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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.

Human rights lawyer Julian Aguon explores how warming threatens not only the survival of small island nations but also the traditions of their Indigenous peoples. He is citing these injuries in legal actions, including in a major victory at the International Court of Justice last year.

Read more on E360 →

Several hundred scientists, government officials, and environmentalists gathered for an unusual two-day conference in Newport, Oregon, last week, entirely focused on a single species: gray whales.

It was an urgent meeting. The number of gray whales along the U.S. West Coast has recently plummeted by the thousands, falling by half in the last decade. The leading theory is that climate change has been causing the whales’ food source in the Arctic to dwindle. And the situation seems to be getting worse. This past summer, 187 gray whales washed up dead on beaches across the region. So far, the Trump administration has largely ignored the problem. 

The attendees at the conference, who came from across North America, were there to share as much as they knew about the animals. Bill Keener, a researcher at the Marine Mammal Center, a nonprofit in California, said it was inspiring to see so many scientists come together to tackle the issue. 

But the atmosphere in the rooms was tense, others said. Gray whales have been off the list of animals protected by the Endangered Species Act for decades. And the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — whose scientists participated in the meetings — recently missed the legal deadline to respond to a petition to relist them. At the end of August, three conservation groups filed a notice of their intent to sue, which would kick off a lawsuit if the Trump administration doesn’t respond to the petition within two months. 

“People were walking on eggshells there,” said Mark Palmer, who helps lead a project protecting marine mammals at the Earth Island Institute, one of the groups behind the potential lawsuit. Presenters at the conference were careful to focus on science and avoid politics, he said, adding that the event organizers “made it very clear from the beginning that they would not discuss policy issues.”

That’s likely because many of the attendees were scientists who work in the government, or depend on federal funding in some way, Palmer said. Since taking office in 2025, the Trump administration has made sweeping cuts to staff and funding at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, to better align with partisan beliefs. It has also proposed eliminating the Marine Mammal Commission, which helps other parts of the government protect animals like whales, and it recently rolled back habitat protections from the Endangered Species Act. There is a backlog of some 400 species currently awaiting a federal listing decision.

“Obviously they are very nervous about what the administration could do to them,” Palmer said. In addition to failing to respond to the petition, NOAA is several months late in releasing the count of gray whale births this year. “Yes, they’ve been dragging their feet, but also the administration has been targeting this funding,” he said. The agency declined to comment in response to Grist’s request.

In many ways, gray whales’ fortunes have long been decided by humans. Starting in the 19th century, commercial whaling drove their numbers to historic lows, but bans on the practice, along with federal endangered species protections beginning in the 1970s, helped the population along the U.S. West Coast more than double. Their recovery was so strong that, in 1994, U.S. officials decided to remove them from the endangered species list.

Now, sharing a planet with humans appears to have reversed their fortunes again. Those found on the U.S. side of the Pacific are known as eastern gray whales, and they are distinct from the western population, found near East Asia and Russia. They feed on small crustaceans in the Arctic waters near Alaska in the summer, and then swim down to Mexico to give birth in the winter — one of the longest migrations of any mammal. But climate change is heating up the Arctic nearly four times faster than the rest of the planet, and the melting ice has led to a number of cascading changes that have caused the whales’ prey to sharply decline. Scientists think hungry gray whales are beginning their migrations with too little energy in reserve, leading to fewer births and more deaths. 

“The science on this is perfectly clear,” said Richard Steiner, a marine conservation biologist who initially submitted the petition to relist gray whales. “As goes Arctic sea ice, so goes the gray whale population. And Arctic sea ice will continue its decline throughout this century.” If humans don’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions that warm the planet, he said, the consequences could be “apocalyptic” for gray whales, as well as many other species on Earth.

