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Lydia Larce has what she calls “storm PTSD.”

Pennsylvania is taking an important step toward reducing methane pollution from oil and gas operations. 

Governor Josh Shapiro and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced today that new methane standards are on the way for Pennsylvania’s oil and gas industry, which will help protect public health, reduce climate pollution, and improve air quality for the more than 1.5 million Pennsylvanians who live near oil and gas infrastructure.  

Once finalized, these highly anticipated methane standards will implement the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 2024 methane rule while allowing Pennsylvania to tailor federal standards to serve Pennsylvania’s needs as the country’s second-largest producer of gas.  

Why does methane matter? 

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that also affects the air we breathe. Oil and gas operations that leak methane often release other harmful pollutants at the same time, including volatile organic compounds (VOCs). These pollutants contribute to smog and have been linked to asthma, respiratory disease, cancer, and other serious health impacts. 

Reducing methane pollution is one of the fastest and most cost-effective ways to slow climate change while improving air quality, especially for people living closest to oil and gas operations. 

What is changing? 

The new standards are expected to strengthen methane leak detection and repair standards and expand protections to more well sites across the Commonwealth, regardless of size. This will help Pennsylvania dramatically lower air pollution and prevent the wasteful leakage of gas into our atmosphere. 

What comes next? 

DEP will begin developing the proposed standards through Pennsylvania’s regulatory process. There will be opportunities for the public to review the proposal and submit comments. Clean Air Council will continue advocating for strong methane protections that reduce pollution, improve public health, and hold oil and gas companies accountable for preventable methane emissions.  

Alice Lu, Policy Analyst at Clean Air Council, issued the following statement: 

“For decades, Pennsylvanians have fought for safeguards from the oil and gas industry’s methane pollution. Today, Governor Shapiro and DEP are answering that call by taking a much-needed, commonsense action to protect our frontline communities. Reducing methane emissions is one of the most effective ways to tackle climate change and improve air quality.” 

Want to stay informed? As DEP develops these standards, there will be opportunities for Pennsylvanians to weigh in. Sign up for Clean Air Council’s Action Alerts to learn how you can help shape stronger methane protections across the Commonwealth. 
 

By Lien De Brouckere, Global Batteries Lead, GAIA

.stk-6ff2893 {height:5px !important;}

The typical story about second-life EV batteries goes like this: EV batteries degrade, and instead of being sent for recycling, innovative companies give the viable ones a next-best life as stationary energy storage for another 10+ years — storing solar energy, shaving peak demand, keeping the lights on during outages. It’s something that we at GAIA strongly advocate for, and that’s why I visited Moment Energy’s new Megafactory 1 outside Vancouver late last month. 

I went to understand the state of the sector, what’s working, and where policy is falling short. What I didn’t expect was to walk away with an even more compelling story: repurposing surplus new EV batteries, outcompeting recycling companies for feedstock, and the need for more education about the key role stationary batteries play – whether new or repurposed – in reducing reliance on fossil fuels.   

Moment Energy is one of a small number of companies worldwide repurposing retired EV batteries at commercial scale. Their new facility in Surrey, BC is the world’s largest second-life battery operation, manufacturing 1 GWh of battery capacity by 2030.  Sumreen Rattan, one of Moment Energy’s co-founders and Chief Operating Officer, graciously hosted me at their facility that had just been inaugurated the week prior; staff and equipment were still at their other facility. 

Lien and Sumreen in front of the Moment Energy Full Luna 1 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) — Photo by Matt Tonello. .stk-776650c {height:25px !important;} The Overproduction Problem

Here’s what caught my attention: today, Moment Energy’s primary feedstock isn’t retired EV batteries, because there are just not enough of those yet. It’s surplus battery production — cells and packs manufactured for EVs that were never installed in a vehicle, a direct consequence of the past few years’ massive overproduction. The large wave of genuinely end-of-life EV batteries is still ahead of us, with 953 GWh of capacity expected globally by 2030. Right now, the repurposing sector is partly running on the overflow from a manufacturing boom that outpaced demand.

Inauguration ceremony demonstration set-up of used EV batteries at Megafactory 1. — Photo by Matt Tonello.

This matters for how we frame the problem. Battery waste isn’t only about what happens at the batteries’ end-of-life — it starts upstream, with how many batteries are produced in the first place. GAIA has been drawing attention to the massive scale of battery overproduction – 2 to 5 times global demand – in our work on mineral demand reduction, and it was striking to see it show up so concretely on the factory floor.

.stk-dab987f {height:25px !important;} Outcompeting Recyclers — On Price

The other dynamic I learned about is how Moment Energy acquires batteries to repurpose. They work directly with OEM automakers, typically collecting retired batteries frequently at an average of 80% state of health. A battery leaving a car at that level of health isn’t worn out; it’s just no longer suited to the high-performance demands of an EV drivetrain. For stationary storage — where a battery sits in a stationary unit cycling energy, rather than accelerating a vehicle — it has potentially decades of useful life ahead.

Moment Energy covers all collection and transport costs, built into their business model. In some cases, they receive batteries at no charge, with logistics as the only cost. This means Moment Energy is competing with recyclers at the point of acquisition — and winning on economics. Recyclers typically charge OEMs for collection. Moment Energy doesn’t. For an automaker deciding where a battery goes, that’s a meaningful difference, and it’s one that policy should reinforce rather than leave to chance.

.stk-6a93e83 {height:25px !important;} What the Megafactory Does Differently

The facility is designed to operate under UL 1974 certification — the safety standard for evaluating and grading repurposed or remanufactured electric vehicle (EV) batteries — and backs its systems with a 10-year warranty. These aren’t incidental details. They’re the difference between a product that can be deployed in grid-connected places such as hospitals, airports, and commercial buildings and one that can’t. 

.stk-b43bf93 {height:25px !important;} Promotional video by Moment Energy — June 23, 2026. .stk-81e3b5c {height:25px !important;}

What is more, the Surrey facility is fully vertically integrated: batteries arrive, are tested at the cell level, assessed for second-life viability, repacked with Moment Energy’s own battery management system, assembled into commercial units, and shipped — all in-house.

One genuinely new capability is a cold environment chamber that accelerates battery degradation down to 60% state of health. This might sound like an obscure technical detail, but it matters: almost all existing industry modeling of battery performance stops at 80% SoH, the point at which a battery leaves an EV. Repurposers have largely been operating without good data on what happens after that. Moment Energy is building the testing infrastructure to understand the full second-life performance curve. No one else is doing this at commercial scale.

