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Human activity has disrupted the innate capacity of Earth’s natural systems to create a stable, healthy climate and atmosphere. The solutions are hiding in plain sight, inherent in the web of biological diversity that creates the conditions conducive to life. In this episode from our Nature’s Genius Series, Wade Crowfoot, California Secretary for Natural Resources, describes how the world’s fourth largest economy is putting natural systems at the center of its bold policies and practices to help restore the biosphere and, in turn, sustain the long-term habitability of planet Earth for human civilization.

This is an episode of Nature’s Genius, a Bioneers podcast series exploring how the sentient symphony of life holds the solutions we need to balance human civilization with living systems. Visit the series page to learn more.

Featuring

Wade Crowfoot, California’s Natural Resources Secretary since 2019, leads efforts to conserve California’s environment and natural resources, overseeing an agency charged with stewarding the state’s forests, natural lands, rivers, water supplies, coasts, wildlife and biodiversity, as well as helping oversee its world-leading clean energy transition.

Credits

• Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel
• Written by: Kenny Ausubel and Cathy Edwards
• Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch
• Associate Producer and Program Engineer: Emily Harris
• Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey
• Production Assistance: Mika Anami
• Graphic Design: Megan Howe
• Interview conducted by Teo Grossman and recorded at KPFA studios by Mike Kohn and Rod Akil

Resources

Wade Crowfoot – California’s Leadership in Nature-Based Solutions: Building Climate Resilience Through Ecosystem Restoration | Bioneers 2025 Keynote

Pathways to 30×30 Progress Report

Global Safety Net App – launched by One Earth and the Nature Data Lab in collaboration with an int’l group of scientists and conservation organizations

Subscribe to the Bioneers: Revolution from The Heart of Nature podcast

Transcript

Neil Harvey (Host): As the climate emergency deconstructs human civilization faster than a lobbyist can buy a politician, societies are being forced to find real solutions.

Until fairly recently, virtually all the solutions applied to address climate change have focused on scaling technology, such as renewable energy, which would lower our reliance on burning fossil fuels. Although these approaches are crucial, by themselves they’re insufficient. We’ve also got to achieve significant carbon drawdown because the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is already in the red zone, exceeding viable planetary boundaries.

This technology-centric approach also ignores the clear data that the large-scale human destruction of ecosystems over the past 12,000 years, including by agriculture, has released massive amounts of atmospheric CO2. Some estimates range as high as one third to half. Human activity has disrupted the innate capacity of Earth’s natural systems to create a stable, healthy climate and atmosphere.

The solution hiding in plain sight is to restore the capacity of Earth’s natural systems to heal themselves and sequester the carbon back where it belongs. It’s the intricate web of biological diversity that creates the very conditions conducive to life that all life depends upon, including us wayward humans.

Nature knows how to do everything we need to do, but without mining the past or mortgaging the future. Enter nature-based solutions.

As Secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency, Wade Crowfoot is responsible for identifying nature-based solutions and putting them into State policy. He spoke at a Bioneers conference.

Wade Crowfoot speaking at Bioneers 2025. Photo: Nikki Ritcher

Wade Crowfoot (WC): California is one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots – scientists say one of 36 hotspots in the world. We have more endemic species in California than almost any place on Earth—40 percent of our plant species in California only grow in California.

But we also rely on our nature and our natural systems. Our natural systems are what keeps us together and alive. We talk about ecosystems and sometimes we think ‘eco’ means environment, that’s just fish and wildlife. ‘Eco’ is the Greek translation of home. These are our home systems. So those watersheds that we’re working to protect are providing our water, and when those watersheds burn up in catastrophic wildlife like they have over the past decade, that is a huge threat to our life as humans in California. So, yes, we’re protecting nature for biodiversity; yes, we’re protecting nature for non-human life; but we’re also protecting nature for ourselves.

And that’s really been the Aha moment in the last decade, where across the world, scientists have told us that, yes, attacking climate change is about solar energy and electric vehicles, and building efficiency, but it’s also about protecting and restoring nature.

I want to tell you something encouraging, and I think it’s important to have encouragement at this time—I call it hope with an action plan—and the fact is nature is finding its way centrally into the work of governments, not only in California, across the United States and across the world. And big things are happening.

So let me skip to the big things because I think it’s really exciting to share with you that after a decadal movement by tribal leaders in California, the largest river restoration project in American history in the Klamath River Basin. [APPLAUSE] Four dams, four defunct dams have been removed that’s restoring over 400 miles of salmon habitat, critically important. [APPLAUSE] Critically important to the survival of salmon and the survival of the Yurok and the Karuk people, salmon people. And I can tell you that institutions like the agency that I lead, for decades, told tribal leaders that it would never happen, it could never happen.

But here’s the most remarkable thing. Those dams came down in the fall, and biologists said it’s going to take a handful of years to understand if salmon are actually going to recolonize this watershed, that are actually going to come back in. Do you know how long it took? Ten days. Ten days. [CHEERS] 6,000 salmon were monitored ten days later getting through that first dam, and it was ten weeks later that the first salmon were identified far up into Oregon in that top headwaters of the restored habitat. Nature is resilient if we give it half a chance.

Klamath River restoration. Photo: YancyDarringer / Shutterstock

Go 400 miles to the south to Los Angeles on what we think is the world’s largest land-based wildlife crossing—the Wallis Annenberg Crossing—connecting two critical habitats for—areas of habitat for the endangered Southern California mountain lion. That’s a wildlife crossing that’s crossing ten lanes of traffic and a two-land frontage road. Many people—most people said it could never get done—it was too big, it was too audacious, it was too complicated, could never happen.

The fact is, great things are happening across California and our country. The California condor is back. I was up with a Yurok biologist releasing California condor into their native habitat in far Northern California. The gray wolves are back in California, and have made their way into the Southern Sierra. And, yes, the beavers are back. [APPLAUSE]

Host: By giving nature a chance to heal itself, these successes profoundly enrich these landscapes.

