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This article Inside the longest refugee protest in history was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Agadez, Niger — On any given day, you will find a group of up to 1,000 people, including women, children, the elderly and people with disabilities, standing in the Sahara Desert, eight miles from the nearest town, holding signs that read “We don’t want to stay here,” “Refugees in the desert without protection” and “We don’t feel safe here.” 

Since Sept. 22, 2024, they have maintained a daily sit-in at the humanitarian center where they are being held. At nearly two years, it has become one of the longest continuous refugee-led protests in history — and almost no one knows about it. 

They are refugees, the majority from Sudan, others from Eritrea, Somalia, Ethiopia, Congo and Cameroon. They are among approximately 2,000 people living at the Agadez Humanitarian Center, which is managed jointly by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, and Nigerien authorities. Established in 2017 with funding from the EU, Italy and the UK, Agadez was intended as a “transit point” for refugees awaiting resettlement. 

Instead, according to sources in the camp who wanted to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, refugees are held with limited movement, no asylum processing and no resettlement path. Some have been there for more than eight years. Nigerien authorities have claimed to offer local integration, but refugees report it happens without their consent.

“We’re stuck between a homeland that can’t be returned to and a humanitarian center that can’t be lived in,” the anonymous source said. “We are held in the desert, without the most basic necessities of life. This is our suffering.” 

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The protesters have made their requests clear: resettlement to safe third countries, improved living conditions until then and an end to their “de facto detention.” 

But they are not suffering in silence. They are still standing proudly, despite intimidation, aggression and violence from the Nigerien police and military forces, and indifference and complicity from the agency meant to protect them.

Desert conditions in Agadez are an active threat to survival. Temperatures regularly exceed 105 degrees Fahrenheit, making exposure, dehydration and heat stroke constant risks. Ironically, when the former head of UNHCR in Niger, Emmanuel Gignac, visited the camp, he complained on camera of the heat to refugees and insisted they only talk in the shade. Compounding the heat risks is a lack of medical care, refugees said. And for nearly a year, most have received no food rations. 

Children in the Agadez refugee camp join their parents on the 571th day of protest. (Amir Abdulkrem / @RefugeesNiger)

UNHCR has repeatedly stated the center is “not a detention facility” and residents enjoy freedom of movement, a claim refugees refute. They point to mandatory passes for non-local travel, which are difficult to obtain from the local government, and often refused. Even with them, refugees face obstructions and payment of bribes at checkpoints, said a source.

A Cameroonian woman, Armelle, told InfoMigrants that when she tried to travel beyond the city of Agadez, Nigerien police stopped her. According to a refugee spokesperson, the police told her, “How dare you decide for yourself — you’re a refugee, you need permission.” 

One refugee summed up the situation, “I see no difference between the place I am in and a prison. What matters to me is conveying the truth about what is happening here.” 

The system that traps them

“The peaceful protests in Agadez aren’t an isolated event, but part of a broader refugee-led movement that has emerged wherever refugees have found themselves trapped in systems of indefinite containment,” said David Yambio, executive director and cofounder of the organization Refugees in Libya, which advocates for migrants and refugees in North Africa and Europe.

Yambio is himself a refugee from South Sudan. Born in 1997, he fled war as an infant with his family, and endured forced recruitment as a child soldier. Later he survived detention, torture and enslavement under notorious Libyan police chief Osama Almasri Najim in Tripoli. 

Through Refugees in Libya, Yambio has built a network that connects refugees across Libya, Tunisia, Niger and other North African countries who say UNHCR has failed to protect them. Together, they are documenting abuses and sustaining pressure on UNHCR. The organization is working with deported leaders of the Agadez protests to fight for those still trapped in the camp. 

“No community chooses to sustain a peaceful protest for more than 670 days unless every other avenue has failed,” Yambio said. 

Agadez is part of the EU’s strategy to externalize its borders and stop people fleeing wars from reaching Europe. “European borders no longer begin at the Mediterranean, they stretch deep into Libya, Tunisia, Niger and beyond,” Yambio said. 

The majority in Agadez are refugees of the war that erupted in Sudan in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a conflict that has killed tens of thousands, displaced more than 15 million and unleashed ethnic violence in Darfur that the UN describes as bearing “the hallmarks of genocide.” Others have fled conflicts in Chad, Ethiopia, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, where political violence, insurgencies and instability are fueled by past colonial legacies and modern-day exploitation. 

Refugees do not set out for Europe lightly. Many try to find a home in neighboring countries first, but when that process is frustrated, as in Niger, with no work, no schooling for their children and no hope of a safe return to their home country, they move on. Europe is not their first choice; it is their last.

The Mediterranean nations of Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Libya are the main avenues for refugees trying to seek safety in Europe. But authorities in those countries do the bidding of European governments by violently expelling refugees fleeing so they can’t reach Europe. In Libya and Tunisia, the EU funds “coast guard” operations not to save refugees, but to intercept migrant boats at sea and return them forcibly, often to Libya — where they face detention, extortion, torture and slavery. 

Other refugees intercepted in North Africa and the Mediterranean are dumped in the desert, abandoned near borders or sent to Mauritania, Niger and the Aegean Islands, where the EU funds mass detention centers. Algeria alone has deported over 80,000 people to Niger since 2024. 

These mass expulsions are not isolated acts but part of a coordinated “chain deportation corridor” in which European money, channeled through international organizations, finances a system of containment. In the Aegean Sea, EU-backed “Closed Controlled Access Centers” confine asylum seekers in detention for months under constant surveillance. In Mauritania, the EU and Spain fund migrant detention facilities known for inhumane treatment. The EU presents these centers as humanitarian, but the effect is to warehouse people indefinitely far from European courts, accountability or empathy. 

Agadez, likewise, operates as a legalized black hole: Refugees are held in a desert camp, their asylum claims are unprocessed, and while protesting peacefully against their detainment, their freedom of speech is criminalized by the authorities detaining them there — all paid for by European taxpayers.

If they try to travel past the nearest city, they are forcibly returned, often at gunpoint. One refugee explained, “We’re not migrants — we’re refugees fleeing war. But they treat us like criminals, as they don’t want us to reach Europe.” 

Inside the movement

The peaceful protests aren’t spontaneous. Refugees formed an elected National Refugee Committee shortly after the protests began in September 2024 to coordinate daily sit-ins, initiate hunger strikes, create petitions and write open letters. They use social media, particularly X, to document their plight, sharing photos and videos that reach the outside world. 

Nigerien authorities refuse to negotiate with the committee and warn refugees not to participate in it, a refugee spokesperson told me. “[The government] told us if refugees are part of a representative body, you won’t obtain your rights,” he said.

The sit-in has continued every day since it began on Sept. 22, 2024, through desert heat as high as 112 degrees Fahrenheit, punitive food ration cuts, arrests, police brutality, harassment and illegal deportations. 

Children participate, holding signs that count the protest days, starting at day one. The protesters chant a single slogan: “We don’t feel safe; we don’t want to stay here.”

Children make up at least 15 percent of the approximately 2,000 refugees held at the UN-run camp in Agadez, Niger. (Amir Abdulkrem / @RefugeesNiger)

The movement has faced repeated crackdowns. In January 2020, after refugees set up a protest camp outside UNHCR headquarters in the city of Agadez, security forces arrested more than 330 people. According to refugees who were present, security forces beat protesters, including children and pregnant women. The arrestees were locked in cramped unsanitary conditions without food for two days, sources say, and were only released after 48 days.

The sit-in that began in 2024 was met with escalating repression. In February 2025, UNHCR suspended food aid at the request of Nigerien authorities seeking to quell the protests. 

The following month, Niger’s National Eligibility Commission for Refugee Status, or CNE, issued a statement criminalizing all refugee committees, which read in part, “There is fundamentally no right to resettlement. … Therefore, organizing and participating in demonstrations of any kind within the Agadez Humanitarian Center to demand resettlement is intolerable.”

Eight protest leaders were then arrested, beaten and held for 10 days. 

