B4. Radical Ecology

This article How 3 local BDS campaigns won the divestment of millions in Israeli bonds was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

On Nov. 19, 2025, members of Break the Bonds NC, a coalition of Palestine Solidarity organizations, spoke at a North Carolina Investment Authority board meeting to demand the state pension fund divest from all Israeli government bonds. Immediately after the meeting, the state treasurer’s office emailed a link of the pension’s holdings to Ari Rosenberg, a lead Break the Bonds NC organizer. The $6.7 million in Israeli bonds that had been there in June were no longer in the portfolio. 

Rosenberg was in disbelief that only five months since the campaign’s launch, the state had already completely divested. But after receiving another email from the treasury confirming that the state pension fund no longer held any Israeli bonds, her disbelief gave way to elation. “I cried really hard,” Rosenberg said. “And then I recorded a message to my comrades being like, ‘You won’t believe this.’” 

She wasn’t alone. A few weeks prior, organizers in Minnesota and Michigan received the same good news: that state investment bodies had divested from or declined to reinvest in Israeli bonds. In total, the three states dropped approximately $27 million in bonds. 

But Israeli bonds remain a contentious issue in many parts of the country, including New York City, where organizers are pressuring comptroller Mark Levine not to reinvest after former comptroller Brad Lander divested in 2023. Mayor Zohran Mamdani opposes reinvestment, setting the stage for a potential showdown.

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While the North Carolina campaign targeted sovereign debt bonds, which are issued directly by the Israeli government, organizers in New York, Michigan and Minnesota targeted another financial instrument, known as “Israel Bonds.” 

This investment vehicle originated in the aftermath of the 1948 Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe,” when Israel was founded on the rubble of ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages. During a time of economic insecurity, Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, conceived of a financial instrument designed specifically for American Jews to materially support Zionism. 

Militarized occupation and genocide are expensive: The Israeli Defense Forces have spent $60 billion on military operations since Oct. 7, 2023. To foot the bill, the Development Corporation for Israel, or DCI, a de facto wing of the state that brokers Israel Bond sales, sold more than $1 billion in bonds during the 30 days following Oct. 7. Sales totaled a record $5.7 billion by October 2025, and just last month, Palm Beach County purchased another $350 million in DCI Bonds, boosting its Israel Bonds portfolio to $1 billion. Additionally, between October 2023 and January 2025, the Israeli Ministry of Finance raised $19.4 billion for its war chest through sovereign debt bonds — the financial instrument that the North Carolina State Treasurer divested from.

Israel Bonds “offer a slush fund that insulates the Israeli military and government from the logical, legal and righteous nonviolent economic pressure that institutions can act on to abide by international law,” said Dani Noble, national campaigns manager of Jewish Voice for Peace, or JVP. 

Previous Coverage

New Jersey’s Break the Bonds campaign adds pressure on states to divest from Israel

The DCI website describes Israel Bonds as “an invaluable and strategic national resource, especially since bonds clients have proven time and again that when Israel is in the midst of a crisis, they do not walk away.” However, at least in some parts of the U.S., that seems to be changing.

Israeli bonds — both DCI and sovereign debt — have become a primary target for organizers seeking an end to local complicity in the Gaza genocide. According to Noble, there are at least 14 different divestment campaigns focused on Israeli bonds around the country, 13 of which started after Oct. 7, 2023. Public opinion is with them: An October 2025 IMEU Policy Project poll found that 76 percent of Democrats support a ban on purchasing Israel bonds.

While they differed in their organizing arena and the type of bonds targeted, the Michigan, Minnesota and North Carolina divestment campaigns shared some common features.

Finding the money

Before these campaigns launched publicly, divestment organizers developed research strategies that included public records requests and conversations with government officials. This research helped them hone in on specific targets.

Break the Bonds North Carolina — a coalition consisting of Muslims for Social Justice, Palestinian Youth Movement-North Carolina, Durham Educators for Abolition and Liberation, and two local chapters of JVP — formed in February 2024 on the heels of a series of municipal ceasefire resolution wins. Organizers initially conceived of municipal-level campaigns in order to maximize pressure on elected officials. But when they researched state investment laws, they learned that municipalities do not manage their own investments; instead, the State Treasurer manages them. Despite their eagerness to focus locally, Rosenberg said this research revealed they “had to do a statewide campaign, and so we switched to the state pension plan.” 

In Michigan, Matt Clark, a labor lawyer and longtime organizer in the Palestine solidarity movement, led the charge on researching Israeli bond holdings, starting in July 2024. He built rapport with a Michigan Treasury Department public relations liaison by presenting himself as a citizen curious about the state pension fund’s international bond holdings. “I didn’t say anything about why I wanted it; I didn’t say anything about Israel Bonds,” Clark said. “I just asked for any information on international bonds.” The treasury department offered to send the entire 90-page pension fund portfolio. Upon digging through it, Clark found Israel Bonds. 

The portfolio revealed that the pensions of 550,000 former and current state employees were invested in a $10 million DCI Bond, purchased November 2023 and expiring November 2025. Subsequent FOIA requests showed that the Michigan treasury had invested in Israel Bonds for 30 years. 

After receiving this information, Clark began talking with people across Michigan about a potential divestment campaign. He found it difficult to explain the abstruse nature of the Michigan retirement system and of Israel Bonds. “It’s hard to get people’s attention, especially when you’re trying to get your own head around it, but I knew that if I got into this it would become my life,” Clark said.

Eventually he connected with a group called Lansing for Palestine, based in Clark’s hometown. “I showed up to their meeting and didn’t know a single person,” Clark said. “I pitched them on an Israel Bonds campaign and was pleasantly surprised at how enthusiastic they were. And things really went from there. I was lucky enough to find people who were willing to also make this their life for a while.” 

Matt Clark speaks at the Michigan Investment Board quarterly meeting in Lansing, Michigan on Jan. 8, 2025. (Michigan Divest)

Michigan Divest launched in October 2024 with a clear one-year timeline and a simple demand for the Michigan treasury: not to reinvest in Israel Bonds when they expired in November 2025. “It was pretty ambitious; you have to be kind of half out of your mind to think that you can even do this,” Clark said.

While these state-level campaigns were forming, a behind-the-scenes national network of Israeli bonds divestment organizers had coalesced to deepen each other’s research capabilities and share strategy tips, facilitated by JVP, the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and the Internationalist Law Center.

Matt Clark credits this network with helping Michigan organizers understand the different types of Israeli bonds, which was crucial to building a statewide strategy. “The technical knowledge about Israel Bonds was really essential,” Clark said. He learned that DCI Bonds are “illiquid,” meaning they are exceedingly difficult to trade before the bond’s maturity date — in this case, November 2025. Organizers knew they had a firm deadline to pile on the political pressure. 

Unlike the one-year campaign in Michigan, Minnesotans have been organizing for Israeli bonds divestment for almost two decades. Inspired by the launch of the BDS movement by Palestine civil society groups in 2005, an autonomous group of organizers in Minnesota got to work looking for a suitable target. Through public records requests, they found out that the Minnesota State Board of Investment, or SBI, which manages the state’s three largest public pension funds, held both types of Israeli bonds. A divestment campaign called Minnesota Break the Bonds launched in 2008. 

