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In 2023, under the bright lights of the Expo City Dubai, almost 200 nations adopted an agreement to dramatically alter the world’s relationship with energy.

The deal at the COP28 climate summit promised to triple the amount of renewable electricity capacity to at least 11,000 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, and double the rate of energy efficiency improvements from 2% to 4%. Taken together, these two commitments have the potential to usher in a new global economy that is cleaner and smarter. 

Research suggests the world is on course to meet the renewable energy target, with an annual growth rate of nearly 30% between 2023 and 2025. The same cannot be said of energy efficiency, where growth fell to 1% in 2024, but has since climbed to 1.8%, according to estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The IEA attributes this poor performance to a number of factors: strong growth in industrial energy demand, policy gaps, greater access to inefficient air conditioners, and an overall growth in energy demand which renewables have not been able to meet. 

Air conditioning units lined up outside a building in Hong Kong. (Image: Unsplash) Air conditioning units lined up outside a building in Hong Kong. (Image: Unsplash)

Global electricity demand is predicted to grow by 3.8% in 2027, up from 3% in 2025. According to researchers, this demand is primarily being driven by heavy industries – steel, chemicals, cement – which overwhelmingly still use fossil fuels to power their energy-intensive factories. 

In addition, the explosive growth of AI has led to the development of new data centres which require huge amounts of electricity. Under conservative scenarios, data centres could double their electricity consumption by 2030, and those dedicated to servicing AI needs could see a 30% annual increase over the same period. The more these trends continue, the greater the cost of transitioning to cleaner, more efficient technologies.

Taking the right policy direction

While both old and new technologies put added pressure on the electricity system, the targets set in recent years remain the same. This presents policymakers with a challenge and an opportunity.

Policy is often designed to be responsive to the world around it. When the EU’s Energy Efficiency Directive was first adopted in 2012, the world was a very different place. That is why it has since been updated, twice, in 2018 and 2023.

Is electrification a no-brainer in the race to net-zero?

Mario Giordano, global head of public and government affairs at lighting multinational Signify, calls this piece of legislation “market transformational” as it created “long-term certainty through binding targets, energy saving obligations, and renovation requirements”. This, in turn, allowed businesses to plan investments and start to innovate with the stability the directive created. 

The legislation has been credited with improving efficiency rates across the bloc. According to Eurostat, the EU used a record low amount of energy in 2024, 20% less than in 2006, an historic high point.

One of the next steps on that journey for Europe is the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive which seeks to upgrade old buildings and introduces a zero-emissions standard for new public ones.

“It is a huge opportunity to renovate the continent’s building stock, and lighting is everywhere,” said Giordano. “There will need to be a massive overhaul from conventional lighting to LEDs, targeting the worst-performing buildings,” he added. This bold legislative approach could provide a template for other countries to develop energy policies with maximum impact on efficiency rates.

How to get to 4%

Jérôme Bilodeau, energy efficiency programme manager at the IEA, told Climate Home News “the world is not currently on track” to meet the COP28 efficiency goal but agreed it was achievable with the right policies in place.

“Nine out of 10 countries have achieved a rate of improvement of 4% at least one year over the past decade,” he said.

“There are many examples of effective energy efficiency policies across the world, and governments are introducing new ones regularly,” he added, pointing out that countries representing 85% of global energy demand had announced hundreds of new or updated policies in 2025 alone.

Signify: “We believe resilience is becoming more important to businesses right now”

In addition, the global energy crisis caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has turbocharged the policy environment with a suite of new policies from dozens of countries now in place to reduce energy demand.

The IEA recommends closing policy gaps and raising the ambition of existing ones to help achieve the 4% energy efficiency improvement target. These policy gaps can be quite straightforward to address – for example, creating efficiency standards for new buildings, something the IEA says is lacking in almost half of all countries. And as technologies improve, policies need to be updated.

“In some countries, a building that meets the local efficiency standard may in fact be using three times as much energy as one in another country with a similar climate but with higher efficiency standards,” Bilodeau added. 

One integrated system

Giordano argues that a whole system view is needed: “Across different industries, there is a growing consensus that energy efficiency, electrification and renewable energy are not separate policy tracks, but one integrated system,” he said.

He believes that lighting can make a serious contribution to this system as a scalable and cost-effective efficiency measure. As lighting is a mature technology that is installed almost everywhere, from small buildings to city streets, it can be upgraded faster and provide immediate savings.

“You can reduce emissions, free up electricity for electrification purposes, and also save money that can be invested elsewhere,” he added.

Can the circular economy win over big business?

The latest figures show lighting accounts for around 8% of global electricity demand, and Signify estimates that switching to efficient LED technologies could save enough electricity to power up to 300 million heat pumps, or 400 million electric vehicles worldwide.

The focus on lighting would form part of a wider policy push to upgrade each country’s energy system where efficient appliances and processes are powered by renewables. And using energy more intelligently and flexibly, for example, by incentivising demand when renewable generation is higher, will greatly improve efficiency rates.

The English city of Liverpool is an example of one place seeking to use electricity in this way. A recent project, completed in 2026, saw the installation of ‘traffic adaptive lighting’ on key routes between a new football stadium and the city centre. The council can now respond to real-time fluctuations in demand, such as increased usage on match days, to meet people’s needs. This new approach could offer up to 30% in cost savings over the next decade, according to Signify.

Making energy work harder

An oft-repeated phrase in energy circles is that the greenest electron is the one you don’t use. The world is making steady progress on the challenge of transitioning away from fossil fuels. New wind and solar power installations continue to grow at record rates, with widespread coverage across continents. But in the headlong rush to build out capacity, governments and business may at the same time be taking a step backwards by paying insufficient attention to energy efficiency.

The positive work in renewables could easily be undone without a coordinated effort to make energy go further and work harder than it currently does. Experts in these circles agree that stronger, targeted policies are an important first step to achieving the world’s energy efficiency goals. But time is quickly running out to do so.

Adam Wentworth is a freelance writer based in Brighton, UK.

The post The overlooked shortcut to meeting the world’s energy goals appeared first on Climate Home News.

For much of his career, Carlos Santos’ job involved being stranded in the middle of the Amazon. Santos is a truck driver on the BR-319, a hazardous dirt highway in Brazil that cuts through a critical part of the rainforest. “You knew when you were going in,” he said of the road. “But you never knew when you’d come out the other side.”

It once took Santos 22 days to cross the 540-mile route. An unexpected rain pounded the highway during the dry season, leaving large pools of mud that mired convoys of trucks. “It’s a survival test in the jungle,” he said. “Time moves slowly. You have to ration food and water.” At night, Santos would hang a hammock in his truck cabin and watch as jaguars, tapirs, and snakes crossed the road in front of him. For weeks, he dug vehicles out of ditches, bathed in nearby rivers, and waited for heavy machinery to pull rigs from the mud one by one.

Carlos Santos has been driving a truck since he was 18 years old. Joaquim Salles

When he finally got home, Santos rested for a few days and then returned for another haul down the 319. “I went back because I enjoy it,” he said. “It’s one hell of a challenge.”

But there’s another reason such conditions are endured aside from a penchant for adventure. The BR-319 is the only road connecting the state of Amazonas, home to 4.2 million people and twice the size of Texas, to the rest of Brazil. Now, after decades of court battles and challenges by environmental groups and regulators, sections of the highway are being asphalted, and plans to pave the entire route are moving forward. 

Asphalting the 319 is a long-held demand of many in the region, who feel their isolation hinders economic development. “Why should we be forgotten?” Santos asked. “Why doesn’t the state of Amazonas have the right to be connected to the rest of the country?”

But the decision isn’t so straightforward. Scientists warn that paving the road will connect previously inaccessible regions of the Amazon to its most under-pressure areas, leading to a deforestation boom with dire consequences for the global climate. The biome currently holds an estimated 150 to 200 billion tons of carbon in its plants and soils, helping to offset greenhouse gas emissions from activities like burning fossil fuels. When the forest is cleared and burned, that stored carbon is released back into the atmosphere, fueling climate change. Indigenous groups that live in the area also say the project poses an existential threat to their communities. 

A sign marking the start of the unpaved section of the BR-319. Joaquim Salles

This May, before the paving went into full swing, I joined Santos on his route to observe how the 319 and the forest it traverses are already changing. We met at 3 a.m. at a distribution center on the outskirts of Manaus, the capital of Amazonas and home to over 2 million people. Despite its isolation, Manaus is a major manufacturing hub, the legacy of tax incentives that have attracted industry since the 1960s. The vast majority of goods currently enter and leave the city by boat or by air. Proponents of asphalting the 319 argue this dependence raises costs, lengthens delivery times, and leaves the region vulnerable to river-navigation interruptions brought on by severe droughts, which have become more common. 