The term ‘nature-based solution’ first arose in the 1980s among visionary ecologists and biologists, but only gained official global recognition in 2022. What started as an outlier has become a legitimate and increasing priority for effective climate action.

But what exactly constitutes a nature-based solution, and what do the approaches look like in practice? The basic question to ask is: “how would nature do it?” 

WC: So when we talk about nature-based solutions, a whole lot of people that don’t do this work really have a hard time understanding what we mean, so I often say, look, this is helping nature help us. When nature thrives, people thrive. And nature needs us and we need nature. 

At the end of the day, in order to survive and thrive, we need clean and abundant water, we need clean air, we need safety from these environmental extremes like wildfire, and actually restoring the health of nature helps us with this. 

So take, for example, on flooding. We are experiencing California increasing wet—water extremes. So the dry periods are getting drier – the droughts; wet periods are getting more intense, and frankly dangerous. And what we’ve realized over time is that one of the best solutions to protect communities from flooding are letting the rivers roam as they used to during certain times of the year. We have these seasonal floodplains across our country that we’ve essentially cut off. We’ve channelized our rivers and we’ve protected communities by creating higher and higher walls or levees around those rivers. And, in fact, by letting the rivers roam out of their river channel at certain times of the year in a safe and well-planned way is remarkable for reducing downstream flood risk.

Where I live in Sacramento, California is one of the most flood prone cities in the United States, where the confluence of two rivers. And it is these floodplains that’s actually protecting us upriver. And we’re working to expand those. 

And what’s really incredible is those floodplains not only protect us from flooding, they are incredible habitat for salmon and other fish that, frankly, have lost a lot of that habitat over time. There are places that seasonal waterfowl and migratory birds are using. They’re even recharging our groundwater basins which are the savings account for water supply. So that’s just one great example where it’s a nature-based solution.

So let’s talk about another extreme – heat. So we’ve experienced worsening heat waves in California. Some people talk about the fact that Los Angeles, over the coming decades, will begin to experience a climate more like Phoenix, Arizona. And when you think about a huge place like Los Angeles, it’s covered in concrete. We know that we can reduce the surface temperatures during these really hot periods through a really simple solution, which is trees. Right? Trees and green spaces reduce the surface temperature and provide shade.

So we’ve invested more than ever in helping generate or create more street trees in neighborhoods that don’t have them, greening schoolyards so that kids, when they’re outside, can be under shaded trees, or if they’re playing, they’re playing on grass or a soft surface. We know from science that the difference between neighborhood temperatures in Los Angeles on a very hot day is more than ten degrees between those places that have a lot of trees and a lot of green space versus those places in concrete. That’s a nature-based solution. 

It’s exciting when you talk to people about examples. Everybody loves the idea of greening a schoolyard. People love the idea of letting rivers roam into seasonal floodplains where it’s safe and possible. Folks love the idea of taking your organic compost and turning it into healthy soil that’s growing vegetables that you can buy in your local grocery store. These are all ideas that are not hard. They don’t involve complicated technologies. They do involve paradigm shifts, though, and they do involve thinking differently. So from my perspective, nature based solutions are all about helping nature, restoring natural processes to benefit people.

Host: In truth, many nature-based solutions are found in ancient Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge systems. What’s old is new again.

One striking example is indigenous use of fire.

WC: Across the West, we face remarkably challenging conditions with catastrophic wildfire. Right? Hotter, drier conditions. What’s amazing is, while we need to continue to improve our response and firefighters and technology, that’s all important, but the biggest solution is right in front of our nose in California, and that is reconnecting with traditional practices from our Indigenous communities. 

California Native American tribes for thousands of years were practicing fire, prescribed fire, safe, low-level fire to reduce the density of our forests and reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire. They were even managing water temperatures by creating smoke in the summer to keep water cold for salmon and other migrating fish.

Chinook Salmon returning to their home rivers to spawn. Photo: Karel Bock / Shutterstock

What’s remarkable is for over a century, the agency that I lead outlawed this practice and was literally arresting, and in some cases, charging felonies to tribal members that were putting good fire back on the ground. And fast forward, now we’re working to scale up this practice across the state, and it’s one of our primary strategies to reduce catastrophic wildfire risk. And we’re partnering and learning from those tribal communities that have been practicing this—you know, good fire. 

So to me, these nature-based solutions are all around us. We just have to get out of this box we’ve created ourselves to recognize them.

Host: Ancient Indigenous and traditional ecological knowledge and the leadership of First Peoples have become foundational elements of California’s nature-based solutions policy. What had long been violent historical conflicts are starting to transform into respectful partnerships.

WC: The Karuk Tribe in the Klamath Basin has been among the most powerful teachers for me and my team. So this is a tribe that is a salmon tribe, and they have lived in this far northern region of California, along with the Yurok people and others for—since time immemorial. And they have been practicing good fire for thousands of years. They really led a movement over the last decade to push the state to recognize the critical importance of this work, and then not only to, you know, legitimize the practice under the law, but then actually to drive or to advance their tribal sovereignty, their ability to actually burn. 

It’s been fascinating to get up there and actually get on those lands and learn from the practitioners. The thing that blows me away is – with nature-based solutions – is, in so many cases, it’s sort of back to the future. It’s these Indigenous practices. 

So we’re really excited. From our perspective in California, you know, to protect our residents, to actually achieve our what we think are world-leading targets to achieve carbon neutrality or net zero carbon in 20 years, we have to restore the health of our lands and waters, and it starts by learning from the original stewards of the land.

Host: We’ll hear more from Wade Crowfoot when we return.

I’m Neil Harvey. You’re listening to the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature.

If you’d like to learn more about the extraordinary intelligence of life inherent in fungi, plants, and animals, subscribe to our Earthlings newsletter. In each issue, we delve into captivating stories and research that promise to reshape your perception of our fellow Earthlings – and point toward a profound shift in how we all inhabit this planet together. You can subscribe at bioneers.org/earthlings. 

Host: In 2016, the revered Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson published his landmark book, “Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life.” In it, he advocated for the formal legal protection of the biodiversity and ecosystem health of fully half of Earth’s lands and waters.

