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Wamuyu Manyara is country director for Trócaire Malawi and Tarcizio Kalaundi is its climate resilience officer.

This week, the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) faces a significant decision that will determine its ability to address the harms being done by climate change.

Discussions on the Fund’s Resource Mobilisation Strategy must get the scale and accessibility of the Fund right. Failure to do so would risk undermining its role to channel finance to countries ex­periencing loss and damage, and undermine obligations to climate justice and human rights.

This discussion could not come at a more pressing time. As loss and damage (L&D) continues to escalate globally, and as the world teeters perilously close to the Paris Agreement’s critical 1.5C warming limit, the FRLD also faces the very real danger of running out of funding in 2027.

As Nigeria rails at loss and damage “mirage”, fund boss assures money is coming

Experts calculate that in 2025, L&D finance needs for climate-vulnerable countries may have reached USD$937 billion. Last year’s major impacts included a series of extremely destructive cyclones that hit the Philippines, estimated to have caused over $5 billion in losses, while in Jamaica, the losses and damage caused by Hurricane Melissa were estimated at $12.2 billion.

The bill for just one of these disasters would exhaust the Fund’s existing resources many times over. While the costs and human rights violations rack up, almost four years after being agreed at COP27, the FRLD remains critically underfunded.

Pledges to the Fund ($822 million) are just a fraction of 1% of annual loss and damage needs, and only around half of those pledges ($448 million) have been paid into the Fund so far.

Meanwhile, those who have done nothing to cause the climate crisis are facing its worst – and intensifying – impacts and are being left to foot the bill for the damages already incurred, not to mention the severe non-economic costs to communities. It is therefore crucial that the FRLD’s Resource Mobilisation Strategy urgently brings in far more L&D finance.

Contributor conundrum

Many developed states will claim that additional countries should provide L&D finance. This, however, is a distraction – particularly considering the deep abyss between the contributions of developed states that are obligated to pay and their fair share as calculated according to their wealth and historical emissions. Furthermore, some states and regions that are currently not obligated to contribute are already doing so. 

Analysis reveals that, even in the highly inequitable scenario where all states including those who have contributed nothing to causing the climate crisis were to pay towards L&D finance, wealthy countries would still be responsible for the vast majority of L&D finance.

New loss and damage fund could run out of money next year

The Fund’s Resource Mobilisation Strategy must focus political discussions on the ability of rich and highly polluting states to raise public, grant-based L&D finance that is new and additional to existing climate finance obligations and overseas development assistance.

Developed states have the means to pay and the FRLD should introduce mandatory and progressive mechanisms to make the biggest polluters, including the ultra-rich and fossil fuel corporations, pay for their climate harms. 

African impacts

Increasingly unpredictable seasons and more frequent and extreme events are driving food insecurity, malnutrition, displacement and other human rights risks in climate-vulnerable countries, and communities facing these escalating and compounding impacts must be centred in FRLD policies.

In Ethiopia, 2023 saw 24 million people affected by five back-to-back failed rains leading to severe food and water shortages, including a 90% crop loss in drought-affected areas. Eleven million people required food assistance, and over 500,000 people were displaced. Meanwhile, the 2023–24 floods and the 2024 Gofa landslide disrupted or destroyed health facilities, displaced thousands, and led to outbreaks of cholera, malaria, and measles.

Comment: Let’s tax luxury air travel to fund climate adaptation and loss and damage

Today, Somalia is facing one of its most severe drought emergencies in recent history driven by climate extremes. Malnutrition rates continue to exceed projections and previous devastating records, with 1.9 million children in Somalia acutely malnourished.

In Malawi, child stunting had significantly reduced, but climate impacts are now affecting children’s growth and development. Tropical Cyclone Freddy in 2023 was one of the worst on record, causing over 1,200 deaths, displacing half a million people, and causing damages exceeding $500 million. Recovery needs for four major disasters between 2015 and 2023 are estimated at $1.7 billion, equivalent to more than a quarter of Malawi’s 2026-2027 budget. 

Funding for communities

Access to community grants in the southern African country, however, has catalysed local responses to L&D that coordinate around immediate and long-term needs and restoring livelihoods.

Direct access to the FRLD for climate-vulnerable countries and communities, with community-centric planning, is essential to ensure that the Fund can respond to the needs of people experiencing the worst impacts of climate change, through prompt and flexible mechanisms that do not hinder recovery options.

Stepping up to fill the FRLD through an ambitious and needs-based Resource Mobilisation Strategy is the bare minimum that wealthy states can and must do. It is, after all, an obligation that flows from the international duties of cooperation and prevention of harm, and from the obligation to provide reparation when harm occurs. Failure to do so would further erode climate justice and human rights for communities on the frontline of loss and damage.

The post The loss and damage fund needs far more finance to deliver climate justice appeared first on Climate Home News.

Last week the United States decided not to renew the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

United States trade representative Jamieson Greer announced the decision in a statement, but did not explicitly state the reason. He referenced “shortcomings” and “trade deficits” that the U.S. will continue to address with Mexico and Canada.

The USMCA Agriculture Coalition, representing farm and agricultural groups, and 20 House Agricultural Committee Democrats sent letters to the Trump-Vance administration encouraging the renewal and expressing concern about the future of North American trade. Set to expire in 2036, USMCA will now be reviewed annually and subject to negotiations.

House Democrats wrote in their letter, that “by not renewing USMCA, the president and his administration are threatening one of his legacy achievements, and the last source of trade certainty our farmers have.”

USMCA, which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 2020 under the first Trump administration, serves as an agreement between the United States, Mexico, and Canada and is intended to strengthen North American trade and support economic stability. In 2024, “agricultural and seafood exports to Canada and Mexico generated US$149 billion in total economic contribution to the U.S. economy and supported nearly half a million jobs,” according to a study by the Agricultural Coalition for USMCA.

The current Agreement maintains NAFTA’s elimination of tariffs on almost all U.S. agricultural exports to Mexico and Canada. According to the International Trade Administration, major differences between the two Agreements include the modernization of sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures, which ensure food safety for agricultural products, and the creation of standards for handling evolving biotechnologies, such as gene editing. It also expands market access for U.S. products, including dairy.

A study by Purdue University finds that trade agreements, including USMCA, have significantly lowered food prices for Americans and created access to seasonal produce year-round.

Prior to the renewal period, the Agriculture Coalition for USMCA sent a letter to the U.S., Canada, and Mexico trade representatives urging them to renew the Agreement. In light of the U.S.’ failure to renew, Bryan Goodman, a spokesperson for the Coalition, tells Food Tank that  “U.S. farmers continue to seek the renewal and strengthening of USMCA… President Trump is a strong negotiator, and we look forward to working with the administration to renew the agreement.”

While the U.S. declined renewal, Canada and Mexico expressed their support of the Agreement in the meeting. “We agreed on the importance of continuing our discussions and identifying ways to ensure trade and investment frameworks… to support North American prosperity and competitiveness,” says the Honorable Dominic LeBlanc, Minister of Canada-U.S. Trade, Intergovernmental Affairs, Internal Trade and One Canadian Economy.

The U.S. will meet with Mexico in two weeks to continue negotiations.

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 Howard Walsh, Unsplash

The post Agriculture Groups Push for Renewal of USMCA Trade Deal appeared first on Food Tank.

Between the view, the marshes, and the birds, Liat Meitzenheimer concedes the drive along California State Route 37 is scenic. Still, she avoids it for two reasons: congestion and flooding.

The highway, about half of which is two-lane, is often backed up with people commuting between affordable communities in Solano County to the east and jobs in pricier Sonoma and Marin counties to the west. It also is a regional link to Napa Valley and other destinations, much of it built on embankments, bridges, and causeways that span marshes precariously close to San Pablo Bay. That makes it prone to flooding, which has led to occasional closures. 

“I don’t go that route whenever we have the potential of flooding, because I know how crazy it can get,” said Meitzenheimer, a retiree who lives in Vallejo, not far from the highway’s eastern terminus at Interstate 80. 

These problems will worsen as the population grows and climate change brings more frequent and intense storms. Without adaptation measures, portions of the road are at risk of permanent inundation by 2050.

The state Department of Transportation and the regional Metropolitan Transportation Commission are pursuing a $500 million project that would, over five years, remake portions of the 21-mile highway. It would replace one of five bridges with one 5 feet taller, raise two one-mile sections by up to 8 inches, add a carpool and bus lane in each direction, and restore a tidal marsh and other ecosystems. 

Not everyone thinks that goes far enough. Some want the highway moved several miles inland. Others favor a far more ambitious $10 billion project that would take at least 20 years. It would raise almost the entire roadway, add a lane for cyclists and pedestrians, and perhaps include railway tracks. To do anything less, advocates of this approach say, overlooks two pressing issues.

