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Recent months have reinforced the case for accelerating action on the energy transition and climate, particularly from a European perspective.

Let’s list the reasons why:

• this summer has been like no other in Europe, with five major heatwaves across the continent and provisional data from the UK Met Office showing temperatures in London approximately 4°C above the long-term baseline average (1991-2020);
• internationally, 2026 has been marked by a series of extreme weather events, from the tragic landslide in Nepal caused by a melting glacier to a deadly winter storm bringing widespread fatalities across North America;
• all this against the backdrop of a super El Niño likely to generate even more extreme weather across the globe in the coming months;
• growing recognition, reflected in UK Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary of State Miatta Fahnbulleh’s warning that the war in Iran and closure of the Strait of Hormuz have shown how exposure to global fossil fuel markets raises energy costs;
• the war has also led to an explosion in electric vehicle sales, particularly in Asia. Across the first half of 2026, electric car sales in Europe grew around 35-40% compared with the same period in 2025; in the UK it’s up about 25% over the same period;
• according to WindEurope, Europe installed 8.8GW in the first half of 2026, a 30% increase on H1 2025. Renewables provided 53.1% of electricity generated by the UK’s Major Power Producers between March and May, with renewable generation up 22% year on year.;
• a breakthrough on the costs of energy storage, with global benchmark costs for four-hour battery storage projects falling by 27% year-on-year in 2025.

On the face of it, the case for accelerating the transition has never been stronger. But despite this, the state of multilateral action on climate change can probably be summed up by the collective shrug in response to the Climate Summit convened by the outgoing UN Secretary-General in New York on 23 September. In his final UNGA week, Antonio Guterres again argued that fossil fuel expansion “defies science, economics and common sense”. In language reflecting an increasing sense of alarm and urgency, he talked about this being the last generation “who can avert climate catastrophe”.

The weakened state of climate multilateralism is often attributed to a geopolitical environment in which political consensus has fractured and climate science is more openly challenged. This is evident not only in North America but in several European countries. But are there still opportunities this autumn for the pendulum to swing back towards concerted policy action that reflects the favourable platform that science, technology and economics are providing?

All roads on climate tend to lead to the COP, which this year will meet in Antalya, Turkey, from 9-20 November. COP31 will feature an unusual co-hosting arrangement between Turkey and Australia, alongside a pre-COP meeting hosted by Fiji and Tuvalu from 5-8 October. Crucially, the Pacific gathering will give small island states a platform to highlight the existential threat posed by climate change.

As for COP31 itself, the co-hosts face the challenge of providing a central focus for a COP where no single major negotiated decision is expected and which is being described as an “implementation COP”. But two key themes are emerging:

• a “35 by 35” global electrification target, designed to accelerate the transition by increasing the share of global final energy demand met by electricity to 35% by 2035, up from the present 20%;
• ecosystem resilience, and the impact of severe climate shocks on food and water systems.

Serious discussion of both issues will be welcome. Yet many increasingly view the COP process, and the wider UN system, as unable to move beyond being a talking shop. Which is why, perhaps even more than is usual at a COP, some of the more consequential action in Antalya may take place in the margins outside the formal negotiations.

This would be consistent with the most significant outcomes from COP30 in Belém, with the emergence of two separate “coalitions of the willing” to work on international roadmaps: to transition away from fossil fuels (TAFF); and to halt and reverse global deforestation.

This TAFF initiative in particular will be put to the test of COP politics, even if it’s not on the formal agenda. Twelve months on from its birth in Belém, and seven months since the coalition of nearly 60 countries met in Santa Marta, Colombia, to kickstart work on a global TAFF process, there will be pressure to start turning high-level ambitions into concrete plans. This will mean attention on the Netherlands, which co-hosted Santa Marta with a Colombian government that has since been replaced by a new administration not committed to the initiative, and Ireland and Tuvalu, which will host a “Santa Marta 2.0” in the Pacific next July. These governments will want to show whether their initiative can work alongside the COP process and even restore some faith in the value of international cooperation to tackle global challenges. Other members of the coalition may also face questions about whether their domestic policies match their claims to international leadership: from the UK Government, which will also take on the G20 presidency in 2027, to Canadian and Australia governments, where fossil fuel production policy is moving in a different direction.

Looking beyond COP31, there are still grounds for optimism, whether through existing institutions or coalitions such as TAFF. The possibility, if recent reports are to be believed, that China could host COP33 in 2029 could be a game-changer, another Paris moment for the UNFCCC and multilateralism to demonstrate that it can deliver more than rhetoric. But back in the present, the science is making clear that delaying meaningful action, even now, will only do further harm. As the Belém Declaration on a TAFF spelled out nearly 12 months ago, action needs to be accelerated.

As progressives gather in Antalya, they may therefore do well to keep two overarching priorities at top of mind.

First, revisit the Belém Declaration as a constant reminder that limiting global temperature rises requires a “shared determination to work collectively towards a just, orderly and equitable transition away from fossil fuels”. This work will require, as the Declaration detailed, a focus on economic diversification, reducing structural dependence on fossil fuel revenues and phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies. Progressive policymakers will also need to consider how to support a step-change in finance for the Global South, given the vulnerability of many emerging and developing economies to both the transition and the physical impacts of climate change. The work that has begun since the Santa Marta conference – both in the Santa Marta workplan and the separate but closely linked Brazilian COP Presidency TAFF exercise – will give policymakers the tools to start implementing TAFF in practice. That collective effort can begin in the discussions in and around COP31, even if not yet in the formal negotiations.

Second, one of the most positive developments this year has been the reframing of climate around energy security, risk and resilience. The statement by the UK Prime Minister at the same UNGA week where the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Summit yielded little tangible progress, that “the climate crisis is now a national security threat for countries around the world”, is a sign of an evolving narrative. As is this line from the recent Green Central Banking newsletter: “maybe resilience, for lack of a better word, is a new, pragmatic way to ensure climate action and collaboration still take place in an ever more geopolitically fragmented world.”

COP delegates will also be mindful that they are convening just after the US mid-terms on 3 November.

Many of the underlying conditions (economic, technological and scientific) are in place for governments to make this autumn one of significant progress on climate ambition. The case for framing the transition around economic opportunity and 21st-century energy security is clear. Policymakers may remain cautious in the current geopolitical environment; but this is time to seize the moment.

The post Can a Sweltering Summer Create an Autumn of Opportunity for the Transition? appeared first on Carbon Tracker Initiative.

The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) is pleased to release its 2025–2026 Annual Report, documenting a year of collective action to advance agroecology, defend farmers’ rights and strengthen community-led food systems. Covering 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026, the report marks the first year of implementation of AFSA’s 2025–2029 Strategic Framework. It brings together achievements, experiences and lessons from an alliance of 48 member organisations, showing how local knowledge and community leadership inform action from farmers’ fields to national, regional and global policy spaces.