The clarion call was a recognition that human existence depends entirely on the health and viability of our ecosystems.

Since that time, a global movement has arisen. Called “30 by 30,” it’s a first step toward Half Earth to protect and restore 30% of Earth’s lands and waters by 2030.

Progress is difficult to measure, but most assessments warn that collective efforts are nowhere near reaching the 2030 goal. According to Protected Planet and the One Earth Global Safety Net, only around 17-18 % of terrestrial land is being formally protected, and only 9-10% of marine habitats – not much progress since E.O. Wilson called for saving half of the Earth a decade before. Conserving the ocean is especially challenging because most of it isn’t owned by anyone, so getting agreements on paper has proven difficult.

The good news is that the state of California is farther ahead. It adopted the 30×30 approach as state law and developed some of the strongest possible standards for adopting nature-based solutions. By 2026, California had conserved 27% of lands and nearly 22% of coastal waters. That means three and a half million acres of counted conserved lands have been added since the initiative began in 2022, more than half way to the state’s conservation goal. Of course, there’s much more to be done.

WC: California has a road map to achieve carbon neutrality. So that’s slashing our pollution. But we realize that in an economy like California, fourth largest in the world, we’re never going to completely eliminate pollution. There’s some really tough industries to reduce emissions. So in order to reach that net zero or carbon neutrality, we need to sequester. We need to remove and store carbon at much larger levels than we have. 

It starts with these nature-based solutions. We all learned in fifth grade that plants absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen. And when our lands are healthy, our soils are healthy, our trees and forests are healthy, they sequester more carbon than they release. Our landscapes in the West and in California are unhealthy. 

And so now for the first time we’re quantifying the amount of emissions that come off our lands, and we’ve set a specific target to reduce the emissions of those lands, ultimately making the lands a carbon sink. 

So things like healthy soils. We have so much organic waste that it’s actually not a form of waste, it’s actually an asset. That’s organic content. If we can actually vastly expand organic content into the soils, create healthier soils across a meaningful swath of California ag lands, this means significant carbon sequestration. And oh, by the way, remarkable water retention, more efficiency of our water usage in a state that’s experiencing greater droughts. 

So those nature-based solution targets that are holding us accountable to really drive land use practices, changing and improving the health of our landscapes, again, so we can achieve carbon neutrality, but also achieve all these other benefits. 

Host: Conserving and restoring nature are effective ways to heal societal and environmental harms – and they’re also also intensely popular. Wade Crowfoot finds that nature-based solutions have unusually broad public support that can transcend even extreme polarization of partisan politics.

WC: People love the outdoors and people love nature. Our state park system, the largest in the country, is beloved by rural people, urban people, north, south, Republicans, Democrats. Our public lands are revered by folks across the ideological spectrum.

So when you talk about these common sense improvements that provide benefits by using nature, or building the health of nature, I really do think it breaks through some of the ideological differences, or even the partisan differences. And at the end of the day, the great thing about, you know, this set of actions we call nature-based solutions, is, yes, it’s about combating climate change, but we don’t have to talk about that if—for somebody who doesn’t recognize that science, right? The great thing about these solutions is they’re multi-beneficial. So we can talk about them in different ways that really resonate with a range of people.

Hiker in Redwood National and State Parks. Photo: Nik Shuliahin / Unsplash

Host: California helped create the Mediterranean Climate Action Partnership in 15 regions that have similar climates, across five continents.

These states and provinces aren’t waiting for their federal governments to mobilize. Instead they’re collaborating directly to share knowledge and solutions that can migrate around the world.

Wade Crowfoot notes that advancing and scaling these nature-based solutions should also include restoring justice with First Peoples.

WC: Three months after he took office, Governor Newsom invited California tribal leaders to the future site of the Native American Heritage Center, this new tribal gathering place in Sacramento, and did something that no California governor had ever done. He offered an unconditional apology for state government’s treatment of tribes. And he read—[APPLAUSE] And he read from the inaugural address of California’s first governor, where that governor put a financial bounty on the head of Native women and children, a state sanctioned policy of genocide. And it was easily the most meaningful and impactful day in my career.

But we talked about, with the tribal leaders, that if that’s all that happened, it was importantly symbolic, but it was ultimately counter-productive because we needed to actually create a new future. So we’ve been holding ourselves accountable over the last five years to create that new future. 

What does that future look like? It looks like ancestral land return, land back. [APPLAUSE] It looks like co-stewardship, co-management of our lands, and it looks like restoring traditional ecological practices that we now desperately need in California. [APPLAUSE] 

We allocated $107 million to ancestral land return that have now facilitated 30,000 plus acres of land back to tribes. [APPLAUSE] California State Parks manages 1.6 million acres of land across California, now 57 percent of those lands in state parks are governed by co-management and co-stewardship agreements with Native American tribes. [APPLAUSE] And we are finally getting out of the way of tribes in getting cultural fire back on the landscape, which we desperately need in California. [APPLAUSE] 

So this is happening. And this will continue to happen. And I want to tell you that as we pick up the paper or, as we do now, doom scroll in the beginning of the day or the end of the night, just know that progress is being made, and it’s not just being made in California. I had a chance to lead a delegation from California of activists and tribal leaders and local government leaders to Cali, Colombia, in the fall, where we came together with countries from around the world under the United Nations Compact convention on biodiversity, and I can tell you, governments from around the world are doing things that make these—this progress look modest. And we have a network of efforts among progressive governments. And I can tell you this linkage between restoration of the environment and restoration of justice, Indigenous led, it’s found its way, as it should, into these governmental discussions, and it’s actually guiding our path forward. So my message is: In this dark, dangerous hour, don’t despair.     

