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Why COP31 needs to start talking about just transition finance
Tens of billions of dollars in international climate finance have been pledged this decade for a “just energy transition” in the Global South. Most of the money, promised by wealthy governments and banks, will be funnelled into infrastructure – mainly shuttering fossil fuel power plants or installing renewables.
But these investments in the shift to low-carbon economies affect workers and communities and therefore require their support. Without funding for social protection and participation, their backing is unlikely, putting the transition at risk, climate justice experts warn.
Several headline-grabbing “Just Energy Transition Partnerships” (JETPs) were announced in 2021 and 2022, including for South Africa at the UN climate conference in Glasgow and Indonesia at the G20 summit.
While there is a need for fair, green transitions across all economic sectors, from vehicle manufacturing to farming and health, it is energy that has attracted the most attention and money so far. The early results have been mixed, with progress on moving away from coal power in the countries with JETPs slower than hoped for.
Another challenge is that the vast majority of the JETP funding on offer is in the form of loans, with the grants needed to support local communities through the transition making up a tiny fraction.
Of the finance pledged to South Africa, Indonesia and Vietnam under their JETPs, grants accounted for just 4%, concessional below-market-rate loans for 53%, commercial loans for 25% and guarantees for 13%, according to a policy brief produced for the G20 in Brazil.
Spotting a major gap in the justice side of these partnerships, philanthropic foundations in 2023 established a $20-million fund to support community-based and non-governmental groups in JETP countries in their efforts to secure a fair deal for local people.
Philanthropies back community inputDuring three years of giving grants to 60 community organisations, unions and researchers, ClimateWorks Foundation – which set up the Global South Just Transition Fund with the IKEA and Laudes foundations – has learned what it takes to complement the JETPs.
“They are built to move money to energy projects, and our grants build the civic and governance infrastructure that lets that money land,” Justin Sylvester, just transition director at ClimateWorks Foundation, told Climate Home News.
The results achieved with the Fund’s backing include progress on a subnational Natural Resource Fund model in Indonesia backed by the finance ministry, which offers a route for districts to channel coal revenues into developing communities’ post-coal economies.
Comment: Santa Marta was a learning moment for how to shape inclusive just transitions
In South Africa, meanwhile, nonprofit INSPIRE has worked with solar developer Forethought Capital to build trust with community leaders and secure signed lease agreements for solar projects on protected communal land – a model that can be replicated.
One key lesson so far, Sylvester said, is the importance of building civil society’s economic, civic and cultural power – not just its capacity. Another is the need to get behind social ecosystems rather than isolated projects, and collaborate with other funders.
“Results come when a community group, a researcher, and a ministry work on the same issue at the local, regional, and national levels,” he said. “We see clear wins when communities can shape transition decisions rather than only react to them, with positive policy outcomes, court rulings, and public money moving.”
The missing finance categoryDespite the importance of these early efforts to ensure an equitable green future for communities on the ground, no one knows how much money is going towards it. That is largely because, as an emerging category of climate action that has evolved only in the past few years, funding for just transitions is not yet being comprehensively measured or tracked.
Nor is there consensus on how much will be needed as the energy transition gathers speed. Estimated requirements for international support for developing countries range from a high-level climate finance panel’s $50 billion a year by 2035 to $242 billion a year from the Civil Society Equity Review. But these figures are hard to compare directly.
A new discussion paper on finance for just transition and how it fits with a new Just Transition Mechanism (JTM) due to be established at the upcoming COP31 climate summit in Antalya notes that it faces “a definitional, methodological and accounting challenge”.
It defines just transition finance as “finance coming primarily from public sources, above all grant-based, highly concessional and non-debt-creating, that supports the policies and measures needed to move economies away from extractive, carbon-intensive models while distributing costs and benefits fairly”.
Co-author Jodi-Ann Wang, a research fellow with the Just Transition Finance Lab at the Grantham Research Institute, told a webinar on the paper’s findings there is as yet no common tracker or shared taxonomy in place, nor oversight to monitor such flows.
“Opacity is… costing us a sound understanding of just transition finance,” she said.
This is where the “Belém-Antalya Just Transition Mechanism” – or BAM, as it’s known among the civil society groups that advocated strongly for it – comes in.
From Belém to Antalya – gains, gaps and challenges for a new Just Transition Mechanism
Resource mobilisation group under BAMAs part of its objectives, form and methods of working, which countries will begin to define at the COP31 negotiations in Türkiye, Climate Action Network (CAN) International, a coalition of hundreds of NGOs, is pushing for the JTM to include a “resource mobilisation group”.
This, the paper explains, could explore and develop ways to boost the quantity, quality and governance of finance for just transition around the world, with a view to making it more accessible and equitable.
More concretely, it could map available sources of support and funding gaps, inform the new JTM on financial realities and needs, and propose partnerships between financial institutions, donor countries and actors implementing just transition on the ground.
A banner calling for the establishment of a Belem-Antalya Just Transition Mechanism at the Bonn climate talks, on June 15, 2026 (Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth) A banner calling for the establishment of a Belem-Antalya Just Transition Mechanism at the Bonn climate talks, on June 15, 2026 (Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth)Rebecca Thissen, CAN’s global advocacy lead who co-authored the paper, emphasised that the aim is not to set up yet another UN climate fund – something donor governments are wary of. Instead, she described the role of a resource mobilisation group as “more agile and innovative”.
One of its first tasks would be raising awareness about just transition finance – not yet an established category of climate funding. Climate finance has traditionally fallen into two main categories: mitigation (measures that cut emissions, such as installing renewables) and adaptation (protecting people, infrastructure and livelihoods from climate change impacts).
A third pillar has recently emerged: loss and damage (responding to and minimising destruction and harm caused by climate-driven disasters and longer-term stresses).
Just transition finance here, there and everywhereThe time has come to add just transition into the finance mix, argued Thissen, explaining this could be done through two main approaches. The first is to ensure that the existing areas – mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage – have a strong justice component integrated into them.
The second is to identify specific just transition policies and measures that “fall through the cracks” of those three types of climate finance and show how they can be funded separately.
Examples given in the paper include Ireland providing a fuel allowance and tax rebates for low-income households to offset additional costs from its carbon tax, Romania offering retraining opportunities in its coal region, and Chile funding ecosystem restoration for polluted areas to recover from resource extraction.
Spain’s unions say just transition means renewing communities beyond jobs
Spain’s government, in addition, has been widely praised for funding formal pacts and just transition strategies in areas where coal mining and power has been phased out, based on tripartite consultations with national, regional and local administrations, unions and industry.
NDCs get serious about just transitionThe emerging discussion around just transition finance comes as governments have begun incorporating the concept of just transition, and how to pursue it, into their national climate action plans (NDCs) in a far more meaningful way.
A report from the International Labour Organization, which covered 123 countries that had submitted updated NDCs by November 2025 – the third set of NDCs since 2015 – found that explicit references to “just transition” appeared in 79%, up from 50% in the second cycle.
It said many countries have moved beyond single mentions of just transition to multiple references or even dedicated sections, while around half of NDCs now reference follow-up mechanisms or institutional arrangements for just transition.
Mentions of explicit resources being allocated for just transition rose to 26% – whether in the form of financial commitments, budget lines or designated funding channels – compared with 2% in the previous round of NDCs.
The report also cast the net wider, showing that employment has become a common consideration when it comes to climate action, with 90% of the latest NDCs referencing employment and giving growing attention to green jobs and decent work. Social inclusion and equity, meanwhile, are also more prominent, appearing in over three-quarters of NDCs.
Labour rights lens puts focus on all workersThis broader lens on just transition fits with the perspective of the International Trade Union Confederation, which argues it must lead to quality jobs in renewables and other green industries, respect labour rights and be built on social dialogue, as well as compensate those who lose out in the shift to a low-carbon world using social protection systems.
All this has to be financed, emphasised Bert De Wel, the confederation’s global climate policy coordinator. His organisation argues that this can best be done by planning a fair deal for workers and people with lower incomes as economies go greener.
“It’s not always about having more money – more public money, more private money,” De Wel said. “It’s also about what is out there and how it’s being distributed – who is winning and who is losing?”
For example, when it comes to promoting sales of electric vehicles over petrol or diesel cars, government subsidies often end up going to richer families, while public transport used by those who can’t or don’t want to buy a car suffer from under-investment.
Two of five new electric buses parked at the Belém terminal in Brazil’s Amazon region. (Photo: Alice Martins Morais) Two of five new electric buses parked at the Belém terminal in Brazil’s Amazon region. (Photo: Alice Martins Morais)Similarly, just transition is often seen in rich countries as limited to helping workers in coal mines or oil fields find new green jobs. But this, De Wel said, is far too narrow an interpretation.
Key decisions at UN climate conferences make clear that just transitions are needed across multiple sectors and require “whole-of-society and whole-of-economy approaches”.
“All workers affected by climate change or by climate policies [should be] the subject of just transition policies, and the best way to deal with it is to give them decent jobs and good contracts, which means formal jobs or formalisation of informal workers,” De Wel said.
This is especially important in developing countries where informal work makes up a large share of economic activity and those who do it risk being left out of the just transition. So far, they have been largely left out of estimates of what will be needed to fund just transitions.
Narrowing the development gapIn addition to compensating workers who are negatively affected by climate policies, social protection and social welfare systems can also be an effective way of providing just transition support to vulnerable people who are hit by climate change impacts.
Back in 2021, record rainfall caused rivers to burst their banks on the border of Germany and Belgium, killing at least 170 people and causing many employees to be out of work for a few months until their companies could recover.
But, De Wel noted, they did not lose out financially because they were covered by national social security systems – unlike in developing countries such as Pakistan when people’s small businesses or fields are devastated by flooding and they have to rely on handouts.
For Indian women workers, a just transition means surviving climate impacts with dignity
Khaled Hashem, an Egyptian negotiator who coordinates the just transition track for the G77 and China group of developing countries at UN climate talks, said it is essential for the new JTM to take a broad view and work towards narrowing the development gap between rich and poor nations, so that the latter are in a position to take stronger climate action.
For example, just changing the energy source of a factory to solar requires a whole range of investments in infrastructure, the power grid, skilling of the labour force and even support for basic health and education services at the local level, he argued. Funding for all these different activities “can be considered as part of the just transition”, he added.
JTM can connect and coordinateGiven the scope of the challenge, CAN International proposes that a resource mobilisation group under the JTM could connect what is happening inside and outside of the UN climate process to coordinate the many existing and potential sources of funding and have them recognised as just transition finance with shared guidelines.
Currently, Thissen said, multilateral development banks are already working on just transition using their own sets of principles, but are starting to appreciate the value the new mechanism could offer in bringing funders together to discuss how to improve cooperation.
This would include UN climate funds, such as the Green Climate Fund which mentions just transition in its strategy but has so far funded few projects that directly address the issue.
Activists demand finance for a fair energy transition at the COP29 climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan on November 18, 2024. (Photo: UN Climate Change – Habib Samadov) Activists demand finance for a fair energy transition at the COP29 climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan on November 18, 2024. (Photo: UN Climate Change – Habib Samadov)“If [the JTM] is established… with the right function and modalities and principles, it could really set a very good precedent on how we articulate the COP discussion, while also including newcomers and new actors, but through defined standards and approaches that are still embedded in multilateral climate agreements,” Thissen said.
She suggested that the next Global Stocktake of national climate plans, due to conclude in late 2028, could evaluate and respond to countries’ progress on just transition and funding for it in the outcomes, which must be agreed by all governments.
The stocktake could be informed by the UNFCCC’s Standing Committee on Finance, which assesses climate finance needs for developing countries every four years, with its third such report due in 2028. While the committee has so far lacked data on just transition finance, this could be provided through the work of the new Just Transition Mechanism.
“That could be a clear connection [between] what actually already exists in the negotiations and… the added value of the BAM,” Thissen said.
The post Why COP31 needs to start talking about just transition finance appeared first on Climate Home News.
Rank-and-file voices from the Ontario day of action for public education
On Saturday, October 24, parents, teachers, students, and concerned Ontarians gathered at five separate rallies across the province to show support for public funding of...
The post Rank-and-file voices from the Ontario day of action for public education first appeared on Spring.
Extreme weather is creating a perfect storm of misinformation. Here’s what’s at stake.
Oct 29, 2026
This story is part of Distorted, a Grist series exploring the spread of misinformation in the wake of extreme weather. It is published with support from the CO2 Foundation.
You likely remember the 2023 Maui wildfires, a tragedy that killed more than 100 people and destroyed nearly 2,000 homes, all but erasing a historic island community. You may also remember that the fires began when a broken power pole owned by the local electric utility sparked against dry vegetation on a windy day.
But do you really know that? Were you there? How can you prove it?
In the aftermath of the Maui fires, thousands of people across all the major social media platforms shared posts and videos alleging that the fires had a more sinister origin. They posited that the government had used a “direct energy weapon,” or a form of laser, to ignite the area. Depending on the post you saw, this was part of a plot to reclaim the area for a high-speed rail line, or a high-tech “smart city.” A number of right-wing activists and social media personalities amplified these claims, including the late Charlie Kirk. At the same time, the Federal Emergency Management Agency saw accounts linked to China circulating rumors that a “weather weapon” had caused the fires. Other accounts alleged that the agency was going to seize the homes of people in Maui who applied for emergency aid, a claim that raised traumatic memories of colonization in a community with significant Indigenous historical and cultural ties.
Extreme weather events are always chaotic, and it’s always been easy for rumors to spread during moments of calamity, but the problem has never been as bad as it is now. The escalating pace of climate change has produced a series of supercharged wildfires, rapidly intensifying hurricanes, devastating drought, and sudden floods, all of which plunge communities into confusion and disarray. At the same time, the information landscape has never been more fragmented — major social media companies have given up on any pretense of fact-checking and content moderation; politicians often distort or politicize disasters; government agencies are short-staffed following DOGE cuts; and generative AI models have created an entirely new and little-understood way to source information. It’s not just your weird uncle seeing these rumors on Facebook: A recent report from the News Literacy Project found that a vast majority of teens encounter social media conspiracies, and a vast majority of teens who encounter those theories are inclined to believe them.
“Disasters are, by their nature, very urgent and have a lot of uncertainty surrounding them,” said Amber Silver, a professor of emergency management at the University at Albany and an expert in disaster communications. Victims of extreme weather events have an urgent need for facts, she said, but almost no way to get reliable data about their situation. “So now we have essentially all of the perfect conditions for the spread of misinformation.”
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Would you trust an emergency alert written by AI?
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How to fact-check during and after a disaster
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Why trust Grist?