Building the base

For all three campaigns, signaling sweeping support for divestment was essential. Organizations in the Minnesota-Palestine solidarity ecosystem spent decades building a base of opposition to the state’s Israel holdings, including hosting teach-ins about the SBI.

Break the Bonds NC assembled a statewide coalition in just under one year. At events ranging from political rallies to farmer’s markets, they gathered 4,600 signatures for a petition to State Treasurer Bradford Briner demanding state divestment from Israeli government bonds. They also received 41 organizational endorsements, including from UE Local 150, a public service workers union representing thousands of pension holders. 

NC Break the Bonds delivers a petition to Treasurer Briner’s Chief of Staff Eric Naisbitt, demanding the Michigan state pension fund divest from Israeli bonds on Oct. 29, 2025. (Jon Warlick Media)

Labor played an important role in Michigan as well. Michigan Divest was endorsed by multiple local labor unions, including AFT 681 (Dearborn Federation of Teachers), AFT Local 2000 (Wayne County Community College Federation of Teachers), AFT Local 4751 (Lansing Community College Administrative Association) and UAW Local 6000 Region 1A Retirees Subchapter, which all represent state pensioners.

Clark also spoke about Israel Bonds at a Metro Detroit DSA meeting, where he collected signatures for a petition calling on the Michigan treasury to allow the DCI Bonds to mature without reinvesting. Michigan Divest flyered at multiple No Kings rallies across the state in October and collected signatures at a 2025 Pride event in Ferndale. Overwhelmingly, the campaign received positive responses from the public. 

“We felt like we really tapped into something, because people are watching this horrible thing happen on their cell phones and wondering, ‘What the hell can I even do?’” Clark said. “I feel like we were able to answer that question.” 

Inside-outside strategies take shape

All three campaigns pursued some combination of an inside-outside strategy. Michigan Divest emphasized “building a warm working relationship with key decision makers,” said campaign organizer Anna Martinez-Hume. The organizers’ warmth paid off, she said, and “they wanted to meet with us again and again. We had a laundry list of key questions, and worked with our coalition in strategizing meetings about what information we wanted to know.” Through these meetings, Michigan Divest learned that the chief investment officer, Jon Braeutigam, is solely responsible for managing assets that represent 1 percent or less of the state pension portfolio and that Israel Bonds fell within those parameters. 

That information helped them understand which official they had to convince and guided their outside strategy toward public investment board meetings. “When we showed up to the first investment board meeting, there was not an empty seat in the room,” Clark said. In subsequent meetings, support for Israel Bonds divestment was so widespread that the board had to book a bigger room.

In Minnesota, organizers began by pursuing a lawsuit against the state, on the grounds that the investments funded war crimes and made Minnesota complicit in Israel’s violations of international law. When the lawsuit was thrown out based on lack of standing in November 2012, the group shifted its strategy to a full-blown public pressure campaign targeting the four elected officials helming the SBI: the governor, attorney general, secretary of state and state auditor. MN BDS Community, a statewide clearinghouse for BDS information, formed in 2015 and adopted Minnesota Break the Bonds as its first campaign. 

“We had state employees and pensioners testifying before the State Board of Investment for years,” said Bob Goonin, a MN BDS Community organizer. Speakers from American Muslims for Palestine, JVP, the MN Anti-War Committee and other groups made the same case the lawsuit had — that the investments made the SBI complicit in international law violations, genocide and apartheid. 

“Especially since we’ve seen starvation used as a weapon of war, teachers have been calling out to the state board saying they don’t want to see children starving in Gaza when they are teaching children here,” Goonin said. 

During one of the last fully in-person SBI meetings, Minnesotans hold up signs depicting Palestinian children killed by Israel and demand divestment. (Minnesota Free Palestine Coalition)

Others appealed to the SBI’s fiduciary responsibility, citing recent credit downgrades that make Israeli bonds a risky investment. “Groups across Minnesota came at this from different angles, but it was really a coordinated effort,” Goonin said. As Israel’s genocide in Gaza escalated over the past two years, more and more Minnesotans protested at SBI meetings.

The SBI reacted by moving its public meetings to a smaller space without live public comment in December 2024. During the March 2025 public meeting, dozens of state troopers guarded the building entrance and blocked parking lots. Goonin saw all of this as a sign that the pressure campaign was working.

Beyond public comment meetings, some organizers focused on meeting with legislators and SBI board members, while others organized actions outside of the governor’s mansion.

In June 2025, before Break the Bonds North Carolina publicly launched, three pension holders with the campaign met with the state treasurer to develop a relationship and express their concern about Israeli bonds. “The treasurer said he was unaware of Israeli bonds and asked for info on them,” Rosenberg said. After organizers sent him information, “he said that he didn’t find the bonds compelling from a risk reward perspective.” Immediately after that meeting, NC Break the Bonds launched its campaign publicly and in October, the treasurer fully divested.

Bonds broken

Despite the Minnesota SBI, the North Carolina treasurer’s office and Michigan treasury each claiming the divestment moves were purely financial, organizers in all three venues claim they are a clear response to public pressure. “The community’s opposition to the state board holding these Israel bonds was a primary driver in their decision,” Minnesota organizer Bob Goonin said.

In Michigan, victory came in November when the chief investment officer decided not to reinvest in the $10 million Israel Bonds after they expired. Public records requests by Michigan Divest revealed that DCI’s national managing director, Larry Berman, had repeatedly emailed the treasury, pleading with the state to reinvest and even offering rates higher than those publicly available. 

“When I saw [the emails], my hair stood up, it was so creepy,” Clark said. “I felt like we saw a shark fin breaching the surface for just a minute. … We know that they’re paying attention. They realize we’re a threat.” The divestment movement in Michigan was threatening enough to break the 30-year financial relationship between Michigan and the state of Israel.

The win in North Carolina was equally significant, considering that the treasurer actively decided to sell the sovereign debt bonds. “I think it shows that these pressure campaigns work,” Rosenberg said. “Investing in Israel is just a bad investment for all the reasons. It’s a bad financial and a bad moral investment.” Rosenberg also believes that the consecutive wins across state lines suggest that state pension managers are communicating with each other. 

Making that financial argument was also critical in Minnesota, where organizer Karen Schraufnagel believes the most important factor was appealing to the SBI’s fiduciary responsibility. In October, public records received by the MN BDS Community showed that the SBI had sold or let expire all but $470,000 in Israeli bonds — from a peak of $13.3 million — at a loss of $830,000. 

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Rosenberg acknowledged that these state divestment wins are “a blip” in comparison to the multi-billion Israeli bonds portfolio,“but every penny matters in this divestment strategy.”

“We recognize it’s really just a little bit of good news, but we needed it,” she added. “You really have to say this is a victory,” Schraufnagel concurred. “But it’s hard to feel enthusiastic when your feed is full of starving children. We have to say good work and go on to the next thing. Five minute celebration and then back to work.”

Across the United States, there are at least 11 other active Israeli bonds divestment campaigns, focusing on a range of institutions. Some campaigns are just launching publicly, such as in Maryland; others have been simmering for years, such as in New York state. “In the wake of the recent victories, we’re seeing unprecedented breakthroughs and possibilities in a variety of communities, from Miami-Dade County, Florida to Indiana, to New York City,” said Dani Noble, the JVP national organizer.

