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Paris Agreement committee names three countries snubbing it over NDCs
Three countries have been named by the Paris Agreement’s compliance committee for failing to submit a nationally determined contribution (NDC) and repeatedly snubbing offers of help with their climate plans.
After months of internal debate over whether to identify serial non-responders, the Paris Agreement’s Implementation and Compliance Committee (PAICC) named the three countries which have failed to engage with it over their NDCs on Friday.
It called out Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal and North Korea in a footnote of its annual report, adding that it decided to name them “with a view to facilitating engagement”, adding that representatives of the three nations had been invited to its meeting in early 2027 “with the purpose of identifying any challenges and constraints”.
“The Committee noted the importance of Parties engaging with the Committee in a timely manner, while noting that some delays may be due to the national capabilities and circumstances of the Parties”, the report said.
In July, PAICC said 12 countries had ignored its repeated attempts to discuss why they had not published an NDC as required every five years under the 2015 Paris accord.
Members of the committee had been divided over whether to name them, but at a September meeting decided to do so in their annual report to the annual climate COP summit.
By the time the report was published on Friday, only Congo, Senegal and North Korea “had not communicated an NDC or submitted a [Biennial Transparency Report] and had not yet responded to any of the Committee’s notifications, despite several reminders issued by the Committee in this regard”.
Rainforest and renewable energy ambitionsThe silence from Congo and Senegal is notable because the former is home to much of the Congo Basin rainforest while the latter has sought billions of dollars in climate finance to support its renewable energy ambitions.
After Brazil, Congo has more rainforest than any country in the world. This forest, and the country’s peatlands, absorb huge amounts of greenhouse gas but are fast being lost to expanding farmland, charcoal production, logging and mining.
Senegal signed a Just Energy Transition Partnership with Canada and wealthy European nations in 2023, to help it meet its renewable energy targets under the-then government of Macky Sall. It was chair of the Least Developed Countries group between January 2022 and December 2023.
Greenpeace campaigner Raoul Monsembula in the peatland forest around Mbandaka, Democratic Republic of Congo, on September 15, 2017 (Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace)Tejas Rao, who is researching the PAICC as part of a doctoral thesis at Cambridge University, said the governments of the three countries should engage with the committee.
“Engagement costs these governments very little and the committee has shown it will listen,” he said.
“Silence leaves the committee with no basis to help, and it leaves the [governments] exposed to the narrative that they are simply disengaged,” he told Climate Home News.
Paris Agreement requirementThe 2015 Paris Agreement requires all parties to publish an NDC every five years outlining their emissions reduction targets, with each plan meant to be more ambitious than the country’s last NDC.
The latest set – the third round of plans, with new targets for 2035 – was due in February 2025. While most countries missed this deadline, all but around 30 – mostly small emitters but including Egypt, Vietnam and Argentina – have now submitted them.
Over the year, the PAICC – which is made up of government climate officials from developed and developing countries – has been communicating with governments that have not submitted NDCs and trying to overcome barriers to them doing so.
Some nations have cited exceptional circumstances as the reason for not submitting an NDC, a process that requires a significant amount of work in tracking emissions and consulting on how to curb them across the economy. For example, a letter from a Sudanese official to the PAICC, seen by Climate Home News, said that the country’s civil war had led to the suspension of its NDC preparation.
The US and Iran are not signed up to the Paris Agreement and so do not have active NDCs, nor does Taiwan, which is not a UN member state.
Rao said that because the PAICC is “facilitative and non-punitive”, naming the countries “is meant to open a door, not close one – the invited consultation is the point”.
“In recent months, governments that explained their constraints, whether capacity, finance or domestic process, have been met with follow-up and support rather than sanction, and the number of silent governments has fallen sharply,” Rao said.
The post Paris Agreement committee names three countries snubbing it over NDCs appeared first on Climate Home News.
Sixteen Years After Deepwater Horizon, Deep Sea Life Shows Few Signs of Recovery
Sixteen years after an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig unleashed more than 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, life in the deep sea has yet to recover.
Climate Politics for the Age of Insecurity
After Europe’s summer heatwaves, climate salience is at its highest in years, yet it’s clear the past frameworks used to mobilise majorities are crumbling amid an ongoing cost of living crisis and energy insecurity. To penetrate politically, climate communications must fit within the material realities of voters’ lives. In other words, the key to mobilising climate action is to demonstrate that the green transition can make European countries more secure and people’s lives cheaper.
The salience of climate change has been on a downward trajectory post-2019. That year is remembered by many as the moment climate politics broke containment: Ursula von der Leyen’s newly elected European Commission mandated Net Zero by 2050 after mass mobilisations in the streets demanding climate action and a strong performance by Green parties in that year’s European elections.
The years that followed could not have been more different. Pandemic lockdowns broke the wave of climate protests, and the subsequent cost-of-living crisis forced climate down the political agenda. There, the issue languished, rarely emphasised by mainstream parties except occasionally by far-right agitators attempting to stir up “greenlash”.
Even before the cost of living crisis, climate struggled to get more than 10 per cent of European electorates ranking it among their top issues. While polling shows that people hold ambient concern for the climate crisis, it remained a second-order issue. The movement has thus existed in political purgatory: marked by high awareness and intense polarisation, yet devoid of broader electoral momentum.
The recent summer of extreme weather may have broken that impasse. New research we conducted in August at Mandate Research, a strategy consulting firm for political campaigns, shows a definite spike in voters’ climate concern during this summer’s heatwaves. Among the countries we polled,1 this effect was particularly visible in Hungary and across Southern Europe, where Spain and France in particular were hit by devastating wildfires. In Hungary, 91 per cent of voters report being worried about climate change, followed closely by Italy (81 per cent), France (80 per cent), and Spain (68 per cent).
This worry translated directly into issue salience. In Sweden, the Netherlands, France, and the UK, roughly a fifth of voters now rank the environment and climate change among their top two issues. In Hungary, salience catapulted from a spring baseline of 3 per cent to a staggering 25 per cent, making it the second most important issue in the country in August. Hungarian citizens have had a particularly shocking confrontation with energy precarity this summer. The most severe drought in over a century partially dried up the Danube, causing a temporary shutdown of the nuclear facility supplying nearly half the country’s power.
Salience numbers are famously difficult to budge. The belief that climate politics had hit a saturation point, with returns diminishing as voters grew accustomed to extreme weather rather than increasing with the severity of the climate crisis, had convinced many mainstream parties that the issue was a vote loser. However, double-digit salience increases in the span of a few months demonstrate that European voters are not yet numb to peril.
This momentum is unlikely to fully evaporate in the colder months. With El Niño intensifying towards historic peaks and European gas storage levels concerningly low ahead of the winter season, the climate conversation is poised to shift from record heatwaves to heating bills and the threat of more extreme weather events.
The failure of old storiesReclaiming a seat at the table is good news, but squandering this moment with outdated messaging would be fatal.
While rising salience presents an undeniable political opening, progressives must not misread the room. Affordability, immigration, housing, and healthcare still rank above climate in most of the countries we surveyed, and overall concern has met but not surpassed the 2019 peak.
More importantly, the world has changed significantly since then, and so have the ways people relate to the climate crisis. The failures of green policies, the rise of the far right (with its own narratives and solutions to the climate emergency) and the shifting geopolitical landscape all demand a different approach from progressives. Reclaiming a seat at the table is good news, but squandering this moment with outdated messaging would be fatal.
This risk is most visible with “Net Zero”, a 2050 target enshrined in both the Paris Agreement and the European Green Deal. When asked to rank environmental policy goals from highest to lowest priority, “achieving Net Zero emissions” ranked dead last across every single country surveyed. In Germany (-37), the UK (-42), France (-35), and the US (-40), Net Zero received deeply negative net priority ratings. Voters overwhelmingly prefer tangible, immediate objectives: building clean energy, protecting nature and wildlife, and reducing energy costs.
Furthermore, the public is deeply sceptical about the feasibility of Net Zero targets. Well over half of respondents believe it is unlikely their country will make meaningful progress towards the 2050 goal. The attempt to bundle various policy aims together and rebrand it as Net Zero has clearly failed to reach voters; repetition has led to abstraction and meaninglessness.
Even more troubling is the perceived distribution of economic costs. Almost half of Europeans surveyed believe that pro-environmental policies have left ordinary people in their country worse off, including 54 per cent in the Netherlands, 46 per cent in Spain, 45 per cent in Germany, 45 per cent in France, and 42 per cent in the UK.
This perception persists despite measurable, real-world improvements in air quality, public health indicators, and biodiversity conservation across Europe. Policies that treated emissions reductions as the target and affordability as an afterthought have clearly reached their limit, and they are even less likely to succeed amid a prolonged cost of living crisis. Relentless far-right framing that depicts environmentalism as technocracy has also played its part in convincing people that green policy is synonymous with meaningless sacrifice and elite control.
Today, progressives have to contend with thin, transactional support for climate action. When asked if they would support renewable energy, people respond positively. However, when renewable investment is posited as requiring taxation or public service cuts, this support turns sharply negative across nearly all European countries.
Moralistic, future-focused arguments and lofty green targets celebrated in the Fridays for Future past have lost momentum. The timelines environmental policies require are inescapable, but so is the need to have people on board a green project. Voters want a green future, but they want a job and food on the table for their families an order of magnitude more.
Reconfiguring climate politicsWhile affordability concerns overshadow melting ice caps, they also provide an opportunity for the climate movement to execute a strategic pivot. The convergence of climate extremes, geopolitical volatility, and rising utility bills creates a narrow window to reframe clean energy as a practical, necessary alternative to fossil fuels. Low riverbeds impact the cost of transportation, hot summers make it hard to cool power plants, and a warming atmosphere yields bad harvests and increases the price of everyday goods such as olive oil, coffee, and chocolate. Framed this way, the green transition is less a matter of global leadership and blue-sky thinking than a shield against further economic insecurity.
Voters do make the connection between renewable power and structural affordability. Clear majorities across Europe agree that transitioning to renewable energy will lower energy bills and reduce dependence on volatile fossil fuel markets. In a similar vein, expanding renewable capacity is consistently ranked by voters as the single most effective action governments can take to lower energy costs.
This is reflected in message testing across Europe. Narratives focused on immediate material outcomes, such as capping household energy bills by taxing fossil fuel windfall profits, or protecting national energy security from foreign autocrats, consistently outperform abstract moral appeals.
