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Despite the high-tech name of “waste-to-energy” and its sustainability claims, GAIA’s documentation of the financial, climate, and human health impacts of twenty incinerators worldwide paints a very different picture. Although these twenty incinerators and incinerator proposals ranged across the globe, they told the same story: decades of debt, a dark cloud of air pollution, and the burning of resources that could have been recycled, composted, or prevented altogether. 

Below are the toplines from GAIA’s research into these twenty incinerators, called  The Burn Book: Incinerators that Threaten the Climate, Public Health, and our Finances. For more in-depth information you can read the report itself.

Read The Report Read The Press Release Attero Moerdijk Facility – Netherlands .stk-fw9xuqb {height:10px !important;}

Operating since 1997, Attero’s Moerdijk plant is one of the Netherlands’ largest waste incinerators. The plant has emitted roughly 945,000 MT of CO2 in a single year, was supported by a $269.4 million USD (€233 million) European Investment Bank (EIP) loan, and was tied to contracts requiring 510,000 MT of waste annually—commitments that later generated financial disputes when increased waste separation reduced municipal waste deliveries.10 11 Rather than eliminating waste, Moerdijk demonstrates how a large, capital-intensive incinerator can create decades-long dependence on maintaining waste throughput while generating hundreds of thousands of tons of CO2 and ash annually.

Runcorn Energy Recovery Facility (ERF) – United Kingdom .stk-lw6v25u {height:10px !important;}

Operating since 2014–2015, Runcorn is one of the UK’s largest waste incinerators, permitted to burn 1.1 million MT annually in an industrial area surrounded by communities living and working nearby that have spent years reporting odors, noise, dust, vermin and other disturbances.56 57 The facility released approximately 1.11 million MT of CO2 in 2025 and generated more than 218,000 MT of bottom and fly ash, while its development was supported by long-term Greater Manchester waste commitments and substantial public financing, including a direct European Investment Bank (EIB) loan.58 59 Community opposition ultimately contributed to legal action by nearly 200 households and a reported $1.3 million USD (£1 million settlement), while residents and campaigners continue to press for stronger monitoring, enforcement, transparency and protection from the cumulative impacts of one of Britain’s largest incinerators.60 61

Hempstead Resource Recovery Facility (Reworld Hempstead) – USA .stk-xeh36zw {height:10px !important;}

Operating since 1989, the Hempstead Resource Recovery Facility (Reworld Hempstead) is a large waste incinerator located in Westbury, New York, operated by Reworld (formerly Covanta), and capable of processing approximately 944,000 MT of waste annually.103 The facility generates substantial greenhouse-gas emissions and roughly 197,000 MT of incinerator ash per year, much of which has historically been disposed of at the Town of Brookhaven Landfill, adjacent to the predominantly Black and Latino community of North Bellport, where regulators have documented a groundwater plume contaminated with PFAS and 1,4-dioxane.104 While the plume has not been specifically attributed to Hempstead’s ash, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) fined Reworld $878,500 in penalties in 2025 for nearly a decade of historic violations in ash-management practices.105 Hempstead is also supported by a long-term put-or-pay contract requiring payment for at least 381,000 MT of waste annually through 2034, reinforcing dependence on incineration even if municipal waste deliveries decline.106

Essex County Resource Recovery Facility (Reworld Essex) – USA .stk-jggh5s1 {height:10px !important;}

Operating since 1990, the Essex County Resource Recovery Facility (Reworld Essex) is a large waste incinerator located in Newark’s heavily industrialized Ironbound neighborhood, where it is operated by Reworld and permitted to burn approximately 894,000 MT of waste annually.139 The facility released roughly 854,000 MT of direct fossil and biogenic CO2 in 2023, alongside hundreds of metric tons of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and other air pollutants, adding to the cumulative pollution burden facing the surrounding environmental-justice community.14 The facility generates roughly 177,000 MT of incinerator ash annually that must be transported elsewhere for processing or disposal.141 142 For decades, the Ironbound Community Corporation and allied environmental-justice organizations have challenged the facility’s pollution and called for its closure, stronger enforcement, and an end to Newark’s dependence on waste incineration.143

Timarpur-Okhla Waste-to-Energy Plant – India .stk-zzg0urs {height:10px !important;}

Operating since 2012 in one of the most densely populated parts of New Delhi, the Timarpur–Okhla Waste-to-Energy Plant burns up to 711,750 MT of municipal waste per year beside residential communities, hospitals and schools.178 The facility has received substantial government support—including publicly supplied waste, nominal cost land, an approximately $1 million USD (₹10 crore) central government subsidy, public sector financing and carbon credits—while residents have spent more than a decade challenging its pollution and expansion.179 180 181 Regulatory monitoring has repeatedly documented pollution problems: government testing found violations for particulate matter and dioxins/furans as early as 2013, while 2021 monitoring measured dioxins/furans at nearly ten times the legal limit and hydrogen chloride at nearly four times the limit.182 183 Despite this history of violations and community opposition, the facility has pursued a major expansion that would increase waste processing capacity by another 1,000–1,200 MT/day.184

Amager Bakke (CopenHill) – Denmark .stk-x677skk {height:10px !important;}

Operating since 2017, Amager Bakke—also known as CopenHill—is a municipally owned mass-burn waste incinerator in Copenhagen operated by Amager Resource Center (ARC). Although promoted internationally for its architecture, ski slope, energy efficiency and advanced pollution controls, the facility has also become a prominent example of the financial and climate risks associated with oversized incineration infrastructure. Amager Bakke was financed through approximately $682 million USD (DKK 3.95 billion) in publicly backed borrowing, while its owner municipalities later loosened restrictions on imported waste after lower than expected local waste volumes weakened the project’s finances.233 234 ARC currently reports stack emissions of approximately 560,000 MT of CO2 per year, while local and regional advocates have argued that the plant’s scale and long-lived debt create pressure to maintain high waste throughput even as Copenhagen seeks to increase recycling and reduce residual waste.235 236

Isséane Incinerator – France .stk-nnkre40 {height:10px !important;}

Operating since 2007–2008, Isséane is a large publicly owned waste incinerator embedded in the densely populated Paris metropolitan area, with over one million people living within 5 km of the facility.276 In 2024, the plant burned 536,000 MT of waste and released 252,060 MT of fossil CO2, alongside NOx, particulate matter, mercury, heavy metals and dioxins; it also generated approximately 89,300 MT of bottom and hazardous fly ash, with fly ash transported to hazardous-waste facilities outside Paris.277 Built at a cost of approximately $836 million USD (€600 million) largely through public financing, Isséane has faced sustained criticism over its short stacks, cumulative pollution in an already heavily urbanized area, health monitoring, and the financial and infrastructural dependence created by large-scale incineration.278 279

Kwinana Energy Recovery Facility – Australia .stk-0bxmez9 {height:10px !important;}

Australia’s first large-scale operational municipal waste incinerator, Kwinana Energy Recovery was developed at a cost of approximately $474 million USD (A$668 million) and is permitted to burn up to 460,000 MT of waste annually in the heavily industrialized Kwinana area south of Perth.313 314 The project received $16.3 million USD (A$23 million) in direct federal grant funding and up to $63.8 million USD (A$90 million) in debt financing from the Australian Government-owned Clean Energy Finance Corporation, while participating councils entered 20-year waste-supply agreements committing residual municipal waste to the facility.315 316 The plant’s own pre-construction lifecycle assessment estimated 115,165 MT CO2e/year in gross greenhouse gas emissions, while residents and environmental groups have raised concerns about air pollution, cumulative industrial exposure, long-term waste contracts and the potential diversion of materials from recycling and composting.317 318 Since waste burning began, residents of nearby Medina have reported recurring burning-plastic/rubbish odors, and Western Australian authorities have acknowledged increasing odor complaints.319

Reppie Waste-to-Energy Facility – Ethiopia .stk-qfu0w19 {height:10px !important;}

Reppie was inaugurated in 2018 as Africa’s first large-scale municipal waste incinerator, after the Ethiopian government spent approximately $120 million USD developing the facility beside Addis Ababa’s longstanding Koshe landfill.380 381 Designed to burn 1,400 MT/day—approximately 511,000 MT/year—the plant now processes only about 396–650 MT/day, while roughly 3,000 MT of waste can still arrive at the adjoining landfill each day.382 383 The facility’s underperformance has created continuing public costs: its annual operating cost is approximately $6.09 million USD (800 million Ethiopian birr), while Addis Ababa faces more than $1.83 million USD (240 million Ethiopian birr) annually in compensation to Ethiopian Electric Power associated with power-generation shortfalls.384 385 Residents and waste pickers living around Reppie and Koshe report smoke, odors, respiratory and skin problems, continued landfill expansion and loss of livelihoods, while interviewed waste pickers reported an average 50% decline in income following introduction of the incinerator.386

Beddington Energy Recovery Facility – United Kingdom .stk-m458ufd {height:10px !important;}

Beddington Energy Recovery Facility is a mass-burn municipal waste incinerator in south London built for approximately $308 million USD (£205 million) and operating under a 25-year residual waste contract between Viridor and the four councils of the South London Waste Partnership.431 432 The facility burned 330,484 MT of waste in 2025 and released 338,934 MT of carbon dioxide, while its environmental permit now allows it to receive up to 382,286 MT/year following a controversial capacity increase approved by the Environment Agency in June 2026.433 434 The facility has faced sustained community opposition over air pollution, waste imports, traffic and regulatory oversight. Concerns intensified after investigators determined that Beddington had exceeded its daily nitrogen oxide emissions limit 916 times between 2022 and 2024 without those exceedances being correctly reported at the time.435 436

Hennepin Energy Recovery Center (HERC) – USA .stk-a0y5qqe {height:10px !important;}

Operating since 1989, the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center (HERC) is located next to the historically black and working-class neighborhoods of North Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is owned by Hennepin County and operated by Great River Energy (GRE HERC Services LLC). Minnesota has the third-highest number of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) incinerators in the country, with six of the seven located in an environmental justice community.494 Over the past 37 years, the HERC facility has become the top polluting facility in Hennepin County, contributing roughly $16 million in health damages, and at least 1-2 premature deaths annually from particulate matter alone, according to a PSE Healthy Energy study.495 496 In October 2024, the Minneapolis City Council passed a resolution pushing to end waste incineration at the HERC by December 31, 2027, and fully decommission the facility by 2033.497 However, this timeline is a recommendation to the county, with county officials not committing to an enforceable closure timeline.

Benowo Waste-to-Energy Plant – Indonesia .stk-n619ngl {height:10px !important;}

The Benowo Waste-to-Energy Plant in Surabaya is Indonesia’s first commercially operating large-scale municipal waste gasification facility, developed through a 20-year Build-Operate-Transfer agreement between the Surabaya City Government and PT Sumber Organik.549 550 Its thermal gasification unit, formally inaugurated in 2021 after an approximately $54.2 million USD (Rp704.4 billion) investment, is designed to process 1,000 MT of waste per day, or 365,000 MT/year, and generate up to 12 megawatts of electricity.551 The public-private arrangement guarantees PT Sumber Organik payment for at least 1,000 MT/day even when the city delivers less waste, while the national electricity utility purchases the plant’s electricity at a preferential $0.1335 USD/kWh tariff.552 553 Communities around Benowo have raised concerns about odors, respiratory illness, ash and the absence of transparent toxic-emissions data, while community air monitoring found daily-average PM2.5 concentrations exceeding the World Health Organization guideline on all 31 monitoring days, with maximum concentrations reaching roughly eight times the guideline.554

Maishima Incineration Plant – Japan .stk-ym9q7hw {height:10px !important;}

Osaka’s Maishima Incineration Plant is a publicly owned mass-burn waste incinerator that began operating in 2001, with two 450-MT/day furnaces capable of burning up to 900 MT/day.625 Designed by Austrian artist and architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser, the highly decorated facility cost approximately $492.0 million USD (¥60.9 billion) to construct and became controversial over its unusually high public cost.626 627 Recent FY2024 records show 32,762 MT of Maishima ash and other incineration residues sent to landfill.628 629 The plant also became the center of a major environmental controversy in 2013–14 when Osaka burned approximately 15,300 MT of disaster debris transported more than 700 kilometers from Iwate Prefecture following the Fukushima disaster, despite opposition from residents concerned about possible radioactive contamination.630 Residents sought an ordinance establishing Osaka’s financial responsibility if health damage occurred, but the Osaka Municipal Assembly rejected the proposal in February 2013.631 Osaka authorities maintained that monitoring showed the material could be processed safely.632

Emerald Energy-from-Waste Facility – Canada .stk-ek34p2z {height:10px !important;}

Operating since 1992, the Emerald Energy-from-Waste Facility is located in Brampton, Ontario, Canada. The company is beginning construction on a phased expansion in 2027 (approved in 2025) to increase capacity from approximately 182,000 to 912,000 MT/year, processing non-hazardous municipal and commercial waste— generating electricity, steam, with plans to eventually produce hydrogen. A recent report from the region’s Medical Officer of Health and Commissioner of Health Services warns that additional emissions from the expanded facility would increase cumulative exposure to air pollutants – posing serious health risks to nearby residents, many of whom are considered to be vulnerable.658

Joinville Energy Recovery Unit (URE) – Brazil .stk-578xvco {height:10px !important;}

The Joinville Energy Recovery Unit (URE), which began operating in October 2025, is a new waste-to-energy facility constructed inside the city’s Parque de Educação Ambiental Bororós and designed to process 110 MT of municipal waste per day, or approximately 40,150 MT/year.686 Rather than directly feeding untreated waste into a conventional moving-grate furnace, the facility mechanically processes municipal waste into a dry fuel marketed as Composto Biossintético Industrial (CBSI), which is subsequently burned in a steam boiler to generate electricity.687The project has faced significant local opposition: environmental advocates, recycling organizations and academics have argued that burning CBSI still constitutes waste incineration, questioned its potential air emissions and challenged whether Joinville should invest more heavily in recycling, environmental education, and composting instead.

Rome Waste-to-Energy Plant – Italy .stk-70z2xq6 {height:10px !important;}

Construction began in May 2026 on Rome’s planned 600,000-MT/year waste incinerator at Santa Palomba, with first waste deliveries scheduled for September 2029. The nearly $1.12 billion USD (€946.1 million) project will bind Rome to a 33-year concession for one of Europe’s largest new municipal waste incinerators, even as the city plans to increase separate collection to 70% by 2035. The facility is expected to generate approximately 150,000 MT of bottom ash each year, while its experimental carbon capture system will initially address only part of the plant’s CO2 stream. Local governments and community groups have opposed the project over its size and location, raising concerns about air pollution, health, water resources, traffic, existing contamination and the potential for a large, long-lived incinerator to compete with waste reduction and recycling.

Pomona Waste-to-Energy Incinerator – Zimbabwe .stk-edkc9xn {height:10px !important;}

Harare’s planned Pomona Waste-to-Energy incinerator is the centerpiece of a controversial $344 million USD, 30-year waste concession that requires the city to pay for minimum quantities of waste whether or not they are actually delivered.  The contract transfers control of Harare’s principal dumpsite to private operator Geo Pomona and ultimately requires as much as 1,000 MT of municipal waste every day, creating a long-term financial incentive to maintain a large residual waste stream.  The project has also become intertwined with a major international corruption controversy: Albania’s Special Anti-Corruption Structure identified Mirel Mërtiri and Klodian Zoto as the de facto owners of Geogenix B.V., the Dutch parent company behind the Pomona concession, and alleges that they concealed their beneficial ownership and benefited from falsified invoices connected with Albania’s Tirana incinerator concession. Documents reported by Albanian media also identify Mërtiri as a Geogenix negotiator in Zimbabwe. In Harare, residents’ groups, civil society organizations and elected officials have challenged the Pomona agreement over its procurement, cost, minimum-payment guarantees and diversion of scarce public resources.

Energy Recovery Unit Barueri (URE Barueri) – Brazil .stk-yolhjxw {height:10px !important;}

Now under construction in the densely urbanized western São Paulo metropolitan area, URE Barueri is designed to become Brazil’s first large-scale mass-burn municipal waste incinerator, processing approximately 300,000 MT of waste per year when operations begin in 2027. The project has drawn sustained community opposition over its proximity to residential areas, projected air emissions, ash generation, licensing history, and potential competition with recycling and composting.  The original environmental review projected approximately 293 MT/year of nitrogen oxides (NOx), 73 MT/year of sulfur oxides (SOx), 73 MT/year of carbon monoxide and 15 MT/year of particulate matter, while estimating that ash and slag would equal 12–14% of incoming waste.  At the same time, Barueri’s 2026 waste plan shows that the plant’s 870-MT/day capacity is roughly three times the amount of residual municipal waste the city itself generated in 2024, meaning the facility is explicitly designed to receive waste from surrounding municipalities as well. The project is tied to a 30-year public-private partnership, long-term electricity contracts and approximately $77 million USD (R$395 million) in tax-incentivized infrastructure debt, creating financial and contractual commitments that will extend for decades.

3-in-1 WtE Complex: Khiang Kan Energy Plant + Me Preme Energy Plant + Phraofa Power Plant – Thailand .stk-5ue16rg {height:10px !important;}

Three industrial waste incinerators are being developed side-by-side at the Hi-Tech Kabin Industrial Estate in Prachinburi Province, Thailand. The three plants are part of Gulf Development’s larger 12-incinerator GWTE Circular Economy Project, backed by more than $500 million USD in debt financing arranged by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and other lenders, including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Under Thai regulations, the individual 9.9-MW plants fell below the 10-MW threshold requiring a full Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and instead proceeded through the less stringent Code of Practice process, despite their close proximity and common corporate ownership. Local residents and civil society organizations have challenged this fragmented assessment, arguing that the three facilities should be evaluated together for their cumulative pollution and health impacts. Thailand’s National Human Rights Commission investigated complaints that residents opposing the projects were excluded, restricted and intimidated during public hearings, concluding that the process lacked genuine public participation.

Vallon Incinerator Plant – Switzerland (Closed in 2005) .stk-y74zdni {height:10px !important;}

Operating from 1958 to 2005, the municipally owned Vallon incinerator burned Lausanne’s household waste for nearly five decades in the densely populated Vallon neighborhood. Although designed to burn approximately 73,000 MT of waste annually, the aging facility experienced recurring combustion and pollution-control problems, including historical exceedances for particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury. Decades after the plant opened, extensive dioxin and furan contamination was discovered in soils across Lausanne, with Swiss authorities identifying the former Vallon incinerator as the probable principal source. Residents had complained about black particulate fallout, smoke, odors and potential health risks since the 1960s, and the contamination discovered after closure has turned Vallon into a long-term environmental-liability case involving soil remediation, public-health monitoring and demands for greater government accountability.  A new facility named the Tridel Waste-to-Energy Plant was built and currently operates at the same location of the former Vallon Incinerator.