The report highlights efforts to protect farmers’ rights to save and exchange seeds, advance agroecology in climate policy, celebrate African food cultures and strengthen local economies. Key developments include the Seed Is Life and My Food Is African campaigns, Healthy Soil Healthy Food work across six countries, and support for 222 agroecological enterprises and 21 territorial markets. Member stories bring these achievements to life: young farmers and women restoring land and water systems in Zambia, communities expanding farmer-led agroecology across West Africa, and farmers in Malawi rebuilding soil fertility and improving maize harvests through locally produced organic manure. Together, these experiences demonstrate the practical value of African-led solutions for livelihoods, resilience and food sovereignty.

Reflecting on the communities behind this work, AFSA Board Chairperson Rev. Dr. Tolbert Thomas Jallah Jr. writes: “Their experiences remind us that food sovereignty is not simply a policy aspiration; it is lived every day through the stewardship of land, seeds, biodiversity, livelihoods and human dignity.” General Coordinator Dr. Million Belay sets out the ambition guiding the alliance: “Our task is not only to respond to crisis, but to build power, alternatives and hope.”

Alongside these achievements, the report shares the challenges, institutional developments and lessons shaping AFSA’s next steps, including the need to translate policy commitments into implementation and sustain investment in community-led change. AFSA thanks its members, communities, partners, donors and allies for their commitment and invites policymakers, researchers, civil society and the wider public to explore and share the report.

Read the AFSA Annual Report 2025–2026

When I visited Oxbow Cattle Company in Montana last spring, I saw firsthand how land management practices can support healthy grasslands and productive working lands. Owners Bart and Wendy Morris and...

A new proposal from the federal government would narrow the scope of the Clean Water Act so much that it would be legal to drain nearly any wetland or pollute the vast majority of streams, experts...

On Monday, contractors knocked down an iconic “grandmother” cottonwood tree on federal land in the San Rafael Valley near Lochiel, Arizona to clear the way for border wall construction. Armed Border Patrol agents cleared an encampment of about 50 people who had gathered to try to protect the cottonwood after three others had already been felled. All four trees were estimated to be as many as 250 years old. The protesters’ efforts included taking turns camping in the tree itself to ensure it was occupied at all times for more than 70 days. Ten protesters were cited and at least another 12 were arrested, including the person who was camped in the tree itself at the time and was forcibly removed from the tree using a cherry picker.

“We are resolute,” said Kate Scott, one of the protesters. “This movement is not going anywhere. They have cut down our grandmother, but her roots are within us.” A similar continual-occupation protest is also happening in a tree on the Mexican side of the border, and a demonstration at the local Bureau of Land Management office is planned for later this week to protest the agency’s recent land closure orders related to border wall construction in the area.

The Border Patrol’s actions fit with a pattern of using the southern border to militarize national public lands, as Center for Western Priorities Creative Content and Policy Manager Lilly Bock-Brownstein wrote in a Westwise blog post earlier this year. “If the administration continues on its current course, these iconic landscapes will continue to be collateral damage,” Bock-Brownstein wrote. “Border security should not require the permanent sacrifice of America’s public lands, and it should not come at the cost of the heritage and economies of the communities that surround them.”

Quick hits Analysis: 99% of commenters oppose motorized use changes in forests

Wyoming Public Radio

Native nations sue over Endangered Species Act changes

High Country News

Supreme Court grapples with case on holding Big Oil liable for climate change

Washington Post

NPS denies request to maintain water stations along Arizona-Mexico border for migrants

KJZZ

Winter is coming, and Crater Lake National Park is in trouble

SFGATE

Residents express worries about copper mine’s return

Las Cruces New Mexican

Judge jails man in moose abuse case and warns: Wyoming values wildlife

WyoFile

Heinrich: Repealing the roadless rule ignores public approval

The Hill

Quote of the day

The Roadless Rule is overwhelmingly popular, including with sportsmen, anglers, campers and recreators. It is so popular that the administration knows it will lose if it consults the public on dismantling it. Thus, the administration is simply refusing to hold public meetings at all. That is not only insulting—it is undemocratic. And it is a failure to listen to the people these lands belong to.”

—U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, The Hill

Picture This @rockynps

“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”
— L. M. Montgomery

October is a special time of the year in Rocky Mountain National Park. Enjoy shades of green, gold, orange, red, and purple throughout the park.

Image Credits: NPS

 

Featured image: San Rafael Valley border wall construction in southern Arizona. Russ McSpadden, Center for Biological Diversity

The post Arrests made as Border Patrol cuts down iconic tree to clear way for border wall appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

At least 130 organisations urge UN carbon market Supervisory Body to suspend credits and independently investigate controversial Myanmar cookstove project

UTRECHT, 6 October, 2026 — At least 130 civil society organisations, networks and other stakeholders are calling on the Supervisory Body of the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM) to immediately suspend the first carbon credits issued under the UN’s new “high-integrity” Article 6.4 carbon market and commission an independent, comprehensive assessment of the project behind them.

The call comes as the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body meets in Bonn from 5–9 October for its 23rd meeting (SBM 023). At the centre of the controversy is PoA 10471, a Myanmar biomass cookstove programme backed by one of South Korea’s largest companies, which, in February 2026, became the first activity to receive credit issuance under Article 6.4. 

In an open letter signed by 130 civil society organisations, the groups call on the Supervisory Body to immediately suspend the project’s credits and undertake an independent assessment, citing serious concerns about environmental integrity, verification, human rights and other safeguards and stakeholder participation, particularly given the radically changed conditions in Myanmar following the February 2021 attempted military coup.

“The first project to receive credits under the UN’s new ‘high-integrity’ carbon market was implemented in communities experiencing war, displacement and grave human rights abuses, while independent analysis indicates that, even if the project had been implemented under ideal conditions, its claimed emissions reductions may still have been substantially overstated,” said Zaw Tuseng, foundation director of the Myanmar Policy Institute. “This is not simply a question of how many credits should be issued. It raises fundamental questions about whether carbon credits can represent genuine climate action when they are separated from the political and social realities in which projects operate.”

The concerns are wide-ranging. The June 2026 report Carbon Credits Under Fire: Myanmar, Crimes Against Humanity, and the Crisis of Credibility Facing the UN’s “High-Integrity” Carbon Markets documents serious concerns about the project’s operation amid conflict and human rights abuses, as well as safeguards, stakeholder participation and the wider conditions in which its claimed emissions reductions were generated. 

PoA 10471 was designed and registered before the February 2021 attempted military coup, but continued operating during all but one month of the monitoring period underlying the first Article 6.4 issuance, from January 2021 to May 2022. Its first six component activities covered 27 townships in Myanmar’s central Dry Zone, where communities experienced documented war crimes and crimes against humanity, including attacks on civilians, forced displacement, the burning of homes and public buildings, and conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence.

Project documentation identifies the Dry Zone Greening Department and other Myanmar government authorities in connection with implementation and data collection. The Dry Zone Greening Department operates under the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation, which came under military control following the takeover, and is a major income earner for the junta through gemstone mining and other resource exploitation. 