Santos was born and raised in Manaus and has been driving a truck since he was 18 years old. “I was never a fan of being locked in a room in front of a computer,” he said. Now 45, he is affable with an easy smile. His belly comes close to touching the steering wheel, and his trimmed salt-and-pepper beard matches the remaining hair on the sides of his head. A long career driving the potholed roads of Amazonas has left him with a bad back.

Carlos Santos says he enjoys driving the BR-319, though “it’s one hell of a challenge.” Joaquim Salles

We pulled out of the distribution center in an immaculate bright blue semi-truck, smaller and more nimble than some of the larger rigs that are regularly seen stranded or capsized amid the mud of the 319. The truck belonged to Bemol, a leading retailer in the Amazon region, and carried large kitchen appliances, furniture, and medicine. Our destination was Porto Velho, the capital of Rondônia, which sits at the other end of the highway.

Santos has been driving on the 319 since 2015, when it reopened after decades of disrepair. Back then, he said, mud pools would stretch for dozens of yards during the rainy season, and potholes were the size of small craters. He was recounting this as we crossed the Rio Negro on a ferry, with dozens of other vehicles. The sun began to rise as we passed the famous meeting of the waters, where the dark, Coca-Cola-colored Rio Negro meets the murky brown Solimões, and the two rivers flow side by side without mixing. An hour later we were off the ferry and onto the highway. It would be a two-day trip with an overnight stop, but that was not guaranteed. The speed of travel on the 319 is highly dependent on the conditions of the road on any given day.

“You never know what to expect,” Santos told me.

In many ways, the history of deforestation in the Amazon is a history of road-building. 

In the 1970s, Brazil’s military dictatorship pursued an aggressive policy of constructing roads and encouraging settlement in the Amazon region. Since then, an area roughly the size of Spain has been deforested — 94 percent of which sits within 3 miles of a road. Often the mere possibility that a road will be built or paved is enough to increase deforestation in a given area.

The BR-319 was fully paved when it opened in 1976, but maintaining it proved too costly. It runs through a low-lying part of the forest and over the years, the grinding conditions of the rainy and dry seasons eroded the asphalt. Bus companies ceased service along the route, and businesses stopped using it to ship goods. The trees closed in on the highway and by 1988 it was virtually impassable, with only the ends still covered with asphalt. 

For years it was left to the forest, used only by the handful of communities that still lived along its route and the occasional adventurer passing through. The trees blocked the sky for long sections of the road, and the wood bridges rotted away. In 2015, federal regulators issued a license for the cleanup and maintenance of the roadway, though not its repaving. Crews worked to clear the trees and repair the more than 50 bridges that run along the road. Conditions remained precarious, but traffic returned. 

When Jair Bolsonaro was elected president in 2018, he gutted environmental regulations and announced he would pave the BR-319 once again. A far-right former army captain, Bolsonaro had campaigned on a platform friendly to loggers, miners, and agribusiness. The promise alone drove a 122 percent rise in deforestation in the area surrounding the highway between 2020 and 2022, greater than the already high deforestation rate for the Amazon as a whole during the same period. 

Brazil’s federal courts blocked the project due to inconsistencies in the environmental licensing process, but in 2025, years after Bolsonaro had left office, Brazil’s pro-agribusiness Congress passed a law that said work on existing roads could bypass licensing altogether. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or Lula, tried to veto parts of the bill but was overruled by Congress. In May, the government opened bidding for paving contracts. “By the end of June,” George Santoro, the Minister of Transportation, announced, “the entire BR-319 will be under construction.” 

After the ferry, the BR-319 continues on potholed asphalt for 120 miles, the final remnants of the original 1970s road. As we drove through the district of Careiro, the first on the 319 after Manaus, the landscape varied between forest and pasture, with modest, scattered homes on the side of the road. “Houses used to be a rare sight,” said Santos. “You’d see one here and another way off in the distance. Not anymore.”

It’s typical of a region in the early stages of deforestation. First, speculators and loggers clear public land. Once the timber is extracted, ranchers move in. They might live on the land themselves, but often they’ll hire someone to live there for them and tend the livestock. The ultimate goal is to petition the government for a formal land title which, if granted, can be resold once the road is fully paved and the land worth far more. The process of land regularization in Brazil is slow, bureaucratic, and rife with irregularities. Occupation is often a first step towards legal recognition, even when the initial clearing was illegal.

Cows in a pasture in the district of Careiro. Joaquim Salles

For three months in 2023, Manaus was shrouded in a thick cloud of smoke, ranking it among the cities with the worst air quality in the world. The governor of Amazonas at the time blamed the crisis on forest fires in the neighboring state of Pará. Research using satellite imagery and atmospheric data has since shown that while some of the smoke was indeed coming from Pará, much of it originated from forest-clearing blazes in districts at the start of the BR-319, like Careiro. 

As the old asphalt continues, the pastures become less frequent and the landscape progressively more wild. Then, all of a sudden, the asphalt turns into a reddish, iron-rich clay. It’s a surface that is rock-hard when dry and extremely slippery when wet. The rainy season brings mud and a slickness that causes trucks to glide out of control. The dry season brings clouds of dust that reduce visibility to just a few yards. This constant wetting and drying causes the dirt to form small ridges that drivers have come to call “cow ribs.” They rattle trucks like never-ending rumble strips.

Compared to what the highway was like in the recent past, this is a minor nuisance. “For the veterans around here, the road is a cakewalk now,” Santos said. The BR-319 may not be paved yet, but maintenance on the route has intensified in the past few years.

We encountered a road crew just a few miles after hitting dirt. To keep the highway passable, crews work daily on different sections, flattening uneven terrain, packing the ground, and adding gravel. Areas that easily flooded just a few years ago have been raised, bridges repaired or rebuilt entirely. (Environmentalists claim that much of this work goes beyond the maintenance license that was issued in 2015.) The road is still mostly used by trucks, but new companies can now be seen on the route, mostly transporting consumer goods, some coming from as far as São Paulo, 2,400 miles away.

A maintenance crew at work on the BR-319. Joaquim Salles

Traveling the 319 with Santos means listening to an unbroken catalogue of accidents he’s witnessed. A truck that rolled into a ravine here, dropping brand new washing machines into the river. Another that tumbled over there, spilling gallons of milk onto the road. Even today, it is not uncommon for Santos to encounter a capsized truck, sometimes more than one in a single journey. 

As we ventured deeper down the highway, lush forest occupied both sides of the road. “It’s every shade of green you could think of,” Santos remarked. He had a point. One hectare of Brazilian Amazon holds more species of trees than all of the continental United States and Canada combined.

About eight hours in, we reached the settlement of Iguapó-Açu. The town is home to some 75 families who live in stilt houses with tin roofs. It serves as a final rest stop for truck drivers before they face the BR-319’s middle stretch, where it cuts through 250 miles of dense forest with virtually nothing else around. Residents of Iguapó-Açu live on subsistence farming, fishing, and by operating a sluggish barge that drivers must take across a narrow river to continue on their way down the 319. 

While waiting for the barge, I spoke to residents who were eating freshly-caught fish stew on the porch of one of the houses. Raimunda de Sá Assunção, 53, moved to the town as a child and still remembers when the road was paved. She also remembers the years when the road fell into disrepair, many families left, and the drive to the nearest hospital could take days. Now the drive can take as little as two hours. She remains skeptical whether the road will ultimately be paved. “My hair’s turned white, and nothing’s happened. All they do is plug holes,” she said. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Raimunda de Sá Assunção is a long-time resident of Iguapó-Açu. Joaquim Salles​

A spot just a few miles north of Iguapó-Açu was the site of a presidential photo-op in late May. As Lula posed with a road crew working on the 319, he painted a rosy picture of the future. “We will set an example of how to build a road,” he said, adding that the paved highway would be “the most beautiful and most preserved road in the world.” 

Lula was elected in 2022 by a broad anti-Bolsonaro coalition. Among those who buoyed him to victory was Marina Silva, the politician and environmental activist who is one of the Amazon’s most respected defenders. To get her support, Lula put the environment at the forefront of his campaign, pledging to put Brazil on a road to end deforestation by 2030.

He’s had mixed results. Deforestation rates are significantly down from the Bolsonaro years, but the government has had little success in stopping a barrage of anti-environment legislation coming from Congress, including the licensing reform that cleared the path for the paving of the 319. Now running for office again, Lula has thrown his support behind the paving, knowing that not doing so will cost him votes in the Amazon region. Silva has since left the Lula government to run for Senate in the upcoming elections. She has long been seen by many in the Amazon as an obstacle to paving the BR-319. In reality, she has never opposed the road outright, only insisted that it proceed with adequate environmental safeguards in place.

The week of the photo-op, in closed meetings with environmental groups, the government said a portion of the highway’s R$1.5 billion ($300 million) construction budget would also go towards an environmental governance plan. It would involve the creation of protected areas, wildlife bridges, and a ramp-up of environmental monitoring in a 60-mile buffer zone along the entire route. The main criticism from environmental groups is that these measures should have been implemented before any paving takes place. Instead, they are still in the discussion stage while the BR-319 is actively being asphalted.