“I am still suffering the consequences of that arrest, physically and psychologically,” one of the leaders said. “I got a broken finger on my right hand, severe headaches and have constant pain.” 

At a meeting where UNHCR was present, CNE revoked the protesters’ legal refugee status, and they were then illegally deported to Chad.

In August 2025, six more leaders were arrested in a raid involving 15 military vehicles, and were also deported to Chad. Their whereabouts remain unknown. The Nigerien military came to the detention facility, rounded people up and, as captured on film, threw one man headfirst into the back of a pickup truck, hands tied behind his back, and drove away with him. He has not been heard from since.

Mary Lawlor, the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders, told The New Humanitarian that these arrests “may constitute enforced disappearances, and a grave violation of Niger’s obligations under human rights law.” 

“All six of those arrested were part of the committee that has been peacefully organizing in defense of the rights of refugees in Agadez,” she said. “I do consider them human rights defenders.”

Reached for comment, UNHCR said it learned of both sets of arrests after the fact, although sources in the camp say that UNHCR staff witnessed and did not intervene in the March 2025 arrests and beatings.

A UNHCR spokesperson said the agency “met with” Nigerien authorities after both arrests to “express its concerns and advocate for international protection standards.” At the deportation hearing, UNHCR said it provided “technical guidance” that “under international law … revocation [of refugee status] must be based on individualized assessments and must not be used as a punitive response to peaceful protest or collective action” and “any alleged violation of national laws and regulations should be addressed through the ordinary justice system.” 

The agency did not answer why it failed to prevent the deportations, despite the freedom of expression and speech rights ordained by the founding documents of the United Nations, and despite the agency’s international mandate to supervise how states implement refugee law.

Yambio said that retaliation against refugees who speak out isn’t isolated to Niger: “Across Libya, Tunisia and Niger, refugee leaders are increasingly labeled as troublemakers or threats to UNHCR rather than recognized as legitimate representatives.”

Complicit, negligent or incompetent?

UNHCR has issued multiple statements defending its operations. In January 2025, it said: “While we fully respect their right to peacefully protest and acknowledge the difficulties they face in a Agadez’s arid conditions, we urge the group to engage with us in a constructive manner and reconsider the assistance and local opportunities that have been made available.” Yet peaceful protesters have been arrested, beaten and deported on UNHCR’s watch. 

The agency acknowledged it “didn’t think [pausing food vouchers] was a good solution” but implemented it anyway. When pressed, UNHCR said in an email that it had “expressed deep concern” about its own suspension of food rations. The agency resumed food rations in summer 2025, but limited them to just 270 people it deems “most vulnerable.”

“UNHCR’s role is very weak, they treat us without humanity,” a Sudanese man held in the camp for more than seven years told me. 

Protesters at Agadez refugee center are demanding resettlement, improved living conditions and freedom of movement. (Amir Abdulkrem / @RefugeesNiger)

UNHCR did not respond when asked why it has consistently failed to prevent violent crackdowns in the camps it operates, despite its legal mandate to protect refugees. 

On May, 25 2022, a 27-year-old man, Musab Muhammad, was shot dead at the center’s children’s school. Authorities tried to force his widow to sign a false death certificate claiming he was killed by a stone, but she refused. UNHCR supported the government’s claim that he had not been shot. But multiple witnesses confirmed the details of the incident — that security forces shot him, unarmed. “We refugees heard shooting, officers were firing tear gas and live bullets, they killed our brother in cold blood,” one man in the camp said. 

Reached for comment about Muhammad’s death, a UNHCR spokesperson said that “UNHCR deeply regrets the loss of life and the suffering” and “as a general principle … condemns the use of excessive force against refugees.” The spokesperson said that UNHCR provided Muhammad’s family with burial costs and “psychosocial support and counselling,” but “does not have the authority to conduct criminal investigations of use of force by Nigerien authorities.”

According to sources in the camp, medical care is also substandard. A health clinic nine miles  away provides only about 10 percent of promised services, detainees said. They said that they also lack access to translators or ambulance service from the camp to the clinic. 

A spokesperson for the National Refugee Committee says eight residents in total have died since 2024 of preventable causes, including hemorrhage and anemia. Their families granted permission to share their names.

On April 30, 2025, Saeed Ahmed, 34, a key organizer in the camp, died of anemia. Sources say that the health center was closed when he arrived, and then doctors failed to treat him. “Saeed was happy with his friends, a fighter,” said Amir, a former detainee. 

The other seven were Makina Wadi, 35, who died of severe postpartum hemorrhage with no doctor attending; Mohamed Abdallah and Abdallah Hashim, both 27, friends who met in detention in Libya before being forcibly deported to Niger; Imad Yousif, 30, described as someone who always demanded his rights and defended the rights of others; Nour Alhuda Musa, 28, a mother of five; Zubeida Abdelgabar, 33, a widow and mother of one; and Zahra Dawood, 33, a mother of three.

Asked for comment, UNHCR maintained that all cases of illness receive medical follow-up and that “access to health care is ensured through a protocol with the Agadez Commune Sanitary District. … The health and well-being of asylum-seekers and refugees remain our priority, and any loss of life is deeply regrettable.” 

The colonial continuum

Many observers note a disparity between the treatment of people fleeing wars in Africa and that of Ukrainian asylum-seekers. The fact that “some refugees are afforded full protection and rights, and others are not, demonstrates what many refugees experience as colonial continuity and segregation within the international protection regime,” Yambio said. “During displacement of Ukrainian refugees, UNHCR publicly and behind closed doors engaged European institutions, EU member states and the UK to establish exceptional protection mechanisms.” So why isn’t UNHCR doing the same for brown and Black refugees in Africa? 

The situation in Agadez can’t be understood in isolation. Refugees are fleeing wars fueled by the very forces that extract Africa’s resources and keep people trapped. The roots of modern tensions in Sudan lay in the policies implemented by the British colonial administration between 1899-1956, which divided the area along racial lines, privileging Arab-identifying groups in the north, while marginalizing African communities in the south and west, including Darfur. This divide and rule legacy, embedded in post-independence governance has fueled cycles of violence and displacement ever since.

External exploitation of the African continent continues. The United Arab Emirates, or UAE, fuels the Sudanese civil war by arming the RSF — who are accused of committing war crimes and genocide — with weaponry procured from U.S. arms manufacturers. The UAE’s motivations are strategic and economic securing access to Sudan’s gold and regional influence, while millions of Sudanese people are displaced.

This is no accident of history, but a pattern of extraction, destabilization and containment that mirrors colonialism. External powers fuel conflicts and extract Africa’s minerals, while underfunding the facilities built to contain people fleeing the destruction they cause. 

The resettlement crisis is global, but the UN system is failing to respond effectively. In 2025, only 200 resettlement places were allocated for all of Niger, against an assessed need of more than 15,000. None of the 200 went to the refugees in Agadez, according to sources there. 

Reached for comment, UNHCR said that more than 700 refugees had been resettled from the center since 2018, but didn’t dispute refugees’ assertion that CNE is currently failing to process claims. UNHCR told protesters in Agadez, “Less than 1 percent of refugees globally benefit from resettlement, so don’t expect it.” 

Refugees at the UN camp in Agadez, Niger, on their 452nd day of protest. (Amir Abdulkrem / @RefugeesNiger)

UNHCR’s former Special Envoy for the Central and Western Mediterranean Situation Vincent Cochetel confirmed in March 2025 that the UN did not support “a right to resettlement.” 

“There are almost no resettlement opportunities in Niger and priority must be given to Malian and Nigerian refugees,” he wrote on X. 

Asked by Waging Nonviolence about the prospects of resettlement for those held Agadez, UNHCR said, “The final decision always rests with the third country, not with UNHCR.” Effectively, a UN agency is declaring itself a neutered organization, with no power to resettle war refugees.

The spread of containment

Agadez is no anomaly. It has effectively been the pilot for Europe’s new Return Regulation, passed in June 2026, which makes offshore detention an official policy. 

“It’s not simply a humanitarian crisis or just operational failures of UNHCR, but a wider systemic mechanism in which refugees are increasingly contained rather than protected,” Yambio said. 

