels, said Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, a leading global environmental activist and Indigenous leader from Chad.

Ibrahim, who produced a report on Indigenous peoples and AI for the UN in April, told journalists that before Indigenous peoples share their know-how on managing forests and stewarding nature, companies and governments must put in place principles to ensure this can happen in a fair way that prevents it being abused by bad actors.

Warning against ‘consumer club’ as G7 forms critical minerals alliance

Her report also points to positive ways that AI can support Indigenous culture and rights, such as tackling their lack of access to digital tools, preserving their languages and knowledge and mapping their territories to detect threats and better protect biodiversity.

Efforts such as those by the UN to shape the future of AI governance should look not only at what AI can do, but also ask who benefits and how it safeguards the planet, Ibrahim said.

“If we answer those questions together with Indigenous peoples as equal partners, we can build AI that serves humanity, protects biodiversity and help restore the balance between peoples and planet in an equitable and just way,” she added.

Policy processes lag AI development

Both O’Donnell and Ibrahim said they would lobby countries, the UN and AI firms themselves to put nature and biodiversity on the political agenda, including at the UN biodiversity summit in Armenia in October.

O’Donnell told Climate Home News that when the Global Biodiversity Framework, the world’s main treaty to protect nature, was agreed in 2022, AI was still nascent but has since exploded in terms of investment and its influence on economies.

The vote that stopped a data center: US communities query resource-hungry AI

He pointed to the mismatch between the timeline of the UN’s efforts to develop governance guidelines and the speed with which AI is being developed in the real world.

“Nature can’t be sidelined in these discussions,” he said, calling for a faster and more comprehensive response from policymakers, business and the environmental community.

“We have a very short window to embed nature both into the governance constitutions of the companies themselves and into the formal regulatory [system] going forward,” he added.

The post AI governance debate silent on risks to nature, campaigners warn appeared first on Climate Home News.

Two incidents that generated worldwide headlines in recent months have called attention to the often-overlooked plight of India’s captive elephants.

In the first, an elderly female elephant died three months after she was painted pink by a Russian photographer.

Then, this May, a young tusker attacked an older, tuskless male elephant at a camp run by the forest department, leading to the death of a tourist and the elder elephant.

Although media around the world carried news about these two sad events, they’re not exactly isolated occurrences. Over the past year alone, multiple distressed elephants used in temple festivities have gone on rampages and killed people, or have suffered immensely and died.

The deaths underscore a hidden reality: Despite India’s designation of the elephant as the national heritage animal, the country allows the animals to be privately owned, which has created opportunities for them to be trafficked and exploited.

“India has an ancient cultural relationship with elephants,” says Kartick Satyanarayan, CEO and co-founder of Wildlife SOS, an animal-welfare and conservation organization headquartered in New Delhi. “But in today’s day and age, captive elephants live in a highly compromised situation as their physical, social and psychological needs are not met. Many elephants succumb to serious health and welfare issues over time.”

 

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An estimated 3,000 elephants live in captivity across the country. Of these, about 70% are privately owned – either by individuals or institutions – with a majority spending their lives in horrific conditions. Owners use these elephants for providing rides to tourists, parades at religious festivals, begging, and other exploitative activities, despite the serious concerns raised by animal-welfare activists.

The rest are owned by the various forest departments in the country, where they’re mainly used for anti-poaching patrols or forest-management activities and are better cared for than privately owned elephants.

A subspecies of the Asian elephant, Indian elephants (Elephas maximus indicus) are classified as “endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). They’re native to 11 countries in south and southeast Asia, and India is home to nearly 75% of the subspecies’ population. The latest census in India (2021-2025) estimated the wild elephant population to be 22,446.

Elephants receive the highest level of protection under Indian law. Yet traffickers take advantage of longstanding legal loopholes and continue to poach calves from the wild, torture them into submission, and exploit them in captivity.

“The law, though strong in intent, has enough structural gaps to render its protections largely ineffective in practice,” says advocate Rishabh Karan Mehta, who practices at India’s Supreme Court.