The post GAIA’s “Burn Book” Documents the Hazards of the Waste-Burning Industry first appeared on GAIA.

Groups Demand End to Public Financing for Incineration at World Bank Annual Meeting

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 13 October, 2026

Today, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives’ (GAIA) has released a report entitled, The Burn Book: Incinerators that Threaten the Climate, Public Health, and our Finances.  The publication analyzed data from twenty incinerators and incinerator proposals worldwide, focusing on public debt and subsidies, climate and air pollution, toxic byproducts, and other common issues surrounding the industry– identifying key patterns that emerged regardless of regional contexts. The release of this publication is timed with a Global Week of Action to Stop Incineration October 13-16, with solidarity events planned around the world. 

“As these examples show, incinerators or so-called ‘waste-to-energy’ plants don’t magically burn away our waste problems– they create new ones,” states Marcel Howard, GAIA Special Projects Lead and author of the report. 

“Not only do they burden communities with toxic air and climate emissions and crippling public debt, but they also need massive volumes of waste to stay in operation, undermining municipal efforts to conserve precious natural resources. With our escalating climate crisis and overshoot of key planetary boundaries, we have no more time to waste on keeping this polluting industry afloat.” 

The report surfaces several key trends: 

• “Waste-to-energy” incinerators turn waste into toxic air and ash pollution. Based on public data, these incinerators alone produced at least 1.7 million tons of toxic ash per year– the equivalent in weight to 230 Eiffel Towers. There is also significant documentation of air pollutants that threaten human health– including carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, dioxin, and furans. Many communities surrounding these plants complained of odors, respiratory issues, and ground contamination. 

• These facilities have a large climate footprint. Despite studies showing that waste-to-energy incineration produces more climate emissions than any other power source, many of the incinerators on the list do not monitor or publicly disclose their emissions levels. The eleven that did have available data release a cumulative 5.5 million metric tons of CO2e per year, the equivalent of 1.3 million passenger cars. 

• “Waste-to-energy” is a waste of money. The twenty incinerators profiled have racked up nearly $7 billion of investments to date, with a portion of that directly from taxpayers in the form of government subsidies and municipal borrowing. In some cases municipalities are on the hook for millions of dollars in debt that stretches for decades. Waste incinerators are the most expensive form of waste management. 

• Burning waste undermines waste reduction. Once built, “waste-to-energy” incinerators require large volumes of waste to stay in operation, and many municipalities have “put-or-pay” contracts that disincentivize waste reduction. Much of the material burned in these incinerators could have been composted, recycled, or avoided altogether.  

As the World Bank convenes its annual meetings in Bangkok, Thailand, communities across the Global South are demanding an end to public financing for incineration disguised as climate action. GAIA Asia Pacific’s Citizens’ Atlas on False Climate and Circularity Solutions found that 42 of 59 World Bank Group projects assessed in Asia Pacific supported incineration technologies between 2015 and 2026. From the proposed Smokey Mountain incinerator in Manila to 12 industrial waste-to-energy plants backed by ADB and AIIB in Thailand, these projects threaten communities, waste workers’ livelihoods, and environmental justice.

Statements from GAIA members whose incinerator campaigns are featured in the Burn Book: 

Elisah Pals, Founder and Board Member, Zero Waste Nederland: 

“Incineration is the wrong direction, including for a country like the Netherlands. We already struggle with air, water and land pollution, yet we continue to import waste to keep incinerators running. Even when we succeed in producing less waste, we can end up facing penalties. Lock-in problems are real here. That is the world turned upside down. We need prevention, not more reasons to burn.”

Karen Wirsig, Senior Plastics Program Manager, Environmental Defence Canada:

“Burning waste is dirty and expensive and often ends up in communities that have the least power to say no. Governments that want to address a growing waste problem need to focus on waste reduction, not toxic fairy tales.”

Alejandra Torres, Assistant Director of Advocacy & Organizing, Ironbound Community Corporation:

“Burning trash is not the right answer for managing waste. The incinerator in the Ironbound, Newark, NJ, has surpassed its lifetime and is getting dirtier and costlier. We are inspired by communities who have managed to advance zero waste practices and jobs, shut down incinerators, and ensure that clean energy subsidies go to real clean energy. A better world is possible!”

Jane Bremmer, Chair, Toxics Free Australia: 

“Australia has a unique opportunity to leapfrog ahead of the mistakes of Europe, the UK and the US on waste management and disposal by choosing a Zero Waste City model instead of incinerators. No community deserves to carry the adverse health and environmental burden of incinerating another town or industry’s waste. While there are safer, more effective ways to manage any country’s residual waste, incineration remains indefensible.”

Rossano Ercolini, President, Zero Waste Italy: 

“Incineration is the polluting past. It destroys resources to be shared with the future. Incineration is against the circular economy and promotes a linear throw-away model.”

Victor Argentino, Instituto Polis: 

“Pushed in cities as a ‘quick fix’ over waste picker inclusion and separate waste collection, incinerators or WTE in Brazil reinforces environmental racism by being placed in low-income, peripheral areas.”

Jai Muhammad, Campaigner, WALHI East Java: 

“In order for us to live a good life, we must breathe clean air. And in order to breathe clean air, incinerators must be shut down!”

Sue Maxwell, Chair, Zero Waste BC:

“Incineration is blocking action on zero waste as it is so expensive and locks communities into pollution and wasting resources.”

Press contacts:

Claire Arkin, Global Communications Lead, GAIA

claire@no-burn.org | +1 510-604-7833

Note to Editor:

• Today, Zero Waste Europe has released a report, Incineration overcapacity in Europe: 2026 Data Update, which finds that the region’s waste-burning capacity is misaligned with its current waste generation and reduction goals.
• GAIA has released Waste-Burning 101: What You Need to Know about So-Called “Waste-to-Energy” Incinerators, which provides a broad overview of the latest research around the harms associated with waste incineration.
• Throughout the week, GAIA and its members will be hosting virtual events in a Global Action Lab, an opportunity to hear from GAIA members first-hand about how waste incineration is impacting their communities. 

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GAIA is a worldwide alliance of more than 1,000 grassroots groups, non-governmental organizations, and individuals in over 100 countries. With our work we aim to catalyze a global shift towards environmental justice by strengthening grassroots social movements that advance solutions to waste and pollution. We envision a just, zero waste world built on respect for ecological limits and community rights, where people are free from the burden of toxic pollution, and resources are sustainably conserved, not burned or dumped. 

The post Analysis of Twenty Waste Incinerators Worldwide Shows Threats to Environment, Investments, Public Health first appeared on GAIA.

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 12 OCTOBER 2026 SLF-2007-085 The Sakhalin Papers LXXV: From Sakhalin to the Baltic — Shell Joins Gazprom’s Nord Stream 2 Project as Europe Divides On 4 September 2015, Royal Dutch Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden joined Gazprom chairman Alexey Miller and four other European energy companies in signing an agreement to develop Nord Stream 2. The proposed pipelines would double the capacity of the existing Baltic Sea route for Russian gas exports to Germany. Shell described the project as necessary for Europe’s future energy needs. Six days later, the Slovak prime minister publicly condemned the agreement as a betrayal of Ukraine and Slovakia. Within weeks, the European Parliament was raising concerns about energy dependence, security and the political consequences of bypassing established transit countries. The authenticated corporate announcements, contemporary journalism, parliamentary records and subsequent court proceedings reveal how a project promoted as commercial infrastructure became a major geopolitical controversy.

Archive reference: SLF-2007-085
Publication date: 12 October 2026
Collection: The Sakhalin Papers — Shell, Gazprom and Russia
Principal authenticated records: Gazprom and OMV joint corporate announcement, 4 September 2015; European Parliament briefing, 1 October 2015; US Treasury sanctions announcement, 12 September 2014; EU regulatory and judicial records.

Contemporaneous reporting: Reuters, 18 June and 4 September 2015; Associated Press, 10 September 2015; Euractiv, 10 September 2015; Agence Europe, June and October 2015.

Judicial context: Court of Justice of the European Union, Nord Stream 2 AG v European Parliament and Council, Case C-348/20 P, judgment of 12 July 2022. Used solely to distinguish the original 2015 shareholding proposal from the ownership and financing arrangements subsequently adopted.

Evidence standard: Corporate announcements establish what was signed and publicly proposed, not whether every anticipated share acquisition or investment subsequently occurred. Contemporary political statements are attributed to their speakers. Subsequent judicial findings are identified separately from the events of 2015. No allegation is made that Shell violated sanctions or that the September agreement was unlawful.

Introduction: Shell’s Russian ambitions cross Europe

The previous instalment, The Shell Leaks Files — 11 October 2026, examined the expanding strategic relationship between Shell and Gazprom.

On 18 June 2015, Ben van Beurden and Alexey Miller had signed agreements concerning their wider cooperation and the proposed third LNG production train at Sakhalin II.

The Sakhalin expansion depended upon additional gas from Gazprom-controlled resources.

But on 7 August 2015, the United States imposed export-control restrictions specifically targeting the Yuzhno-Kirinskoye field, an important potential source of that gas.

Those restrictions complicated the commercial assumptions underlying the expansion.

Yet Shell’s ambitions in Russia were not limited to Sakhalin.

At the same St Petersburg forum in June, Shell had also participated in discussions about constructing additional gas-export infrastructure across the Baltic Sea.

That proposal was considerably more than an extension of an existing commercial partnership.

It envisaged two new offshore pipelines delivering Russian gas directly to Germany.

The additional capacity would equal that of the original Nord Stream system.

And it would provide Gazprom with another major route to European customers without passing through Ukraine.

On 4 September 2015, the proposal advanced from preliminary understandings to a shareholders’ agreement.

Shell’s chief executive personally signed it.

The political reaction was immediate.

1. The authenticated record: 4 September 2015

The most important primary document is Gazprom’s official announcement issued at 08:00 on 4 September 2015.

Its title was:

“Gazprom, BASF, E.ON, ENGIE, OMV and Shell sign Shareholders Agreement on Nord Stream 2 project.”

The signing took place at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia.

The participants were:

• Alexey Miller — Gazprom.
• Kurt Bock — BASF.
• Klaus Schäfer — E.ON.
• Pierre Chareyre — ENGIE.
• Rainer Seele — OMV.
• Ben van Beurden — Royal Dutch Shell.

The announcement confirmed that the companies had signed a shareholders’ agreement concerning the construction of Nord Stream 2.

It identified New European Pipeline AG as the proposed project vehicle.

The plan envisaged two offshore pipeline strings running from Russia to Germany across the Baltic Sea.

Their combined annual transport capacity would be approximately 55 billion cubic metres of natural gas.

Gazprom presented the project as an expansion of the existing Nord Stream system, applying experience acquired during its development and operation.

The announcement is an authenticated corporate record.

It identifies the signatories, the proposed structure and the commercial purpose of the agreement. Gazprom

Importantly, the announcement was independently reproduced by one of the Western participants.

OMV published its own official release on the same day.

The two records agree on the principal facts.

Primary source: OMV — Shareholders’ Agreement on Nord Stream 2, 4 September 2015

This provides strong documentary confirmation of Shell’s participation.

There is no need to rely on anonymous sources or retrospective recollections to establish that van Beurden signed the agreement.

2. Shell’s proposed 10 per cent interest

The September agreement set out a proposed ownership structure.

Gazprom would hold 51 per cent.

E.ON, Shell, OMV and BASF/Wintershall would each hold 10 per cent.

ENGIE would hold the remaining 9 per cent.

Gazprom would therefore retain majority control.

The Western partners collectively expected to hold 49 per cent.

For Shell, the proposed 10 per cent participation represented a potentially significant investment in European gas infrastructure.

But there is a crucial documentary distinction.

The September agreement specified intended shareholdings. It does not, by itself, prove that Shell subsequently acquired the proposed equity interest.

That distinction is particularly important because the project’s ownership arrangements changed.

Later regulatory objections prevented the original Western participation structure from being completed as planned.

Shell ultimately became a lender rather than a shareholder in the project company.

The later court record confirms that Gazprom remained the sole shareholder of Nord Stream 2 AG, with Western companies, including Shell, contributing through financing arrangements.

That subsequent development must not be projected backwards onto September 2015.

At the time of the Vladivostok signing, the publicly announced intention was for Shell to acquire a 10 per cent interest.

The fact of the agreement is established.

Completion of the proposed share acquisition is a separate question. Italaw

3. What the new pipeline would do

The original Nord Stream project consisted of two offshore pipelines connecting Russia and Germany beneath the Baltic Sea.

The first began operating in 2011.

The second followed in 2012.

Together, they provided approximately 55 billion cubic metres of annual transport capacity.

Nord Stream 2 proposed to add another two pipelines.

If completed and fully utilised, the four lines would provide a combined nominal capacity of approximately 110 billion cubic metres annually.

That was a major potential expansion of Russia’s direct gas-export infrastructure to Germany.

The route also had a fundamental geographical characteristic.

It bypassed Ukraine.

This was commercially significant because Ukraine had historically been a major transit country for Russian gas entering European markets.

Gas transported through Ukraine also passed through infrastructure in neighbouring countries, including Slovakia.

Transit arrangements generated revenue and gave those countries an important role in Europe’s energy system.

The Baltic route offered Gazprom an alternative.

It could transport gas directly to Germany without using Ukrainian transit infrastructure.

That possibility was central to the controversy.

It is important, however, to distinguish pipeline capacity from actual deliveries.

An additional 55 billion cubic metres of capacity did not automatically mean an additional 55 billion cubic metres of European gas consumption.

Nor did the agreement establish that all existing transit volumes would immediately be transferred away from Ukraine.

Those outcomes depended upon future production, contracts, market demand, regulatory requirements and operational decisions.

The authenticated agreement established the intended infrastructure capacity.

Its eventual commercial utilisation remained uncertain. OMV

4. Ben van Beurden’s public justification

Shell’s chief executive did not leave his reasons for supporting the project entirely to speculation.

The joint corporate announcement included his statement.

Van Beurden argued that natural gas would remain an important component of Europe’s energy supply for many years.

He pointed to declining European domestic gas production.

In his view, additional import infrastructure would be needed to meet future demand.

This was a recognisable commercial argument.

Natural gas played an important role in European electricity generation, industry and heating.

Domestic production in several mature European gas provinces was declining.

Additional imports could help replace that lost production.

Shell was also a major participant in international gas markets and LNG production.

The commercial logic behind investment in gas infrastructure was therefore consistent with the company’s wider business strategy.

But the argument contained an important omission.

Van Beurden addressed Europe’s anticipated demand for natural gas.

He did not, in the quoted statement, explain why meeting that demand specifically required additional dependence upon infrastructure transporting gas from Russia.

There is a distinction between needing gas and needing more Russian pipeline capacity.

Europe could pursue additional imports through several routes and from different suppliers.

Those alternatives had different costs, capabilities and limitations.

The September corporate announcement presented Nord Stream 2 as an answer to future European gas demand.

It did not independently establish that Nord Stream 2 was the only available or most secure solution.

Source: The joint corporate announcement, including van Beurden’s statement

5. Gazprom’s argument: a more reliable route

Gazprom’s public position was equally clear.

Alexey Miller welcomed the proposed doubling of the Baltic Sea route.

He argued that declining European domestic gas production would create demand for additional imports.

He also stressed the importance of having major international energy companies participate.

For Gazprom, Western corporate involvement offered several advantages.

It provided prospective investment partners.

It offered commercial and technical expertise.

And it demonstrated that important European energy companies remained willing to undertake substantial business with Gazprom despite the deterioration in relations between Russia and the West.

Gazprom presented the project as strengthening the security and reliability of European gas supplies.

But the meaning of security was contested.

For Gazprom, an offshore route bypassing established transit countries could reduce exposure to disputes involving those countries.

For Ukraine and Slovakia, the same route could weaken their economic and strategic positions.

For critics within the European Union, it could increase reliance upon a single external gas supplier.

The disagreement therefore concerned competing definitions of energy security.

Security of a particular transport route was not necessarily the same as security through diversification of suppliers.

That distinction would become central to the European political debate.

6. The project had already been prepared in June

The September shareholders’ agreement did not emerge without warning.

On 18 June 2015, Shell, Gazprom, E.ON and OMV had signed memoranda concerning additional gas-transmission infrastructure across the Baltic Sea.

The proposal involved the same additional annual capacity of approximately 55 billion cubic metres.

Contemporary Reuters reporting identified the political context immediately.

Russia was facing Western sanctions over Ukraine.

Gazprom was seeking additional routes to European customers that did not depend upon Ukrainian transit.

The June memorandum demonstrated corporate interest.

The September agreement moved the project forward by specifying a proposed ownership structure and implementation vehicle.

That progression is important.

A memorandum of intent indicates the parties’ willingness to explore a project.

A shareholders’ agreement represents a more developed contractual framework.

But neither should automatically be treated as proof that construction was inevitable.

The project still required financing arrangements, regulatory approvals, technical preparations and commercial commitments.

The September agreement therefore marked a significant development without resolving every obstacle. La Tribune

7. The political contradiction: sanctions and new investment

The timing made the agreement unusually sensitive.

Russia had annexed Crimea in March 2014.

Western governments had introduced sanctions.

Those sanctions were expanded later in 2014.

In September of that year, Washington had imposed restrictions affecting certain Russian deepwater, Arctic offshore and shale-oil activities.

The European Union had introduced its own measures affecting finance, technology and specified energy-sector activities.

Shell’s annual reporting subsequently confirmed that the restrictions had caused it to pause certain Russian liquids-rich shale-exploration activities.

The previous instalments documented those operational consequences.

Yet in June and September 2015, Shell was advancing new commercial arrangements with Gazprom.

Was this necessarily a contradiction in law?

No.

The 2014 sanctions were targeted restrictions.

They did not amount to a blanket prohibition on all business dealings with Gazprom.

They did not automatically prohibit every transaction involving Russian natural gas.

Nor did they establish that the Nord Stream 2 agreement was unlawful.

The US Treasury’s September 2014 announcement shows the particular financial and energy activities being restricted. U.S. Department of the Treasury

Nevertheless, there was an unmistakable political tension.

Western governments were attempting to impose economic costs upon Russia because of its conduct in Ukraine.

At the same time, major Western energy companies were agreeing to pursue infrastructure that could strengthen Russia’s capacity to sell gas directly to European markets.

The companies could argue that they were operating lawfully and addressing legitimate energy needs.

Critics could argue that the proposed infrastructure conflicted with the strategic objectives behind Western policy.

Both positions must be understood.

The documentary record does not support replacing that debate with an unsupported allegation of sanctions evasion.

8. Six days later: Slovakia calls the agreement a betrayal

On 10 September 2015, Slovak prime minister Robert Fico delivered an exceptionally strong response.