“Highway expansion does not solve congestion and will worsen climate change,” said Zack Deutsch-Gross, who leads TransForm CA, a sustainable transportation advocacy organization. “This project is pretty egregious,” because the highway, if left where it is, “in the long term will be underwater.”

The challenges facing SR-37 are not unique. California’s iconic Highway 1, has been repeatedly closed due to floods, fires, and rockslides. Coastal cities like Miami Beach and Atlantic City are scrambling to harden infrastructure against rising seas and frequent inundation. Hurricanes routinely leave island and low-lying communities isolated by deluged causeways. Addressing these problems requires tremendous investment — bolstering bridges alone could cost $170 billion by 2050. Failing to do so could bring grave consequences. Without further adaptation, annual damage from coastal flooding worldwide could account for 2.9 percent of global gross domestic product by 2100. That’s up from 0.3 percent just 11 years ago.

California is among the states most aggressively planning for a warmer world. How it proceeds with SR-37 will show just how serious it is about adapting roadways to climate change.

California Highway 37 regularly floods during severe rain, as it did during an atmospheric river that dumped enough rain in January 2023 to require closing the two westbound lanes. Alan Dep / Marin Independent Journal via Getty Images

Highway 37 began as Sears Point Tollway, which opened in 1928 to connect Marin and Solano counties north of San Francisco. California bought it 10 years later, and in the decades since has widened it as the road became an increasingly important commuter and freight route. The road is essentially a causeway and crosses an intricate system of wetlands, sloughs, rivers, and creeks at the northern end of San Pablo Bay. It also traverses a federally protected wildlife refuge, a state managed wildlife area, and an immense tidal marsh.

Transportation planners have considered widening, raising, or relocating portions of the road since the 1950s, but rarely proceeded due to the cost and environmental impact. That’s become less of a concern as repeated flooding and sea level rise — California could see an average increase of 10 inches by 2050 and 1.6 to 3.1 feet by 2100 — become more urgent problems.

Fraser Shilling, who leads the Road Ecology Center at the University of California, Davis, started researching SR-37 in 2010, which is about when Caltrans started considering sea level rise. His work presented a variety of ways to bolster it against that inevitability. “The least resilient was what they’re currently building, which is the highway on a berm,” he said. “The most resilient was to move the highway inland.”

A raised highway would still rest precariously on mud, Shilling said. He favors the strategic retreat of moving it as much as 5 miles inland. “There’s always been a problem that it goes through the marshes,” Shilling said. “You would never ever get permission to build that today.”

Barring that, he said, the state and region face irreconcilable choices. Without sufficient hardening, the highway could wash away. But too much could make the shoreline erode more quickly. 

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission considered relocating the highway, but chose to focus on more feasible projects given the cost and time constraints, said agency spokesperson John Goodwin. “We would love to see the long-term projects completed sooner rather than later, but recognizing that [it] would take many billions of dollars, and probably 20 years, we’ve got needs that need to be satisfied,” he said.

The agency has secured $270 million to replace the Novato Creek Bridge in what Goodwin called the first part of the long-term project –– that would accommodate sea-level rise and storm surges on SR-37 until 2130. He said starting with quicker, relatively cheaper projects will also give the agency enough time to find the $10 billion needed for the long-term project.

The Sanibel Causeway is the only road connecting Sanibel Island with mainland Florida. The state reopened it in 15 days. Ricardo Arduengo / AFP via Getty Images

In 2022, Hurricane Ian flooded the 3-mile Sanibel Causeway, which connects that Florida island to the mainland. While the state managed to reopen it in 15 days, the experience has become a cautionary tale for other islands. 

Jill Gambill, a researcher at Georgia Tech’s Institute for People and Technology, began developing an adaptation plan for Tybee Island in 2012 –– the first of its kind by a local government in the state. An 11-mile causeway connects it to the mainland near Savannah. Flooding closed it four times in 2024, leaving residents stranded for as long as five hours.

A hurricane has not made landfall in Georgia since 1979, but hurricanes Irma and Matthew brought the highest water levels since measurement began in 1935. “If we were to get hit by, even a category two or a category three storm here, where it’s a direct hit, that would be catastrophic,” Gambill said. 

The state, which maintains Highway 80, repaved and raised it 8 inches in 2019. Elevating it more substantially could help reduce flooding but require widening the base, threatening important marsh habitat. It would also be expensive, and the state Department of Transportation, which did not respond to a request for comment, has yet to commit the funding. 

Jo E. Sias, a civil engineer and professor who studies pavement design at the University of New Hampshire, said rising seas also bring hidden problems. As groundwater tables rise, they intersect with pavement below the surface, weakening the road and leading to faster deterioration, she said. The increased moisture in the soil caused by precipitation and sea level can weaken the road and potentially halve its lifetime.

There is growing interest in nature-based solutions. When the Sanibel Island Causeway disappeared, for example, segments near small, self-contained “pocket beaches” remained largely intact when others washed away. “Pocket beaches, beach nourishment projects, dune systems,” Sias said, listing possible solutions. “Anything that you can do to minimize the energy of the water as it’s coming across the roads is going to reduce the propensity for washout.”

Tybee Island recently added three rain gardens to bolster roads around Highway 80 through funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the city. A future phase of the project would build living shorelines, which use bags of oyster shells, smooth cordgrass, and other vegetation to absorb energy from waves.

Jason Evans, the executive director at Stetson University’s Institute for Water and Environmental Resilience, sees an opportunity to strengthen both habitats and highways. Oyster reefs, for instance, benefit the ecosystem and grow vertically as seas rise, unlike seawalls. 

Evans said flooding in low-lying southeastern communities is increasing as seas rise. That makes it essential to consider where roads lead and how they are used when developing mitigation plans. It makes little sense to raise a road by six feet if what’s at the other end hasn’t been prepared as well. “You might have an elevated road going out to a flooded island,” he said. 

There are also questions of equity. Residents of coastal communities tend to be wealthier than those living inland. Using tax revenue to elevate a causeway or bridge “so the millionaires and billionaires can get to their beach house” denies funding to projects that could serve a wider swath of the community, Evans said.

Ethan Elkind, who leads the climate program at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, said the Golden State’s approach to transportation conflicts with its climate goals, though he concedes fixing SR-37 is complicated. Many of those who use it commute to rural jobs in wine country or in low-density suburbs. Greater job density would allow public transit to drop workers at fewer, more central locations, “as opposed to needing small-scale transit to help workers reach dispersed locations,” Elkind said. 

Dense, affordable housing in Marin and Sonoma counties would help too by reducing the number of commuters. “Instead, those communities, for decades now, have really put up the gates to any new development,” Elkind said. He added that there’s still time to greenlight more housing development, shore up the roadway, and build a high-capacity bus lane.

As for plans to expand the highway, Hana Cregar, associate director of climate equity at the Greenlining Institute, said people are starting to see the downsides of adding lanes. A Transportation for America survey found that only 10 percent of respondents consider that the best solution to reducing traffic. It may help explain how the project is being pitched.

“The way that this highway expansion project is aiming to rebrand under a climate resilience lens is unique,” Cregar said, “because I think it’s aiming to hide the flaws in this project by painting it as solving a very real issue.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How to build a highway in the age of climate change on Jul 9, 2026.

For decades, Jon Zehr was haunted by an organism he knew was there — but couldn’t see.

It all started in the ‘90s on a research boat in the middle of the ocean. Zehr was an oceanographer studying nitrogen-fixing bacteria — simple, microbial life forms that could pull the element straight from the air, making it bioavailable to plants and animals. Scientists at the time had only seriously studied one species of nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the entire ocean, but Zehr wanted to change that. His plan was to gather and test samples of seawater with the hope that he might find something that other scientists had missed.

Left: Jon Zehr (bottom center) sits aboard a research vessel. Right: Zehr studies nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the lab. Courtesy of Jon Zehr.

Zehr’s plans involved something pretty cutting-edge for the time: DNA. He gathered seawater samples and ran tests for the presence of the gene for nitrogenase, the enzyme that gives bacteria the ability to pull nitrogen out of the air. If he got a hit, it would hopefully mean the seawater contained some new kind of nitrogen-fixing bacteria.

And it worked. Almost immediately, he found traces of a species of nitrogen-fixing bacteria previously unknown to science. Looking at the genes themselves, he could get a pretty good idea of what this new bacteria should look like. It was likely a unicellular cyanobacteria, around 3 micrometers in size, that should fluoresce orange under the microscope. Full of anticipation, he popped the seawater samples under the microscope, expecting to see that bacteria everywhere.

Instead, he found nothing. There weren’t any organisms in the sample that matched the right description.

Surprised, Zehr repeated the process over and over. He tested samples of seawater from the tropical waters of Hawaii and the southern Caribbean, all the way to the cold waters in the Arctic. Again and again, the genetic signature surfaced but not the visible bacteria. It was as if he had discovered a footprint without an animal.