Right-wing figures like Giorgia Meloni in Italy and Kemi Badenoch in the UK have attempted to present themselves as pragmatic leaders defending working families against “arbitrary climate targets”. Support for nuclear energy as part of the solution is often featured in this kind of discourse – and it resonates among voters, ranking as the top climate priority in Sweden and Poland, and a close second in the UK, France, and the Netherlands.
During this summer’s heatwaves, French far-right leader Marine Le Pen also tried to pitch herself as a pragmatic leader by advocating a “grand plan” for air conditioning. While this will neither solve the climate crisis nor adapt our cities to the heat, it put her opponents on the defensive.
All this shows that progressives can no longer lay exclusive claim to the climate issue. The newfound salience of the climate crisis will only translate into votes if they offer solutions to people’s material concerns. In this context, conceding the language of pragmatism to the Right would be a strategic mistake.
Voters want a green future, but they want a job and food on the table for their families an order of magnitude more.
Rebuilding majoritiesEuropeans have not abandoned the green transition. Across the continent, solid majorities recognise that drastic change is needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, and they believe that green investment can help make their lives easier.
However, voters are no longer responding to the argument as it has been framed and delivered over the past decade, and hoping that extreme weather will shock electorates back to reason is bad politics. Many Europeans are providing the movement an opening because of the energy and cost of living crisis and security concerns. The climate movement must take heed of this, and meet voters where they are.
Civil society and climate movements can continue to highlight immediate threats from extreme weather to maintain emotional urgency – after all, this type of messaging still proves the most effective in boosting the salience of the climate crisis. But political parties competing for government must ground their vision in tangible economic benefits. By dismantling the abstract vocabulary of Net Zero, confronting corporate profiteering, and presenting renewable energy as a tool for bill reduction and sovereign security, progressives can begin to rebuild a majority for climate action.
- Sweden, The Netherlands, the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Hungary, Poland, and the US. ︎
England enters the pyrocene
Permitting Bill Text Would Strip Our Most Basic Federal Protections
By Aaron Mintzes, Deputy Policy Director and Senior Policy Counsel, and Allison Woolverton, Campaign Manager and Policy Advocate.
Last week, a group of key Senators published text of a long-anticipated permitting bill, S. 5653, the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (BAAJA). While it includes widely supported improvements to strengthen renewable energy transmission, the bill gives industry a wide-open door to deliver widespread damage to science, waters, lands, wildlife, Tribes, and communities impacted by oil, gas, and mining, all while cutting the public out of the process. The Senate appears likely to begin voting on this bill as soon as November 9.
Email your Senators now Does the oil, gas, or mining project receive any environmental review?For all major federal projects – such as a new mine, a gas pipeline, or an expansion to an oil refinery – the bill makes sweeping changes to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the key tool informing the public and allowing input on our own Government’s environmental decisions. In fact, BAAJA provides multiple ways for mining and fossil fuel projects to avoid NEPA review altogether. For example, the bill declares interstate natural gas pipelines are not major federal actions and do not qualify for NEPA review. Nor will most grants, loans, loan guarantees, and other forms of Government financial assistance to corporations seeking permits to build. This is especially troubling given this Administration’s tendency to spend taxpayer dollars on mineral projects to enrich their own family members. The bill also makes it easier for the Government to exclude certain kinds of projects from review, as when the Forest Service unlawfully allowed graphite mine exploration in the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota.
The bill provides the corporations great advantages while being incredibly disadvantageous to the public. If there is a NEPA review, BAAJA defines the “purpose and need” of the oil, gas, or mining project to narrowly meet the company’s own goals. This limits the review largely to what the company chooses. Further, the bill precludes considering alternatives that do meet the project sponsor’s own goals. Traditionally, NEPA reviews consider a range of alternative plans, including not approving the project.
Montana Resources in Butte, MT. Credit: Chris Boyer, Kestrel Aerial
And even if the oil, gas, or mining project gets reviewed, what process does it get?Before applying for a permit, project sponsors selectively meet with interested parties such as Tribes, local governments, and community organizations to create a “record of stakeholder engagement.” The project sponsor’s prepared record includes “any ways the feedback from stakeholders were incorporated into the proposed agency action.” Project sponsors may draft NEPA documents, but the agency decides the level of review. Traditionally, large oil, gas, and mining projects might receive two or three opportunities for comment. First, to understand the project’s scope. Then, to comment on the Government’s draft study. And for those projects that the agency decides may have significant environmental impacts, another public comment opportunity.
The vote could come in less than a month, so they need to hear from us now.
TAKE ACTION NOW: Tell the Senate to put People first.
Yet, BAAJA requires only one public comment period at the beginning of permitting and only for the most harmful projects. The bill requires no public comment for any draft studies, nor for any projects with more moderate impacts. When the Government does prepare a review, it may disregard any study available afterward, effectively preventing the public and Tribes from contributing science and Indigenous Knowledge tailored to that project’s review. BAAJA also closes the courthouse door by limiting legal challenges to those who comment and limiting their legal claims to those raised in their comments.
Finally, if BAAJA becomes law, it would lock in all oil, gas, and mining projects already approved under this Administration’s feckless, weak, and submissive minerals policy. Worse, the bill precludes any future President from doing anything that may “alter” or “amend” what this President has already authorized, including transferring sacred landscapes like Oak Flat to foreign mining corporations. BAAJA proponents argue this provision starts wind and solar projects this President has unlawfully halted. Even so, it also leaves in place projects this President already unlawfully started, like Alaska’s Ambler Road through the Gates of the Arctic National Park.
Goldstrike Mine in NV. Credit: Ecoflight
Unfettered Mining of Public LandsIn addition to gutting protections for wildlife and people, BAAJA would open public lands to unchecked mining. That will cause permanent damage.
The United States’ mining law is already wildly inadequate. The 1872 Mining Law was written more than 150 years ago. Its goal was to encourage mining in the West, not to protect communities or the environment. It can seem hard to imagine how this law could be worse, but BAAJA is up to the challenge.
The damage extends beyond the mine itself to include infrastructure and dumps for toxic mining waste. BAAJA allows mining companies to claim nearly unlimited public lands for any use associated with a mine plan, including dumping waste, roads, pipelines, or power lines. It expands mining companies’ legal right to claim public lands under the 1872 Mining Law, rather than allowing the Government to choose the number and locations of waste dumps, roads, or transmission lines.
There is good news in this bill. Currently, the hardrock abandoned mine lands fund (created in 2021’s Infrastructure Law) has no dedicated revenue, and so relies on taxpayers instead – roughly $4.8 million/yr. BAAJA would dedicate meaningful funding sources toward this cleanup with revenue from mining “acquired lands” – lands the Government bought from states, towns, or private entities, mostly in the Midwest and East– and raising certain fees.
Case study: Desert Southwest PipelineBAAJA’s devastation of environmental review can be seen in its potential impact on the proposed Desert Southwest Pipeline. The 48-inch pipeline proposed by Energy Transfer would run 522 miles carrying 2.3 billion cubic feet of fracked gas per day from the West Texas Permian Basin through southern New Mexico and Arizona. The pipeline will supply gas to large AI data centers via other pipelines as well as municipal utility grids facing increasing demand due to data center buildout.
Land, water, Tribes, and communities along the pipeline’s route are threatened with pollution, safety risks, and harm to sacred sites and fragile ecosystems. The pipeline would run under the Rio Grande, Pecos, San Pedro, and Gila Rivers via horizontal directional drilling, a risky process using pressurized mud to tunnel under rivers. It would pass through the ecologically diverse Chihuahuan and Sonoran Deserts and the Otero Mesa, America’s wildest grassland that hosts over 1,000 native species and thousands of archaeological sites.
Yet, BAAJA would say all interstate natural gas pipelines, like Desert Southwest, are not major projects, and therefore do not receive NEPA review. The change would entirely alter the multi-step environmental review under the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and crucial opportunities for public input by communities along its intended route.
Additionally, BAAJA amends the National Historic Preservation Act to essentially make Tribal consultation discretionary. Now, Tribes and states can review water crossings and impose their own water quality standards under Sec. 401 of the Clean Water Act, BAAJA weakens that authority. The bill imposes burdens upon states and Tribes and undermines tribal and state sovereignty over a massive pipeline project cutting through their land. And Desert Southwest is just one pipeline of the hundreds of miles of pipelines the Trump Administration is poised to bring online in coming years.
ConclusionThere’s still time to tell Congress that BAAJA creates more harm than good. The bill weakens NEPA, the 1872 Mining Law, the Clean Water Act, and Tribal consultation under the National Historic Preservation Act. Overall, the bill needlessly serves extraction over the people and renewable energy. Congress should pass the bill’s renewable energy transmission provisions, strike the harmful ones, and instead preserve science, public input, consultation, and meaningful mining reforms.
The post Permitting Bill Text Would Strip Our Most Basic Federal Protections appeared first on Earthworks.
Authoritarianism and Conservation: How a Dictator Shaped the Future of an Endangered Bird
Indonesia is a young country — in more ways than one.
Its current democratic government dates back under three decades to 1998, after the fall of Soeharto, the military dictator who led the country for 32 years.
It’s also demographically young, with a median age of just 31. That means fewer and fewer people in Indonesia remember the time they were under Soeharto’s ‘New Order’ rule.
But despite the fading memory of Soeharto’s reign, one of the decisions he made in the later years — selecting a National Precious Bird — is outlasting his regime.
Ten days into January 1993, President Soeharto signed his fourth Presidential Decree of that year. The first three dealt with setting the domestic retail sale prices of petroleum and tariffs for electricity and public transportation. The fourth declared an until-then largely unknown bird, the Javan hawk-eagle (Nisaetus bartelsi), as Indonesia’s national bird. The United States had its bald eagle, China had its giant panda, and now Indonesia had its hawk-eagle.
Photo: Vincent NijmanThree reasons favored giving the Javan hawk-eagle this title.
First, their appearance and prominent crest mirrors the mythical bird Garuda, which is central to Indonesia’s national coat of arms, the Garuda Pancasila.
Second, the loss of rainforest on Java — Indonesia’s most densely populated and least forested island — meant very few hawk-eagles remained, and increased attention could be beneficial to their conservation.
