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Backbone Intern Giacomo Moody's Story Map for We the People is now LIVE!.

The Story Map traces the journey of this Iconic image, from its 2007 debut at Seattle Center to its current deployments in pro-democracy protests around the country. Check out Giacomo's great work and the amazing fruits of our collective labors.

Learn more about joining us in DC or pitching in to support our team going to Washington, DC to mark the 250th Birthday of this country. We'll once again take the streets in a defiant and beautiful expression of common cause and our shared commitment to fulfilling mission of creating a more just, sustainable, and democratic nation, and a future we can be proud to hand our children.

Check out the We the People Story Map at BackboneCampaign.org/WeThePeople.

 

 

We the People featured at NW Folklife Festival this weekend!

Two copies will be at Seattle Center this weekend at the NW Folklife Festival, one at the Mural Amphitheater Stage, near the Space Needle and another in the International Fountain Pavilion, with pens for signing. Use this chance to add your signature in time for it to be taken to DC this July 4th!

Over the last 19 years, Backbone's giant We the People banner has served as an icon of people power and our aspirations to fulfill the shared mission of creating a more perfect union. Adding two more Preamble sections has allowed it to appear in even more cities in the past year, collecting signatures and grabbing the attention of the press and public as a symbol of resistance and resilience.

In April 2026, the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais gutted a core protection of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — the provision barring racial gerrymandering designed to dilutes the voting power of Black communities. The Trump administration called it a victory. For communities on the frontlines of pollution, climate change, and environmental injustice, it is one most deliberate act of erasure and as Dr. Beverly Wright of Deep South Center for Environmental Justice (DSCEJ) says, it is a “theft of our movement’s inheritance”.

This ruling did not arrive alone. It is part of a coordinated, multi-front strategy to remove impacted communities — particularly Black communities — from the rooms where decisions get made. Through the courts, through Executive Orders seizing control of elections, through the SAVE Act’s documentation barriers that would block more than 21 million Americans from voting, through a Department of Justice that has sued all 50 states to build a national voter surveillance database, and through the threat of criminal prosecution against election officials and civic organizations.

This administration’s goal is not election integrity. The goal is the permanent political marginalization of Black communities, Indigenous communities and communities of color.

The pattern is unmistakable when you see it whole. The Supreme Court’s ruling applies not just to Congressional districts, but also to state legislative districts and maps for county and municipal elections — determining who gets to serve on a school board, a city council, or in the judiciary. 

Meanwhile, the administration has turned the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department into an agency that violates the very definition of civil rights, redirecting it toward suppressing voting rather than protecting voting rights. 

At the same time, another assault on voting rights is being advanced through Congress. If signed into law, the SAVE Act would require every American to produce a passport or certified birth certificate, in person, at an election office just to register to vote, eliminating online registration, mail registration, and most voter registration drives. For Black communities, this lands on a foundation of deliberate historical denial: many older Black Americans were never issued birth certificates by governments that refused to recognize their full humanity. 

For Indigenous communities, the SAVE Act’s promise that Tribal IDs will suffice is a fiction, ignoring the fact that virtually no Tribal ID includes place of birth, another barrier buried in the bill’s text. And even with documents in hand, the nearest election office can be a hundred miles away across reservation land, or in Alaska, accessible only by plane. 

These are not bureaucratic inconveniences; they are systemic barriers deeply rooted in this country’s history of racial segregation. They reflect the architecture of laws written around people who were never meant to be politically represented and applied to communities still fighting to be counted.

The same communities facing barriers to their rights to vote are bearing the greatest burden of air pollution, toxic contamination, extreme heat, and climate disasters. And the fact that these communities are overwhelmingly Black, Brown, Indigenous, and low-income, and this is not a coincidence. It is the predictable result of political exclusion and the enduring legacy of segregation. 

When communities cannot elect representatives who share their priorities, when their votes are diluted through racial gerrymandering, the outcome is a petrochemical plant permitted next to an elementary school, a neighborhood left without clean water, or a community absorbing the full cost of an energy system it had no power to refuse. 

A political system that makes voting harder perpetuates the very conditions that make environmental justice necessary.

This is also why the assault extends beyond the ballot. The same administration that is dismantling voting rights protections is also terrorizing immigrant communities — deportation threats, surveillance, and the weaponization of documentation status as a tool of political control. 

What this administration is attacking, in every instance, is the fundamental democratic principle that the people most affected have a rightful voice in decision-making. 

That principle does not begin and end at the voting booth. It lives in every planning meeting, every regulatory comment period, every public hearing, every coalition room where communities are fighting for their lives and their land. Undocumented neighbors, visa holders, green card holders, people who live and work and raise children in the same fenceline communities, who breathe the same air and drink the same water, carry knowledge and moral authority that no policy process can afford to exclude. 

