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INDIGENOUS PEOPLES have long advocated for the right to
self-government related to their children and families. On May 11, 2026, the Misipawistik Cree Nation, Black River First Nation and Pimicikamak Cree Nation achieved a major success at the Manitoba Court of King’s Bench for the recognition and affirmation of this right. 

In Cook et al v. Manitoba [Mispawistik], Chief Justice Joyal, for the Court, granted a declaration that the First Nations hold an Aboriginal right to
self-government in the area of child welfare and child and family services under s. 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982. The Chief Justice found that this includes First Nations’ right to raise their children in their culture and community, connected to their land and immersed in their languages and spiritual traditions. 

The Chief Justice also granted a declaration that Canada and Manitoba’s funding, regulation, and provision of child and family services unjustifiably infringed upon the rights of First Nations in Manitoba. The Chief Justice accepted the “rich” record of evidence of their right to self-government over children and families from over seventeen witnesses, nine expert witnesses — including Dr. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Elder Florence Paynter — and a substantial number of reports of inquiry and government publications. All of that evidence tells a story of how Manitoba and Canada’s conduct resulted in the apprehension of children and their removal from their communities, land, spirituality, language, and culture.

All First Nations in Manitoba can rely on Misipawistik for their right to self-government. Chief Justice Joyal explicitly confirmed that “there is a right of all Manitoba First Nations to self-government in the area of CFS” (at para 699). Additionally, this class action was certified as “opt-in,” meaning that First Nations in Manitoba can opt in and be able to rely on the Court’s declarations related to Manitoba and Canada’s infringement of that right. Based on a notice plan filed with the Court, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs will provide information to First Nations in Manitoba. 

In this case commentary, I explore the significance of the Misipawistik case for Indigenous peoples’ exercise of their inherent right to self-government over Indigenous children and families. Although this case is directly relevant to First Nations in Manitoba, Indigenous peoples in other provinces, the territories, and Nunavut may find parts of the Chief Justice’s reasons to be helpful.

The Significance of the Misipawistik Case

Misipawistik confirms what First Nations in Manitoba have always known: they have an inherent right to self-government over their children and families, which was never surrendered by treaty or extinguished. Misipawistik is significant because, for the first time in Manitoba, the Court has recognized aspects of this right under s. 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982.

In the last twenty years, Indigenous peoples have brought actions to hold Canada and the provinces to account for the harms caused to individuals and communities. The Indian residential schools litigation and class action, and the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, demonstrated that Canada could be sued for its conduct. The First Nations Child and Family Caring Society complaint at the Human Rights Tribunal proved that Canada’s underfunding of First Nations child and family services was discriminatory. And in the Moushoom and Trout class actions, the plaintiffs sued Canada for underfunding the Child and Family Services Program and its narrow interpretation of Jordan’s Principle. 

Misipawistik relates to another aspect of all this litigation. Those cases focused on historical and ongoing harms caused to individuals by the government’s policies and actions. In Misipawistik, the First Nations asked the Court to declare that those policies and actions also infringed upon their right to self-government under s. 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982. 

Misipawistik confirms that First Nations in Manitoba have a right to self-government over child and family services or child welfare. It also confirms that Canada and the Province’s funding, regulation, and provision of child and family services is an unjustifiable infringement of that right. 

Now, Canada and Manitoba (all the provinces, really) should have the direction they need to ensure that their involvement in Indigenous child and family services is not discriminatory or negligent, and that it does not infringe Indigenous peoples’ rights to self-government under the Constitution. Canada and Manitoba have started to take steps in the right direction by recognizing this right through legislation. Now, they have to live up to their commitments.

First Nations in Manitoba have a Right to Self-Government over Child Welfare and Child and Family Services

In Misipawistik, Canada argued that the First Nations needed to satisfy the test for proof of Aboriginal rights in Van der Peet. The Chief Justice rejected Canada’s arguments and modified the test based on changes to the law since it was first developed in 1996. Rather than strictly apply the Van der Peet test, the Chief Justice applied a modified version used by the Quebec Court of Appeal in its Reference regarding an Act Respecting First Nations, Métis and Inuit Children, Youth and Families. The modified test asks “whether the claimed right to self-government in a particular area goes to the cultural security and continuity — the cultural survival — of the Indigenous peoples claiming the right” (at para 677 in Misipawistik). 

Under the ordinary Van der Peet test, Indigenous peoples must prove a practice, custom, or tradition was integral to their distinctive culture before contact (for First Nations and Inuit) or before effective governmental control (for Métis). As the Chief Justice himself noted, the Van der Peet test is “ill-fitting” for
self-government rights because it relies on “outdated ideas about how cultures work,” focuses on “discrete, particularized” practices such as hunting, fishing, and trapping, and freezes rights in the past (para. 657, 679). The Court found that “it would be […] inefficient and inconsistent with the goal of reconciliation underlying s. 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982” to require the First Nations to prove their rights under a strict application of the Van der Peet test (para. 682). 

The Chief Justice reasoned that it was necessary to depart from a strict application of the Van der Peet test because of the evolution of the jurisprudence and legislation related to the right to self-government (paras. 654-685). First, he noted that the Court in Van der Peet and Delgamuukw had always recognized that the Van der Peet test might require adaptation and modification as new rights were claimed (para. 470, 663-667). Second, over the past few decades, the case law has increasingly supported the possibility that s. 35 protects an Aboriginal right to self-government (paras 651, 668-674). Third, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) affirms rights to self-government related to children and families and informs the Court’s interpretation of Indigenous peoples’ constitutional rights (paras. 675-676 and 704). Fourth, Canada’s federal United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act implements UNDRIP as a source of interpretation of Canadian law (para 430 and 681). And finally, and significantly, Canada and Manitoba have both recognized the inherent right to self-government over children and families through legislation (para. 693). 

There is a clear takeaway from Misipawistik: Indigenous peoples’ rights to self-government are vital to the cultural security and continuity, or cultural survival, of
Indigenous peoples.

Many other areas of self-governance are also vital to cultural security and continuity. Misipawistik is a well-reasoned starting point for future claims related to self-government in Manitoba — and throughout Canada. 

Canada and Manitoba’s Infringement on the Right to
Self-Government

Chief Justice Joyal found that Canada and Manitoba’s regulation, funding, and provision of Indigenous child and family services unjustifiably infringed the First Nations’ rights from January 1, 1992, to the present (2026). In support of his finding, he accepted Dr. Simpson’s evidence on the impact of child apprehensions on the community, and on a child’s connection to land, culture, language and spirituality. The Chief Justice quoted Dr. Simpson at length (at para. 720):

When children are removed from their First Nations family, the community and nation has no mechanism to ensure their teachings and way of life is passed down to the next generation. They have no way of fulfilling their responsibilities to mino-bimaadiziwin and this has a negative impact on their own sense of belonging and their own identity since they are no longer a link in the chain, as expressed in the concept of nindaanikoobijiganag. Removing a child from their cultural land-based context is akin to cutting their umbilical cord and disconnecting them from their community, their knowledge systems, and the land from which all meaning flows. The survival of First Nations knowledge systems and languages is entirely dependent upon the next generation of First Nations people learning land-based practices from their Elders.

…

Land-based practices when a child or children are missing are therefore filled with grief and loss because there is nowhere else that this way of life and these practices can be learned. In many regions, land-based practices are threatened and endangered practices because of the impact of colonialism, the residential and day school era, and the child welfare system. Because First Nations knowledge systems are land-based, spiritual, oral, and generated through communal practice, they cannot be learned at a desk in school or by reading books. They can only be learned by engaging in land-based practices over the course of one’s lifetime. When children are removed from First Nations communities and families by Child and Family Services, they no longer have access to this knowledge, and it becomes impossible for them to uphold their responsibilities to their community.

In his reasons, the Chief Justice considered evidence on the cumulative effect of residential schools and federal and provincial policies on the harms caused to the First Nations’ right to self-government, and the right to raise their children on the land, in their languages, cultures, and spiritualities (at para. 838). This is important, because in other cases, such as the residential schools litigation, the Court often separates these harms into distinct events, which often makes it difficult to litigate and remedy them. A cumulative approach recognizes how all of these events are related. 

Indigenous Governments May Need to Consider Claiming Remedies for “Reconciliatory Justice” for Breaches of
Aboriginal Rights

Misipawistik provides some direction on what governments should not do, but it does not provide much clarity to what governments must do when they choose to be involved in regulating, funding, or providing Indigenous child and
family services. 

As others have noted, funding is one of the main challenges related to the exercise of the right to self-government for child and family services. Shortly after Canada enacted An Act Respecting First Nations, Métis and Inuit Children, Youth and Families (2019), the Yellowhead Institute published its report on the Act. Professors Naiomi Metallic, Jeffery Hewitt, Hadley Friedland, Aimée Craft, and Sarah Morales identify five areas where the Act fell short. On funding, Canada received a failing grade. Almost seven years later, it is still unclear how funding and resources will be transferred to Indigenous governments who want to exercise their right to self-government in this area. 

In Misipawistik, the Court was asked to determine whether Canada or Manitoba had breached any duties — in common law, equity, or under the Charter — that were owed to the First Nations. Since duties specify a standard of conduct, any decision on these duties would have clarified Canada or Manitoba’s obligations, including financial, to the First Nations involved. 

Although the Chief Justice found that Canada and Manitoba had unjustifiably infringed upon the First Nations’ right to self-government over child and family services, he dismissed the First Nations’ claims that other duties had also been breached. Unlike s. 35, which acts as a negative limit on government, those other claims would have imposed a positive obligation or duty on the Crown. In turn, this would have impacted the Crown’s legislative and executive discretion and, perhaps most importantly, its budgetary choices. Because, like it or not, Indigenous governments need resources and funding to provide child and family services in the First Nation communities.

One way to read the decision is that the Court was concerned about its impact on government discretion. Suppose the government owed the First Nations a duty of care and the standard of that care meant providing services in the child’s home community. That would require the government to fund, in many cases, more extensive preventative services. Those “less expensive”— yet so-often used — short-term options, such as apprehending children and removing them from their community, would be off the table because they would fail to meet the standard of care.

So, how might Misipawistik be helpful to other First Nations? Consider that the Chief Justice accepted witness evidence and public reports about Canada and Manitoba’s funding, regulation, and provision of services. This evidence clearly demonstrates gaps, challenges, and proposed best practices. It could, therefore, offer some guidance to inform future frameworks for
moving forward.

Indigenous governments may also want to consider seeking remedies for “reconciliatory justice.” In Pekuakamiulnuatsh Takuhikan, the Supreme Court of Canada ordered compensation because the Honour of the Crown was breached. I previously wrote about this for the Yellowhead Institute:

When the Honour of the Crown is breached, compensation may be required to advance what the majority calls ‘reconciliatory justice.’ The majority explains that the purpose of the Honour of the Crown is to ‘facilitate the reconciliation of the Crown’s interests and those of Indigenous peoples, including by promoting negotiation and the just settlement of Indigenous claims.’ Where the Honour of the Crown is breached, compensation advances reconciliation by ‘repairing and maintaining the special relationship with the Indigenous peoples on whom European laws and customs were imposed.’

Although compensation is intended to remedy the harm caused to the First Nation, it may also be used by a First Nation to restore the community and prepare it for exercising the right to self-government. Compensation, however, is not a reliable source for sustaining Indigenous child and family services into the future.

What Comes Next?

The Court’s decision was the first of two stages in this litigation. The first stage addresses the certification of the plaintiffs’ claims as a class action and presents a summary judgment on the sole certified claim under s. 35. Now, the parties can negotiate and attempt to settle or proceed to the second stage. The Court’s reasons are incredibly thorough, and so the parties have been given a lot of direction. If they can’t come to a settlement, the Court will be asked to determine compensation for collective harms. Canada and Manitoba may be able to raise defences to limit their liability at the second stage. 

Canada and Manitoba will likely argue that the claim for compensation is statute-barred. This occurs when a statute of limitations restricts compensation based on the number of years between the claim being filed and when it was first known to the plaintiff. It’s unclear at this point whether Canada and Manitoba will be able to rely on statutory limitation periods to avoid paying compensation for their infringements. However, it might be argued that statutory limitation periods are unconstitutional and cannot be applied.

In addition, it is possible that compensation for “reconciliatory justice” is available. In Pekuakamiulnuatsh Takuhikan, a majority of the Supreme Court of Canada found that compensation could be appropriate for breaches of the Honour of the Crown. It would seem inconsistent with the principles of reconciliatory justice for compensation to be barred by legislation enacted by a province or Canada. That is an odd sort of justice and reconciliation, where the party that causes the harm can determine whether it is liable. 

Overall, the Chief Justice’s reasons provide significant guidance and direction to the parties. At this point, the parties might discuss how Canada and Manitoba could support First Nations in Manitoba as they exercise their inherent right to self-government over Indigenous children and families. It is clear that whatever Canada and Manitoba do, they must ensure that the First Nations are supported in the right to raise their children on the land, in their own communities, and with their own culture, languages and spiritual traditions.

Citation:

Franks, Scott. “The Right to Self-Government and Child and Family Well-Being: A Case Comment on Cook et al. v. Canada,” Yellowhead Institute. June 30 2026. https://yellowheadinstitute.org/2026/case-comment-on-cook-et-al-v-canada-the-right-to-self-government-and-child-and-family-well-being

Artwork by Dakota Brant, May Their Journeys be Gentle

https://www.dakotabrant.com/

The post The Right to Self-Government and Child and Family Well-Being: A Case Comment on Cook et al. v. Canada appeared first on Yellowhead Institute.

