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As competition for minerals needed to produce clean energy technologies intensifies, a growing number of countries have resorted to an age-old mechanism to cope with the threat of scarcity: stockpiling.

The world’s biggest economies are racing to shore up reserves of cobalt, lithium, graphite and rare earths, which are needed to produce batteries, electric vehicles, wind turbines and electric systems to wean the global economy off fossil fuels. The same minerals are also increasingly sought after to manufacture military hardware and chips for AI, adding further pressure on supplies.

But the cutthroat scramble to build up reserves threatens to drive up the costs of the energy transition by intensifying competition and pushing up prices of key materials needed to produce clean energy technologies, research published today has found.

“If you undermine the financial viability of [clean energy] projects through higher raw material costs, you’re going to delay their roll-out,” co-author Hugh Miller, the critical minerals lead at the Centre for Economic Transition Expertise at the London School of Economics and Political Science, told Climate Home News.

Stockpiling “is happening, whether we like it or not”, said Miller. “But if we’re going to do it, we need to have it in a coordinated manner that means we don’t have massive market volatility and adverse implications from every country trying to go at it alone,” he added.

The rise of stockpiles

A growing number of governments have adopted national stockpiling programmes in response to heightened geopolitical tensions around mineral supply chains.

Earlier this year, US President Donald Trump announced the establishment of a critical mineral reserve known as “Project Vault” to protect American businesses from shortages after China imposed export restrictions on rare earth supplies.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivers opening remarks at the Critical Minerals Ministerial in Washington DC (Credit: Official State Department photo by Freddie Everett)

Beijing suspended the measures until November as part of a trade truce with Washington but the episode spooked Western governments and exposed how strategic materials can be weaponised to achieve geopolitical objectives.

Australia, China, the EU and India have also announced measures to create strategic mineral reserves. Japan and South Korea already have long-standing mineral stockpiling programmes.

“Legitimate concerns”

“There are legitimate concerns with regards to potential global shortages of these minerals,” said Miller, citing rapidly rising and concurrent mineral demand for the energy transition, AI, data centres, and military technologies, combined with underinvestment in new supplies for some minerals, such as copper.

While stockpiling can serve as an emergency response mechanism during acute shortages, it does nothing to address the underlying concentration risks in mineral supply chains. The Democratic Republic of Congo holds around 70% of the world’s cobalt reserves, for example, while China dominates the processing of 19 out of 20 minerals deemed critical by a large number of nations.

• May 27, 2026 Clean Energy Frontier Recycling could meet half of Europe’s critical mineral needs by 2050 A new report by an EU-funded research project says the bloc could harness its “urban mines” to reduce its dependence on China for energy transition minerals Read more
• May 5, 2026 Clean Energy Frontier The energy transition has a rare earth problem: These startups are solving it China’s grip on global supply chains is turbocharging efforts to find alternatives to the small group of metals that dominate EV motor technology Read more
• Mar 9, 2026 Comment The US’s critical minerals club threatens an equitable clean energy transition Washington’s minerals trading bloc will shore up supplies for the US’s digital and military sectors and risks diverting resources away from cleantech Read more

Uncoordinated stockpiling programmes risk heightening the price volatility they are designed to hedge against, according to the report.

Researchers found that if Australia, China, the EU, India, Japan, South Korea and the US simultaneously built reserves of minerals to cover six months of imports, the aggregate stockpile demand could represent up to 34% of global annual cobalt supply and over 10% of global lithium, graphite and copper supply. That could cause a shock to the market, triggering the shortages and price spikes they are trying to avoid.

Miller said it was unlikely that every country would stockpile at that rate, but aggregate stockpiling demand of just 5% of global mineral supply would have an impact on prices.

Coordinating stockpiles: a role for the IEA?

Researchers found that avoiding the negative impacts of stockpiling requires global coordination over how mineral stocks are accumulated and released – a mechanism which already exists for other commodities, including oil.

Coordination should include agreed rules for countries to build up their stocks over a slow and staggered timeline and pre-agreed conditions for releasing reserves to provide market predictability and reduce the risk of price spikes.

The International Energy Agency (IEA), which was established after the 1970s oil crisis to coordinate emergency oil stock releases among member countries, is best placed to oversee such a mechanism, they say.

Earlier this year, IEA member countries called on the agency to strengthen its work on critical minerals, including by providing support to countries “that choose to establish and expand critical minerals stockpiling systems”.

But Miller and his co-author Pau Morandi, a policy fellow at the Centre for Economic Transition Expertise, argue that members should go one step further and mandate the IEA to coordinate the security of supplies, rather than only helping individual governments.