Voting is an essential mechanism through which communities exercise the most direct form of political power available to our communities, and its protection is non-negotiable. The fight for voting rights and the fight for full community participation are intrinsically linked because they are being waged against us by the same forces, for the same purpose: to ensure that the communities with the most at stake in our climate and environmental future have the least say in shaping it.

 Our communities continue to show up, no matter the barriers put in our way: voters and non-voters, citizens and non-citizens, people who cast ballots, people who testify, and people who organize. No matter the injustices we face, environmental justice leaders know that our solidarity is unstoppable and our resolve to fight for true representation will never be broken by any court or politician.

Byron Ramos Gudiel is Executive Director of the Center for Earth, Energy & Democracy (CEED).

Sources:

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/save-act-and-election-power-grab

https://www.vote.org/save-act/

https://narf.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/narf-save-act-native-voters.pdf

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/environmental-justice-requires-a-healthy-democracy

https://www.aclu.org/trump-on-voting-rights

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/how-gerrymandering-tilts-2024-race-house

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/we-arent-paying-enough-attention-to-what-the-scotus-vra-decision-means-for-state-legislatures

https://abcnews.com/Politics/congressional-black-caucus-lose-seats-amid-redistricting-fight/story?id=132965013

LCV – https://www.lcv.org/media-center/lcv-statement-on-scotus-decision-in-louisiana-v-callais/

Not NRDC Action Fund: https://www.nrdcactionfund.org/news/scotus-voting-rights-act-decision-hurts-our-democracy-and-the-court-itself/

Sierra Club: https://www.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2026/04/sierra-club-statement-supreme-court-ruling-gut-voting-rights-act

CAP: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-supreme-courts-callais-decisions-undermine-the-voting-rights-act-and-sow-election-chaos/

WE ACT: https://weact.org/updates/in-response-to-regressive-voting-rights-act-supreme-court-decision-we-act-committed-to-fighting-for-our-democracy/

The post How the Gutting of the Voting Rights Act Deepens Environmental Injustice appeared first on CEED.

By Nagraj Adve Seeking to cushion the impacts of global warming is like aiming at a moving target. What’s worse, the target is now moving faster. Over the last decade or so, there has been a significant acceleration in the rate of warming globally, from about 0.18 degrees Celsius (°C) per decade during 1970–2010, to […]

Rumours. False announcements. Lies. What’s going on with immigration changes in Canada these days?!

Join us on June 10 for a free online information session just for migrants like you. Let’s break through the noise together to get the facts, and learn how migrants are uniting to take action against unfair immigration rules to win permanent status for all.

What we’ll cover:

• Recent TR to PR announcement
• Changes to Express Entry
• What to do if your permit is expiring
• & more

Don’t miss out! Sign up now and invite a friend:

The post Recent immigration changes: Free online information session first appeared on Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.

The post Recent immigration changes: Free online information session appeared first on Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.

RFK JR Lies Us Americans Die.

The Green Economy Networks podcast Class & Climate is back, with new host Em Thompson.

On this eighth episode of Class & Climate: Perspectives on a Green Economy,  Em Thompson sits down with Martin Empson to reveal how COPs (Conferences of Parties) have bureaucratized climate organizing.

Martin Empson is a climate activist from the UK and the editor and a contributor to System Change not Climate Change, a book of essays from socialists around the world on the nature of capitalism’s ecological crisis and the radical response that is needed.

Class & Climate is a podcast series from Perspectives Journal and the Green Economy Network that maps how climate action can deliver jobs and long-term affordability for workers — while debunking myths that these goals are a zero-sum trade-off with a clean environment.

Boycott The Bezos Met Gala at the crown of the Chrysler Building, Boycott The Bezos Met Gala with Laughing Bezos Image.

Who Murdered Renee & Alex, Trump Did That!, & Impeach Convict Remove,Trump'sCorruptionBetraysUsAll,& More Science Less Fiction.

The post SINGING THE SONGS OF THE SOIL – with Tilly Gomersall of Cân y Pridd appeared first on Landworkers Alliance.

Diversity Makes America Great.

TORONTO — “Build Canada Strong” is a central mantra of the federal government’s plans to bolster Canada’s economy in a rapidly changing world, with new housing and infrastructure key to Canada’s nation-building efforts. But all this construction poses a problem: the production of building materials can be a huge source of emissions. 

Thankfully, there are solutions that can reduce this downside, at little or no extra cost—while also supporting Canadian industry, as a new report, Build Canada Clean, from Clean Energy Canada reveals.

The report, which features case studies from across the country—from apartment buildings to roads to wastewater facilities—finds that lower-carbon construction materials can generally be procured at no or marginal cost increases, while simple design changes can further minimize cost and emissions. One case study of an apartment building in Quebec, for example, found that design changes and lower-carbon materials could cut construction emissions by 30% while reducing overall construction costs by 12%.

