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In the thick of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in 2024, the UN climate talks were rattled by what can only be described as a major PR disaster. The BBC, Reuters and The Guardian all carried headlines, attributed to leading climate policy experts, that the COPs were “no longer fit for purpose”. 

The articles outlined a series of reforms called for in an open letter signed by 22 eminent scientists and politicians, including a former UN secretary-general and previous UN climate chief, with a further 150 lending their support. The headlines shook confidence in the COP process, just as governments were wrestling over a new climate finance goal.

The Club of Rome – which handled the media relations for the letter – hurried to say that its “constructive, supportive ideas” had been “misinterpreted”. Negotiators kept calm(ish) and carried on, in the end landing the finance goal after some high-stakes drama on the final day.

• Oct 23, 2026 News Early speakers’ list suggests few powerful leaders will attend COP31 Just 77 heads of state or government are scheduled to address the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, a third less than the COP28 peak Read more
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To my surprise, when I went back this week to read the letter again, I could not find the offending line about the COPs not being fit for purpose. The Club of Rome has yet to respond to my query about its disappearance.

Whatever happened to the wording, that sentiment has been widely shared. COPs have ballooned in size while the importance of their outcomes seems to have diminished since the 2015 Paris Agreement (with the exception of the 2023 COP in Dubai where countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems).    

The same on the surface 

Two years on from those painful headlines in Baku, has anything changed for the better? You might be forgiven for thinking not. Official decisions are still made by consensus rather than the majority voting some have called for to stop blockers.

Tens of thousands of officials, activists and business execs still scurry around the halls to an ever-growing list of side events, roundtables and dialogues, while deals still come down to rows, all-nighters and jargon-filled texts adopted to rounds of applause. 

But it would not be true to say that COPs have completely failed to respond to the very real need to translate the words of the Paris Agreement into action in the outside world.

Global warming is projected to be around 1.3C lower this century than it would have been if the world had not committed to tackle the climate crisis under that accord. Developing countries have a valued space at COPs in which their voices have equal weight in decision-making, unlike in many other international fora. And most importantly, perhaps, there has been a subtle shift, tipping the balance away from negotiating towards doing.

Brazil branded last year’s summit in Belém as the “COP of Implementation”, corralling the sprawling Action Agenda into six axes, including food systems, urban resilience and nature. This was a bid to impose some structure on the mushrooming efforts between governments, UN agencies, cities, businesses and civil society to set targets and spur faster results on their pet issues, from methane emissions to health and adaptation in conflict zones. COP30 alone saw the launch of 120 “plans to accelerate solutions”.

COP30 roadmaps off the cuff

Meanwhile, as the formal negotiations drew to a close, it was clear that consensus decision-making was evolving into something a little more improvised. 

With only around half of all countries on board with the idea of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago announced his team would put one together over the coming year, along with another on how to meet a global goal to halt deforestation by 2030. Those roadmaps will be launched next week, presented and discussed at COP31, though it’s still unclear whether or how they’ll be incorporated into the formal negotiating agenda.

Saudi Arabia raises a point of order during the closing plenary at COP30 in Belem, Brazil on November 22, 2025 (Photo: IISD/ENB | Mike Muzurakis) Saudi Arabia raises a point of order during the closing plenary at COP30 in Belem, Brazil on November 22, 2025 (Photo: IISD/ENB | Mike Muzurakis)

Some leading policy-makers don’t think that matters too much. Speaking to journalists before the Antalya summit, COP30 CEO Ana Toni and Dutch climate minister Stientje van Veldhoven said “coalitions of the willing” can move ahead without needing consensus from the COPs. This, they said, was evident this year at the first global conference on TAFF, co-chaired by van Veldhoven and attended by 60 countries.

“Consensus or no-consensus in the general COP doesn’t make a difference for the choices I have to make in my country to get my country to phase out fossil fuels,” said the Dutch minister. The Netherlands recently became one of the first to publish a national TAFF plan. 

COP31 banks on flagship voluntary initiatives

This thinking has permeated the management and expected outcomes of this year’s COP too. Earlier this year, Türkiye, supported by international energy agencies, floated the idea of a voluntary goal to boost electrification to 35% of the world’s final energy consumption by 2035 – and this is now being touted as one of the main results to be expected from Antalya.

Türkiye is also championing a pledge on AI and climate, while co-host Australia is pushing to ease access to climate finance for least developed countries and small island states.

COP31 presidency announces AI pledge as UN climate chief says Big Tech ‘on thin ice’

None of these needs consensus. But with a political cover decision already in the works, as trailed by the COP presidents, they – and perhaps the fossil fuel roadmap – may find a home in the official text if language acceptable to most can be found, giving them them additional weight. 

UNFCCC reform process in the shadows 

Formal reform is underway too, if quietly. UN climate chief Simon Stiell is leading a review informed by ongoing consultations with a group of 15 well-respected climate policy experts, three of whom signed the open letter in 2024.

Among them is leading Swedish climate and sustainability scientist Johan Rockström who has strong ideas about how to make COPs function better, including a switch to majority voting. He told the same press briefing nothing stands in the way of this, because the rules of procedure for making decisions at COPs have never been formally agreed. 

Still, to get away from the default setting of consensus would require agreement on a new system that may be impossible to achieve given the rise in bullying tactics by fossil fuel heavyweights.  

Comment: The UN climate process was built for negotiation – now it must support implementation

The deliberations with the high-level policy gurus, as reflected in a summary of June’s session in Bonn, largely echo what’s already happening organically, calling for stronger partnerships and accountability both in and between the Action Agenda and negotiations. It doesn’t mention voting.

A general overview of the reform exercise says that “improving and optimizing the [UN climate] process over the medium to long term… will be critical to fostering trust, enhancing collaboration, and catalyzing increased ambition”.

In the short term, don’t hold your breath for anything concrete on reform at COP31 but watch for signs in what ends up dominating the headlines from Türkiye. 

The post Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines appeared first on Climate Home News.

Lake Powell recently dropped to a historic low, slashing hydropower and the flow of water downstream. As drought deepens, groups are pushing to drain the lake entirely to reveal its long-submerged rock arches and spires and allow wildlife along the Colorado River to recover.

Read more on E360 →

Jerry Arnold stands in a patch of cleared land, his combine idling behind him. To the west, acres of freshly cut grain reveal rolling hills, and to the east, 3-foot stalks of wheat pulse in the wind. Arnold’s sweat-stained baseball cap is coated with fine golden dust after a day of harvesting at his farm near Opheim, Montana, a town with a population of 72 near the Canada border. 

Last year’s warm, dry winter hit Arnold’s unirrigated farm hard. Record-low snowpack left moisture in short supply, stunting crops’ growth. But he could soon see some financial relief. Arnold is one of nearly 300 Montana landowners in the path of a proposed pipeline that would traverse nine counties in eastern Montana and an expanse of eastern Wyoming. 

“We’re coming off of two, three bad years,” Arnold said, “and that’s going to be a good-size check.”

Wyoming-based Bridger Pipeline LLC plans to build a 650-mile pipeline to move tar sands oil — a dense mix of sand, clay, water, and a molasses-like form of petroleum that generates about 20 percent more greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional crude. The route would connect to an existing Canadian pipeline and run through Montana to an oil refinery hub and trading center in Guernsey, Wyoming. The company has said it plans to break ground within a year. This spring, President Donald Trump granted the project a presidential permit authorizing it to cross the Canadian border.

Bales of hay dot the landscape, photographed in Fallon County. Lauren Miller / Montana Free Press / CatchLight Local / Report for America

Arnold has farmed in this region all his life. He’s seen droughts come and go, and expanded his operation to remain profitable in an industry that runs on razor-thin margins. In the 1980s, when a trifecta of drought, heat, and grasshoppers decimated his crops, he wasn’t sure if he could afford to keep going. Then a pipeline came to town. 

The Northern Border Pipeline moves gas from Canada to the American Midwest, with 105 miles running through Montana. The check Arnold got for letting that pipeline cut through his land enabled him to continue farming. 

“It was the greatest thing ever,” he said. 

Decades later, when the Keystone XL was proposed to move tar sands oil from Alberta through the U.S. to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico, Arnold was excited to see another pipeline come into his community, but disappointed to find he wasn’t along the path. The pipeline was never constructed after then-President Joe Biden terminated the project in 2021.

Now, Arnold has another chance. Standing in his grain fields, he said he was excited when Bridger first approached him about an easement more than a year ago. 

“My first thought was, ‘I’m not gonna let you come through unless you do circles out there,’” Arnold said, noting that he wanted to maximize the length of the pipeline crossing his land. The more pipe on his property, the more he stands to earn.

Bridger’s proposed pipeline runs through farm and rangeland where volatile cattle markets, skyrocketing diesel prices, and multiyear droughts have made a challenging industry even harder in recent years. Farmers and ranchers who own land along the route say a payment from Bridger could provide meaningful stability. 

Cows watch Kent Kleeman drive in September 2026 in Peerless, a community in eastern Montana. The Bridger Pipeline’s preferred route from Canada to Wyoming would cross Kleeman’s property. Lauren Miller / Montana Free Press / CatchLight Local / Report for America

Pipeline companies often negotiate deals with individual landowners, paying them a one-time sum for an easement on their land. Landowners are also compensated for survey access or preliminary legal fees to consult a lawyer about an easement proposal.  

The amount a pipeline company pays depends on the length of pipe and individual negotiations, which are often private. In 2012, some landowners reported offers of up to $38,000 from the Keystone XL pipeline. Landowners in Nebraska who held out said they were offered tens of thousands of dollars in signing bonuses, with some reporting offers of more than $150,000.

With President Donald Trump back in office, many landowners in eastern Montana are cautiously optimistic that a new pipeline could deliver the economic opportunities Keystone once promised. Still, the project has multiple milestones to pass before it can be built. 

First, the company must identify potential routes. Bridger has proposed three, with one defined as the preferred route. Next, the company must survey the route, examining topographical challenges and environmental impacts. Bridger spokesperson Bill Salvin told Grist and Montana Free Press in October that the company has paid each of the roughly 450 landowners on the preferred route for the right and access to conduct surveys. Salvin declined to say what collective payments to landowners might add up to. 

The Bureau of Land Management will then publish its own environmental review for public comment. Pending that process, Bridger has to secure state and federal compliance permits, negotiate with landowners, and pay them for easements. Only then can construction begin, Salvin said. 

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Landowners along the pipeline’s proposed routes have varying levels of information about the company’s plans. Many still have basic questions about what the pipeline will carry, where it will end up, and how it might help them with rising fuel costs. But the Montana Department of Environmental Quality has hosted regular meetings with Bridger and county commissioners along the route, and as a result, local commissioners are largely championing the project. 

Daniels County Commissioner Tammi Fladager said a project like Bridger would provide a much-needed economic boon. Fifty miles of Bridger’s preferred route run through the county, which is home to roughly 1,600 people, 11 percent of whom live in poverty. 

“We’re kind of desperate,” Fladager said, sitting in a purple rocking chair in her living room in September. “Anybody that comes with a big check, it’s ‘Where do I sign?’ You don’t want the lottery ticket to walk out the door.”

Bridger anticipates hiring anywhere from 2,000 to 2,500 construction workers to build the pipeline, and those workers, Salvin said, would stay in temporary housing provided by the company, commonly referred to as “man camps.” Salvin said Bridger expects to create 50-100 full-time jobs in Montana to maintain the pipeline once it’s built. 

Economic impacts at that scale are meaningful in rural eastern Montana. The Continental Divide separates more than just the forests from the prairie. Most of the state’s income-generating population centers, tourism destinations, and growth are located in the western half of the state. It’s a different story in the east. The oil and gas industry is a major economic driver for eastern Montana, and one of the region’s primary avenues of revenue. Carter County commissioners said existing oil and pipeline infrastructure accounts for the vast majority of the county’s property tax receipts. The pipeline’s promise to consistently fill county coffers, Fladager said, carries a lot of weight in the eastern half of the state. 

“It almost feels like western Montana is eating off of a banquet table, and we’re down here picking up scraps,” Fladager said. “And this [pipeline] is like a pork chop falling on the floor. That’s what it is to us.”

Daniels County is also uniquely poised to benefit from Bridger because it doesn’t have any existing pipelines paying into county tax accounts. In 2025, neighboring Valley County collected more tax revenue from centrally assessed properties, which include everything from pipelines to power lines, than from any other real estate. 

Valley County Commission Chair Paul Tweten said the community was hopeful when Keystone announced it was coming through the area. He said residents built new shops, bought new pickups, and approved a $16.8 million school bond with the expectation of leveraging Keystone tax revenues.   

Asked how he felt when Biden signed the executive order ending Keystone, Tweten paused. “You don’t want to know,” he said. 

Paul Tweten, Valley County Commission chair, photographed in Glasgow in September 2026. Lauren Miller / Montana Free Press / CatchLight Local / Report for America

Bob Thielen ranches outside Plevna, about 250 miles southeast of Valley County. His land is on the pipeline’s preferred route, and he supports the project. 

“There’s a couple old Bridger pipelines that were put in way before I was born,” Thielen said, standing beside the county road running through his property. “I don’t even know what year. Probably in the ’50s, maybe.” 

His property was also on the path of Keystone XL. Having watched Keystone’s death, Thielen said he’s skeptical about Bridger’s chances.   

“I’m going to call this the annoying stages of it,” he said. “When all the negotiations are going on, and when you got all the surveyors and environmentalists, and everybody is wanting to come through your property and do all this and do all that, really before anything’s even set in stone.”

Bridger has local offices in the area, and Thielen said he trusts the company. But he has questions. 

“Where’s the oil going? It’d be really nice to know,” Thielen said. “I don’t know why we have to keep sending oil out of our country when we’re in a struggle right now.”

He said he’d like to see more transparency from company and government officials about what the pipeline will carry, and whether it will help drive down gas prices. 

“What is the benefit to the American people?” Thielen said. “The counties might get a little revenue, us ranchers are going to get a little revenue — the American people are going to get absolutely zero from it if it’s just coming in and going out.”

A dog waits in a truck outside the Four Buttes Supper Club in Scobey, a rural city in eastern Montana, in September 2026. Lauren Miller / Montana Free Press / CatchLight Local / Report for America

Several landowners on the pipeline’s route told Grist and Montana Free Press they are in the dark about what the pipeline will carry and its final destination.

While Wyoming may mark the end of the pipeline, it’s not necessarily the last stop for the crude it will carry. Bridger, in collaboration with South Bow, another energy company, plans to build a pipeline to move tar sands crude from Guernsey, Wyoming, through Colorado and Kansas to a refinery in Cushing, Oklahoma. From there, it could be stored or moved to the Gulf of Mexico to be globally exported. 

Salvin said it’s impossible to say how or whether the Bridger pipeline might impact the cost of fuel but noted that more supply in the market is a good thing. 

“This is scheduled to start at 550,000 barrels a day; that gives additional security and stability to a market that can be unstable at times,” Salvin said. “And when you have a secure market, and you have a security of supply, that can help even out some of those shocks.”

The pipeline also comes with risk. At full capacity, it could carry more than a million barrels daily. A spill could pose serious environmental and health hazards. 

The preferred route skirts just north of the Fort Peck Reservation boundary, coming within 2 miles of the reservation at its nearest point. Tribal leaders have said that even though the pipeline wouldn’t cross their land, a spill could put thousands of people’s drinking water at risk. 

Krystal Two Bulls, executive director of Honor the Earth, an Indigenous-led environmental advocacy organization, said plotting a pipeline’s path just beyond a reservation boundary is a “familiar tactic.” The Dakota Access pipeline skirts around the northern border of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, and Enbridge’s Line 5 is being rerouted to avoid the Bad River Reservation in northern Wisconsin. 

“It’s an extremely common practice,” she said. “It’s like, ‘We’ll put the pipeline just close enough where you don’t have rights. And you can’t say that it’s on the reservation, so, legally, you don’t have the same protections or the same ability to fight it.’ But it’s close enough where it’s going to have an impact.”

Bridger’s Salvin said the company prioritized a route that does not cross reservation land because of tribal opposition. 

“Their tribe has made it clear they don’t want additional pipelines,” he said. “We are of the mind that if people don’t want our pipelines, whether it’s Fort Peck Tribes or an individual landowner, we don’t want to put it there. We’d rather have someone amenable to the pipeline willing to have it cross their property.”

Fort Peck Tribal Executive Board member Jestin Dupree listens as Bureau of Land Management officials answer questions from tribal representatives about the proposed Bridger Pipeline in September 2026 in Poplar, Montana. Lauren Miller / Montana Free Press / CatchLight Local / Report for America

Sitting beside his colleagues in the Fort Peck tribal chambers on a Thursday morning in late September, Tribal Executive Board member Jestin Dupree addressed two U.S. Bureau of Land Management representatives. Because the pipeline would cross more than 50 miles of BLM land, the federal agency is a major player in the planning process. 

“I want to know about worst-case scenarios,” Dupree told agency leaders.

The pipeline would run near several water systems that treat and deliver water from the Missouri River to thousands of Native and non-Native people on the reservation and in surrounding counties. It would also cross the Poplar River, a tributary of the Missouri.

What would happen, Dupree wanted to know, if it were to spill? 

In 2015, a different pipeline owned by Bridger spilled at least 30,000 gallons of Bakken crude oil into the Yellowstone River. About 6,000 Glendive residents, whose water treatment plant was downstream of the spill, were directed not to consume drinking water at the time. Bridger ultimately settled a civil lawsuit with the Montana Attorney General’s Office over the spill for $2 million in 2021. According to data from the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, Bridger pipelines have spilled 12 times since 2012. In 2023, Bridger and pipeline company Belle Fourche agreed to pay a $12.5 million civil penalty under the federal Clean Water Act and pipeline safety laws following oil spills in Montana and North Dakota. 