The three victorious campaigns are currently planning the next stage of their divestment strategy. The Michigan Divest coalition is scouring other institutions invested in Israel Bonds, while Minnesota and North Carolina are focused on their state pension funds’ investments in weapons manufacturers and other companies targeted by the BDS Movement for complicity in apartheid and genocide. Regardless of where it turns next, it is clear that the divestment movement is building momentum across the U.S. 

This article How 3 local BDS campaigns won the divestment of millions in Israeli bonds was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

ICE’s surge into Minneapolis-St. Paul continues. After the ICE murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, labor and community groups mobilized against the federal intervention. Listen in: In our latest,…

This article The fight to keep ICE from reopening a notorious prison was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

On March 1, 2025, Kendra Drysdale stood before a crowd of about 500 people at a street protest to rally the Dublin, California community against the potential reopening of a local federal prison as an immigrant detention center. She warned them of the harm and trauma that the reopening could cause — which she knew firsthand, because she and many incarcerated women she knew had been sexually assaulted at Federal Correctional Institution Dublin, or FCI Dublin, when it was a women’s prison. 

Before it closed in April 2024, the federal prison was known as the “rape club” for rampant sexual assault and retaliation against incarcerated women who spoke out. Prisoners also reported unsafe building conditions and medical neglect. More than 200 women have sued over sexual abuse or are in the process of suing, and nine employees have been convicted of sex crimes.

However, the facility may not stay closed for long. Last February, news broke that ICE had toured FCI Dublin. In response, local residents, advocates and survivors like Drysdale formed the ICE out of Dublin Coalition and worked to inform the community about the dangers of an ICE takeover of FCI Dublin, successfully getting the Dublin City Council to pass a resolution in December opposing a reopening. Mobilization continues, as the Federal Bureau of Prisons has confirmed it is in the process of transferring the facility to the General Services Administration, which could then transfer it to ICE. 

Drysdale was horrified at the news of the transfer and is still working to activate the community and pressure officials to prevent a reopening.

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She and other formerly incarcerated women who were sexually assaulted at FCI Dublin have been speaking out since March at monthly rallies and City Council meetings to talk about their experiences of abuse, the deterioration of the building’s infrastructure, and the potential harm to immigrants.

“In FCI Dublin, it was sort of a normalized culture of abuse, with immigrants being more targeted than anyone else because of their vulnerable status,” Drysdale said.

She described the retaliation that she and other whistleblowers faced: After she testified about the abuse she underwent in an evidentiary hearing a month before she was scheduled to get out, her release date was postponed another seven months. The guards also took away her in-person and virtual visits and her access to mail and phone calls.

Drysdale also noted that the building would require major renovations to remedy mold and asbestos problems.

“We all together have come together as survivors of Dublin to advocate,” Drysdale said. “That building should be demolished. None of us want to see it reopen for anyone.”

No ICE detention in Northern California

The ICE out of Dublin coalition formed not long after leaders of the federal prison workers union told the Los Angeles Times in February 2025 that an assessment of FCI Dublin had been provided to ICE “for what appears to be the potential of ICE taking over the facility.” A few days later, another report confirmed ICE officials had toured FCI Dublin.

Activists in the community were not surprised and began organizing immediately. There is no immigrant detention center in the area, and between 2018 and 2023, activists rallied to end ICE contracts for use of local prisons and jails in Sacramento County, Contra Costa County and Yuba County. Activists knew that a second Trump administration would mean a push to expand ICE detention, and in 2024, ICE filed an inquiry into opening a facility near San Francisco. 

For Alex Mensing, communications manager at the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, one of dozens of groups in the ICE out of Dublin coalition, there is concern that an immigrant detention center in Northern California could result in more enforcement. Northern California currently has the nation’s lowest ICE arrest rate in the country.

Protesters with the ICE out of Dublin coalition held a vigil near the facility on April 16, 2025. (ICE Out of Dublin coalition)

“I think that folks recognize that there have been less ICE arrests in Northern California because there’s no ICE detention centers in Northern California, and that’s the result of organizing over the course of the last decade to end any ICE contract,” Mensing said. 

Mensing sees keeping the Bay Area free of detention centers as a crucial safeguard “to prevent what’s been happening in Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis and all these places from happening in Northern California.”

Getting the City Council on board

Bay Area residents have also played a key part in organizing against the reopening of FCI Dublin. In December, the Dublin City Council passed a resolution to oppose the facility reopening after public comments from dozens of local residents, as well as testimony from survivors. 

To encourage participation, the ICE out of Dublin coalition went door to door, passed out flyers at local farmers markets and other places people congregated, took down emails, and hosted education sessions on Zoom before City Council meetings.

“It’s chaotic when ICE comes; look at Minneapolis,” said Elizabeth Schmitt, a Bay Area native active in the coalition. “People don’t want that. They want to be able to live their lives without being afraid of being swept up in something or accidentally in the wrong spot at the wrong time and shot. It’s a very basic idea of being safe in your community.”

Schmitt said that City Council meetings are usually poorly attended, but during a meeting the second week of November, there were so many people the session overflowed into a side room where attendees had to watch on a TV. 

Speakers “were talking about the inhumanity of ICE, about how the detention centers were badly maintained, badly kept, how people got ill and died in the detention center,” Schmitt said. “They talked about the illegality of people being snatched and deported, and also did not want to repeat what happened when it was an FCI building.”

By the end of the meeting, the City Council agreed to put a resolution opposing the reopening on the December agenda. The resolution passed unanimously at the next meeting.

“The City Council knew immediately this was not an ordinary thing that maybe some people had an interest in,” Schmitt said. “It was quite obvious there were very strong feelings in the community.”

Mobilization ahead

The ICE out of Dublin coalition is also calling for transparency from the federal government about updates and timelines regarding the facility.

Earlier in December, the Federal Bureau of Prisons sent a letter to the City of Dublin saying the facility “is no longer needed to house inmates, requires substantial capital investment to meet standards, and is costly to operate and maintain” and advocating for its disposal through the General Services Administration 

However, once the prison is transferred to the GSA following an environmental evaluation, the GSA could transfer ownership to ICE.

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“The reason that we feel like that is concerning is because the GSA has been the agency that deals with federal properties, and they have been facilitating ICE takeover of other properties,” Mensing said. “It’s another step towards potentially turning it into an ICE detention center.”

Mensing said that the coalition’s next goal is to get the Board of Supervisors governing Alameda County, which includes Dublin, to put out a statement against FCI Dublin reopening. The coalition has reached out to local U.S. Reps. Mark DeSaulnier and Eric Swalwell to ask them to share any information about plans for FCI Dublin, oppose its reopening and oppose all ICE detention. The organizers also plan to continue holding regular rallies and educating people. 

“We’re definitely not going to let up the pressure, and will continue to mobilize people and keep an eye also on the facility,” Mensing said. “There’s a lot of people in Dublin who don’t want it to become an ICE detention center, and they’re paying attention to what’s happening.”

For Drysdale, the stakes are clear: “I don’t want to see the Bay Area have more exposure to ICE because they have a local place to place them. [And] I don’t want to see anyone else go through anything like [we did].”