This extends far beyond Agadez. “UNHCR has repeatedly supported and agreed with governments implementing migration containment policies, embracing the Italy-Albania so-called return centers, the UK-Rwanda deportation deal, and blessed and congratulated Europe on its Return Regulation,” Yambio said. 

UNHCR’s own admissions reveal a confirmed pattern: awareness of abuses and choosing compliance over protection. 

“Resolving the situation in Agadez requires restoring refugee protection as the primary objective of international refugee law,” Yambio said. “It requires UNHCR to recover the independence necessary to confront abusive states. It requires Europe to end policies of externalization.”

Neither the European Union nor the United Kingdom’s ambassador to the UN responded to requests for comment.

“What begins with refugees rarely ends with refugees,” Yambio continued. “The migration containment policies being developed today increasingly shape domestic legal systems tomorrow.” As journalist Neal Ascherson wrote in a 1996 article about the al-Masari affair: “The way a state treats its aliens is the way it would treat its own subjects if it dared.”

In the Sahara Desert, the nonviolent protests will continue, signs will still rise, the refugees still remain standing in the desert. Their words are clear: “We are human beings; we have the right to a decent life. Through pain and hope, we refugees of Agadez, Niger, don’t want to stay here in this desert.”

They are sharing the stories of how they fled wars and genocides and how they’re seeking justice on X at @refugeesniger @RefugeesTunisia and @RefugeesinLibya.

The choice of nonviolence isn’t incidental. In a system designed to render them invisible, protesters have chosen a strategy that forces the world to look. They have chosen to absorb violence without returning it, not as a form of passivity, but as a strategy grounded in their reality. Their discipline in the face of brutality lays bare the moral asymmetry of the system that claims to protect them while imprisoning them.

This article Inside the longest refugee protest in history was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Panel puts spotlight on Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, BLM Director Steve Pearce, and anti-park members of Congress

SANTA FE— Leaders from New Mexico advocacy groups and the Center for Western Priorities called on President Donald Trump, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and former New Mexico congressman and current Bureau of Land Management director Steve Pearce to stop attacking New Mexico’s parks and public lands.

At a live taping of The Landscape podcast, the Center for Western Priorities’ Keep Parks Public campaign highlighted the ongoing threats to American public lands, including the Trump administration’s aggressive attempts to lease public land for oil and gas drilling, funding cuts to national parks and public land management agencies, and efforts to cut the public and Tribes out of public land management.

“New Mexico’s public lands are being used as political pawns,” said Charlotte Overby, vice president of conservation field programs at the Conservation Lands Foundation. “The Trump administration is trying to strip protections from places like Chaco Canyon and national monuments through executive action, while Congress is mandating more lease sales and eliminating hard-fought, collaborative planning processes local people and the public worked hard to achieve. It’s not one attack, it’s a coordinated and systematic attempt to literally remove the public from public lands. Public lands belong to everyone, not to companies or a handful of wealthy individuals who seek to develop and profit off them.”

“Chaco is not a resource to be extracted, it is the origin of our Pueblo world, and this administration keeps treating it like an obstacle instead of a living homeland,” said Keegan King, executive director of the Native Land Institute. “First they came for the buffer zone. Now we’re watching the same pattern repeat across every corner of New Mexico’s public lands, monuments shrunk without our consent, tribal consultation reduced to a formality, decisions made in Washington before our governors ever get a seat at the table. The federal government has a trust responsibility to Tribal Nations, not a courtesy it extends when convenient. Every time these protections are stripped away, the cost isn’t just what’s drilled or logged, it’s the trust between our nations and this government, and that erosion doesn’t show up on anyone’s balance sheet.”

“Public lands are first and foremost ancestral lands of America’s Tribes. The larger threats we are seeing to public lands are threats to Tribal sovereignty, culture, identity, spirituality and subsistence,” said Andrew Black, director of Tribal lands and waters at the National Wildlife Federation. “Right now, energy dominance asks what can we extract from the land for the land is regarded as a commodity belonging to us. However, we must reverse this paradigm to see that we belong to the land as part of a larger interconnected community for what we do to the land, water, air, and wildlife we fundamentally do to ourselves. The challenge before us is not simply to preserve landscapes. It is to preserve right relationships —between people and the land, between generations, and ultimately between humanity and the larger web of life.”

“America’s public lands are under assault, and science itself is under siege. The very core of our national natural treasures and cultural sites and stories are being undermined through policy shifts, lack of public input, and staffing shortages,” said Elaine Leslie, executive council member with the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks. “Redefining what constitutes harm to species at-risk can only result in the demise of animals and their habitats already on the brink from impacts such as climate change, invasive species, resource extraction, and fragmentation. Our nation’s natural and cultural resources and history depend upon our collective voices to protect our public lands now and for generations to come.”

Audio, video, photos, and transcripts from today’s event and previous events will be available in the Keep Parks Public media archive.

The Keep Parks Public campaign is a project of the Center for Western Priorities, which is partnering with local conservation groups to elevate the voices of leading experts on threats to outdoor access, from budget cuts and funding freezes to attempts to sell off public lands entirely.

The Keep Parks Public tour kicked off in July 2025, making stops in Denver, Las Cruces, Tucson, Flagstaff, Moab, Salt Lake City, Grand Junction, and Jackson. This summer, we’re stopping in Santa Fe (7/30), Tucson (8/28), and more locations around the West.

The public is invited to share their thoughts and join the campaign to Keep Parks Public and stop the attacks on America’s public lands.

Top threats to New Mexico’s Public Lands

1. The Chaco Canyon buffer rollback
   The Bureau of Land Management is moving to gut the 10-mile protective buffer around Chaco Culture National Historical Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site sacred to more than 20 Pueblo tribes, implemented under the Biden administration. The Trump administration wants to eliminate the buffer as part of its “Unleashing American Energy” agenda, even though 90% of the surrounding terrain is already leased. BLM’s current proposal offers three options: eliminate the buffer entirely, cut it in half, or leave it intact. The public comment deadline just passed on July 29.Sen. Martin Heinrich and the rest of New Mexico’s congressional delegation have introduced a permanent fix to protect the region and its cultural sites: the Chaco Cultural Heritage Area Protection Act, which would permanently bar new oil and gas leasing on federal lands within 10 miles of Chaco Culture National Historical Park, closing the door the administration is now trying to force back open. It’s currently stalled in Congress, but it’s the only proposal on the table that would take the buffer zone question out of the hands of whoever occupies the White House.
2. Monuments in the crosshairs
   Mark Allison with New Mexico Wild warns that Trump’s decision to reduce Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah could put Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, Rio Grande del Norte, and Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks national monuments at risk. Leaked Interior Department documents have listed those three New Mexico monuments as potential targets for reductions, with Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks specifically named as one of six sites under consideration.
3. Wildland firefighting reorganization
   The administration recently stood up a new U.S. Wildland Fire Service, consolidating firefighting away from individual Interior bureaus, including the Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service, and into one central office, over bipartisan congressional objections. Meanwhile, the Forest Service has already lost about 5,900 people, roughly 16% of its staff, through early retirements, resignations, and buyouts, with proposed 2026 staffing cuts of 30% or more on top of that.
4. Park staffing: a mixed but still bad picture
   DOGE’s “Fork in the Road” email pushed roughly 2,400 NPS employees into early retirement or resignation in January 2025, about 12 percent of the workforce, and then Interior fired around 1,000 more NPS employees that February in what staff called the “Valentine’s Day Massacre.” Total NPS staff losses since then are estimated at 25 percent. Rep. Gabe Vasquez has said staffing at Carlsbad Caverns specifically has declined 20 percent, leaving the park unable to run regular visitation hours or after-school programs. That October, both Carlsbad Caverns and White Sands closed entirely during the 35-day-adjacent federal shutdown, with Rep. Vasquez warning “we’re going to see minimal staffing across our public land system.”