Slavin told Grist and Montana Free Press the company has improved its safety protocols since the 2015 spill.

“We build the pipelines today better than they were built in the past,” he said. “They are designed for safety and 24/7 monitoring with multiple leak detection systems, including one that we invented using AI.”

In the same September meeting, tribal leaders asked BLM representatives if the agency’s environmental analysis will consider the lifetime emissions produced by processing and burning tar sands oil. 

The refining and burning of fossil fuels releases planet-warming emissions. In addition to the higher greenhouse gas footprint compared to other types of crude, tar sands oil requires large amounts of water and gas for heating and mining to extract the bitumen.   

Marva Chapman, member of the Fort Peck Tribal Executive Board, listens as Bureau of Land Management officials answer questions about the proposed Bridger Pipeline on Sept. 24, 2026, in Poplar. Lauren Miller / Montana Free Press / CatchLight Local / Report for America

Phillip Blundell, the pipeline project lead for the BLM, cited a recent Supreme Court decision that federal agencies are not required to analyze such environmental impacts. He told tribal leaders that the BLM’s environmental analysis “will only look at emissions from construction.”

Council members also asked what an emergency response would look like in the event of a spill. They wanted to know how to document potential harm to the tribes’ natural resources and asked if there are plans to mitigate possible violence at man camps.

BLM representatives provided council members with little in the way of specifics, repeating several times that Bridger’s delay in providing logistical information about the pipeline has stalled the agency’s progress on its environmental analysis. 

Dupree said he left the council meeting with more questions than answers.

“We met with the BLM twice and Bridger Pipeline twice in the last year and a half, but you know, the same questions come about with no answers,” he said. “It’s just a lot of lip service, it seems.”

Asked about plans to meet with the tribal council, Bridger spokesperson Salvin said the company is preparing technical assessments to address the tribes’ questions and plans to meet in December. 

Dupree told Grist and Montana Free Press that, as of mid-October, he was unaware of any scheduled meeting. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In eastern Montana, a new oil pipeline comes with perils and a potential payday on Oct 29, 2026.

Nick Reece is Lord Mayor of Melbourne, Australia, and co-chair-elect of C40, a global network of nearly 100 major cities working to address climate change. Claudio Castro is Mayor of Renca, Chile. Both are board members of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy.

When we talk about the green economy, we often think nationally: industrial strategies, renewable-energy targets, subsidies and rules for electrification. But much of the investment needed to deliver the green transition will be decided closer to home – in our cities.

City authorities determine where and how buildings are built and renovated, how public transport develops, how land is used, what municipalities buy and what gets built in terms of infrastructure.

These decisions have the power to go beyond cutting emissions and strengthening resilience. They create new opportunities for businesses and investors.

• Oct 21, 2026 Investigations Turkish giant sponsoring COP31 cut climate goals then cashed in on oil boom COP31 sponsors should be screened for “climate integrity”. Yet Koç Holding has become a top partner while its oil refiner runs flat out and its climate targets slip Read more
• Oct 7, 2026 News Australia says COP31 co-presidency will work on a cover decision Chris Bowen said the text could acknowledge the inevitable overshoot of 1.5C, while questions remain over the inclusion of the electrification goal Read more
• Oct 6, 2026 News Race to host High Seas Treaty HQ heats up as Chile reaffirms bid Chile’s ocean protection record and concerns over a rival Chinese bid keep it in play, despite questions over the Kast government’s environmental policies Read more

A new analysis by C40 Cities and the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM) shows just how large these new markets could become.

Across 151 cities, annual spending on key green products could rise from $293 billion in 2025 to $2.78 trillion by 2050, as cities implement the climate commitments they have made. That figure would place them among the world’s five most valuable companies by market capitalisation.

Reliable source of rising demand

The supply of these green products will need to increase dramatically to meet booming demand. With Smart City Expo in Barcelona, Spain, and COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, on the horizon, these projections highlight an unprecedented investment opportunity that decision-makers cannot afford to ignore.

Beyond the global headline figure, it represents millions of local decisions and investments and, crucially, a growing source of market certainty. The analysis shows that fulfilling existing city climate plans could drive demand for key green products to eight times current levels by 2050, creating a reliable pipeline for businesses and investors.

A worker installs solar panels on a rooftop in the city of Nakhon Pathom in central Thailand (Photo: Peerapon Boonyakiat) A worker installs solar panels on a rooftop in the city of Nakhon Pathom in central Thailand (Photo: Peerapon Boonyakiat)

Because these markets are shaped locally, the same national policies can produce very different outcomes from one city to another. But cities determine how quickly markets take off through planning, permitting, procurement, infrastructure and the targets they set.

Over the past decade, GCoM has brought together more than 14,000 cities and local governments across 150 countries under the premise that tackling the climate and energy crises head-on requires municipalities of all shapes and sizes to act – alongside their national governments.

And we have seen firsthand how local climate action can create new investment opportunities. Renca and Melbourne offer two very different examples of this dynamic in practice.

Greener future for city living

Melbourne is creating a pipeline of green investment across the city. In its 2025-2026 budget, Melbourne committed approximately $31 million to new parks, streetscape improvements and thousands of trees, while planning to electrify 11 municipal sites, including Melbourne Town Hall, and move its buildings towards 100% renewable electricity. Its 4-km Greenline project is also delivering promenades, parks, native planting and environmental renewal along the Yarra River – Birrarung. Together, these investments are creating demand across construction, clean energy, urban design and other green industries.

In Renca, climate investment is tackling local challenges while bringing public and private partners together. Between 2018 and 2025, about $7.6 million in public and private investment funded a reforestation effort that has planted more than 85,000 trees in the Renca Hills Metropolitan Park. An assessment supported by the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF) now puts a number on what that investment returns: once the park matures, around 2035, its ecosystem services could be worth about $8.9 million a year.

A Water Master Plan, designed to reuse treated industrial water, will help sustain it. Renca has also attracted clean-energy investment through a 1.6-MW solar plant at a site run by manufacturer Tehmco. The project, which involved cooperation with the Japanese city of Toyama, includes more than 3,400 panels and expected annual emissions savings of about 1,000 tonnes of CO2.

Stepping up to meet cities’ climate needs

For us, as mayors, the lesson is clear: climate resilience is also economic resilience.

This is why the message ahead of COP31 should be straightforward: the world does not need a new market for climate action. It is already emerging in cities across the globe. What we need now is the push to take it to scale and turn local demand into a global investment boom.

COP31 has made implementation central to its Global Climate Action Agenda, with targets including raising the share of final energy demand met by electricity to 35% by 2035 and reducing building energy-consumption intensity by at least 25%. It has also highlighted green industrialisation, circularity and resilient cities.

Comment: Why the transition beyond fossil fuels depends on cities and collective action

These are ambitious targets and delivering them will require investment at a scale that matches the ambition. Cities are already putting projects into motion. The task now is to ensure that national policies and global finance scale up supply to meet demand.

But governments and global institutions cannot do this alone. The private sector must respond, too. The $2.78-trillion opportunity will be built on thousands of local climate and energy projects, like those in Melbourne and Renca. Companies need to look to cities as a source of long-term demand, while markets need products that can reach smaller projects and businesses, not only mega-infrastructure.

As members of C40 and GCoM, we strongly believe city and business leaders must work together to scale solutions faster. We need predictable, affordable finance and the capacity to turn local priorities into investment-ready projects. COP31’s Climate Implementation Bridge can help connect national commitments with these city-level investment pipelines and place local governments where they belong: at the centre of implementation and investment.

The businesses best positioned for the next decade will be those that see local governments not simply as stewards for climate solution deployment, but as the markets driving growth at speed and scale – from villages and towns to cities and metropolises. The opportunity is already there. Now we need to invest in it.

The post From Australia to Chile, our cities are driving a green investment boom appeared first on Climate Home News.

Last August, Christine Burton got an unexpected call from her sister, an employee at the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Kodiak, Alaska. The state-owned facility was about to conduct an unannounced test launch of what was likely a hypersonic missile and would be closing the only road that runs from the center of town to the site. Burton knew the drill. She and her husband, Buck, owned and operated a 140-acre bison ranch that abuts the Spaceport and, for the last couple of years, had had to deal with the many disruptions that came with it: road closures, accidents — at least five rockets have exploded or malfunctioned during takeoff, releasing debris and toxic material into the surrounding environment — and last-minute changes for clients hunting game on their land. Plus, their home is on the same two-lane road to the facility. When the road is shut down, the Burtons and their six children are effectively stranded. 

Usually, they’d get a couple of days’ notice, allowing them time to make any necessary arrangements. But this time there was no such buffer. Her sister had called to let her know that the road would be closed that evening for the test launch, so Burton left work early and drove home. Then, about a half hour later, she observed an unmarked security vehicle blocking her driveway. This, more than anything, she found infuriating. Her 6-year-old was sick, and whoever was overseeing the launch was essentially telling her not just that she couldn’t drive into town, but also that she couldn’t leave her house.

A sign marks part of “Burton Ranch,” owned by Christine and Buck Burton. Nathaniel Wilder

The launch, it turned out, was delayed until the following night. On August 21, 2025, around 10 p.m., a massive rocket streaked across the sky before breaking up somewhere over the Pacific. Videos posted to Facebook, X, and other social media captured its flight path, with one viewer wondering if it had been a nuclear weapon fired from Russia. 

The Alaska Aerospace Corporation, which operates the Spaceport facility, later released a statement explaining that it had carried out “a successful government rocket launch,” and that the people of Kodiak (with a population of over 12,000) should be proud of their role in “the United States’ space legacy.” But the information blackout the U.S. military required for this launch was unprecedented and even ruffled feathers within Alaska Aerospace. The Spaceport had prepared a press release and public notice that it wanted to share with the local media a few days before the launch. But government officials wouldn’t allow it. They wouldn’t even let Spaceport staff tell Alaska’s Department of Transportation about the road closure.

“It was the government that put the handcuffs on us,” Alaska Aerospace’s CEO, John Oberst, told colleagues at a board meeting in Kodiak a few weeks later. 

For the Burtons, it was an ominous sign, the beginning of a new era of secrecy around the launch facility and militarization of Kodiak Island itself. Founded by the state of Alaska in 1991, Alaska Aerospace was originally billed as a “public corporation” that would focus primarily on “space-related economic growth” and “space-related educational and research development by encouraging and assisting the University of Alaska,” according to the state statute establishing it. Unlike Cape Canaveral Space Force Base in Florida or Vandenberg Space Force Base in California — two of the country’s busiest launch facilities — it was the first commercial spaceport not affiliated with a federal installation. 

Stacy Studebaker, a Kodiak resident and longtime critic of the facility, said that officials used to tout its public-facing nature and potential to contribute to the local economy. “They claimed from the beginning that this would be a commercial launch site,” Studebaker said.

Longtime Kodiak resident and former Audubon chair Stacy Studebaker at her cabin at Pasagshak Bay nearby to the rocket launch sites. Nathaniel Wilder

But in the last couple of years, the tone has shifted. Alaska’s proximity to Russia and China, viewed as the U.S.’s primary threats and competitors in the region, and existing Cold War-era infrastructure, have made places like Kodiak highly attractive to military planners. At the same time, a rapidly warming Arctic is accelerating the competition for resources, including minerals and rare earth metals, and for control of shipping lanes, while also exposing infrastructure to the threat of worsening storms and sea level rise. This quest for “Arctic dominance” has heightened the risk of accidents — an oil tanker capsizing in the Arctic Ocean, for example — or outright military conflict.  

The Trump administration is planning to invest billions of dollars in Arctic security, including its Golden Dome missile defense system — a complex, layered defense shield incorporating “space-based sensors and interceptors,” designed to protect the United States from incoming missiles.

Much of the project has been cloaked in secrecy. But in September, the Air Force announced for the first time that it had deployed weapons in orbit to guard against “hostile adversary action.”

All of this means a potentially dramatic increase in launches from the Spaceport. In July, Rocket Lab, a private aerospace company, announced that it had signed a $266 million contract with the U.S. Air Force for missile defense testing, which will entail up to 18 suborbital launches at the facility over the next two years. And in the last year, the Spaceport was allocated up to $45.5 million from the federal government to upgrade the facility. It plans to modernize several of its launch pads and build a new 10,000-foot airstrip as well as a large lodging facility to accommodate government employees and private contractors, according to Oberst.

Construction on a new launch site at Narrow Cape where the Alaska Aerospace Corporation has rocket launch pads. The sites are built near the Gulf of Alaska, which would absorb fallout from a launch failure or explosion. Nathaniel Wilder

Alaska Aerospace’s 2025 annual report states that the Spaceport is “actively planning for increased launch cadence” and could see an exponential increase in activity — from one to three launches per year to one to three per month. Since opening nearly three decades ago, the Spaceport has performed a total of 35 launches. Now, it could potentially exceed that figure in a single year. 

Alaska Aerospace also has ambitions to grow beyond Kodiak. It has partnered with the University of Alaska Fairbanks to facilitate orbital and suborbital launches out of the university’s Poker Flat Research Range, north of Fairbanks, and is looking at a possible launch site on Alaska’s North Slope at Oliktok Point.  

“Spaceports are like beachfront property,” Oberst said in a press release announcing the agreement with the university in June 2025. “Very few and in high demand.”

This activity comes as the Trump administration is loosening regulations for commercial space operations and speeding up the permitting and review process for launches. The goal is to expand the number of launches nationwide from roughly 200 last year to 1,000 every year by the end of the decade (and as many as 10,000 launches a year by 2035), as outlined in a recently released National Security Presidential Memo, and marks the beginning of what President Donald Trump has called the “golden age of space transportation.” Achieving that goal will require not only new infrastructure, but also fast-tracking the environmental review process for launches and the construction of new spaceports.

The integrated processing facility at Narrow Cape where rockets are assembled. Rockets are assembled inside structures, which are later removed to expose the completed rocket. Nathaniel Wilder

In an executive order issued last year, Trump called for streamlining the licensing requirements for commercial launches. More recently, the Federal Aviation Administration announced a new rule that would allow private companies such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin to bypass more than a dozen regulations, including longstanding environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Clean Water Act when applying for launch permits or construction of new spaceports. 

Earthjustice, an environmental advocacy group that has criticized the FAA’s rule, says the rapid increase in launch activity poses risks to public health and the climate, many of which have yet to be studied. 

“One of the main goals of this deregulatory push is just to massively increase commercial space activity,” said Scott Stern, a senior attorney at Earthjustice. “And the whole point of our environmental review statute is not necessarily to impede activity. It is to make sure that it’s being done safely and that it is not unduly harming the human environment, wildlife, clean air, clean water, and our own communities.”

A cooling pool outside a rocket launch site, left, is designed to capture some of the heat from a launch so that it doesn’t burn the local terrain. Some locals complain that the rocket launches are disruptive and could contaminate the surrounding environment.​ Along the 35-mile road between the Kodiak airport and rocket launch facility, a brown bear, right, walks through the landscape. ​Nathaniel Wilder​

The scientific community has only recently begun revisiting the impacts of air pollution from rockets — including black soot and other toxic chemicals released during takeoff. One study published by researchers at University College London in 2022 found that a surge in rocket launches on a scale being proposed by the Trump administration could threaten progress in restoring the ozone layer over the past four decades and accelerate global warming. An emissions tracker created by the research team estimates that in the last five years alone, the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere from rocket launches has increased by more than 300 percent. 

Eloise Maraise, a professor of atmospheric chemistry and air quality at the university and the study’s lead author, said interest in the subject is now starting to attract significant funding opportunities because there’s been a realization that the impacts could be far-reaching. She described herself as being in the unenviable position of “forecasting an upcoming environmental disaster.”

It’s not just missile defense that is driving investment in Kodiak. The U.S. Coast Guard, which operates its largest base on the island, is slated to receive two new 328-foot polar icebreakers in the coming years (a third will have its home port in Seward, just to the north). The government is already building 30 new housing units, a child development center and playground, and other infrastructure improvements to accommodate the influx of personnel. There’s also been a flurry of construction at the highly secretive Navy Seal cold-weather training base in Kodiak, fueling rumors about what may be coming. All of this new activity is raising concerns among residents and local officials that the island’s energy grid, which is already nearing capacity, will not be able to accommodate the new development.

The Narrow Cape Lodge, known locally as the “space hotel,” is owned by a developer in Fairbanks. The Alaska Aerospace Corporation has worked with the lodge in the past to house spaceport employees. Nathaniel Wilder

Meanwhile, Senator Dan Sullivan, a Republican, has advocated for reopening the U.S. base on the island of Adak, part of the Aleutian archipelago southwest of Kodiak, which served as a staging ground for the Navy during World War II. The flight path over these islands is being turned into what Alaska Aerospace has dubbed the “Pacific Test Range,” which will be used to pilot “hypersonic vehicles, orbital launch, and other advanced aerospace systems.” 

Given these changes, the Burtons sold most of their property, which had been in the family since the 1960s, to Alaska Aerospace for $2.4 million in February. (They kept their home and 20 acres.) Christine Burton said it no longer made sense to hold onto the land. The increase in launches would have made it too difficult to operate their game ranch, and she feared the Spaceport’s new military focus meant the government would have found a way to seize the property by eminent domain. 

“We saw the writing on the wall,” Burton, who grew up in a military family, told me. 

