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The CFS Advisory Group and Bureau meeting will meet to continue the preparation of the upcoming CFS 54 Plenary Session, including an update on the CFS 54 Side Events, as well as a discussion regarding the Building Resilient Food Systems Workstream which did not conclude after the two past round of negotiations.

• Bureau outcomes – May 2026
• Provisional Agenda

Brackground documents

1. CFS 54 – ITEM II -Strengthening coordination and collaborative actions – Draft Conclusions 
2. Building Resilient Food Systems
3. CFS 54 – ITEM IV – Strengthening the Impact of CFS policy products – Draft Conclusions 
4. CFS 54 – ITEM V – CFS Strategic Direction 
   a) Update of the Rolling Section of the CFS MYPoW 2024-2027 
   b) Draft Decision on the Update of the Rolling Section 
   c) Identification of prioritized themes for HLPE-FSN Report 2028 
   d) Draft Decision on the Theme of the HLPE Report 2028 
   e) Draft Conclusions on Critical, Emerging and Enduring Issues 
   f) Draft Conclusions on Strategic orientation in the context of the UN 80 Initiative 
5. CFS 54 – ITEM VI – Indigenous Peoples’ Food and Knowledge Systems – Draft Conclusions 
6.  CFS 54 – ITEM VII – Global Thematic Event on Empowering Family Farmers 
   a) Draft Conclusions 
   b) Monitoring Report – Secretariat’s analysis of the contributions received to inform the Global Thematic Event 
7. CFS 54 Guide 
8. Update on CFS 54 Side Events 
9. Main takeaways from the CFS Bureau and Advisory Group retreat 
10. Workstream updates 
11. Any other business
    
    
    

The post CFS Advisory Group and Bureau meeting | July 27 2026 appeared first on CSIPM.

Checks & Balances Project (C&BP) filed a complaint with the FBI’s Richmond field office seeking an investigation into Sussex County Board of Supervisors Chairman Steve White and the Stony Creek Volunteer Rescue Squad (SCVRS).

The complaint cites 10 issues of concerns about White’s apparent corruption in office, including his conflicts of interest in voting to send taxpayer money to SCVRS, which he runs, and potential Medicare and Medicaid billing fraud tied to SCVRS.

C&BP has reported that White is serving as acting county administrator in apparent violation of Virginia law after he engineered the firing of County Administrator Richard Douglas in April.

C&BP also obtained a memorandum of understanding between the county and SCVRS that pays the rescue squad $422,250 a year for emergency medical services. That’s more than twice the amount of money SCVRS made in 2019, when it filed its most recent tax returns with the IRS.

The IRS stripped SCVRS of its nonprofit status in 2023 because it failed to file tax returns for three straight years. It regained its status in January 2025 but continued to solicit donations during the 18 months it had no nonprofit status.

Ray Locker is the executive director for Checks & Balances Project, an investigative watchdog blog holding government officials, lobbyists, and corporate management accountable to the public. Funding for C&BP is provided by Renew American Prosperity and individual donors.

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The post Checks & Balances Project files FBI complaint about White, SCVRS appeared first on Checks and Balances Project.

Registered nurses will hold an informational picket on Thursday, July 16 in Bakersfield, Calif., to protest proposed health care staffing reductions and service cuts at CommonSpirit Health’s Dignity Health Bakersfield Memorial Hospital and Dignity Health Mercy Hospitals that will jeopardize patient care.

By JEANNE GREEN

Alert: There is still time to comment on the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) proposing an increase in nuclear weapons at LANL. The deadline for written/e-mailed comment is July 16th.

You may not have heard about this, even though Taosenos live within about 50 miles of the nation’s only nuclear bomb factory at Los Alamos. The NNSA—National Nuclear Security Administration—is proposing an increase of production of 200+ plutonium pits/year for new nuclear weapons, 80 at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and 125 at Savannah River, South Carolina.  Plutonium pits are the core triggers for nuclear bombs. This proposal disregards the fact that there are over 15,000 reusable plutonium pits sitting at the decommissioning plant in Amarillo, Texas. These are verified reliable for at least 100 years. There are 1,200 nuclear bombs, ready to deploy a mile from the Albuquerque airport and around 4,000 deployed across the country in silos and submarines, many on hair-trigger alert.

During the Cold War, the U.S. and Russia amassed 70,000 nuclear warheads, fueled by the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD.) Due to nuclear arms control treaties, 48,000 of these were retired. Now NNSA plans to trigger a new global nuclear arms race with new nuclear weapons that would require testing.

Officially, at least 2,056 nuclear bombs were exploded globally before treaties were established. The 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty forced testing to go underground due to concerns over radioactive fallout. LANL attributes local findings of radioactive materials, including plutonium in homes, soils, fruits, to global testing. This doesn’t even take into account that the first test was detonated right here in New Mexico, without warning to locals and no accountability for the vast numbers of cancers resulting in local populations. The Center for Disease Control’s LAHDRA report also delineates the historical multitudinous releases of radioactive and hazardous materials by LANL into the air and waters of NM.

The NNSA’s PEIS (Programmatic Environmental Impact statement) required by law, gives short shrift to their justification for producing new nuclear weapons. On page 5, their mission is: “2. maintaining and enhancing the safety, reliability and performance of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, including the ability to design, produce and test, in order to meet national security requirements.” But no future production maintains the safety and reliability of the existing tested stockpile. The 2009 JASON (an independent group of elite scientists) report for NNSA verified the longevity of the stockpile until 2080.

NNSA’s mission number 4 is “promoting international nuclear safety and non-proliferation.” In fact, new nuclear pit production conflicts with the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The 1970 NPT, Article VI obliges the U.S. to “enter into serious negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament.” Despite this international treaty, the PEIS states its “missions are conducted fully consistent with current treaty obligations.” No—a new nuclear arms race and testing is the opposite of non-proliferation. Non-proliferation program funding is also being cut in the PEIS. The U.S. is a non-signatory to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons signed by 191 countries.

Pope Francis states that “possessing atomic weapons is a crime against humanity and the future,” and “relying on the fear of annihilation poisons relationships between nations and obstructs real dialogue.” Who would not question the morality of killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in seconds, for what?

LANL, in recent years, has managed to produce one pit per year due to safety infractions, radiation exposures, contamination, criticality incidents, and an aging 48-year-old production facility, the PF-4. Rocky Flats, the previous nuclear bomb factory near Denver, was shut down in 1989 by the FBI for environmental crimes. The massive contamination was imploded down and covered, but it’s still there. This is indicative of the damage we can expect to see in New Mexico with mass production.

Production facility PF-4, containing significant amounts of plutonium, is situated between two fault zones and on top of a fragile layer of volcanic tuff, within 2,000 feet of the nearest fault zone. This has been analyzed by the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board (DNFSB) and declared unsafe. In their recommendation 2009-2 to the Secretary of Energy they report that “the critical NNSA assumption that the upgrades addressing seismic issues are adequate is flawed. . .  A major deficiency in the facility’s safety basis exists.” In the late 1990s cautionary upgrades were judged to be cost-prohibitive.

The DNFSB also cites the probability of post-seismic fires which would result in widespread contamination throughout New Mexico and beyond. We have already seen massive fires come within a mile of the Lab boundaries, where 10,000 barrels of radioactive waste sit atop the mesa.

Please send comments to: PitPEIS@nnsa.doe.gov with subject #DOE/EIS-0573. More information is at https://pitpeis.com/

 

How quickly we forget — if we allow ourselves to.

For journalist Jason Dove Mark, bald eagles represent what the planet can lose, what it can regain, and what it can still lose in the process.

His new book, The Earth Said Remember Me: How to Revive Our Memories and Restore the Planet (W.W. Norton, published July 14), examines what scientists call “shifting baseline syndrome”: how we quickly forget the way things used to be.

For example, skies that once abounded with bald eagles — or the skies from which they once nearly vanished.

The Revelator is proud to present this excerpt from The Earth Said Remember Me. We don’t think you’ll forget it easily.

For hundreds of thousands of years, during those long centuries when the New World was still old, bald eagles lived nearly everywhere in North America, their one and only natural home. Eagles flew over the tidal estuaries of the Atlantic Coast and the rugged seashore of the Pacific. They built their nests in the folds of western basin and range, on the prairie, throughout the north woods. There were likely a half million of them, an eyrie perched every few miles along fish-rich rivers like the Schuylkill, the Hudson, the Columbia, the Colorado. Up to 14 pounds in weight and with a wingspan that can stretch eight feet from tip to tip, the bald eagle was sovereign of the American sky, the apex predator of the air.

The First Nations perceived a great power in the bird. Many Native cultures considered bald eagle feathers as sacred and used them in ceremonies or for ritual healing practices. For the Lenape people of the Delaware River region, it was considered a sign of courage and good luck to wear an eagle feather that had been plucked from a living bird. In the Southwest, the Pueblo and Zuni kept domesticated eagles in large aviaries. Across diverse cultures, Indigenous lore esteemed the eagle as a chief, the bird of heaven. “In an eagle there is all the wisdom in the world,” the twentieth-century Lakota spiritual leader Lame Deer (aka John Fire) once said. “Eagle” was very likely the most common animal clan name continent-wide.

When the newcomers arrived from across the sea and encountered this bird they had never known, they also apprehended its strength. Perhaps it was just anthropomorphic projection. Bald eagles mate for life and carefully tend their young, and maybe the settlers imagined some kind of puritanical family values. Bald eagles also have a passion for building — their nests can weigh up to a ton and last for decades — and maybe the restless settlers appreciated the bird’s industriousness. At the very least, the new Americans liked the bird’s military bearing, with its steely gaze, broad chest, and bone-white crown. In 1782, the bald eagle became the central symbol of the Great Seal of the United States, the unofficial national bird — George Washington in feathers.

But it was a conflicted relationship. The eagle had become a symbol of America, yet many Americans didn’t like the actual animal. “He is a Bird of bad moral Character,” Benjamin Franklin famously wrote. “He does not get his Living honestly.” Franklin was referring to the bald eagle’s habit of stealing fish from the smaller osprey, its penchant for poaching, and its taste for carrion. Settlers complained that eagles often snatched their lambs and chicks. Against all common sense, the myth spread that bald eagles could carry off human babies from the crib.

