G1. Progressive Green

Mississippi sides with Drax as Gloster now faces more pollution. The historic denial of Drax's permit is overturned as the state chooses profits over people.

The post Statement: Mississippi Fails Its People first appeared on Dogwood Alliance.

Open Letter – Please Say No to Dirty Drax’s Plea to Pollute

The tourism and travel industries have created a destructive duo, one that jeopardises the way of life for local communities and destroys the environment to create profit for a few. But travel and leisure time could look so different if we recreate these systems with the majority of people in mind. As part of our strategy conference in Barcelona in July 2025 we created collective visions of what…

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Ian Graham and John Jensen

The version of record of this op-ed appeared in the National Observer.

We’ve made halting progress on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Despite setbacks, countries are switching to electric vehicles and expanding renewable electricity. But even if we succeed in slashing human-made emissions, the climate math we’re working with is incomplete. A huge missing piece comes from the Arctic: potential emissions from thawing permafrost aren’t even counted in most global climate models or in the carbon budgets underpinning Paris Agreement commitments.

This permafrost thaw presents more than a rounding issue — it’s a potential carbon time bomb. As frozen soil begins to release vast stores of carbon dioxide and methane, it risks unleashing a self-reinforcing feedback loop: warming causes thaw, thaw causes emissions and emissions drive still more warming. Left unaddressed, these feedbacks could overwhelm even our most ambitious efforts to cut human-made emissions.

You might expect that governments and research institutions are already working full tilt on this problem — and they should be. A new Cascade Institute report reviews the current state of such work, and identifies 13 potential interventions that could slow or stop permafrost thaw and curb resulting emissions. Most are still in early stages of research and development, but together they represent a critical frontier for innovation. With focused investment and international cooperation, at least some of these interventions could transform from tentative experiments into the tools we need to defuse the permafrost carbon time bomb.

Permafrost, found mainly in the Arctic North, is permanently frozen soil laid down over the past million or so years, during periods when the planet was much colder than today. It’s also one of nature’s great storehouses of carbon. The scale of that storehouse is hard to fathom: over one and a half trillion metric tonnes of carbon locked in the ice, more than twice the amount of carbon currently in the atmosphere. And Canada is home to more of that permafrost than any country but Russia.

Because of recent warming, this reservoir is starting to thaw. And when the frozen organic material is released, it begins to decay, releasing its planet-heating gasses.

Emissions from permafrost thaw are currently small compared with those from direct human activities. These emissions are expected to accelerate significantly as thaw becomes more severe, although much uncertainty remains around the trajectory and timing of this increase.

The best case? The impact of thaw will make it harder to achieve our net-zero goals and a stabilized average global temperature and might somewhat raise the temperature at which we stabilize the climate.

The worst case is calamity: rapid and accelerating thaw triggering a vicious cascade of rising concentrations of planet-heating carbon, with permafrost thaw driving further heating, which in turn drives further thaw.

We don’t yet know which case is most likely, or where between the two we might end up. But we know enough to start searching for solutions. Of the 13 interventions we reviewed, only three — wildfire management, caribou herding, and conservation or restoration of peatlands and wetlands — are already commonly practiced, though not yet in ways designed to specifically prevent or slow permafrost thaw.

Work on the other 10 is either very preliminary (e.g., engineering bacteria to reduce methane emissions) or extremely controversial (e.g., injecting aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect some of the incoming solar radiation).

Moreover, all these interventions will require years of research and development to move from ideas to tools we understand and could use effectively. And all will need an operating and governance model for developing and eventually deploying these strategies, led by Indigenous Peoples and other Northern stakeholders.

But today there are no plans to create such an operating and governance model, and no plan to conduct the needed R&D.

In the current environment, neither Russia nor the United States is likely to act on this threat. It’s thus up to Canada to lead, in cooperation with other permafrost nations — the Nordic countries, China, Greenland and Mongolia.

The situation is urgent. Permafrost is already thawing and that thaw is accelerating, pushing us closer to a potential point of no return. We need to understand the challenge and start dealing with it, before it’s too late.

Ian Graham is an affiliated researcher at the Cascade Institute and the author of the report Protecting Permafrost: Addressing the climate threat of Arctic thaw.

John Jensen is a sustainable-energy-focused entrepreneur, a former director of the Yukon Energy Board, and a member of the Gaanaxtedi Clan of the Carcross Tagish First Nation.

 

Read article in The National Observer The post Canada must lead on permafrost protection appeared first on Cascade Institute.

For more than a week now — beginning September 23 — the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) has remained disconnected from Ukraine’s national power grid. This marks the tenth blackout at the facility during nearly three and a half years of Russian occupation, and the longest one to date.

For more than four months, the plant has relied on a single external power line, whereas before 2022 it had ten. This sole remaining 750-kilovolt line, running north to connect the plant with Ukraine’s energy system, was reportedly damaged about 1.5 kilometers from the site because of military action. The line was cut at 16:56 local time on September 23, according to both the Russian-installed plant management and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Since then, the plant has been powered by backup diesel generators. Electricity from either the external grid or the generators is vital for the plant’s internal systems — especially where cooling the nuclear fuel stored in the reactors and spent fuel pools is concerned. Without cooling, this fuel could overheat and melt, leading to a situation reminiscent of the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan.

However, the current blackout raises not only the risk of a radiation accident but also suspicions that it could be part of a Russian plan to reconnect the Zaporizhzhia plant to its own power grid.

Despite the danger and instability, the actual risk of a nuclear accident remains relatively low. The plant has enough diesel generators — twenty in total. Immediately after the 750-kV line was cut on September 23, eighteen generators automatically kicked in, while two were under maintenance. As in similar incidents before, staff gradually reduced the number in operation to those required to supply essential systems, conserving fuel. As of September 30, eight generators remain running.

Russian officials have repeatedly informed the IAEA that the plant maintains enough diesel fuel on site to power the emergency generators for at least 20 days. Deliveries of diesel are reportedly ongoing, and additional shipments could be arranged if necessary. This allows the plant to remain in this emergency mode for quite some time.

Even in the event of generator failure — due to breakdowns or fuel shortages — there would still be enough time to act before the nuclear fuel overheats and begins to melt.

All six reactors have been shut down for over three years, and the residual heat from radioactive decay — which decreases exponentially over time — is now much lower than immediately after shutdown. Based on data used in Bellona’s 2024 report on the potential restart of the plant, current residual heat output per reactor does not exceed 800 kilowatts. Including spent fuel in cooling pools, total heat generation per reactor unit is no more than 2.5 megawatts (a conservative estimate — the real value is likely lower).

This means that even if all cooling systems were to fail completely, the remaining water in the reactor buildings would continue to cool the fuel through evaporation for at least two to three weeks — enough time to take emergency measures and prevent a major accident.

Only if nothing were done at all would the fuel begin to overheat and melt, potentially damaging the reactor vessel and allowing molten material to reach the lower levels of the unit — and theoretically, the ground and surrounding environment. Some radioactive materials could also be released into the atmosphere, either through pressure relief from the reactor’s containment or as a result of hydrogen explosions if recombination systems fail.

For now, however, there is enough time — and enough technical options — to prevent any of these scenarios, beginning with the repair of the damaged power line and the maintenance of the backup generators.