Bison graze on land that was recently sold to the Aerospace Corporation, which plans to ramp up rocket launches in the coming years. Nathaniel Wilder

Alaska Aerospace hasn’t said much about what it plans to do with the 139.5 acres of land, close to popular hiking trails and beaches where visitors can watch gray whales make their way north in the summer. More than 150 bird species, several of which are at risk of extinction, also frequent the area along the island’s eastern edge, known as Narrow Cape. In addition to the new lodging complex, Alaska Aerospace officials have also resurrected a controversial plan to install a barge dock at the mouth of the Pasagshak River that would allow them to get heavy equipment to the site, but which could impact salmon and other species. 

Taken together, the expansion of the Spaceport and other defense installations on Kodiak will transform this rugged island into a hub of military activity in just a few short years. What Kodiak Mayor Jared Griffin described to me as a “sleepy working-class fishing town” is poised to become the tip of the spear in a new battle for control of the Arctic.

A monument stands just outside of the Alaska Aerospace Corporation launch facility at Narrow Cape. Nathaniel Wilder

Kodiak is the second largest island in the United States and one of Alaska’s most important commercial fishing hubs. A one-hour flight from Anchorage, it flanks the eastern edge of a volcanic island chain that extends more than 1,000 miles into the Bering Sea along the Russian border. 

Although the Trump administration has been fixated on exerting more control over Greenland, and the president himself has frequently referred, falsely, to the ubiquitous presence of Russian and Chinese ships in the North Atlantic, there’s been far more tension and potential for conflict along Alaska’s coast. The U.S., Russia, and China are all competing for control of these waters and the riches that lie beneath them, including oil and gas, rare earth metals, and highly lucrative commercial fish stocks such as crab and pollock. China, which declared itself a “near Arctic State” in 2018 and is rapidly expanding its own fleet of icebreakers, now routinely sends research vessels to the Bering Sea near the U.S. border on the way to the Arctic.

As warming waters melt the sea ice that once blanketed much of the Arctic Ocean — the Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet — shipping access will only increase. Russia has already invested tens of billions in developing the Northern Sea Route, which runs along its roughly 3,500-mile-long Arctic coastline and would slash the amount of time it takes for oil and gas to reach East Asia. The world’s superpowers also have their sights set on commercial fishing opportunities in the Arctic Ocean, though it is currently protected by an international treaty.

A river that flows into Pasagshak Bay just below the rocket launch sites draws fishermen for its salmon runs throughout the season.The Aerospace Corporation is considering building a barge landing in the Bay. Nathaniel Wilder

Tensions have already spilled out into the open. In 2023, a Chinese spy balloon entered U.S. airspace north of the Aleutian Islands and drifted across the continental United States before being shot down off the coast of South Carolina. And the U.S. has intercepted several Russian fighter jets — and one joint Russian-Chinese mission — in the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone near the Bering Strait. One encounter in 2024 came dangerously close to an outright collision.

These sensitivities extend to the Spaceport. Oberst, the Alaska Aerospace CEO, said last year’s launch was kept quiet until the last minute because the government “didn’t want anybody, especially the adversaries, to be aware of the timing or the detail of it.” 

Though Democratic and Republican administrations have both sought to project power in the Arctic — the Army released a report in 2021 titled “Regaining Arctic Dominance” — Trump has placed a premium on reasserting U.S. primacy in the region. 

The Golden Dome project, which the Congressional Budget Office has estimated will cost more than $1 trillion, is the crown jewel in his plans. The system, which Lockheed Martin has described as a “Manhattan Project-scale mission,” would use land, air, and space-based sensors and interceptors to stave off an incoming attack.  

“Golden Dome is the main driver for business for the next three-to-five years,” Oberst told colleagues at Alaska Aerospace’s annual board meeting last year. “It’s the national imperative. So it supersedes other missions.”

President and CEO of the state-owned Alaska Aerospace Corporation, John Oberst, in his office in Anchorage. Nathaniel Wilder

Commercial launches aimed at environmental research or scientific discovery, the suggestion seemed to be, would have to take a back seat.

Money has already begun to flow into Alaska, and Kodiak in particular. Beyond the tens of millions of dollars for upgrades to the Spaceport, the facility is also one of hundreds of contractors considered eligible for up to $151 billion in government funding related to Golden Dome over the next decade. Alaska Aerospace has also signed a memorandum of understanding with Moonshot Space, an Israeli aerospace start-up whose CEO helped develop the Iron Dome, Israel’s missile defense shield. The company is currently developing an electromagnetic launch technology that would operate out of Poker Flat. 

Shahar Bahiri, one of Moonshot’s co-founders and its chief operating officer, told me Alaska is attractive precisely because of its large open spaces and low population density. “What we want to have is an area which is open sea … very low air traffic, very little sea traffic, not a lot of civilians around the launch area, and not a lot of nature,” he said. 

Meanwhile, the Defense Authorization Act for 2027, which still has to get through Congress, would provide $2.6 billion for military assets across the state, including the continued expansion of Kodiak’s launch capacity. Sullivan, in an op-ed published earlier this year, said Alaska is “in the midst of the most significant military buildup … since World War II.”

The integrated processing facility at Narrow Cape where rockets are assembled. Nathaniel Wilder

Cold War-era military development and infrastructure is still visible in parts of Alaska. Distant Early Warning Line radar stations were set up across the Arctic, from the Aleutians to Greenland, and served as a kind of trip wire for Soviet bombers. The U.S. also tested nuclear weapons in Alaska in the 1960s and ’70s, including a series of underground explosions on Amchitka Island in the Bering Sea — despite opposition and a lawsuit from Native Aleuts — which killed up to 2,000 sea otters as well as thousands of sea birds and other wildlife. (In an editorial published a few days before the final test in 1971, the New York Times wrote, “The folly of Amchitka is the folly of a species that burns and poisons and blows up its only home.”)

Today, some of the most direct impacts of this new military buildup will be felt by people in places across Alaska. At board meetings and in op-eds, residents of Kodiak have expressed worries about the disruption and potential harm from new weapons testing, but also more mundane concerns such as what all the activity will mean for housing, roads, and the island’s energy supply. 

A couple of days before I first spoke with Kodiak Mayor Jared Griffin in July, he’d toured the Spaceport with the undersecretary for energy, Kyle Haustveit, who was in town to learn about the island’s energy needs. Griffin, who was elected a year ago, grew up in Alaska in a military family and teaches English and literature at the University of Alaska at Anchorage’s Kodiak College. A self-described “space nerd,” Griffin believes Kodiak will benefit from the defense-related investments. He lobbied for the expansion of the Coast Guard base, which he said could bring an additional 300 to 500 people to the area, which has seen a decline in its population over the last decade. But he also recognizes that the infusion of federal dollars and personnel has the potential to change the character of the island.

Kodiak borough mayor Jared Griffin in the town of Kodiak. Griffin’s job is to facilitate communication between the borough and the Alaska Aerospace Corporation. Nathaniel Wilder

Griffin said that when he was campaigning for office last fall, most of these concerns weren’t really on the table. Over the past six months, however, interest in Kodiak’s role as a central military outpost in the Arctic has intensified. “Things are just exploding,” Griffin said.

Dan Menth, CEO of the Kodiak Electric Association, the island’s main electric utility, expressed a similar sense of disbelief in just how quickly the mood has changed. Over the past year, Menth said, the cooperative started receiving inquiries from federal agencies about Kodiak’s grid capacity as rumors swirled about new development, whether it was tied to Golden Dome or a broader military buildup in the Arctic. 

“It’s kind of like the year ended and the floodgates opened,” Menth said.

Sign at Narrow Cape where the Alaska Aerospace Corporation has rocket launch pads. Nathaniel Wilder

It was also unclear to Menth, and the rest of the island’s residents, what specifically the federal government had in mind and what it would mean for Kodiak. “What’s coming?” Menth asked when I spoke to him in August. “I don’t know.” 

Secrecy surrounding construction at the Navy Seal training base has added to the sense that government officials are not being fully transparent. “Something was definitely happening last summer, and they were cryptic about it for sure,” said Natura Richardson, executive director of the Island Trails Network, which promotes access to Kodiak’s hiking trails, including a loop that skirts the naval base. (In a written statement, the Navy said it is constructing a new “operational facility,” that will be powered from the existing grid with backup generators for emergencies.) 

The new projects will be an added challenge for the island’s electrical grid, which at certain times of the year, especially the height of fish processing in February and March, is nearly maxed out.

Kodiak relies on a mix of hydro and wind power that provides residents with affordable clean energy and can draw on backup diesel generators if necessary. Indeed, Kodiak has some of the least expensive electricity in Alaska, which is notable considering that Kodiak is an island in the Pacific Ocean. 

“It takes years to add generation to our system,” Menth said. “It’s not like the Lower 48 where you just show up and you plug it in. We’re an island. And, unfortunately, we’re right on the verge of being tapped out.”

The Pillar Mountain wind farm is located above the town of Kodiak as seen here from across Chiniak Bay. Nathaniel Wilder

A representative from the Department of Energy said the federal agency is “focused on leveraging Alaska’s abundant energy resources and advancing practical solutions to deliver more affordable, reliable, and secure energy for Alaskan communities, including Kodiak.”

Some locals also worry about the island’s fragile ecosystems. There are rare and endangered bird habitat, grey whale migration corridors, and salmon streams — already facing threats from rapidly warming water. Marine mammals are especially sensitive to noise pollution, which will increase with more launches and shipping traffic. The Spaceport’s expansion will fragment important wildlife habitat. And with significantly more launches, there’s a greater chance that something will go wrong — as happened in 2014 when the Army’s experimental hypersonic missile exploded four seconds after takeoff, raining debris on the surrounding area. The mishap led to a multiyear $34-million reconstruction project, according to an Alaska Aerospace presentation. (There have been at least five launch failures that have ended in explosions or accidents.)    

Stacy Studebaker, who moved to Kodiak in 1980 after working for the National Park Service, says her biggest fears are that the military buildup and increase in launch activity will block access to public lands and beaches and result in environmental contamination. She also worries about the proposed barge landing dock at the mouth of the Pasagshak River, not far from where she and her husband have a seasonal cabin.

Longtime Kodiak resident and former Audubon chair Stacy Studebaker at her cabin at Pasagshak Bay nearby to the rocket launch sites. Nathaniel Wilder

This past May, Studebaker, who is conservation chairperson of the local chapter of Audubon Alaska, arranged a meeting with Oberst, who gave the group a tour of the Spaceport and answered questions. Studebaker presented a recent inventory of bird species in the area compiled by Audubon; they identified 185 in Narrow Cape, including two dozen considered species of conservation concern. 

“We really wanted them to know they are on hallowed habitat,” Studebaker said. 

By all accounts, Oberst has been much more engaged with the community than previous Alaska Aerospace leaders: After the missile launch last August, he sent Christine Burton flowers and a note apologizing for the disturbance. But his relationship with the town could soon be strained. The military’s insistence on secrecy and the rushed timeline for developing a Golden Dome prototype — the Pentagon has scheduled the first major test before the 2028 presidential election — will likely take precedence over the concerns of the community. 

That seems to be the emerging pattern. In August, General Michael Guetlein, who oversees the Golden Dome project, told an audience at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, that the government had already carried out two secret tests of the missile defense system, one of them at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico (the other site remains undisclosed). But the program largely remains a black box. At the 2025 symposium, government officials were barred from talking about Golden Dome. More recently, David Mosher, national security division director for the Congressional Budget Office, which produced its own estimate of the program’s cost, said that the Pentagon initially refused to share any information with him, and he only received a briefing on the program after intervention by Senate Armed Services Committee staff.  

Launch site at Narrow Cape where the Alaska Aerospace Corporation has rocket launch pads. Nathaniel Wilder

Oberst, for his part, said he intends to be as transparent as he can be with the community. He hopes the new hotel and land acquired from the Burtons will eventually create more opportunities for residents and the public to explore that part of the island. But as the military presence on Kodiak grows and tensions between the U.S. and its adversaries escalate, there will be limits to what he can tell his neighbors.

As Oberst said only half-jokingly during our conversation, he’s not even supposed to say the words “Golden Dome.”    

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The new Cold War comes to Kodiak on Oct 29, 2026.

A framework for peace in Ukraine Channel Comment brendan 29th October 2026 Teaser Media

On Tuesday, October 27, representatives from six communities dealing with the impacts of Canadian mining projects in Latin America and the Caribbean testified in a thematic hearing held by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. For years, these communities have fought to have their human rights and right to a healthy environment upheld both in their home countries and in Canada. 

Community leaders testify to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

Corporate investment and abuses cross borders. Communities’ solidarity does too. At yesterday’s hearing, leaders from across Latin America and the Caribbean joined with Canadian and international NGOs to strengthen each others’ voices. Together, they posed a question to the Canadian government: The issues at each of these mine sites are well documented, so why hasn’t the Canadian government done more to hold Canadian mining companies accountable for their actions abroad?

Their testimonies show how individual community experiences add up to a pattern of corporate abuse that demands immediate action.

Canada’s government supports mining companies as communities call for action.

Canada’s laws and state practices provide political, legal and economic support that enables the sector… There are no effective mechanisms to prevent or investigate damages.

Charis Kamphuis, Justice and Corporate Accountability Project, Canada

Canadian stock exchanges are home to roughly half of the world’s publicly traded mining companies, but Canada does not hold the sector to strict and binding human rights and environmental due diligence standards. Mechanisms for corporate accountability in Canada fall short. Instead, it often uses its economic and diplomatic resources to support companies’ operations despite the impacts these have on local communities. 

In Argentina, toxic spills contaminate the Jachal River. 

For more than ten years, we have fought for our right to clean water… We have waited for more than ten years without response. We do not want more broken promises. We want clean water, justice, and guarantees that this will not repeat.

Saúl Zeballos, Argentina

Two witness testimonies heard yesterday relate to Barrick Gold’s operations abroad. 

At the Veladero Mine in Argentina, five spills have contaminated the Jachal River with cyanide and mercury, and community members are still asking for the company to take responsibility for the contamination. 

While mining company Barrick acknowledged the first three spills, in regards to two additional spills documented through independent water sampling, the company said it “is aware of the allegations regarding a recent incident at Veladero, and categorically denies them.” 

In the Dominican Republic, concerns about pollution are met with bottled water and denials.

We have many health problems, both kidney and lung problems, vision problems, lead in the blood… We are suffering from a lack of water… I believe it is not acceptable for us to be living in the situation we are living in…Without water, there is no life.

Casilda Lima, Dominican Republic

At its Pueblo Viejo Mine in the Dominican Republic, residents living near one of the largest gold mines in the world have to deal with constant air pollution and impacts on water. Community members have had to drink bottled water for the past 15 years.

The company denies any responsibility and has not developed a permanent solution for the  health issues and pollution that communities allege comes from their proximity to the mine. In response to a Guardian article about issues at the Pueblo Viejo mine, Barrick stated that it is “committed to operating in an environmentally and socially responsible manner. Contrary to the allegations, the water quality surrounding our operations has improved due to the extensive environmental remediation and water treatment activities we have undertaken.” 

In Ecuador and Colombia, land defenders are imprisoned and harassed.

We have people who are unjustly criminalized for defending our rights, for defending our nature, for defending our water, our Pachamama.

Marco Manobanda, Ecuador

In Ecuador, the Curipamba-El Domo mine threatens the health, livelihoods, and water resources of local Indigenous and campesino communities. Land defenders who have spoken out about the impacts of the project have faced criminalization and imprisonment without due process.

Those of us who have raised our voices for 17 years have been stigmatized and labeled as belonging to groups outside the law… 

We have gone to the authorities, we have gone to the courts, and the risk continues. That is why we have come before you today.

Mayerly López, Colombia

Members of the Santurban Committee protesting a Canadian mine project in Colombia have also faced harassment and criminalization. 

In response to these allegations, Aris Mining claims “we remain steadfast in our assertion that we do not and have not participated in, nor do we condone, the intimidation of anyone.” 

The Committee and UN experts have sent letters to the Canadian Government about the situation. Despite this, Canada has not responded or taken responsibility for the actions of Aris Mining.

In Panama, residents cannot enter their home communities without company permission.

Before we had to travel on foot through the mountain for many hours. Now, even though the road is much faster, the company controls it and complicates our access. There is a security checkpoint and they monitor who enters or leaves… If there is an emergency, and my family calls me, without a company ID, I cannot get to them quickly. 

Why do we have to ask First Quantum for permission to pass if the company is on our territory? Instead of asking the Indigenous People for permission, they come to tell us what to do…

This testimony is anonymous because I am worried that they will threaten me and my community, or that they will prevent me from using the road to reach my family.

Name withheld

In Panama, Canadian mining company First Quantum Minerals has had its contract revoked twice by the country’s Supreme Court. Despite this, they continue to operate a checkpoint along the main road into the mine concession area. First Quantum Minerals told the media that the checkpoint is “only within the industrial zone itself” with “no restrictions in the remainder of the region.” 

Nevertheless, nine communities are located within the concession area, and are required to have a company-issued identification in order to pass through, greatly restricting their freedom of movement. Canadian officials have repeatedly expressed their support for First Quantum and the company has filed international arbitration for $20 billion USD against Panama. 

In Mexico, a community leader opposing a mine was murdered.

We are not saying that the [Canadian] Embassy ordered my father to be killed. But by denying him support for security, and by only working in favor of the company, we think that they put him at greater risk… Today, almost 17 years after my father’s murder, we are still seeking justice.

José Luis Abarca

In 2009, community leader Mariano Abarca was murdered for his opposition to a Canadian mining project near his home in southern Mexico. This was after the Canadian Embassy received multiple letters stating that Abarca feared for his safety. Canadian authorities have refused to investigate the case and a Canadian court claimed that human rights policies were not binding for government officials. 

At the time of Abarca’s murder, Blackfire’s CEO claimed that the company “is not involved in this in any fashion…We’re just trying to continue working and moving forward with our projects.” Mariano Abarca´s son, José Luis Abarca, continues to fight for justice for the murder of his father. He testified on Canada’s obligations in the hearing.