“The plan being drawn up needs to be translated into documents with feasible, credible targets,” said Suely Araújo, Public Policy Coordinator at Observatório do Clima, a coalition of Brazilian civil society organizations focused on climate. “You need structural measures that are actually implemented. Not just promised.”

On September 8, Lula announced the formal creation of four protected areas around the BR-319, encompassing 2,600 square miles, well below the nearly 14,000 square miles the government had promised in closed meetings months earlier. 

“On one side were people who thought it was off-limits to undertake a project on a road that had already been built, connecting two state capitals,” Lula said in a speech during the announcement ceremony. “On the other were people who thought we should do it haphazardly, without any environmental-preservation criteria, without properly demarcating the relevant areas, turning it into a way for a few people to get rich by buying and selling land. We insisted that it was possible … We found a way to demarcate whatever needed to be demarcated.”

As it stands, most of the land around the BR-319 remains undesignated public land, the most attractive target for land-grabbers. It’s unclear if the government plans to announce additional conservation units. There is speculation that it might do so next year if Lula wins reelection in October. Polls show him neck-and-neck with Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro.

While research shows that giving an area protected status is a powerful deterrent to deforestation, it is by no means a silver bullet. “It’s far from enough. Many conservation units exist only on paper.” said Araújo. “The plan for the region hasn’t been formalized yet. What we’ve seen is a Power Point presentation.” 

The whole notion of whether the Brazilian state is capable of closely monitoring an area as large as the one impacted by the BR-319 is up for debate. Araújo told me there is no historical precedent for it in Brazil. IBAMA, the main agency responsible for environmental enforcement, is chronically understaffed. The area around the BR-319 almost entirely lacks state presence. Authorities that attempt to enforce environmental regulations in the region are often met with hostility. There are no police checkpoints and no bases for any of Brazil’s environmental monitoring agencies along the 319, though the government had pledged to establish them in the future. 

The main risk is what experts call the “fishbone phenomenon,” a pattern seen from above in many parts of the Amazon. Highways serve as a main corridor from which illegal side roads opened by loggers, land-grabbers, and wildcat miners branch out. The highways are the spine of the fish and the side roads are the ribs. It is from these unauthorized roads that much illicit activity takes place.

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The BR-319 is only in the early stages of this process, which picked up when the road reopened in 2015 and intensified during the Bolsonaro years, but it already has more miles of side roads than the length of the highway itself. Follow one of those through satellite images and inevitably you’ll find large, recently cleared areas in the middle of the rainforest. 

Phillip Fearnside, a biologist at the National Institute of Amazonian Research, or INPA, has studied the region for decades. “You have a huge area that could be deforested very quickly,” he said. 

Researchers have used complex modeling to simulate how the paving of the BR-319 and the proliferation of side roads — both legal and illegal — will impact the forest. One study, led by Britaldo Soares-Filho of the Federal University of Minas Gerais, found that if the road is asphalted, the resulting deforestation in the region would emit 8 billion tons of carbon dioxide by 2050, four times more than if the highway remained unpaved but maintained. A separate study projected that deforestation will be 60 percent greater by 2100 under a paved scenario. 

Fearnside argues the impact would extend far beyond the 60-mile buffer zone that the government has pledged to monitor because the asphalt would connect the mostly untouched central Amazon — “the last big stretch of forest,” as he described it — to deforestation hotspots in the south. “It would be enough to push climate past the tipping point where warming gets out of control,” he said.

The threat is not only theoretical or in the future. Indigenous communities in the highway’s reach are already feeling the consequences. There have been several reports of illegal side roads encroaching into Indigenous territory. The Mura people in the region of Lago Capanã Grande have been under growing threat from land-grabbers since 2020, as conditions on the 319 improved and traffic increased. There is evidence that the toxic chemical 2,4-D, one of the main components of Agent Orange, was used to deforest land the Mura use to harvest Brazil nut, a key food source in the region. The waste was then dumped into rivers relied on by the community and made 20 people ill.

In total, there are 69 Indigenous territories in the region impacted by the BR-319, including some groups living in voluntary isolation. Together, these territories are inhabited by at least 13 different ethnicities comprising over 18,000 people. Although Brazilian law requires that Indigenous groups be consulted on large infrastructure projects that could impact them, there is no evidence this has happened in this case. 

“Consultation must happen before any decision is made, with real dialogue and the possibility of influence, including the right to say ‘no.’ What is happening is the opposite,” Mariazinha Baré told the Brazilian website Nexo. Baré is a coordinator at APIAN, a coalition of Indigenous groups from Amazonas. “BR-319 is not just infrastructure; it is an instrument of death that threatens the existence of Indigenous peoples and weakens the Amazon,” she said.

The middle stretch of the BR-319, where the road cuts through 250 miles of dense forest with virtually nothing else around. Joaquim Salles

After Iguapó-Açu, the 319 enters its wildest section. We stopped so I could get an aerial view using a drone. At 400 feet, nothing but thick, impregnable forest stretched to the horizon in every direction, except for the distinct red gash of the highway.

Since there is no cell service, truckers going in opposite directions often stop to swap notes on road conditions and weather. It wasn’t long after we started driving again that a passing trucker warned of rain ahead.

It began as a soft patter but quickly turned torrential. “While it’s raining, it’s best to push on,” Santos said. It’s the hours after the downpour, when the ground is drying but still slick, that are the most dangerous for drivers. It was getting late, and we still had 100 miles to go before reaching the town of Realidade, where we’d spend the night.

Large puddles began pooling across the road, and the ground turned to sludge. A few miles later, we encountered a stranded truck, a flatbed carrying generators that had drifted to the road’s soft shoulder and listed sharply to one side. “Welcome to the BR-319!” Santos laughed.

A truck stuck in the mud in the middle stretch of the highway. Joaquim Salles

The sun set and soon we could only see what was illuminated by the headlights. The rain continued relentlessly. At times our speed was reduced to just 5 miles per hour. Santos pressed on, passing other stranded trucks and crossing rickety wooden bridges that creaked under the wheels. Many hours later, we came to a town that appeared seemingly out of nowhere. The muddy streets were deserted and dark as we pulled into a bright orange motel called La Kazita.

It was 11 p.m., 20 hours after our departure from Manaus.

The largest settlement on the unpaved part of the 319, Realidade is a dusty outpost typical of Amazonian boom towns. Its population has swelled from just 800 people in 2010 to 7,000 today. The town lives and dies by the highway.

Many of its original residents were workers who built the road in the 1970s. When the route closed in 1988, Realidade became a virtual ghost town. Landless farmers from out of state arrived in the region in 2004 and were granted settlement rights under a federal land-reform program. Since then, a steady stream of land-grabbers, loggers, and cattle-ranchers have poured in.

Exploring Realidade, the impression is that the people arrived before the government did. The town has no police station and only a small health post, but numerous cattle-ranching supply stores. The dynamic has been the same throughout the modern history of the Amazonian frontier: People come in search of land and the riches of the forest; the state then scrambles to catch up with basic services and the rule of law.

A cattle-ranching supply store in the town of Realidade. Joaquim Salles

At La Kazita, Santos and I were eating a breakfast of plain bread when the manager began telling us how two nights before he had been paid R$600 ($115) to drive some logging workers to Humaitá, a mining town southeast of the 319. They had just come out of the forest after weeks of work felling trees. Flush with cash, they wanted to party.

Data from Simex, a system that uses satellite images to monitor logging, show that 16 square miles of land were illegally logged between 2021 and 2024 in the municipality that includes Realidade.

“All the money flowing through the region is rooted in illegal logging and land grabbing,” Lucas Ferrante, a researcher at the University of São Paulo who has studied the area extensively, told me.

The scenery around Realidade is a far cry from the lush forest I had driven through the day before. Illegal side roads abound, sawmills dot the side of the highway, and native forest is interrupted by swaths of pasture. I stopped by one of the largest ranches in the region.

Eliane Jesus Pereira, 33, lives in a ramshackle wooden house at the edge of an expansive pasture. She sells cheese made out of buffalo milk while her husband tends to the cattle. The couple moved to the farm from Realidade in 2021 when her husband was hired as a ranch hand. The owner of the land lives in Manaus. Since she has been living on the farm, she’s seen a marked improvement on the road. “Sometimes my daughter couldn’t go to school because the bus got stuck in the mud,” she said. “Now it’s better.”

Eliane Jesus Pereira lives on a ranch a few miles north of Realidade. Joaquim Salles​

It’s consensus among the scientific community that paving the BR-319 without environmental safeguards will lead to drastic consequences. Realidade might well be a vision of the future of the entire highway. Beyond the immediate impacts, studies suggest that the deforestation the asphalt could trigger may disrupt key hydrological cycles within Brazil that, in the long run, will lead to severe water shortages in large cities like São Paulo. And if Amazonas, with its size and its 97 percent forest coverage, goes the way of other Brazilian states, like Rondônia, which has lost more than a third of its native vegetation, the climate implications would be global in scale.