So why hasn’t Russia repaired the line, and could it be using this situation as a pretext to switch the plant over to its own power grid?

First, the power line could have been repaired long ago. According to the IAEA and the Russian occupation authorities at the plant, the break occurred about 1.5 kilometers from the plant on territory controlled by n troops along the left bank of the former Kakhovka Reservoir. It seems unlikely that for more than a week, repair crews — who have fixed similar line breaks in a matter of hours in the past — have been unable to do so.

Additionally, satellite imagery analysis conducted by McKenzie Intelligence Services for Greenpeace found no evidence of shelling or visible damage to the transmission line in question, calling into doubt the official Russian explanation for the outage.

Illustration: Power transmission from the Zaporizhzhia NPP. Four 750-kV lines (blue) and six 330-kV lines (yellow). The alleged damaged section of the “Dniprovska” 750-kV line is circled in red. Map based on Bellona’s 2024 report “Potential Restart of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

As Bellona noted in its 2024 report on the possible restart of the ZNPP, connecting the plant to Russia’s power grid — or to that of the occupied territories — would be a necessary first step for Moscow in preparing to restart the facility.

This would not mean an immediate restart. Major technical issues remain unresolved: restoring water supplies, reloading nuclear fuel, and expanding transmission lines to carry power from the plant. Despite some progress—such as preparations for new pumping stations and transmission routes—restarting even one reactor is still months away.

For now, the likely goal would be simply to connect the plant to Russia’s grid to provide the few megawatts of electricity needed for safety systems. Under the pretext that the repair of the Ukrainian connection is impossible due to combat operations, Russia could attempt such a switch. In June this year, Russia informed the IAEA via diplomatic note that it had developed exactly such a plan in case of a plant blackout.

This could then be presented as a humanitarian step — “saving the plant from a nuclear accident” — a message that might find a sympathetic audience within the IAEA and among an anxious international public.

For that reason, the current situation must be assessed soberly: the immediate danger to the plant is serious but manageable. The greater danger lies in Moscow’s potential use of the crisis to justify reconnecting the plant to its own grid — portraying itself as the savior preventing a nuclear disaster.

In reality, any step toward integrating the Zaporizhzhia plant into Russia’s power system would only worsen its strategic situation, give Moscow additional leverage, and bring a potential restart closer — a move that, amid ongoing fighting, would itself sharply increase the risk of a nuclear accident.

Under no circumstances should the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant be reconnected to the Russian grid or restarted. The facility must return to the full control of its rightful owner — Ukraine.

Bellona calls on the IAEA and other international organizations not to assist or legitimize Russia’s unlawful plans to integrate the Zaporizhzhia NPP into its own energy system or to normalize the current occupation status.

The post Is the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant’s longest blackout a scheme for Russia to siphon off its power? appeared first on Bellona.org.

Comments to the BSI on the standards for the quantification of greenhouse gas removals associated with BECCS on behalf of Biofuelwatch

Del 20 al 22 de agosto de 2025, la ciudad de Valparaíso fue sede del IV Encuentro Latinoamericano y del Caribe por la Justicia Climática, un espacio clave para la articulación regional frente a la crisis climática global. Organizado por la Plataforma Latinoamericana y del Caribe por la Justicia Climática (PLACJC) y la Campaña Global para Exigir Justicia Climática (DCJ), el encuentro reunió a más de 60 personas de distintos territorios del continente con un objetivo común: avanzar hacia una transición justa que enfrente la captura corporativa del clima y denuncie las falsas soluciones promovidas por actores económicos, corporativos, públicos y privados.

Este evento marca un hito dentro de la segunda fase del proyecto “Detener la Captura Corporativa Climática” que ambas plataformas implementan en la región, con el propósito de fortalecer el movimiento por la justicia climática en América Latina y el Caribe, impulsar articulaciones regionales y visibilizar los impactos de proyectos que, aunque se presentan como sostenibles, profundizan la desigualdad, el extractivismo y la vulneración de derechos.

El encuentro se desarrolló a lo largo de tres intensas jornadas que abordaron de manera integral las falsas soluciones a la crisis climática y las alternativas reales desde los pueblos y territorios. En la primera jornada, los participantes exploraron colectivamente el concepto de falsas soluciones, actualizando el Mapa de Falsas Soluciones a través de análisis grupales y debates, mientras que mediante metodologías creativas, como la elaboración de arpilleras, se visibilizaron las resistencias y alternativas territoriales. El segundo día profundizó en prácticas de protección y cuidados subversivos, junto con metodologías de educación popular que fortalecen el trabajo colectivo y la movilización social, complementando las proyecciones del proyecto “Detener la Captura Corporativa Climática” y el intercambio entre redes regionales, como la Red de Biomasa, para analizar sus impactos y estrategias de acción.

El cierre del encuentro se centró en la importancia estratégica de la comunicación para la justicia climática, con un Encuentro de Comunicación que reunió a activistas y medios de diversos territorios para fortalecer la Red de Comunicación para la Justicia Climática. Este espacio sirvió para compartir experiencias y formar en herramientas comunicacionales clave. Finalmente, el Foro Seminario Internacional “Cambiar el sistema, no el clima” consolidó el diálogo con testimonios de comunidades afectadas por falsas soluciones en Chile, análisis críticos y debates sobre los desafíos políticos y territoriales frente a la captura corporativa climática. La plenaria y espacios culturales concluyeron esta jornada, fortaleciendo la articulación regional y la apuesta colectiva por un cambio sistémico basado en justicia y respeto a los pueblos.

Denuncias y propuestas: el corazón del Encuentro

De forma pública se realizó el 22 de agosto en la Universidad de Playa Ancha el Foro Seminario Internacional «Cambiemos el sistema, no el clima», que sirvió también como plataforma para destacar y reivindicar las soluciones reales impulsadas por los pueblos originarios, campesinos y comunidades locales. En la instancia se subrayó la importancia de reconocer y respetar los saberes ancestrales, las prácticas de cuidado de la tierra y los modelos de vida que priorizan la sustentabilidad integral y la equidad. Este enfoque se propuso como un camino hacia la justicia climática auténtica, que no solo busca mitigar el cambio climático, sino transformar las estructuras socioeconómicas que lo generan.

En conjunto, el foro fortaleció el compromiso colectivo por construir alternativas desde abajo y visibilizar las luchas y propuestas que emergen desde los territorios en resistencia.

Así mismo el Mapa de Falsas Soluciones, elaborado por el Colectivo de Geografía Crítica del Ecuador, fue uno de los ejes centrales del evento. El colectivo elaboró un informe que identificó 30 proyectos en Chile (como plantas de biomasa, hidroeléctricas, hidrógeno verde y minería de litio) que son presentados como alternativas verdes, pero que en realidad tienen fuertes impactos socioambientales, afectando áreas protegidas, territorios indígenas y ecosistemas frágiles.

Este IV Encuentro Latinoamericano y del Caribe por la Justicia Climática en Valparaíso representa un paso fundamental en la construcción de un movimiento regional unido y fortalecido, capaz de enfrentar con claridad y convicción las falsas soluciones que perpetúan la crisis climática. A través del intercambio de experiencias, el reconocimiento de los saberes ancestrales y la articulación de propuestas desde los territorios, se reafirma la urgencia de cambiar los modelos extractivistas y corporativos por sistemas basados en justicia, equidad y respeto por la vida. Este encuentro no solo visibiliza los impactos reales de las políticas climáticas actuales, sino que también impulsa un camino colectivo hacia una transición justa y transformadora, sostenida por la voz y la acción de los pueblos.