It’s time for the Canadian government to uphold human rights.

Each of these communities have had their livelihoods, health, safety and wellbeing threatened by Canadian mining companies. 

This is not the first time that these issues have been raised to the Canadian government. In a 2023 House of Commons hearing, Catherine Coumans stated that, “Harm caused or contributed to by Canadian mining companies, their subsidiaries and contractors overseas is widespread globally and persistent.” 

Leaders from countries across Latin America and the Caribbean made their message clear: It is past time for Canada’s government to uphold international human rights standards and hold its mining industry accountable for the many harms it has caused abroad. 

The post Hearing Spotlights Human Rights Failures of Canadian Mining throughout Latin America and the Caribbean appeared first on Earthworks.

What is the cost of polluting the air that Coloradans breathe? 

On February 24, 2025, we filmed pollution pouring out of a storage tank valve on a well pad owned by PDC Energy, a subsidiary of Chevron. The well pad is located just outside Brighton, Colorado and is within a half-mile radius of dozens of homes. Colorado’s Air Pollution Control Division (APCD) responded promptly and an APCD inspector observed the same pollution at the site a few days later. The valve was not operating as designed, so the APCD issued a notice of alleged violation.

(Top) Image of storage tanks on the well pad
(Bottom) Optical gas imaging video showing invisible pollution from a valve on one of the tanks

On March 4, 2025, the valve was fixed. 

For nine days the facility was in violation of Colorado’s air quality rules, dumping harmful compounds into the air that pose a threat to public health, degrade regional air quality, and accelerate climate change. 

The maximum daily fine in 2026 for violating Colorado’s air quality regulations is $57,773. A violation lasting nine days could result in a fine of over half a million dollars.

Yet, on August 13, 2026, the state proposed a total fine of only $18,375. This is less than 5% of the maximum fine that could have been assessed.

A few justifications APCD offered for this drastically reduced fine:

• One was the operator’s good behavior and cooperation. Meanwhile, another Chevron subsidiary in Colorado was just fined $1.5 million for a well blowout that rained toxic chemicals down on Galeton, Colorado for days. 
• The other was the operator’s willingness to get back into compliance, but notably only after they were caught in violation of Colorado rules by Earthworks.

So, to answer the question posed above: for the oil and gas industry, polluting the air that Coloradans breathe is significantly cheaper than lobbying lawmakers and convincing the public that their pollution is not a threat.

We aim to change that. 

Colorado is preparing for the 2027 legislative session, which is the first with a new governor in 8 years. This creates a rare opportunity for decisive action to put people over polluters. The Polis Administration has operated under the idea that “compliance” is the only thing that matters when it comes to air pollution, routinely negotiating penalties down to tiny fractions of the allowable maximum. This has allowed operators to routinely spew pollution into Colorado communities for pennies. 

To truly put people, health, and the environment first, we need penalties that actually matter. 

The post A Slap on the Wrist appeared first on Earthworks.

African negotiators have asked the UN to open a formal space at COP31 for contentious talks on adaptation finance and trade, lining up a potential fight over the agenda when the climate summit opens in Antalya on November 9.

In a letter sent to UN climate chief Simon Stiell last Sunday, Ghana, which is chairing the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) this year, requested three additional agenda items on tripling adaptation finance, trade and climate change, and the financing arrangements of the Green Climate Fund. 

Governments agreed at last year’s COP30 on a new target to “at least triple” finance for climate adaptation in developing countries by 2035, following a push led by the least-developed countries which are highly vulnerable to growing climate impacts. But the last-minute deal left out key details, including the baseline year for tripling, a headline amount, who should pay and how it will be delivered.

AGN chair Antwi-Boasiako Amoah wrote in the letter that “a dedicated item is needed”, pointing to worrying trends in adaptation finance. He added that the mid-year climate talks in Bonn had “made clear” that countries could not agree how or where to take the goal forward.

During June’s session, developing countries tried to anchor the target in the negotiations on the Global Goal on Adaptation, which lays out technical indicators to measure and boost global efforts to cope with climate change. But wealthy nations – led primarily by the EU, the UK and Japan – opposed that push, arguing adaptation finance should be discussed elsewhere. Unable to break the deadlock, diplomats left Bonn without an agreement on adaptation.

‘Homeless’ issue

No other developing-country group has officially backed the AGN’s proposal so far. That may change next week, when negotiating blocs hold their pre-COP coordination meetings in Antalya.

Raju Pandit Chhetri, lead climate finance negotiator for the least-developed countries (LDCs), told Climate Home News it would be difficult to secure an agenda item on adaptation finance alone, but it is “a homeless issue” that needs to be discussed somewhere within the formal talks at COP31.

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Developed countries are likely to resist. In their agreed COP31 negotiating position, EU governments reaffirmed the tripling call but framed it within the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), the broader post-2025 finance goal agreed at COP29 in Baku. The EU and its member states are the largest provider of international climate finance to developing countries, but some nations, including Germany and France, have cut their aid budgets in recent years.

The LDCs want the goal to be defined as $120 billion a year by 2030 (five years before the agreed timeline), which would triple a previous target of around $40 billion. That was meant to be reached in 2025 but is likely to have been missed.

Mattias Söderberg, global climate lead for the Danish development NGO DanChurchAid, said tripling adaptation finance is not just “catchy wording”, but something that will save lives and help countries and communities cope with climate change on the ground. 

He added that the AGN’s proposal will “for sure” spark a debate and “may lead to an agenda fight”, but it will ensure that the goal will not be forgotten. 

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) GCF’s needs assessment

The second request in Ghana’s letter aims to revive a provision dating back to COP19 in 2013. Countries agreed then that the COP conferences should periodically assess how much money developing countries need to implement the UN climate convention, with the goal of helping inform fundraising by the Green Climate Fund (GCF).

Amoah said the COP has not made that assessment since 2013, so the fund’s replenishments have gone ahead without it. The GCF’s next fundraising round, covering 2028 to 2031, officially began in July. Its board is meeting in South Korea this week to agree rules for donor contributions, and a pledging conference is expected by the end of 2027.

The letter points to “declining” aid and “pressure on multilateral climate funds”. In May, the UK told the GCF it would deliver only half of the £1.62bn it had pledged for the current period, as it spends more on national security.

Trade tensions return

The third African request, for a “Trade and Climate Change Dialogue” item, is likely to be just as contentious. Disputes over what some countries call unilateral trade measures, such as the EU’s carbon border tax, have flared at recent COPs.

To keep this hot issue out of the official negotiations, in Belém last year, the Brazilian presidency set up three trade dialogues to take place at the Bonn mid-year sessions from 2026 to 2028. The first, in June, stayed stuck at “principled debate”, E3G’s Ellie Belton told Climate Home News. There, the African Group and Russia floated a formal negotiating track, which developed countries are reluctant to open.

Tensions set to flare over trade at COP31 as China makes it a priority

The AGN letter argues that the Belém decision already gives sufficient basis for an agenda item. “Respecting previous decisions of the [UNFCCC] governing bodies is an inalienable basis for trust in the process,” it says.

China, which previously asked for an agenda item on trade, signalled last week that it wants COP31 to tackle trade “protectionism” and the free flow of green technology, after US and EU curbs on its cleantech exports.

The UN climate secretariat can add the requested items to a provisional agenda that would need to be formally adopted at the start of the COP. Any government can object to the inclusion of additional issues, and disputed items are often moved into consultations led by the presidency to broker a deal.

The post Africa wants adaptation finance on COP31 agenda, raising risk of a fight appeared first on Climate Home News.

In the pantheon of coral reef creatures, few fish look as if they’ve been painted by an ecstatic artist with an unlimited palette more than the mandarinfish.

Synchiropus splendidus, a tiny dragonet no longer than your thumb, is a riot of color — electric blues swirling into molten oranges while psychedelic greens trace intricate patterns across its body. Yet these flamboyant little fish spend much of their lives in a place we might easily overlook.

Rubble. Broken coral branches. Collapsed skeletons. The fractured architecture of reefs continually being built, broken, and built again.

I first encountered a mandarinfish during fieldwork in Palau, Micronesia, in 2000. The late-afternoon light filtered down through warm water, the reef slipping into that golden hour when diurnal fish slow down and the nocturnal world prepares to wake.

My dive buddy motioned for patience and pointed toward what looked like nothing more than a pile of broken coral fingers. At first I saw only debris. Then something moved. A flicker of turquoise. Then orange. Then the unmistakable hovering glide of a mandarinfish weaving through the labyrinth of coral fragments.

It looked like a living jewel dropped into a shattered mosaic.

The moment stayed with me, although for years I think I misunderstood what it was telling me.

Palau, like reefs across the tropics, had endured the global coral bleaching event of 1998 — the most severe mass bleaching the world had recorded at the time. Reefs that had once been towering cities of living coral became fields of pale skeletons. Algae colonized newly exposed surfaces while erosion and storm damage slowly broke carbonate structures apart.

Floating there only two years later, I couldn’t escape the juxtaposition: extraordinary beauty moving through the physical evidence of loss.

For years I remembered that fish as a small testament to resilience. But more than a quarter-century later, I began wondering whether science supported the story I had attached to it.

So I started asking people who study reef fish a seemingly straightforward question: How are mandarinfish actually doing?

The first thing I learned was that the rubble wasn’t necessarily a problem.

“Mandarinfishes hide within the dead bases of branching coral or deep coral rubble and prey upon tiny invertebrates,” says Keoki Stender, a Hawai‘i-based fish expert and underwater photographer. The places where he finds them include “murky harbors and lagoons” with corals resistant to bleaching — places that can resemble reefs altered by both natural and human disturbances.

Stender told me he isn’t particularly concerned about mandarinfish. Other reef fishes are much more directly vulnerable to coral mortality: species that eat living coral or shelter within living colonies, including some butterflyfishes, filefishes, damselfishes, gobies, and blennies.

Mandarinfish are different.

They are small, slow, and conspicuously colorful. In open water that combination would make for a very short life. Broken coral gives them a maze of crevices and hiding places, while tiny invertebrates living among the fragments provide food.

To us rubble may look like devastation. To a mandarinfish it can be a neighborhood.

The Trouble With Rubble

Coral reefs have always broken. Storms shatter colonies. Urchins and worms bore into reef frameworks. Parrotfish grind coral into sand. New corals settle among the remains and begin building upward again.

A reef is architecture and archaeology at once.

And rubble isn’t simply what remains when that architecture collapses. It is itself habitat. That makes the mandarinfish an awkward species through which to tell a simple story about coral decline.

Bart Shepherd, senior director of the Steinhart Aquarium at the California Academy of Sciences, told me he isn’t particularly worried about the species either.

Mandarinfish are classified as “Least Concern” on the IUCN Red List, something Shepherd attributes in part to their broad geographic range across the Indo-Pacific and relatively limited collection for the aquarium trade.

That puts them in a different position from fishes with narrow distributions, such as the Banggai cardinalfish, or species heavily harvested across large portions of their range, including sharks and food fishes.

Dr. Emma Kennedy, a coral reef scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, pointed to the same IUCN assessment. Although declines have been reported in the Philippines, she said there isn’t enough published information to determine whether they represent a broader global trend.

In some places the more immediate concern may not even be climate change.

Although the IUCN describes the aquarium trade as “limited” overall, collection — particularly in Indonesia and the Philippines — may still pose a significant direct threat to some local mandarinfish populations, Kennedy says.

That wasn’t the answer I expected when I began asking about a fish I had come to associate with coral loss. But then the story became more complicated.

A Fish That’s Hard to Count

“We really have very little data on mandarinfish, globally,” says Dr. Daniela Ceccarelli, who leads fish monitoring work on the Great Barrier Reef for the Australian Institute of Marine Science.

That means scientists can’t confidently say whether populations are declining.

Part of the problem is the very behavior that makes mandarinfish so captivating also makes them cryptic.

Mandarinfish spend much of their lives tucked into the reef matrix, emerging most conspicuously around dusk. Dr. Christopher Fulton, a principal research scientist at AIMS, says conventional visual surveys don’t work particularly well for fishes like these. Obtaining reliable abundance estimates can require anesthetic or ichthyocide within small sampling stations.

In other words, the rubble that protects mandarinfish from predators also protects them from scientists trying to count them. Their population trend remains unknown.

That distinction matters. “Least Concern” doesn’t mean scientists have established that mandarinfish populations are stable everywhere. It means the evidence currently available does not place the species in one of the IUCN’s threatened categories.

So perhaps the most scientifically defensible answer to my question — How are mandarinfish doing? — is also the least satisfying.

We don’t really know.

Where the Living Reef Comes Back In

There was another complication. Even a fish who lives among dead coral ultimately depends on living coral.

As Fulton told me, “Mandarinfish and other dragonets in the family Callionymidae do tend to occupy rubble patches in and around coral reefs,” but rubble doesn’t last forever.

Waves move it. Animals bore into it. Physical and biological erosion gradually grind it down. The process repeats infinitely. “We do need live coral to produce a constant supply of coral-supported habitats,” Fulton says.

That includes rubble.

Dr. Shaun Wilson, a senior research scientist at AIMS, cautioned that there are no studies he knows of explicitly examining the relationship between coral cover and mandarinfish. Direct effects from changing coral communities therefore shouldn’t be assumed.

But ecological dependence can be indirect. “There may be long-term consequences for these fish if production of coral rubble declines,” he told me.

That sentence changed how I thought about the fish I had seen in Palau.

Rubble can provide perfectly good habitat today while simultaneously carrying the history of the ecosystem that created it. Every broken branch was once built by living coral polyps pulling calcium carbonate from seawater. Without continued coral growth, the supply of that architecture eventually stops.

The mandarinfish’s labyrinth may look self-contained. It isn’t.

Ceccarelli put the distinction succinctly: Mandarinfish like sediment-rich and rubble habitats, “but they still rely on tropical coral reef ecosystems as habitat.”

Kennedy makes a similar distinction. Mandarinfish aren’t as directly dependent upon living coral as butterflyfishes that feed on coral polyps. Their diet — including copepods, worms and other small organisms — allows them to forage among dead coral. That may buffer them from the immediate effects of coral mortality. It does not make them independent of reefs.

With the scale of coral loss expected under continued warming, Kennedy told me, “Ultimately everything reef-related will be affected to some extent.”

Persistence Is Not Permanence

That brought me back to Palau. The fish I saw in 2000 was real. So was the habitat it occupied. There was nothing ecologically contradictory about a mandarinfish weaving through broken coral two years after a devastating bleaching event.

Perhaps the mistake was mine. I had interpreted its persistence as a promise. Nature finds a way. Life persists. Beauty emerges from broken places. There is truth in those tropes, but the mandarinfish exposes their limits.

A reef damaged by a storm can generate rubble while living corals elsewhere on the reef continue to grow. New colonies can settle among the fragments. Over time the architecture is rebuilt.

A reef subjected to repeated marine heat waves, declining water quality, disease and algal overgrowth faces a different trajectory. If coral growth and recruitment fail to keep pace with erosion, today’s rubble habitat can become tomorrow’s sand.

The difference is difficult to see in a snapshot. It emerges through time. And we don’t yet know where the mandarinfish sits along that timeline.

How quickly would continued coral loss begin affecting populations? Years? Decades? Would some populations adapt while others disappear?

The scientists I contacted couldn’t answer those questions because the data don’t yet exist. That uncertainty is not a footnote to the story. It may be the story.

What Persists

When I return in memory to that dive in Palau, I still see the scene first as I saw it then. Broken coral fingers. Empty spaces. Debris. And then color. Turquoise. Orange. Green. A tiny fish slipping between fragments, disappearing and reappearing as though the rubble itself were flashing.

Twenty-six years later, I understand something about that scene that I couldn’t have known while hovering above it. The mandarinfish wasn’t evidence that the reef was fine. But neither was its home among the rubble some ecological contradiction. It was simply a fish making use of the habitat available to it — habitat created by corals that had lived before it and dependent, ultimately, upon corals continuing to live after it.

I no longer need the mandarinfish to tell me that nature will always find a way. That asks too much of a fish — and lets the rest of us off too easily.

The water still needs to be clean enough. The heat needs to relent long enough. Corals still need to grow, reproduce and build the structures that future generations of creatures will inhabit.

More than a quarter-century after that dive, I can still picture that mandarinfish moving through the labyrinth — a living brushstroke against the broken bones of a reef. I once saw in it a simple promise: Life finds a way. The scientists I asked gave me something more useful than a promise.

They gave me uncertainty.

The mandarinfish is still considered secure. It is widespread. It may tolerate reef disturbance better than many of its neighbors. And yet the habitat beneath it is connected to living coral by a chain of dependencies we are only beginning to understand.

Maybe that’s what resilience actually looks like — not invulnerability, but dependence stretched across time.

Life will try. Our task is to make sure there is still something living to build from.

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

I Will Love You to Death: A Divemaster’s View on Coral Tourism

The post What a Reef Fish Taught Me About Life in the Rubble appeared first on The Revelator.

Negotiations on finance at a key UN summit where governments are expected to ramp up “insufficient” nature conservation policies have reached a stalemate, as countries struggle to agree on where new sources of funding for biodiversity will come from.

Ahead of the COP17 nature summit taking place in Yerevan, Armenia, a UN assessment report showed that governments are off track to meet nearly all the 2030 targets in the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), often referred to as the ‘Paris Agreement for nature’.

In Yerevan, talks on increasing financial resources for biodiversity have remained gridlocked by an EU proposal to expand the list of potential government donors, so that emerging economies like China or Gulf states would also be able to contribute funding and have it counted towards a collective goal.