.stk-56e7529 {height:25px !important;} The Real Education Gap

One exchange from the visit has stayed with me. I asked whether the public and the market still needed convincing about second-life batteries — whether customer skepticism was a significant barrier. Sumreen Rattan pushed back on the framing.

“The education we need to do isn’t really about second-life batteries,” she said. “It’s about batteries in general — helping customers understand how storage saves them money through peak shaving and demand charge reduction. Once they get that, the second-life question takes care of itself.”

The examples that brought this to life were instructive. Moment Energy’s systems have been deployed alongside diesel generators in remote locations — including an island resort where their battery reduced diesel runtime by 75%. 

I was accompanied on the visit by Matthew Tonello, Project Executive at Consigli Construction Co., Inc., who is exploring whether and how Moment Energy’s systems could replace diesel generators in a university and a playhouse project currently in the design phases. This was a concrete illustration of what Moment Energy is selling to commercial and industrial customers facing cost penalties when demand spikes. I learned that the goal isn’t simply to swap one power source for another. What Moment Energy is really selling, increasingly, is participation in a broader energy management logic: a system that can anticipate when a building or facility is about to hit a demand peak, automatically shift to drawing power from the battery, and dial back grid or generator draw before costs spike. This kind of automated load management builds a strong financial case for batteries within a smarter overall energy infrastructure system. 

This education gap is a useful corrective. The conversation in civil society and policy circles often centers on convincing people that repurposed batteries are safe and reliable. But for many potential customers, the threshold issues — why would I want any battery storage at all and how do I use it? — are important first questions to address.

.stk-e0d5900 {height:25px !important;} Sumreen shows samples of battery modules for testing. — Photo by Matt Tonello. .stk-65ac1d1 {height:25px !important;} Where Policy Is Falling Short

Moment Energy has an active policy team in the US and Canada, although this doesn’t yet extend to Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). That’s not unusual for a company at their stage, and it makes it all the more important that civil society organizations are present in the rooms where these frameworks are being designed.

Sumreen shared three important policy gaps to address.

There is no waste management hierarchy. In most jurisdictions, nothing requires that a battery be evaluated for second-life viability before it goes to a recycler. Recyclers compete for the same feedstock and have well-established collection infrastructure that gives them a structural advantage. Codifying a highest-and-best-use principle — second-life before recycling — would change the incentive structure in ways that market economics alone won’t deliver.

Data doesn’t travel with the battery. Assessing whether a battery is viable for repurposing requires its history: state of health, charge cycles, active faults, internal monitoring data. That information typically lives with the automaker and isn’t transferred when the battery changes hands. Without it, repurposers are partly testing blind. Battery passport frameworks need to address this directly, and civil society should be pushing for provisions that make this data accessible to the repurposing sector.

Tax incentives are doing heavy lifting — inconsistently. In the US market, Investment Tax Credit eligibility has been decisive for Moment Energy’s competitiveness against cheaper imported alternatives. But ITC rules weren’t designed with second-life batteries in mind, and eligibility isn’t always certain. Explicit policy design here — rather than leaving repurposers to navigate rules built for new battery manufacturing — would do more to level the playing field.

.stk-385dabd {height:25px !important;} What Comes Next

The repurposing sector is further along than many people realize — commercially viable, technically credible, and already out-competing recyclers on price for batteries that have years of useful life remaining. The feedstock wave is coming. The infrastructure is being built. What’s lagging is the policy environment.

For those of us working on battery waste, the task is ensuring that the frameworks being developed now — on extended producer responsibility, battery passports, safety certification — treat second-life as a genuine priority not only for retired EV batteries, but to leverage surplus batteries. 

The post A Visit to the World’s Largest Second-Life EV Battery Megafactory first appeared on GAIA.

Registered nurses at Adventist Health St. Helena in St. Helena, Calif. voted overwhelmingly this week to join California Nurses Association (CNA), an affiliate of National Nurses United, the nation’s largest and fastest-growing registered nurse (RN) union. In an overwhelming landslide vote, 250 nurses elected to join CNA.

One week after shrinking Bears Ears National Monument by 91 percent, the Trump administration has removed the seals of five Tribal nations from Bears Ears signs.

The Tribal seals represented members of the Bears Ears Commission, which includes the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Zuni Tribe, and Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah & Ouray Reservation.

The Tribal Commission was first created in 2016 to help guide the management of Bears Ears in a manner rooted in Indigenous perspectives and place-based conservation strategies developed over centuries. But President Trump’s July 13 proclamation disbanded the Tribal Commission.

“They may be able to remove the signs and take down the Tribal seals, but they cannot erase who we are, our connection to Bears Ears, or our responsibility to protect it,” said Davina Smith-Idjesa, co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition. “Bears Ears remains a living cultural landscape, and our commitment to this place continues.”

Lawmakers introduce bicameral Local Input Act

Yesterday, U.S. Congressman Joe Neguse of Colorado and U.S. Senator Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico introduced the Local Input Act. The bill seeks to protect the right of the American people to provide input on proposed oil and gas lease sales on national public lands, and would restore the Interior department’s ability to incorporate public comments into decisions on whether to nominate public lands for lease to oil and gas companies.

Quick hits Days after slashing Bears Ears, Trump administration removes Tribal seals from monument signs

Salt Lake Tribune

This dark money political operative could soon become Trump’s ethics chief

Public Domain

Opinion: New BLM proposal and lease sales will devastate Colorado public lands, communities

Colorado Sun

Colorado’s Glenwood Springs mayor pro-tem calls for action to stop limestone quarry

Sopris Sun

Nevada lawmaker demands answers on BLM data center approval process

Nevada Current | Nevada Independent | E&E News | Las Vegas Review-Journal

Column: Understanding how Donald Trump sees public lands

More Than Just Parks

Wyoming outdoor rec board awards $1.9M in grants for trail building, campground fixes

WyoFile

The Gambler 500: Junky old cars race on public lands to clean up trash

KUOW

Quote of the day

You can’t persuade someone to value a wilderness they never understood in the first place.”

—Jim Pattiz, conservationist, filmmaker, and co-founder of More Than Just Parks

Picture This

@usfws

Computa, cancel that. Make more toads instead!

This year, conservation partners are reintroducing about 3 million Houston toad eggs into restored habitat in Bastrop County, Texas while improving the forests these endangered amphibians depend on.

No, the individual toads aren’t becoming the size of Labradors. There’s just going to be a whole lot more of them.

Check out our link in bio to learn more about how we’re working with private landowners to reconnect forests and breeding ponds so these tiny toads can safely disperse, find mates, and keep the next generation hopping.