This article The fight to keep ICE from reopening a notorious prison was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

In our latest, we talk with legendary filmmaker, screenwriter, actor and novelist John Sayles. We start with a discussion about his new novel “Crucible.” But, also talk about labor, class…

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We talk with Oglala Lakota poet and organizer Mark K. Tilson about the ICE surge in Minneapolis, the killing of Renee Good, and how neighbors are building a decentralized resistance. The conversation traces lawless tactics, historical patterns, and the courage that grows when people act together.

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Many far-right groups claim that migration drives environmental destruction, from river pollution to climate breakdown. These ‘ecobordering’ narratives greenwash racism and cover up the political and economic causes of ecocide.

As world leaders gathered at the COP26 climate summit in 2022, members of the fascist group Patriotic Alternative (PA) unveiled a banner declaring ‘Reduce immigration to reduce CO2’. The same day, the opaquely funded think tank Migration Watch UK posted an image of a forest fire hellscape emblazoned with the words, ‘Mass migration puts pressure on our precious environment’. These are just two examples of an emerging set of ‘ecobordering’ narratives which frame reducing – or eliminating – immigration as environmental protection.

Fascists declare that borders are climate action. Source: Patriotic Alternative via Telegram.

The far right sells racism as the solution to white people’s anxieties. If we want to develop up-to-date antifascist responses and avoid reproducing far-right narratives ourselves, we need to keep up with far-right storytelling. We also need to understand how mainstream discourse legitimises far-right issues. This article outlines how the British far right exploits ecological anxiety to push for harsher immigration policy. There are two main narratives: one claims that migration raises emissions and increases pressure on British nature; the other casts migrants as an invasive species threatening both British nature and the ‘indigenous’ population of white people. Both narratives are fed by the liberal mainstream.

Migration Watch UK illustrates ‘mass migration’ with climate disaster imagery. Source: Migration Watch UK via Twitter/X.

“The ravages of overpopulation”

The British far right often claims that migration threatens the environment via overpopulation. This narrative runs across the far-right spectrum. For example, the fascist Homeland Party takes a similar line to the radical right UK Independence Party (UKIP):

‘The most significant threat to the Green Belt, and the UK environment in general, especially England, is unsustainable population growth, which is predominantly fuelled by uncontrolled mass immigration’ (UKIP, 2020).

‘The environment in which we all live should be protected from the ravages of over-population, the new building projects, and pollution that goes with it’ (Homeland, 2023).

In their environmental policy, Homeland also holds migration responsible for water pollution: ‘When our sewage treatment plants cannot meet the demand of our rapidly increasing population, their only option is to release untreated sewage, causing great harm to our river ecosystems. This is unavoidable until the root cause, overpopulation driven by mass immigration, is dealt with.’

Homeland advertises ethnonationalism as ‘the REAL green solution’. Source: Homeland Party.

Although far-right groups generally apply this narrative to local environmental issues such as housebuilding, some also link migration to rising carbon emissions such PA’s banner shown in the first image. Identitarian group Local Matters and Migration Watch UK have both cited NGO Population Matters to claim that ‘our growing numbers are incompatible with our climate change commitments’. This, they reason, is because an individual’s carbon footprint will grow as they move from a poorer country to a richer country. Green Party candidate and Extinction Rebellion spokesperson Rupert Read voiced similar arguments in a deleted Ecologist article, although he does not advocate for tighter border controls.

These narratives obscure the underlying causes of environmental destruction – organising production and consumption around profit rather than wellbeing – whilst shifting the blame onto those least responsible. For example, English housing stock is already more than adequate for meeting needs and comfort if distributed more equally, but it is in the interests of homeowners as well as the financial and housebuilding sectors to maintain high housing demand through artificial scarcity. Meanwhile, the claim that overpopulation causes river sewage is extremely convenient for the privatised water companies which pocketed billions whilst leaving the infrastructure to crumble. In the case of climate change, ecobordering frames resource-intensive provisioning as inevitable and erases Britain’s responsibility for climate breakdown, instead blaming people who may very well be escaping its impacts.

“Protect our native species”

A second set of ecobordering narratives assumes a unique, spiritual connection between white British people and British nature. As Homeland writes, ‘Our people have an intrinsic bond with our homeland and are its natural stewards’. PA founder Mark Collett expands this idea in The Fall of Western Man, writing that ‘The strength and steel of the Western body was forged […] in the harsh frozen lands of Northern Europe’ through a process of ‘brutal natural selection’. As a result, ‘Blood and soil are the natural callings that must be at the centre of Western man’s mindset.’

The ecological undercurrents of this ‘blood and soil’ doctrine – popularised by the Nazis – present white British people as an indigenous species adapted to thrive in their ecosystem. Unlike overpopulation narratives, this position is mostly held by the ethnonationalist far right which believes that only those of a particular race can belong to a nation. For Homeland, ‘natural law’ dictates that ‘social harmony’ can only be achieved when each ‘ethnic group’ can ‘assert our unique cultural identity in our respective territories.’ Like the ethno-differentialists of the French New Right, Homeland claims to be ‘the true champion of diversity’, using strong borders to conserve a plurality of peoples and cultures.

According to this framework, fascists cast migrants as an ‘invasive species’ preventing the ‘native species’ from living peacefully – or even living at all. In the article ‘Ecocide’, PA writes:

‘By means of their NGOs, they have ferried invasive species across the Mediterranean […] Actions that have culminated in national governments spending billions to cement over bucolic landscapes in their rush to build accommodation for the “New Europeans” and tarmac over ancient woodlands to provide them with roads to aid their rapid access to social security offices, mosques and community centres where they can congregate and displace the indigenous species.’

Here, ‘they’ refers to Jewish billionaires George and Alex Soros, key characters in far-right conspiracy theories such as the ‘Great Replacement’. Replacement is a central mobilising issue amongst British fascists, with PA performing annual ‘White Lives Matter’ banner drops on Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

PA refracts this conspiracy through a blood and soil lens. As a result, the perceived destruction of British nature by migrants becomes inseparable from the eradication of white British people altogether. In one flyer PA alludes to this existential threat with a photo of the red squirrel, a symbolic British animal that has faced harsh competition from non-native grey squirrels. Meanwhile, Homeland illustrates the threat of ‘being subsumed into a homogenised global mass’ with footage of deforestation, underscoring the deep association between white extinction and environmental destruction.

Homeland illustrates the threat of race mixing. Source: Homeland Party.

Ecobordering and the mainstream

Across Europe, far-right groups are exploiting ecological crisis to push for further border violence. In Britain, they justify this by arguing that (a) migration will increase pressure on resources such as land and water, as well as raising emissions; and (b) migrants are an invasive species simultaneously threatening nature and the ‘indigenous’ population of white people. However, overpopulation narratives in particular may be more strategic than heartfelt. For example, PA urges politicians to ‘reduce immigration to reduce CO2’ whilst also warning of the ‘Climate Con’. Meanwhile, Migration Watch UK is part of a network of right-wing think tanks located in Tufton Street, including Britain’s foremost climate misinformation organisation, the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Although these ideas are most common on the far right, they are closer to the mainstream than people may realise. For example, blaming migrants for placing unsustainable pressure on nature reproduces neo-Malthusian overpopulation narratives. These have enjoyed centuries of popularity and continue to be upheld by policymakers, NGOs, and TV presenters. Indeed, the president of Migration Watch UK is a former British ambassador, now sitting in the House of Lords. Mark Collett’s theory of climate-induced racial difference is purely colonial-era scientific racism. Meanwhile, Conservative politicians and newspaper columnists repeatedly describe migrants using the invasive species imagery of a ‘swarm’, an ‘invasion’, or ‘cockroaches’. But more fundamentally, in many ways the far right is only making explicit what is already implicit in government policy: that certain racialised groups present a threat that must be met with violence. By placing ecology downstream of borders the far right is mirroring the state’s own priorities.