Speaking alongside Ukrainian prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Fico condemned the agreement between Gazprom and its Western European partners.

He described it as a betrayal of Slovakia and Ukraine.

The language was unusually blunt for a disagreement over energy infrastructure.

But the underlying concern was substantial.

Slovakia had historically received Russian gas transported through Ukraine.

Transit arrangements were economically important.

Ukraine also depended upon revenues from transporting Russian gas to European customers.

A major alternative pipeline system could reduce those revenues.

Fico argued that European governments had been discussing ways to support Ukraine while Western companies were simultaneously pursuing a project that could undermine Ukraine’s transit role.

His criticism was therefore not limited to the potential loss of income.

He regarded the arrangement as inconsistent with European political commitments to Ukraine.

The reaction was documented contemporaneously by Associated Press and Reuters-linked reporting.

Yatsenyuk also condemned the project.

He characterised it as damaging to Ukraine’s interests.

At their joint appearance, Yatsenyuk estimated that Ukraine could lose approximately $2 billion annually in transit revenues, while Slovakia could lose approximately $800 million.

Those were political estimates of potential future losses.

They were not established financial consequences of the unbuilt pipeline.

The importance of the statements lies in what they reveal about the contemporary political response.

Only six days after Shell signed the agreement, the governments of two countries directly affected by the proposed route were publicly condemning it. Fox News

9. Ukraine’s objection went beyond transit fees

Ukraine’s concerns were not purely commercial.

For many years, Ukrainian infrastructure had played an important role in transporting Russian gas to Europe.

That role gave Ukraine economic revenue and a degree of strategic importance.

A substantial reduction in transit could weaken both.

From Kyiv’s perspective, Nord Stream 2 threatened to remove part of the economic and political relationship connecting Ukrainian infrastructure with European energy security.

The political circumstances were especially sensitive.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine continued.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea remained internationally contested.

Relations between Moscow and Kyiv were severely damaged.

A new route bypassing Ukraine could therefore have consequences extending beyond pipeline tariffs.

The commercial partners did not necessarily share that interpretation.

Germany and the participating companies could reasonably argue that infrastructure decisions should reflect economics, reliability and future market demand.

But for Ukraine, the project could not be separated from the wider conflict.

This explains why the September agreement attracted a reaction far beyond the energy industry.

It had become a question about the relationship between European commercial interests and European political commitments.

10. Poland joins the opposition

Poland also viewed the proposal with concern.

The September reporting recorded criticism from Polish president Andrzej Duda.

Poland was concerned that new Baltic infrastructure could strengthen Gazprom’s position in the European gas market.

There were also concerns that infrastructure benefiting Germany and Gazprom could be developed without adequate consideration of the interests of other European countries.

The issue was not simply whether Germany wanted additional gas.

It concerned the consequences for the wider European energy system.

The original Nord Stream route already bypassed several countries in central and eastern Europe.

Nord Stream 2 would substantially increase the capacity of that route.

For countries seeking to reduce dependence upon Russian gas, the project appeared to move in the opposite direction.

These concerns would later develop into concrete regulatory action.

At the time of the September agreement, however, they were part of a growing political controversy.

Poland’s government had not yet determined the outcome of the proposed ownership arrangements.

That development lay ahead. Euractiv

11. The European Commission had already defended Ukrainian transit

There is another contemporary record that helps explain the institutional disagreement.

On 21 June 2015, shortly after the preliminary Baltic pipeline agreement, European Commission vice-president Maroš Šefčovič spoke at a security forum in Bratislava.

Šefčovič was responsible for the Energy Union.

He emphasised the strategic importance of continuing Russian gas transit through Ukraine.

He pointed to the capacity of Ukraine’s existing pipeline network.

He also questioned the economic logic of constructing expensive infrastructure primarily to bypass an established transit country.

The remarks were reported by Agence Europe on 23 June.

The Commissioner was not issuing a legal judgment against Shell or the proposed project.

He was articulating an important policy concern.

The European Union’s Energy Union strategy emphasised energy security, integration and diversification.

A project that concentrated additional transport capacity on a route controlled by the same major external supplier raised questions about its consistency with those objectives.

The Commission’s concern therefore predated the September signing.

This is an important historical distinction.

Opposition to bypassing Ukraine did not arise solely because of the September agreement.

It was already part of the European policy debate. Agence Europe

12. October: the European Parliament formally raises the alarm

By October 2015, the controversy had reached the European Parliament.

On 1 October, Parliament issued an official briefing announcing a debate scheduled for 7 October.

The briefing explicitly named Shell alongside Gazprom, E.ON, OMV, BASF/Wintershall and ENGIE.

It stated that Members of the European Parliament were concerned that the project could increase dependence upon Russia.

They also feared that it could weaken Ukraine and adversely affect European countries bypassed by the pipelines.

The briefing identified Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland among the countries whose political, security and economic interests were under discussion.

This is particularly valuable evidence.

It is not merely a newspaper describing criticism of the project.

It is an authenticated parliamentary publication establishing that Nord Stream 2 had become a formal subject of debate within an EU institution.

The questions went directly to the central issues.

Would the project increase European dependence upon Russian gas?

Would it undermine diversification?

Would it weaken Ukraine?

Would it disadvantage countries excluded from the new route?

These were questions that the September corporate announcement had not resolved.

Primary parliamentary source: European Parliament — MEPs to debate plans to expand Nord Stream, 1 October 2015

Contemporaneous reporting of the debate held on 7 October recorded strong criticism from a number of MEPs.

Some urged the European Union to oppose the development.

Others argued that the project was inconsistent with the Union’s efforts to diversify energy supplies.

The political battle had clearly begun. Agence Europe

13. The fundamental dispute: diversity of routes or diversity of suppliers?

Nord Stream 2 exposed a significant disagreement over energy-security terminology.

For the participating companies, the project offered a new transport route.

That could provide operational advantages.

It might reduce exposure to interruptions involving existing transit arrangements.

It could connect Russian production more directly with large Western European gas markets.

But critics argued that the project did not diversify the underlying gas supplier.

The gas would still originate in Russia.

Gazprom would remain the principal supplier and the controlling corporate participant.

Additional transport capacity could therefore strengthen an existing supplier’s commercial position rather than reduce dependence upon it.

Both arguments had substance.

Multiple routes can improve resilience against a failure affecting one route.

But multiple routes originating from the same supplier do not eliminate the risks associated with dependence upon that supplier.

The September disagreement was therefore not merely semantic.

It concerned two different models of energy security.

One emphasised reliable infrastructure and adequate import capacity.

The other emphasised supplier diversification and reduced strategic dependence.

Shell publicly supported the first argument.

Ukraine, Slovakia, Poland and a number of European parliamentarians emphasised the second.

The documents demonstrate that this disagreement was visible from the project’s earliest formal stages.

14. The shareholders’ agreement did not settle the regulatory position

There is another important distinction between the September announcement and the project’s eventual development.

The agreement was a corporate instrument.

It did not constitute approval from every relevant regulator.

The proposed pipelines would operate across an international maritime environment and connect with European gas infrastructure.

Their development raised questions involving construction permissions, environmental assessment, energy regulation and competition law.

Different legal questions required consideration under different rules.

The fact that Gazprom and its Western partners signed a shareholders’ agreement did not determine how every provision of European energy law would apply.

Nor did it remove the possibility of objections from national competition authorities.

That became highly significant when the proposed ownership structure was examined.

It is important not to apply later legislation retrospectively.

The legal framework governing pipelines to and from third countries was subsequently amended.

Those later developments cannot simply be treated as if the same provisions already governed the September 2015 agreement.

The correct historical approach is to examine the law as it stood at the time, then trace subsequent changes.

15. What the subsequent court record establishes

A later judgment provides authoritative confirmation of the distinction between the original corporate proposal and the project’s subsequent legal structure.

On 12 July 2022, the Court of Justice of the European Union delivered its judgment in:

Nord Stream 2 AG v European Parliament and Council of the European Union, Case C-348/20 P.

The case concerned amendments to EU natural-gas market legislation introduced in 2019.

Those amendments extended certain rules governing the internal gas market to pipelines connecting EU member states with third countries.

The proceedings concerned the admissibility of Nord Stream 2 AG’s challenge to the legislation.

The Court held that the company’s action was partially admissible and referred the relevant issues back to the General Court.

It did not make a finding that Shell’s 2015 agreement was unlawful.

Nor did it determine that Shell had violated sanctions.

The judgment is nevertheless important for the documentary history.

Its account of the project’s later corporate structure identifies Gazprom as the sole shareholder of Nord Stream 2 AG.

It also records financing arrangements involving five Western companies, including Royal Dutch Shell.

The contrast with the September 2015 announcement is significant.

In September 2015, Shell was publicly identified as an intended 10 per cent shareholder.

Under the later arrangements described by the Court, Shell was a financing participant, not a shareholder in the project company.

The development between those two positions belongs to the next stage of the story.

The judicial record confirms that the original ownership plan did not become the permanent structure of the project. Italaw

16. The importance of Shell’s participation

Shell was not a peripheral participant in the September agreement.

Its chief executive was one of the signatories.

The company’s public statement endorsed the commercial justification for the project.

The proposed ownership structure allocated Shell a significant minority interest.

And the agreement was part of a broader relationship with Gazprom that extended from Sakhalin LNG production to European gas infrastructure.

The connection with earlier events is particularly important.

In 2006–07, Shell had surrendered majority control of Sakhalin II following the confrontation surrounding the project’s development.

Gazprom became the controlling shareholder.

Shell nevertheless remained involved.

By 2014, the companies were discussing LNG expansion.

In June 2015, they entered a wider strategic cooperation agreement.

And in September 2015, Shell joined Gazprom and other European companies in proposing one of Europe’s largest new gas pipeline projects.

The relationship had therefore evolved far beyond the original Sakhalin investment.

Shell was no longer simply preserving an existing Russian asset.

It was actively exploring further commercial integration with Gazprom.

The September documents establish that much.

They do not establish that Shell supported Russian government actions in Ukraine.

Nor do they show that participation in the project constituted a sanctions violation.

Those claims would require evidence not present in the records examined here.

The significance of the agreement lies in the extent of the proposed cooperation and the political environment in which it was pursued.

Documentary Findings Established by authenticated corporate records

On 4 September 2015, Ben van Beurden signed the Nord Stream 2 shareholders’ agreement at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.

The signatories represented Gazprom, BASF, E.ON, ENGIE, OMV and Royal Dutch Shell.

The proposed project involved two additional offshore pipelines across the Baltic Sea.

Their combined annual capacity would be approximately 55 billion cubic metres.

Gazprom’s announced ownership share was 51 per cent.

Shell’s proposed interest was 10 per cent.

The agreement identified New European Pipeline AG as the intended project vehicle.

Van Beurden publicly justified the project by reference to Europe’s future gas requirements and declining domestic production.

These facts are confirmed by the 4 September Gazprom and OMV announcements. Gazprom

Established by contemporaneous reporting

Reuters reported the June and September agreements as developments in Gazprom’s effort to expand direct gas-export infrastructure to Europe.

The proposed route would bypass Ukraine.

On 10 September, Slovak prime minister Robert Fico publicly condemned the agreement as a betrayal.

Ukrainian prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk also opposed it.

Both leaders warned of substantial potential losses of transit revenue.

Those losses were forecasts attributed to the political leaders, not independently established consequences.

Polish political leaders also expressed opposition to the project. La Tribune

Established by European institutional records

On 1 October 2015, the European Parliament announced a debate concerning Nord Stream 2.

Its briefing explicitly identified Shell and the other participating companies.

It recorded concerns about dependence upon Russian gas, Ukraine’s strategic position and the interests of European countries bypassed by the proposed route.

The debate was scheduled for 7 October.

Contemporaneous reporting confirms that the project attracted substantial criticism from MEPs.

These records establish political opposition.

They do not establish a judicial ruling that the September agreement was illegal. European Parliament

Established by subsequent judicial proceedings

The Court of Justice’s judgment of 12 July 2022 confirms that Nord Stream 2 AG subsequently operated under a structure in which Gazprom was the sole shareholder and Western companies, including Shell, were involved in financing.

The judgment concerned later EU gas-market legislation.

It does not establish wrongdoing by Shell.

It is relevant here because it prevents the proposed 2015 shareholding arrangements from being mistakenly presented as the project’s final ownership structure. Italaw

Not established

The documents do not establish that Shell breached sanctions by signing the September 2015 agreement.

They do not establish that Shell endorsed Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

They do not establish that Shell had completed the acquisition of its proposed 10 per cent shareholding.

They do not establish that construction had received every required approval.

They do not establish that the proposed pipelines would automatically replace all Ukrainian gas transit.

They do not establish that the project was economically unnecessary.

They do not establish that it was economically indispensable.

And they do not establish that the September agreement settled the project’s eventual ownership, financing or regulatory position.

Commentary: A Commercial Decision With Political Consequences

The September 2015 agreement illustrates a recurring difficulty in the relationship between multinational energy companies and governments.

Infrastructure investments are often presented in commercial terms.

And frequently, those commercial arguments are substantial.

Europe needed natural gas.

Domestic production was declining.

New infrastructure could offer additional import capacity.

Shell and the other companies participating in the agreement were pursuing opportunities within their established areas of expertise.

There was nothing inherently surprising about major energy companies considering another large gas pipeline.

But Nord Stream 2 was not being proposed in an ordinary political environment.

Russia had annexed Crimea.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine continued.

Western governments had introduced economic sanctions.

The European Union was attempting to strengthen energy security and maintain support for Ukraine.

Within that environment, Shell and other Western companies agreed to pursue infrastructure that could reduce Ukraine’s role in Europe’s gas supply system.

For Gazprom, the attraction was obvious.

A direct Baltic Sea route could reduce reliance upon existing transit countries.

It could also strengthen Gazprom’s relationships with major Western European energy businesses.

For Shell, the attraction was different.

Participation offered a prospective stake in important gas infrastructure and an opportunity to deepen an already substantial commercial relationship with Gazprom.

The company’s public argument focused upon European energy demand.

But commercial logic did not remove the political implications.

A project can be economically attractive to its investors while creating serious disadvantages for countries outside the investment agreement.

That was precisely the concern expressed by Ukraine and Slovakia.

Their objections were not evidence that Shell had broken the law.

They were evidence that the commercial consequences of the project extended beyond its immediate shareholders.

There is a broader point about corporate responsibility.

Energy companies are entitled to pursue lawful commercial opportunities.

But large energy infrastructure can influence national security, international relations and the economic resilience of entire countries.

Those consequences deserve consideration alongside projected financial returns.

The September announcement demonstrated that Shell considered additional Russian gas infrastructure commercially desirable.

The reaction from Ukraine, Slovakia and the European Parliament demonstrated that important political institutions saw the project differently.

That divergence deserves to be preserved in the historical record.

The lesson of Sakhalin

There is also a revealing continuity with the earlier Sakhalin story.

Shell had experienced the consequences of Russian political and regulatory power during the Sakhalin II confrontation.

The company’s original majority position had been substantially reduced.

Gazprom had taken control.

Yet Shell remained commercially committed to the relationship.

By 2015, the companies were discussing expansion in Sakhalin and infrastructure in Europe.

The partnership had survived a major dispute over the ownership and development of Sakhalin II.

It was now surviving serious geopolitical tension.

But the Nord Stream 2 agreement would encounter obstacles of its own.

This time, the pressure would not arise primarily from Russian environmental regulators or negotiations over production-sharing arrangements.

It would emerge from European institutions and competition authorities.

The proposed ownership structure, confidently announced in September 2015, would prove particularly vulnerable.

That later development provides an important reminder about the difference between corporate ambition and completed investment.

The September agreement was real.

The signatures were real.

Shell’s participation was real.

But the proposed ownership arrangements were not immutable.

And the political controversy had only begun.

Principal Documentary Sources

1. Gazprom — 4 September 2015

Gazprom, BASF, E.ON, ENGIE, OMV and Shell sign Shareholders Agreement on Nord Stream 2 project.

The central primary document confirming the Vladivostok signing, participants, proposed shareholdings, pipeline capacity and executive statements.

Read Gazprom’s official announcement

2. OMV — 4 September 2015

Gazprom, BASF, E.ON, ENGIE, OMV and Shell sign Shareholders’ Agreement on the Nord Stream 2 project.

Independent company-authored confirmation of the terms and Shell’s participation, including van Beurden’s statement.

Read OMV’s official announcement

3. Reuters — 18 June 2015

Contemporaneous reporting of the preliminary Baltic gas-transmission agreement involving Gazprom, Shell, E.ON and OMV.

Reuters report: Gazprom announces agreement with Shell, E.ON and OMV

4. Reuters — 4 September 2015

Contemporaneous account of the shareholders’ agreement, estimated project cost and anticipated construction timetable.

Reuters: Gazprom and European partners sign Nord Stream 2 agreement

5. Associated Press — 10 September 2015

Reporting of the objections raised by Slovak prime minister Robert Fico and Ukrainian prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, including their estimates of potential transit-revenue losses.

Associated Press: Ukraine and Slovakia condemn Nord Stream 2

6. Agence Europe — 23 June 2015

Contemporaneous reporting of European Commission vice-president Maroš Šefčovič’s position on the strategic importance of continuing gas transit through Ukraine.

Šefčovič calls for continued gas transit through Ukraine

7. European Parliament — 1 October 2015

MEPs to debate plans to expand Nord Stream pipeline from Russia.

Official parliamentary briefing identifying Shell and other participating companies and setting out concerns about energy dependence, Ukraine and bypassed EU countries.

Read the European Parliament briefing

8. Agence Europe — 9 October 2015

Contemporaneous reporting of the 7 October European Parliament debate and opposition to the project.

European Parliament debate: Opposition to Nord Stream 2

9. US Department of the Treasury — 12 September 2014

Official announcement of the expanded Russian financial and energy-sector sanctions in force before the September 2015 agreement.

US Treasury: Expanded sanctions against Russia

10. Court of Justice of the European Union — 12 July 2022

Nord Stream 2 AG v European Parliament and Council, Case C-348/20 P.

Subsequent judicial record concerning EU gas-market regulation and the project’s later corporate and financing structure.

Read the Court of Justice judgment

11. OSW Centre for Eastern Studies — 26 April 2017

The Nord Stream 2 financing agreements.

Independent analysis documenting the eventual financing structure and explaining how the original shareholding arrangements failed following Polish competition objections.

Read the OSW analysis

Archive disclaimer: This instalment distinguishes authenticated corporate documents, contemporary political statements, independent journalism, parliamentary records, subsequent judicial material and editorial interpretation.