This confluence of factors does more than sow confusion. A void of good information after a disaster can lead to lost lives, traumatic displacement, or a slow recovery. It also strains the relationship between public authorities and their citizens. A growing body of research from around the world shows the consequences of this strain: A Department of Homeland Security study found that an inaccurate map tweeted out during a 2017 California flood caused an unnecessary mass evacuation, while another study, from the Inter-American Development Bank, found that an earthquake in Mexico led to an 11 percent drop in people’s trust in government. The federal government in the United States now often creates fact-checking and myth-busting websites in an attempt to dispel rumors after disasters.
A review of recent research found that this kind of bad information has often “led to resource misallocation, overwhelmed emergency services, and diverted attention away from genuine needs.”
At Grist, we have been hearing for years from emergency managers and disaster victims in the U.S. about this growing chaos. In our new series, Distorted, we’re exploring this fragmented information landscape: Who do people actually trust when disaster strikes, and why do so many people believe conspiracies that are clearly false? Is there anything the authorities can do to fight social media rumors and post-disaster hysteria? What would it actually take to establish a shared sense of truth as a hurricane or a wildfire is bearing down?
The concepts of “misinformation” (unintentional deception) and “disinformation” (intentional deception) have been the subject of innumerable academic papers and policy initiatives, and the Biden administration even appointed a “disinformation governance board” at the Department of Homeland Security in 2022. In truth, the concepts are a little hard to pin down — the question of whether a certain piece of information is “dis” depends on the beliefs and attitudes of the person who’s reading or hearing that claim. Even so, it’s clear that many people believe things about disasters that simply aren’t true, and they often mistrust the people whose job it is to keep them safe.
When disaster strikes, this lack of trust can be the difference between life and death.
Anatomy of a conspiracyHow a series of unrelated photos morphed into a climate conspiracy theory.
It all starts with an innocuous photo taken on January 16, 2018. The Marathon Petroleum Refinery in Canton, Ohio, conducts a flare in response to a mechanical issue. A local resident captures a blurry picture of the flare, which includes a lens flare pointing upward, and posts it on Facebook.
SpaceX posts an Instagram photo of their Falcon 9 rocket launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
A windstorm in Santiago, Chile, causes an electrical transformer to explode. A resident captures the event on video, which includes a lens flare from the bright explosion, and posts the video on TikTok.
A brush fire in Maui, Hawai‘i, spreads out of control, destroying the town of Lahaina. The fires caused over $5.5 billion in damages and killed more than 100 people.
Old photos become a conspiracySoon after the fires ignite, social media posts on Instagram, TikTok, and X start to resurface these old photos of the refinery flare, the electrical explosion, and the rocket launch, attributing them as evidence of some kind of energy weapon used to ignite the Maui fire.
These posts were viewed and reshared millions of times, and often would take on a life of their own.
The conspiracy can't be stoppedHawai‘i-based Instagram user @for_our_rights_kauai, for example, posted the old photo of the refinery flare and suggested the Maui fires were the result of an “attack.” A few days later, she acknowledged that the photo was unrelated to the fires.
“I want to apologize for contributing to spreading that photo that I was told came from Maui on the day of this event. It turns out it was not true,” she said in a follow-up video. “It is very important for us to vet our information.”
The conspiracy spreadsBut it was too late. The instagram account @cultivateelevate, run by an influential MAHA-adjacent health food entrepreneur, had already published a video containing a screenshot of @for_our_rights_kauai’s later-deleted post. “My friend in Hawai‘i,” the host said, pointing to the screenshot, “showed a laser beam coming out of the sky, directly targeting the city.” @cultivateelevate’s video received 432,000 views, over 40 times more views than the video apologizing for the mistake.
Out of controlOther accounts, like Instagram user @mama_speaks_truth, also contributed to the spread, posting screenshots of screenshots of screenshots, each getting further and further from the original photo of a refinery, taken five years earlier and 4,500 miles away. This is just one example of the twisty way that misinformation can spread in the wake of a disaster. Images and facts can blend together with old fears and suspicions, morphing into a conspiracy with a new meaning and a life of its own.
Anatomy of a conspiracyHow a series of unrelated photos morphed into a climate conspiracy theory.
It all starts with an innocuous photo taken on January 16, 2018. The Marathon Petroleum Refinery in Canton, Ohio, conducts a flare in response to a mechanical issue. A local resident captures a blurry picture of the flare, which includes a lens flare pointing upward, and posts it on Facebook.
SpaceX posts an Instagram photo of their Falcon 9 rocket launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
A windstorm in Santiago, Chile, causes an electrical transformer to explode. A resident captures the event on video, which includes a lens flare from the bright explosion, and posts the video on TikTok.
A brush fire in Maui, Hawai‘i, spreads out of control, destroying the town of Lahaina. The fires caused over $5.5 billion in damages and killed more than 100 people.
Old photos become a conspiracySoon after the fires ignite, social media posts on Instagram, TikTok, and X start to resurface these old photos of the refinery flare, the electrical explosion, and the rocket launch, attributing them as evidence of some kind of energy weapon used to ignite the Maui fire.
These posts were viewed and reshared millions of times, and often would take on a life of their own.
The conspiracy can't be stoppedHawai‘i-based Instagram user @for_our_rights_kauai, for example, posted the old photo of the refinery flare and suggested the Maui fires were the result of an “attack.” A few days later, she acknowledged that the photo was unrelated to the fires.
“I want to apologize for contributing to spreading that photo that I was told came from Maui on the day of this event. It turns out it was not true,” she said in a follow-up video. “It is very important for us to vet our information.”
The conspiracy spreadsBut it was too late. The instagram account @cultivateelevate, run by an influential MAHA-adjacent health food entrepreneur, had already published a video containing a screenshot of @for_our_rights_kauai’s later-deleted post. “My friend in Hawai‘i,” the host said, pointing to the screenshot, “showed a laser beam coming out of the sky, directly targeting the city.” @cultivateelevate’s video received 432,000 views, over 40 times more views than the video apologizing for the mistake.
Out of controlOther accounts, like Instagram user @mama_speaks_truth, also contributed to the spread, posting screenshots of screenshots of screenshots, each getting further and further from the original photo of a refinery, taken five years earlier and 4,500 miles away. This is just one example of the twisty way that misinformation can spread in the wake of a disaster. Images and facts can blend together with old fears and suspicions, morphing into a conspiracy with a new meaning and a life of its own.
Experts have identified a few main vectors where communication can collapse in the lead-up and aftermath of a disaster:
Mistrust in governmentThe most important source of information around extreme weather is the government itself. Federal, state, and local agencies and officials are responsible for predicting the weather, sending out warnings about disasters, coordinating mandatory evacuations, and leading disaster response. If people don’t trust them, or if they can’t get their messages out effectively, lives are at stake. The background trends are already bad: Less than 20 percent of Americans say they believe the government does the right thing most of the time, the lowest level on record.
The most visible avatar of the government in a disaster is the Federal Emergency Management Agency, so it’s no coincidence that FEMA is also the most frequent subject of conspiracies and disinformation. Even though the agency is supposed to act as a backstop for state and local authorities, disaster-affected communities often swirl with allegations that federal relief is absent, that the government is restricting freedom of movement, or, as in the case of Maui, that officials are going to seize land and disenfranchise victims.
“FEMA has been the source of misinformation since its inception,” said Deanne Criswell, who led the agency under the Biden administration. She pointed to the famous allegations that the agency plans to imprison disaster victims in government-run “FEMA camps”; these allegations have circulated almost since FEMA was founded. “It’s this [idea] of the black arm of government. It makes it harder for us to actually get the assistance to the people who really need it, because they don’t know who to trust and who to believe.” There’s no knowing how many victims never show up to apply for FEMA aid because of these rumors and fears.
During Hurricane Helene in 2024, this misinformation became dangerous: A rumor about a man who had come to North Carolina to shoot FEMA disaster response officials forced Criswell to shut down field operations for several hours during the immediate aftermath of the storm. At the same time, both Criswell and her deputy chief of staff had their homes “swatted,” meaning anonymous trolls called police with false accusations that resulted in the deployment of SWAT teams. These disruptions further stressed an aid system that was already strained, which likely meant more victims in North Carolina had to wait longer to receive aid and shelter.
Hurricane Helene also hit just a few weeks before a consequential presidential election, which likely helped fuel the spread of mis- and disinformation. Right-wing accounts with names like End Wokeness accused Biden of starving North Carolina of aid, racking up millions of views despite a complete lack of evidence for their claims. Elon Musk claimed on his own platform, X, that FEMA was barring him from flying in to deliver aid, only to walk back those claims later. His retraction got 1 million views, but his initial accusation got almost 30 million, and it’s likely that many people in North Carolina and elsewhere still believe that Biden tried to restrict aid.
In other cases, mistrust in government can look very different. It doesn’t have to be about political animus — it can also be about blithe confidence, or even fear. Some people who’ve experienced storms that didn’t live up to early projections may dismiss evacuation warnings later, while others may be afraid to evacuate because they’re undocumented and fear retribution. The end result is the same — more people putting their lives at risk, and more people unwilling to get the help they need after a disaster.
“It could just be a person who says, ‘I’m a conspiracy theorist, I don’t trust the government,’ but there are also people who can’t or won’t trust that government for very different reasons,” said Silver, pointing to the example of undocumented migrants or communities that have traumatic experiences with law enforcement. “There is some skepticism and doubt, and that is hard to overcome.”
Pervasive social mediaBased on the pervasiveness of social media in Americans’ lives, it may not come as a total surprise that these platforms act as the incubator for almost all major disaster conspiracy theories in the modern age. Rumors have swirled around extreme weather events since the dawn of disaster — from allegations that a group of wealthy industrialists caused the 1889 Johnstown flood, which killed more than 2,000 people in Pennsylvania, to claims that FEMA put disaster survivors in concentration camps after Hurricane Katrina. But platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X have allowed for these rumors to achieve global circulation in minutes. The networks also make it near impossible to trace the origin or the trajectory of a given rumor, unless you’re a university or nonprofit lab doing “network analysis” of many millions of tweets.
There is little good data about how these rumors spread, but it’s clear enough that they do spread. One study on a 2023 earthquake in Turkey found that around a quarter of polled residents believed at least some version of a conspiracy theory that the U.S. had caused the earthquake with a seismic weapon or a bomb. Those who believed these theories were more likely to be supportive of the incumbent government ahead of an election that year. A comprehensive study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that most conspiracy posts were from verified accounts. Even benign fakes, like a famous doctored image of a shark on a flooded highway, have duped media outlets and at least one U.S. senator.
If you’ve spent any time on social media, you already know how pervasive this kind of misinformation can be. One meta study last year found that “misleading messages … often outpaced official communications, resulting in reduced trust and exacerbating anxiety, stress, and fear.” This mistrust can have real-world consequences: A study on a 2018 Japanese earthquake found that communities with low trust in government tended to evacuate even when they didn’t need to, which risked clogging up the roads for people who actually did need to flee. After the Maui fires, Criswell worried that the fear of a colonial land grab caused families who needed help to reject it.
Even though many people blame bots and malign actors for the spread of rumors, some studies have found that most people who spread false rumors believe what they are sharing. While accounts in Russia and China may have stoked outrage about the fires in Maui, it seems clear that many people who shared such misinformation believed it to be true. One prominent source of conspiracies belonged to an account called Cultivate Elevate, with over half a million followers. It’s run by a MAHA-adjacent health food entrepreneur who posted a number of videos alleging that the fires had been set on purpose through some kind of government scheme. (The owner of the account did not respond to a request for comment.)
The rise of AIThe proliferation of large language models like Gemini and ChatGPT is the latest wrinkle. About a quarter of U.S. adults now use AI chatbots daily, and searching for information is the most common usage. These models are more likely to draw on news articles and official sources than social media rumors when they answer user queries, which can cut against misinformation — if I type in “Maui directed energy weapon” into ChatGPT, it hectors me that “there is no credible evidence supporting” that theory, and even offers to debunk the actual origins of alleged images that show lasers starting the fire — but that doesn’t mean these models would always be trustworthy in an emergency.
What if a model were to scrape a news article from last week, for example, that said there’s no evacuation from a storm, but the weather had since progressed or a new event had since formed? Can I really trust the bot to give me an accurate summary of my eligibility for FEMA benefits?
Generative AI is developing so rapidly that most researchers have yet to conduct peer-reviewed studies of how it operates in the disaster space, but it’s clear that the intersection is growing. In addition to dozens of startups that purport to map flood risk or storm damage, the Red Cross has developed a chatbot named Clara that can help navigate disaster situations, and MIT has created a similar technology called Crisischat. The Trump administration’s own chatbot, America.gov, offers information on how to get FEMA assistance. When it comes to analyzing how people trust these tools and standard chatbots like Gemini, however, we are still flying blind.
“You need to learn if the information’s accurate, but then you also need to know, Do people trust it, regardless of the objective veracity?” said Anita Atwell Seate, a professor of communication and a crisis expert at the University of Maryland. “If people trust it, they’re going to act on it whether it’s accurate or not.” Seate is working with other researchers to develop a longitudinal study about how people in disaster areas use AI tools.
It’s hard to know what it would even mean to “solve” the problem of mis- and disinformation in a landscape as fragmented as the 21st century United States. There’s no way to measure the number of people who believe a false rumor, and efforts to debunk inaccurate information will always be of necessity slower and less viral than that information itself. It’s not great for politics if someone in Iowa believes that a laser started the Maui fires, but the more urgent question is how to ensure people in disaster areas have accurate information before, during, and after extreme weather events. That could make the difference between a slow recovery and a fast one, or even between life and death.
Experts in the field tend to say that the only way to fight disinformation is to establish strong communication channels beforehand, and for emergency managers to partner with people who have organic trust in their communities. Toward the end of the Biden administration, FEMA started to experiment with such efforts. The agency partnered with a Native Hawaiian FEMA employee in Maui who reassured his broader network that the government wasn’t planning to take anyone’s home. While there are still people out there in the U.S. who believe Biden set the fire with a laser, eventually most people in the vicinity of the fire did come to the agency for aid. FEMA also partnered with the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers to distribute disaster info to home health aides and caregivers, putting information in the hands of trusted messengers who would have credibility when the disaster arrives.
“From a government perspective, they’re just like, ‘They don’t know us,’” said Seate, describing the communication difficulties that she’s observed at the National Weather Service. “But they don’t have to know us, they know Jim down at the fire station and Jim, you know, rings the alarm and posted on Facebook for us.”
The tough part is this only tends to work if you lay the foundations before a disaster. Even then, it isn’t always successful — there are people out there who will choose to believe a social media hoax over a trusted weatherman, whether because it confirms their prior beliefs or just because that’s how their brain works. Fighting misinformation isn’t like swordplay, where one side wins and another side loses. It’s more like trench warfare, where emergency managers and recovery leaders have to slog to increase their share of the information environment.