Photo of immature Houston toad by Hannah Gilbreath/USFWS
Graphics by Erin Huggins/USFWS

Featured image: Bears Ears National Monument signs before and after the Tribal seals were removed. Photo used by permission

The post Tribes removed from Bears Ears National Monument signs appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Rachelle Vance was determined to see another flamingo. Two months after Hurricane Idalia swept a pink wave of the gangly birds through Florida and beyond in August 2023, the photographer from Crystal...

Star Energy has given up environmental consent to produce hydrogen at the Albury gas site in Surrey.

Albury Park well site. Photo: Surrey County Council

The company failed to get planning permission in 2023 for a scheme to manufacture grey hydrogen from methane at the site near Guildford. Surrey councillors unanimously rejected the proposal.

The Environment Agency has now accepted the partial surrender of the site’s environmental permit for hydrogen production using the steam methane reformation process with gas from the Albury-1 well.

The site permit had been varied in 2022 to add a hydrogen production process and a new medium combustion plant.

The surrender notice, published today, revealed that Star Energy had applied in April 2026 to surrender the hydrogen variation.

It also confirmed there had been no hydrogen production at Albury and no plant associated with the process had been constructed on site.

The EA said:

“We have determined this is an application to remove authorisation to carry on an activity which has not been put into operation.”

The remaining permit continues to allow operations at Albury including:

• flaring of gas
• use of an electricity generator fuelled by methane
• receipt, storage and handling of raw materials used in the production process
• management of extractive waste

The formal boundary of the site remains unchanged.

According to official data, Albury continues to produce small amounts of gas. In 2025, the site produced 1,648 ksm3 (thousand standard cubic meters), at an average of 137 ksm3 a month.

“The Hub” is a weekly round-up of transportation related news in the Philadelphia area and beyond. Check back weekly to keep up-to-date on the issues Clean Air Council’s transportation staff finds important.

As exciting events continue in Philadelphia, learn how you can get around to major summer 2026 events without a car, or being stuck in traffic with GoPhillyGo: Car-Free Routes Map!

Image Source: WHYY

WHYY: Leave something on the train, bus or trolley? Here’s how to find it on SEPTA – Riders can look for lost items from SEPTA in the lost and found, but there’s more than one depending on where you left your item. For regional rail riders, the lost and found is in Suburban Station in Center City. Broad Street Line holds items at Fern Rock Transit Center and SEPTA headquarters on Market. Market-Frankford riders need to check the 69th Street Transit Center, and the depot holds unclaimed items from buses and trolleys.

Image Source: whyy

WHYY: Schuylkill River Passenger Rail Authority takes a baby step toward resurrecting passenger rail between Philadelphia and Reading – Amtrak and the Schuylkill River Passenger Rail Authority (SRPRA) signed a formal commitment to attempt to bring back passenger rail service between Philadelphia, Phoenixville, Pottstown, and Reading. It’s been over 40 years since passenger rail trains stopped in Phoenixville. The agreement means SRPRA intends for Amtrak to operate the lines, and Amtrak is willing to see the project through to the next phase.

Image Source: Zummo Bikes

Philadelphia Today: Young Mechanics Take the Lead in FOX 29’s Look Inside Zummo Bike – A non-profit in Chester County, Zummo Bikes is collecting, repairing, selling, and donating refurbished bicycles. Zumme Bikes is also a workforce development program, training students to fix bicycles and other components, see inside a small business, and develop customer service skills. Visit Zummo Bike’s website here.

Other Stories

6ABC: Pep rally held for Philadelphia Cycling Classic

Safe Routes Partnership: Ruby Bridges Walk to School Day Mini-Grants are Open!

BillyPenn: The Wissahickon’s 100 Steps connect a natural oasis to the city

WHYY: Philly-area police launch aggressive-driver campaign to reduce highway fatalities

Axios Philadelphia: SEPTA’s AI-powered cameras generated $14.5M in fines in the first year

Mass Transit Mag: Amtrak selects STV for static frequency converter replacement in Philadelphia

Farms.org: Why Rural Roads Account for 40% of U.S. Traffic Fatalities

There appears to be broad support for strengthening the independence of the grid operator’s board, possibly by moving to an advisory stakeholder process, and giving states more influence. Some also called for codifying the public interest in PJM’s mission.

Oral arguments were held July 21st before U.S. District Judge Nancy J. Rosenstengel in the case Friends of Bell Smith Springs v. U.S. Forest Service (Case No. 3:25-cv-01377-NJR), a lawsuit challenging an ongoing logging project in the Shawnee National Forest.

This summer has seen Europe suffer through a series of record-breaking heatwaves.

Amid widespread media coverage of the number of deaths and the influence of climate change, the UK’s Daily Telegraph reported on new research with the incorrect headline: “Heatwaves caused by fall in pollution.”

The article was shared on social media by Richard Tice – deputy leader of the hard-right, climate-sceptic Reform UK party – along with a number of prominent rightwing commentators.

Tice claimed that “net stupid zero is contributing to rising temperatures, not helping”, adding that “we have been gaslit and lied to”.

GB News followed up with its own article, incorrectly headlined: “Britain’s scorching heatwaves caused by falling pollution levels, researchers find.”

Scientists tell Carbon Brief that the framing of heatwaves being “caused” by declining air pollution is “wrong”.

While a drop in pollution has reduced the cooling impact it has had in the past, the scientists say, Europe’s summer heatwaves are primarily becoming more extreme “as a result of greenhouse-gas-induced warming”.

Another scientist adds that “any attempt” to link this research to net-zero policies is “simply wrong”.

Fast warming

The extensive reporting around Europe’s heatwaves in recent months has often mentioned that Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent. 

The new study in question aims to unpack why Europe’s summer temperatures are rising more quickly than other regions of the northern hemisphere’s mid and high latitudes. 

The research – published in Geophysical Research Letters – explores the role of air pollution and, specifically, how it affects circulation patterns in the atmosphere. 

(The study focuses on long-term trends in European summers and does not include the very recent heatwaves.)

Human-caused emissions of aerosols – tiny, light‑scattering particles produced mainly by burning fossil fuels – have long acted to “mask” global warming. This is largely because they absorb or reflect incoming sunlight and influence the formation and brightness of clouds. 

To understand how the climate of Europe – or any region – is changing, scientists need to take into account a whole range of factors, says Prof Bjørn Samset, a research professor at Norway’s Center for International Climate Research (CICERO), who was not involved in the work.

This includes “greenhouse gases, aerosols, land-use change, natural variability and how they all interact”, he says, adding:

“The effects of air pollution on circulation, which is the topic here, has long been difficult to pin down.”