“Every elephant removed from the wild is a loss to the gene pool and genetic diversity of the wild population,” says Satyanarayan.

According to Mehta, a 2020 response to a Right to Information petition revealed that roughly 1 in 4 privately owned captive elephants lacked proper supporting documentation.

“That’s how widespread the problem is,” he says.

Captive Elephants in Tourism

Elephant riding continues to be touted by some travel agents as a must-do experience in India. Over 100 elephants ferry eager tourists to Amer Fort in the northwestern state of Rajasthan, for example.

“Tourists who ride elephants are often misled,” says Satyanarayan. “Their cultural experience is built entirely on the suffering and abuse of the elephant and causes irreversible damage to its spine and back.”

Several of the elephants at Amer Fort are blind, crippled, and have scores of wounds and abscesses. “These injuries are masterfully concealed beneath colorful decorations, velvet fabrics and paint,” says Satyanarayan.

Snatched from their mothers at an early age, elephant calves undergo a brutal “breaking-of-the-spirit” process involving severe beatings and starvation. Once they’ve submitted to their captors, they spend decades of their lives in chains, abused and neglected until death saves them from their daily suffering.

Two Cases That Ignited Firestorms

In November 2025 a Russian photographer visiting Amer Fort asked for a captive elephant to be painted bright pink for a photoshoot. The owner of an elderly elephant named Chanchal agreed. When the images of the “pink elephant” were shared on social media, a global furor erupted about the ethics of using animals in such projects.

“It’s deeply troubling that people don’t hesitate to use elephants as props and abuse them in the process,” says Satyanarayan. “It shows how little consideration there is for the elephant’s welfare,” he adds.

Three months later, Chanchal — who was in her mid-60s — died. Though the post-mortem said that she died of age-related issues, a lifetime of captivity and neglect would have had an impact on her health and wellbeing, Satyanarayan says.

“Chanchal spent decades without ever knowing a day of true freedom, a victim exploited by people for greed and profit,” he says.

Another gruesome incident in the southern state of Karnataka reignited the conversation around elephant captivity. In May, during an elephant bathing activity in the Cauvery River at the forest department-run Dubare camp, a 26-year-old tusker named Kanjan attacked an older tuskless male, Marthanda.

“These situations can occur when captive bull elephants are in proximity to each other,” says Satyanarayan.

The older elephant lost his footing in the water and fell on a female tourist standing nearby, killing her instantly. Marthanda later succumbed to his injuries as well.

“When camps become tourism attractions, then the welfare and safety of visitors and elephants needs to be the highest priority,” says Satyanarayan. “Placing visitors in close proximity to elephants can create dangerous situations for both.”

Though the camp authorities responded swiftly by stopping all close contact activities, including elephant bathing, feeding, and selfies, the measures came too late for the tourist and the elephant who lost their lives in this entirely preventable tragedy.

Captive Elephants at Religious Festivals

The southern state of Kerala has a tradition of parading richly dressed captive elephants as part of festival processions. Some of these elephants are owned by Hindu temples, but most are leased from private owners for the festivities. While churches and mosques in Kerala are not known to own any elephants, some do rent them for festival parades. The approximately 300 privately owned elephants in the state are transported between thousands of local festivals to meet demand.

Physical trauma and exhaustion, psychological distress from prolonged confinement, combined with the loud noises of festival music and fireworks, have driven several processional elephants to run helter-skelter in distress. Since January there have been multiple such incidents involving human fatalities and injuries, as well as the destruction of property.

Each festival gives elephant owners “a lot of money,” says Sangita Iyer, founder of the U.S.-registered nonprofit Voice for Asian Elephants Society and a National Geographic explorer, who notes that an elephant can bring in thousands of dollars a day for its owner. “So they don’t care about the welfare of the elephants,” she adds. “That’s the reason these elephants are constantly distressed.”

Iyer, a practicing Hindu herself, has been outspoken about the cruelty these elephants suffer in captivity.