“It’s at a level that we’ve never really seen before, because the systems and the silos of information have gotten so siloed and quick,” said Justin Knighten, a risk communication consultant who led FEMA’s external affairs team under President Biden during several major disasters. “When trust is low, you have a lot of work to not only build up that trust, but to also get ahead of those upcoming threats, so you’re really working at a deficit.”
toolTips('.classtoolTips5','In scholarly research, a “peer-reviewed” study or article is one that has been independently evaluated by other experts in the field to assess scientific accuracy. Not all studies go through a peer-review process, so peer-reviewed studies and journals typically indicate a higher level of confidence in methodologies and results.');This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Extreme weather is creating a perfect storm of misinformation. Here’s what’s at stake. on Oct 28, 2026.
Would you trust an emergency alert written by AI?
Earlier this month, after Hurricane Isaias made landfall on the Gulf Coast as a Category 3 hurricane, the emergency management expert Laura Myers got a call from a meteorologist in Alabama. Myers is director of the University of Alabama’s Center for Advanced Public Safety, and she talks to state and local emergency managers around her region all the time. The meteorologist told Myers that a local emergency manager had published a graphic showing where Isaias might threaten the Alabama coast with a “sting jet” of high winds.
The problem? The emergency manager had generated the graphic using an artificial intelligence chatbot, and it wasn’t accurate.
“That county emergency manager was trying to get his stakeholders to focus on the risk in that county, and so he had asked AI to help him,” she said. “It did what he wanted it to do, but it was not meteorologically accurate.”
Most emergency management agencies don’t permit employees to use generative AI, but Myers and most other emergency management experts agree that its usage is likely already pervasive at state and local disaster departments. There are hundreds of companies that are marketing AI tools to emergency managers for tasks like flood damage assessment and resource coordination, but public communication is one of the areas where government employees and startups have the most interest.
The reason? Most emergency managers aren’t very good at sending out alerts and quickly communicating about disasters with the public. That’s not because they’re emergency managers, but because they are human beings. They tend to write in jargon that non-experts might not understand, leave out information on the assumption that the public already knows it, and include irrelevant details that could distract people from what they actually do need to know.
“A lot of agencies are really limited in resources and the number of people that they have,” said Jeannette Sutton, a disaster researcher at the University of Albany who has created a comprehensive dashboard that provides templates for disaster alerts. “I think they recognize it as a priority, but they don’t prioritize it until they realize they should have. They’re just trying to get their job done without screwing something up.”
Emergency department personnel with the city of New York monitor the watch-command room in Brooklyn on February 23, 2026, ahead of a winter storm.Matthew Hoen / NurPhoto via Getty Images
Emergency managers are the government officials who are in charge of disaster response and recovery. At the state and local level, It is these officials and their agencies, not the Federal Emergency Management Agency, that make up the first line of defense after an extreme weather event. As such, emergency managers often like to say that “trust is our currency,” and it’s in their communication with the public that they build and lose this trust.
As climate disasters become more frequent and widespread, there have been numerous examples of flawed human communication scrambling an emergency response. In 2016, for instance, adjacent counties in California issued a “voluntary evacuation” and a “mandatory evacuation” for the same wildfire. In Australia in 2019, officials warned about wildfires by using the phrase “Watch and Act,” which the government later said caused “significant confusion” because no one knew what it meant.
In some cases, inadequate communication can mean the difference between life and death. This happened in Montecito, California, after the 2017 Thomas Fire. A few weeks after the fire, a heavy rainstorm produced a deadly mudslide. The government of Santa Barbara County struggled to communicate the risk to residents still traumatized from the blaze and experiencing a phenomenon that Sutton calls “warning fatigue.” The county sent alerts to everyone in the “voluntary evacuation zone” for wildfires, telling residents to “stay alert to changing conditions and be prepared to leave immediately.” Most of those residents should have left immediately, but to many the evacuation notice was optional; others just didn’t want to evacuate for a second time in a month. The mudslide killed 23 people and injured more than 160 others.
Governments that put out bad warnings are apt to lose the public’s trust said Sutton. “They’re losing the opportunity to be that voice to help people to be safe.”
After a series of erroneous evacuation alerts to L.A. residents sparked panic during an active wildfire season in January 2025, the director of the county’s emergency management department apologized.Chris Delmas / AFP via Getty Images
In theory, alerts are a perfect use case for artificial intelligence, and in particular for the generative AI systems that have developed at a dramatic pace over the past few years. FEMA provides training sessions for emergency managers to learn best practices for synthesizing and sending alerts, but many officials don’t remember all their training when an emergency arrives. A large language model is different. It can read hundreds of thousands of alerts in mere minutes, digest all the research on what works in similar scenarios, and then apply that to edit a human alert in seconds.
“If you’ve only sent one [alert] in your life, and that was 15 years ago, and you need to remember all your training, and you’re thinking ‘Hey, there’s a chemical plume coming my way, the phone’s ringing, the radio’s blaring, I need help,’ the AI is probably gonna do a better job than you are,” said Rob Dale, a former meteorologist who now runs the emergency management department in Ingham County, Michigan.
Dale has already used AI to draft a few practice alerts behind the scenes, but he’s never had to send one out. Ingham County is a small county in central Michigan, and it’s immune from major weather events like hurricanes and fires. If such an event did happen, Dale said he would have no issue allowing a chatbot to draft his incident communication, but he’d still want control over sending the alert out.
Some experts believe the technology is already good enough to deploy. EM1, a startup that produces AI software for emergency managers, has used Sutton’s research to train a model that its executives say is already better than almost any human emergency manager. The company has tested this in-house model on a number of scenarios including wildfires and tsunamis. It can already match or exceed human capabilities on most benchmark tests.
Sutton gave Grist an example of how the software works: Grist provided her with a recent alert sent by a New Mexico county that was trying to warn residents about flooding on the San Juan River.
The original alert1 of 1Sutton asked the EM1 model to evaluate and revise the alert. In a few seconds, it produced what she said is a far better alert, one that checks all the main boxes of disaster communication.
The new alert1 of 1The model identified and fixed several problems with the original text, which does not say who is sending the alert, name the specific location where flooding is happening, or clarify who needs to evacuate and give advice on how to do so safely. It misspells the word “breached,” and it doesn’t provide any guidance on where residents can seek further information.
EM1 has contracts with around a hundred government agencies and school districts, but none are using it to automate their extreme weather alerts just yet. For the moment, they’re only using it to workshop plans and internal preparations. Even so, all the experts interviewed for this story said they are certain that many emergency managers are already using chatbots to write messages, even if they won’t admit it. Sutton said that the emergency managers who take her alert training sessions often present her with high-quality alerts they have drafted in seconds using ChatGPT or Gemini.
“Official adoption is pretty low, but people are unofficially using it, absolutely,” said Sarah Miller, a professor of emergency management at Pierce College in Florida and a longtime instructor at the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center. “They’re using their own personal accounts, or they’re using free ones.”
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Extreme weather is creating a perfect storm of misinformation
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How to fact-check during and after a disaster
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Why trust Grist?
It sounds like an easy trade-off: if AI is better and faster than humans, and the difference between a good alert and a bad alert can be life and death, we should be using AI for every heat wave and wildfire. Yet even researchers who are bullish on chatbot technology say that making the switch could backfire. Members of the public who are skeptical of AI or who don’t trust the government in the first place may spurn agencies that publish AI-generated graphics or social media posts. In Syracuse, New York, for instance, a union of public employees sued the local government for using an AI service to answer non-emergency 911 calls.
“We trust things that we perceive [are] authentic and care about us,” said Ginny Katz, the founder of HazAdapt, a consultancy that helps disaster officials figure out how to use technology. “AI-generated content does not feel authentic.” There’s also a risk that chatbots could allow emergency managers to send out more alerts, and faster, which could increase the risk of warning fatigue.
As is the case in other areas where AI is being deployed, disaster experts say that for the moment the software is only as capable as the person using it. A seasoned emergency manager might be able to speed up their communication with the public by having a chatbot draft a series of alerts, but an inexperienced one rushing to create an urgent alert won’t know how to evaluate the output of a model like ChatGPT or Claude.
Even though the technology is a ways off from being able to perform without a human expert in the loop, that hasn’t stopped many understaffed emergency management departments from using it. As for how the proliferation of AI-generated content is affecting public trust in government, experts say it’s too early to tell.
“If you had a human sending you a text message versus a computer sending you a text message, which one would you believe is being more accurate?” said Justin Snair, the founder of Preppr, another company that offers AI software to emergency managers.
The answer, he said, depends on the person receiving it.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Would you trust an emergency alert written by AI? on Oct 28, 2026.
COP31 must amplify people power, not oil lobby voices
Jurema Werneck, Ruhat Sena Akşener and Samantha Klintworth are directors for Amnesty International in Brazil, Türkiye and Australia, respectively.
The climate crisis is also a human rights crisis – claiming lives and turning life upside down for countless communities across the world.
But while those profiting from fossil fuel expansion retain privileged access and influence over global climate negotiations, the people facing its harshest consequences, such as Indigenous peoples or those living in climate-vulnerable communities, remain largely shut out of the decision-making.
As directors of Amnesty International in Brazil, Türkiye and Australia, countries with a leading role in COP30 and COP31, we have seen how effective climate action depends on people being able to speak, organise, protest and participate.
Last year in Belém, fossil fuel lobbyists outnumbered every national delegation except Brazil’s, exposing the imbalance of power within climate negotiations. COP31 should confront corporate capture and expand public participation. Instead, serious concerns have been raised over whether civil society will be able to speak freely and safely in Türkiye.
Rights curbs worsen climate breakdownThe human rights needed to confront the climate crisis and demand justice are being eroded.
Authoritarian practices are supercharging climate breakdown by restricting protest, silencing defenders and shielding fossil fuel interests from scrutiny. Attacks on women, LGBTI+ people and members of other marginalised communities divide societies, weaken collective action and divert public attention while fossil fuel expansion continues.
That is why the assault on civic space in Türkiye, the host of COP31, should alarm every government preparing to attend the summit.
Indigenous people attend a protest outside the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belem, Brazil, November 6, 2025. REUTERS/Adriano Machado Indigenous people attend a protest outside the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belem, Brazil, November 6, 2025. REUTERS/Adriano MachadoIn September, Turkish authorities launched a nationwide operation targeting LGBTI+ organisations, activists and human rights defenders. Homes, venues and offices were raided, people were arrested and imprisoned, and social media accounts belonging to activists, journalists and human rights groups were restricted, including that of Amnesty International Türkiye.
This is part of a decade-long crackdown that has weakened judicial independence, ignored international judgements and restricted peaceful assembly, association and expression. Whoever is targeted, the effect is the same: dissent is silenced and fear spreads.
For COP31 to succeed, Türkiye must end its human rights crackdown.
Worrying signals from TürkiyeAgainst this backdrop, the agreement between Türkiye and the UN on hosting COP31 is alarming.
Article 11.11 requires participants to respect Türkiye’s laws and regulations and refrain from interfering in its “internal affairs”. Article 11.12 reintroduces language on waiving immunity that was omitted from Brazil’s COP30 agreement.
Turkish authorities are already invoking vague notions of “public morality” and “harm to the family” to investigate people and restrict expression. The agreement could therefore have a chilling effect on activists, defenders and journalists.
COP31 attendees told not to interfere in Türkiye’s “internal affairs”
Could criticism of Türkiye’s fossil fuel policies, its treatment of environmental defenders or its crackdown on LGBTI+ organisations be characterised as interference in “internal affairs”? Nobody attending a UN climate conference should have to ask.
Türkiye and the UN should publicly guarantee that participants can speak, organise, report and protest peacefully without discrimination, intimidation, surveillance, detention or reprisals. Governments ought to challenge the agreement’s flaws before arriving in Antalya.
Progress, not perfection, at Brazil’s COPCOP31 must build on Brazil’s approach. Its COP hosting agreement committed to an inclusive and non-discriminatory conference, while its presidency adopted a more open and participatory tone. COP30 saw record participation by Indigenous peoples, but access did not guarantee influence: many key decisions continued to be shaped behind closed doors.
Commitments made in Belém ultimately depend on domestic political choices, and Brazil’s October election results point to a legislature that may be less willing to uphold them. This could put the rights of Indigenous peoples, Quilombola and traditional communities at greater risk.
When protections at home weaken, international spaces become even more vital for affected populations to speak out, and hold decision-makers accountable. COP31 must guarantee freedom of expression and peaceful assembly outside the “Blue Zone” (the UN-protected area) and grant civil society greater access to negotiations.
Comment: Coal mines and hypocrisy must not be Australia’s COP31 legacy
As documented by Amnesty International, communities resisting fossil fuel expansion and building fairer alternatives are facing harassment, surveillance, criminalisation, disinformation, violence and restrictions on peaceful protest. They include: First Nations people in Australia challenging offshore oil and gas exploration, artisanal fishers in Brazil’s Guanabara Bay fighting for environmental justice, and activists defending Akbelen Forest in Türkiye from coal mining expansion.
These communities are rights-holders, knowledge-bearers and political actors protecting territories and forging effective climate responses. Governments must protect them and ensure they have a meaningful say.
Confronting fossil fuel powerTo defend human rights, governments must use COP31 to advance three urgent priorities.
First, they must end fossil fuel expansion and accelerate a full, fast, fair, funded and human rights-compliant transition away from fossil fuels. States most responsible must go further and faster, ending fossil fuel subsidies and redirecting public resources towards rights-respecting renewable energy.
Second, they must ensure the transition protects rights and leaves no one behind, including by making the new Just Transition Mechanism operational, funded and accountable.
A climate activist protesting the drilling of new coal seam gas wells holds a sign during a demonstration outside Origin Energy Ltd’s Annual General Meeting in Sydney, Australia, October 15, 2025. REUTERS/Hollie Adams A climate activist protesting the drilling of new coal seam gas wells holds a sign during a demonstration outside Origin Energy Ltd’s Annual General Meeting in Sydney, Australia, October 15, 2025. REUTERS/Hollie AdamsAnd third, they must scale up public, grant-based climate finance for mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage, without pushing lower-income countries further into debt.
COP31 will not deliver these outcomes without the knowledge and expertise of frontline communities.
Brazil must defend the participatory progress made at COP30. Türkiye must reverse its crackdown and protect civic space. Australia, as president of negotiations for COP31, should secure an ambitious, human rights-centred outcome while confronting restrictions on peaceful climate protest at home.
The climate crisis cannot be solved behind closed doors. The doors must remain open, and people must have the power to shape what happens inside.