What’s more, Canadian manufacturers are already producing many of the lower-carbon alternatives required, such as steel produced in electric arc furnaces, concrete that uses industrial byproducts to replace cement, and reclaimed asphalt. Supporting this kind of construction presents a unique opportunity for Canada to build its market at a time when our key trade partners, like the EU, are actively seeking cleaner products.

Governments are key to ensuring we seize this opportunity. They are big builders and by requiring lower-carbon materials and design—an approach known as “Buy Clean”—they can create a strong demand signal. The federal government has already taken some steps to reduce carbon in its building projects, and has also recently introduced a “Buy Canadian” approach. Expanded Buy Clean policies sitting alongside Buy Canadian ones would allow us to support domestic producers while also incentivizing our industries to become more climate-competitive in a global trade environment increasingly prioritizing or requiring cleaner materials.

Beyond “Buy Clean,” some simple regulatory changes can make a big difference, as the report elaborates. There are many different codes and standards for infrastructure construction across the country, some of which needlessly restrict the use of lower-carbon materials or design practices. Where flexibility does exist to use more recycled or other lower-carbon materials, it isn’t always made use of—something that could be addressed with better procurement guidance.

As we build more projects, we have the opportunity to avoid locking in huge amounts of damaging emissions—all while cutting costs for developers and taxpayers alike. So while we “Build Canada Strong,” let’s also “Build Canada Clean.”

KEY FACTS

• The construction sector contributed over 8% of Canada’s total emissions in 2018. And that was at less than a third of the housing starts Canada actually needs. 
• For efficient, electrified buildings, the emissions associated with material production and construction, known as “embodied carbon,” usually accounts for a larger portion of lifecycle carbon emissions than those from operation, like heating and cooling.
• The global low-carbon construction materials market is expected to be worth US$579 billion in 2032, with trade partners, including the EU, increasingly looking for clean materials. 
• Through nine roadway case studies, we show that lifetime emissions reductions of between 17% and 31% could be achieved while reducing the per-metre cost of the roads by up to 16%. 
• A study of an apartment building in Quebec found that making just two changes to the building design and replacing materials with lower-carbon equivalents would reduce embodied emissions by 30% while reducing overall construction costs by 12%.
• Choosing lower-carbon material options for water infrastructure can reduce the emissions of stormwater and wastewater infrastructure with marginal cost impacts.

RESOURCES

Report | Build Canada Clean

The post Amid Canada’s massive housing and infrastructure build-out, a few changes can limit climate impact at little or no cost: report appeared first on Clean Energy Canada.

It’s been over half a year since Hurricane Melissa, the most powerful hurricane to ever hit Jamaica, tore a path of destruction through the island. Many migrant farmworker families remain homeless and a number of communities still don’t have electricity restored, relying on expensive generators and battery-operated devices for power. The agricultural areas of the island got hit the hardest, impacting access to fresh food and driving up grocery prices.

What Your Donation Will Support

100% of all contributions go directly to farmworker families’ immediate needs:

• Emergency food and clean water supplies
• Critical medications and medical supplies
• Temporary shelter and urgent roof repairs
• Flood recovery and debris removal
• Other immediate costs as needed

About This Effort

Migrant Workers Alliance for Change is providing direct support to Jamaican farm worker members impacted by the devastating storm. Many of these workers split their time between Canada and Jamaica as part of seasonal agricultural programs, and they’re facing this crisis both in Canada and now in Jamaica.

Your contribution goes directly to migrant workers and their families who need it most. No administrative fees, just direct relief.

How to Help

Donate Now

Suggested amounts:

• $100 – Provides emergency food supplies for one family
• $300 – Funds urgent roof repairs to prevent further damage
• $500 – Comprehensive support including food, clothing, medicine, and shelter repairs
• Other amount – Every dollar makes a difference

Why This Matters

These are the same workers who help feed Canada. When disaster strikes their communities, they deserve our support. The combination of destroyed infrastructure and disrupted income means families are struggling to meet basic needs.

Share this campaign: Help us reach more supporters by sharing on social media

The post Help Jamaican Farm Workers Recover from Devastating Hurricane first appeared on Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.

The post Help Jamaican Farm Workers Recover from Devastating Hurricane appeared first on Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.

VICTORIA — Evan Pivnick, associate director of public affairs at Clean Energy Canada, released a statement in response to BC Hydro’s release of its new energy efficiency strategy, Power Smart 2.0:

“BC Hydro has a strong history of using energy conservation to reduce electricity use in B.C. as well as prepare for the growing demands for electrification. However, while this new plan makes meaningful investments and continues in this tradition, it falls short of fully harnessing the opportunities that household technologies have to save families—and BC Hydro—money.