The post IV Encuentro Latinoamericano y del Caribe por la Justicia Climática: territorios en resistencia frente a las falsas soluciones al cambio climático appeared first on Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice.

EWG Verified® sets a gold standard with new eczema product category JR Culpepper September 30, 2025

WASHINGTON – As millions of Americans struggle to treat their eczema and decode product labels, the Environmental Working Group is offering a game-changing solution: a new EWG Verified® category that sets bold benchmarks for safety and transparency in over-the-counter, or OTC, eczema products.

EWG Verified products have to meet EWG’s strictest standards for ingredient safety, health and full transparency. Four eczema products from HealthyBaby, Mustela and hypothesis meet these standards. Their inclusion in this new EWG Verified category signals to consumers that these eczema products have undergone rigorous review and represent a trusted choice for families managing eczema.

A new standard 

“Our babies’ skin is more sensitive and permeable than an adult’s, and when eczema compromises that barrier, it becomes even more vulnerable to everything in our environment,” said Shazi Visram, founder and chief executive officer of HealthyBaby. “Following on HealthyBaby’s first ever EWG Verified diaper, we’re so proud to introduce the first-ever EWG Verified eczema cream for babies that protects the skin barrier and microbiome while soothing irritation safely without synthetic chemicals.

“As a mom of two, I know the heartbreak of watching a baby struggle with eczema, and parents deserve the peace of mind that what they’re putting on their child’s body is truly safe,” she added.

HealthyBaby’s Our Eczema Remedy was the first eczema care product to earn the EWG Verified mark and is expected to hit the market in early 2026.

“We’re thrilled to celebrate HealthyBaby, Mustela and hypothesis for meeting the rigorous standards set by EWG,” said Jocelyn Lyle, EWG’s executive vice president of mission and partnerships. 

“We're giving consumers what they’ve always wanted and deserved: a clear and trustworthy way to choose safer, healthier eczema products for their families,” she added. “The EWG Verified program continues to grow, making shopping for eczema products stress-free.”

Eczema, a condition that causes dry, flaky skin, affects roughly 10% of the population, including more than 9.6 million children, according to the National Eczema Association. The irritated skin barrier can leave people more vulnerable to harsh chemicals or allergens. 

The EWG Verified eczema standard combines standard EWG Verified product hazard scoring and ingredient restrictions with additional considerations about potential allergens and active ingredients.

Families dealing with eczema should work with their health care provider to develop a treatment plan, including potential OTC product recommendations.  

The program launches with four products:

• Healthybaby – Our Eczema Remedy
• hypothesis – Eczema Precision Hydrogel
• hypothesis – Eczema Therapy Cream
• Mustela – Stelatopia Intense Eczema Relief Skin Protectant

Science-driven benchmarks

Navigating the world of OTC eczema products can be a confusing and frustrating experience for families trying to find relief. With so many products on the market, it’s often difficult to figure out which have safer ingredients for sensitive, compromised skin. 

Families may struggle to find OTC products that help address eczema symptoms and also meet ingredient safety and transparency standards. 

EWG Verified eczema products give families a clear option by requiring full ingredient disclosure, sensitive skin testing and non-steroid active ingredients.

“Adding eczema products to the EWG Verified program represents a crucial step forward in eczema care,” said Oliver Liu, Ph.D, co-founder of hypothesis. 

“Building on their longstanding commitment to rigorous safety standards, EWG has created a certification that recognizes eczema-prone skin’s unique needs – and ensures products meet the exacting standards that sensitive, barrier-compromised skin requires,” she added. “This seal helps consumers navigate the complex world of eczema products with confidence.”

The addition of these products to the EWG Verified program builds upon EWG’s decades-long track record of empowering consumers to make healthier choices through science-based standards and transparency about ingredients, especially in personal care products. 

“At Mustela, supporting families with safe and effective skincare has been our mission since 1950,” said Meena Rana, the company’s assistant vice president of quality, regulatory affairs and customer service. 

“Because eczema can be especially challenging for parents and children, we sought EWG verification for our eczema care products, giving families the reassurance that Mustela products are gentle, effective and safe for the whole family,” Rana said.

“We’re proud to be one of the first brands ever to receive this recognition, for our Stelatopia Intense Eczema Relief, an OTC treatment. The mark underscores both the rigor of our formulas and our dedication to clean, transparent skincare,” she added.

Choosing safer products

EWG Verified takes the guesswork out of shopping and allows consumers to treat their symptoms with brands and products they can trust. 

“As a toxicologist and mom of a child with eczema, I’m excited EWG has expanded our Verified standard into this space,” said Kaley Beins, director of ingredient safety for EWG Verified. 

“You shouldn’t need to be a scientist to choose safer eczema products for yourself or your family. We’ve prioritized ingredient safety and skin sensitivity so you can look for the EWG Verified mark when searching for eczema products you can trust,” she added.

Shoppers can find the complete list of EWG Verified OTC eczema products here.

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The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that empowers people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. Through research, advocacy and unique education tools, EWG drives consumer choice and civic action.

HealthyBaby, Mustela and hypothesis products meet EWG’s rigorous science-backed standards for ingredient safety and transparency Press Contact JR Culpepper jr.culpepper@ewg.org (202) 779-9990 October 1, 2025

We worked hard throughout FY24 to bring our vision of a fair energy future to life — one that is clean, accessible, and affordable to everyone. We believe we need new energy systems that are powered by the sun and wind, not by coal, oil and gas, and that are rooted in local needs: respecting cultures and traditions, creating jobs and income, supporting communities to grow and thrive, and protecting both people and nature. 

We did this in many ways. We spoke up at international meetings, pushed governments to create better energy laws, and demanded fair and fast climate funding. These big actions are important — and they’re often what people see the most. 

But a lot of our work happens behind the scenes: helping local groups identify where action is most impactful, planning strong actions, giving them training and tools, and building powerful networks. In short, we’re helping shape the future of the climate movement, making it stronger, smarter and more connected. The Our Own Power Network is a great example of our vision in action. 

As we expanded our strategy from stopping fossil fuels – the cause of the climate crisis – to also pushing for real and fair energy solutions, we saw something was missing. People all over the world were excited about clean energy and working on local projects. But many of these efforts were happening alone, they weren’t connected to each other – and  their success stories weren’t travelling far enough.

Our first step towards closing this gap was to create “Our Own Power”. This free toolkit is the result of working closely with local activists and communities around the world. The toolkit, available in five languages, gives step-by-step advice on how to start renewable energy projects, get funding, work through local rules and achieve lasting wins. It also shares real stories from communities who are already putting all those learnings to practice. So far, almost 40,000 people have visited the website, and 14,000 have downloaded the toolkit, mostly from countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia – places that are often most impacted by climate change, even though they have contributed the least to causing it. 

The toolkit marked the start of our building a strong, connected Our Own Power Network. This new global network, officially launched in early September 2024, offers an invitation to groups working with clean and fair energy solutions to the climate crisis. More than 200 people joined us for our first online meeting, and by the end of that month, 89 groups had become part of the network – including farmers’, women’s, faith and youth groups.