On the local level, it is hard to begrudge the people of Amazonas for wanting a paved road connecting them to the rest of the country, particularly in a nation as rich as Brazil. A 2025 poll by the Instituto de Pesquisa do Norte showed that 9 in 10 Amazonenses were in favor of the BR-319 being asphalted. The state has the 25th lowest GDP per capita among Brazil’s 26 states and the federal district. It ranks well below the national average in most developmental metrics, including access to education and healthcare.

“We have the sense that the region is subordinate to Brazil, like an invaded territory, a colony,” said Augusto Rocha, an engineering professor and logistics expert at the Federal University of Amazonas. “Infrastructure is a way of reducing this inequality.” Rocha is in favor of the road being paved, but warns that without environmental controls, deforestation will increase.

“We don’t deny the importance of the road,” said Suely Araújo. “The problem is building it without the necessary social and environmental conditions in place.”

Whether environmental governance is possible along the BR-319 is an open question. In the spectrum of opinions surrounding the road and development in the Amazon as a whole, there are those who would just shut it all down and leave the forest intact. On the other end, there are those who believe the forest is there to be exploited, and that the preservationist approach is to blame for the economic woes of the region. In the middle, there are those who believe that sustainability with development is possible, even if the history of the Brazilian Amazon has not yet provided a large-scale model to follow. And there are the Indigenous peoples who are too often an afterthought.

As we grew closer to Porto Velho, the dirt turned to asphalt again. I was relieved to finally be on a smooth surface after two days of bumpy, uneven terrain. The truck, now caked in dried mud from top to bottom, picked up speed for the first time since the previous morning. During the whole ride I had not seen a single instance of roadkill. But just minutes into the asphalt I did — a bright green snake and a few miles later an anteater strewn across the highway.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A trip down the road that will determine the fate of the Amazon on Sep 17, 2026.

As researchers around the world begin work on the next U.N. climate assessment, fears are growing that the Trump administration could meddle with critical U.S. climate data. In response, scientists are preparing to transfer vast troves of that data to repositories in Germany.

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Scientists push for fungi protection Channel News Catherine Early 17th September 2026 Teaser Media

The world needs more homes. The world also has too much plastic. Perhaps the only thing those two problems have in common is that they’re hard to solve.

Our oceans are in trouble and new research from Flinders University shows how changes in diatoms (microalgae) could further undermine the foundation of aquatic life’s food webs – as well as vital deep-sea carbon capture or sequestration.

Where and when water is available places a pivotal control on environments – with ancient sediments and fossils explaining how rainfall has changed through time, although researchers now believe climate scientists have read some historical signs about rainfall levels incorrectly.

There is very little authorities in Nepal could have done to prevent the deaths and devastation caused by the flash flood on its border with Tibet in late August, scientists with the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group have said.

Launching a study that highlighted the role of climate change in causing the glacial rock and ice collapse that triggered the Himalayan flood, WWA co-founder Friederike Otto told reporters that “no amount of local adaptation can fully shield vulnerable people downstream from this scale of destruction”.

The findings released on Thursday are likely to strengthen Nepal’s case for emergency support from the UN’s Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage. Its board members met informally on Wednesday to discuss whether to grant the country a maximum of $20 million towards its estimated $4.8 billion cost of recovery and reconstruction, but no decision has yet been taken.

Nepal’s foreign minister Shisir Khanal told Climate Home News last week that the destructive flood was “exactly the kind of climate-driven catastrophe the Fund was created to address”.

Hard to predict

The WWA study found that rock-ice avalanches are very hard to predict and that moving people out of areas vulnerable to such floods is difficult as their livelihoods revolve around the rivers along which the floods travel.

The recent disaster began on the morning of August 26, when an avalanche started falling beneath a glacier. This caused huge amounts of rocks and glacier ice to fall over a kilometre to a valley floor, where they then picked up more rock and ice and became a flood of debris heading downhill and downstream along the border of Nepal and Tibet.

The torrent entered the narrow Lhende Khola gorge and crashed through the busy Gyirong port border crossing at 170 kilometres an hour. It continued many kilometres downstream before eventually turning from rock and ice to water and slowing down.

The flood swept through villages, roads, bridges and hydropower stations, killing over 1,300 people in Nepal with more than 5,000 still missing. The flood also killed at least 40 people in Chinese-run Tibet.

Those on higher ground away from the river mainly survived but the flood’s speed meant that many people received no warning to seek higher ground or shelter.

While Nepal has early warning systems for flooding caused by rain and glacial lake outbursts, the WWA study noted that rock-ice avalanches are complex and understudied, with methods to monitor them still being explored.

Co-author Walter Immerzeel, mountain hydrology professor at Utrecht University, told journalists that with current methods, the disaster could not have been predicted.

But, he said, in the future it may be possible to use remote sensing techniques to analyse glaciers and rocks to generate a warning before a collapse occurs.

A technique called radar interferometry can detect hotspots which should be monitored with field-based sensors and drones, he said, adding that early warning systems could be installed in these areas using seismometers, water-level measurements and CCTV.

Because doing this for thousands of glaciers across the Himalayas would be difficult, authorities could monitor only the rock and ice faces that are a danger to the river valleys with the most people and infrastructure in them, he added. But this would still require lots of investment together with international collaboration and coordination, he warned.

The study found that another potential adaptation strategy – restricting development in flood-prone river valleys – is socially, economically and politically difficult.

The scientists said habitable land is scarce in these steep river valleys and economic activities like transport and hydropower generation are dependent on the river itself.

Madhab Uprety, a Nepali scientist from the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said that, while new development should assess the risks of floods, many existing communities and buildings are already at risk.

Loss and damage

Otto said the flood should be discussed in the context of loss and damage as “there is no doubt that climate change is one of the drivers” and “it’s also one of the types of events that are absolutely outside of the limits we can possibly adapt to”.

As well as the deaths, a Nepali government’s assessment has found that a large amount of infrastructure was damaged, including more than 7,500 homes, 105 bridges, 48 public buildings, 47 cultural heritage assets, 18 schools, 13 hydropower facilities, seven health facilities, and numerous shops, hotels, restaurants, irrigation systems and farms. Over 30,000 people were affected.

Developing countries have called for the loss and damage fund’s board to hold an emergency meeting to discuss how to respond to Nepal’s request for funding. Instead of a full board meeting though, board members met only informally and online on Wednesday, Climate Home News understands. A source with knowledge of discussions said the informal nature of the meeting meant they were not able to take decisions or agree on next steps, which have been left up to the board’s co-chairs.

• Sep 9, 2026 Finance Foreign minister: Nepal needs “meaningful” international support to face climate threats Following its recent Himalayan flooding disaster, the South Asian nation is seeking urgent help from a new UN climate fund, appealing for “stronger global solidarity” Read more
• Sep 2, 2026 Finance Loss and damage fund urged to hold crisis meeting on Nepal The new fund is coming under pressure from developing nations to respond quickly to climate disasters rather than just financing longer-term projects Read more
• Apr 2, 2026 News Nepal’s EV revolution pays off as oil crisis causes pain at the pumps Import subsidies, abundant hydropower and charging investments have spurred EV adoption, with electric vehicles now making up about three-quarters of new car sales Read more

Speaking before that meeting started, Nepali climate negotiator Manjeet Dhakal said he had “heard of an extremely positive response” to Nepal’s request from board members. “Hopefully there will be something – a decision that the fund will do for exactly the reason that the fund was established,” he said.

Ajay Mathur, former Indian climate negotiator and now head of The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, told a separate press briefing on Wednesday that the Nepal flood disaster would push loss and damage higher up the agenda of international climate talks, particularly if the United Nations Secretary-General decides to champion the cause at the UN General Assembly in New York next week.

Murat Kurum, Turkish environment minister and president-designate of COP31, told Climate Home News last week that he would be “pleased” if the fund could support Nepal and that he will keep calling in every speech for countries to give money to the loss and damage fund.

Jennifer Morgan, former German climate envoy and now a senior fellow at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, called for the loss and damage fund – which currently has around $630 million in contributions – to be topped up with new pledges from governments as well as solidarity levies on things like luxury air travel, super-rich individuals and fossil fuel firms’ windfall profits.

The post Nepal flood destruction shows “limits to adaptation”, scientists say appeared first on Climate Home News.

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Lou Leon Guerrero, the governor of Guam, learned about the government’s plan to mine her people’s waters the same way everyone else did: by reading the news.

It was November 12, and her advisor had sent her an article link — apparently, a journalist had inquired about it. She opened the page, and was stunned by what she read. The Trump administration planned to lease millions of acres of seafloor around the island to mining companies. 