The 4 September 2015 shareholders’ agreement is evidence of the participating companies’ stated intentions and contractual arrangements at that date. It must not be treated as proof that all proposed equity acquisitions were ultimately completed.

The Court of Justice proceedings cited concern subsequent EU gas-market legislation, not a prosecution of Shell or an adjudication of its conduct in September 2015.

No sanctions violation, unlawful transaction or other misconduct by Shell is alleged or established in the documents examined.

Site-wide disclaimer also applies.

NEXT: The Ownership Plan Unravels — Poland Challenges Gazprom and Shell’s Nord Stream 2 Joint Venture

The September 2015 agreement proposed that Gazprom would hold 51 per cent of Nord Stream 2, with Shell and four other Western companies holding the remaining shares.

But the plan encountered an obstacle that the signing ceremony in Vladivostok had not resolved.

Competition law.

In December 2015, the participating companies sought approval from Poland’s competition authority for their proposed joint venture.

The application would eventually be examined by Poland’s Office of Competition and Consumer Protection, known as UOKiK.

In July 2016, the authority published objections.

It was concerned that the proposed concentration could strengthen Gazprom’s already substantial position in the Polish gas market.

The applicants subsequently withdrew their notification.

The original multinational ownership structure could not proceed as planned.

Shell remained interested in the project, but its participation would eventually take a different form.

A subsequent financing agreement would leave Gazprom as the project company’s sole shareholder, with the Western companies providing substantial funding.

The documentary trail is unusually clear.

The proposed shareholding structure can be found in the September 2015 corporate announcements.

The Polish competition authority’s objections were publicly reported in July 2016.

And the later financing arrangements were documented in 2017. PAP

The next Shell Leaks File — SLF-2007-086 — will examine how Poland’s competition authority challenged the original Nord Stream 2 ownership structure, why Gazprom’s Western partners withdrew their proposed share acquisitions, and how Shell’s involvement survived the failure of the initial plan.

It will also examine an important distinction for shareholders.

A company can cease to be a proposed equity partner in a controversial project without necessarily ceasing to provide the money required to build it.

The evidence establishing how that distinction applied to Shell lies in the corporate, regulatory and financial records that followed the Vladivostok agreement.

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 12 OCTOBER 2026 was first posted on October 12, 2026 at 8:22 pm.
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Cleaner cooking projects in the UN carbon market will have to set aside a share of their credits to insure against the risk that the trees they save are lost to fire, drought or logging, after the market’s regulator rejected calls to exempt the sector.

The requirement is part of a new rulebook that the Paris Agreement carbon market regulator – the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body – approved last Friday for programmes that aim to cut emissions by distributing new and cleaner cookstoves in regions that still burn wood or charcoal for cooking.

These are the UN mechanism’s first rulebooks for cookstoves, one of the carbon market’s most popular credit types and also one of its most criticised for overstating climate benefits.

They consist of two methodologies: one for programmes that aim to cut greenhouse gas emissions by distributing more efficient cookstoves that burn less wood or charcoal, and a separate methodology for projects shifting households to lower-emissions cookers running on electricity or liquid petroleum gas (LPG).

Mkhuthazi Steleki, the South African chair of the Supervisory Body, said “this decision gives cleaner cooking projects a new pathway under the UN carbon market, with clear rules to ensure that each credit represents a real and credible emission reduction”. 

• Sep 8, 2026 Carbon markets Industry and NGOs lobby to weaken UN carbon credit rules in “coordinated” push In copycat submissions and a private briefing to government officials, the groups have opposed a proposal to tighten safeguards for emissions offsets Read more
• Oct 9, 2026 Energy Launch of Africa Energy Bank delayed again in blow to oil and gas hopes Repeated delays are raising questions about the bank’s momentum and whether it can mobilise investment to finance Africa’s oil and gas ambitions in an era of energy transition Read more

Exemption push rejected

More efficient cookstove projects earn credits based on the amount of carbon they save by preserving trees that would have otherwise been cut down and burned for fuel. But if those trees later burn in a wildfire or are logged, the carbon stored would be released anyway, erasing the climate benefits of the credits.

Several carbon credit developers, conservation NGOs and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) disputed that cookstove projects face this risk, in what critics described as a “coordinated lobbying campaign”.

They argued that, unlike forest protection schemes, this type of credit represents a “flow” of avoided emissions rather than a “stock” of stored carbon that can be released. They also warned that requiring a buffer would impose disproportionate costs and undermine the financial viability of these activities.

But the UN carbon market regulator was not persuaded by the argument. It decided that projects would have to protect against this reversal risk by handing over a percentage of credits to a so-called “buffer pool” instead of selling them.

A spokesperson for the Project Developer Forum, an umbrella group for carbon credit developers, said it was “disappointed” with the Supervisory Body’s decision. “The new requirements are expected to weigh heavily on a sector where major integrity improvements are already underway,” he added.

‘New paradigm’

The amount of credits to be given up is calculated by applying different methods for natural risks, like wildfires, droughts or hurricanes, and human-caused ones, such as logging or land clearing. 

For natural risks, project developers will need to apply local risk values derived from new modelling published by a group of independent scientists. 

Campaigners have broadly welcomed the decision. Federica Dossi, an expert at Brussels-based advocacy group Carbon Market Watch, said it sets a new paradigm for calculating reversal risk based on empirical data. “This approach is grounded in science and we hope to see this now being adopted by other carbon crediting mechanisms in the voluntary market,” she added. 

Backers claim this method is more rigorous than current practice in the voluntary carbon market, which largely relies on expert guesswork.

Pre-COP draws attention to Pacific’s climate plight and 1.5C goal

Pushback over science

As Climate Home News previously revealed, the same industry and NGO groups that sought an exemption from the “buffer pool”, along with some corporate buyers, criticised the use of a study backed by the UN carbon market’s experts that recommended the new risk assessment approach.

The groups pushed for more flexible rules that would have allowed natural risk values drawn from other sources, including national databases, or from the project developers themselves. 

While the Supervisory Body rejected this approach, it gave project developers and countries the option to propose alternative values that would first need to be vetted by the mechanism’s expert panel and then approved by the regulator.

A carbon market expert told Climate Home News that, while it is too early to say how this provision will be used, they expect requests will have to be backed up with solid scientific evidence, lowering the risk of unfounded claims.

A drone view of the Turmalina Farm in Mae do Rio, Para, Brazil, September 29, 2025. REUTERS/Wagner Santana Policy discounts questioned

To guard against human-caused risks, projects will need to apply a flat 20% value set by the Supervisory Body, at the bottom of the 20-45% range recommended by its technical experts ahead of last week’s meeting. 

That value can be further reduced by up to two-thirds if the host country has an emission-reduction plan covering forests, a long-term climate strategy and a framework for the UN’s REDD+ forest protection scheme. 

Injy Johnstone, senior research fellow at the Munich-based Max Planck Institute, said that, while these are important governance measures, their existence does not necessarily demonstrate that the underlying risk of forest carbon loss has been reduced. 

“It is important to distinguish between evidence of actual risk reduction and assumptions about the effectiveness of policy commitments,” she added.

Moving target

A UN source told Climate Home News that, under the approved formula, improved cookstove projects must set aside at least 9% of credits linked to saved wood if they operate in the lowest-risk areas and the host country can claim all available discounts. The share of credits rises significantly in regions with high natural risk values, such as Guyana, Sri Lanka and Timor Leste, or that do not have REDD+ programmes. 

These factors could change in the future as the Supervisory Body asked its technical experts to recommend revisiting the risk values “should credible new evidence arise”. 

Climate change is likely to make forest destruction events, such as wildfires or hurricanes, more frequent and more severe in certain regions. Meanwhile, national policies on forest protection can shift significantly depending on government changes.

Johnstone said the UN carbon market needs periodic reassessment to respond to new evidence showing that previously assumed levels of risk were too low.

“The integrity of credits is not guaranteed simply because a reversal risk tool exists,” she added. “The real test will be whether the mechanism provides equivalent atmospheric protection over time, rather than simply introducing another layer of accounting requirements”.

The post UN carbon market forces cookstove projects to protect against forest loss appeared first on Climate Home News.

Weeks after the collapse of Europe’s most prominent hard-right think tank, a new group with the same staff and similar mission has emerged to take its place.

MCC Brussels announced the creation of the Freedom & Sovereignty Initiative (FSI) Europe on 23 September, a fresh entity that promises to “carry forward” its predecessor’s aims, and according to its slick new website, provide “the intellectual infrastructure for the European patriotic movement”.

This Wednesday (14 October) will mark the organisation’s official launch in central Brussels. The talk and drinks reception is being trailed as a “a rare opportunity to bring together representatives from patriotic, sovereigntist and genuinely conservative political forces to ask whether the European right is merely a political vibe or ready for a serious breakthrough”.

Two far-right MEPs, French National Rally politician Virginie Joron, and Alternative for Germany’s Christine Anderson, are listed as speakers.

But questions persist over who’s funding the once cash-rich group, which in 2024 received €6.3 million euros from its parent company, Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), Hungary’s largest private education institute and think tank. After Viktor Orbán’s resounding defeat in the Hungarian elections in April, new Prime Minister Péter Magyar has sought to dismantle Orbán-era institutions such as MCC, which pushed Orbán’s agenda at home and built up a network of allies abroad. 

In July, Magyar dissolved the trust that manages the think tank, nationalising its assets. This included returning a 10 percent stake in national oil and gas company MOL and pharmaceutical firm Gideon Richter, worth an estimated €1.5 billion, that were gifted to the group under Orbán. 

At the end of August, Frank Furedi, then-director of MCC Brussels and regular contributor to the right-wing online magazine Spiked, resigned from his post “with immediate effect,” claiming that the group had been unable to pay its staff. 

Yet, company records indicate that FSI Europe was incorporated by Furedi, the group’s president, in Belgium on 14 August, registered at the same address as Politico Europe, which was voted the most influential news organisation in Brussels last year.

“It begs the question where FSI Europe got the money, if MCC Brussels was out of money, to rent property in one of the most sought-after pieces of real estate in the EU lobby bubble on a very short timeline,” said Nick Aiossa, director of Transparency International EU.

Olivier Hoedeman, research and campaign coordinator for lobby watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory, suggested that “likely suspects” could include U.S. funders of the MAGA movement or the Trump administration, referring to a funding opportunity put out by Donald Trump’s State Department to fund European NGOs to “develop civilizational bonds.” 

The Trump administration has already allocated $12 million to two UK organisations founded by conservative figures, former MP Jacob Rees-Mogg and commentator and House of Lords member Toby Young. Another $4 million is reportedly earmarked for supporting right-wing media in Europe.

However, in August, MCC Brussels then-communications director John O’Brien told Politico that neither it nor its parent group would be applying for U.S. grant money.

In an emailed statement to DeSmog, O’Brien added that: “Private donations fund FSI Europe. We take no money from any government.”

Daniel Freund, a German Greens MEP who focuses on anti-corruption and transparency, said: “Orbán’s propaganda machine, MCC, has not disappeared. It has simply given itself a new look.”

The Hungarian government’s 2021 transfer of state-owned assets to MCC in shares and real estate has been widely criticised. A fellow at the German Marshall Fund, an American NGO focused on transatlantic cooperation, told the Financial Times the move amounted to “a sort of dispossession of public wealth in Hungary by the governing party”. 

“The FSI provides a platform for far-right MEPs,” Freund added. “In doing so, it continues to nurture the far-right network that MCC built up” using extensive Hungarian government funding, he said.

In his statement, O’Brien described FSI Europe as “a new, independent think tank with its own board, staff and programme”.

“Several of us worked at MCC Brussels, and we are proud of that work,” he said. “But suggesting we are the same thing in a new tin is lazy and untrue.

“We exist to defend free speech, national democracy, and Europeans’ right to disagree with Brussels. Debate does not threaten democracy. Shutting it down does.”

Funding and Transparency

MCC Brussels was until its collapse one of the best-funded lobby groups in the EU, financed by MCC, which in 2023 made €50 million in dividends from shares granted to the group by Orbán’s government.

O’Brien told Politico that the group was “open to receiving funding from anyone who supports our cause”, but added: “experience shows that when governments fund organizations, they do so often for their own reasons”. 

“MCC Brussels enjoyed freedom and independence over the past four years, and this is one element of its legacy that we are very keen to preserve,” he said.

Despite this, FSI’s predecessor had close institutional, as well as financial, ties to the Orbán regime. MCC’s chair until June 2026, Balazs Orbán, took a seat in the European Parliament on 18 September for Fidesz, the party of Orbán’s government. He served as political director in Viktor Orbán’s (no relation) government, and resigned from MCC over the Magyar government’s attempt to dismantle MCC. 

FSI Europe’s second event on 23 October will be held in partnership with The Foundation for a Civic Hungary, the official party-affiliated think tank of Fidesz.  

FSI Europe is likewise staffed by vocal defendants of Hungary’s former autocratic leader.

Furedi stated in 2025: “Hungary, and Orbán, is invariably accused of democratic backsliding time and again – I just don’t see that.”

In August 2026, following Orbán’s defeat, FSI Europe researcher Thomas Fazi criticised anti-corruption efforts by new Prime Minister Péter Magyar, stating that there was “no defensible logic” for limiting prime ministers to a lifetime term limit of eight years. Orbán had been prime minister for a total of 20 years and five terms at the time of his defeat.

When DeSmog asked Füredi about MCC Brussels’ funding in 2023, he said he was “prepared to take money from the devil, because I think I’ve got enough integrity, that you know, I’m not going to play to their tune.”

Half of FSI Europe’s staff are British, despite the UK leaving the EU back in 2021, and all but two FSI Europe’s 12 staff members have written for Spiked, a British online magazine that regularly publishes attacks on climate science and policy. Between 2015 and 2018 the website received $300,000 from the Charles Koch Foundation, an arm of oil giant Koch Industries and a major funder of climate science denial. 

“There is a disproportionate number of British staff members, in an organisation that is clearly looking to dismantle the EU, pushing a nationalist, sovereigntist agenda,” Aiossa of Transparency International added. 

Campaigners have also accused FSI Europe of exploiting a loophole in the EU lobby register to evade transparency rules. 

“They’ve pulled their old trick again,” said Aiossa.

“By reincorporating the same organisation with a different name, even if they were going to register on the EU lobbying transparency register, they’re not going to have to disclose any financial information until March 2028 at the earliest,” he said. 

Under the EU lobby register’s transparency rules, newly incorporated organisations can classify themselves as a “newly formed entity,” which means all financial reporting requirements are suspended for two years. 

When MCC Brussels entered the register in January 2024, it had already been active in EU politics since at least November 2022, yet was still able to register as a newly formed entity.

In 2025, Corporate Europe Observatory accused MCC Brussels of deliberately exploiting the loophole and filed a complaint with the transparency register, which the group denied in an exchange with DeSmog. 

MCC Brussels was suspended from the lobby register in June 2026 for violation of “single registration” rule, because both it and MCC had separate registrations, a decision it said it would challenge in court but has yet to act on. 

In a statement, O’Brien told DeSmog: “We will follow the EU Transparency Register’s rules and publish our funding as required. We have always done this.”

‘Far-right Network’

MCC nurtured a network of hard-right allies across the world until its funding cuts earlier this year. At MCC Feszt 2025, the group’s annual festival, Palantir founder Peter Thiel took to the stage, and the leader of Germany’s extreme right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Alice Weidel, was spotted in attendance. 

At its first public event under its new name, FSI Europe will be hosting Christine Anderson, an AfD MEP who was the party’s delegation leader in 2024, and Virginie Joron, a French MEP from the hard-right Rassemblement National (RN), who has previously spoken at MCC Brussels events. Joron has been accused of pro-Kremlin sentiment and became prominent on social media during the Covid-19 pandemic for her critical views of vaccinations. 

“The line-up of speakers at its first event shows that, like MCC Brussels, FSI Europe continues to align very closely with the most far-right MEPs,” said Olivier Hoedeman from CEO. 

In 2023, Christine Anderson spoke at a “Freedom Convoy” rally in Canada – a far-right trucker movement that emerged in opposition to Canada’s Covid-19 lockdown measures. In 2022, the group staged a months-long protest by the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa, with some of the city’s residents saying that they were targeted because of their race. Pierre Poilievre, the Trump-aligned leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, has since sought to distance himself from Anderson.

In 2021, the European Parliament reprimanded and placed restrictions on Joron and several other hard-right MEPs, after it emerged that they had undertaken an unauthorised “election monitoring” trip to Russian-occupied Crimea in 2020. Joron said at the time that she could not remember who had invited her on the visit – during which Joron and others “observed” a referendum on Russian constitutional reform that gave Vladimir Putin power until 2036.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Joron repeatedly voted against proposals by the European Parliament condemning Russia, until March 2022 when Marine Le Pen reportedly intervened, asking RN members to vote in favour of the proposals.

In September 2026, Joron posted an image of her sitting next to Balázs Orbán following his election to the European Parliament. The caption praised him as “A strong voice for nations, sovereignty, and a Europe of the people”.

Joron and Anderson did not respond to DeSmog’s requests for comment. 

O’Brien of MCC Brussels told DeSmog: “At our launch, we will hear from MEPs whose parties millions of Europeans voted for. We make no apology for giving elected representatives a platform. 

“Criticising our ideas is fair game, and our door is open to anyone who wants to argue with them. Too often, though, critics would rather smear the messenger than answer the message. That’s a shame.”

Frank Furedi and Thomas Fazi were also approached for comment.

The post Orban’s Favourite EU Think Tank is Back in Brussels. But Who’s Funding It? appeared first on DeSmog.

CNA/NNOC has officially seated a newly elected Council of Presidents to serve a three-year term from 2026-2029. The new leaders took office on Oct. 1, 2026 at the CNA/NNOC convention in San Francisco, California, where nearly 1,500 nurses from around the country convened.

Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom has taken full control of one of the country’s largest logistics companies, consolidating an expanding transport empire that now stretches from Arctic icebreakers to Black Sea grain terminals.

The acquisition, announced October 7, gives Rosatom the remaining 51 percent of Delo Group, a major Russian container and freight operator, from its founder Sergei Shishkaryov. Rosatom already owned the other 49 percent.

The takeover is the latest step in Rosatom’s transformation from a nuclear energy corporation into a sprawling state conglomerate with an increasingly important role in Russia’s international trade.

Bellona expert Alexander Nikitin sees a broader political purpose behind the expansion.

“Putin trusts Rosatom,” Nikitin said. “That is why Putin is giving Rosatom access to resources the nuclear corporation could previously only have dreamed of.”

According to Nikitin, the corporation’s rapid growth has become particularly pronounced since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Building a transport empire

The purchase gives Rosatom complete control of Delo’s network of maritime terminals, rail infrastructure and container operations.