Riparian brush rabbit. Photo: ranchorunner / Shutterstock

And I want to end with a story, and it’s one of my favorite stories. The San Joaquin riparian brush rabbit is this cute little rabbit that has lived in the Central Valley, the San Joaquin Valley. And as its name suggests, it lives along the rivers. It lives in those riparian zones, woodsy areas along the rivers. And we’ve lost 96 percent of our riparian habitat in the Central Valley, and we thought we lost the San Joaquin riparian brush rabbit until they found a breeding pair taking shelter under an overpass of Highway 99. […] And that breeding pair was brought into what’s called captive breeding, where they help generate more population into the dozens. […]

Well, fast forward, an incredible nonprofit named River Partners, that does these multi-benefit restoration projects, bought an area of land at the confluence of the San Joaquin and the Tuolumne Rivers, and the goal was buy it from agricultural production and re-wild it for this type of habitat, this riparian habitat. And it’s an amazing story, because we caught wind of this effort, and we decided to see if they would help us make it a state park.

And so in the course of that, they were doing biological surveys to prepare for the reintroduction of the brush rabbit, […] And during that biological survey, within that newly repaired riparian zone, only three-and-a-half years old, do you know what they found? Riparian brush rabbits. [LAUGHTER] 

Somehow these incredible bunnies have figured out a way to travel ten miles and across the river to find their new home at Dos Rios. So to me, that says never give up hope, always recognize that nature can rebound if we help nature, and this is our moment.

Host: Wade Crowfoot, Nature-Based Solutions: Hope with an Action Plan 

The post Nature-Based Solutions: Hope With an Action Plan appeared first on Bioneers.

Saturday, October 17, 2026

See updated poster for

10th Annual White Mesa Ute Community Spiritual Walk and Protest against

Energy Fuels’ uranium mill/dump and uranium mines.

Although they receive less than 1% of climate funding, women-led climate justice grassroots projects are generating cascading benefits, from greater gender and economic equity and less gender violence to improved biodiversity and ecosystems’ health. Simultaneously, the centrality to many Indigenous peoples’ cultures of traditional relationships to place and to honoring all of life as sacred are a tremendous resource in strengthening efforts to protect and renew biodiversity and water resources. 

Listen to this excerpt of a conversation exploring what these two vastly under-resourced constituencies have to offer in the quest to co-create regenerative landscapes and futures. With Dilafruz Khonikboyeva, Executive Director of Home Planet Fund;  Osprey Orielle Lake, founder and Executive Director of Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN); and Zainab Salbi, co-founder of Daughters for Earth.

Transcript (edited)

OSPREY ORIELLE LAKE: We are at a crossroads. I feel like many of us have known this moment was coming. It’s been building, and building, and building, and now we’re at an apex point of a transformational moment for society. Things are getting terribly, terribly worse, but this is also the crack in the system that we also know needed to happen, because we cannot continue to live the way we have been with each other or with our precious planet. 

We are seeing the end result of patriarchal institutions, and this is core to the reason we’re in these interlocking crises. We cannot separate out the long history of patriarchy and the violence against women and the violence against the land. Those things are intertwined. When we desecrate the female in any capacity, we can see the end result. Whether you want to look at the economy, and the extractive economy, if you want to look at what is happening with racism, if you want to look at what’s happening with colonization, it is based on these systems of supremacy and othering, and not belonging. And so we’re here to address that, and what are women doing in this space? 

There’s something called the Women’s Political Empowerment Index, which is all over the world, country by country, observing and taking studies on how women have agency in their country; if they’re involved in political office, how they’re doing in their economic structures. It just measures women’s agency in many spheres. Not that carbon emission reductions are the most important thing, but interestingly, with just a one unit increase in the Women’s Political Empowerment Index, we see an 11.51 decrease in carbon emissions per country, which is vast. And it’s a really important study because intervening in the climate crisis is not about carbon emission reductions, but it just shows what happens when women have power in their communities. It’s one of the most undervalued, misunderstood pieces of information we need to have right now: when you insert women’s leadership, how radically systems change, talking about these different islands. 

A lot of that is being guided by women’s leadership, feminist values, feminist analysis, and I think it’s really important to lift that up. That’s where a lot of the transformation is taking place, because of this relational way of working. 

A lot of times we see women in communities doing this leadership that is often not well-funded, under-acknowledged. And people say, well that’s just a small community project. They’re doing food security, they’re growing some trees, and they’re taking care of their community. That’s just one project. How does that save the planet? And it’s completely opposite to how many women’s groups view these things, which is, actually, when you add up all these different projects that are localized – where people are living well and we’re transforming the land, economy, relationships, taking power, building egalitarian spaces – when you add them up, it’s gigantic. And it is in opposition to this corporate ideology where you have to have these huge hierarchical structures where governments and corporations and financial institutions are making tons of money, but not the people on the ground. 

So we’re really working to reclaim that narrative, that we don’t need that. We need our own communities to work well, and women on the ground are doing that, and it needs to be seen as a vast solution.

DILAFRUZ KHONIKBOYEVA: Home Planet Fund is an Indigenous fund that is run by an Indigenous woman. The Board and Staff are also Indigenous from the communities in which we work. 

When we talk about funding to Indigenous people, what I hear a lot is actually a lot of excitement, to be really honest. Right? Because stats – I know no one cares about them, but I’m going to say them anyway – Indigenous people are 6 percent of the global population. They oversee 80 percent of the biodiversity, at least, of the world, and 50 percent of endangered animals. That’s not by accident.

We work in the Tongass, which is the largest temperate rainforest. It’s in Alaska, in the southeast. We work in the South Pacific on terrestrial and marine land areas. We work in East Africa in the grasslands across Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda. And then we work in Central Asia at the glaciers and the glacial watersheds with regenerative ag. 

My favorite thing that I like to do is tell people we work in Afghanistan, because I love seeing the rotation of faces, where it’s horror, and then disbelief, and then interest, and then horror again. Some of the questions I get are: Well, why are these women choosing to stay there? Like if you’re funding Indigenous people, 1) we didn’t know Indigenous people exist in Afghanistan. Plot twist: 80 percent of Indigenous people are in Asia. But 2) there’s this fundamental misunderstanding that as Indigenous people, for example, I’m Pamiri, which means we name ourselves for the mountains where we come from. My core identity is innately tied to the lands and waters I come from. It took everything, and a lot of coaxing, to have us leave that land. It took many years of civil war. It took so much, and I want to relate that to how, for people to leave their land is like cutting off one of your limbs, is what we say in my language. Right? 