   This June, Vasquez sent Interior Secretary Burgum a letter demanding an explanation for why roughly $90 million in NPS entrance fee revenue, money meant for repairs at parks like White Sands and Carlsbad Caverns, was instead redirected to beautification projects in Washington, D.C., during peak summer visitor season.

5. Congress eyeing public land sales
   Sen. Mike Lee proposed striking a provision requiring Interior to maintain ownership of all existing National Park Service units, which would open the door to selling park land, in a state home to Carlsbad Caverns, White Sands, Bandelier, Chaco Canyon, and Valles Caldera. An earlier version of the reconciliation bill would have greenlit selling off roughly 1.23 million acres of public land, and even after that language was stripped, the bill still clawed back $267 million in committed park staffing funds.
6. Rolling back drilling accountability
   BLM is proposing to slash lease bond minimums to 1950s and ’60s levels, cutting statewide bonds from $500,000 to $25,000 regardless of how many wells they cover, while eliminating methane waste minimization plans and leak detection and repair requirements. This directly undercuts rules credited with keeping New Mexico’s methane intensity in the Permian Basin at less than half of Texas’s, and threatens to stick taxpayers with a massive orphan well clean up bill.
7. Expanded oil and gas leasing across the Permian and San Juan basins
   Since the “One Big Beautiful Bill” took effect on July 4, 2025, BLM has leased roughly 61,400 acres of federal land in New Mexico across three completed quarterly sales: 7,501.76 acres in July 2025 for $58.26 million, 20,399 acres in January 2026 for $326.8 million (nearly all in New Mexico, with a single Oklahoma parcel), and 33,530 acres in May 2026 that brought in just over $4 billion, the largest lease sale total in BLM history.

   More is coming. BLM has scheduled an August 19, 2026 sale offering 26 parcels totaling 20,334 acres across New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, and has opened comment on a proposed November 2026 sale covering 30 more parcels totaling 8,071 acres in New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas. If the August sale goes through as planned, it would push the total leased in New Mexico since OBBBA past 80,000 acres in just over a year.

8. Weakening the Endangered Species Act
   The administration has proposed rolling back Endangered Species Act regulations that would severely limit how much critical habitat can be designated for species headed toward extinction, alarming conservationists about the Mexican gray wolf’s future. A related change opens New Mexico’s forests to logging and mining by loosening wildlife habitat protections.
9. Push to delist the Mexican gray wolf
   The House Natural Resources Committee has advanced the Enhancing Safety for Animals Act with bipartisan support, which would strip federal ESA protections from the Mexican wolf entirely. Separately, federal and state agencies are preparing to downlist the wolf from endangered to threatened, even as at least 23 wolves have been documented in trapping incidents across New Mexico since 2022.
10. Budget: parks got a reprieve for FY2026, but FY2027 is a fresh fight
    The FY2026 appropriations law, enacted January 23, 2026, gave NPS $3.267 billion, 54 percent more than what the administration had requested. That blocked what would have been a $900 million, 31 percent operations cut and the elimination of funding for roughly 350 park sites.

    The administration’s FY2027 budget proposal, released in April, seeks to slash $736 million from park operations and would shrink the NPS workforce from about 16,000 to roughly 13,000. Sen. Heinrich called it proof “this administration is not committed to keeping the Park Service intact” and warned it would gut the regional scientists, archaeologists, and historians parks rely on even if front-line ranger jobs are nominally spared. That budget fight will play out in Congress this fall.

Since 2012, the Center for Western Priorities (CWP) has been a leading source of accurate information about energy and public lands across the West. CWP advocates for responsible uses of American lands, including recreation, conservation, and renewable energy.

The Conservation Lands Foundation (CLF) is a national non-profit headquartered in Durango, Colorado, dedicated to protecting, restoring, and expanding National Conservation Lands.

 

The post New Mexico conservation leaders denounce attacks on national public lands, join campaign to Keep Parks Public appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

TEJIENDO ALTERNATIVAS #20: Una publicación periódica del Tejido Global de Alternativas Recordando Bandung, reimaginando el futuroJulio de 2026 Nota editorial: Tejiendo esperanza en tiempos de crisis Cuando comenzamos a planificar esta segunda Asamblea presencial a mediados de 2025, nuestra intención inicial era organizarla en Nepal. Al trabajar con nuestros colegas de allí, también esperábamos apoyar el surgimiento de un tejedor del sur de Asia y profundizar el proceso de tejido en la regió…

WEAVING ALTERNATIVES #20: A periodical of the Global Tapestry of Alternatives Remembering Bandung, Reimagining FuturesJuly 2026 Editorial Note: Weaving Hope in Times of Crisis When we began planning for this second in-person Assembly in mid-2025, our initial intention was to organise it in Nepal. Working with colleagues there, we were also hoping to support the emergence of a South Asia weaveralternativesalternativesalternativesweaversendorsersGTAGTAGTATapestryAlternativesGTAGTAalternatives…

The United Nations Secretary-General and foreign ministers from the UK, France and Spain have blamed the deadly wildfires engulfing Europe on climate change, using the disaster to renew calls for faster cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.

António Guterres told journalists on Friday that the “climate crisis is in overdrive”, adding that global heat seen so far is just a “warm up act” as a phenomenon known as El Niño intensifies “adding fuel to a planet already on fire”.

A new World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) report published on Friday predicts that the weather pattern will grow into a “strong event” between now and October, increasing the risk of higher than normal temperatures across much of the world and disrupted rainfalls.

“That risks shattering every seasonal record – and driving even more severe effects worldwide,” Guterres said.

El Niño builds on top of an already warming world, driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels. A WMO scientist, who did not want to be named, told journalists that all the heatwaves and other climate impacts seen so far this year are “before the effects of El Niño are really kicking in at a global scale”.

Fossil fuellling the fires

Fires have broken out across much of Europe but are threatening the most people in the south-west of France near Bordeaux and in Central Spain near Madrid. Nearly a quarter of a million people have been evacuated in France with hundreds of homes destroyed while in Spain 80,000 people have had to leave their homes and at least 13 died in one village.

A scientific study published on Friday by the World Weather Attribution group found that man-made climate change made deadly fires in France twice as likely and those in Spain twenty times more likely. Smaller fires in the UK were not analysed by the study.

UN Climate Change leader Simon Stiell blamed fossil fuels for the fires, as well as storms in Chile and heatwaves in North America and Japan in recent weeks. “The climate alarm is blaring”, he said on Wednesday.

Guterres criticised new fossil fuel production projects and fossil fuel subsidies for causing hardship across the world. Discussing his speech, a senior UN official – who did not want to be named – said the subsidies amounted to trillions of US dollars a year and criticised pension funds and institutional investors, including insurance companies, for continuing to invest in fossil fuel projects.

The head of the United Nations Antonio Guterres (right) with the head of the UN’s climate arm Simon Stiell (left) at COP30 (Photo: Kiara Worth/UNFCCC)

Asked why world leaders and the public are not prioritising climate action, Guterres said they are distracted by wars in Ukraine, the Middle East, Sudan and elsewhere and sometimes forget “other aspects that are a sometimes even more dangerous threat”.

Also the fossil fuel industry and “some countries” are campaigning to pretend that climate change does not exist, he said, adding that the UN should be more active in “naming the situations as they are and the responsibilties as they are and mobilising the public opinion”.

After meetings in Paris and Madrid earlier in the week, the UK’s new foreign minister Ed Miliband issued joint statements with his French and Spanish counterparts – Jean-Noël Barrot and José Manuel Albares Bueno – calling on the world to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels.

They promised to do more to reduce emissions and protect their people and encouraged other governments to do the same. 

The UK-French statement called on governments to publish UN climate plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), which are aligned with the Paris Agreement’s goal to limit global average temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

According to Climate Action Tracker, only three countries – the UK, Nigeria and Norway – have submitted NDCs with 2035 emissions reduction targets which are compatible with 1.5C. Fifty-two countries – including Egypt, Vietnam and Argentina – have yet to submit an NDC at all.

Defending science

Beyond action on emissions, the ministers also intervened in an ongoing dispute over the timing of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC)’s next flagship assessment.