Austerity and neoliberalism have pushed workers across Bolivia into an indefinite general strike, with miners, teachers, and transport workers, alongside social movement groups (primarily Indigenous),...

The post “Rifle, machine gun, the people will not be silenced”: General strike and protests in Bolivia first appeared on Spring.

Milk comes out slowly. Nipples hurt after each pumping session. Many parents blame the pump, but the real problem sits in a small plastic piece. Wrong flange size cuts milk output by half and damages tender skin. A lactation specialist measures and fixes this hidden issue quickly. Calling a lactation specialist Dubai changes pumping from painful to productive in one visit.

Why size matters:

Fit determines success. If the tunnel diameter is too large, too much tissue pulls inside. This causes friction and swelling. If the diameter is too small, the nipple rubs against the sides, causing pain and blocking flow. Correct alignment allows the tissue to move freely without dragging. Proper dimensions provide comfort and protect sensitive skin from unnecessary trauma during daily use.

Signs of incorrect fit:

Watch for clear physical signals. Redness or skin irritation indicates poor sizing. Pain or burning sensations during the session point toward a bad match. If the nipple looks blanched or white after pumping, the flange is likely too tight. Conversely, if too much areola enters the tunnel, the opening is far too wide. These visual cues tell a story about comfort levels.

How to measure accurately:

Measuring requires patience. Wait until the end of a session when the tissue is most supple. Use a simple tool to measure the base diameter of the nipple. Avoid including the surrounding areola in the calculation. Add a few millimeters for movement to find the ideal diameter. Most manufacturers provide guides to help determine the starting point based on these specific measurements.

The impact on output:

Efficient emptying relies on proper suction mechanics. When the fit matches the anatomy, the cycle mimics a natural nursing rhythm. This stimulates milk production effectively. Poorly fitted parts restrict the ducts, reducing volume. Achieving the right seal helps the device work exactly as intended. Better fit leads to shorter sessions and improved overall yield without the frustration of constant adjustments or skin distress.

Adjusting as needs change:

Bodies shift throughout the journey. Tissue size fluctuates due to hormone levels and hydration. What worked during the early weeks might not suit the situation three months later. Periodically re-evaluating the fit remains wise. Small changes in size requirements are normal. Updating the equipment to match current physical needs keeps the process comfortable and productive throughout the entire duration of feeding.

Governments are holding “critical” talks this week on a global treaty to curb plastic pollution, as some countries and activists warn that key issues – including measures to rein in soaring plastic production – are being sidelined.

Diplomats are meeting in person in Nairobi for the first time since negotiations were suspended in chaos nearly a year ago, stymied by a long-running deadlock that pits petrostates against more ambitious nations over the reach of the UN pact.

Because nearly all plastic is made from planet-heating oil, gas and coal, the sector’s trajectory will have a major influence on global efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The four-day informal gathering, which begins on Tuesday, has been billed by the chair of the talks, Chilean ambassador Julio Cordano, as a “brainstorming” session in which countries are invited to put forward possible solutions to some of the treaty negotiations’ most divisive elements.

Cordano is expected to distill those views in a new document intended to serve as the basis for a new draft text of the future treaty, which governments would take up at the next official round of negotiations, scheduled for March 13-24, 2027.

Two earlier rounds, each billed as the final one, ended without agreement, derailed largely by a standoff over how the treaty should address plastic production, which the UN says is set to triple by 2060 without intervention.

Production curbs in the spotlight

Large fossil fuel and petrochemical producers, led by Saudi Arabia, the United States, Russia and India, have repeatedly argued that the treaty should focus only on managing plastic waste. A US State Department spokesperson told Climate Home News that Washington supports “practical, cost-effective solutions” to plastic pollution, while opposing “global plastic bans”.

A majority of countries – including most European, Latin American, African and Pacific island nations -want to limit the manufacturing of plastic to “sustainable levels”, but have not pushed for any wide-ranging ban. 

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Ahead of what it described as “critical” talks in Nairobi, the French government said last week it had already shown flexibility and “significantly scaled back” its initial ambitions. But a French official told a meeting of EU environment ministers that without an explicit reference to the “unsustainable nature” of plastic production, the treaty would be “fundamentally unbalanced, ineffective and, worse still, could set us on the wrong path for decades to come”.

In a separate written communication, the French government lamented that informal meetings held in recent months have given “disproportionate visibility to the positions of the least ambitious states”, fuelling a “risk that partial agreements may be reached only on the issues with the broadest consensus”.

Dennis Clare, a negotiator for the Pacific island nation of Micronesia, told Climate Home News that “if we fail to address any key elements”, including overproduction, the impacts of the plastic crisis on the climate, human health and ecosystems will only grow more severe. 

Fears over “political calculations”

Despite such concerns, plastics production is not mentioned in the wide-ranging list of topics Cordano has drafted for the meeting – an omission that has alarmed observers.

Christina Dixon, a campaigner at the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), said there appeared to be an attempt to write off this crucial element of the treaty as “too complicated and politically unviable”.

David Azoulay, environmental health programme director at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), said the meeting’s proposed structure was “highly concerning”. He accused the chair of “making political calculations in favour of potential short-term wins” and aiming to deliver a treaty “based on the lowest common denominator”.

UN asks AI companies to reveal full environmental impacts

Speaking to journalists last week, Cordano pushed back, insisting that “no topic is off the table” and inviting countries to bring whatever proposals they judged necessary for a successful outcome.

He added that the treaty could not be allowed to settle for just any level of ambition, and that he would not be happy with an outcome at all costs.

“This is what makes it so difficult and complex,” said Cordano, who was elected in February after his predecessor’s resignation. Countries “are trying to be creative” in finding solutions, he explained, because “the road to the objective of our work might not be so obvious”.

The post UN plastics pact talks restart amid fears production curbs will be left out appeared first on Climate Home News.

Tomás Ayala leaps off the side of a small dinghy and into the dark swell of water. His arms slice through the waves like a cutlass as he dives deep into the bay off the southeastern coast of the Puerto Rican island of Culebra. Armed with a spear gun, Ayala swims even deeper as he scans the perimeter of the reef for his target. It doesn’t take long. Mere seconds later, a cloud of blood darkens the water around a large hogfish — proof enough that he found his mark. He snatches up his catch and makes for the surface. 

Back safely on his boat, Ayala drops the reef fish into a cooler, guns the motor, and heads for shore. It’s late Wednesday afternoon in mid-May. Ayala has been out since before dawn. The 50-year-old hails from a family of fishers — he started free diving for reef fish, laying lobster traps, and catching octopus when he was just eight years old, following in the footsteps of his brother and grandfather. Before long, he arrives at his destination — a concrete dock leading to a villa pesquera, a “fishing village” or “fish landing center,” a site with key infrastructure for Culebra’s community of traditional fisherfolk. Inside are cleaning stations, freezers, a saltwater tank for storing lobsters, a mélange of other equipment, and a bustling market. 

The villa pesquera provides the equipment dozens of local fishers need to sustain their work, and also a space to convene: Every week, the association that co-manages the space comes together for updates and to share their challenges and successes.

Ayala is greeted by Nicolás Gómez Andújar, a marine scientist whose dad is a local fisher, and they prepare the space for their next gathering. The members will discuss the federal permits they’re hoping to get for a native oyster farm, the effort to clear droves of abandoned fishing gear from Culebra’s seabed, and anything else someone may want to bring to the group. While they talk, they’ll eat a seafood mofongo, a popular shrimp-and-plantain dish.

Ayala and Pedro Gómez drive a boat off the coast of the island-municipality of Culebra. Nelson Vega Oliveras / 9 Millones

For decades, Culebra’s villa pesquera lay dormant, an abandoned facility shut down by the Puerto Rican government in 2002 because of political infighting, loss of government funding, and conflict between local fishers. In 2021, when Ayala and Gómez Andújar decided they wanted to resurrect it, dozens of their friends, neighbors, and local businesses donated time and labor to restore the dilapidated structure. It took roughly four years of organizing, fundraising, and securing permits for it all to come together. 

Last October, they formally reopened the fish market to much fanfare. Hundreds of people, on an island home to less than 2,000, showed up to help celebrate. They ate, laughed, and danced together. “We created what we dreamed of,” said Ayala. 

Hidden behind their success, however, lies a story of entrenched government divides and a growing need to rehaul how fishers are represented across the Puerto Rican government. The very survival of small-scale fishing and its unsung role in Puerto Rico’s food system depends on it — especially in the face of climate change, as rising temperatures make it harder and harder to fish for a living.

Ayala fishes for sardines following small-scale and artisanal practices. Nelson Vega Oliveras/9 Millones

In the early to mid-1960s, amid a push to modernize commercial fishing boats and docking facilities, the Puerto Rican government formally established villas pesqueras, turning informal fishing spots into regulated, communal spaces. In 1979, Corporación para el Desarrollo y Administración de los Recursos Marinos, Lacustres, y Fluviales, or CODREMAR, the centralized agency tasked with handling all research, education, and conservation efforts related to commercial fishing, was born.

By the early ‘80s, the government began promoting the implementation of “fisher associations,” or organized local groups tasked with controlling their own seafood sales — partly to break up emerging seafood monopolies — and co-managing the villas pesqueras alongside municipalities. What happened next is not well documented. Research by University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez social anthropologist Manuel Valdés-Pizzini has found fishers still struggled to keep control of the landing centers because of political infighting and dwindling institutional support — the same dynamics that ultimately led to the closure of Culebra’s fishing village.

“There is a lot of politics in this,” said Valdés-Pizzini. “The landing center is just one piece of infrastructure in the whole fishery, culture, and society.”

In 1990, CODREMAR was dissolved after the Puerto Rican government deemed its oversight of the fishing sector inefficient, leaving its core responsibilities to be divvied up between two agencies — Puerto Rico’s Department of Agriculture and Department of Natural and Environmental Resources. Nowadays, experts and fishers alike say the governance of the industry in Puerto Rico is little more than a patchwork, piecemeal approach splintered across just about every layer of government. Villas pesqueras are typically co-managed by local fishing associations, independent fishers or businesses, municipalities, and the Department of Agriculture. Some of the equipment inside, such as storage lockers, is overseen by the Department of Agriculture, and fishers’ licenses, boat ramps, and other permitting approvals are largely regulated by the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources. 

The list of government stakeholders and regulators also includes the Puerto Rican Department of Economic Development and Commerce, the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Caribbean Fishery Management Council, the Puerto Rico State Historic Preservation Office, and the Puerto Rico Planning Board, among others. For the fishers who are trying to adapt to global warming, such as those in Culebra, the red tape just gets in the way.

A forthcoming analysis by The Nature Conservancy Puerto Rico, previewed exclusively by Grist and 9 Millones, found that the burdens of this existing regulatory process as it relates to marine aquaculture “can be disproportionately high for small-scale producers.” Permits and authorizations are not only notoriously unwieldy for small fishers, but can also cost hundreds to thousands of dollars, according to the report. For some, as in the case of traditional shellfish farmers, the upfront and operating costs can be far more than what their peers in other parts of the U.S. pay.

Puerto Rico’s fishing sector also differs from the rest of the U.S. in that it’s primarily made up of small-scale, artisanal fishers rather than industrial-scale operations. Fisheries account for a marginal slice of the archipelago’s economy. Commercial fishing falls within Puerto Rico’s agriculture, forestry, and fishing sector, which accounted for just 0.69 percent of Puerto Rico’s gross domestic product in 2024. Yet in the most vulnerable island communities, where food is almost exclusively imported, poverty rates are more than double the national U.S. average, and resources are scarce, the expansion of local fishing could serve as the cornerstone of long-term food security and sovereignty. 

A recent report found that just 12 villas pesqueras contribute more than $3 million every year to Puerto Rico’s economy. And that contribution is poised to grow, as more fishers advocate for a streamlined permitting system, better industry and cultural valuations for small-scale operators, and a centralized regulatory landscape overseen by one government office. Without those changes, they face an uncertain future. 

“Fishers are embedded in this complex web with the Department of Agriculture and Department of Natural and Environmental Resources. These different governmental institutions, they don’t seem to be talking to each other. There’s a disconnection,” said Luis Alexis Rodríguez Cruz, a food systems researcher and science communicator who works with the Caribbean Agroecology Institute on fisheries. “In Spanish we say, ‘Entre la espada y la pared’ — between the sword and the wall. It’s like, you want to do something, because this agency is requiring you to do [it], often this other agency is not requiring it, or somewhat counters it.”

An aerial view of the fishing village in Ceiba, Puerto Rico, which includes an area for processing the catch of the day and a fish market. Nelson Vega Oliveras/9 Millones

Even as distrust between fishers and the government deepens, the effects of climate change are pushing fishers toward that very system for relief. 

Rising seas driven by a warming planet have continued to encroach upon shorelines, wetlands, and coastal infrastructure throughout Puerto Rico. Erosion has been identified in more than a third of Puerto Rico’s beaches. The situation is so dire that in 2023, the Puerto Rican government declared a state of emergency over the issue, a move that included earmarking $105 million in federal funds to implement nearly two dozen measures to minimize the effects. Late last month, Puerto Rico’s Governor Jenniffer González-Colón declared yet another state of emergency over coastal erosion. On May 27, days before the start of the Atlantic hurricane season, González-Colón signed an executive order that described the “critical condition” of erosion as only having “accelerated” because of rising sea levels, storm surges, atmospheric phenomena, and the landscape vulnerability of several Puerto Rican coastal communities. 