“When elephants are tied in one spot, their wild instincts are cruelly denied,” she says. “In captivity, they are alone and they suffer like human beings suffer in solitary confinement. It impacts their brain and nervous system, and they’re constantly terrified of what’s going to  happen next.”

Iyer’s powerful 2016 film Gods in Shackles sheds light on the dark reality behind the flamboyant elephant parades at Kerala’s festivals.

“They live a life of misery,” Iyer says. “You see the shackles cutting into their flesh, tears oozing down their face,” she adds.

Loopholes in the System

Wildlife traffickers and traders use many different loopholes — both legal and administrative — to circumvent laws and legalize wild-caught elephants.

“When the [Wildlife Protection] Act was enacted [in 1972], ownership certificates were issued to regularize elephants that were already in captivity at the time,” says advocate Mehta. This was intended to be a one-time measure that was never meant to continue. “Over the decades, this mechanism has been repeatedly misused to introduce newly captured wild elephants into the captive pool by issuing fresh ownership certificates.” Mehta explains that these fresh ownership certificates are often fraudulent or issued in a rush without verifying the origin or history of the elephant.

“The absence of a centralized, tamper-proof national elephant registry and the lack of mandatory DNA-based verification means there is no reliable way to distinguish a wild-caught elephant from a captive-born one,” Mehta says.

The Way Forward

Some Asian countries are leading the way on addressing the exploitation of elephants in captivity.

In early 2026 Indonesia became the first country in Asia to introduce a nationwide ban on elephant rides and forced performances and interactions. In May Bangladesh introduced new regulations banning the use of elephants in any exploitative or cruel activities. While India has banned the use of elephants in circuses, their mistreatment in tourism and religious festivities continues.

India launched a DNA profiling program in 2022 to enable the monitoring of the captive elephants in the country and prevent the trafficking of wild elephants into captivity. Genetic material of nearly 2,000 captive elephants has been collected so far. The profiles — including parentage and ownership information — will eventually be uploaded to a centralized database and app that will make it easy to identify wild-caught elephants from captive-born ones, as well as any illegal transfers or fraudulent ownership cases.

Meanwhile animal welfare advocates hope to make elephant riding less attractive by calling attention to the hidden abuses behind tourism activities, such as the Refuse to Ride campaign that Wildlife SOS launched in 2018.

“The only way to stop the demand is by creating awareness,” says Satyanarayan. “When the demand dies, the abuse and cruelty stops,” he adds.

 

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Wildlife SOS also works closely with the Responsible Tourism Society of India, whose members include thousands of local travel agents. “Many of the big operators have assured us and given us written commitments that they will never promote the riding of elephants,” says Satyanarayan.

Wildlife SOS’ latest campaign focuses on the nearly 300 “begging” elephants in the country, who are forced to walk on hot tar roads for hours and beg for alms, despite their many injuries. The nonprofit is working toward the goal of ending this cruel practice by 2030.

The increasing number of incidents involving distressed elephants running amok during festival processions and causing human fatalities is starting to make people rethink their use. As a cruelty-free alternative to the use of captive elephants in festival processions, two nonprofits — People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in India and Iyer’s VFAES — have donated life-size robotic elephants to several temples.

“This elephant can be paraded across the village and the public have really taken well to it,” says Iyer. “They get to touch and feel these elephants and feel safe doing it. I’m hoping that in the next five to ten years, we will see a complete abolishment of live elephants being paraded.”

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

Study: Commercial Lion Farming in South Africa Could Be Harming, Not Helping, Wild Lions

The post India’s Captive Elephants in the Spotlight After High-Profile Deaths appeared first on The Revelator.

“On the Ground with Dani Nierenberg” is an ongoing series documenting Food Tank President Danielle Nierenberg’s ground-truthing work. Read more by clicking here. 

Mary Atemo greeted us with hugs and a warm smile on her farm in Kisumu West County, Kenya, roughly 120 kilometers from the Ugandan border.