“A recent study from Dunsky Energy + Climate Advisors found that distributed energy resources (electric technologies that can generate or store energy or control demand) could meet more than 10% of B.C.’s total peak electricity demand by 2040, saving ratepayers money by avoiding more expensive infrastructure build-outs while improving grid reliability. 

“As such, it’s good to see support for consumers to adopt clean solutions, from energy-efficient appliances to battery storage, that help realize this potential. But this is only a first step. B.C needs to follow the lead of other jurisdictions across North America that are going much further in advancing changes to their electricity systems and standing up new programs that can help households save on their energy bills.

“Beyond energy-efficient appliances, new technologies have unlocked much greater opportunities to save, like managed EV charging, smart panels, controllable water heaters, and household batteries that work in harmony with the grid. The new plan lays out a vision for using these technologies, but more should be done to encourage British Columbians to make the switch. The Dunsky study found that greater financial incentives, like rebates, and other ambitious installation programs, were key to realizing the full potential of distributed energy resources for reducing both household bills and costs to the utility. 

“What’s more, heat pumps will be vital to reducing power demand, offering the ability to displace power-hungry baseboard heating and air conditioning. With another hot summer around the corner, the provincial government should introduce regulations that ensure new permanent air conditioning systems are heat pumps. Our analysis shows that a province-wide switch to heat pumps could save a cumulative $675 million in annual energy bills: that translates to average savings of approximately $170 a year for those currently using natural gas with A/C.

“Already, B.C. has some of the lowest electricity rates in North America, making the switch to EVs and household electrification especially enticing for British Columbians. And while today represents a positive step, at a moment when the cost of living is top of mind for most families, there is much more we could be doing to lower electricity bills across the province—while simultaneously building a smarter, more cost-efficient electricity system.” 

The post Response: New BC Hydro plan maintains key programs, but the province and utility are leaving larger household savings on the table appeared first on Clean Energy Canada.

By Gracia Ramirez and David Vergara-Moreno

This photo essay looks at Isla Grande, the largest coralline island of Nuestra Señora del Rosario Archipelago, which is part of the Parque Nacional Natural Corales del Rosario y de San Bernardo, in the Colombian Caribbean. The essay considers the environmental beauty and the violence that underpin Black lives on the island, and the ways in which they have resisted as a community to go forward into the future.

DOCKS

La Bodeguita dock in Cartagena de Indias is the tourists’ gateway to the promised paradise of white-sand beaches and turquoise waters of the Rosario Islands. The docks and other hard boundaries of the port witness an encounter with the polluted waters around Cartagena. This port is responsible for 70% of the country’s maritime trade and has been categorized as the third most efficient port in the world.

Although rarely mentioned by the early chroniclers, it is reasonable to infer that —prior to and during the early centuries of colonization— Cartagena’s Bay was a lush mosaic of abundant coral reefs, dense mangrove forests, and towering tropical dry forest trees.

Today, however, the bay reveals another face: murky waters, laden with sediments, polluted by centuries of maritime traffic, urban and industrial waste, and dredging works that have radically transformed its ecological cycles.

While the departure of tourism to the islands is mainly managed from La Bodeguita dock, the journey out of the bay and into the sea allows visual contact with other docks along the coast.

This is a layered cartography of memories, economies, and spatial regimes: tourist piers, logistical cargo yards, shipyards, naval bases, and private marinas. The bay is not merely a coastal landscape, it is a friction zone between multiple socio-economic and political logics: tourism, military operations, goods trade, and the communities whose ways of life are subordinated to those regimes. This is a liquid frontier: a place of circulation, exclusion, and resistance.

LOGISTICS

The archipelago of the Rosario Islands is connected not just to the Atlantic but also to another body of water, the Canal del Dique. The Spanish colonizers began its construction in the 16th century using enslaved Indigenous and African labor, with the goal of linking the Magdalena River —the nation’s main fluvial artery— with the Cartagena Bay.

Map of the Northern part of Bolívar Department, Republic of Colombia 1886-1903 (Edward Stanford, 1899, cropped). It is possible to see Cartagena de Indias, Barú island below, the Canal del Dique and the Calamar-Cartagena Railway (red line). Source: Mapoteca Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia.

Since then, the Canal has played a strategic role in both domestic and foreign transport and trade, evolving from wooden barges in the 17th century, to the advent of steam-powered boats in the 19th century.