The IEA has been contacted for comment.

A call to action for the G7

Miller said he hoped the research could be picked up by the G7 group of wealthy countries, which could lead on mandating the IEA to take on this coordination role.

France, which is presiding over the group this year and is hosting leaders in Evian on the shores of Lake Geneva in mid-June, has made strengthening the resilience of critical minerals value chains a priority.

In a communique last month, finance ministers agreed to “deepen and expand our cooperation among G7 members and with like-minded partners” to strengthen and diversify critical mineral supply chains and to continue discussions “on how to best organise analytical cooperation”.

Sebastien Treyer, executive director of the Paris-based Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI), said he hoped the G7 leaders’ summit can help move the discussion on critical minerals towards greater international cooperation to secure the resources the world needs to build a clean economy.

From inclusive and mutually beneficial partnerships to mine resources to stockpiling minerals, “we need to coordinate more like a trade organisation than something that is about securing supply,” he said.

The post The scramble to stockpile critical minerals could drive up energy transition costs appeared first on Climate Home News.

New coal-fired plants in Anchorage, Alaska, and Mt. Storm, West Virginia, would total 2.85 GW. They would be the first new U.S. coal plants to come online since 2013.

Former crew members on squid fishing expeditions report environmental destruction and labor abuses, due to a regulatory vacuum.

Read more on E360 →

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A new solar-powered desalination device could help address society’s growing thirst for freshwater and energy. The device has specially engineered solar panels that pull potable water from seawater while also extracting salts, including lithium. Because it removes salts, the system does not produce harmful brine waste.

Researchers at the University of Rochester reported the device in the journal Light: Science and Applications. And in a recent related paper published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A, the team showed that the panels can be tweaked to separate lithium from the recovered salts. The modified device extracted about half of the lithium from Great Salt Lake water samples.

According to the United Nations, the world has entered an “era of global water bankruptcy”. About 2.2 billion people do not have access to safely managed drinking water, and 3 billion live in areas where total water levels are declining or unstable.

Many parched regions of the world rely on desalination plants that convert seawater into fresh water. But the technologies used today are energy-intensive and expensive. They also generate large volumes of concentrated briny water that is discharged into the ocean where it can damage local ecosystems.

So the Rochester team took inspiration from the coffee ring effect to design their new solar desalination device. First, they etch small, black metal panels with ultra-fast lasers to make special solar panels. The textured black surface absorbs nearly all incoming sunlight and is very good at attracting water.

The patterned region quickly wicks water. As the device absorbs sunlight, the water evaporates and is distilled into fresh water. Meanwhile, the metal’s grooves are patterned in a way that they guide the salts and minerals outward to the edges of the active area, much like a coffee ring is formed as liquid evaporates and push the solid particles out in a circle.

For lithium extraction, the researchers embedded hydrogen titanate nanoparticles into the panel’s grooves. The particles selectively trap lithium ions selectively while other salts move to the passive collection zone.

“Mining lithium from the Earth has proven to be very taxing from an energy and environmental standpoint, so pulling lithium directly from saltwater could be a very important future route,” said Chunlei Guo, a professor of optics and physics, in a press release.

Sources:

• Luheng Tang et al. Additive-free and brine-discharge-free solar-thermal desalination with simultaneous complete mineral mining from ocean water. Light: Science, 2026.
• Luheng Tang et al. Rapid lithium extraction via solar-thermal interfacial evaporation with zero liquid discharge. Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 2026.

Image: University of Rochester photo / J. Adam Fenster

Here in the U.S. but certainly also all over the world, when people have questions about health and wellness, nearly three-quarters of us turn to the internet first. And in a country where 1 in 2 adults is experiencing diabetes or pre-diabetes and 7 in 10 faces overweight or obesity, according to The Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, nutrition is increasingly a central subject we’re relying on technology to help guide.

This week, I was in Washington, D.C. for FIMCON, a new national Food is Medicine Conference. I moderated a panel that explored how we can communicate nutrition and health messages to the public using a mix of digital platforms, behavioral science, and emerging artificial intelligence (AI) tools. I spoke with experts including Nira Goren, MD, Head of AI for Societal Health & Food is Medicine at Google; Noosheen Hashemi, Founder & CEO of January AI; and Sarah Mastrorocco, VP & GM of Instacart Health.

I find it fascinating that the increasing public realization of the power of Food is Medicine in recent years has coincided with the boom of generative AI, and I’ve got to be honest: It makes me both excited and nervous. GenAI is a hugely powerful tool—and with major opportunity comes the serious challenge of using it responsibly. That’s exactly why we need to talk about it.

