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Jacynta Fa’amau is a Pacific campaigner at global grassroots climate movement 350.org and a secretariat member of Pacific Climate Warriors.

The first thing that struck me was the sheer size of Queensland’s Saraji coal mine. Standing at the edge of the enormous pit, my brain scrambled for words as I scanned the earth’s open wound – a whole island could probably fit inside it. 

Looking down, I noticed footprints of an emu and a koala, pressed and dried in what was once a puddle – signs of how drought had driven animals in desperate search of water, so dangerously close to the coal trucks and heavy machinery ahead.

Earlier this year, I joined a small group of Pacific Islanders on a journey through the Bowen Basin to learn from First Nations communities battling Australia’s mammoth coal industry. Of the more than 40 coal mines operating in the area, BHP & Mitsubishi Alliance’s Saraji mine is one of the largest. So it came as a painful shock to us when in August, the Australian government approved the mine’s extension just months after our visit. 

• Oct 2, 2026 Comment As COP31 co-host, Australia should make its polluters pay for climate damage With UN climate funds running short on cash, now is the time to start taxing the companies whose emissions are driving harm in the Pacific and other vulnerable parts of the world Read more
• Oct 5, 2026 Politics At pre-COP, UN climate chief warns of heat threat to mothers and babies The spotlight on maternal health came on the first day of the pre-COP31 meeting in Fiji, where Pacific concerns are set to top the agenda as ministers gather for talks Read more

Witnessing coal extraction is devastating. It is bad enough to see what pillaging tonnes of coal can do to a mine’s immediate surroundings: dry creek beds, dwindling wildlife, denuded land. But to know that this coal will be shipped across the ocean, bring air pollution, and eventually lead to the destruction of Pacific islands thousands of miles away is another kind of heartbreak.

Rising ocean waters

I’m an Australian-born Samoan. In 2002, I visited my family home for the first time. My father took me to the rural community where generations of my family were raised. He did not have the words to describe how much has changed since rising ocean waters had taken away almost a third of the beach.

I learned of how we had to relocate my great‑great‑grandparents’ grave to higher ground twice in the last 15 years. Of how my cousins have to paddle out further to sea to catch fish, since warmer waters have destroyed much of the reef. Of how the ocean crashes so close to my uncle’s home that he had to build a new house further away. 

A climate activist protesting the drilling of new coal seam gas wells holds a sign during a demonstration outside Origin Energy Ltd’s Annual General Meeting in Sydney, Australia, October 15, 2025. REUTERS/Hollie Adams A climate activist protesting the drilling of new coal seam gas wells holds a sign during a demonstration outside Origin Energy Ltd’s Annual General Meeting in Sydney, Australia, October 15, 2025. REUTERS/Hollie Adams

We saw reflections of our own climate destruction in the Pacific when we shared these stories with our First Nations relatives at the edge of the Saraji mine. Murrawah Johnson and Teila Watson, both Birri Gubba and Gangulu women, made clear connections between their struggles and ours. “We don’t get to inherit our land and we don’t get to inherit our traditional roles. We are fighting a war on extinction,” Murrawah said.

Coal extraction devastated their lands and cultures – totems have disappeared, fresh water has become scarce – while the effects of using it have devastated ours. “King tide, cyclones, all the violence that has been enacted on your country and people is because of the violence that has been allowed here, to us and our country,” Teila said.

Wearing the mantle of climate leadership

This week, Australia is assuming the mantle of climate leadership as co-president and head of negotiations of this year’s UN Climate Change Conference, COP31. It will lead on deliberating the summit’s priorities as world leaders and climate negotiators descend on Fiji and Tuvalu for the pre-COP meetings.

Ironically, just days before the pre-COP began, the New South Wales Independent Planning Commission approved the largest-ever coal project the state has seen, set to emit an extra 800 million tonnes of carbon emissions. I joined the Pacific Climate Warriors and other communities in submitting about 4,000 appeals to oppose the project – yet these all fell on deaf ears. 

• Sep 18, 2026 News Fossil fuel expansion threatens COP31 hosts’ credibility, experts warn Türkiye and Australia are pushing coal, oil and gas at home with no national timeline for their own fossil fuel phase-out Read more
• Mar 19, 2025 Justice This Australian coal community is co-designing its own green future The mining town of Collie offers a promising example of how to survive – and even thrive – amid the global transition to net-zero emissions Read more

But the fight is not yet over. The project still requires federal approval to proceed, so every promise that Australia makes while at the helm of the climate talks counts. These promises will be measured against actual decisions it makes at home: to either lock us into more decades of climate pollution, or begin shutting down coal and gas once and for all.

Pacific leaders have made it clear that countries must align their policies with the 1.5-degree warming goal, a limit that we already know will be breached within the decade. Any chance of keeping this still within reach requires an immediate end to fossil fuel expansion and concrete plans to phase out existing projects. But success will be an uphill battle if COP31’s own head of negotiations refuses to lead by example.

Kaibakia Pinata holds the fish he caught in his nets off Bikeman islet, located off South Tarawa in the central Pacific island nation of Kiribati May 25, 2013. Credit: Reuters Kaibakia Pinata holds the fish he caught in his nets off Bikeman islet, located off South Tarawa in the central Pacific island nation of Kiribati May 25, 2013. Credit: Reuters

Australia remains the second-largest coal exporter in the world. It is one of the very few industrialised countries under the Paris Agreement’s Annex I that still has no coal phase-out plan. Since 2022, the Albanese government has approved 37 new, expanded or extended coal, oil and gas projects. It is thus unsurprising that its own mitigation policies have been rated by Climate Action Tracker as “insufficient”, even without factoring in fossil fuel exports and related expansion.

Keeping 1.5C alive

Australia must course-correct to earn the mantle it has been given, especially by Pacific nations that backed the country’s bid for the COP31 co-presidency. As a first step, the government must end all coal expansion and explicitly declare a coal phase-out date. It’s the only way to show that it’s capable of leadership that moves beyond endlessly deliberating the “if”, and starts implementing the “how” of keeping the 1.5C target alive. 

The dread I felt staring down at the abyss on the edge of that coal mine months ago still exists. I carry it with me as I show up at the pre-COP to demand that leaders heed the calls of Pacific people. But it is tempered with resolve to keep our lands and communities alive. We remain steadfast in our efforts to secure an outcome that protects people everywhere and brings us back below 1.5 degrees as soon as possible.

The post Coal mines and hypocrisy must not be Australia’s COP31 legacy appeared first on Climate Home News.

When José Antonio Kast took office as Chile’s new president in March, one of his first moves was to put the brakes on plans to expand two protected marine parks – raising doubts about the country’s high-profile bid to host the headquarters of the High Seas Treaty.

But during the UN General Assembly last month, the right-wing leader reaffirmed his leftist predecessor’s ambition for Chile to host the landmark global pact, which came into effect in January and provides a legal framework to protect the waters of the high seas beyond national jurisdiction that cover about two-thirds of the world’s oceans.

Hailing the country’s “maritime vocation”, Kast’s government said the bid to host the treaty’s secretariat in the port city of Valparaíso was state policy and testament to its commitment to multilateralism.

“For the government of Chile, it is of high interest to achieve this recognition, and we will carry out all the efforts to obtain the necessary support,” Foreign Minister Francisco Pérez Mackenna was quoted as saying by local media.

• Oct 5, 2026 Politics At pre-COP, UN climate chief warns of heat threat to mothers and babies The spotlight on maternal health came on the first day of the pre-COP31 meeting in Fiji, where Pacific concerns are set to top the agenda as ministers gather for talks Read more
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Tough competition from Chinese, Belgian bids

But to garner the votes it needs, Chile must fend off competing bids by Belgium – which has proposed its well-connected capital, Brussels – and China, whose well-funded bid includes the provision of free premises in the coastal city of Xiamen and five years of free utility costs.

Parties to the treaty, formally called the Agreement on Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), will choose the headquarters at their first summit (COP1), in New York from January 11 to January 22, 2027. They will seek consensus, falling back on a two-thirds majority in successive secret ballots.

Chile has offered to provide a restored waterside warehouse “at its own expense” as office space, pitching itself to developing countries as a Global South alternative to Europe-centred Brussels. Among richer countries, it is promoting its democratic credentials and greater transparency as an alternative to China. 

Rolling back environmental safeguards at home?

While the South American country remains the top pick among environmental campaigners and other civil society groups, critics of Kast’s government say recent policy moves may make it harder for the country to garner the support it needs.

On March 12, the day after Kast took office, the Environment Ministry withdrew 43 decrees awaiting legal approval, including a push to expand the Mar de Juan Fernández and Nazca-Desventuradas marine parks – vast protected areas in Chile’s Pacific Ocean waters. Both remain under review, the ministry told Climate Home News.

The decrees also included an emission standard for coal power plants and regulations for Chile’s new biodiversity and protected areas service.

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A month after holding up the decrees, Kast questioned aspects of Chile’s urban wetlands protection law, suggesting it was sometimes an unjustified obstacle to much-needed housing development, and his administration has also sought to ease the rules on salmon farming in the world’s second-largest producer. 

In August, the Constitutional Court struck down the salmon farming reform after a challenge by opposition lawmakers and warnings from green groups including Greenpeace, which said it could help farms relocate into protected areas such as the Kawésqar National Reserve. 

Valparaíso mayor Camila Nieto, from former leftist President Gabriel Boric’s party, backs the bid to host the High Seas Treaty, but said she hoped “the government’s support also translates into public policies consistent with the goals of protecting and conserving the oceans”.

“The decisions a country makes on environmental matters can influence international perceptions of its commitment to protecting the oceans. That is something we cannot ignore,” Nieto told Climate Home News.

A Victorgorgia coral hosts brittle stars on a seamount in the Salas y Gómez ridge. (Photo: Center for Ecology and Sustainable Management of Oceanic Islands / Schmidt Ocean Institute) China’s bid stirs concerns over data access, fishing

Chile’s past record on marine protection – it has protected 43% of its jurisdictional waters – could yet give it an edge.

“Chile deserves it for its conservation record as a state. For more than 15 years Chile has been following this path,” Liesbeth van der Meer, executive director at conservation group Oceana in Chile, told Climate Home News.

Concerns in some quarters about the rival bid by China – for example, over a potential conflict of interest due to the vast Chinese fishing industry – may also weigh in Chile’s favour, experts say.

Chinese-flagged vessels did about 30% of detected high seas fishing between 2022 and 2024, according to an Oceana analysis of Global Fishing Watch data. China also sponsors five of the International Seabed Authority’s 31 deep-sea mining exploration contracts, more than any other country. 

The secretariat would host sensitive marine data, making transparency paramount, experts say.

China says hosting the secretariat in Xiamen would help make the treaty more globally representative, fostering cooperation between rich and developing countries and aiding equitable access to marine science and technology.

Wang Yi, China’s minister of foreign affairs, said in a statement that the country has “all along championed true multilateralism” and “firmly defended” UN institutions. Given Xiamen’s $38-billion ocean industry, the city lives up to the treaty’s “significance and promising future”, he added.

Meanwhile, Chile is proposing the treaty’s first high seas marine protected area for the Salas y Gómez and Nazca ridges, a chain of more than 110 seamounts stretching about 4,000 km from off Peru to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) that is rich in endemic fish and other marine species.

The ridges are “a true oasis of productivity”, said Carlos Gaymer, director of the Centre for Ecology and Sustainable Management of Oceanic Islands at Universidad Católica del Norte and co-author of a 2021 scientific review of the area. 

Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel Falkor deploys a remotely operated vehicle on the Salas y Gómez ridge in January 2024. Chilean scientists rely on foreign ships to study the area. (Photo: Center for Ecology and Sustainable Management of Oceanic Islands / Schmidt Ocean Institute)

The water is so clear that phytoplankton thrive around 200 metres down, feeding zooplankton, small fish and, up the chain, sharks and seabirds. Whales, turtles and sharks use the ridges as “a real highway” across the Pacific, Gaymer said. Parts of the Nazca ridge are likely nursery grounds for jack mackerel and swordfish.