But he didn’t want to stop looking. He knew that any new discovery could represent a vital link in the Earth’s fragile nitrogen cycle. “This one I kept chasing, because it’s globally important,” Zehr said. 

To understand Jon’s obsession, it helps to start with a peculiar biological constraint — a cruel joke, as one scientist put it — at the heart of all life on Earth. It goes like this: All living organisms need the element nitrogen to survive. It’s a key part of proteins, DNA, and RNA. But while our atmosphere is absolutely packed with nitrogen, the one enzyme that can pull nitrogen from the air so that living organisms can actually use it basically falls apart in the presence of oxygen. So even though plants, animals, and fungi are constantly surrounded by nitrogen in the air, they can’t get a hold of it on their own. 

The only organisms that can actually pull this off are ones that can survive without oxygen: super simple bacteria and archaea. That means the entire natural world relies on a relatively small number of microscopic species to make nitrogen usable by more complex forms of life.

Animals, plants, and fungi rely on simple microbes like bacteria and archaea for nitrogen. Jesse Nichols / Grist

This biological bottleneck has had major impacts on human civilization. Nitrogen is a major component of fertilizer, since plants need it to grow. Enriching soil with nitrogen drastically increases crop yields — important for feeding a growing population. Centuries ago, fertilizer was in such short supply that countries fought wars over islands covered in nitrogen-rich bird guano. In the early 20th century, German scientists created an industrial method to create synthetic, or lab-made, fertilizer. While this invention saved billions of lives from starvation, it also wreaked havoc on the environment. Producing synthetic fertilizer uses a massive amount of energy, and the overuse of fertilizer has polluted the water enough to lead to massive “dead zones” in the ocean. 

These dueling problems — the consequences of too much and too little nitrogen — have led scientists to muse about innovations like self-fertilizing plants. But despite these dreams, researchers hadn’t been able to develop a form of complex life capable of fixing its own nitrogen. It seemed to be an ironclad rule of biology that no organism from the complex side of the tree of life could pull nitrogen out of the air.

Which made it all the more puzzling that Jon Zehr’s particular type of nitrogen-fixing bacteria didn’t seem to be playing by the usual rules. His research team had plenty of the organism’s DNA, but no actual organism. Not only that, but the more they studied it, the less the bacteria’s DNA seemed to make sense. They could tell from its genetic markers that it was photosynthetic bacteria, but it didn’t actually seem to have the genes to photosynthesize. In fact, it seemed to have lost about 80 percent of its entire genome, including several genes it should technically need to survive. The organism seemed less like a complete bacterium than a collection of absences. How was it even alive?

After years of studying this puzzle, Zehr started to notice a pattern: Every sample of seawater that contained the mystery bacteria DNA also contained DNA for one specific type of algae. What if the reason that he had never seen the bacteria under the microscope was because it was hiding in plain sight, inside another organism? That might also explain how the bacteria could survive, even with all those missing genes. 

Zehr began to suspect the algae was the missing piece he had been chasing for decades. What he didn’t know was that someone else had spent years trying to solve the other half of the same puzzle from the other side of the world.

Despite being told her research would be of no use to others, Japanese scientist Kyoko Hagino spent decades of her career studying a type of algae called Braarudosphaera bigelowii.
Naotomo Umewaka / Grist

Kyoko Hagino is an algae scientist from Kochi, Japan. Just like Jon Zehr, her story also started in the late ‘90s, with a microorganism that changed the course of her career. She was part of a paleontology research team, studying tiny algae fossils on the ocean floor, to piece together information about Earth’s past climate.

Among the countless microscopic fossils she examined, there was one that absolutely captivated her. It was a type of algae called Braarudosphaera bigelowii. Hagino fondly just calls it Bigelowii.

At certain points in Bigelowii’s life, it surrounds itself with this beautiful geometric shell, and Hagino would find these pentagonal skeletons throughout her samples. “When I first spotted Bigelowii, I thought it was in such a beautiful shape,” she said. “It has a very beautiful shape like a jewel.”

But no one really knew anything about the algae living inside. This was what Hagino wanted to study. But no one else seemed to share her fascination.

Braarudosphaera bigelowii in its jewel-like calcified (left) and non-calcified (right) forms.
Courtesy of Kyoko Hagino

“When I first started the research, my boss at the time objected to it,” she said. “[I was told] even if you do such research that nobody reads, it won’t land you a job.”

At the time, Hagino was having trouble finding a position at a university. At the same time, she was taking care of her young kids. And she was moving to a new city where her husband had found work. Everything in her life seemed to be sending the clear message that she should just drop it and find something else to study. But Hagino just couldn’t do that. For whatever reason, there was something about this algae that just absolutely fascinated her, and she wanted to learn everything about it. Even if that meant studying it on her own.

So Hagino and her daughter started taking trips to the beach, collecting samples of seawater in the hopes of finding this elusive algae. Over the years, they ended up taking hundreds of these trips. They did this so often that her daughter genuinely didn’t know that people went to the beach for other reasons, like to go swimming.

“‘The ocean — isn’t that the place to collect seawater?’” Hagino recounted her daughter saying.
  

Kyoko Hagino and her daughter collect samples of seawater. Courtesy of Kyoko Hagino

Hagino would then spend hours at home with the microscope, searching for Bigelowii cells and individually picking them out when she’d find them. This was incredibly time-consuming, but it was kind of the only way to study them. No matter what she did, the cells didn’t seem to want to grow in a test tube. 

For years, Hagino worked on growing a culture without any kind of university salary. To make ends meet, she ended up picking up a part-time job washing test tubes in a lab. One day, she was talking to one of the scientists there, and he suggested adding an unusual ingredient to her culture. It wasn’t a chemical or anything else you’d normally find in the lab. It was tokoroten, a type of traditional Japanese jelly noodle made from seaweed.

To Hagino’s amazement, the noodles were just what Bigelowii needed.

“I saw Bigelowii swimming and increasing in number,” she said. “I was extremely happy.”

Left: Kyoko Hagino holds a bowl of tokoroten, the secret ingredient she used in her Bigelowii culture. Naotomo Umewaka / Grist. Right: A microscope image of Hagino’s culture. Courtesy of Zehr Lab.

Now that she had a culture, she could finally grow enough cells to answer some of the big questions about this organism. And there was one big question at the top of Hagino’s mind. Over the course of her many years studying Bigelowii, she noticed something odd. It had all the normal components of an algae cell. But then it also had something she couldn’t explain — something she had never seen in any textbook. It was a black dot in the center of the algae.

A transmission electron microscope image of a Bigelowii revealed a strange object. Courtesy of Kyoko Hagino

Hagino was preparing to publish a paper on this mysterious dot, when she stumbled upon an article that had just come out in the American journal Science. It described the search for a seemingly invisible nitrogen-fixing bacteria that the author theorized was likely living inside a species of algae. The author of the article was Jon Zehr, and he was talking about Braarudosphaera bigelowii.

Hagino thought about the strange object she had discovered inside Bigelowii. The pieces fit. She ran a genetic test on Bigelowii, and it came out positive: She had found the nitrogen-fixing bacteria that Zehr had spent so many years searching for. 

“I never imagined that someone was doing research on Bigelowii,” she said. “I was shocked to think that I had been surpassed.”

Zehr was also surprised when Hagino reached out to share her discovery with him — the same puzzle, worked on from an ocean away. “Neither one of us knew that the two things went together!” he said.

Hagino and Zehr had both spent their careers trying to solve a scientific puzzle, with no idea that they each held the other’s missing piece. Now that they had a culture, they had the chance to unravel a mystery that would end up going deeper than they’d ever imagined.

Together, they would reveal a level of cooperation that would rewrite a fundamental rule of biology.

Zehr and Hagino look out at the Pacific Ocean. Left: Naotomo Umewaka​ / Grist Right: Jesse Nichols / Grist

Nature is full of symbiotic relationships: two organisms, each helping the other out. The clownfish from Finding Nemo is a good example of this — it looks after its sea anemone partner, in exchange for a safe place to live. But these helpful relationships can get closer and closer. There are organisms that live inside other organisms, like corals, which get food from zooxanthellae algae living in them. And you even have cells that live inside other cells. At a certain point, the relationship becomes so close that we’re not sure where one organism starts and the other begins. 
  
Now, two organisms converging — going from being considered separate entities to part of the same being — is pretty mind-bending, and it’s a line that’s only been crossed a few times in the history of life on Earth. The two famous examples of this are mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell found in every complex life form on Earth, and chloroplasts, the parts of plant cells that use photosynthesis to turn sunlight and carbon dioxide into food. Both of these examples started as independent cells that over time got so close to their partners that they became organelles: little organs inside other cells.
  