And the network kept growing fast since then!

Our Own Power gives communities the tools, training and global support they need to shift from fossil fuels to clean, local energy. It’s about reimagining what’s possible: a future where energy comes from the sun and the wind and is controlled by people, not corporations. Together, we are building a movement to make a clean energy future a reality.

 

As a young woman from a small island who is actually seeing the impacts of climate change in my daily life, I often felt powerless because I felt like I had no control over these uncomfortable things. With the Our Own Power Network, the community has given me a reinvigorated appreciation for the strength and resilience of people who face adversity and adapt to it. We can learn together and take action for the better tomorrow we all want!

– Katrina Khan-Roberts, @TnTClimate, Trinidad and Tobago

The Our Own Power Network is the best place to share practical experience on how communities get their power back, acquire innovative skills, and get started on community-led renewable initiatives. It is amazing how much knowledge sits with this community, just waiting to be tapped or co-created in the sessions!

– Peter Owiti, Wote Youth Development Projects, Kenya

Being part of the Our Own Power Network has given me a crucial perspective on how community energy can work in different parts of the world. It also helps me understand the power struggles that communities face in our current economic system, with concrete stories and examples.

– Chris Vrettos, REScoop.eu, Greece

This is a story from 350.org’s 2024 Annual Report

Explore the report

The post Our energy future is locally-led appeared first on 350.

Taufu’i ‘Ae Valu Naufahu has been a dedicated member of 350 Tonga, a 350 local group, since 2010. Over the years, he has organized activist networks, direct actions, and political advocacy – both locally and internationally – to defend the Pacific islands and the future of his people. For him, climate action is not just about survival – it’s about belonging.

“I have a daughter who’s turning nine this year. I want to secure a safe and protected future for her, my nieces and my nephews. I look for solutions to stop the climate crisis, because this may be the only way that they will be able to experience our islands along with the nature, traditions, and community as I did when I was young”. 

Taufu’i ‘Ae was instrumental in shaping and leading the “Our Pawa” campaign. As a part of the Council of Elders from Polynesia, he helped craft 350 Pacific’s strategic plans. During the PIFL meeting in Tonga in August, he organized events to engage civil society and the youth movement, ensuring their voices were part of critical climate discussions. 

The Pacific is on the frontlines of the climate crisis – rising seas, stronger hurricanes, homes and livelihoods lost, entire communities at risk. Yet, activists like Taufu’i ‘Ae stand as beacons of hope and power in the fight for climate justice. Now, he focuses on empowering youth to take climate action, believing that intergenerational collaboration is the key to a just and livable future:

“My generation knows that for the Pacific to survive, we need to end the age of fossil fuels. But we don’t just want to survive, we want the next generations to thrive! That means securing access to safe, affordable and renewable energy. The youth are the islands of the future. They should and will lead the way – and I am ready to stand beside them as new leadership rises.” 

In the coming years, Taufu’i ‘Ae plans to train and mentor high school students in Tonga, equipping them with the tools to push for renewables. With his deep connections and lifelong experience as a climate activist, he aims to amplify their vision for a locally-led energy transition, ensuring national policies reflect the needs and voices of communities – from the ground up.

This is a story from 350.org’s 2024 Annual Report

Explore the report

The post Our Pawa: Taufu’i ‘Ae Valu Naufahu appeared first on 350.

In another win for the climate movement in the US, our affiliate 350 New Hampshire (350 NH) helped shut down New England’s last remaining coal plant in March 2024, marking a definitive move to renewables. After five years of relentless pressure from direct action and lawsuits from 350NH and allies, Granite Shore Power, the company behind the project, was forced to end its coal project by 2028 and repurpose the former coal plant into clean energy parks.

Rebecca Beaulieu, Communications Director at 350NH, grew up in Massachusetts  where she saw (and breathed) the dirty smoke coming from a nearby coal power plant.  When Massachustts finally closed that plant, her community fought hard for a transition to clean energy, only to see the plant site converted to a gas plant. This personal connection makes the victory against coal all the more meaningful for Rebecca.

“This win happened in a region where the local government didn’t even acknowledge the coal problem, so it shows why local public pressure is so important. It’s very exciting to see that this coal plant now has a real end date, and that it doesn’t involve other fossil fuels.”

Rebecca joined 350NH when the No Coal No Gas campaign launched and has been involved since the beginning. She’s even been arrested at Granite’s coal plant during a civil disobedience action. Over the years, 350NH has shown that New Hampshire doesn’t need coal, oil, or gas for its energy needs. They won a major campaign to bring offshore wind to the coast and stopped a proposed fracked gas pipeline and storage tank. These victories paved the way for freeing the state from coal.

 “The fight is not over, though”, Rebecca says. “Here at 350NH we will keep pressure up to ensure that the future of this site is not only clean, but also respectful to the communities around it”.

This is a story from 350.org’s 2024 Annual Report

Explore the report

The post No Coal, No Gas: Rebecca Beaulieu appeared first on 350.

Since 2020, 350.org has led the Caribbean Climate Network (CCN) – a multilingual and multinational network of 54 activists and six local groups working together to pressure governments into taking the urgent action needed to help protect communities, support their adaptation to and recovery from the worst effects of the climate crisis, and strengthen resilience through renewable energy solutions. Through the CCN, we support local organizers with monthly training, one-on-one coaching, and direct support to plan campaigns and execute projects. 

Tracey Edwards, founder of Plakortis Earth Cafe – CCN’s chapter in Jamaica – champions campaigns to build resilient communities through renewable energy. Her country faces intensifying hurricanes, leaving communities vulnerable when power outages strike. Without electricity, people lose more than just lights — essential medications spoil, the risk of heat stroke rises, and small businesses struggle to survive.

As a Type 1 diabetic, Tracey knows firsthand how these disruptions affect vulnerable groups, especially women and older adults. Her wake up call to join the climate movement came in 2004 with Hurricane Ivan, when losing electricity put her insulin — and her life — at risk. Since then, she has dedicated herself to reducing fossil fuel dependency and building sustainable, empowered communities.

“I fight for a world where no one feels forgotten, rejected, and ignored. We don’t want to just survive, but to thrive in the face of climate change. Now is the time to empower our communities to become energy-independent and resilient – and the only way to do that is through solutions that integrate renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, and nature-based approaches”.

As part of CCN, Tracey and her team equip local institutions like churches and schools with the knowledge and tools to adopt solar power and other renewable solutions. In 2025, she plans to scale up her work — manufacturing and installing renewable energy systems – so that local families and organizations may easily access clean energy, at lower cost.

Her goal is clear: provide communities with practical, sustainable solutions to withstand stronger storms, prolonged power outages, and rising temperatures. Tracey’s work is a powerful example of communities leading the fight for climate resilience — by the people, for the people.  

This is a story from 350.org’s 2024 Annual Report

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Greta is an Ecosystems Science student who grew up in a small town in Germany. Since she was very young she learned to love nature and to take care of our planet. Her family has always been supportive of renewable energy, and has solar panels to meet their own energy needs. She has been engaged with environmental issues for a long time, but it was only in college that she fully joined the climate movement. She’s currently advocating for moving money from big polluters to funding the renewable energy transition in Europe through 350’s Tax Their Billions campaign. 