The post COP31 must amplify people power, not oil lobby voices appeared first on Climate Home News.
How to fact-check during and after a disaster
Misinformation about extreme weather and disasters often starts small: Someone reposts a rumor on social media about government corruption or an AI photo of a shark swimming in floodwaters. It’s shared dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of times before huge swaths of people believe it as truth.
Trying to fact-check during a crisis is stressful, and extreme weather makes you feel like there’s a lot to figure out and learn in a short period of time. That’s why it’s important to know ahead of time who you can trust, how to vet information, and how to talk to your friends and family about it.
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Extreme weather is creating a perfect storm of misinformation
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Would you trust an emergency alert written by AI?
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Why trust Grist?
Many well-intentioned people want to do their own research. But not all sources of information are equal — especially when your safety is on the line. Finding the right sources will help you avoid falling for — or fueling — rumors that aren’t true.
Below is a list of reliable sources for extreme weather alerts, updates, and more.
Your local emergency agency: Your city, county, and state has an emergency management department. Emergency managers handle response efforts and communicate with the public in their jurisdiction about the disaster. Many of these agencies have an SMS-based emergency alert system that you can sign up for via text to get regular updates. In larger cities, it’s a separate agency. But in smaller communities, updates and alerts come from a sheriff’s office.
Find specific details: Sometimes rumors about extreme weather or disaster conditions accidentally spread as people try to share information on social media that hasn’t been fact-checked. When in doubt, look for an official source. You can track extreme weather conditions on these websites:
- Poweroutage.US, managed by energy data platform Find Energy, tracks which states and counties are experiencing significant outages.
- The National Interagency Fire Center tracks wildfires around the country.
- The National Hurricane Center tracks hurricanes in the bodies of water surrounding the U.S.
- The National Weather Service active alerts page monitors severe weather through several filters including state, region, and type of weather.
National Weather Service: This agency, called NWS, is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, and offers information and updates on everything from wildfires to hurricanes to air quality. You can enter your ZIP code on weather.gov and customize your homepage to get the most updated weather information and receive alerts for a variety of weather conditions. The NWS also has regional and local branches where you can sign up for SMS alerts. Local alerts in multiple languages are available in some areas.
Weather stations and apps: The Weather Channel, AccuWeather, Apple Weather, and Google, which all rely on NWS data, will have information on major storms. That may not be the case for smaller-scale weather events, and you shouldn’t rely on these apps to tell you if you need to evacuate or move to higher ground.
Local news: The local television news and social media accounts from verified news sources will have live updates during and after a storm. Meteorologists at your local news station use NWS weather data. Follow your local newspaper, radio station, and television station on Facebook or other social media, or check their websites regularly. If you don’t have cable, these stations often livestream online for free during severe weather. Your local news may also have a live blog that is updated regularly. You can search this database for nonprofit news outlets, or this one for local journalism by state.
Official social media accounts: Many agencies and elected officials share quick updates on social media about extreme weather. If you are unsure whether information is coming from an official account, Google the name of the agency. Most official agency websites have links to their social media accounts. For example, the New York City Emergency Management’s website has a section on its homepage with all of its social accounts.
How to fact-check during a crisisAn extreme weather event can cause many emotions: fear, anger, grief, confusion. Knowing whom to trust and how to spot inaccurate information can help you keep a clear head when making decisions.
Keep your questions short: When you hop on your phone or laptop, try to prioritize a few quick questions that you’re trying to answer. It’s important to look for specific details that apply to you or loved ones so that you can avoid doomscrolling through a deluge of details. For instance: If there’s heavy rain, look up something specific, such as when the rain is forecast to stop in your area or if there are evacuation orders for your county.
Double-check the source: A lot of news is shared via social media, but it’s often hard to pinpoint where it comes from. Before you share something or act on it, re-read the information and look closely at any photos or videos.
First, ask yourself: Is there a source tagged anywhere?
If the answer is yes:
- If you don’t recognize it as a news outlet, government website, or other vetted source, do a quick Google to confirm what it is.
- Look around the source’s website and social media accounts to make sure they publish factual information, not solely opinions or conspiracy theories.
- Send it to a friend, neighbor, or family member and ask them if it tracks with what they’re seeing online.
If the answer is no:
- Is there any identifying information that you can Google to confirm at least some of the information that you’re seeing?
- Is there a logo or watermark on an image that you can search for to help confirm the source?
- Send it to a friend or family member and ask them if it tracks with what they’re seeing.
If it’s hard to confirm anything, avoid sharing it. It could unfortunately be misinformation that’s making the rounds on your feed.
Keep to official sources when possible: If you’re struggling to figure out where to find the correct information, look for the official accounts from your local and state agencies. Government agencies, newsrooms, and other trusted institutions can make mistakes, too, but you can trust they’ll address it and issue a correction if they do. They’ll also likely share updates as they receive new information about extreme conditions.
Bookmark some fact-checking sites: As online rumors may continue spreading online, it’s important to find news sources that double-check information and explain sources.
Here are a few:
Know the common myths: During every disaster, officials have to address rumors. During Hurricane Helene in 2024, for instance, there were conspiracy theories that FEMA was stealing supplies and food. Another common one is that agencies, like FEMA, will take away people’s land and homes after a disaster.
Familiarize yourself with these myths and how to bust them whenever you see them being spread:
- Common disaster-related rumors (from FEMA)
- FEMA myth-busting for homeowners (from FEMA)
- More common myths about disasters (from Red Cross)
The internet has become inundated with content generated by artificial intelligence. About 34 percent of webpages published after ChatGPT was released in late 2022 showcase AI editing or authorship, according to an analysis from the Pew Research Center. There’s a lot to sift through, and some posts aren’t easily identified as AI-produced content, no matter how trained your eye is. Here are a few things you can look out for to help identify AI:
- AI-generated written content doesn’t have a consistent writing style. Look for abrupt shifts in tone and formatting.
- Some AI images look too airbrushed. A guide from the Global Investigative Journalism Network suggests zooming in on people’s faces. If there are no imperfections, no hair out of place, and no visible pores, that photo might be AI or has been heavily edited.
- Look at the background of photos and videos, as well. Does a landscape shot of a city accurately reflect the skyline? Are buildings out of place or fake?
- Videos generated by AI sometimes have an overly polished look, and elements that may defy the laws of physics.
Most people are trying to be helpful when they share information online. They may be worried or angry, especially during or after a disaster. They likely truly believe what they’re seeing, even if it is incorrect. Below are some suggestions for approaching a conversation with a loved one, which can be difficult to navigate.
Decide if it’s worth engaging: Research shows people listen to those they already trust. Arguing in the comments of a news article or Facebook post hardly goes well. Before you start the conversation, really think about the setting, the impact on your relationship, and the possible outcomes.
Assume best intentions and show empathy: Don’t approach a conversation about misinformation with your guns blazing — you’re trying to understand where someone is coming from, and they aren’t going to let you do so if you aren’t curious and calm. Most people that share misinformation believe it to be true. By asking questions and not assuming bad intent, you’ll have a better, more productive conversation.
Have a real dialogue: Ask meaningful questions and try to understand the other person’s experience and emotions. This communication guide from the Environmental Defense Fund offers tips for this type of conversation, including offering to trade sources, acknowledging that it’s difficult to find sources to trust amid all the noise online, and finding common ground on something. Once you hear someone out, share your sources and explain how you fact-check for yourself when looking for information online.
Learn when to take a step back: Some of your friends and family will be open to learning about misinformation, and some may not. If a handful of conversations don’t go well, it may be time to move on from speaking to that person about your concerns. A misinformation tool kit from the Initiative to Study Hate at the University of California, Los Angeles points out that continuing to force someone to have a conversation is only going to escalate the situation.
If the conversation isn’t going anywhere, your loved one is simply not willing and maybe not ready to process what you’ve told them yet. That could change in the future, but for now it’s time to take a step back.
Pre-bunk for future extreme weather: Some friends and family may seem receptive to conversations. It may be worth “pre-bunking” information with them before extreme weather comes back around. This may include sharing vetted sources of information or mentioning that certain rumors may spread and how to fact-check them.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How to fact-check during and after a disaster on Oct 28, 2026.
Bioregional regeneration: Lessons from Whatcom County and Cascadia
How human ecology education can counter learned social hierarchies — Cont’d
Hurricane Helene haunts the midterms in North Carolina
Lunch hour was busy at the Haywood County Public Library in Canton, North Carolina, where the midterm election wasn’t the only thing on people’s minds as they cast early ballots on October 19. The region has seen a lot of natural disasters in the past few years, and many residents are still rebuilding after Hurricane Helene. Repeated flooding has unsettled Sandra Moody, a straight-ticket Republican voter.
“Well, we’re not weather people,” Moody said with a hoarse laugh, “but these floods that keep coming — they’re supposed to be 500-year floods. You’re like, ‘What is going on?’”
Two years after the storm, recovery remains far from complete. Helene caused nearly $60 billion in damage and recovery needs, and about $10 billion in federal assistance has been provided so far. Even after accounting for state funding and insurance payments, the state pegs the unmet need at roughly $41 billion.
Half of all North Carolinians are dissatisfied with the government’s response, compared to 37 percent who are satisfied, according to a poll commissioned by television stations WRAL and WSOC. In western North Carolina, which bore the brunt of Helene’s fury, just 5 percent said they are “very satisfied” with how officials are handling things.
The lingering dissatisfaction looms over two surprisingly competitive races closely tied to the recovery. North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District, which includes much of the area hit hardest by Helene, is considered a toss-up. In the state’s Senate race, Democrat Roy Cooper, who was governor when the storm hit, has maintained a double-digit lead over Republican Michael Whatley, whom President Donald Trump tapped as his point person on the recovery.
This is something of a reversal from the 2024 election. As Republicans campaigned in Helene’s immediate aftermath, the party hammered the Biden administration over its response to the disaster. Two years later, Republicans control the White House, Congress, and the federal agencies responsible for the recovery.
Trump, who joked that he wouldn’t send North Carolina additional aid if Whatley lost, has drawn connections between aid and the election in other races. He announced $17.9 million in disaster assistance for Wisconsin while promoting Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany. He also approved an Ohio disaster declaration just before campaigning with Republican Senator Jon Husted but left 15 others pending. Vice President JD Vance, meanwhile, promised $858 million to North Carolina during a recent campaign stop near Asheville.
The White House has denied that disaster decisions are politically motivated, but the episodes underscore a question hanging over the midterms: Politicians are treating recovery as an electoral issue. It is much less clear whether voters are doing the same.
Western North Carolina offers one place to look for an answer. NC-11 encompasses 16 largely rural, mountainous counties along with solidly Democratic Asheville. Trump carried the district by 9.5 points in 2024, and its voters have sent three successive Republicans to Congress: Mark Meadows, Madison Cawthorn, and Chuck Edwards.
But Republican Jennifer Balkcom, who entered the race three months ago after Edwards withdrew, is running even with Democrat Jamie Ager. A pro-Trump political action committee recently canceled more than $1 million in television advertising supporting Balkcom, and the race is considered a toss-up.
For some voters, Helene figures into the election for reasons beyond the recovery. Maggie Panther, a Democrat voting early in Canton, said the storm reinforced her concerns about climate change and the increasingly severe weather it is bringing. “I hate to sound totally partisan, but I know that there’s one party that’s trying to do something about climate change, and there’s one party that is denying it,” she said. “And so, I vote accordingly.”
Ager, a fourth-generation farmer whose grandfather served three terms in Congress, has focused on the economic impact of the storm and on the many residents who are still awaiting FEMA reimbursement and struggling to rebuild.
“We were trying to do everything we could to get back up on our feet here at the farm and everywhere else,” Ager said. “As time kept dragging on and recovery was clearly insufficient, [we were] hearing from neighbors and folks in the community about their frustrations.”
Helene has become an issue in the Senate race as well, though the questions about recovery center more directly on Whatley’s role in the federal response.
Whatley’s role in the recovery — widely described as Trump’s “Helene recovery czar” — has haunted him in the campaign. A recent investigation by the Asheville Citizen-Times found no communication between Whatley and FEMA in the two years after the storm, with only six text messages and five phone calls documented between Whatley and a state official coordinating hurricane recovery. The Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC, has pulled its financial support from the race as Cooper maintains a healthy lead in the polls.
Cooper and Whatley have blamed each other for the slow pace of Helene aid while defending their own records. Neither agreed to an interview, but commented by email. Whatley’s campaign said he helped “deliver more aid for Hurricane Helene than any other natural disaster” in the state’s history. Cooper’s campaign argued that Whatley “has completely failed in his role as federal recovery czar” and said the state has received just 16 percent of the funding it needs.
But despite sparring over Helene, mailers and ads for both campaigns are shifting attention to economics and crime.
Political scientist Chris Cooper at Western Carolina University said Helene has figured less prominently in campaign ads and mailers than he expected. That may be because neither candidate has much to gain from drawing attention to an unpopular recovery.
“One reason why Hurricane Helene hasn’t come up quite as much during this election is because both candidates have some experience that might allow folks to blame them for what almost everyone agrees was a poor response,” said Cooper, who is not related to the former governor.
Read Next Two years after Hurricane Helene, survivors are taking lessons for the future Katie Myers & Laura HackettThe WRAL/WSOC poll supports that idea. Despite the candidates’ attempts to blame one another, it found no meaningful difference between Cooper and Whatley supporters in their views of the government’s response to Helene. It follows a pattern that Cooper has previously seen after hurricanes, which until Helene had largely impacted the eastern part of the state.
“I cannot think of a single disaster in North Carolina or elsewhere, where afterward public opinion was, ‘Boy, we really got this recovery right,’” he said. Generally speaking, voters tend to blame the government, he said, which means someone who wasn’t involved with the response, like Ager, may have a better shot at winning.
Research suggests that disasters can influence how voters judge elected officials. Penny Liao, an economist at the think tank Resources for the Future, said incumbents can benefit from a strong response and timely aid, while a poor recovery can work against them.
“The disaster itself is usually not very good news for the incumbent, but if there is large aid or a timely response, generally the incumbent can potentially benefit from it,” she said. On the other hand, a failure to prepare for a disaster or a poor response “is not going to be rewarded.”
Whether that dynamic is playing out in North Carolina may become clearer after the election. Political responsibility for Helene spans parties and levels of government: ADemocratic administration was in the White House when the storm hit, a Republican one has overseen much of the recovery, while a Democratic governor and Republican-controlled Legislature share power in Raleigh.