According to a study in Frontiers in Nutrition, AI can be used to deliver personalized nutrition recommendations, enable early dietary interventions to prevent chronic diseases, and optimize food processing to reduce food waste. At the Periodic Table of Food Initiative, researchers are using AI alongside a global database to map out what they call the “dark matter” of food—the overwhelming majority of biomolecules in food we don’t know about—to improve human and planetary health.

These potential impacts stretch from your forks all the way back to our farm fields. At the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) this week, the annual Menus of Change summit brought together chefs, advocates, and private-sector food leaders to discuss ways that food systems of the future—including health-oriented technologies like AI—begin in the kitchen.

And as we’ve reported at Food Tank, AI tools can also help farmers improve their land management practices via precision agriculture; analyze climate risks and predict disruptions before they become disastrous; and strengthen transparent and traceable supply chains.

But of course, no technological solution is a silver bullet. Along with well-documented environmental impacts that cannot be ignored, generative AI exists in an overwhelming internet information ecosystem that is not always accurate.

“Unfortunately about 50 percent of the information online in nutrition is disinformation,” Nira Goren of Google told us at Food Tank’s SXSW Summit earlier this year. “So navigating that sea of information—what’s high quality, what’s not high-quality, why are these two institutions saying conflicting things—is something we wanted to help make better.”

To address this, Google is working with the Tufts Food is Medicine Institute to ensure their tools and models are both building upon and delivering the best available public nutrition information.

And the public health landscape has changed significantly in recent years. For example, challenges around obesity have really only become predominant in the past few decades, says cardiologist Dariush Mozaffarian, the Director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University.

“I graduated medical school in 1995; we were talking about eating disorders (when) we talked about nutrition. There wasn’t an obesity epidemic in 1995. So this has happened in just the last 30 years in our adult lifetimes,” he says.

And the economic stakes are higher than ever, too. Besides the quality-of-life impacts of poor nutrition, health care spending and lost productivity from sub-optimal diets cost the economy US$1.1 trillion in the U.S. alone, per The Rockefeller Foundation. So the costs of getting things wrong—or doing nothing!—are enormous.

There’s no question that the food movement needs to ask serious questions about the future of generative AI. When it comes to protecting biodiversity, establishing food sovereignty, and even the idea that food is our first and best medicine, we often find deeply powerful answers in Indigenous wisdom that has guided humanity for millennia. As the climate crisis becomes more intense, we cannot afford to make certain sacrifices but we also cannot afford to leave powerful tools on the table unused.

In other words, some new problems require new solutions. Investing in emerging technologies to bolster our efforts to nourish the planet can truly pay off—if we manage them responsibly and center equity and justice in all of our decision-making.

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 Nathan Dumlao, Unsplash

The post Asking Serious Questions About AI’s Role in Food is Medicine appeared first on Food Tank.

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Mientras el mundo celebra el Día Mundial del Medio Ambiente de 2026, la atención global se centra cada vez más en la urgente necesidad de tomar medidas contra el cambio climático y la protección del medio ambiente. El tema de este año, “Inspirado por la Naturaleza. Por el Clima. Por Nuestro Futuro,” destaca que la acción climática no solo consiste en reducir las emisiones de carbono, sino también en replantearse los sistemas que dan forma a las economías, las industrias y la relación entre las personas y el planeta.

En la República Dominicana, la creciente crisis medioambiental en torno al embalse de Hatillo, en Cotuí, se ha convertido en un claro ejemplo de estos retos. Hoy, las comunidades hacen de nuevo un llamado sobre la reciente contaminación del agua y exigen medidas de remediación y una mayor protección medioambiental. Su mensaje es claro: proteger el embalse de Hatillo no es solo una prioridad medioambiental, sino una necesidad social y económica.

Las comunidades dan la voz de alarma

Conocido como el mayor embalse de agua dulce de la República Dominicana y el Caribe, el Hatillo es vital para la agricultura, los ecosistemas y el suministro de agua a las comunidades situadas aguas abajo. Sin embargo, décadas de acumulación de sedimentos y la falta de un mantenimiento adecuado han contribuido a agravar la degradación ambiental, poniendo cada vez más en riesgo la salud pública y los medios de vida locales.

La preocupación pública se intensificó en diciembre de 2025, cuando los residentes de las comunidades situadas alrededor del embalse comenzaron a compartir alarmantes fotos y vídeos en las redes sociales que mostraban que el agua había adquirido un color verde brillante. En respuesta, el Ministerio de Medio Ambiente llevó a cabo análisis del agua y emitió un comunicado en el que atribuía el cambio de color del agua a una proliferación de algas.

