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In just a few years, support for “remigration” – an illegal project to deport migrants, refugees and citizens who are deemed “unassimilated” – has moved from the fringes to the fore of political discourse. In Italy, this dynamic has been enabled by collaboration between the far right in government and extra-parliamentary groups. How to resist the normalisation of extremist ideas when the debate keeps shifting further to the right?

Around 500 far-right politicians, activists, and influencers gathered in Porto last May for the second edition of the “Remigration Summit”. The first had been held a year earlier in Gallarate, not far from Milan. In April this year, Milan also hosted the demonstration “Fearless! In Europe, we are masters in our own home”, organised by the European far-right party Patriots for Europe. In June, a pro-remigration march took place in Rome, reportedly attended by around 4000 people. Two weeks later, on 30 June, the “Comitato Remigrazione e Riconquista” (“Remigration and Reconquest Committee”) filed a citizen initiative bill on remigration, collecting over 130,000 signatures (well above the 50,000 required).  

All of these initiatives reflect the growing popularity of “remigration”, which, according to the summit’s promoters, aims to “prevent population replacement through the reversal of migratory flows, thereby restoring the sovereignty, independence, and identity of countries, through the defense of their ethnocultural specificity.” In practice, remigration means the mass expulsion of irregular migrants, but also asylum seekers, refugees, and other legal migrants and citizens deemed “unassimilated” into the dominant culture – that is, people who are non-white and Muslim.  

From the fringes to the institutions 

The Remigration and Reconquest Committee brings together various strands of the extra-parliamentary, anti-democratic, and neo-fascist far right, including CasaPound (whose members have proudly called themselves “the fascists of the third millennium”), Veneto Fronte Skinheads, Brescia ai bresciani, and the Rete dei patrioti. But remigration has also been popularised by prominent figures within the institutional Right, particularly the League.  

Led by Transport Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, the League is the second-largest force in the three-party governing coalition. It remains a key player in regional politics in Northern Italy, but has in recent years lost many of its supporters to Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy. In an attempt to stem its losses, the League has increasingly radicalised on identity issues.  

So far, this strategy hasn’t worked. In February, Roberto Vannacci – an army general elected to the European Parliament with the League in 2024 – left the League to found a new party, Futuro Nazionale (“National Future”). Vannacci, who has been criticised for his homophobic, racist, and fascism-revisionist statements, is among the staunchest supporters of remigration, and accuses the government and the League of being too moderate and too willing to compromise. National Future is currently polling above 7 per cent, ahead of the League and just behind Forza Italia, the junior coalition partner.  

Although remigration remains, for now, a minority project, its political rise has already created a climate of tension. In January, for example, during a press event at the Chamber of Deputies for the launch of the popular-initiative bill on remigration, a member of Rete dei patrioti handed a fake plane ticket to journalist Youssef Hassan Holgado, who is of Spanish and Egyptian origin. “I was there as a journalist and was given a ticket to ‘remigrate’ to my country of origin,” recounts Hassan Holgado. “As a journalist, I have the rhetorical tools to defend myself against accusations and attacks. But that gesture is an insult to all the people of foreign origin who might not have the tools to defend themselves against this barbarity.”  

The press conference, organised by League MP Domenico Furgiuele, was later cancelled after dozens of opposition lawmakers occupied the chamber, singing the anti-fascist anthem “Bella ciao” and holding up copies of the Italian constitution. In April, the 32 MPs who had taken part in the protest were suspended for blocking the event. In June, Furgiuele left the League to join National Future.  

Both in Italy and Germany, […] provisions stipulate that no one may be stripped of their citizenship on political grounds. Born from the resolve never to repeat Nazi and fascist persecutions, these principles are now being challenged across Europe.