But what about Bigelowii and its internal bacteria? There was no doubt the relationship between the two was close. Zehr and Hagino were eager to find out just how the two worked together. So they teamed up. She sent a culture to John’s lab with hopes to visit California as the experiment went on.
  
When the culture arrived at Zehr’s office, he was so excited he took a photo to capture the moment. His team debated over which experiments they were going to run first.  

Jon Zehr smiles as he receives the first Bigelowii culture shipment from Hagino in 2020. Courtesy of Zehr Lab

“We sat around as a lab, and we decided the ten things we were going to do first, because we didn’t know how long the culture would stay alive,” he said.  “And within three days, Covid lockdown started.”

The pandemic threw a wrench in all of their plans. Japan put up very strict travel restrictions that ended up staying in place for years. After all her hard work, Hagino couldn’t join Zehr in person. But the two were still hungry for answers, and they decided that Zehr’s lab should proceed with the tests. Hagino, who had funding from a grant she shared with Zehr, would help as much as she could from afar.
  
And pretty quickly, they started to find clues that the algae and the bacteria’s relationship was not a standard case of symbiosis. Bigelowii and the bacteria always divided at the same time. They also grew at the same rate, and in ways that looked really similar to mitochondria or chloroplasts. 

But the most compelling piece of evidence came from Tyler Coale, a postdoc in Zehr’s lab. He was studying the proteins inside of the two organisms, when he noticed something strange: the bacteria were full of proteins that they didn’t have the genes to make. Instead, these proteins were being produced from extra genes found in Bigelowii. And on the very ends of each of these extra genes, there was the same short DNA sequence that kept showing up over and over.

Tyler Coale looks at Braarudosphaera bigelowii cells under a microscope at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Jesse Nichols / Grist

This pattern reminded Coale of an earlier mystery: The nitrogen-fixing bacteria that had somehow lost many of the genes for proteins it needed to survive. Could Bigelowii be supplying them instead? To find out, he ran an experiment, lining up the missing genes from one organism with the extra genes from the other. The match was striking. For nearly every gene that the bacteria had lost, Bigelowii had evolved an extra copy. And each of those extra genes were tagged with that same sequence of DNA on the end — molecular delivery instructions to send the protein over to the bacteria.

This discovery was huge because this kind of system had only been seen a small handful of times in mitochondria and in chloroplasts and now, in the tiny dot Zehr and Hagino had found inside of Bigelowii. The nitrogen-fixing bacteria were no longer bacteria anymore. It had become a part of Bigelowii, an independent microorganism-turned-organelle.

Zehr and his team decided to call it the Nitroplast.

And that also meant Bigelowii had broken the fundamental rule that only simple organisms like bacteria could pull nitrogen out of the air. The algae are the first known organisms on the complex side of the tree of life that can pull nitrogen out of the air. 

While it’s early days, Coale says the discovery could have big implications for industries like agriculture. “This organism has done what decades of biotech couldn’t do, right? It has engineered this capability into this cell. It’s natural to think that there might be lessons here that we could learn.” he said. 

Zehr, while cautiously optimistic, thinks that self-fertilizing plants are still a long way from becoming a reality. “The downer is it’s really difficult to go from what we know about the nitroplast to engineering a plant,” he said. “But if you don’t take one step, you’re not going to make 100 steps.”

Zehr and Hagino are excited to see where the research takes them next. But for them, it’s never really been about changing the world. They spent their careers studying their tiny pieces of the puzzle, not knowing what they’d find, but with the hope that whatever they discovered could teach them a little more about how the natural world works.

And on that front, there’s so much more to learn.

“This experience has shown that we don’t know which research will be useful and when,” Hagino said.

“Some of the biggest, biggest advances might come from things that you didn’t expect,” Zehr said. “And this might be a case like that.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The tiny cell that broke a big rule of biology on Jul 9, 2026.

Back in April, we launched the Great Power Shift, our flagship global campaign to end fossil fuel dependence and ensure affordable clean energy for all. We are calling on governments to shift public money away from fossil fuels and into renewables, make polluters pay their fair share through a permanent windfall tax, and invest in energy systems that work for everyone, not just the highest bidder.

Months on, our campaign is gaining real momentum across the world, shifting power away from polluters and back to people.

Learn more about how fossil fuels and the cost of living crises are interconnected. Credit: Kathleen Lei Limayo/350.org

From local actions to national campaigns, people across the world are demanding a better future where clean, affordable energy is within reach for everyone.

Together, here’s what we’ve achieved so far:

More than 30,000 people called on G7 leaders to make polluters pay

Ahead of the G7 Summit in France, we made our demand to the world’s richest countries loud and clear: stop letting fossil fuel companies rake in obscene profits while ordinary people pay the price through higher bills and climate disasters.

More than 30,000 people signed our petition, while campaigners in France took the message directly to decision-makers through creative public actions and a wave of online pressure ahead of the summit.

Although G7 leaders stopped short of taxing the windfall profits of oil and gas companies, they couldn’t ignore the growing public demand for a fairer energy system.

The pressure doesn’t stop here.

Thousands helped deliver the ‘Out of Pocket’ Report to decision-makers

Supporters from around the world sent our Out of Pocket report directly to political leaders, highlighting how dependence on imported fossil fuels drives up household energy costs.

The report highlights how fossil fuels are taking money from ordinary people and governments.

And it got noticed. We received a response from the European Commission – proof that people speaking up together can reach the halls of power. We also hand delivered copies to the European Parliament last week.

Communities are already building the alternatives

Across our network, people aren’t waiting for politicians to act.

In the Pacific, community leaders gathered for a Solar Scholars training programme, learning how to bring renewable energy projects to their communities.

Pacific solar scholars program.

In Türkiye, our organisers are building a virtual solar cooperative. In South Africa, our campaigners continue pushing for free basic electricity. In Canada, we’ve joined more than 60 organisations calling for governments to tax fossil fuel companies’ excess profits.

More and more communities are building energy systems that put people first.

A global week of action to #StopEACOP

Communities around the world also stood in solidarity with people resisting the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), a project threatening livelihoods, ecosystems and communities across Uganda and Tanzania.

Residents of Kijumba District, Uganda, stage a peaceful road blockade during the #KickPollutersOut Global Week of Action

Together with partners, campaigners organized more than 60 actions across 19 countries as part of #KickPollutersOut Global Week of Action, from marches and community meetings to creative protests and digital actions, sending a clear message that fossil fuel expansion has no place in our future.

The week showed something powerful: communities separated by thousands of kilometres are standing together against the same system that puts corporate profits before people and the planet.

Taking our demands to global leaders

Momentum continued well beyond the G7.

In Santa Marta, Colombia, representatives from 57 countries came together for the first-ever global conference focused on transitioning away from fossil fuels. For the first time, Indigenous Peoples, frontline communities, trade unions, youth activists and civil society weren’t just watching from the sidelines – they had a seat at the table, shaping the conversation alongside governments.

During the Santa Marta conference, activists and local communities blocked the entrance of one of the main coal ports in Latin America.

Outside the official meetings, communities showed that the transition is already happening. From community energy projects to a peaceful action at one of Latin America’s largest coal ports, people demonstrated that renewable alternatives aren’t ideas for the future – they’re already being built today.

Just weeks later at the UN Climate Talks in Bonn, governments signalled growing momentum behind the global commitment to transition away from fossil fuels. But once again, wealthy countries failed to deliver the finance that climate-vulnerable communities urgently need to adapt to worsening floods, droughts and extreme heat.

The message from both meetings was clear: progress is possible, but governments still need much more public pressure to match their promises with action.

That’s why our movement continues to grow. Around the world, people are facing a cost of living crisis, rising energy bills and worsening climate impacts. Meanwhile, oil and gas companies continue making enormous profits while ordinary households bear the costs.

350.org campaigners in France and Africa call for a permanent windfall tax on fossil fuel profit. Photo: Remy El Sibaïe

Enough is enough. It’s time governments made polluters pay and invested that money in affordable renewable energy and climate solutions that put people first.

When we come together to speak out, organize and build solutions in our own communities, change becomes possible.

Ready to be part of the movement?

Join the Great Power Shift and help push for a fair, fossil-free future.

Join the Great Power Shift

The post The Great Power Shift is underway! appeared first on 350.

Huge wind project with one of the country's biggest batteries to become the first to test Queensland's tough new planning framework.

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Picture a sunflower growing in a median strip along a busy highway in Los Angeles. It looks cheerful enough – bright petals, sturdy stem. But slice open its tissues in a lab, and you might find cadmium concentrations five times higher than sunflowers grown in a rural field 60 miles away. That flower isn’t just decorating the roadside. It’s recording the invisible chemistry of urban air and soil, one metal atom at a time.