Since 1901, the average ocean temperature around Puerto Rico has increased by nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit. This has scrambled the region’s marine biodiversity — killing off coral reefs and seagrass, shifting which species are more abundant, and affecting the quality of the catch. But the surging frequency of intensified hurricanes hitting the Caribbean remains the biggest climate stressor for Puerto Rico’s fishing sector. 

In 2017, Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico as a Category 5 storm, devastating the archipelago and plunging parts of it into close to a year without power. The hurricane was also devastating for small fisheries, which lost an estimated $17.8 million in damaged gear, boats, and shoreside infrastructure, including villas pesqueras. Following the storm, the Puerto Rican government set out to rebuild and reconstruct the fishing hubs with funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and NOAA, but quickly ran into issues. Aid was repeatedly delayed. Some fisherfolk didn’t receive any federal support for years and were forced to operate in makeshift markets. Others rebuilt, bit by bit, on their own dime. 

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Although no official record of how many structures were lost to the storm currently exists, a 2026 survey by the nonprofit Conservación ConCiencia found that 41 villas pesqueras are actively selling seafood, down from approximately 63 in the ‘80s, and the conditions of those facilities vary widely. The number of total active villages is unknown to the Puerto Rican government. The Department of Natural and Environmental Resources told Grist in an email that the agency currently has 1,646 “bonafide and licensed fishermen on record.” However, there tends to be discrepancies between the number of fishers licensed and those that show up in government data captured by multiple agencies.  

In the small beach town of Ceiba, which hugs the eastern tip of Puerto Rico’s mainland, Beverly Román Figueroa and her partner Ernesto Correa Torres have been fighting battle after battle with local authorities over their villa pesquera — battles that began when Maria hit. 

After the storm severely damaged Ceiba’s fishing hub, Román Figueroa says they were told by the mayor that the municipality had been allocated a little over $124,000 of Federal Emergency Management Agency aid to pay for the repairs. But when she and Correa Torres would visit the site — even as late as 2023, after a lengthy contract dispute over the villa pesquera’s management — they found little evidence that any work had been done. Photos and videos taken in March of 2023 show destroyed pipes and waterlogged floors and walls — a largely unusable space. 

“What they handed me was a neglected property,” said Correa Torres in Spanish. “This isn’t mine; this belongs to the people of Puerto Rico and to the fishermen.”

In Puerto Rico, fishing is a trade passed down through generations. Nelson Vega Oliveras / 9 Millones

For months, their requests for repairs went unanswered by local and federal officials. (The Department of Agriculture sent representatives at one point to conduct an on-site inspection, Román Figueroa says, but the visit resulted in “no real action.”) Tired of waiting and needing to generate income, the duo invested more than $60,000 of their own money into fixing up the villa pesquera. They even collaborated with Conservación ConCiencia and Hispanic Federation to get solar panels installed on the fish market for cleaner, cheaper power. 

Three years later, the structure and its facilities — storage lockers, the boat ramp, and the floating dock — are always accessible to local fishers. Its new restaurant, Pescaderia y Restaurante ANSI, is open four days a week. Román Figueroa whips up piping hot meals like sancocho de tiburón, a traditional stew made from the shark that Correa Torres hauls in from the sea. He is president of ANSI, the company made up of local fishers who manage the villa; she, the secretary and resident cook. Their children also help out — their daughter works in the market, and their son is also a fisher. 

“It was a disaster … but little by little, we got it back up and running,” said Román Figueroa in Spanish. The government, she says, had no part in that. “Despite everything we have done at the villa, we have worked alone.”

A sign reads, “Warning, ramp for exclusive use by commercial fishers” in Ceiba, Puerto Rico. Nelson Vega Oliveras/9 Millones

Ariam Torres Cordero, an environmental planner and assistant professor at the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras, has visited at least 15 of the archipelago’s villas pesqueras in the last two years to begin mapping the current state of the fishing industry. Together with Valdés-Pizzini, he is setting out to change the fact that the government has no official account of the current conditions of the fishing hubs in Puerto Rico. “You can see, already, the deterioration, even despite the fact that they were reconstructed less than eight years ago. You can already see the impacts of coastal erosion,” said Torres Cordero. 

Puerto Rico’s governance of the sector has made fishers more vulnerable to these threats — not less. This is most apparent in the bungled rebuilding of the dozens of villas pesqueras destroyed by Maria. Fisher communities across the archipelago still report being unable to access federal aid to repair storm-ravaged facilities and equipment. 

An audit published in January 2025 by the Office of the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Commerce found that Puerto Rico’s government had distributed only around 7 percent of the $11.4 million in disaster assistance funds earmarked for fisheries since April 2020 and had completed just 4 of 17 designated restoration projects. 

Puerto Rico Secretary of the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources Waldemar Quiles Pérez did not address Grist and 9 Millones’ requests for clarification on the severe delays revealed in the audit or provide updates on the agency’s aid disbursement. “All of the fishing spaces around the Island are either privately owned or are administer[ed] by the Department of Agriculture,” Quiles Pérez said in a written statement. 

Puerto Rico’s Department of Agriculture did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

Not only was the allocation of the aid itself riddled with delays and discrepancies, Torres Cordero pointed out, but what little money the federal government distributed for post-disaster rebuilding of villas pesqueras wasn’t used to rebuild in a way that accounts for the effects of climate change on fishing infrastructure. That much is obvious in how many of the facilities are already falling apart. By building back the structures just as they were designed decades ago, “we’re bound for another situation where we’re going to end up with most of this infrastructure being basically destroyed,” said Torres Cordero. “It’s not sustainable just to keep rebuilding the same.” 

With this in mind, he is trying to figure out how to minimize the risk of future storm and erosion damage while still allowing the fishing facilities to remain near the sea. The answer, he believes, lies in reimagining parts of the villa pesquera design itself to be both more durable and, where it makes the most sense, even mobile. 

Torres Cordero himself is recruiting the help of architecture, landscape, and social work students to come up with a new blueprint for a more “climate-proof” structure. “We need to decide, ‘What things do we need permanently placed in a location? And then what things should be mobile?’ And then design around that,” he said. 

A villa pesquera isn’t a simple building, however. The freezers and areas where fish are cleaned and prepared, for example, often require heavy equipment that would be too complex to move ahead of a storm. On the other hand, a fish market or dock could be designed to be mobile. (The Puerto Rican government, for its part, did try to do some version of this following Hurricane Maria by installing temporary floating docks in a handful of locations, which Torres Cordero says have proven not to be very durable or functional.) 

The pilot project is focused on the island of Vieques, another of Puerto Rico’s smaller island municipalities home to many traditional fishers. The work is in its infancy  — it only started coming together last summer – and Torres Cordero hasn’t yet secured the funding and capacity needed to move it forward. Several outside factors have also contributed to grounding the project before it’s really begun. In September, the fishers they were just beginning to collaborate with in Vieques were suddenly faced with the deployment of U.S. troops to the island, which the military considered a strategic position in its tensions with Venezuela. Vieques still bears the lasting environmental toll of decades of bombing by the U.S. Navy, which used much of the island for military practice. That included the navy’s regular disposal of unknown contaminants in the waters surrounding Vieques, polluting its fishing stock and marine ecosystems. Then, in April, students at the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras went on strike, calling for the resignation of the university president, Zayira Jordán Conde, over her controversial decisions having to do with widespread research and staffing cuts.

“All of that fell apart,” said Torres Cordero. “Right now, we are playing the waiting game.” 

As the ocean temperature rises, fishers are forced to go to deeper waters. Nelson Vega Oliveras/9 Millones

The fishers in Culebra are as ready as they can be for the next calamitous storm. That’s thanks to the more than two dozen solar panels lining the villa pesquera’s roof, the hurricane-proof windows found throughout the blue-and-white building, and a rainwater harvesting system ensuring a backup water supply. These are small but mighty ways fisherfolk there have already sought to better fortify themselves against the many climate-borne stressors assailing their sector. In doing so, they’ve also bolstered their island community’s defenses against food insecurity when the next hurricane or flood tears through Puerto Rico. 

Following Maria, Puerto Rico’s fishers mobilized to feed their neighbors. In Culebra, Ayala remembers how, after the hurricane left the island without electricity for half a year, the local seafood supply chain collapsed entirely. To meet the need, as fishers struggled with damaged gear and lack of power, and the community waited on external food aid that just didn’t come, Ayala organized an informal system. He collected fish from other fishermen, set up a makeshift area to clean the catch, and knocked on doors to sell directly to people. The grassroots effort underscored the need for a more resilient system, catalyzing the formation of the fishing association and restoration of their home base — the villa pesquera. 

Even though fishing only makes up a marginal slice of Puerto Rico’s economy, it’s clear that Culebra is better for the work that Ayala and Gómez Andújar are doing. For a community where about a quarter of residents live below the poverty line, a primary indicator of food insecurity, building a robust local supply chain and bolstering their resilience against environmental degradation isn’t merely an aspiration, but a survival strategy. So in 2020, Gómez Andújar and local environmental scientist Megan Considine set out to create another pillar of that vision — the only permitted oyster farm in Puerto Rico. 

“Climate change is, of course, this unpredictable threat. And it’s chronic, and it’s there,” Gómez Andújar said. “To a certain extent, we need to flow with it. We need to adapt. We need to mitigate.” 

Culebra fishers are prepared for an incoming storm and regular power outages in part by the more than two dozen solar panels installed on the roof of the villa pesquera.
Nelson Vega Oliveras / 9 Millones

Though the oyster farm is currently grant-funded, with only research permits, local fishers like Ayala view farming native shellfish as a way to spark future generations’ interest in careers in fishing and diversify the seafood supply chain operating out of Culebra’s villa pesquera. But in order to keep it running through the next few years, they’ll need to commercialize the farm. Everything was moving in the right direction — until late last month. 

Much of their farm’s federal compliance suddenly hinged on an Army Corps of Engineers permit at risk of expiring. Rather than chance violations, they made the difficult decision to, at least temporarily, shut down roughly half of their operations while awaiting that clearance. “It’s demoralizing,” said Gómez Andújar. “The main message, really, is we’re doing the best we can to do everything right, and it’s still very, very, very hard.” 

After their yearslong effort to restore Culebra’s fishing village, Gómez Andújar and Ayala are buried under layers of bureaucracy, yet again. The road ahead looks much like the road behind. 

“We show people how to live from the ocean, how to grow food from the ocean,” says Ayala. Fishing represents so much more to Ayala than just a job — it’s the foundation of Puerto Rico’s food-sovereign, climate-resilient future. “And the government is the biggest barrier.”

Filmmaker Nelson Vega Oliveras contributed reporting. 9 Millones’ Laura M. Quintero contributed editing.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline For Puerto Rico’s fishers, climate change isn’t the only challenge — being left to adapt alone is another on Jun 30, 2026.

No city dealing with a lot of lead pipes spends as much as Chicago does to replace them. 

With more than 400,000 lead water service lines, Chicago has the largest known inventory of lead pipes of any city in the country. Officials say replacing each one costs about $31,000 on average — more than six times the Environmental Protection Agency’s national estimate of $4,700 a line.

Grist, WBEZ, and Inside Climate News surveyed other cities with the most lead service lines in the country — including Detroit, Milwaukee, and New York — about the cost of fully replacing a lead service line. The 18 that responded provided averages between $6,000 and $25,000, with most less than half of Chicago’s figure. Engineering firm CDM Smith, which works with cities across the country, pegs the national average at $12,500 per line. 

Now, with a federal mandate to remove every lead pipe within roughly 20 years, Chicago is facing a daunting timeline and an astronomical price tag. Replacing the city’s inventory at the current rate will cost more than $12 billion. 

“It is absurd,” said Cyndi Roper, a senior policy advocate with the Natural Resources Defense Council’s safe water initiative. “You can’t play victim to your own policies. … You actually can make changes to bring the cost down.”

A review over seven months of hundreds of pages of program documents and contracts, plus dozens of interviews with city officials, policy experts, contractors, and homeowners, found several key contributors. The most significant include inefficient early contracts, cumbersome permitting requirements, and the city’s reliance on one-off replacements rather than undertaking whole blocks at once.

A glaring lack of clarity from the Department of Water Management, which oversees the city’s replacement program, has also made it difficult to pinpoint the exact reasons for the high cost. Its officials were unable to provide Grist, WBEZ, and Inside Climate News with consistent figures for replacement costs and the number of lines replaced, or make clear whether the water department is tracking these costs systematically.

“It seems like the story here is how hard you have to work to get information that’s needed in order to figure out why the costs are so high,” Roper added.

More in this series

• Chicago residents risk daily lead exposure from toxic pipes. Replacing them will take decades.
• Chicago was supposed to warn residents about toxic lead pipes last year. Most still have no idea.
• Chicago has the most lead pipes in the nation. We mapped them all.

A spokesperson for Mayor Brandon Johnson said in an emailed statement that he is committed to accelerating replacements and minimizing the burden to residents, but did not respond to specific questions about the city’s unusually high costs. 

“The Johnson administration is working across departments in coordination with local, state, and federal partners to accelerate replacements, streamline processes, and maximize every available dollar so more residents can access safe, reliable drinking water,” said the statement. 