Racism and conspiracy theories 

Italy, with two far-right parties in government, represents an important laboratory for the European Right. But the movement to normalise remigration as a political project dates back much further. One of its ideological antecedents is the theory of ethnopluralism, advanced by French thinkers from the Nouvelle Droite and the Research and Study Group for European Civilisation (GRECE), founded in 1968 by Alain de Benoist. Rejecting universalism – the idea that all people share a common human worth – ethnopluralism legitimises a form of apartheid based not on explicit racism, but on the idea that peoples have fundamental, unbridgeable differences, and must therefore live in separate ethno-cultural regions.  

“The ideological core [of remigration] is nativism, the idea that nation-states should be populated by natives,” says Mattia Zulianello, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Trieste and an expert on populism, radicalism, and political extremism. He explains nativism splits into three strands: “Economic nativism holds that immigrants steal jobs from natives; welfare chauvinism claims migrants drain resources without contributing; and symbolic nativism sees migrants – especially Muslim migrants – as a threat to traditions and customs.”  

Linked to these ideas is also the conspiracy theory of the “Great Replacement” articulated by another French writer and intellectual, Renaud Camus. In his 2011 book Le grand remplacement, Camus argues that mass immigration into Europe is part of a plan to end white European civilisation. Camus’s racism is also steeped in antisemitism: he claims a “globalist elite” made up of Jewish political and financial figures, along with the progressive world, is carrying out the transnational design of the “Great Replacement”.  

Leonardo Bianchi, a journalist, writer, and author of the newsletter Complotti! (“Conspiracies”), argues that the conspiratorial and ideological dimension lies at the heart of remigration as a political proposal: “It isn’t just about expelling migrants, but above all about stripping civil rights from citizens deemed ‘unassimilated’, meaning those who hold European passports but, in the movement’s own terms, aren’t ‘native’ – that is, not white and not Christian. 

Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the far-right Front National, helped spread Camus’s ideas. In his book Mémoires, he claimed that the “Great Replacement” is a fact and that the white world is dying. Over the years, Camus’s theory spread across Europe and reached the United States through the “alt-right” movement. It also inspired the perpetrators of terrorist, xenophobic massacres, such as the 2019 Christchurch attack in New Zealand.  

Parties and influencers  

The vocabulary of remigration emerged alongside the spread of Camus’s ideas. According to Zulianello, the first movements to talk about remigration, in the Netherlands and Belgium, were classic extreme-right groups: skinheads and ultras of varying degrees of extremism. But the idea initially had little traction.  

Among institutional political actors, Geert Wilders (the Eurosceptic and Islamophobic founder of the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands) and the Flemish nationalist party Vlaams Belang (“Flemish Interest”) were among the first to adopt the term between 2011 and 2012. Following the 2015 refugee crisis, the discourse on migration shifted rightward, and parties like Fidesz in Hungary began spreading Camus’s theories. As recently as 2022, during his inauguration speech for his fourth and final term as prime minister, Viktor Orbán said: “I see the great European population exchange as a suicidal attempt to replace the lack of European, Christian children with adults from other civilisations – migrants.” 

In Denmark too, the idea that migrants were siphoning off social resources meant for native citizens took hold in the political agenda. “Welfare chauvinism originated with the Dansk Folkeparti [“Danish People’s Party”], which then prompted other parties to follow suit, as they sought to replicate successful strategies,” says Zulianello. The theme later spread across various far-right parties in Europe. “The current wave owes to Alternative für Deutschland”.  

On 25 November 2023, AfD members, businesspeople, entrepreneurs, doctors, fraternity members, and even some figures from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) gathered at a hotel on Lake Lehnitz, near Potsdam. Martin Sellner, an Austrian neo-fascist ideologue and influencer, set out the strategy needed to normalise remigration, a long-term project meant to unfold over decades. He also spoke of a “model city” in North Africa where two million people would be relocated (that is, deported). The parallels with the Nazi plan to deport four million Jews to Madagascar are clear. The Potsdam meeting was meant to remain secret, but it was exposed by the independent investigative outlet Correctiv.  