“My wake up call to move from being supportive to taking action was when I learned about the village of Lützerath, proposed to be taken down by RWE to make space for more coal. I joined the activists occupying the village, in a muddy and cold winter. That experience was super moving, and opened my eyes to how powerful the fossil fuel industry is – but also to how much more powerful we are when we unite“. 

Greta joined the Tax Their Billions campaign after discovering that the world’s richest 1% produce more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%. “This is really unfair, and shows that we won’t be able to change things fast enough just by changing our lifestyles, if those rich polluters don’t do so too. The Tax Their Billions campaign offers a clear and practical solution: tax their wealth to enable a just energy transition to benefit us all”. Greta had attended climate protests before, but this was the first campaign where she organized her own action.

Since joining 350’s Tax Their Billions campaign, Greta has deepened her understanding of what it takes to not just fight fossil fuels, but also power a fair and accessible transition to renewable energy. In the coming year, she plans to organize with other activists and groups across Germany to help grow the campaign.

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Sutanpri is a passionate advocate for clean energy in education. He is the headmaster at the Muhammadiyah 4 Bengkulu High School in Indonesia, and has designed a curriculum to include climate change and renewable energy as part of the students’ learning journey. As a mathematician and teacher himself, he also teaches students how solar panels are built and work, so they can develop the technical skills to install and manage locally-led energy systems. He believes that it’s through the younger generations that we can make the most impactful change.

“Not everyone in my community is interested in learning about the climate crisis and the need to transition to cleaner energy sources – but the youth are! They understand that our future relies on that, and they have an amazing reach within our communities. When we share knowledge with the students, they bring it to their families and soon it becomes a topic of discussion in different community spaces. The new power is with the new generation!”

Sutanpri joined the climate movement after being inspired by the work of firemen helping people during repeated devastating floods in his country. Extreme weather has become stronger and more frequent in Indonesia, and he felt the urge to act.

Beyond the innovative school curriculum, Sutanpri also operates a solar power plant as part of the Clean Energy School, a project of 350 Indonesia, Climate Rangers Bengkulu and the NGO Kanopi. The initiative is part of RESolusi, a network of community-based renewable energy practitioners led by 350.org. Sutanpri joined the network to get skilled up on the energy transition and bring those learnings back to his fellow teachers and students. 

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Ziada Kassimu is a medical assistant doctor from Tanzania, working with Green Conservers – a youth-led organization and one of 350’s partners in the REPower Afrika campaign. Her journey as a climate activist began years ago, when she was in college. As part of her studies, Ziada visited local communities and villages to understand what was threatening people’s health, especially focusing on women’s and girls’ wellbeing. The answer was unequivocally clear: climate change and fossil fuels. 

Tanzania is a major producer of fossil gas, yet more than 30 million people – or about half of the population – lack access to energy. In rural areas, the situation is even worse: less than 2% can rely on electricity for their daily needs. With REPower Afrika, Ziada has been holding periodic meetings with around 100 women and 150 youth in more than 30 villages in the region of Tanga – one of the most affected areas by EACOP. She delivers information about the impacts of the pipeline, and on how to use renewables to improve their lives, exploring the best solutions for them and with them. 

“I’m really proud of the work we’ve done so far – from installing solar panels in community facilities, to empowering women and girls with knowledge to fight for a just energy transition. The improvements that clean energy has represented to people’s health and lives in these villages is notable already. And each day we see more women standing up for themselves and their communities.”

In 2025, Ziada hopes to reach more communities affected by EACOP in Tanzania, multiplying REPower Afrika’s impact and making it a model for community-driven energy transition.

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Around the world, people are taking control of their own energy future. Through grassroots organizing, online campaigns, and mass public mobilizations, we connect local efforts to create global impact. This is the beating heart of our work at 350: to support the communities leading the charge for a fair transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and drive transformational change at the global level. 

Our Power Up for Climate Justice global mobilization in November 2023 is a powerful example of how we drive impact: following our month-long public campaign, in December 2023, at the UN Climate Summit (COP28) world leaders committed to the landmark goal of tripling renewable by 2030 – a major step towards keeping global heating under control. 

© Hanpo Cheng. Taipei, Taiwan.

 

This was a fantastic testament to our collective power: we had orchestrated a global mobilization that ran from 3 November to 12 December 2023, which showed that we are ready to build a world powered by fair and locally-led renewable energy. During the hottest year ever recorded up to that point, we:

• Brought people from 66 countries together in community – from Fiji to the United States, Germany, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Brazil;
• Mobilized more than 15,000 people; 
• Organized more than 220 events, connecting every continent;   
• Exposed the greed of fossil fuel companies while they announced outrageously high record profits; and
• Restated a call for justice: to redirect the money and power to fund a just and peaceful future powered by the sun, the wind and the people everywhere.   

Our voice resonated globally: from streets worldwide to the corridors of power at the UN Climate talks in Dubai (COP28). 

We released an eye-opening report called “Power Up for Climate Justice: Financing and Implementing a 1.5°C-aligned Global Renewables Target”. It lays out that the best way to reduce emissions and keep global temperatures within the safe 1.5°C limit is by tripling renewable energy capacity worldwide. On 8 December 2023, as global leaders gathered in Dubai for COP28, we were there too, holding this report and backed by the thousands of people who called for a Power Up of clean and accessible energy. 

By strategically timing our actions in the month prior to COP28, we kept the momentum alive, and pressure high on world leaders. Although COP28 ended with bittersweet results for the climate movement, we did achieve clear progress, as countries committed to tripling clean energy and doubling energy efficiency by 2030, a necessary measure to speed up the transition away from fossil fuels and avoid the worst impacts from the climate crisis. Throughout Power Up and COP28, our movement stood firm in its demands for a full phaseout of fossil fuels, and a fast and fair energy transition – and it made a difference!

 

NURTURING NEW CLIMATE LEADERSHIP

Power Up for Climate Justice and COP28 were moments for new climate leadership to grow. 350.org was born from the enthusiasm of a group of university students, so we have always prioritized growing new generations of youth climate leaders.

During FY24 we led the Youth Climate Leaders Fellowship, a program that trained and mentored 20 young climate activists from 18 different countries. Through online and in-person workshops, they learned how to lead powerful campaigns, heard from experienced movement leaders, and worked on projects together. They received monthly stipends so they could focus on their activism without financial obstacles, and were introduced to other climate groups and coalitions in their regions, helping them grow youth-led campaigns.

With these newfound skills, participants started or expanded five campaigns. Some focused on elections in their countries, while others helped organize actions for Power Up for Climate Justice. At COP28, they also launched and coordinated a campaign to highlight COP28 president’s glaring conflict of interest as head of the climate summit, and of UAE’s national oil company.

We are now supporting our first set of fellows to mentor a new set of Youth Climate Leaders, through a new cohort formed in the lead up to COP30. By supporting, training and connecting young climate leaders, we help our movement grow stronger and create real change! 

 

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LIVERPOOL – The UK’s largest oil and gas trade body has criticised Reform UK’s plans to “turn off the tap” on renewable energy.