Officials with the water department said they see some room to bring expenses down as work ramps up. But they’ve also disagreed with outside experts who say Chicago’s high costs are unreasonable, and they don’t appear to be treating the drastic cost differential with other cities as a high priority to address.

“There’s a lot of people that claim they know lead service line replacement,” said a senior official with the water department, who spoke with Grist, WBEZ, and Inside Climate News on the condition of not being named. “They don’t know what they’re talking about.” 

Senator Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat who has been working to secure federal funding for lead service line replacements across the state, said she wasn’t aware of the cost discrepancy but hoped the city would be transparent with the public about why costs are so high. 

“Cities just need to get their act together and get this done, and we’ve been slow to do this in Chicago,” Duckworth said. “Other cities have moved much faster than us.”

Replacing pipes on an entire block

Chicago replaces lead service lines through several programs, including emergency repairs, capital improvement projects, and equity initiatives targeting low-income neighborhoods and daycares.

It also replaces entire blocks of lead pipes at once. But that program accounted for just 3 percent of the approximately 15,000 lines swapped out between 2021 and the end of 2025, according to analysis of city replacement data by Grist, WBEZ, and Inside Climate News. Instead, nearly all of those lines were fixed piecemeal, mostly when crews were sent out to fix leaks and breaks. 

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Both city officials and experts agree that replacing lead pipes a full block at a time is cheaper. In Milwaukee, the per-line cost to replace a full neighborhood is nearly $2,000 less than a one-off replacement. Chicago officials say they want to ramp up blockwide replacements, but there have been legal and logistical barriers to expanding that program. 

In Illinois, property owners control half the service line, and the municipality is responsible for the other. State law forbids partial line replacement because the process can flush more lead into drinking water, and municipalities willing to replace private lines must first get the property owners’ permission. That’s harder and more time-consuming than it may seem, a key reason for the city’s low number of block replacements, according to officials.

Earlier this year, state lawmakers introduced a new bill at the water department’s request to fix that, granting city plumbers access to private lines without the owner’s permission. It passed in May and now awaits Governor JB Pritzker’s signature.

“We need to accelerate, as much as humanly possible, this process,” said state Senator Ram Villivalam of Chicago, a co-sponsor of the bill. 

A Chicago resident holds a lead water test kit from the city. Anthony Vazquez / Chicago Sun-Times

Still, it’s not clear how much block-level replacements will actually decrease Chicago’s costs. Water department officials pegged the average per-line cost for block-level work, which they have said is their cheapest program, at approximately $34,000, and the average for one-off replacements at $39,000. Both figures are well above the $31,000 overall average that department officials have cited.

Asked to explain how that could be, the water department did not respond. In her last email to the news organizations in May, water department spokesperson Megan Vidis said she would not answer any more questions on the topic.

The toll on homeowners

Any lead pipe a property owner replaces on their own is one the city doesn’t have to pay for. But some homeowners are finding that far harder than they imagined — in part because of the city’s prohibitively expensive and complex permitting process. 

Craig Hines and his wife, homeowners in Chicago’s Avondale neighborhood, discovered they had a lead service line last summer when they received a letter from the city. They were immediately alarmed. They cook regularly for young nieces and nephews, and Hines knows there’s no safe level of lead exposure.

They called 14 plumbers looking for a quote. Some refused to take them on or seemed to be trying to dissuade them from doing the work altogether, saying the job would be too expensive. One preliminary quote totaled $25,000. They were told permits alone could cost between $5,000 and $7,000.

“These fees seem so exorbitant when it’s like, this was a city screw-up,” Hines said, referring to Chicago’s history of installing lead lines long after the health consequences came to light. “I just cannot believe that the permitting fees are so high to help fix a problem that the city created.”

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Replacing a single line can require permits from the water and transportation departments as well as inspection-related charges, according to the city’s Department of Buildings. The fees vary based on the type of street and size of pipe.

The water department said it waives all its permit fees when the city pays for replacements. But it’s not so simple when property owners want to shoulder the cost. Some qualify for a city program waiving up to $5,000 in fees; others don’t. Water department officials could not provide an average cost for permits, saying it varies by project site. 

After more than six months of research, including contacting their alderman, district commissioner, and multiple city departments to track down answers about costs, Hines and his wife finally settled on a plumber who knew how to navigate the city’s permit waivers. He gave them a quote of $22,000 for the job, which he said will include permits. They hope their replacement will take place in July.

Several miles south, Ryan Wilson and his wife, Alaina Harkness, said they didn’t qualify for the fee waiver. They paid nearly $25,000 to replace the lead line at their Hyde Park home last year, but because they also upsized their service line while replacing it, they weren’t eligible for the waiver.

Ryan Wilson and Alaina Harkness stand next to their new water meter that was placed during the replacement of the lead pipes in their Hyde Park home. Anthony Vazquez / Chicago Sun-Times

Wilson has worked in urban planning for decades, and even so, said he found navigating the city’s permitting requirements extremely confusing. They never were able to figure out how much of their final bill was allotted to permits. If Chicago wants to improve citywide replacement efforts, Wilson said, improving the permitting process should be high on the list.

“There’s not a single person to talk to about this,” he said.

Inefficient contracts and funding woes 

Water department officials pointed to two key reasons for the high costs. First, they said that the city lacked a firm grasp of costs when launching its replacement program in 2021 and that its first round of contracts was inefficient. The early contracts also bundled jobs poorly, tasking contractors with work outside their specialization, like having plumbers work on restoration or outreach.

“Early on, the issue was … a lot of unknowns in our contracts,” the water department’s deputy commissioner, Michael Grillo, said at a webinar last fall. “We are trying to be smarter with our contracts that go out, be more specific, eliminate those unknowns.”

Plumbing companies overbid to cover worst-case scenarios in those early contracts, he said. The water department’s Vidis confirmed via email that the city has implemented four new contracts this year, focused on improving equitable access for small businesses to replace lead service lines, but said the goal of those contracts was not to reduce per-line prices. 

Grillo also blamed labor costs for part of the city’s high price tag. But that explanation doesn’t appear to pan out. 

The base prevailing wage for a union plumber in the Chicago area is $99.52 per hour. By contrast, it’s about $97 in Minneapolis and roughly $121 in New York City, both of which replace their lead pipes for less than half of Chicago’s costs.  

“I have a hard time believing that the prevailing wage would be the cost factor,” said Betony Jones, a senior researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and former director of energy jobs under the Biden administration.

The city says a lack of robust, flexible funding is compounding the problem. Chicago has to cobble together funding from a patchwork of local and federal sources in the form of grants and low-interest loans, which bring red tape and restrictions.

The Biden-era Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act delivered a historic $15 billion for lead pipe removal, with Illinois getting about $1.2 billion, according to Duckworth’s office. This month, Duckworth’s office announced a separate $22 million federal grant earmarked for Chicago’s majority-Black Austin neighborhood — where 92 percent of service lines require replacement, according to last year’s lead service line inventory. At Chicago’s price point, the state estimates that $22 million will only replace about 650 lines out of the nearly 17,000 reported in city data for Austin last year. 

“Chicago needs to explain where the money is going and justify the cost,” wrote Elin Betanzo, a national drinking water expert who helped uncover the Flint water crisis, in an email.

Read Next He’s the only comprehensive lead tester in this contaminated neighborhood. He graduates next month. Anna Mattson

Betanzo, who has done extensive research on cost-saving tactics, said she has not seen a realistic cost breakdown that demonstrates why Chicago is paying as much as it is.

“They need to figure out how to complete the most cost-efficient lead service line replacements in the country, not the most expensive,” she added.

With funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act set to run out this year, public health experts have been calling for more local, federal, and state dollars to fund replacements, especially in overburdened cities like Chicago.

“It’s a critical part of the infrastructure,” Betanzo said. “It’s that final piece of public health protection.”

Amy Qin and Cam Rodriguez contributed data analysis to this story.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Why is it so unusually expensive to replace lead pipes in Chicago? on Jun 30, 2026.

Stella Dadzie's collection of essays, poems, diary entries and speeches highlights the importance of Black feminist archival practices, writes Grace Blenkinsop

The post Stella Dadzie: A Whole Heap of Mix Up – review appeared first on Red Pepper.

In his latest Freedom 250 triumph, Pres. Fragile Snowflake launched a Great American State Fair in D.C, which is not a state, boasting tens of attendees, no shade or seats, melted ice cream, busted Ferris wheel, $25 pretzels, teenage performers, sorry-ass pavilions often sporting a mere chair, a masturbating MAGA podcaster, and a Spinal-Tap-like mini-Arc-de-Pedo that began disintegrating its first day. No wonder headliner Trump - right again! - giddily proclaimed, "This is the beginning of the golden age of America."

Fresh from miraculously transforming the iconic "reflecting lakes" into a fetid debacle, Trump launched "the most unforgettable birthday party any country has ever had," though maybe not in the way he envisioned. Many observers noted "his own Potemkin Village," billed as "a world-class exposition," sadly "sputtered out of the gate," bathed in the same "stench of kitsch and failure" as everything he touches. The “sparsely attended and shockingly boring” result was variously likened to "comedy gold," "horror movie vibes," "theater of the absurd," and a Butlins - low-rent British package resorts - "for fascists with heatstroke."

It did not have to be this way. A viral Reddit post by a former worker at the Smithsonian recalled the "millions in private philanthropy" raised years ago for a landmark 250th anniversary of what's been called "the greatest sentence ever written" declaring "all men (sic) are created equal." Planned was a month-long folk festival, "The Festival of Festivals," featuring a blend of the likes of Burning Man, Farm Aid, Grand Ole Oprey and local festivals highlighting the best of American arts, redolent of the famed Christmas Truce of World War One when "people put down their weapons and got together" in a hopeful, unifying cause.

That was before Trump "stole America's 250th birthday and threw it for himself," refusing to issue permits for the Smithsonian's version and swiftly turning what could have been a joyful historic civic celebration into a bleak, gaudy reality-TV pageant, an alleged state fair (which clearly neither he nor his minions have ever seen) without the requisite rides, games, farm animals, cotton candy, fried dough, fresh lemonade or "fun," which could be why reports surfaced of a muggy and miserable scene where bored kids were loudly complaining and at least one took to rolling in the steamy grass screaming, "I. WANT. TO. GO. HOME!!!”

Because grifters gonna grift, it also became an egregious “$100-million laundering operation" with a small Ferris wheel. Added to $80 million in our money he stole from the bipartisan, real 250 commission, he lured corporate sponsors seeking favors or contracts - Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Palantir, Oracle, ExxonMobil, United Airlines - with obscene "deals": $500,000 for “V.I.P access and seating" at all events, $1 million for a “private thank you reception” and “historic photo opportunity,” $2.5 million to be handed the mike for "a speaking role" at a July 4 event," up to $10 million for God knows what further abuse of power.

Thus did his latest round of corrupt bombastic patriotism, trailing "a sense of dread" and blaring Creed's Higher, kick off Wednesday night to a military flyover, a National Anthem badly sung by Kash Patel's girlfriend, and a speech behind bulletproof glass to a mostly empty National Mall. "I am thrilled to declare that America is back,” he said, going on to reassure himself on the greatest terror of his life. "We were a joke two years ago, but nobody's laughing at us anymore" - this, from a purported US president forced to fill in for Milli Vanilli. Then he did his cringey robot "dance" while a Marine band played YMCA. Oof.

Despite a relatively, mercifully brief speech, a viral video showed people streaming out as he droned on. Later he posted the rally was "packed to the brim with 45,000 happy people. Everybody stayed right until the end of my speech - they loved hearing about a truly successful America." Uh huh. "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears": Most reports put the crowd at about 1,000. Sleepy Joe last week: "Whoa. What a loser." Online, people cracked about "almost dozens of people," said they'd seen bigger crowds at school fairs, family reunions, Walmart, and suggested, "They were all at Mamdani's pool party."

Grimly smiling Fox News hosts, though, toughed it out. Before a vast vista of grass dotted with maybe 14 people, they posted AI slopaganda and happily exclaimed "How great is this?" "We've got thousands celebrating!" "People are still coming!" and, "The feeling of patriotism is all in the air!" After C-listers all bailed and Vanilla Ice cancelled due to non-existent "inclement weather," performers came down to a 14-year-old singer from Arkansas and a local artist who painted an American flag live on stage; steadfast Fox chirped "so many cool people" watched him. They didn't mention, per one sage, that more people have been sexually assaulted by Epstein et al than attended this week's Fair.

Meanwhile, generator issues caused the Ferris wheel to periodically shut down and the ice cream to melt; inexplicably, a butter sculpture of Trump and mascot cow named Melania didn't. Food vendors were few and airport-pricey: $5 water bottles, $23 turkey legs, $25 stuffed pretzels, a $27 dry burger with "limp, slimy lettuce on top.” Replicas of Trump passports, bewilderingly reading, "Welcome but be good," were gifted; invited whiteboard messages included, "A felon and predator resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave!!”; police arrested a MAGA podcaster dressed as Uncle Sam for masturbating to a performance by women acrobats.

Lining the Mall were slapdash, flimsy state pavilions looking like empty doctors' waiting rooms or "like something Wile E. Coyote would run into while chasing the Road Runner." Over 20% of states declined to partake in the regime's ideological project to rewrite American history into a white, male Christian saga; some sent a minimal token - state name or symbol, (welcome) chair or two. Maine is a bare room whose walls list lobster facts; Oregon, "the Beaver State," has a chair, Vermont was empty until a woman drove down with maple syrup pamphlets; Alabama has a tub of peanuts; Kansas, cut-outs of Wizard of Oz characters.