A campaign of ecocide began. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Americans murdered eagles mercilessly. Farmers and ranchers shot them on sight — “We kill all the eagles we can,” one sheep farmer said — while some state and local governments paid bounties for dead eagles. In Alaska alone, hunters killed some eighty thousand eagles to cash in on the territory’s bounty. By the turn of the last century, the birds were vanishingly rare in most of the country. “Twenty years ago, I used to see a dozen or more along the river in the spring” the nature writer John Burroughs noticed in the early 1900s, “where I now see only one or two, or none at all.”

Image by Hans Toom from Pixabay

Eventually, the American public realized the country’s mistake. In 1940 the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act outlawed killing the bird. But the protection came almost too late. A new danger worse than bullets and buckshot threatened the species: the powerful insecticide DDT, which government agencies and farmers were spraying all over the place. The bald eagle — along with osprey, peregrine falcons, and pelicans — became collateral damage in the war against insects. DDT weakened the eagles’ eggshells and lowered females’ hormone levels, impacting the species’ ability to procreate. In Silent Spring, Rachel Carson wrote, “Something is at work in the eagle’s environment which has virtually destroyed its ability to reproduce.  The reports differ in detail, but always repeat the theme of death.” By 1963, there were just 417 nesting pairs outside of Alaska.

In a spate of legislative urgency that these days feels like some-thing out of legend, lawmakers rushed to address the crisis. Congress banned DDT, which was pulled off the market in 1972. When the Endangered Species Act became law in 1973, the bald eagle was among the first species to come under its protective umbrella. The Clean Water Act helped too. An eagle can’t survive if it has nothing to eat, and by the 1960s many of the United States’ rivers served “as little more than sewers to the sea,” in the words of one senator. The Clean Water Act prohibited industries from using streams, rivers, and lakes as dumps for their chemical crap. Freed from pollution, the waters slowly came back to life. Fresh waters again furnished the food web.

The descendants of the destroyers became the restorers.

State fish and wildlife agencies launched captive breeding programs in which biologists, often assisted by volunteers, pantomimed the behavior of eagle parents to raise chicks. Using a technique called “hacking” that was already common among keepers of trained falcons, biologists reintroduced young eagles to lakes and rivers. Citizen scientists kept vigil over nests and helped count bald eagle numbers. Popular attitudes changed. For many Americans, to kill a bald eagle came to be something akin to burning the flag.

The heroic labor paid off. In 2007, the bald eagle was removed from the endangered species list. Between 2009 and 2021, the number of bald eagles in the lower 48 quadrupled, from about 72,000 to more than 300,000 — a figure not all that far from the estimated baseline before European arrival in the Americas. In the space of a couple human generations, the nearly extinct became common again.

It was as if the great hoop of time had spun all the way around. Once — that word that weighs the scales of every shifting baseline — could be used in celebration instead of lamentation.

Image by Alexa from Pixabay

After an absence that stretched beyond memory, the bald eagles arrived at Madison’s Warner Park in the summer of 2020. Warner Park is one of the largest parks in the Wisconsin state capital, one of those jewel boxes of city nature that — like New York’s Central Park or Audubon Park in New Orleans — forms an eco-tone where the urban, the cultivated, and the undomesticated meet. Braceleted by the tracks of the Wisconsin & Southern Railroad, encircled by modest middle-class neighborhoods, and just a five-minute drive from the local airport, Warner Park is no wilderness. But it’s still a wild place, home to beaver and muskrat, deer and fox. An unruly copse — locals call it “the Big Thicket” — is packed with red maple, ash, and walnut. A massive bur oak, some 250 years old, has lived there since well before the first settlers appeared. Warner Park is one of those spots where people can watch wildlife and the wildlife are just comfortable enough with humans to watch back.

For the eagles, Warner Park had what they needed to make a home. When a mated pair began building a nest on an island in the park’s cattail-ringed lagoon, neighbors quickly spotted them. The birds became minor celebrities, symbols of hope in that eerie season of pandemic lockdown. “It was this brilliant beacon of light during a very dark time,” Beth Sluys, a Warner Park neighbor and amateur naturalist who had long been involved in local conservation issues, told me. “Observing the birds living their lives, there’s something magical about that.”

A neighborhood teenager named Elsie Olmanson who had started watching the eagles with her father after hearing about them from Beth also found joy in their arrival. “You’re happy that they are able to have a recovery, and that they’re coming more and more back into the world,” she told me. The eagles, she said, were “adorable creatures.” The nesting eagles seemed to her “like a married couple — they will bicker with each other.”

By the time of autumn leaf fall, the nest was impossible to miss: a lump of sticks and branches some thirty feet up, the whole mess wedged in the crook of two limbs, like a leather sofa had been dropped from the sky. The calendar flipped to 2021, and that March the bald eagle couple hatched a single eaglet. At which point a minor controversy broke out. Just a few hundred yards from the eagles’ home lagoon sits “the Duck Pond” — a small stadium that is home to the Madison Mallards, a collegiate summer baseball team. Every Fourth of July the Mallards stage a big fireworks display, and some of the eagle fans feared the fireworks would scare away the birds. A few folks petitioned the baseball team to halt the pyrotechnics or, at the very least, post-pone them until after fledging time. “We were concerned that this might potentially impact the fledglings at a critical time,” Elsie’s father, Eric, said.

Other eagle enthusiasts were nonplussed. Patrick Hasburgh, a passionate outdoorsman who owns a fishing bait and tackle shop on the edge of the park, was among the first people to spot the nesting eagles, and he felt like the fireworks controversy was overblown. “I’ve been watching the nest since it was built,” he told me, “and the eagles don’t seem to mind [human activity] at all. They are used to people. It’s an urban environment.”

In an age of mass extinction, the dustup over whether a fireworks show would disturb an eagle family seemed to me like something of a First World problem. Fifty years ago, there were just 108 eagle nests in all of Wisconsin; by the time an eagle pair started stacking sticks in Warner Park, that number had climbed to nearly 1,700. With eagle survival no longer in doubt, the question had become how best humans might help eagles to thrive. Here was another form of shifting baseline syndrome — an example of how progress, every bit as much destruction and diminishment, can be difficult to remember.

Too much of environmental history is a litany of losses. Ghost stories haunt the landscape: the passenger pigeon, the Tasmanian tiger, the ivory-billed woodpecker. But running parallel to the string of disappearances are stories of recovery and resilience. The bald eagle is not alone.

Image by Dave Eslinger from Pixabay

Think about the forests of North America: there’s more forest in New England today than there was in 1850. Consider the air and the water: both are clearer now than before the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act were passed. Recall the beaver — now numbering in the millions across North America — or loggerhead turtles, whose population increased by nearly two orders of magnitude in the last twenty-some years. The California condor, at one point on the doorstep of extinction, is on the wing again. Take a breath and remember the whales, saved from annihilation. Seen from one vantage, many of those success stories could also be evidence of shifting baselines, of how our ideas of abundance contract generation by generation. Sure, there are more wolves on the American landscape now than there were fifty years ago — and there are also far fewer wolves than there were 150 years ago. But Mia Monroe, the co-founder of the Western Monarch Count, often brings up such wildlife recoveries as examples of the possibilities that also exist for her beloved butterflies. If we could save the bald eagle, what else can we save? “In my life I’ve watched the gray whale return and the peregrine falcon and the otter,” Mia told me once. “I don’t know what’s ahead for monarchs. But I do know that when people realized there was a problem, and we did something different, then nature responded. I always remember those examples.”

I remember them, too. They remind me that baselines some-times shift in virtuous directions. The British writer Robert Macfarlane suggests a name for this: lifting baselines. “We can normalize betterment as well as decline and then wish for betterment’s increase,” he has written. “We can run the reel backward.” The bald eagle’s comeback is proof that the passage of time doesn’t always mean loss and decay. Growth and increase are also expressions of time. So is healing.

There is, however, a danger that can come with lifting baselines and the normalization of betterment. To grow accustomed to abundance risks obscuring all the hard work and long years it took to achieve that abundance. Without collective memory, improvements can also be difficult to see. Rebecca Solnit made a similar point in an essay a few years ago when she warned that “forgetting is everywhere.” Solnit wrote that she feels like “a tortoise at the mayfly party,” and cautioned that “change itself becomes invisible when your timeframe is shorter than that change.” The indivisible present can cloak the march of progress just like it provides cover for the grind of destruction.

Environmental progress is especially vulnerable to becoming invisible since, more often than not, it leaves no trace. Many environmental victories are triumphs of harm avoided: the proposed oil pipeline denied, the forest kept free from the loggers, the fossil fuels unburned. Pollution, once cleaned from the air and the water, is another one of those absences that the mind struggles to recognize and remember. Without memory, environmental well-being is always at risk of being taken for granted. To endure, progress requires vigilance — the long view of history.

When I was growing up, the bald eagle was a rarity; the first time I saw one, I was in my mid-twenties. Now, I live in a place where bald eagles are common to the point of mundane. I make an annual winter-solstice pilgrimage to the North Fork of the Nooksack River, where bald eagles stage big convocations. From the small bridge there I can spot scores of eagles perched in the December-bare alder and cottonwood, their calls — skreee, like a door on rusty hinges — echoing off snow and ice. It’s a thrill to watch them scrimmage over salmon carcasses. For me, an eagle sighting never gets old.

My daughter has a different relationship to the bald eagle, especially having grown up in a place where you can spot them at the county dump (He does not get his Living honestly). She barely registers them as special, and she all too often greets her dad’s glee with an eye roll. What is a bald eagle to a child who has never known them as endangered? About as interesting as a wren.