But some developing nations have fiercely opposed proposal. The group of Arab countries said at the summit’s opening plenary that it “rejects any attempt” to expand the list of donors or “reclassify” the development status of countries.

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Ireland’s nature minister Christopher O’Sullivan, whose country holds the EU presidency, told journalists in Yerevan that EU member states “do feel very strongly about this”. “There are a lot of countries considered developing countries that obviously need to play their part,” he said.

“It’s been 20 years since that list was added. Times have changed and there are new realities. And we just, as simple as this, would like to see those new realities reflected,” O’Sullivan told a press conference on Wednesday.

EU environment commissioner Jessika Roswall said the bloc’s member states will continue their financial commitments but – given a “big gap” on investment – their effort alone will not be enough. “We need more countries to bridge biodiversity finance” to meet the 2030 targets, she added.

Countries are meeting in Armenia for the first Global Review of Collective Progress – a similar process to the climate Global Stocktake – under which they are expected to adopt a “Yerevan Pathway” outlining ways to ramp up nature conservation policies and get on course to meet global nature goals.

Biodiversity finance falling short

The UN report on progress shows developed countries most likely failed to meet an interim target to channel $20 billion for nature protection by 2025, which developing countries say is necessary to implement a global target to protect 30% of the world’s land and ocean by 2030.

The group of African countries said in a statement at the COP17 opening plenary that the findings of the global review “serve as a serious warning” and “underscore the urgent need to strengthen” the delivery of public finance.

Brian O’Donnell from the non-profit Campaign for Nature told a Climate Home News webinar that public funding is key for developing countries – which are home to most of the world’s biodiversity – so that they can develop tools like spatial planning, incentives for local communities, institutional capacity and even simply signage within a protected area. “We’re asking a lot from those countries,” he added.

The GBF target also states that public biodiversity finance should be increased to $30bn by 2030, and that in total countries should mobilise $200bn from all possible sources – which includes the private sector and philanthropic funds – by the same date. In 2025, global biodiversity finance is estimated to have reached between $74.9 and $92.4 billion per year.

Opening of the COP17 leaders’ summit in Yerevan, Armenia. (Photo: UN Biodiversity)

Speaking at the webinar, Steven Guilbeault, a former minister of environment for Canada and one of the architects of the GBF, said he has been hearing the idea of expanding the base of donors to increase available finance since the biodiversity COP1 in 1995, but added it’s not an “easy conversation” that will be solved in Yerevan.

“I wouldn’t want the progress that we’re seeing here, the progress that we can still make in the coming days, to be jeopardised by the entrenched position on this issue,” he said.

In a letter issued to governments, the Armenian presidency said it aimed to adopt the Global Review text on Wednesday, with two days of negotiations still to go. Observers told Climate Home News that this would be a way of detaching it from the thorniest negotiations on finance. The text, however, was not adopted as planned.

Reducing harmful subsidies as an alternative

Linda Krueger, director of biodiversity and infrastructure policy at The Nature Conservancy (TNC), said it is “no surprise” that the finance decisions will require guidance from ministers, but argued that the “heavy lift” to increase financial commitments will need to come from reforming subsidies.

When the GBF was adopted, countries identified a finance gap of $700bn a year by 2030. They agreed to address it by mobilising $200bn from all sources, but the bulk of this is due to come by redirecting $500bn in subsidies for activities that harm nature. This goal – contained in Target 18 of the GBF – is where governments have made the least amount of progress, according to the UN progress report.

The UN currently estimates that for every dollar invested in nature conservation and restoration, $30 are currently invested in its destruction. A report by Conservation International puts the cost of harmful subsidies at $11 trillion-$24.7 trillion a year, when also accounting for the nature loss they leave behind.

In Yerevan, the COP17 presidency has aimed to raise the profile of the target on subsidies by launching several voluntary initiatives, including the “Friends of Target 18”, a new platform led by Colombia and Finland which will help countries identify and find ways to redirect damaging subsidies.

Early speakers’ list suggests few powerful leaders will attend COP31

A group of over 130 business and financial institutions – among them French bank BNP Paribas, fashion retailer H&M, food giant Nestle and household products multinational Unilever – also issued an open letter calling on countries to accelerate incentive reform.

Speaking to the media on Monday, Kumi Kitamori, environment director at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), said much of the discussion focuses on winding down nature-negative incentives, but noted “it’s also equally about scaling up incentives that are positive”.

In the formal negotiations, countries are talking about whether to include a specific mention of this in the Global Review. The COP17 presidency has proposed to include a line encouraging countries “to accelerate the identification, and the elimination, phase out or reform of negative incentives”, as well as scaling up positive ones.

Jill Hepp, Conservation International’s managing director of nature policy and incentives, said this sends a “powerful signal” that the presidency is prioritising subsidy and incentive reform. She said the new suggested text “well reflects the discussions over the last two weeks and the reality that action towards Target 18 in its entirety must be accelerated to keep 2030 goals within reach”.

Delegates at the opening plenary of the COP17 biodiversity summit in Yerevan. (Photo: IISD/ENB – Mike Muzurakis) Private contributions awaiting rules

Developed countries have pointed to the need for more private-sector contributions that can offset shrinking government aid budgets. At the COP16 biodiversity summit in Cali, countries created a new fund to channel voluntary private-sector contributions based on their use of genetic material to support biodiversity protection.

A large part of the fund’s potential relies on the participation of pharmaceutical companies. According to a report by think-tank Zero Carbon Analytics, the top 15 pharma companies could have paid $756 million into the fund in 2025, when taking into account its guidelines suggesting contributions of 1% of profits or 0.1% of revenue.

Yet two years since its creation, the Cali Fund has received little more than $10,000 in corporate contributions. In Yerevan, negotiations have focused on how to operationalise the fund and how to distribute the money among developing countries.

Guilbeault argued that once the rules are finalised, it will open the door to further contributions, noting that companies “need a little bit more security” about what they’re investing in. “Like we saw on climate, when the rules became clearer, more money started flowing through the type of activities we want,” he said.

On the sidelines of COP17, the EU also launched an initiative for “Friends of Credits for Nature and Biodiversity”, which provides a platform to support biodiversity credits. Much like carbon markets, these are credits that companies can buy and sell representing “nature-positive” actions that protect biodiversity, but they are a controversial measure disputed by some Indigenous and environmental groups.

Campaign for Nature’s O’Donnell argued that, even if private-sector flows increase, public funds will still be required, given that the “business case” for some nature-conservation or restoration projects could be harder to make than for climate measures like renewable energy.

Nonetheless, the TNC’s Krueger noted there is a lot of interest among businesses in investing in nature and said the UN biodiversity talks could help ensure they play their part.

“A lot of businesses have taken it up voluntarily, which is fantastic to see. And so, I think a process of making that a little bit more mandatory, a little bit more implemented, could go a long way to help business and nature be aligned,” she said.

This story was updated to add further comments from Irish minister Christopher O’Sullivan and EU environment commissioner Jessika Roswall.

The post Stalemate on finance at COP17 nature talks exposes need for new sources appeared first on Climate Home News.

Carbon dioxide levels are set to surge this year amid a powerful El Niño, a report warns.

Read more on E360 →

Tens of billions of dollars in international climate finance have been pledged this decade for a “just energy transition” in the Global South. Most of the money, promised by wealthy governments and banks, will be funnelled into infrastructure – mainly shuttering fossil fuel power plants or installing renewables.

But these investments in the shift to low-carbon economies affect workers and communities and therefore require their support. Without funding for social protection and participation, their backing is unlikely, putting the transition at risk, climate justice experts warn.

Several headline-grabbing “Just Energy Transition Partnerships” (JETPs) were announced in 2021 and 2022, including for South Africa at the UN climate conference in Glasgow and Indonesia at the G20 summit.

While there is a need for fair, green transitions across all economic sectors, from vehicle manufacturing to farming and health, it is energy that has attracted the most attention and money so far. The early results have been mixed, with progress on moving away from coal power in the countries with JETPs slower than hoped for.

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Another challenge is that the vast majority of the JETP funding on offer is in the form of loans, with the grants needed to support local communities through the transition making up a tiny fraction.

Of the finance pledged to South Africa, Indonesia and Vietnam under their JETPs, grants accounted for just 4%, concessional below-market-rate loans for 53%, commercial loans for 25% and guarantees for 13%, according to a policy brief produced for the G20 in Brazil. 

Spotting a major gap in the justice side of these partnerships, philanthropic foundations in 2023 established a $20-million fund to support community-based and non-governmental groups in JETP countries in their efforts to secure a fair deal for local people.

Philanthropies back community input 

During three years of giving grants to 60 community organisations, unions and researchers, ClimateWorks Foundation – which set up the Global South Just Transition Fund with the IKEA and Laudes foundations – has learned what it takes to complement the JETPs. 

“They are built to move money to energy projects, and our grants build the civic and governance infrastructure that lets that money land,” Justin Sylvester, just transition director at ClimateWorks Foundation, told Climate Home News.

The results achieved with the Fund’s backing include progress on a subnational Natural Resource Fund model in Indonesia backed by the finance ministry, which offers a route for districts to channel coal revenues into developing communities’ post-coal economies. 

Comment: Santa Marta was a learning moment for how to shape inclusive just transitions

In South Africa, meanwhile, nonprofit INSPIRE has worked with solar developer Forethought Capital to build trust with community leaders and secure signed lease agreements for solar projects on protected communal land – a model that can be replicated.

One key lesson so far, Sylvester said, is the importance of building civil society’s economic, civic and cultural power – not just its capacity. Another is the need to get behind social ecosystems rather than isolated projects, and collaborate with other funders. 

“Results come when a community group, a researcher, and a ministry work on the same issue at the local, regional, and national levels,” he said. “We see clear wins when communities can shape transition decisions rather than only react to them, with positive policy outcomes, court rulings, and public money moving.”

The missing finance category

Despite the importance of these early efforts to ensure an equitable green future for communities on the ground, no one knows how much money is going towards it. That is largely because, as an emerging category of climate action that has evolved only in the past few years, funding for just transitions is not yet being comprehensively measured or tracked.

Nor is there consensus on how much will be needed as the energy transition gathers speed. Estimated requirements for international support for developing countries range from a high-level climate finance panel’s $50 billion a year by 2035 to $242 billion a year from the Civil Society Equity Review. But these figures are hard to compare directly.

A new discussion paper on finance for just transition and how it fits with a new Just Transition Mechanism (JTM) due to be established at the upcoming COP31 climate summit in Antalya notes that it faces “a definitional, methodological and accounting challenge”.   

It defines just transition finance as “finance coming primarily from public sources, above all grant-based, highly concessional and non-debt-creating, that supports the policies and measures needed to move economies away from extractive, carbon-intensive models while distributing costs and benefits fairly”. 

Co-author Jodi-Ann Wang, a research fellow with the Just Transition Finance Lab at the Grantham Research Institute, told a webinar on the paper’s findings there is as yet no common tracker or shared taxonomy in place, nor oversight to monitor such flows. 

“Opacity is… costing us a sound understanding of just transition finance,” she said. 

This is where the “Belém-Antalya Just Transition Mechanism” – or BAM, as it’s known among the civil society groups that advocated strongly for it – comes in. 

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

Resource mobilisation group under BAM

As part of its objectives, form and methods of working, which countries will begin to define at the COP31 negotiations in Türkiye, Climate Action Network (CAN) International, a coalition of hundreds of NGOs, is pushing for the JTM to include a “resource mobilisation group”.

This, the paper explains, could explore and develop ways to boost the quantity, quality and governance of finance for just transition around the world, with a view to making it more accessible and equitable.

More concretely, it could map available sources of support and funding gaps, inform the new JTM on financial realities and needs, and propose partnerships between financial institutions, donor countries and actors implementing just transition on the ground. 

A banner calling for the establishment of a Belem-Antalya Just Transition Mechanism at the Bonn climate talks, on June 15, 2026 (Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth) A banner calling for the establishment of a Belem-Antalya Just Transition Mechanism at the Bonn climate talks, on June 15, 2026 (Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth)

Rebecca Thissen, CAN’s global advocacy lead who co-authored the paper, emphasised that the aim is not to set up yet another UN climate fund – something donor governments are wary of. Instead, she described the role of a resource mobilisation group as “more agile and innovative”.     

One of its first tasks would be raising awareness about just transition finance – not yet an established category of climate funding. Climate finance has traditionally fallen into two main categories: mitigation (measures that cut emissions, such as installing renewables) and adaptation (protecting people, infrastructure and livelihoods from climate change impacts). 

A third pillar has recently emerged: loss and damage (responding to and minimising destruction and harm caused by climate-driven disasters and longer-term stresses).

Just transition finance here, there and everywhere

The time has come to add just transition into the finance mix, argued Thissen, explaining this could be done through two main approaches. The first is to ensure that the existing areas – mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage – have a strong justice component integrated into them. 

The second is to identify specific just transition policies and measures that “fall through the cracks” of those three types of climate finance and show how they can be funded separately.  

Examples given in the paper include Ireland providing a fuel allowance and tax rebates for low-income households to offset additional costs from its carbon tax, Romania offering retraining opportunities in its coal region, and Chile funding ecosystem restoration for polluted areas to recover from resource extraction.

Spain’s unions say just transition means renewing communities beyond jobs

Spain’s government, in addition, has been widely praised for funding formal pacts and just transition strategies in areas where coal mining and power has been phased out, based on tripartite consultations with national, regional and local administrations, unions and industry.

NDCs get serious about just transition

The emerging discussion around just transition finance comes as governments have begun incorporating the concept of just transition, and how to pursue it, into their national climate action plans (NDCs) in a far more meaningful way.

A report from the International Labour Organization, which covered 123 countries that had submitted updated NDCs by November 2025 – the third set of NDCs since 2015 – found that explicit references to “just transition” appeared in 79%, up from 50% in the second cycle.

It said many countries have moved beyond single mentions of just transition to multiple references or even dedicated sections, while around half of NDCs now reference follow-up mechanisms or institutional arrangements for just transition. 

Mentions of explicit resources being allocated for just transition rose to 26% – whether in the form of financial commitments, budget lines or designated funding channels – compared with 2% in the previous round of NDCs. 

The report also cast the net wider, showing that employment has become a common consideration when it comes to climate action, with 90% of the latest NDCs referencing employment and giving growing attention to green jobs and decent work. Social inclusion and equity, meanwhile, are also more prominent, appearing in over three-quarters of NDCs. 

Labour rights lens puts focus on all workers 

This broader lens on just transition fits with the perspective of the International Trade Union Confederation, which argues it must lead to quality jobs in renewables and other green industries, respect labour rights and be built on social dialogue, as well as compensate those who lose out in the shift to a low-carbon world using social protection systems. 

All this has to be financed, emphasised Bert De Wel, the confederation’s global climate policy coordinator. His organisation argues that this can best be done by planning a fair deal for workers and people with lower incomes as economies go greener. 

“It’s not always about having more money – more public money, more private money,” De Wel said. “It’s also about what is out there and how it’s being distributed – who is winning and who is losing?” 

For example, when it comes to promoting sales of electric vehicles over petrol or diesel cars, government subsidies often end up going to richer families, while public transport used by those who can’t or don’t want to buy a car suffer from under-investment.

Two of five new electric buses parked at the Belém terminal in Brazil’s Amazon region. (Photo: Alice Martins Morais) Two of five new electric buses parked at the Belém terminal in Brazil’s Amazon region. (Photo: Alice Martins Morais)

Similarly, just transition is often seen in rich countries as limited to helping workers in coal mines or oil fields find new green jobs. But this, De Wel said, is far too narrow an interpretation. 

Key decisions at UN climate conferences make clear that just transitions are needed across multiple sectors and require “whole-of-society and whole-of-economy approaches”. 

“All workers affected by climate change or by climate policies [should be] the subject of just transition policies, and the best way to deal with it is to give them decent jobs and good contracts, which means formal jobs or formalisation of informal workers,” De Wel said. 

This is especially important in developing countries where informal work makes up a large share of economic activity and those who do it risk being left out of the just transition. So far, they have been largely left out of estimates of what will be needed to fund just transitions.   

Narrowing the development gap 

In addition to compensating workers who are negatively affected by climate policies, social protection and social welfare systems can also be an effective way of providing just transition support to vulnerable people who are hit by climate change impacts. 

Back in 2021, record rainfall caused rivers to burst their banks on the border of Germany and Belgium, killing at least 170 people and causing many employees to be out of work for a few months until their companies could recover. 

But, De Wel noted, they did not lose out financially because they were covered by national social security systems – unlike in developing countries such as Pakistan when people’s small businesses or fields are devastated by flooding and they have to rely on handouts.

For Indian women workers, a just transition means surviving climate impacts with dignity

Khaled Hashem, an Egyptian negotiator who coordinates the just transition track for the G77 and China group of developing countries at UN climate talks, said it is essential for the new JTM to take a broad view and work towards narrowing the development gap between rich and poor nations, so that the latter are in a position to take stronger climate action.

For example, just changing the energy source of a factory to solar requires a whole range of investments in infrastructure, the power grid, skilling of the labour force and even support for basic health and education services at the local level, he argued. Funding for all these different activities “can be considered as part of the just transition”, he added. 

JTM can connect and coordinate

Given the scope of the challenge, CAN International proposes that a resource mobilisation group under the JTM could connect what is happening inside and outside of the UN climate process to coordinate the many existing and potential sources of funding and have them recognised as just transition finance with shared guidelines.

Currently, Thissen said, multilateral development banks are already working on just transition using their own sets of principles, but are starting to appreciate the value the new mechanism could offer in bringing funders together to discuss how to improve cooperation.

This would include UN climate funds, such as the Green Climate Fund which mentions just transition in its strategy but has so far funded few projects that directly address the issue. 