Most people associate environmental monitoring with expensive sensors, government agencies, and complicated lab work. But researchers across the U.S. and Europe are increasingly turning to something far simpler – flowering plants – as living detectors of toxic metal contamination. The concept is called bioindication, and flowers, it turns out, are remarkably good at it.

Existing research has focused heavily on mosses, lichens, and tree leaves as bioindicators. Some studies have explored common weeds. But the specific role of flowering species – their petals, reproductive tissues, and ornamental varieties found in every American city – remains an underexplored territory. That’s exactly what makes this topic worth digging into.

What makes a plant a good bioindicator – and why flowers stand out

A bioindicator is any organism that reflects the environmental conditions around it through measurable changes – chemical accumulation, physiological stress, or morphological shifts. For plants, this typically means absorbing metals like lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), zinc (Zn), copper (Cu), and nickel (Ni) from contaminated soil and air, then storing those metals in their tissues.

Not every plant does this equally well. A good bioindicator species needs a few key traits:

• Wide geographic distribution – so you can compare results across different sites
• High tolerance to pollutants – it needs to survive long enough to accumulate detectable levels
• Measurable uptake – the plant should reliably concentrate metals above background levels
• Easy identification – no confusion about which species you’re sampling

Most published studies have focused on leaves of trees or common weeds. A 2023 study in Scientific Reports tested species like red clover, ribwort plantain, and pigweed – all solid choices. But one finding stood out: the ornamental species Alcea rosea (hollyhock) showed the highest bioconcentration factor for both cadmium (BCF = 8.51) and zinc (BCF = 6.62) among all species tested. This is a garden flower, not a weed. And it outperformed everything else in the experiment.

Why would a flowering ornamental accumulate more metals than a roadside weed? The answer likely involves root architecture, growth rate, and the metabolic demands of producing large, showy blooms. Flower production requires substantial nutrient uptake, and the biochemical pathways that pull in essential micronutrients like zinc can’t always distinguish between zinc and chemically similar toxic metals like cadmium. In a sense, the flower’s own ambition works against it – and in our favor as monitors.

Which flowers tell us the most – and what they’re detecting

A pattern emerges across the phytoremediation and biomonitoring literature: certain flowering species keep showing up as strong accumulators across different studies and geographies. Here’s a practical breakdown.

Hollyhock (Alcea rosea)

This tall, old-fashioned garden flower is a cadmium and zinc accumulator of surprising efficiency. It’s widely planted in American cities for its low-maintenance appeal and drought tolerance. Its large leaf surface area also captures airborne particulate matter containing metals from vehicle exhaust and industrial emissions. For community-level monitoring, hollyhock is almost ideal – it’s recognizable, common, and thrives in disturbed urban soils.

Sunflower (Helianthus annuus)

Already well-known in phytoremediation circles, sunflowers accumulate lead, cadmium, and zinc in both roots and aerial tissues. After the Chernobyl disaster, sunflowers were planted to extract radioactive strontium and cesium from contaminated ponds. In urban settings, their rapid growth cycle (about 70–100 days to maturity) makes them useful for seasonal pollution snapshots. Plant them in spring near a suspected contamination source, harvest the flower heads in late summer, and analyze the tissue. You get a discrete time-stamped pollution record.

Marigold (Tagetes spp.)

Marigolds are planted by the millions across U.S. cities – in parks, school gardens, and commercial landscapes. Research has shown they accumulate lead and cadmium in their roots and, to a lesser extent, in their flowers. They’re annual plants, which means each season gives you a clean baseline. Their ubiquity is the real advantage: you can collect samples from dozens of sites within a single metro area without needing to plant anything yourself.

Clover (Trifolium pratense)

Red clover technically flowers, and its blooms are part of the tissue often analyzed. Studies show it’s particularly good at translocating copper and zinc from roots to shoots (translocation factors above 2.5), making the above-ground parts – flowers included – representative of what’s in the soil below.

How flowers respond to metal stress – visible and invisible clues

Here’s where things get interesting for anyone without access to a chemistry lab. Flowers don’t just accumulate metals silently. They often show physiological signs of stress that you can observe with the naked eye – or with simple measurements.

Chlorosis and necrosis. Excess heavy metals interfere with chlorophyll production. You’ll see yellowing leaves (chlorosis) or brown, dead patches (necrosis), especially in species exposed to high cadmium or lead levels. If marigolds in one city park look healthy and marigolds three blocks from a highway show persistent yellowing despite adequate watering, that’s a data point.

Stunted growth and reduced flowering. Metal toxicity diverts energy from reproduction to stress response. Plants in contaminated sites often produce fewer, smaller blooms. A 2024 study tracking physiological responses in bioindicator plants found elevated hydrogen peroxide levels in roots and leaves – a marker of oxidative stress – along with reduced chlorophyll content and lower relative water content across all tested species.

Petal color changes. This is more anecdotal and species-dependent, but some researchers have noted subtle shifts in flower pigmentation when metal stress alters anthocyanin and carotenoid pathways. It’s not yet reliable enough for quantitative monitoring, but it’s a frontier worth watching.

The key point: even before you send tissue samples to a lab, flowers give visual feedback about environmental quality. That makes them accessible indicators for citizen science programs, school projects, and community advocacy efforts.

Putting it into practice – a citizen science approach

You don’t need a PhD to use flowers as pollution scouts. Here’s a straightforward approach that community groups across the U.S. have adapted for local monitoring:

1. Select 3–5 sites with different expected pollution levels – near a highway, beside an industrial zone, in a residential neighborhood, and in a park or rural reference area
2. Plant the same species at each site (sunflowers or marigolds work well) using identical soil mix in raised beds or containers to isolate airborne deposition from soil contamination
3. Grow for a full season, documenting visual health – leaf color, growth height, flower count, any abnormalities
4. Harvest and dry tissue samples (leaves and flower heads), then send them to a university extension lab or commercial soil-testing facility that offers plant tissue analysis for metals
5. Compare concentrations across sites – the differences tell the story

The cost of plant tissue analysis typically runs $25–$50 per sample at university labs, making this approach dramatically cheaper than deploying electronic air quality monitors. And the data, while less precise than continuous sensor readings, captures cumulative exposure over weeks or months – something point-in-time air samples miss entirely.

What competitors miss – flowers vs. mosses and the seasonal advantage

Much of the existing literature argues that mosses are superior bioindicators because they lack root systems and cuticles, making them efficient at absorbing metals directly from the atmosphere. A study comparing mosses with vascular plant leaves in urban China confirmed that mosses generally showed higher contamination factors for metals like chromium, copper, and zinc.

That’s a valid finding – for atmospheric deposition monitoring. But it misses a crucial distinction. Flowering plants sample both soil and air pathways simultaneously. Their roots pull metals from contaminated ground while their leaves and petals capture airborne particulates. This dual-pathway sampling gives you a more complete picture of total environmental contamination, which is arguably more relevant for human health risk assessment – because people are exposed to both soil dust and air particles.

Flowers also offer a seasonal resolution that mosses can’t match. An annual flower planted in April and harvested in September gives you a five-month integrated pollution sample with a clear time window. Mosses accumulate metals continuously over years, making it harder to pinpoint when contamination events occurred.

And let’s be honest about a practical reality: mosses are harder to find, identify, and collect in many American cities – especially in arid Western states. Flowers are everywhere. They’re already growing in your garden, your neighbor’s yard, and every municipal park from Portland to Miami.

Where this matters most – U.S. urban pollution hotspots

Heavy metal contamination isn’t evenly distributed across American cities. Some areas carry legacy pollution from decades of industrial activity, leaded gasoline use, or mining operations. Consider these contexts:

• Former Superfund sites in cities like Newark, NJ, or East Chicago, IN, where lead and cadmium persist in soils long after cleanup
• Highway corridors – soil within 50 meters of major interstates often contains elevated lead from decades of leaded fuel exhaust, plus ongoing platinum group metals from catalytic converters
• Older residential neighborhoods where lead paint dust has settled into garden soils over generations
• Urban areas near ports and rail yards with diesel particulate matter and associated metal contamination

In all these settings, flowers already growing on-site serve as unintentional monitors. And intentionally planted sentinel flowers can fill monitoring gaps where no government sensors exist – which, frankly, describes most residential neighborhoods in America.

What your garden flowers might be telling you

This isn’t about inducing panic over your backyard sunflowers. Background levels of heavy metals exist everywhere, and most urban flower gardens won’t show dangerous concentrations. But the science is clear that flowering plants accumulate and reflect the metal burdens of their environment with surprising fidelity.

If you’re curious about the pollution profile of your neighborhood – or if you’re involved in community health, urban planning, or environmental education – flowers offer an accessible, affordable, and scientifically grounded starting point. They’re not a replacement for professional environmental assessment, but they’re a powerful complement to it.