Third, a national bird had to be found exclusively within Indonesia, and Soeharto’s regime heavily favored Java, leading to a “Javanization” of Indonesian politics, culture, and economic development. The Javan hawk-eagle fit like a glove.
Photo: Vincent NijmanOrnithologist Bas van Balen, one of the first people to study the species, recalls that the decree established three national “mascots” — a popular animal, a charming one, and a rare one. The animals were selected “during a workshop in 1993, attended by representatives of various governmental bodies, such as the Forest and Environmental departments, the parliament, the scientific authority, local universities, media mass, NGOs and various experts. Worries that the eagle would undergo the same fate as for instance the black-naped oriole — provincial faunal symbol of Central Java, which was much sought after for the bird trade in the years after its nomination — were discounted, as its protection was believed by the committee to be the authorities’ responsibility.”
In 1993 I was a young biologist, eager to study birds in the rainforest. The announcement of the Javan hawk-eagle as Indonesia’s national bird, and the observation by French naturalists of a juvenile on a mountain in central Java, spurred me on to make the move to Indonesia.
At the time there were no photographs of the bird — either in the wild or in captivity — and I had to rely on some 30 preserved skins in Dutch museums to get a good idea what the bird looked like. I also had the fortune to become acquainted with the then 87-year-old ornithologist Hans Bartels, the middle of the Bartels family (Max Sr, Max Jr, Hans, and Ernst) after which Javan hawk-eagles received their taxonomic name.
Javan hawk-eagles were already legally protected — all birds of prey in Indonesia were put on the county’s protected species list in 1970, signed by Soeharto’s long-trusted Minister of Agriculture, Toyib Hadiwinata — and none lived in zoos or private collections. After the national bird declaration, any individuals or institutions that wanted to keep a Javan hawk-eagle had to receive presidential permission. Only one person was granted this: Ibu Tien, Soeharto’s wife. Her Javan hawk-eagle, a juvenile bird almost certainly illegally taken from its nest, was displayed at a Jakarta zoo run and managed by one of many Soeharto family foundations.
In those first years during many of my visits, more zoo directors expressed the desire to display Javan hawk-eagles and even breed them. Of course zoos were not allowed to obtain them, but “gifts by anonymous donors” created a loophole. Two years after the declaration, three zoos on Java displayed or had displayed a total of 14 Javan hawk-eagles, six of whom died within one year.
Photo: Vincent NijmanZoos were not the only ones eager to own a national bird. In an Indonesian context, owning and displaying legally protected species was, and perhaps still is, seen as a sign of status, of “being untouchable” or above the law. Ibu Tien’s display of a Javan hawk-eagle could be interpreted in this context, as was the decision by a national celebrity to have himself photographed in traditional dress next to his pet Javan hawk-eagle for the women’s magazine Femina.
It was, and still is, challenging to keep a rainforest eagle in captivity, as attested by the high mortality rates in Indonesian zoos. Most of the Javan hawk-eagles I saw in zoos in the 1990s and 2000s were first-year birds — easily recognizable as such because young birds have blueish eyes that turn yellow as they get older. This was not evidence of captive breeding but attested to them being poached from their nests.
Looking back, the decision to declare such a rare bird as a national symbol, without first putting proper protection and management in place, may not have been wise. When I started my research on Java, every large eagle regardless of species was described as a “Javan eagle,” but this changed rapidly and the Javan hawk-eagle quickly became recognized as something special. Enforcement of protected species legislation in Indonesia was and continues to be weak, and under Soeharto’s rule corruption and nepotism allowed for exceptions to be made.
Today numerous people and zoos keep Javan hawk-eagles, and young birds are frequently offered for sale. In the early years one could find them in the dark corners of one of the many bird markets that are present throughout Indonesia, but increasingly they are offered for sale on e-commerce platforms and social media sites.
But all is not negative.
At time of the declaration, very little was known about Javan hawk-eagles. Based on very limited surveys — including ones done by Bas van Balen — they were considered among the rarest birds in the world, with fewer than 60 pairs confined to five or six widely separated forest fragments and millions of people living in the areas in between. The first people who recorded the species and commented on their conservation were non-Indonesian birders, either living in Indonesia or visiting.
This has now changed. Today Javan hawk-eagles are arguably Indonesia’s most frequently studied birds, with university students’ conducting projects year after year on the eagles themselves, their habitat, and their distribution.
Meanwhile a solid group of dedicated raptor enthusiasts works to study, monitor, and protect the species. We now know more about Javan hawk-eagles than ever before, and the earlier population estimates were off by an order of magnitude.
And it turned out that the birds were not confined to the island of Java: They’ve been observed flying on neighboring Bali as well.
Trade and continuing habitat loss remain the main threats to the species, but guard nest protection programs have been very successful.
Zaini Rakhman, chairman of Raptor Indonesia, says that “between 2001 and 2021, 40 confiscated or surrendered Javan hawk-eagles were released and 27 of them survived in their new habitats.”
In 2023 two Javan hawk-eagles, captive born in an Indonesian zoo, were released into a national park in western Java — an area that might not have been protected if not for the birds.
“The presence of Javan hawk-eagles was one of the reasons why the forests on Mt. Murio in central Java were declared as a Grand Forest Park,” says Rakhman. “Increased protection of additional forest areas are currently under review.”
In the early 1990s Hans Bartels was of the opinion that the survival of the Javan hawk-eagle and its forest was fully dependent on Indonesia’s younger generation. They have taken this to heart. The eagle is now the pride of many Indonesians — and rightly so — and December 2025 saw the opening of the Bartels Javan Hawk-Eagle Conservation Museum, in a historic building that had originally been the private residence of the Bartels family.
Even President Soeharto could not have imagined this would be the cumulation of his single-handed declaration of Indonesia’s national bird.
References:
Nijman, V. 2020. Illegal trade in Indonesia’s National Rare Animal has moved online. Oryx 54(1), 12.
Nijman, V., Shepherd, C.R., Van Balen, S. 2009. Declaration of the Javan hawk eagle Spizaetus bartelsi as Indonesia’s National Rare Animal impedes conservation of the species. Oryx 43(1), 122-128.
Thiollay, J.M., Meyburg, B.U. 1988. Forest fragmentation and the conservation of raptors: a survey on the island of Java. Biological Conservation 44(4),229-250.
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El Niño Brings Exotic Sea Life to the California Coast
A powerful El Niño is delivering unusually warm waters to the California coast, and with them, an array of tropical sea creatures rarely seen there.
IPCC scientists vow to press on with climate reports despite political deadlock
Scientists have vowed to keep working on the next flagship set of reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), after a political row over the timeline for their release saw its latest session suspended on Friday evening without agreement.
During the weekend, government officials and scientists alike expressed disappointment over the inability to reach a compromise before some delegates from developing countries and small island states had to leave the week-long meeting in Ethiopia to catch flights home.
The disagreement – which has persisted since early 2024 – turns on whether the three key parts of the AR7 assessment should all be published before the conclusion of the UN’s next Global Stocktake of global climate action, which is due to be completed in late 2028.
The IPCC issued a statement after the close of the session, saying that “key agenda items” – the timelines for the three AR7 reports, as well as the IPCC budget – remain open and under discussion. It said the IPCC’s plenary session and its deliberations on the pending agenda “will resume at the earliest opportunity”, giving no further details of when.
IPCC Chair Jim Skea told delegates in closing remarks that recent months had been some of the most turbulent for the climate science panel and that, if there were stronger words than “profound disappointment” he would use them, according to a summary published by the Earth Negotiators Bulletin (ENB). IPCC discussions happen behind closed doors.
IPCC scientists remained committedIn an open letter, issued on Monday, a group of nearly 120 scientists – from a total of 664 AR7 authors – said they “stand committed to continue working to deliver the AR7 reports in a manner that is rigorous, timely and inclusive, in line with our mandate to be policy-relevant”.
“An assessment that arrives after the decisions it is meant to inform cannot serve its purpose,” they emphasised. “The second Global Stocktake in 2028 is such a decision point, and the world should not have to face it without the IPCCʼs latest assessment.”
Europe, small islands and the least developed countries, plus many Latin American and developed nations, want the IPCC to meet this deadline, arguing that the findings from the UN climate science body are irreplaceable in the UN climate policy-making process.
However, around a dozen developing countries plus Russia have argued that the reports should come later in order to allow for greater research input from the Global South – something that, in their view, would make the findings fairer. They also claim that a shorter timeline would put excessive pressure on experts.
The most vocal of this group at last week’s meeting were India and Saudi Arabia, according to the ENB summary and a developed country diplomat. Critics see this push for a longer timeline as an excuse to deprive government decision-makers of the latest science and ease pressure on emerging economies to raise their ambition, particularly on cutting emissions.
Commenting on last week’s meeting, France’s ambassador for climate negotiations Benoît Faraco said a broad coalition of developed and developing countries from all five continents, “united in their support for science and the timeline proposed by scientists”, had withstood pressure “from a few countries” seeking to slow down the process of adopting the IPCC reports.
He added that France would not back down and would “continue to fight tirelessly for science, protect the integrity of information, and convince our partners that without the best available scientific data, we will be less effective in tackling climate change and protecting our populations”.
Delegates at last week’s IPCC session in Addis Ababa. Photo: IISD/ENB | Danny Skilton Delegates at last week’s IPCC session in Addis Ababa. Photo: IISD/ENB | Danny Skilton Inclusivity proposal stalledIn a bid to unlock a solution for the AR7 timeline, countries discussed ways to improve the inclusivity of the IPCC’s work. One option put on the table was for the IPCC to expand its funding for delegates from developing countries to attend some or all of its sessions from one to two participants, according to the ENB summary and a delegate speaking to Climate Home News.
That would increase the costs for the IPCC to complete AR7 by up to a quarter, according to an assessment shared by the secretariat. The panel’s budget is under severe strain and its officials have warned that, without additional voluntary contributions, it risks running out of money before it can deliver on this assessment cycle.
Climate Home News understands that some of the IPCC’s traditional donors – which mainly include European countries, Japan and Australia – indicated a willingness to support funding for an additional developing country participant. But without an agreement over the budget or the timeline for the reports, that option was ultimately not adopted.
‘Disappointed and worried’The three reports are managed by working groups that collate and draw overall findings from the latest scientific studies and data on the physical effects of global warming around the world, how to adapt to it, and pathways for cutting planet-heating emissions in order to meet the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement.