“This theory isn’t harmless,” Bianchi comments. “As a project, it undermines the constitutions of European countries, which are founded on the fundamental principles of the post-World War II era. Both in Italy, under Article 22, and in Germany, under Article 16, these provisions stipulate that no one may be stripped of their citizenship on political grounds.” Born from the resolve never to repeat Nazi and fascist persecutions, these principles are now being challenged across Europe: by Chega in Portugal, Vox in Spain, and Reform UK in the United Kingdom.  

According to Zulianello, Europe’s radical right has also influenced its American counterpart, which in turn has helped mainstream the idea of remigration. After Elon Musk’s 2023 acquisition of Twitter, violent content circulated more freely, giving greater visibility to figures like Sellner. A report by the Center for the Study of Organized Hate found a spike of 71000 mentions of the term “remigration” on X between 1 and 8 September 2025, following coordinated posts from Musk himself and other prominent far-right figures, such as Dutch influencer Eva Vlaardingerbroek.  

Donald Trump, too, has invoked and carried out expulsions of migrants, explicitly using the term “remigration” on the official channels of the Department of Homeland Security. But according to Zulianello, the real driving force behind this movement remains Europe.  

“What’s interesting about the Italian case,” says Zulianello, “is that the proposal didn’t originate from a party, but from a far-right network – the Comitato Remigrazione e Riconquista”. As Bianchi points out, the Committee’s proposal “follows Martin Sellner’s plan to the letter, which sets out three steps: the deportation of irregular migrants, the restriction of the right to asylum and family reunification (which are also long-standing causes championed by the League), and voluntary remigration, which is anything but voluntary and targets all so-called ‘non-assimilated’ people.” 

The citizen initiative bill submitted in June aims to “regulate” migratory flows in order to combat irregular migration and exploitation. It proposes establishing a national “remigration Programme” to crack down on NGOs (allegedly “involved in migrant trafficking”), reduce flows of foreign workers, encourage the “return of Italian descendants”, and create a fund to boost Italy’s birth rate. These measures would be financed through a “remigration fund” of 500 million euros per year, raised through NGO asset seizures, a tax on remittances, and funds currently allocated to asylum policy. However, the proposal’s central problem isn’t economic but legal and constitutional: remigration openly violates the anti-fascist principles of the Italian Constitution and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.  

According to Zulianello, the initiative’s promoters “know that the proposal as it is is simply not feasible. What matters to them is getting the issue onto the agenda. By mainstreaming certain topics, the space for debate widens, and mainstream parties tend to want to fill that vacuum, effectively legitimising the issue and hardening anti-immigration policies.”  

The effects are already visible. A security package approved in April included an amendment that offered financial rewards to lawyers who successfully carried out voluntary repatriation procedures for migrants. Legal controversy over the measure later forced the government to amend it.  

Resisting normalisation 

Tickets to the Remigration Summit in Porto cost between 45 and 325 euros – a price justified by the stakes, according to the organisers: “With remigration, Europe will become more European day by day. Without remigration, it will become less European every day and will eventually cease to exist.” But the Europe imagined by remigration’s supporters – which is moving closer to the mainstream, also thanks to the cooperation between the centre-right and the far-right in the European Parliament – isn’t the only possible Europe. Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union states that “The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities.” 

According to Bianchi, opposing remigration and the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory means, above all, refusing to allow their normalisation as “common sense” proposals. “The term ‘remigration’ sounds neutral because it comes from the social sciences, but it’s an act of linguistic normalisation: its meaning and its origins are inseparable from the political project behind it.” 

The spiking price of oil helped increase global sales of electric cars in the second quarter of 2026 despite total car sales falling, a new International Energy Agency (IEA) report shows.

The IEA’s latest update on the market for electric cars said sales increased by 4% in the second quarter, after the war between the US, Israel and Iran disrupted oil supplies around the world and caused oil prices to jump at the end of February.

The increase in electric car sales was achieved despite customers buying fewer vehicles in total due to economic problems and, in China, a reduction in government subsidies for cheap cars. Total car sales fell 5% globally in the first half of 2026.