Residents remain deeply dissatisfied with the recovery, and two races closely linked to Helene have become unexpectedly competitive. But so far, voters’ frustration is easier to measure than its effect on their votes, and it may well be that whoever is in office during a troubled recovery, regardless of party, will pay a political price.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Hurricane Helene haunts the midterms in North Carolina on Oct 28, 2026.
For Indigenous peoples in Brazil, the election results offer a reprieve — not a resolution
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s reelection as president of Brazil gave Indigenous communities a measure of relief after a campaign in which his opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro, promised to halt recognition of new Indigenous territories and push for more mining and development.
“For Indigenous peoples, the reelection of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is more than a victory, and it is bigger than Brazil,” said Edson Krenak, who is Indigenous Krenak. “It is not about victory; it is about the possibility to dream and to fight without fear of death.”
But Sunday’s runoff election strengthened Bolsonaro’s movement in Congress, where his Liberal Party won the largest number of seats in both houses and the broader right gained a Senate majority. Leaders warned that this could open their territories to mining, weaken environmental protections, and roll back land rights, making it much harder for Lula to advance his Indigenous and environmental agendas.
Climate Observatory, a nonprofit coalition of 172 organizations, said 70 percent of the incoming lawmakers oppose the climate and environmental agenda, according to The Associated Press.
The stakes were especially high for Indigenous peoples because Bolsonaro campaigned on policies aligned with those of his father, Jair Bolsonaro, whose presidency from 2019 to 2023 saw an increase in mining, land grabs, deforestation, and attacks on their rights. Amazon deforestation reached a record in 2022, and Indigenous leaders say their communities endured unchecked violence from illegal mining operations during the elder Bolsonaro’s time in office.
His son finished more than 2 million votes ahead of Lula in the first election earlier this month, but neither candidate secured the 50 percent required to win outright. That result sparked fear in Indigenous communities and environmental advocates, who warned that the future of the Amazon was at stake. Lula came back to win Sunday’s runoff by roughly 4.4 million votes, securing a fourth nonconsecutive term as president.
In an interview between the two rounds of voting, Toya Manchineri, the general coordinator of the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon, or COIAB, said Indigenous peoples across the rainforest were deeply concerned about the possibility of a Bolsonaro win. Much of the last three years of Lula’s administration were spent undoing the damage the Bolsonaro administration caused, Manchineri said.
Manchineri said Lula’s term has largely been a period of rebuilding as Indigenous peoples gained greater roles in decision-making. “We were only beginning to see the resources returning,” he said.
In 2023, the administration established the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples and appointed Sônia Guajajara to lead it. Lula also revitalized the federal Indigenous affairs agency FUNAI after Bolsonaro had used it to support agribusiness, despite Indigenous resistance. The government also announced just before the election that Amazon deforestation had fallen to its lowest level since recordkeeping began in 1988, according to the AP.
Still, Indigenous leaders said the progress made under Lula has not resolved deeper conflicts over land, development, and decision-making.
“Lula’s victory prevents a president who promised to halt Indigenous land demarcation from taking office, but our territories are far from safe,” Alessandra Korap Munduruku, coordinator of the Munduruku Pariri Indigenous Association, said in a statement. “We have demanded that Lula’s government respect our decisions and listen to Indigenous peoples before advancing projects that affect our rivers and forests. Congress has become more dangerous for us, and we must remain organized. Our struggle does not end with an election’s outcome.”
For Indigenous organizations, Lula’s victory is cause for hope, but they must now work with a Congress dominated by lawmakers who have already voted in favor of easing environmental protections and against Indigenous land claims. Given that dynamic, Krenak expressed concern about the difficulty Lula may face advancing his agenda. “The costs of negotiating with the Congress and Senate will be very high, if ever successful,” he said.
The election also came amid years of Indigenous voters struggling to access the polls. Earlier this month, a court denied a request for transportation assistance filed by Indigenous peoples in the Javari Valley in northern Brazil. Other efforts were more successful: Court rulings elsewhere helped secure government transportation for Indigenous voters in remote areas, while Indigenous communities across the Amazon organized to increase turnout, AP reported.
“Despite the challenges faced throughout the electoral process, Indigenous peoples of the Amazon made their voices heard at the polls across all nine states of the Brazilian Amazon, reaffirming their commitment to democracy, national sovereignty, and the defense of Indigenous rights. We marked the ballot boxes in defense of life, our territories, and Brazil’s future!” COIAB said in a statement. “Brazil’s future is Indigenous, and it begins in our territories! WE ARE THE ANSWER!”
For Krenak, however, Lula’s victory is only the beginning. He said he wants to see more meaningful progress during the president’s next term.
“By 2030, success should not be measured by how many Indigenous leaders stand beside officials at summits,” he said, “but by whether Indigenous peoples gain real authority to prevent their territories [from becoming] sacrifice zones, but territories of life, reciprocity, and generosity.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline For Indigenous peoples in Brazil, the election results offer a reprieve — not a resolution on Oct 28, 2026.
Revealed: UK relied on £2bn of ‘questionable accounting’ to hit its climate-aid goal
The UK has beaten its target to provide £11.6bn of climate aid to developing countries by 2026 – but only through “questionable accounting”.
As part of its obligations under the Paris Agreement, the UK pledged to give at least £11.6bn in overseas “climate finance” between 2021 and 2026.
Now, Carbon Brief analysis reveals that around £2.1bn of the funds the UK counted towards this goal did not come from new spending.
Instead, the government relabelled existing funding for development banks, private-sector investment and aid for Afghanistan, Sudan and other war-torn nations as “climate finance”.
Without these changes, the UK would have fallen nearly £1bn short of its target.
Carbon Brief’s analysis is based on numerous FOI requests and reveals the otherwise-unpublished details of the UK’s climate-finance spending.
Experts and MPs say the use of “questionable” accounting shows the UK is “cutting corners” to hit its climate goals, while making unprecedented cuts to its foreign aid budget.
‘Moving the goalposts’The UK and other developed countries are obliged under UN climate treaties to provide “new and additional” climate finance to help developing countries tackle climate change.
They also have specific targets to “mobilise” $100bn of climate finance per year through to 2025 and “at least” $300bn by 2035.
As the UK’s contribution to international climate finance, in 2019 the Conservative government pledged to provide £11.6bn between the financial years 2021-22 and 2025-26. This amounted to “doubling” its previous five-year target.
Since then, successive governments have slashed the amount of money going towards foreign aid, citing economic strain and a need for more defence spending. This has placed great pressure on the £11.6bn target, which comes from the UK aid budget.
In order to retain the target while cutting aid, the Conservative government decided in 2023 to loosen the criteria for what it defined as “climate” spending.
This enabled the UK to remain committed to the £11.6bn goal, without spending more on new climate projects, by simply relabelling existing funds. The current Labour government has opted to maintain this approach, while pledging to cut aid spending even further.
The move has been strongly criticised by campaigners, MPs and even the UK’s official aid watchdog, who have described it as “creative accounting” and “moving the goalposts”.
‘£1bn shortfall’The UK government has announced that it met the £11.6bn target, but has not released the full details of how it did so – or even the total amount provided by 2025-26.
FOI data obtained by Carbon Brief over the course of several months reveals that, in fact, total climate finance over the past five years reached £12.8bn – with a record £4bn in the past year alone.
However, Carbon Brief analysis of government data also shows that around £2.1bn – nearly a fifth of the total – comes from the government’s accounting changes.
Without these changes, as the chart below shows, cumulative UK climate finance would only have reached around £10.7bn by 2026, leaving a shortfall of £924m.
This final figure of £2.1bn is higher than forecast by the UK Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI), which estimated in 2024 that the total amount of “reclassified” climate finance would reach £1.7bn.
The government has stressed that its accounting changes are “consistent” with “internationally agreed ways of calculating ICF”, used by other major donors.
(Experts have noted that, traditionally, the UK was viewed as taking a more rigorous approach to climate-finance accounting, which is notoriously unregulated and opaque.)
A recent International Development Committee (IDC) report noted that developed countries have committed to providing “new and additional” climate finance to developing countries, which is generally interpreted as extra funds on top of existing aid.
Evidence gathered by the IDC concluded that, alongside aid cuts, the UK’s accounting changes have “eroded” the “additionality and credibility” of its climate finance.
Responding to Carbon Brief’s findings, IDC chair Sarah Champion said the data “shines a new light” on the committee’s findings:
“The picture is not getting any better. If questionable accounting has been used to get around a £1bn shortfall on ICF spend between 2021-22 and 2025-26, this only underlines my concerns that the government has been cutting corners to maintain headline climate-spending commitments, rather than working to deliver genuine climate and nature outcomes.”
These accounting changes remain relevant as the UK begins its next phase of international climate finance, while cutting the aid budget further.
The government has pledged £6bn of foreign aid for climate projects over the next three years. This makes the UK one of the only major donor countries to set out a new climate-finance target for the period after 2025, despite a global pledge to scale up support.
Nevertheless, the new UK goal amounts to a halving from £4bn in the financial year 2025-26 to £2bn a year, on average. Previous Carbon Brief analysis also shows that the continued use of “questionable accounting” is likely to make up around a third of the new target.
Responding to Carbon Brief’s analysis, a UK government spokesperson says:
“We are proud to have both hit, and exceeded, our third international climate-finance target – and will continue to work hard on protecting climate and nature.
“Climate change and nature loss pose a real and significant threat to global security and prosperity. That is why the UK is leading action on climate and nature, and prioritising climate finance in its aid budget.”
Accounting changesThe UK’s accounting changes break down into three major components, which are behind most of its upward revision in climate-finance spending.
The first is counting a share of “core” funding for multilateral development banks (MDBs) as climate finance.
This refers to un-earmarked contributions that governments provide to support these banks in their work, which includes providing loans and grants to developing countries.
Counting this spending as “climate finance” adds £1.1bn to the total of £12.8bn, split mainly between the World Bank and the African Development Bank.
As the chart below shows, this is by far the largest chunk of extra climate finance resulting from the UK’s accounting changes.
A spreadsheet with details of these accounting changes can be viewed here.This revision has been justified on the grounds that the World Bank and other banks have clear targets for funding climate-relevant projects, using their core funding.
However, MDBs have also faced criticism for their lack of transparency around climate finance and their reliance on loans, rather than grants. (In contrast, nearly all of the UK’s climate finance so far has been grant-based.)
Moreover, the US has been pressuring MDBs to drop their climate plans altogether. Indeed, the Trump administration has already forced the World Bank to abandon its overall target to put 45% of its funds towards climate finance.
Jon Sward, environment project manager at the Bretton Woods Project NGO, tells Carbon Brief:
“One thing removing the overall [World Bank] target definitely does is it adds…a lack of predictability of the flows going forward.”
The second-largest UK accounting change – contributing nearly £600m – comes from automatically counting 30% of humanitarian aid as climate finance, if it is going to one of the countries judged most vulnerable to climate change.
This includes some of the most war-torn and low-income nations in the world, such as Afghanistan, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Crucially, this means projects are counted even if they have no discernible link to climate change, such as helping “conflict-affected” people in Yemen and orphans in Zimbabwe.
The Center for Global Development (CGD) has described this revision as “arbitrary”, given every aid project is already screened for any climate-relevant components.
The third significant portion comes from counting more of the government’s private-sector investments via British International Investment (BII) as climate finance. BII is a publicly owned, for-profit company that invests in developing-country businesses and is partially funded with injections of UK aid money.
The UK government decided to start calculating the climate share of its BII spending based on real-world BII investments, rather than a default, fixed share of 30%.
Data obtained by Carbon Brief via FOI suggests that £133m of extra BII funding was labelled as climate finance over the first four years of the £11.6bn target.
However, government records of BII climate finance have been inconsistent, making it difficult to estimate the total impact of accounting changes. Therefore, Carbon Brief has used an earlier internal government forecast that estimated this change would add a total of £266m over the five-year target period.
BII has increasingly turned its attention to investing in clean power in recent years, reaching more than £1bn in “climate investments” in 2025.
However, the company has faced criticism for investments that “conflict” with UK priorities – including legacy fossil-fuel investments – as well as channelling aid money to “billionaires”.
There was also some extra spending that the government decided to count as climate aid – notably, £99m of “spending on COP26”, from when the UK hosted the climate summit.
Shruti Agarwal, senior climate finance adviser at Save the Children UK, tells Carbon Brief the reduction in overall “financial effort” by the UK is a “concerning pattern that must cease”. She adds:
“[The UK should] strengthen transparency by publishing timely, detailed data on international climate spending and stop classifying expenditure as climate finance retrospectively, as seen with COP26 expenses.”
MethodologyCarbon Brief obtained the full datasets of international climate-finance spending via FOI, covering the five-year period 2021-22 to 2025-26. For more details and to access the full dataset, see Carbon Brief’s analysis of the £12.8bn in spending over this period.
In addition, Carbon Brief requested details from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) of what climate-finance spending would have been prior to the 2023 accounting changes, for the period 2021-22 to 2024-25.
Carbon Brief then used this information to calculate the impact of accounting changes in 2025-26, combining the figures to work out the full impact.
A spreadsheet with the full details of the accounting changes can be viewed here.
UK climate-finance figures have been subject to regular revisions. While this analysis is based on final figures provided via FOI requests in recent months, it is possible that departments will still change the figures in future releases.
Related UK budget 2026: Key climate and energy announcements 28.10.2026 UK policy Analysis: How the UK spent more than £11.6bn on climate aid since 2021 28.10.2026 UK policy Q&A: Why are UK energy bills so high – and how could they be lowered? 27.10.2026 Oil and gas Revealed: Expensive gas behind ‘nearly 90%’ of rise in UK electricity bills 21.10.2026 Oil and gasThe post Revealed: UK relied on £2bn of ‘questionable accounting’ to hit its climate-aid goal appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: How the UK spent more than £11.6bn on climate aid since 2021
- The UK has supported around 500 climate projects since 2021
- UK climate aid has reached record levels – but is set to drop
- Afghanistan received more bilateral climate aid than any other country
- Development banks and private-sector funders are among the biggest beneficiaries
- Methodology
The UK has spent £12.8bn on climate aid for developing countries since 2021, according to official figures obtained by Carbon Brief.
Freedom-of-information (FOI) requests reveal how the UK has used its “climate finance” to support everything from solar projects in Mozambique to carbon offsets in the Amazon.
UK climate funding, which reached a record £4bn this year, has supported roughly 500 aid projects, climate funds and private-investment initiatives over the past five years.
With this spending, the UK has surpassed its £11.6bn climate-finance target for this period, although Carbon Brief analysis shows that it has partly relied on “questionable accounting”.
This target is part of the UK’s ongoing responsibility under UN climate treaties to financially support developing countries in their efforts to tackle climate change.
Despite being central to its international climate policy, the UK government does not routinely release data on progress towards its climate-finance goals.