Winston Chow, an urban climate professor at Singapore Management University who co-chairs Working Group II on adaptation, wrote in a LinkedIn post that he was “disappointed and worried” for the IPCC authors who have worked “extraordinarily hard” to assess the relevant climate science over the past two years.
He said he shared their concern that “the rigour, time and goodwill they’ve invested are now being put at risk by the Panel’s stalemate”.
As science comes under attack at UN talks, climate movement splits over how to respond
For Working Group II, a meeting for 250 experts writing that report is scheduled for January 2027, followed by the approval of a special report on cities and climate change in Singapore next March.
But because the IPCC’s budget has not been confirmed due to uncertainty about the AR7 schedule, travel support for those researchers is at risk, wrote Chow. “If they cannot participate, our assessments will lose vital expertise, perspectives and scientific breadth, and the collective effort of our authors will be undermined,” he warned.
Scientific work continuesDespite the political holdups, he – together with French climate scientist Robert Vautard, co-chair of Working Group 1 – agreed with IPCC head Skea who told the IPCC’s closing session on Friday: “The engine room of the IPCC is working, and it’s healthy.”
Vautard commented in a separate post on LinkedIn after it ended: “The boat is at full steam.” Working groups I and II are due to start revising the first drafts of their reports, while Working Group III on reducing emissions is finalising its first draft which will be out soon, he wrote.
“The most exciting two years of the cycle are ahead, for the authors. The momentum in the engine room is here and now. Trust the engine room!” he added.
The IPCC and some scientists report that progress has been made towards achieving an equitable balance of authors from the Global North and the Global South.
The group of researchers who signed the open letter on Monday noted that “inclusivity is at the heart of how we work”, with author teams bringing together experts from developed and developing countries with diverse backgrounds and at different stages of their careers.
IPCC chair Jim Skea at the panel’s session last week. Photo: IISD/ENB | Danny Skilton IPCC chair Jim Skea at the panel’s session last week. Photo: IISD/ENB | Danny Skilton Plea to overcome political differencesThe signatories include several scientists from some of the countries opposed to the alignment of all IPCC reports with the Global Stocktake.
“We are committed to an assessment in which the knowledge, experience and priorities of every region are fully reflected, a commitment we share with the leadership of the IPCC.
Equity is built into how our assessment is being drafted,” they added.
They appealed to governments that make up the IPCC “to overcome their political differences and work together as we do as a global scientific community, so that we can deliver the IPCC reports the world needs to hear”.
In a statement published on Monday, IPCC chair Skea said reaching consensus on the schedule for the reports is “vital”. He added that the assessments provide authoritative scientific evidence to inform national climate policies, strengthen adaptation and resilience and support access to climate finance, as well as helping communicate the scale of the climate crisis and the urgency of efforts to tackle it.
The post IPCC scientists vow to press on with climate reports despite political deadlock appeared first on Climate Home News.
The world is crumbling in ‘The History of Concrete’
It’s the second-most used material on Earth, it’s an environmental disaster, and it’s falling apart all around us. Meet concrete, the subject of a new feature-length documentary by John Wilson, a filmmaker with a knack for finding laugh-out-loud absurdity in the mundane.
The History of Concrete stitches together quick cuts of handheld footage and deadpan narration in the same style as How To with John Wilson, the HBO show that made the filmmaker’s career. As in his episodes on “how to make small talk” and “how to put up scaffolding,” the titular subject of the film isn’t really the point. Instead, Wilson uses the theme of concrete as a kind of connective tissue, taking the viewer on a sprawling exploration of the overlooked corners of our world. Concrete’s pervasiveness allows this film to venture anywhere — a family-run mortuary that specializes in tattoo preservation, a patriotic brick-laying competition in Las Vegas, and a 3,100-mile spiritual race in which runners circle a single block in Queens for weeks on end.
It would be a stretch to call the documentary a climate film. (In fact, it’s explicitly styled like a Hallmark movie.) But with each turn of the lens, Wilson sheds light on an unfolding environmental disaster. After all, he points out, concrete is the third biggest contributor to global warming. And although concrete is an indispensable part of modern life, its short, crumbling lifespan makes it a hazard on an increasingly disaster-prone planet. (Reader beware, there are more grim facts about concrete — and spoilers — ahead.)
Wilson’s fascination with concrete started when the basement of his apartment building in Queens began intermittently flooding. He tried to patch the repair himself with a store-bought concrete mix, but the leak kept coming back. His frustration is widely shared: As climate change intensifies storms and raises sea levels, New Yorkers are dealing with more extreme rainfall and coastal flooding than ever before. The abundance of concrete worsens flooding by preventing stormwater from seeping into the soil and, when it cracks, fails to block the water from filling subway stations and buildings for dozens of days a year.
More on concrete A new solution for flood-prone cities? Concrete made from shellfish waste. Ayurella Horn-MullerWilson goes on to discover our concrete-smothered world is full of hazards, owing to the material’s surprisingly short lifespan. Structures like the Brooklyn Promenade, which makes up the upper most deck of a four-layered expressway, aren’t supposed to last more than 40 years according to Sam Schwartz, a former New York City traffic commissioner who Wilson interviews. Today, the 1,800-foot-long artery is covered in patch jobs. Schwartz tells Wilson that a mass catastrophe could be just a few years away.
With these facts in mind, any city starts to look like a morass of potential disasters. It’s no wonder that Wilson spent at least a year filming the cracks around New York. Some places, such as a public swimming pool sanitation facility that is inundated with leaks, are given a few minutes of screentime. Others, including the architecturally famous Spring Street Salt Shed, which is patched with packing tape, and a 10-year-old skyscraper in midtown Manhattan that may already need to be demolished, are presented in a quick, jaw-dropping montage. As Wilson says, it feels as though “we’re all in danger somehow.”
Perversely, climate change is making this problem even worse. Studies show that extreme weather hastens the deterioration of concrete structures around the world. And while Wilson doesn’t say this, it’s worth noting that even structurally sound concrete is a hazard as the planet warms. The material creates an “urban heat island” effect that can cause local air temperatures to rise as much as 7 degrees Fahrenheit, turning the pavement into a scalding 140 degrees F griddle and killing hundreds of people in places like Arizona every year.
But, as a contractor tells Wilson, “We’d be up a creek without concrete. It is used for everything.” Places like New York require vast amounts of the material to build new housing and maintain urban areas. Unfortunately, sand — the key ingredient in concrete — is vanishing as coastlines erode and humans use up some 50 billion tons of the stuff per year. While most people remain blissfully unaware, Wilson says, experts have been trying to warn us of an impending global sand shortage.
Near the end of the film, Wilson takes a peak at a concrete recycling plant, one of the few existing solutions to these problems. These facilities exist to stop debris from demolitions going to landfills, and, ideally, to make newly usable material with fewer emissions. But the one that Wilson found near Brooklyn’s marine terminal was also filling nearby neighborhoods with dangerous amounts of airborne dust, prompting protests and the plant’s eventual closure in 2025.
For now, our dependency on concrete seems as intractable as its pitfalls. “Once you’re used to something, it becomes hard to change your lifestyle without external pressure,” Wilson says.
I was already aware of the environmental costs of concrete when I first moved to New York City as an early-career climate reporter, but I wasn’t prepared for what it would feel like to be surrounded by so much of it. I found myself questioning the commonly cited statistic that urban lifestyles have a smaller carbon footprint than suburban ones. After all, these studies generally account for the energy and materials residents consume directly, while leaving out the emissions embodied in the buildings, sewers, and other parts of the built-up environment that make city life possible.
Although my own back-of-the-envelope calculations support the idea that living here is probably the greener choice, I still rush through my commutes to spend less time amid the chaos. But walking out of the Manhattan theater where I saw The History of Concrete, my gray surroundings came into sharper focus — almost like the film had never stopped. There’s a kind of poetry in Wilson’s work: the banal becomes beautiful, the bizarre becomes delightful, and the heartbreaks become unguardedly funny. His curiosity, bordering at times on voyeurism, is an invitation to join him in the simple act of paying attention.
And so I noticed the toddler lying on her belly outside of the gum-plastered entrance to the subway station. A dumpling food truck, seemingly stuck in a pothole. Groups of women in ballgowns rushing past, their long skirts dragging into puddles — all of it part of a concrete world worth noticing.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The world is crumbling in ‘The History of Concrete’ on Oct 19, 2026.
Protecting nature is a public duty, not a Wall Street profit opportunity
An Lambrechts is a biodiversity politics expert at Greenpeace International with extensive experience in biodiversity-related multilateral negotiations. She is the head of the Greenpeace delegation at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP17 happening in Yerevan, Armenia.
In 2022, COP15 delivered the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. With COP17 starting in Yerevan, we are now halfway to the deadline, and according to the first Global Review of progress, countries are not on track to meet the biodiversity targets, and implementation must accelerate fast.
One of the main findings of the Global Review is that funding falls far short of the scale needed to halt and reverse nature loss. But the crisis facing the world’s biodiversity is not an absolute scarcity of capital – it is a profound public policy distortion.
The global economy currently spends roughly $30 destroying nature for every single dollar invested in its protection. According to a report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, a staggering $2.4 trillion is spent in public subsidies for fossil fuels, agriculture and water use, while global investment in biodiversity conservation and restoration stands at a mere $220 billion.
Countries urged to ramp up “insufficient” nature policies at COP17
Yet, discussions about how to close the biodiversity finance gap continue to claim that salvation lies in mobilising private capital, scaling offsets and “derisking” investments in nature. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of both the nature of ecological stewardship and of the global financial architecture.
Biodiversity conservation is not a speculative investment portfolio – it is the foundation of human survival. The health of our planet is a non-monetisable, non-excludable public good. Expecting profit-seeking private capital to protect nature perpetuates the structural drivers of ecosystem destruction in the first place.
But if private market mechanisms cannot save biodiversity, where will the necessary public resources come from?
Money going to the wrong placesThe answer lies in recovering the vast public wealth currently drained by cross-border tax abuse, financial secrecy and corporate impunity. Finance and environment ministers meeting in Yerevan must give a strong political signal that, to avert ecological breakdown, countries need to take swift action to reform global tax rules, eliminate harmful public subsidies and cancel unsustainable sovereign debts for the public revenues to end up where they belong.