For a deeper look at how environmental science intersects with community advocacy and public health policy, Counterview covers critical perspectives that mainstream outlets often overlook. It’s worth exploring if these topics resonate with you.

In the meantime, the next time you pass a flower bed in a city park, consider what those petals might know about the air you’re breathing and the soil beneath your feet. The data is already there – growing quietly in plain sight.

All you need is love Channel Comment brendan 9th July 2026 Teaser Media

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Tucked among forested slopes and pristine valleys in a corner of northeastern India, young villagers have been busy knocking on doors – hoping to convince sceptical elders that graphite mining would bring much-needed jobs to their distant region.

“The youth in our village migrate to cities for work. What’s better than to have jobs near home?” Gollo Doni, a farmer and secretary of the local youth association, told Climate Home News as he and other members in their 20s discussed the latest meetings between locals and representatives of Oil India Limited (OIL), a state company exploring graphite and vanadium reserves in Arunachal Pradesh.

The mining plans in the state, which is home to more than one-third of India’s graphite reserves and the subject of a sovereignty dispute with China, reflect a push by the Indian government to position itself as a leading producer of battery-grade graphite as the mass rollout of batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) and power storage drives demand for the mineral.

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An average electric car contains about 60 kg of graphite anode materials, according to the International Energy Agency, and the graphite supply chain is heavily dominated by China, which produces about 80% of the world’s natural graphite and controls more than 90% of global refining.

As Western countries seek to reduce their dependency on China, India’s reserves of graphite and other minerals vital for the switch to clean energy have caught governments’ attention, with Germany signing a critical minerals partnership agreement in January.

Ambitious plans

But hurdles remain to India’s ambitious plans to ramp up critical minerals output, both to position itself as an alternative to China and to meet its own fast-growing needs.

India has a target for 30% of new vehicle sales to be electric by 2030, and demand for EV lithium batteries looks set to surge close to 35-fold between 2023 and 2035, according to S&P Global Mobility, driven by growth in two- and three-wheelers in the country of 1.4 billion people.

Although domestic manufacturing of EV batteries is expanding, the sector remains at an early stage and India depends heavily on imports from China, South Korea and Japan.

Gollo Doni (left) and other members of the All Pith-Seer Youth Welfare Association meet to discuss graphite exploration around Phop village in Arunachal Pradesh, India (Photo: Cheena Kapoor)

At the same time, it wants to get graphite processing off the ground, aiming to turn its reserves of the mineral – which rank among the world’s 10 biggest – into higher value battery-grade supplies.

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With exploration already underway, the next step should be starting discussions about developing processing facilities – including support from foreign partners, said Kaira Rakheja, South Asia energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).

“These exploration and extraction projects have a long gestation period. So even if discussions on processing start now, it will still take a while,” she said, noting India’s simultaneous push to create “rare earth corridors” encompassing every step of production.

Hurdles ahead

India’s graphite reserves are mainly of a lower grade, however, making processing for use in battery anodes more complex, while the country is a late entrant.

“We are not a big player in the market and have missed the bus,” said Aditya Ramji, director of the Global South Clean Transportation Centre at the University of California, Davis.

While exploration work is already underway at several sites in Arunachal Pradesh, and at some places in eastern and southern India, production will take at least two years to start, said Tana Tage, director at the Centre for the Earth Sciences and Himalayan Studies, OIL’s local partner and holder of a 10% stake in the Phop project. 

Graphite powder, used for battery paste, is pictured in a Volkswagen pilot line for battery cell production in Salzgitter, Germany, May 18, 2022. German carmaker will launch its so called “Mission SalzGiga”, a plant for battery cell production, including battery recycling, on July 7, 2022. REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer Graphite powder, used for battery paste, is pictured in a Volkswagen pilot line for battery cell production in Salzgitter, Germany, May 18, 2022. German carmaker will launch its so called “Mission SalzGiga”, a plant for battery cell production, including battery recycling, on July 7, 2022. REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer

A mine would create about 300 jobs and the project’s partners are discussing options for processing the site’s medium- to high-grade graphite locally, Tage added, despite voicing concern about a lack of technological know-how. 

“India does not have the large-scale, advanced processing capabilities to achieve the ultra-high purity levels required for EV batteries and clean technologies,” he told Climate Home News.

Diversification drive

Despite such challenges, industry experts say India could benefit from the push to find sources of battery graphite other than China.

“We can’t beat China in this space, but we can still create a space for ourselves in buying and selling, as everyone is looking for a space to diversify,” said Rishabh Jain, fellow at the Council on Energy, Environment  and Water, a New Delhi-based think-tank.

India’s government hopes the bilateral memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed with Germany could help.

A graphite deposits visible on a hillside near the village of Phop, Arunachal Pradesh, India (Photo: Cheena Kapoor)

As well as pledging cooperation on critical minerals exploration, the declaration envisions the exchange of know-how to add value through processing and recycling, facilitating investment and building the supply chain resilience of both countries. That could include identifying joint research projects and facilitating cooperation between industry players.

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“India and Germany will work together to mutually strengthen supply chains in the field of critical minerals,” a spokesperson for the German government’s energy strategy said. “We will encourage companies to build strong ties in terms of knowledge sharing, offtake agreements and investments.”

Germany is already supporting several domestic projects focused on converting graphite into battery anode material – valuable experience that could potentially be shared with India, said Rakheja. In return for shared technical expertise, India offers a strong pool of workforce talent and a big market.

“This way, both partners can look beyond China,” she said.

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The MoU, which is non-binding, is “a good start”, said Svenja Schöneich, a senior advisor at the NGO Germanwatch, adding that it was thin on details, including on how to add value to India’s critical mineral resources.

“The partnership document should figure out the problem of local value creation. It should also consider that it can’t really skip processing through China,” Schöneich said.

An official at India’s Mining Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

Trade deals and tax breaks

Beyond the five-year German accord, India has implemented numerous policy measures aimed at securing its own supplies of critical minerals and adding value to its mineral exports, for example by signing favourable trade deals. Last year, India’s graphite was granted zero-duty access to the US, just as the tariffs on Chinese graphite imports climbed to a high 160%. 

When the government announced the national budget in February, it included a raft of financial measures aimed at kickstarting a plan to process minerals domestically – the details of which are expected to be announced in the coming months.

They included zero customs duty on critical mineral inputs and enhanced tax deductions for exploration, while the government’s production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme allocated the equivalent of $1.87 billion to build domestic battery cell manufacturing.

Before that can happen, progress on new mining – such as the Arunachal Pradesh graphite projects – is vital, Jain said.

“We are in 2026, and looking to move towards a cleaner world. This is the future,” he said.

The state government in Arunachal Pradesh agrees. It called last year for fast-tracked environmental permitting for graphite projects, new infrastructure around mine sites and reforms to avoid legal disputes that could hold the sector back. 

Gollo Kami, 60, a cardamom farmer and a traditional hunter has lived all his life in Phop village. He worries about the impact of mining on the local environment (Photo: Cheena Kapoor)

Back in the village of Phop, youth association secretary Doni said that while reluctant residents did not raise an objection to OIL’s preliminary exploration licence, he fears a bigger fight ahead.

Tage said up to 3,000 people could ultimately be displaced if the project proceeds, raising questions about whether economic benefits would outweigh the social and environmental costs.

“It has been difficult to make the elders agree to actual mining,” Doni said, as he and other young villagers sipped on sweet tea in a thatched mountain house. “We are trying to convince our elders that mining will not only bring resources for the nation, but bring us jobs here.”

This article was produced as part of the India-Germany Climate and Energy Journalism Programme organised by Clean Energy Wire, supported by Heinrich Böll Stiftung.

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Northern British Columbia is entering a period of economic transition, with new opportunities emerging in clean energy, critical minerals, transportation, mass timber and other low-carbon industries. This report finds that while workforce development...

Picture a fly landing on what looks like a perfectly ordinary leaf. Within half a second – literally faster than you can blink – that leaf snaps shut like a jaw. The fly is trapped, and over the next week or so, the plant slowly digests it alive. This isn’t science fiction. It’s just Tuesday for a Venus flytrap.

Carnivorous plants have fascinated people for centuries. Charles Darwin himself called the Venus flytrap “one of the most wonderful plants in the world” back in 1875, and frankly, I think he undersold it. But while most articles lump all meat-eating plants together into a quick overview, I want to go deeper on two species that are especially remarkable – and surprisingly different in how they operate: the Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) and the sundew (Drosera).

Why would a plant bother eating bugs?

Here’s the thing most people get wrong about carnivorous plants: they don’t eat insects because they’re hungry in the way we think of hunger. These plants still photosynthesize. They still pull energy from sunlight like any other green thing on Earth. The insect-eating is really about one problem – terrible soil.