Chile has already asked the body that regulates the industry in the area – the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO) – to close the ridges to all fishing vessels. According to Chilean data, more than 80% of fishing in the area involves Chinese vessels.

Meeting on the Chilean request in early September, SPRFMO’s scientific committee agreed only to recommend closing the area to bottom fishing. SPRFMO’s commission will take the final decision at its next meeting, in early 2027.

For Gaymer, Chile’s push to close the area to fishing should be seen as a “starting point” for the treaty proposal. 

“Every time there’s a new expedition, species new to science appear,” Gaymer said. “If you don’t protect areas like these … those species simply disappear from the planet.”

The post Race to host High Seas Treaty HQ heats up as Chile reaffirms bid appeared first on Climate Home News.

Mohamed Adow is the founder and director of Power Shift Africa.

What does it mean to ask a continent to adapt to a crisis it did little to create? For Africa, that question has stopped being philosophical as it is answered every day in flooded communities, failed harvests, disappearing livelihoods and public budgets stretched by disasters they cannot afford. 

Africa produces a negligible share of global emissions, but between 1970 and 2021 it accounted for around 35% of climate-related deaths worldwide. The continent is therefore confronting a brutal contradiction that is exemplified by the fact that those who have contributed least to the climate crisis are carrying some of its heaviest costs. 

And that explains why, for us, it is worrying that much of the climate debate treats adaptation as a technical exercise. Build better infrastructure, they say. Improve early-warning systems, they urge. Develop drought-resistant crops, they preach. Strengthen disaster preparedness, they yell. All of these things matter, but they do not answer the harder question of why some people and countries are so much more vulnerable in the first place.

At pre-COP, UN climate chief warns of heat threat to mothers and babies

That is the question we have spent the last couple of years trying to answer, and it culminates in our recently launched thought-provoking report that shows how Africa’s vulnerability is not an accident of geography, but has instead been shaped by history, economics and power.

Colonial extraction, unequal development, debt dependency, global economic asymmetries and exclusion from international decision-making have all constrained the resources and choices available to African countries, and climate change is intensifying those existing inequalities, shows the report, titled “A Just Transition for Adaptation: A Framework and Vision for Africa”.  

Widening adaptation finance gap

I say it is ‘thought-provoking’ because it asks us to rethink adaptation itself – not as a collection of projects designed to help people cope with climate impacts, but as a question of justice, power and structural change. 

That distinction might not sit well with some people, but for Africa it matters, because there is a danger in asking vulnerable countries simply to become more “resilient”. Resilient against what? How can you ask people to toughen up while letting them be strangled by a system that continues to reproduce the very inequalities that have made resilience so difficult? 

If you want to know where the problem is, see where the money is coming from and where it is going. That becomes quite stark when you consider the fact that Africa’s annual adaptation needs are close to $70 billion but its adaptation finance flows are only around $14 billion.

Editor’s Desk: Nepal’s disaster has laid bare the world’s adaptation accountability gap

At the same time, a growing proportion of climate finance is being delivered through commercial loans rather than grants. That means countries already under severe fiscal pressure are being asked to borrow to protect themselves from climate impacts they did little to cause. 

There is something deeply wrong with a system in which climate-vulnerable countries are spending more of their own public money on adaptation than they receive in international support, because that system turns climate injustice into a financial transaction, with those least responsible carrying more of the cost.

Members of civil society call for a tripling of adaptation finance. (Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth) Members of civil society call for a tripling of adaptation finance. (Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth) From extractivism to African ownership 

And, as the new report shows, the problem goes beyond finance. Africa’s land, minerals, forests and other resources have become central to the global transition towards lower-carbon economies. Markets and green industrial projects may offer genuine opportunities, but without African ownership, participation and accountability, there is a risk that old patterns of extraction will simply be repackaged in the language of the green economy, and that is why we argue that a transition can be low-carbon and still be unjust. 

It is precisely because of this risk that the report’s idea of a  just transition for adaptation becomes important as it expands the idea beyond the familiar focus on emissions and energy systems. It asks what justice looks like when the goal is not simply to reduce carbon, but to enable societies to withstand a changing climate without reproducing the inequalities that made them vulnerable. 

The report places four dimensions of justice at the centre: recognition, participation, distribution and restoration. 

From Belém to Antalya – gains, gaps and challenges for a new Just Transition Mechanism 

Recognition means taking African realities and knowledge seriously. Indigenous and local knowledge has too often been treated as peripheral to “real” climate expertise, even though communities possess generations of detailed understanding of ecosystems, rainfall, soils, water and livelihoods. That knowledge should inform adaptation policy from the beginning, rather than being added after decisions have already been made. 

Participation means giving affected communities a genuine voice in decisions about their land, resources and futures. Adaptation governance should be inclusive, democratic, rights-based and rooted in free, prior and informed consent. 

Climate justice must confront unequal development

Meanwhile, distribution asks who actually receives adaptation finance, technology and protection? Money that is announced internationally but fails to reach vulnerable communities does little to change their reality. 

And, finally, restoration recognises that present-day vulnerability has a history. Climate justice cannot begin and end with today’s emissions, but must also confront the structural conditions that have shaped unequal development and continue to limit African countries’ room to respond. 

This report, therefore, is an invitation to change the terms of the conversation on just transition. Africa definitely needs adaptation, but that should not mean endlessly adjusting to an unjust system. The real goal should be something more ambitious; a transition in which resilience, development and justice reinforce one another, shaped by African priorities and grounded in African realities. 

The post Africa should not have to adapt to an unjust climate system  appeared first on Climate Home News.

A joint publication of The Revelator and Crucial Comix.

Sources:

• • 50 office spaces https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/energy-star-expands-efforts-improve-energy-efficiency-us-data-centers
  • 3-5 million gallons of water per day for cooling https://vcnva.org/bill-of-the-day-data-center-growth/
  • Heat nearby neighborhoods by as much as 4 degrees F https://news.asu.edu/20260518-environment-and-sustainability-turning-down-heat-data-centers
  • Constant, low-frequency noise https://www.sierraclub.org/ohio/blog/2026/02/data-centers-noise-pollution-ohio-communities-are-organizing-accountability
  • Size of 150 Walmart Supercenters https://www.pecva.org/work/energy-work/mitigating-data-center-developments-impacts/
  • $2.4 billion per month https://ourworldindata.org/how-much-is-the-us-spending-on-building-data-centers
  • do not bring many permanent jobs https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/do-data-centers-create-few-permanent-jobs
  • County administrator is tearing up https://virginiabusiness.com/google-botetourt-data-center-purchase/
  • 8th largest data center complex in the world https://cardinalnews.org/2026/07/09/by-water-use-googles-botetourt-site-would-be-its-8th-largest-data-center-complex-in-the-world/
  • 12 Olympic-sized swimming pools https://scienceline.org/2010/02/what-would-you-do-with-eight-million-gallons-of-water-every-day/
  • Government and companies have an insatiable need https://wtop.com/virginia/2026/07/how-virginia-became-the-worlds-data-center-capital-and-how-its-going/
  • 72% of Virginia voters oppose the state-wide tax exemption for data centers https://wjla.com/news/local/virginia-spanberger-popularity-vcu-poll-election-commonwealth-university-abigail-democrats-economy-data-centers-grocery-store-costs-of-living-impacts-business
  • 73% of Virginia voters blame data centers for rising energy bills https://ccanactionfund.org/media/New-Polling-on-Virginians-Views-of-Data-Centers-and-Rising-Energy-Costs.pdf
  • A map of the United States with data centers https://cleanview.co/data-centers/us

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Previously in The Revelator:

The Land Is an Ancestor We Refuse to Abandon: In the Shadows of the Hermosa Mine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The post Virginia Is for Lovers … of Data Centers? appeared first on The Revelator.

Extreme heat poses a growing threat to pregnant women and their babies, both before and after birth, the UN climate chief said on Monday, calling it “a new faultline in the global climate crisis, and one which is potentially fatal”.

Speaking on the first day of the pre-COP31 meeting in Fiji, where new research was launched on the issue, Simon Stiell warned: “This faultline must not become another deep chasm of climate-driven suffering, inequality and injustice.”

Rather than being a time of hope, he added, pregnancy is becoming “a time of anxiety, as climate impacts fill everyday life with risk”, straining health systems and threatening essentials like food, water and power – especially in poorer countries where many women work outdoors and live in informal housing far from under-equipped clinics.

• Oct 1, 2026 News What’s on the climate calendar for October 2026? Brazilians are heading to the polls, diplomats are gathering in the Pacific for pre-COP, and it’s crunch time for the IPCC Read more
• Jun 11, 2026 Science WHO issues new guidance on heat-health action plans, as El Niño sets in Amid warnings of “unprecedented” weather extremes this year, the World Health Organization urges governments to strengthen protections for vulnerable groups Read more

In a new international survey of 1,000 maternal healthcare professionals in Australia, Brazil, India, the UK and Zimbabwe, around three-quarters reported an increase in heat-related cases or complications affecting pregnant women, as well as foetal and newborn health, over the past five years.

Nearly all respondents in the survey commissioned by Wellcome, a global charitable foundation, said they had cared for a pregnant woman or baby whose health they believed had been affected by extreme temperatures.

Researchers have linked heat exposure with preterm birth, low birth weight, stillbirth and maternal complications. For every 1 degree Celsius rise in heat exposure, the odds of preterm birth increase by around 5%, while exposure to heatwaves is associated with a 25% higher risk of obstetric complications.

“No woman should have to fear that extreme heat will harm the baby she is carrying,” said Julia Gillard, chair of Wellcome and former Australian prime minister, adding “pregnant women must not be invisible”.

Call to include mothers and midwives

Wellcome urged governments to include pregnant women, new mothers and babies in their national climate and health plans, with funded measures to protect them from extreme heat.

It also called on the World Health Organization to develop clinical guidance on heat, pregnancy and the postpartum period, alongside stronger data and surveillance on how heat exposure impacts maternal and newborn health.

The charity is backing a study in Zimbabwe and South Africa to test simple interventions such as handheld fans, reflective paint on health-facility roofs and community-led climate information systems.

Extreme heat costing India’s poorest workers 2% of GDP, survey finds

The International Confederation of Midwives, which represents over 2 million midwives, is also pushing for action, asking countries to include maternal healthcare professionals in their National Adaptation Plans, and provide finance to ensure clinics have access to reliable water, power and cooling.

Chief executive Anna af Ugglas told an event on adaptation at Climate Week NYC that midwives tire more easily when working in high heat, which can lead them to make errors. They are often first responders in a crisis – and yet “too many climate and emergency plans are still developed without them”, she added.

Pacific hosts Pre-COP

The campaign to put maternal health on the climate policy agenda kicked off the proceedings in Fiji, where ministers and other attendees from around 50 countries are gathering this week to advance discussions in the run-up to the COP31 climate summit in Antalya next month.

This year’s annual UN climate conference is taking place in Türkiye which holds the COP presidency, while Australia is in charge of the negotiations – a deal worked out after a long rivalry to host COP31.

Australia is using its role to spotlight the concerns of the Pacific region to which it belongs, where low-lying island nations are under threat from sea level rise.

On Tuesday, a group of 14 government leaders – mainly from the Pacific – plus heads of international organisations including the Green Climate Fund and the Asian Development Bank will visit climate resilience projects in neighbouring Tuvalu.

Leaders will visit a Green Climate Fund-backed coastal resilience project in Tuvalu during the Pre-COP31 meeting in the Pacific. (Photo courtesy of the Australia-Pacific Partnership for COP31) Leaders will visit a Green Climate Fund-backed coastal resilience project in Tuvalu during the Pre-COP31 meeting in the Pacific. (Photo courtesy of the Australia-Pacific Partnership for COP31)

Key themes for the pre-COP – a glitzier event than usual – are keeping the 1.5C global warming limit within reach despite a projected overshoot, protecting oceans and improving access to finance for small island nations and the least-developed countries.