So, for example, in Afghanistan, people are like, well, women’s work didn’t work in Afghanistan for lots of reasons. Right? My personal theory is that we were imposing a very globalized Western view of what feminism or women’s leadership looked like, and we wanted to see a photo and like a copy/paste of that in that context. What I’m seeing now is women who hold very traditional and non-traditional roles who are able to lead because of traditional spaces they have, and build out economic freedoms and voice and physical freedoms for themselves in their context, on their land, while feeding their families. So when we give people the resources and the space to do things in their way, they’re able to build out the growth that they want and not make it echo a femininity that we only see as one “hegemonous”, global way.  

The other example I’ll really quickly give is in Kenya. There’s a wonderful woman named Rosemary. She and this local village of Maasai women convinced their husbands and the male elders to give them a plot of land. In a Maasai culture, their whole wealth is in the cattle, but goats are women’s work, so men don’t touch goats, and any money you make from it goes to women. And it’s actually such a brilliant way to utilize the culture to make money. So these women got this plot of land. They did a lot of biodiversity on it. They have turned it into an eco-hostel for people, and they take care of their goats on it. And because the land and the goats are owned by the women, the men have to be invited to the land to come. And so they found their own ways of subverting their culture and giving themselves power, and really renegotiating within their context. Right?

One of the most amazing things is there was one elder who was responsible for the female genital mutilation, which is a big problem in Maasai communities. Rosemary worked with her over many years, and she was teaching beading, right, as a way for women to make money separate from their husbands. And one of the most beautiful stories she told me, “I love this land. I love what I’ve done here, but the hands that used to hurt our daughters have now put down the knife and picked up the beads.” And so through her own way, in a way that I don’t believe outsiders could have done, she stopped female genital mutilation in these villages on this land. That is what localized women’s leadership means. It doesn’t mean us imposing, it means that we allow them to take the necessary steps. Sometimes it’s zig-zaggy, sometimes it’s straight out, but if we let them decide what their version of femininity and indigeneity looks like, it is durable, it is healing, and it is the pluralism that this world needs.

ZAINAB SALBI: Indeed, everyone celebrates Indigenous leaderships and women’s leadership. Women are getting 0.2 percent of all philanthropic funding that is going to climate, and Indigenous people are getting 1 percent or less than 1 percent. So show me the money, to quote Jerry Maguire, if I remember correctly. Show me the money. I’m done talking and celebrating, we are still in women’s month. I always tell people, ‘Please don’t celebrate us. We are done with the celebration. Show me the money.’ You know? 

Because I have to take advantage of a room full of amazing people, we are in Code Red right now, as it relates to women, and Indigenous people, and anybody who’s interested in climate. In Code Red, 5 governments cut their money out of international aid. The UN says 95 percent of women’s organizations are going to close within the year. We are dealing with women’s organizations on the ground who are closing. Violence against women has increased in rates I have not seen in my lifetime. And believe me, I worked in conflicts for 35 years. It’s so tremendous, I never thought women leaders in the environmental movement would be threatened for their life, but they are threatened, and they’re going through violence I have not seen before. 

As someone from different parts of the world, I get news all the time that this person got killed, this person got killed, it’s too much. So we can bitch and moan about how bad it is, but this is the time of action. 

And here’s the thing: Before our actions, when we are here, it’s always show me the money, which is real because we really need to make sure that we hold their back. They are doing the real work. They are bringing systems change. We are too, and they are equally important, if not more important, because they are creating change in relationship with something fundamental that, I think with all our work and all our consciousness, is really hard to do in cities, which is the different relationship with nature. And as good as we are, you live in the city, you lost that connection. They’re bringing about an existential, spiritual change, in my opinion, and that is the relationship with nature, these communities. Right?

How do we all shift even in our communications from transactional relationships even within each other to regenerative relationships where every person in here really has a contribution, because they are doing all the work despite their circumstances, not because of it. They need every support possible. Yes, the money makes a difference, but so are the voices, and so is their reiteration of what they are contributing. 

Like we also have to shift and be advocates of that shift within our own systems, the systems that we are living in. Because they need us to show up, and because this is Code Red in our history, in my opinion. That means it’s the most exciting time to be alive. Because every drop matters, every action matters, every word matters in this moment. And what a privilege that we are the liminal leaders that are holding this space in between, what a privilege that we are the edgewalkers that are taking the risk, and are okay with the risk, because the only way we can get out of this moment is to take risk, and to experiment, and to look at what are the new systems. And to create new systems, you actually have to trust them, and trust the context that they are in.

Let’s trust what’s possible, because the possible is there and it’s proven, actually. We just have to shift our own attitude in more trusting and more money and more actions on our end as well.

OSPREY ORIELLE LAKE: The assault right now is increasing, because as we are seeing polarization and the wealthy elite are consolidating their power – white supremacist leadership, just call it out – the attack becomes more severe, which means we all need to collect together much better than we ever have. We really need to be together and be in our networks, and work together, because it’s a very, very tenuous time. 

I just came back last week from the UN Commission on the Status of Women. I go to those conferences all the time. I’ve never seen it be that severe, the threats to funding, the increase in the violence, the consideration that the UN is even running out of funds, which is one of the few multilateral spaces that we have, what will happen to women’s rights. I mean, this is such a critical moment. Like this is our moment. If you are on the sidelines, it’s time to get off the sideline and be in your community and work with people.

We really need to protect the Indigenous women land defenders because they’re on the frontlines, literally putting their bodies on the line, protecting the last of the biodiversity, the last of the forests, the last of the waters. I can’t stress enough the difference between us being in the city, and supporting those activities, and people who are literally waking up in the morning because their water’s being destroyed or their forest is going to be cut down. 