The project’s monitoring documentation does not acknowledge these fundamental changes in the political, administrative and security environment or consider how they may have affected implementation and the claimed mitigation outcomes. However, verification reports indicate that security conditions prevented the verification team from conducting the required on-site inspections of monitored households in any of the project’s implementation areas. Instead, the verification team was granted an exceptional exemption and permitted remote inspection. Instead of site visits, the verification team conducted video interviews through Zoom with just 22 end-users from an office in Yangon. Only two of the interviewees were women.

Meanwhile, two independent analyses of the project’s emissions reductions calculations have raised substantial concerns about the quantity of credits issued: an earlier analysis estimated that the project was over-credited by a factor of 14 under the CDM, while more recent analysis estimates that it is still likely to be over-credited by approximately a factor of seven under Article 6.4’s supposedly tougher rules. These findings further undermine the claim that the first credits issued under the new mechanism represent genuine and verifiable emissions reductions.

“Environmental integrity cannot be reduced to accounting methodology alone. Simply refining the methodology used to calculate emissions reductions and slapping on a “high integrity” label does not guarantee that the resulting credits represent genuine mitigation, especially when they are so completely separated from the political, social and environmental circumstances in which they are supposedly generated,” said Oli Munnion, Global Forest Coalition (GFC)’s Climate Justice and Forests Campaign Coordinator. “The Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism has fallen at the first hurdle. The Supervisory Body must immediately suspend this credit issuance and investigate how on earth it was approved in the first place.”

The organisations also raise concerns about safeguards and participation. Women and girls are presented as important beneficiaries of the cookstove programme, yet women in the project areas have experienced displacement, severe restrictions on movement and conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence. Of the 231 households surveyed for monitoring purposes, 80% of recorded heads of household were men, raising questions about whether women—whose unpaid labour the project depends on—were adequately represented as decision-makers rather than primarily as beneficiaries.

The organisations are calling on the Supervisory Body to immediately suspend any further issuance, transfer or use of credits associated with PoA 10471 and to commission an independent, comprehensive assessment of the project and the process through which the credits were approved. The assessment should examine the project’s environmental integrity, monitoring and verification, safeguards and stakeholder participation, as well as the impact of Myanmar’s radically changed political, administrative and security circumstances. 

The organisations are also calling for the assessment to consider the best available evidence and real-world conditions, rather than treating formal methodological compliance or previous validation and verification as conclusive, and for its findings to be made public. Where the evidence shows that applicable requirements were not met or that the credits do not represent genuine and verifiable emissions reductions, the Supervisory Body should take appropriate corrective action, including revoking credits already issued and preventing the project from participating further in the mechanism.

In support of these calls, a Formal Stakeholder Communication was also submitted to the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body in response to its call for stakeholder input on matters before SBM 023. The submission sets out the concerns in detail and calls for PoA 10471 to be considered under the relevant agenda items, including Agenda item 4.3 on issuance.

PoA 10471 is the first activity to receive issuance under the Article 6.4 mechanism and therefore represents an early test of what the mechanism’s stated commitment to “high integrity” means in practice.

“Climate mitigation cannot be based on human rights abuses and questionable carbon accounting. If the Article 6.4 mechanism is to have credibility, its first project must be assessed against the realities in which the claimed emissions reductions were generated, not simply against calculations on paper,” said Sooyoun Han, Plan 1.5’s Policy Activist.

The food and agriculture sector employs 1.4 billion people—more than any other in the world. It’s also the most exploitative,  according to a new report from the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food). But stronger labor protections and worker-led movements can help build food systems that work for those who sustain them.

Roughly two out of every five people in the global workforce depend on food and farming systems for their livelihoods. But whether they are in a field, on a boat, in a processing facility, or a supermarket, many lack the protections they need to keep them safe.

Informal employment agreements, legal loopholes, and systemic discrimination make food systems workers some of the most vulnerable on the planet. The climate crisis, expanding gig economy, and corporate consolidation are adding new layers of uncertainty and risk.

“This report confirms what we’ve seen for many years: That there’s widespread exploitation throughout these systems,” says Susan Longley, a labor rights expert and External Advisor for IPES-Food.

The authors highlight a stark gender imbalance. One in three food systems workers makes below a living wage with women earning, on average, 50 percent of what men do. Women are also more likely to engage in unpaid care work, from cooking to cleaning, which makes up an estimated 12.5 billion combined hours of labor per day. This often prevents them from holding full-time jobs, resulting in lower wages and weaker protections.

“One of the things that is fairly central is our insistence that care be centered in the way that we think about food and food work,” says Raj Patel, a member of IPES-Food’s Expert Panel. “That means that we need to recognize care [and] we need to reduce the amount of it that is disproportionately on women’s shoulders.”

Migrant workers also face a uniquely precarious position. Despite the essential role they play in food and agriculture systems, they face “some of the highest rates of workplace abuse,” the report states.

The authors reveal that migrant workers are three times more likely to experience forced labor and they are 70 percent more likely to die on the job compared to the general population. They are also “routinely victims of wage theft,” says Olivier De Schutter, Co-Chair of IPES-Food’s Expert Panel. The International Labor Organization estimates that, collectively, migrant workers lose US$31 billion in underpaid wages every year.

The report makes clear that the exploitation experienced by food workers is no accident. It is built into the systems and structures that shape how food is produced, processed, prepared, distributed, and sold.

Patel sees efforts to upend these harmful power dynamics, but notes that “we are at the very early stages of the transformations that we need.”

Outlining 12 levers for change, the authors call for legislation that guarantees protections for workers, regardless of status, and demand accountability for employers guilty of labor abuses. And at the heart of solutions are the workers, who are empowered through stronger trade unions, collective bargaining, and broad cross-movement coalitions.

“The key to resolving a lot of these problems is through building worker power,” Longley says.

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Photo courtesy of Bernd Dittrich, Unsplash

The post Ending Exploitation Across the Food System appeared first on Food Tank.

Jacynta Fa’amau is a Pacific campaigner at global grassroots climate movement 350.org and a secretariat member of Pacific Climate Warriors.

The first thing that struck me was the sheer size of Queensland’s Saraji coal mine. Standing at the edge of the enormous pit, my brain scrambled for words as I scanned the earth’s open wound – a whole island could probably fit inside it. 

Looking down, I noticed footprints of an emu and a koala, pressed and dried in what was once a puddle – signs of how drought had driven animals in desperate search of water, so dangerously close to the coal trucks and heavy machinery ahead.

Earlier this year, I joined a small group of Pacific Islanders on a journey through the Bowen Basin to learn from First Nations communities battling Australia’s mammoth coal industry. Of the more than 40 coal mines operating in the area, BHP & Mitsubishi Alliance’s Saraji mine is one of the largest. So it came as a painful shock to us when in August, the Australian government approved the mine’s extension just months after our visit. 