Gray whales on the other side of the Pacific are struggling too, with only a few hundred remaining. And the Atlantic gray whale disappeared centuries ago, likely due to whaling. The loss was “the only extinction of a whale in human history,” Steiner said. “Thus, we know this particular whale population is extremely vulnerable to anthropogenic impact.”

Experts from the Marine Mammal Center and the California Academy of Sciences pull in a gray whale carcass found in the San Francisco Bay for examination.
Clara Field / San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

Malnutrition may be making it harder for whales to withstand threats along their routes, like collisions with ships or getting tangled in fishing gear. It may also be pushing more whales to forage for food in dangerous stretches of their route — like the San Francisco Bay Area, where scientists have been tracking an increased number of whale strandings in recent years. At least a fifth — and possibly up to half — of all whales that enter the San Francisco Bay end up being killed by ships. This summer, 13 were discovered dead in the area, but scientists say many more are sinking before they can be counted. 

U.S. government scientists estimate that eastern gray whales peaked in 2016 with some 25,000 to 30,000 individuals. But in the last decade, the population crashed to about half that, with estimates ranging from 11,700 to 17,000. Normally, a thousand calves are born each year. But last year, scientists estimated just 85 births — a record low. 

Relisting gray whales as an endangered species is an important first step, said Miyoko Sakashita, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental nonprofit, who is leading the impending lawsuit against the Trump administration. Once a species is formally protected, federal agencies are generally required to develop a recovery plan. Listing also opens the door to federal funding for monitoring, research, and efforts to protect or restore habitat. That could “buy us some time for us to solve that bigger climate change problem,” Sakashita said. 

If the Trump administration decides not to relist the whales, Sakashita said, the plaintiffs would file another lawsuit and probably end up in court anyway. “The law says they have to use the best available science,” when deciding which species are endangered, she said. “When we look at this terrible population decline, it seems like there cannot be any other answer than to proceed forward with a threatened or endangered listing.”

NOAA has released estimates indicating that whale populations rebounded by roughly 5,000 whales in the last year. Palmer, of Earth Island Institute, is among those who are skeptical of these numbers. Especially considering the low number of calves born last year, “it’s just physically impossible for gray whales to produce that many animals in such a short time,” he said.

Many groups are racing to protect whales, even without an endangered species listing. One promising approach starts with asking ships to slow down near hotspots of whale activity — a step that can significantly increase the odds that a whale will survive a collision, said Rachel Rhodes, a scientist with the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory at the University of California in Santa Barbara. She leads Whale Safe, a large project that has been mapping whales in shipping lanes by using sonar, thermal cameras, and satellite tags. 

In an ideal world, ships would be able to avoid whales entirely. But waterways are often too busy and confined for that to be possible, she said. “So the next best thing is to ask ships to slow down to 10 knots or less.” 

Similar speed limits are mandatory for large vessels on the East Coast, but remain voluntary on the West Coast. Another California project, Blue Whales Blue Skies, has had success in paying and publicly praising shipping companies whose ships slow down. But some vessels, particularly cruise ships, continue to speed through these areas. 

“The scientists have done their job in reporting the dire situation for gray whales,” said Steiner. “Now it’s time for the policymakers to put that science to work in protecting them as much as possible.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Gray whales are starving as the Arctic warms. Will the US protect them? on Sep 15, 2026.

A fifth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions are linked to international trade in goods and services, a new tracker shows, spotlighting a little-studied issue that researchers say should be tackled by the UN climate process.

Currently, as part of the Paris Agreement, every country is responsible for counting and reducing the planet-heating emissions that are produced within its territory. Manufacturing countries, for example, may have high emissions even if what they make is exported for consumption elsewhere.

But new analysis from the European Climate Foundation (ECF) and climate consultancy Matière, based on the tracker’s data, shows that some countries have a high footprint of “imported emissions” from goods and services they ship in. These emissions are often ignored in the places where the products are consumed because they are not formally counted under greenhouse gas inventories.