North Carolina flew a Confederate flag, later taken down. In "a small act of cultural sabotage," Florida honors anti-Trump Tom Petty and Jimmy Buffett among its famous residents. A mostly empty Faith and Family pavilion adorned with an Israeli flag hosted an evangelical pastor and drew two customers to "plunder hell and populate heaven”; other evangelicals reportedly wander the empty grounds, offering exorcisms. An empty War Department (sic) booth exhibits a cardboard cutout of George Washington, a montage of Hegseth's noble "war-fighters," and camo vests for kids to try on, get hyped and emulate them.

Overseeing it all stands a stubby, shabby plywood and vinyl mock-up of Trump’s $100 million “Arc de Trump,” aka "Arc de Mentia," "Epstein Memorial Arch," "L' Arc de Dômbfuqué," his "Triumph of the Will" vision of "democracy if it had a midlife crisis and bought a white tracksuit." Many liken it to McDonald's arches, Spinal Tap's mini-Stonehenge, or Derek Zoolander's Center for Kids Who Can't Read Good and Wanna Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too," but the arch quickly began buckling and melting in D.C.'s humidity. Some fair-goers in search of rare shade have still sought it out. Others argue it'd get more traffic as a urinal.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

On Monday, the Fair was devoted to RFK's so-called MAHA, Make America Healthy Again program, or what has now morphed into Make America Hurl Again after organizers inexplicably decided the best way to promote better eating habits was to hold a contest in muggy-90-something-degree temps where people stuff their faces with as many pancakes as possible while gagging and trying not to throw up. Eat till you puke: Fun for the whole family! Up next, some speculate: "They will swim in some sewage and stare into an eclipse." Or mebbe snort heroin off a toilet seat? Stay classy, fascists. Trump was right: Too much winning.

America's 250th marks the signing by 56 brave men of "a flawed but aspirational document" declaring a nation's independence and asserting, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Facts owe. Most of the Founding Fathers - slaveholders, misogynists, oppressors of Native Americans - "did not live up to those words," notes one historian. "The country they created was incomplete, and the work of completing it has been the work of every generation since."

Since its inception, America has been "wrestling with the contradictions of its original sin," says Eddie Glaude, a professor of African- American studies. "This divided soul in which America imagines itself as a beacon of freedom and as a white republic (is) a kind of madness at the heart of the country. That madness evidences itself in cycles, and we happen to be in one right now." Still, every bailed musical act, court victory, voice raised in truth tells Trump, "We see you," writes Dean Blundell. "The country is not him. It has never been him. The country is the people who showed up across 250 years and did the work." And for now, it remains.

For almost century, Europe’s agriculture has been structurally reliant on chemical fertilisers. The risks of this dependence have been made amply clear by successive conflicts that have disrupted supply chains, while decades of intensive application have led to pollution and soil imbalances. Changing this trajectory will be a tough challenge.

In France, the baguette has recently become a matter of public concern. According to the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (ANSES), staples of the French diet like bread, cereals, and even potatoes are among the main pathways of exposure to cadmium, a carcinogenic heavy metal that accumulates in agricultural soils. While cadmium is naturally present in the environment, its levels in France have become increasingly concerning over the past two decades, prompting ANSES to issue warnings that a significant share of the population is estimated to exceed health-based reference exposure values, with higher levels observed among children and adolescents. At the core of this looming public health crisis lies the intensive use of phosphate-based fertilisers. 

As the French Parliament moved to tighten cadmium limits in agricultural soils this spring – finally aligning national standards with existing European rules – the European Commission adopted a Fertiliser Action Plan designed to facilitate farmers’ access to key agricultural inputs. Like previous geopolitical shocks, the war in Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a major artery for global trade, have revealed Europe’s dependence on imported fertilisers.  

These local, national, European, and global developments point to a structural vulnerability at the heart of Europe’s food system, with fertilisers lying at the intersection of ecological constraints, public health, market volatility, and external dependence.  

Vulnerable supply chains 

On 19 May, more than 200 farmers protested in front of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, carrying a large red banner declaring a “fertiliser crisis”. Just a few weeks earlier, in April, the prices of many raw materials and fertilisers had surged. Urea, the world’s most widely used nitrogen fertiliser, had climbed above 850 dollars per tonne, the highest level since 2022.  An estimated 30 per cent of globally traded volumes of urea passed through Hormuz before the war.  

Since the 1950s, synthetic nutrients have dramatically increased agricultural productivity while reshaping Europe’s food system.

The effect of the blockade was compounded by the growing importance of Gulf states in the global fertiliser market. The world’s largest urea production complex, for instance, is located south of Doha, in Qatar. In the last 10 years, Saudi Arabia has also rapidly climbed the ranks among leading producers of phosphate-based fertilisers. The broader Gulf energy industrial complex, which underpins global fertiliser production, was put under pressure following Iran’s strikes on key energy infrastructure in the region. Qatar, for instance, suspended production of urea, ammonia, and sulfur after key facilities were damaged. 

Ammonia and sulphur, two key feedstocks used in fertiliser production, are intertwined with the fossil fuels extracted in the region. Ammonia, the key feedstock for the production of urea and all other nitrogen-based fertilisers, is obtained by combining nitrogen with hydrogen, the latter typically extracted from natural gas. Although efforts are underway to produce ammonia using “green hydrogen” produced from renewables, these technologies remain marginal.  

Similarly, sulphur is largely recovered as a by-product of oil and natural gas processing. Most of it is converted into sulfuric acid, essential for producing phosphate fertilisers, whose supply chains have also been disrupted by the war: Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates are major sulphur exporters. Iran, which exported sulphur to China, Latin America, Pakistan, India, and other Asian and African countries, halted production of both sulphur and ammonia during the conflict. In light of the crisis, countries such as China – the world’s largest producer of sulfuric acid – Turkey, and India considered export restrictions. 

An old dependency 

Europe’s dependence on imported fertilisers and their feedstocks has deep historical roots. Fertiliser use began as an innovative solution to increase agricultural productivity in the early 20th century, gradually reshaping the continent’s food system, and tying farming to industrial production and global supply chains. At the heart of this shift lies the industrial processing of three essential nutrients found naturally in the environment: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. “It’s like a big kitchen,” a laboratory operator at Norwegian fertiliser giant Yara International, told me. “These elements are mixed together according to farmers’ needs, increasingly in tailor-made combinations.” 

One of the earliest artificial fertilisers, superphosphate (SSP), was first produced commercially in the mid-19th century by treating phosphate rock, rich in phosphorus, with sulphuric acid. With SSP, fertiliser manufacturing gradually moved from farms – where the natural manure cycle was rooted in the recycling of organic waste back into agricultural soils – into the hands of the agrochemical industry, accompanying the industrialisation of agriculture in the early 20th century.  

The expansion of phosphate use further tied agrochemistry to mining: phosphate rock is only found in a handful of countries, particularly in North Africa. Morocco alone holds more than 70 per cent of global phosphate reserves; it is the world’s largest producer and the second-largest exporter after China. With some reserves facing depletion in the coming decades, Beijing has implemented export controls on phosphate fertilisers since 2021. In 2017, the European Commission added phosphate to its list of critical raw materials, acknowledging its strategic importance and Europe’s exposure to supply risk.  

Since the 1950s, synthetic nutrients have dramatically increased agricultural productivity while reshaping Europe’s food system. Globally, fertiliser use rose from roughly 30 million tonnes in 1960 to more than 190 million tonnes today – a more than sixfold increase. According to estimates by Fertilizers Europe, the industry’s main trade association in the EU, of the roughly 180 million hectares of agricultural land in the European Union, nearly 124 million are now fertilised. The remaining areas consist mainly of permanent grasslands, fallow land, or land left temporarily out of production. 

Arable land dedicated to annual crops accounts for 57 per cent of fertilised land. Yet this broad picture masks significant regional differences. In Western Europe, a substantial share of agricultural land is devoted to permanent crops (such as vineyards, orchards, and forestry plantations) as well as fertilised grasslands. In Central and Eastern Europe, by contrast, agriculture is more heavily concentrated on large-scale annual cropping systems, particularly cereals, oilseeds such as rapeseed and sunflower, and fodder crops used for animal feed. As a result, Fertilizers Europe expects most Central and Eastern European EU member states to record higher fertiliser consumption in the coming years. 

The EU as a whole remains a key player in the global fertiliser market, with France, Poland, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Romania accounting for the bulk of phosphate fertiliser consumption. France is also the continent’s largest consumer of nitrogen fertilisers.  

However, overall consumption is contracting. In 2023, European agriculture applied 9.3 million tonnes of mineral fertilisers, marking a 3.7 per cent decrease compared to 2022 and a decline of more than 20 per cent from the 2017 peak. While producer associations point to signs of stabilisation and hope for a return to pre-2022 levels, the market still appears not to have fully recovered from the disruptions triggered by the war in Ukraine.  

But amid recurring geopolitical shocks and ecosystems reaching critical conditions, to what extent is a return to business as usual in fertiliser use necessary or desirable? 

Nutrition and pollution 

Intensive fertilisation has enabled Europe to expand agricultural production and secure millions of tonnes of food, but it has also created a dependence that goes beyond the actual agronomic needs of soils.  

Decades of continuous application have, in some cases, led to nutrient accumulation or imbalances. Numerous studies, some of them published by fertiliser producer associations themselves, suggest that fertiliser needs in many European and American production systems are increasingly oriented toward maintenance applications (keeping existing soil nutrient levels stable) rather than corrective inputs (raising deficient nutrient levels to a healthy target). Meanwhile, regions facing nutrient deficiencies, such as many African countries, still struggle to access fertilisers. 

Intensive nutrient use in the Global North has intensified concerns over soil health, water quality, and the accumulation of contaminants in agricultural land, all of which have entered public and policy debates. In recent years, discussions on fertiliser use in the EU have increasingly centred on pollution linked to eutrophication, a process in which excess nutrients in water bodies trigger algal blooms that deplete oxygen and disrupt aquatic ecosystems. The problem remains unresolved and continues to affect lakes and river deltas across Europe, despite the EU Nitrates Directive, which aims to reduce agricultural nitrate pollution. 

In Italy’s Po Delta, pollutants accumulated along the river system cause algal blooms, particularly in the summer. In Spain, civil society organisations have taken agro-industrial actors to court for eutrophication in the Mar Menor, accusing them of illegal discharges that contribute to the lagoon’s degradation. France’s recent cadmium controversy has expanded the debate on fertiliser sustainability beyond production sites to food safety and public health concerns.  

EU contradictions 

Despite the reassuring slogans of fertiliser producers, often framed in humanitarian terms – “saving lives” and “feeding the planet,” – the environmental costs of the agrochemical industry have long fuelled public debate and grassroots mobilisation. In autumn 2025, for instance, Tunisia saw large demonstrations against the Groupe Chimique Tunisien along the coastline of Gabès, following the hospitalisation of more than 200 people, mostly children, for respiratory distress and gas poisoning. 

In Europe, this tension between productivity and environmental limits gradually entered policy frameworks. In the early 2000s, the European agricultural policy framework finally acknowledged the urgency of limiting fertiliser dispersion by introducing environmental measures and, more recently, eco-schemes under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). These measures encourage farmers to return to more traditional agroecological practices, such as crop rotation with legumes and other plants capable of naturally enriching the soil. Agroecology Europe, a Brussels-based organisation, also recommends a partial return to non-chemical soil fertilisation methods.  

Geopolitical instability has added another layer of urgency to Europe’s need to reduce its dependency on mineral fertilisers. The President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, stressed in May that the EU’s Fertiliser Action Plan isn’t just about supporting farmers in the short term but also aimed at “accelerating innovation in sustainable, home-grown solutions”. She also acknowledged that “climate leadership and economic resilience are interlinked”. 

However, the EU is rolling back climate and environmental measures to placate farmers and pursue economic competitiveness. In early 2026, under pressure from the agrochemical sector, the European Commission proposed an amendment to its Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), allowing for the temporary exclusion of certain products – particularly fertilisers – in the event of “serious harm to the EU internal market.” Meanwhile, the signing of the EU-Mercosur trade agreement with South American countries in January 2026 angered the agricultural sector, particularly in France, with farmers fearing unfair competition from imported products.  

These conflicting interests show that reversing a century-long trajectory of agricultural intensification and supply fragmentation won’t be easy, particularly in the current political climate. In this context, the EU appears to be advancing the liberalisation of agricultural policy under the banner of “sovereignty”. However, the declining productivity of soils and mounting ecological pressures both point to the need to transform this trajectory. 

The renewables tricks Channel Comment brendan 30th June 2026 Teaser Media

In Pakistan, small-scale farmers allege that International Monetary Fund (IMF)-driven policies are dismantling the support structures that sustained them. Women bear specific weight in this crisis.

The post Pakistan: Peasant Women Organize Against IMF-driven Agrarian Policies appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

What is a heatwave?

It’s hot. Very hot. Hotter than it should be. It’s not for too long, just a few days or weeks, but everyone feels it, and everyone talks about it. We don’t give it fancy names, like we do with hurricanes, but you hear about it in the news. Or not.