I got a welcome corrective to these worries after spending a morning with the family of Patrick Hasburgh, the bait store owner who has been involved with the Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance’s formal Bald Eagle Nest Watch since the mated pair showed up Warner Park. The Hasburgh boys — Fletcher, then sixteen, and Ranger, eleven — had spent count-less hours with their parents monitoring the eagles. But the commonplace had not dulled excitement. If anything, their regular eagle-watching had made them fascinated with the birds — appreciation earned through intimacy. Fletcher told me he “absolutely” knew the story of the fall and rise of the bald eagle, in part “because I have, you know, a kind of field knowledge.” Ranger, who was sporting a skater’s cut and an Off-the-Wall black hoodie, said he liked to “see the birds up close and see their whole life cycle.” He liked how, when he uses his dad’s spotting scope to check out the nest, he can “pretty much see every individual feather.”

We strolled the park, and the family shared with me some of its natural wonders: a killdeer nest on the railroad tracks, a pair of sandhill cranes coming in for a landing. The birds were like giraffes on the wing, tumbling earthward and honking madly. It quickly became apparent that the Hasburghs were involved in all sorts of neighborhood-scale environmental stewardship projects. Here was an ordinary American family who intuitively, organically, was embodying the antidotes to environmental amnesia — going outside in all weather and all seasons, emotion-ally encoding their relationships with the living world, writing them down, and transmitting their experiences back and forth between generations. This focus group of four seemed the very model of Emerson’s “practical naturalists.”

As a family, they go outside all the time. When Patrick and his wife, a nurse practitioner named Ashley, started a family, they committed to get their kids outdoors as much as possible because, as Patrick said, “they have more than enough reasons to stay inside.” The family made a point to visit every state park in Wisconsin. They hiked a lot, fished a lot. And they adopted Warner Park as their backyard wilderness. “This park has been a constant through my life,” mop-headed Fletcher said as we walked the paths not far from the eagle nest. “Now, when I’m going through this park, there’s a million stories.”

Over time, the family attuned themselves to the urban wildlife, began to notice things that other people seemed to miss: the cranes and the eagles, tiny frogs in the lagoon, a big snap-ping turtle laying its eggs on the railroad tracks. “For me, it’s one of those things where it’s like: Is it that I’m more aware, or are things changing?” Ashley said. “I see more nature than I remember seeing when we first started walking.   Maybe I’m more in tune, or maybe it’s that it’s actually just kind of started becoming more wild. Or both. Probably both.”

The Hasburghs had made a record of their experiences in Warner Park. In addition to the eagle nest monitoring, Patrick enlisted the family in an initiative to protect the area’s bluebirds, believing that a formal citizen-science project would be a way of “sneaking some education in  without it being their lame dad preaching to them.” On a weekly basis the family checked on eleven bluebird nesting boxes, evicted any sparrow squatters if necessary, and then sent to the Bluebird Restoration Association of Wisconsin information about the number of eggs and chicks. When he was a little kid, Fletcher had taken the work very seriously. Equipped with a clipboard, he studiously went from box to box making observations. “Pretty much half of my entire summer was spent just checking bluebird boxes,” he told me as we inspected one nest box that, it turned out, was empty. By now, Ashley said, the bluebird stewardship was “built into our lives.”

Both boys had become crackerjack birders who could tell a sparrow nest from a chickadee nest from a bluebird nest at a distance. They could see a bluebird chick and tell how many days old it was. With familiarity came emotional attachment: the family imprinted on the birds. “Maybe it’s just in my head, but you build sort of a relationship with them,” Ashley said. “I love it, and it’s fun to see, like, the evolution. And you kind of feel like, you know, a little mama bird.”

Passing on their naturalist knowledge to other kids was a big-ger lift. Fletcher — whose great passion is video games, especially Call of Duty — said he didn’t exactly advertise his conservation endeavors. “I don’t really want to have a big prom sign that says, Come to the prom with me — I look at birds.” And as much as Ranger was psyched about outdoor activities like fishing — the previous winter, he had caught a “monster” thirty-eight-inch pike and a twenty-nine-inch walleye — most of his free time was spent skateboarding.

If anything, the boys had passed their environmental passion not outward to peers but upward to their parents. Patrick said one of the reasons he had gotten into birds is because Fletcher, when he was very young, kept asking for their names. “And I wouldn’t have an answer,” Patrick said. “So then I got curious and then we started looking at other birds and we started a life list.” A child’s inquisitiveness, it turned out, could be a parent’s spark bird.

When we first spoke, Patrick told me that one his great inspirations was Aldo Leopold, whose writings he had been exposed to during a brief stint in college and who moved him to seek out “an engagement with the landscape.” It was A Sand County Almanac that spurred Patrick to start keeping a fishing journal, which turned into a birding journal, and then into an all-around phenology journal that is now entering its twenty-fifth year. “It’s mostly birds and animals and stuff like that,” he told me. “And at the end of the year I go through my journals and notes and send out a little report to friends.”

A famous line in Leopold’s canonical book comes as the author declares, “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on the land is quite invisible to laymen.” The Hasburghs’ tour of Warner Park made me think that maybe it was time to turn Leopold’s insight onto its head. Perhaps it’s equally true that one of the benefits of an ecological education is that one might, together with friends and family, inhabit a world of wonders. Much of the abundance that remains on the land is made visible by sharing it.

Isn’t this how the world might turn toward environmental progress, one workaday relationship with nature after another? The Hasburgh family was living proof that the task of ecological remembering isn’t necessarily difficult or esoteric; it can be as simple and as easy as a walk in the park. And as much as the Hasburghs demonstrated how to make memories of the living world, they also illustrated why it’s worthwhile to do all this physical, mental, and emotional work. Remembering isn’t about dwelling in the past, but a way of casting oneself forward in time, into the future tense. It was Ranger who helped make this clear. “I like just seeing the eagles and just watching the nest,” he said as we wrapped up our loop around the park and stood, again, not far from the eagle eyrie “That’s, like, a memory that will stay with me for a while.”

The post For Bald Eagles, the Descendants of the Destroyers Became the Restorers appeared first on The Revelator.

Photo Credit: Green Knowledge Foundation, Nigeria.

By Weyinmi Okotie, GAIA Africa, Clean Air Program Manager 

This week, 13 – 16 July, policymakers, scientists, civil society organisations, development partners, and community leaders will gather in Pretoria for the 2026 Africa Clean Air Forum. The theme is “Investment Case for Clean Air and Healthy Cities.” Air pollution is becoming one of Africa’s most pressing public health challenges. The forum is a crucial opportunity to shape the continent’s clean air agenda.

Over the years, the forum has grown beyond an annual conference. It has become a platform for collaboration. This helps governments, researchers, and communities share evidence, strengthen partnerships, and accelerate action on air pollution. Most importantly, it has raised air quality from a largely ignored environmental issue to a critical public health and development priority in Africa.  

Across Africa, awareness of air pollution is increasing as cities are investing in air quality monitoring. More cities are realising that clean air is essential for healthier communities, stronger economies, and climate resilience. 

The growth of air quality monitoring networks across the continent is especially encouraging. Reliable data leads to better policies, stronger accountability, and more informed public decision-making.  

But monitoring air pollution is only the beginning. The real measure of success lies in whether the investments that follow truly reduce pollution and improve people’s lives. As African governments seek solutions, we must ensure that the technologies promoted address the root cause of the problem rather than end-of-pipe solutions. 

While discussions on air pollution often focus on transport, industrial activities, and power generation, waste is a major yet frequently overlooked source of pollution in African cities. 

Open burning of waste is common in many communities due to poor collection systems, badly managed dumpsites, and limited waste infrastructure. Smoke from burning plastics, organic waste, and other mixed materials exposes nearby communities to harmful air pollutants and emits greenhouse gases.  

Open burning of waste accounts for 29% of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution in the air, and, together with other air pollutants, causes nearly 1.2 million premature deaths per year in Africa.

There is no doubt that Africa must stop open burning; the question is HOW do we achieve this?

Studies also highlight that around 70-80% of the municipal solid waste generated in African cities is recyclable – such as biodegradable waste, plastics and paper,and could be worth US$8 billion per year if kept in a circular economy. Hence, there is a need to support real solutions to waste management challenges in Africa, such as separation at source, waste reduction, reuse, recycling, and composting initiatives.

Increasingly, the industry is promoting waste-to-energy incineration as the solution to Africa’s municipal waste challenges. However, this is a false claim!

Incineration does not eliminate waste. It changes waste into emissions, toxic ash, and greenhouse gases. It also relies on a steady supply of combustible waste, creating long-term dependence on generating and burning materials that should be reduced, reused, recycled, or composted.  

For many African countries reviewing their waste systems, this is a critical moment. Decisions made today will shape urban infrastructure for decades. Investing in costly combustion technologies risks locking cities into a waste-management mode that competes with recycling, undermines resource recovery, and diverts limited public resources from real environmental justice efforts. 

The forum’s focus on increasing investment in clean air is both timely and necessary. Africa urgently needs more financial support to strengthen air quality monitoring, improve enforcement, build institutional capacity, and implement effective pollution control measures.  

However, as we work to increase clean air finance, we must ensure that the funds are NEVER used to support false solutions in the waste management sector, which are already known to emit a cocktail of noxious substances into our environment.

Funding for the waste sector should not support false solutions such as waste-to-energy incineration under the guise of reducing pollution. Clean air finance should prioritise interventions that prevent pollution at its source—such as waste separation, composting, recycling, organic waste recovery, material recovery facilities, and the integration of informal waste workers into modern waste management systems.  

These approaches do more than reduce emissions. They create jobs, improve public health, reduce methane emissions, strengthen local economies, and advance the transition toward circular economies. They address multiple environmental challenges simultaneously rather than shifting pollution from land to air.  

I hope this forum continues to inspire strong leadership—not only in acknowledging the scale of Africa’s air pollution crisis, but also in choosing solutions grounded in science, public health, and environmental justice, especially in the waste management sector.

My desire for Africa is that we do not confuse costly technologies with meaningful progress. That we resist the temptation to fund projects simply because they seem modern or innovative. That communities most affected by pollution are put at the centre of decision-making. And that Africa has the courage to reject false solutions, even when they are proposed as shortcuts to municipal waste management. 

The discussions at this year’s Clean Air Forum will not ultimately measure the forum’s success. It will be measured by the policies adopted, the investments made, and the quality of the air that millions of Africans breathe long after the conference has ended. 