In the European Union, for example, while domestic emissions have declined since 2015, imported emissions have remained unchanged, the analysis shows. In some countries, like Austria or Sweden, they are as high as the country’s entire annual carbon footprint.

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Former EU lead climate negotiator Jacob Werksman said that under the Paris Agreement, these traded emissions are accounted for in the countries where they are originally produced, but importing countries can also take responsibility for their consumption.

“It starts with a wide recognition by many jurisdictions around the world that we need to know the carbon content of these products, and we then need to agree what is a fair, effective, transparent and relatively easy-to-implement way of measuring that carbon in traded products,” he told a launch event for the trade emissions tracker, which contains data for different countries, sectors and gases.

Trade and its role in addressing climate change has become a higher priority at UN climate talks after a push led by emerging economies including China, India and South Africa led to the first trade and climate change dialogue held this year at the mid-year session in Bonn.

At the upcoming COP31 UN summit in Antalya, some voluntary initiatives like the Brazil-led Integrated Forum on Climate Change and Trade are expected to continue, but the issue does not feature in Türkiye’s Action Agenda of climate initiatives and formal negotiations are not scheduled on the topic.

China: the world’s top emissions exporter

As a manufacturing powerhouse, China ranks first in the new tracker as the world’s top-emitting country, but the data shows that a large chunk of the country’s carbon emissions – an amount larger than Brazil’s entire annual carbon footprint – are linked to products that are exported and consumed abroad.

Russia, Brazil, the US and the EU rank as the top destinations for Chinese trade-related emissions, which are mostly linked to components for power generation, basic metals like copper and lead, and non-metallic minerals like graphite and phosphorus.

Yet China is also the world’s top emissions importer, related mostly to agricultural products, fossil fuels and minerals brought from the US, the EU, Japan and India, among others. The US ranks second by a close margin, with both countries importing about 1.6 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent.

China’s industrial engine starts to break its fossil fuel habit

Richard Baron, ECF’s industrial policy and trade director, said Chinese clean energy products are key for reducing emissions around the world, adding that Europe is “not able to do without those technologies” for its energy transition.

“China has an emissions trading system that counts CO2 differently there. But if China and the EU were to agree on some kind of translation mechanism to say ‘this is how we measure it’, and companies can understand the protocol to navigate both markets, that would set the tone for a lot of other conversations,” he said at the platform’s launch event last week.

The analysis suggests that if the EU and China aligned their climate requirements for products, the resulting standards could influence trade flows representing about 7% of global emissions.

Baron said there’s “a plethora” of multilateral spaces to hold these discussions, including the climate and trade dialogue at the UN climate talks or the Climate Club at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which seeks to cut industrial emissions.

Trade breaks into agenda of UN climate talks – but will it have teeth?

Controversial trade measures

Instruments like the Europe’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) – a recent piece of legislation that penalises emissions-heavy imported products – are one tool that could be used to address trade-related emissions, said Antoine Oger, executive director at the Institute for European Environmental Policy.

He said a significant portion of imported emissions in Europe are already covered by CBAM, as it includes sectors like cement, iron and steel, fertilisers and aluminium. This then allows the EU “to engage in constructive dialogue with our trade partners”, he added.

An employee of Dirostahl, a medium-size forging steel firm that produces large parts, works on a glowing steel element that has been heated in a classic natural gas-fired furnace to 1,200C in Remscheid, Germany, June 30, 2025. (Photo: REUTERS/Thilo Schmuelgen) An employee of Dirostahl, a medium-size forging steel firm that produces large parts, works on a glowing steel element that has been heated in a classic natural gas-fired furnace to 1,200C in Remscheid, Germany, June 30, 2025. (Photo: REUTERS/Thilo Schmuelgen)

But across diplomatic summits, including at UN climate talks, emerging economies have pushed back heavily against the CBAM and other trade measures. The most recent BRICS declaration adopted on Saturday by 11 such countries – including China, India and Russia – condemns “protectionism under the guise of environmental objectives”.