As European countries improved their air quality through the second half of the 20th century, the cooling effect of aerosols has gradually been removed.

This can boost heatwaves in two ways – directly, by letting more sunlight reach the land surface and, indirectly, by influencing the jet stream.

Using hundreds of simulations from nine climate models, the new study finds that a decline in aerosols is resulting in more frequent “quasi-stationary Rossby waves”. 

Rossby waves are huge meanders in the jet stream. Occasionally, they become slow-moving – or “quasi-stationary” – which allows weather systems to get stuck over one region, leading to prolonged heatwaves.

These circulation changes have contributed to Europe’s rapidly warming summers.

However, while Europe’s heatwaves are being influenced by declining aerosols, it is “wrong” to say they are being “caused” by them, says Prof Erich Fischer, a climate scientist at ETH Zurich.

Headline in the Daily Telegraph, 22 July 2026.

Fischer, who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief:

“Heatwaves are caused by high-pressure systems and are now much more frequent and intense because they are happening in a climate that is much warmer than 100 years ago as a result of greenhouse-gas-induced warming. 

“The paper shows that the greenhouse-gas-induced summer warming had been temporarily masked by air-polluting aerosols. The full extent for European summers only becomes visible now as the air-polluting aerosols have declined.”

Samset adds:

“Air pollution never causes or removes global warming, it only temporarily moderates it.”

Study lead author Dr Pedro Roldán‐Gómez, an associate researcher at the Barcelona Supercomputer Centre, is quoted in the Daily Telegraph saying that “most” of the “excess warming” in Europe, beyond that of comparable regions in the northern hemisphere, can be linked to declining aerosols.

But, earlier in the article, the newspaper interprets this as, simply, “most of the extra heat experienced in Britain and Europe” is down to air pollution. 

GB News uses a similar phrasing, reporting that “much of the additional warming across Britain and western Europe since the 1980s is linked to the sharp decline in airborne particles known as aerosols”.

This is “misleading”, says Fischer, while Roldan-Gomez tells Carbon Brief that this is a “tricky point”, which “could lead to wrong interpretations if not properly explained”. He adds:

“The contribution of greenhouse gases is, in any case, the most important factor.”

Headline on GB News, 23 July 2026.
Cleaner air

The Daily Telegraph’s article was seized upon by Reform’s Richard Tice to claim that “cleaner air” was causing higher temperatures, rather than CO2.

This continued his position – refuted by long-established climate science – that CO2 does not drive global warming. 

Tice also claimed in his post that net-zero policies are “contributing to rising temperatures”. Tice appears to be linking declining air pollution to a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

Samset points out that net-zero became a goal “decades later” than the cumulative efforts to reduce air pollution since the 1980s and that it is “simply wrong” to link it to the study. 

“The scientific community will keep working to understand how greenhouse gas warming and air pollution interact,” he says, but “nothing we do will change the fact that the consequences of global warming are due to human-induced CO2 emissions”.

Fischer adds:

“Let us not forget that cleaning up air-polluting aerosols is highly desirable. According to the World Health Organisation, 7 million people still die prematurely every year due to air pollution.”

Clean air legislation

Finally, the Daily Telegraph article and the study itself both attribute Europe’s declining air pollution from the 1980s onwards to the Montreal Protocol.

This is a “glaring error”, Samset says, and it is “surprising that it wasn’t picked up” in the peer-review process for the study. He explains:

“The Montreal Protocol did not deal with air pollution. It dealt with ozone-depleting gases and has been an extremely successful multi-national effort against environmental damage. “

Clean air legislation was already in place in many European countries by the time the Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987, says Samset. 

In response, Roldán‐Gómez says that while the protocol did not target aerosols specifically, it “boosted the clean air policies”.

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The post Factcheck: No, Europe’s heatwaves are not being ‘caused’ by declining air pollution appeared first on Carbon Brief.

A version of this piece was featured in Food Tank’s newsletter, released weekly on Thursdays. To make sure it lands straight in your inbox and to be among the first to receive it, subscribe now by clicking here.

Do you remember what you ate for dinner last night?

Good diets can actually help support our memories! And our moods, and our metabolisms. Every day, scientists are working to better understand the powerful connections between nutrition and nearly every component of human health, both physical and mental.

Many people, including policymakers in Congress, know that high-quality nutrition can help us live longer and more healthful lives. But it’s the specific details—which nutrients are most beneficial; what metabolic and cognitive impacts do our diets have; how we can make sure people can access good food—that are particularly important for us all to understand.

That’s why Food Tank is heading to Capitol Hill next week with our partners at the Tufts University Food is Medicine Institute, for a bipartisan luncheon event titled “The Power and Peril of Food: The Latest Science on Your Mood, Memory, Metabolism, and Longevity.”

The program runs 12:00PM to 1:30PM ET, with lunch provided when doors open at 11:30. If you can join us in person, CLICK HERE to reserve a spot at the event, in Dirksen Senate Office Building, Room 106, in Washington, D.C.

Otherwise, we’ll see you in our livestream audience, which you can bookmark HERE.

We’ll also be joined by an expert lineup of speakers including United States Senators Roger Marshall of Kansas and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana; Calley Means, Senior Advisor at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Dariush Mozaffarian, Food is Medicine Institute; Ashley Gearhardt, PhD, University of Michigan; Eric Verdin, MD, Buck Institute for Research on Aging; Jan Ellison Baszucki, Baszucki Group; Uma Naidoo, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital; and more to be announced.

Events like Food Tank’s Capitol Hill luncheons are powerful opportunities for you to get to talk with researchers and legislators on the front lines of food science and food policy! This is about having a voice in the future of nutrition policy—and it’s also about accountability. In my opinion, it’s important to the health of our democracy for these conversations to be happening with science-backed experts and attendees who can fact-check and hold politicians to their word, rather than behind closed doors.

HERE is the link to tune into our livestream, and you can CLICK HERE to reserve a seat in person.

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

Photo courtesy of Sara Cottle, Unsplash

The post Can Better Food Policy Improve Our Memories, Moods, and Metabolisms? appeared first on Food Tank.

This story was originally reported by Jenae Barnes, Climate Reporter of The 19th. Meet Jenae and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

Anti-abortion advocates, including Republican lawmakers and state officials, want the EPA to review mifepristone as a water contaminant. Scientists say there’s no evidence it harms the environment or people.

While there is no scientific evidence that abortion medication is contaminating Americans’ water supply, it has nonetheless become a central claim by the anti-abortion movement. Activists, Instagram influencers and Republican Party officials — including state and federal lawmakers — are doubling down on what experts describe as a disinformation campaign that mixes environmental policy and reproductive rights, and risks exploiting legitimate concerns about clean water.