Se han identificado múltiples fuentes posibles de contaminación, incluyendo efluentes agrícolas  y actividades industriales. Hay tres minas en operación situadas dentro de la cuenca hidrográfica que desemboca en el embalse. El Comité Nuevo Renacer (CNR), que representa a cinco comunidades afectadas —La Cerca, La Piñita, Las Lagunas, Jobo Claro y Jurungo— ha abogado por el reasentamiento lejos de las actividades mineras y sostiene que las numerosas fuentes potenciales de contaminación y los impactos ambientales asociados reflejan grandes deficiencias en la gestión medioambiental de la zona. 

Los análisis revelan graves riesgos

Los estudios microbiológicos posteriores realizados entre diciembre de 2025 y enero de 2026 por el Instituto de Microbiología y Parasitología (IMPA) de la Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD), junto con los análisis del Laboratorio Franja, revelaron hallazgos alarmantes. Los resultados, difundidos públicamente por la periodista Nairobi Viloria en el programa “Te lo explico” y posteriormente diseminados por Diario Libre, identificaron altas concentraciones de bacterias asociadas a la contaminación fecal, lo que indica graves riesgos sanitarios.

Los estudios también detectaron especies de Microcystis, un tipo de bacteria relacionada con la proliferación excesiva de algas que provoca la depleción de oxígeno y puede producir potentes toxinas perjudiciales para la salud humana, el ganado y la vida acuática. Además, se identificaron otros tipos de microalgas que indican aguas ricas en nutrientes, altas cargas orgánicas y desequilibrio ecológico. En conjunto, estos hallazgos sugieren que el embalse está sufriendo un deterioro ambiental progresivo. También se registraron niveles elevados de nitrógeno y fósforo, lo que contribuye a la proliferación de algas nocivas.

También hay metales pesados

Un análisis del Laboratorio Franja reveló concentraciones elevadas de metales pesados y sustancias tóxicas, entre ellas níquel, cromo total, manganeso, sulfatos y cianuro, algunas de las cuales superan los umbrales de seguridad establecidos. Estos resultados apuntan a múltiples fuentes de contaminación, entre las que probablemente se incluyen actividades mineras, vertidos industriales, escorrentías agrícolas y residuos urbanos. 

Resulta particularmente preocupante los niveles de níquel, que alcanzan hasta 1.613 mg/L, muy por encima del límite permisible de 0,1 mg/L para aguas superficiales destinadas a sustentar la vida acuática. Un artículo de 2025 publicado enEnvironmental Science and Pollution Research también informó sobre niveles elevados de cobre, arsénico, antimonio, aluminio, cobalto y zinc en el embalse de Hatillo.

Tras revisar los resultados analizados por el Laboratorio Franja, la Asociación Dominicana de Ingenieros Químicos publicó un informe de 20 páginas en el que expresaba su profunda preocupación por los resultados de la calidad del agua y recomendaba un seguimiento y análisis continuos, incluyendo los sedimentos del fondo del embalse, así como la reclasificación de la calidad del agua.

La Academia de Ciencias de la República Dominicana también emitió una declaración pública instando a las autoridades a tomar medidas inmediatas. Según la declaración, la coloración verdosa observada en el embalse puede deberse a una combinación de factores, entre ellos el uso intensivo de fertilizantes y agroquímicos, la afluencia de materia orgánica, la reducción de los niveles de agua durante períodos prolongados de sequía y posibles vertidos procedentes de operaciones mineras cercanas.

El agua del Embalse de Hatillo sigue con un color verdoso seis meses después de la primera proliferación de algas. Crédito: Ramón Ventura Las comunidades responden a la contaminación

Más allá de las pruebas científicas, la crisis medioambiental en torno al embalse de Hatillo ha provocado una fuerte respuesta ciudadana. Los residentes de Cotuí se han movilizado para exigir medidas inmediatas, expresando su preocupación por la posible toxicidad del embalse y su impacto en la salud, los medios de vida y el medio ambiente.En marzo de 2026, los miembros de la comunidad se reunieron cada noche en el parque del pueblo para celebrar vigilias a la luz de las velas, que culminaron en una gran marcha popular el 20 de marzo.  Meses después, siguen haciendo un llamado por la justicia medioambiental y medidas urgentes para proteger y restaurar el embalse de Hatillo, como una fuente vital de agua dulce para el futuro.

The post Con motivo del Día Mundial del Medio Ambiente, las comunidades de la República Dominicana reclaman responsabilidad ambiental appeared first on Earthworks.