According to Reuters, the company operates a container fleet with capacity exceeding 220,000 twenty-foot equivalent units, or TEUs, and approximately 40,000 railway platforms. It also controls the KSK grain terminal at Novorossiysk, one of Russia’s largest grain export facilities, with annual handling capacity of up to 10 million tonnes.

Rosatom already controls another major shipping company, FESCO, which operates maritime and rail freight services linking Russia’s Far East with domestic and international markets.

According to Russian business newspaper Vedomosti, Rosatom chief Alexei Likhachev said the corporation’s combined logistics operations now account for approximately 50 percent of Russia’s container-handling market and 44 percent of its rail container transport.

The acquisition followed a prolonged disagreement between Rosatom and Shishkaryov over Delo’s future. Under a shareholder buyout mechanism initiated earlier this year, Rosatom acquired the founder’s stake for a reported 77 billion rubles, approximately $900 million. Interfax reported that Rosatom financed the purchase with borrowed funds.

Nikitin argues that the acquisition belongs to a much larger pattern of concentrating strategically important industries under Rosatom’s control.

The corporation’s influence, he said, now extends across “nuclear and conventional weapons, advanced technologies across the civilian nuclear design and construction industry, mineral resources in the Arctic, including rare earths and precious metals,” as well as logistics infrastructure.

“Rosatom is becoming the managing corporation for Russia’s major port facilities,” Nikitin said, citing Vladivostok, Kaliningrad, Novorossiysk, St. Petersburg and Nakhodka.

The Arctic connection

For Rosatom, the acquisition is about more than moving containers. Since 2018, the corporation has been responsible for developing the Northern Sea Route, while its nuclear icebreaker fleet provides the infrastructure necessary to keep Arctic shipping lanes navigable.

Moscow has repeatedly promoted the route as a strategic commercial corridor connecting Russian Arctic resources and Asian markets.

But expanding Arctic shipping requires considerably more than icebreakers. It also depends on cargo terminals, railway connections, container services and reliable transport networks linking the Arctic to the rest of Russia.

By combining Delo with FESCO and its existing transport operations, Rosatom is seeking to bring more of that infrastructure under unified management.

In remarks published by Vedomosti, Likhachev described the corporation’s goals as strengthening Russia’s transport sovereignty, maintaining international freight connections and developing both the Northern Sea Route and the broader Trans-Arctic transport corridor.

The corporation also argues that consolidating its logistics businesses will eliminate overlapping investments and could save as much as 100 billion rubles over the next decade.

Whether those savings materialize remains uncertain.

The acquisition does not mean that all these operations will directly serve the Northern Sea Route. Many of Delo’s most important assets lie far from the Arctic. But the consolidation gives Rosatom a much larger role in determining how Russian freight moves between ports, railways and international markets.

More than a commercial transaction

The acquisition also illustrates how closely Russia’s largest state corporations are becoming intertwined with the country’s broader strategic priorities.

As Reuters reported, Shishkaryov said he intends to devote a substantial portion of the proceeds from the sale to Russia’s national security needs, although he provided no details about how the money would be used.

For Nikitin, however, Rosatom’s growing power is about more than overcoming commercial obstacles.

“Rosatom is becoming an institution the Kremlin can rely on when necessary,” he said.

Concentrating so many resources under its roof, Nikitin argues, is making Rosatom increasingly important to the country’s political leadership.

“Today, it is impossible to name another Russian company that has expanded so dramatically or accumulated so many resources as Rosatom,” he said. “In every sense, it has become the most trusted asset of Russia’s current leadership.”

The post From reactors to shipping: Rosatom tightens its grip on Russian transport appeared first on Bellona.org.

Gender, Patriarchy & Extractivism YLNM position paper | 2025

Introduction

What is Gender?

Feminist Understandings of Extractivism

Extractvism & Patriarchy

Extractivism & Gendered Impacts

Women on the frontlines of resistance to extractivism

Historical & Material Connection

Challenges of Resistance

Feminist Future Beyond Extractivism

Conclusion

Download

Yes to Life No to Mining and Rainforest Rescue standing in solidarity with the women in Loeha Raya resisting nickel mining, Sulawesi, Indonesia, October 2023. Credit. YLNM

This position paper was prepared by Dr V’cenza Cirefice, member of CAIM, on behalf of and in collaboration with YLNM.

Introduction

Extractivism creates both environmental and social injustices because it is rooted in systems of oppression, patriarchy, colonialism, white supremacy and capitalism. Gender and extractivism are intertwined in multiple and complex ways. Here, we lay out these links and call for gender justice and dismantling patriarchy to be considered central to anti-extractivism movements and deeply necessary for post-extractive futures.

Extractive projects, their impacts and resistance to them, are highly gendered. Women and girls are often first and worst impacted but also on the frontlines of resistance to extractivism, while the extractive sector is often gendered as a masculine space. Adopting an intersectional gendered lens to all aspects of extractivism is needed to understand how certain groups of people experience extractive violence and oppression in different ways.

(Eco)feminist movements have been central in calling out destructive extraction, as well as narratives of green growthand green extractivism. Instead, they highlight the many ways to embrace a life-sustaining society beyond extractivism that already exist today.

What is Gender?

Gender is socially constructed. This means it’s not about biology, but the ways that people are socially conditioned, or taught, to take on different roles in society and perform certain gendered identities.

Gender is not just about women, but is about the power relationships between men, women and gender non-conforming peoples.

Gender is fluid, it changes across cultural contexts and times, it is not binary (i.e. just man or woman), it includes trans, intersex and non-binary people.

European colonialism imposed a strict gender binary on colonised cultures, erasing a wide range of genders and sexualities that were common before. Many cultures have more than two genders, for example, the Two Spirit folks in Indigenous North American societies.

As a key organisational aspect of society, gender often determines the division of labour in society, which means who does the productive work (normally waged work done by men) and who does reproductive work (care work and domestic roles, often unpaid work done by women).

The genders that are marginalised by patriarchy (women, girls, trans, intersex and non-binary people) experience the impacts of extractivism first and worst.  Feminist Understandings of Extractivism

Feminism is a political tool, a social movement and an analysis of power and oppression. It works towards equality between all genders and sexes and aims to fight patriarchy.

Ecofeminism is a reaction to how women and nature have been marginalised and devalued in modern patriarchal society, and highlights that all types of domination (capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy) are connected. Therefore, one cannot be eliminated without the others.

Feminists have highlighted that extractivism is not just about the removal of resources from the ground but a specific way of relating to the world, a worldview about relations of power. It is a model of relationships that are non-reciprocal and that destroy, enclose and rupture relations between people and the rest of the living world.

Feminist approaches are important because they emphasise that extractive logics are rooted in oppressive systems of capitalism, colonialism and patriarchy. Therefore, only systemic change and different ways of relating to each other and the more-than-human can resist extractivism and build post-extractive worlds.  Extractivism & Patriarchy

Patriarchy is a social system of domination, control, exploitation, hierarchy and supremacy. Under this system women are oppressed, and their bodies and work are exploited. It is a system, not just about individuals – all genders can act in patriarchal ways and can be hurt by patriarchy.

Patriarchy, like colonialism, divides the world into strict binaries or opposites, with one valued more than the other. This includes man above woman, people above nature, western above non-western, science above tradition, and mind above body. The devalued side of the binary, like women, nature, non-western peoples, are dehumanised and treated like a resource to extract from. Colonialism and capitalist patriarchy are intertwined systems that are at the root of extractivism and extractive violence.

“But women are—and have always been—viewed as disposable. Extractivism was born out of colonialism, which wasn’t just about conquering land. It was also about taking control of women’s bodies, silencing them, and turning them into objects for male consumption. That context impacts everything.”

Winnet Shamuyarira, the project coordinator at WoMin African Alliance

Feminists say this way of thinking about the world is at the root of our social and environmental crises. Extractivism is rooted in this patriarchal worldview, both women and the Earth are treated like an object, to extract from to make profit. Patriarchy and gender inequality has a huge impact on power relations and control of land and natural resources, therefore they are central components when thinking about extractivism.

The concept of territorio/cuerpo/tierra from Latin American Feminist and Indigenous movements is important when thinking through extractivism and patriarchy. It emphasises the interconnectedness of territories, bodies and land. The body and territory are seen as sites of control and colonial extraction, but also as sites of resistance and agency.  Extractivism & Gendered Impacts

Extractive industries do not deliver the “development” they promise instead they leave a host of environmental devastation, displace communities and worsen social, economic and gender inequality. This is because extractivism reproduces capitalism, patriarchy and (neo)colonialism

Most of the socio-environmental costs of the extractive industry are felt by the mainly rural populations of extractive regions – women are often disproportionately impacted. While most jobs are held almost exclusively by men, the negative effects are felt in the household and community, where, due to gender socialisation, women have the most responsibility.

Women are the most impacted by extractive development, not because of inherent vulnerability, but because of systems, like capitalist patriarchy, positioning them as caregivers and enforcing structural inequalities. Patriarchal structures mean women have less access to decision making, land, resources and power. There is a material link.

Not all women experience these impacts in the same way – an intersectional approach is important. Age, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, migration status, caste, ability, and more are all factors that create different lived experiences for women in relation to extractivism.
Indigenous women and women across the Global South are further impacted by colonialism. 

Research highlighting the gendered impacts of mining can be understood in four categories: environmental impacts, health impacts, community displacement, and violence against women.

Environmental Impacts: Water and Food Sovereignty

The gendered division of labour brings women in contact with natural resources and the environment for subsistence.

Women, as primary caregivers, have a material connection as key stakeholders in small-scale farming and managing natural resources. Women produce up to 80% of the food in the Global South and have important roles in managing water systems and firewood, saving seeds, caring for livestock and in forest conservation.

When extractivism impacts the local environment, women are on the frontline of its impacts.

Women in many cultures are responsible for water. Extractive projects exhaust and contaminate water supplies, with women often being the first to notice that water is drying up or making people sick. This places a heavier care-work burden on younger women, who must travel farther to collect water.

These impacts are especially felt by Indigenous communities and those with subsistence economies that rely on natural resources for hunting, fishing, foraging, medicine and culture.

Health Impacts

The land, air and water contamination caused by extractivism makes communities sick, placing more care-giving burdens on women.

Women’s central role in agriculture and day-to-day tasks that bring them in contact with the environment means they are more exposed to toxic substances and heavy metals.

The attack on nature by mining industries also impacts women’s bodies as the effects of radiation poisoning are most apparent on reproductive systems with increased cases of ovarian cancer, miscarriages and birth defects.

Indigenous women are on the frontline of these impacts. In South Dakota, a toxic legacy of uranium mining disproportionately impacts the health of Indigenous Oglala Lakota women. Women of All Red Nations (WARN)make connections between uranium contamination and the high rates of miscarriage and reproductive cancers among Lakota women.

Extractivism can also increase poverty and food insecurity, which is also gendered. Women are often the first to reduce how much they eat. This further impacts neonatal and maternal health. 

Community Displacement and Loss of Communal Land

Land grabbing, the selling off and occupation of land by the extractive industry, leads to community displacement.

Often, communal lands that women especially depend on for farming, foraging, firewood and water are enclosed (gated and made private). The gendered impact of displacement is heavy, placing a huge physical and mental burden on women who are responsible for their family’s and community’s well-being due to a lack of access to resources and power. It also alters the social fabric both socially and economically.

Extractivism depends on rupturing community cohesion it creates divisions that destroy community care and support practices, which often women depend on more for survival.

Many Indigenous, peasant and rural women have strong ancestral and spiritual ties to the land. Women’s experiences from Zimbabwe detail how the loss of land to extractivism is more than just a material loss – it is a deep spiritual and emotional wound. The land is understood as sacred and ancestral. Women are custodians of traditional knowledge related to these sacred places. Its loss impacts their cultural identity and spiritual well-being.

This destruction of these deep-rooted relationships with place is seen across many extractive contexts and is a tactic of extractive logics that try to turn living landscapes into “natural resources” to extract from.

Violence Against Women (VAW)

The extreme violenceand human rights abuses that accompany extractivism are felt in gender specific ways. Women’s bodies and the land are both exploited and commercialized by extractive violence.

There is a link between sexual violence and extraction zones globally. The transient and mainly male workforce surrounding extractive projects can increase sexual exploitation, trafficking and gender-based violence – this comes with added health risks like HIV. When this violence is intersected with race and ethnicity, it becomes even more brutal.

Many large-scale extractive projects take place in post-conflict contexts or ongoing conflict zones where VAW is normalised, and women’s position is particularly precarious. The militarization and securitisation around extractive projects can increase gender violence – cases of sexual assault carried out by security forces employed by extractive companies are documented globally. For example, security for Barrick Gold raped women at the Porgera mine in Papua New Guinea. 

Extractivism can also increase structural violence towards women. In many cases, extractivism reinforces patriarchal dynamics, like a gender binary and strict gender roles in society. Men often receive cash wages, making women more dependent on them. Women lose cultural, economic and social status. This dynamic can lead to increases in alcoholism, domestic violence and abuse.

Because of patriarchal inequalities in society, women are often left out of decision making and discussions around land and ownership. Compensation is normally paid to the head of households who are predominately recorded as male.

Gender-based violence also increases with displacement, increasing poverty, and a loss of resources, all common consequences of extractive projects.

The extractive sector is represented as highly masculinised, however, women still participate as workers but often in informal, badly paid, precarious roles. This is largely in the Artisan and Small-scale Mining (ASM) sector. Due to gender norms, women who work in mines, sometimes face shame and ostracization by society. This short video, “Nadirah” explores honour and shame for a female informal coal miner in Tajikistan.

Women on the Frontlines of Resistance to Extractivism

Women are much more than passive casualties of extractivism – they are not victims, they are fighters. Women Human Rights and Environmental Defenders are standing up to extractivism across the world.

As noted, women experience the material impacts of extractivism first and the worst, therefore, they are often the first to stand up and resist. For many women, their resistance is seen as an extension of their care-work, what some ecofeminists call Earthcare. Research has focused on women’s motivations, practices and experiences of resistance, from Colombia, to Ecuador, to Greece, to Ireland and the Pacific. 

Often, this resistance is globally networked. Feminist solidarity building beyond borders is linking affected communities internationally against toxic extractivism. Also, a number of collectives and networks organise within grassroots struggles against extractivism from a gendered and feminist perspective.

The Ecofeminaria Initiative: Women in Defense of Territories and The Red Latinoamericana de Mujeres Defensoras de Derechos Sociales y Ambientales, are working in Latin America to foreground the gendered impacts of extractivism and feminist alternatives.

WoMin is a pan-African ecofeminist alliance building solidarity and movements against extractivism as well as woman-centred just alternatives. WoMin highlight the role of peasant women in Sub-Saharan Africa in organising to resist and hold mining corporations to account and reclaim lands taken by extractive industries. 

Feminist anti-extractive movements have also been intersecting with other social justice movements, connecting across struggles that challenge extractive capitalism, colonial and patriarchal violence. This includes movements for health and reproductive justice, drawing on the concept of “body as territory”.

There is also the connection between Indigenous and peasant rights and anti-imperial struggles, as seen from the solidarity of those resisting the Cerrejón coal mine in Colombia with the people of Palestine throughout the ongoing genocide.

The roots of these issues are interconnected. These struggles show it’s more than about a specific mine, but about a system predicated on violence and death. Building strong coalitions across connected issues is an important tool of resistance. Historical and Material Connection

Historically, women have fought against the commercialization of nature, resisting land enclosures and defending communal cultures. Silvia Federici argues that three hundred years of witch hunts in Europe, followed by peasant revolts that accompanied the transition to a capitalist system, were a tool to subjugate and control the power of women.

Colonial violence around the world enforced this gendered system. In turn, this ensured that women provided reproductive work for free, to continue producing and caring for a workforce. Despite this, women have continued to be at the front of the defence of the commons since the inception of colonial capitalism. This includes defending the commons from the enclosures by extractive industries. Globally, due to the gendered division of labour, women rely heavily on commons for subsistence livelihoods and so are often involved in resisting their enclosure. 

Women are more affected due to a lack of resources and power dynamics within society, not an innate vulnerability. Material approaches argue participation of women in resistance movements stems from their closer day-to-day contact and use of Nature and caring for a healthy environment, as well as their greater awareness and respect for community cohesion and solidarity. This material link is key, however, some women make political use of traditional gender roles, such as motherhood, for mobilisation or draw on a biological link between women and the Earth.

There is a diversity of women’s motives to engage in resistance, some traditionally feminine and some not, reminding us there are many ways for a woman to become an activist, not all of which depend on discourses of motherhood and caring.

  Challenges of Resistance

When women stand up, they face a range of gender specific challenges. Not only are women taking on corporate and state power, but they are transgressing traditional gender norms and conventions. Violence or the threat of violence is used to maintain patriarchal power and gender binaries. 

A report by AWID outlines how women face criminalisation, stigmatisation and smear campaigns against them, militarisation by private and public security, and marginalisation in their own communities and movements. Women Earth Defenders face severe threats in many contexts, from sexual violence to murder.

For example, Rosane Santiago Silveira was tortured and murdered in 2019 for her resistance to extractive industries and Dora Recinos Soto was shot dead for her resistance to the El Dorado mine in El Salvador. The role of women in resisting extractivism is often minimised and sidelined, even within movements, drawing attention to the ways women resist is key. 

Further, resistance to mining is riddled with invisible work, which is often done by women. Because of the way women are socialised they are often more responsible for care work, emotional labour, building relationships, administrative tasks and more. Not romanticising resistance but also acknowledging the added burden on women is important. There is a need to emphasise inequalities around gender including the invisibility of women’s contributions and the silencing of their concerns in anti-mining activism. 

On the other hand, women’s involvement in anti-extractive resistance can also transform traditional gender norms. Resistance in Greece altered the patriarchal structure of society and rhythm of everyday life as women took on leadership roles and care work was redistributed throughout the community.

Women’s resistance can generate new ways of thinking about the world, for example, the concept of territorio/cuerpo/tierra  emerges from Guatemalan Indigenous activists’ opposition to the El Escobal mine.

This brings us to the varied feminist alternatives for a post-extractive world. 

Feminist Futures Beyond Extractivism

A feminist perspective means taking a structural approach.

In many mainstream discussions of gender and the extractive industries, the focus falls on including women in the perceived benefits of extractivism. The argument goes: the extractive sector needs legal and regulatory reform to address gender inequality, so women can participate more fully in the system. This neoliberal viewpoint, which focuses on individuals rather than the system, argues: if we incorporate more women into the current system, things would be better.

In contrast to this, a feminist approach is systemic and structural. It sees the whole extractivist model and worldview as the issue: we need to challenge the colonial and capitalist roots of the extractivist system. If a mining company is still structured around pursuing endless growth, with the human rights and environmental injustices that go along with that, having more female CEOs is not a solution. 