“What if I were to tell you that every time you fill up a glass of water at your kitchen sink from the tap, you were actually *drinking* someone else’s abortion,” influencer Isabel Brown wrote in an Instagram post in May. In the accompanying video, the Gen Z conservative content creator, who has more than 1 million followers on her platform, talks to Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, a national anti-abortion organization, and contends that anti-abortion medication is “poisoning” the water.

The claim isn’t new. For decades, anti-abortion advocates have argued that abortion medications, primarily mifepristone, pollute the environment and put pregnant people’s health at risk. But the argument has now become part of a widespread and often coordinated effort to create federal and state policy that further suppresses abortion access.

On June 5, 14 Republican state attorneys general and 19 GOP lawmakers in Congress urged the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to classify and regulate mifepristone as a water contaminant. In two concurrent letters, officials argued that the abortion medication, part of a safe and effective two-drug regimen to terminate pregnancies, is “a growing threat to the country’s waterways” and violates the Safe Drinking Water Act.

One letter was signed by attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas. The other letter, led by Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, made similar claims and was signed by 18 other GOP lawmakers.

Environmental health experts have consistently said there is no scientific evidence that abortion medication causes harm to the environment — or to humans. Both reproductive rights advocates and environmental scientists have said that the argument co-opts environmental policy as a pathway to weaponize and stigmatize health care.

“This is really part of a broader effort to restrict access to medication abortion,” said Anna Bernstein, principal federal policy adviser at the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports reproductive rights. She said anti-abortion activists are increasingly turning to “every lever they can” as medication abortion has become the largest share of abortion care nationwide. Medication abortion accounted for 63 percent of all abortions in the United States in 2023, according to Guttmacher Institute data.

Does Oral Abortion Medication Really End Up in Drinking Water?

Anti-abortion advocates contend that over 50 tons of medical waste “including blood, placental tissue, and human remains” are flushed into water systems each year as a result of these drugs. They argue high concentration of the elements of mifepristone in water, specifically a hormone called progesterone, disrupts and reduces fertility in women. They also say that previous results of federal testing of mifepristone’s environmental impact are outdated.

Environmental health experts dismiss these claims. These experts consistently point out that there is no scientific basis for treating mifepristone or other abortion medication as a water contaminant. Nathan Donley, the environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, pointed out that mifepristone is used by a small fraction of the population and is typically taken as a one-time dose. By comparison, many pharmaceuticals taken daily by tens of millions of Americans enter wastewater systems in far greater quantities. He also noted that mifepristone was not included among nearly 700 pharmaceutical compounds the EPA previously screened for potential water contamination concerns.

Instead, Donley described the effort as an attempt to use environmental concerns as a pretext for limiting reproductive rights. He noted that while proponents are seeking to add mifepristone to the EPA’s 6th Contaminant Candidate List (CCL6), a preliminary list of substances that could potentially be considered for future drinking water regulation, placement on the list would not itself regulate the drug but could begin a lengthy review process.

Donley added that focusing on mifepristone distracts from well-documented water quality threats, including PFAS — known as forever chemicals — pesticides, lead and nitrate contamination.

“There are legitimate water quality threats that we need to attack and rectify in a regulatory manner. And then there are things that are out in the left field that just distract people,” Donley said.

Where Did This Argument Come From and Why Is It Gaining Traction Again Now?

In 1996, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tested for the environmental effects of mifepristone and found “no significant impact.” In the June letter, lawmakers cite the FDA study, and urge “reconsideration” of potential harm to the environment.

Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion, opponents have increasingly focused on limiting access to abortion medication and prescribing it through telehealth, which has become a critical pathway for people living in states with abortion bans.

But anti-abortion groups have ramped up efforts during the second Trump administration to advocate for the official classification of mifepristone as a water contaminant.

Last November, Students for Life of America (SFLA), a national anti-abortion group, met with the EPA to advocate for adding mifepristone to the CCL6 as the agency carried out a routine update to a separate list of health benchmarks for pharmaceuticals that must be tracked in drinking water.

The coordinated letters in June were timed toward the EPA’s 60-day comment period, which began in April and allowed members of the public to submit their thoughts on draft proposals to be reviewed by the agency.

“SFLA asks that mifepristone be tracked, given the reasonable cause for concern that regular and ongoing exposure to a progesterone blocker is impacting public health, endangered species, and the environment,” the anti-abortion group said in a statement on their website, adding that the group plans to take on the issue in every state. “You don’t have to be pro-life to want clean drinking water. You don’t have to be pro-life to be concerned that we are being ‘microdosed’ by progesterone blockers, which are a factor in rising infertility.”

The SFLA said it collected over 1,700 public comments to send to the EPA, and helped spearhead the 14-state campaign of letters from attorneys general to the EPA ahead of its public comment period for the CCL6.

The draft for the CCL6 received nearly 22,000 public comments before closing on June 5, public records show.

How Are Lawmakers Trying to Change Environmental Abortion Policies?

In 2025, anti-abortion policymakers introduced nine bills in seven states tying medication abortion to water pollution, according to the Guttmacher Institute. That same year, 25 members of Congress sent a similar letter asking the EPA to monitor for environmental harms of mifepristone. This March, U.S. Rep Mary Miller, a Republican from Illinois, introduced a Clean Water for All Life Act, citing similar claims of environmental degradation from abortion medication.

According to Bernstein and Guttmacher state policy adviser Kimya Forouzan, some proposals would require state agencies to test wastewater for abortion medications. Others would require patients to use so-called “catch kits” and medical waste bags to collect and return pregnancy tissue after taking abortion medication. Some bills would create liability for drug manufacturers if abortion medications were detected in wastewater.

While the bills vary, abortion rights advocates say they share a common goal: creating additional barriers to medication abortion access.

“The CCL is one part of a broad regulatory process. This draft list is then used to inform another list, which determines which contaminants are monitored and regulated, but the surveillance really does happen at a municipality and then state level,” Bernstein said, adding: “So this would be setting federal benchmarks for localities to monitor in their wastewater.”

To date, neither President Donald Trump nor EPA chief Lee Zeldin have explicitly spoken to any health risks of mifepristone in water. But the president and leading administration officials’ decision to stay silent on the issue may increase pressure from anti-abortion advocates, according to Bernstein.

“We anticipate that disinformation campaigns surrounding mifepristone, including these false claims on the environmental impact, will continue to escalate — particularly as abortion opponents are frustrated at a perceived lack of action by the Trump administration,” Bernstein told The 19th. “We know, however, that restricting access to abortion is politically unfavorable, and candidates may be hesitant to focus on these efforts before the midterm elections.