ENDS.

The post Investing in clean air should also mean rejecting false solutions to the waste management crisis first appeared on GAIA.

The UK’s incoming prime minister Andy Burnham has remained tight-lipped on his views on climate change during his leadership campaign.

When asked his views on reversing Labour’s manifesto pledge to stop new North Sea drilling in June – a move that the oil-and-gas industry and right-wing media have pushed for in recent months – he said he had “something of an open mind” on the issue.

But a trawl of Burnham’s past comments about climate change, net-zero and fossil fuels reveals a different picture.

Just a year ago in June 2025, Burnham, while mayor of Greater Manchester, gave his support to the fossil fuel treaty – a proposed international pact on phasing out coal, oil and gas – calling it a “lifeline” that “all governments” should join.

In a video message endorsing the treaty, he also said that “there should be no turning away from net-zero”.

During his last bid to be Labour leader in 2015, he used similar language, saying: 

“Labour under my leadership will never turn our back on either our duty to tackle climate change or the prospects offered by the green economy.”

Burnham has spoken about the threat of climate change since at least 2008, noting in 2021 that accelerated action could “create thousands of good jobs”, but also warning that net-zero risked becoming the “next Brexit”.

Burnham is yet to appoint his cabinet, but there is much speculation that he will select current net-zero secretary Ed Miliband as his chancellor – with their ally Miatta Fahnbulleh having a “strong chance” of taking Miliband’s former position.

Below, Carbon Brief recounts 28 things that Burnham has said about climate change, net-zero, fossil fuels, energy and transport.

Climate change 

“Tackling climate change isn’t just about protecting the planet – it’s a powerful opportunity to build a fairer, greener future for our communities and businesses.”  

Calling for local councils to be given more power and money for climate action, 29 November 2025 

“There is little doubt that Greater Manchester’s biodiversity has taken a hit over the years, with habitats being lost, destroyed and becoming less diverse due to the impact of development, climate change, pollution and invasive species…We are committed to delivering a city-region for all residents to enjoy – a fairer, greener and more prosperous place for everyone.” 

Statement after Greater Manchester declared a “biodiversity emergency”, 25 March 2022

“Over the next decade, if we accelerate our response to the climate crisis, we can create thousands of good jobs, improve homes, overhaul our transport system and make [Manchester] an even better place to live.”

Greater Manchester Green Summit, 18 October 2021

“The environment has never been higher on the national and international agenda.” 

Statement after visiting a peat bog restoration project in England, 9 January 2020

Andy Burnham (left) and others, including members of Massive Attack, endorsing the Fossil Fuel Treaty in June 2025. Credit: Fossil Fuel Treaty

“I think climate change [action] will be driven more quickly from the bottom up, if I’m honest. It’s the will of evolution if you wait for the government to act…When governments aren’t listening you get out and get your voice heard…so I think [climate protesters] deserve our encouragement, not our criticism.” 

Speaking to Manchester Evening News at a student climate protest in Manchester, 24 May 2019

“Labour under my leadership will never turn our back on either our duty to tackle climate change or the prospects offered by the green economy.” 

Labour leadership candidate speech, 15 July 2015 

“Climate change can seem a distant, impersonal threat – in fact the associated costs to health are a very real and present danger…We need well-designed climate change policies that drive health benefits.” 

Speaking to the Guardian about a study on climate and health, 25 November 2009

“The Stern report on the economics of climate change has changed the debate, in this country and around the world. It made it clear that the people who could suffer most from a failure to tackle climate change, or from a lack of ambition in our approach to it, are those living in the developing countries. They are the most vulnerable…[and] Stern said that the cost of not acting would be large. That is why the government took various measures in the recent spending review to ensure that we are prepared to face the challenges posed by climate change.” 

Speaking in the UK parliament on the economic impacts of climate change on his final day as chief secretary to the Treasury, 24 January 2008

Net-zero

“There should be no turning away from net-zero.” 

Speaking after giving his support to the fossil fuel treaty – a proposed global pact to introduce laws to phase out coal, oil and gas – on behalf of Manchester, 6 June 2025 

“An opportunity is opening up for Britain as other countries move away from net-zero. We should seize that…We can make Britain a green leader. This is not the time to tiptoe, it is the time to commit to this path.”

Speaking at Innovation Zero World Congress in London, 29 April 2025 

“[We] need a government that fully buys into the 2038 vision because the UK will not get to 2050 unless places like Greater Manchester are freed up to go faster – and we’re ready to go faster.”

Speaking about Greater Manchester’s aim to reach net-zero by 2038, 19 October 2022 

“In Greater Manchester we have plans to build 30,000 net-zero social rented homes because we recognise that a successful city region needs good quality, affordable accommodation for everyone.”

Speech on the future of cities, 24 June 2022  

“By building a broad consensus behind the drive to net-zero, we can ensure that the transition is a fair one that delivers social justice as well as climate justice. This is an opportunity for all of us to show how cutting carbon emissions in our cities can make a real difference to our communities – away from the abstractions and rooted in the real world.” 

Panel discussion in Glasgow during the COP26 climate summit, 12 November 2021 

“To the extent that people have picked up anything from COP26, it’s a sense that the drive to net-zero will mean cost and inconvenience for ordinary people and offsetting for the wealthy and entitled. All of a sudden, you can feel how net-zero could become the new Brexit –  a debate that gets very divided on class grounds…This has got to be a wake-up call. We cannot let this happen. We need to act now to build a broad social consensus behind the drive to net-zero. How to do that? It starts with taking control of the climate narrative from those steering it in the wrong direction and turning it around…We must show how, if done in the right way, the drive to net-zero is actually an opportunity to reduce the cost of living; to make people’s lives better and society fairer.”

Writing for the London Standard, 5 November 2021 

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“The drive to net-zero is a chance to re-industrialise the north of England, this time in a clean way. Create really good jobs, future-facing jobs for people, better public transport, improve people’s homes…If we go quickly towards net-zero, it’s the quickest way to level up the country.” 

ITV interview at COP26, 1 November 2021 

“If we really embrace the drive to net-zero, that is the route to level up the country…But it needs substantial investment, upfront, now, of the kind that Rachel Reeves, shadow chancellor [and chancellor under Keir Starmer’s government], has been talking about. We need long-term predictable funding.” 

Interview with GB News at COP26, 1 November 2021 

“I would have preferred to hear slightly less about carbonated wine and much more about a decarbonised economy.” 

Referencing a UK budget, which included tax cuts for sparkling wine and other drinks, 28 October 2021 

“Decarbonising is not just about lowering costs on to people. It’s the route to get better, cheaper public transport. It’s the route to getting homes that are cheap to run. It’s actually the way we can create thousands of good jobs for the people who live in Greater Manchester. This is the route to levelling up the country by going further and faster on decarbonisation.”

Speaking to Manchester Confidential, 20 October 2021 

“[I am] asking people to stop seeing the environmental agenda as a cost and a burden agenda. I think this is a barrier that we’ve got to get over. Already in the media interviews I’ve done today, people are saying ‘can you afford it?’, ‘can it be achievable when times are tough?’. 

“My answer to that is, at some point in the 21st century, all homes will be zero-carbon. At some point in this century, all buildings of any kind will be zero-carbon…All cars will be zero-carbon, all public transport will be zero-carbon…The question is: when? And surely the places that embrace those things first are putting themselves in a position of economic strength when it comes to facing up to the future. Rather than seeing the whole agenda as a burden, we’ve got to see it for the benefits that it can bring. 

“There may be a greater upfront cost in a zero-carbon home, but let’s stop thinking, as we tend to do in Britain, of the short-term, the short-termist approach to life. Surely let’s start talking to the public about the lifetime cost.”

Greater Manchester Green Summit, 21 March 2018 

Fossil fuels

“I’ve got something of an open mind, you know. I don’t have a sort of fixed position.”

Speaking on the issue of new North Sea oil and gas in a New Statesman interview, 3 June 2026

“We would fight this in GM [Greater Manchester]…Communities across the north would face all the danger and disruption while big oil and gas walk away with all the profits.”

In response to Reform’s call for fracking, on X, 25 August 2025

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“I am proud to endorse the fossil-fuel treaty proposal today on behalf of Greater Manchester. It’s not just a plan – it’s a lifeline. It’s a call to end coal, oil and gas, hold polluters accountable…I urge all governments, nationals and subnationals to join this fight.” 

Statement upon endorsing the fossil-fuel treaty, 5 June 2025

.cb-tweet{ width: 65%; box-shadow: 3px 3px 6px #d3d3d3; margin: auto; } .cb-tweet img{ border: solid 1.25px #333333; border-radius: 5px; } @media (max-width:650px){ .cb-tweet{ width:100%; } }

“Fracking is the past, it is not the future.”

Speech at London climate protest, 20 September 2019

“I have called for a moratorium on fracking. Far too many potential risks and unanswered questions.”

On X, 22 June 2015

.cb-tweet{ width: 65%; box-shadow: 3px 3px 6px #d3d3d3; margin: auto; } .cb-tweet img{ border: solid 1.25px #333333; border-radius: 5px; } @media (max-width:650px){ .cb-tweet{ width:100%; } } Energy and transport 

“What I would do, if successful, is lay out a plan for more public control over water, energy, transport, so that over the period we can get those bills down, fares down, and give people and give businesses breathing space.”

LBC interview, 2 July 2026

“I am all in favour of tough decisions at a national level. I don’t believe there should be a third runway at Heathrow, for instance. But I think those are decisions for national government.”

Guardian interview, 13 June 2019

“There is a debate to be had about aviation, isn’t there? There are changing public attitudes about aviation. Rather than just saying no to people flying, don’t we need to accelerate research into low and zero-carbon forms of aviation?”

Guardian interview, 13 June 2019

“Today, I stand alongside the mayors of some of the greatest cities in the world. I’m committed to a cleaner, greener and healthier future for Greater Manchester. Around a third of greenhouse gas emissions in our city-region come from transport.”