Miliband and Barrot’s statement said they “underline the importance” of that scientific report feeding into governments’ next global stocktake of progress on climate action in two years’ time, calling it a “critical input” to that process.

The timing of this report has been a contentious issue in government negotiations at the IPCC and at June’s climate talks in Bonn. While a group of nations calling themselves the “friends of science” want the report before the stocktake, others like Saudi Arabia and India have argued that this would make the report of a worse quality and less inclusive of developing countries’ scientists.

Science ‘under attack’ from fossil fuel interests at UN climate talks

The UK-Spanish statement weighed in less explicitly on this issue but said that they “recall the importance of scientific evidence and acknowledge the work of the IPCC in this respect.”

The British and French ministers said they would seek to accelerate reductions of emissions in methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas, at COP31 in November. They encouraged governments “to work jointly to develop a marketplace for fossil fuels with near-zero methane intensity.” 

Methane leaks from oil, gas and coal production are a major contributor to global warming. Over a 20-year period, methane traps around 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide.

Ed Miliband meets José Manuel Albares Bueno in Madrid on 29 July 2026. (Picture by Ed Morris / FCDO)

The UK and Spanish statement emphasised the importance of supporting the Global South and underlined the need to mobilise sustainable financing “at scale with the challenge we face”. The previous UK government, in which Miliband was energy minister, cut climate finance to developing countries to pay for increases in military spending.

The UK government led by new Prime Minister Andy Burnham has yet to outline any major changes to climate finance in its two weeks in power but has announced it will convert some finance from grants to loans in order to free up money to subsidise bus travel in England.

More adaptation needed

Guterres said that “it is time to stop treating each disaster as an isolated tragedy and recognise the systemic risk that is unfolding before our eyes.” A recent study found that three-quarters of UK media reports about the British June heatwave did not mention climate change.

As well as reducing emissions, the UN Secretary-General called for measures to adapt vulnerable people to extreme heat. Specifically, he said that buildings should be built and retrofitted for extreme heat and that every city and country should have heat-health action plans and early warning systems. Over 250 cities have joined the UN’s ‘beat the heat’ initiative, he said.

The Portuguese diplomat called for governments and employers to do more to protect their workers from heat, criticising global fashion brands for not setting heat standards for the factories that supply them. “No one should have to risk their life to earn a living,” he said.

The post UN chief warns climate crisis “in overdrive” as El Niño threatens to fuel the fire appeared first on Climate Home News.

2024 Impact Report https://youtu.be/T4Oah3NvAo8?feature=shared In 2024, the Global Justice Ecology Project (GJEP) achieved remarkable milestones in its mission to protect forests and defend the rights of Indigenous and forest-dependent communities worldwide. From amplifying the struggles of the Mapuche people in Chile to mobilizing against genetically engineered (GE) trees at international forums, GJEP’s work demonstrates the […]

“The Hub” is a weekly round-up of transportation related news in the Philadelphia area and beyond. Check back weekly to keep up-to-date on the issues Clean Air Council’s transportation staff finds important.

As exciting events continue in Philadelphia, learn how you can get around to major summer 2026 events without a car, or being stuck in traffic with GoPhillyGo: Car-Free Routes Map!

Image Source: BillyPenn

BillyPenn: Philadelphians are riding SEPTA 24 hours straight hoping to improve it – Transit Forward Philadelphia organized a 24 ride on SEPTA this week, to bring awareness and support to the Zero Fare Program, the Transit Access Fund, and other inclusive transportation programs. SEPTA access and student key cards are a lifeline for communities, as stated by Kensington organizer and advocate Gloria Cartagena Hart. SEPTA is a critical need for all Philadelphians, and people with disabilities are sometimes relying on the same service, at a higher price. The Transit Access Fund hopes to address those inequities, and keep SEPTA moving for all.

Image Source: Philadelphia Visitor Center

PhillyVoice: Philly PHLASH says it likely just had its busiest stretch in its 32-year history – Philadelphia’s PHLASH, the bus service that brings riders to popular tourist destinations around the city, drove over 60,000 riders during the 39-day stretch of the World Cup. PHLASH will continue operating daily from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. to its 19 stops through Labor Day. It will run Fridays through Sundays every week after Labor Day through the end of November.

Image Source: 6ABC

Mass Transit Mag: SEPTA, CTA report drops in system crime as agencies fortify security efforts – SEPTA has recorded a double digit decrease in crime, including a 21% reduction in serious crimes in the second quarter of 2026. Summer events such as the World Cup saw over 155,000 fans riding the BSL and SEPTA responded with increased transit police officers. Serious crimes remain at their lowest levels since 2015, and fare evasion has also been reduced by 10% with measures taken so far.

Other Stories

NBC Philadelphia: Philadelphia leads major US cities in deadly crashes, latest data shows

PhillyVoice: Nearly completed Washington Avenue Connector is part of a broader vision for Delaware River waterfront

CBS Pittsburgh: PennDOT reaches major milestone for I-79 interchange reconstruction project

The Inquirer: Abingtonians can now request anti-speeding devices on certain streets. Will yours be one of them?

CBS Philadelphia: Speed cameras now in place along busy road in Newark, Delaware

The legislative session has wrapped up in Raleigh with more than 2,000 Audubon advocates signing petitions, sending messages, and flocking together for a successful Advocacy Day. All that...

In our latest, Scott talks with Yannis, an activist on the ground in southern Arizona, about the tree-sit that launched this week to block construction of Trump’s border wall as…

A landmark study of the towering ash trees that grow in the mountains of Victoria, Australia, which was launched in the 1980s, boosted arguments for clearcutting the iconic trees. But when scientists returned to the site years later, they came to a much different conclusion.

Read more on E360 →

A version of this piece was featured in Food Tank’s newsletter, released weekly on Thursdays. To make sure it lands straight in your inbox and to be among the first to receive it, subscribe now by clicking here.

There’s a difference between ensuring that no one goes hungry and ensuring that every person can nourish their bodies with healthful food. Across the globe, we’re making progress on the first goal—but we still have a ways to go on the second.

Every year, we look to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report, compiled by five United Nations agencies, as a checkpoint on global progress toward food security and healthy diets. This year’s report, analyzing 2025 data, was released last week.

Global hunger (sometimes referred to as “chronic undernourishment”) declined for the third year in a row last year, which is optimistic. That’s not something we can take for granted! An estimated 7.8 percent of the world’s population experienced hunger in 2025, down from 8.6 percent in 2022—or 43 million fewer hungry people worldwide. Although there are regional disparities in hunger levels, a downward trend from 2024 to 2025 was observed consistently across the board, including for the first time in a decade in Africa.

“I am taking these results as positive, despite of all the risk and uncertainties that this sector is facing, and let’s hope that we can cope even more with the next year’s problems,” Maximo Torero, Chief Economist for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), tells me on an episode of the Food Talk podcast.

Looking at the somewhat more complex metric of food security, which is more effective than hunger at accounting for people having to compromise on diet quantity or quality, we see similar trends but need a nuanced analysis. Yes, moderate and severe food insecurity levels also dropped in 2025, which is positive, but that number sits at 25.8 percent of the global population. Not only is that still higher than pre-pandemic numbers, but on a very basic level, it also means 1 in 4 human beings worldwide are not food-secure—which is morally unacceptable.

Broadly we’re moving in the right direction, though still far off from a previous target of ending global hunger by 2030. That goal, Maximo admitted, is now “close to impossible to achieve.” But I think he and I both agree: The global progress we’re seeing on hunger is firm proof that international collaboration works, and the slow pace only underscores the urgency of scaling up financing and implementation.

But as I mentioned, the SOFI report paints a more concerning picture regarding the affordability of healthy diets.

The number of people unable to afford healthy diets did decrease slightly last year compared to 2024. But within the past five years, the cost of a healthy diet has increased by 25 percent to around $4.28 (in purchasing power parity dollars, a metric that adjusts for cost-of-living and productivity across borders). Still, nearly one-third of the global population could not afford a healthy diet last year.