Nigel Farage’s party has tried to present itself as the oil and gas industry’s closest ally, vowing to “drill, baby, drill” in the North Sea and scrap the windfall tax on excess profits, while meeting with oil executives, and courting donations from the sector.

However, on a panel at the Labour Party’s annual conference in Liverpool on Monday (29 September), a spokesperson for Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) criticised Reform’s plans to end state support for clean energy.

Natalie Coupar, communications and marketing director at OEUK – members of which include fossil fuel giants BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, TotalEnergies, and Equinor – said the group is “apolitical” but gives “hard truths to all parties”.

She said: “One of the things we’ve been saying to Reform very much is, you know, if you’re going to turn on the taps for oil and gas, there’s almost really no point if you’re just going to turn off the taps to renewables.

“That doesn’t help. We need to keep both those streams open.”

According to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), the UK’s net zero economy grew by 10 percent in 2024, employing almost a million people in full-time jobs.

Coupar also said it was essential to “hold the consensus on tackling climate change and growing our energy future”.

A panel at 2025 Labour Party conference sponsored by Offshore Energies UK (OEUK). Credit: DeSmog Reform’s Oil Campaign

Reform has vowed to stop all government subsidies for renewable energy, and has pledged to block solar and onshore wind farms in the local authorities it controls.

In May, the party’s deputy leader Richard Tice said: “Whether it’s planning blockages, whether it’s judicial reviews, whether it’s lawsuits, whether it’s health and safety notices, we will use every available legal measure to an extreme way in order to frustrate these people.”

Tice – who has said “there’s no evidence that man-made CO2 is going to change the climate” – met with senior oil executives in May and promised to approve new drilling licences “on day one” of a Reform government.

Last month, he pledged to overturn the UK’s ban on fracking for shale gas, which he calls “treasure beneath our feet”, and told the industry to “get ready”.

In April, Reform party treasurer and a billionaire property developer Nick Candy said he was trying to secure donations from oil and gas executives, claiming to have raised £100,000 from one, though this has yet to appear on Reform’s donations register.

As DeSmog has reported, 92 percent of Reform’s funding between the 2019 and 2024 general elections came from climate science deniers or those with highly polluting interests – a total of £2.3 million.

Since his election as an MP last year, Farage has spoken at a string of events in the U.S. organised by radical groups backing U.S. President Donald Trump’s pro-fossil fuel agenda. Last December, Farage launched the UK-EU branch of the Heartland Institute, a U.S. climate denial think tank.

Speaking at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in London in February, Farage claimed it was “absolutely nuts” for CO2 to be considered to a pollutant. However, he added: “I’m not a scientist. I can’t tell you whether CO2 is leading to warming or not, but there are so many other massive factors.”

Climate scientists at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading climate science body, have stressed that “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet”.

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LIVERPOOL – Gas companies and Conservative lobby groups have been leaning on the Labour Party to allow tech companies to use gas to power their energy-guzzling artificial intelligence (AI).

A number of events have taken place at Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool this week focused on how the UK can become a leader in building AI infrastructure.

During U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to the UK earlier this month, the two countries announced a ‘Tech Prosperity Deal’ that will see some of the world’s biggest companies invest in UK AI, including in a fleet of new data centres.

This infrastructure will require vast amounts of energy, and lobbyists have been putting pressure on Labour during the conference to allow data centres to be powered by fossil fuels.

At an event hosted by Cadent, the UK’s largest gas distribution network, its head of external affairs Arnie Craven said that he had received a message on LinkedIn last week from a data centre developer asking for information about being connected to the gas grid.

DeSmog asked Craven how he responded to the enquiry, to which he said: “I think it’s important to recognise that data centre operators are looking across the energy piece… There’s demand [for gas]. There’s clear demand.”

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Speaking at another event, Sam Dumitriu of Britain Remade – a right-wing think tank run by former Tory advisors and Tufton Street lobbyists – said that gas and nuclear would be “really important” to powering data centres in the UK.

The event – hosted by Labour Digital and Nvidia, the U.S. tech giant that has pledged to invest £11 billion in the UK – featured Labour’s AI minister Kanishka Narayan, and the UK AI firm NScale.

Nvidia, which donated $1 million (£750,000) to the Trump inauguration ceremony, has said that UK data centres should be powered in part by fossil fuels.

Dumitriu defended Huang’s comments and said that he sees “a really big opportunity” for the UK in data centres requiring large amounts of energy. “Because the more demand you have and the more generation you get online, the more we can drive down fixed costs of energy,” he said.

The CEO of Britain Remade, Sam Richards, was an energy and environment advisor to former Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson while Dumitriu – its head of policy – used to work at the Adam Smith Institute, part of the Tufton Street network of opaquely-funded, anti-climate lobby groups.

Sam Dumitriu (second from the right), head of policy at Britain Remade, speaking on a fringe event on AI at Labour’s 2025 annual conference. Credit: DeSmog

The average data centre uses enough energy to power roughly 5,000 UK homes, and between 11 million and 19 million litres of water per day, the same as a town of 30,000 to 50,000 people. There are 480 data centres in the UK, with another 100 planned for the next five years.

Fintan Slye, the CEO of the UK’s National Energy Systems Operator (NESO), told The Guardian that, even before Labour announced its plans for an AI boom, the country was already at the “outer limit of what’s achievable” in terms of its planned renewable energy development.

Dumitriu and tech companies therefore see fossil fuels as a core part of AI growth.

The Financial Times reported in August that five large data centre projects in the south of England had made formal enquiries to National Gas about building their own gas-fired power stations and connecting them to the grid.

DeSmog recently revealed that some data centre operators are also attaching vast amounts of “backup” diesel generators to their sites, including one in Blyth that has enough generators to produce as much power as a nuclear plant.

In a June meeting of Labour’s AI Energy Council – which includes Google, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, UK chip designer ARM, and American data centre operator Equinix – ministers were asked to consider “temporary on-site generation, including natural gas fuel cells” as an “interim measure”.

Responding to Politico, the government said it is considering a range of energy options for data centres, and repeatedly refused to rule out authorising on-site gas plants in the future, but indicated this was not the current plan.

At the Nvidia event, Narayan suggested that the government believes there is no conflict between its push for new data centres and its clean power objectives – echoing the speculative claims of big tech companies that AI development is justified because the technology will eventually be used to solve climate problems.

Narayan claimed that “in those horseshoe extremities of British politics, you have the belief that we are in a trajectory of necessary scarcity” in relation to energy and other policy areas.

“The belief is that we are necessarily in a world of fundamental trade-offs,” he said – adding: “there’s a competing vision, which is the vision that this government believes, which is the vision that you can break through those trade-offs.”

The International Energy Agency forecasts that the energy requirements of data centres will quadruple by 2030 – to nearly as much energy expenditure as Japan. Meanwhile, NESO says that, by the same year, data centres will guzzle 7 percent of Britain’s entire energy output.

Additional research by Rei Takver

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This investigation was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe.

Farm owners convicted of exploiting migrant workers continue to claim millions in taxpayer-funded subsidies, DeSmog can reveal.

A major new investigation traced dozens of EU payments to farms that have breached, are under investigation for, or have already been convicted of labour-related offences.