The declaration calls for the “elimination of such unlawful measures”, which they argue have “far-reaching negative implications for the human rights, including the rights to development, health and food security” of vulnerable communities.

“The question of responsibility is a political question,” Oger said. “These emissions exist – they are emitted somewhere to make a product that will be consumed elsewhere. So you can debate responsibility but the idea is for the two parts to recognise there’s a problem.”

The aim, he added “is not to point fingers, but to accept this is a reality of our emissions profiles and ask what we can do about it”.

The post International trade linked to 20% of global emissions – but imports ignored appeared first on Climate Home News.

The EU has placed competitiveness, industrial renewal, and strategic autonomy at the centre of its agenda. But will these ambitions support the green and social transition, or become a pretext for deregulation and a weakening of Social Europe? The General Director of the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), Andrew Watt, explains what this changing political landscape could mean for workers and trade unions and social policy – and for the kind of economic model Europe is building.

Seden Anlar: Competitiveness, strategic autonomy, industrial policy and deregulation are rising up the EU’s political agenda, while the bloc is also navigating war, energy shocks, trade tensions, competition with China, and growing uncertainty around the United States. Where do you see Europe within these overlapping pressures, and what kind of transformation are they driving within the EU?

Andrew Watt: Europe is changing because the world is changing. There are longer-term trends driving that change, like demography, decarbonisation, technology, and now AI. Then there are shorter-term developments: war, the dislocation of the global political system, the behaviour of powers like Russia, but also our erstwhile ally, the United States, and renewed inflationary shocks.

For populations, policymakers and trade unions, most of these changes are initially perceived as threats. They constrain our fiscal resources, for instance. We spent a lot of public money getting out of the Covid crisis and dealing with the inflation crisis. That reduces the size of the cake available today, for example for social policy.

Then there is the demand from the US and from many Europeans for a more autonomous European defence policy, and that is going to cost money. We also have the burdens associated with ageing. So if you take the fiscal situation as a focal point for all these things, you can see how pressure is building in the system. We are going to have to face up to some trade-offs and make some difficult decisions.

But I don’t think it is all negative. Some of the responses we are seeing – industrial policy, a more critical attitude towards trade, a greater role for governments and perhaps, hopefully, for the European Union itself – are things that some of us have wanted for a long time.

There is that old story about Europe progressing through crises. It is often only when crises come that the political space opens up to take steps we think are anyway necessary .

How is this broader transformation affecting Europe’s economic model? Are we moving towards a genuinely different model of EU economic governance, or are older political-economic cycles returning in new language?

We have seen some considerable changes, and we are seeing pressure for further change. The open question is whether it is going to be enough.

If we understand economic governance as both what the EU itself can and cannot do in economic policy, including through the EU budget, and the framework within which national governments conduct economic policy, then there have been important changes. We had NextGenerationEU and the Recovery and Resilience Facility, which was a substantial investment package. It broke new ground in terms of European-level borrowing, with money distributed to member states to enable them to invest when they otherwise would not have been able to, and the debt being paid back at the European level.

This was actually a big deal, but it was temporary. What we need is something like that, or even something more ambitious, on a permanent basis, and there is considerable resistance to that. We just about managed to get political support for NextGenerationEU on the understanding, in some capitals – I won’t mention any by name – that it had to be temporary. Making something like that permanent is really a sort of Rubicon. There are some decisive member states – all member states are important, of course, but some are more important than others – where there is resistance. I would hope that we take that step, but whether we do or not remains to be seen. The fact that the market for US government bonds has come under considerable pressure could, and I believe should, serve as a window of opportunity here.

We have also seen changes to the national fiscal rules. They have been revised in a good direction, but still not enough. The decisive thing we still do not have is the ability for governments to invest and to borrow in order to invest without coming up against legal constraints.