For over three centuries, the Magdalena River and its canal were the only connection between Colombia’s Caribbean and its Andean provinces, linking a nation divided by three mountain ranges and a wide variety of thermal floors and ecosystems. Socially, the Canal became the route to freedom, as many runaway enslaved people (cimarrones) followed its waterways and founded Maroons communities (palenques) in the surrounding wetlands and hills during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Until the late 19th century, the Dique was merely a narrow, shallow ditch less than 15 meters wide, which was impossible to navigate during droughts. But throughout the 20th century, the canal was radically transformed. U.S. companies carried out major dredging and straightening projects that widened it to 100 meters, reducing its original 270 meanders to only 55, dramatically increasing its flow and sediment loads, altering the ecological balance of Cartagena and Barbacoas Bays and surroundings.

Despite these efforts, the canal became almost obsolete after the construction of two major highways that linked the Caribbean to the Andean region of the country in the 1950s. However, around the same time, Colombia’s largest oil refineries were established in Barrancabermeja and Cartagena.

As human geographer Austin Zeiderman argues, such infrastructures articulate geo-racial regimes and hierarchies of white and black, urban and peripheral, central and insular, that become sedimented into both Cartagenian landscapes and bodies.

MATERIALS

Excavations on the ground reveal the coralline stone, compacted after centuries of pressure and erosion. Isla Grande is a coral reef fossil itself. Coral reefs are vital ecosystems: they protect shorelines from storms, sustain local fisheries, support biodiversity, and form the ecological backbone of a tourism industry that underpins much of Cartagena city’s economy. Yet their very skeletons have been quarried and consumed. Entire islets were built for elite leisure by filling the sea with broken coral, the moneyed class literally manufacturing new islands from the bones of the reef.

Coral grounds. Photo by Gracia Ramirez.

The Canal del Dique continues this slow and silent violence. Each rainy season, it expels plumes of sediment-laden freshwater that spread across several square kilometers, covering turquoise waters with brown stains. These pulses reduce salinity and block light, suffocating photosynthesis and interrupting coral reproduction cycles that coincide with the wet months. In fact, the deposits of sediment have turned the formerly island of Barú into a peninsula, following the interventions of USA engineering companies in the twentieth century.

The history of Isla Grande is intimately linked to that of Barú. Around the time of the Spanish colonization, these territories were called Bahaire after the indigenous chief that ruled them before the conquest. The Spaniards used enslaved labour to excavate quarries in Barú and Tierra Bomba, extracting coralline stone used in Cartagena’s colonial architecture. They also built kilns to burn coral stone, producing mortar for the city’s fortifications and lime for its characteristics whitewashed walls.

In the eighteenth century, the nearby island of Barú became a strategic point for cimarrones and Dutch and English smugglers who used enslaved workforce for the logistics related to trafficking. Some enslaved workers, in turn, were secretly saving money to buy their freedom to their masters –mostly Spaniards–.

Over the nineteenth century, with the crisis of slavery and the independence wars, Barú became an instance of a horizontal community formed mostly by cimarrones, freed slaves and mestizos. Their economy was based on subsistence agriculture, fishing, bartering and mutual support.

Wooden house. Photo by Gracia Ramirez.

On June 7 of 1850, groups of neighbours from Barú bought an old hacienda to its then owner for 1.200 COP and finished their payment on May 19, 1851. Just two days later, the abolition of slavery was signed in the country. Thus, Barú become a Black community with collective property before the establishment of the modern-day Republican State. Coconut became the main crop and some families from Barú moved to the neighbouring Rosario Islands to extend the plantations.

Islander dwellings echo this layered material history. Traditional houses rely on wooden boards and palm-thatched roofs, fragile yet renewable. Modern constructions import thin red bricks and cement from the mainland, materials that, as they degrade, seep into the calcareous soil and alter its composition.

Seashell. Photo by David Vergara.

Cement itself is ambivalent: it raises luxury resorts that displace the community, yet it also fortifies schools and homes through collective labor. In their very texture, these materials tell two stories at once—of extraction and restriction, but also of resilience and re-creation.

ORIKA

Right at the centre of Isla Grande is now the town of Orika. An old rubber tree guards the town’s square and provides shelter from the sun. The Cultural House is the gathering place where local council meetings (juntas) take place. The story of Orika is one of socioecological struggle and resistance.

Over the twentieth century, Barú started supplying agricultural goods to the growing Cartagena population, shifting toward intensive production of coconut, fish and mangrove charcoal. Up until the 1950s –when roads were constructed to connect Cartagena with other inland cities– the Rosario islands and Barú were the main providers of food sold at the city’s Getsemani market.

Rubber Tree in Benkos Biohó Square, Orika, Isla Grande, PNNCRSB. Photo by Gracia Ramirez.

The first tourists were members of Cartagena’s urban elite. They arrived at the Rosario Islands between the 1930s and 1940s and started building recreational homes. While tourist infrastructure was consolidating around Cartagena and the islands, a beetle plague destroyed the coconut plantations in the 1950s.