• Oct 2, 2026 Comment As COP31 co-host, Australia should make its polluters pay for climate damage With UN climate funds running short on cash, now is the time to start taxing the companies whose emissions are driving harm in the Pacific and other vulnerable parts of the world Read more
• Oct 5, 2026 Politics At pre-COP, UN climate chief warns of heat threat to mothers and babies The spotlight on maternal health came on the first day of the pre-COP31 meeting in Fiji, where Pacific concerns are set to top the agenda as ministers gather for talks Read more

Witnessing coal extraction is devastating. It is bad enough to see what pillaging tonnes of coal can do to a mine’s immediate surroundings: dry creek beds, dwindling wildlife, denuded land. But to know that this coal will be shipped across the ocean, bring air pollution, and eventually lead to the destruction of Pacific islands thousands of miles away is another kind of heartbreak.

Rising ocean waters

I’m an Australian-born Samoan. In 2002, I visited my family home for the first time. My father took me to the rural community where generations of my family were raised. He did not have the words to describe how much has changed since rising ocean waters had taken away almost a third of the beach.

I learned of how we had to relocate my great‑great‑grandparents’ grave to higher ground twice in the last 15 years. Of how my cousins have to paddle out further to sea to catch fish, since warmer waters have destroyed much of the reef. Of how the ocean crashes so close to my uncle’s home that he had to build a new house further away. 

A climate activist protesting the drilling of new coal seam gas wells holds a sign during a demonstration outside Origin Energy Ltd’s Annual General Meeting in Sydney, Australia, October 15, 2025. REUTERS/Hollie Adams A climate activist protesting the drilling of new coal seam gas wells holds a sign during a demonstration outside Origin Energy Ltd’s Annual General Meeting in Sydney, Australia, October 15, 2025. REUTERS/Hollie Adams

We saw reflections of our own climate destruction in the Pacific when we shared these stories with our First Nations relatives at the edge of the Saraji mine. Murrawah Johnson and Teila Watson, both Birri Gubba and Gangulu women, made clear connections between their struggles and ours. “We don’t get to inherit our land and we don’t get to inherit our traditional roles. We are fighting a war on extinction,” Murrawah said.

Coal extraction devastated their lands and cultures – totems have disappeared, fresh water has become scarce – while the effects of using it have devastated ours. “King tide, cyclones, all the violence that has been enacted on your country and people is because of the violence that has been allowed here, to us and our country,” Teila said.

Wearing the mantle of climate leadership

This week, Australia is assuming the mantle of climate leadership as co-president and head of negotiations of this year’s UN Climate Change Conference, COP31. It will lead on deliberating the summit’s priorities as world leaders and climate negotiators descend on Fiji and Tuvalu for the pre-COP meetings.

Ironically, just days before the pre-COP began, the New South Wales Independent Planning Commission approved the largest-ever coal project the state has seen, set to emit an extra 800 million tonnes of carbon emissions. I joined the Pacific Climate Warriors and other communities in submitting about 4,000 appeals to oppose the project – yet these all fell on deaf ears. 

• Sep 18, 2026 News Fossil fuel expansion threatens COP31 hosts’ credibility, experts warn Türkiye and Australia are pushing coal, oil and gas at home with no national timeline for their own fossil fuel phase-out Read more
• Mar 19, 2025 Justice This Australian coal community is co-designing its own green future The mining town of Collie offers a promising example of how to survive – and even thrive – amid the global transition to net-zero emissions Read more

But the fight is not yet over. The project still requires federal approval to proceed, so every promise that Australia makes while at the helm of the climate talks counts. These promises will be measured against actual decisions it makes at home: to either lock us into more decades of climate pollution, or begin shutting down coal and gas once and for all.

Pacific leaders have made it clear that countries must align their policies with the 1.5-degree warming goal, a limit that we already know will be breached within the decade. Any chance of keeping this still within reach requires an immediate end to fossil fuel expansion and concrete plans to phase out existing projects. But success will be an uphill battle if COP31’s own head of negotiations refuses to lead by example.

Kaibakia Pinata holds the fish he caught in his nets off Bikeman islet, located off South Tarawa in the central Pacific island nation of Kiribati May 25, 2013. Credit: Reuters Kaibakia Pinata holds the fish he caught in his nets off Bikeman islet, located off South Tarawa in the central Pacific island nation of Kiribati May 25, 2013. Credit: Reuters

Australia remains the second-largest coal exporter in the world. It is one of the very few industrialised countries under the Paris Agreement’s Annex I that still has no coal phase-out plan. Since 2022, the Albanese government has approved 37 new, expanded or extended coal, oil and gas projects. It is thus unsurprising that its own mitigation policies have been rated by Climate Action Tracker as “insufficient”, even without factoring in fossil fuel exports and related expansion.

Keeping 1.5C alive

Australia must course-correct to earn the mantle it has been given, especially by Pacific nations that backed the country’s bid for the COP31 co-presidency. As a first step, the government must end all coal expansion and explicitly declare a coal phase-out date. It’s the only way to show that it’s capable of leadership that moves beyond endlessly deliberating the “if”, and starts implementing the “how” of keeping the 1.5C target alive. 

The dread I felt staring down at the abyss on the edge of that coal mine months ago still exists. I carry it with me as I show up at the pre-COP to demand that leaders heed the calls of Pacific people. But it is tempered with resolve to keep our lands and communities alive. We remain steadfast in our efforts to secure an outcome that protects people everywhere and brings us back below 1.5 degrees as soon as possible.

The post Coal mines and hypocrisy must not be Australia’s COP31 legacy appeared first on Climate Home News.

Headline News:

• “Climate Change Takes Center Stage In SCOTUS Battle Over Oil Companies” • The City of Boulder and Boulder County, Colorado, in 2018 sued major fossil-fuel producers. They allege the companies “knowingly caused and contributed” to climate change by promoting fossil fuels. The case is before the US Supreme Court. [ABC News]

Impacted forest (Dan West, Colorado State Forest Service)

• “Aula Energy Plans 1.8-GWh battery To ‘Optimise’ 330 MW Solar Farm” • Aula Energy, owner of one of Australia’s biggest solar farms, has revealed plans to add a 1.8 GWh battery energy storage system at a site in central west New South Wales. It is seeking to overcome limitations associated with the intermittent nature of solar energy. [pv magazine Australia]
• “Climate Damage Already ‘Locked In’ – But These 10 Insights Show Our Future Is Still Being Decided” • The 10 New Insights In Climate Science report points to a “narrowing window for action” but one that is still open, showing us what is already locked in, what can still be avoided, and where policy can have the greatest effect. [Euronews]
• “BYD Commercial Vehicle Sales Up 113% In September” • Sales of BYD’s commercial vehicles, all EVs, look great now. BYD has separated reporting them into bus sales and non-bus sales, but we can combine them. BYD’s total was 6,848, 194.8% more than the 2,323 sold in August 2026 and 113.3% more than the 3,210 sold in September 2025. [CleanTechnica]
• “The EPA Cooks The Books And The Planet” • The Trump EPA went past repealing the 2024 power plant standards. It issued a new proposal purporting to find that the EPA lacks any authority to regulate power plants’ climate pollution under the Clean Air Act. The proposal is yet another step on this administration’s campaign against climate action. [CleanTechnica]

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

The Supreme Court opened its 2026-2027 term Monday with a climate case: a lawsuit brought by Boulder, Colorado, against Exxon Mobil and Suncor, a Canadian oil company, over the costs of a warming planet. The case is one of dozens across the country in which local governments have sued fossil fuel companies for their role in driving climate change and are seeking compensation as they now deal with its effects. The Supreme Court’s decision could decide the fate of all those other cases and the idea that oil companies must pay for the damages their products caused.