“I’ll never forget the date,” Leon Guerrero said from her office overlooking Agaña Bay. “I had not heard anything about it.”

She immediately called David Apatang, the governor of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a neighboring U.S. territory.

“We were both very upset that we didn’t get any kind of warning,” she said. Shortly after, she rang Bill Hague, an official in the Department of the Interior, an agency that handles federal relations with territorial leaders and tribal nations. 

“I know we are a U.S. territory,” Leon Guerrero recalls saying to him. “I know that you as the federal government can just come in and say, ‘I don’t care about what you guys say. We’re going to do it anyway.’” But still, she said, “I want you to know I don’t support this.” Hague reassured her, she said, that mining would never proceed without the community’s support. 

Nearly a year later, that’s exactly what’s happening. 

Read Next American Samoa says no to deep-sea mining. The Trump administration might do it anyway. Anita Hofschneider

The Trump administration is moving forward with plans to lease vast swaths of seafloor to mining companies. It is part of a broader push to secure critical minerals and counter China, which dominates the global supply. These resources — including copper, manganese, nickel, and rare earth elements — are essential to military technologies and batteries.

First up are America’s Pacific island territories. In July, the Marine Minerals Administration said that it would auction access to 31 million acres of the continental shelf around American Samoa in mid-November. A month later, the agency announced plans to do the same in December across more than 67 million acres on either side of the Marianas archipelago, which includes the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam. About half of those acres border a national marine monument established by President George W. Bush.

Local leaders and environmentalists staunchly oppose these plans. Recently, Earthjustice, an environmental law nonprofit, filed lawsuits against the Trump administration on behalf of conservation groups in American Samoa and the Mariana Islands, arguing that the government does not yet know if seabed mining would harm animals that are protected by the Endangered Species Act, like whales and sea turtles.

The Marine Minerals Administration declined to comment on the ongoing litigation. Brent Lawrence, a spokesperson who responded to Grist’s questions, said that the department would continue “to closely coordinate with territorial leadership” as well as community members in American Samoa, Guam, and the Mariana Islands.

Unlike neighboring Pacific nations, which can decide for themselves whether to allow mining, Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands are subject to federal decisions often made without their approval. Under international law, the Indigenous peoples of these islands have the right to free, prior, and informed consent to projects affecting their lands and waters. The Trump administration, however, says it has the authority to proceed under U.S. law.

That decision is the latest example of how the United States has for more than a century denied the residents of these islands a meaningful voice in decisions that affect them, said Adi Martínez-Román, co-director of Right to Democracy. They cannot vote for president, have no voting representation in Congress, and their right to self-determination is generally ignored, she said.

“The territories are practically invisible to the general U.S. society and to public officials,” said Martínez-Román. “It is an insidious result of the colonial framework.”

Lourdes “Lou” Aflague Leon Guerrero, governor of Guam, attends a a full committee hearing in Washington, DC, alongside other leaders of U.S. territories on June 17, 2026.​ Ken Cedeno / AFP via Getty Images​

On July 16, while staying with family in Manuʻa, American Samoa, J.V. Langkilde awoke at 2 a.m. It was Manuʻa Flag Day, a holiday commemorating the islands’ chiefs signing a treaty that brought Manu‘a under U.S. sovereignty more than a century ago.

The family had agreed to cater the day’s festivities, which included a cricket tournament, a parade, and a competition to determine who could make the best oka, a Samoan raw fish dish similar to ceviche. His favorite dish of the day was lobster with coconut sauce, but there was also pig, and smokey Samoan taro cooked in an umu, or earthen oven, he said. 

The early start meant Langkilde immediately noticed when his phone screen lit up the darkness with a text message alerting him to the news: On a day marking the anniversary of the United States agreeing to respect Samoan property rights, the Trump administration had announced it was proceeding with a plan to allow deep-sea mining in the waters of American Samoa.

The subject came up again and again during his time at home. The first concern people in Manuʻa have is, “Shouldn’t there be a full understanding of impacts before someone gets a property interest in our ocean floor?” said Langkilde, an attorney at the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice. During the rest of his visit home, his fellow Samoans repeatedly expressed their unease.  

“They think it’s a little bit backwards that some company who has no stake in the community here will have property interest on our ocean floor without a full understanding of impacts,” he said.

Deep-sea mining has not yet occurred on a commercial scale, and scientific understanding of the consequences is scant. One recent study suggests mining could create sediment plumes that harm large fish like tuna, which makes up more than 99 percent of American Samoa’s exports. Mining companies dispute these claims, but locals and environmentalists remain unconvinced.

“The throughline of concern I hear is becoming a test site with no kind of guarantees for money being reserved, not just for revenue share, but even for environmental protection,” Langkilde said. “There could be some sort of bond or fund imposed upon the company should things go wrong.” 

The governor of American Samoa, Pula’ali’i Nikolao Pula, has expressed similar concerns. In June of 2025 he announced that the government was united in its opposition to mining “in line with the express will of the people and the protection of American Samoa’s natural resources.”

Five months later, the Trump administration nearly doubled the area that might be mined.

A field of manganese nodules on the Pacific sea floor as seen during NOAA’s 2015 Hohonu Moana expedition. NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research

Because American Samoa is a U.S. territory, its ban on seafloor mining only extends three nautical miles from shore, a fraction of the 200-mile radius around the islands that the federal government claims jurisdiction over.

By contrast, Samoa, which lies just 40 miles to the northwest, has complete control over its waters, of which it plans to protect at least 30 percent. The nation has also joined others calling for a moratorium on deep-sea mining in international waters. It was the first of a dozen Pacific island nations that have achieved independence from colonial powers in the modern era, an autonomy that allows them to determine how their waters are managed. 

Read Next Digging for minerals in the Pacific’s graveyard: The $20 trillion fight over who controls the seabed Anita Hofschneider

Some, like the Republic of Naoero (which was until this month known as Nauru) and the Kingdom of Tonga, are eager to see the industry move forward. The two countries sponsor deep-sea mining companies, allowing them to apply for exploration contracts in international waters through an international body in exchange for financial benefits. “For Nauru, seabed minerals represent more than economic diversification. They are a pathway to resilience and a pathway to contribute to global solutions,” said David Adeang, the president of Naoero, at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025. 

Earlier this year, Tonga’s prime minister, Lord Fatafehi Fakafānua, signed an agreement with the Trump administration for mining research and exploration. Fakafānua called it an “exciting development.” Others, like the Republic of Kiribati, are considering similar moves. 

But the majority of Pacific nations support an international moratorium on the industry. Palau has banned the practice in national waters, while others like Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands have taken similar stances amid concerns about its effects on fisheries and cultural practices. 

Residents of the Mariana Islands protest seabed mining during a visit by federal officials to the CNMI governor’s office on Feb. 28.
Courtesy of Leigh Gases / Marianas Press

Unlike U.S. territories, independent Pacific nations have a vote in international negotiations over seabed mining. More than 45 countries have called for an international moratorium or ban.

A 1994 United Nations treaty created the International Seabed Authority to oversee mining in international waters, which lie beyond any country’s jurisdiction and cover about half the globe. That body holds biannual meetings to develop potential rules for the industry. This mining code has been under debate for more than a decade, and commercial extraction has not yet been approved.

The Trump administration isn’t waiting. The president ordered federal regulators to begin processing applications for mining in international waters under a decades-old U.S. law. That prompted outcry from other nations, which say the United States is circumventing international law. As with mining in U.S. waters, it could also leave Indigenous Pacific peoples with little say over industrial activity in the seas they have long stewarded.

More than 170 nations have ratified the treaty establishing the seabed authority, allowing them to attend meetings and cast votes. But territories without independence are excluded. The federal law extending U.S. citizenship to the people of Guam explicitly grants Congress the right to overturn any law passed by the island’s legislature. 

“A decision about our islands is going to be made at a desk,” said Sabrina Suluai-Mahuka, a fellow at Right to Democracy from American Samoa. “It does not make sense that we can’t have any say in how our futures go.”

Four months after the Trump administration announced plans to lease the seabed around Guam, Lou Leon Guerrero met with officials in Washington, D.C. to share her concerns. Three days later, back on Guam, she learned that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management had doubled the area that might be mined, including waters closer to Guam than initially proposed. Again, she called Hague at the Interior Department. The department had not told Leon Guerrero that they were days away from making the change.

“You guys don’t include us in your discussions,” she told him. “We’re the ones that’re going to be impacted. 

“He said he made it very clear to everybody to make sure that the governor and the leaders are apprised about what’s happening,” she recalled Hague assuring her. 

“We hear it only in the media or in the CFR announcements,” Leon Guerrero told him, referring to federal regulatory notices.