In order to “protect” the islands, the government declared them National Natural Park in 1977, but the National Park mainly considered the sea, not the ground islands themselves. The decree sought to “conserve flora, fauna, landscapes, and historical and cultural manifestations with scientific, recreative or aesthetic goals”, but omitted any mention of the Blacks communities that already inhabited the territory (Rosario Islands, Barú, Santa Ana and Ararca).

New prohibitionist environmental policies, coupled with the rise of tourism, relegated local families to the hinterlands of Isla Grande and to the backs of hotels and resorts, where they worked as subordinate labor.

In the 1980s, the government declared the Rosario Islands to be State-owned vacant lands, unrecognising the community as a “organized population” for the use of land but allowing other economical uses such as tourism and recreation. This enabled a wave of land grabs by private investors that further marginalised the community. However, the 1991 Constitution and the ensuing law 70 of Black Communities of 1993 provided legal tools to transform the memory of dispossession into a fight for recognition.

The community used environmental education programs to strengthen social organizations and articulate their historical demands into a juridical argument. In 2001, after years of legal limbo, the Colombian state began the land restitution process.

Fearing expulsion from the territory, the families decided to establish a new village in the center of Isla Grande: Orika, in honor of the daughter of Benkos Biohó, a cimarron leader and hero of San Basilio de Palenque, the first Black free village in the Americas (1714). In just two months, the community cleared the land and built their houses, a gesture of dignity and memory, affirming their right to exist as a Black community in their ancestral territory. After collecting evidence and going through endless administrative hurdles, in 2014 the Constitutional Court recognized the collective deed title for the Black community of Isla Grande, becoming the only community having achieved that so far within the national park.

UNBOUNDEDNESS

Sunset horizons and native trees may meet the tourist’s gaze as landscapes ready for easy consumption— postcards of “untouched nature.” Yet the town of Orika unsettles this commodified view. Its soundscape resists containment: sound systems (picós) blasting loud music reverberates from the main square, echoing through every coralline ground cavity, vibrating as much in bodies as in stone.

In language, too, survival leaves its trace. The word Dios circulates as the name of the Christian god, but within it hides the untranslatable presence of African spirits, invoked yet unconfined by letters. This is not syncretism as tourist folklore, but the deep mimicry of African cosmologies that persisted beneath colonial surveillance.

In the Colombian Caribbean, enslaved Africans lived not in the vast monocultures of the sugar plantations of Brazil or Cuba, but in smaller, multiethnic communities tied to haciendas, cattle ranches, mines, and urban centres under the close watch of the Inquisition tribunal of Cartagena.

Cut off early from eighteen century renewed arrivals of African captives, these populations developed distinctive spiritual practices, an instance of what Sylvia Wynter called “black indigenization”— that in intertwining African, indigenous, and Christian forms, found ways of being human when colonial hegemony ruled otherwise.

Orika inhabits this layered spiritual geography. It is not simply a village bounded by its streets, but a porous space where music, light, and faith exceed enclosure—an unlimited terrain of survival, memory, and reinvention.

ROOTS

Mangrove forests form the living roots of Isla Grande. They are among the most resilient trees on Earth—thriving where others would perish. Their bodies adapt to saline soils and shifting tides, standing firm where land is not yet land.

Propagules germinate while still attached to the parent tree, dropping into the water as living seedlings that drift across lagoons and channels, anchoring themselves wherever conditions allow. Each root is a promise of survival, each forest a nursery that shelters fish, crabs, and birds in any of their stages of life. Mangroves breathe through aerial roots that rise above the mud, searching for oxygen in conditions too harsh for most species. Always green, they embody endurance.

The mangrove is never alone. Its leaves, roots, and fallen branches decompose into nutrients that sustain fish and crustaceans; its tangled roots interlace with seagrass meadows and coral reefs in a single inter-ecosystemic web. Together, these systems form the ecological triangle of the Caribbean coast: corals buffer waves, seagrasses filter and stabilize sediments, mangroves hold the shoreline while feeding both sea and land. In Isla Grande, these roots not only prevent erosion but also connect the island’s fragile ecology to Cartagena’s coastal mangroves, weaving life across waters.

For Orika, the mangrove is more than ecology—it is a metaphor for community. Like the red mangrove that elevates itself above its roots, the people rise from centuries of exclusion, rooted yet expansive. Their history drifts like propagules, carried by tides of resistance until finding ground to grow.

The mangrove teaches resilience, interconnection, and renewal: lessons for a community that continues to defend its territory while imagining futures where culture and ecology flourish together. Roots here are not only in soil, but in memory and struggle, anchoring Orika to both the Caribbean Sea and to its own unfolding horizon.

DRIFT

There are no roads in Isla Grande, only sandy footpaths weaving through the tropical dry forest and the mangroves. No motorized vehicles circulate within the island, people walk or ride bicycles, while boats and yachts, arriving from Cartagena, leave trails of oil shimmering over the turquoise surface.