When signing the C40 Fossil-Fuel-Free Streets Declaration, which includes support for zero-emissions vehicles and walking and cycling, on behalf of Manchester, 14 September 2018

UK withdraws millions in funding from world’s second-largest rainforest in Congo 

Nature policy

|

15.07.26

Analysis: UK newspapers have already printed 63 editorials in 2026 backing North Sea drilling 

Media analysis

|

01.07.26

Livestock heat deaths in transit doubled in UK record-hot summer of 2025

Food and farming

|

25.06.26

Analysis: UK sales of electric vehicles just overtook petrol cars for the first time

Other technologies

|

25.06.26

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The post 28 quotes from next UK leader Andy Burnham on climate, net-zero and fossil fuels appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Stopping neonic-coated seeds could mean the difference between survival and extinction for endangered pollinators like the rusty-patched bumblebee.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 14, 2026

Berkeley, CA — Thirty-one environmental organizations, including GAIA (the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives), are calling on environmental agencies in seven US states to ensure strong safeguards for plastic recycling and disposal facilities. On Tuesday, July 14, the organizations submitted a joint letter urging regulators not to surrender oversight of those facilities by adopting the “Responsible Markets (REM) Standard,” which weakens existing state and federal protections for community health, worker safety, and the environment. 

The groups also raised concerns around a lack of adequate public consultation on the draft standard, proposed by the Producer Responsibility Organization for packaging Extended Producer Responsibility schemes in California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington. 

Press contact:

María Guillén, Communications & Network Development Manager, U.S. & Canada

mariaguillen@no-burn.org

###

The Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) is a member-based, environmental justice network working at the intersection of waste, climate, and justice. In the United States and Canada, GAIA supports grassroots organizations that advance zero waste solutions, challenge the plastics and petrochemical industries, reduce methane emissions, and promote safe, sustainable practices for electric vehicle battery production and recycling.

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The post 31 Environmental Organizations Call on Regulators in 7 States to Protect Oversight of Plastic Recycling Facilities first appeared on GAIA.

Today, conservation groups and a fishing guide filed suit in federal court in San Francisco to challenge the Trump administration’s new interpretation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) that “harm” to species does not include destroying their habitat. The new decision reverses 50 years of bipartisan agreement that protecting species’ habitat is at the heart of the ESA and, without it, many species will go extinct.

The conservationists assert that no matter how the administration contorts the legal term “harm,” its plain meaning, as confirmed by the Supreme Court in Babbitt v. Sweet Home, includes destroying species’ habitat. Indeed, the ESA itself states its first purpose is “to provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved.”

“This is war on the forests and rivers of the West,” said Pete Frost, attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center in Eugene. “No longer protecting where grizzlies, salmon, and owls live will make them extinct. We’re hopeful the court will clarify what the ESA has always meant.”

Chris Daughters, a licensed fishing guide on the McKenzie River in Oregon, decided to join the lawsuit as a plaintiff, because “my business depends on cold, clean water in which salmon thrive. Without good habitat, we won’t have salmon, and I won’t have customers.”

“Marbled murrelets depend on coastal old-growth forests,” said Tom Wheeler of EPIC. “The administration’s twisted interpretation of the ESA means ancient forests could be logged—and the murrelet doomed to extinction. Not only does that wrongly fully interpret the ESA, it’s reprehensible position for the administration to forward.”

“Removing habitat protections for spotted owls would not only mean a death sentence for spotted owls, but a death sentence to old-growth forest ecosystems of the Northwest as we know them. What’s at stake isn’t just one species, but the web of life that countless other wildlife depend on,” says Sydney Wilkins, conservation attorney for KS Wild.

Lost habitat is the very reason most species are listed under the ESA. And habitat loss causes more species to go extinct than any other single factor. To illustrate, the Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog, which is now 90% gone, is nearing extinction due to its alpine lake habitat being destroyed, not because people are stomping on frogs. Similarly, spotted owls and murrelets are not directly harmed by logging – these birds are not crushed by logging equipment. Rather, logging removes viable habitat for vital life activities such as nesting and foraging, leading to the slow unraveling of entire populations as breeding and nesting areas disappear, prey becomes scarce, and the ecosystem balance they depend on quietly collapses.

Likewise, the four recent dam removals in the Klamath River Basin are for the first time in decades allowing wild salmon to swim hundreds of miles upstream to reach historic habitat. But this may not have been possible without the prior longstanding, sensible interpretation of the ESA: habitat matters.

The idea that burning down a person’s house does not ‘harm’ that person defies all logic,” said Bethany Cotton, conservation director with Cascadia Wildlands. “The Trump administration’s interpretation that destroying an imperiled species’ habitat is not harmful is absurd and will not stand.

The conservationists ask the court to set aside the administration’s new rule and require it to first evaluate what this radical change will mean for protected species analysis, which they illegally failed to do for this major change in interpreting and applying the ESA.

Cascadia Wildlands, KS Wild, EPIC, Friends of the Shasta River, and Mr. Daughters are represented by attorneys at the Western Environmental Law Center.

Contacts: 

Pete Frost, Western Environmental Law Center, 541-543-0018, frost@westernlaw.org

Tom Wheeler, EPIC, 206-356-8689, tom@wildcalifornia.org

Sydney Wilkins, Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, 541-488-5789, sydney@kswild.org

Bethany Cotton, Cascadia Wildlands, 503-327-4923, bethany@cascwild.org

The post Lawsuit challenges Trump’s decision to stop protecting species’ habitat appeared first on Western Environmental Law Center.

As China erects the largest hydropower installation on Earth atop an active fault line in the Himalayas, Chinese scientists are calling on engineers to guard against risks from earthquakes.

Read more on E360 →

The United States government is responsible for environmental regulations. It has promised to take action on climate change. But lately, it has been going back on those commitments. 

Some state governments are stepping up to fill in the gaps.

Requiring Manufacturers to Take Responsibility for the Waste the Create

Extended Producer Responsibility, or EPR, is one of many interlocking policies that are crucial for developing a robust circular economy, where waste is reduced and reused. Without EPR policies, taxpayers and governments are left to clean up waste. That waste is often hard to recycle or reuse. 

But EPR policies make sure that companies that make things have to think about what happens to their products after they are used.

Communities on the frontlines of mining and mineral production benefit from good EPR policies and other policies that support a strong circular economy. Mining harms people and permanently damages the environment, including by contributing to greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet. 

The easiest and best way to make mining less harmful is to do less of it. Recycling and reusing minerals that are already above the ground is part of that equation.

New Jersey Forges the Way for Electric Vehicle Recycling

In 2025, New Jersey became the first state in the country to pass an EPR law for electric vehicle batteries. 

The batteries in electric vehicles slowly become less effective. After ten to fifteen years, they usually stop holding enough power to make a car work. 

The New Jersey bill requires manufacturers to create management plans for electric vehicle batteries after they wear out. These batteries still have two-thirds of their original capacity. They can be used for other things, including stationary storage.

European Union Battery Recycling Policy Sets the Example

The governing body of the European Union has taken similar action. States can learn from the EU’s experience. 

A few years ago, the European Commission passed sprawling battery regulations. The rules touched on many parts of the battery supply chain. 

This includes EPR policies and recovery requirements for when batteries are recycled. 

Recycling is the next step after reuse in a strong circular economy. Ideally, it should only happen once the batteries have been reused and only under the strictest environmental and labor laws. 

New Colorado Law Sets the Standard for Electric Vehicle Battery Recycling

In June 2026, Colorado Governor Polis signed Senate Bill 26-003, End-of-Life Management of Electric Vehicle Batteries. Earthworks partners Western Resource Advocates and the Union of Concerned Scientists supported the law. 

Dr. Jessica Dunn at the Union of Concerned Scientists said the bill “will set the standard for the rest of the country.” 

It goes beyond what’s in New Jersey’s bill. SB26-003 requires recycling to recover a certain percentage of minerals. It requires battery-makers to report on how they’re recovering the minerals. It makes it easier to reuse batteries, too, by allowing auto mechanics, scrap yards, and other businesses to reuse or recycle batteries or have the automaker collect them free of charge.

Colorado’s bill is a victory for circular economy advocates. It’s also a victory for communities affected by mining or processing minerals for batteries.

States Can Lead the Way to Less Need for New Battery Minerals

National laws and regulations would be the best solution. Until those exist, other states should look to Colorado’s example. 

States where electric vehicles are popular or becoming popular can have the most impact. But every state that takes action can move us forward.

The post States Step Up to Require Recycling and Reusing Electric Vehicle Batteries appeared first on Earthworks.

A variety of climate action strategies improve people’s quality of life, including strategies that require people to shift their behavior to use less energy, according to a new analysis. The study challenges the conventional wisdom that fighting climate change imposes a burden on the public—and offers a hopeful message about people’s willingness to engage.

In the past, most of the debate about policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has centered on cost versus amount of carbon saved. The new study adds quality of life as a third, previously overlooked dimension to the picture.

Researchers used computer simulations of national energy systems to evaluate how six different climate mitigation strategies affect various aspects of quality of life, performing this analysis for 18 countries.

They analyzed one so-called “supply-side” strategy focused on replacing fossil energy with clean technologies and one “demand-side” strategy involving reduced use of energy and materials for each of three major economic sectors: transport, buildings, and industry.

Until now, most research on climate mitigation has emphasized supply-side strategies, in part because of an assumption that demand-side measures would make people’s lives more difficult and thus be unpopular.

That’s not the case. All six climate strategies improve overall quality of life, the researchers found.

Both high-income and low- to middle-income countries see quality-of-life benefits from climate action, challenging the usual narrative that fighting climate change pits countries’ interests against each other. “Framing the climate change mitigation conversation around quality of life could break political stalemates” arising from this mistaken assumption, the researchers write.

 

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The researchers analyzed six different dimensions of quality of life—household income, jobs, health, energy security, fairness, and environmental conditions. Demand-side interventions perform slightly better across a wider range of quality-of-life aspects, the researchers found.

The best performers overall are demand-side interventions: reducing energy use in buildings by beefing up insulation and tweaking thermostat settings, and shifting car trips to other modes of transport like public transit, walking, and cycling.