And so, there are some really strong policies that are now being enacted and possible, especially in Latin America around the Escazú Agreement, and different things that are being pushed by grassroots movements to protect women land defenders. It’s one of the most critical things we could be doing because that relationship between the violence against the land and the women, and what’s left of nature are all intertwined.

ZAINAB SALBI: We recently issued a report, a random study of women leaders, and the only common denominator is they are women led and they are nature-centric, basically. And what we saw is the way they’re going about their leadership is actually addressing the livelihood of the community, the local economics of the communities, all of these things that I mentioned earlier, but there’s all these unintended consequences which are very exciting, including women and girls saying: I want to be like that as well; I want to be a defender of the forest, or I want to protect the dolphins, or I want to protect the pangolins; or, oh, there’s money and there’s live concession? What we’re finding out is what we’re calling the ripple effects of women’s leadership, and this is just by the fact that they are controlling the decisions and the money, and the money management of it. All these other consequences that are happening from it.

DILAFRUZ KHONIKBOYEVA: I’m going to say something that is going to—I’m going to get eye rolls, and you’re going to think I’m really naive. I think that any two people, despite where they are in their politics, in their views, even in war on opposing sides can find the middle. And I’m going to say I’m not naive, because I lived through a civil war as a child. I have spent too much of my time in academics around civil war. I have worked in that context, and there’s a theory around it, it’s called rational actor theory, and it’s that as war or anything is happening to you and around you, you still have to sleep, you still have to eat, you still have to think about your practical decisions. 

So I have found in my personal life, to be honest, when I can’t take the news or even what’s happening in my own community, frankly, I focus on the day to day, like what can I do today; what can I do now; what can I do sitting in relationship with amazing organizations and people around me. 

I think at the core of Home Planet Fund, that’s kind of what was built in innately; I don’t need you to have my politics. I don’t need you to know what my politics are. I don’t need you to believe in indigeneity even, frankly, as a term because my own people sometimes don’t even self-label as “indigenous”, because they’re like: What is that? We know who we are. We don’t know what that weird random term is. Right? I just need you to fundamentally believe 1) we have an impact on the Earth, and 2) we should make a positive impact on the Earth. If you can meet me there, I believe we can foster a good relationship. And I believe together, we can foster good change. 

So instead of thinking about the academics or the larger scale, I’m honestly so tired. I’m so tired and I have seen so much good work happen where people don’t label and don’t self-identify, they just sit there in community and do good work. 

These are not small, little, tiny, fringe, cutesy projects that women and Indigenous people are doing, because, again, it’s cutesy or it’s small or it’s naive. We’ve been around for nearly four years. We work in one percent of the Earth’s lands and waters – one percent. That is not because I do that, that is because there are Indigenous people who are working in community. It doesn’t matter how they identify politically, socially, economically. They are doing it because that’s what right relationship and healing and spirituality looks like to them. And they were doing it, frankly, before we resourced them. Right? But when we resourced them, it went faster year after year. It grew. It went deeper. 

And so I don’t know that we need large-scale, homogeneous breakdowns or buildups, I actually just want us to sit in community and do good things, and sit in right relationship. I feel like that’s all my heart desires, and that’s all I’m seeing these days. And it’s so beautiful to be in that space.

ZAINAB SALBI: I think we need radical collaboration, and we need to unlearn some of the systems that enable us to even succeed, and perhaps learn new pathways. The women’s movement has always operated from a psychology of scarcity, because we always did get the breadcrumbs, and that breadcrumbs have just gotten even less. Right? And if I may dare, in that politics of scarcity, we loved each other as sisters, but we also competed with each other and feared for the money. If you haven’t figured that out, I’m very practical, like, you know? And we right now require this radical collaboration of even assessing the structures and the systems that we are in, and perhaps not defending the structures and the systems that we are in, but making sure that the ones that we exist to support not only survive, but thrive. 

In other words, sometimes we get in our way, because I have to defend Daughters for Earth, and she has to defend her fund, and she has to defend her organization. And we care about our brand and our legitimacy and all of these things, and then we lose the very thing that we were actually created for, which is there, the unseen, in front of us here today. So it really requires us to also shatter the system from within our own system. Right? And requires us to ask hard questions, uncomfortable questions. Not only how do we make our work more efficient, not only how do we cut our costs, not only how do we radically collaborate so we ensure we’ve got their back. So that’s one thing that is going on in me. 

I so believe in it, and we’ve talked that talk, but we didn’t walk it all the time. If I am to be extremely honest. Right? And we were not rewarded for collaboration either, for those who are familiar with the NGO sector, not always it was rewarded. Right? But now, it’s “F the system”, because the system is not working, so we have to be radical in our collaboration, and in our having honest conversations and honest discussions and practical ones, because we are in Code Red, one.

The second thing is, I have that longing in me for community and for belonging, and this time is also questioning all of that. You know? Especially—I will say everyone in my life is questioning that, how small we are, how relevant we are, this is bigger than all of us, da, da, da…all of that. You know? And it has different ways on us, it depends on our identities. Right? 

So what’s for me is most important in terms of how that goes is really, it’s a sense of belonging. And when I die or when any of you die, we should have given it our all. And that’s the future I want. We’re not going to know what’s the future, but we’ve got to show up in every single fucking way right now. Really. You know, we may succeed or we may not. Hopefully, Inshallah, we will succeed. But the only way we know is if we give it our all. 

So I have a tattoo on my back. It’s the hummingbird. Right? And because the hummingbird is the symbol for Daughters for Earth, and I said, ‘This is how much I believe, and so I’m going to tattoo it.’ So I have no choice but to do it. Really. You know? And it’s the hummingbird. It’s based on the fable of Wangarĩ Maathai, who was a Nobel laureate, and who tells the story, it’s an African fable, of a forest fire and all the animals panicked and escaped except for the tiny hummingbird, who rushed to the local river, took a drop of water and rushed to the fire, and dropped it on top of the fire, and kept on going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And all the other animals criticized the hummingbird. “You’re so small. Your beak is so small. Your drop of water is so small.” And she looked at them and said, “But I’m doing everything possible to turn off the fire. Why don’t you join me?” And with that, she inspired other other animals, and they turned off the fire. 