At a press conference on Monday, Australia’s climate change and energy minister Chris Bowen flagged his country’s investments in renewables, both in Pacific nations such as Vanuatu and at home, saying this would help lower the use of diesel, fossil gas and coal in energy supplies.

Ahead of the pre-COP, Australia has been criticised by climate campaigners and some Pacific leaders for greenlighting expanded coal production on its territory.

As COP31 co-host, Australia should make its polluters pay for climate damage

Asked about Australia’s ongoing support for fossil fuels, Fiji’s climate minister Lynda Tabuya said the issue had been raised by “certain countries” at a ministerial meeting on Monday.

“There will be things that we disagree on, but we can agree to disagree – and we’re just very grateful for the support of Australia and the commitment towards renewable energy, and I think that’s the direction that we need to take, especially in the Pacific,” she added.

The post At pre-COP, UN climate chief warns of heat threat to mothers and babies appeared first on Climate Home News.

Godzilla El Niño is coming Channel Comment brendan 5th October 2026 Teaser Media

In 2025, I sat locked in a room in a private home as military officials camped on the front porch. A surveillance photo of me taken that morning was circulating on WhatsApp around Kawasi Village, where I was staying on Obi Island in Indonesia. I was visiting as a representative of Earthworks, along with colleagues from Indonesian environmental NGO WALHI.

When I heard that surveillance and harassment resulted in WALHI staff and journalists abandoning their attempted reporting trip to that same village this summer, I recognized a pattern.

The North Maluku branch of the Indonesian NGO WALHI has experienced an environment of increasing hostilities and intimidation related to their work to support and advocate with mining-impacted communities on Obi Island. I saw it first hand. Now reporters had seen it too.

Nickel mining transforms a fishing village

The story on Obi Island has global significance. Nickel mining is booming in Indonesia. The country’s annual nickel production in 2015 was 130,000 tons. In 2025, it was 2.6M tons. This island nation is now responsible for more than 60 percent of the world’s nickel production. Much of that nickel goes into batteries, including batteries for electric vehicles. 

In 2010, Obi Island, known for its fishing and spice economy, became the site of a large nickel mining and processing operation owned by Harita Group. Since its opening, the operation has  caused an explosion of environmental and social harms:

• environmental pollution, 
• toxic and carcinogenic chemical leaks that affect drinking water,
• displacement of local residents, 
• health issues, 
• mine waste facilities that are at risk for catastrophic failure, and 
• reports of threats and intimidation and harassment of people speaking out.

Accountability depends on information justice

Kawasi Village residents have called for more transparency around Harita’s operations. WALHI and the Indonesian Society of Environmental Journalists (SIEJ) point out that, “there can be no environmental justice without information justice.”

A transition to cleaner transportation needs to be built with minerals that are sourced responsibly, and operations on Obi Island are raising concerns. Buyers, consumers, human rights advocates, environmentalists, and others are starting to pay attention. 

Communities need to be able to tell their stories without fear, and the media must be able to report those stories to the public. 

Companies and governments around the world use fear and harassment to try to silence communities that are defending their rights in the face of mining operations. But at Earthworks, we know that people who are standing up for their families and their land and water are not easy to silence, and their voices must be heard in order to find lasting solutions.

Journalists cancel visit due to intimidation

Most recently, a group of journalists experienced intimidation and surveillance. Over the course of four days in June and July 2026, WALHI and SEIJ jointly organized a trip for five journalists to report about the situation on Obi Island. 

The journalists who attended were from Konde, which focuses on women’s issues in Indonesia; Mongabay, an international environmental science publication; Project Multatuli, a collective focused on underreported populations and holding power accountable; Bahalo Project; and Tempo, one of the largest and best-known newspapers in Indonesia. 

Obi Island is only reachable by boat, and the surveillance began while the group was on a ferry, en route to the island. Two people began following the group on board the ferry and asking questions about the purpose of their work and trip to Obi Island. 

When the SIEJ and WALHI group arrived on Obi Island, the police chief said that they had entered without alerting local authorities and security officials. Residents of one of the towns on the island, Kawasi Village, had to come and help transport the group to safety. 

A group from Eco Village, a village where Harita has relocated some residents impacted by their operations, also attempted to turn the reporters away at the port.

The journalists were forced to cancel their visit to the area and were unable to continue their reporting work.

Indonesian military surveillance targets Earthworks and WALHI

This is not the first time that civil society groups have faced intimidation and surveillance while visiting Obi Island for work regarding Harita Group’s operations and impacts. 

In April 2025, during a visit with WALHI staff to Kawasi Village, I was surveilled and harassed by military security officials. 

Within 12 hours of arriving on the ferry, my photo was circulating via WhatsApp messages. Military security contacted a colleague to let them know that they had my photo and to ask questions about the purpose and timing of my visit. Plainclothes military officials visited the home where I was staying with a local family. The officers camped out on the front porch for hours while I stayed locked away in my room. 

The harassment continued while in transit leaving Obi Island. Plainclothes military officials turned up on a neighboring island as we switched boats. They began interrogating WALHI colleagues about me and our visit to Kawasi Village. I decided to spend the nearly 24-hour trip that remained inside a small cabin to avoid further harassment by the officials.  

These tactics effectively limited Earthworks and WALHI’s ability to witness mining impacts on the village and surrounding areas and to speak with community members living near Harita’s operations. 

Intimidation pattern raises concerns

Harita Group’s operations on Obi Island are currently undergoing an audit by the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance. IRMA offers independent assessments of whether or not specific industrial mines meet standards for responsible mining. Voluntary standards like IRMA can be a powerful way to improve mining companies’ practices. Everyone involved, including communities and NGO staff, needs to be able to engage in the process without fear.

Both incidents took place around the time when IRMA auditors were expected to be visiting the area. The 2025 incident occurred just days before the onsite audit. Currently, Harita is nearing the end of its optional corrective action period as part of this audit. That means another review of the operations by the audit team will take place in the coming months. 

Earthworks reported these incidents to the audit team, highlighting concerns about residents’ ability to safely participate in the audit without fear of intimidation or retaliation, as well as the pattern of military security restricting access to Kawasi Village, the community most directly affected by Harita’s operations. In its July 2026 update, Harita states that “During and beyond the CAP process, communities, and other stakeholders may raise concerns at any time through our whistleblowing and public grievance channels, which allow anonymous or non-anonymous reporting, with each matter logged, reviewed, and tracked through to resolution.” 

Effective corporate grievance mechanisms like Harita’s require trust that reports will result in action to address the issue and that retaliation will not result — or they require stakeholders to carefully weigh the risks to themselves and others. Now that my experience is part of a pattern, I decided to share this story publicly.

Earthworks and Indonesian NGOs call on officials uphold human rights and transparency

WALHI and SIEJ point out that Law 40 in Indonesia protects freedom of press and freedom from interference  and Law 32 and the Indonesian Constitution protect the right to a healthy environment. Attempts to silence reporting on the impacts from mining operations on Obi Island are not in the spirit of the national laws upholding democratic institutions and good governance. 

Community members, NGO experts, and reporters must be able to speak about the impacts of mining without harassment and fear. Their knowledge and insights are important for buyers, policymakers, and advocates. We need truth, not silence, to build a sustainable future that works for everyone. 

Earthworks joins WALHI AND SIEJ’s call for Harita Group to uphold the principles of democracy, human rights, transparency, and freedom of press.

The post Silencing the Story: Surveillance and Harassment Limit Reporting on Harita’s Nickel Operations in Indonesia appeared first on Earthworks.

Several major banks that helped set up the UN’s now-defunct Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) in 2021 have since continued to lend money to coal companies, a new report has revealed.

Bank of America, Barclays, Citibank, Deutsche Bank and Santander were heavily involved in the NZBA and the associated Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) when it was launched by Mark Carney, then a UN climate envoy and now Canada’s leader, in the run-up to the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

Despite their involvement, data released this week shows those banks and some others did not reduce the amount of money they lent, nor the value of their underwriting, to coal activities between 2022 and 2025. Around half of the NZBA members who were engaged in coal financing over that time increased it and half cut it, according to the report by German environmental research group Urgewald.

Ana Botín, executive chair of Santander, was a member of the GFANZ CEO principals’ group and said at the time of the NZBA launch that her Spanish bank was “proud to be part of the founding members of this new alliance and to accelerate progress towards net zero”.

Since then, the report’s data documents that Santander has provided loans and underwriting worth hundreds of millions of dollars each year to coal companies, particularly American coal-power plant operators Duke Energy and the Southern Company. Santander did not respond to a request for comment.

Urgewald’s research adjusts the value of loans and underwriting provided to coal companies based on how much of a company’s revenues come from the most polluting fossil fuel. So a hypothetical $100 million loan to German utility RWE is valued at $21 million, as 21% of RWE’s revenue is from coal.

The research does not take account of whether companies are expanding their coal business or phasing it out for greener alternatives. Some banks have said their coal clients need to put in place transition plans by a certain date. Some also say that, by a certain date, they will stop lending money to clients that get more than a set percentage of their revenue from coal.

• Oct 1, 2026 News What’s on the climate calendar for October 2026? Brazilians are heading to the polls, diplomats are gathering in the Pacific for pre-COP, and it’s crunch time for the IPCC Read more
• Sep 22, 2026 Energy UN chief urges countries to adopt fossil fuel transition plans with timelines In his last speech to the UN General Assembly, António Guterres for the first time called on every nation to deliver a plan to phase out coal, oil and gas while protecting workers Read more

Most companies expanding coal are in Asian nations like China, India and Indonesia and are largely financed by banks from their own countries. But there are examples of NZBA founding members supporting companies that are actively prolonging the life of their coal businesses.

For example, Glencore, a Switzerland-based multinational that gets 4% of its revenue from coal, has just won preliminary regulatory approval to keep on coal mining in Australia’s Hunter Valley until 2045. Last year, the company was supported by loans and underwriting from Bank of America, Citigroup, Santander, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Standard Chartered.

Good and bad news

Some NZBA founding members like Swiss giant UBS have reduced their loans and underwriting for coal companies, the data suggests. Others – like Triodos and Kenya Commercial Bank – have provided no support for coal companies since at least 2021.

Urgewald researcher Hannah O’Neill told Climate Home News that “the banking sector is not moving in one direction. There is a growing divide between banks that are tightening their coal policies and reducing their exposure, and those where coal policies remain weak or where financing continues.” 

Unlike the UN’s Race to Zero campaign, with which it partnered, the NZBA did not require its members to end financing for fossil fuels like coal, leading to accusations by climate campaigners that its rules were too weak.

Despite this, after Donald Trump’s re-election as US president in November 2024, several North American banks quit the alliance and the NZBA’s requirements were diluted in April 2025. After further withdrawals, the group shut itself down in October 2025.

Globally, the Urgewald report found that many banks in the European Union, Thailand, Malaysia, India and Taiwan have reduced their coal finance since governments agreed at COP26 to phase down coal power.

But with Chinese, American, Indonesian and South Korean banks increasing their support, total bank financing for the coal industry has remained broadly the same each year since 2022. 

“Coal financing is not disappearing – but it is concentrating in banks and markets where coal policies are either missing or weak,” said Heffa Schücking, director of Urgewald.

Urgewald’s definition of coal companies includes firms and their subsidiaries that explore for, process, trade, transport and mine coal, or burn it in power plants to produce electricity, or manufacture equipment for the coal industry. It does not include companies that use coal to make cement or steel – and an adjustment is made to account for how much of the business model is coal-related.