“While a lag in consumer responses and policy implementation means the full effects will take time to materialise, the crisis has clearly reinforced the case for [electric vehicles] as a way to address energy security and fuel cost concerns,” the IEA’s report said.

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The IEA predicts that sales of electric cars will speed up in the second half of the year, increasing by 10% for 2026 in total compared to 2025. Electric car sales will be 29% of total car sales over the full year, it forecasts, up from 24% in the first half.

The IEA expects sales of fossil fuel-reliant internal combustion engine vehicles to continue declining, as they have been doing for a decade because of economic shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic and, since around 2020, the rise of electric cars.

Road transport – which also includes two- and three-wheeled vehicles like scooters and rickshaws – currently accounts for half of global oil use. The oil industry has been trying to expand markets in newer, growing sectors like plastic to replace its declining business in petrol and diesel for road transport.

Pro-EV policies

As well as the higher oil price, the IEA said this year’s electric car boom is being driven in some countries – particularly in Europe and Southeast Asia – by government policies that have been put in place since the Iran war blocked shipping of oil and other commodities through the Strait of Hormuz.

It highlighted the Netherlands and Ireland, which have both announced subsidies for scrapping old internal combustion engine cars and replacing them with electric ones.

Australia, Spain, Chile, Vietnam and the US state of California have introduced, or are introducing, tax benefits for electric cars.

Australia, the UK and Hungary have announced funding or support for charging infrastructure, while Cambodia, Brazil and Kenya have reduced taxes on imports of electric vehicles.

Growth in electric car sales was particularly strong in Europe, Brazil, Australia, India, South Korea, Vietnam, Colombia, South Africa and New Zealand.

On the other hand, electric car sales fell 16% in China – the world’s biggest electric car-buying country – in the second quarter. This was driven by a decline in total car sales, which was more extreme for internal combustion engine cars than electric ones.

In the US, electric car sales rose 20% in the second quarter compared with the first quarter of 2026. But this was about 25% less than in the same period of 2025, when Americans were taking advantage of expiring Biden-era federal tax credits.

These statistics back up Climate Home News’ reporting from the ground since the oil price spiked. As we reported from Yemen in May, the IEA data shows Chinese electric car companies are having success in the Middle East.

And as our correspondents found in Nepal and Bangladesh, there has been a surge of interest in electric vehicles across Asian countries outside of China. Yet while EV adoption in Nepal has been enabled by investments in charging and import subsidies, drivers in Bangladesh have been put off by a lack of chargers and high prices for electric two-wheelers.

The post Hormuz crisis speeds up transition to electric cars, IEA data shows appeared first on Climate Home News.

Give them liberty … and give us death.

A forthcoming federal bill proposes to outlaw speed- and red-light cameras under the cover of legitimate, but unrelated, mass surveillance fears.

Flock Safety, which operates more than 120,000 surveillance cameras across the country, is under fire for a growing number of data breaches, stalking incidents, and wrongful arrests. Police have been caught 28 times abusing their system access to stalk romantic interests in the past several years, according to public interest law firm Institute for Justice. In one case this year, a Milwaukee police officer pleaded guilty to using the system to stalk an ex-partner 124 times.

Now, Republicans may be using Flock opposition – and confusion – to advance their war on safety. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) announced earlier this week that he is introducing legislation to “withhold federal money from municipalities and police departments that deploy Flock (and other style) cameras to surveil law-abiding citizens.” (Emphasis added.)

I’ll soon be sponsoring a bill to withhold federal money from municipalities and police departments that deploy Flock (and other style) cameras to surveil law abiding citizens. pic.twitter.com/FGzE69psxS

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) July 25, 2026

Should that “other style” include speed- and red-light cameras, the bill would effectively ban traffic enforcement on local roads nationwide and lead to hundreds of fatalities. (But, then again, people caught on such cameras are not “law-abiding…”)

Speed- and red-light cameras prevent hundreds of road deaths every year, but they collect far less data, and under more-strict regulations, than Flock’s devices. For instance, traffic enforcement cameras do not collect data except when prompted to do so by an active violation. A transgressing driver sets off a trigger, either by running through a red light or traveling above the speed limit, which prompts the camera to take one to two photos.