Venus flytraps are native to a remarkably small region: a roughly 75-mile radius around Wilmington, North Carolina. That’s it. The entire wild population exists in the boggy, acidic, nutrient-poor wetlands of the Carolinas. Sundews are more widespread – there are roughly 200 species found on every continent except Antarctica – but they share the same fundamental challenge. They grow in places where the soil is so stripped of nitrogen, phosphorus, and other essential minerals that a normal plant would simply starve.

So these plants evolved an alternative supply chain. Instead of pulling nutrients up through roots, they get them by dissolving insects. It’s an elegant solution to a brutal environment, and it’s happened independently across multiple plant families over millions of years – a phenomenon biologists call convergent evolution.

The Venus flytrap: a snap trap with a counting brain

Let’s start with the headline act. The Venus flytrap’s trap mechanism is one of the fastest movements in the entire plant kingdom, closing in approximately 100 milliseconds. But speed alone isn’t what makes it extraordinary. What’s genuinely astonishing is that this plant can count.

How the trigger system works

Each trap lobe has three to four tiny trigger hairs on its inner surface. Here’s the critical detail that most articles skip over: a single touch does nothing. The trap requires two stimulations of those hairs within about 20 seconds to snap shut. Scientists believe this “counting” mechanism prevents the plant from wasting energy on false alarms – a raindrop, a piece of debris, a grain of sand.

But it doesn’t stop at two. Research published in a 2016 study in Current Biology by Rainer Hedrich’s team showed that the flytrap actually counts up to five touches:

• Touch 1 – the plant goes on alert, priming its electrical system
• Touch 2 – the trap snaps shut
• Touch 3 – the plant begins producing the hormone jasmonic acid
• Touches 4 and 5 – digestive glands activate and begin secreting enzymes

This means the Venus flytrap doesn’t just catch prey – it assesses whether the catch is worth digesting before committing resources. A trap that closes on nothing will reopen in about 12 hours. But once those digestive juices start flowing, the trap stays sealed for 5 to 12 days while the plant absorbs the nutrient-rich soup.

The cost of each snap

One fact that rarely comes up: each individual trap can only close and reopen about 5 to 7 times in its lifespan before it becomes permanently inactive and shifts into functioning purely as a photosynthetic leaf. This is why poking your flytrap repeatedly for fun is genuinely harmful – you’re burning through a finite resource. I’ve watched people at garden centers trigger every single trap on a display plant, effectively exhausting the poor thing for entertainment. Don’t be that person.

Sundews: the patient sticky trap

If the Venus flytrap is a steel-jaw trap, the sundew is flypaper – but far more sophisticated than that analogy suggests. Sundews use what botanists call an adhesive trap, and watching one work up close is mesmerizing in a slightly unsettling way.

Tentacles tipped with glue

Every sundew leaf is covered in hair-like structures called tentacles – sometimes hundreds per leaf – each tipped with a glistening droplet of mucilage. This sticky substance looks like morning dew (hence the name), and it’s what lures insects in. Many species produce mucilage that contains both a sweet scent and UV-reflective compounds, essentially tricking insects into thinking they’ve found nectar.

When an insect lands, it sticks. As it struggles, it contacts more tentacles, which then slowly bend inward toward the prey. In some species, like the Cape sundew (Drosera capensis) – probably the most commonly grown species in the U.S. – the entire leaf curls around the insect within a few hours. The leaf then secretes digestive enzymes similar to those in your own stomach, breaking down the soft tissues of the insect over one to two weeks.

Why sundews might actually be better hunters

Here’s something that surprised me when I first dug into the research: sundews are arguably more efficient predators than Venus flytraps. Consider the numbers. A single Cape sundew leaf can catch multiple insects simultaneously. There’s no “counting” requirement, no 20-second timing window. The trap doesn’t wear out after a set number of uses – old tentacles regenerate their mucilage, and the plant continuously produces new leaves.

Sundews also display a wider prey range. While Venus flytraps primarily catch crawling insects – ants, beetles, and spiders make up the bulk of their diet in the wild – sundews snag everything from fungus gnats to mosquitoes to even small butterflies, depending on the species and leaf size.

Venus flytrap vs. sundew: a side-by-side look Feature Venus flytrap Sundew (Cape sundew) Trap type Active snap trap Adhesive (sticky) trap Closing speed ~100 milliseconds Minutes to hours (tentacle curling) Prey per leaf One at a time Multiple simultaneously Trap lifespan 5–7 closures per trap Reusable until leaf naturally dies Native range Coastal Carolinas only Every continent except Antarctica Winter dormancy Required (3–4 months) Varies by species; tropical types skip it Beginner-friendliness Moderate – needs dormancy period High – Cape sundew is very forgiving What most care guides don’t tell you

If you’re thinking about growing either of these plants at home – and they genuinely make incredible houseplants – there are a few things I wish someone had told me earlier.

Water quality matters more than you think

Both Venus flytraps and sundews are extremely sensitive to dissolved minerals. Tap water in most American cities contains enough chlorine, fluoride, and calcium to slowly kill these plants over weeks. Use distilled water, rainwater, or water filtered through reverse osmosis. This is non-negotiable. I’ve seen more carnivorous plants die from tap water than from any other cause.

Skip the fertilizer – and the hamburger

Feeding your flytrap bits of ground beef is a surprisingly persistent myth. Meat contains fats and proteins that the plant can’t properly break down, leading to rot. If you want to feed your plant indoors, use small, recently killed insects – freeze-dried bloodworms from a pet store work well for sundews. But honestly, if your plant sits near a window, it’ll catch enough on its own.

The dormancy question

Venus flytraps require a cold dormancy period of roughly 3 to 4 months with temperatures between 35°F and 50°F. Without it, the plant weakens over successive growing seasons and eventually dies. Many first-time growers in warmer states don’t realize this. An unheated garage or a refrigerator (yes, really) can work. Most sundew species from tropical regions, on the other hand, grow year-round without dormancy – another point in their favor for indoor growers.

Conservation: a wild plant under pressure

The Venus flytrap is listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN, and its wild habitat keeps shrinking. Poaching is a serious problem – in 2014, North Carolina made the theft of Venus flytraps a felony, punishable by up to 25 months in prison. Habitat loss from development and fire suppression (these plants depend on periodic wildfires to clear competing vegetation) compounds the issue.

Sundews face their own pressures, particularly species with very limited ranges. The great sundew (Drosera anglica), once widespread across northern bogs in the U.S., has seen significant population declines due to wetland drainage.

If you’re growing these plants, make sure you’re purchasing nursery-propagated specimens – never wild-collected ones. Reputable growers will be transparent about their sourcing.

More than just a novelty

Venus flytraps and sundews aren’t just fascinating curiosities. They’re windows into how life adapts under pressure – how evolution can turn a passive, rooted organism into something that hunts. The flytrap’s electrical signaling system has even drawn interest from researchers studying plant neurobiology (a controversial but growing field), while sundew mucilage is being studied for potential biomedical applications, including wound-healing adhesives.

Whether you’re a seasoned plant hobbyist or just someone who’s always been quietly curious about that little flytrap in the hardware store, these organisms reward closer attention. They’re tougher, smarter, and more nuanced than most people give them credit for. For more perspectives on topics like these – where science meets the natural world in unexpected ways – you can explore additional reading at Counterview.

Start with one Cape sundew on a sunny windowsill. Watch it catch its first gnat. I promise – you’ll be hooked.

Europe has spent several weeks enduring blistering heat. The heatwave the continent experienced last month closed schools, disrupted power supplies, and has been linked to thousands of deaths. France, Germany, and Denmark all saw their highest temperature ever, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Now, new data shows that western Europe set another record: its hottest June ever. 

The readings, from the European Union’s Copernicus Earth observation program, showed that western Europe averaged 20.74 degrees Celsius, or a little over 69 degrees Fahrenheit, across the entire month — night and day. That squeaks past the previous mark set during June of 2025, and is more than 3 degrees Celsius above the average for the month. Ocean temperatures were also the hottest ever recorded. Globally, June was only .01 degrees Celsius off the all-time high.

“These records reflect a climate system continuing to accumulate heat,” Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said in a statement. “The result is increasingly intense heatwaves, a persistently warm ocean, and growing risks for people, ecosystems, and infrastructure across Europe and beyond.”

Read Next Across Europe, heat adaptation plans are being put to a brutal test Naveena Sadasivam

The late-June heatwave followed a similar spike in May, and preceded still more high temperatures in July. These extreme conditions would have been virtually impossible 50 years ago, the World Weather Attribution initiative noted last month. Climate change, it said, is driving a new, dangerous norm that’s wreaking havoc on European systems that weren’t built for these risks. 

“Many people still live, work, and study in places that are not designed for the temperatures we are now experiencing,” Carolina Pereira Marghidan, with the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said in a statement. “We need greater investment in heat-resilient homes, cities, and infrastructure to keep people safe.” 