On one level, then, ecobordering narratives can be countered by drawing attention to the large inequalities in environmental impacts driven by economic inequality, as well as the endless expansion of production and consumption required by capitalism. However, without challenging borders themselves, this approach can at best maintain border violence at business-as-usual levels. As ecobordering discourse gears up to legitimise this increasingly repressive bordering regime, it falls to antifascist and other liberatory movements to address the root causes of racist violence and ecological crisis.

 

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Lise Benoist, Miranda Iossifidis, Heather Luna, and Rohan Montgomery for their generous feedback.

 

Cable Collective is an antifascist research collective monitoring how ecological crisis is used to justify oppressive politics in the UK.

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In Ancestral Future, the Brazilian Indigenous leader and philosopher Ailton Krenak recounts the story of the Maxakali community, an Indigenous group from the eastern rivers of Brazil. He describes how, despite being dispossessed and forcibly removed from their land, the Maxakali retain a remarkable ability to recall and narrate the presence of the living beings—animals and plants—that once shared their territory even though they no longer share it with them. Krenak emphasizes that this act of remembrance is more than nostalgia; it is a way of remaining rooted, or sustaining the experience of place. Even as modernity expands, imposing an abstract, homogenized notion of space—a void to be filled with ‘development’—the Maxakali resist this erasure by preserving their connection to nature through storytelling and memory. Their ability to inhabit, even in displacement, serves as a powerful testament to how communities, sometimes against all odds, retain their dignity, their sense of belonging, and their past and future as living, continuous realities. I often find myself returning to this thought as a profound example of resilience in the face of development and its multiple faces of dispossession.

The development enterprise, now 76 years old, has been remarkably effective not in solving poverty, but in producing and perpetuating it. As Majid Rahnema argues in The Development Dictionary, the term had multiple meanings before January 20, 1949. Poverty could be a voluntary choice, a form of exclusion from the community, a public humiliation, or a lack of protection. It was only with the expansion of industrial and mercantile economies that poverty became redefined as the opposite of ‘rich’ or a measure of wealth —a condition of material deficiency requiring intervention. The proposed solution, of course, was development— understood as the systematic deployment of industrial production, a wage-based economy, and the positivist advancement of technology and scientific knowledge, concentrated in the hands of professionals and experts. This logic did not simply enclose the means of production or subsistence, as Marxist thinkers might have predicted; it went further, creating a system of dependencies that rendered people perpetually in need of development itself—an alienating force that reshaped entire ways of being into something incomplete, always lacking, and requiring external intervention. Despite this there are many grassroots, autonomous and alternative movements resisting and creating alternatives to the development enterprise.

For five days in February, I had the privilege of joining land defenders, grassroots movements, Indigenous Peoples, and communities from 20 countries across the Global South in Port Edward, along South Africa’s Wild Coast, to discuss radical democracy, autonomy, and self-determination. Hosted by the Global Tapestry of Alternatives, the Academy of Democratic Modernity, the Amadiba Crisis Committee, and the Pan African Ecofeminist Alliance WoMin, this gathering was more than an exchange of ideas—it was a convergence of struggles, lived experiences, and collective visions for autonomy. Despite the participants’ diverse backgrounds, languages, and contexts, a striking commonality emerged: a clear and resounding rejection of the development enterprise. Over the past 40 years, what began as a slow erosion of the means of subsistence has escalated into a full-scale war against it. Development, far from being a means of upliftment, has proven to be an economic and political project of alienation, dispossession, and enforced dependency—disrupting ways of life, dismantling communal autonomy, and deepening systemic inequalities. This gathering reinforced that resistance is not just about rejecting this imposed model, but about reclaiming the power to define and create our own futures.

Participants at the inauguration of the Global Confluence on Radical Democracy, Autonomy and Self- determination’, Port Edward, South Africa, 2-6 February 2025.

 

What is the crisis we are facing?

Communities and grassroots movements striving to maintain their autonomy and practice radical or direct democracy are facing unprecedented challenges in an era of extreme inequality, shaped by centuries of exploitation and dispossession. The intersecting crises of climate collapse, economic inequality, and rising authoritarianism are intensifying new forms of oppression and violence—particularly against the ‘poor’ and marginalized communities produced by decades of development policies. The state has become central to enforcing the disciplinary, counterinsurgency, and social engineering technologies necessary to sustain capitalist extraction. At the same time, the far right has weaponized capitalism’s crisis to push liberal democracy toward xenophobia, racism, and hatred which serve as tools to entrench elite and corporate-driven forms of extreme neoliberalism.

Meanwhile, leftist and progressive governments have largely resigned themselves to crisis management, acting as administrators of capitalism’s systemic failures rather than challengers of its logic. In countries like Mexico, the rapid expansion of militarization and state-deployed social engineering technologies reinforces what Leanne Betasamosake Simpson calls the extraction-assimilation system—a model in which people, their knowledges, nature, and the more-than-human world are treated as resources to be rendered extractable. As these dynamics unfold, grassroots resistance remains critical, not only to oppose these structures but to reclaim autonomy and sustain alternative ways of being and relating beyond the confines of capitalist and state control.

At the heart of these struggles is a demand for more than rights or state recognition— a framework that ultimately reproduces condescending forms of hospitality, tolerating otherness while reinforcing systems of alienation through participatory and democratic mechanisms. Instead, these movements are fighting for radical autonomy. Paraphrasing the rich debates and discussions held during the meeting, the prevailing sentiment was clear: “We cannot ask or wait for the state to act. If we did, we would be long dead before development arrived. Instead, we must build, reclaim, or maintain systems of self-governance to sustain our territorialities.”

The concept of territory was central to this understanding. Participants emphasized that land and place are not only essential for constructing autonomous systems of self-determination and radical democracy, but also embody deep historical, epistemic, and ontological relationships—connecting people to nature and to ways of being that precede and resist capitalist modernity.

The meeting reinforced what many have long argued: the race toward development is a race toward deeper dispossession. This is not just about the extraction of resources; it is an increasingly violent system that enforces total alienation from the means of subsistence. As Ivan Illich warned, development is a war on subsistence—where in the logic of capitalism, economy becomes synonymous with scarcity. The crisis we face today is not merely economic or political, it is existential.

Participants of the Global Confluence on Radical Democracy, Autonomy and Self- determination’ in a visit to the Xolobeni Community, hosted by the Amadiba Crisis Committee (AAC). Photo by Ashish Kothari.

This ‘modern’ state system, as Ailton Krenak argues, has become highly proficient in the production of poverty and perpetual precarity by alienating people from their lands—whether through direct displacement or the slow contamination and degradation of their territories— forcing them into urban peripheries where no connection to autonomous livelihoods remains. Even institutions like the World Bank have acknowledged this trend, which is particularly visible in countries like Mexico, where nearly two thirds of those classified as poor under modern definitions live near or in cities. The state, in its contemporary form, does not function as a protector but as a facilitator of dispossession, offering ‘solutions’ that ultimately serve corporate and elite interests at the expense of communities.