The researchers also surveyed between 800 and 1,400 residents in three of the countries—the Netherlands, Brazil, and China—making the study one of only a few studies that have provided both objective and subjective data on the quality-of-life dimension of climate action.

In all three countries, people were open to both supply-side and demand-side climate strategies, and expected both to improve their quality of life. “People evaluate demand-side strategies positively, even if there is a tendency to evaluate supply-side strategies even more positively,” the researchers write.

What’s more, sharing evidence about the quality-of-life impacts of the six climate strategies tends to increase people’s support for them, the researchers found.

Overall, the findings suggest that in designing climate policy and selling it to the public, policymakers should emphasize well-being, not just cost-effectiveness—and they shouldn’t shy away from proposing demand-side measures, the researchers say.

Source: Grubler A. et al. “The undervalued quality-of-life benefits of demand-side energy and climate strategies.” Communications Sustainability 2026.

Image: © Anthropocene Magazine.

 

Eating Behind Bars: Ending the Hidden Punishment of Food in Prison received the James Beard Media Award in Food Issues and Advocacy, highlighting the perspectives of incarcerated people and the critical role of food in supporting their health and livelihoods.

The book highlights the work of criminal justice nonprofit Impact Justice. Written by Leslie Soble with Alex Busansky and Aishatu R. Yusuf, it showcases Impact Justice’s programs working to provide incarcerated people with healthy, nutritious food as a gateway to successful reentry into society. Marion Nestle’s What to Eat Now and Greg Mercer’s The Lobster Trap rounded out the nominees for the award category.  

“We work in the criminal justice space. Food is in every space, and one of the challenges we have is convincing people in the food space to care about the criminal justice space,” Impact Justice President and Founder Busansky tells Food Tank. “For us to get out of the echo chamber—in terms of funding, government, and the public—is really important. And that’s what we’re trying to do: open the aperture on how people think about criminal justice problems.”

Founded in 2015, Impact Justice conducts research and implements programs to support inmates and others involved in the criminal justice system. Eating Behind Bars was borne from the nonprofit’s 2020 report on the dehumanizing effect of prison food, which featured hundreds of surveys and dozens of interviews with state correctional facility staff and formerly incarcerated people.

The book’s first section, “Hidden Crisis,” illustrates many of the report’s findings: Beyond being bland and unhealthy, food served in prisons in the United States is often moldy, spoiled, and sometimes contains rats or cockroaches. Around 94 percent of people surveyed by Impact Justice weren’t served enough food to feel full during their incarceration, and many who worked in their prison’s kitchens had to cook and serve meat labeled “not for human consumption.”

For Impact Justice, the most important question isn’t why prison food is bad, but rather how it can improve. Criminal justice issues don’t always need criminal justice solutions, according to Busansky.

“This is a problem that can be solved. We know how to feed people—we do it in baseball stadiums, the military, schools, hospitals and nursing homes,” Busansky says. “We know how to feed them good food, food that they want to eat, food they ask for. Since we know how to solve that, how do we go about doing that?”

Over the last few years, Impact Justice has tested several pilot programs to change some of the ways people eat, learn about, and interact with food in carceral environments. Through Chefs in Prison, for example, prisons in Maine underwent improvements in their kitchen operations and menus—led by former Noma chef Dan Giusti—for no additional cost. Additionally, Impact Justice’s Harvest of the Month program provided inmates in each of California’s 31 state prisons with a rotating subset of local, fresh fruits and vegetables.

“Last year, we had pears delivered, and we had a gentleman that ate a pear and had the biggest smile on his face,” Yusuf, Impact Justice’s Vice President of Innovation Programs, tells Food Tank. “When asked why he was so happy, he said he hadn’t had a pear in 18 years.”

There’s also an economic case for improving the prison food system, Impact Justice argues. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is California’s largest purchaser of food, according to a 2023 report co-written by Impact Justice. By working with California-based Spork Food Hub to distribute produce from regenerative farms to prisons, the organization hopes to support a circular economy that benefits small businesses.

Impact Justice remains one of few advocates for a more sustainable, equitable prison food system in the United States. As its programs work to turn prison food from punishment to nourishment, the group continues to push the narrative on good food as a human right, including and especially for the incarcerated.

“We’re not talking about gourmet Michelin-star restaurants here,” Yusuf says. “We’re talking about lettuce—food that’s not moldy, that is fit for human consumption, that is nutritious.”

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 Evett Kilmartin

The post James Beard Award-Winning Authors on Solving America’s Prison Food Problem appeared first on Food Tank.

• July 14, 2026

OPEN LETTER: GREEN CONNECTION QUESTIONS ISRAELI OIL COMPANY’S BID FOR SOUTH AFRICAN OFFSHORE BLOCK AMID ICJ CASE

Environmental justice organisation The Green Connection has written an open letter to President Cyril Ramaphosa about reports that Israeli-owned Navitas Petroleum LP is set to become operator of offshore oil and gas exploration Block 1 CBK in the Orange Basin off South Africa’s West Coast. The organisation believes that the proposed transaction raises questions about whether South Africa’s commercial decisions align with the principles underpinning its international stance on Israel and Palestine, including its ongoing case against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The Green Connection’s letter has thus far been endorsed by thirty-five (35) civil society organisations,
and counting.

“The Green Connection is not calling for the transaction to be automatically rejected. It is urging government to provide clear political and policy leadership on commercial engagement involving Israeli-owned companies while South Africa continues to pursue accountability through international legal processes,” says Lisa Makaula, Advocacy Lead at The Green Connection. 

Block 1 CBK is the northern-most offshore block on South Africa’s West Coast, extending about 250 kilometres west along the South Africa–Namibia maritime border and covering approximately 19 907 square kilometres. Media reports say Navitas Petroleum LP, through Navitas Petroleum Africa Limited, has agreed with Eco (Atlantic) Oil and Gas Ltd., through Azinam South Africa Limited, to acquire a 37.5% participating interest in Block 1 CBK and assume operatorship. If completed, Navitas and Eco Atlantic will each hold 37.5%, while Orange Basin Energies (Pty) Ltd will retain 25%.

South Africa instituted proceedings against Israel before the ICJ in December 2023, alleging violations of the Genocide Convention. The case remains before the Court, which has issued provisional measures. This includes requiring Israel to prevent acts prohibited under the Convention, enable humanitarian assistance and halt action that could bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza.

“This is about far more than a single commercial transaction,” says Makaula. “South Africa earned international respect by taking the unprecedented step of asking the ICJ to hold Israel accountable under the Genocide Convention.

The eco-justice organisation also argues that the proposed transaction is inconsistent with South Africa’s commitments under the Just Energy Transition Partnership, which aims to accelerate a fair and equitable shift to cleaner energy rather than expand offshore oil and gas development. A just transition involves moving away from carbon-intensive fossil fuels that drive global warming and climate change, towards cleaner, more sustainable and safer energy sources.

Neville van Rooy, Outreach Coordinator and Ambassador at The Green Connection, says that offshore oil and gas decisions directly affect coastal communities. He says, “Small-scale fishing communities often carry the risks of offshore oil and gas development while seeing few promised benefits. Too often, decisions affecting our oceans are made without meaningful participation from the people whose livelihoods, culture and food security depend on healthy marine ecosystems.” 

In its letter, The Green Connection calls on the Presidency to ensure that the government develops a lawful, transparent policy position on commercial engagement involving Israeli-owned entities, that is consistent with South Africa’s constitutional values, international obligations and stated foreign policy positions. 

“We are not asking for political interference or automatic rejection,” says Makaula. “We are asking for any decision, including under section 11 of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act, to be made lawfully, transparently and with proper regard for South Africa’s constitutional values, international obligations and stated commitments.” 

“This is ultimately about South Africa’s credibility,” says Makaula. “The world has looked to South Africa for principled leadership because of our willingness to stand up for justice. Today’s decisions will show whether our commitment to human rights, international law and justice extends beyond our words.”

The Green Connection administrator September 4, 2024 Past News THE GREEN CONNECTION AND NATURAL JUSTICE NOW HAVE THE RECORD OF DECISION TO PROGRESS LEGAL CHALLENGE AGAINST TOTALENERGIES

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The Green Connection administrator November 6, 2024 Past News TO PROTECT OCEANS AND LIVELIHOODS, WESTERN CAPE HIGH COURT SET TO HEAR ANOTHER CASE AGAINST TOTALENERGIES DRILLING PLANS IN SOUTH AFRICAN WATERS

November 6, 2024 TO PROTECT OCEANS AND LIVELIHOODS, WESTERN CAPE HIGH COURT SET TO HEAR ANOTHER CASE AGAINST TOTALENERGIES DRILLING

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The Green Connection administrator January 24, 2025 Past News Eskom’s Proposed Retail Tariff Plan: The Green Connection Joins Calls For Energy Justice And Stakeholder Engagement

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The Green Connection administrator February 28, 2025 Latest News Eco-Justice Organizations Reject Draft Scoping Report For Offshore Drilling On SA’S West Coast (TEEPSA DWOB South).

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The post OPEN LETTER: GREEN CONNECTION QUESTIONS ISRAELI OIL COMPANY’S BID FOR SOUTH AFRICAN OFFSHORE BLOCK AMID ICJ CASE appeared first on The Green Connection.

In this four part mini-series, Spring Radio takes a closer look organized labour. The series dives into the rank-and-file strategy, the history of the labour...

The post Spring Radio: Why organized labour is the key to fighting back (feat. Ayesha Jabbar and Dave Bush) first appeared on Spring.

Dalam tradisi pemberitaan klasik, sebuah informasi dinilai layak dipercaya apabila didukung oleh sumber yang dapat dipertanggungjawabkan. Prinsip tersebut tetap relevan hingga saat ini. Berbagai ahli di bidang teknologi menjelaskan bahwa permainan modern umumnya memanfaatkan sistem yang telah dirancang dengan mekanisme tertentu. Hasil yang muncul selama permainan tidak dapat dipastikan hanya karena seseorang baru pertama kali bergabung atau membuat akun baru.