Instead, grassroots feminist movements around the world are proposing and enacting alternative development models to extractivism. This includes a huge array from agroecology, to commoning, community-owned energy, seed saving, projects that centre traditional and Indigenous ecological knowledge, Rights of Nature movements, solidarity economies based on care and more.

Feminist approaches call for system change, not green capitalism, technological fixes or eco-modernisation.

This map prepared by the Latin American Network of Women Defenders of Social and Environmental Rights shows the impacts on women from extractivism across Latin America, but also shows women’s role in building alternatives.

The ONAMIAP Women initiative in Peru is working towards a just energy transition that is based in community and ancestral knowledge and challenges extractive capitalism.

Adivasi Indigenous women in India are using traditional ecological knowledge to advance food sovereignty and regenerate forests in the face of extractive threats. 

Feminist movements have been thinking about how to relate to the land and each other differently for a long time. We see this through the Beijing Declaration of Indigenous women 1995, Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth, 2010 and in September 2015, the Indigenous Women of the Americas signed a Defend Mother Earth Treaty against extractive industry. It stated that:

“While opposing extractive industries, women human rights defenders are advancing alternative economic and social models based on the stewardship of land and common resources in order to preserve life, thereby contributing to the emergence of new paradigms”.

This resistance to extractivism is making a systematic critique and calling for a move away from growth-orientated capitalist and extractivist-based models.

Feminist movements against extractivism demonstrate the power of collective action and solidarity, pushing back against the neoliberalisation of environmentalism that reduces action to individual lifestyle changes. Feminist approaches mean revaluing care and embedding it into all our relationships, with each other, human and non-human. Central is valuing relationships and different ways of relating.

Indigenous feminist scholar activist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson highlights that:

“The alternative to extractivism is deep reciprocity. It’s respect, it’s relationship, it’s responsibility, and it’s local”.

These alternative visions of non-extractive relationship building exist in movements that say no to mining and yes to life. 

Conclusion

Applying a gender perspective to all injustices from extractivism to mining projects, from supply chains to resistance movements, is important.

Not all women are the same. An intersectional lens is key to understanding the different ways women are impacted and resist. Beyond women as passive victims or romanticised saviours, we need to understand how specific contexts shape the gendered impacts of extractivism. Women are the most impacted by extractive development, not because of inherent vulnerability, but because of systems, like colonialism and capitalist patriarchy, positioning them as caregivers and enforcing structural inequalities. 

Feminist perspectives highlight that systemic change is needed, not technofixes, green extractivism or green growth. Instead, alternative economic models that centre care and the wellbeing of people and planet are crucial.

The struggle to dismantle patriarchy and advance gender justice is not an ‘add on’, it must be part of our movement to resist extractivism globally. 

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It’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and right now, the government and corporate polluters are aggressively driving policies that will destroy our communities and our public lands.

We’re supporting Tribal and Native organizers and expanding our partnerships with Tribes, Native communities, and multiracial coalitions to strengthen the grassroots movements we need to protect Native lands.

Current threats include:

• The Department of Homeland Security is building a destructive border wall in and near Big Bend National Park and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and on the Tohono O’odham Nation’s reservation itself.

• After the protected area surrounding Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments was cut by 90%, mining companies lined up and applied for permits, which were granted for mining and profit-driven development of this land, and now they are trying to destroy Bears Ears’ groundbreaking federal-intertribal collaborative management authority created by community gatherings.

These actions violate Tribes’ inherent and legal right to sovereignty, including the right to decide on projects that may affect our communities, resources, and territories.

Ensuring Native people can steward lands as their ancestors have is a major pathway to conservation and sustainability, mitigating the impacts of climate change, and protecting Mother Earth for future generations.

The post Indigenous Peoples’ Day 2026 appeared first on Native Organizers Alliance.

“When Dominion was asked about the [Virginia Clean Economy Act], its executive vice president told the commission, ‘I am still your throat to choke,’ and that was a shocking thing for me to hear as a legislator,” said Virginia Del. Irene Shin, D.

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Next week, diplomats from around the world will descend on Yerevan, Armenia, to negotiate a series of decisions under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). 

Between 19 and 30 October, 196 parties will gather to hammer out the precise wording of the dozens of legal texts that make up the decisions under the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the CBD.

This year’s summit is particularly significant, as it marks the halfway point between the agreement of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the deadline for achieving its targets.

The CBD has found that countries are currently not on track to meet 22 out of the framework’s 23 targets. 

During the fortnight, delegates will also be negotiating decisions relating to the two supplemental protocols to the CBD: the Cartagena Protocol, which covers biosafety; and the Nagoya Protocol, which covers access and benefit-sharing for the use of genetic resources. 

(The Cartagena and Nagoya Protocols, which are each governed by a “meeting of the parties”, or “MOP”, have fewer parties than the CBD as a whole, with 173 and 141, respectively.)

Carbon Brief is tracking the progress of countries towards consensus on dozens of negotiating texts using the interactive table below. 

The tracker includes texts from the COP, as well as the MOPs for the Cartagena and Nagoya protocols. It also includes draft decisions from the most recent subsidiary body meetings, as these form the starting point for the negotiations in Yerevan. 

The CBD has three subsidiary bodies: the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA), the subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) and the subsidiary body on article 8(j) and other provisions (SB8J). 

SB8J focuses on issues related to the Indigenous peoples and local communities. It was established at COP16 in Cali, Colombia, in 2024. 

The first two columns of the interactive tracker list the topic of each agenda item and the relevant body, with subsequent columns including dates, page counts and links to the original documents.

The table is searchable and can be sorted using the arrows in the header.

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Areas of disagreement in UN draft texts are denoted by square brackets. Counting the brackets in a particular iteration of a text therefore gives a sense of how far parties are from reaching consensus. 

The bracket column is colour-coded, with dark green indicating a low number of brackets and red indicating a high number of brackets remaining. 

Texts can also present parties with choices using “options” or alternatives (“alt”), which are counted together in the sixth column of the table. 

The key discussions in Yerevan will centre around two agenda items in particular. The first is the global review, which will assess progress towards the GBF and make recommendations for accelerating action. 

The second is finance, which can be separated into two parts: resource mobilisation and the financial mechanism. On resource mobilisation, biodiverse global south countries are likely to push for an increased amount of international finance for conservation. 

Disagreement over the creation of the financial mechanism led to the suspension of COP16 in Cali in October 2024, as parties failed to find agreement on the mobilisation of finance before the end of the summit. 

Global south countries want the establishment of a separate financial mechanism under the control of the CBD; global north countries largely prefer to maintain the existing mechanism, which sits under the Global Environment Facility. 

At the resumed session of COP16 in Rome in early 2025, countries agreed on a roadmap that would lead to the establishment of a permanent mechanism.

related Analysis: Lula presidency saved at least 20,000km2 of Brazilian Amazon since 2022 28.09.2026 International policy Why land-use emissions have fallen by a third this century – in six charts 17.08.2026 Climate pollutants Analysis: 84% of nations miss deadline to identify ‘nature-harming’ subsidies by 2025  28.07.2026 International policy UK withdraws millions in funding from world’s second-largest rainforest in Congo  15.07.2026 Nature

The post Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP17 biodiversity summit appeared first on Carbon Brief.

By KAY MATTHEWS

Making a movie about the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire is not for the weak of heart. Untangling the tension between those who suffered so much destruction and those, namely the US Forest Service, that caused that suffering, requires courage and tact. Fortunately, a talented filmmaker named Hillary Bachelder has both, and her film, “Burn, Scar,” is an achingly fair and honest assessment of what happened. The first showing in New Mexico will be at the Santa Fe Film Festival, October 15. Starting Friday, October 30, the film will show in Las Vegas at the Indigo Theater, 5 pm and 7:45 pm with multiple showings throughout the week. Tickets are available at Indigo Theater.

In April of 2022 a prescribed fire set by the Forest Service near Hermit’s Peak in Mora County jumped its perimeter boundary. Soon after, a previously prescribed burn in a nearby canyon that had smoldered under the winter snows erupted into a fire that joined the fire near Hermit’s Peak. In total, what became known as the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire burned 341,471 acres and destroyed 903 structures in Mora, San Miguel, and Taos counties.

Before I continue with this review, I have a disclaimer. I contributed some of the video footage and photos used in the film and know many of the people who are featured and interviewed, including Antonio “Ike” DeVargas, about whom I wrote a book. Hopefully that adds to, rather than detracts from, the review.

This film rests on the shoulders of the narrators Bachelder chose to tell the story. It begins in 2022, when the fires erupted, and ends in 2025, when Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)money finally compensates many of those who lost their homes and livelihoods.

Here are the protagonists:

• Ernie is a handsome cattle rancher and acequia mayordomo who simmers with anger over the impacts of the fire and the negligence of the Forest Service.
• Martin, a gentle man, works to rebuild his grandparents’ house and fence his cows (whom he names), waiting for FEMA reimbursements while he goes into debt.
• Dennis is the Santa Fe National Forest Fire Ecologist who takes responsibility for the fire but is adamant that fire will always be part of the landscape and needs to be managed
• Angie is the District Ranger at Canjilon and works with the people of Rio Arriba County to integrate thinning and prescribed fire into the community after the fire
• Antonia is an Albuquerque lawyer who comes back to her el norte home to help everyone file their claims with FEMA for compensation
• Moises is a Rio Arriba County Commissioner who opposes the proposed thinning and prescribed burning on the land near his home in Canjilon
• Ike is the longtime activist who founded La Raza Unida Party in Rio Arriba County and the small logging company La Companía de Ocho.

These people take us through story as the fire erupts and spreads to the communities. The film’s footage of the blaze is unsettling, as acres and acres of trees are scorched and homes burned to the ground. The Forest Service is omnipresent, holding uncomfortable meetings with community members. At one of those on the Pecos/Las Vegas Ranger District the district ranger says, “We take full responsibility” for the fires and when Dennis apologizes, he’s asked why anyone should trust the Forest Service. He answers, “Because the alternatives aren’t very good.” At a meeting on my district, the Camino Real, the district ranger is confronted by a hostile audience, one of whom says, “We don’t want fire and we don’t agree with our government.” The ranger tells her the Forest Service is obligated to do what is needed to protect her community.

Three months after the fire, 90 percent contained, Antonia Roybal Mack enters the narrative, evacuating her grandmother’s house for fear of flooding as the rains have arrived and the floods caused by the burn scar begin. The film shows water rising to the doorstep of homes, roads washed away, and acequias filled with mud and debris. Antonia becomes a stabilizing figure in the film with her lawyerly competence and understanding of the emotions of those who have lost so much. The US Senate appropriates the FEMA budget to support the fire victims. Antonia: “It’s my job to represent people against FEMA. There is an enormous amount of distrust of the federal government.”

Five months after the fire started it’s 100 percent contained. Dennis is profiled as a lifelong fire fighter who works his way up into fuels and fire ecology to dismantle the Smokey Bear mythology that all forest fires need to be extinguished. One hundred years of this policy is what has left the forests overgrown, diseased, and prone to massive fires. Dennis is one of my favorite figures in the film: obviously very sincere in his acceptance of responsibility but also a little pugnacious in his determination to pursue policy that he believes is essential to forest management. His language is blunt and his hurt is heavy.

Ernie’s hurt is also a large component of the film. The shots of him at his acequia meeting—held outside—are painful as he fields questions from his fellow parciantes trying to parse FEMA regulations. They ask about what will happen when the acequias flood next year and the year after that during the monsoons. Will FEMA be back to help them then? It’s a revealing moment when a FEMA representative shows up to try to explain how to log on to the portal to begin the process and Bachelder films only his back. It’s also telling that there is only one parciante younger than Ernie (who looks to be in his thirties or early forties) who takes over Ernie’s mayordomo position.

One year after the fire Martin is living in a FEMA trailer with a generator his only source of heat, at $30 a night for gas. He’s selling wood to made a little money while waiting for FEMA to reimburse him for all the money he’s spent fixing the house and his road. He ends up having to sell his cows as he can’t afford to borrow any more. Although his life is more difficult than Ernie’s, he seems less angry, maybe just more resigned, in the quotidian grind of the life he’s been dealt.

Moises and Ike appear in the film in juxtaposition. While their values aligned for many years, they were estranged by the time the film was made. They both speak about the loss of the land grants to unscrupulous speculators like attorney Thomas Catron and eventually the government, who Ike says his grandfather referred to as “Los Americanos.” They both were in the front lines in the 1960s and 70s Chicano movement. Moises participated in the raid by Reies Lopez Tijerina on the Rio Arriba County Courthouse and was, with Ike, an active member of La Raza Unida that brought down Emilio Naranjo, the despotic ruler of Rio Arriba County. Bachelder includes footage of Ike from the Danny Lyon film “Little Boy” in La Raza protests and at home in Servilleta Plaza with his young son, Antonio. Ike was the founder of La Companía de Ocho, a small logging company, and fought many battles with the Forest Service, that favored corporate logging, and urban environmentalists, who were opposed to any logging on public lands. Sam Hitt, founder of Forest Guardians, who went head-to-head with Ike throughout the 1990s, is filmed opposing a 2024 Santa Fe Watershed restoration project in a meeting where Dennis has this to say: “We know what works but none of that shit matters without public buy in.”

Ike and Moises’s assessments of the fire and its aftermath reveal their divergent paths, however. Moises thinks the thinning project near Canjion cut too many trees and he doesn’t want to see any prescribed burning. Angie, the district ranger, whose lovely green eyes are captured by the camera’s closeups, hopes to change his mind. She’s trying to implement new policies, like the leñero mayordomo projects from the east side of the Carson that have successfully recruited community people as sawyers to cut their own small allotments in restoration projects. But Moises pushes the Rio Arriba County Commission to block her efforts. He bluntly says, “I think all them people who started these fires should be accused of crimes.” Filmed at home, Angie agonizes over what happened during the fire but stays true to the science she knows is needed to protect the forests in the future. “Were we broken before, yeah, we were broken before, but perhaps in this new world we’re in there will be a remaking.”

It takes me a minute to realize it’s my voice asking Ike a question back in the 1990s after the environmentalists’ lawsuits shut down his logging company: “Do you still think the Forest Service is primarily responsible for mismanagement of the forests in northern New Mexico.” He answers in the affirmative. But the film then fast forwards to an interview just before he died in 2024 where he provides a measured analysis of the relationship between the communities and the Forest Service today: the land grants are not going to be given back to the people and the Forest Service has the ability to manage the forests with the communities foremost in mind.

The movie ends three years after the fire, but I won’t write a wrap-up and spoil it for those who haven’t seen the film. What I can say is that Bachelder has beautifully crafted it to reflect the emotional and moral complexity of this amazing film. I haven’t used the term beautiful before, but that word describes both the aesthetics of the film—the way Bachelder zooms in with facial close-ups to emphasize emotionally charged moments—and the grace with which every opinion, argument, and complaint is granted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The PJM Interconnection’s plan for curtailing large loads that don’t have matching new generation intrudes on state jurisdiction and appears to be discriminatory, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said.

The ocean surrounding California’s Channel Islands can feel like another world. Beneath the surface sway towering kelp forests that are patrolled by huge sheephead fish, striking in pink and black with protruding teeth, along with refrigerator-sized giant sea bass. Seals and sea lions swim among colorful sponges and sea stars. “We sometimes think of the Channel Islands as our Galapagos in California,” said Doug McCauley, a professor of marine science at UC Santa Barbara. 

The cornucopia of marine wildlife here wasn’t always this vibrant. Violet Sage Walker, the chair of California’s Northern Chumash Tribal Council, recalled documentary footage showing the Channel Islands before marine protections were enacted, in an era when intensive commercial fishing had damaged kelp forests and key species. “It looked like Mars, like a dead planet,” she said.

But beginning in 2003, areas around the Channel Islands were designated as California Marine Protected Areas, or MPAs — a conservation strategy akin to creating underwater state parks. With roughly 150 square miles of protected waters, the islands now function as a safe haven for marine flora and fauna, essentially acting as nurseries for baby fish and protecting dozens of iconic species like kelp bass, rockfish, leopard sharks, and more.  

Now, for the first time in 15 years, California officials are considering proposals to create new areas and expand existing ones, as part of the state’s first-ever review of its MPA network. “This is a historic opportunity that we don’t want to miss,” said McCauley.

Building California’s marine protections

MPAs are designated ocean zones where restrictions on activities such as fishing, oil and gas drilling, and other seafloor disturbances can help preserve marine ecosystems and give damaged habitats room to recover. Protections vary by site, but in areas where these kinds of disturbances are removed, “you have larger fish, more abundant wildlife, and a healthier habitat,” said Sandy Aylesworth, director of the Pacific Initiative, Nature, at the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC.

Among the 2026 potential additions are two new proposals for protected areas on the state’s Central Coast: the Point Sal and Mishopshno State Marine Conservation Area proposals. Each of these sites is co-sponsored by a California Tribe in collaboration with NRDC, and in the case of Mishopshno, also by the Environmental Defense Center, a Santa Barbara-based non-profit. These Tribally sponsored proposals represent a first for California’s MPA network, and offer the state an opportunity to formally recognize the longstanding role of California Tribes as ocean stewards and make good on its commitment to Tribal marine stewardship. 

A rare convergence of habitats

The proposed Point Sal State Marine Conservation Area would include roughly nine square miles off the Santa Barbara County coast. Here, a headland shelters the waters on its southern side from the wind, creating calmer conditions where fish larvae can linger and mature safely. Nearby Lion Rock is a gathering place for seals and sea lions and a roosting area for seabirds, while kelp forests and rocky reefs provide habitat for fish, sharks, sea otters, and other wildlife. Over 880 sea lions have been documented there by scientists in a single day. “It’s a little tiny paradise,” Walker said.

For the Northern Chumash Tribal Council, which co-sponsored the proposal, Point Sal is also a place of deep cultural significance. Chairwoman Walker described ancient village sites up and down the coast and a relationship to the area woven through Chumash history. “Our people lived and thrived there for thousands of years,” she said. 

Preserving marine ecosystems and cultural connections

That history is central to another feature of the current MPA review: Tribal stewardship. California’s current MPAs don’t have formal Tribal co-management systems, though the Tribes  have stewarded the lands and waters of the Central Coast for over 10,000 years. The Point Sal and Mishopshno proposals are among the first potential additions to the MPA network led by California Tribes.

Walker said she wants California to create a clearer pathway for coastal Tribes to continue to participate in ocean stewardship, including access for cultural practices and a role in management. “Being able to reconnect and offer our vision and our help with dealing with climate resiliency and coastal stewardship is critical,” she said.

The proposed Mishopshno State Marine Conservation Area offers another example of what that kind of Tribal stewardship could look like. Farther down the coast, near Carpinteria, is another unusual convergence of habitats. Just offshore sits a 1.6-mile rocky reef supporting one of the Central Coast’s most enduring kelp forests. 