Here, Carbon Brief has published the data in full for the first time and pulled out key trends since 2021.
The UK has supported around 500 climate projects since 2021According to the FOI data obtained by Carbon Brief, at least 493 projects, funds and institutions received UK climate finance between 2021-22 and 2025-26.
These included £45m to help Ukraine curb its reliance on fossil fuels, £40m in cash transfers for Kenyans affected by drought and £30m to provide flood resilience in Nepal.
Larger sums were provided to projects spread across multiple countries, often with the stated goal of “mobilising” additional finance from the private sector.
For example, the UK channelled £198m into a World Bank-backed project to help Colombia, Cambodia and others create and sell “high-integrity” carbon offsets.
The UK also provided £229m to a group that uses foreign aid to attract private capital for projects in predominantly low-income nations, such as a solar farm in Uganda and a “sustainable aviation fuel” project in Pakistan.
All of the funded projects can be viewed in the interactive table below.
(function(){function e(){window.addEventListener(`message`,function(e){if(e.data[`datawrapper-height`]!==void 0){var t=document.querySelectorAll(`iframe`);for(var n in e.data[`datawrapper-height`])for(var r=0,i;i=t[r];r++)if(i.contentWindow===e.source){var a=e.data[`datawrapper-height`][n]+`px`;i.style.height=a}}})}e()})();The UK has been criticised by campaigners and MPs for its lack of transparency around climate finance data.
In line with its international obligations, the government routinely releases its climate-finance figures to the UN – albeit with a two-year delay.
However, it does not publish this data broken down by financial year, making it impossible to accurately gauge progress towards the £11.6bn goal.
The data gathered by Carbon Brief is therefore the most comprehensive attempt to track this information to date. Carbon Brief has been periodically tracking this data since 2017.
UK climate aid has reached record levels – but is set to dropThe UK government committed in 2019 to spending £11.6bn of the nation’s aid budget on “climate finance”, between 2021-22 and 2025-26.
This is the nation’s contribution to an international goal to mobilise $100bn of climate finance a year between 2020 and 2025.
Developed countries are obliged under UN climate treaties to financially support developing countries, assisting their efforts to cut emissions and adapt to climate change.
However, alongside other major donors, such as the US, the UK has dramatically cut its aid budget, placing significant strain on the nation’s climate finance.
Despite this, FOI data shows that UK climate finance reached a record £4bn in 2025-26, as shown in the chart below.
Not accounting for inflation, this amounts to a tenfold increase from 2011-12, when the UK started providing climate finance.
The £11.6bn target was met comfortably, with £12.8bn provided over the five-year period.
However, as separate Carbon Brief analysis shows, the target was only met due to the government reclassifying £2.2bn of existing foreign aid as climate finance, without spending any more.
Rather than setting a new five-year goal, in March 2026 the Labour government committed to spending “around £6bn” of UK aid as climate finance over the next three years. On average, this would mean £2bn in climate aid annually – roughly half the level achieved in the financial year 2025-26.
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Alongside the £6bn in climate aid, the government has also pledged to invest £6.7bn from outside the aid budget to “drive climate and nature outcomes”.
Rather than grant funding, this support will include private investments, export credit and guarantees to development banks. The UK already provides such finance, but has not previously counted it towards its climate-finance targets.
Afghanistan received more bilateral climate aid than any other countryThe vast majority of UK climate finance was delivered “multilaterally”, meaning it supports large funds or institutions working in multiple countries.
More than 80% of the funding since 2021 is therefore listed as helping “developing countries” in general, or whole regions such as “Africa”.
Of the £2.1bn (17%) that was delivered “bilaterally”, with the UK directly supporting climate projects in specific countries, the biggest beneficiaries are nations in east Africa and south Asia. Around two-thirds of this funding goes to nations classified as “least developed”.
For many years, Ethiopia has been the top recipient of bilateral UK climate finance, largely due to long-running projects supporting ecosystem restoration and drought resilience.
However, Afghanistan overtook Ethiopia over the £11.6bn period, with £256m of its aid labelled as climate-related, compared to Ethiopia’s £226m. (The UK does not provide aid via the Taliban, instead channelling it through partners, such as UN agencies.)
Afghanistan is struggling with floods and low electricity access. However, the UK’s apparent surge in support for the nation is not, in fact, due to new climate-related initiatives.
Instead, it is the result of the UK automatically labelling 30% of aid for all humanitarian projects in this country as “climate finance”, following a controversial accounting change.
This shift affected other climate-vulnerable and war-torn nations, meaning Somalia (£139m), Sudan (£136m) and Yemen (£130m) were also among the top recipients of “climate aid”.
Where the UK has provided large sums of climate finance to projects in middle-income nations, they are typically aimed at “mobilising” private-sector investment, rather than achieving humanitarian goals.
Examples include £83m to support Brazil’s Amazon Fund – a carbon offsetting initiative – and £43m to boost UK investment in India’s low-carbon infrastructure.
Development banks and private-sector funders are among the biggest beneficiariesThe largest chunks of UK climate finance are channelled via international climate funds and other bodies, which in turn use that funding to support climate projects in developing countries.
Despite recently cutting its 2024-27 support for the Green Climate Fund, the UK still provided £1.5bn to this flagship UN fund – more than any other initiative.
British International Investment (BII), a publicly owned, for-profit company that invests in developing-country businesses and is partially supported with UK aid money, received almost £1.4bn.
The UK has increasingly been relying on BII to meet its climate-finance goals, partly reflecting the body’s decision to prioritise clean-energy investments, rather than fossil fuels.
Other major recipients of UK climate finance are multilateral development banks, particularly the various arms of the World Bank and the African Development Bank. This reflects the UK’s decision to start counting “core” funding for these banks as climate finance.
The government’s accounting changes – which have boosted the significance of BII and MDBs in UK climate finance – have faced criticism from experts, MPs and the UK’s aid watchdog. For more, see Carbon Brief’s full analysis of these changes.
MethodologyAll of the international climate-finance data used in this piece was obtained via FOI requests. Carbon Brief has compiled the data into a spreadsheet, which can be accessed here.
UK climate finance comes from the aid budgets of four departments, with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) providing three-quarters of the total.
The remainder comes predominantly from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), with much smaller sums from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST).
BIST has also released a dataset detailing the hundreds of climate-science projects in developing countries – or benefiting those countries – that have been supported with UK climate funds.
UK climate-finance figures have been subject to regular revisions. While this analysis is based on final figures provided via FOI requests in recent months, it is possible that departments will still change the figures in future releases.
Related COP17: Key outcomes agreed at the UN biodiversity conference in Yerevan 31.10.2026 COP17 Yerevan Experts: What China wants from the COP31 climate talks 29.10.2026 China policy Analysis: China’s clean-tech exports in 2026 to avoid as much CO2 as Brazil emits in a year 29.10.2026 China policy UK budget 2026: Key climate and energy announcements 28.10.2026 UK policyThe post Analysis: How the UK spent more than £11.6bn on climate aid since 2021 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
The carbon colonialism frontline
COP 31: Resisting Erdoğan’s Authoritarian Greenwashing
As Turkey prepares to host the world’s largest climate summit in Antalya, its official rhetoric masks a long-running policy of expanding fossil fuel exploration and accelerating nuclear projects under foreign dependency. In this context, COP31 is bound to become yet another greenwashing spectacle. Still, Turkey’s grassroots movement continue to resist the government’s authoritarian push for more extraction, fighting instead for energy democracy and ecological justice.
The 31st United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP31) will be held from 9 to 20 November in the Turkish city of Antalya. Touted as the “implementation COP”, the hope is that it will provide a platform for forging global consensus on realistic emission cuts and fossil fuel phaseout.
This edition of the world’s largest climate summit will be held against a backdrop of intense geopolitical rivalry and tension. China, the world’s foremost producer of green energy, has signalled its intent to use the conference to push back against Western tariffs on its clean technology, including solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and electric cars. Meanwhile, the US under Trump 2.0 has cast its lot with fossil fuels, while the EU faces energy insecurity due to oil and gas supply chain disruptions, and slashes green policies in the name of competitiveness despite growing climate impacts.
Turkey itself is heading to this COP as a country that imports two-thirds of its primary energy – nearly all of it fossil fuels. Still, a centrepiece of the summit is Ankara’s “35 by 35” proposal, a global target for electricity to meet 35 per cent of the world’s energy demand by 2035 (compared to today’s approximately 20 per cent). This comes even as, under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey has made no secret of its ambitions to become a major fossil fuel transit hub between the Middle East and Europe. And while Ankara has struck deals with China covering mining, critical minerals, renewables, and nuclear power, it has also intensified oil and gas exploration in the Mediterranean, putting it at loggerheads with Greece and the EU.
For the Turkish government, COP31 is an opportunity to divert attention from a prolonged macroeconomic crisis. Climate diplomacy serves Erdoğan not as a genuine ecological commitment but as a pragmatic instrument of governance, designed to attract foreign capital and secure international legitimacy in a domestic context where social opposition has already been silenced.
Greenwashing continuesJust as Egypt (COP27), the UAE (COP28) and Azerbaijan (COP29) used their host status to pursue energy deals worth billions, and Brazil (COP30) pressed ahead with oil licensing and auctions in the run-up to its summit, Turkey is approaching COP31 with a dual strategy: it is leveraging the global electrification narrative to mask deep-seated policy contradictions and position itself as a hub for clean technology.
On the one hand, the Turkish government has negotiated with China on battery investments, urging Western donors to shift defence spending toward climate finance, and staging high-profile domestic events including the state-sponsored “NextGenCOP30.5” youth summit on Yassi Island (renamed Democracy and Freedom Island in commemoration of the 1960 coup). On the other hand, rather than outlining a coal phaseout strategy, Ankara has said it would raise national emissions through 2035, signed new international natural gas agreements, and regularly issues emergency expropriation decrees for domestic oil and gas exploration activities. In other words, COP31 will be another act of greenwashing by a government that is actively increasing carbon emissions and promoting fossil fuels.
This contradiction became most evident on 10 October, when a presidential decree authorised urgent land expropriations across Antalya and the Mediterranean coast to accelerate oil and gas exploration led by the Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO). Indeed, this institutional greenwashing was already embedded in Turkey’s official climate commitments for the 2053 net-zero goal, as the state’s updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) promised a 41 per cent reduction by 2030, which in fact implies an additional 11 per cent increase beyond the roughly 30 per cent emission level that would occur without mitigation measures. After the launch of Turkey’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) in August, this policy environment became even more complex, as the system risks legitimising continued industrial pollution through tradable allowances instead of enforcing real emissions limits.
In fact, with Turkey’s emissions expected to rise by 16 per cent by 2035, absolute reduction targets have been deferred to an unspecified future date. This trend is also confirmed by 2026 data from the European Commission’s Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research. According to these data, Turkey rose two places in the global emitter ranking, now accounting for 1.13 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions and standing as the world’s 14th-largest greenhouse gas emitter.
Ultimately, behind Ankara’s climate diplomacy lies a familiar calculus of regime survival. Just as growth in the construction and energy sectors was leveraged to maintain political hegemony in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, the government now regards ESG funds, green loans, and the revenues expected from COP31-related economic activity as vital liquidity to manage macroeconomic tensions before the 2028 presidential election. These pressures stem from inflation, which peaked at 85 per cent in late 2022 before stabilising at around 30 percent, as well as the roughly 80 percent depreciation of the Turkish lira.
Murky renewablesBeyond political rhetoric, an analysis of the Turkish Electricity Transmission Corporation’s national power grid data reveals that these contradictions have roots in the energy system itself. At first glance, while fossil fuels constitute 38 per cent of total installed capacity – with imported natural gas alone making up 19 per cent – the remaining 62 per cent is officially labelled as renewable energy. However, 40 per cent of this renewable share comes from hydroelectric projects that disrupt river flows, exacerbate regional water stress, and face persistent local opposition, while solar and wind account for only 21 per cent and 15 per cent of installed capacity, respectively.
But that is not the full picture. According to Ember Climate data, actual production levels reveal the structural limitations of Turkey’s renewable energy production more clearly. For instance, solar energy accounted for only 6 per cent in January 2026; in June, one of the peak summer months, solar contributed just 16.5 per cent of total generation, while wind contributed 13.5 per cent. In contrast, countries with broadly comparable solar resources, such as Portugal and Italy, regularly derive around 20 to 30 per cent of their monthly electricity generation from solar during peak months. Italy’s renewable energy output can exceed 40 per cent of total electricity demand during high-generation summer periods, while Germany, despite having only a third of Turkey’s solar potential, generates more than 20 per cent of its summer electricity from solar through more effective use of its infrastructure.
Addressing these structural shortfalls requires a drastic acceleration: as officially declared in its 2053 net-zero targets, Turkey must urgently develop a concrete roadmap to deploy 120 GW of solar and wind energy by 2035. This has not been done so far, and current solar generation capacity remains limited due to institutional barriers. Moreover, the lack of mechanisms within the current legal framework to encourage households or local communities to feed the electricity they generate back into the grid has left small-scale projects mired in licensing procedures, bureaucratic delays, and inadequate grid capacity.
Complicating these problems is the fact that while small-scale initiatives are systematically obstructed, land allocations and financial support flow directly to large corporations and foreign capital. For example, despite having 185 GW of solar energy potential and 300 sunny days per year, Turkey has instead signed an intergovernmental agreement with Saudi Arabia, akin to the Akkuyu nuclear deal with Russia, for energy production on its own territory. In domestic discourse, the government portrays such projects as cost‑free investments that will leave Turkey with new facilities. Yet these agreements in fact oblige Turkey to purchase the energy from the producing state, turning these ventures into a source of economic loss in the long run, even if they appear beneficial in the short term before elections. What is more, when renewable energy projects are pursued through centralised state‑backed deals, they also trigger dispossession, which in turn fuels social opposition.
The nuclear gambleThe critical reliance on foreign sources embedded in Turkey’s energy policy is most evident in its long-standing nuclear ambitions, officially framed as a 20-GW capacity target under the 2053 net-zero strategy. Beyond the 4.8-GW Akkuyu plant currently under construction, revised plans include a 5.6-GW facility in Thrace, a 4.8-GW plant on the Black Sea coast in Sinop, and a 4.8 GW allocation for Small Modular Reactors (SMRs).