Recent extremes are reminiscent of Europe’s sweltering summer of 2003. Since then, World Weather Attribution scientists say climate change has made daytime heat of the kind Europe is experiencing 10 times more likely and overnight extremes 100 times more likely. Going into the morning of June 28, a weather station in East Saxony, Germany, recorded a minimum temperature of 29.4 degrees Celsius, or nearly 85 Fahrenheit. The country’s meteorological agency, Deutscher Wetterdienst, called the reading historic.

Experts say elevated overnight minimums are especially concerning for human health. “When we have these high nighttime temperatures, the body isn’t able to recover sufficiently,” said Kurt Shickman, who works on heat issues at the World Resources Institute. “They’re going into the next hot day with a couple strikes against you from a health perspective.” 

The heat is also further fueling wildfire risks in parts of Europe that are already dry. Fires in Spain and southern France have caused thousands to flee, thwarted Tour de France spectators, and killed at least one firefighter. Such conditions are expected to continue, as is the general trend toward a warmer planet. 

Extreme weather can sometimes prompt policymakers to take action. After the 2003 heatwaves, European governments developed early warning systems and other adaptation measures that research shows would have reduced deaths by as much as 75 percent. Shickman also points to apps like Extrema, which help people map the thermally safest route when they’re traveling. But he says there’s a lot more that could still be done — from increasing access to affordable air conditioning to installing more resilient infrastructure, such as reflective roofs and cooler walls — in the face of a warming future. 

Extreme heat is “something that we’re seeing more and more of,” said Shickman. But he’s also optimistic that events like this can also be a catalyst for change. “These types of iconic moments can be galvanizing for years and years to come.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Western Europe just set the record for its hottest June ever on Jul 8, 2026.

Hiking through mud, thick and slippery, puts a damper on anyone’s enthusiasm. Such was the case for my intern and me on a humid summer morning, making our way to our first Western...

This is a re-post from Carbon Brief

Clean power added more to global energy supplies than any other source in 2025, according to the latest Energy Institute statistical review of world energy.

Outside the Covid pandemic, it was also the first year ever in which wind and solar, when combined, contributed more new energy than any of the individual fossil fuels.

The findings illustrate the “growing prominence” of electricity in the global energy system, according to the Energy Institute, a professional membership body that took over the production of the annual statistical review from oil firm BP in 2023.

It notes that electricity demand is rising much faster, at 3% in 2025, than energy use overall at 1.7% – and that all of the new power supply came from low-carbon sources.

While it includes data on data-centre demand for the first time, the review shows that these only make up 2% of all electricity use and 15% of the increase in 2025.

(The review does not explore other sources of demand, but separate data shows electrification of industry, heat and transport is a far larger driver of growth than data centres.)

At the same time, every source of energy – including coal, oil, gas, nuclear and hydro – also reached global all-time highs in 2025, the statistical review shows.

While the 86% of “primary energy” that came from fossil fuels is a record low, their real contribution to the economy is far lower, because roughly two-thirds of their energy is lost during combustion.

Below, Carbon Brief highlights the key findings of the review in six charts.

• Global energy supplies increase 1.7% in 2025
• Fossil fuels met a record-low 86.2% of global energy supply
• The ‘primary energy fallacy’ ‘inflates fossil fuels’
• Wind and solar were biggest source of new energy in 2025
• Clean energy met all of global electricity growth in 2025
• China generates more power than the US, EU and India combined

Global energy supplies increase 1.7% in 2025

The review shows that global energy supply reached a record high in 2025, climbing 10 exajoules (EJ, 1.7%) to more than 600EJ for the first time ever.

Within this total, there were new all-time highs for every energy source: oil; coal; gas; nuclear; wind and solar; as well as hydro and other renewables. This is shown in the figure below.

Total global energy supply by fuel, exajoules. Source: Energy Institute (2026).

Notably, coal hit a new record of 166EJ in 2025, up 0.7% from a year earlier and 2.8% above the level reached in 2014, which had been seen as a potential peak for the fuel.

Wind and solar saw the fastest growth, up by 18.3% year-on-year, as well as adding more to global supplies – in combination – than any single fuel source.

Fossil fuels met a record-low 86.2% of global energy supply

Nevertheless, on the basis of these primary energy figures, the contribution of low-carbon sources to the global energy system still looks relatively small.

The latest data shows that fossil fuels made up 86.2% of global primary energy supplies, as shown in the figure below.

Share of total global energy supply from fossil fuels and clean-energy sources, including nuclear and renewables, %. Source: Energy Institute (2026).

The rise of nuclear power had pushed the fossil-fuel share of global energy down to 91% as long ago as 1986, before the Chernobyl disaster pulled the plug on further growth.

It is only in the past decade that clean-energy sources have started to gain more ground, as a result of the rapid expansion of wind and solar.

The ‘primary energy fallacy’ ‘inflates fossil fuels’

Crucially, however, the statistical review is based on “total energy supply” (TES), a measure of primary energy. This counts the energy stored in coal, oil, gas and nuclear fuel going into the energy system, whereas for renewables it measures the amount of electricity coming out.

Yet, most of the energy in fossil fuels is lost as waste heat during combustion.

In fact, some two-thirds of all primary energy is lost before it can be turned into useful energy that moves a car, warms a home or keeps the lights on.

This gives rise to the “primary energy fallacy”, which tends to “inflate…the perceived contribution of fossil fuels” and the difficulty of replacing them with low-carbon energy sources.

For example, the figure in the post shows that 105 units of energy went into the global transport sector – almost all of it oil – but this only generated 20 units of transport “energy services”.

In other words, less than 20% of the primary energy being used for transport actually ends up moving people or goods, while the remaining 80% was lost as waste heat.

Until 2024, the statistical review sought to address this issue by using the “substitution method” for clean-energy sources. This listed the primary energy supplied by wind and solar, for example, as the amount of fossil fuels that would have been needed to generate the same amount of electricity.

It stopped using this approach in 2025, explaining that this would reveal the higher efficiency of a clean-energy system that loses less energy during fossil-fuel combustion. It explained:

“Put simply, in future we will need to supply less energy in the form of clean electricity to undertake the same amount of work as the equivalent energy supplies from fossil fuels. Primary energy demand will decrease as the energy system increasingly electrifies and renewable electricity continues to increase its share of generation..”

Wind and solar were biggest source of new energy in 2025

With this in mind, it is all the more notable that wind and solar, in combination, were the world’s biggest source of new energy in 2025, as shown in the figure below.

Again, perhaps two-thirds of the new primary energy added by fossil fuels last year will never actually contribute useful work to the economy, because it will be lost as waste heat.

In contrast, the new energy added by wind and solar is in the form of electricity and almost all of it can be used directly to power factories, homes, appliances and electric vehicles.

Contribution to the change in total global energy supply by fuel, %. Source: Energy Institute (2026).

Moreover, wind and solar saw the fastest growth by far, up 18% in 2025 alone. Over the past decade, they expanded fivefold, while coal, oil and gas grew by 6%, 9% and 21%, respectively. 

Clean energy met all of global electricity growth in 2025

The impact of renewables is clearest in the power sector, where combined with a new record for nuclear power, they met all of the growth in global electricity demand in 2025.

This is shown in the figure below, which illustrates how fossil generation was flat last year and how wind and solar now generate more electricity than hydro or nuclear power.

Global electricity generation by fuel, terawatt hours. Source: Energy Institute (2026).

The review says that wind and solar power, when combined, grew by 18% in 2025, whereas there was a small decline in coal generation balanced by a small rise for gas.

Overall, it says that global electricity generation increased by some 940 terawatt hours (TWh, 3%), roughly three times the annual demand of the UK.

Separate figures, included in the review for the first time, show that data centres used 788TWh of electricity in 2025, up 130TWh on a year earlier.

This means that data centres accounted for 2% of global electricity demand. 

China generates more power than the US, EU and India combined

The Energy Institute report says that the power sector is set to play an increasingly important role, because it is growing more quickly than other parts of the global energy system.

There is also increasing political attention on the idea of using expanded clean-power supplies to rapidly electrify other parts of the economy, particularly heat and transport.

The COP31 presidency has called for countries to back a global goal for 35% of “final” energy to come from electricity by 2035, against a global average today of around 22%.

China is well ahead of the global average, with electricity making up 30% of its final energy supplies in 2025. It recently adopted a 35% by 2030 target for electrification.

One reason it has been able to do this is the huge scale of its electricity system. Indeed, China now generates more electricity than the US, EU and India combined, as shown in the figure below.

Electricity generation by country, terawatt hours. Source: Energy Institute (2026).

While much of the rise in China’s electricity has historically come from coal-fired generation, there was enough growth of clean-power sources to push coal down last year.