Banks defend delays

At the time of publication, most of the banks named in the report for increasing their coal finance had not responded to requests for comment. But a spokesperson for Deutsche Bank pointed Climate Home News to its May 2026 announcement that it was delaying its requirement for existing clients to present it with transition plans and cut their coal exposure.

Instead of having to present these plans by the end of 2025, the bank has given them until the end of 2027. They will also have to ensure that their revenue share from thermal coal falls below half by then, the bank added. New clients need energy transition plans to access finance.

Deutsche Bank said at the time it was delaying its requirements because of the “increasingly complex regulatory environment as well as differing speeds of energy transition in various regions beyond what was anticipated by Deutsche Bank in 2023”.

Big banks’ lending to coal backers undermines Indonesia’s green plans 

A spokesperson for Barclays told Climate Home News: “Many companies in this report are diversified energy or mining companies. We do not provide financing to companies that generate more than 30% of revenues from thermal coal mining or power generation, and we will phase out all financing by 2035.”

The Barclays spokesperson added: “Barclays is financing an energy sector in transition, providing finance to meet current energy needs and also financing the scaling of clean energy. Over the past three years, we have facilitated more than $300 billion of sustainable and transition finance, including billions to cleaner energy projects, and invested millions into climate tech.”

The post Big banks behind “net zero” alliance continued lending to coal firms appeared first on Climate Home News.

Harjeet Singh is the global convenor of the Fill the Fund campaign and founding director of the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation. Julie-Anne Richards is strategic campaign lead for the Make Big Polluters Pay campaign in Australia.

This year, a glacier collapse in Nepal’s Himalayan valleys swept away the lives of at least 1,500 people, with recovery costs of US$5 billion, or 10% of national GDP. But this was not a tragedy for which no one can be blamed. This was a crime with a balance sheet – one whose costs are paid by people who did nothing to cause it, and whose profits are booked by polluting corporations that did everything.

Across the Pacific, the calculation of injustice is now brutally clear. According to Oxfam Australia, the average yearly GDP loss of Pacific countries from climate disasters has increased four-fold over the last decade, reaching 14.3% of GDP. The number of Pacific people battered by climate disasters has risen by 700% in a decade. Whole villages are being packed up and moved as the sea takes the land beneath them.

• Sep 30, 2026 Editor’s Column Editor’s Desk: Nepal’s disaster has laid bare the world’s adaptation accountability gap Knowledge about accelerating climate risks and how to adapt to them has grown over the past two decades – but it hasn’t been put into practice fast enough to protect communities Read more
• Oct 1, 2026 News What’s on the climate calendar for October 2026? Brazilians are heading to the polls, diplomats are gathering in the Pacific for pre-COP, and it’s crunch time for the IPCC Read more

Let’s look at the other ledger. This year, as climate change and an oil shock drove up the cost of living for ordinary families, Woodside – touted as “one of Australia’s biggest winners” from the war in the Middle East – reported revenues jumping nearly 30% to AUD$6 billion in just three months.

In Australia, Oxfam finds that in 2023-2024, fossil fuel corporations paid only AUD$22.8 billion in corporate income tax – just 5% of their AUD$436 billion in total reported income – while 26 out of 80, or one in every three large fossil fuel corporations, did not pay corporate income tax at all.

The polluters are not struggling to pay for the damage they cause. They are choosing not to.

This is the moral obscenity at the heart of the climate crisis: the money exists. It is simply flowing in the wrong direction. And nowhere is that clearer than in the funds the world built to protect the vulnerable, now left to languish.

Funds struggle to fill their coffers

The Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) has received US$2.8 billion in requests from 119 countries. And Nepal has sought an urgent US$20 million for immediate needs. Yet the Fund has only US$342 million in total to give.

The Pacific Resilience Facility – a fund the Pacific designed for itself, to prepare its own communities – sits well short of even its modest US$500 million capitalisation target. And the Adaptation Fund is running on empty. While adaptation needs in developing countries could reach US$387 billion a year by 2030, according to the latest UNEP Adaptation Gap report, the Fund’s resource mobilisation target of a modest US$300 million for 2025 fell far short, with only US$135 million pledged.

This is a matter of priorities, not of resources. For decades, the world has accepted a simple principle – the polluter pays principle – whether through the OECD, of which Australia is a member, or Europe’s carbon pricing. New York and Vermont have already passed laws to make Big Oil pay into climate superfunds, and ten more US states are moving to follow.

The idea is neither radical nor new. It’s time to make big polluters pay.

Comment: After Hormuz, Nepal and wildfires, people want action to make polluters pay

What is urgently needed is the courage to apply it to the fossil fuel corporations that have spent decades avoiding it. In November, Australia takes up the presidency of the COP31 negotiations, committing to stand shoulder to shoulder with its Pacific neighbours.

Australia, together with the Turkish COP31 Presidency, must guide and inspire progress at the upcoming climate conference, including on new climate finance pledges by developed countries (which agreed to mobilise at least $300 billion by 2035) and triple the funds available to the FRLD, the Adaptation Fund and the other UN climate funds.

Rich countries agreed to these goals two years ago at COP29. Yet, the reality is that developing countries’ need for climate finance is in the trillions annually, while developed countries continue to delay providing even what they have already committed. A clear signal recognising the importance of delivering the promised climate finance must come at next week’s Pre-COP in the Pacific, and COP31 in Antalya must go on to deliver against existing promises or risk an irreparable breakdown in trust.

Time for a climate pollution levy

Countries must also ensure funding for loss and damage takes its rightful place as the third pillar of climate finance, alongside mitigation and adaptation, in negotiations regarding the UNFCCC climate finance work programme and Article 9 on shifting finance flows towards a low-carbon, resilient world.

Australia, as President of Negotiations and as a Pacific nation, cannot ask the world to fill these funds while it lets its own coal and gas giants off the hook. Australia should not only stop approving new and expanded coal and gas mines, it should also introduce a Climate Pollution Levy on big coal, oil and gas corporations – a charge on every tonne of carbon pollution they extract and profit from. Independent analysis shows such a levy could raise tens of billions of dollars a year, and can be designed so the cost falls on the corporations, not on households.

This is not charity – it is compensation. It is the beginning of accountability. And the public is far ahead of its leaders: eight in 10 people worldwide, and a clear majority of Australians, want fossil fuel firms taxed to pay for the damage they cause.

Fossil fuel expansion threatens COP31 hosts’ credibility, experts warn

The money must go where the harm lands. A Climate Pollution Levy should feed the funds frontline communities are relying on – fully capitalising the Pacific Resilience Facility this year, replenishing the Adaptation Fund, and delivering the billions the loss and damage fund needs.

It is essential for these funds to be able to provide grant-based finance that reaches communities directly, not more loans that push drowning nations deeper into debt. With Nepal’s recovery costs estimated at around 10% of the country’s GDP, if we leave it to fend for itself without loss and damage funding, Nepal will likely be saddled with debt and could fail to recover adequately, increasing poverty and inequality.

We have heard enough empty pledges. We have watched enough funds announced with fanfare, only then to be starved in silence. The era of asking polluters politely is over. Australia, as COP31 president, has a rare chance to prove that the polluter pays principle means something and apply it to those who have profited the most.

The post As COP31 co-host, Australia should make its polluters pay for climate damage appeared first on Climate Home News.

Low private jet tax 'fuels climate crisis, inequality' Channel News brendan 2nd October 2026 Teaser Media

This is a republication of October’s edition of The Climate Agenda – a subscriber-only newsletter designed to keep you informed of the key events, negotiations and announcements happening every month. If you want to receive The Climate Agenda straight to your inbox at the start of each month, sign up as a subscriber today.

This month, we’ll be on the ground reporting from the Convention on Biological Diversity summit in Yerevan, Armenia later this month and following all the developments as we build towards COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye next month. Here’s what you need to know for October, why it matters and what to expect.

Brazilian Election First round: Sunday 4 October – Second round: Sunday 25 October

This poll is being closely watched by Brazilian environmentalists as it’s likely to make a big difference to Brazil’s international climate politics and the health of the Amazon rainforest. 

The two clear front-runners are current left-wing President Lula and right-wing Flávio Bolsonaro. Flávio is the son of Jair Bolsonaro, who ruled from 2019 to 2023 but was declared ineligible to hold public office because of his attacks on the electoral system and is now under house arrest.

In the unlikely event that either candidate wins more than half the votes in the first round, they will be elected as the country’s leader. Latest polls have Lula on 39% and Bolsonaro on 35% (though the numbers are shifting) with several minor candidates in the single-digits. If none of them get a majority, there will be a one-on-one run-off on October 25.

The Latin American nation is set to record its lowest-ever level of deforestation, as efforts to rein in illegal clearing and restore Indigenous rights progressed under Lula. But Brazilian experts are warning that the huge agribusiness lobby in Congress, whose interests shape what happens in the Amazon, will be emboldened if Bolsonaro takes power, with the Supreme Court also risking a turn to the right.

As for climate politics, some seasoned watchers fear that Flávio – a climate change denier like his dad – could even try to pull Brazil out of the Paris Agreement. That would leave other countries to take forward Brazil’s COP30 global roadmaps on transitioning away from fossil fuels (TAFF) and ending deforestation – both of which are due to be delivered by COP31. 

For Brazil’s own TAFF roadmap – commissioned earlier this year but so far nowhere to be seen – the election may have less of an impact, given Lula is as keen as any other politician to extract oil and gas from the Amazon, amid cross-party support for fossil fuel production.

Read more: Brazil leads “encouraging” decline in global rainforest destruction in 2025

The Pacific nation of Tuvalu is facing an existential threat due to the impact of climate change on rising seas. (Photo: Theo Rouby / Hans Lucas via REUTERS) Pre-COP Monday 5 October – Thursday 8 October – Fiji and Tuvalu

The annual pre-COP meeting is usually a business-like gathering of government negotiators, sounding out each other’s positions and laying the groundwork for deals at the main COP summit. But this year’s “pre” has been jazzed up by Australia’s partnership with Pacific governments keen to elevate their climate issues on the international stage.

“We will bring the eyes of the world to our region, highlight the threat that climate change poses to it, and show how Pacific voices are shaping global action to counter it,” Australian PM Anthony Albanese said of the event.

Early in the week, a group of senior government figures – including a handful of leaders – will visit the world’s second lowest-lying nation Tuvalu, as UN boss Antonio Guterres did in 2019.

They will visit areas affected by sea level rise, see climate resilience projects and meet local communities before flying 2.5 hours south to Fiji to join up with the pre-COP and speak at a “Leaders’ plenary session” on Tuesday evening.

The pre-COP runs until Thursday. Governments are expected to try to advance on some kind of a roadmap for protecting oceans from climate change, while Fiji says Pacific nations will emphasise the need to follow science and step up efforts to limit warming to 1.5C. 

Australia is also due to present an action plan to improve access to climate finance for small island nations and least-developed countries, so that governments, development banks and climate funds can endorse it ahead of the Antalya summit.

Alongside the official pre-COP discussions, a “green zone” will host talks organised by civil society on topics like public transport, carbon markets and the International Court of Justice advisory opinion. Unfortunately, these events won’t be available to follow online.

Read more: Threatened by rising seas, small islands secure right to keep their statehood

Read more: At regional summit, Pacific islands ask for COP31 support for clean energy and finance

Forest clearance for a palm oil plantation in Indonesia on 1/4/2018 (Ulet Ifansasti/ Greenpeace) Article 6.4 Supervisory Body Monday 5 October – Friday 9 October – Bonn, Germany

The UN carbon market’s rule-making body meets for one last jam-packed session ahead of COP31, with decisions pending on several high-stakes issues that could shape the future of the new crediting mechanism.

Top of the agenda is a rulebook for clean cooking projects, which aim to cut greenhouse gas emissions by distributing more efficient cookstoves. These projects generate some of the most popular carbon credits but have also drawn some of the heaviest criticism for overstating their climate benefits through lax accounting.