What Are the Stakes for Pregnant People?

As abortion rights and access have shrunk, Forouzan said that medication abortion has become a “lifeline” for many people seeking care after Dobbs, particularly through telehealth providers operating under shield laws, which are state-by-state legal protections to safeguard practitioners from being sued by states with abortion bans. As a result, anti-abortion officials at the state and federal level have increasingly focused on restricting the remaining ways people can access abortion care.

Forouzan said the push to monitor abortion medication in wastewater contributes to a broader “culture of surveillance” surrounding abortion. She said proposals to test wastewater for mifepristone raise concerns about how such monitoring data could eventually be used and whether it could increase scrutiny of people who obtain medication abortions.

Do These Claims Have the Potential to Affect Federal Policy?

The potential of environmental harms continues to shape policy for abortion and anti-abortion advocates. On the anniversary of Dobbs, Rep. Brittany Pettersen, a Democrat from Colorado, submitted a resolution to address the disinformation campaign, saying that water systems should “not be weaponized for the purposes of surveilling, tracking, or detecting use of, stigmatizing, and further restricting access to medication abortion care.”

Advocates also point to what they see as a contradiction in the campaign. Many of the same advocates and elected officials who support mifepristone monitoring have opposed other environmental hazard regulations. For example, in Indiana, where the state’s attorney general co-signed the letter, state lawmakers recently passed legislation to deregulate the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, an agency in charge of limiting pollution in the state’s air, water and soil.

The EPA has already taken action to recommend states begin testing drinking water for abortion medications. In April, the agency released a list of 374 drugs that states should monitor. While it does not include mifepristone, it does include other medications used in abortions such as misoprostol and methotrexate, commonly used in daily birth control and the NuvaRing contraceptive. It’s the first time the agency has designated pharmaceuticals as a contaminant group, according to an April press release.

The EPA did not respond to The 19th’s request for comment.

The EPA’s comment period allowed 60 days for the public to weigh in on the list before agency staff began reviewing the feedback and finalizing. Now that the June comment period has closed, whether the agency will ultimately add the medication to the list remains uncertain. However, when federal regulators previously reviewed environmental concerns related to mifepristone, they found no evidence warranting restrictions, according to Bernstein.

Bernstein and Forouzan said that anti-abortion states and lawmakers often learn from each other in order to pass bills in their respective states. Forouzan added these efforts work “parallel” to federal bill proposals, both with the same goal: to restrict further access.

“Its really just to restrict access to mifepristone and specifically to roll back requirements to force in-person dispensation, which would really limit access to a lot of folks.”

Four years after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, reproductive advocates say the evolution of anti-abortion campaigns continue to “severely restrict” access to care across the country. Thirteen states currently enforce total bans, and 6 explicitly prohibit telehealth use to provide abortion pills, according to Guttmacher Institute.

“It’s contributing to this culture of surveillance around medication abortion at a time when that is already increasing, and folks, especially in banned states, are facing increasing fear of criminalization,” Bernstein said. “There are concerns whether it will be eventually used for the criminalization of patients, in addition to creating a broader restriction of mifepristone and perpetuating these myths.”

The post No, Drinking Water Isn’t Contaminated By Abortion Pills appeared first on The Revelator.

Two chemicals with safety concerns are still in your food. EWG is urging the FDA to act. Iris Myers July 24, 2026

Two additives, known as ADA and BHT, are found in cereal, baked goods and other processed food millions of Americans enjoy. They’re also linked to potential health harms such as cancer and hormone disruption, so EWG is reiterating calls for banning their use in food.

Even though research on the two chemicals is ongoing, studies so far in animals or humans have already found their potential to cause health problems. These concerns justify the Food and Drug Administration revoking its approval for use of the two additives, EWG said in a pair of letters submitted to the agency earlier this month.

Safer alternatives to ADA and BHT are available, allowing manufacturers to achieve the same functions without relying on these chemicals. Some retailers – including major chains like Pizza Hut and Whole Foods Market – have already taken steps to get one or both of the additives out of their products. 

It’s time for the regulatory system to catch up with the science and food companies’ voluntary actions.

Ongoing FDA review

The comments follow the FDA’ s request for information, or RFI, about the two chemicals in food earlier this year – ADA, or azodicarbonamide, and BHT, or butylated hydroxytoluene. 

It’s part of the agency’s new program to reevaluate the safety of food chemicals.

The RFI only gathers input – it isn’t any kind of policy action. But the comments it receives on the request could eventually be used to guide decisions about allowing the additives in food.

That’s why EWG weighed in with written comments highlighting our concerns. The deadline to submit comments on BHT has been extended to August 13. The comment period for ADA closed on July 13.

What is ADA?

ADA was greenlighted for use in food in 1962 by the FDA as “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS. It’s added to baked goods as a dough conditioner. 

ADA breaks down during breadmaking, and two of its breakdown products, semicarbazide and urethane, have been shown to cause cancer. Urethane can also damage the reproductive system.

Because of these concerns, ADA is not permitted as a food additive in Australia or the European Union. International evaluations have also identified kidney effects in laboratory animals exposed to ADA.

Despite these concerns, the FDA has not thoroughly reexamined ADA’s safety in light of newer research on its potential health effects.

Lawmakers in New York and Texas introduced legislation to remove ADA from food sold in their states, but neither bill passed.

Several food retailers, including Whole Foods, Aldi and Walmart, have voluntarily removed or restricted ADA in their products. A 2025 survey by the American Bakers Association found that nearly 95% of its member companies already don’t use ADA.

Given the evidence of health risks – and how few companies still use the chemical – the FDA should take decisive action to end the use of ADA in food.

What is BHT?

The FDA approved BHT for use in food in 1954 and deemed it GRAS in 1959. The chemical is commonly added to breakfast cereal, frozen pizza, chewing gum and other processed foods, acting as a preservative, extending the shelf life of fats and oils. 

While it has not been formally classified as a carcinogen, studies have linked it to tumor promotion in animals. It has also been linked to damage to DNA and hormonal disruption.

A 2019 study found that U.S. residents had some of the highest exposure levels of BHT globally, with some exposure estimates exceeding safety limits. The chemical has been detected in human cord blood, breast milk, blood, urine and body fat.

Some states have already acted on concerns about BHT’s health effects, and several major food retailers and manufacturers, including Whole Foods and General Mills, have voluntarily removed the chemical from many products. 