DeSmog found that 30 farms and farm owners – ranging from smallholdings to large estates – received at least €14 million in subsidies over the past ten years, despite convictions or formal investigations relating to labour abuse. The figure is just a fraction of the likely total, covering cases that faced legal penalties in some of the EU’s largest countries.

With an overall budget of €378.5 billion, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) – aimed at supporting EU farmers and improving Europe’s food security – makes up a quarter of the bloc’s seven-year expenditure. But critics say the subsidy is failing the EUs over nine million agricultural workers, of which at least one in four are estimated to be migrants.

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Workers shared with DeSmog harrowing accounts of their treatment at the hands of employers, who frequently made false promises of fixed contracts and decent wages. 

Instead, “we were treated like slaves, working shifts of up to 14 hours,” recounts Mohammed, a graduate from Morocco who in 2023 worked as a fruit-picker in southern France, where he was subjected to verbal and physical violence, constant surveillance, and forced to live in cramped, dirty conditions. 

In stark contrast, Mohammed’s employer was paid over €270,000 in public funds between 2017 and 2024, including €15,000 in 2024 – the year Mohammed and five of the 60 Moroccan workers at the farm filed complaints about their treatment. Following an investigation, the farmer was charged with human trafficking. He is currently awaiting trial.

In another case, a farmer in Jaén, Spain – previously convicted of labour exploitation in 2016 and twice charged with murder over the alleged deaths of two different migrant farmworkers a decade apart – was paid over €118,000 in public funds between 2014 and 2022. The sum includes €17,000 paid in 2022, a year after a second worker, Ibrahima Diouf from Senegal, disappeared following an argument over unpaid wages. The farmer is now awaiting trial for Diouf’s alleged murder. 

A new “social conditionality” reform, introduced in full this year, ties subsidies to the treatment of people working in the fields for the first time. But this investigation reveals how the measure – implemented by EU member states – is riddled with issues, ranging from a major lack of transparency to shoddy enforcement.

It comes as the European Commission’s next proposal for CAP – currently under review – risks watering down social conditionality further, or axing the reform entirely.

A Commission spokesperson defended the measure as “an important signal that farm workers should be treated with respect”.

“The vast majority of farmers do treat their workers properly,” they told DeSmog. “Unfortunately, as is the case in any sector, there are exceptions. The social conditionality mechanism is an important signal that farm workers should be treated with respect – with decent conditions and a right to a safe working environment.”

For the EU to be funnelling large sums of public money into farms accused and convicted of labour abuses was “scandalous,” said Olivier De Schutter, co-chair of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food).

“People want food that is fair – both in how it’s grown and how people are treated – and the Common Agricultural Policy should be a tool to deliver that,” he said. 

“Instead, public funds continue to subsidise farms implicated in exploitative food production, including modern-day slavery. Social conditionality was meant to change this, but it has proven toothless – failing to prevent abuse or trigger meaningful sanctions.”

A strawberry farm in Palos de la Frontera, Huelva, Spain. Credit: Eoghan Gilmartin Minimal Fines

A cross-border team of journalists reviewed dozens of court filings, media reports and testimonials, and interviewed precarious workers at farms across Europe.

The nine-month investigation identified over a hundred individual and corporate-owned farms involved in labour violation cases across France, Spain, Germany and Italy, the largest recipients of the CAP subsidy, and cross-checked these with an EU farm subsidy database. 

Press and court documents were often heavily edited or inaccessible, and the opaque movement of money through cooperatives and consortia meant it wasn’t always possible to verify whether an offender had received CAP funds. The 30 cases identified by DeSmog are likely to be a conservative estimate, since the vast majority of landowners benefit from the subsidy.

The outcome of these cases varied considerably depending on the country – ranging from convictions to administrative sanctions, financial settlements, and ongoing criminal investigations. In all of them, DeSmog found that CAP funds continued to be paid to farms once prosecutors had opened investigations – and frequently after convictions.

In 2022, a court in Piedmont, northern Italy, sentenced a poultry farmer and his mother to three years in prison and an 8,000 euros fine for exploiting migrant workers. The jail sentence was reduced to 18 months on appeal. Italy’s state police anti-terrorism unit DIGOS found the pair had underpaid wages as part of a tax evasion scheme. The son received more than €90,000 in subsidies the year of his conviction, and €110,000 the following year.

In another case in Campania, southern Italy, a farmer convicted of labour exploitation in 2023 received nearly €200,000 in CAP subsidies the following year – almost enough to cover the €250,265 fine imposed as part of his sentence. The same farm, which collected over a million euros in subsidies since 2015, was found to be paying migrant workers just €4.50 an hour to work 11-hour days, seven days a week.

Similarly in 2024, a farmer and local politician for the centre-right People’s Party in Galicia, Spain, was sentenced, along with two family members, to nine months in prison after forcing two migrant workers to work 13 hours a day – without a contract, breaks or benefits. The three convicted farmers were ordered to pay the workers a total of €44,000 in compensation, but their family-run farm received €41,000 in CAP subsidies that same year. Since their initial arrest, they have been paid €283,000 in EU funds.

In 2023, Spain’s labour inspectorate ruled against Berrynest, a major berry producer in Huelva, for failing to pay overtime to its warehouse workers and for violating legal limits on their shift lengths. 

Grassroots workers’ organisation Jornaleras de Huelva en Lucha, which had brought the case, had been denouncing such practices at the company for the previous five years. Yet even after the ruling the berry producer – one of the largest private recipients of CAP funding in the EU – saw its subsidies go from €3.26 million in 2023 to €3.41 million in 2024. 

Cases of labour abuse were concentrated but not confined to southern Europe, the investigation found.

In 2021, labour ministries signed an agreement that up to 5,000 Georgians a year could enter Germany legally and work as seasonal workers. In the same year, 18 Georgian strawberry-pickers sued their employers after finding themselves housed in dirty, mouldy accommodation and paid only a fraction of what they’d been promised. 

While one case was settled, the second is yet to be resolved. In the years since the lawsuits were brought, the two farmers have collected around €63,000 in CAP funds.

Carlos Ruiz-Ramirez, author of a 2024 Oxfam report on migrant workers’ experiences in Europe, says it is imperative for the EU and national governments to close subsidy loopholes and ramp up labour inspections.

“Workers are being exploited on Europe’s farms,” he told DeSmog, “and EU subsidies are bankrolling this.”

Informal migrant settlement in Huelva, Spain. Credit: Eoghan Gilmartin ‘Cosmetic Measure’

Widespread labour abuses in Europe’s fields were meant to be addressed through ‘social conditionality’. Under the flagship reform – negotiated in 2021 and implemented across the EU this year – farmers would have to comply with minimum social and labour standards to receive payments, and be fined a percentage of the CAP funding if they did not comply.

France was one of the three member states to voluntarily introduce the reform in January 2023, along with Italy and Austria. However, not a single penalty has yet been imposed by French authorities.

The mechanism is informally set to be reviewed in 2027. But at this point the re-design of the measure for the next CAP period, which runs from 2028 to 2034, will have already been decided.

“There is still absolutely no channel of communication set up between the CAP paying agencies and the labour inspectorate [in France],” explains Lucas Dejeux from the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), one of France’s five big trade unions, who said that those authorising CAP payments often aren’t even aware when farmers are convicted for violations. 

“We have not received an internal memo on the subject… there is nothing at all,” he adds. Two other labour inspectors, who wished to remain anonymous, corroborated this.