Pengalaman banyak pengguna juga menunjukkan bahwa setiap individu dapat memperoleh hasil yang berbeda. Ada yang merasa beruntung pada awal permainan, sementara pengguna lain tidak mengalami hal serupa. Perbedaan pengalaman tersebut menjadi bukti bahwa klaim “member baru pasti turun scatter” tidak dapat dijadikan patokan umum. Oleh sebab itu, masyarakat perlu membedakan antara pengalaman pribadi dengan fakta yang dapat diverifikasi.

Dari sisi keahlian, pemahaman mengenai sistem permainan online perlu didasarkan pada informasi yang bersumber dari penyedia resmi maupun penjelasan teknis yang kredibel. Banyak platform menerapkan teknologi yang dirancang agar setiap putaran berjalan sesuai mekanisme sistem, bukan berdasarkan status pemain sebagai anggota baru ataupun lama. Dengan demikian, peluang yang diperoleh pengguna tetap bergantung pada mekanisme permainan yang berlaku.

Aspek otoritas juga menjadi bagian penting dalam menilai suatu informasi. Media yang bertanggung jawab tidak hanya menyampaikan kabar yang sedang populer, tetapi juga memberikan penjelasan yang seimbang agar pembaca memperoleh pemahaman yang benar. Sikap kritis terhadap judul-judul sensasional merupakan bagian dari literasi online yang perlu terus dikembangkan, terutama di era ketika informasi dapat menyebar dengan sangat cepat melalui berbagai platform media sosial.

Kepercayaan publik dibangun melalui penyampaian informasi yang jujur dan transparan. Oleh karena itu, masyarakat dianjurkan untuk tidak mudah mempercayai klaim yang menjanjikan hasil tertentu tanpa adanya bukti yang dapat diuji. Membandingkan informasi dari beberapa sumber terpercaya merupakan langkah yang bijaksana sebelum mengambil kesimpulan.

Sebagai penutup, istilah “Member Baru Pasti Turun Scatter” lebih tepat dipahami sebagai ungkapan yang berkembang di kalangan komunitas pengguna daripada sebagai fakta yang telah terbukti. Pendekatan yang mengutamakan literasi, pengetahuan, dan verifikasi informasi akan membantu masyarakat mengambil keputusan secara lebih rasional. Dengan mengedepankan prinsip pengalaman, keahlian, otoritas, pembaca dapat menyaring setiap informasi secara objektif sehingga tidak mudah terpengaruh oleh klaim yang belum memiliki dasar yang kuat.

Nearly two years after the Constitutional Court’s decision to annul Romania’s 2024 presidential election, there is no clear end in sight to one of the most divisive political sagas in the country’s recent history. With anti-establishment sentiment on the rise, evidence of Russian interference might not settle the matter and rebuild trust with citizens.

Since his election as president in Romania’s May 2025 re-run, Nicușor Dan has yet to fulfil a key campaign promise: releasing a detailed report explaining why the Constitutional Court cancelled the 2024 presidential race after far-right candidate Călin Georgescu won the first round with nearly 23 per cent of the vote.

The Court justified its unprecedented intervention on the basis of intelligence assessments alleging a coordinated foreign interference operation. According to those evaluations, the campaign involved illicit financing, online manipulation, and Russian-linked networks that artificially boosted Georgescu’s visibility on platforms such as TikTok.

Dan repeatedly promised greater transparency on the matter. He initially suggested the report wouldlikely be released by the end of January 2026. Officials within the presidential administration later shifted the expected release date to the end of April. However, no report was published. Then, the president said that it would come out later this year, without providing a clear timeline.

In the absence of the promised report, Dan has nevertheless made increasingly categorical public claims. He has stated that, “without a doubt”, Georgescu had benefited from “an infrastructure created by Russia”. Dan has also argued that Romania has been the target of Russian hybrid warfare for at least a decade, and suggested that around 90 per cent of the information gathered by state authorities could eventually be disclosed publicly.

Dan may be right. The interference may have been real, serious, and well-documented. Still, there remains a consequential question that no authority has publicly addressed: Was annulling the election a proportionate response? Did the alleged Russian campaign decisively distort the result, or did nearly a quarter of Romanian voters choose Georgescu for reasons of their own?

The legitimacy of the annulment ultimately depends not only on what happened, but on whether what happened justified one of the most extraordinary interventions possible in a democratic process. And even proving proportionality may not be enough in a country where trust in institutions has been eroding long before 2024, and where, for many, the verdict on that question has already been reached.

Uncharted territory

In March 2025 and in the wake of Romania’s decision to annul the elections,  the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe’s advisory body on constitutional matters, released a report examining when constitutional courts may invalidate elections. The Commission emphasised that annulment should be a measure of last resort, reserved for exceptional circumstances and supported by clear evidence. Under international democratic standards, the Commission stressed, results should only be annulled when irregularities can be shown to have directly affected the vote’s outcome.

That is a high bar, and the Commission noted it is especially difficult to meet when the alleged irregularities concern online campaigning rather than voting or ballot counting. It added that online political speech is generally protected by freedom of expression standards, making it “currently hard to see how the form and content of campaign messaging of candidates could amount to a violation of electoral law that may lead to the annulment of the elections”.

How feasible, then, is it to demonstrate that the irregularities in campaigning invoked by Romania’s Constitutional Court determined the voting results? Luciana Alexandra Ghica, a political science professor at the University of Bucharest, argues that the challenge is notable. Establishing such a causal link requires long-term technical data, sustained multidisciplinary cooperation, and, above all, political will.

“This might be the most difficult part,” she explained, adding that success depends on “the mechanisms needed to support such an effort.” In her assessment, Romania currently lacks much of that institutional capacity, with “too little coordination, too little recognition of experts, and too many appointments based on personal connections”.

What the evidence shows

In its decision to annul the election, Romania’s Constitutional Court concluded that the electoral process had been “compromised throughout its entire course” by irregularities that “distorted the free and fair nature of the vote,” linking it to a coordinated foreign interference operation.  Yet the ruling did not explain why annulment was a proportionate response, nor did it attempt to demonstrate how the alleged irregularities concretely affected the outcome.

Subsequent investigations have strengthened the case that Romania was indeed targeted by a sophisticated influence campaign. In September 2025, the General Prosecutor’s office published a report that Dan presented to European leaders the following month. The report exposes a coordinated Russian-linked operation of considerable scale. It states that companies including AdNow, MGID, Geozo, and AdsKeeper built alarge online influence network using fake social media pages, AI-generated content, and native advertising, as well as cloned doppelgänger websites designed to mimic trusted news outlets and public institutions.

Neither the prosecutor’s report nor the Constitutional Court’s original ruling demonstrates how the interference altered voting patterns, or whether less intrusive measures could have been taken to address the situation.

More than 2,000 Facebook pages and coordinated Telegram, TikTok, YouTube, and clickbait ecosystems were allegedly activated to identify and grow receptive audiences by manipulating vulnerable individuals, spreading anti-government information, and eroding trust in institutions ahead of Romania’s 2024 elections.

Then, closer to polling day, the same pre-built ecosystem was reportedly “activated” or repurposed more explicitly for electoral influence, with content shifting toward coordinated messaging that supported Georgescu and amplified political disinformation during the campaign period.

These findings are substantial, but they do not resolve the question of proportionality. Neither the prosecutor’s report nor the Constitutional Court’s original ruling demonstrates how the interference altered voting patterns, whether Georgescu’s performance depended decisively on the operation, or whether less intrusive measures could have been taken to address the situation.

Lingering questions

Two considerations make the proportionality case harder to establish. One is the question of why voters supported Georgescu in the first place. While official explanations for the annulment have focused on foreign interference, analysts argue domestic political and social grievances also played a significant role in boosting his appeal. “External interference overlapped with internal anxiety, with Russia’s hybrid campaign exploiting a level of weakness within our own democracy,” stressed Ioan Stanomir, a political science professor at the University of Bucharest.

A key component of this anxiety was socio-economic dislocation. According to Stefan Hofmann, the head of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) in Romania, large segments of the electorate felt “isolated and shut out from opportunity”, particularly amid widening inequality. Georgescu was able to harness those frustrations by offering voters something more visceral than policy: a sense of belonging, identity, and recognition. “A discourse like Georgescu’s addresses the disorientation and fear people felt,” Hofmann said.

The second consideration is that this pattern was not unique to Georgescu.  Elena Lasconi, the runner-up of the first round of the 2024 election, also sat outside the mainstream political establishment and made the corruption and failures of the political class a key theme of her campaign.

That both frontrunners emerged as vehicles for anti-establishment sentiment points to a broader public dissatisfaction that predated the election and cannot easily be attributed to foreign influence alone. “When voters want to channel their frustration, to put it mildly, they turn to options outside the political mainstream,” Hofmann said.

The stronger the role played by genuine domestic grievances, the harder it becomes to demonstrate that foreign interference was a decisive causal factor in producing Georgescu’s success. Hofmann notes that Romanian authorities could have considered a more targeted measure, like disqualifying Georgescu, while allowing the second round to proceed. Such an approach would have addressed concerns surrounding him without invalidating the votes already cast by millions of Romanians.

Whether that or other alternatives would have been legally viable or politically preferable, remains open to debate.

The counter-narrative

In the absence of a fully consolidated public justification, the annulment has not settled into a single authoritative interpretation. Instead, it has become a contested political reference point, increasingly shaped outside formal institutional channels. Many Romanians doubted from the outset that the circumstances justified the Constitutional Court’s decision. An IRES poll conducted shortly after the annulment found that 62 per cent of respondents considered it a bad one.

Public trust in institutions has continued to decline since then. An INSCOP poll comparing July 2025 with January 2026 showed trust in the presidency falling from nearly 35 per cent to around 28 per cent, while trust in Parliament dropped from 14.5 per cent to just under 12 per cent.

At the same time, support for far-right parties and figures has grown. A January 2026 CURS poll found Georgescu to be the most trusted political figure in the country with an approval rating of 36 per cent. Following him were George Simion – another far-right figure who lost to Nicușor Dan in 2025 – at 32 per cent, and Dan at 31 per cent. Meanwhile, an INSCOP survey on parliamentary voting intention placed the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) – the party founded and chaired by Simion – at around 38 per cent, significantly ahead of any competitor.