Lou Leon Guerrero gestures in her office in Adelup, Guam as she describes her efforts to block seabed mining off of her island’s shores. Anita Hofschneider / Grist

Hague did not respond to Grist’s request for comment. A department spokesperson, Alyse Sharpe, clarified that while the agency facilitates support for tribal people and nations, “Mr. Hague does not have a role in that,” and that the department regularly communicates with U.S. territory leadership and will continue to do so. In an emailed statement, she declined to comment on or verify the conversations with Leon Guerrero, “due to the often confidential and deliberative nature of these conversations.”

The statement also said, “The Department of the Interior is committed to maintaining a transparent process as the possibility of mining critical minerals from the seafloor is explored,” and noted that a signed lease does not necessarily grant permission to mine and that any lease holder would be subjected to a feasibility, safety, and environmental assessment.

A remotely operated vehicle, Deep Discoverer, images the seafloor off American Samoa during an expedition in 2017. NOAA OER​

Neildino Taisacan, an Indigenous Carolinian-Chamorro environmental advocate in the Marianas, said the community submitted extensive comments opposing the proposal despite the short notice. The governors had requested a 120-day extension which would give residents until after the holidays to leave a public comment. The Trump administration instead approved a 30-day extension. In the end, when the proposed area was eventually doubled, many residents were left wondering whether their concerns had been heard, Taisacan said.

“All we can do is just scream at the top of our lungs and say, ‘No, we don’t want this,’” he said. 

The administration is also pursuing seabed mining in the waters of Alaska and Virginia. But residents of those states can vote and have representatives with sway in Congress. Those rights are not extended to residents of the territories, giving lawmakers little motivation to take their concerns seriously. 

That hasn’t stopped territorial leaders from trying. In June, Pula’ali’i Nikolao Pula, the governor of American Samoa, flew to Washington, D.C. to testify before the Senate. There, wearing a black suit and yellow tie, he reaffirmed his opposition to deep-sea mining. 

“However, should the federal government move forward,” he said to senators, “we would like to have basically a seat at the table.” If mining is done in an environmentally friendly way, he said, “our little territory would very much appreciate revenue sharing.”

Kimberlyn King-Hinds, who is the U.S. House delegate for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, plans to introduce legislation that would give the commonwealth half of all seabed mining revenue. “If they’re going to shove this down our throats,” she said, “I want to be able to ensure that we have a backup plan, we have insurance and that we actually benefit from the waters that surround us.” 

Still, what happens next remains to be seen, because she, as a delegate, cannot vote on bills.

One company interested in mining in the region, Impossible Metals, has suggested a benefit-sharing agreement that would give territories a small percentage of their profits, as a gesture of goodwill. But these promises are not yet legally binding. 

And with decision-making power consolidated in Washington, D.C., there is little incentive for companies to approach territorial leaders like Pula. The Metals Company, for example, has instead spent about $800,000 lobbying federal officials to permit seabed mining. 

If the nascent industry becomes profitable, even a small share of the windfall could provide a significant boost to Pacific island economies.

In American Samoa, a single StarKist tuna cannery employs about 2,000 people and accounts for 80 percent of the private-sector jobs. The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands has endured a prolonged tourism downturn and was battered by two super typhoons earlier this year. In Guam, fewer people have visited since the pandemic, leaving the island increasingly reliant on military investment. Without stable economies at home, many residents leave their island communities for jobs abroad.

That’s one reason some Pacific governments with more autonomy than U.S. territories are in favor of mining. The Cook Islands, for instance, supports the industry and has used government funds to explore nearby waters for mineral deposits.

Prime Minister Mark Brown has described that exploration as part of the islands’ “journey of sovereign independence.” Mining companies have been courting the islands’ communities for years, sponsoring local cultural organizations and sporting events. Brown has said the industry could boost revenue significantly. 

But some mining analysts and environmentalists doubt that. A recent study found that mining near American Samoa would carry steep operating costs and might not generate enough revenue to be profitable. It also concluded that demand for some targeted minerals — including cobalt, manganese, and nickel — may not hold, while other analyses found that proposed financial arrangements would return little revenue to developing countries.

Langkilde, the Earthjustice attorney from American Samoa, said his community was shocked by how the latest lease proposal doesn’t include revenue sharing. And while the federal notice suggests that deep-sea mining companies invest in training a local workforce and upgrading public facilities like ports, neither is mandated.

Seeing it in black and white is, he said, “very discouraging to people here who might have otherwise been like, ‘Maybe the federal government will do right by us.’”

In April, Sheila Babauta hid with her parents and her 2-month-old son in a storage room for hours, listening to 150-mph winds moan and rattle the windows as Typhoon Sinlaku battered her home island of Saipan. 

They had no running water or electricity for weeks afterward. While cleaning up flood damage, collecting water for baths, and caring for her newborn son, Babauta received a group chat message about the federal government’s latest push to accelerate seabed mining.

Five weeks after Typhoon Sinlaku hit the Marianas, Sheila Babauta lives without electricity in her home in northern Saipan while caring for her newborn son. She feels grateful that her family kept their house when so many others lost theirs. Anita Hofschneider / Grist

“I didn’t have capacity to even think about it,” she said. “All of the immediate needs definitely took priority over keeping track of what was happening with seabed mining.”

Babauta, a former member of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands House of Representatives, is a longtime Indigenous Chamorro-Pohnpeian environmental advocate who has been vocal about opposing seabed mining. But even she has found it difficult to keep track of what the federal government is doing and find the time and energy to weigh in as her community recovers from two climate-fueled typhoons.

“After the typhoon, I definitely felt overwhelmed, especially with a baby, because he’s my priority, right?” Babauta said of her son, whom she envisions growing up and living on the island.

“Deep-sea mining is also important to me because I want to protect our home for future generations,” she said. “All of that is going on in my head while outside of me, in reality, you see destruction all over.”

Pacific islands are on the front lines of climate change, with rising seas and worsening storms already impacting residents. But as the Trump administration pushes seabed extraction while undermining climate action, those immediate crises leave many territorial residents with less time and energy to influence whether mining proceeds.

That’s happening despite what many Pacific Islanders describe as the incalculable cultural costs seabed mining could impose on the environment and on the ancestral beliefs, practices, and traditions of Indigenous peoples.

Companies like the Metals Company have spent hundreds of millions of dollars exploring deep ocean ecosystems. Scientists who conducted that research later published some of their findings independently in peer-reviewed journals, concluding that these habitats are fragile and slow to recover.

Any risk to fishing, an essential part of culture and identity in American Samoa, looms large. 

“The people of American Samoa have a profound connection to the ocean, relying on it for sustenance, cultural practices, and economic activities, particularly through fisheries and tourism,” then-Governor Lamanu Peleti Mauga wrote in his 2024 moratorium on seabed mining. 

Other Indigenous Pacific Islanders, including John Castro, worry about how mining would impact traditional seafaring.

John Castro sits under a damaged canoe house on Saipan, reflecting on what seabed mining might mean for traditional navigation. Anita Hofschneider / Grist

On an afternoon in May, Castro sat beneath a damaged canoe house in Susupe, Saipan. Its thatched roof had been partially destroyed by Typhoon Sinlaku, and Castro had joined others in repairing it. He is a fisher who coordinates a program that helps pass down the knowledge required to navigate canoes across the Pacific using the stars and waves.

Traditional seafarers rely on marine life to determine where they are, he said. “If deep-sea mining happens, and that thing kind of drives whales in a different course, then we’re going to get lost, too.” 

This knowledge was once widespread across the Pacific but was lost to colonization in many places, including the Marianas and Hawaiʻi. It has recently returned with the help of expert navigators from the Federated States of Micronesia. Disrupting that revival would be an enormous loss. 

Still, Castro is resigned to what feels like an inevitable consequence of his communityʻs status as a U.S. territory. “We do have a say-so, but it’s not going to be entertained,” he said. “We’re small compared to Uncle Sam, who makes the rules.”

Earthjustice is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline She governs a US territory. But she has no say in who mines its waters. on Sep 16, 2026.

On a spring day earlier this year, 10 men stood on the rooftop of a door manufacturing facility in the central Ukrainian town of Bila Tserkva, surveying the rows of solar panels that surrounded them. Since Russia invaded in 2022, the town has endured repeated attacks, triggering mass power outages. For the factory, which supplies doors to homes and businesses, keeping production going had become extremely challenging. The outages were particularly brutal in the winter, when limited power supplies led to rolling blackouts across the country.

Some days, the employees burned discarded wood in a fireplace to keep the warehouse warm. The facility has backup generators, but they were expensive to run. Tired of relying on a grid that was being routinely bombarded by Russian missiles, Yaroslav, the facility’s owner, decided to switch to solar earlier this year.

Switching to solar energy will enable them to “further expand our capacity and be a bit more independent from the general grid,” he said. “It will be cheaper, more economical, and more ecological.” (Yaroslav requested that Grist use only his first name and withhold details about the facility for fear of Russian retaliation.)