Under the reform, fines for labour abuse are issued as a subsidy cut of up to 10 percent, generally rising to 30 percent for repeat offenders. The penalties are only ever imposed as a one-off reduction on funds from the year of the offence.

In Austria, this has happened just once. A farmer was ordered to pay more than €3,000 for breaching social conditionality on two separate occasions in 2023 and 2024 – docking just four percent off the average 40,000 euros he received annually in CAP subsidies. He was fined three per cent of his CAP payments in 2023, which was increased to five per cent due to the repeated violation. 

According to the Spanish ministry of agriculture, 227 beneficiaries of CAP subsidies were penalised under social conditionality in 2024, mostly with a three percent reduction of their funds. The figure is tiny compared to the scale of abuses detected in the sector every year. The latest available figures for 2023 show the labour inspectorate recorded 7,449 labour violations in agriculture.

Yoan Molinero, senior researcher at Comillas University’s centre for migration studies, says even these moderate sanctions will also only be applied against basic direct payments, whereas most funding to the fruit and vegetable sector – where the worst labour abuses take place – is received through other CAP schemes.

Indeed, all of the €3.4 million received in 2024 by the Huelva berry producer would be exempt from sanctions under current rules, since it was paid from a sector-specific aid program.

For Molinero, the cases reviewed by DeSmog cases reflect “the total disconnect between subsidies and social conditions of production.”

In its current form, social conditionality is “less an initial step in the right direction towards protecting workers,” Molinero said, “and more a cosmetic measure designed to offer the semblance of change while maintaining the CAP status quo”. Its impact on offending farmers will be “negligible,” he said.

Éric Sargiacomo, a French social democratic MEP and vice chair of the agriculture committee, agrees. “The level of sanctions are too low to operate as a deterrent,” he told DeSmog.

As the centre-right European People’s Party increasingly aligns itself with far-right forces on agricultural policy, the risk with the next CAP reform is that social conditionality will be weakened further. The Commission’s new proposal – to be introduced in 2028 – would exempt farms under ten hectares from controls and penalties, effectively exempting around 70 percent of farms from sanctions. 

“Workers’ rights can’t depend on the size of the farm,” said Cristina Guarda, an Italian Green MEP and farmer. “It’s like saying exploitation is acceptable as long as it happens on a small scale. Being underpaid [as smallscale farmers] doesn’t give us the right to violate others’ rights.”

Guarda’s counter proposal, and that of the European Federation of Food, Agriculture, and Tourism Trade Unions (EFFAT), is to strengthen social conditionality through withholding CAP payments. She explains this would mean any farmer under investigation for serious labour abuses would have their subsidies automatically stopped in advance until the proceedings in the case are fully resolved.

“Farmers with a serious history of labour violations, exploitation, or anti-union practices should not have access to public funds,” Guarda told DeSmog.

“Decent work and good food must be a core goal of EU food policy,” added Olivier De Schutter of IPES-Food. “Yet instead of raising the bar, the Commission’s latest CAP reform proposals risk further weakening social and environmental standards. Europe cannot afford a race to the bottom in its food system.” 

Additional reporting by Pascale Müller

Editing by Phoebe Cooke and Clare Carlile

This investigation also appeared in El Salto Diario (Spain), profil (Austria), L’Humanité (France), FragDenStaat (Germany), Taz.die Tageszeitung (Germany) and L’Espresso (Italy).

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Citing hard evidence of the Lujan Grisham administration inappropriately pressuring the Water Quality Control Commission (WQCC) to fast-track a new rule proposed and written by Big Oil to allow discharge of treated fracking waste to New Mexico’s rivers and streams, water advocates today filed a motion to disqualify 7 of 14 commissioners and vacate their July 7 vote to hear the petition. In the motion, Amigos Bravos, the Sierra Club Rio Grande Chapter, and the Western Environmental Law Center raise the alarm of the impossibility of an impartial rulemaking given this outside political pressure.

“The governor’s office tainted the Water Quality Control Commission in a drive to pressure members to get Big Oil’s petition ‘over the finish line’ to allow the discharge of produced water—a toxic waste—to New Mexico’s precious and scarce clean water,” said Tannis Fox, senior attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center. “In my 25 years working in this arena, I’ve never seen this level of political interference with the decision making of an administrative body charged with protecting human health and the environment. The WQCC is supposed to act impartially and base its decisions on the evidence before it, not on outside political directives. This rulemaking can not proceed fairly. Today, we asked the commission to recognize that fact. We hope the commissioners police themselves and vacate their tainted vote that allowed the rulemaking to go forward.”

The WQCC, an independent state body charged with adopting water quality standards to protect public health and the environment for both ground and surface waters, is required to hear and consider scientific evidence and public comment before making decisions that could adversely affect New Mexico’s water resources.

Emails from New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) Sec. Kenney, five other cabinet secretaries, and the governor’s office reveal commissioners were effectively told to vote to advance a petition by the Water Access Treatment & Reuse Alliance (WATR Alliance), an oil and gas industry-backed group, before the WQCC heard the merits of the petition. The WQCC is supposed to be an impartial rulemaking body that is required to base its decisions on the scientific record before it, not on political mandates outside the record. While the governor’s office can direct general executive policy, it cannot direct specific votes in specific cases before the commission without regard to evidence in the record.

“At a time when we are seeing institutional norms and government integrity disintegrate before our eyes at the federal level, it is devastating to see a similar lack of integrity at the state level,” said Rachel Conn, deputy director of Amigos Bravos. “We depend on the Water Quality Control Commission to impartially make decisions based on the evidence before them. That hasn’t happened here and as a result, the commission has placed our waters and communities at risk.”

In May, the commission adopted a complete prohibition against all discharge of treated fracking wastewater based on a proposal from NMED supported by expert testimony from NMED staff scientists. Only weeks later, on June 23, an oil and gas industry group, WATR Alliance, filed a petition proposing a rule that would reverse the rule adopted by the commission. WATR Alliance’s proposed rule would allow discharge of treated fracking wastewater to both surface and ground water, in some cases without any monitoring requirements.

In addition, NMED management is not authorizing its scientists to participate in the new rulemaking. These same experts presented technical evidence in support of the May treated fracking wastewater discharge ban. In the commission’s 58-year history, there has never been a rulemaking on a rule that NMED will implement in which NMED staff did not participate as a party. NMED scientists should be allowed to participate in the hearing and evaluate whether the WATR Alliance’s proposal protects New Mexico water resources, public health, and the environment.

“New Mexicans put their trust in the commission to base its decisions, without interference, on the technical expertise and independent science from state agencies,” said Dale Doremus of the Rio Grande Chapter of the Sierra Club. “It is hugely disappointing to see a majority of commissioners abandon that charge and allow politically driven decision making in such a critical rulemaking that should prioritize safeguarding our precious and scarce ground and surface waters from toxic contaminants that can endanger human health and the environment.”

Contacts:

Tannis Fox, Western Environmental Law Center, 505-629-0732, fox@westernlaw.org

Rachel Conn, Amigos Bravos, 575-770-8327, rconn@amigosbravos.org

Dale Doremus, Sierra Club Rio Grande Chapter, 505-795-5987, doremuswater@gmail.com

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