Technical experts have recommended the Supervisory Body tighten the rules compared to existing crediting programmes, including by forcing cookstove project developers for the first time to guard against the risk of the climate benefits of their credits – the trees saved from becoming cooking fuel – being wiped out by fire, drought or logging. 

The proposal on the so-called reversal risk assessment has sparked a “coordinated” lobbying campaign from the industry, some conservation NGOs and UNEP, arguing that stronger protections could hike project costs and restrict the supply of credits.

Read more: Industry and NGOs lobby to weaken UN carbon credit rules in “coordinated” push

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) plenary Monday 12 October – Friday 16 October – Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Scientists and government officials will try, once again, to agree on a timeline to produce the highly influential AR7 assessment report from the UN’s climate science body. 

The faultlines that have blocked a deal at several previous sessions are well established: a large group of predominantly developed countries, small island and progressive Latin American states and the poorest nations want the reports to be ready in time to inform the UN’s next global assessment of climate action, due to be completed in November 2028. 

A small group of primarily big emerging economies disagree, claiming this timeline would put a burden on developing countries with limited resources and restrict their ability to provide scientific input into the process.

Three options will be on the table in Addis Ababa. Two of them would see all three flagship assessment reports approved by July 2028 and September 2028 respectively, just in time to feed into the second Global Stocktake. 

The third, based on proposals from Saudi Arabia and India, would deliver only the Working Group 1 report, on the physical science of climate change, by May 2028. The reports from Working Groups 2 and 3, covering climate impacts and ways to cut emissions, would not be approved until mid-2029, well after the stocktake concludes at COP33.

Delegates are also expected to discuss the IPCC’s increasingly strained budget, made worse by a funding gap left by the withdrawal of the United States. The panel has warned that, without a sustained increase in contributions, its trust fund’s cash balance would run out by the end of 2028, putting the delivery of the AR7 set of reports at risk and forcing cuts to in-person meetings, translation and outreach.

Read more: Science ‘under attack’ from fossil fuel interests at UN climate talks

Read more: As science comes under attack at UN talks, climate movement splits over how to respond

A small group of climate activists gather in front of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group 2025 Annual Meeting on October 16, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images) World Bank & IMF Annual Meetings Tuesday 12 October – Sunday 18 October – Bangkok, Thailand

With their biggest shareholder – the US – resolutely opposed to climate action, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) are likely to try to avoid mentioning climate change at their annual meetings in Bangkok – and there are no headline events on the subject.

But they aren’t in complete control of the agenda. Thailand will host a discussion on financing a green resilient economy and World Bank President Ajay Banga is likely to be challenged on climate at a live-streamed civil society townhall on October 12.

With tricky negotiations on the World Bank’s climate finance target concluded earlier this year (it was dropped), talks are moving on to the sustainability framework of the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, which invests in the private sector. Civil society is calling for its rules on protecting people and the planet to be maintained and strengthened.

The IMF’s guidance note to staff – which shapes the circumstances under which climate can be included in IMF programmes – will also be negotiated. Longer term, the Resilience and Sustainability Trust, which channels funding to green projects, will be reviewed but not before 2028 at the earliest.

Read more: World Bank’s climate work can endure without finance target, experts say

Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP17 Monday 19 October – Friday 30 October – Yerevan, Armenia

The biodiversity COP – a sister convention to the UN climate process – will for the first time take stock of progress towards key goals in its 2022 landmark agreement, the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). These include a headline target to protect and conserve at least 30% of the planet’s land and marine ecosystems by 2030. 

A draft report prepared by a scientific panel warns that “unless collective implementation accelerates rapidly, the 2030 targets and mission will not be achieved”. In fact, governments are failing on 22 out of 23 targets. The final report is expected to be published ahead of COP17, where governments are expected to react strongly.

UN biodiversity chief Astrid Schomaker told journalists earlier this month that the most significant progress is expected to occur towards the end of the decade, as 174 countries took the first four years to develop national targets. 

Finance, meanwhile, is set to become a contentious issue, as the draft report says developed countries fell short on a target to provide $20bn per year in international public finance for nature protection, reaching only about $17bn per year from 2020 to 2023. They have also yet to meet a wider goal to mobilise $200bn per year counting all kinds of finance.

Much like in climate talks, the EU has proposed to broaden the base of donors to include emerging economies who want to “voluntarily assume the obligations” of developed countries. Saudi Arabia and Qatar want nothing to do with this proposal. China has said bringing in new contributors should not weaken the obligations of developed countries. Expect a fight in Yerevan.

A preliminary meeting in Nairobi in August resulted in a heavily bracketed text that delegates will have to unravel in Armenia. One observer said countries had “overall missed the level of urgency” needed.

Keep an eye out for our webinar live from Yerevan later this month, where we’ll provide an update on the talks and how governments are responding to science’s demands for quicker action.

Read more: Mombasa ocean summit drives progress on marine protection, but threats persist

Read more: UN biodiversity talks agree finance roadmap, postponing decision on a new fund

European Climate Resilience & Risk Management Framework Wednesday 28 October – Brussels, Belgium

Following a torrid summer beset by recurring heatwaves, drought and outbreaks of forest fires across the continent, the European Commission will present its keenly awaited climate resilience and risk management framework to help member states protect their populations from worsening climate change impacts.

As part of the policy package, the Commission will identify 100 of Europe’s most climate-vulnerable territories. And alongside an assessment of the risks, there will be guidance at which level they should be managed – regional, national or by the EU. Currently, confusion often arises over who is responsible for preventing, preparing for and managing disasters across the bloc.

The framework will also aim to make Europe a “champion in adaptation technologies” – such as drought-resistant crops, flood prevention or energy-efficient cooling – which have been described by EU President Ursula von der Leyen as “a huge emerging market”. 

With only around a quarter of catastrophe losses in Europe covered by private insurance, the Commission also plans to set up a Climate Insurance Alliance to boost that figure.

READ MORE: WHO issues new guidance on heat-health action plans, as El Niño sets in

The post What’s on the climate calendar for October 2026? appeared first on Climate Home News.

On the desert shores of the Red Sea, Jordan plans to build a vast desalination plant to send drinking water hundreds of kilometres across its arid interior to the capital, Amman – bolstering climate resilience and reducing reliance on Israel for the vital resource.

As climate change exacerbates water scarcity in Jordan, a deterioration in the country’s already prickly ties with Israel since the start of the Gaza war has underscored the strategic importance of the roughly $6-billion desalination initiative, billed by its backers as a strategic climate adaptation project.

But despite receiving $295 million in support for the project from the UN’s Green Climate Fund (GCF), the energy-hungry plant – which will double the power needs of Jordan’s water sector – will get no more than 27% of its electricity from a purpose-built solar farm in the desert near the plant in Aqaba. The rest will come from the grid, whose power is mostly generated by fossil gas. 

To get salt out of sea water, it has to be pushed at high pressure through a membrane – a process requiring huge amounts of electricity.

• Nov 3, 2025 Clean Energy Frontier Self-taught mechanics give second life to Jordan’s glut of spent EV batteries As EV sales boom in Jordan, a lack of formal infrastructure for dealing with end-of-life batteries is leading to some innovative solutions Read more
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• Sep 4, 2026 Justice Palestine: Israel’s bombing has left Gaza vulnerable to climate change With homes, hospitals and water storage destroyed, Palestine’s government says that Gazans have little protection from climate impacts and sets conditional emissions targets Read more

The annual planet-heating emissions from producing the non-renewable power needed for the plant would be equivalent to having 160,000 petrol-run cars on the road for a year, according to an analysis by Climate Home News of figures provided by the project’s developers to the GCF – the world’s largest multilateral fund to help developing countries tackle climate change.

Such forecasts prompted a warning from its independent technical advisory panel and criticism by climate campaigners, but the GCF board nevertheless approved the financing at a meeting late last year, with GCF Executive Director Mafalda Duarte hailing it as a “milestone project”.

A GCF spokesperson told Climate Home News its design “required the balanced optimisation of multiple objectives”, among them water security, financing considerations and climate-related benefits.

Asked to respond to concerns about the project’s sustainability, a spokesperson for Jordan’s Ministry of Water and Irrigation said the plant is key to tackling the nation’s water deficit, in tandem with other steps to conserve supplies such as managing leaks.

“We have carried out environmental impact studies for the Aqaba desalination plant,” the spokesperson added. “All donor countries reviewed and approved these studies.”

Dry and getting drier

Jordan is already one of the world’s most water-stressed countries, and climate change impacts mean the country of about 11 million people is getting less rain at a time of population growth, in part due to the arrival of refugees from the war in Syria.

Half of Jordanian homes currently receive water for less than 24 hours a week and many pay to get tanker trucks to deliver extra water despite the high cost.

“Every Jordanian living in a village or city … can feel, especially in the summer, that the amount of water reaching their home is not enough,” said University of Jordan water science professor Elias Salameh.

Truck drivers stop for ice at a small ice-making factory in Al-Azraq city in Jordan on July 25, 2026 (Photo by Salah Malkawi/Getty Images)

At the same time, heightened political tensions in the region are raising fears over a long-standing water supply accord with Israel.

Prominent Israeli news outlet Ynet quoted government officials as saying last year that – until Jordan ends its criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza – it would no longer send Jordan 100 million cubic metres of water a year, as it has been doing since 2021. 

Instead, media reports said Israel had decided to send just the 50 million cubic metres required by the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace agreement.

That makes the desalination project all the more urgent, Motasem Saidan, a former water minister who pushed it forward, told Climate Home News.

“Relying on neighbouring countries for sources of the most important resource for life is risky. You need to have self-sufficiency and water security,” Saidan added.

Largest single GCF investment

French multinationals Meridiam and Suez have been awarded the contract to lead construction of the desalination facility, which Suez says will be one of the largest of its kind globally.

Scheduled for completion in 2030, it will turn 300 million cubic metres of seawater a year – enough to fill 120,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools – into drinking water, which will then be carried by pipeline more than 400 km across the desert to reservoirs near Amman, home to nearly half of Jordan’s population.

The GCF will support it with a $220 million loan and a $75 million grant. While that represents a small share of the total cost, Duarte said last year it represented “the largest single investment in one project that we have made”.

But the GCF’s decision to pour millions into the project followed strong criticism from climate campaigners, initial opposition from some of the fund’s board members and a warning by its independent technical advisory panel (ITAP) over its potential impact on emissions.

The emissions it aims to avoid rest on the timely completion of a 65-km transmission line connecting the desalination plant to the solar farm. Without this, the plant will run entirely on Jordan’s gas-dominated grid, the ITAP said in its assessment report.

Moreover, while the government plans to make the power supplied by the national grid greener in the years ahead, there is no guarantee this will be achieved, the report added.

Such issues make the project “difficult to reconcile with climate finance objectives”, the ITAP said, adding there is a significant risk that “concessional resources could end up subsidising a high-carbon, high-cost water pathway”.

Still, the ITAP concluded that “given the dire water situation in Jordan”, the project’s benefits outweighed those concerns and recommended approval to the board.

Bigger renewables role deemed unfeasible

The possibility of producing more of the plant’s electricity from solar power and batteries was dismissed by the project’s proposer and co-funder – the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) – and the GCF as too expensive and impractical, a decision critics see as a wasted opportunity to shift to clean energy.

The companies that carried out the project’s environmental and social impact assessment – Eco Consult and Energies Group – said the option of sourcing all power from renewables “was not studied in detail” because it was seen as unfeasible.

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Asked to comment, the GCF spokesperson said the fund supported that conclusion, citing renewable energy’s intermittency and noting that excess solar power produced would be wasted because there is no provision for it to be sold to the grid.

“The optimum design of such a critical life-line desalination project for Jordan is fundamentally a whole-of-system water optimisation challenge rather than a standalone energy storage exercise,” the spokesperson said.