The justices gave no clear signs of how the court will rule, but over the course of two hours of questioning, they did demonstrate unison on one point: It is a hard and consequential task to identify who is legally liable for the impacts of climate change. 

Although Boulder’s case was first filed in Colorado courts, oil and gas companies asked the Supreme Court to step in, arguing that important climate change matters shouldn’t play out at the state level. Instead, they say, the issue belongs to Congress and the White House. Boulder wants the court to send the case back to Colorado, where it can proceed. 

Eight justices — Justice Samuel Alito removed himself from the case — attempted repeatedly to cast the case into something legible and simple. Multiple times, justices from both sides of the ideological spectrum asked attorneys, “Why make this argument so complex?” Yet they seldom openly agreed on what the simpler argument would be. The consequences for oil companies weighed heavily on some parts of the discussion, while the consequences for communities dealing with a warming planet went largely unexplored.

Some judges attempted to describe it as a case about reducing emissions — a framing that aligns closely with what Exxon Mobil and Suncor argue. If Boulder’s case is an attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through state court, it opens the possibility that a state court could police activity all over the country, and even the world. No state law could be appropriate to apply to the cumulative impact of global pollution, the companies argue.

“This case involves an unprecedented effort to use state law to regulate global conduct,” said Kannon Shanmugam, the attorney representing oil companies.

Several justices seemed to agree with that general picture. Kavanaugh said he could see no difference between allowing a state court to order oil and gas companies to pay damages for climate-related harms and allowing a state to effectively regulate greenhouse gas emissions all over the world. He told Boulder’s attorney, Kevin Russell, that he was downplaying the effect this case could have on oil companies, arguing it could “bankrupt” some of them. In his closing arguments, Shanmugam reinforced the idea that the chaotic consequences of the case could reach the scale of climate change itself. 

“Boulder could tag me … when I am in Colorado in two weeks and sue me on a nuisance claim for refilling my car and thereby contributing to global climate change,” he said. 

A recently rebuilt neighborhood in Superior, Colorado, that had been destroyed in the Marshall Fire. Boulder County, where Superior lies, is suing oil companies in an attempt to receive compensation for the effects of climate change.
Chet Strange / The Washington Post via Getty Images

Ironically, these questions were far from what Boulder claimed it wanted to do with its case. The city hasn’t asked to stop companies from producing oil and gas, or to stop those who burn them from sending greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Rather, it wants oil companies to pay for deceiving the public into thinking those products weren’t producing large-scale harms through climate change. 

Justice Elena Kagan argued Boulder’s case was similar to suits that states brought against cigarette companies in the 1990s, seeking compensation for health care costs linked to tobacco consumption. The companies weren’t required to stop selling cigarettes, but to roll back their pro-cigarette marketing and fund awareness campaigns around the effects of smoking.

“This is not an effort to reduce emissions,” said Russell. “Under our deception theory, they can continue to produce as much fossil fuels as they like and contribute to as much air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions as the market will bear when consumers are properly informed about the consequences of that decision.” 

“It doesn’t prohibit them from engaging in the conduct. It requires them to internalize a portion of the cost of their activities by paying for some of the damage,” Russell said later.

Kavanaugh called Russell’s phrasing “cavalier,” saying that those costs could be significant to oil and gas companies. Some firms, including Suncor, have told their shareholders the accumulating climate cases against them could affect their bottom lines. 

An Exxon gas station lies only blocks from the Supreme Court building on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C. Exxon Mobil is one of the defendants in Boulder’s climate case. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, looms behind the station. Austin Corona / Grist

If the case is allowed to proceed in Colorado courts and Boulder wins, it could open the floodgates for other cases, Shanmugam argued: “More [suits] are being filed by the week … so given the extraordinary magnitude of these cases, where, in each of these cases, plaintiffs are seeking billions of dollars of damages, we need an answer to this question sooner rather than later.”

Justices typically hear opening arguments and ask questions at the beginning of the court’s term and then take months before publishing a decision. This thread was only one of several they teased apart during the arguments, including arguments over states’ regulatory authorities under the Constitution and the intent of the Clean Air Act. Judges could use a range of rationales for their ultimate ruling, each of which would affect other climate suits against oil companies differently because those suits depend on different legal bases.

“States and local governments are trying to recoup costs related to harms from climate change in a lot of different types of lawsuits,” said Erika Kranz, an attorney with Harvard Law School’s environmental and energy law program. Whether these other cases “run into trouble will depend on how justices write their decision.”

It’s also possible justices send the case back to Colorado, either by deciding the Supreme Court isn’t the right place for it or by voting 4-4, which would leave Boulder able to carry on with its state-level lawsuit. (Alito has not explained why he removed himself from the case, though he has faced accusations that his investments in oil and gas companies not related to the case made his participation inappropriate.)

Kranz and Chris Winter, executive director of the Getches-Wilkinson Center at the University of Colorado Law School, said it’s hard to know whether that emphasis showed the court was leaning toward the oil companies, but it suggested that at least some justices were deeply concerned about the case’s potential financial consequences for the industry.

Boulder’s lawyers must now convince them that this risk to oil and gas companies was beside the point, Winter said. To do that, Boulder will have to overcome justices’ claims that it’s trying to reduce emissions through the court.

“There’s a lot of concern from the oil industry, from corporate actors, and from the conservative justices about the significant consequences of these cases,” Winter said. “One way to get at that is to equate this case with previous cases, which were much more directly about regulation of pollution.”

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Supreme Court wrestles with who should pay for climate change on Oct 6, 2026.

Marvin Martin was in the Four Corners area of Dorchester one day when a train sped by on the Fairmount Line into downtown Boston. It was filled with white people, sitting comfortably and reading newspapers. It made him wonder why the commuter line seemed to pass through communities of color without stopping, leaving people in his neighborhood to crowd into buses.

Martin decided to do something about that. In 1995, he and others began pressuring the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority to expand service. It took more than 15 years, but the agency added three stops in Dorchester in 2012 and 2013. It opened a fourth in Mattapan in 2019.

But Martin wasn’t finished. He also had been pushing for electrifying the line. 

“We want a train that would not be spewing a bunch of toxic particulates into the air,” Martin, who recently retired as the head of the transit advocacy organization Action For Equity, said.