There is now an opening for more spending, but it is for defence spending. Defence may also be necessary, but we do not have that same opening for other forms of investment, and the multipliers from defence spending are much lower than for civilian public investment projects.

When you say Europe needs more investment, what kind of investment are you talking about? What is holding it back, and how could Europe unlock it?

The first distinction is the most basic one, between public investment and private investment. Public investment is much smaller, but it is important because, if it is done intelligently, it can drive private investment. We are no longer in the bad old days after the euro crisis when public investment was very depressed. Things have improved slightly, but still not enough to really move the dial.

Business investment is much bigger, so we also have to think about what gives the private sector an incentive to invest. The message we are getting is that there is a heavy regulatory burden and, if we cast that off, companies will invest. I don’t think that is going to happen.

What is holding back investment in the short term? Energy prices are a huge problem. The breakdown of trading relations is another. We also have a genuine competitiveness issue, which is with China.

But what I think is less well discussed is the internal situation, particularly internal demand. Investment that expands productive capacity will only happen if entrepreneurs are convinced there will be demand for the additional products. Europe’s population is now hardly growing at all and is set to shrink, so that is another structural factor holding companies back from investing. We are unfortunately getting locked into a pessimistic, self-reinforcing cycle. That is why the public sector can sometimes kick-start a more virtuous circle and get us out of a vicious one; public investment “crowds in” private investment.

Another factor is regulatory uncertainty. Look at the constant debates in the automobile sector about whether, from 2035, petrol and diesel engines are going to be allowed or not – backwards and forwards. That sort of uncertainty is killing investment.

Other issues include the way investment is financed in Europe and the lack of a venture-capital market. So it is not a simple matter where you pull one lever and suddenly get investment.

What is holding back investment in the short term? Energy prices are a huge problem. The breakdown of trading relations is another. We also have a genuine competitiveness issue, which is with China.

We need to do several things. We need a bigger role for the public sector at the national level, and major European initiatives on the green transition, technology, and infrastructure. We also need investment in schools, hospitals and care services, in addition to classical infrastructure, grids, and interconnections between countries. In technology, we need to build up our own indigenous tech sectors. That is where we really need investment.

We also need more regulatory certainty and, in some cases, support for companies. If European industries need protection from aggressive Chinese competition based on excessive subsidisation, then I would support that. I am not a China basher, but we do need to protect our industries where those distortions exist. And this is where I think we need to see the different orders of magnitude. The whole political system, the media, and the Brussels bubble are investing so much time and energy in the deregulation agenda, which is of more marginal importance.

Even if regulatory simplification is successful on its own terms, I don’t really think anybody believes – and I certainly don’t believe – that it is going to deliver the scale of investment Europe needs. It might reduce some costs, but it is not going to move the dial.

The main point of the Draghi report was that we need around 750-800 billion euros a year in additional investment. Even if we got half of that, it would make a big difference if it were done effectively, in the right places, and in the right sectors. How is regulatory simplification going to deliver that investment? I don’t think it will.

The EU’s growing focus on competitiveness, strategic autonomy, and security is arguably putting its social agenda at risk. Do you see these agendas as compatible? And is it still realistic to think of Social Europe as a structuring political project in this new context?

There are certainly political forces using the competitiveness argument to make Europe less social and to weaken it. But that doesn’t have to be the case.

Let me say a few words about competitiveness. If you use the word in a businesslike sense, Europe is competitive. We have had a current-account surplus for many years. We have no problem paying our way in the world. So this chain of thought that goes, “Europe is not competitive, therefore we have to cut pensions, cut childcare allowances, or make people work longer hours” just doesn’t fly from a very basic point of view.

The more useful understanding of competitiveness – the one Draghi and that most sensible economists use – is really about productivity. We should not get obsessed with the idea that a country is like a company, because it isn’t. Competitiveness is about productivity, living standards, and what we can afford as societies. If we don’t have productivity growth, the cake is not growing. And if the cake is not growing, we will have distributional conflicts that are very difficult to resolve.