For AUR and Georgescu, the annulment has become a central mobilising narrative, framed as evidence of systemic illegitimacy: the 2024 election was “stolen”, Georgescu is the rightful president, and all Romanian elections are vulnerable to manipulation. In response to Dan’s report presented to European leaders, AUR published its own assessment, describing the annulment as a “state coup” carried out through “unconstitutional means”.

In AUR’s framing, Russia’s intervention in the election was used as the pretext to justify the coup. The report concludes that Romania is “not a democracy”, and that “the coup has exposed the general vulnerability of state institutions and of the oligarchic system governing the country”. In November 2025, when speaking about municipal elections in Bucharest, Georgescu argued that “all these elections are a farce”.

In 2026, he once again claimed that the annulment was an act of “desperation” because the Romanian people were about to “take back their country”. He added that the Constitutional Court’s decision was conducted with “external colleagues, namely the European Union,” thus inverting the foreign interference narrative to implicate Brussels rather than Moscow.

According to Ghica, the narratives being pushed by Georgescu and his allies are unlikely to fade quickly. Voters who feel they were deprived of a rightful president do not simply absorb that grievance and move on: they carry it forward. What makes this particularly hard to reverse, Ghica argues, is that the audiences most exposed to these narratives are also the least equipped to scrutinise them: people with “limited digital and functional literacy, heavily reliant on social media, and affected by considerable social and economic inequalities.”

Voters who feel they were deprived of a rightful president do not simply absorb that grievance and move on: they carry it forward.

Dan’s quicksand

While the “stolen election” narrative has provided AUR and Georgescu with a powerful mobilising tool, it does not fully explain their sustained popularity. Anti-establishment sentiment has been further reinforced by a broader climate of political instability that Dan’s first year in office has done little to change.

Dan, a former mayor of Bucharest, came to office as an outsider candidate, promising reform and a break with established political practices. That positioning made him vulnerable to any perception of indecision or continuity with the system he had promised to change. His first year as president has supplied critics with considerable material.

The most significant test came in early May 2026, when a no-confidence motion brought down the government of prime minister Ilie Bolojan. The procedure was initiated by the Social Democrats and AUR over painful austerity measures and tax increases introduced to address Romania’s fiscal deficit, the largest in the EU at9.3 per cent of GDP in 2024 and 7.9 per cent in 2025.

For the Social Democrats, this was also a political escape from the costs of staying in power as unpopular fiscal measures hit their voters and patronage networks, while AUR used the moment to amplify its anti-austerity, anti-establishment message.

Dan declined to publicly back Bolojan, arguing that his role was that of a mediator. Critics, however, say Dan’s position implicitly validated the legitimacy of the Social Democrats’ move. They are also openly questioning whether the president’s passivity in this and other matters can bring stability, or whether it surrenders control over key political outcomes to other forces, such as the Social Democrats.

Amid heightened political turmoil, the no-confidence motion passed.  Dan subsequently sought to reassure the public, insisting that Romania remained stable. But as weeks passed without the confirmation of a new government, his assurances rang increasingly hollow.

“President Dan is in a delicate situation,” stressed Professor Stanomir. “One year after his election, he is compelled to rebuild a parliamentary majority. Such a challenge is likely to affect the years of his mandate that lie ahead.”

The rule, not the exception

Romania has not been the only target of Russian electoral interference in the EU. Ahead of Poland’s 2025 presidential election, minister of digital affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski publicly warned of an “unprecedented” Russian attempt to influence the vote via cyberattacks, sabotage, and disinformation. Yet the elections proceeded.

In Croatia’s 2025 presidential election, researchers found that Russian-linked bots and disinformation campaigns favoured the anti-NATO candidate, Zoran Milanović,

spreading pro-Kremlin narratives on social media platforms to sway public opinion.

The EU has begun responding. In December 2024, the Commission launched a formal investigation into TikTok under the Digital Services Act, following the release of Romanian intelligence reports suggesting the platform had been used to facilitate foreign interference.

In an email exchange, a Commission spokesperson confirmed to me that the proceedings remain ongoing. The outcome of this initiative could have lasting implications for the role of major tech platforms in electoral processes and, more broadly, for the influence of privately owned tech companies on democratic institutions. Nevertheless, the Commission has been careful to define the limits of its role. “The organisation and conduct of elections is a national competence,” the spokesperson said. “Elections have always been and will always remain in the hands of the citizens.”

That delineation matters. The EU can pressure platforms to “protect the integrity of elections through the Digital Services Act” and sanction individuals linked to disinformation campaigns. It can also support member states through bodies like the newly established European Centre for Democratic Resilience, which aims to help EU countries build their capacity to detect threats to democratic processes and strengthen resilience.

What the EU cannot do is answer the questions that Romania’s annulment continues to raise. Those questions remain Romania’s to resolve.

Can the loose ends be tied?

This is why the long-promised presidential report matters. Its most important task is not simply to establish what happened, but to explain why the response that followed was necessary and why less intrusive alternatives would have been insufficient to protect the integrity of the democratic process.

But even a report that does so convincingly may not be enough to reverse the continued decline in trust in institutions or the rising support for anti-establishment forces in Romania.

A detailed account might settle some of the concrete disputes that have festered since the annulment, like Georgescu’s claim that he is the rightful president. Rebuilding trust, however, will require more than evidence alone. “To get back some level of trust, people’s feelings have to be acknowledged and understood,” KAS’ Hofmann said, both in relation to the 2024 election and the broader dissatisfaction that preceded it. Romania’s traditional parties, he suggests, need to confront their own record more openly, even when doing so means acknowledging uncomfortable truths.

Ghica sees the structural obstacles as even more daunting. Trust in democratic processes and electoral integrity could be re-established, she argues, only through sustained, coordinated effort. “Time is not on our side in this hybrid war. The levels of social polarisation, digital and functional illiteracy, as well as economic inequality, which generates frustration toward others and toward authorities, remain very high.”

These technologies represent a new offensive by corporations to commodify life, seize control of seeds, and disregard the rights of the peoples who have protected biodiversity for millennia.

The post Latin American Organizations Unite Against Gene Editing in Agriculture and Seed Control appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Charting a path to protect human health during prolonged gas flaring in Kitimat

July 14, 2026 – In May, Douglas Channel Watch allies in Kitimat, British Columbia (BC) contacted ALERT. The community of 8,300 residents is a marine port at the head of the Douglas Channel, a principal fjord along the BC Coast, in the traditional and unceded territory of the Haisla Nation. Previously, I worked with First Nations and Canadian allies in a successful multi-year effort to block the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline project that ended in November 2016 when the Canadian Prime Minister cancelled the project.

Much has changed in ten years. Kitimat now faces another daunting situation – a looming liquified natural gas (“LNG”) boom in northwestern BC, as part of the federal government’s plan to export liquified natural gas from Albert’s oil and gas fields to China. Exhausted from the pipeline battle, there was little resistance to the next wave of development pressure – this time for an LNG facility in Kitimat. No messy mixture of tar sands oil, but a clean natural gas! What could possibly go wrong?

Construction started on the Shell-led LNG Canada facility in fall 2018. According to an investigative report by The Narwhal, LNG Canada first tested its system to burn off gas by firing up its flare in fall 2024. By December, officials knew something was wrong – the 90-meter, roaring flare was a clue that the facility’s equipment was malfunctioning. LNG Canada first reported non-compliance with government air waste dumping permits in May 2025, adding that it could take up to three years to fix the problem. Nonetheless, the first tanker-load of natural gas shipped out to China in June 2025, and cargo continues to be shipped to this day.

In fall 2025, Kitimat residents first voiced health concerns from the natural gas flaring, despite offers from LNG Canada to temporarily relocate and pay people not to make complaints or raise concerns about LNG Canada’s flaring to government regulators, the media, or the District of Kitimat. By the end of 2025, LNG Canada was the estimated highest source of LNG flaring emissions in the world, based on 2024 emissions.

Kitimat is now “a compromised airshed.” A Northern Health study found Kitimat has 74 percent higher rates of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease than the rest of the province. While the Rio Tinto (formerly Alcan) aluminum smelter, operational in Kitimat since 1954, is likely the source of these chronic health issues, the local nurse in Kitimat is concerned that the LNG flaring is exacerbating these illnesses – and he is among the health care providers and advocates calling for government regulation.

On July 7, at the Kitimat Airshed Group general meeting, Ott spoke about the need for symptom-based health assessment – something the U.S. National Response Team now recommends for oil-chemical workers, and science supports. Symptom-based surveys more accurately define the health risk and the health impacts that can occur from annual, persistent, low-level exposures to gas flaring emissions – even though exposures may be well below the mandated standards. Generally, symptom-based health monitoring gives a more accurate estimate of health risk than numeric-based standards when complex mixtures of chemicals in various phases (gas, aerosol, particulate) are involved and interacting with other chemicals in the atmosphere such as occurs during LNG flaring.

The extended Q&A session revealed a path forward from ALERT’s perspective. Kitimat residents could:

1. Petition the Kitimat town council with new information on the health risk of persistent, annual, low-level exposures from LNG emissions and ask the council to reverse its vote and support the call for a cumulative health impact assessment;
2. Petition federal regulators for stationary air monitors in Kitimat and downwind communities to augment the sparse RAM (“remote area monitoring”) data, collected by one vehicle; and
3. Work independently with the University of Texas TILT Research Team to conduct a pilot health study in their community and others in the Kitimat airshed.

Meanwhile, Canada’s first major LNG facility may soon be joined by others. Construction has already started on the Cedar LNG plant near LNG Canada in Douglas Channel. It is Canada’s (and the world’s) first Indigenous majority-owned LNG export facility. It promises to have “one of the cleanest environmental profiles in the world.”

What could possibly go wrong?

. . . . .

It bears mentioning that, over the last two decades, there have been other changes. Indigenous peoples have emerged as leaders in Canada’s renewable energy transition and are leading development in wind, solar, geothermal and utility-scale batteries. Even when faced with daunting situations, concerted efforts by people can lead to positive changes.

 

In solidarity,