Extractive sectors such as industrial agriculture, fishing, timber and mining continue business-as-usual, often heavily subsidised by public treasuries, while voluntary carbon and biodiversity offset markets pose a serious risk to nature conservation. Offset schemes have delivered only a negligible fraction of the funding needed to preserve ecosystems, allowing industries to continue with their destructive business-as-usual practices.
In advanced economies, public funding often actively undermines biodiversity. In Europe, over €5.3 billion in public subsidies is funnelled annually into intensive forest biomass harvesting under renewable energy directives, degrading primary forest ecosystems and undermining long-term climate resilience. Pleading with private investors to fill a “finance gap” while pouring billions into ecological destruction is an exercise in futility.
Developing countries struggle with debt burdenFor developing countries, reliance on private finance is further compounded by a crushing sovereign debt crisis. In 2024, public debt in developing economies reached record levels, with net interest payments alone absorbing $921 billion. A record 61 developing countries now spend more than 10% of government revenue on foreign debt service, with many climate-vulnerable nations spending twice as much servicing external debt as they receive in climate and biodiversity finance combined.
This burden acts as a structural driver of ecosystem destruction. Under pressure from external creditors and international financial institutions to avoid default and secure foreign exchange, governments are routinely forced into austerity measures and pushed to expand raw commodity exports into pristine biomes.
Comment: World Bank and IMF should lead the financial system in responding to the climate crisis
The current negotiations for a United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation (UNFCITC) also offer a way forward. An estimated $492 billion in tax revenue is lost every year to offshore tax havens. Multinational corporations account for around $348 billion of this total by shifting profits away from the countries where real economic extraction and environmental degradation occur.
In the mining sector alone, developing nations lose tens of billions annually to corporate tax dodging. Furthermore, international financial secrecy shields environmental criminals, with illicit financial flows from illegal logging draining between $51 billion and $152 billion annually.
At COP17, leaders must seize the opportunity to build a bridge between the two conventions and enhance cooperation. Governments must put the world on a firm path to securing predictable, sufficient, sovereign public finance for biodiversity conservation. It’s the only path to a restorative, rights-based future for people and the planet.
The post Protecting nature is a public duty, not a Wall Street profit opportunity appeared first on Climate Home News.
The extractivists of the Foreign Office
A new gas line or cash to electrify? California lets households choose.
When one of the nation’s biggest investor-owned utilities, Pacific Gas and Electric, wanted to replace Merrian Borgeson’s aging gas service line in Berkeley, California, she asked the company not to do it.
Borgeson, who is the California policy director for climate and energy at the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, explained that the repair wasn’t necessary: She was in the process of fully electrifying her home and would be replacing her stove — the only gas appliance left in the house — with an induction version during an upcoming kitchen remodel. At that point, she planned to request that the gas line be shut off.
But PG&E told her it couldn’t wait. That week, the utility dug up her yard and swapped in a new pipe to send gas from the distribution main line to her home.
Borgeson wasn’t charged for the service — at least not directly. The upgrade, which in PG&E’s service area typically costs $20,000 to $30,000, plus interest and operation and maintenance costs, gets paid for by all gas customers over the life of the infrastructure.
A few years later, the new pipe sits unused in the ground.
Courtesy of RMI“Now, I have no gas in my house,” Borgeson said. “But the customers all around me are paying for that pipeline for the next 50 years.”
Soon, Californians will have the choice that Borgeson did not.
A new law, the Home Energy Choice Act (Assembly Bill 2313), will require utilities to give households scheduled for a service line replacement the option of getting the new line or taking a financial incentive potentially worth several thousand dollars to get off gas instead. Crucially, the incentive to switch to all-electric equipment, such as a heat pump, induction range, and heat-pump water heater, will be less than the cost to replace the line, resulting in savings that will be shared among all gas customers.
The law “sends a very clear message that California is no longer going to invest millions of dollars in gas infrastructure without considering the future,” said Borgeson, who advocated for the bill. “It’s this huge signal of where the state is headed.”
The Natural Resources Defense Council has calculated that PG&E’s gas customers could save a total of $20 million if the utility gave 1,000 households a $17,500 incentive apiece rather than replacing their service lines. For context, PG&E replaces about 15,000 service lines annually.
Read Next The Northeast’s reliance on heating oil is turning into a crisis Tik RootIf similar programs were instituted across the country, the savings could rival Biden-era investments in home electrification. Utilities spend upward of $7 billion per year on service line replacements, according to clean energy nonprofit RMI.
The policy will help push the state closer to its goal of a carbon-neutral economy by 2045; however, the version that passed was less ambitious than what was introduced, according to Brandon García, California director at industry association Advanced Energy United. Revisions included programs being capped at 1% of a utility’s customers and the law expiring Jan. 1, 2035, though it could be renewed before then.
“AB 2313 was a very difficult bill to get through the Legislature, so I’m very excited that it will soon give Californians the opportunity to decide what energy is powering their home and provide financial support if they choose to transition away from natural gas,” Assemblymember Marc Berman, who authored the bill, said by email. “When homeowners opt to electrify, the utility avoids additional investments in fossil fuel infrastructure that will eventually become a stranded asset, and this saves all ratepayers money long-term.”
Utilities San Diego Gas and Electric and SoCalGas opposed the bill, arguing that it would result in an unfair cost shift: As some customers stop using gas, those remaining could be left bearing outsized costs to maintain the system. While that is an issue writ large for the transition off of fossil fuels, and one the state needs to address, this law “is instead about trying to encourage people to leave at the exact time when they are saving money for everyone else by leaving,” said Kiki Velez, equitable gas transition lead at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
With the new legislation, California becomes the third jurisdiction to authorize the pipeline replacement alternative approach — and the first to do so statewide. In 2024, New York utility Con Edison launched its initiative, the Energy Exchange Program, which offers eligible households up to $20,000 to electrify. Other New York utilities are following suit, Velez said. And in July, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission authorized Xcel Energy to create a similar program, which she expects could launch within a few months.
Read Next A new report just busted another myth about heat pumps Matt SimonIn California, the next step is for the Public Utilities Commission to create a detailed framework for utilities to follow, including incentive levels, with larger amounts for customers in disadvantaged communities. Then utilities will have until January 1, 2028, for their individual proposed programs to be approved.
One yet-to-be-determined detail is how much notice utilities will give residents whose pipes they want to replace. “I think the worst case is you don’t hear about [the incentive] until the last minute,” Borgeson said. RMI recommends utilities alert residents one to five years ahead — at the point when it is scheduling the service line replacements.
Other states are looking to emulate California with bills of their own, Velez said, pointing to Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington. “Folks are already reaching out a lot about how they can bring it to their state,” she said.
In California, the bigger electrification incentives for disadvantaged communities will provide a much-needed boost to clean energy equity, García noted. “As someone who grew up in those kinds of neighborhoods as a low-income person, I want to make sure that everyone has access to [all-electric] technology.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A new gas line or cash to electrify? California lets households choose. on Oct 18, 2026.
The fire retardant in the seafood chain
In January 1966, a South African ship caught fire at sea. In port in Bristol, England, after firefighters pried open the smoking container, the conflagration spread and burned for five days. A little over a month later, a Liberian steamship caught fire near Rotterdam, ignited a storage area with barrels of petrol and sank. The month after that, a Danish ship caught fire off Long Beach, California, injuring three firefighters, killing a longshoreman and causing over a million dollars in estimated damages.
The culprit in each fire was fishmeal, a dark yellow powder made by drying and pulverizing fish that, if left untreated, is known for spontaneously combusting as it decays and oxidizes.
Tied to at least 90 ship and plant fires from the 1950s through the 1970s, fishmeal’s combustibility was a serious worry for seafarers, insurers and dock workers, according to a sweep of historical news coverage by The Outlaw Ocean Project, a news organization in Washington, D.C.
In 1967, American feed producer Cargill announced a solution: ethoxyquin.
A crew abandons ship as the SS South America burns in Rotterdam in 1966. Sepia Times, NY Daily News, Evers, Joost / Anefo
A fire retardant previously used to keep rubber tires from drying out and applied as a preservative on fruits and alfalfa, production of the antioxidant was soon ramped up.
“Antioxidant treatment has made bulk handling an easy matter,” the director of the Canadian Department of Fisheries told an industry publication in 1966, arguing it should be required for fishmeal shipments.
The chemical was highly effective. By the 1970s, press-reported fires dropped sharply—from a typical 16 ship fires a year, according to the Liverpool Underwriters Association, to five.
By 1976, the U.S. Coast Guard imposed mandatory ethoxyquin treatment on fishmeal shipments, and three years later, the United Nations body that oversees maritime activity recommended fishmeal be treated with it “to prevent spontaneous combustion.”
But there was a problem: Ethoxyquin is a carcinogen.
“Toxic effects had been observed in laboratory animals fed high concentrations of ethoxyquin,” said a 1969 paper by U.N. food and agriculture authorities.
87 fires in fishmeal cargoes, plants, and warehouses, 1950–1978. The Outlaw Ocean ProjectAs its use in animal feeds and aquaculture grew, a 1987 study by British researchers found the chemical “caused severe damage” and had a potentially “carcinogenic effect” in rats. In 2015, the European Food Safety Authority said an impurity within ethoxyquin, known as p-phenetidine, was capable of causing mutations in genetic material.
There is a lack of scientific consensus on whether it is safe to eat farmed seafood raised on feed treated with ethoxyquin, but some countries have considered the risk to be high enough to justify banning or limiting the use of the chemical. In 2017, the European Commission suspended authorization for its use in animal feed across the European Union.
Today, ethoxyquin has been banned in the U.K. and by members of the European Economic Area, including Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein. But ethoxyquin, within limits, is still permitted in animal feed in Australia, Japan, South Korea, and the U.S.
With more than half of the seafood eaten worldwide now coming from fish farms, and with the majority of such species fed fishmeal and fish oil, studying the chemicals added to feed is critical for understanding the possible contamination of our global food supply.
Although ethoxyquin is not banned in the U.S., it has been at the center of a half-dozen lawsuits, typically involving claims of false advertising. Some lawsuits targeted seafood companies for marketing their products as “sustainable” even though they contained ethoxyquin, while others highlighted the potential risks that the additive poses to the environment.