Right now, in the summer of 2026, Europe is living through one of its most severe heatwaves on record, with all-time temperature highs broken in France, Spain, the UK, Germany, Belgium, Austria and beyond, and hundreds of deaths already linked to the heat in France alone. Meanwhile, India has spent much of its pre-monsoon season under extreme heat, with cities like Delhi, Nagpur and Akola pushing past 45°C and even 46°C, and nighttime temperatures rising faster than daytime ones across nearly every Indian state. This is what the climate crisis looks like in real time, not a future projection.

The problem with heatwaves is that they are very relative. It’s not the same to register 30 ºC in the summer or in the winter. And it’s not the same to register 30 ºC in Greenland or in the Middle East. Each place has its average temperature for each time of the year. We call it a heatwave when a particular region goes well above that average for a number of days. How much above it, and for how long, varies from region to region. In many parts of the world, these events are already increasing in frequency, duration and intensity, and will increase even more as a result of the climate crisis.

The silent killer

 Unlike more spectacular climate impacts such as tropical storms, floods or wildfires, heatwaves come up without a bang. For most people, heatwave days are just annoyingly hot and media sometimes even portrays them as something nice. But, actually, heatwaves are as dangerous a climate impact as it gets.

According to a recent academic study, heatwaves killed at least 157,000 people between 2000 and 2020 (only storms are deadlier, with around 200,000 victims). However, the authors of the report warn that this figure is very likely underestimated: many countries don’t monitor heatwaves and some times don’t even have a definition for them. To illustrate that point, only 6.5% of those casualties were registered in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and South and Central America, despite those regions concentrating 85% of the global population.

The toll keeps mounting. The World Health Organization has described Europe’s current heat emergency as a public health crisis, estimating that heat has contributed to roughly 200,000 deaths across the continent over just the past four years.

Heat can be behind a number of health conditions. The most concerning is heat stroke, which occurs when the body is too hot and loses its ability to cool down. Children, the elderly and low-income communities are more vulnerable to heat stroke, as are people with chronic diseases, pregnant women and outdoor workers. The poorer a community is, the less access to cooling it has, which exacerbates inequality and injustice. Heatstroke is more likely in high humidity conditions.

In India, this inequality is stark: around three-quarters of the country’s workforce, roughly 380 million people, works in heat-exposed sectors like agriculture and construction, often informally and without basic protections, while only about 8% of households have air conditioning. Rising humidity is compounding the danger, since high humidity stops the body from cooling itself through sweat, turning conditions that were once merely uncomfortable into something deadly.

More than just heat strokes

The dangers of heatwaves, however, go way beyond heat stroke. High temperatures are associated with lower air quality, which causes and aggravates respiratory diseases such as asthma. They are also related to cardiovascular and kidney diseases.

Extreme temperatures affect agriculture, stunting plant growth or directly killing them. Livestock is also affected, as animals can also see their growth, milk production and reproduction rates reduced. These impacts disproportionately affect communities who depend on agriculture for survival and don’t have any other social safety nets, which increases climate injustice. Heatwaves also affect infrastructure such as airports, roads and bridges, and any economic activity that requires outdoor work.

Is it hotter?

Heatwaves are a statistical occurence. They are relative to the average conditions, so by definition we can find it in any time and any place in history. But that doesn’t change the fact that climate change is making them worse in absolute and relative terms. Or, in other words: yes, it’s hotter than ever, more often, and yes, it will get hotter.  Scientists have concluded that it is virtually certain that global heating drives that increase in the duration and intensity of heatwaves at a global level. That means, in climate science terms, above 99% certainty.

Heatwaves happen when a mass of high-pressure air remains stationary (still) for long enough to get warmed up by the sun. Greenhouse gases such as CO2 have the capacity to absorb heat, so a stationary mass of air will get warmer in the same amount of time if it contains a higher concentration of these gases. These phenomena are geographically uneven and their likelihood at a specific location depends on many factors, such as orography, tree cover, aerosol pollution, soil moisture or distance to the sea.

One of the clearest examples of this mechanism in action is the heat dome. You’ll hear the term a lot now, so it’s worth explaining. A heat dome forms when a large, stationary zone of high pressure traps hot air over a region for days or weeks, acting almost like a lid: air sinks within it, keeping surface pressure high and suppressing cloud formation, so the sun bakes the ground relentlessly with no relief. Sometimes that high-pressure system gets wedged between two other weather systems and becomes “locked in,” barely moving — a pattern known as an Omega block for the shape it traces on weather maps. This is exactly what’s been driving Europe’s 2026 heatwaves: a stubborn Omega block parked over the continent, dragging in hot, dry air from the Sahara and refusing to budge, before slowly shifting from Western Europe toward Germany, Poland and the Balkans. And heat domes themselves are becoming more frequent and more intense as the planet warms, since warmer baseline temperatures mean the same stagnant weather pattern now produces far more extreme spikes than it used to. See how the 2021 heat dome in Canada impacted lives. 

According to the IPCC, the average temperature of the extremely hot days in land will increase by 3ºC if we contain global warming under 1.5ºC, and by 4ºC if we stay under 2ºC. Keep in mind that this is an average! Some areas are already becoming uninhabitable during heat waves within this century.

The climate footprint

Heatwaves are one of the deadliest expressions of the climate crisis. We are seeing how they increase in frequency and intensity as the concentration of greenhouse gases mounts. And it is the greed of the fossil fuel industries and its allies what is pushing that increase. Let us retrace their steps.

Global heating is caused by an increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases, mostly (but not only) CO2 and CH4. These are found naturally in the atmosphere, but since we started massively burning fossil fuels, the concentration has been growing exponentially.

The increase in concentration of CO2 is linked to fossil fuels. There isn’t any other possible source (not volcanos, not clouds, not solar cycles, nothing). CH4 is also massively linked to fossil fuels and land use change. Studies and data have widely proven that: the debate is over.

The coal, oil and gas industries have massively profited from it and they continue to profit from an economic model that forces people to use fossil fuels. Reports have proven that they knew the damage they were causing since at least the 1970s, and that, instead of abandoning their business model, they actively worked to disinform the public. They still do. We keep burning fossil fuels because they choose (and they chose then) to use their power for that purpose.

But even if we cannot stop heatwaves completely, we can stop the fossil fuels industry. People around the world have been fighting to keep coal, oil and gas in the ground, to cut the financial flows that allow this industry to still exist and to push for a more equitable and clean future. If you haven’t yet, join us!

More from the Fossil Fuels Did This series:

• Fossil Fuels Did This: Tropical Cyclones
• Fossil Fuels Did This: Floods
• Fossil Fuels Did This: Drought

The post Fossil Fuels Did This: Heatwaves appeared first on 350.

Queenslanders could be left to pay for mine clean-ups if the Queensland government uses its review of the Financial Provisioning Scheme to weaken safeguards that ensure mines pay for rehabilitation. 

As Canada’s auto industry grapples with the fallout from Donald Trump’s erratic and mutually-damaging tariffs, the union representing auto workers has opened its triennial round of major bargaining with the major North American automakers. First up will be talks with Ford, which has invested $5 billion in its Canadian operations despite the tariffs. In this commentary, originally published in the Toronto Star, Centre for Future Work Director Jim Stanford discusses the importance of this bargaining in enhancing stability for both workers and the automakers, and showcasing the advantages of Canadian auto manufacturing – advantages which, he argues, will outlast Trump.

Despite Trump tariffs, Unifor talks with Ford the perfect moment to showcase Canada’s auto sector By Jim Stanford

Canada’s auto industry is reeling from Donald Trump’s trade war. His 25% tariff on vehicles and some auto parts had immediate impact on Canadian vehicle production, employment, and exports, which all slumped badly after he imposed it last year.

But the longer-run threat facing auto is even worse. The tariff destroys the business case for making cars in Canada, given that 90 percent of our output goes to the U.S. – a geographic reality that has been true since the 1960s.

And that is exactly Donald Trump’s goal. He wants all North American production to relocate to the U.S. His Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick put it bluntly: “Car assembly is going to be in America and there is nothing Canada can do about it.” Last month U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer echoed that view, asking “Why do we make cars in Canada?”

Into this turbulent arena marched two negotiating teams last week: bargainers for Unifor, the auto union, and Ford Motor Company. The two sides kicked off triennial contract talks in Toronto, hoping to reach a new collective agreement for Ford’s 5000 Canadian workers by a July 10 deadline.

One might think this is a terrible time to negotiate a labour contract – with many workers on layoff, and uncertainty hanging thick. But given the unfortunate reality of Trump’s tariffs, stakeholders must deal with the world as it is, not how they wish it was.

In fact, these talks are an opportunity to remind businesses and governments on both sides of the border why Canada is a great place to build cars.

Both the union and the company emphasized these negotiations as an opportunity to impart some badly-needed stability to an industry beset by Trump-induced chaos. The union, of course, puts priority on job security for its members at Ford’s operations: the Oakville assembly plant, two major engine factories in Windsor, and three parts distribution centres.

But the company needs stability, too. The Oakville plant is launching a new generation of pickup trucks. This represents a massive investment by Ford, which has pumped $5 billion of capital into Canadian plants despite Trump’s actions.

Any vehicle launch is a complex, sensitive moment for an assembly plant. But the Oakville launch is particularly fine-tuned: the company will produce several specialized variants of large trucks on the same assembly line.

Ford is also launching a new high-feature engine at its Essex plant in Windsor. These two simultaneous product launches underscore the value to Ford of a smooth round of bargaining.

That the two sides have set an internal bargaining deadline two months before the current contract expires (when a strike or lockout would become legal) is a clear indication they aim to reach agreement without a work stoppage, if possible.

The intricate cross-border nature of Ford’s supply chain serves as a parable for the whole industry. Ford’s Canadian-built engines flow to 12 different U.S. and Mexican assembly plants (as well as Oakville). And its Oakville trucks encompass hundreds of different parts made across the U.S. and Mexico. A disruption in any of those cross-border flows (whether from a tariff or anything else) hurts everyone.

That’s why the automakers themselves are dead-set against Trump’s destructive strategy: it’s cost them billions in needless costs, lost efficiency, and supply-chain uncertainty.

Despite recent tribulations, auto is still Canada’s most important manufacturing sector. 120,000 Canadians are directly employed in auto and parts production – and that many again in the upstream supply chain that feeds auto plants with an incredible array of inputs, materials, machinery, and services.

These are high-productivity jobs, supporting good wages and benefits, and anchoring billions of dollars in GDP, downstream consumer spending, and government revenues. Canadian auto plants have higher productivity, better quality, and lower labour costs than in the U.S.

So to answer Greer’s insulting question, we make cars in Canada because we’re better at it than Americans. Not to mention because we spend $100 billion buying 2 million new cars every year, and hence deserve a fair share of the jobs that come with that demand.

A fair and productive round of bargaining, nailing down new investment and securing jobs, would be a powerful and tangible demonstration that this industry is here to stay – long after Trump is gone.

The post Auto Talks a Chance to Reinforce the Canadian Industry’s Lasting Potential appeared first on Centre for Future Work.

EWG evaluation of food chemicals: Propyl gallate rcoleman June 29, 2026 Dayna de Montagnac, MPH Sydney Evans, MPH Tasha Stoiber, Ph.D. Jump to: What is propyl gallate and why is it added to food? Food propyl gallate is found in What is the regulatory status of propyl gallate? Is food containing propyl gallate always classified as ultra-processed? Is propyl gallate allowed in organic foods? What are the potential health harms associated with propyl gallate? Uncertainties and the need for more research Additional details Other product use categories References June 30, 2026 EWG’s recommendation

Propyl gallate is an ingredient of concern, and EWG recommends limiting consumption of food containing this ingredient. 

Propyl gallate’s toxicity is linked to its breakdown in the body, which produces reactive oxygen species, or ROS. It also causes oxidative stress, a process connected to numerous chronic diseases. When broken down into pyrogallol, a highly reactive oxidizing agent, it can lead to pro-oxidant systemic toxicity, glutathione depletion, and potentially cause damage to the liver (hepatotoxicity) and kidneys (nephrotoxicity). 

Studies in animals and cells have also shown propyl gallate is associated with reproductive health harms, including inducing male infertility and testicular toxicity in mice, anti-estrogenic effects affecting female reproductive health, and impaired early embryonic development.

Science analysis

What is propyl gallate and why is it added to food?

Propyl gallate is a preservative that prevents oxidation, extending the shelf life of fats and oils in processed foods.

Food propyl gallate is found in

Propyl gallate is typically added to meat products, frozen food and candy.

Propyl gallate is used in 275 of the 172,081 food items added to EWG’s Food Scores between 2023 and 2025.

Top 15 food and drink categories organized by supermarket shelf

Image

Source: EWG’s Food Scores. Label created between 1/1/23 and 10/22/25.

What is the regulatory status of propyl gallate?

The Food and Drug Administration classified propyl gallate as “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS, and approved it for use in food in 1948. Propyl gallate is commonly added to food as an antioxidant, but the total antioxidant content cannot exceed 0.02% of the total fat or oil content of the food. 

Like other synthetic antioxidants, propyl gallate is also approved in the U.S. as a food contact substance – materials and articles intended to come into contact with food. 

In the European Union, an acceptable daily intake, or ADI, of 0.5 mg/kg was established for three gallates – propyl, octyl and dodecyl – in 1987 by the Scientific Committee on Food. WHO/JECFA established a higher ADI of 1.4 mg/kg of body weight in 1996 for propyl gallate. 

In 2014, a European Food Safety Authority, or EFSA, panel derived an ADI of 0.5 mg/kg for propyl gallate only. The panel concluded there was no longer a basis for the group ADI.