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Utility Dive caught up with the associate deputy secretary of energy at the Edison Electric Institute conference in Las Vegas, where the dominant theme was balancing demand growth with affordability.

Headline News:

• “Trump Delivers Boost To Coal Worth Hundreds Of Millions” • The Trump administration is putting $700 million into coal. Trump announced the move during remarks in the Oval Office, saying his administration is “taking historic action to bring down the price of energy and the cost of living for all Americans with the power of clean, beautiful coal.” [The Hill]

Clean, beautiful coal mine (Carol M Highsmith, public domain)

• “France Accused Of ‘Climate Denial’ As Green Funding Quietly Shrinks Following Blistering Heatwave” • Last month, France sweltered under a powerful heat dome. Weather agency Météo France said that new monthly highs had been logged at 352 weather stations. The highest temperature was 37.1°C. But France repeatedly cut its funding to deal with heat. [Euronews]
• “Energy, Water Use And Pollution Of AI And Data Centers Rival Most Countries” • The environmental footprint of data centers already rivals some of the world’s largest countries, a United Nations University report says. The report predicts their water and energy use will double in just four years as use of AI grows. So will their pollution. [MSN]
• “Citing Cleaner, Cheaper Alternatives, Colorado Regulators Deny Xcel Energy’s $2.9 Billion Gas System Plan ” • Colorado’s Public Utilities Commission declined to approve much of Xcel Energy’s Gas Infrastructure Plan, which lays out the utility’s forecasted investments in methane gas infrastructure over the coming years. [CleanTechnica]
• “Wind And Solar Are Saving Texans $20 Million A Day” • In Texas, more than a third of electricity came from wind and solar projects as early as the first half of 2022. This year, wind and solar capacity have both set records already. RMI estimates that, on average, wind and solar projects in Texas have avoided $20 million per day in fuel costs. [RMI]

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

Salah satu alasan utama mengapa slot pulsa semakin diminati adalah kemudahan akses yang ditawarkannya. Generasi milenial dikenal sebagai kelompok yang tumbuh bersama perkembangan teknologi digital. Mereka cenderung memilih layanan yang dapat digunakan secara instan tanpa prosedur yang rumit.

Metode pembayaran menggunakan pulsa memungkinkan pengguna melakukan transaksi langsung melalui nomor telepon yang dimiliki. Tidak diperlukan proses registrasi perbankan tambahan atau langkah-langkah teknis yang kompleks. Kesederhanaan ini menciptakan pengalaman yang lebih praktis dibandingkan metode pembayaran konvensional.

Dari perspektif perilaku konsumen, kemudahan akses sering kali menjadi faktor yang lebih menentukan daripada harga atau fitur tambahan. Inilah yang membuat sistem berbasis pulsa mampu menarik perhatian pengguna dalam jumlah besar.

Peran Smartphone dalam Mendorong Popularitas

Tidak dapat dipungkiri bahwa penetrasi smartphone menjadi salah satu pendorong utama pertumbuhan layanan digital berbasis pulsa. Saat ini, hampir seluruh aktivitas online dilakukan melalui perangkat mobile, mulai dari komunikasi, belanja, hingga hiburan.

Slot pulsa memanfaatkan tren tersebut dengan menghadirkan sistem yang kompatibel dengan penggunaan smartphone sehari-hari. Pengguna tidak perlu berpindah perangkat atau membuka aplikasi tambahan untuk melakukan transaksi. Seluruh proses dapat dilakukan secara cepat melalui perangkat yang selalu berada dalam genggaman.

Kondisi ini menunjukkan bahwa keberhasilan slot pulsa tidak hanya bergantung pada produknya, tetapi juga pada kemampuannya beradaptasi dengan kebiasaan digital masyarakat modern.

Faktor Psikologis di Balik Preferensi Milenial

Aspek yang jarang dibahas adalah faktor psikologis yang memengaruhi preferensi generasi milenial terhadap layanan berbasis pulsa. Dalam banyak studi perilaku digital, pengguna cenderung lebih nyaman menggunakan metode pembayaran yang terasa sederhana dan familiar.

Pulsa telah menjadi bagian dari kehidupan sehari-hari selama bertahun-tahun. Karena sudah terbiasa melakukan pengisian pulsa untuk kebutuhan komunikasi, pengguna tidak merasakan hambatan psikologis ketika memanfaatkannya sebagai alat transaksi digital.

Selain itu, generasi milenial dikenal menghargai pengalaman pengguna yang cepat dan minim hambatan. Semakin sedikit langkah yang diperlukan untuk menyelesaikan suatu aktivitas, semakin tinggi kemungkinan layanan tersebut digunakan secara berulang.