Activists demand finance for a fair energy transition at the COP29 climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan on November 18, 2024. (Photo: UN Climate Change – Habib Samadov) Activists demand finance for a fair energy transition at the COP29 climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan on November 18, 2024. (Photo: UN Climate Change – Habib Samadov)

“If [the JTM] is established… with the right function and modalities and principles, it could really set a very good precedent on how we articulate the COP discussion, while also including newcomers and new actors, but through defined standards and approaches that are still embedded in multilateral climate agreements,” Thissen said.  

She suggested that the next Global Stocktake of national climate plans, due to conclude in late 2028, could evaluate and respond to countries’ progress on just transition and funding for it in the outcomes, which must be agreed by all governments. 

The stocktake could be informed by the UNFCCC’s Standing Committee on Finance, which assesses climate finance needs for developing countries every four years, with its third such report due in 2028. While the committee has so far lacked data on just transition finance, this could be provided through the work of the new Just Transition Mechanism.

“That could be a clear connection [between] what actually already exists in the negotiations and… the added value of the BAM,” Thissen said.

The post Why COP31 needs to start talking about just transition finance appeared first on Climate Home News.

Extreme weather is creating a perfect storm of misinformation

a perfect storm of misinformation

Rumors and conspiracies are spreading too fast for emergency managers to keep up. This information chaos is slowing disaster relief and putting lives at risk.

By Ellis Juhlin, Nora Mabie, & Jacob Olness

Oct 29, 2026

This story is part of Distorted, a Grist series exploring the spread of misinformation in the wake of extreme weather. It is published with support from the CO2 Foundation.​

You likely remember the 2023 Maui wildfires, a tragedy that killed more than 100 people and destroyed nearly 2,000 homes, all but erasing a historic island community. You may also remember that the fires began when a broken power pole owned by the local electric utility sparked against dry vegetation on a windy day. 

But do you really know that? Were you there? How can you prove it?

In the aftermath of the Maui fires, thousands of people across all the major social media platforms shared posts and videos alleging that the fires had a more sinister origin. They posited that the government had used a “direct energy weapon,” or a form of laser, to ignite the area. Depending on the post you saw, this was part of a plot to reclaim the area for a high-speed rail line, or a high-tech “smart city.” A number of right-wing activists and social media personalities amplified these claims, including the late Charlie Kirk. At the same time, the Federal Emergency Management Agency saw accounts linked to China circulating rumors that a “weather weapon” had caused the fires. Other accounts alleged that the agency was going to seize the homes of people in Maui who applied for emergency aid, a claim that raised traumatic memories of colonization in a community with significant Indigenous historical and cultural ties.

Extreme weather events are always chaotic, and it’s always been easy for rumors to spread during moments of calamity, but the problem has never been as bad as it is now. The escalating pace of climate change has produced a series of supercharged wildfires, rapidly intensifying hurricanes, devastating drought, and sudden floods, all of which plunge communities into confusion and disarray. At the same time, the information landscape has never been more fragmented — major social media companies have given up on any pretense of fact-checking and content moderation; politicians often distort or politicize disasters; government agencies are short-staffed following DOGE cuts; and generative AI models have created an entirely new and little-understood way to source information. It’s not just your weird uncle seeing these rumors  on Facebook: A recent report from the News Literacy Project found that a vast majority of teens encounter social media conspiracies, and a vast majority of teens who encounter those theories are inclined to believe them.

“Disasters are, by their nature, very urgent and have a lot of uncertainty surrounding them,” said Amber Silver, a professor of emergency management at the University at Albany and an expert in disaster communications. Victims of extreme weather events have an urgent need for facts, she said, but almost no way to get reliable data about their situation. “So now we have essentially all of the perfect conditions for the spread of misinformation.”

• Would you trust an emergency alert written by AI?

• How to fact-check during and after a disaster

• Why trust Grist?

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This confluence of factors does more than sow confusion. A void of good information after a disaster can lead to lost lives, traumatic displacement, or a slow recovery. It also strains the relationship between public authorities and their citizens. A growing body of research from around the world shows the consequences of this strain: A Department of Homeland Security study found that an inaccurate map tweeted out during a 2017 California flood caused an unnecessary mass evacuation, while another study, from the Inter-American Development Bank, found that an earthquake in Mexico led to an 11 percent drop in people’s trust in government. The federal government in the United States now often creates fact-checking and myth-busting websites in an attempt to dispel rumors after disasters.

A review of recent research found that this kind of bad information has often “led to resource misallocation, overwhelmed emergency services, and diverted attention away from genuine needs.”

At Grist, we have been hearing for years from emergency managers and disaster victims in the U.S. about this growing chaos. In our new series, Distorted, we’re exploring this fragmented information landscape: Who do people actually trust when disaster strikes, and why do so many people believe conspiracies that are clearly false? Is there anything the authorities can do to fight social media rumors and post-disaster hysteria? What would it actually take to establish a shared sense of truth as a hurricane or a wildfire is bearing down?

The concepts of “misinformation” (unintentional deception) and “disinformation” (intentional deception) have been the subject of innumerable academic papers and policy initiatives, and the Biden administration even appointed a “disinformation governance board” at the Department of Homeland Security in 2022. In truth, the concepts are a little hard to pin down — the question of whether a certain piece of information is “dis” depends on the beliefs and attitudes of the person who’s reading or hearing that claim. Even so, it’s clear that many people believe things about disasters that simply aren’t true, and they often mistrust the people whose job it is to keep them safe. 

When disaster strikes, this lack of trust can be the difference between life and death. 

Anatomy of a conspiracy

How a series of unrelated photos morphed into a climate conspiracy theory. 

It all starts with an innocuous photo taken on January 16, 2018. The Marathon Petroleum Refinery in Canton, Ohio, conducts a flare in response to a mechanical issue. A local resident captures a blurry picture of the flare, which includes a lens flare pointing upward, and posts it on Facebook. ​​

May 2018: Santa Barbara County, California​

SpaceX posts an Instagram photo of their Falcon 9 rocket launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. 
​

May 2023: Santiago, Chile​

A windstorm in Santiago, Chile, causes an electrical transformer to explode. A resident captures the event on video, which includes a lens flare from the bright explosion, and posts the video on TikTok.
​

August 2023: Maui, Hawai‘i

A brush fire in Maui, Hawai‘i, spreads out of control, destroying the town of Lahaina. The fires caused over $5.5 billion in damages and killed more than 100 people.​

Old photos become a conspiracy

Soon after the fires ignite, social media posts on Instagram, TikTok, and X start to resurface these old photos of the refinery flare, the electrical explosion, and the rocket launch, attributing them as evidence of some kind of energy weapon used to ignite the Maui fire.

These posts were viewed and reshared millions of times, and often would take on a life of their own. ​

​

​

The conspiracy can't be stopped

Hawai‘i-based Instagram user @for_our_rights_kauai, for example, posted the old photo of the refinery flare and suggested the Maui fires were the result of an “attack.” A few days later, she acknowledged that the photo was unrelated to the fires.

“I want to apologize for contributing to spreading that photo that I was told came from Maui on the day of this event. It turns out it was not true,” she said in a follow-up video. “It is very important for us to vet our information.” ​

​

The conspiracy spreads

But it was too late. The instagram account @cultivateelevate, run by an influential MAHA-adjacent health food entrepreneur, had already published a video containing a screenshot of @for_our_rights_kauai’s later-deleted post. “My friend in Hawai‘i,” the host said, pointing to the screenshot, “showed a laser beam coming out of the sky, directly targeting the city.” @cultivateelevate’s video received 432,000 views, over 40 times more views than the video apologizing for the mistake. ​

Out of control

Other accounts, like Instagram user @mama_speaks_truth, also contributed to the spread, posting screenshots of screenshots of screenshots, each getting further and further from the original photo of a refinery, taken five years earlier and 4,500 miles away. This is just one example of the twisty way that misinformation can spread in the wake of a disaster. Images and facts can blend together with old fears and suspicions, morphing into a conspiracy with a new meaning and a life of its own. ​

Anatomy of a conspiracy

How a series of unrelated photos morphed into a climate conspiracy theory. 

It all starts with an innocuous photo taken on January 16, 2018. The Marathon Petroleum Refinery in Canton, Ohio, conducts a flare in response to a mechanical issue. A local resident captures a blurry picture of the flare, which includes a lens flare pointing upward, and posts it on Facebook. ​​

May 2018: Santa Barbara County, California​

SpaceX posts an Instagram photo of their Falcon 9 rocket launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. 
​

May 2023: Santiago, Chile​

A windstorm in Santiago, Chile, causes an electrical transformer to explode. A resident captures the event on video, which includes a lens flare from the bright explosion, and posts the video on TikTok.
​

August 2023: Maui, Hawai‘i

A brush fire in Maui, Hawai‘i, spreads out of control, destroying the town of Lahaina. The fires caused over $5.5 billion in damages and killed more than 100 people.​

Old photos become a conspiracy

Soon after the fires ignite, social media posts on Instagram, TikTok, and X start to resurface these old photos of the refinery flare, the electrical explosion, and the rocket launch, attributing them as evidence of some kind of energy weapon used to ignite the Maui fire.

These posts were viewed and reshared millions of times, and often would take on a life of their own. ​

​

​

The conspiracy can't be stopped

Hawai‘i-based Instagram user @for_our_rights_kauai, for example, posted the old photo of the refinery flare and suggested the Maui fires were the result of an “attack.” A few days later, she acknowledged that the photo was unrelated to the fires.

“I want to apologize for contributing to spreading that photo that I was told came from Maui on the day of this event. It turns out it was not true,” she said in a follow-up video. “It is very important for us to vet our information.” ​

​

The conspiracy spreads

But it was too late. The instagram account @cultivateelevate, run by an influential MAHA-adjacent health food entrepreneur, had already published a video containing a screenshot of @for_our_rights_kauai’s later-deleted post. “My friend in Hawai‘i,” the host said, pointing to the screenshot, “showed a laser beam coming out of the sky, directly targeting the city.” @cultivateelevate’s video received 432,000 views, over 40 times more views than the video apologizing for the mistake. ​

Out of control

Other accounts, like Instagram user @mama_speaks_truth, also contributed to the spread, posting screenshots of screenshots of screenshots, each getting further and further from the original photo of a refinery, taken five years earlier and 4,500 miles away. This is just one example of the twisty way that misinformation can spread in the wake of a disaster. Images and facts can blend together with old fears and suspicions, morphing into a conspiracy with a new meaning and a life of its own. ​

Experts have identified a few main vectors where communication can collapse in the lead-up and aftermath of a disaster:

Mistrust in government

The most important source of information around extreme weather is the government itself. Federal, state, and local agencies and officials are responsible for predicting the weather, sending out warnings about disasters, coordinating mandatory evacuations, and leading disaster response. If people don’t trust them, or if they can’t get their messages out effectively, lives are at stake. The background trends are already bad: Less than 20 percent of Americans say they believe the government does the right thing most of the time, the lowest level on record. 

The most visible avatar of the government in a disaster is the Federal Emergency Management Agency, so it’s no coincidence that FEMA is also the most frequent subject of conspiracies and disinformation. Even though the agency is supposed to act as a backstop for state and local authorities, disaster-affected communities often swirl with allegations that federal relief is absent, that the government is restricting freedom of movement, or, as in the case of Maui, that officials are going to seize land and disenfranchise victims.

“FEMA has been the source of misinformation since its inception,” said Deanne Criswell, who led the agency under the Biden administration. She pointed to the famous allegations that the agency plans to imprison disaster victims in government-run “FEMA camps”; these allegations have circulated almost since FEMA was founded. “It’s this [idea] of the black arm of government. It makes it harder for us to actually get the assistance to the people who really need it, because they don’t know who to trust and who to believe.” There’s no knowing how many victims never show up to apply for FEMA aid because of these rumors and fears.

During Hurricane Helene in 2024, this misinformation became dangerous: A rumor about a man who had come to North Carolina to shoot FEMA disaster response officials forced Criswell to shut down field operations for several hours during the immediate aftermath of the storm. At the same time, both Criswell and her deputy chief of staff had their homes “swatted,” meaning anonymous trolls called police with false accusations that resulted in the deployment of SWAT teams. These disruptions further stressed an aid system that was already strained, which likely meant more victims in North Carolina had to wait longer to receive aid and shelter.

Hurricane Helene also hit just a few weeks before a consequential presidential election, which likely helped fuel the spread of mis- and disinformation. Right-wing accounts with names like End Wokeness accused Biden of starving North Carolina of aid, racking up millions of views despite a complete lack of evidence for their claims. Elon Musk claimed on his own platform, X, that FEMA was barring him from flying in to deliver aid, only to walk back those claims later. His retraction got 1 million views, but his initial accusation got almost 30 million, and it’s likely that many people in North Carolina and elsewhere still believe that Biden tried to restrict aid.

In other cases, mistrust in government can look very different. It doesn’t have to be about political animus — it can also be about blithe confidence, or even fear. Some people who’ve experienced storms that didn’t live up to early projections may dismiss evacuation warnings later, while others may be afraid to evacuate because they’re undocumented and fear retribution. The end result is the same — more people putting their lives at risk, and more people unwilling to get the help they need after a disaster. 

“It could just be a person who says, ‘I’m a conspiracy theorist, I don’t trust the government,’ but there are also people who can’t or won’t trust that government for very different reasons,” said Silver, pointing to the example of undocumented migrants or communities that have traumatic experiences with law enforcement. “There is some skepticism and doubt, and that is hard to overcome.”

Pervasive social media

Based on the pervasiveness of social media in Americans’ lives, it may not come as a total surprise that these platforms act as the incubator for almost all major disaster conspiracy theories in the modern age. Rumors have swirled around extreme weather events since the dawn of disaster — from allegations that a group of wealthy industrialists caused the 1889 Johnstown flood, which killed more than 2,000 people in Pennsylvania, to claims that FEMA put disaster survivors in concentration camps after Hurricane Katrina. But platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X have allowed for these rumors to achieve global circulation in minutes. The networks also make it near impossible to trace the origin or the trajectory of a given rumor, unless you’re a university or nonprofit lab doing “network analysis” of many millions of tweets. 

There is little good data about how these rumors spread, but it’s clear enough that they do spread. One study on a 2023 earthquake in Turkey found that around a quarter of polled residents believed at least some version of a conspiracy theory that the U.S. had caused the earthquake with a seismic weapon or a bomb. Those who believed these theories were more likely to be supportive of the incumbent government ahead of an election that year. A comprehensive study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that most conspiracy posts were from verified accounts. Even benign fakes, like a famous doctored image of a shark on a flooded highway, have duped media outlets and at least one U.S. senator.

If you’ve spent any time on social media, you already know how pervasive this kind of misinformation can be. One meta study last year found that “misleading messages … often outpaced official communications, resulting in reduced trust and exacerbating anxiety, stress, and fear.” This mistrust can have real-world consequences: A study on a 2018 Japanese earthquake found that communities with low trust in government tended to evacuate even when they didn’t need to, which risked clogging up the roads for people who actually did need to flee. After the Maui fires, Criswell worried that the fear of a colonial land grab caused families who needed help to reject it. 

Even though many people blame bots and malign actors for the spread of rumors, some studies have found that most people who spread false rumors believe what they are sharing. While accounts in Russia and China may have stoked outrage about the fires in Maui, it seems clear that many people who shared such misinformation believed it to be true. One prominent source of conspiracies belonged to  an account called Cultivate Elevate, with over half a million followers. It’s run by a MAHA-adjacent health food entrepreneur who posted a number of videos alleging that the fires had been set on purpose through some kind of government scheme. (The owner of the account did not respond to a request for comment.)

The rise of AI

The proliferation of large language models like Gemini and ChatGPT is the latest wrinkle. About a quarter of U.S. adults now use AI chatbots daily, and searching for information is the most common usage. These models are more likely to draw on news articles and official sources than social media rumors when they answer user queries, which can cut against misinformation — if I type in “Maui directed energy weapon” into ChatGPT, it hectors me that “there is no credible evidence supporting” that theory, and even offers to debunk the actual origins of alleged images that show lasers starting the fire — but that doesn’t mean these models would always be trustworthy in an emergency. 

What if a model were to scrape a news article from last week, for example, that said there’s no evacuation from a storm, but the weather had since progressed or a new event had since formed? Can I really trust the bot to give me an accurate summary of my eligibility for FEMA benefits?

Generative AI is developing so rapidly that most researchers have yet to conduct peer-reviewed studies of how it operates in the disaster space, but it’s clear that the intersection is growing. In addition to dozens of startups that purport to map flood risk or storm damage, the Red Cross has developed a chatbot named Clara that can help navigate disaster situations, and MIT has created a similar technology called Crisischat. The Trump administration’s own chatbot, America.gov, offers information on how to get FEMA assistance. When it comes to analyzing how people trust these tools and standard chatbots like Gemini, however, we are still flying blind.

“You need to learn if the information’s accurate, but then you also need to know, Do people trust it, regardless of the objective veracity?” said Anita Atwell Seate, a professor of communication and a crisis expert at the University of Maryland. “If people trust it, they’re going to act on it whether it’s accurate or not.” Seate is working with other researchers to develop a longitudinal study about how people in disaster areas use AI tools.

It’s hard to know what it would even mean to “solve” the problem of mis- and disinformation in a landscape as fragmented as the 21st century United States. There’s no way to measure the number of people who believe a false rumor, and efforts to debunk inaccurate information will always be of necessity slower and less viral than that information itself. It’s not great for politics if someone in Iowa believes that a laser started the Maui fires, but the more urgent question is how to ensure people in disaster areas have accurate information before, during, and after extreme weather events. That could make the difference between a slow recovery and a fast one, or even between life and death. 