Caribbean Sea water around Isla Grande. Photo by Gracia Ramirez.

Plastic bottles and rubbish drift ashore, carried by tides that remember more than the islanders would wish. Drift here is both material and historical: traces of empire, slavery, tourism, and extraction wash against the reef, staining waters once clear. The islands themselves are a coral body in constant erosion and recomposition, a living drift of stone, memory, and survival.

Plastic and vegetable waste. Photo by Gracia Ramirez.

Yet drift is not only decline—it is also possibility. Orika, born out of dispossession, has become a node of reorganization and creativity. The community council anchors collective life, negotiating with agencies and hotels that now contribute resources for communal projects.

Every weekend, and on national and local holidays, happiness brightens the whole town in shared spaces like the main Plaza (Benkos Biohó Plaza), the picós, the cockpits, houses and the Casa Cultural. A new foundation works with children and youth, teaching them to stage traditional dances and music, reweaving ancestral ties to the palenques and to African rhythms long suppressed.

Ecotourism initiatives, led by younger generations, form alliances with older community projects, offering alternatives that value culture and ecology together.

Buildings around Benkos Biohó Square in Orika. Photo by Gracia Ramirez.

Drift, then, also gestures toward a different horizon. In Orika, the tides carry not only the weight of history but also the seeds of futures yet to come. The Rosario Islands are a historical drift still evolving—where coral, memory, and community recombine into new forms of life.

 

The post Notes on Isla Grande: Figurations of Environmental Violence and Beauty in the Colombian Caribbean appeared first on Undisciplined Environments.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has won deserved praise for standing firm against the Trump administration’s threats and imposition of tariffs. But political credit is only as good as the strategy that follows, and Canada now faces a genuine opportunity to do something more ambitious than weather the storm.

Carney’s approach has sparked a broader conversation among the world’s ‘middle powers’ – countries with significant economies like Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the U.K. that share a commitment to rules-based trade but sit outside the U.S.-China superpower axis. These are countries that are actively looking for a different economic path forward, one that doesn’t simply mirror the nationalism coming out of Washington and Beijing.

Keep reading this post, co-authored by Ryan Mulholland and Ollie Sheldrick, in Policy Options.

The post A Canada-led clean trade pact would show that middle powers mean business appeared first on Clean Energy Canada.

By Simon Pirani Russia’s political prisoners are “outcasts in their own land,” Sergei Dudchenko, a biker tortured and framed by the security services, told his trial judges this month before being handed a seven-year prison sentence. Those arrested for opposing the war on Ukraine had “fewer rights than a stray dog, and on top of […]

TORONTO — Rachel Doran, executive director at Clean Energy Canada, made the following statement in response to the Implementation Agreement for the Canada-Alberta MOU:

“The long-awaited agreement between the federal government and Alberta was promised to strengthen Canada’s competitiveness and the effectiveness of key climate policies—but is, in reality, a step backward. This is true not only when it comes to reducing climate-change-causing emissions from big industry, but also on the aspiration laid out yesterday to double Canada’s electricity grid as the economic backbone of our future.

“Indeed, the federal government’s goal of a net-zero grid by 2050 may be fundamentally at odds with the details in this MOU. Alberta, once the Canadian capital of renewable investment, has not made any concrete commitments to unleash its once-booming free market. It has, conversely, secured a commitment that natural gas generation will be expanded and is likewise not dropping its legal challenge against Canada’s Clean Electricity Regulations. Furthermore, the federal government’s suggestion that the regulations will be ‘in abeyance’ until after all court cases have been finalized—a process that may take years—will create significant investment uncertainty. 

“Alberta policy changes have already undermined tens of billions in renewable energy investments in the province. Despite leading the country in wind, solar, and energy storage deployment early this decade, private investment in renewables has fallen by nearly 99% since 2023 due to changes introduced by Premier Smith’s government. 

“On the Clean Electricity Regulations, Alberta has agreed only to negotiate an equivalency agreement if courts uphold the policy’s constitutionality. If Alberta does not negotiate in good faith and the agreement has no teeth to prevent future debate, the result could be a provincial race to the bottom, leaving Canada’s vision of a competitive, unified electricity grid back where it started: fragmented and increasingly failing to realize its potential.

“And while the government’s press release and implementation agreement suggest that Alberta will make changes to its Restructured Energy Market to facilitate more investment in renewables, the MOU makes a far weaker commitment: that changes will only be considered if warranted.

“None of this adds up to meeting the vision laid out by the federal government only yesterday to double Canada’s relatively clean electricity grid as a way to electrify industry and Canadian homes: an essential play both for the future of our economy and household affordability.