Nearby sandy-bottom habitat, beach, and a protected salt marsh create connected nursery and feeding areas for marine life, supporting hundreds of bat rays, large fish species, and juvenile white sharks. The Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians, NRDC and the Environmental Defense Center have sponsored a proposal to protect the area, which is named for a historic Chumash village in the region.

A refuge for marine wildlife

Shark filmmaker, documentarian, and researcher Carlos Gauna has spent thousands of hours filming the marine environment that would be protected by the Mishopshno MPA. “I live and breathe sharks daily, and this is one of the most amazing spots in the world to see a great white shark. There is literally nothing like it anywhere else on the California coast,” he said. 

In his years of filming there, Gauna said, he’s documented illegal fishing, jet skiers purposely ramming into wildlife, and other harms to the local marine population. “I’ve seen sharks get hit and injured by boats, or even deliberately killed,” he says, noting that the proposed MPA might help guard against such damaging actions because its status as an MPA would signal to visitors that it’s a safe haven for marine wildlife. 

He also points to successful protected areas as a model for what the new Mishopshno MPA might achieve. At Cabo Pulmo in Baja California, Gauna said, the contrast across the protected-area boundary is night and day. Inside is a thriving, abundant ecosystem. “It’s one of the most stable and beautiful areas in the world for marine wildlife,” he said. Outside, where there is intensive  fishing activity, “it’s an underwater desert.”

An urgent moment

The state’s voters treasure California’s iconic coastal waters and advocate for keeping them healthy: Roughly 70% of California voters support expanding MPA protections at both Point Sal and Mishopshno. And while a small group of fishing interests opposes the new MPA proposals, there is no scientific evidence that California’s MPAs cause financial harm to fisheries. In certain circumstances, the opposite is true: a 2021 study of two Southern California MPAs established in 2012 found that fishing boats in the surrounding areas had increased lobster catch by about 225% over six years.

The California Fish and Game Commission final votes on the proposed changes to the California MPA network are scheduled for October 14th-16th. “We have an opportunity now to protect the areas where California has jurisdiction, at a time when the Federal government is undoing protections more broadly,” McCauley said. Given that the periodic reviews of California’s MPA network only happen once every ten years, the Fish and Game Commission is unlikely to consider these two proposals again for many years. 

The outcome of the October 2026 process could help define the next chapter of California’s marine protection network. For Walker, the stakes extend beyond this unique moment. “The ocean, given the opportunity, will thrive,” she said. “But we have to give it the space and the time to heal itself.”

California’s Fish and Game Commission are deciding whether to expand MPAs this month. Now is our chance to protect these precious areas and the marine life that call them home. Join NRDC in calling on the California Fish and Game Commission to conserve these special areas of our Coast.

LEARN MORE

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A once-in-a-generation opportunity for California’s ocean on Oct 12, 2026.

The Congo Basin is one of the few places on Earth where the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has failed to track the long-term shift in extreme heat and rainfall. The reason is a lack of readily available data. To fill this gap, scientists have digitized thousands of handwritten weather records, which reveal the impact of warming in the region. 

Read more on E360 →

Peak outages numbered approximately 950,000. Utilities said grid modernization efforts kept more customers from losing power and sped service restoration for those who did. FPL said its underground lines performed eight times better than overhead ones.

As the oil blockade cripples Cuba’s farms and food supply, the island is becoming a stark preview of what happens when fossil-fuel dependent agriculture collides with geopolitical and climate instability, and a powerful illustration of why an agroecological transition is becoming increasingly necessary.

In recent months, scenes from Cuba have become increasingly stark as access to energy, food, and water has become a daily struggle for most. The immediate trigger is fuel scarcity resulting from the de facto oil blockade imposed by the Trump administration since January 2026. But conditions on the island have been deteriorating for years, exacerbated by the decades-long blockade by the United States coupled with domestic structural challenges. Cuba, like most countries, depends heavily on imported oil to power its electricity grid, transport goods, and sustain its food system.

For ordinary Cubans, the consequences are dire. The state rationing system, once a pillar of food security, now covers only a small fraction of household needs. Market alternatives exist, but inflation has pushed them beyond the reach of many households. The average monthly wage is roughly US$20; a carton of eggs can cost half that. Food insecurity and malnutrition are no longer isolated concerns. They are becoming widespread.

Domestic food production has fallen for years. Staples such as rice, maize, and beans remain well below national demand. Farmers face acute shortages of diesel, fertilizer, animal feed, and spare parts. The consequences ripple across the food chain: land goes unploughed, irrigation systems sit idle, harvests are delayed, transport networks seize up, and food spoils before reaching consumers.

Today’s crisis is not a temporary disruption. It is part of a structural polycrisis in which energy scarcity, economic contraction, climate instability, and demographic decline reinforce one another. Cuba’s food system is not simply experiencing a bad moment. It is confronting the limits of fossil-fuel-dependent agriculture in an era of permanent instability.

Many proposed solutions—import more food, revive export-oriented industrial agriculture, restore fuel flows—remain trapped within the same agricultural paradigm that exposes it to crisis. They offer relief, but not resilience.

But Cuba’s story is not only one of crisis. It is also one of adaptation and resilience—and of a path not fully taken.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, Cuba abruptly lost access to fuel, fertilizers, and imported food. In response, the country embarked on an ambitious agroecological transformation.

Land was redistributed to cooperatives and family farmers who now manage more than 70 percent of agricultural land. Urban gardens spread through cities. Farmer-to-farmer networks trained more than 200,000 farming families in agroecological methods.

For a time, Cuba became a global symbol of what post-fossil-fuel agriculture might look like.

However, the transition remained incomplete.

As economic conditions improved intermittently, policymakers often shifted back toward conventional industrial agriculture. Agroecology was never fully institutionalized as the foundation of the food system. Instead, it was treated as an emergency substitute: embraced in crisis, sidelined in recovery.

That cyclical approach left Cuba with an unfinished transformation—and a food system still deeply vulnerable to external shocks.

Today, the constraints facing all types of farmers are immense. Beyond fuel shortages, they lack tools, seeds, equipment, refrigeration, processing facilities, and reliable transportation. Credit is scarce. Decades of outmigration have weakened the social fabric of rural areas. Bureaucratic hurdles remain high, and a centralized economy, coupled with state monopolies, leads to inefficiencies and stifles innovation. An estimated 40 percent of food produced in Cuba is lost before reaching consumers due to failures in harvesting, storage, transport, and processing.

And yet the productive potential remains considerable.

Critics often dismiss agroecology as idealistic or insufficiently productive. Yet the evidence increasingly points the other way. Global governance institutions now recognize agroecology as a comprehensive solution that goes beyond organic farming to redesign food systems around biodiversity, local knowledge, human health, and democratic governance, aiming to build resilience, equity, and local control rather than simply growing food differently.

Diversified agroecological farms in Cuba can produce around 7 tons of nutritious food per hectare annually—enough to meet the caloric and protein needs of roughly eight people. Scaling such systems across 200,000 family farms—covering just over two million hectares of the more than six million hectares of arable land—could enable Cuba to meet its national food requirements, with potential surpluses for tourism and export.

Recent reforms suggest renewed support for local agroecological food systems. Cuba’s 2022 Food Sovereignty Law and 2025 Agroecology Decree provide a framework for decentralizing food governance and supporting municipal food planning. But implementation remains uneven. After decades of centralized administration, many local governments lack the capacity and institutional culture needed to manage participatory, territorial food systems.

In June 2026, the government approved a package of 176 economic measures that open much of the economy to private actors. In July, it followed with a new Agricultural and Forestry Land Law that allows land rights to be inherited and transferred and opens idle state land to private businesses and foreign investors. Other new regulations give cooperatives the right to import inputs, export directly, set their own prices, form second-tier cooperatives, and partner with foreign investors. Decree-Law 161/2026 ends mandatory state intermediaries, lets supply and demand set prices, and creates an Agricultural Bank to finance the sector.

For cooperatives and family farmers, these changes could bring autonomy, fairer prices, access to credit, and secure land tenure. Second-tier cooperatives could pool resources for shared infrastructure, credit, and markets. But none of these measures explicitly prioritize agroecology. Without safeguards, they could concentrate land and capital in the hands of larger commercial players and pull production toward export and tourism markets instead of local food needs.

If agroecology is to move beyond rhetoric, it will require sustained investment in seed systems, irrigation systems, decentralized biofertilizer production, small- and medium-scale storage and processing facilities, transportation infrastructure, and renewable energy (solar, biodigesters, and wind turbines).

It will also require supporting the social infrastructure of transformation—farmer training, cooperative management, peer-learning networks, participatory governance, and local enterprises. And a rebalancing of roles across public institutions, new non-state actors, and civil society—each of which has a part to play in rebuilding a more resilient food system.

Funding that transition will require more than state spending or donor aid. Cuba must diversify its financing ecosystem – drawing on diaspora investment, impact capital, justice-oriented funds, climate finance, and local development banking alongside public and multilateral funds. But attracting that investment will require clearer rules, less bureaucracy, and more predictable economic governance. And of course, an end to the debilitating web of unilateral coercive measures imposed by the US for more than 60 years.

Done well, such investment could create rural jobs, reduce food waste, strengthen local economies, lower import dependence, and improve climate resilience—all while keeping wealth circulating within communities rather than flowing outward.

The lesson is clear. In a world of tightening constraints, resilience will not come from securing more oil and fossil-fuel fertilizers and pesticides. It will come from needing less of it.

For Cuba, that means embracing a transition already underway within its own agricultural traditions: toward agroecology, toward local production, and ultimately toward food sovereignty grounded in the strength of local ecosystems and communities.

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Photo courtesy of Leidy Casimiro

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After years of stagnation under the Biden administration, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has been revitalized with a series of recent primary electoral victories. The Democratic Party establishment collapsed after Kamala Harris’s disastrous presidential campaign, which allowed democratic socialists and progressives to emerge as prominent leaders in the mainstream opposition to Trumpism. Zohran Mamdani’s unexpected mayoral primary win and follow-up general election victory against disgraced former New York governor Andrew Cuomo put the establishment’s fragility on full display, inspiring several other successful “insurgent” campaigns since last year.

At the same time, the problems that contributed to DSA’s stagnation in the early 2020s are resurfacing. Mayor Mamdani, Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), and other prominent democratic socialists are distancing themselves from ‘radical’ commitments like defunding the police by labeling it “woke 1.0” craziness, even though DSA’s national platform commits to abolishing police and prisons. This certainly wasn’t the first time DSA officeholders contradicted the group’s proclaimed goals, but by embracing the amorphous label of wokeness as a pejorative, this time they also aligned with the wider right-wing campaign against free speech and public education.

By embracing the amorphous label of wokeness as a pejorative, this time DSA officeholders also aligned with the wider right-wing campaign against free speech and public education.

Writers and caucuses on the right wing of DSA were quick to defend Mamdani and AOC. Ben Burgis at Jacobin accused critics of putting “radical-sounding but half-baked ideas” onto a pile, then pointlessly defending them even when they’re “unpopular” and “genuinely poorly thought-out,” simply to out-Left others. Eric Blanc, another Jacobin writer, is quoted by Burgis saying:

It’s frankly just a mistake that the national DSA took certain positions that are both marginalizing for us in the short term and just politically wrong even in the long term… In what world does it make sense, if our goal is to organize millions of people and to overcome the Democratic establishment and to defeat Trumpism, to take a position that you know is just going to give fuel to your opponents, and for which there’s no practical upshot right now? Taking that sort of doctrinaire ideological position seems to me a reflection of a lack of experience and a lack of engagement in mass politics.

In short, Blanc and Burgis are suggesting that it is not the officeholders’ “mass politics” that need correcting; it’s their critics’ “political instincts.” They shrug off the reality that ‘woke’ and initially unpopular movements like Black Lives Matter or Abolish ICE inspired millions of people to protest against state violence toward working-class people of color. These movements pushed a large share of young working-class people of color to embrace revolutionary abolitionist ideas en masse and inspired others to get involved in political or labor organizing.6More than 20 percent of Democrats supported abolishing the police and 34 percent supported defunding it in 2021. These might be minority positions but it took one year for them to be adopted by millions while it took hundreds of DSA campaigns and millions of dollars for a third of Democrats to support socialism in 2026. See https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/30/politics/cnn-poll-a-third-of-democrats-now-identify-as-democratic-socialists

So is it just wokeness to oppose workers being mandated to fund the high-tech repression campaigns run by various armed state agencies? What makes DSA’s electoral approach democratic or socialist if grassroots activists must be accountable to their rightward-drifting officeholders, and not to the working-class movements they belong to? DSA leaders criticize the limits of democracy under capitalism, but in what ways does their strategy challenge the capitalistic and technocratic logics of electoral campaigning?

Anti-wokeness and electoralism

Wokeness, a term coined by Black activists to raise awareness of racial injustices, is now a right-wing pejorative used by elites to dismiss movements for social justice. Identity politics, critical race theory, diversity, equity, and inclusion have served similar purposes for right-wing witch-hunts across U.S. public institutions in recent years. McCarthyite taboos around these terms were reinforced by right-wingers, centrists, and some ‘leftists’ to rally reactionary forces against movements like Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and Abolish ICE in various institutional settings since the 2010s. For the purposes of this piece, I use ‘wokeness’ here descriptively—not as praise or condemnation—but to name the set of demands around abolition, racial justice, and opposition to carceral institutions that have been dismissed by electoralists as politically inconvenient.

The leftmost version of anti-wokeness has become influential in DSA and Jacobin since 2020. Adolph Reed was the initial figurehead of a movement centered on accusing George Floyd protestors of embracing ‘professional managerial class’ privilege and an identitarian outlook that is antithetical to working-class politics. Since Reed, other anti-woke Leftists like Burgis have taken the mantle. Anti-wokeness allows its proponents to rationalize the de facto deprioritization of oppression struggles, deprioritizing campaigns against repressive state policies that disproportionately impact women, people of color, and queer people. Anti-woke writers and activists argue that because large sections of the working class hold ‘culturally’ conservative attitudes on these issues, wokeness is a political liability in organizing workers, particularly around electoral campaigns.

Yet in the explosive moments that woke movements dominated news cycles, socialists like Mamdani and AOC had embraced woke demands like defunding the police and abolishing ICE, even when their popularity remained far from universal even within DSA and the Left. DSA officeholders only became less vocal about ICE deportations and U.S. support for Israel under the Biden administration. But more recently, DSA electeds re-embrace some woke policies, as boycotting Israel and abolishing ICE became much more popular through the uprisings that involved participation by DSA members.

This flip-flopping on wokeness is a byproduct of the electoralist logic embraced by right-wing DSA caucuses that make up DSA’s leadership majority (Groundwork, Socialist Majority, North Star, and the right-wing of Bread and Roses). Electoralism refers not to electoral participation itself but to the logic that treats elections as the primary or exclusive mechanism for building working-class power. Right-wing DSA caucuses view electoral campaigns as the vehicle for a legislative transition to socialism, and these ideas have dominated the largest chapters of DSA throughout both waves of DSA’s growth (2016-20, 2025-now). Given the limited time and resources electoral campaigns have, electoralists argue that DSA must prioritize organizing universalist reforms, such as Medicare for All or the much more amorphous “affordability agenda,” at the expense of ‘woke’ demands like defunding the police or abolishing ICE. DSAers who have tried to reframe this (unnecessary) contradistinction by advocating for progressive redistribution of police funds have had an uphill battle within DSA, with electoralist leadership factions gaining more influence from wins while pushing against efforts that center demands they deem too woke.

Electoralism became the dominant approach in DSA because the group’s growth came from its chapters’ involvement in Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaigns and their more localized successors. Electoralist caucuses grew more rapidly because they were the ones primarily recruiting cadres through these campaigns. Many of these organizers had already internalized the logic of electoralism and believed Sanders provided the opening we need to take advantage of in the absence of strong workers’ movements.

However, for most members, electoralism has not been a stepping stone toward becoming more active in DSA or getting involved in other organizing. Most DSA members (70–80%) are not active in the day-to-day activity of their chapters outside of elections. Electoralist caucuses reinforce this dynamic by moving decisions about political direction to caucus spaces or online and only bringing major questions back to members in their chapters when they can outnumber the opposition or limit the scope of discussion. As a result, there is very little reason to attend chapter meetings in many DSA chapters beyond just getting updates on campaigns that are ongoing elsewhere.

Other critical currents (Marxist Unity, Reform and Revolution, left-wing of Bread and Roses, various anarchists and popular frontists) position themselves further to the Left by identifying electoral wins as reflections of movement power, but not as mechanisms of class power. The DSA-left is also involved in electoral campaigns, but it defends holding endorsed officeholders  “accountable.” Nevertheless, these groups rarely agree on what accountability should mean. The disagreements around how to enforce accountability policies have fragmented the Left for years, undermining its ability to end an ongoing de facto non-accountability policy.

AOC and Mamdani, who rode the waves of radicalization generated by grassroots movements to abolish ICE, defund the police, and end the Israeli genocide, embraced anti-wokeness in this context where they are aware that DSA currently has no enforced accountability mechanism to pressure them and that DSA needs them more than they need the organization.

What’s so bad about electoralism?

While anti-woke stances might help electoralists and officeholders reach their short-term aims under certain conditions, embracing these stances is fundamentally anti-solidaristic. Discounting movements that center the rights of oppressed communities moves the socialist movement away from the long-term goal of building strong and democratic working-class organizations that can challenge and overturn capitalist rule. DSA’s leading factions’ alliances with officeholders ultimately limit the organization’s willingness and ability to stand up for independent working-class movements that might conflict with electoral imperatives.

These movements have been more central to DSA’s and the Left’s growth in recent years than electoralists give credit. Others have shown that DSA’s electoral successes have been more reliant on external movements, including Black Lives Matter, specifically the George Floyd protests, and Abolish ICE actions. These movements transformed mass consciousness in major cities, far more than any one group’s internal strategic decisions. They also created the space for DSA campaigns to present themselves as mechanisms to institutionalize movement gains. But when DSA leaders move right, the mass energy dissipates to be replaced by burnout and disillusionment. As a result, DSA had been stagnant for multiple years until the Palestine solidarity encampments revived grassroots energy and provided political foundations for the Mamdani campaign’s success by discrediting the Zionist establishment in New York and elsewhere.

The real question is how socialists can sustain working-class movements without falling into the dual traps of ultra-Left self-marginalization and electoralist compromises as exemplified by DSA officeholders.