Maternal and child nourishment is also vastly insufficient, the report finds. Only 30.8 percent of children younger than 2 years old consume a minimally diverse diet, which is unbelievably tragic—and fully preventable.

The climate crisis is already hurting the food system, but in recent years, we’ve also seen global conflicts threaten to drive food prices even higher. As just one example cited in the report, the current conflict between the U.S., Israel, and Iran that resulted in the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has driven fuel and fertilizer prices up, and food costs have risen alongside.

With major global concerns already posed by climate change, the last thing we need is avoidable conflicts piling on even more pressure, Maximo told me.

“We are looking at more intense and frequent weather events like El Niño now, and therefore this sector needs to be prepared for this. If not, we will have a bigger challenge, and we will move backwards,” he says.

He later continued: “We need to minimize [human-made challenges]. We cannot have situations created by men when we have such a challenge right now in the world because of climate issues.”

So let’s talk solutions.

We need significant increases in public-sector and philanthropic investment and a greater willingness to participate in international collaboration and aid programs, especially from governments of powerful countries like the U.S.

There are more targeted efforts we can push for, too. Although animal products are also expensive, fresh fruits and vegetables make up about the largest share of the cost of healthy diets, about 40 percent. Focusing there, policymakers can more effectively support farmers with better subsidy programs and to facilitate access by improving seed quality, storage facilities, and roads for transporting crops. More regionalized, small-scale food chains can also help prioritize traditional crops at reasonable costs.

“It’s very important to put investment in development of local markets, and that includes indigenous foods, that includes nutritious foods,” Maximo Torero, the FAO chief economist, says.

He says we’re getting better at moving from “just in time” responses to “just in case” proactive solutions to instability. “But we need to keep working on that,” he says, “because resilience, at the end of the line is, how much can (we) absorb the shock and how little time will it take to recover.”

We should be seeing even more effort poured into improving the quality and accessibility of these climate-smart, resilient crops—and strong local markets for them!

I encourage you to take the time to check out my full conversation with Maximo—one of my favorite people for when I want to get into the nitty-gritty of global food policy—and even read through the SOFI report yourself.

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo courtesy of Helena Pfisterer, Unsplash

The post Hunger Is Down—But Healthy Food Costs Are Up. What Should We Do? appeared first on Food Tank.

Tomatoes are some of the most widely-produced and consumed crops worldwide. They’re also vulnerable to increasing soil salinity. But now researchers say they may have a solution—and it comes in the form of a refreshing spritz for developing tomato plants.

Using their new spray, they’ve dramatically increased plant weight, photosynthetic capabilities, and crop resilience, compared to untreated tomatoes that have been exposed to the same level of salt stress.

Salinity affects 3.2 million square miles of global cropland, an area about the size of Australia. Finding solutions is a priority for future farming—especially for tomatoes, which have been the subject of many salt-fighting studies. Tomatoes are “known to be fairly salt-sensitive,” said Hamidreza Sharifan, an assistant professor of environmental chemistry at Florida Atlantic University, and the study’s lead author. “If it works well in tomatoes, that’s a strong signal it could be adapted to other salt-sensitive crops.”

Sharifan and team tested their spray in a series of greenhouse experiments on two main batches of tomato plants, each exposed to medium and high salt stress in the soil. They sprayed one group, while the other went untreated. Their concoction combines two ingredients: manganese oxide nanoparticles and chitosan, an ingredient found in crustacean shells of which there is also an abundant supply from seafood waste streams. 

In the untreated tomatoes, the highly saline soils reduced their biomass and the quantity of photosynthesizing pigments like chlorophyll and carotenoids. The plants also showed more signs of oxidative stress, which ultimately leads to cell damage.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:A tiny tomato may harbor the secret to salt-tolerance in a climate-changed world

 

The spritzed tomatoes, on the other hand, fared strikingly well: their roots doubled in weight, increasing by 55% compared to the unsprayed controls. Photosynthesizing pigments also increased in these plants by between 25 and 91%. Signs of cellular damage declined, and the responsiveness of key antioxidants in plant tissues increased by between 100 and 300% compared to the controls, suggesting that these tomatoes were overall much more resilient plants. 

The benefits come down to the spray’s carefully-selected ingredients, Sharifan explained to Anthropocene. “The manganese nanoparticles help activate the plant’s own antioxidant enzymes, which neutralize oxidative damage. Chitosan acts more like a protective coating, it helps the plant hold onto water, stabilizes cell membranes, and supports the plant’s internal salt-water balance,” he said. “Together, they work synergistically better than either one alone.” 

Spraying the leaves helps the plants absorb the beneficial tonic quickly, instead of a root treatment which would first have to bypass the large quantity of salt in the surrounding soil, Sharifan added. 

The results are striking, but the researcher cautioned that so far they’ve only been demonstrated under relatively controlled, greenhouse conditions. The next step will be to test their spray out in the field to find out if it can sustain tomatoes against salt in other growing conditions. 

“This isn’t about fighting the salt directly, it’s about giving the plant the tools to protect itself. That’s a shift in philosophy from a lot of traditional approaches, and it’s why the treatment works at such a low dose,” Sharifan said. 

That might also make it more cost-effective for struggling farmers, he said. “It points to a practical, affordable tool that could help farmers keep growing food on land that’s becoming too salty to farm, which is a fast-growing problem worldwide.”

Sharifan et. al. “Synergistic alleviation of salinity stress in tomato: unraveling the physiological, biochemical, and antioxidant mechanisms modulated by manganese nanoparticles and chitosan.” International Journal of Phytoremediation. 2026.

Image: Based on Foodie-girl/Freerange Stock

Headline News:

• “Fire Crews Tackle Blaze Close To Major Nuclear Power Sites In UK” • Firefighters are continuing to battle a large wildfire close to three major nuclear power sites in the UK county of Suffolk. An EDF spokesperson said that the fire “is not currently affecting operations at Sizewell B power station” but that the company was “continuing to monitor the situation.” [Euronews]

Sizewell B from Dunwich Heath (Bill Tyne, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped)

• “China’s Coal Power Drops Below 50% For The First Time” • Coal power produced less than 50% of China’s electricity for the first time in the first six months of 2026. In a historic shift, coal plants produced 49.7% of the country’s power. Renewable energy sources accounted for 41.2%, with wind and solar supplying 24.6% of the power mix. [Impakter]
• “China’s 15th Five-Year Plan For Solar And Wind Is Huge” • China’s National Development and Reform Commission and National Energy Administration published their 15th Five-Year Plan for Renewable Energy Development. It calls for seven major wind and solar bases that will add no less than 370 GW of new capacity in 2026 through 2030. [CleanTechnica]
• “Energy Bible Confirms Renewables Generated Over Half UK’s Electricity For Second Year Running” • Statistics published by the Government confirm that renewable energy provided over half of the UK’s electricity for the second year running in 2025, guaranteeing our energy security by generating a record annual percentage of clean power. [RenewableUK]
• “Oil Companies Are Expected To Reap Big Profits Because Of US-Iran Conflict” • Analysts are expecting major oil companies to report raking in large spring profits while fighting between Iran and the US impeded petroleum shipments. As the conflict continues, consumers around the world pay more for fuel and confront shortages. [ABC News]

For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

Avi Lewi’s victory in the NDP leadership race in March was decisive. His win is a breath of fresh air in a political landscape that...

The post Lewis’ NDP: Opportunities and challenges for the left   first appeared on Spring.

The plantation was established on land won through peasant struggles, and the cooperative forms part of SPI’s strategy to strengthen peasants’ economic institutions.

The post Indonesia: SPI inaugurates Coffee Plantation Cooperative, Reinforcing the Agrarian Reform Struggle appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Over the past week, hundreds of thousands of people in France and Spain fled their homes, many in the dead of night, carrying only what they could. In the coming days and weeks, as evacuation orders lift, some will come home to partially destroyed towns. Others will only find ash. 