Fishmeal production at an Exalmar plant in Peru spans from unloading fresh catch through processing and bagging the final powdered product. Growing health concerns over substances like ethoxyquin are fueling debate about the future of additive use in the global fishmeal industry. Credit: Pesquera ExalmarIn 2022, a New York resident brought a class-action lawsuit against Aldi Inc., a German supermarket chain with stores in the U.S., alleging its Atlantic salmon products were falsely labeled as “sustainable” due to “environmentally destructive” practices. The complaint cited the EU’s ban on the chemical and a study linking ethoxyquin to mortality and deformations in fish and crustaceans, noting the chemical “poses a risk for aquatic life.” The case was settled out of court.
The same year, a New York and a California resident jointly sued Gorton’s Inc., a seafood company, for labeling its frozen tilapia as “sustainably sourced” despite containing ethoxyquin. This lawsuit also cited the “risk for aquatic life” and the European Union’s ban, and was settled out of court.
In Canada, the country’s Food Inspection Agency requires feeds containing ethoxyquin to carry a label declaring that it meets the legal limits, but the agency does not specify how it tests for the chemical in feeds. Inspectors also do not check whether ethoxyquin ends up in the seafood itself, according to the agency’s latest food inspection report from 2022.
And a 2024 audit of the Canadian agency by the EU found it completed only about 40 percent of its planned inspections, citing “systematic and significant under-delivery” in terms of testing seafood products.
Read Next Marine protected areas aren’t as protected as you think Joseph WintersCargill said in a statement that it has assessed alternative antioxidants since 2005 and no longer uses ethoxyquin in its global salmon feed business or in any market where ethoxyquin is not authorized for use in aquafeed. The company also noted that it did not develop ethoxyquin. Globally, producers and feed makers have also increasingly shifted to alternatives, including natural additives such as rosemary extract and vitamin E compounds.
“More and more destinations are not accepting ethoxyquin, starting with our local Peruvian market,” said James Frank, managing director of the Peruvian fishmeal company MSICeres, during a 2022 webinar. He added that 100 percent of Peru’s fishmeal exports to Europe, Canada, the U.S. and Australia are now ethoxyquin-free, a shift also seen among companies in the U.K. and Norway.
The most popular alternative to ethoxyquin is now butylated hydroxyanisole, or BHA, favored for its lower costs and strong antioxidant properties compared with fully natural additives. But like the chemical it aims to supplant, BHA has its own significant health risks, according to researchers.
The U.S. National Toxicology Program identified BHA as “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen” as early as 1991, and Japanese researchers found it caused malignant tumors in laboratory rats in 2008.
In February, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced it was reassessing the safety of the substance as a food additive.
To address the world’s insatiable hunger for seafood, the aquaculture industry will continue to expand. Perhaps there’ll be a shift away from carnivorous fish, or a replacement will be found for fishmeal. But for now, the aquaculture and fishmeal industries find themselves in a perilous loop: pivoting from deadly ship fires to a carcinogenic fire retardant, and then to yet another one.
This story is part of an investigation conducted by an international team of journalists based at The Outlaw Ocean Project. Read the other stories here.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The fire retardant in the seafood chain on Oct 17, 2026.
Congress has a plan to stop Trump’s attack on offshore wind. It may not be enough.
The clean energy industry has learned the hard way that having the law on your side doesn’t always mean you win.
Since taking office for his second term, President Donald Trump has attempted to delay or cancel dozens of wind and solar projects. These projects all underwent extensive reviews to secure federal approval, but the Department of the Interior and other agencies have frozen their permits for vague “national security” reasons, or with no explanation at all. These attacks have all but tanked the offshore wind industry and have led many developers to take payouts from the administration rather than fight for permits.
This attack is one big reason why solar and wind companies have been supportive of efforts in Congress to negotiate a bipartisan “permitting reform” bill. A group of senators reached a compromise earlier this month on a bill they call the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act. Lawmakers won’t vote on it until after the midterm elections, but the renewable energy sector has hailed it as a win. The bill would speed up environmental reviews for all kinds of energy projects, from transmission wires to oil pipelines, and it also contains a number of provisions that are designed to deter current and future presidents from blocking clean energy. Trump reportedly told aides just before the compromise became public that he would ease up on wind projects in order to reach a deal.
Cracks are already emerging in the deal. While the renewable energy industry has remained steadfast in its support of the bill, a number of experts and key climate advocates are arguing that the “project certainty” provisions would do little to prevent Trump or another president from blocking solar farms and offshore wind turbines. The Trump administration itself threatened the compromise bill this week when it announced that it would review three permits for wind farms off the Atlantic Coast, including one that is already up and running.
“The administration’s action against [the wind projects] just further demonstrates the lengths they will go to to obstruct clean energy progress, especially offshore wind,” said Elizabeth Klein, who led the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which oversees offshore wind permits, under former president Joe Biden.
The project certainty portion of the Senate bill has two key parts. First, it declares that the federal government “shall not take any new action that would revoke, rescind, withdraw, terminate, suspend, amend, or alter” a project that has already received a permit. This is just a forceful restatement of the status quo, since permits that are issued aren’t supposed to be canceled for no reason. But the bill goes further by offering companies two main remedies if the government does take such prohibited actions.
One is the reinstatement of the permit — which is somewhat redundant. Judges have already shot down the Trump administration’s past attempts to stop wind projects, but the administration is still seeking to revoke those permits. If the bill passes, all the courts would be able to do is order it in stronger terms to restore them.
The other remedy is a cash payout. The courts would be able to order the government to refund a project developer between 25 and 50 percent of the costs of their project, which for a big offshore wind farm could reach well into the billions. The money would come from the Judgment Fund, a bank account the federal government uses to pay out legal settlements. This fund typically disburses around $2 billion in settlements per year, and successful claims under the permitting bill could lead to a big spike in payouts.
The other key part of project certainty in the bill is an anti-discrimination clause that would ban “disparate treatment” of any particular energy source, whether it’s solar panels or coal plants. If a wind developer found evidence that the government denied them permits as part of an anti-wind pattern, they could present that evidence to a judge. If persuaded, the judge would then order the government to restore the permit and pay the developer the entire construction cost of the wind farm — albeit only if the developer finished building it.
Supporters of the bill argue that the promise of financial relief would help lure investors back to the renewable energy industry, which has been in turmoil under Trump. This is most important for offshore wind. Big companies like Ørsted and Equinor spent billions of dollars to build wind farms in the Atlantic under the Biden administration, but their costs ballooned after the pandemic snarled their supply chains and Trump tried to destroy their existing projects. These companies now view the United States as uninvestable, but Northeastern states still need a lot more offshore wind in order to meet their climate goals.
The cash payout provision is supposed to help make the U.S. seem like a less risky place to invest. The American Clean Power Association, a trade group representing wind and solar developers, said in its analysis of the bill that “greater certainty lowers financing risk before construction and reduces the chance that years of development and investment will be stranded by a later policy reversal.”
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, gives a press conference about the Trump administration’s connection to fossil fuels. Whitehouse is one of the lead negotiators behind a bipartisan energy permitting bill. Photo by Tasos Katopodis / Getty ImagesWhile the promise of reimbursement from the federal government would be good news for investors, it’s not clear that it would actually lead to more clean energy getting built. Opponents of the permitting reform bill point out that Trump has already been paying to stop renewable power plants from being built, albeit on a smaller scale. The president has worked out several deals to buy back offshore wind leases from energy developers in exchange for those developers committing to build a fossil fuel project elsewhere. These arrangements are being challenged in court, but in the meantime they function as repayments for leases that Trump intended to block.
The project certainty “provisions are unlikely to deter the Trump Administration from continuing to mess with clean energy permits, since this administration has shown an eagerness to use the public’s money to advance its own policy goals,” said Matthew Littleton, a former attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice who worked on environmental law issues.
Littleton also points out that the anti-discrimination provision may not work as intended. The baseline for calculating “disparate treatment” is the average pace of project approvals over the most recent five years. By the time Trump leaves office, he will have spent four years permitting oil and gas projects while delaying almost all major solar and wind efforts. This baseline would prevent wind developers from making a discrimination claim — while also preventing a future president from walking back support for new oil and gas.
As if to highlight these risks, the White House has said in court filings over the past week that it is seeking to rescind permits for three offshore wind projects on the Atlantic Coast. One of these projects, the 700-megawatt Revolution Wind, is already complete and delivering power to Rhode Island, while the other two are still in the early stages. In each filing, the government has said only that it seeks to “reevaluate … compliance” with federal law.
Over the past year, Democratic negotiators in the Senate have said that this sort of behavior would jeopardize any bipartisan deal. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, one of the authors of the bill, said in the spring that he would not endorse a compromise bill unless the administration stopped blocking wind farms. This week he appeared to change tack, and described the move against Revolution Wind as another reason to pass the bill. “Frankly, we need to get permitting certainty in law, and this proves it,” he said in a statement.
The bill would in fact offer financial protection to a company like Ørsted, ensuring that a president could not wreck billions of dollars worth of investment with no justification at all. The question is whether it could end the government’s prejudicial assault against offshore wind. The answer could determine how millions of people in the Northeast keep their lights on and heat their homes, and right now, it’s up in the air.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Congress has a plan to stop Trump’s attack on offshore wind. It may not be enough. on Oct 16, 2026.
UN’s loss and damage fund set to give Nepal $20m for flood recovery
The board of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) will decide on Thursday on whether to “provisionally set aside” $20 million for Nepal to deal with some of the effects of the climate-driven flood it suffered in August.
The motion, seen by Climate Home News, has been drafted by a group of board members from both developed and developing countries and so is likely to pass easily at the fund’s first-ever extraordinary board meeting on October 22.
It invites the government of Nepal to submit a proposal for how to use the money, with the board then deciding at one of its regular board meetings whether to approve the proposal or not.
While Nepali officials have described $20 million as merely “symbolic” in the face of the $4.8 billion estimated costs of recovery and reconstruction, it would be the first time the new FRLD – agreed in 2022, months after devastating floods in Pakistan – has set aside money for a specific disaster.
Residents walk along a muddy road following flash floods on August 27, 2026 in Trishuli, Nepal. (Photo: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)Until now the fund has only taken requests through a single call for proposals, launched at COP30 in Belém last November, that gave countries six months to submit requests.
Most of the 180 projects the FRLD is currently considering are designed to help countries avoid damage from future climate disasters, for example by strengthening responses to floods in Bangladesh and Lagos.