As the Akkuyu project illustrates, this ambitious roadmap faces serious limits: 16 years after the intergovernmental agreement with Russia to complete the plant was signed, not a single reactor has entered commercial operation. That is more than double the global average construction timeframe of seven to eight years. As the world’s first nuclear power plant built under the “Build-Own-Operate” (BOO) model, Akkuyu does not reduce dependence on Russian energy, as Turkish officials initially claimed. On the contrary, by granting a foreign state ownership over sovereign national territory, it deepens Turkey’s strategic dependence on Russia. Moreover, while officials often claim Akkuyu NPP will meet 10 per cent of national electricity demand, long-term energy projections suggest that its contribution will be lower. With electricity consumption projected to approach 500 TWh by 2035, Akkuyu’s expected annual generation of 35 TWh would cover only about 7 to 8 percent of demand.
This structural mismatch is compounded by severe ecological risks: Akkuyu relies on cooling water from the Mediterranean Sea, which is warming 20 per cent faster than the global average, heightening the risk of climate-driven operational disruptions. Yet, instead of adapting ecological safeguards to these climate realities, the government has granted regulatory exemptions. Crucially, the discharge water temperature from the Akkuyu plant has been exempted from the 35°-Celsius thermal limit set by the national Water Pollution Control Regulation.
The project’s waste management framework exposes another structural inequality in the allocation of risk. Although official statements suggest that spent fuel will be managed domestically, existing regulations and international practice indicate that fuel from the VVER‑1200 reactors, which are also used at Akkuyu, will instead be shipped to Russia for reprocessing. Under Russian federal law, foreign radioactive waste cannot be permanently stored on Russian territory. Consequently, once plutonium and uranium are extracted, the remaining high-level waste must be returned to Turkey. As a result, while Russia extracts usable materials for strategic and industrial purposes, Turkey is left with the burden of managing high-level radioactive waste that will remain hazardous for up to a million years.
This waste will force Ankara to confront the question of long-term disposal, and there is even a possibility that the management of long-lived isotopes may ultimately compel Turkey to build a deep geological repository; a multi-billion-euro infrastructure project akin to Finland’s Onkalo facility, which is designed to isolate waste for 100,000 years. Under centralised and authoritarian governance, however, even the siting of a radioactive waste management facility follows a rigid top-down approach. Indeed, in 2022, Turkey’s Ministry of Energy was reportedly considering Polatlı, an agrarian region near the capital Ankara with relatively lower seismic activity, as a potential site for a radioactive waste facility, without consulting local populations or securing community consent.
In addition to environmental and strategic risks, the Akkuyu project fails to integrate with Turkey’s labour market and technical infrastructure. While official sources reported that construction employment once approached 30,000, Russia’s economic bottlenecks due to the ongoing war in Ukraine have already reduced this figure to 10,000; it will decline even further upon operational launch, requiring only about 4,000 long-term workers. Because the specific terms of the BOO agreement with Turkey explicitly exclude technology transfer, local engineers and workers will be confined largely to mid-level technical support roles, reinforcing structural dependence on foreign expertise. This institutional gap is tied to a longer historical legacy: during the restructuring that followed the 1980 military coup, the ranks of experienced scientists in Turkey’s public nuclear research sector were severely diminished.
Resistance and repressionBetween 2018 and 2025, Turkey issued 22,855 mining licenses and received 13,342 initial applications, systematically converting agricultural land and ecologically sensitive zones into industrial sites. This expansion of extractive concessions and large-scale energy projects unfolded alongside escalating administrative and legal pressures on civil society and local environmental movements. By narrowing the channels of public participation in environmental decision-making and repressing opposition in the public sphere, the central government has systematically suppressed local resistance to secure compliance with large state-backed initiatives.
In recent years, a common thread among COP host countries has been not only high carbon emissions but also authoritarian forms of governance that refuse dialogue with social opposition and systematically rely on administrative coercion. In Turkey, grassroots activism against ecologically destructive projects has faced severe repression, particularly since the 2016 state of emergency, proclaimed after an attempted coup. Environmental activism is not merely a debate among urban intellectuals; as state-backed mining and energy projects steadily expand into rural areas, it has evolved into a direct struggle by local communities to defend their land, water, and livelihoods. As Human Rights Watch has documented in the lead‑up to COP31, the state increasingly employs criminal investigations, arbitrary detentions, and administrative fines to suppress this local resistance.
For instance, in Mugla’s Akbelen Forest, where local villagers have mobilised against coal mine expansion since 2019, state authorities have deployed law enforcement to safeguard corporate extraction. Security forces have repeatedly dispersed nonviolent protesters with tear gas, water cannons, and pepper spray. Turkish activists and residents also face arbitrary detentions, administrative fines, and continuous identity checks around their protest encampments; a police strategy of spatial surveillance designed to intimidate the community and erode ongoing resistance.
Similar dynamics unfolded in the Black Sea region during the 2026 protests against gold mining on the Perşembe Plateau. Situated across the Korgan and Aybastı districts of Ordu city, this high-altitude plateau sustains pastoral livelihoods and livestock farming. Although the area holds legally protected pasture status, the Ministry of Environment granted a mining permit in 2024 without public consultation. Residents only became aware of the project after preliminary site operations directly contaminated their drinking and irrigation water supplies. In June 2026, a court-appointed expert report validated these concerns, warning that gold extraction through cyanide leaching posed a lasting threat to the region’s groundwater reserves. Yet, despite these judicial findings and ongoing legal challenges, security forces repeatedly suppressed peaceful local demonstrations with pepper spray, tear gas, and arbitrary detentions.
Meanwhile, In Rize province’s İkizdere Valley, state intervention assumed an explicitly coercive form when a limestone quarry was opened to supply raw materials for a state-backed logistics port. The quarry directly threatened local tea cultivation, old-growth forests, and essential water sources. To bypass community opposition, the government issued urgent expropriation decrees and imposed district-wide movement restrictions under the pretext of maintaining public order. Despite heavy security blockades and administrative fines, residents, spearheaded by rural women, sustained road blockades, direct physical interventions to protect trees, and legal petitions against the project.
Autocratic greenwashing vs. energy democracyThese cases demonstrate that Turkish state institutions and security forces have acted in tandem to guarantee corporate access to natural resources. By bypassing community consultations, disregarding judicial and scientific assessments, and criminalising nonviolent protest, the central government systematically shuts down public participation. Under the guise of regional development and energy security, state authority dispossesses local populations of their land, water, and livelihoods.
In countries where domestic opposition is suppressed, international climate conferences provide host governments with an opportunity to project a progressive image and secure foreign capital in a politically sanitised environment. For foreign investors and state delegations, this authoritarian arrangement ensures predictability and shields large‑scale energy and infrastructure deals from public scrutiny.
At the same time, grassroots initiative networks such as the People’s Climate Summit (PCS) – formed as a collective platform for excluded civil society to articulate a common voice against COP31, encompassing the local struggles discussed above in Akbelen, Persembe, and Ikizdere – are building solidarity across environmental, labour, and human rights movements. By confronting extractivist projects and demanding community‑led energy democracy, these alliances articulate the most vital alternative vision of a just transition: they embody alternative imaginaries of ecological justice and democratic transition.
Tensions set to flare over trade at COP31 as China makes it a priority
Trade measures that impose tariffs and penalties on cleantech and emissions-intensive goods are poised to re-emerge as a challenging issue at the UN climate talks in Türkiye next month, after China signalled it wants COP31 to focus on ensuring the free flow of green technologies.
China, which dominates global manufacturing of cleantech equipment, has staunchly denounced US and EU tariffs and measures restricting the import of Chinese green technologies, which Washington and Brussels argue receive unfair government subsidies that threaten their nascent domestic industries.
China’s vice-minister of ecology and environment, Li Gao, told a press conference last week that COP31 should discuss the free flow of green technology as well as trade “unilateralism and protectionism”, warning that Beijing would give a “firm response” to attacks against it.
Trade tensions spilled over into the climate negotiations at COP30 in Brazil last year, quickly becoming one of the talks’ major flashpoints after large emerging economies, including China, India and South Africa, pushed to get “unilateral trade measures” on the agenda of the UN climate negotiations.
Observers of the UN talks told Climate Home News trade is likely to re-surface as a major sticking point between the EU and emerging economies, including China, during COP31 this November after newly created spaces for dialogue on climate and trade adjacent to the formal negotiations have so far failed to yield practical solutions on a way forward.
“We should be prepared for the climate-trade issue to be one of the prominent issues in Antalya,” said Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute.
China’s game plan unclearAlthough there is currently no designated track in the negotiations to discuss trade issues, China and other large emerging economies have repeatedly used the climate conference to air their grievances over trade barriers. How far China is willing to push the issue within the UN climate process and what it hopes to achieve remain unclear, however.
The vehemence which characterised the trade discussions at COP30 could be tempered in Antalya next month, Li said.
“My expectation is that all sides will be mindful of the trade issue creating more frictions to the multilateral system and will be more measured at COP31,” Li told Climate Home News. “That said, we should continue to expect rhetoric around this issue. Domestic politics in different countries will demand emotions on this issue to be unleashed.”
An EU-China deal struck earlier this month to halve exports of Chinese hybrid vehicles to the bloc could also help ease tensions, with further talks planned in March.
The Trump administration did not send an official delegation at COP30 and is not expected to attend COP31 either, after it quit the Paris Agreement and is also withdrawing from the UN climate convention.
A space for dialogueAt COP30, China and other large emerging economies used the trade discussions to take aim at the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which they staunchly oppose.
The mechanism imposes a border levy on imports of high-emitting products from countries with less stringent emissions regulations to protect European industries from unfair competition and help drive down emissions. The UK is set to implement its own version from January.
But China and other developing countries argue that the levy violates international trade rules and disproportionately punishes countries with fewer resources to clean up their industries or pay a premium for greener products in their supply chains.
Delegates during the session on trade and climate change in Bonn in June (Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth)To keep the issue outside the formal negotiations, the COP30 Brazilian presidency bundled trade with other contentious issue into an overarching political decision, in which governments agreed to establish the first UN climate and trade dialogue.
The “Global Mutirão” decision repeated previously agreed language that unilateral measures to address climate change “should not constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction on international trade”. Brazil also launched a voluntary climate and trade forum for countries to discuss how trade can support sustainable economic growth.
But recent discussions “have remained stuck at the level of principled debate and have failed to identify practical solutions”, said Ellie Belton, who tracks climate and trade issues for think-tank E3G.
Voluntary dialogue off on wrong footDuring the first of three trade dialogues scheduled annually between now and COP33, countries largely reiterated their existing positions at the June session in Bonn.
The EU defended its carbon border mechanism, and noted that the dialogue “should not become a space to address trade disputes or make judgements about the legitimacy of climate measures”. A spokesperson for the European Commission told Climate Home News that the bloc “welcomes continued dialogue” to enhance cooperation on measures to prevent carbon leakage.
Russia and the group of African countries suggested the creation of a formal negotiation track for trade discussions at the UN climate talks. But the EU and other developed economies will be reluctant to reopen the matter in Antalya, said Belton.
Meanwhile, the first meeting of the Integrated Forum on Climate Change and Trade (IFCCT) – also held during the Bonn climate talks – was poorly attended after last-minute participation by Russia, which led many developed countries skipping the dialogue, three attendees told Climate Home News.
Countries that joined the session “had a useful discussion but it wasn’t the meeting it was originally envisioned to be”, one delegate said.
Can UN climate talks deliver trade progress?Although the World Trade Organization is the obvious venue to discuss trade issues, it does not assess the climate impacts of trade interventions – a gap the UN climate talks could help bridge, observers say.
“Trade can generate real economy benefits to help advance global climate action – failing to address this at the UNFCCC is a missed opportunity,” said Belton, of E3G. “Unfortunately, it is likely to remain challenging to focus attention on the positive role of trade co-operation at COP31 if these longstanding tensions continue to consume so much bandwidth,” she added.
Some of the solutions proposed by countries in the first trade dialogue included ways to make different carbon markets work together, including by exchanging data, and using free trade agreements to lower barriers for clean technologies.
Access to affordable clean energy technologies such as solar panels, EVs and batteries has become a key issue for developing countries seeking to wean their economies off expensive and polluting fossil fuels. At the same time, nations want a share of cleantech value chains to create jobs and spur development.
A background paper for the climate and trade forum, seen by Climate Home News, shows that some of the areas identified for co-operation include reducing the cost of low-carbon trade, protecting trade flows after climate-induced disasters, and better connecting systems to report and verify the sustainability of traded goods.
Alden Meyer, a senior associate at E3G, said the forum is meant for countries to “hold hands and move together in a more ambitious and faster way” without the need for global consensus required by formal negotiations.
Meanwhile, the accompanying trade dialogues are designed to “feed into the negotiations over the second Global Stocktake” at COP33, where countries will issue a set of recommendations to ramp up global climate policies. This package could include trade provisions for the first time.
“That could be useful if the next two years demonstrate that there’s a willingness to look for ways in which the UNFCCC can be constructive in the trade space, and make trade a driver of climate ambition rather than a finger-pointing exercise and an irritant,” Meyer said.
The post Tensions set to flare over trade at COP31 as China makes it a priority appeared first on Climate Home News.
We are the Lorax and must speak for the trees
I sit down on a thick wooden fence-post under a native coastal live oak at the mouth of the hidden oasis that is a section of San Pascual Park. Joining me are Amada Segura and Josh Kashapata, two stellar LA resident volunteers with the Save San Pascual Park group.
For Amada and Josh, their Save San Pascual Park journey started with spotting yard signs in their neighborhood. Soon after, they attended a land defense meeting at the Coyotl + Macehualli Lending Library community space in El Sereno. There they met one of the main organizers in the defense of this park: a proud long-time Angeleno and land defender hailing from East LA, Clara Solis.
Since then, Amanda and Josh have joined the park defense, offering their talents to aid in the battle against corrupt city governments, golf course management, and major media outlets.
Just as a single spark can start a prairie fire, a single neighbor—Steve Crouch—raised the alarm to others upon receiving mail about the Arroyo Seco Water Reuse Project. Among those was his childhood friend Clara Solis. This collaborative project by the cities of Pasadena and South Pasadena—both cities boasting significant affluent areas—requires the destruction of a natural space containing 136 trees, a biologically active waterway, and a safe haven for species including the majestic great blue heron. The parcel of lush land would be replaced with artificial pools and water-purifying systems to filter out bacterial contamination in the Arroyo Seco channel. Also included will be enough carefully landscaped native foliage to suitably cover the project in green paint and call it environmentally aligned.
The project claims to be a community-oriented and nature-based solution….However, the city’s efforts, which have refused to educate and include the public in the process, reveal a different pattern.The project claims to be a community-oriented, nature-based solution and receives funding from the Safe Clean Water Program, Measure W. However, the city’s own efforts, which have refused to educate and include the public, in the process reveal a different pattern. Los Angeles is almost 50% Hispanic or Latinx, but the outreach was only in English until people started calling them out. The pamphlets themselves contain so much misinformation; Save San Pascual Park went line by line on their social media and debunked them using the city’s own sources. One of these sources includes an environmental impact report completed by other cities, which only happened because they were sued by Clara Solis.