Experts in the field tend to say that the only way to fight disinformation is to establish strong communication channels beforehand, and for emergency managers to partner with people who have organic trust in their communities. Toward the end of the Biden administration, FEMA started to experiment with such efforts. The agency partnered with a Native Hawaiian FEMA employee in Maui who reassured his broader network that the government wasn’t planning to take anyone’s home. While there are still people out there in the U.S. who believe Biden set the fire with a laser, eventually most people in the vicinity of the fire did come to the agency for aid. FEMA also partnered with the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers to distribute disaster info to home health aides and caregivers, putting information in the hands of trusted messengers who would have credibility when the disaster arrives.

“From a government perspective, they’re just like, ‘They don’t know us,’” said Seate, describing the communication difficulties that she’s observed at the National Weather Service. “But they don’t have to know us, they know Jim down at the fire station and Jim, you know, rings the alarm and posted on Facebook for us.”

The tough part is this only tends to work if you lay the foundations before a disaster. Even then, it isn’t always successful — there are people out there who will choose to believe a social media hoax over a trusted weatherman, whether because it confirms their prior beliefs or just because that’s how their brain works. Fighting misinformation isn’t like swordplay, where one side wins and another side loses. It’s more like trench warfare, where emergency managers and recovery leaders have to slog to increase their share of the information environment.

“It’s at a level that we’ve never really seen before, because the systems and the silos of information have gotten so siloed and quick,” said Justin Knighten, a risk communication consultant who led FEMA’s external affairs team under President Biden during several major disasters. “When trust is low, you have a lot of work to not only build up that trust, but to also get ahead of those upcoming threats, so you’re really working at a deficit.”

toolTips('.classtoolTips5','In scholarly research, a “peer-reviewed” study or article is one that has been independently evaluated by other experts in the field to assess scientific accuracy. Not all studies go through a peer-review process, so peer-reviewed studies and journals typically indicate a higher level of confidence in methodologies and results.');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Extreme weather is creating a perfect storm of misinformation. Here’s what’s at stake. on Oct 28, 2026.

Earlier this month, after Hurricane Isaias made landfall on the Gulf Coast as a Category 3 hurricane, the emergency management expert Laura Myers got a call from a meteorologist in Alabama. Myers is director of the University of Alabama’s Center for Advanced Public Safety, and she talks to state and local emergency managers around her region all the time. The meteorologist told Myers that a local emergency manager had published a graphic showing where Isaias might threaten the Alabama coast with a “sting jet” of high winds.

The problem? The emergency manager had generated the graphic using an artificial intelligence chatbot, and it wasn’t accurate. 

“That county emergency manager was trying to get his stakeholders to focus on the risk in that county, and so he had asked AI to help him,” she said. “It did what he wanted it to do, but it was not meteorologically accurate.”

Most emergency management agencies don’t permit employees to use generative AI, but Myers and most other emergency management experts agree that its usage is likely already pervasive at state and local disaster departments. There are hundreds of companies that are marketing AI tools to emergency managers for tasks like flood damage assessment and resource coordination, but public communication is one of the areas where government employees and startups have the most interest.

The reason? Most emergency managers aren’t very good at sending out alerts and quickly communicating about disasters with the public. That’s not because they’re emergency managers, but because they are human beings. They tend to write in jargon that non-experts might not understand, leave out information on the assumption that the public already knows it, and include irrelevant details that could distract people from what they actually do need to know. 

“A lot of agencies are really limited in resources and the number of people that they have,” said Jeannette Sutton, a disaster researcher at the University of Albany who has created a comprehensive dashboard that provides templates for disaster alerts. “I think they recognize it as a priority, but they don’t prioritize it until they realize they should have. They’re just trying to get their job done without screwing something up.”

Emergency department personnel with the city of New York monitor the watch-command room in Brooklyn on February 23, 2026, ahead of a winter storm.
Matthew Hoen / NurPhoto via Getty Images

Emergency managers are the government officials who are in charge of disaster response and recovery. At the state and local level, It is these officials and their agencies, not the Federal Emergency Management Agency, that make up the first line of defense after an extreme weather event. As such, emergency managers often like to say that “trust is our currency,” and it’s in their communication with the public that they build and lose this trust. 

As climate disasters become more frequent and widespread, there have been numerous examples of flawed human communication scrambling an emergency response. In 2016, for instance, adjacent counties in California issued a “voluntary evacuation” and a “mandatory evacuation” for the same wildfire. In Australia in 2019, officials warned about wildfires by using the phrase “Watch and Act,” which the government later said caused “significant confusion” because no one knew what it meant.

In some cases, inadequate communication can mean the difference between life and death. This happened in Montecito, California, after the 2017 Thomas Fire. A few weeks after the fire, a heavy rainstorm produced a deadly mudslide. The government of Santa Barbara County struggled to communicate the risk to residents still traumatized from the blaze and  experiencing a phenomenon that Sutton calls “warning fatigue.” The county sent alerts to everyone in the “voluntary evacuation zone” for wildfires, telling residents to “stay alert to changing conditions and be prepared to leave immediately.” Most of those residents should have left immediately, but to many the evacuation notice was optional; others just didn’t want to evacuate for a second time in a month. The mudslide killed 23 people and injured more than 160 others.

Governments that put out bad warnings are apt to lose the public’s trust said Sutton. “They’re losing the opportunity to be that voice to help people to be safe.”

After a series of erroneous evacuation alerts to L.A. residents sparked panic during an active wildfire season in January 2025, the director of the county’s emergency management department apologized. 
Chris Delmas / AFP via Getty Images

In theory, alerts are a perfect use case for artificial intelligence, and in particular for the generative AI systems that have developed at a dramatic pace over the past few years. FEMA provides training sessions for emergency managers to learn best practices for synthesizing and sending alerts, but many officials don’t remember all their training when an emergency arrives. A large language model is different. It can read hundreds of thousands of alerts in mere minutes, digest all the research on what works in similar scenarios, and then apply that to edit a human alert in seconds.

“If you’ve only sent one [alert] in your life, and that was 15 years ago, and you need to remember all your training, and you’re thinking ‘Hey, there’s a chemical plume coming my way, the phone’s ringing, the radio’s blaring, I need help,’ the AI is probably gonna do a better job than you are,” said Rob Dale, a former meteorologist who now runs the emergency management department in Ingham County, Michigan.

Dale has already used AI to draft a few practice alerts behind the scenes, but he’s never had to send one out. Ingham County is a small county in central Michigan, and it’s immune from major weather events like hurricanes and fires. If such an event did happen, Dale said he would have no issue allowing a chatbot to draft his incident communication, but he’d still want control over sending the alert out. 

Some experts believe the technology is already good enough to deploy. EM1, a startup that produces AI software for emergency managers, has used Sutton’s research to train a model that its executives say is already better than almost any human emergency manager. The company has tested this in-house model on a number of scenarios including wildfires and tsunamis. It can already match or exceed human capabilities on most benchmark tests.

Sutton gave Grist an example of how the software works: Grist provided her with a recent alert sent by a New Mexico county that was trying to warn residents about flooding on the San Juan River.

The original alert

“Breeched banks. The water is rising. EVACUATE NOW. McGee Park open for people and pets, RV.”

1 of 1

Sutton asked the EM1 model to evaluate and revise the alert. In a few seconds, it produced what she said is a far better alert, one that checks all the main boxes of disaster communication.

The new alert

“San Juan County: Floodwater is rising near [location]. People in [evacuation area]: LEAVE NOW for higher ground. Do not walk or drive through floodwater. McGee Park is open for people and pets. Check [official update source] for updates.”

1 of 1

The model identified and fixed several problems with the original text, which does not say who is sending the alert, name the specific location where flooding is happening, or clarify who needs to evacuate and give advice on how to do so safely. It misspells the word “breached,” and it doesn’t provide any guidance on where residents can seek further information. 

EM1 has contracts with around a hundred government agencies and school districts, but none are using it to automate their extreme weather alerts just yet. For the moment, they’re only using it to workshop plans and internal preparations. Even so, all the experts interviewed for this story said they are certain that many emergency managers are already using chatbots to write messages, even if they won’t admit it. Sutton said that the emergency managers who take her alert training sessions often present her with high-quality alerts they have drafted in seconds using ChatGPT or Gemini. 

“Official adoption is pretty low, but people are unofficially using it, absolutely,” said Sarah Miller, a professor of emergency management at Pierce College in Florida and a longtime instructor at the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center. “They’re using their own personal accounts, or they’re using free ones.”

• Extreme weather is creating a perfect storm of misinformation

• How to fact-check during and after a disaster

• Why trust Grist?

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It sounds like an easy trade-off: if AI is better and faster than humans, and the difference between a good alert and a bad alert can be life and death, we should be using AI for every heat wave and wildfire. Yet even researchers who are bullish on chatbot technology say that making the switch could backfire. Members of the public who are skeptical of AI or who don’t trust the government in the first place may spurn agencies that publish AI-generated graphics or social media posts. In Syracuse, New York, for instance, a union of public employees sued the local government for using an AI service to answer non-emergency 911 calls. 

“We trust things that we perceive [are] authentic and care about us,” said Ginny Katz, the founder of HazAdapt, a consultancy that helps disaster officials figure out how to use technology. “AI-generated content does not feel authentic.” There’s also a risk that chatbots could allow emergency managers to send out more alerts, and faster, which could increase the risk of warning fatigue.

As is the case in other areas where AI is being deployed, disaster experts say that for the moment the software is only as capable as the person using it. A seasoned emergency manager might be able to speed up their communication with the public by having a chatbot draft a series of alerts, but an inexperienced one rushing to create an urgent alert won’t know how to evaluate the output of a model like ChatGPT or Claude. 

Even though the technology is a ways off from being able to perform without a human expert in the loop, that hasn’t stopped many understaffed emergency management departments from using it. As for how the proliferation of AI-generated content is affecting public trust in government, experts say it’s too early to tell.

“If you had a human sending you a text message versus a computer sending you a text message, which one would you believe is being more accurate?” said Justin Snair, the founder of Preppr, another company that offers AI software to emergency managers. 

The answer, he said, depends on the person receiving it.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Would you trust an emergency alert written by AI? on Oct 28, 2026.

Jurema Werneck, Ruhat Sena Akşener and Samantha Klintworth are directors for Amnesty International in Brazil, Türkiye and Australia, respectively.

The climate crisis is also a human rights crisis – claiming lives and turning life upside down for countless communities across the world.

But while those profiting from fossil fuel expansion retain privileged access and influence over global climate negotiations, the people facing its harshest consequences, such as Indigenous peoples or those living in climate-vulnerable communities, remain largely shut out of the decision-making.

As directors of Amnesty International in Brazil, Türkiye and Australia, countries with a leading role in COP30 and COP31, we have seen how effective climate action depends on people being able to speak, organise, protest and participate.

• Oct 21, 2026 Investigations Turkish giant sponsoring COP31 cut climate goals then cashed in on oil boom COP31 sponsors should be screened for “climate integrity”. Yet Koç Holding has become a top partner while its oil refiner runs flat out and its climate targets slip Read more
• Oct 26, 2026 News Lula’s election win in Brazil raises hopes for zero deforestation drive Lula’s re-election makes it more likely Brazil can meet a key goal to end forest loss in the Amazon and builds confidence in a new fund to protect the world’s rainforests, experts say Read more
• Oct 7, 2026 News Australia says COP31 co-presidency will work on a cover decision Chris Bowen said the text could acknowledge the inevitable overshoot of 1.5C, while questions remain over the inclusion of the electrification goal Read more

Last year in Belém, fossil fuel lobbyists outnumbered every national delegation except Brazil’s, exposing the imbalance of power within climate negotiations. COP31 should confront corporate capture and expand public participation. Instead, serious concerns have been raised over whether civil society will be able to speak freely and safely in Türkiye.

Rights curbs worsen climate breakdown

The human rights needed to confront the climate crisis and demand justice are being eroded.

Authoritarian practices are supercharging climate breakdown by restricting protest, silencing defenders and shielding fossil fuel interests from scrutiny. Attacks on women, LGBTI+ people and members of other marginalised communities divide societies, weaken collective action and divert public attention while fossil fuel expansion continues.

That is why the assault on civic space in Türkiye, the host of COP31, should alarm every government preparing to attend the summit.

Indigenous people attend a protest outside the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belem, Brazil, November 6, 2025. REUTERS/Adriano Machado Indigenous people attend a protest outside the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belem, Brazil, November 6, 2025. REUTERS/Adriano Machado

In September, Turkish authorities launched a nationwide operation targeting LGBTI+ organisations, activists and human rights defenders. Homes, venues and offices were raided, people were arrested and imprisoned, and social media accounts belonging to activists, journalists and human rights groups were restricted, including that of Amnesty International Türkiye.

This is part of a decade-long crackdown that has weakened judicial independence, ignored international judgements and restricted peaceful assembly, association and expression. Whoever is targeted, the effect is the same: dissent is silenced and fear spreads.

For COP31 to succeed, Türkiye must end its human rights crackdown.

Worrying signals from Türkiye

Against this backdrop, the agreement between Türkiye and the UN on hosting COP31 is alarming.

Article 11.11 requires participants to respect Türkiye’s laws and regulations and refrain from interfering in its “internal affairs”. Article 11.12 reintroduces language on waiving immunity that was omitted from Brazil’s COP30 agreement.

Turkish authorities are already invoking vague notions of “public morality” and “harm to the family” to investigate people and restrict expression. The agreement could therefore have a chilling effect on activists, defenders and journalists.

COP31 attendees told not to interfere in Türkiye’s “internal affairs”

Could criticism of Türkiye’s fossil fuel policies, its treatment of environmental defenders or its crackdown on LGBTI+ organisations be characterised as interference in “internal affairs”? Nobody attending a UN climate conference should have to ask.

Türkiye and the UN should publicly guarantee that participants can speak, organise, report and protest peacefully without discrimination, intimidation, surveillance, detention or reprisals. Governments ought to challenge the agreement’s flaws before arriving in Antalya.

Progress, not perfection, at Brazil’s COP

COP31 must build on Brazil’s approach. Its COP hosting agreement committed to an inclusive and non-discriminatory conference, while its presidency adopted a more open and participatory tone. COP30 saw record participation by Indigenous peoples, but access did not guarantee influence: many key decisions continued to be shaped behind closed doors.

Commitments made in Belém ultimately depend on domestic political choices, and Brazil’s October election results point to a legislature that may be less willing to uphold them. This could put the rights of Indigenous peoples, Quilombola and traditional communities at greater risk.

When protections at home weaken, international spaces become even more vital for affected populations to speak out, and hold decision-makers accountable. COP31 must guarantee freedom of expression and peaceful assembly outside the “Blue Zone” (the UN-protected area) and grant civil society greater access to negotiations.

Comment: Coal mines and hypocrisy must not be Australia’s COP31 legacy

As documented by Amnesty International, communities resisting fossil fuel expansion and building fairer alternatives are facing harassment, surveillance, criminalisation, disinformation, violence and restrictions on peaceful protest. They include: First Nations people in Australia challenging offshore oil and gas exploration, artisanal fishers in Brazil’s Guanabara Bay fighting for environmental justice, and activists defending Akbelen Forest in Türkiye from coal mining expansion.

These communities are rights-holders, knowledge-bearers and political actors protecting territories and forging effective climate responses. Governments must protect them and ensure they have a meaningful say.

Confronting fossil fuel power

To defend human rights, governments must use COP31 to advance three urgent priorities.

First, they must end fossil fuel expansion and accelerate a full, fast, fair, funded and human rights-compliant transition away from fossil fuels. States most responsible must go further and faster, ending fossil fuel subsidies and redirecting public resources towards rights-respecting renewable energy.

Second, they must ensure the transition protects rights and leaves no one behind, including by making the new Just Transition Mechanism operational, funded and accountable.

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

And third, they must scale up public, grant-based climate finance for mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage, without pushing lower-income countries further into debt.

COP31 will not deliver these outcomes without the knowledge and expertise of frontline communities.

Brazil must defend the participatory progress made at COP30. Türkiye must reverse its crackdown and protect civic space. Australia, as president of negotiations for COP31, should secure an ambitious, human rights-centred outcome while confronting restrictions on peaceful climate protest at home.

The climate crisis cannot be solved behind closed doors. The doors must remain open, and people must have the power to shape what happens inside.

The post COP31 must amplify people power, not oil lobby voices appeared first on Climate Home News.

Misinformation about extreme weather and disasters often starts small: Someone reposts a rumor on social media about government corruption or an AI photo of a shark swimming in floodwaters. It’s shared dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of times before huge swaths of people believe it as truth. 

Trying to fact-check during a crisis is stressful, and extreme weather makes you feel like there’s a lot to figure out and learn in a short period of time. That’s why it’s important to know ahead of time who you can trust, how to vet information, and how to talk to your friends and family about it. 

• Extreme weather is creating a perfect storm of misinformation

• Would you trust an emergency alert written by AI?

• Why trust Grist?

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Many well-intentioned people want to do their own research. But not all sources of information are equal — especially when your safety is on the line. Finding the right sources will help you avoid falling for — or fueling — rumors that aren’t true. 

Below is a list of reliable sources for extreme weather alerts, updates, and more.

Your local emergency agency: Your city, county, and state has an emergency management department. Emergency managers handle response efforts and communicate with the public in their jurisdiction about the disaster. Many of these agencies have an SMS-based emergency alert system that you can sign up for via text to get regular updates. In larger cities, it’s a separate agency. But in smaller communities, updates and alerts come from a sheriff’s office. 