I very much believe the labour movement and trade unions need to play a role in the debate about how to raise productivity, and many of them do. We have evidence in our research that when you involve workers in decision-making – through works councils, at board level, through collective bargaining, or at sectoral and national level – you get better outcomes. It is not hard to understand why. If you involve people in processes of structural change, for example restructuring or the green transition, the outcomes will be better. There will be less resistance and less conflict, and productivity can grow faster. That is one example of how a sensible competitiveness or productivity agenda goes hand in hand with good social policy.

There are numerous other examples. Think about childcare, education, and healthcare. It is perhaps an instrumental way to think about these things, but from an economic perspective they also affect how productive workers are, how often they can go to work, how much work they miss because they are ill, and how productive they are when they are working.

One of the main ways the competitiveness agenda is manifesting in this mandate is through the simplification-deregulation agenda. What risks do you see this creating for Social Europe, workers’ rights, and labour protections? And how should trade unions respond?

I think we can have a debate about simplification in some cases, but deregulation should be out of the question. That is essentially also the line the trade unions take. We have sectoral bodies and interprofessional bodies where business and labour are represented and can work through the issues that make regulation unnecessarily complex. European Parliament committees can do that as well. That is all fine.

What concerns the trade unions, and us at the ETUI, is the speed with which these things are now being pushed through. There can be over-regulation, or cases where the same thing is covered by two different directives. Nobody wants things to be more complicated than they have to be. But we need to understand that regulation was put there for a purpose.

We can have a debate about simplification in some cases, but deregulation should be out of the question. That is essentially also the line the trade unions take.

It could be that that purpose no longer exists. For instance, we do not need a regulation for steam trains if we no longer have steam trains. Some regulations simply become obsolete. But usually the public purpose is still there, whether it is health and safety, or protecting the environment, workers, or pregnant women. So if you want to weaken or remove a regulation, you need to answer the question: what about that public purpose? How is it still going to be achieved?

Unfortunately, I don’t think we are really having that detailed debate at the moment. It would have to be a very granular, detailed, and time-consuming debate, and instead these things are being pushed through the institutions very quickly. It also makes no sense to talk about regulation simply in quantitative terms. Business lobbies champion ideas like “one in, one out”: every time you introduce one regulation, you have to throw out an old one. That is absurd.

The question should be: what public priorities do we want that the market will not provide without regulation? And then, of course, we can discuss how we achieve those objectives without imposing unnecessarily high costs.

Europe is again talking about strategic industries and reindustrialisation – areas in which trade unions historically played an important role, both in industrial development and in shaping workers’ rights. At a time when collective-bargaining coverage has declined considerably, what might this renewed industrial agenda mean for trade unions and their capacity for renewal and mobilisation?

Following the Covid-19 pandemic and the energy shocks and highly politicised trade relations of recent years, we are simply in a different world. In this context, the renewed focus on industry is welcome, but we should not take it too far because most European workers are in services. That said, industry still has an outsized economic importance. It matters for exports, it is often where productivity growth is generated, and a lot of service employment is built around the industrial sector. It also has strategic significance, including in relation to defence.

For trade unions, industry matters because it is a big part of their history and, in many countries, where they remain relatively strong. Large workplaces are easier to organise than many fragmented service-sector workplaces, and practices of industrial relations have developed over decades – even centuries to some extent – in which trade unions have a recognised voice at the table. You have national and European works councils as well as board-level representation. Union density tends to be higher than in services, although the public sector is of course now extremely important for the trade-union movement as well.

The unions want to play a role in this new industrial-policy debate, and we as a research institute want to support that. This is also closely linked to trade and China. I said before that Europe does not really have a classical competitiveness problem except vis-à-vis China. We have a very large trade deficit with China – roughly one billion euros a day, or around 360 billion euros in 2025. Germany, for instance, had trade surpluses with China for many years but now also runs deficits.