Integrasi dengan Ekonomi Digital Modern

Popularitas slot pulsa juga tidak dapat dipisahkan dari pertumbuhan ekonomi digital yang semakin masif. Saat ini, masyarakat hidup dalam ekosistem yang mengutamakan transaksi elektronik, layanan berbasis aplikasi, serta konektivitas tanpa batas.

Dalam konteks tersebut, pulsa bertransformasi dari sekadar alat komunikasi menjadi instrumen transaksi yang memiliki nilai ekonomi lebih luas. Perubahan fungsi ini mencerminkan bagaimana teknologi mampu mengubah perilaku masyarakat dalam memanfaatkan sumber daya yang sudah ada.

Fenomena ini menunjukkan bahwa inovasi tidak selalu berarti menciptakan sesuatu yang baru. Dalam banyak kasus, inovasi justru lahir dari kemampuan memanfaatkan teknologi yang sudah dikenal masyarakat untuk memenuhi kebutuhan yang berkembang.

Pengaruh Komunitas dan Media Sosial

Generasi milenial merupakan kelompok yang sangat dipengaruhi oleh interaksi digital. Rekomendasi dari teman, komunitas online, hingga media sosial memiliki dampak besar terhadap keputusan penggunaan suatu layanan.

Ketika sebuah layanan mendapatkan eksposur luas melalui berbagai platform digital, tingkat kepercayaan publik cenderung meningkat. Efek jaringan atau network effect ini membuat popularitas slot pulsa berkembang lebih cepat dibandingkan metode yang kurang mendapat perhatian di ruang digital.

Di era informasi saat ini, persepsi publik sering kali terbentuk bukan hanya melalui iklan, tetapi juga melalui pengalaman yang dibagikan oleh sesama pengguna. Faktor inilah yang turut mempercepat adopsi berbagai layanan berbasis digital.

Tantangan dan Prospek di Masa Depan

Meskipun popularitas slot pulsa terus meningkat, terdapat sejumlah tantangan yang perlu diperhatikan. Persaingan antarplatform semakin ketat, sementara ekspektasi pengguna terhadap keamanan dan kenyamanan terus meningkat.

Ke depan, keberhasilan layanan berbasis pulsa akan sangat bergantung pada kemampuan penyedia layanan dalam menghadirkan sistem yang aman, transparan, dan responsif terhadap kebutuhan pengguna. Selain itu, perkembangan teknologi pembayaran digital juga akan menjadi faktor penting yang menentukan arah pertumbuhan industri ini.

Jika mampu beradaptasi dengan perubahan teknologi dan perilaku konsumen, slot pulsa berpotensi mempertahankan posisinya sebagai salah satu metode transaksi digital yang diminati oleh generasi milenial dan generasi digital berikutnya.

Kesimpulan

Popularitas slot pulsa di kalangan generasi milenial bukanlah fenomena yang terjadi secara kebetulan. Kemudahan akses, integrasi dengan smartphone, faktor psikologis pengguna, pertumbuhan ekonomi digital, serta pengaruh komunitas online menjadi elemen utama yang mendorong perkembangannya.

Memahami fenomena ini dari berbagai sudut pandang memberikan gambaran yang lebih luas mengenai bagaimana teknologi membentuk perilaku konsumen modern. Slot pulsa pada akhirnya menjadi contoh nyata bahwa kesuksesan sebuah layanan digital sering kali ditentukan oleh kemampuannya menghadirkan solusi yang sederhana, relevan, dan sesuai dengan gaya hidup masyarakat masa kini.

The country is currently facing a runoff election to choose its new president. National organizations representing Indigenous Peoples and peasants have outlined a critical agenda to ensure full respect for their rights.

The post Peru: Indigenous Peoples and Peasants Mobilize Against the Threat of a Setback for Democracy appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

In an increasingly divided nation, Americans agree on at least two things. For one, politicians across the political spectrum are scrambling to get more housing built, which happens to be an accidentally powerful way to fight climate change. And two, Americans love their parks: A recent poll found that 88 percent of them visited one in the past year. Nearly 90 percent of people who voted for Kamala Harris, and 80 percent of those who voted for Donald Trump, consider these spaces critical infrastructure in their communities. 

That alone should encourage elected officials to build as many of them as possible. But a new report finds another, potentially even more motivating, factor for American cities: For every dollar invested in parks and recreation, communities reap $3 in local economic benefits each year. “You really do get so much goodness out of them,” said Will Klein, director of parks research at the Trust for Public Land, which produced the report. “People are healthier, people connect with each other. They drive business activity, especially for small businesses.”