“There’s no ecological basis for any of their projects,” says Josh. “It’s kind of like a lot of them ignoring the root causes of issues but using those issues as justifications for projects. So like, runoff from the golf course or Rose Bowl is still going to be coming through here. This [project] is a band-aid for that; it’s not treating the problem at the source, which is obviously the ideal.”
The environmental impact report itself points to two golf courses as the sources of pollution for the waterways, but the cities have targeted this specific area instead. “They admit themselves, that they cannot conduct a nature-based system yet,” Amada adds. Meanwhile, groups like the Stewards of the Arroyo Seco, who are committed to natural restoration, have not been approached by either city.
Importantly, the Kizh Nation has been involved since the beginning, working through the AB 52 CEQUA process. AB 52 requires tribal consultation for projects such as the Arroyo Seco Water Reuse Project.
“They say they’ve had the consultation,” Amada states. “Chief Salas can tell you, and he has stated multiple times that all the consultation was [the tribe] receiving the initial project plans and the Kizh Nation saying ‘we’re not ok with this’ and Pasadena basically saying ‘Ok. We’re still gonna do it though.’
Image credit: author.In addition, public records requests have gone unanswered, with no explanation as to why. A city administrator has run multiple public campaigns to slander members of Save San Pascal Park. The City of South Pasadena has been falsely claiming that parcel of land as its own, even though the official LA County zoning information says otherwise. Several media outlets, including The Los Angeles Times, have suspiciously biased articles in favor of the cities and golf courses.
Active SGV, a nonprofit based in several cities and 15 miles away, has allegedly been contracted by the City of Pasadena to do outreach for the Arroyo Reuse Project.”1A member of the nonprofit, Active SGV, admitted to being contracted and encouraged by the City of Pasadena to advocate for the Arroya Water Reuse project. As this group tabled at the same farmer’s market as Save San Pascual Park, market-goers told members of Save San Pascual Park that Active SGV was telling people that the people of Save San Pascual Park were lying and should not be talked to.
Through all this and more, Amada and Josh have been contributing to the group’s growing numbers and impact.
The Lorax Must Mobilize for the Trees: Lessons in Building an ImpactWhat started as neighborly communication and yard signs is now a thriving volunteer-based social media success.
What started as neighborly communication and yard signs is now a thriving volunteer-based social media success.“As much as I hate Instagram, it really did what it needed to do for us,” says Amada, who found their niche in the group as a social media savant with previous nonprofit experience. “Within the first month of taking over the socials, we grew to over 100k viewers on our page. We went from 46 followers to over 1000 in like a month and a half.” You might not be able to use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house, but you sure can get more people to know about why the house needs to be torn down.
Their farmers’ market tabling has also seen success. They use the time to educate the public about the ongoing struggle, gather signatures, and sell merchandise to raise funds for their legal fees.
“Being at the farmers market and being able to connect with folks and just kind of just see people, you know, connect the dots right then and there and be like, this is messed up,” Amada relates. “Realizing that people can see through corruption and can really see the importance and value of our parks . . . that’s not something that’s been difficult to convince people.”
Amada also stresses the importance of reaching out to other groups, as they have received support from environmental groups such as Citizens for Los Angeles Wildlife (CLAW), the Los Angeles Audubon Society, and the Sierra Club.
“Realizing that there are so many groups that are willing to pitch in in the way that they can help is just a matter of actually connecting with them and getting them in.”
Democratic, community-based groups willing to fight for a future that benefits the people—not profits—are how we build our mobilizing muscles. They teach us to rally around shared causes—even if we might not totally agree politically. They inspire more to take action in their neighborhoods.
Nearby in Pasadena, people are chaining themselves to trees to prevent the Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD) from cutting them down. People are rallying against the removal of trees at the Santa Anita Park for the LA Olympics.
These groups connect us to other related struggles. The outcry for the trees at Santa Anita Park could easily lead someone to connect with the NOlympics LA campaign. The NOlympics campaign highlights the displacement of low-income tenants and increasing militarization of Los Angeles. The PUSD debacle is related to toxins from the devastating Eaton Fire—which leads to a rabbit hole about environmental devastation caused by poor land management and private companies prioritizing profit over safety.
Every struggle that brings people together to fight for what is right matters. For we all are the Lorax and all must speak for the trees.
This has been a report and interview from Los Angeles.
Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Edward Kimmel and author; modified by Tempest.
The post We are the Lorax and must speak for the trees appeared first on Tempest.
Seattle Aims to Turn Vision Zero Dreams Into ‘Durable Law’
Seattle just passed a pair of bills aimed at giving the city’s theoretical commitment to Vision Zero real teeth— and the pressure is on to pass the third part of the package, which proponents say could really take the Emerald City’s street safety aspirations to the next level.
On Monday, the Seattle City Council unanimously approved two out of three of the policies collectively known as the SAFER Streets package — short for “Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Equitable and Responsive” — which sponsor and transportation committee Chair Rob Saka said could help “move Vision Zero from an aspirational policy into durable law.”
Those approved policies include a push to get city contractors to install “side guards” that prevent pedestrians and bicyclists from being swept under the wheels of trucks, as well as granting the city’s Traffic Engineer the dual title of “Chief Safety Officer” and new powers to install quick-build safety improvements after a crash.
The third policy — whose vote Seattle Bike Blog’s Tom Fucoloro says was punted until “at least November 10” due to concerns about historic districts — would make even more ambitious changes.
Those include requiring “daylighting” treatments every time certain roads are repaved to make it easier for drivers to see oncoming cyclists and walkers; upping the frequency at which the city updates its Vision Zero action plan from every five years to every three; and enhancing data collection and reporting requirements for traffic safety concerns across the board, among other measures.
Taken together, Chair Saka said those initiatives would represent a leap forward in the city’s fight to end traffic deaths and serious injuries, which critics warn may be stalling out. Pedestrian deaths nearly doubled in Seattle between 2024 and 2025, despite a groundswell of demand for more action to stop the bloodshed.
“At least in Seattle, we know the tools that can save lives,” Saka added. “This is about putting those tools into municipal law, empowering people to act faster, and just making safety a part of how Seattle operates every single day.”
Recommended ‘I’m Always on the Bus’: How Transit Advocacy Helped Katie Wilson Become Seattle’s Next Mayor Kea Wilson December 8, 2025Saka said the SAFER Streets package was directly inspired by Seattle advocates, who demanded policy change following a rash of recent road deaths in the cycling and pedestrian communities.
In particular, he cited the killing of Christian Sayler, 30, who died on June 1 at the hands of a turning garbage truck driver, as well as the death of 76-year-old Maridee Bonadea, who a different truck driver killed in Saka’s district just two weeks later. Some advocates say both riders could have been saved if the vehicles had been equipped with side guards.
“We’re reminded all the time that there’s more work to do,” Saka said. “I’ve personally been to a fair amount of tribute rides and ghost bike memorials, and spoken extensively with impacted families and victims of car violence … Local advocates are demanding immediate changes.”
Seattle may be uniquely primed for those sorts of changes since the election of Mayor Katie Wilson, whose background as a transit organizer helped propel her into office last year. Wilson signed a Vision Zero executive order in August, many measures of which heavily overlap with the SAFER Streets package; it’s also bolstered by an eight-year, $1.55 billion transportation levy enacted in 2024, hundreds of millions of which are specifically earmarked to save lives.
Much of the money could sit on the shelf, however, if the council doesn’t take action to spend it, Saka said. And Wilson’s orders could easily be rolled back if they’re not codified into law before she leaves office.
“The truth of the matter is that personnel change … and elected officials change [too],” he added. “Just because the mayor acts or does not act, that doesn’t absolve me as a lawmaker of my responsibility to keep people safe on our roads and our streets.”
Recommended Truck Deaths Are Up 71% — Will NHTSA Require New Tech? Kea Wilson May 15, 2023In addition to truck side guards — which have been a goal for safety advocates across the country for years, and which Boston has required on city-owned at city-contracted vehicles since 2014 — Saka said his package would pave the way for broader change, especially if its stalled elements can find passage. He’s particularly passionate about the bill’s potential to speed the city’s response to installing infrastructure after fatal crashes, which he says often takes far too long.
As the self-proclaimed “unapologetic King of Potholes” — a moniker he even lists on his LinkedIn bio — Saka says he’s proud that his district addresses 80 percent of the reported road defects within 72 hours, and doesn’t accept that the city can’t act with similar urgency when someone dies.
“It could be six-plus months between the time of a fatality and when any actual remediation or safety upgrade is made to address the root causes of that fatality,” he added. “This [bill] puts us on a path to a faster response time.”
Recommended Steal This Idea: ‘Emergency Streets’ Strategy Gets First Real-World Pilot Kea Wilson October 1, 2026Even if every component of the SAFER Streets package passes, Saka said there will still be more work to do to ensure Seattle becomes the first large US city to actually achieve Vision Zero. Considering how local historic boards have opposed the kind of daylighting measures the bill proposes in the past, that’s a big “if.”
“There’s no legislation there’s no piece of single piece of legislation — or legislative package, or executive order — that can guarantee no more traffic deaths or serious injuries,” he said. “But I do know that without [this package], we’re going to continue floundering.”
Still, he said that the time is ripe to pick this low-hanging fruit — and hopefully, inspire other US cities to get more aggressive about saving lives, too.
“At least in Seattle, I think Vision Zero is moving beyond an ideological constituency and becoming basic municipal public safety governance,” he added. “That’s a good thing. People win; taxpayers win; the residents and visitors of the city of Seattle win.”
Cutting ultra-processed foods may ease depression, new study finds
- Diets with less ultra-processed food may help to relieve depression symptoms.
- A small new pilot study adds to a growing body of evidence linking UPF to mental health.
- EWG’s Food Scores flags ultra-processed foods to help you make simple, healthy swaps.
Cutting back on ultra-processed food, or UPF, may help improve symptoms of depression, according to a new study.
UPF such as sugary drinks, salty snacks and frozen meals have already been shown to be strongly tied to chronic diseases like Type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
These findings add to the growing evidence that what we eat may also play a role in our mental health.
Get your free guide: EWG's Guide to Food Additives Study links eating less UPF to fewer depression symptomsThe study, published in JAMA Psychiatry in September, is among the first to examine whether cutting back on UPF can improve symptoms of depression and ease some symptoms of anxiety.
It involved 20 participants with depression who regularly consumed large amounts of UPF. They were told to follow either their usual diet or a low-UPF diet for four weeks, then switched to the other diet for another four weeks.
Researchers then measured changes in their self-reported depression and anxiety symptoms.
Study participants who cut their UPF intake by about 85% percent experienced moderate to large improvements on three measures of depression. Anxiety symptoms also improved modestly.
The findings may reveal some new insights about the way food affects our mood and mental health.
But this was a small pilot study, and improvements in depression and anxiety symptoms were self-reported. More research is needed to determine whether reducing UPF can directly improve depression symptoms.
Why might ultra-processed foods affect mental health?Researchers are still trying to understand why a diet high in UPF may be linked to depression. One possibility is that some UPF contain additives that may affect the gut microbiome. Because the gut and brain communicate with one another, researchers are investigating whether changes in the gut microbiome could influence mood.
Another possibility is that diets high in UPF may displace minimally processed foods that provide fiber, vitamins and minerals important for overall health.
States are taking action on ultra-processed foodsScientific evidence has done little to persuade the federal government to protect us from harmful chemicals in our food. But action at the state level is forcing the issue and driving meaningful change.
California’s Real Food, Healthy Kids Act last year created the nation’s first legal definition of UPF. The law also requires schools to phase the worst UPF out of meals.
Gov. Gavin Newsom also recently signed AB 2244, an EWG co-sponsored law that creates the first state-backed “non-ultraprocessed certified” label. This voluntary seal is designed to help shoppers in California more easily identify foods that aren’t ultra-processed – a big step toward making healthier choices more accessible.
How to cut back on UPFAbout 70% of packaged food in the U.S. is ultra-processed, which makes it difficult to avoid. It’s also designed to be craveable and hard to resist.
Cooking from scratch takes time and energy, which can be tough for those trying to balance nutrition, convenience and cost. And experts say that can be especially challenging for people with depression.
You don’t have to aim for perfection. Cutting back on ultra-processed foods in any amount is a good place to start. Begin by swapping some packaged snacks for fruit, nuts or other minimally processed options. And at the grocery store, make a point to check ingredient lists to find products with fewer additives.
EWG’s Food Scores can help take some of the guesswork out of grocery shopping. The database rates foods based on nutrition, ingredient concerns and degree of processing, making it easier to compare products and find healthier options.
You can also use EWG’s Healthy Living™ app to check products while you’re at the store.
Nicole Pajer is a freelance journalist.
Areas of Focus Ultra-Processed Foods Guest Authors Nicole Pajer (for EWG) October 28, 2026Wednesday’s Headlines Are On the Ballot
- More than 20 communities in 11 states have transportation referendums on the ballot this November (Smart Cities Dive).
- One is a 0.5 percent sales tax in Seattle to support bus service (Seattle Times; paywall).
- Another is in the Bay Area, where Max Mautner notes that residents pay more in taxes to subsidize highways than they do for transit.
- …and in Florida, an amendment to cut property taxes would devastate transit funding (Tampa Bay Times).
- A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposal would require autonomous vehicles to use cyan lights to indicate there’s no human driver. (The Verge)
- Parking in a garage is much more expensive than parking on the street in most big cities, which is the opposite of the way it should be. (Government Technology)
- Amtrak will have an online public hearing about its restructuring next month. (Trains)
- Chicago’s new transit agencies has broad powers to develop land. (Sun-Times)
- The new Crosslake Connection in Seattle is shifting transit riders from buses to trains, allowing Sound Transit to beef up bus service elsewhere. (Seattle Transit Blog)
- Dallas Area Rapid Transit’s newly hired CEO is under investigation by authorities in Florida, where he previously led Jacksonville’s transit agency. (Dallas Observer)
- Valley Metro is asking for public input on the West Phoenix light rail line’s route. (KJZZ)
- Only one third of New Orleans jobs are accessible by transit, severely limiting opportunities for residents who don’t own cars. (Lens)
- The Birmingham suburb of Clay lacks sidewalks, but Jefferson County has no plans to build any. (ABC 33/40)
- Albuquerque installed a protected bike lane on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue. (Journal)
- Seoul started running a self-driving shuttle. (Korea Times)
- London has officially closed shop-filled Oxford Street to vehicular traffic. (The Guardian)
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