The fourth heat wave of a broiling summer is underway this week, and Europe has already seen one of its most destructive wildfire seasons on record, leading to one of the largest evacuation of people on the continent since World War II. It’s also the latest consequence of climate change, according to a study released on Thursday by World Weather Attribution, a scientific nonprofit that analyzes the role of global warming in extreme weather events. Human-induced climate change made the likelihood of fire-prone conditions in France at least twice as likely, and at least 20 times as likely in central Spain. 

“This is not an isolated event, it is part of a pattern,” said Maria Alcazar Castilla, the deputy regional director of the International Federation of Red Cross in Europe. The Red Cross is helping coordinate the disaster response effort in both countries and providing supplies and temporary shelter for thousands.

For months leading up to the recent wildfires, Western Europe had been scorched by back-to-back heat waves and an extended drought that dried out trees, shrubs, and farmland, turning the landscape into a tinderbox. Climate change makes the confluence of these extremes more likely, scientists say.

Last year, similar conditions created Europe’s worst wildfire season in history, with more than 2 million hectares burned by September. This year could be on track to surpass that: Some 430,000 hectares have burned so far — roughly 100,000 more than this time last year with two months left to go. In Spain alone, the burned area is roughly equivalent to the size of London.

With heat waves projected to continue in the coming weeks, the risk of more fire looms over the continent. Other research on Southern Europe, also released on Thursday, found that summer days with conditions making them prone to extreme fires have more than doubled in recent decades.

At the height of the disaster this week, more than 300,000 people had been displaced across France and Spain. Rural areas that rely on farming and tourism have been the worst hit, Alcazar said. “The impact to the livelihoods of people will be huge.”

Wildfire evacuees from the Bordeaux region of France rest at a temporary shelter on July 25.
Alain Jocard / AFP via Getty Images

The high temperatures that set the stage for these fires had their own devastating consequences. This June was the hottest ever recorded in Western Europe. In addition to causing nuclear reactors and train lines to shut down, the oppressive heat killed thousands of people across the continent in the span of a few weeks. 

This summer has shown that climate change is a “national security emergency facing Europe and threatening our way of life,” said officials from the United Kingdom and Spain in a joint statement on Thursday. 

Scientific research that links climate change to weather events is a relatively young field known as attribution science. Groups like World Weather Attribution skip the typical publishing process in science and use rapid analysis methods to get answers faster. The goal is to give the public an understanding of the role climate change plays in an extreme event before the news cycle has moved on. 

Clair Barnes, a research associate at World Weather Attribution who led the analysis, said this particular study was completed more quickly than the organization’s usual studies. It drew from the group’s earlier research on heat and drought, which, along with wind speed, are key components in so-called fire weather. The group also analyzed historical weather data to compare this year’s fire conditions with those from past summers, as well as with simulations of a world without climate change.

“As long as we continue to emit fossil fuels into the atmosphere, those greenhouse gases are going to continue to warm the planet more,” Barnes said. “This is just the beginning of how bad it’s going to be.”

One significant factor, the group found, was a rainier than usual winter in January and February, which prompted a burst of vegetation growth in the spring. Then, as the monthslong drought set in, those plants dried up, becoming the tinder that fueled these fires.

This phenomenon, sometimes called “weather whiplash,” is a direct result of climate change. As the atmosphere warms, it gets spongier and thirstier, sucking up more moisture from the land and holding onto it for longer periods of time. That, in turn, leads to more intense rainfall that happens less frequently.

Bystanders watch the smoke and flames from a wildfire on July 21 in Cotignac, France.
FBM Media / Getty Images

How people use the land can also make wildfires conditions significantly worse, said Robert Field, a fire and climate researcher at Columbia University in New York. 

In both France and Spain, abandoned farmland and a shift away from cattle, which graze on plants, might have played a role in fueling the fire. In France, the wildfire outbreak was centered in the Landes de Gascogne, a coastal region with an abundance of planted pine forests. Research on wildfires worldwide has shown that timber plantations like these can be twice as flammable as natural forests. 

“I don’t think it’s an issue of firefighting capacity or investment,” Field said. “It’s fundamentally an issue of landscape management in the face of global warming.”

Since Tuesday, firefighters have managed to partially contain many of the fires and authorities have more than 100,000 evacuees to return home in southwest France. A weak cold front is also on its way to Europe, potentially providing a small window of relief, according to Jason Nicholls, a meteorologist and international forecasting lead at AccuWeather. 

But another surge of heat could come as soon as this weekend, with more heat expected by mid-August, forecasts show. “I don’t see any drought relief in the near term, which would mean the wildfire risk will stay very elevated,” Nicholls said. The drought and heat will continue to smother France, Spain, and other parts of Central and Western Europe, like Germany and Hungary.

“I’ve been doing international forecasting for 20 years,” Nicholls said. “These wildfires have been some of the worst I’ve ever seen.”

toolTips('.classtoolTips3','Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other gases that prevent heat from escaping Earth’s atmosphere. Together, they act as a blanket to keep the planet at a liveable temperature in what is known as the “greenhouse effect.” Too many of these gases, however, can cause excessive warming, disrupting fragile climates and ecosystems.');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Here’s what supercharged the monster wildfires in Spain and France on Jul 31, 2026.

More than half the world’s population depends on rice to survive. But this year’s El Niño weather pattern and the ongoing climate crisis are intensifying dry, hot weather that could cause yields to plummet.

Globally, rice production is set to fall for the first time in more than a decade, according to projections by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In the U.S., where most rice is grown in the Mississippi Delta, production for the upcoming season is expected to fall by more than half, to the lowest levels in 40 years. 

“High temperatures can substantially reduce the rice yield,” said Atul Jain, a professor of climate, meteorology, and atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois. “Farmers are going to be hit hard during these extreme climate events.”

How much rice farmers can produce depends on a range of weather conditions, such as precipitation and temperature. Climate scientists have predicted that this year’s El Niño will be the strongest on record, describing it as a “super El Niño.” The naturally occurring phenomenon, which happens roughly every two to seven years, will continue to drive extreme weather, including intense drought, in regions across the globe. 

Researchers at Columbia University’s Climate School shared this week that the current El Niño has already reached “very strong” levels and will continue to intensify in the coming months. During a given El Niño year, trade winds weaken and warmer ocean water in the Pacific drifts eastward, leading to convection, or warm air rising off the ocean. “That acts like ringing a bell,” said Radley Horton, a professor at the Climate School. “It sends out waves that resonate all across the globe.” The result is that some areas experience much wetter seasons than usual, while others see much drier months.

As this El Niño intensifies, the world could experience major disruptions to food systems dependent on staple crops like rice. “Drought,” said Jeremy Zwinger, president and CEO of The Rice Trader, an industry analysis company, “kills commodities.”

Read Next The ‘super El Niño’ is here. What happens next could upend food systems worldwide. Frida Garza

The good news, though, is that many countries are more prepared than ever for the variability that climate change brings to food production. In recent decades, governments, nongovernmental organizations, and corporations have invested billions of dollars in improving agricultural technologies, especially irrigation systems and new, heartier strains of rice (some of which actually slash planet-warming emissions). 

Recent advancements in irrigation and plant-breeding are an insurance policy of sorts that has been useful in years like this, when the rainy monsoon season in parts of South Asia has been delayed and unpredictable. India has been especially successful at using new technology to boost production, which has pushed it to the top of the list of rice-growing countries this year.

In some ways, the agricultural gains have worked almost too well. The world is now oversupplied with rice, said Zwinger, which has resulted in falling prices and less money for farmers. “It’s a mind twist,” he said, “because you’re penalizing somebody for success.”

In another twist, the very carbon dioxide that is causing global warming also makes it easier to grow rice. Higher concentrations of CO2 in the air enhances photosynthesis and improves water-use efficiency, said Jain, calling it “the primary environmental factor” contributing to the surge in worldwide rice productivity.

Still, the increasingly warmer and dryer conditions that climate change will bring are expected to inhibit rice growth. A new study found that climate models have generally underestimated the production loss by as much as half. For every degree of warming Celsius, it said, rice production will fall about 8 percent. 