That is partly linked to Chinese policies which, in my view, need to change. China needs to import more and address over-subsidisation in some industries, such as the car industry. It needs to pay its workers more or revalue the currency. There are lots of different steps it could take, and Europe should be negotiating with China about them. But I do not want to bash China. China is also very important for the green transition. I am fine with cheap solar panels coming in and, to some extent, cheaper cars. But we also need a chance to export. That is what trade is for: countries import things others are good at producing and export things they themselves are good at producing, and everybody benefits. But China deliberately restricts imports.

We have been losing manufacturing employment. We lost around 220,000 manufacturing jobs between the average of 2024 and 2025. That is a lot, and that can’t continue.

At the same time, we do not want Fortress Europe. We do not want to stop the green technologies we need from coming in. What has changed is the naïve faith that was dominant in Brussels for decades that we simply need free trade, and everything will be fine. That is gone, and that also creates opportunities for trade unions.

Unions are worried about forced labour, deforestation and the oppression of organised labour in some of our trading partners. They want to use trade as a lever to improve conditions in other countries. That has become more possible, and I think that is an important development.

There has long been a wider debate about the limits of GDP as a measure of economic and social progress, including whether it adequately captures dimensions such as wellbeing, care, and ecological sustainability. Given your point about how the economic “cake” is distributed, how should we think about growth and productivity in an era of extreme wealth concentration and weak redistribution?

Let me split that into two things and first focus on the beyond-GDP question.

We have a long tradition at the institute of work on just transition, and I intend to continue that. Growth is not the solution to everything. What we need, I think, is qualitative growth and investment-driven growth, because that is also a path to decarbonisation. It is easy to become depressed about the climate crisis, but if we have a hope, I do think technology is an important part of it. Technology comes through scientific processes and research, but it only changes economic outcomes if it is actually invested in and becomes part of the capital stock of the economy.

So I am not a “go-for-growth” person in a traditional sense. But I am also very clear that I am not in the degrowth camp. Whether we like it or not, if the cake is not growing, distributional conflicts build up. Politics becomes poisonous: it is you against me; either you have it or I do. If we want decent pensions and we want to take care of elderly people with a shrinking labour force, we need productivity growth and some economic growth.

But the distribution question is absolutely central. Think about comparisons between the United States and European countries. Even if GDP per capita in the United States is higher, people work longer hours and have shorter holidays, and income is much more unequally distributed. So, the benefit for the average person – or, more precisely, the median citizen or median worker – can look very different. How GDP is distributed is therefore absolutely vital.

Whether we like it or not, if the cake is not growing, distributional conflicts build up. Politics becomes poisonous: it is you against me; either you have it or I do.

We are seeing rising concentrations of wealth and income within the corporate sector, more in the US than Europe, but increasingly here too. That is not only an economic problem; it is a political problem. People with enormous amounts of money have outsized political influence. Europe has stricter rules around party financing than the United States, but wealthy people still have influence. They buy newspaper publishers, for example.

Digital services and technology also tend towards monopoly, and wherever you have a monopoly you tend to get concentrations of wealth. That is bad socially, but it can also be bad economically.

And that brings us to AI. If AI improves productivity and those gains are distributed through the economy, then it can be a very good thing. We become more productive, living standards rise, and maybe some boring tasks that people do not like doing can be done by AI. If the gains are shared, people have higher wages and use that income to buy other services, and you can maintain full employment. That is more or less how the positive scenario works.

But that won’t happen if the gains from AI become concentrated among a handful of billionaires or trillionaires, some tech workers, and shareholders. In that case, aggregate demand breaks down, you do not get the corresponding expansion in other services, and you can expect unemployment and social strife.