Nearly three decades after Martin saw the train roll through Four Corners, the T, as the transit agency is known, plans to electrify the Fairmount line. It will lease seven battery-powered trains, each with four cars, for 15 years in a deal expected to cost $765 million. The arrangement allows the agency to gain experience with the technology before deciding whether to use it more widely.

The trains, built by the Swiss company Stadler, are slated for 2030. They will boost frequency of stops along the 10-mile route from every 30 minutes to every 20 and save 17,700 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually compared to the diesels they will replace, according to the T.

Battery-powered trains allow transit agencies to electrify without the expense or complexity of installing overhead power lines, called catenary. But some worry the technology remains unproven on lines with ridership similar to what the Fairmount carries daily. 

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They’ll find out soon enough. Caltrain, which provides regional service in the San Francisco Bay Area, plans to introduce battery-powered trains by 2028. Chicago’s Metra has a similar timeline. The projects could offer a glimpse into the future of rail electrification, but the technology must first show that it is capable of transporting thousands of people each day.

Boston is no stranger to electric rail. Its first electric streetcar rolled out in 1889, and the Tremont Street Subway — now part of the Green Line — was the first electric subway in North America. (It was third worldwide behind Budapest and London.) 

Chris Friend, interim executive director of the advocacy organization TransitMatters, considers the Fairmount line a logical place to begin the T’s regional re-electrification because it is the system’s shortest commuter route. But he added that battery-powered trains have not yet been widely used on busy routes anywhere in the world. “So, is this the thing,” he asked, “or are we going to end up in another quagmire of an unproven technology?”

Battery-powered trains built by the French manufacturer Alstom are zipping back and forth on a 50-mile route in Germany that carries 2 million people annually. Dani Simons, the company’s vice president of communications in the Americas, said rising fuel prices make electrification more appealing. (The average price of diesel was $6.32 a gallon on Monday, up from $3.70 a year ago.)

Simons conceded the technology is best suited to “medium ridership.” But she said transit agencies should be pursuing electrification in all its forms, including diesel-electric hybrids and trains powered by overhead lines. These technologies can mitigate the impact of rising fuel costs and improve air quality. Even the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is diversifying, with plans to deploy both battery and catenary trains on the Providence Line.

In some ways, electrifying transit means going back to the future. Urban systems began the transition from horse-drawn vehicles to electric streetcars in the 1880s and 1890s, said Albert Churella, a history professor at Kennesaw State University. Steam railroads, meanwhile, carried passengers between cities and their outskirts, helping spur the growth of suburbs.

Some commuter lines, including routes from New York to New Haven and Philadelphia to Paoli, along with the Long Island Rail Road, electrified at the start of the 20th century. Subways in Boston and elsewhere used electricity because steam trains emitted smoke and risked asphyxiating passengers underground. 

It also helped that the technology was new.

“People get infatuated with technological advancements, and they tend to believe that these are cure-alls, that these are things that have extraordinary, almost unlimited potential,” Churella said. “Electrification of railways was no different.”

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Most commuter lines, however, were never electrified. Many ran on tracks owned by larger railroads that also carried long-distance passengers and freight, operations that favored steam and, later, diesel power, said Nicholas Dagen Bloom, a historian and author of The Great American Transit Disaster. As passenger rail declined after World War II, he added, those companies increasingly wanted out of the passenger rail business. Diesel trains also offered a cheaper alternative to electrification because they do not need miles of wire.

Caltrain provides a look at what electrification can deliver. In 2024, it replaced diesel trains with electric ones on the 51-mile route between San Francisco and San Jose, powering them with overhead lines. Commute times dropped by as much as 23 percent because electric trains accelerate so much faster, and people loved the smoother, quieter cars. Ridership climbed 60 percent, and quality improved. Beyond the immense reduction in CO2 emissions, Joshua Apte, an environmental engineer at the University of California Berkeley, found that riders’ exposure to black carbon dropped 89 percent — a result he called comparable to what California cities achieved during 30 years of regulation.

Given the number of commuter rail systems that still rely on older diesel locomotives, “you might see similar air quality gains if you electrify them,” he said.

Although battery-powered trains might be slightly less efficient than those that use overhead lines or a third rail, Apte said they still do wonders for easing pollution. 

That’s enough for Martin. He acknowledges that the cleaner, quieter trains that will begin rolling through the Four Corners will be a “novel thing” and that riders will continue breathing air polluted by diesel exhaust until they go in service. But he considers his three decades of advocacy a success.

“I’m pretty satisfied with where we ended up,” he said. “As long as we still get that train.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of French train manufacturer Alstom.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The future of commuter rail could be taking shape in Boston on Oct 6, 2026.

To really understand what’s going on in the Nebraska Sandhills, Shelly Kelly told me, it’s helpful to see it from the air. From the window of her father’s Bonanza A36, we looked out over the heart of one of the most rural landscapes in the United States. The Sandhills are a 19,500 square-mile swath of grassy dunes embellished with grazing cattle, serpentine rivers, and sunflowers. 

Kelly has spent her life on the prairies of the High Plains. As a child, she made bouquets of flowering grasses and hunted for mudpuppies in the interdunal buffalo wallows on her parents’ ranch. Now a rancher herself, she’s trying to preserve the landscape she loves against the usual suspects — overgrazing and overharvesting — and one surprising new threat: trees. 

She pointed out my window to the prairie below. “You can see it there,” she said, pointing to a neat grove of Juniperus virginiana, eastern red cedar, deliberately planted by ranchers to protect calving heifers from the wind. These windbreaks are standard features on the Plains. But to the south of their orderly rows, a dozen cedars have popped up in the middle of the grass, scattering across the nearby range like race-runners breaking free of the pack. 

This spreading of trees is known as woody encroachment — or the “green glacier,” as some call it, evoking the slow creep of tree species over grasslands — and it’s got ecologists and ranchers of the Plains on high alert. 

“We’re losing our biodiversity,” Kelly said. “We’re losing our resiliency.”

Trees grow along the Spring Creek Prairie Audubon Center in March 2024 near Lincoln, Nebraska. The Center works to conserve the tallgrass prairie ecosystem and associated wildlife.
David Madison / Getty Images

For ranchers, a woody takeover of their rangeland creates an obvious problem: less land to graze. The Texas A&M Agrilife extension estimates that woody encroachment over the 10 Great Plains states represents $4 billion in lost range production. Ecologists predict biodiversity losses would affect the insects, birds, and small mammals that populate the country’s remaining prairies. Everybody worries about what those thirsty trees will do to the already stressed water supply as the green glacier expands from the wetter climate in the eastern prairie states to the arid western regions. 

Prairies — on the High Plains and around the world — thrive in cycles of stability and disruption. Fire, grazing, dry seasons, and the area’s particular mix of vegetation all play a role in preserving the healthy root systems that allow a diverse mix of grasses to continue growing year after year. Some heartier grasses with root systems 20 feet deep can keep the prairie green in a drought, while healthy soil can hold dormant seeds until the conditions are right. 