Given the already available evidence showing the potential health risks of BHT, the FDA should act to immediately revoke approval for its use in food.

The trouble with GRAS

Both BHT and ADA remain on the market, thanks to their GRAS status.

When Congress created the GRAS exemption, in 1958, it was intended to apply to ingredients whose safety was beyond dispute, such as salt, water, yeast and vinegar.

But in the decades since, GRAS has expanded far beyond that intent. Since 2000, nearly 99% of new food chemicals have entered the market through the GRAS loophole, according to a 2025 EWG analysis. This lets scores of food chemicals reach store shelves with little government oversight, leaving food safety in the hands of manufacturers.

To protect the safety of our food supply from harmful chemicals like BHT and ADA, the FDA must close the GRAS loophole.

In March 2025 the Department of Health and Human Services, of which the FDA is part, announced a plan to review GRAS, originally slated for October 2025. That timeline has since been delayed to December 2026. The announcement could eventually lead to changes in the GRAS rule, but without firm proposals, there’s no real progress on food safety.

In the absence of enforceable federal action on GRAS, New York passed a bill that would ban use of three harmful food chemicals statewide – Red Dye No. 3, potassium bromate and propyl paraben – and reform the GRAS loophole at the state level. The bill awaits Gov. Kathy Hochul’s signature.

What you can do

While we wait for the FDA to act on BHT and ADA and amend the GRAS loophole, consumers can minimize exposure to harmful food chemicals with these tips.

• Check ingredient labels and avoid food products that contain BHT and ADA. Food companies must list these on packaged food labels if they’re added as a food ingredient.
• Consult EWG’s Food Scores database to find products without BHT, ADA and other concerning ingredients. When you’re on the go, use EWG’s Healthy Living™ app to find products without toxic chemicals.
• Whenever possible, look for packaged foods that are certified organic. These products must meet strong standards that protect consumers from exposure to potentially harmful additives.
• Reduce consumption of ultra-processed foods when possible. Many contain ingredients of concern that could harm your health.

Areas of Focus Food Ultra-Processed Foods Toxic Chemicals Food Chemicals Authors Iris Myers July 24, 2026

تابلۆی جیهانی جێگرەوەکان، بەیاننامەی گەلانی باندۆنگ [ English ] [ Español ] [ Français ] [ Português] [ Kurdish] دەرچووە دوای دووەمین کۆبوونەوەی ڕووبەڕووی “تۆڕی جیهانیی جێگرەوەکان” کە لە باندونگ، ئیندۆنیزیا، لە ١١-١٧ی نیسانی ٢٠٢٦ بەڕێوەچوو.

The use of small, controlled burns to clear out flammable underbrush has saved thousands of giant sequoias from devastating wildfires, new research finds.

Read more on E360 →

A growing problem of modern industrial agriculture is the accumulation of ‘forever chemicals’ like PFAS in the soil. But now, researchers have developed a three-part plan involving hemp plants to draw it out of the soil—one that they say will cost a fraction of regular toxic clean up, and remove CO2 while they’re at it.

For decades, groups of persistent synthetic chemicals like PFAS have been used to make a range of products including food-contact materials, so accumulating in our bodies, and then our waste—which often becomes fertilizer. This has created a situation where swathes of farmland is now straining under a toxic load. Some farms in US states like Maine have even been forced to shut down because their soils exceeded safe limits for crop production and consumption. 

The new study proposes that the solution to this industrial threat is plants, rock dust and biochar. The research, led out of Yale University, developed a pollution remediation model based on available data from farms in Maine and looked at two types of PFAS: PFOS and PFOAS. They first considered what would happen if they applied basalt rock dust to the soil, a common approach for sequestering carbon dioxide—but which also changes the pH in ways that makes chemicals more mobile in the soil.

While that might sound counterintuitive to the goal, it makes chemicals like PFAS more available for uptake by plants—like the hemp and perennial grasses the researchers tested in the study. They modeled the effects of this plant growth, and then also looked at what would happen if the cuttings were turned into biochar, the heat in this process being a way to neutralize the toxicity of the chemicals. As a final step, they considered scattering this biochar product across other particularly contaminated farmlands as a method to trap forever chemicals and stop them from entering run off and further polluting other ecosystems from farms.

The application of the rock dust was found to increase uptake of PFOS via plants, accelerating the decline of this chemical in the soil by between 20 and 40 percent. The effects weren’t as strong for PFOAS, but PFOS are considered the bigger regulatory priority, the researchers say. 

 

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If the uptake plants were recycled into biochar and spread over contaminated farmland, this would immobilize enough PFAS to reduce the runoff of these chemicals by 95%. Overall, they found that these combined solutions could limit PFAS levels in US soils to below the thresholds of concern within a decade. The double-whammy of rock dust and biochar would also remove 10.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually if these remediation methods were scaled up cross-country. 

Conventional clean-up methods would involve excavating and burning a huge quantity of farmland soil: this huge endeavour would cost an estimated $1.6 million per hectare, ultimately amounting to $8 trillion ultimately. Meanwhile, the researchers calculate that their approach would cut that per-hectare annual cost to a fraction—just $1,460.

The study focused on the US, but its authors are keen to emphasize its rest-of-the-world relevance. In Europe 50% of sewage sludge—about 10 millions tons—produced annually is spread over farmland; China applies the same amount to its soils. In the UK that figure is 70%. PFAS is likely to keep accumulating in soil, but their solution to this problem is “broadly applicable,” the researchers say. 

“We outline a path that allows farmers to continue to work their land while restoring soil health.”

Planavsky et. al. “Integrated thermal and phytoremediation of agriculturalsoils impacted by PFAS.” PNAS. 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

Empowering women through greater access to finance could “strengthen” households’ resilience to “climate shocks”, according to a new study.  

Published in Climate Risk Management, it analyses the impact of financial access on “women-headed households” in sub-Saharan Africa. 

The study finds that where women had formal financial access – such as through owning a bank account – households were more able to withstand short-term shocks.

It adds that “climate shocks”, such as extreme weather events and the impacts of climate change, can cause economic crises, which destabilise communities and households. 

However, the authors say that in order to protect households from long-term climate vulnerabilities – including “droughts, floods and sea-level rise” – financial access would need to be paired with wider efforts to tackle gender inequality. 

They add that the findings could have important implications for policy in sub-Saharan Africa, where many countries and households are vulnerable to climate disasters. 

Financial inclusion 

The study highlights that entrenched gender disparities mean many women still have unequal access to financial services in sub-Saharan Africa

For example, women are still less likely to have their own bank accounts and instead are often dependent on male relatives for access to finance. 