Parks aren’t as much about land as they are about people. In an increasingly commodified world, they’re one of the few remaining public places where folks can roam without the pressure of spending money. That makes them a critical kind of “third place,” somewhere to gather beyond the workplace and the home. Whereas people must pay a premium to use a gym, they can use a park or rec center for free.

This brings huge benefits, and cost savings, to public health. The new report notes that the United States spends $5.3 trillion annually on health care. Physical inactivity, which greatly increases the risk of chronic problems like cardiovascular disease, costs the country more than $200 billion a year. “Our polling this year showed that the most popular place in America in 2025 to run around and play and exercise are parks and public spaces, much more popular than private gyms,” Klein said. “That physical activity has real health and economic benefits, about $2,000 per person in health care savings each year.”

Parks boost mental health as well. Simply being among greenery boosts positive well-being, research has shown. Parks also foster social interaction and reduce loneliness, which is a public health crisis of its own. This kind of commerce-free third place is especially important for the elderly, who may be living on fixed incomes and can’t afford to frequent cafes and the like. “There’s movie nights in the park, concerts in the park,” Klein said. “Just playing on the playground, talking to neighbors, having barbecues — all that stuff allows people to afford that higher quality of life.”

Even though they exist outside of the frenzy of capitalism, parks provide major economic value. The crowds they attract, for example, filter into surrounding neighborhoods, buying food and drinks for picnics or perusing mom-and-pop shops and boutiques. Famous green spaces — New York City’s Central Park, Chicago’s Millennium Park, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and newly minted Sunset Dunes — attract tourists, too. The Trust for Public Land says that the Florida Gulf Coast Trail, the 420-mile greenway it’s helping develop, will bring $200 million in economic activity in Sarasota County alone by attracting bicyclists and other recreationists.

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Even if you own a home near a park but never visit it, you’re benefiting economically in a way. “People want to live near green spaces,” Klein said. “So you see increased property values, which supports a broader tax base, which can be reinvested into community benefits through the increased property tax revenue.”

The trick is ensuring everyone — not just those who can afford condos and single-family homes — can enjoy the aura of these jewels. While new housing developments might seem at odds with green spaces, the two can exist in harmony. Even if they’re crammed into the densest of cities, affordable complexes can incorporate pocket gardens, which have the added benefit of reducing increasingly unbearable urban temperatures. Some developers are even building communities around working farms, known as agrihoods, which bring yet another benefit of local food production.

Any additional green space will also help cities adapt to one of the stranger consequences of climate change: It’s raining a lot harder. City sewer systems were designed to handle the rainstorms of old, but are overwhelmed by the additional water falling today. By soaking up some of that liquid, parks help save money in two ways: They reduce the amount of water that a city has to pay to manage, and they help prevent the surrounding neighborhood from flooding, avoiding property damage. 

More so than ever before, then, the humble green space is a surprisingly powerful way to solve a bunch of problems at once — improving mental health, helping cities adapt to climate change, and supercharging economic activity. “Parks,” Klein said, “are actually one of these solutions hiding under the feet of all these local leaders.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Your local park is bringing in the green (and by that, we mean money) on Jun 5, 2026.

A gentle shower fell as four people in rain gear made their way deep into a spruce-fir forest high in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Ducking beneath bright green underbrush and stepping away from the road, a hush took over.

Just a few steps in, they came across an aging yellow birch tree covered in moss.

But it wasn’t just moss. James Hollinger, a retired computer scientist turned amateur lichen scientist, leaned closer and spotted a rare, spongy lichen that has been documented about a dozen times in the park. As far as he knows, it does not appear in any botanical guidebooks.

“So, we could, right here right now, come up with a common name for it,” Hollinger said excitedly, as fellow volunteer and lichenologist Laura Boggess unfolded her magnifying lens. Counting carefully, she found more than 17 other moss and lichen species on just one side of the tree. 

Every square foot of the Smokies teems with life that most visitors never notice: lichens clinging to bark, fungi hidden in fallen logs, and salamanders darting beneath damp leaves. Scientists and volunteers say paying attention to those small creatures — and returning often enough to notice when they change — has grown increasingly urgent as climate change alters the park’s ecosystems and federal agencies see deep cuts that threaten long-term monitoring and biodiversity research.

Hollinger, Boggess, and the others in the group call themselves the Gang of Retirees in Search of Life’s Diversity, or “GRISLD.” Not all are retired — Boggess is beginning a teaching job at Warren Wilson College in the fall — but they share a habit of spending hours moving deliberately through remote corners of the park, documenting species few people will ever see. Connected through a listserv and their keen interest in the Smokies’ rich biodiversity, the group quietly contributes to a long-running project called the all taxa biodiversity inventory, or ATBI, conducted in partnership with the park. 