Instead, the plan’s advocates have touted potential emissions reductions as the pipeline replaces water trucks. They say the solar farm set to supply more than a quarter of the desalination plant’s power will prevent 6.7 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent being emitted over its 26-year projected lifetime. 

Saidan, the former water minister, said the urgency of providing water must take priority over gas dependency concerns.

“This is not the time to raise such issues,” he told Climate Home News.

But Kostanta Rangelova, a global electricity analyst at think-tank Ember, said the plant could “easily” get at least 80% of its power from solar with batteries, pointing to Jordan’s abundant sunshine and the plunging costs of the equipment needed.

Such systems are set to power large facilities elsewhere in the region, like a luxury Red Sea resort just over the Saudi border and a data centre near Abu Dhabi, she said. Jordan’s own energy sector strategy, published in May, lists increasing battery storage as a strategic target.

Rangelova noted that with battery prices falling significantly in recent years, the cost of solar plus battery storage is now competitive with grid power in many places, particularly in countries like Jordan that have a lot of sun but currently rely on expensive imported gas.

“With solar and batteries, Jordan (could) use homegrown electricity not just during daytime hours, but round-the-clock, which can significantly strengthen its energy security position,” she added. 

Lesser of two evils

Using more renewables in the project could also help reduce demand for Israeli natural gas imports – a sensitive issue in Jordan.

“[The desalination plant] will not be viable if we depend on gas supplied by the Israeli occupation,” Mahmoud Amin Al-Hayari, an activist with the General Trade Union of Electricity Workers in Jordan, told Climate Home News.

Jordan’s government is working to develop new sources of gas imports to diversify its current supply, and also wants to boost domestic gas production, alongside renewables.

In the meantime, Jordan’s National Electric Power Company (NEPCO) remains heavily dependent on Israeli gas for electricity generation, industry experts say. Latest government figures from 2024 show the country got 58% of its electric power from gas.

Most of that gas is likely to be Israeli. “About 57% of the electricity that NEPCO supplies to distribution companies comes from gas imported from Israel,” a Jordanian energy and conflict analyst told Climate Home News, asking to speak anonymously due to the sensitivity of the subject.

The spokesperson for Jordan’s Ministry of Water and Irrigation declined to comment on the source of the gas that would help power the Aqaba desalination project.

The issue has gained attention due to several security-related gas supply disruptions from Israel related to the conflict in the Middle East.

For countries like Jordan, a net fuel importer, the energy security case for boosting renewables is a no-brainer, said Ember’s Rangelova. “Unlike imported fossil fuels, the sun cannot be turned off,” she said.

The post Jordan’s mega-plan for water security risks locking in fossil gas demand appeared first on Climate Home News.

Deirdre Macnab was reading her local newspaper this spring when she learned that Rio Blanco County, where she lives in northwest Colorado, had taken the side of oil companies in a major lawsuit before the Supreme Court. Suncor and Exxon Mobil were trying to get out of standing trial — the city and county of Boulder had sued them, seeking damages for the rising costs of adapting to heat waves, wildfires, and floods.

After ranching for a decade, Macnab had seen those costs firsthand. During one of the worst fires in Colorado history last year, 60 of her neighbor’s cows burned to death. Record heat and drought this year parched the land so thoroughly, ranchers had to pay thousands of dollars to haul in feed and water for their animals. Some ranchers, headed toward bankruptcy, had to sell part of their herds or put their land up for sale. 

“It really disturbed me that the county was taking sides,” Macnab said, “and in particular, supporting oil companies whose operations, we now know, are putting the human population and wildlife, livestock, everything, at risk.” Rio Blanco County spent thousands of taxpayer dollars in legal fees to join the brief alongside other Colorado counties where the oil industry has a large presence.

Macnab rallied ranchers around Colorado to join her in urging the Supreme Court to side with Boulder. They wrote that local governments can’t keep absorbing the increasing costs from worsening heat, drought, fires, and flooding and still provide the resources — disaster relief, grants, infrastructure repairs — to keep ranchers in business. The oil companies argue that federal law not only protects them from needing to defend their actions in state courts, but also shields them from being liable for damages. 

The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in the case on Monday. The court’s decision could have huge ramifications for efforts to hold companies accountable for deceiving the public about the dangers of burning fossil fuels — and the larger question of who pays for the costs of adapting to a hotter world. Oil majors have pulled out all the stops to stymie the dozens of climate lawsuits that local and state governments have brought against them, with billions and billions of dollars on the line. With a conservative-dominated Supreme Court and the Trump administration’s Department of Justice as a powerful ally, oil companies saw their chance to stop these suits, said Alejandro Camacho, a professor at UCLA School of Law.

That calculus changed slightly this week when Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, a strong conservative with financial holdings in oil companies, recused himself from the case. His withdrawal makes it harder for oil companies to get at least five justices — a majority of the court — on their side.

The city and county of Boulder, Colorado, originally sued Suncor and Exxon Mobil in 2018. The lawsuit slowly wound its way through the court system. Oil companies tried to dismiss it or move it to federal court, a more industry-friendly venue, but Boulder won at every stage. In May 2025, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the case should proceed in state courts.

Much of the support for Boulder and the oil companies falls along familiar, partisan lines. Republican states and business associations tend to side with the oil companies; Democratic states and environmental advocates typically back Boulder. A watchdog organization found that 25 of the 38 briefs filed to the Supreme Court in support of Exxon and Suncor were written by groups with financial ties to the fossil fuel industry or foundations opposing climate science and regulation. But Colorado ranchers aren’t the only surprising source of support for Boulder’s case — some conservative thinkers are challenging oil companies’ arguments.

Read Next States want to make Big Oil pay for climate harm. Now, courts are weighing in. Joseph Winters

To understand why, it helps to know that the case before the Supreme Court isn’t really about the substance of the lawsuit: if oil companies should pay damages for climate change. The first question is whether the Supreme Court can take the unusual move of stepping in before the case has gone to trial in state court. If the justices decide that they can, then they’ll consider oil companies’ arguments. Suncor and Exxon’s lawyers argue that Boulder’s suit is essentially a backdoor attempt to regulate emissions through state courts. They also say that the Clean Air Act and broader constitutional limits on state power should prevent Boulder’s claims from proceeding.

“If someone has harmed you, you should be able to go to court and make the case that they harmed you and that they need to pay you for it,” Camacho said. “It’s a centuries-old common law principle. And these companies are basically trying to say, ‘You shouldn’t be able make the case in court.’”

Some conservative legal scholars argue that there’s nothing in the federal law or the Constitution that would prevent the lawsuit from moving forward in state court. That includes Jonathan Adler, an environmental law professor at William & Mary Law School. Two former heads of the EPA under Republican presidents, Christine Todd Whitman and William Reilly, are other prominent proponents of that argument. 

The oil companies appear to have recognized that their arguments about the Clean Air Act aren’t very strong, Adler said, because they’ve moved away from them over time, toward other arguments about the limits of state power. In his view, courts generally shouldn’t override claims brought under state law “unless there is a clear basis for doing so.” Adler sees why some conservatives argue that the litigation in state courts is an improper way to drive climate policy, but he thinks it’s possible that skepticism about the merits of the lawsuit might have influenced some of their views on the narrower questions before the court.

Some Republican-dominated jurisdictions have also found themselves challenging oil companies. Coastal parishes in Louisiana are suing Chevron and other oil majors, seeking compensation for restoring coastal lands. “There are going to be conservative communities, or predominantly conservative communities, who see that they are being forced to pay millions of dollars to protect their towns because of the actions of fossil fuel companies,” Camacho said. 

Colorado ranchers, not exactly known for their liberal views, are left with few options for dealing with the environmental changes that are bankrupting them. Macnab said she hopes the Supreme Court sends Boulder’s case back to state court where it belongs, so that oil companies will be forced to face accountability.

“Until they’re held responsible for the consequences that they have known about for decades, they are not going to be part of the solution,” Macnab said. “They need to be brought to the table, because humankind and our food production is what’s at stake.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The surprising allies backing Boulder’s climate case before the Supreme Court on Oct 1, 2026.

Caught between a return to an ecologically blind abundance agenda and degrowth environmentalism that offers no aspirational material vision, ecosocialism can choose a third option: a version of ecological modernisation that champions abundance within planetary boundaries. Revolutions in renewable energy and agriculture bring this outcome within reach.

 “The worst possible crisis, at the worst possible moment.” Xan López’s concise, clear-eyed diagnosis summarises the Left’s position 25 years into the 21st century. We are faced with a political turning point, one that threatens to wipe out democracy and the planet itself in one fell swoop. A reactionary political wave is surging, and must be stopped before it achieves the neoliberal goal of undoing all social progress made since 1945 – even the political progress made since the French Revolution of 1789 is under threat. At the same time, we must fight this wave while also decarbonising the planet within the next 25 years. Failure to do so could result in a climate breakdown that, if left unabated, could leave 3 billion people stuck in uninhabitable regions by the end of the century, thus jeopardising the very existence of civilisation as we know it.

These two colossal tasks will determine the course of our species long into the future, but both rely on the Left at a time when the movement is politically weak and poorly organised; perhaps the lowest point in its entire history. A strategic rethink is now an existential imperative.

The abundance agenda

In recent years, one proposal in particular has impacted the renewal of leftist policy: the abundance agenda. This paradigm emerged after the publication of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s 2025 book Abundance, and proposes that the Left cannot simply settle for the redistribution of scarce resources – it has to rediscover its own productivism and offer a new strategy for material expansion. In order to recover its ability to propel massive infrastructure projects – whether in housing, transport, or energy – Klein and Thompson propose that the Left must abandon its current political ethos of shying away from material change. According to their diagnosis, some progressives have retreated into a political culture of caution, regulation, protection, and the preventive vetoing of anything that could upset the established social balance, even when innovations could solve urgent social problems such as Western society’s housing crisis.

In many respects, Klein and Thompson’s book is too US-centric. Not all countries face the same obstacles of hyper-regulation as the US, and many Americans see their relative material stagnation as a sign of an empire in decline, in contrast to China’s rapid rise. Abundance received well-deserved criticism from the Left for its tendency to conflate democratic participation with bureaucratic stagnation, as well as for its centrist (or liberal, to a US audience) concern for the supply of goods while failing to question artificial scarcity, markets, or capitalist property structures.

Nevertheless, the book has resonated far beyond the US progressive scene because it highlights something that the Western Left is missing: that the possibility of restoring our power lies in rebuilding a tangible, compelling, and unapologetic promise of collective prosperity, just as it did in the 19th and 20th centuries. As Matt Huber, Leigh Phillips, and Fred Stafford write in their article “Abundance for the 99 Percent”, “The anarchists planned to take over the mines, not shut them down.”

One of the Left’s biggest political mistakes over the last 50 years has been limiting itself to protecting egalitarian moral values, thus handing the enticing rhetoric of aspiration and civilisation to the Right. However, simply expressing indignation and a desire to topple corrupt elites is not enough for a people to reach its full potential, something requisite for any process of transformation. There needs to be a horizon, an aiming point where things will one day get better. For much of the population – who suffer in precarity and acute material need, and who understand progress not as some tired teleological myth but as a legitimate expectation for survival – this “something better” will always entail an experience of material comfort, and even a certain degree of luxury, that the notion of abundance can offer.

There needs to be a horizon, an aiming point where things will one day get better.