Find specific details: Sometimes rumors about extreme weather or disaster conditions accidentally spread as people try to share information on social media that hasn’t been fact-checked. When in doubt, look for an official source. You can track extreme weather conditions on these websites:

• Poweroutage.US, managed by energy data platform Find Energy, tracks which states and counties are experiencing significant outages. 
• The National Interagency Fire Center tracks wildfires around the country.
• The National Hurricane Center tracks hurricanes in the bodies of water surrounding the U.S. 
• The National Weather Service active alerts page monitors severe weather through several filters including state, region, and type of weather.

National Weather Service: This agency, called NWS, is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, and offers information and updates on everything from wildfires to hurricanes to air quality. You can enter your ZIP code on weather.gov and customize your homepage to get the most updated weather information and receive alerts for a variety of weather conditions. The NWS also has regional and local branches where you can sign up for SMS alerts. Local alerts in multiple languages are available in some areas.

Weather stations and apps: The Weather Channel, AccuWeather, Apple Weather, and Google, which all rely on NWS data, will have information on major storms. That may not be the case for smaller-scale weather events, and you shouldn’t rely on these apps to tell you if you need to evacuate or move to higher ground. 

Local news: The local television news and social media accounts from verified news sources will have live updates during and after a storm. Meteorologists at your local news station use NWS weather data. Follow your local newspaper, radio station, and television station on Facebook or other social media, or check their websites regularly. If you don’t have cable, these stations often livestream online for free during severe weather. Your local news may also have a live blog that is updated regularly. You can search this database for nonprofit news outlets, or this one for local journalism by state.

Official social media accounts: Many agencies and elected officials share quick updates on social media about extreme weather. If you are unsure whether information is coming from an official account, Google the name of the agency. Most official agency websites have links to their social media accounts. For example, the New York City Emergency Management’s website has a section on its homepage with all of its social accounts.

How to fact-check during a crisis

An extreme weather event can cause many emotions: fear, anger, grief, confusion. Knowing whom to trust and how to spot inaccurate information can help you keep a clear head when making decisions.  

Keep your questions short: When you hop on your phone or laptop, try to prioritize a few quick questions that you’re trying to answer. It’s important to look for specific details that apply to you or loved ones so that you can avoid doomscrolling through a deluge of details. For instance: If there’s heavy rain, look up something specific, such as when the rain is forecast to stop in your area or if there are evacuation orders for your county. 

Double-check the source: A lot of news is shared via social media, but it’s often hard to pinpoint where it comes from. Before you share something or act on it, re-read the information and look closely at any photos or videos.

First, ask yourself: Is there a source tagged anywhere? 

If the answer is yes:

• If you don’t recognize it as a news outlet, government website, or other vetted source, do a quick Google to confirm what it is. 
• Look around the source’s website and social media accounts to make sure they publish factual information, not solely opinions or conspiracy theories. 
• Send it to a friend, neighbor, or family member and ask them if it tracks with what they’re seeing online.

If the answer is no:

• Is there any identifying information that you can Google to confirm at least some of the information that you’re seeing? 
• Is there a logo or watermark on an image that you can search for to help confirm the source?
• Send it to a friend or family member and ask them if it tracks with what they’re seeing. 

If it’s hard to confirm anything, avoid sharing it. It could unfortunately be misinformation that’s making the rounds on your feed. 

Keep to official sources when possible: If you’re struggling to figure out where to find the correct information, look for the official accounts from your local and state agencies. Government agencies, newsrooms, and other trusted institutions can make mistakes, too, but you can trust they’ll address it and issue a correction if they do. They’ll also likely share updates as they receive new information about extreme conditions. 

Bookmark some fact-checking sites: As online rumors may continue spreading online, it’s important to find news sources that double-check information and explain sources. 

Here are a few:

• FactCheck.org
• SciCheck
• The Washington Post Fact Checker
• Snopes

Know the common myths: During every disaster, officials have to address rumors. During Hurricane Helene in 2024, for instance, there were conspiracy theories that FEMA was stealing supplies and food. Another common one is that agencies, like FEMA, will take away people’s land and homes after a disaster. 

Familiarize yourself with these myths and how to bust them whenever you see them being spread:

• Common disaster-related rumors (from FEMA)
• FEMA myth-busting for homeowners (from FEMA)
• More common myths about disasters (from Red Cross)

How to identify AI images and videos 

The internet has become inundated with content generated by artificial intelligence. About 34 percent of webpages published after ChatGPT was released in late 2022 showcase AI editing or authorship, according to an analysis from the Pew Research Center. There’s a lot to sift through, and some posts aren’t easily identified as AI-produced content, no matter how trained your eye is. Here are a few things you can look out for to help identify AI: 

• AI-generated written content doesn’t have a consistent writing style. Look for abrupt shifts in tone and formatting.   
• Some AI images look too airbrushed. A guide from the Global Investigative Journalism Network suggests zooming in on people’s faces. If there are no imperfections, no hair out of place, and no visible pores, that photo might be AI or has been heavily edited. 
• Look at the background of photos and videos, as well. Does a landscape shot of a city accurately reflect the skyline? Are buildings out of place or fake?
• Videos generated by AI sometimes have an overly polished look, and elements that may defy the laws of physics. 

How to debunk misinformation  

Most people are trying to be helpful when they share information online. They may be worried or angry, especially during or after a disaster. They likely truly believe what they’re seeing, even if it is incorrect. Below are some suggestions for approaching a conversation with a loved one, which can be difficult to navigate.   

Decide if it’s worth engaging: Research shows people listen to those they already trust. Arguing in the comments of a news article or Facebook post hardly goes well. Before you start the conversation, really think about the setting, the impact on your relationship, and the possible outcomes.

Assume best intentions and show empathy: Don’t approach a conversation about misinformation with your guns blazing — you’re trying to understand where someone is coming from, and they aren’t going to let you do so if you aren’t curious and calm. Most people that share misinformation believe it to be true. By asking questions and not assuming bad intent, you’ll have a better, more productive conversation. 

Have a real dialogue: Ask meaningful questions and try to understand the other person’s experience and emotions. This communication guide from the Environmental Defense Fund offers tips for this type of conversation, including offering to trade sources, acknowledging that it’s difficult to find sources to trust amid all the noise online, and finding common ground on something. Once you hear someone out, share your sources and explain how you fact-check for yourself when looking for information online. 

Learn when to take a step back: Some of your friends and family will be open to learning about misinformation, and some may not. If a handful of conversations don’t go well, it may be time to move on from speaking to that person about your concerns. A misinformation tool kit from the Initiative to Study Hate at the University of California, Los Angeles points out that continuing to force someone to have a conversation is only going to escalate the situation. 

If the conversation isn’t going anywhere, your loved one is simply not willing and maybe not ready to process what you’ve told them yet. That could change in the future, but for now it’s time to take a step back.  

Pre-bunk for future extreme weather: Some friends and family may seem receptive to conversations. It may be worth “pre-bunking” information with them before extreme weather comes back around. This may include sharing vetted sources of information or mentioning that certain rumors may spread and how to fact-check them. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How to fact-check during and after a disaster on Oct 28, 2026.

Lunch hour was busy at the Haywood County Public Library in Canton, North Carolina, where the midterm election wasn’t the only thing on people’s minds as they cast early ballots on October 19. The region has seen a lot of natural disasters in the past few years, and many residents are still rebuilding after Hurricane Helene. Repeated flooding has unsettled Sandra Moody, a straight-ticket Republican voter.

“Well, we’re not weather people,” Moody said with a hoarse laugh, “but these floods that keep coming — they’re supposed to be 500-year floods. You’re like, ‘What is going on?’”

Two years after the storm, recovery remains far from complete. Helene caused nearly $60 billion in damage and recovery needs, and about $10 billion in federal assistance has been provided so far. Even after accounting for state funding and insurance payments, the state pegs the unmet need at roughly $41 billion.

Half of all North Carolinians are dissatisfied with the government’s response, compared to 37 percent who are satisfied, according to a poll commissioned by television stations WRAL and WSOC. In western North Carolina, which bore the brunt of Helene’s fury, just 5 percent said they are “very satisfied” with how officials are handling things.

The lingering dissatisfaction looms over two surprisingly competitive races closely tied to the recovery. North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District, which includes much of the area hit hardest by Helene, is considered a toss-up. In the state’s Senate race, Democrat Roy Cooper, who was governor when the storm hit, has maintained a double-digit lead over Republican Michael Whatley, whom President Donald Trump tapped as his point person on the recovery.

This is something of a reversal from the 2024 election. As Republicans campaigned in Helene’s immediate aftermath, the party hammered the Biden administration over its response to the disaster. Two years later, Republicans control the White House, Congress, and the federal agencies responsible for the recovery.

Trump, who joked that he wouldn’t send North Carolina additional aid if Whatley lost, has drawn connections between aid and the election in other races. He announced $17.9 million in disaster assistance for Wisconsin while promoting Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany. He also approved an Ohio disaster declaration just before campaigning with Republican Senator Jon Husted but left 15 others pending. Vice President JD Vance, meanwhile, promised $858 million to North Carolina during a recent campaign stop near Asheville.

The White House has denied that disaster decisions are politically motivated, but the episodes underscore a question hanging over the midterms: Politicians are treating recovery as an electoral issue. It is much less clear whether voters are doing the same.

Western North Carolina offers one place to look for an answer. NC-11 encompasses 16 largely rural, mountainous counties along with solidly Democratic Asheville. Trump carried the district by 9.5 points in 2024, and its voters have sent three successive Republicans to Congress: Mark Meadows, Madison Cawthorn, and Chuck Edwards.

But Republican Jennifer Balkcom, who entered the race three months ago after Edwards withdrew, is running even with Democrat Jamie Ager. A pro-Trump political action committee recently canceled more than $1 million in television advertising supporting Balkcom, and the race is considered a toss-up. 

For some voters, Helene figures into the election for reasons beyond the recovery. Maggie Panther, a Democrat voting early in Canton, said the storm reinforced her concerns about climate change and the increasingly severe weather it is bringing. “I hate to sound totally partisan, but I know that there’s one party that’s trying to do something about climate change, and there’s one party that is denying it,” she said. “And so, I vote accordingly.”

Ager, a fourth-generation farmer whose grandfather served three terms in Congress, has focused on the economic impact of the storm and on the many residents who are still awaiting FEMA reimbursement and struggling to rebuild.

“We were trying to do everything we could to get back up on our feet here at the farm and everywhere else,” Ager said. “As time kept dragging on and recovery was clearly insufficient, [we were] hearing from neighbors and folks in the community about their frustrations.”

Helene has become an issue in the Senate race as well, though the questions about recovery center more directly on Whatley’s role in the federal response.

Whatley’s role in the recovery — widely described as Trump’s “Helene recovery czar” — has haunted him in the campaign. A recent investigation by the Asheville Citizen-Times found no communication between Whatley and FEMA in the two years after the storm, with only six text messages and five phone calls documented between Whatley and a state official coordinating hurricane recovery. The Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC, has pulled its financial support from the race as Cooper maintains a healthy lead in the polls.

Cooper and Whatley have blamed each other for the slow pace of Helene aid while defending their own records. Neither agreed to an interview, but commented by email. Whatley’s campaign said he helped “deliver more aid for Hurricane Helene than any other natural disaster” in the state’s history. Cooper’s campaign argued that Whatley “has completely failed in his role as federal recovery czar” and said the state has received just 16 percent of the funding it needs.

But despite sparring over Helene, mailers and ads for both campaigns are shifting attention to economics and crime.

Political scientist Chris Cooper at Western Carolina University said Helene has figured less prominently in campaign ads and mailers than he expected. That may be because neither candidate has much to gain from drawing attention to an unpopular recovery.

“One reason why Hurricane Helene hasn’t come up quite as much during this election is because both candidates have some experience that might allow folks to blame them for what almost everyone agrees was a poor response,” said Cooper, who is not related to the former governor.

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The WRAL/WSOC poll supports that idea. Despite the candidates’ attempts to blame one another, it found no meaningful difference between Cooper and Whatley supporters in their views of the government’s response to Helene. It follows a pattern that Cooper has previously seen after hurricanes, which until Helene had largely impacted the eastern part of the state.

“I cannot think of a single disaster in North Carolina or elsewhere, where afterward public opinion was, ‘Boy, we really got this recovery right,’” he said. Generally speaking, voters tend to blame the government, he said, which means someone who wasn’t involved with the response, like Ager, may have a better shot at winning.

Research suggests that disasters can influence how voters judge elected officials. Penny Liao, an economist at the think tank Resources for the Future, said incumbents can benefit from a strong response and timely aid, while a poor recovery can work against them.

“The disaster itself is usually not very good news for the incumbent, but if there is large aid or a timely response, generally the incumbent can potentially benefit from it,” she said. On the other hand, a failure to prepare for a disaster or a poor response “is not going to be rewarded.”

Whether that dynamic is playing out in North Carolina may become clearer after the election. Political responsibility for Helene spans parties and levels of government: ADemocratic administration was in the White House when the storm hit, a Republican one has overseen much of the recovery, while a Democratic governor and Republican-controlled Legislature share power in Raleigh.

Residents remain deeply dissatisfied with the recovery, and two races closely linked to Helene have become unexpectedly competitive. But so far, voters’ frustration is easier to measure than its effect on their votes, and it may well be that whoever is in office during a troubled recovery, regardless of party, will pay a political price.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Hurricane Helene haunts the midterms in North Carolina on Oct 28, 2026.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s reelection as president of Brazil gave Indigenous communities a measure of relief after a campaign in which his opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro, promised to halt recognition of new Indigenous territories and push for more mining and development.

“For Indigenous peoples, the reelection of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is more than a victory, and it is bigger than Brazil,” said Edson Krenak, who is Indigenous Krenak. “It is not about victory; it is about the possibility to dream and to fight without fear of death.”

But Sunday’s runoff election strengthened Bolsonaro’s movement in Congress, where his Liberal Party won the largest number of seats in both houses and the broader right gained a Senate majority. Leaders warned that this could open their territories to mining, weaken environmental protections, and roll back land rights, making it much harder for Lula to advance his Indigenous and environmental agendas.

Climate Observatory, a nonprofit coalition of 172 organizations, said 70 percent of the incoming lawmakers oppose the climate and environmental agenda, according to The Associated Press.

The stakes were especially high for Indigenous peoples because Bolsonaro campaigned on policies aligned with those of his father, Jair Bolsonaro, whose presidency from 2019 to 2023 saw an increase in mining, land grabs, deforestation, and attacks on their rights. Amazon deforestation reached a record in 2022, and Indigenous leaders say their communities endured unchecked violence from illegal mining operations during the elder Bolsonaro’s time in office.

His son finished more than 2 million votes ahead of Lula in the first election earlier this month, but neither candidate secured the 50 percent required to win outright. That result sparked fear in Indigenous communities and environmental advocates, who warned that the future of the Amazon was at stake. Lula came back to win Sunday’s runoff by roughly 4.4 million votes, securing a fourth nonconsecutive term as president.

In an interview between the two rounds of voting, Toya Manchineri, the general coordinator of the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon, or COIAB, said Indigenous peoples across the rainforest were deeply concerned about the possibility of a Bolsonaro win. Much of the last three years of Lula’s administration were spent undoing the damage the Bolsonaro administration caused, Manchineri said.

Manchineri said Lula’s term has largely been a period of rebuilding as Indigenous peoples gained greater roles in decision-making. “We were only beginning to see the resources returning,” he said.

In 2023, the administration established the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples and appointed Sônia Guajajara to lead it. Lula also revitalized the federal Indigenous affairs agency FUNAI after Bolsonaro had used it to support agribusiness, despite Indigenous resistance. The government also announced just before the election that Amazon deforestation had fallen to its lowest level since recordkeeping began in 1988, according to the AP.

Still, Indigenous leaders said the progress made under Lula has not resolved deeper conflicts over land, development, and decision-making.

“Lula’s victory prevents a president who promised to halt Indigenous land demarcation from taking office, but our territories are far from safe,” Alessandra Korap Munduruku, coordinator of the Munduruku Pariri Indigenous Association, said in a statement. “We have demanded that Lula’s government respect our decisions and listen to Indigenous peoples before advancing projects that affect our rivers and forests. Congress has become more dangerous for us, and we must remain organized. Our struggle does not end with an election’s outcome.” 

For Indigenous organizations, Lula’s victory is cause for hope, but they must now work with a Congress dominated by lawmakers who have already voted in favor of easing environmental protections and against Indigenous land claims. Given that dynamic, Krenak expressed concern about the difficulty Lula may face advancing his agenda. “The costs of negotiating with the Congress and Senate will be very high, if ever successful,” he said.

The election also came amid years of Indigenous voters struggling to access the polls. Earlier this month, a court denied a request for transportation assistance filed by Indigenous peoples in the Javari Valley in northern Brazil. Other efforts were more successful: Court rulings elsewhere helped secure government transportation for Indigenous voters in remote areas, while Indigenous communities across the Amazon organized to increase turnout, AP reported.

“Despite the challenges faced throughout the electoral process, Indigenous peoples of the Amazon made their voices heard at the polls across all nine states of the Brazilian Amazon, reaffirming their commitment to democracy, national sovereignty, and the defense of Indigenous rights. We marked the ballot boxes in defense of life, our territories, and Brazil’s future!” COIAB said in a statement. “Brazil’s future is Indigenous, and it begins in our territories! WE ARE THE ANSWER!”

For Krenak, however, Lula’s victory is only the beginning. He said he wants to see more meaningful progress during the president’s next term.

“By 2030, success should not be measured by how many Indigenous leaders stand beside officials at summits,” he said, “but by whether Indigenous peoples gain real authority to prevent their territories [from becoming] sacrifice zones, but territories of life, reciprocity, and generosity.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline For Indigenous peoples in Brazil, the election results offer a reprieve — not a resolution on Oct 28, 2026.

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