In the spring, he contacted Yasno, a private Ukrainian electricity and gas supplier, to install solar panels on his rooftop. Yasno’s clients pay for the panels to be installed, often with the help of a government program that covers some of the installation expenses. Ukraine created incentives to encourage businesses to switch to renewable energy, like the “Affordable Loans 5-7-9” program, which offers loans to purchase solar panels and other equipment. The preferential loans have interest rates of 5, 7, or 9 percent, depending on the type of business, and can cover up to 80 percent of the installation costs.

Yasno will ultimately decide where to station hundreds of solar panels on the warehouse rooftop and install them. The project is one of dozens that the company has undertaken across the country. In the past two years, it has installed solar panels at 117 sites with a combined capacity of 23 megawatts. The company paused its work for the first two years of the war, but resumed operations in the summer of 2024.

Workers install solar panels on the roof of a door manufacturing facility in Bila Tserkva, Ukraine, in 2026.
Anna Conkling

Volodymyr Hershtun, a service maintenance manager with Yasno who led the project in Bila Tserkva, said that Ukraine is rapidly developing its renewable energy portfolio in part because the country needs to be resilient as it continues to face a barrage of Russian attacks.

“The enemy is trying to destroy energy infrastructure, and we are building what is very easy to restore,” he said. “And those same systems can store electric energy.”

Before Russia’s invasion, Ukraine relied on a highly centralized electricity system dominated by nuclear power. More than half of the country’s electricity came from four nuclear power plants, while natural gas and coal generated roughly a quarter of the energy mix.

A damaged solar panel remains on a roof of a residential house after a Russian drone strike in August 2026 in Mykolaiv, Ukraine. Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images

Renewables made up a small share of the energy portfolio, though the country had been rapidly expanding its solar generation in the years leading up to the war. The surge was driven by the country’s “green tariff” program, which encouraged households and businesses to produce solar and wind power through guaranteed above-market payments for electricity. Ukrainian law guarantees the tariff until 2030, and lawmakers have described the program as a step toward integrating the country into the European Union’s energy market.

Those government incentives led Ukrainian businesses to install about 8 gigawatts of solar by 2022. But Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure over the past few years have upended that model. Since the invasion, missiles and drones have repeatedly struck power plants, substations, and transmission lines, leaving millions without electricity during the coldest months.

Roughly 30 percent of the installed solar capacity and most of the country’s 36 wind farms in the south were either destroyed, fell under Russian occupation, or are unaccounted for. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine has also been shut down and under Russian control since the invasion began. Given the legacy of Chernobyl, many Ukrainians live with the fear of another nuclear disaster.

The repeated attacks on the grid have caused prolonged power outages. Parts of Kyiv continue to ration electricity with scheduled power outages that can last for hours. Ukraine’s National Bank has said that Russia’s energy infrastructure attacks this year have worsened the electricity deficit assumptions, raising them from 3 percent to 6 percent.

With the vulnerabilities of relying on large, centralized power stations exposed, Ukraine has begun accelerating its shift toward smaller, distributed sources of electricity that are harder to knock offline. ​In 2025, the Solar Energy Association of Ukraine estimated that 1.5 GW of new solar capacity was built — almost double the prior year’s total — and it expects 2026 installations to at least match that pace.

“Renewables have become the very obvious choice for Ukraine when the full-scale invasion started and when Russia started deliberately and heavily attacking the energy infrastructure, especially the centralized generation facilities,” said Anastasia Vereshchynska, the director of the European-Ukrainian Energy Agency, a nonprofit that works with energy efficiency and renewable resources in Ukraine.

The investments are likely to help Ukrainians weather brutal winters. Last year, as temperatures dropped to -1 degree Fahrenheit, Russia’s bombardments caused widespread electricity and heating outages. Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, had just half the electricity supply it needed to weather the winter, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared a state of emergency.

Volodymyr, a taxi driver in Kyiv who asked that his last name be withheld for safety reasons, told Grist in May that during last winter’s attacks, his apartment building lost power, leaving him and his family without heating and hot water. Fortunately, he said, his apartment faced south and received sunlight most of the day, keeping it relatively warm.

In an attempt to minimize the effects of outages, the building’s management company has since decided to install solar panels on the roof to help keep the boiler turned on and operate the elevators. The installation is part of the 5-7-9 program.

“It’s a cool thing that the government covers at least part of the cost,” said Volodymyr. “In emergency cases, during power outages, you could turn to the solar panels. There is no harm to the planet. It’s a good thing.”

A photovoltaic power station at the industrial site of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 2025. Volodymyr Tarasov / Ukrinform / NurPhoto via Getty Images

The need for renewable energy is especially critical in communities closest to the war’s frontlines. As Russian forces advance, towns and villages are increasingly cut off from the energy grid as attacks destroy power lines, and the threat to maintenance workers makes repairs difficult or impossible. Some villages in particular have become so dangerous that repairs cannot be conducted, leaving residents without electricity and access to the outside world.

In those communities, volunteers and nongovernmental organizations have stepped in to install solar panels and battery systems that can power homes and businesses. ​Denny Ugorchuk, the founder of Kosmo Tabir, an NGO that works to help villages access solar energy, said that much of the funding for large projects comes from the help of international partners in the West, while local donations from Ukrainians help fund smaller projects. In one village, solar panels installed at a private residence gave a 50-year-old woman access to online university classes.

In Ukraine, solar panels are a “basic human right,” said Ugorchuk. “People should have access to communicate with one another — you can call a doctor, the police, and it helps you feel safe.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As Russia attacks Ukraine’s grid, solar offers a path to resilience on Sep 16, 2026.

Let’s put this summer’s extraordinary heat in perspective.

Last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed what so many Americans suspected, that the heat has been extra unbearable lately: This meteorological summer, which runs from June through August, was the hottest on record for the contiguous U.S., beating the previous champions of 1936 and 2021 by 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit. Compared to the average over the 20th century, this summer was 3 degrees hotter, with August specifically climbing even higher at 3.5 degrees. Across the pond, Europe has been suffering under one heat wave after another, which have killed more than 25,000 people this year.

Blame the sun for doing what it’s been doing for billions of years, but also blame human-driven climate change. According to an analysis released today by the research group Climate Central, this summer 293 million Americans, or 86 percent of the population, sweltered through at least 30 days of risky heat. (Meaning those that were hotter than 90 percent of previous days in a given area.) In Asia, some 2.8 billion people faced the same exposure. Of the top 10 most unusually hot countries globally, seven were in Europe, which remains the fastest-warming continent.  

“The numbers are just really mind-boggling,” said Kristina Dahl, vice president for science at Climate Central. “Extreme heat on its own can cause health problems, but it can also exacerbate a lot of underlying health conditions.”

Courtesy of Climate Central

This summer, the average American suffered about 26 days with temperatures strongly influenced by climate change, the report found, but some regions were hit harder than others. Four of the five states with the most risky days were in the west: New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, and Utah. Colorado’s plight has been especially glaring, as its summer temperatures were 4.4 degrees F above normal, followed by Utah and Nevada, both at 3.8 degrees.

Still, Europe takes the crown as the fastest-warming continent, and it certainly showed this summer. (As we reported last month, the heat pushed electrical grids to their breaking points, but solar power swooped in to save the day.) This is due in part to the region’s proximity to the Arctic, which is warming far faster than the rest of the planet — as more sea ice disappears, it exposes darker waters that absorb more of the sun’s energy. A stranger factor is an unintended side effect of clean air policies: While they’ve massively benefited public health, they’ve also reduced the atmospheric particulate matter that reflected solar energy back into space. “As we clean up our industrial processes and we have less aerosols in the atmosphere, which is the case in much of Europe, we’re unmasking that climate signal,” Dahl said. “Europe’s experiencing more of the full brunt of climate change because of that.”

Courtesy of Climate Central

In Europe and beyond, rapidly climbing temperatures are creating a public health nightmare that got even scarier this summer. Climate change isn’t just making heat waves hotter, it is extending them. At the same time, nights are warming faster than days. So with day after day of relentless heat, and less of a cooldown at night, the human body doesn’t get a chance to recover. “When you don’t have the ability to cool off at night, your body is storing some of that accumulated heat from the daytime and carrying it over into the next day,” Dahl said.

Extreme heat can kill on its own, of course, but it can also exacerbate heart and lung conditions. This is especially dangerous for farmworkers and other outdoor laborers, who return to work in the morning carrying the heat effects of yesterday’s shift. The elderly are also at high risk, as their bodies aren’t as efficient at cooling themselves. 

And now the world is staring at what could turn out to be an incredibly strong El Niño, the band of warm Pacific water extending from South America. This is adding still more heat to the atmosphere, and played a part in driving up temperatures this summer, the analysis found. But scientists worry that as El Niño continues to develop, next year’s summer could be even hotter. “It’s still an event that’s taking shape,” Dahl said, “so it’s nowhere near its peak.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Yes, this summer really was as hot as you think it was on Sep 16, 2026.