Now here’s the thing: This is not Wangarĩ — the hummingbird is a very special bird. It has the biggest heart-to-body ratio of any other species in the world – big heart. It has different spiritual meanings. The Basque region believes it’s a messenger between heaven and here. So when you see a hummingbird, make a wish, it will take it to the heavens. And it flies in all directions, sideways and backward as well. And it flies for 12 hours straight! I honestly did not believe this fact. But it does fly 12 hours across the ocean. So never doubt your drop of water. Right? Oh, and it kills. If you fuck with a hummingbird, it kills you. Really! So do not underestimate the power of us, and every drop that we are putting in. 

So I don’t know where the future lay, but I want to embody the hummingbird in all of its characteristics. Right? Because that’s the only choice we each have. 

The post Global Indigenous Women Led Movements For Climate Justice appeared first on Bioneers.

Six candidates running in Meaford, Ontario’s 2026 municipal election oppose TC Energy’s proposed pumped storage project

The post Meaford Election 2026: Six Candidates Oppose TC Energy Pumped Storage Project appeared first on Ontario Clean Air Alliance.

Tuesday, September 29, 2026
Press Contact: Sumeet Bal, Director of Communications, 917-647-1952, sbal@publicadvocates.org

San Francisco—Governor Newsom just made it legal for California’s most vulnerable students—those with special needs—to spend nearly 40% of the school year with a barely-trained substitute standing in for a real teacher. This is not a compromise. Less than a year ago, his own veto message promised to protect these students. Today, he abandoned them.

In vetoing AB 1224 last October, the governor warned that the bill would “allow individuals to serve our highest-need students for as much as a third of a school year without minimally required training or mentorship.”  He urged the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC ) or the bill’s author to address the problem. The CTC did exactly that, engaging stakeholders for months to build a new substitute pathway with 15 hours of preservice training and 45 hours in the first year plus 2 hours per week of support and mentoring. AB 2490 guts that work before it even takes effect, replacing it with just FIVE hours of training, no weekly support or oversight and a permit good for 70 days—roughly 40% of the school year.

“Last year, the governor told us that substitutes couldn’t be trusted with our highest-need students without real training. This year, he signed a bill that provides no meaningful protections for those students,” said John Affeldt, Managing Attorney at Public Advocates. “Worse, he has signed a law that puts districts on a collision course with federal law, and puts students’ legally guaranteed services on the line. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires a certified special education teacher in that classroom—full stop. This bill runs headlong into minimum federal standards.”

The harm will fall hardest on students with disabilities. Unlike the CTC’s proposed regulations, AB 2490 reaches directly into special education classrooms, where federal law leaves no room for shortcuts.

“The CTC spent the last year doing exactly what the governor asked, building a real training pathway through a full regulatory process, with input from the people who’d be affected,” said Rachel Murphy, Senior Legislative Counsel at Public Advocates. “The legislature and the governor just undercut that process before it could even take effect. It’s a shortcut that leaves special education students paying the price.” 

An equitable education system does not respond to educator shortages by lowering expectations for the students who have historically been least well served. It invests more deeply in them. Students with disabilities deserve educators who are prepared, supported, and equipped to recognize their strengths and meet their needs. What they got was a system that normalizes unequal access to qualified teachers. 

“Placing insufficiently trained substitutes in classrooms for extended periods doesn’t create stability—it creates wider learning gaps that harm our most vulnerable students,” wrote Christine Case-Lo, a parent of a child with special needs, in a written testimony to the governor. “Districts should feel urgency to hire qualified teachers—not be given a legislative off-ramp that lets them settle for less.”

Public Advocates has spent over three decades fighting for qualified educators in every California classroom, from suing the state over a discriminatory teacher test in  AMAE v. California, to challenging the lack of a system to ensure qualified educators in Williams v. California, to recently overturning the unlawful use of substitutes to fill teacher vacancies in Cleare v. West Contra Costa Unified School District. We will not stand by while the state walks back hard-won protections for the students who need them most.

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About Public Advocates Inc.
Public Advocates Inc. is a nonprofit law firm and advocacy organization that challenges the systemic causes of poverty and racial discrimination by strengthening community voices in public policy and achieving tangible legal victories advancing education, housing, transportation equity, and climate justice.

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The post Press Statement: Public Advocates Condemns Governor Newsom’s Reversal on Substitute Teacher Training, Signing AB 2490 appeared first on Public Advocates.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 29, 2026

 

White Mesa Concerned Community

protectwhitemesa.org 

MEDIA ADVISORY

Contacts: 

Yolanda Badback, White Mesa Concerned Community, (435) 459-2461, ybadback427@gmail.com 

Bradley Angel, Greenaction for Health & Environmental Justice, (415) 722-5270, bradley@greenaction.org

Photos and video (free for media use): https://bit.ly/White-Mesa-2025-Photos

White Mesa Ute Invite Public to Join 10th Annual Spiritual Walk to Protest Energy Fuels Uranium Mill 

 

What: A rally and spiritual walk to protect the White Mesa Ute Community’s health, water, air, land, culture, and sacred sites from the Energy Fuels uranium mill located just north of our reservation and just east of Bears Ears National Monument. The community-led walk protests the mill operating as an international dumping ground for radioactive waste. We walk in solidarity with our relatives across Indian Country, and with people across Utah, the Southwest, and the world, from Japan to Europe to Madagascar, suffering due to radioactive materials destined to be processed and buried at the mill near our community. Please join us.

 

When: Saturday, October 17, 2026, 11 a.m. MDT rally followed by spiritual walk to the Energy Fuels uranium mill, about five miles on relatively flat pavement. Wear comfortable shoes and bring plenty of water. Limited number of vehicle seats available for elders and those not able to walk the whole way.

 

Where: The White Mesa Ute Community Center in White Mesa, Utah, off Highway 191. The community center is on the west side of the highway. Turn west at the gas station and go one block south.