“The agreement similarly falls short in delivering on effective industrial carbon pricing, which modelling by the Canadian Climate Institute found to be doing the most heavy lifting toward our climate targets. While changes to Canada’s industrial carbon pricing system were meant to strengthen the actual impact of the policy, if not the optics of it, the dials here are turned too low to result in the better outcome that was promised. 

“The agreement makes an attempt to ensure the real carbon price that companies pay comes closer to the so-called ‘headline price,’ and yes, setting a carbon price floor is a good idea, as is signing contracts for difference to ensure governments stick to their promises for an effective carbon price. But when it comes to the actual numbers needed to empower these changes, the agreement offers too little, too late. 

“An industrial carbon price serves as an incentive for companies to invest in cleaner methods of production. If increasing this price to meaningful levels is pushed down the road, then so will be any related investments. Industrial carbon pricing is tied to over 70 major projects worth more than $57 billion. And this does not just affect Alberta. By striking this deal with one province, the federal government has potentially opened the floodgates for a lowering of ambition across all provincial industrial carbon pricing systems, affecting the incentives for steel mills in Ontario, potash mines in Saskatchewan, and cement plants in B.C.

“Canada is falling out of step with key trading partners in the transition to a global clean energy economy. Whereas the agreement aims for an effective carbon price of $130 by 2040, the European Union carbon price is close to that amount already today. And while the agreement sets tightening rates of 2% or lower, the EU has set rates of over 4% every year. 

“The EU knows where it needs to go, launching a comprehensive set of new measures—including electricity tax cuts and investments in renewables—that cement clean energy as the path to energy security. EV sales are unsurprisingly skyrocketing globally, including here in Canada: March EV sales were up 75% year-over-year. 

“More than 40 countries are currently rationing energy, and it’s no wonder. As International Energy Agency head Fatih Birol put it, ‘the damage is done…. There will be a significant boost to renewables and nuclear power and a further shift towards a more electrified future,’ adding that ‘this will cut into the main markets for oil.’

“In other words, the same forces driving up oil prices today are destroying the fossil fuel demand of tomorrow. This government has suggested that it’s making certain short-term concessions while keeping its eye firmly on building for the future. But the reality is that, once again, Alberta is making promises while the federal government is making commitments. Canadians need policies that strike a better balance.”

The post Response: Lopsided MOU undermines yesterday’s clean electricity strategy appeared first on Clean Energy Canada.

Like The Price Of Gas? Trump Did That!

VANCOUVER — Joanna Kyriazis, director of policy and strategy at Clean Energy Canada, made the following statement in response to newly released federal vehicle sales data for March:

“We knew March would be an important month for EV sales: it was the first month that fully captured the return of the $5,000 federal EV rebate in February, and it was the month the war in Iran began driving up gas prices. 

“The anecdotal evidence that Canadians were increasingly looking to go electric was strong, but today’s numbers are unmistakable: Canada saw a 75% increase in EV sales in March compared to the same month last year.

“Regionally, this was a phenomenal 136% year-over-year increase in Quebec, a 53% increase in B.C. and the territories, and a 40% increase in Ontario.

“That amounts to 12.2% of new vehicle sales in Canada (compared to 6.5% last March), but provincial numbers tell another story. Roughly a quarter of British Columbians and those in the territories (23.5%) purchased an EV in March, 21.8% of Quebecers did likewise, while Canada’s largest province, Ontario, continues to catch up with EV sales at 8%.

“While price matters, clarity is similarly important. Last year’s EV rebate pause caused many would-be EV buyers to wait on the sidelines, artificially deflating normal EV demand. That is now being rectified.

“To build on this momentum, Canada must ensure that it’s not only providing consumers with rebates but also access to affordable models. The introduction of a limited number of Chinese EVs is already having an impact, with Tesla recently significantly dropping the price of its popular Model 3 after shifting production back to Shanghai. Hopefully, new models from Chinese companies will give Canadians even more budget-friendly options and, critically, keep other automakers on their toes. The forthcoming $35,000 import price quota for a sizable percentage of these vehicles can help realize this important goal.

“Likewise, ensuring Canada’s forthcoming tailpipe standards are designed to achieve roughly 75% EV sales by 2035 is the other, massive piece of this puzzle. Like improving competition, the regulation will compel automakers to meet the market with more affordable EVs.

“Affordable EVs exist, and Canadians are hungry for good options that make financial sense in the short term as well as the long term. Recent Clean Energy Canada analysis found that EVs still save typical drivers about $23,000 to $32,000 over 10 years of ownership. But not everyone can afford to save money a few years down the road. Upfront price matters, and where it works, Canadians are ready to hit the accelerator.

“The proof is in the numbers.”

The post 75% EV sales spike in March a strong signal that 2026 will be Canada’s EV comeback year appeared first on Clean Energy Canada.