The Great Smoky Mountains are the most biodiverse site in the national park system. Every square foot of the park teems with life, much of which park visitors rarely see. Katie Myers / Grist

“We’ll hike into these places that other researchers don’t have the resources, the funding to,” Hollinger said. “We watch all these things and keep an eye on how things are changing.”

The Smokies project is one of the oldest and longest-running all taxa biodiversity inventories in the country, one of several decades-long efforts to document biodiversity in dozens of ecological hotspots around the world. That work has taken on increasing urgency in the Great Smoky Mountains, the most biodiverse site in the national park system and a global hotspot for salamanders, fungi, mosses, and other less-studied forms of life.

The mountains’ varied elevations and countless microclimates may help some species survive a warming world by providing pockets of cooler habitat. But climate change is also reshaping the park in visible ways, from an increase in invasive insects and dying trees to more frequent floods, fires, and violent storms. The inventory is conducted with the park and managed by the nonprofit Discover Life in America, where Will Kuhn — one of the hikers threading through the wet forest that morning — leads scientific research.

“We’re up to over 22,000 species of everything that has been documented here in the Smokies,” Kuhn said. More than 1,000 of them documented since 1998 are new to science, a number believed to just scratch the surface.  “That is maybe a third to a quarter of the actual diversity here.” 

Finding a new species might seem like a rare joy, but it happens regularly, Kuhn says. Larger, charismatic species are well documented, but little ones, such as mites, mosses, and microscopic plankton-like rotifers are often understudied.

Much of the park’s biodiversity data is collected during spring and summer, when academic researchers tend to visit, Kuhn said. Volunteers are there year-round, however, tracking species that are active in colder months or, like many birds, pass through while migrating. “The park’s really known during that time of the year, but what about the things that are off-period?” Hollinger said, turning over a log as a red-cheeked salamander scampered into the wet leaves. 

A red-cheeked salamander scampers under a log. Volunteers take photos of every species they log and upload them to iNaturalist, a citizen science database. Courtesy of Will Kuhn

Although the Park Service grants permits to academic researchers, its relationships with local nonprofits and tourism-dependent communities allow it to support ecological work it cannot manage on its own. Those organizations can also raise money in times of need, in one recent case helping to keep the park open while salaries were on pause during the 2025 government shutdown. 

“Ultimately, we’re able to spend money on things that benefit the park but that a federal agency just can’t do,” Kuhn said.

Retired biologist Paul Super coordinated research in the park for over two decades. He’s interested in lichens, mosses, insects, and other small creatures in part because of the way they hold moisture, keeping the mountain cool and foggy. If they die, the water cycle will change. 

“Regulating the moisture in these high elevation areas is pretty important because we’re at the top of the watershed, and everybody’s drinking water is downhill from here,” Super said.

In the decades he’s spent in the park, he’s seen long-term changes unfold. Warming temperatures are rippling through the food chain, making way for invasive parasites like the woolly adelgid. The tiny insect, which is native to Asia, has infested and killed thousands of the park’s hemlocks, a towering tree sometimes called the “redwood of the East.” Other pests have attacked Fraser firs, elms, and white and green ash trees that keep streams cool for temperature-sensitive aquatic species like the beloved brook trout.

The high-elevation ecosystems of the Smokies are “sky islands” –  isolated pockets of unique species that depend upon cooler, wetter conditions. When the climate warms, there’s nowhere else to go. Some may disappear before anyone even knows they’re there.

To Super, logging these species is about noticing the minute, day-to-day, month-to-month, year-to-year changes that become earth-shattering over time. “The visitor coming here for a day or a week is not going to notice things and know that this is not what it used to be,” he said.

Laura Boggess was born and raised in western North Carolina and drawn to science through a lifetime love of climbing the region’s remote cliffs. She considers these data-gathering trips a critical way to monitor the changing climate from the ground up. “The small ways, the paying attention, the naming of a species, which isn’t a small thing, but it’s like an accumulation of small, cooperative creation,” she said. “It is even more important as we enter into even more rapid change.”

There is so much to see in the park that it took the volunteers about two hours to go half a mile. Even as they left the trail and returned to the road, they found a rare parasitic fungus. The magnifying glass came out, and everyone slowly leaned in for a good look.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In the Smoky Mountains, a volunteer effort aims to document every species — before it’s too late on Jun 5, 2026.

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