 

Why: The Ute Mountain Ute Community of White Mesa and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe’s Environmental Programs Department are concerned about contamination from the uranium mill and desecration of sacred sites. This is our 10th year of leading the rally and walk to the mill. The uranium mill, owned by Energy Fuels Resources, is also where uranium ore from the Pinyon Plain Mine, near the Grand Canyon, is trucked more than 300 miles for processing; Native American tribes, including the Havasupai Tribe, strongly oppose that mine. Amid the administration and the State of Utah’s push to boost uranium and nuclear power, more uranium is trucked from the Energy-Fuels-owned La Sal Mines Complex about 60 miles to the mill, and at least 72 new mining claims have been staked on lands cut from Bears Ears National Monument. Trucks hauling uranium ore are a constant presence on Highway 191 through our community, the same road our children travel to school, and at least two uranium haul trucks have crashed on the Navajo Nation this year. The waste from all this uranium-ore processing is dumped in pits near our community. As far away as Madagascar, Indigenous people strongly oppose Energy Fuels’ operations. 

 

Quotes:

“They want to expand the mill’s waste pits south towards our reservation. We are standing up and doing whatever we can to stop that from happening. We are a small community. We cannot do this alone. Please come join our walk and show the state of Utah and the world that we’ve had enough. Our children need clean water to drink and clean air to breathe. Your radioactive waste is not welcome here.” –Yolanda Badback, White Mesa Concerned Community cofounder

 

“The water under the mill is becoming more and more polluted and is moving toward our community. The acidity of the water is increasing, and heavy metals are rising.  We used to drink the spring water for ceremonial purposes. We don’t do

that anymore. We used to hunt for animals near our homes; we used to gather plants for baskets, and to eat. We don’t do that anymore as well.” –Anferny Cly, White Mesa Concerned Community

 

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White Mesa Concerned Community is a grassroots group of concerned citizens of the Ute Mountain Ute community of White Mesa, Utah, located south of Energy Fuels’ uranium mill. We work to inform our people and protect our community, health, water, air, land, culture, and sacred sites from toxic contamination.

 

The 10th Annual Rally and Spiritual Walk is sponsored by the White Mesa Concerned Community and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe’s Environmental Programs Department.

 

Event co-sponsors: 

Ah Mut Pipa Foundation, Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, Bidii Roots, Children for a Safe Environment, Diné Care, Gila River Alliance for a Clean Environment, Grand Canyon Trust, Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, Haul No!, HEAL Utah, Indigenous Environmental Network, Moab Mutual Aid, Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment, National Parks Conservation Association, New Mexico Social Justice and Equity Institute, Northern Arizona American Indian Movement, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, PANDOS, Red Water Pond Road Community Association, Sierra Club Utah Chapter, SLC Air Protectors, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Uranium Watch, University of Utah Environmental Justice Clinic.

 

Click here to download this Press release in PDF Format

Farms’ nitrogen management approaches have impacts on water quality, soil health, nitrous oxide emissions, and farms’ climate resilience and viability. Synthetic...

The post Achieving Clean Water and Climate Goals through Healthy Soils Management in the Irrigated Lands Regulatory Program appeared first on CalCAN - California Climate & Agriculture Network.

This is a time of escalating fear for immigrant communities. They are being demonized and are under assault, as large-scale, heavy-handed enforcement has been unleashed on them, and our noblest traditions of welcome and inclusion are being discarded. And yet, despite these deliberate attempts to isolate and separate us, immigrants and non-immigrants alike have often been stepping up together to protect rights, build alliances, and fight for a better future for all of us. In this conversation, leading activists talk about what these movements of resistance and solidarity mean for the broader efforts to protect our democracy. With: Cristina Jiménez Moreta, formerly of United We Dream; Guerline Jozef of the Haitian Bridge Alliance; Shaw San Liu formerly of the Chinese Progressive Association; and Manuel Pastor of USC’s Equity Research Institute.

Recorded by Jason Maze and Rebecca Ewing at Maze Productions.

The post Neighbors and Allies: Solidarity in a Time of Distress appeared first on Bioneers.

The University of Toronto could generate a quarter of its electricity from on-site solar power, according to our new report. Despite U of T’s ambitious climate and sustainability goals, existing solar installations currently supply less than 1% of the university’s total electricity needs. Our new report, Scaling Solar Power at the University of Toronto, finds

The post University of Toronto could generate 25% of its electricity with solar power appeared first on Ontario Clean Air Alliance.

Nostalgia Is Not an Energy or Economic Strategy

The post Nostalgia Is Not a Good Energy or Economic Strategy appeared first on Ontario Clean Air Alliance.

Amtrak and Canal Edge are building a modern maintenance facility to support passenger rail in Chicago and across the Midwest. Read more.

A sketch in water territories1

Elba Mercedes Palacios Córdoba

This article was written in Spanish. Read the original article here.

In an attempt to understand what is happening to us—amidst the fiction that “anything goes” and the “every …

Un esbozo en territorios de agua1

Elba Mercedes Palacios Córdoba

An English translation of this article is available here. // Una traducción al inglés de este artículo está disponible aquí.

En un intento por comprender lo que nos …

The University of Toronto (U of T) has adopted strong targets for improving sustainability and reducing climate damaging emissions. Currently, however, less than one percent of the university's electricity demand is met by on-site solar power. Our report finds that U of T could meet 25% of its electricity needs by greater deployment of

The post Scaling solar power at the University of Toronto appeared first on Ontario Clean Air Alliance.

Pooja Kishinani and Satakshi Gupta

An interview with Yuri Tuma, a multidisciplinary Brazilian artist, researcher, and co-founder of the Institute for Postnatural Studies (IPS) a Madrid-based institute working at the intersection of art, culture, and ecology. The IPS uses artistic …

September 15, 2026

Protect Yosemite National Park from Trump’s proposed land giveaway!
Greenaction joins 149 organizations in opposing the Trump administration’s plan!

Click here to Read the letter!