She has been working with researchers from icipe for 16 years. They introduced her to push-pull farming, a simple but powerful intercropping strategy that increases crop diversity. Some plants push pests away from crops, while others pull them in, helping farmers reduce crop losses and rely less on pesticides and other agrichemicals.

Mary told us that in 2010, the Striga weed was decimating her maize crop. Striga, also called witchweed in parts of Kenya, is a parasitic plant and one of the biggest threats to maize and sorghum production in sub-Saharan Africa. According to icipe, it infests about 40 percent of the region’s arable land and causes an estimated US$7 to US$13 billion in crop losses each year. Around the Lake Victoria basin, where Mary farms, Striga can reduce maize yields by 30 to 100 percent.

And Striga wasn’t the only problem. Stem borers, insect larvae that tunnel through the stems of cereal crops, were also destroying her harvest.

When researchers from icipe first visited, Mary agreed to set aside a small experimental plot on farm. “I wanted to prove if the technology was effective or not,” she told us.

It didn’t take long.

“The stem borers ran away after a few days,” she said with a laugh.

As we sat in the shade outside her house, Mary told us she is differently abled and relies on a crutch to move around her farm. But she also made something else very clear.

She is fully capable.

Walking through the farm with her we listening as she pointed out the Napier grass that repels stem borers and the Desmodium that suppresses Striga while enriching the soil with nitrogen. As she spoke, it became obvious that what makes Mary successful isn’t physical strength—although she has plenty of that. It’s years of observation, experimentation, and an openness to trying something new.

Too often, conversations about agriculture focus on what farmers, especially women farmers, don’t have—land, financing, technology, healthy soil, extension services. Those challenges are real. But Mary reminded me to pay just as much attention to what farmers do have—knowledge, experience, and curiosity. And the ability to adapt.

Sixteen years after planting that first experimental plot, Mary has become much more than an adopter of push-pull farming. She has become one of its best ambassadors, sharing what she’s learned not only with her neighbors, but also with researchers, policymakers, and visitors from around the world who come to her farm. She is proof that science has the greatest impact when it reaches farmers’ fields.

Mary also reminded me that farmers with disabilities are too often overlooked. But they are growing food, supporting their families, and strengthening their communities every day. If we’re serious about building more resilient food systems, they have to be included in the research, financing, and training that shape agriculture’s future.

As we were getting ready to leave, Mary hugged me again. She hugged Haven, our filmmaker, too. Before we climbed into the van, she made me promise that I would come back.

Next time, she said, she’d make me ugali.

I’ve met farmers like Mary all over the world. They don’t want sympathy, and they certainly don’t want to be underestimated. They want access to good science, good seeds, good markets, and the opportunity to keep doing what they’ve always done which is feed their communities.

Mary reminded me that if we’re serious about building a better food system, we have to invest in all farmers. Otherwise, we’re overlooking some of agriculture’s greatest innovators.

As we drove away, I was already thinking about that promised bowl of ugali. I hope I get the chance to go back.

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

Photo courtesy of Haven Worley

The post On the Ground with Dani Nierenberg: Differently Abled, Fully Capable appeared first on Food Tank.

Asamblea #20 - 24/07/2026 Fecha, hora y enlace a la reunión * Fecha: 24/07/2026 * Hora: 1 p. m. GMT * Duración: 2 horas * Enlace a la reunión: Agenda * Apertura y resumen de Bandung * Breve bienvenida y contextualización como la primera Asamblea Virtual desde Indonesia.

Assembly #20 - 24/07/2026 Date, time and meeting link * Date: 24/07/2026 * Time: 1pm GMT * Duration: 2 hours * Meeting link: Agenda * Opening and Bandung recap * Short welcome and framing as the first Virtual Assembly since Indonesia. alternativesalternatives

More than half of the 41 Highly Hazardous Pesticides (HHPs) registered for use in Uganda are currently banned in the European Union. Despite this, they remain on Ugandan shelves and in Ugandan fields.

The post Uganda’s Peasant Movements Push Back Against Harmful Pesticides with Agroecology appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Whales, dolphins and porpoises are protected from hunting in most places these days. But that doesn’t mean they’re safe from fishing.