Stories for an emerging food system Channel Comment brendan 16th September 2026 Teaser Media

Irrigating U.S. crops prevents higher greenhouse gas emissions by avoiding land conversion, groundbreaking new research by Colorado State University shows.

Should I stay or should I go?

At the foot of Njeza Mountain in Zimbabwe’s Mutare district, newly discovered lithium deposits have turned a quiet, small-scale farming enclave into the next frontier of the country’s mineral rush.

But more than a year after residents learned of the project, it remains shrouded in secrecy and has become a source of constant anxiety for farmers living in villages surrounding the proposed mine.

“We don’t know much about this project,” says Kwadzanai Nicholas Mukundidza, a farmer in the area. “We were not consulted, and there is a lot of fear among farmers. These projects are linked to powerful people in [Zimbabwe’s ruling party] ZANU PF. We are afraid we might lose our land, our pastures, our rivers, and our water.”

Farmers were resettled in this part of the country in the early 1980s, during the first phase of Zimbabwe’s land reform program after independence from Britain.

The farmers have every reason to fear the new lithium mining project: Similar mining ventures elsewhere in the country have displaced communities from their lands, polluted water and air, and disrupted livelihoods.

Coveted Minerals, Poisoned Communities

As the world races to secure lithium for the clean energy transition, Zimbabwe has emerged as one of Africa’s largest suppliers, attracting billions of dollars in foreign investment. Chinese companies — many with close ties to Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s ruthless regime — have acquired much of the country’s lithium sector.

Although President Mnangagwa promised sweeping sociopolitical and economic reforms after seizing power from long-time dictator Robert Mugabe in a 2017 military coup, civic space continues to shrink. Activists, journalists, and community and political leaders have faced intimidation and arrests when challenging powerful political or commercial interests.

In lithium-mining communities this climate of fear has profound environmental consequences.

In Zimbabwe’s Buhera district, for example, Sabi Star Mine’s lithium project has already upended the lives of many local people. James Mupfumi, director of the investigative NGO the Centre for Research and Development, says drinking water around the lithium mine has been contaminated by chemical disposal.

Mupfumi says Zimbabwe’s Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Environment, Climate and Wildlife carried out a fact-finding mission on July 12, when community-based organizations such as Buhera Residents Network Trust gave oral evidence, including testimonies from affected villagers on the dust and water pollution and resulting health problems.

“Latest information from Tagarira [in Buhera] community leaders indicates stomach-related challenges from drinking contaminated water. The Tagarira community is the worst affected,” he says.

He adds that at least 120 30-ton trucks use the dust road daily in the area to transport lithium from Sabi Star to Beira through either Beira or Durban ports. Six villages spread along the 30-kilometer (18-mile) dusty stretch from Tagarira to Gaza in Buhera are the worst affected.

A truck carrying lithium from Sabi Star Mine in Buhera, Zimbabwe- Photo: Leonard Mabasa

“These villages have five schools, and an average of 5 to 7 pupils visit the clinic every day seeking treatment for various illnesses caused by dust pollution,” Mupfumi says.

He says there have been very few efforts at dust suppression by the mining company to alleviate the suffering of communities.

“Villages in Tagarira and Mukwasi are also affected by dust from blasting and crushing, and as soon as the dust is cleaned, it soon settles again,” he says.

Official Threats

Buhera Residents Network Trust — an organization representing the interests of local people —presented oral evidence before the Parliament Portfolio Committee on Environment, Climate and Wildlife raising concerns over environmental pollution, water insecurity, worker injuries, community displacement and mining operations at Sabi Star Mine.

The Trust’s leader, Leonard Mabasa, told legislators that the community was not opposed to mining itself and acknowledged that Zimbabwe’s mining sector remained a cornerstone of the national economy, with lithium among the country’s most valuable mineral exports.

 

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But the residents want to ensure that mining is carried out responsibly and that affected communities receive adequate protection. However, after the presentation President Mnangagwa’s spokesperson George Charamba came out swinging, warning the residents to be “very careful” and not “wreck a good thing for a dime.”

Chengxin Lithium, the company that operates Sabi Star Mine, has maintained that it undertook extensive community engagement before developing the project and provided adequate water, electricity, and sanitation facilities. The company says it compensated villagers who suffered from the mine’s activities.

Charamba’s threatening X post prompted a consortium of Zimbabwe NGOs to issue a statement condemning the intimidation and publicly rallying behind the Buhera residents.

“Communities living alongside mining operations are not enemies of development. They are constitutional rights holders entitled to safe environments, meaningful participation in decisions affecting their lives, and access to effective remedies where harm has occurred. Responsible mining cannot exist without transparency, accountability and respect for human rights,” the NGOs said in the statement.

I asked Mabasa whether he still feels safe after his presentation to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee. He says Zimbabwe Parliamentary privileges — special rights and powers granted to lawmakers so they can do their jobs safely and independently — should protect him from any threats during and after the submissions before Portfolio Committee on Environment Climate and Wildlife, “[But] what happens after that usually becomes too personal and uncontrollable. Smear campaign can make you feel insecure. Certain actions are shrewdly done to psychologically wean you off from the struggle. Safety is delicate. Physical and digital security can be issues of great concern which need not to be breached.”

Community Rights

Mabasa says the community needs to be aware of their economic social cultural rights — which include housing, health, education, and fair work — so compensation on relocation is anchored on “Free Prior Informed Consent.”

“I also think that legal support ecosystem is key for communities to be able to understand the terms and conditions of voluminous documents produced during the … Environmental Social Impact Assessment,” he says. This legal requirement, previously known as an Environmental Impact Assessment, evaluates how major projects affect ecosystems, health, and communities before they start.

Donald Nyarota, communications and advocacy officer for the Centre for Natural Resource Governance (CNRG), a Zimbabwe-based NGO, says they have observed a degree of fear and reluctance among community members in lithium producing areas to speak openly about their concerns.

“These concerns include environmental pollution, loss of agricultural lands, loss of livelihoods, water and security, particularly displacement,” Nyarota says. “These are issues that communities are afraid to speak about because [they’re linked to] very powerful government officials. Sometimes they just say ‘government officials’ — they don’t even want to name them because of the fear that they could be victimized and conflict with these powerful interests associated with mining operations.”

At CNRG, Nyarota says, they’re addressing these issues through creating spaces where communities can raise their concerns collectively and safely under their “do no harm principle,” where they protect the identity and maintain anonymity of the communities.

Nyarota says they place a lot of emphasis on community-led evidence gathering, where communities send evidence anonymously through their safe and secure social networks.

A Just Transition

Mupfumi says Zimbabwe requires a just energy transition for its green minerals such as lithium.

“There is a need to secure the supply chain from corruption and criminality that are negatively impacting the rights of host communities. These negative impacts also pose a direct threat to climate action,” he says.

Political elites’ participation in the industry, like what is happening in Buhera, Mupfumi says, seeks to mask these violations and shield extraction from accountability.

“It is therefore important that global measures, such as supply-chain exclusion under clean energy laws, are applied to companies operating in Zimbabwe,” he says.

He adds that the processed lithium from these companies enters the global electric vehicle and green-energy battery supply chains, so markets and laws must prevent automotive companies from receiving green subsidies or selling vehicles where their raw materials are linked to human-rights abuses or toxic pollution.

“For communities to fully benefit from lithium resources, extraction must be linked to human rights protection, environmental accountability, transparent supply chains and meaningful community benefits, rather than allowing communities to bear the environmental and social costs of extraction while global markets benefit from the resource,” Mupfumi says.

He says Buhera demonstrates that communities must recognize lithium as a critical mineral whose extraction should contribute to transforming host communities in line with a just energy transition, rather than leaving them to bear the social and environmental costs.

“This makes community unity, transparency and accountability critical, particularly in securing fair benefits, protecting rights and ensuring responsible extraction. Communities must also recognize their vulnerability under Zimbabwe’s insecure land regime, where state power and corporate interests can weaken their bargaining position,” he says.

At the same time, communities should organize early and seek independent legal support on compensation and relocation, ensuring that displacement only occurs when livelihoods, living conditions and adequate compensation have been properly addressed.

“Community exchange visits, such as the one already facilitated by CRD, remain critical in enabling communities to share experiences, build solidarity and learn from each other’s struggles,” Mupfumi says.

“Ultimately,” says CNRG’s Nyarota, “the issue is not whether the communities support or oppose mining. It’s about whether mining takes place in a way that respects their rights, protects the environment, and ensures that they have meaningful voices in decision-making on issues that are affecting their lands and livelihoods.”

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

Anthrax in Zimbabwe: Caused by Oppression, Worsened by Climate Change

The post How Zimbabwe’s Regime Is Fueling a Dirty Lithium Boom appeared first on The Revelator.