The draft decision says Nepal’s proposal will serve as a pilot for how funding requests can be submitted outside of the fund’s current timetable. That could let governments seek funds quickly after a climate disaster strikes, rather than waiting for the next call.
This arrangement would set the fund apart from other United Nations funds designed for climate adaptation or cutting emissions like the Green Climate Fund.
Climate campaigners from Fill the Fund said the draft decision is “a real step forward” as it is “the first time this Fund has moved to respond to a specific disaster”.
Too little, too lateThe FRLD was agreed by governments at COP27, set up and operationalised at COP28 in 2023 but has yet to award any money. The 180 funding requests it is currently considering would cost around $2.8 billion, but it only has $350 million to allocate.
The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has described the amount of money available in the fund as “ridiculously small” and Fill the Fund said $20 million “is a meaningful signal but it is a drop against an ocean of need”.
A glacial rock and ice collapse sent a torrent of water and debris through Nepal and the Chinese-administered region of Tibet on August 26. It killed more than 1,400 people, left thousands more missing and destroyed homes, bridges, roads and hydropower plants. Nepal’s finance and environment ministers quickly appealed to the FRLD board for funds, saying that “time is of the essence”.
Their call was followed swiftly by a letter from developing country FRLD board members urging the board’s co-chairs to organise an extraordinary meeting to allocate funds to Nepal.
But developed countries initially called for an informal consultation rather than a full board meeting. It took a further 45 days for the board’s co-chairs to organise an extraordinary board meeting for October 22 and to draft a motion for adoption.
Fill the Fund called for a permanent way for the FRLD to respond rapidly to disasters, as “Nepal should not have required historic letters, an informal drafting group and the Fund’s first-ever extraordinary meeting simply to unlock an emergency response. The next country cannot wait two months and a bureaucratic marathon. Speed must be built in, not improvised.”
The post UN’s loss and damage fund set to give Nepal $20m for flood recovery appeared first on Climate Home News.
The Revelator Gallery: October 2026 Exhibit
Pause
Charles River, Dover, Massachusetts
Infrared photography
© copyright Marcia Ciro
“I’m not sure of the species, just got ‘ray-finned fishes’ on apps. I’ve been exploring local underwater environments in nearby rivers and lakes. I am fascinated by the complexity that lurks just below the surface.” Image taken with a digital camera modified to shoot infrared images.
Marcia Ciro
Untitled
Ipswich River, Ipswich, Massachusetts
Infrared photography
© copyright Marcia Ciro Both photos were taken with a digital camera modified to shoot infrared images. Marcia Ciro’s website is papertracestudio.com if you want to see more of her work, including more landscapes in color and infrared.
Barri Hitchin
Alien Visitor
Somerset Levels, United Kingdom
Inspiration: Surreal Wetland
Photograph
© copyright Barri Hitchin
Karl J. Findling
Hell’s Canyon, Oregon
Oregon Pack Works
Bend, Oregon
© copyright Karl J. Findling
María Isabel Dabrowski
SSSSlithering Through the Jungle
Bocaracá
Eyelash palm pitviper/Bothriechis schlegelii
La Selva Biological Station, Costa Rica
© María Isabel Dabrowski
“While at La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica for a training, I met a lovely wildlife biologist who is studying this species at La Selva to learn more about what, if anything, impacts the color variation of the Bocaracá. While we were admiring this bright yellow danger noodle from a respectful distance, the snake began moving along the tree branch; as this species mostly moves at night, the wildlife biologist we were with was super excited to watch the Bocaracá’s tongue-flicking and branch-wending in daylight.”
Lizann Michaud
Black-Tailed Rattlesnake (Crotalu molossus)
Mule Mountains of southeastern Arizona
© 2026 Lizann Michaud
“We knew this small black-tailed rattlesnake was there only when it began to move (and we of course hopped back a safe distance in reply). It didn’t rattle, and appeared remarkably relaxed, so I took a golden sunset-lit photo of this curious beauty.”
Stephen Reed
Colorado Columbine and Greenback Trout
Rocky Mountain National Park
© copyright Stephen Reed
“Here’s an unintentional double exposure from Rocky Mountain National Park. It shows the state flower (blue columbine) and the state fish (greenback trout) in a tribute to the 150th anniversary of the state of Colorado.”
Stephen Reed
Bison Profile
©copyright Stephen Reed
“Here’s a bison profile taken with a 300mm telephoto lens near Soda Butte Creek in Yellowstone. What caught MY eye was the knot of fur near the nose (shaped like a false eye) that makes that nose look like a monkey face within the image. I cannot un-see it…”
Kate Chabarek
European Black Bee on Teasle
Basque Country, Spain
Photography, edited with Adobe Lightroom Classic (manual tools only)
© copyright Kate Chabarek
“My three-year-old son and I saw the European Black Bee by the Urumea River, near the town of Hernani, where we live. He warned me quite strenuously about the “erlea” (bee) and how it would “mina eman” (give pain), in the Basque language. I want to encourage him to be interested in nature, and I enjoy talking with him about plants and animals in English, so he can talk to his grandmother in the United States about them.”
Puffball
The Adirondacks in Northern NY
© copyright Kate Chabarek
Red Eft or eastern newt (Notophthalmus viridescens)
© copyright Kate Chabarek
Robert Ross
Wildlife Observing the Wildlife Photographer
Red foxes
Dean Hill Road, Wellsboro, Pennsylvania
Canon Powershot SX70 HS
© copyright Robert Ross Robert Ross
Wildlife Observing the Wildlife Photographer
Red foxes
Dean Hill Road, Wellsboro, Pennsylvania
Canon Powershot SX70 HS
© copyright Robert Ross
“While trying to get good photographic evidence (for the 3rd Pennsylvania Breeding Bird Atlas) of a mother Bobolink feeding its young in a hayfield, I noticed a family of red foxes watching me the whole time from their upscale home nearby. These moments are what makes the project well worth the time spent.”
Candace Galen
Complementary Colors
Little blue butterfly (Icarica) on a purple aster
Hoosier Ridge — part of the Continental Divide just north of Hoosier Pass in central Colorado.
Photography, using a Sony Alpha II camera with telephoto lens and a continuous shoot setting so as not to disturb the butterfly.
© copyright Candace Galen
“Though tiny, these are truly the smallest of butterflies, their luminescent blue color is a showstopper. This one, flitting from flower to flower in an alpine meadow was irresistible.
An interesting fact: this species was given its scientific name by the Russian writer, Vladimir Nabokov, better known for his literary contributions (for example, Lolita). Exiled from Russia in the 1940s, he hired on as Curator of Lepidoptera at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology.”
Linda Carroll
Moth Feasts on Sunflower
© copyright Linda Carroll
“I confess I don’t know the moth species. The photo was taken in Spokane, Washington. I went out to water the plants one summer morning and was taken by the beauty of the moth and the grouping of bright colors. I took a number of photos, moving closer each time but trying to do so without the moth noticing me. It wasn’t easy because the sun was behind me and I didn’t want to create a shadow, which would have disturbed the moth and spoiled the photo. This was the closest I got and the best shot. Shortly thereafter, the moth became annoyed with me and flew away.”
Guidelines to get your masterpiece into the Revelator Gallery:
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- Original photos and art from you
- No AI-generated or enhanced images
- Images can be horizontal, square, or vertical
- We accept only .jpgs and .png files
- No limit on submissions
- No people in the images, just wildlife and landscapes (animals, plants and trees, insects, sea life…)
Send your submissions to ccrary@biologicaldiversity.org with the following information:
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- Your name
- Title of image (if applicable)
- Species of wildlife
- The location (where it was created)
- A brief description of what inspired you to capture or create this image
- Medium: Photography (many types, be specific), painting, drawing, pottery, sculpture, textiles/fabric art, mixed media, glass, etc.
- Let us know if you want us to include a specific copyright notice “©”
All submissions are considered intended for publication; submission does not guarantee publication. Monthly galleries will be distributed to our partner publications under a Creative Commons license, but you retain the copyright on your individual images. There’s no prize or payment, just bragging rights.
Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy.
The post The Revelator Gallery: October 2026 Exhibit appeared first on The Revelator.
Under US pressure, World Bank says it will back gas “where appropriate”
The World Bank president said on Friday his organisation will continue to support some gas projects in developing countries alongside renewables, nuclear and hydropower, despite criticism from climate campaigners who say fossil gas is expensive and polluting.
“Homes, mines, factories, farms, and growing cities – what do they need? Reliable, affordable baseload power,” Ajay Banga told the bank’s annual meeting in Bangkok on Friday. “Our approach is balanced by design – a full mix of renewables, hydro, gas where appropriate, nuclear when it makes sense, transmission, grids, storage – the whole thing.”
His comments come in a week during which he faced pressure from the US to finance more gas projects and from climate campaigners to stop funding fossil fuels altogether, part of a tightrope he has walked on the bank’s climate policy since Donald Trump’s re-election in 2025.
The bank ended its support for coal around ten years ago and last year, for the first time, funded no oil projects. It has ended support for gas exploration but still backs some projects to do with transporting and using gas, such as a $140-million project to help Benin, Côte d’Ivoire and Togo in West Africa to import liquefied natural gas (LNG).
While its overall support for fossil fuels wanes, the bank’s support for clean energy has been at historic highs over the last few years, with funding of just under $10 billion a year in 2023, 2024 and 2025 – compared to under $1.5 billion a year for fossil fuels.
On Monday, the head of Pakistan’s Indus Consortium, Hussain Jarwar, asked Banga at a civil society townhall meeting why the bank is supporting a “volatile” energy source like LNG, which is pushing economies and consumers into debt “when real renewable energy solutions like solar [are] available and supporting communities and industries for clean, accessible and affordable energy source”. Global LNG prices hit record highs earlier this year as the Iran war squeezed supplies.
Banga replied that the bank is working with countries to source “baseload productive power” and that “if Pakistan wants to build an energy system that is more self-reliant by going further on different forms of baseload plus top-up energy, we’re more than happy to work with it”. “We’ve got no biases in the system – our job is that electricity and water are human rights,” he added.
His answer did not satisfy climate campaigners. Sunil Acharya, just transition lead at Recourse, an NGO that works on sustainable development finance, said in a statement that the bank is moving in the wrong direction and Banga’s “framing of wind and solar as a ‘top-up’ to nuclear, hydropower and gas misses the opportunity to transform energy systems”.