The woke Left movements’ direct connection to DSA’s growth suggests that organizing outside of the electoral arena is not only important but essential to shifting class consciousness. This is not to say socialists should abstain from elections. Dismissing certain avenues of Left organizing as woke prevents socialists from building the mechanisms of working-class power that can pressure elected officials to act instead of waver. Even if some of these movements do not exclusively center the economic inequalities generated by capitalism, they show how repressive state institutions enable capitalist rule in oppressed communities. The real question is how socialists can help to sustain working-class movements without falling into the dual traps of ultra-Left self-marginalization and electoralist compromises as exemplified by DSA officeholders.

DSA and infrastructures of working-class dissent

There are at least three areas where electoralism limits the socialist movement’s ability to drive transformative change: labor organizing, community organizing, and internationalism. By prioritizing ties to officeholders at the expense of supporting bottom-up movements, DSA electoralists limit the group’s capacity to build independent infrastructures of dissent within working-class communities outside of elections.

DSA’s labor organizing work has contributed to some new union campaigns through the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC), but so far EWOC has functioned autonomously from DSA’s much more visible electoral campaigns. In practice, this meant the group primarily functioned to direct workers to the relevant allied unions and organizations such as the CWA, UE, Workers United, Labor Notes, and others. Beyond EWOC, DSA’s local labor working groups and various bureaucratically run union-endorsed national labor campaigns were short-lived with only limited exceptions.

While there is no doubt that some labor activists in DSA hold broader conceptions of “class struggle unionism” and “rank-and-file strategy,” DSA’s outsourcing of labor activist training through EWOC depoliticizes the group’s overall approach to labor activism. The scope of EWOC and DSA labor work in general is limited by the priorities of electoralist leaders. Electoralists have to retain good relations with union leaders to get campaign endorsements and support for efforts like EWOC. The partial dependency of DSA on labor leaders’ endorsements and resources limits DSA’s ability to organize against leadership conservatism within unions.

At the neighborhood level (at least in NYC), DSA canvassers no doubt contribute to normalizing the socialist label, usually by equating socialism with redistributive demands. However, when it comes to organizing against landlords, police, ICE, and for trans people, people with disabilities, and immigrant workers, the organization’s leaders often take sectarian stances, insulting activists as “unsatisfiable” instead of fighting the policies that oppress working-class people. These stances often undermine the organization’s ability to retain activists from diverse communities, contributing to the outsized representation of white professionals from elite colleges in DSA membership and leadership.2NYC-DSA membership poll from this year shows that the group is 60 percent white and 12 percent Jewish with 63 percent of members participating. Most recently, NYC-DSA co-chair Gustavo Gordillo has been exposed for misrepresenting his home address and employment history to falsely claim being a tenant and a union member. This is not an inherently unresolvable problem, but the current practice of DSA provides little-to-no space for young organizers who do not prioritize electoral campaigns. Engaging with neighborhood-level activism like tenant unions, ICE-watch, or progressive diaspora organizations can allow the Left to recruit and develop cadres from more diverse backgrounds.

Finally, the electoralist dominance of DSA promotes very narrow and unprincipled conceptions of internationalism. While DSA moved toward a more pro-Palestine orientation in 2017, this did not mean consistent opposition to the Israeli occupation. Current NYC-DSA co-chair Gustavo Gordillo and others on the DSA-right defended then-Congressperson Jamaal Bowman, voting to dismantle the Palestine Solidarity Working Group after it had campaigned to censure Bowman in 2021. Bowman provoked this by voting to fund the Israeli Iron Dome and visiting Israel and the West Bank on a propaganda tour by the liberal Zionist political advocacy group J Street. The Palestine working group became subordinate to the International Committee, whose leadership is appointed by the DSA’s national leaders.

DSA’s International Committee (IC) also took a largely one-sided ‘campist’ position on the basis of opposing U.S. imperialism. The first major step in this direction was pushing the national organization to align with the São Paulo Forum in 2021. São Paulo Forum includes leaders of the Latin American center-left like the Brazilian Workers’ Party and Bolivian MAS, but also other authoritarian parties like Venezuela’s PSUV and Nicaragua’s Sandinista movement. By aligning with parties of government, DSA positioned itself against grassroots opposition movements in these and other countries. While defending these regimes against U.S. imperial interventions, independent of their political content, the IC remained skeptical of opposition movements in Ukraine, Venezuela, and Iran, as backing them could be perceived as U.S. imperial policy. The dismissal of the working-class agency in favor of alliances with ‘anti-imperialist’ regimes is anti-solidaristic, much like anti-wokeness, and it discourages DSA and U.S. Leftists from engaging with independent working-class struggles in these countries.

While there are disagreements in DSA on all these questions, the prevailing consensus has been to try to prioritize good relations with U.S. progressives and foreign heads of state, whether they be authoritarian, social democratic, or communist, even if that means ignoring or dismissing some independent workers’ movements.

The Roads to working class power through dissent

In this context, movement-focused forces on the socialist Left must prioritize building independent and democratic sources of power in workplaces, communities, and across borders to withstand the pull of electoralism and other forms of socialism from above like campism.

Recent surge of organizing among city workers, public school teachers, higher education workers, nurses and services point toward some sectors with openings where socialists can contribute to the formation of a new militant minority. These efforts could help socialists move beyond a referral model of labor organizing by building rank-and-file committees in key bargaining units. Promoting socialist and solidaristic abolitionist views against repressive policies is essential there not only on moral grounds, but on tactical grounds if we want to redirect the trillions of dollars that go to the military, police, ICE, and other armed forces of capitalist rule.

Community-level organizing among immigrant workers against police violence, ICE, brutal working conditions in service jobs, and slumlords can also help us build ties with workers in more precarious jobs or living conditions. Precarious workers in low-income minority and immigrant neighborhoods must rely on community connections to sustain their lives in the absence of social welfare provisions. If we dismiss minority and immigrant workers’ more localized rebellions against state forces that are putting their boots on their necks, how can socialists expect to build an active majority of workers who fight for their own liberation?

If we do not build the democratic infrastructures of dissent across areas where workers can leverage power independently of electeds, our movement is bound to repeat the cycle of electoral ‘wins,’ reaction, and political disillusionment on the Left.

Finally, by positioning socialists as defenders of independent and democratic workers’ movements internationally and learning from limited precedents, socialists can help build solidarity networks across borders to develop foundations of cross-border actions. Some limited but meaningful examples of cross-border worker resistance emerged in response to the war in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza, even in the face of political repression. If socialists waver on principled defenses of working-class democracy in all its diversity within and outside the U.S. to win votes, we are simply counterposing democracy in one country against that in another.

There is no doubt socialists have a long way to go building an international working-class movement capable of pushing back against capitalism’s increasingly authoritarian turn amid ecological collapse. While the growing popularity of socialism and progressive ideas is no doubt encouraging, the driver of the socialist movement cannot be the goodwill of elected officials. If we do not build the democratic infrastructures of dissent across areas where workers can leverage power independently of electeds, our movement is bound to repeat the cycle of electoral ‘wins,’ reaction, and political disillusionment on the Left.

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: dbking; modified by Tempest.

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Crypto billionaires Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne each recently piled £36 million into Reform UK, Nigel Farage’s political party.

The story amplified recent scandals about the party’s donors, with scrutiny mounting over the funding of Farage and his outfit.

In light of these recent developments, DeSmog has taken a closer look at the financial interests of Reform’s donors, to understand which sectors have been backing the party and why they’re interested in bringing about a Farage government. 

Delo and Harborne made their money from the cryptocurrency sector, but DeSmog’s analysis shows that they – and Reform’s other major donors – have business ties spanning far beyond this one industry. 

Farage’s party has taken substantial amounts of money from members of the Sunday Times Rich List, fossil fuel interests, the landed gentry, property developers, offshore investors, and has been forced to return large sums to those who aren’t allowed to donate to UK parties.

Meanwhile, campaigners and MPs continue to push Andy Burnham’s Labour government to stop a few super wealthy individuals from bankrolling our political system. 

The Major Players

Excluding Reform’s new £72 million windfall, more than 72 percent of all recorded donations to the party since the 2024 election have come from just three people, including Delo and Harborne.

Harborne, who has lived in Thailand for 30 years and is worth £18 billion, is comfortably Reform’s biggest backer, having given £15 million to the party since the last general election (£47 million including his recent donation) and £25 million (£57 million) since the party’s launch in 2019. 

Harborne is also responsible for a controversial £5 million undeclared personal gift to Farage prior to the 2024 general election, which is the subject of an investigation by the parliamentary standards commissioner.

Delo, co-founder and former executive of the crypto trading platform BitMEX, is behind a further £8 million, while venture capitalist David Grainger has given £1.4 million.

Major donations have also been received from Reform treasurer Nick Candy, and telecoms and fintech magnate Bassim Haidar, who have collectively donated a further £1.7 million since the last general election.

Billionaire venture capitalist Sasan Ghandehari has also pledged to donate millions to the party. Though these sums have yet to materialise, he has already given over £50,000 to Farage personally.

The Crypto Barons

If the new Delo and Harborne donations are deemed to be legal, Reform will have received 90 percent of its funding since the last general election from those with ties to the crypto industry. 

Harborne is a shareholder in Tether, the world’s largest ‘stablecoin’ provider, which is based in El Salvador. Tether is currently seeking an injection of private capital that would increase its value up to $500 billion – making Harborne one of the richest men in the world. 

The company has ties to Donald Trump’s U.S. administration and has reportedly benefitted from the crypto-friendly policies of his regime. 

Delo, meanwhile, is one of the co-founders of the crypto trading platform BitMEX. He was one of those who pled guilty to Bank Secrecy Act violations for failing to establish and maintain an anti-money laundering scheme at the company. Delo was fined $10 million and served 30 months’ probation in Hong Kong, before later being pardoned by Trump. BitMEX was ultimately fined £100 million.

Reform UK donor and crypto billionaire Ben Delo.

Credit:
Jkhildreth / Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY-SA 4.0)

But they aren’t the only Reform donors with an interest in the crypto industry. Farage’s backers also include Maria Rost, behind some £130,000 across nine donations to the party, who is understood to be the wife of U.S. crypto investor John Rost, as well as Oscar Townsley, founder of Bitcoin derivatives trading platform A1X, and London-based investor Simon William Smith. 

Farage has repeatedly lobbied for the industry, promising to bring about a “crypto revolution” if he becomes prime minister. He announced flagship proposals for unleashing the sector at the Bitcoin conference in May 2025 in Las Vegas, including tax breaks and government support, although the document has now vanished from the party’s website. 

Farage also lobbied the Bank of England to drop plans for a state-backed stablecoin, a move that would suit Harborne – his most generous patron – by blocking a rival to Tether.

Reform was until recently the only major political party in the UK to accept donations via cryptocurrencies, having been accused of using a third party to turn crypto into cash and obscuring the original funding source.

Burnham’s predecessor Keir Starmer introduced a temporary moratorium on crypto donations earlier this year, which campaigners say should become a permanent ban. 

Offshore Interests

As previously reported by DeSmog, a large part of Reform’s funding comes from those with offshore business interests.

Since the last general election, 57 percent of its income has been donated by individuals and companies featured in the Offshore Leaks database, which details information about more than 810,000 offshore companies, foundations, and trusts.

A large number of the party’s donors are also international investors – people or companies with significant financial interests abroad. In the second quarter of 2026, prior to the £72 million windfall, Reform received £5 million from 17 different international investors – including a Monaco-based former Lehman Brothers executive, an investment firm in business with the UAE, and a New York-based asset management firm linked to the owners of Chelsea Football Club.

The party has been embroiled in controversy after an undercover investigation by Verbatim Investigations, broadcast by Channel 4 in September, appeared to show the party conspiring to accept donations from foreign sources.

Two of Reform’s most senior figures have now resigned following the documentary, though both deny wrongdoing – as does the party. The Metropolitan Police has launched an investigation into whether any laws were broken.

Farage has previously said that he wants to win back high net worth individuals to the UK through a £250,000 “Britannia Card” that would allow wealthy foreigners to buy a 10-year residency permit and enter a special tax regime. Labour has called the policy a “billionaires bonanza” and tax experts have estimated it would cost the UK £35 billion over five years in lost revenue. 

Fossil Fuel Interests

As reported by DeSmog in April, Reform has received two-thirds of its funding to date, not including the £72 million, from fossil fuel interests. A further £2.4 million has been donated by individuals who have publicly disputed basic scientific facts about climate change. 

Harborne owns AML Global, which supplies aviation and maritime fuel to a distribution network that includes “main and regional oil companies”, according to its website.

The price of jet fuel has spiralled since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, which would benefit Harborne’s business interests.

Although Harborne doesn’t deny climate science, and recently called the issue an “existential threat”, Reform’s senior figures frequently dispute the contribution of carbon dioxide to global warming and support the mass expansion of fossil fuel production in the UK. 

Fellow Reform donor Jeremy Hosking had $440.8 million (around £326.5 million) invested in oil and gas companies via his hedge fund Hosking Partners as of March – an increase of more than 50 percent from the previous three months. 

Meanwhile, Reform-controlled councils have been axing net zero commitments and stating their intention to withdraw from climate emergency declarations. Farage has claimed it’s “bonkers” for carbon dioxide to be considered a pollutant. 

Property Developers and Financiers

More than half (55 percent) of Reform’s corporate donors are connected to the construction, property, and development industries, which would stand to benefit substantially from the party’s policies. Of the 40 companies recorded as having donated to the party before June this year, 22 were involved in this sector. 

Reform’s 2024 manifesto promised to “unleash” housebuilding across the country and “restore landlords’ rights” by reducing their taxes. Reform’s housing spokesperson and deputy leader Richard Tice is a property industry millionaire, having run the Sunley Group, a company founded by his grandfather.

Reform treasurer Nick Candy is also a property magnate, having made his money selling luxury homes to the super rich. Candy recently sold his Chelsea mansion for £265 million – the most expensive residential property in UK history.

The party has also received extensive funding from financiers. Reform’s donors include hedge fund manager Johan Christofferson, who has given £200,000 to the party, the “vulture fund” Greybull Capital, and the disgraced City of London titan Crispin Odey. 

Although Farage has threatened to impose higher taxes on banks, he has also promised to deregulate the sector – including by removing regulation introduced after the 2008 financial crash.

Reform UK treasurer Nick Candy.

Credit: FII Institute / YouTube The Rich List

As recently reported by DeSmog, Reform’s donors include aristocratic families, the owners of exclusive London clubs, peers, and members of the landed gentry.

The annual Sunday Times Rich List acts as “the definitive guide to the wealth of the UK’s richest people”, cataloguing the country’s 350 most affluent individuals and families. The entries in the 2026 edition share a combined wealth of £784 billion. Nearly a third of them no longer live on the British mainland.

Four of Reform’s donors appear in this year’s list, two of whom appear in the top 10. 

Harborne ranks at number six, while the Reuben family – another Reform donor – sits at number two. The Reubens have donated to Reform through a private investment firm – Investors in Private Capital Limited – which is ultimately controlled by Omaha Business Holdings Corp, owned by the family and based in the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven. 

Reform’s donor list also includes a number of old money backers. Among them is Fiona Cottrell – the daughter of Rupert Watson, 3rd Baron Manton. Under her maiden name, Fiona Watson, she was a former glamour model and one-time girlfriend of King Charles III when he was the Prince of Wales. 

Cottrell has given £500,000 to Reform via Britain Means Business, a company owned by the party’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, and £750,000 directly to the party. The Metropolitan Police is currently investigating the majority of these donations. Cottrell has repeatedly declined to comment when approached by media outlets. 

Fiona’s son George Cottrell – nicknamed “Posh George” – is part of Farage’s inner cadre, having been UKIP’s head of fundraising and later Farage’s chief of staff. George, who was previously convicted of wire fraud after being arrested by undercover U.S. agents while attending the 2016 National Republican Convention with Farage, has also provided direct financial support to the Reform premier.

Cottrell helped to fund Farage’s anti-immigration campaign videos in 2023 and 2024, supplied him with security, and allowed the Reform leader to use an office in his five-storey London townhouse, which overlooks Buckingham Palace. Farage didn’t declare these gifts, and falsely claimed that he hasn’t received any support from George since being elected to Parliament.

Reform and policy advisers associated with the party have proposed reducing taxes for the wealthiest, paid for by dramatic reductions in state benefits for lower-paid workers and the disabled. 

Impermissible Donors

Another feature of Reform’s fundraising record is the vast number of impermissible donors who have attempted to give money to the party over its relatively short existence. 

Reform has been forced to return donations worth more than £295,000, on 83 occasions, since its founding in 2019. Farage’s party had to reject more unlawful donations in 2025 than any other party, including donations from Monaco, Jersey, and Germany. The party ultimately had to give back £200,000, and their benefactors made up 18 of the 23 donors turned away by UK politicians or parties during the year.

Labour’s Response

Labour is in the process of introducing a new law that would set a £100,000 annual limit on the amount that foreign donors can give to political parties. 

It’s unclear if Delo and Harborne’s latest donations will fall foul of the new rules, which are currently being debated by Parliament – given they have, at least until recently, been living in Hong Kong and Thailand respectively. 

However, in the meantime, campaigners and MPs are urging Burnham’s administration to strengthen the legislation by introducing a £100,000-a-year cap on all donations – including from those based in the UK.  

The government has been facing pressure from the trade union movement not to introduce a blanket cap, which would limit its extensive financial contributions to the Labour Party. 

After donating his latest £36 million, Delo said that he wants to create “a level playing field” between Reform and other major political parties. However, the data shows that his and Harborne’s donations would tip the scales heavily in Reform’s favour. 

Last year’s accounts for political parties, published by the Electoral Commission, revealed that Labour received £44.6 million, the Conservatives £30.9 million, and Reform £31.9 million. If Reform is able to receive the full £72 million, its 2026 income would likely be far ahead of the other parties. 

Delo also cited Labour’s income from trade unions as a reason for his philanthropy. However, since 2020, Labour has received almost £43 million from the unions – whereas, in roughly the same period, Delo and Harborne will have given over £100 million to Reform. 

What’s more, trade unions raise money from individual workers’ membership fees. The Trade Union Congress, a federation of trade unions across the UK, represents roughly 6.6 million people.

Speaking at the annual TUC conference in Brighton in September, its leader Paul Nowak said: “The evidence is clear: Reform UK is a party for sale. Nigel Farage is a politician for sale. And given half the chance, they’d sell our country down the river.

“Make no mistake, this is a crisis for our democracy. We cannot allow our political system to be captured by corporate interests.”

He said there was no similarity “between care workers chipping in a few quid a year through their union and a party bought and paid for by billionaires” – adding: “We need a proper conversation about how we clean up our politics that doesn’t push workers to the margins – but does stop the super-rich corrupting our politics.”

The post Who Funds Reform UK? The Business Interests of Nigel Farage’s Major Donors appeared first on DeSmog.

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