Fire — both naturally-occurring and prescribed burns — has long been a feature of the prairie landscape. Suppressing it is part of what has allowed woody plants to seed, spread, and develop the thick bark that makes them more likely to then withstand future fires. Meanwhile, overgrazing reduces trees’ and shrubs’ grassy competition, allowing them to grow faster. Cattle and bison don’t eat the woody plants. Goats, sheep, elk, and other “browsing” species don’t eat enough of them to control the spread, though some are experimenting with browsers as a component of a larger management plan. 

The Flint Hills of Kansas and Osage Hills of Oklahoma are home to two-thirds of the nation’s remaining tallgrass prairie, said Brian Obermeyer, The Nature Conservancy’s Great Plains grasslands strategy director. The persistence of the prairie in this region is largely because of the longstanding culture of prescribed burns, dating back to when Chisholm Trail cattle drives would divert their skinnier livestock to fatten up on the highly nutritious, tender, juicy grasses that grow back after a burn. Obermeyer even found a lease contract dating back to 1915 requiring the land to be burned regularly so that cattle would have access to the new growth. But in regions where that practice is not common, Obermeyer said, “Getting people comfortable with the culture of prescribed fire takes time.” 

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The Sandhills in Nebraska don’t have the fire culture, though Kelly and others are trying to change that. What they do have, Kelly said, is a culture of tree-planting. 

“Most of the people that settled Nebraska came from areas that were full of trees,” she said. In fact, before it was known as the “Cornhusker State,” Nebraska’s official nickname was the “Tree Planter State.” It dates back to the Homestead Act of 1862, which required settlers to cultivate their land with crops or trees to establish ownership, and Nebraska’s Kinkaid Act of 1904, which offered free trees to help settlers cultivate 640-acre tracts in the state. The tradition has gone on for centuries now, and thanks to advances in horticulture, ranchers buy heartier and heartier red cedar saplings for their windbreaks, which then spread their juggernaut offspring across the plains. 

As executive director of the Sandhills Task Force, a nonprofit established 33 years ago to promote conservation and sustainable land management in the ranching industry, Kelly knows that half the battle is changing the culture. “We’re not talking about trees being bad everywhere,” she said. “But trees are not good on a prairie, especially invasive trees.” On her water bottle I spotted a sticker: Be A Leader, Cut a Cedar. 

Another cultural shift might be necessary as well, particularly for the broader conservation community. The prevailing climate wisdom has been pretty clear: Trees are good, and planting them is virtuous — the more the better. But actually, Obermeyer said, grasslands can be a more secure carbon sink than forests. A big reason for that goes back to the cycle of fire on the landscape, and the worsening threat of out-of-control wildfires that are often the result of too much fire suppression. Woody plants store most of their carbon above ground in their trunks and leaves. When they burn, all of that carbon is released, and the charred remains continue to release carbon after the initial burn. It can take years for the forest to return to its storage capacity. Grasslands store the vast majority of carbon safely underground in their deep root systems, and after a fire their stems and blades quickly rebound. 

The sun rises over the Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Osage County in June 2026 in Pawhuska, Oklahoma.
Heather Diehl / Getty Images

There is evidence that the increased atmospheric carbon may be giving another advantage to woody plants, which utilize a different carbon pathway than grasses in photosynthesis, making them more efficient photosynthesizers in carbon-soaked, warm, dry air. While this means that trees may, in the short term, capture carbon more quickly, the loss of an entire ecosystem, especially one that stores carbon more securely, isn’t a good tradeoff in the long term, said Chris Helzer, Nebraska director of science and stewardship for The Nature Conservancy. 

Climate change is one of many reasons that a non-intervention strategy — letting nature take its course — won’t work on the High Plains. There are too many things in motion to simply go “hands-off.” But, really, Helzer said, grasslands as we know them have never been free of human intervention. From the time that Indigenous peoples hunted free-ranging bison, grasslands have evolved in tandem with humans, explained Helzer. The Nature Conservancy has also worked with the InterTribal Buffalo Council and Tanka Fund to support the return of bison to the Plains along with other tribal-led efforts to restore damaged ecosystems and build management capacity. 

Ranchers also have a critical role to play, Helzer said. And many are playing it with gusto. Kelly’s dad, John Taylor, has had a front-row seat to his daughter’s crusade and benefited from her growing expertise. On his ranch the cedar is under control, but near the fenceline, a few of the evergreen treetops peeked over a neighboring dune, like Birnam Wood advancing on MacBeth’s Dunsinane Hill. These trees are prolific, spreading their seeds across a 200-foot radius. Seedlings grow at about a rate of 1 to 2 feet per year, and once they reach 5 feet tall, they start spreading seed in their own 200-foot radius. That said, the Sandhills are mostly lucky, Kelly said. Eastern red cedar is easy to kill. Cut it down to the root and it mostly doesn’t grow back.

A red cedar grows near Wauneta, Nebraska. Getty Images Over 2,000 bison, also known as American buffalo, roam in the Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Osage County in June 2026 in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. Heather Diehl / Getty Images

Kelly has even helped Nebraskans connect to funding opportunities to clear the cedars. Through grants and fundraising, the Sandhills Task Force can help ranchers pay for up to 75 percent of cedar removal. The funds are stimulating a growing cedar removal industry in the region. State and federal programs will also help fund the removal — but, ironically, the same departments still subsidize tree-planting for windbreaks, Kelly said, though they are increasingly discouraging red cedars. 

The Nature Conservancy is using its preserves to test grazing patterns, new mixes of plant species, and other mitigation techniques that can help private landowners across the High Plains find the right balance of grazing, burning, and rewilding to keep their grasslands healthy. “To some extent, you can have a prairie that has trees,” Helzer said. “But there’s a line — when you cross that line, you have a woodland with clearings, not a grassland with trees.” 

Grassland prairies — short, mixed, tall, and other types — used to stretch from Texas to the Dakotas, into Kentucky and up to the foothills of the Rockies. Only 4 percent of tallgrass prairies are left, making it, Obermeyer said, “the most altered landscape in North America in terms of acres lost.” At the same time, he said, places like the Flint Hills and Sandhills give him hope. More people are recognizing the subtle beauty and ecological power of the plains. “We can’t lose sight of the fact that we have a tremendous amount that we have the chance to preserve,” Obermeyer said. “We have a lot of opportunities to get this right.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Great Plains face a surprising threat: Too many trees on Oct 6, 2026.

The facility calls for 456 small nuclear reactors, nuclear fuel production and nuclear waste storage. On the same day it surfaced, Sen. Ron Wyden introduced legislation that would ban new data centers.

Communities that trust their institutions are more willing to participate, collaborate, adapt, and recover. Communities that do not trust them remain vulnerable, regardless of how much climate finance is mobilised.

What can one person actually do about the metacrisis? In this week’s Frankly, Nate explicitly outlines just a few of the countless actions we can take to actually change what’s coming.