“Fossil gas is bad economics – it exposes countries to volatile global markets and debt while locking public resources into costly infrastructure,” the Nepali campaigner said. “The World Bank must stop reproducing the extractive development model of the fossil fuel era and redirect public finance towards 100% renewable economies that deliver energy for all, protect people and nature, and put people’s priorities before private profit.”
US pressure from Scott BessentOn Wednesday, however, Banga was pressured from the other direction. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who skipped the Bangkok meeting, issued a statement praising the bank for “beginning to refocus on its core mission of reducing poverty and raising economic growth” after what he called “years of mission creep”.
He said the bank should “formally retire its prohibition on financing” gas and oil exploration and production as it “cannot credibly invoke country ownership while categorically excluding upstream projects before their development merits are even assessed”. He argued that supporting gas projects would help extend electricity access in Africa.
The US is a major gas exporter and analysts are warning its gas companies will struggle to sell their product abroad in the coming years, as US LNG production expands while buyers in Europe and Asia move away from gas to cleaner sources of electricity.
In July, under US pressure, the World Bank scrapped its target for 45% of its finance to go to climate projects. But, with support from a broad majority of countries, it renewed its climate change action plan. The compromise “could have been a lot worse”, E3G climate policy advisor Danny Scull said at the time.
Other multilateral development banks that have the US as a major shareholder, like the Inter-American Development Bank and Asian Development Bank, are now expected to face pressure to scrap their climate finance targets too.
In June 2025, the World Bank ended its ban on support for nuclear power – a move that was welcomed by the US. In his speech on Friday, Banga said the bank would support nuclear retrofits – the modernisation of existing nuclear power stations – alongside the International Atomic Energy Agency, noting that this was “the first such work in 50 years for the bank”.
The post Under US pressure, World Bank says it will back gas “where appropriate” appeared first on Climate Home News.
Long after the Maui fires, toxic metals linger in residents’ bodies
In August of 2023, a series of wildfires broke out across Maui, killing more than 100 people, destroying thousands of homes, and causing billions in damage. Noelani Ahia, who is Kanaka Maoli and co-founder of Maui Medic Healers Hui, helped mobilize nearly 600 volunteers in Lāhainā, including doctors, nurses, and therapists.
Three years later, the housing and health crises remain acute. Maui Medic Healers Hui runs a free clinic, but Ahia wishes it had 10 more to address the community’s needs. “The fire may be out, but the catastrophe is not over by any stretch of the imagination,” she said.
The devastation extended well beyond the lives lost and buildings destroyed. Research published last year by researchers with the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Maui Wildfire Exposure Study, or MauiWES, found that more than 1 in 5 residents had reduced lung function.
Now, new research from the same project has found elevated levels of toxic metals in the island’s residents months after the fires, with higher exposure associated with impaired lung function. The findings offer further evidence that the health consequences of catastrophic wildfires can persist long after the flames are extinguished and the smoke clears.
“What we consider and sometimes look at as a one-time event isn’t really one-time anymore,” Alika Maunakea, who is Kanaka Maoli and co-director of MauiWES, told Grist.
Researchers don’t yet know how much of the contamination came from the fires and how much was already present in the environment. That distinction matters as wildfires increasingly race through towns like Lāhainā and cities like Los Angeles, where burning homes, cars and infrastructure can leave contaminants that people encounter for months or years afterward.
Community members hold hands in a prayer circle at a “Lāhainā Strong” gathering in October 2023. Mario Tama / Getty Images“We have traditionally thought about wildfire exposure primarily through the lens of smoke,” Maunakea said in a press release. “But when an entire community burns, we are dealing with a much more complicated exposure environment.” Researchers must also understand what contaminants were already present, what the fire may have released, and what entered residents’ bodies, he said.
The research, which studied 1,400 adults across Maui six to 18 months after the fires, measured 24 metals in urine samples. It found that participants had higher concentrations of several metals than people in a nationwide health survey conducted before the fires. That included 2.2 times as much arsenic, 2.3 times as much barium, and 3.8 times as much manganese. Antimony, which is used in flame retardant materials and has been previously linked to lung irritation, stomach pain, and other symptoms, was found at levels nearly 40 times higher.
Because the researchers lack comparable data from before the fires, they could not determine how much of the metal exposure resulted from the disaster. Maunakea told Grist answering that question is the next step for the project, which has received a $3.6 million grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. That work will include investigating whether and to what degree past agricultural and industrial activity contributed to the contamination.
“It’s important to realize that these are all part of settler colonialism,” Ahia said. “So what we’re looking at is confounding factors that are to the detriment of the health of our local people.”
Read Next Two years after a wildfire took everything, Maui homeowners are facing a new threat: Foreclosure Anita HofschneiderDecades of plantation agriculture altered water systems, introduced herbicides, and displaced native plants, leaving a legacy on the islands that is still felt today. Disasters like fires and storms can compound those ongoing environmental problems.
“If we begin the story when the fire starts, we miss the decisions that shaped the landscape and the community’s ability to respond,” said Katie Kamelamela, who is Kanaka Maoli and an assistant professor at Arizona State University based in Hawaiʻi. “Micro climate change acts on places already shaped by histories of land ownership, water diversion, development, and unequal access to resources.”
Kamelamela said true recovery must look beyond the fire. “I want recovery to be measured by whether people can remain in their communities, care for ʻāina, and pass on their knowledge and practices in place,” she said, using the Hawaiian word for land, which carries deeper meaning and relationship than property or mere place. “Rebuilding should not recreate the same conditions that left people at risk. Caring for ʻāina and caring for people need to be funded and planned together.”
Maunakea said the multitude of intersecting pressures is one reason why he wanted to pursue this research. As climate change continues to accelerate, longstanding issues facing Native Hawaiians like housing, the harms of tourism, and the legacy of plantations can amplify problems. “We worry that disasters like this that we experience on Maui, as well as the floods and other storms that we’re experiencing now, is just going to continue widening the gaps in health disparities that already exist in those populations,” he said.
Moving forward, the project will not just identify health risks but also help residents respond to them. Study participants receive their results, discuss them, and meet with health professionals. “People now know that there’s these types of potential hazards, and what to do about them is a big concern,” Maunakea said. “We still don’t have all the answers for sure, but we are taking the next steps to get a better picture and inform our community around it.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Long after the Maui fires, toxic metals linger in residents’ bodies on Oct 16, 2026.
Advice from a climate therapist: Touch grass. (No, really.)
In my years as a psychotherapist, I’ve worked with many people facing similar struggles. One such pattern is embodied by a client I’ll call Emma (whose real name and identifying details I’ve changed for privacy purposes). She came to see me because, despite pursuing a climate career aligned with her values, practicing good self-care, and having a close community of friends, she couldn’t shake a persistent feeling of being “low.” She didn’t know what was missing.
Emma was invited to an event at a scenic destination — let’s say, for your mind’s eye, that it was a wedding in Alta Lakes, high in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. Imagine a scene something like this: The cool scent of spruce and fir drifted through the open windows, along with the thin, mineral clarity of mountain air. Now and then two owls traded low hoots through the dark, and something slapped in the water out on the lake.
Emma lay listening for a long time. For reasons she couldn’t name, tears began to slide down her face, and soon she was sobbing.
She wasn’t sad or upset. She described a welling up of joy, a sort of homecoming moment — a deep remembering that felt familiar yet beyond the reach of words. It was, she said, like “drinking clear, cool water when you didn’t know you were thirsty.”
Ask a Climate Therapist tackles your questions about how to navigate the emotional side of climate change, with leading climate-aware therapist Leslie Davenport. Have a question? Ask it here!Emma spent most of her workday in an office building. She loved to run, but usually on city streets with a podcast playing in her ears, or on a gym treadmill. Like most of us, she lived by a daily routine whose steady stream of input kept her separate from the natural world. She cared for nature, but it was cognitive, not visceral.
Our work focused on integrating what had lifted her mood during that experience in Colorado and keeping that connection alive in her everyday life.
We don’t need to go to the mountains to touch the living world within and around us. For Emma, it started small. She left her earbuds at home on some runs and let the wind and birdsong keep her company. She began each morning with a moment at the window watching the sky before opening her laptop. At lunch she found a beautiful tree in a nearby park and made it her regular spot to pause and sit, watching it change through the seasons.
I was reminded of Emma, and the other clients I’ve seen who were similarly feeling the sorrow of this detachment, when I read a question that came through the Ask a Climate Therapist form: “Why is it that working with animals and tending to plants helps process the grief, anxiety, and depression?”
This question-asker found the answer that Emma and others were seeking, but wanted to understand the “why” behind it. I can point to some of the science that backs this up: Compounds released by trees can boost the activity of our immune cells. Stroking an animal lowers stress hormones and can raise oxytocin. But I would also say that we don’t need academic journals to know these things. We feel better working with plants and animals because we can sense directly how life flourishes as a complex, interwoven system that we’re part of. When you water a garden or care for an animal, you’re practicing a form of reciprocity that’s also a way of caring for the future.
And so for you, reader of this column — wherever you may be at in your journey of connecting with, caring for, and feeling a sense of belonging in the natural world — remember that engaging with nature brings more than just joy; that restoration of connection actually supports and sustains your ability to do the larger work.
Below, I offer just a few practices to begin to cultivate that more mindful relationship. I would love to know about your regular practices, too. How do you create moments of connection and kinship with nature in your daily life? Reply to this email or reach out to lookingforward@grist.org to share them with the Grist team, and with me.
Practice tips:
There are many ways to cultivate an awareness of our place in the living world.
- Listen to the mp3 “We are Nature” — a free resource I created to accompany my book, Transforming Climate Anxiety — for a guided experience of connection.
- Take a daily sensory pause. Once a day, stop for one minute and notice what’s alive around you: Take the temperature of the air on your skin, notice a bird call or the smell after a rain. As you breathe, remember that the Earth’s trees and plants created the oxygen you’re taking in, and that your exhale feeds them in return.
- Tend something — and say thank you. Water a plant, fill a birdfeeder, or care for a patch of garden. Reciprocity is how we take our place in the web of life: We receive and we give back.
- Leave the earbuds at home from time to time. Try a walk or run with the wind, neighborhood sounds, and your own breathing as the soundtrack.
In this with you,
Leslie
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Advice from a climate therapist: Touch grass. (No, really.) on Oct 16, 2026.
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