Drivers who do not violate the law are not photographed by traffic enforcement cameras. But libertarians like Massie still object to speed cameras, which are derided as a “money grab.”

Recommended This Data Proves that Speed Cameras Improve Safety John Greenfield March 5, 2025

This form of automated enforcement technology was developed in the 1980s. In San Francisco, speeding dropped by 72 percent at key locations after cameras were installed last year. Boulder Springs, Colorado reduced red light-running violations by the same percentage in its first year of enforcement. In New York City, which has the largest automated camera system, collisions declined by 30 percent and injuries by 16 percent in the the seven months following the introduction of a camera, the local Department of Transportation reported.

Traffic enforcement cameras deter reckless driving by capturing specific illegal behaviors. Flock cameras watch everyone, everywhere, all of the time.

The company operates a national network of Automated License Plate Readers that scan for, and log, every plate that comes into view. Every vehicle in frame is sent to a broader database that anyone to whom Flock grants access can see.

Recommended Report: Speed Cameras Working in San Francisco, Floundering in Bureaucracy in L.A. Damien Newton December 11, 2025

Last year, the company introduced FreeForm, an AI search tool enabling its clients to parse data using plain language searches. A law enforcement officer could search “red SUV with dent on rear bumper” and find every image of a specific vehicle captured by Flock. Police could then compile that information into a detailed history of the vehicle occupants’ location.

“We’re making it easier than ever for investigators to track down vehicles of interest,” the company said in an announcement.

Automated traffic enforcement and plate reading systems differ enormously in the quantity of data they collect and what can be done with it. Few Americans can actually tell the difference – and many are taking their frustrations out on the wrong cameras.

One enraged X user tagged Fox News in a post: “I received a speeding ticket as a result of a flock camera! I was going ONE MILE over the speed limit. ONE!!!!!”

@FoxNews I received a speeding ticket as a result of a flock camera! I was going ONE MILE over the speed limit. ONE!!!!!

— Vera Allen (@AliCat203) July 27, 2026

Under differing state laws, speed cameras don’t issue tickets until violators are driving many miles per hour — in New York City, it is 11 mph — above the limit. Even more puzzlingly, Flock does not issue speeding tickets.

The company itself has blurred the line between its plate readers and traditional speed enforcement. Its website used to claim that it does not “perform facial recognition, does not store biometrics, cannot be queried to find people, and is not used to enforce traffic violations.” Sometime after Dec. 2, 2025, it quietly removed that last commitment.

Just three weeks later, Flock had already gone back on its commitment. A Georgia State Patrol officer used a Flock license plate reader to ticket a motorcyclist for holding his phone, as first reported by 404 Media.

Georgia State Patrol used a Flock camera to cite a motorcyclist in December 2025.

Massie’s legislation is not the Republicans’ first attempt this term at enacting The Purge on US roads. A bill by Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-N.C.) would ban speed cameras by withholding federal highway funds from states.

Increased conflation between privately operated license plate readers and standard traffic enforcement could increase public support for anti-speed enforcement bills – including the ones that won’t rein in Flock at all.

Whether by panicked confusion or targeted destruction, automated traffic enforcement is under attack. That attack won’t disarm mass surveillance, but it will cause thousands of Americans to die on the road.

Diet shapes nearly every aspect of human well-being. It influences the risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and certain cancers as well as how we learn, think, feel, age, and function.

That critical connection between food and health was the theme of Food Tank’s Capitol Hill Luncheon on July 29, held in partnership with the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, “The Power and Peril of Food: The Latest Science on Your Mood, Memory, Metabolism, and Longevity.” The discussions explored how diets rich in fruits, vegetables, and minimally processed foods may benefit mood and mental health, and how nutrition can influence memory, metabolism, and cognitive decline.