Degrowth thinking

If this historically obvious idea seems provocative to large parts of the progressive community, it is at least in part because ideas of degrowth environmentalism are exerting an ever-growing influence on ecosocialism – and by association, on the Left as a whole. The term degrowth (and its sibling post-development, born from the Global South’s experiences of colonisation) covers a veritable galaxy of ideas that cannot be treated as a whole without straying into clichés. There is a huge difference between, for instance, Jason Hickel’s post-capitalist environmentalism – which champions degrowth via a global “Green New Deal”, a massive rollout of renewable energy – and programmes like that of Spain’s Adrián Almazán and Luis González Reyes, who challenge the renewable nature of any large-scale industrial technology and advocate for degrowth based on mass rural, economic, social, and community development.1

However, some common ground remains. Both ends of the spectrum – though to varying degrees – criticise and reject economic growth; not solely from a moral standpoint, but also because it is biophysically impossible on a planet that is dangerously surpassing its ecological limits. Advocates of degrowth thus envisage a 21st century characterised by forced adaptation – with varying degrees of social disruption – to more constrained material conditions; a new era in which, compared with times of great industrial acceleration, various forms of relative and absolute scarcity will become the new norm. They argue that there is a metabolic bottleneck that technology cannot resolve, which will prevent us from continuing the rapid, expansive trends of the modern era – including population growth and mass urbanisation – that are an exception to the planet’s historical norm.

Under degrowth, future sustainability can only derive from a corrective shift towards more restrictive material and environmental conditions. Degrowth scenarios range from gently bringing ourselves within planetary limits to predictions of widespread impoverishment and the collapse of industrial society, a material step backwards that we would need to willingly embrace and prepare for in order to minimise its impact. The degrowth movement also argues that this historic transformation could be mitigated to some extent through redistribution, socialising consumption, and cultural transformations in our everyday lives. Out of these schools of thought, however, the most politically astute understand that environmental austerity is deeply unappealing to the masses, and instead highlight the social abundance that will follow and allow us to explore new ways of living beyond the modern age.

A non-Malthusian environmentalism

Ecosocialism’s slide towards degrowth is not just a product of capitalism’s broken metabolic systems – it is also fuelled by a cultural, ontological, and moral wariness of modernity as inherently alienating and oppressive, a shift that constitutes a refounding of the Left’s historical strategy.

In the late 18th century, Nicolas de Condorcet and William Godwin laid the axiological foundation of progressive environmentalism. They did this by arguing that, among all of humanity’s possible futures, there is potential for a virtuous circle between societal perfection and ever-increasing material abundance, a self-perpetuating loop that could be brought about through emancipatory political reforms. Thomas Malthus challenged this promise by highlighting the limits of nature as an obstacle that humanity could never overcome. Though his work focused on agricultural productivity – the great environmental cause of his era – his reasoning can be applied to all natural resources. For Malthus, the clash between nature’s limits and human expansion constituted a universal condition – one that is as tragic as it is unavoidable. Accordingly, he suggested that any future for humanity would require societal restrictions, because scarcity could never truly be overcome. As Ernest García points out, this idea shaped the logic and core arguments – now endlessly revisited and reformulated – of two centuries of debate among the Left and the environmental movement.2

Malthusianism has been one of the most vital schools of thought in the environmental movement, and should not be exaggerated or misinterpreted. However, in a distorted yet somewhat effective way, neo-Malthusian environmentalism has introduced the Left to one of environmentalists’ greatest contributions to philosophical thought: the notion of a natural limit that humanity’s social or technological will cannot overcome. This naturalist realism – or, to use Marxist terms, the relatively autonomous reality traditionally categorised as “nature” – offers a vital antidote to the Left’s socio-centric tendencies, especially because it reveals an ontological asymmetry that we are culturally programmed to deny: natural forces can be the undoing of any social project, but no social project can dictate the natural conditions of its own existence. For example, communism cannot magically reduce atmospheric CO2 levels, but a certain amount of atmospheric CO2 can thwart communism because it will thwart all forms of human civilisation. In the absence of this conceptual counterweight, contemporary humans tend to imbue technology with soothingly miraculous qualities, leaving ourselves unable to discern the dangers, harms, and pace of its environmental impacts.  

There is an undeniable cognitive benefit to the idea of a Malthusian natural limit, but it comes at a high cost. Politically, it leads us into very dangerous territory, while also instilling a whole series of scientifically flawed assumptions in our way of thinking. In terms of political dangers, Neo-Malthusianism backs us into a rhetorical corner. In the best of cases, its arguments can easily be interpreted as backing a process of voluntary adaptation to poverty. In the worst, it runs the risk of normalising reactionary ideologies that take root all too easily in society. Ever since Garrett Hardin’s lifeboat analogy laid the foundations of ecofascism, it has been clear that scarcity pairs well with competition, cruelty, hoarding, and the perceived right to defend one’s threatened living space. As Carl Amery was the first to point out – followed more recently by authors such as Andreas Malm and Bruno Latour – the rise of the new far right is inseparable from pre-emptive reactions to an ecologically saturated world, one where supremacists would rather kill than share.3

Transforming our countries into renewable electrostates must be the number one goal of any ecosocialist programme.

But apart from its political dangers, the Malthusian approach also has epistemological flaws – or, at the very least, it is confusingly open to interpretation when applied to specific historical situations. This is particularly true in a modern world-system of intensely interdependent global human networks, driven by unprecedented technological, economic, and scientific dynamism. While some maintain that the “Malthusian trap” persists in industrial civilisation, evidence has repeatedly disproved their warnings: Malthus himself was refuted, as were his intellectual successors, by the “population bomb” of the 1960s and Hubbert’s peak oil theories, which predicted the imminent decline of oil in the 2000s. Malthusian environmentalism’s predictions tend to be disproved because, while natural resources are limited, they are also unknown and dynamic. The resources we use in any given historical context are a combination of our planet’s material potential, variable economic incentives, and technological developments.

However, there is another environmental philosophy which has freed itself from Malthusianism’s problematic political and scientific influences, while also conserving some of its core truths. This current – which we can broadly call ecological modernisation – has often been scorned by the Left for its seeming collaboration with capitalist goals like sustainable development. It should not, however, be confused with its more extreme counterpart, ecomodernism, which advocates instead for a very particular form of radical Promethean modernisation, rejecting the precautionary principle in favour of technologies such as nuclear power, geoengineering, and transgenesis.

We can think of society’s metabolism like that of an organism: it ingests materials and energy (input) from its surroundings and excretes waste and alterations (output) into its environment. Malthusianism and modernisation disagree not only in how much they trust or distrust technology, but also on what stage of social metabolism is subject to ecological limits. Malthusianism identifies the input as the weak link, interpreting unsustainability as scarcity, whether in the form of shortages or exhausted supplies. Modernisation points to the output, viewing the limit as saturation: carbon sinks overwhelmed by pollution, and destroyed or disrupted ecosystem functions. This difference matters. Politically speaking, the first leads us to view sustainability as a forced reduction in human demand (or even population) in the face of dwindling natural resources, and the future as a zero-sum or negative-sum material game. The second leads to a radical redesign of our socio-ecological metabolism and technosphere, compatible with the promise of progress as a positive-sum material game.

Caught between a return to a classical, ecologically blind abundance agenda and neo-Malthusian environmentalism that refuses to offer the people an aspirational material vision, ecosocialism requires a push towards a third option: a left-wing version of ecological modernisation that champions abundance within planetary boundaries. This ceases to sound like an oxymoron when we consider that, at this very moment, productive forces are undergoing a genuine revolution that is, in its content, origins, and potential, worthy of the label “ecological”.

An ecological revolution

Thanks to Marx’s famous, oft-quoted prologue to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, a segment of Marxist thought has erroneously granted productive forces an almost automatic sense of historical agency. However, as philosopher César Rendueles argues, there is something about this tradition which, without any deterministic illusions, values the analyses of the social sciences and is politically worth championing: productive forces persistently condition both our relationship to the biosphere and the possibility of social organising. This can be both restrictive and empowering. The concept of productive forces is not, of course, simply another way of referring to technology, but a socially structured, politically oriented, and disputed understanding of it. This nuance is vital because the biggest historical impacts of productive forces were not the result of technology alone – they were rooted in its widespread adoption and through deliberate deployment and politically driven economies of scale.

Today, humanity stands on the threshold of three revolutions in productive forces that will expand the anthropological sphere, with potentially disruptive impacts on its evolution. Two of these deserve the title of “ecological” because they bring the goal of sustainability within reach while also increasing productivity – even when measured in environmentally and socially destructive capitalist terms. Both were also born of ecological movements: first the renewable energy revolution, and second, the regenerative agriculture movement. The third revolution, the digital-cognitive, is not inherently ecological – it could theoretically be deployed in such a way, but could also become another vector for contemporary devastation of the natural world.

From the earliest days of computing to the internet, AI, and robotics, the digital-cognitive revolution has commanded outsized attention, what Rendueles calls a kind of “cyberfetishism”.4 The Left has had a somewhat manic-depressive relationship with this technology, oscillating between the edenic naivety of the 1990s and present-day doomerism. Without a doubt, the fears that it raises in 2026 are justified by trends such as technofeudalism, surveillance capitalism, and tech’s contribution to 21st-century fascism. But these productive forces are also subjects to be debated. As authors like Aaron Bastani and Paul Cockshott have highlighted, their rise could offer huge opportunities for socialist causes in terms of economic and democratic planning and streamlining workflows: a literal communist “abundance” in exchange for little to no money. However, if the material abundance of the future is to be environmentally sustainable, then free digital information will never be more than an auxiliary – only a different relationship with the earth and energy can guarantee it.

This is what the regenerative agriculture and electro-renewable revolutions enable. The former combines traditional farming knowledge with cutting-edge science, and is revealing to us that soil, far from being an inert medium, is one of the Earth’s most complex ecosystems. Replacing practices that damage its structure with those that restore it can successfully maintain or even increase industrial agricultural productivity, while simultaneously restoring its fertility. It promises an encouraging evolutionary shift: to restart the Neolithic era and redirect primary biomass production towards restoring the richness of our ecosystems.

But renewables hold the key to a programme of abundance within planetary boundaries. The falling cost of photovoltaic and wind energy, as well as energy storage, is one of the most spectacular changes in economic history, and its rollout is progressing with unprecedented speed. China took 16 years to build the Three Gorges Dam, but in 2025 it installed solar panels with a similar capacity every three weeks. This energy acceleration is not limited to China. Pakistan, India, Kenya, and Vietnam demonstrate that one of the great virtues of the renewable energy revolution is that it will not be monopolistic, but distributed. This opens up a historic opportunity for autonomous development in the Global South.

This is unlike any other energy transition. In most of the world, there is currently no cheaper way to produce electricity than pointing a solar panel at the sky. More than any previous energy transition, the process closely resembles the introduction of microprocessors: a radical levelling that allowed billions of people to carry in their pockets a computer a million times more powerful than those used in the Apollo space programme.

What is happening today with solar energy and batteries is a similar evolutionary leap to the discovery of fire. To paraphrase Marx, we are on the cusp of leaving behind humanity’s prehistorical era of energy production, i.e. burning things. Over the coming decades we will stop regularly burning the molecules created by photosynthesis – whether biomass or fossil fuels – that have ruled our energy systems for a million years, and will enter a new world of unimaginable efficiency and abundance. We will use the free gift of sunlight to move electrons ourselves.

The Left should focus on politically challenging the energy transition in order to harness it in the service of an ecologically rigorous and socially inclusive modernisation.

To this we can add the fact that – thanks to the superior efficiency of electricity over fossil fuels – it is both technically and economically viable for us to electrify around 70 per cent of our material processes, offering a sovereignty, security, and democratising potential that goes far beyond the hypothetical. If we can grasp this, then we already know that transforming our countries into renewable electrostates must be the number one goal of any ecosocialist programme.

Degrowth environmentalism has questioned renewable energy’s ability to ensure a future of abundance through various arguments. The purely technological ones made some sense 15 or 20 years ago, but have now been empirically disproved. Objections regarding impacts on biodiversity are valid, but experience has also shown that renewable energy can be integrated with agriculture and ecosystems. When well managed, it can even enhance biodiversity by, for instance, restoring native vegetation beneath and between solar panels. Furthermore, mineral constraints do not jeopardise the viability of the transition where it matters most: renewable generation, grids, and storage. These are not especially mineral-intensive technologies, and are recyclable. However, it is doubtful whether we could electrify every single vehicle in existence, thus replicating the existing model in an electric version. Here, the bottleneck – at least with current technology – lies with batteries, not to mention that the current model of privatising public space for the benefit of the car has disastrous social effects that ecosocialism must combat.