When José Antonio Kast took office as Chile’s new president in March, one of his first moves was to put the brakes on plans to expand two protected marine parks – raising doubts about the country’s high-profile bid to host the headquarters of the High Seas Treaty.

But during the UN General Assembly last month, the right-wing leader reaffirmed his leftist predecessor’s ambition for Chile to host the landmark global pact, which came into effect in January and provides a legal framework to protect the waters of the high seas beyond national jurisdiction that cover about two-thirds of the world’s oceans.

Hailing the country’s “maritime vocation”, Kast’s government said the bid to host the treaty’s secretariat in the port city of Valparaíso was state policy and testament to its commitment to multilateralism.

“For the government of Chile, it is of high interest to achieve this recognition, and we will carry out all the efforts to obtain the necessary support,” Foreign Minister Francisco Pérez Mackenna was quoted as saying by local media.

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Tough competition from Chinese, Belgian bids

But to garner the votes it needs, Chile must fend off competing bids by Belgium – which has proposed its well-connected capital, Brussels – and China, whose well-funded bid includes the provision of free premises in the coastal city of Xiamen and five years of free utility costs.

Parties to the treaty, formally called the Agreement on Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), will choose the headquarters at their first summit (COP1), in New York from January 11 to January 22, 2027. They will seek consensus, falling back on a two-thirds majority in successive secret ballots.

Chile has offered to provide a restored waterside warehouse “at its own expense” as office space, pitching itself to developing countries as a Global South alternative to Europe-centred Brussels. Among richer countries, it is promoting its democratic credentials and greater transparency as an alternative to China. 

Rolling back environmental safeguards at home?

While the South American country remains the top pick among environmental campaigners and other civil society groups, critics of Kast’s government say recent policy moves may make it harder for the country to garner the support it needs.

On March 12, the day after Kast took office, the Environment Ministry withdrew 43 decrees awaiting legal approval, including a push to expand the Mar de Juan Fernández and Nazca-Desventuradas marine parks – vast protected areas in Chile’s Pacific Ocean waters. Both remain under review, the ministry told Climate Home News.

The decrees also included an emission standard for coal power plants and regulations for Chile’s new biodiversity and protected areas service.

What’s on the climate calendar for October 2026?

A month after holding up the decrees, Kast questioned aspects of Chile’s urban wetlands protection law, suggesting it was sometimes an unjustified obstacle to much-needed housing development, and his administration has also sought to ease the rules on salmon farming in the world’s second-largest producer. 

In August, the Constitutional Court struck down the salmon farming reform after a challenge by opposition lawmakers and warnings from green groups including Greenpeace, which said it could help farms relocate into protected areas such as the Kawésqar National Reserve. 

Valparaíso mayor Camila Nieto, from former leftist President Gabriel Boric’s party, backs the bid to host the High Seas Treaty, but said she hoped “the government’s support also translates into public policies consistent with the goals of protecting and conserving the oceans”.

“The decisions a country makes on environmental matters can influence international perceptions of its commitment to protecting the oceans. That is something we cannot ignore,” Nieto told Climate Home News.

A Victorgorgia coral hosts brittle stars on a seamount in the Salas y Gómez ridge. (Photo: Center for Ecology and Sustainable Management of Oceanic Islands / Schmidt Ocean Institute) China’s bid stirs concerns over data access, fishing

Chile’s past record on marine protection – it has protected 43% of its jurisdictional waters – could yet give it an edge.

“Chile deserves it for its conservation record as a state. For more than 15 years Chile has been following this path,” Liesbeth van der Meer, executive director at conservation group Oceana in Chile, told Climate Home News.

Concerns in some quarters about the rival bid by China – for example, over a potential conflict of interest due to the vast Chinese fishing industry – may also weigh in Chile’s favour, experts say.

Chinese-flagged vessels did about 30% of detected high seas fishing between 2022 and 2024, according to an Oceana analysis of Global Fishing Watch data. China also sponsors five of the International Seabed Authority’s 31 deep-sea mining exploration contracts, more than any other country. 

The secretariat would host sensitive marine data, making transparency paramount, experts say.

China says hosting the secretariat in Xiamen would help make the treaty more globally representative, fostering cooperation between rich and developing countries and aiding equitable access to marine science and technology.

Wang Yi, China’s minister of foreign affairs, said in a statement that the country has “all along championed true multilateralism” and “firmly defended” UN institutions. Given Xiamen’s $38-billion ocean industry, the city lives up to the treaty’s “significance and promising future”, he added.

Meanwhile, Chile is proposing the treaty’s first high seas marine protected area for the Salas y Gómez and Nazca ridges, a chain of more than 110 seamounts stretching about 4,000 km from off Peru to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) that is rich in endemic fish and other marine species.

The ridges are “a true oasis of productivity”, said Carlos Gaymer, director of the Centre for Ecology and Sustainable Management of Oceanic Islands at Universidad Católica del Norte and co-author of a 2021 scientific review of the area. 

Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel Falkor deploys a remotely operated vehicle on the Salas y Gómez ridge in January 2024. Chilean scientists rely on foreign ships to study the area. (Photo: Center for Ecology and Sustainable Management of Oceanic Islands / Schmidt Ocean Institute)

The water is so clear that phytoplankton thrive around 200 metres down, feeding zooplankton, small fish and, up the chain, sharks and seabirds. Whales, turtles and sharks use the ridges as “a real highway” across the Pacific, Gaymer said. Parts of the Nazca ridge are likely nursery grounds for jack mackerel and swordfish.

Chile has already asked the body that regulates the industry in the area – the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO) – to close the ridges to all fishing vessels. According to Chilean data, more than 80% of fishing in the area involves Chinese vessels.

Meeting on the Chilean request in early September, SPRFMO’s scientific committee agreed only to recommend closing the area to bottom fishing. SPRFMO’s commission will take the final decision at its next meeting, in early 2027.

For Gaymer, Chile’s push to close the area to fishing should be seen as a “starting point” for the treaty proposal. 

“Every time there’s a new expedition, species new to science appear,” Gaymer said. “If you don’t protect areas like these … those species simply disappear from the planet.”

The post Race to host High Seas Treaty HQ heats up as Chile reaffirms bid appeared first on Climate Home News.

Four formerly suspended registered nurses at Olympia Fields Hospital in Olympia Fields, Ill. and one formerly terminated nurse at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, Maine, have been reinstated and will return to work this week. By Sept. 18, Prime Healthcare had suspended or fired 20 nurses at CMMC and 6 at Olympia Fields Hospital.

Global Citizen's Michael Sheldrick on why the global push to electrify could lift millions out of poverty, and why Collie is a key test case for the transition from coal.

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Controversy has erupted over a planned cap on land lease payments for wind farms in Germany, with the industry and banks warning it could jeopardise new projects.

The post Plan to cap wind farm land lease payments sparks controversy, may jeopardise new projects appeared first on Renew Economy.