Is food containing propyl gallate always classified as ultra-processed?

Yes, propyl gallate and other synthetic preservatives are common ingredients in ultra-processed food, or UPF. As an industrially synthesized ingredient, the NOVA framework classifies it as a UPF ingredient (Monteiro et al., 2019). 

Because it serves as a flavoring agent and adjuvant, the presence of propyl gallate is enough to qualify a food or beverage as ultra-processed, according to a recent California law defining UPF (Real Food, Healthy Kids Act, 2025). 

Is propyl gallate allowed in organic foods?

No. Under Department of Agriculture organic standards, synthetic substances are prohibited in certified organic foods. 

What are the potential health harms associated with propyl gallate?

Like other synthetic antioxidants, the toxicity of propyl gallate is related to its breakdown in the body and production of ROS, which creates oxidative stress. Oxidative stress damages cells and causes programmed cell death (apoptosis), a process associated with numerous chronic diseases. 

Propyl gallate rapidly metabolizes into gallic acid in the body. At higher levels, a portion can then be decarboxylated by gut bacteria into pyrogallol, a highly reactive oxidizing agent. The formation of pyrogallol may contribute to pro-oxidant toxicity, resulting in glutathione depletion, which leads to hepatotoxicity and nephrotoxicity (Park, 2025). 

While gallic acid is less reactive at low dietary exposure levels, it may become pro-oxidative and hepatotoxic at the elevated concentrations typically found in concentrated herbal supplements (Galati et al., 2006). 

The accumulation of these reactive metabolites and generation of ROS have been associated with cellular DNA breaks (Javaheri-Ghezeldizaj et al., 2023).

Evidence of cell damage induced by propyl gallate extends across multiple studies. One found that propyl gallate induces male infertility and testicular toxicity in mice by disrupting calcium homeostasis, causing mitochondrial and endoplasmic reticulum stress, and suppressing cell viability and steroidogenesis in Leydig and Sertoli cells (Ham et al., 2019). 

Another study found propyl gallate interferes with the production of estrogen (Amadasi et al., 2009), which can affect female reproductive health. In another rodent study, propyl gallate exposure impaired early embryonic development by inducing oxidative stress, DNA damage and autophagy while also disrupting mitochondrial and lysosomal function and altering epigenetic modifications (Yang et al., 2024).

Studies investigating the anti-cancer properties of propyl gallate provide further evidence of its pro-oxidant activity. In lung cancer cell models, propyl gallate increased ROS and depleted glutathione, leading to mitochondrial dysfunction and apoptosis (Park, 2021). 

These mechanisms overlap with the compound’s toxic effects in non-cancer cells, suggesting that oxidative stress may play a central role in both its therapeutic and adverse biological effects. 

A 1982 carcinogenesis bioassay by the National Toxicology Program concluded that propyl gallate was not carcinogenic in rats or mice. However, the study noted evidence of tumorigenesis in low-dose male rats specifically. They exhibited more, mostly benign pancreatic, adrenal and preputial gland tumors that did not occur in the high-dose treatment groups. 

Rare tumors were noted in two of the low-dose female rats (National Toxicology Program, 1982).

In refined exposure assessments conducted by the EFSA in 2014, propyl gallate was estimated to exceed the ADI for the elderly and adults. Higher estimates in adults and the elderly compared to other groups were due to its presence in food supplements (EFSA ANS Panel, 2014). 

The assessment also found exposure to propyl gallate from food contact materials alone likely exceeded the ADI for most children (EFSA ANS Panel, 2014). But because their exposure models were intentionally conservative, the EFSA concluded current real world use of propyl gallate was not a safety concern. 

Uncertainties and the need for more research

The presence of propyl gallate in food contact materials and cosmetics, as well as octyl gallate and dodecyl gallate, should be considered when determining total exposure risk. Concurrent exposure to propyl gallate and related synthetic antioxidants may contribute to overall exposure and should be considered when evaluating potential health risks (Wang et al., 2021). 

To refine future exposure assessments, the EFSA panel noted that additional data are needed on the use of propyl gallate in breakfast cereal, soup, processed nuts and food supplements. 

More research is needed to understand both the cytotoxic and cytoprotective properties of propyl gallate in humans. 

Additional details 

Research shows propyl gallate’s anti-cancer activity appears to involve pro-oxidant and apoptotic pathways that overlap with mechanisms implicated in its toxicity. In cancer cell models, propyl gallate induces severe oxidative stress, cell cycle arrest and programmed cell death (Wei et al., 2019; Park, 2020).

Other product use categories

Propyl gallate is also added to cosmetic products as a preservative. It  scores 4 in EWG’s Skin Deep® database and is not allowed in EWG Verified® products.

References

Global health and regulatory agencies

• EFSA Panel on Food Additives and Nutrient Sources added to Food (ANS). (2014). Scientific opinion on the re‐evaluation of propyl gallate (E 310) as a food additive. EFSA Journal, 12(4), Article 3642. https://doi.org/10.2903/j.efsa.2014.3642

Comprehensive reviews and frameworks

• Monteiro, C.A., Cannon, G., Levy, R.B., Moubarac, J., Louzada, M.L., Rauber, F., Khandpur, N., Cediel, G., Neri, D., Martinez-Steele, E., Baraldi, L.G., & Jaime, P.C. (2019). Ultra-processed foods: what they are and how to identify them. Public Health Nutrition, 22(5), 936–941. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1368980018003762.
• National Toxicology Program. (1982). Carcinogenesis bioassay of propyl gallate (CAS No. 121-79-9) in F344/N rats and B6C3F1 mice (Feed study) (Technical Report Series No. 240; NIH Publication No. 83-1796). Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health. https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/sites/default/files/ntp/htdocs/lt_rpts/tr240.pdf
• Park, W.H. (2021). Enhanced cell death effects of MAP kinase inhibitors in propyl gallate–treated lung cancer cells are related to increased ROS levels and GSH depletion. Toxicology in Vitro, 75, Article 105176. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tiv.2021.105176 
• Wang, W., Xiong, P., Zhang, H., Zhu, Q., Liao, C., & Jiang, G. (2021). Analysis, occurrence, toxicity and environmental health risks of synthetic phenolic antioxidants: A review. Environmental Research, 201, 111531. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2021.111531 
• Monteiro, C.A., Cannon, G., Levy, R.B., Moubarac, J., Louzada, M.L., Rauber, F., Khandpur, N., Cediel, G., Neri, D., Martinez-Steele, E., Baraldi, L.G., & Jaime, P.C. (2019). Ultra-processed foods: what they are and how to identify them. Public Health Nutrition, 22(5), 936–941. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1368980018003762.

Legislation

• Real Food, Healthy Kids Act, A.B. 1264, Chapter 467, Cal. Stat. (2025).https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1264 
• 21 CFR 184.1660 – Propyl gallate. (n.d.). https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-184/subpart-B/section-184.1660

Specific health impact studies

• Park, W.H. (2025). A comprehensive review of pyrogallol: from fundamental chemistry to advanced applications and toxicological insights. Biotechnology and Bioengineering, 123(3), 527–543. https://doi.org/10.1002/bit.70115 
• Galati, G., Lin, A., Sultan, A.M., & O'Brien, P.J. (2006). Cellular and in vivo hepatotoxicity caused by green tea phenolic acids and catechins. Free Radical Biology and Medicine, 40(4), 570–580. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.freeradbiomed.2005.09.014 
• Javaheri-Ghezeldizaj, F., Mirza Alizadeh, A., Dehghan, P., & Ezzati Nazhad Dolatabadi, J. (2023). Pharmacokinetic and toxicological overview of propyl gallate food additive. Food Chemistry, 423, Article 135219. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2022.135219
• Ham, J., Lim, W., Park, S., Bae, H., You, S., & Song, G. (2019). Synthetic phenolic antioxidant propyl gallate induces male infertility through disruption of calcium homeostasis and mitochondrial function. Environmental Pollution, 248, 845–856. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2019.02.087 
• Amadasi, A., Mozzarelli, A., Meda, C., Adriana, M., & Cozzini, P. (2009). Identification of xenoestrogens in food additives by an integrated in silico and in vitro approach. Chemical Research in Toxicology, 22(1), 52–63. https://doi.org/10.1021/tx800048m 
• Yang, S., Yang, F., Zou, Y., Wang, Y., Ding, Z., Zhang, L., Zhou, X., Liu, M., Duan, Z., & Huo, L. (2024). Propyl gallate exposure affects the mouse 2-cell stage embryonic development through inducing oxidative stress and autophagy. Food and Chemical Toxicology, 185, 114488. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fct.2024.114488
• Wei, P., Huang, C., & Chang, Y. (2019). Propyl gallate inhibits hepatocellular carcinoma cell growth through the induction of ROS and the activation of autophagy. PLoS ONE, 14(1), e0210513. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0210513 
• Park, W. (2020). Propyl gallate reduces the growth of lung cancer cells through caspase‑dependent apoptosis and G1 phase arrest of the cell cycle. Oncology Reports, 44(6), 2783–2791. https://doi.org/10.3892/or.2020.7815 

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Samantha Harrington

Sarina Virmani lives in Loudoun County, Virginia, which is home to over 200 data centers and colloquially known as Data Center Alley. As a high school student, Virmani published a paper on the environmental impact of data centers in the American Journal of Student Research. She also organizes for more transparency and regulation in the industry.

“A lot of people think that artificial intelligence is something that’s invisible, but it’s not. It lives in these massive buildings,” she said. 

Data centers aren’t new in Loudoun County, but the explosive growth of AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini is driving demand for more. The environmental impact of all of those data centers can be tricky to parse, but there are a few things we know for certain: Data centers are extending the life of aging oil, gas, and coal infrastructure, they are spurring the building of new fossil fuel infrastructure, and they can pose risks to water resources. 

What is AI, and why does it need so much electricity?

To some extent, AI technology is as old as the computer. The term artificial intelligence was popularized in the 1950s, and as computer technology has become increasingly affordable and powerful, machine learning and algorithms have become part of our economy and everyday lives. The Instagram algorithm, for example, just turned 10 years old.

The current iteration of AI began in November 2022, when OpenAI publicly launched ChatGPT. ChatGPT’s secret weapon was access to a massive amount of data — some of which was used without copyright permission — and the computer power and architecture to process it and train models. This process is enormously energy-intensive. In a Q&A published by the University of Washington, AI scholar Sajjad Moazen said that training one single large language model like ChatGPT-3 can use up to 10 gigawatt-hours of power. 

“This is on average roughly equivalent to the yearly electricity consumption of over 1,000 U.S. households,” he said. 

A worker prepares a plot of land for an AI data center in the shadow of a retired power plant being refurbished to provide electricity for the facility. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

How much climate-changing pollution does generative AI create? 

The training and deployment of large AI tools requires so much power that it is leading to a boom in new fossil fuel infrastructure and extending the life of aging power plants. 

“I like to call them zombie power plants,” said Quentin Good, coauthor of a report on data centers by the Frontier Group. “They should be dead, but we keep reviving them, and they’re walking around like zombies polluting our communities.”

The report found that the retirements of at least 15 fossil fuel plants have been postponed to meet increased energy demand. Those 15 plants alone emit more climate-changing pollution than the entire state of Massachusetts. Utilities, grid operators, and the federal government have all cited data center energy demand as a reason to keep aging fossil fuel infrastructure online. In some cases, power plant retirements have been pushed back by more than a decade. 

In the case of one coal plant in southern Virginia, which was set to phase out in 2025, operations have been extended indefinitely. In 2023, the plant emitted more pollution than over 65,000 typical gasoline-powered vehicles produce in a year.

“[The U.S. had] been planning to get pretty much all of our coal plants offline by 2040,” Good said. “Those plans are basically out the window now.”

On top of that is all of the new fossil fuel infrastructure being built to meet AI demand. Wired writer Molly Taft reported in April 2026 that new gas plants linked to just 11 U.S. data center campuses could generate more climate-changing pollution than the entire country of Morocco emitted in 2024. 

And some data centers use highly polluting diesel generators as backup when there’s too much demand on the electric grid. Good said that although restrictions limit how much a company can run diesel generators, many states are considering exceptions for data centers. 

How much water does AI use, really?

Details around data center water use are murky, and the environmental impact is at least partially dependent on where data centers are located. Good has found that although data centers do need large volumes of water to cool down servers, data center water use is not a crisis in Virginia — though that could change in times of drought. 

Data centers in water-stressed areas, like arid parts of Colorado, pose larger water-use concerns. Good noted that the highest data center water demand comes during the hottest, driest months, which is when river flows tend to be lowest and other water needs also peak.

Other water-related issues arise when water is discharged after it has been used in a data center. Good said the environmental impacts of this process and the effects on local waterways and wildlife are an underresearched area that he hopes to study more. 

“When they discharge the water that they used to cool the servers, that water has elevated levels of sodium and other nasty stuff in it,” Good said. “And it’s really hot, so that could impact fish and other animals in streams and rivers.”

What can you do to reduce AI’s climate-changing pollution?

Like most climate solutions, the fight against polluting AI systems happens at all levels, including through regulation, community organizing, and limiting individual use of energy-intensive tools. 

The Trump administration has tended to favor accelerating permits for data centers, and the president signed an executive order in late 2025 attempting to limit states’ ability to regulate their construction and energy use. Yet NPR has reported that there is bipartisan support for AI industry regulations in Congress and in state governments.