The number of women with access to an account in the region had risen to 52% as of 2024, according to data from World Bank Group.

However, as shown in the chart below, the gap between men and women has also increased, rising from just under 5 percentage points in 2011 to 12 in 2024. 

Share of population with bank accounts by gender over 2011-2024, %. Source: Global Findex Database, World Bank Group

Using survey data from Afrobarometer, the new study analyses 25,511 women-headed households across 37 sub-Saharan countries. 

The authors use the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) framework to measure “financial inclusion”. This looks at factors such as having a bank account, owning a mobile phone and having internet access. 

Francis Anaisie, a co-author on the study, tells Carbon Brief the researchers were motivated by the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs). Anaisie, an economist at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, says the study specifically looked at SDGs five and 13, on gender equality and addressing climate issues. He adds: 

“Financial inclusion is one of the key policy tools for empowering women or for empowerment. But as to whether this actually translates into better climate outcomes for women is not known or is limited; this study seeks to address that gap.”

The study finds households with higher levels of financial access for women had higher levels of women’s empowerment, when this is defined as the ability to make choices and have control over economic and social outcomes. 

This was checked by cross-comparing financial access against different measures of women’s empowerment, such as financial security, voting rights and connection to communities.

In particular, the study found that “financially included” women had greater political and economic empowerment, such as financial security and voting rights. On some measures of social empowerment, however, the link was weaker – financial access alone was not enough to erase cultural and social barriers to gender equality. 

Women and climate change 

It has been well documented that women are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change than men. 

Environmental shocks affect women disproportionately due to a range of factors. These include income disparities, higher rates of displacement and unequal access to land.

Financial inequality and barriers to economic resources, such as needing internet access to make digital payments, play a key role in climate vulnerability, says Tracy Kajumba. She is director for the Least Developed Countries initiative for Effective Adaptation and Resilience (LIFE-AR) interim secretariat at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). 

Kajumba, who was not involved in the study, explains to Carbon Brief:

“Women are on the front line doing farming, planting, harvesting and these things that are all impacted [by climate change]. If they don’t have the income to invest either in drought-resistant crops or water-saving technologies, it becomes difficult for households to adapt.”

Calculating climate resilience 

The new study measures the impact of financial inclusion on women’s empowerment and, in turn, on climate resilience.  

It evaluates a household’s ability to withstand and recover from “shocks and stressors” by using a UN Food and Agriculture Organization metric for “resilience index measurement and analysis” (RIMA). 

For example, questionnaires are used to gather information about households in certain areas. The data is then used, together with key indicators, to quantify a household’s resilience to food insecurity, climate variability and economic crisis, amongst other risks. 

The 25,511 households surveyed across sub-Saharan Africa were found to be relatively resilient overall and had a high capacity to bounce back from climate shocks. However, they had much lower ability to adapt, in order to build protective capacity in advance of extreme events.

In addition, the study finds that women’s financial empowerment had a positive impact on a household’s ability to “absorb” a climate shock, suggesting that financial access is critical for responding to climate change. 

Community garden and climate adaption project, focusing on women’s empowerment, Niger. Credit: Joerg Boethling / Alamy Stock Photo

Increased empowerment through financial access enables women to make decisions about planting crops, to access credit in emergencies and to buy or sell food at a better price, the study notes. 

For example, it says increased financial access and women’s empowerment help households to deal with the immediate consequences of an extreme weather event, such as a drought. This could be through building community mutual-support networks and by enabling access to savings, to keep the household running. 

Anaisie says the study shows women’s empowerment has a significant impact on climate resilience. He tells Carbon Brief: 

“If we include women in the financial system, in the case of any climate issue they can save, they can be independent, they can rely on investment to absorb these shocks. This empowerment will help them to be more resilient to climate shocks…We can make progress because SDG goals are all about inclusiveness. It’s all about inclusive growth.”

However, the study notes that financial access does not necessarily create long-term change, which would make the household less vulnerable to extreme weather in the first place. 

The authors suggest that lasting structural and cultural change is important for bringing about long-term resilience. They say that policies to address gender inequalities would help bring this about.

They say such policies could include gender-sensitive agricultural credit schemes, subsidised climate insurance for women farmers in drought-prone regions, joint land-titling programmes and quotas for women in local climate-adaptation committees. 

Such policies would have helped women impacted by recent severe floods in Ghana to protect their savings, Anaisie explains. He tells Carbon Brief: 

“Women are engaged in economic activities, especially informal activities. They have resources and money, but when the flood came in, many women lost that. If they had access to insurance, this flood wouldn’t have cost them that much. 

“So, if the government comes out with financial initiatives, training, civic education and gender-focused initiatives, leadership training, women will be empowered and this will translate into their resilience with regards to climate change.”

Addressing climate vulnerability in sub-Saharan Africa 

The study could have policy implications for sub-Saharan Africa, a region particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The region faces increasingly extreme weather, heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and floods, as well as food scarcity and threats to crops. 

The study suggests that policies to address structural and cultural barriers to women’s financial autonomy could be a key way to build climate resilience across the region. 

However, it recognises that even where financial access is expanded, gender norms and cultural constraints continue to shape women’s social empowerment. This, in turn, affects their ability to adapt to climate change in the long term. 

Ultimately, addressing structural inequalities is needed to minimise climate vulnerability, says Kajumba. She adds that supporting adaptation with financial access can allow households to absorb shocks without falling into poverty – and to rebuild after climate impacts. 

Kajumba says that supporting adaptation with women’s financial access can allow households to absorb shocks without falling into poverty – and to rebuild after climate impacts. She adds:

“When they are supported [with] microloans, savings and all that, you will see change in income, change in households, change in health and education for the children as well.”

However, Kajumba notes that structural inequalities still “amplify” women’s vulnerability to climate impacts and make it harder for them to exercise agency and leadership. She adds:

“The tools that are being used are not always favourable for women…When we look at women in leadership and participation, you cannot lead or you cannot participate unless you have some level of income.”

Article information

Essossinam, A. et al. (2026) Effect of financial inclusion and women empowerment on climate resilience: Evidence from sub-Saharan African households, Climate Risk Management, doi:10.1016/j.crm.2026.100848

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The post Access to finance ‘strengthens climate resilience’ among sub-Saharan women appeared first on Carbon Brief.

EDMONTON — Tim Weis, Senior Director, Industrial Decarbonization at the Pembina Institute, made the following statement following the First Ministers’ announcement to advance the buildout of electricity infrastructure between provinces. “Recent...

Headline News:

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Miatta Fahnbulleh (Roger Harris, ©House of Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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