How are communities responding?

While the term radical democracy is not one that communities use to describe their own decision-making processes, participants in the meeting in South Africa emphasized that autonomy and self-determination are not about seeking state recognition, but about reclaiming the power to govern and sustain life on communities’ own terms. The ‘radical’ in the term points towards the multiple struggles at the grassroots where alternatives are actively breaking away from liberal institutions and the extractivism that manufactures dependence. The response to this crisis is not uniform, but it is clear: grassroots communities are rejecting  formal education, healthcare, housing, transport and other expert-led systems that produce “needy” individuals. Instead, they are building self-sufficient networks of mutual aid, reclaiming food sovereignty, energy autonomy, traditional healing, learning and collective (re) inhabitation among many other direct challenges to capitalism and development’s monopolization of basic needs.

Many movements are resisting so-called “green transitions,” which disguise new forms of extraction under the banner of sustainability and climate change ‘mitigation’ and ‘adaptation’. Others are directly challenging the legal frameworks that reduce collective rights to manageable, individual, co-optable categories, reliant on expert, state or market produced services. Paraphrasing what some of the  participants argued: “collective and Indigenous peoples rights cannot be limited to human rights. These rights are based on the rights of nature, on our relationships with territory and place, and on our capacity to determine how we relate to and in these places.”

This response, again is not homogenous, but entails a radical plurality of actions, struggles and movements reclaiming dignity: building radical alternatives that are rooted in creating a sense of place and communitarian entanglements that redefine a sense of value produced through a commonly defined good life.

A tapestry of alternatives and radical democracy, made by participants of the Global Confluence on Radical Democracy, Autonomy and Self- determination’. Photo by Ashish Kothari.

The gathering highlighted the vital role of grassroots struggles in advancing radical democracy and emphasized the urgent need for academia, NGOs, and civil society to reconsider how they engage with these movements. Too often, these institutions, even with good intentions, align with the development agenda by treating knowledge as extractable and transferable, reinforcing the same systems of power that communities resist. In contrast, the struggles represented assert that knowledge is not the exclusive domain of universities: communities possess their own theories and political visions, rooted in everyday resistance and collective traditions.

The central question is no longer whether radical democracy is possible, but how to sustain it in a world bent on its erasure. This calls for a fundamental shift: from supporting movements through hierarchical models to co-creating with them in ways that dismantle the extractive-assimilation system. The struggle for autonomy is not merely opposition to development but a process of rebuilding social fabric through mutual aid, reciprocity, and self-determination.

As the confluence in South Africa demonstrated, these struggles are not isolated—they are interconnected nodes in a global movement toward radical democracy. As several  of the participants expressed: “We should no longer seek recognition from the state, but from each other.” From Indigenous communities defending their lands against extractivist projects, to urban collectives reclaiming the capacity of decision making from the state, what emerges is a vision of autonomy built on global solidarity that moves beyond reform to the active construction of new worlds. Autonomy and radical democracy thus cease to be abstract concepts: they entail the lived experiences of those who refuse to be governed and ‘developed’.

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By Eva Camus & Panagiota Kotsila

Heatwaves expose deep inequalities, hitting racialized migrants hardest due to race, gender, class, and poor housing. In Neukölln, Berlin, we see the urgent need for inclusive, locally-informed climate adaptation strategies that prioritize migrant voices, housing justice, and equitable access to cooling resources.

The numbers are staggering. Last month, the Climate Risk Index 2025, published by Germanwatch,  documented the growing impact of extreme weather events globally. Between 1993 and 2022, more than 765,000 people have lost their lives due to extreme climate events, while over 9,400 climate-related disasters, including hurricanes, floods, storms, and heatwaves, caused economic damages exceeding $4.2 trillion (Climate Risk Index, 2025). But behind these figures lie deeper questions: Who is most at risk when disaster strikes? Who shoulders the weight of climate?

While some stay cool in air-conditioned offices, shaded neighborhoods, or public cooling centers, others, including migrants, low-income workers, and racialized communities, endure the heat in overcrowded apartments, precarious workplaces, and public spaces where they are often unwelcome. Across European cities, adaptation strategies often overlook these inequalities, reinforcing existing patterns of environmental injustice and exclusion.

Who gets to stay cool? Heatwaves and climate injustice in European cities

Heatwaves are not just a weather event; they are a crisis of inequality (Anguelovski et al. 2025). As temperatures rise, cities become heat traps, where dense infrastructure and the urban heat island effect push temperatures higher than their rural counterparts and disallow urban neighborhoods from cooling down during the night. In Europe, risks are growing as it has become the fastest warming continent (Climate Risk Index, 2025). While Mediterranean cities have long coped with high temperatures, northern European cities are now also struggling. Many buildings, designed to retain warmth, make cooling difficult, and where air conditioning is scarce both in private homes and public buildings, heat stress is an increasing concern.

Not everyone experiences extreme heat the same way. As political ecologies of risk have long noted (see Collins 2008;Wescoat 2019; Huber et al.), vulnerability to environmental and climate impacts is socially produced. Power relationships are reflected in how such impacts and the subsequent policies of mitigating or adapting to them are governed, and social structures determine who will be most at risk and whose voice will be heard in processes of risk assessment, prevention and policy. The risks that climate change poses to human health and well-being are no exception.

Extreme and prolonged heat impacts places and communities by building on and magnifying existing inequalities related to urban planning and zoning decisions, historical patterns of socio-spatial exclusion and segregation, as well as to everyday patterns of life and work, hitting those at the most precarious positions the hardest. Research has identified children, older adults, and those with pre-existing conditions as particularly at risk, taking into account the biological predisposition of different people to the effects of heat (Rebetez et al., 2009; Kovats and Hajat, 2008). However, we need to take a closer look at the role of deeper and historical social, economic and cultural determinants of such vulnerability, including how race, gender, class, and living conditions are just as decisive of factors when defining vulnerability as biological predisposition (Abi Deivanayagam et al., 2023; Anguelovski & Kotsila, 2023; Anguelovski et al. 2025).

In the context of urban life in cities in Europe, some of the most socially vulnerable groups are racialized migrants; people that come from countries of a majority world context and now live in Europe. Despite increased attention to how racialization and marginalization shapes heat injustice, we have seen limited attention on the topic from scholars in Europe. In response to this gap in our understanding of climate injustice in EU cities, we designed a pilot research project to examine how migrants experience, understand and react to extreme and prolonged heat in the context of Neukölln neighborhood in Berlin, Germany.

Created by: Jana Dabelstein
@mentalnotearchive (Instagram)
http://www.linkedin.com/in/janadabelstein

 

During May and June 2024, we held 2 participatory workshops with 11 majority-world migrant residents. We adapted the Relief Maps method, to capture intersectional dynamics of heat-related dis/comfort in everyday spaces, and the contradictions often faced by migrants regarding thermal versus emotional comfort.

Firstly, we found out that ten out of eleven participants find public transport uncomfortable in relation to heat, mainly due to poor ventilation, high temperatures, and overcrowding. Gender significantly influences these experiences, with public transport showing the highest average discomfort in the gender dimension. Five of eight women and gender-nonconforming individuals reported insecurity due to harassment, with a young woman from Mexico, describing “a lot of sexual and sexist harassment.” The results also reveal that race and ethnicity contribute to discomfort on public transport, with four participants experiencing stereotyping, judgment, and overt racism.