There is also a more specific labour-market issue beginning to emerge. It looks as if AI may be hitting entry-level jobs – not only in coding, but office positions, skilled jobs, and some professional occupations. Some studies point to this outcome, and there is evidence that fears around AI are quite concentrated among people who are just starting their careers. At the same time, those who already know the ropes may benefit from AI. They can use it to become more productive and perhaps increase their earnings.

So, once again, the question is about distribution: who benefits from the technology and who carries the costs?

Earlier you touched on the challenges posed by Europe’s changing demographics. While ageing societies and shrinking workforces are usually framed as a crisis, tighter labour markets could actually also give workers greater bargaining power, perhaps even strengthen collective bargaining. How do you see those two sides playing out, both now and in the future?

There is a joke going around about a young person who goes to a job interview. At the end, instead of the employer saying, “We’ll call you,” the candidate says: “I’ll put you on my shortlist.” It is a joke, but for certain sectors and skills there is something to it. People can afford to be a bit more choosy. For teachers and healthcare workers, for example, large cohorts are leaving, and employers need people. The same applies to some parts of industry.

This can be good for job quality as well. Even in countries we think of as having high standards, there are sectors – notably care – where working conditions are pretty bad: low pay, long hours, and physically demanding work. We are already seeing that employers who want to keep people in these sectors or attract new workers have to pay higher wages and offer more flexible arrangements, including working hours that make it easier for people with caring responsibilities to remain in the labour market. So, tighter labour markets can also bring positive changes.

We are still relatively early in this EU mandate, and political agendas are likely to evolve over the coming years. Looking ahead to the next few years, what do you think is likely to happen? What would success for Social Europe look like from the ETUI’s perspective? What concerns you most, and where do you see reasons for optimism?

We have to get through some short-term issues first, and they are going to be decisive. If geopolitical conflicts drag on or relations between the major powers deteriorate further, things are going to get very hard. We already face big challenges, and I don’t think we should be under any illusions about that.

We have done some scenario analysis that actually looks beyond five years, towards 2040. Even some of the “muddling through” scenarios for Europe and Social Europe, to be very frank, do not look great. So we need to do things. We cannot simply continue with the status quo.

In that sense, I think Draghi did us a service, even though I don’t agree with everything in his report. He essentially said: look, if we don’t get our act together and move beyond the status quo and the constant “I can’t agree to this, I can’t agree to that,” the outlook is not good. We need some kind of social pact: agreements between member states with different views, between capital and labour, and across political divides.

Maybe it sounds slightly naïve, but people need to recognise that things can get worse and find ways of overcoming some of their differences and making concrete proposals for moving forward. Because if we don’t, things will go downhill. I do think there is scope for a more positive scenario. If we get some tailwinds at the global level and international tensions decline, some of the pressure around huge increases in defence spending could ease.

Technology is another source of optimism. Look at how dramatically the price of solar panels and batteries has declined. I think the price of electric vehicles will also come down considerably. If AI is managed well and fulfils its expectations, I think it can be a force for good. It may not be, but it can be. Higher productivity growth could help us address some fiscal problems and some of the problems connected with demographics.

There are avenues forward. But to be frank, most of them require a stronger European level. Unless we get something like what we had with NextGenerationEU – some sort of central capacity to invest in our common future – it is going to be hard. We need to face up to the fact that even quite large European countries are small on a global scale, and they are becoming smaller in terms of their share of global GDP and their political influence. We need to overcome that fragmentation.

We have seen some positive signs of that happening, but also some limits. We are pushing up against those limits now with the idea of a common European fund or a bigger EU budget. There is a lot of resistance, but we need to overcome it.

So, I am always cautiously optimistic. There is the famous Gramsci quote, “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will”. That is certainly a sort of motto for me personally and, I think, for the institute. We need to do what we can. We need to point things out, make proposals and hope they are picked up by trade unions, political parties, opinion-makers and the media. That is what we do. That is the game we play every day. And it is the game we are trying to win.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length. Some answers have been reordered thematically.

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