Accidental entanglement and drowning, often called bycatch, is one of the greatest threats to cetaceans. The overwhelming majority of those incidents were tied to gillnets, curtains of virtually invisible nylon mesh dangled in the water, indiscriminately trapping anything that swims into them.

The carnage is worldwide. In the Indian Ocean, an estimated 4.1 million small cetaceans such as dolphins died between 1950 and 2018 in gillnets targeting tuna. Gillnets have pushed Mexico’s vaquita porpoise to the brink of extinction. In U.S. waters, the nets claimed more than 6,000 marine mammals every year in the 1990s.

But for at least some gillnets, the solution might be easily at hand in the nearest trash can. Plastic drink bottles tethered to drift nets cut bycatch of an endangered South American dolphin by nearly 90% without affecting the overall amount of fish caught, according to new research in Marine Mammal Science.

“This is a good news story and something that we strive for—a simple solution that benefits both dolphins and the fishers who use the gear,” said Per Berggren, a marine conservation scientist at the United Kingdom’s Newcastle University who developed the idea of using the bottles. “Attaching plastic bottles to fishing nets can reduce dolphin bycatch globally and is something that every fisher can afford.”

 

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The arrangement is remarkably low-tech, taking advantage of the acoustic properties of air-filled bottles and the hunting strategies of dolphins. Slender-snouted franciscana dolphins, which grow to a little less than 2 meters, pursue fish close to shore in Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. That puts them in direct conflict with small scale fishers, who sink their nets to the seafloor.

The dolphins use echolocation to survey their surroundings, emitting a series of clicks and then interpreting the sounds reflected back to them. The air-filled bottles act a bit like mirrors, reflecting the clicks better than the fine mesh of the nets.

The researchers attached the small bottles every 130 meters along the upper edge of nets that totaled 3 kilometers in length, like wide-spaced Christmas lights. Working with fishers in southern Brazil, between 2020 and 2025 they tracked what came up in the bottle-festooned nets compared to regular nets.

The results showed a dramatic 88% fewer dolphins caught in the bottle-topped nets when adjusted for the total amount of time each set of nets were in the water. In the modified nets, just one franciscana dolphin was caught, compared to eight franciscana dolphins and two bottlenose dolphins in the standard nets.

At the same time, there was no significant change in the number of fish caught in the nets, meaning there was little downside to the bottles.

“This is genuinely recycling that rescues dolphins,” said Berggren.

That doesn’t mean this is a silver bullet for all bycatch problems. Similar experiments in Zanzibar and Peru with gillnets that float near the surface didn’t produce the same benefits, according to a companion paper in Fisheries Research. Berggren suspects that’s because the surface water is a “noisier” environment, obscuring the presence of the bottles.

There are fancier devices that might overcome some of the weaknesses of the plastic bottles. For instance, there are electronic devices that can be attached to nets that emit a “ping.” But the researchers note that the cost of buying and maintaining them might be deterring small-scale local fishers from adopting them.

Empty plastic bottles, on the other hand, are all too abundant.

Sucunza, et. al. “Evidence of Dolphin Bycatch Reduction With Upcycled Plastic Bottles Acoustic Reflectors Attached to Bottom-Set Gillnets.” Marine Mammal Science. May 18, 2026.  

Berggren, et. al. “Upcycled glass and plastic bottles offer potential low-cost mitigation to megafauna bycatch in gillnet fisheries.” Fisheries Science. May 9, 2026.

Image: © Yaroslaf | Dreamstime.com

"If we want more farmers, policies for generational renewal must be based on principles of justice rather than profit-making." ECVC

The post Europe: ECVC responds to European Commission’s strategy for Generational Renewal appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

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Pervasive plastic contamination and unreliable methods have clouded the science on microplastics in the human body. In an interview, Australian scientist Cassandra Rauert, who built a plastics-free lab to study human exposure, explores the challenges for researchers.

Read more on E360 →