Agreeing with scholars who have identified migrants working in construction, agriculture and manufacturing as particularly vulnerable due to their exposure to long hours in direct sunlight, or poorly ventilated environments with minimal protections against extreme temperatures (Hansen et al., 2014; Venugopal et al., 2014; Messeri et al., 2019), we found that beyond physical conditions, deeper socio-cultural structures and circumstances—such as language barriers—also significantly influence their access to thermal comfort. Five participants in our study noted that limited German proficiency restricted their job options, made it difficult to communicate with employers, and left them unable to advocate for better conditions. The exclusion from workplace decision-making processes mirrors broader patterns of labor control in migrant economies, where language is often a barrier to social mobility and labor rights advocacy (Collins, 2012).

 

We also found that for migrant women, these vulnerabilities were even more pronounced. Many are overrepresented in caregiving, cleaning, and service jobs, where gendered expectations of emotional and physical labor heighten their exposure to heat. One participant, a childcare worker, described how the burden of protecting others during heatwaves made her own discomfort secondary:

“If I have to go to work on a hot day, then it’s kind of annoying because I work with kids, and we have to go to the park. Then it’s like I’m stressed about the bodies of 20 kids instead of mine. I’m stressed about whether they have sunscreen, if they have their hats, if they’re drinking water, if they’re not burning themselves on the metallic parts of the park. And then I’m super exhausted. […]”

Her experience reflects a broader reality of gendered workplace precarity, where migrant women are expected to manage heat exposure not only for themselves but for those under their care, often while earning low wages and receiving little institutional support (see also Sultana, 2014; Truelove & Ruszczyk, 2022).

Furthermore, housing conditions turned out to be a key determinant of climate vulnerability. Yet, for many migrants, their home offers very little protection from extreme heat. Scholars in urban political ecology emphasize that thermal comfort is not just about the level of air temperature, but also about access to safe, affordable and stable housing which is in turn deeply shaped by economic and social inequalities (Anguelovski et al. 2025; Checker, 2020).

Our workshops, indeed, revealed that while some participants found relief in good ventilation or cooling infrastructure, others faced overcrowding, poor airflow, and noise pollution at home, making heat waves unbearable. One participant, living with five others, described her home as “impossible to endure” without air conditioning, underscoring how housing conditions shape thermal comfort as much as outdoor temperatures. This is compounded by the constant struggle connected to securing an affordable home, let alone one that offers relief during times of heat. Many participants described constantly moving in search of affordable rent, reinforcing the argument that housing precarity compounds climate risk (Rolnik, 2019). With rising rents and few housing options, cooling often became a secondary concern, demonstrating how heat vulnerability is inseparable from economic instability and displacement. As one participant shared:

“I’m paying a lot for a small studio, and this is the fourth time I’ve moved in a year. Most housing is overpriced for the little space it offers.”

 

Exclusionary adaptation: who gets to benefit from green cities?

At a systemic level, migrants’ ability to adapt to extreme heat is shaped not just by economic hardship but by policies that reinforce exclusion. Neoliberal climate strategies, rooted in historical racism and capitalist exploitation, limit access to resources, making it harder for migrant communities to cope with rising temperatures (Kotsila et al., 2023). While European cities promote sustainability and climate adaptation, these efforts often mask, and indeed exacerbate, deep-rooted inequalities. Green infrastructure projects (including parks, permeable surfaces, green roofs, regeneration of waterfronts, etc.) are celebrated as solutions to urban heat. However, these are seen to frequently drive-up property values, displacing low-income and migrant residents and making public spaces less accessible (Anguelovski et al., 2018).

Parks and cooling green corridors offer relief from extreme heat, yet for many migrants, these spaces remain unwelcoming due to harassment, discrimination, and police surveillance, as participants in our study described.  Eight participants said they seek heat comfort in parks, and green spaces were also valued for their financial accessibility, particularly by those unable to afford private cooling options. Despite their cooling benefits however, experiences of exclusion and racial profiling severely also shape access to these environments. Three women and non-binary participants reported feeling unsafe in parks due to histories of sexual harassment and cultural judgment.

Access to life-saving information is another barrier. Many migrants struggle to access heat warnings, emergency resources, and public health information due to language barriers and weak institutional support (Kotsila et al., 2023; Lebano et al., 2020). Even when cooling centers exist, social exclusion and lack of networks prevent many from using them.  Our findings revealed a significant gap in awareness regarding municipal or NGO-provided heat relief locations. As one participant shared:

“Honestly, I do not know about these spaces. I have not heard about these places and did not know they existed in Berlin or Germany.”

The absence of commentary from other participants suggests that this lack of awareness is widespread. Beyond information gaps, social dynamics also played a role in limiting access. One participant, described feeling “very foreign in this place”, highlighting how migrants may feel unwelcome or out of place in institutional spaces designed for heat relief.

Rethinking climate adaptation: from exclusion to justice

If European cities are to adopt adaptation strategies that benefit all and prioritize the most vulnerable, adaptation must move beyond mainstream technocratic approaches that treat the city as a blank slate and assume “trickle-down” benefits. Local context, the history of neighborhoods and the realities of those who inhabit them, need to be the pillars of climate adaptation, including knowledge and practices from networks and collectives that have long sustained, involved, and provided care for and with the most vulnerable.

Migrants, often framed as passive victims of risks, hold crucial knowledge about surviving adversity and detecting risks of social exclusion and injustice, because they often have long experience of such processes. Heat knowledge, for example, consists of histories of adaptation in hotter climates and resource-scarce environments, but also by years or generations of people living in conditions were heat often becomes a health-threatening factor during or after the migration journey.  

Understanding climate health vulnerability through the experiences of migrants requires centering their situated knowledge and everyday adaptation practices. In our efforts to capture this through the workshops in Neukölln, we heard participants’ proposals for more shaded pedestrian and cycling routes, increased public water fountains, and capped-price fruit and drink vendors to ensure equitable access to cooling. They also suggested developing an app to map shaded park pathways, helping residents navigate cooler routes during extreme heat.

Urban adaptation strategies remain shaped by top-down processes and resulting policies that exclude the communities mostly at risk. This is not just a procedural or coincidental oversight. It is the result of the socio-economic production of urban nature, including how ecosystems have been managed, altered and commodified, within and outside of cities for the purpose of urbanization and urban economic growth; of how communities of color and the working class have been assigned certain roles and social positions, reflecting on the formation of certain types of neighborhoods and housing complexes; as well as of how nature is being increasingly instrumentalized to proxy urban health and climate protection in order to promote powerful interests such as those of the tourist or real estate industries.

Instead of climate policies that raise property values and displace vulnerable communities, adaptation must prioritize housing justice, labor protections, and equitable access to cooling infrastructure. Public spaces should be designed with inclusivity and safety in mind, ensuring migrants and racialized communities feel welcomed rather than policed or excluded. Most importantly, cities must create spaces where migrants’ experiences and adaptation strategies are valued as essential. In the face of intensifying heatwaves, relief cannot remain a privilege. Climate adaptation must be about redistributing resources, dismantling systemic inequalities, and ensuring that no one is left to endure the heat alone.