People attend a planning meeting to comment on a proposed data center in Nashville, Tennessee. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

At a local scale, residents can attend public meetings and hearings about data centers and ask questions. Well-organized neighbors across the U.S. have shut down projects, passed local moratoriums, and limited electricity rate hikes. 

On the individual level, people can think twice before using a generative AI tool. By reducing unnecessary use of AI tools and encouraging others to do the same, people can reduce demand for these tools and the enormous amounts of energy they require.

How do we build mass powerful movements? Why does the left often implode and self-destruct as it makes gains to challenging the ruling class? How to raise to the occasion…

Dirty Dozen™ food chemicals: Propyl gallate Iris Myers June 29, 2026 EWG’s recommendation

Avoid or limit foods containing propyl gallate.

Propyl gallate is a preservative that has been linked to oxidative stress, which is when reactive molecules build up and damage cells. Laboratory studies have connected propyl gallate and its breakdown products to liver and kidney damage, as well as potential reproductive harm. 

What is propyl gallate?

Propyl gallate is a preservative that prevents oxidation, extending the shelf life of fats and oils in packaged foods. It’s also used as a preservative in cosmetic products.

Which foods contain propyl gallate?

Propyl gallate is most commonly found in processed meat like hot dogs and sausages. It’s also a common ingredient in candy and a range of frozen products, including pizza and other frozen meals.

Look for propyl gallate in product ingredient lists, usually below or next to the Nutrition Facts panel, on the back of the package. Propyl gallate may also be added to food packaging, which companies are not required to disclose.

How is propyl gallate regulated?

The Food and Drug Administration is responsible for overseeing food additives and other ingredients. Propyl gallate was approved for use in food in 1948 and is classified as generally recognized as safe in limited amounts.

The European Union’s European Food Safety Authority reevaluated propyl gallate in 2014 and derived an acceptable daily intake level of 0.5 mg/kg for this single additive. This assessment found that adults and the elderly may have higher exposure due in part to propyl gallate’s presence in food supplements. 

Exposure from food packaging alone was also estimated to exceed the most children’s allowable intake level. But the European authority concluded that because its exposure models were intentionally conservative, the current real world use of propyl gallate was not a safety concern.

Propyl gallate is prohibited in certified organic foods under Department of Agriculture organic standards, which bar synthetic substances.

What does the science say about propyl gallate?

When propyl gallate breaks down in the body at higher levels, it can produce reactive byproducts that cause oxidative stress, damaging cells and DNA. Research shows that one key breakdown product, pyrogallol, is a highly reactive compound that can deplete the body’s natural antioxidant defenses and damage the liver and kidneys.

Propyl gallate has also been linked to reproductive harm in animal and cell studies. One study found it induces male infertility and testicular toxicity in mice at high exposure levels. Another found it to be anti-estrogenic, which can affect female reproductive health. 

A third study showed that higher levels of propyl gallate exposure impaired early embryonic development in mice by triggering oxidative stress and DNA damage. 

A 1982 study by the National Toxicology Program found propyl gallate was not carcinogenic in rats or mice but noted an increased incidence of mostly benign tumors in low-dose male rats. No major regulatory agencies classify propyl gallate as causing cancer. 

Find out more

Learn more about recommendations relating to propyl gallate – and the full EWG Dirty Dozen list of food chemicals – on EWG’s research page.

EWG’s Food Scores provides ratings for more than 150,000 foods and drinks based on nutrition, ingredients and processing concerns, and flags unhealthy ultra-processed foods to help you identify alternatives.

EWG’s Skin Deep® cosmetic database helps to identify harmful chemicals in personal care and beauty products. EWG Verified® products meet the strictest criteria for transparency and health.

And the Healthy Living™ app lets you take these tools with you on the go.

Areas of Focus Food Ultra-Processed Foods Food Chemicals Authors Sarah Reinhardt, MPH, RDN June 30, 2026

Originally published by Mongabay. 

VJOSA-NARTA, Albania — In late April, heavy machinery began moving into the Pishë Poro-Narta protected landscape on Albania’s Adriatic coast without permits or public notice. Bulldozers and excavators felled coastal pine trees, flattened sand dunes, and cut new roads through previously untouched habitat. Then, barbed wire fences went up along the shoreline.

The incursion was the realization of a luxury resort development backed by Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law. The development plans of Kushner’s Affinity Partners, a private equity fund, stretch from the uninhabited Sazan Island into the Vjosa-Narta Protected Landscape, the delta region of Albania’s Vjosa River that includes Pishë Poro-Narta.

Roughly twice the size of Paris, the Vjosa-Narta area shelters flamingos, Dalmatian pelicans (Pelecanus crispus), loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) and more than 70 endangered species, among them the Mediterranean monk seal (Monachus monachus).

Neither Affinity Partners nor the office of the prime minister of Albania responded to Mongabay’s requests for comment.

Aerial drone video of demonstrators gathering at Dalan Beach on June 6 for a rally near the site of the original resort-construction site. Footage by Stefan Lovgren for Mongabay.

When protesters arrived at the site, security guards confronted them. Video of a demonstrator being dragged across the dunes on May 30 near the village of Zvërnec went viral. Soon demonstrations erupted in Tirana, the Albanian capital, in what has since been dubbed the Flamingo Revolution. The protests have grown larger every day, with tens of thousands demanding accountability for corruption, an end to environmental abuses, and the resignation of Edi Rama, Albania’s prime minister.

On June 6, hundreds of demonstrators made their way to Dalan Beach for a symbolic rally near the site of the original incursion. The barbed wire fences had been taken down a few days earlier and the machinery was gone. But no one there believed the battle was done.

Protesters spell out “Save Narta” in the sand at Dalan Beach during a symbolic rally June 6 near the original resort-construction site, as the Adriatic Sea and surrounding hills frame what demonstrators are fighting to protect. Image by Stefan Lovgren for Mongabay.

Vjosa-Narta is one of the last intact delta wildernesses in the Mediterranean. Only 4% of the region’s deltas remain in a relatively undisturbed state, and this is the largest and most biodiverse. More than 2,300 species have been documented across a mosaic of lagoons, reed beds, salt flats and coastal dunes that formed over millennia.

“I call it the place where I go to meet the gods,” Hanais Mhilli, a 36-year-old baker and part-time hiking guide living in Vlorë, a city south of the delta, told Mongabay as he joined other protesters there who were boarding a bus to the beach.

At the heart of the delta lies the Narta Lagoon, a vast, shallow body of brackish water stretching more than 40 square kilometers (15.4 square miles) where the Vjosa River meets the Adriatic Sea. It hosts more than 20,000 wintering waterbirds and ranks among the most important wetlands on the Adriatic Flyway, the migration corridor along which millions of birds travel each year between Africa and Europe.

 

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“Here we are not just fighting for Albania’s natural heritage, we are fighting for the natural heritage” everywhere, Aleksandër Trajçe, executive director of the Protection and Preservation of Natural Environment in Albania, told Mongabay. “Italy and Spain have destroyed miles and miles of coastline and now they’re trying to restore what they lost. Albania doesn’t have to make the same mistakes.”

Protesters carry an Albanian flag along the beach in the Vjosa-Narta delta after a rally on June 6. Image by Stefan Lovgren for Mongabay. A Biosphere Reserve

For more than a decade, the Vjosa River — flowing from the Pindus Mountains in Greece through southern Albania to the Adriatic Sea — was at the center of one of Europe’s fiercest conservation battles. Though dammed near its headwaters in Greece, it runs entirely free through Albania, its channels shifting and braiding across gravel beds in patterns that once characterized rivers throughout Europe.

When the river faced a cascade of proposed hydropower projects, campaigners organized and won a landmark victory in 2023 as the Vjosa became Europe’s first Wild River National Park, pioneering a conservation model in which the river itself, not just the surrounding land, is protected from development.

The Vjosa River braids freely across a wide gravel floodplain in southern Albania. The Vjosa is one of the last major rivers in Europe to flow largely unimpeded by dams. Image by Stefan Lovgren for Mongabay.

But the delta was left out. Campaigners feared that pushing to include it would jeopardize the entire agreement, and it remained under a weaker designation, the Vjosa-Narta Protected Landscape. Where the national park carries the strictest level of protection under international conservation standards, the protected landscape category permits limited development and human use.

Warning signs quickly stacked up. Maps had already been redrawn to accommodate a new international airport near the lagoon. Then, in early 2024, the Rama government amended the law on protected areas to allow construction of what it vaguely describes as high-end tourism projects, even inside protected zones. Three weeks later, Kushner’s Affinity Partners announced its plans.

“The delta was intentionally left out of the national park,” Trajçe said. “It was part of a political agenda.”

Albania hopes to join the European Union by 2030, a goal that requires closing the environment chapter of accession negotiations. This in turn requires repealing the very amendment that created the high-end tourism exception.

What Trajçe and other conservationists see unfolding now is a race against that deadline. “It’s a rush for development before they change the law,” he said. “It defies the whole purpose of a protected area.”

A cut-out flamingo rises above the crowd at a protest June 9 in Tirana, where the bird has become the unlikely symbol of a movement that Albanians have dubbed the Flamingo Revolution. The ongoing protests were sparked by a planned luxury resort development in the country’s Vjosa-Narta delta region. Image by Stefan Lovgren for Mongabay.

In September 2025, the delta received an additional layer of protection when it was included in the newly designated Vjosa Valley UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, a status the EU had supported as part of Albania’s accession process. But in January, Ivanka Trump, Kushner’s wife, visited Albania with architects and met with Rama, a trip widely interpreted as a signal that the Kushner project was moving toward construction.

Rama has made his position clear. Speaking on the sidelines of the EU-Western Balkans Summit in Montenegro on June 5, he dismissed the international attention the project has drawn. “If it wasn’t Jared, they wouldn’t give a shit,” he told Politico.

From Source to Sea

Conservationists say the Albanian government has also failed to honor its legal obligations under the management plan for the wild river national park. While the park has delivered important results — most of all, stopping the dam projects — violations have mounted.

Large quantities of water have been diverted from the Shushicë River, a major tributary within the national park, for irrigation, in direct violation of the plan, with further plans to pipe its water to the coast for tourism development. Crude oil has spilled into the Vjosa near the town of Poçem, where 150 active oil wells line the river’s middle stretch.

Excavators work in September 2025 to divert water from the Shushicë River, a protected tributary of the Vjosa River within the Vjosa Wild River National Park, seemingly in violation of the park’s legally binding management plan. Image by Stefan Lovgren for Mongabay.

Ulrich Eichelmann, a German conservationist who heads the Vienna-based NGO RiverWatch and was a key driver behind the park’s establishment, said the government has treated the designation primarily as a marketing tool. Almost none of the activities required under the management plan have been implemented, he told Mongabay. “All they focus on is getting more tourists into the area,” Eichelmann said. “Three years after the national park was created, the river system is in a worse state than before.”

The threat to the delta is part of a broader global crisis. Deltas are among the most biologically productive ecosystems on earth, the place where freshwater and saltwater mix to create conditions of great fertility. But many deltas have been relentlessly exploited, drained for agriculture and built over for ports and other infrastructure. A 2024 assessment of all 258 river deltas discharging into the Mediterranean found that no large delta — except those in Albania — still qualifies as relatively intact.

“The delta is an integral part of the wild river,” Besjana Guri, founder of LUMI and winner of a 2025 Goldman Environmental Prize for her work to protect the Vjosa River, told Mongabay. “Ecologically, you cannot divide them.”

A sea of protesters fills one of Tirana’s main boulevards on June 9, with crowds calling for the resignation of Albania’s prime minister, Edi Rama. The ongoing protests were sparked by a planned luxury resort development in the country’s Vjosa-Narta delta region. Image by Stefan Lovgren for Mongabay. Euro Leverage

The Flamingo Revolution shows no sign of losing momentum. The demonstrations have remained largely peaceful, drawing people of all ages — young couples, parents with children, elderly Albanians who lived through decades of communist rule — united by something that has rarely mobilized this society before.

The movement has also attracted the attention of Albania’s anti-corruption authority. SPAK, the independent prosecutorial body that has pursued high-profile corruption cases since its establishment in 2019, has opened a formal investigation into the project, examining not only environmental violations but reportedly extending into questions of land ownership changes and government decisions made in 2024 that cleared the way for development in the protected area.

The EU’s position has sharpened significantly, too. The European Commission has publicly and repeatedly warned Albania that it must terminate the strategic investments law that gives favored projects fast-track treatment, bypassing environmental safeguards. Failure to do so, the commission made clear, could put Albania’s path to EU membership at risk.

“Can the EU really allow Albania to destroy this unique ecosystem on the last stretch before it becomes a member state?” asked Eichelmann before heading out to join other demonstrators on the ninth day of protests in Tirana. “I don’t think so.”

 

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Citations

Miho, A., Bego, F., & Beqiraj, S. (2023). Overview of the Vjosa Delta (Pishe Poro – Narta Landscape Protected Area) – Natural Values and Threats. Albanian Journal of Natural and Technical Sciences, 59(XXVIII), 43–68.

Schwarz, U. (2024). Mediterranean Deltas: Assessment of General Intactness Based on Hydromorphological Criteria and Land Use Obstruction. EuroNatur & Riverwatch, Radolfzell/Vienna.

Schwarz, U. (2025). The State of Balkan Rivers 2025: Hydromorphological Assessment and 13-Year Trends. EuroNatur & Riverwatch, Radolfzell/Vienna.

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