“Climate change amplifies these pressures through higher temperatures, erratic rainfall, floods, salinity intrusion, and longer dry spells,” said Alisher Mirzabaev, senior scientist and policy analyst on climate change for the International Rice Research Institute. 

Another worry is that some advanced irrigation systems, especially in India, are depleting long-term groundwater stores in order to meet short-term needs. “For this season, the rice growers have basically used groundwater,” said Sampriti Baruah, the head of sustainable agriculture for the environmental think tank WRI India. This type of excess withdrawal will eventually catch up with farmers, she said, “but that’s the fallout of the irrigation system.”

These risks are why experts say a continued focus on adaptation measures remain critical. “These different management practices help us offset some of these climate impacts,” said Jain. Of farmers, he added, “if they are very well prepared for that, definitely they can overcome all these issues.”

On the whole, Zwinger said he isn’t too worried about El Niño causing a slump in rice production this year. The excess in the system should be able to satisfy demand, and less supply could improve pay for many growers. But, at the same time, he certainly isn’t cheering for El Niño, either. 

“I know certain countries will really suffer,” said Zwinger. “What you’re going to have is the have and the have-nots.”

Zwinger is especially worried about the Philippines, where rice makes up half of the typical meal, and sub-Saharan Africa, both of which are major rice importers. An extra-strong El Niño would also worsen food security in other vulnerable regions around the world, including southern Africa, South Asia, and parts of Brazil. 

In Indonesia, one of the globe’s top rice producers, a weaker monsoon season due to El Niño would mean less rainfall. This could delay the planting season for rice, ultimately leading to reduced yields. In 2015, another very strong El Niño year, the country had already seen significant drops in rain totals by the early fall, said Horton. Resulting fires blanketed the parched country, as well as Singapore and Malaysia, in heavy smoke. That in turn impacted public health, particularly for outdoor agricultural workers. This year, “we’re concerned about seeing all these effects at once,” Horton said. 

Whatever El Niño and climate change bring, Jain’s research suggests that technology can help mitigate rice production problems — at least for now. “The challenge for the future is whether these management improvements can continue to keep space as the climate intensifies,” said Jain. “It will be the key scientific and the policy question.”

toolTips('.classtoolTips7','A powerful greenhouse gas that accounts for about 11% of global emissions, methane is the primary component of natural gas and is emitted into the atmosphere by landfills, oil and natural gas systems, agricultural activities, coal mining, and wastewater treatment, among other pathways. Over a 20-year period, it is roughly 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Why rice crops could be in for a weird year on Jul 31, 2026.

Officials from the Trump administration and members of Congress walked along the burn scar from Utah’s devastating Cottonwood Fire last week and saw the damage from the rain and flood that followed the flames.

The wildfire is among the country’s largest, charring more than 97,000 acres. It started on June 22, and is only 95 percent contained as of late Thursday, according to Utah Fire Info.

After surveying the destruction, lawmakers laid blame on a lack of forestry management. If the forest had been thinned, with “a lot fewer trees per acre, and maybe even some controlled burns to take the underbrush out, there’s just not the fuel there when these fires start to make them catastrophic fires,” Representative Bruce Westerman, a Republican from Arkansas, told Salt Lake City’s FOX 13 News. 

But these traditional fire prevention methods may no longer work, one researcher cautions, with a changing climate that makes hot, dry weather increasingly the norm.

“Weather and climate override the effects of fuels in determining what happens in forested landscapes,” said Dominik Kulakowski, a professor of geography at Clark University in Massachusetts whose research focuses on climate and mountain ecosystems. “The implication of that is that we’re losing our ability to manage forest fires.”

Larissa Yocom, a professor of fire ecology at Utah State University, agrees that today’s extreme wildfires defy the usual approaches to prevention, but she doesn’t think they are the West’s “new normal — yet.”

Climate change, which stokes intense heat, longer droughts, and extreme weather, has been the primary driver of wildfire risk in the Western United States for the last two decades, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The severe snow drought that afflicted Utah over the winter is 14 times more likely in Utah and other Upper Colorado River Basin states compared to the start of the industrial period when humans began releasing climate-altering pollutants into the atmosphere, according to research published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Forests in the West evolved in response to fire, and fire has long been part of their normal ecological function, Kulakowski said. But fires are now changing faster than forests can adapt.

Fuels like dry shrubs and drought-stressed trees are a secondary factor that contributes to wildfires, and they’re what most forestry treatments have focused on — like creating buffers around homes known as firebreaks, thinning forests, and scheduling prescribed burns. Yet fast fires can jump interstate highways and blow past firebreaks hundreds of yards wide, Kulakowski said.

“We’ve seen examples that embers from these dangerous megafires can travel … about a mile,” he said. “What we can do to protect ourselves is becoming increasingly difficult.”

The country’s most expensive, deadly, and destructive fires in recent decades moved extremely fast. Utah’s own Cottonwood Fire exploded by 20,000 acres overnight in late June as firefighters evacuated homes and struggled to keep the blaze contained.

As long as the trend of warmer and drier weather conditions continue, so will the megafires. And as extremely hot and large fires increase, the ability for forests to regenerate decreases, Kulakowski said. “The soil is being sterilized,” he said. “There are fewer surviving trees.”

Fewer trees mean fewer seeds to help forests regrow. In some cases, the types of forests that do re-sprout may look different — aspens may dominate where conifers once thrived, for example. But in parts of the West, Kulakowski said, it appears no forest vegetation is regrowing at all.

“In which case, we’re talking about ecosystem collapse,” he said. “We’re talking about forests disappearing from parts of the landscape.”

Eagle Point Resort, one of the smallest ski and snowboard areas in Utah, was one of the first areas to fall victim to the Cottonwood Fire in late June.
Francisco Kjolseth / The Salt Lake Tribune

Other fire experts in Utah say traditional fire-treatment methods still work and should be deployed across forests. “We have a lot of examples where managing fuel is still beneficial and makes a difference,” said Yocom, the professor at Utah State.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers from Western states, including Senator John Curtis, a Republican from Utah, and Senator John Hickenlooper, a Democrat from Colorado, have sponsored the Fix Our Forests Act after spending months negotiating the best ways to manage woodlands and prevent catastrophic wildfire. The bill creates “fireshed management areas” — fire-prone lands that pose the biggest risk to communities — where federal agencies would streamline and speed up fuel treatments. It has yet to receive a full vote in the Senate.

Yocom acknowledged, however, that there’s little forestry managers could have done to prevent some of the large wildfires that have burned across Utah this season.

“In the most extreme conditions, those on-the-ground factors get overwhelmed,” she said. 

If forestry managers allowed more fires to burn in shoulder seasons in the spring and fall, during cooler weather and milder conditions, wildfires might be less intense and have different effects on forests, Yocom said.

“It’s not preordained that we are stuck with this kind of fire,” Yocom said. “The only type of fire we’re ‘allowing’ to happen right now are the ones that are burning in the conditions where we literally can’t do anything about it.”

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The Trump administration issued a directive this year calling on federal agencies to aggressively suppress all fires — including the smaller, milder ones that forests evolved with to keep them healthy.

“We have an imbalance within our natural environments because, basically, almost every ecosystem within Utah has developed out of an adaptation of fire,” said Bradley Washa, a firefighter and professor of wildland resources at Utah State, “and we have removed that fire from those ecosystems.”

A warming climate is taking a toll on Western forests, Washa said, but it’s difficult to pin any single fire event to climate change.

Through his work on the ground, he continues to see how small things — like removing a firewood pile or clearing overgrown brush — can make the difference between a home surviving a wildfire or burning to the ground.

Still, “some of our fuel treatments and defensible space concepts are designed for your average fire,” Washa acknowledged, “not these extreme events.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Wildfire prevention has always been a challenge in the West. Hotter, drier weather is making it worse. on Jul 31, 2026.

I feel so deeply grateful to have known him, and for the support and enthusiasm he showed for the Transition movement as it emerged. He was a sensitive and thoughtful man who knew that human beings could do so much better.

A debate between Bill McKibben and Mark Roller highlights a central question: Can a “green transition” address a crisis rooted in ecological overshoot?