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Grazing in open-air landfills is a common practice in various parts of the world, especially for goats. Yet, this practice can have devastating consequences for both the health of the animals and the humans who consume their products. Driven by curiosity, I wanted to explore how this dynamic worked in intersection with environmental colonialism within the socio-ecological context where I found myself: at the edge of the Sahara Desert.

It’s the final stretch of our annual winter escape – the trip my boyfriend and I try to take every year to break free from the monotony of the coldest, most stressful season. Our rental car is carrying us north along the highway that slices through the country, winding through the pre-desert landscapes surrounding the city of Gafsa.

Suddenly, a flock of goats grazing among the dunes catches our attention – not because of the animals themselves, but because we slowly realize the sand of the dunes has been replaced by piles of waste. To make things worse, a sharp, nauseating smell begins creeping into the car, growing stronger by the minute. Driven by curiosity, we decide to pull over and walk towards the flock, determined to figure out what kind of bizarre place we’ve stumbled upon.

Columns of smoke rising from burning waste in Gafsa’s open-air landfill. Credits: Alexandra D’Angelo

«Don’t you have them in your country?» the shepherd asks, pointing to his goats, trying to grasp the reason behind our interest in his grazing.

«Yes, we have them in Italy too – he works with goats», I reply, pointing to my boyfriend. Only then does the shepherd seem to make sense of our unusual behaviour: “this white guy must be a shepherd too”, he probably thought. Whether it’s true or not doesn’t really make a difference. What seems important is that, between the two of them, they’ve found a common ground of knowledge and interest, making it easier to carry on a conversation full of brief words and plenty of gestures.

We are on the outskirts of Gasfa, a Tunisian city with 120,000 inhabitants and the capital of the eponymous governorate. Here, to greet anyone arriving from the southwestern regions of the country, there are around 35 hectares of waste, the equivalent of 50 football fields.

Columns of smoke rise from burning waste here and there, while herds of goats and sheep graze, hopping among plastic and metal debris between one dune and another.

«They find cellulose in the paper» the shepherd informs us. Cellulose, typically found in plants, is an essential element for the survival of goats and sheep. However, when vegetation is scarce, as in desert ecosystems, the animals are forced to seek it elsewhere. This is how cardboard packaging, canned goods, or piles of unused paper documents end up in the diet of Tunisian ruminants, not without repercussions on their health and, consequently, on the health of humans who consume their milk and meat.

A group of sheep chewing sheets of paper to ingest the cellulose essential for their diet. Credits: Alexandra D’Angelo

A High-Risk Diet

Paper may seem like an innocuous source of nutrition, but it rarely is. This is largely due to the industrial process used in its production, which involves numerous chemicals. Among them, chlorine and other bleaching agents are commonly used to achieve a white, uniform appearance, but their use can leave behind traces of toxic residues.

Additionally, paper discarded in landfills is often contaminated by a variety of potentially dangerous substances, including inks, glues, heavy metals, and other chemicals used during processing and printing. These can accumulate in the tissues of organisms that ingest them. Dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and heavy metals, in fact, are not eliminated from the body but instead progressively accumulate in fatty tissues, causing harmful effects both on animals and on those who consume their products.

In fact, the ingestion of waste can have devastating effects on animal health, extending well beyond immediate damage, as it can compromise the reproductive system, reducing fertility and hindering their ability to produce healthy offspring. In the long term, such alterations undermine the stability of populations, making it more difficult to maintain balanced and sustainable ecosystems.

A shepherd crouching on piles of waste while his flock grazes. Credits: Giovanni Bailo.

Moreover, one of the main and most dangerous characteristics of dioxins is their persistence in the environment and their high ability to bioaccumulate along the food chain. This means that people who consume meat or dairy products from goats and sheep grazing in landfills may also accumulate these substances in their bodies. Dioxins are linked to a wide range of negative health effects, including hormonal disorders, immune system damage, reproductive problems, and an increased risk of cancer.

In addition to dioxins, landfills often contain heavy metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium, and arsenic, found in common items like batteries, electronic devices, paints, and pesticides. In this case too, these substances can accumulate in internal organs, bones, and tissues. Heavy metals are known for their toxic effects, including neurological damage, kidney problems, cardiovascular disorders, and, in some cases, teratogenic effects (i.e., harm to the foetus during pregnancy).

Among the potentially most dangerous contaminants are microplastic residues, which accumulate in landfills in significant quantities. These tiny fragments, once ingested, can cause severe inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract, impairing digestive function. Furthermore, microplastics act as carriers for other toxic substances, amplifying the health risks for exposed organisms, especially for the most vulnerable populations such as children, pregnant women, and the elderly. For instance, in the case of pregnant women, exposure to dioxins and heavy metals through the diet can have negative effects on fetal development, causing growth delays, cognitive issues, and other congenital malformations.

Waste and Phosphates: The two sides of Tunisian Environmental Colonialism

The issue of illegal landfills and, more broadly, the hazardous management of waste, is a pressing topic in Tunisia’s recent history, often sparking protests and mobilization led by the country’s environmental movements.

First and foremost, Tunisia has never implemented any recycling system.

Indeed, it has recently come to light that there has been an illicit trade between Tunisia and Italy surrounding the illegal disposal of waste. In 2020, a judicial investigation discovered the export of approximately 7,892 tons of unsorted municipal waste packed in 70 containers traveling from the southern-Italian region of Campania to the port of Soux, on the western Tunisian coast. These waste materials, falsely declared as recyclable, were destined for a company called Soreplast, which lacked the proper facilities for treatment.

As a result, the waste was either burned along roadsides or buried in the outskirts of cities—practices that are unfortunately common when waste disposal is controlled by organized crime, and which have severe consequences for the ecosystem and the health of local communities. On one hand, burning waste releases highly toxic substances into the air, including dioxins, furans, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). On the other hand, burying waste in areas lacking adequate soil sealing systems can lead to soil and groundwater contamination through the liquids produced by waste piles (known as “leachate”).

The open-air landfill near Gasfa is just one of the countless examples scattered across the country.

However, the uniqueness of the region that stretches from the Gasfa mountains to the border with Algeria lies in its phosphate rocks, which have been targeted by mining companies for over a century to produce phosphate fertilizers, which are essential for global industrial agriculture.

The ingestion of waste can have devastating effects on animal health. Credits: Giovanni Bailo

In fact, Gasfa’s phosphate leads the global market in terms of quality and purity. Since 2022, the Tunisian market has become even more competitive after phosphate prices skyrocketed with the onset of the Russia-Ukraine war, as both countries, along with Belarus, are among the world’s largest phosphate exporters.

Tunisia is now aiming to significantly increase its production and, consequently, its export to Western countries. This represents a potential massive economic gain for the country, but with minimal impact on the local economy of Gasfa, the region with the highest poverty rate in Tunisia – an imbalance that has been at the root of protests and mobilization in this mining basin since 2008.

Indeed, phosphate extraction does not create jobs but causes significant environmental damage and risks to human health. The mining process releases heavy metals like cadmium and arsenic, which contaminate the soil and groundwater, posing a serious threat to the health of ecosystems and nearby communities.

Waste and phosphates represent two sides of the same coin of relentless environmental colonialism – where external powers exploit and deplete local ecosystems for profit, while exporting wealth, importing disease, and perpetuating poverty.

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