The energy transition will, of course, expand the mining industry, but it is worth clearing up a misconception that degrowth has helped to spread: rolling out all of the infrastructure needed for decarbonisation over the next 25 years will require fewer minerals than just one year of fossil energy. Though this figure may seem surprising, it has a simple explanation: fossil fuel extraction produces outputs that are continuously burned. Once extracted and processed, metal minerals remain incorporated in the system’s capital as products with a long useful life, and they can also be recycled.5

New mines will undoubtedly open as a result of the green transition, and these processes may, depending on how they are handled politically, be violent and extractivist. But they could also be beneficial. The key lies in challenging them. The same happens with new renewables: if deployed under a capitalist logic, renewables in many areas exacerbate wealth accumulation via dispossession in the name of green progress, and provoke legitimate resistance.

But the ecosocialist’s job cannot be to simply question the widespread rollout of renewables, because this, however inadvertently, places them on the side of the fossil fuel industry. Instead, the Left should focus on politically challenging the energy transition in order to harness it in the service of an ecologically rigorous and socially inclusive modernisation. We can adopt the same kind of proactive, modernising political shift when it comes to issues relating to extractivism. Rather than flatly rejecting extractive processes when they could work against the fossil-fuel model, the ecosocialist left could approach them from the perspective of a new form of popular development. This would place the recovery of material sovereignty on the agenda, but take it beyond classical resource nationalism through strict conditions on investor access linked to technology transfer, cooperative trade frameworks, and the development of endogenous industrial policies.

Our generational mission is to harness capital so that, within 25 years, we can decarbonise the world, fully electrify the global productive structure, and distribute this new source of collective wealth equitably.

Ecosocialism for the masses

While new productive forces are broadening the horizons of ecosocialism with promises of newfound abundance, they do not eliminate the threat of the ecological crisis. We are faced with catastrophic shifts in the world’s climate that urgently require us to slow down, while also demanding a herculean effort to adapt – one which we are failing dismally to make. We continue to wipe out species at an unprecedented rate, and to self-destructively erode vital ecosystem functions. We also continue to exceed seven of the nine planetary boundaries: in 2025 we added ocean acidification to the six already identified (climate change, erosion of biosphere integrity, land system change, excess global freshwater use, biogeochemical flows, and novel entities).

The energy and regenerative transitions are the cornerstones of an ecological transformation of industrial metabolism. They can ensure its long-term viability, but they are not the only pieces of the puzzle. We also need a genuinely circular economy, with far-reaching ramifications, ranging from a new critical mineral recycling industry to a complete redesign of all production processes, including the abolition of strategies like planned obsolescence, which exist only to maximise capitalist profit margins. We need to ingrain various forms of consumption in society, starting with transport. We must also transform practices that are not, and will never be, sustainable in any conceivable scenario of ecological abundance, such as consumerism, throwaway culture, and the unprecedented dominance of meat in the contemporary diet.

None of these changes is easily compatible with neoliberal capitalism – even less so if we also aspire, as the Left should, to an ecological transition that is swift and just. These two features can only come in tandem. If the transition is not just, it cannot be quick, because grassroots opposition will hamper any changes. The reverse is also true; if it is not quick enough, it will be unjust for those most exposed to climate chaos, and for future generations who would be undeservingly condemned to a life of crushingly hostile conditions.

While renewable energy’s new competitive advantage has opened up a profitable niche that capital is already readily exploiting – ushering in a new frontier of accumulation, with all the social upheaval that this entails – ecosocialism’s work cannot consist of holding back this technological change. On the contrary, we must accelerate it through public control, and place it in the service of the common good. Our generational mission is to harness capital so that, within 25 years, we can decarbonise the world, fully electrify the global productive structure, and distribute this new source of collective wealth equitably. Although this may sound provocative, in this historical context of resurgent imperialism, with petrocapitalism morphing into fossil-fuelled fascism in petrostates (such as the US) that dictate the world order, green capitalism is not our main enemy. What is private today can be socialised tomorrow, but a “Hothouse Earth” scenario is irreversible: it would be an anthropological failure, one that would make life extremely harsh for countless future generations of humankind.

The chance to reconcile future abundance with planetary boundaries is perhaps the best news of the century.

Abundance within planetary limits is not some new, technologically enabled time extension that will allow us to continue the same ecocidal patterns that have made the Anthropocene an evolutionary dead-end. It does, however, offer a chance to radically transform our socio-natural relationship with political agendas that could – in contrast to the self-containment of Malthusian environmentalism – lead to a scientifically founded horizon of sustainability that actually appeals to the average person. This is ultimately why it is worth politically exploring the idea of abundance within planetary limits: it offers tangible benefits for political action. Climate action “for the people” will not result from an ontological shift or the moral equivalent of religious conversion; we will build it by challenging the “common sense” of our current anthropological moment, with all its fears, hopes, illusions, expectations, and politically calculated rules.

In a way, the chance to reconcile future abundance with planetary boundaries – thanks to the possibilities offered by an ecosocialist harnessing of new green productive forces – is perhaps the best news of the century. Despite an entrenched (and more than reasonable) sense of catastrophic doubt, we know today that a destabilised climate and biosphere have not, in historical terms, brought to an end what Marx taught us to call the Realm of Freedom. And if there has ever been a goal that works in our favour – one capable of uniting vast numbers of people and forging the sort of collective spirit needed to weather the many trials and tribulations along the way – it is this.

This article first appeared in Nueva Sociedad 323 / August 2026 in Spanish. It was translated by the Guerrilla Media Collective and is republished here with permission, with minor edits.

1. Jason Hickel: Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World, Random House, 2020; Adrián Almazán and Luis González Reyes: Decrecimiento. Del qué al cómo, Barcelona, Icaria, 2023.  ︎
2. Ernest García: Ecología e igualdad, Valencia, Tirant Humanidades, 2021.    ︎
3. Carl Amery: Auschwitz, ¿comienza el siglo XXI? Hitler como precursor, Madrid-Ciudad de México, Turner / fce, 2002.  ︎
4. César Rendueles: Sociophobia: Political Change in the Digital Utopia, Columbia University Press, 2017.  ︎
5. For a broad, exhaustive overview of advances in electro-renewables that speaks from a position of both activist compromise and academic rigour, see, Daniel Carralero, Marta Victoria and Cristóbal Gallego: Un lugar al que llegar. Mapa político de la transición energética, Madrid, Levanta Fuego, 2025.  ︎

This story is published through the Indigenous News Alliance.

After retiring from a long career as a conservation officer with the Canadian government, Derrick Pottle devoted himself to guiding people on the land, carving, hunting, and training bear guards.

Pottle, an elder and skilled guide from the Inuit community of Tikigâksuagusik in Nunatsiavut, founded BearSafe Planning in 2005. The program trains and certifies students to guard against the polar bears and black bears found throughout northern Labrador. The three-day course is advertised as offering “safety, protection, confidence in bear country.”

More than two decades later, that work has taken on renewed urgency. As climate change reshapes the Arctic — particularly the sea ice polar bears rely on to travel and hunt — Inuit are seeing the animals at different times of year and in places they rarely encountered before. Pottle says those changes are increasing the need for people who know how to keep people and bears safe. That, he said, is “the whole objective of the course.”

Graduates of the program keep watch for bears to prevent encounters and learn to recognize signs that a bear is not comfortable. “They may feel threatened, they may feel intimidated, and they may even charge or attack you,” Pottle said. He teaches students “how to recognize those signs, how to prepare yourself for them, the tools you have to use to do your job.”

Canadian officials say encounters between people and polar bears are becoming more likely as a lengthening ice-free season keeps bears on land longer. Inuit and Cree communities have reported polar bears appearing more frequently and in places where they were once rare. Researchers have linked the increase to several factors, including longer ice-free periods, changes in bear abundance and condition, and growing human activity in polar bear habitat. 

Pottle developed BearSafe Planning’s training program with input from groups that included Parks Canada, conservationists, Inuit elders, and academics. It started “out of a necessity,” Pottle said, after the creation of Tongait KakKasuangita SilakKijapvinga, (Torngat Mountains National Park) under the 2005 Labrador Inuit Land Claims Agreement. 

“They needed bear guards,” Pottle said. We didn’t have trainers in Nunatsiavut at the time. Somebody had to do it.”

Inuk elder Derrick Pottle founded BearSafe Planning in 2005 to keep people and bears safe. That work has taken on renewed urgency as climate change reshapes the Arctic and encounters with bears grow more common. Frey Blake-Pijogge / IndigiNews

The Arctic is warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the planet. As climate change remakes landscapes across the North, the need for guards is only for “all species of bears,” Pottle said. 

“We’re seeing more and more bears now in this time of our lives than we ever saw before,” he said.  “People are seeing polar bears in this part of Inuit Nunangat — where polar bears used to travel north late in the spring — and now are staying all summer long.”

The province’s Endangered Species Act lists polar bears as “vulnerable,” while the federal government deems them a “species of special concern.” Sixty to 80 per cent of the world’s polar bear population lives in Canada, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada. The massive carnivores, which can weigh as much as 1,400 pounds, rely upon sea ice to travel, mate, and hunt. “Climate change is the main threat to polar bears,” the agency notes.

Becoming a bear guard can offer employment opportunities, but also can be used for personal safety. “Lots of people just use the bear guard course for their own personal protection when they’re out on the land with their families fishing, hunting and participating in Inuit lifestyle.”

Sherri Wolfrey, a mother of four, is a trained bear guard in Tikigâksuagusik. She recounted how, in 2015, she became “interested in the program and just thought ‘OK, maybe someday I might want to try for a job that involves bear monitoring.’”

Wolfrey is the secretary of Northern Lights Academy and uses her training when she’s out on the land. Last year, she put her certification to work professionally for the first time, when she was contracted as a bear guard in Akami-Uapishkᵁ-KakKasuak (Mealy Mountains National Park Reserve). “Especially up in that area in the bottom of the Mealy’s, it was so beautiful up there,” she told IndigiNews.

She finds the skills valuable even when she isn’t working as a bear guard. “It’s good to have the training,” she said, “because when you do what I like to do, especially being at the cabin … you could know what to expect and what to do if you came upon a bear.”

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Pottle’s experiences started “before there were bear guards.” People in his community would ask him to escort them on outings with boats, dog teams or snowmobiles because he knew the land. 

BearSafe Planning offers its course on demand, and has taught as many as 30 students at a time. And though he is an instructor, Pottle also considers himself a student, drawing from the experiences of others. 

“I talk to the Elders, I talk to the hunters, I talk to the students,” he said. “A lot of these people live on the land all their lives, so they have lots and lots of experiences and stories. So we learn from one another.”

Employment opportunities for certified bear guards vary by season and can range from day trips to longer-term, full-time work, Pottle said. Cruise ship operators, for instance, hire guards to keep tourists safe when they visit the North, while group outings and land-based programs in Nunatsiavut and elsewhere across Inuit Nunangat also rely on them. Inuit governments and agencies employ trained guards for outings as well.

Pottle sees professionally trained bear guards as “no different than any other aspect of the workforce.”

“It’s not always easy to find employment in the North, and bear guarding can give people — if they choose to — an opportunity to make a good living from it.”

Two decades of teaching students about bear safety has been personally rewarding, Pottle said.

“You’re doing something you love, and you’re going into communities, and you’re … bringing knowledge,” he said. “Our role is to keep people safe, and make sure people enjoy the land and enjoy the surroundings — and get the job done and come home safe at the end of your work day.”

This story was originally published by IndigiNews and updated with additional information by Grist.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In a warming Arctic, Inuit bear guards protect communities on Oct 1, 2026.

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