According to the National Institute for Health Care Management (NIHCM) Foundation, about 6 in 10 Americans live with at least one chronic disease, creating significant health and economic burdens. In 2022, 90 percent of the US$4.5 trillion spent on health care in the United States was for individuals with chronic physical and mental health conditions. And American families feel the impact.

“For an average family of four, we spend US$50,000 a year on healthcare,” says Dariush Mozaffarian, Director of the Food is Medicine Institute. “Imagine if we spent just US$10,000 less per family, what that family could do or what the government could do with the US$10,000 a year, let alone US$20,000 less.”

Eric Verdin, MD, of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, described nutrition as a key influence on multiple systems in the body, serving as a signal to switch metabolic and repair pathways on or off.

“Many of us think about nutrition as a form of energy. Nutrition is actually a lot more than this…The choices that you make when you’re eating influence your metabolism and your brain,” says Verdin, who also connected diet to chronic inflammation and brain health. “What happens when you have a poor diet is you enter a state of chronic inflammation…This affects your brain.”

Ultra-processed foods were a major focus of discussion at the event, with speakers pointing to their prevalence in the American diet and potential connections to chronic disease and other health outcomes. Speakers agreed that more research is needed to understand what makes ultra-processed foods impact health and how the food system might pivot toward more nutritious options.

“Ultra-processed food represents 50 percent of nutrition for most Americans,” says Verdin. “These foods are not engineered for nutrition; they’re engineered for palatability and to make you eat more.”

Nutrition’s influence extends beyond physical health, too. Ashley Gearhardt, PhD, Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, says “some of the strongest evidence between ultra-processed food diets and disease is actually for mental health conditions…We are seeing a strong body of evidence that the food you’re eating is going to influence how your mind is working.”

Jan Ellison Baszucki, President of the Baszucki Group, shared a personal story highlighting the potential for metabolic approaches to address mental health conditions: Her son used a ketogenic diet to help treat bipolar disorder. She questioned whether the country is investing enough in research on the relationship between metabolism and mental health.

“Can we afford, as a society, to not investigate nutritional, metabolic approaches to our most serious mental illnesses?” says Baszucki.

Speakers also challenged the traditional approach to healthcare, arguing that prevention and nutrition should play a greater role. “We have a medical system now that we call healthcare. It is not healthcare, it is sickcare,” says Verdin.

The discussion comes as policymakers and the public are paying greater attention to the role of food in health. At a time when Americans disagree on many issues, speakers agreed that improving nutrition and reducing diet-related disease offers common ground.

“I’ve been thinking about active advocacy in this area for about 10 years, and I’ve never seen such bipartisan support,” says Mozaffarian.

Calley Means, Senior Advisor at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, agreed that “wherever we are on the political aisle, we can all hopefully agree that there is a unique political moment right now where we are talking about these things more in this country.”

Speakers called for better data and research to understand how nutrition affects individuals differently, including using emerging technologies.

“The age of AI is here, and we should be implementing it to collect more accurate data to offer personalized solutions for some individuals, but also offer better research,” says Uma Naidoo, MD, Director of Nutritional & Lifestyle Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Ultimately, the event underscored the importance of turning scientific findings into policies and practices that can improve health at scale.

“There’s a handful of policies that we could enact to both improve the science and improve the food right now for Americans,” says Mozaffarian. He emphasizes that while much more investment is needed in science and solutions, “there really is an opportunity here, and we really can fix this.”

Watch the full event below:

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Photo courtesy of A.E.Landes Photography for Food Tank

The post Experts Highlight the Power of Food to Improve Metabolic and Mental Health appeared first on Food Tank.

Protesters today climbed into an ancient cottonwood tree in Arizona’s San Rafael Valley to stop the Trump administration from cutting it down for construction of two parallel 30-foot-tall border walls.

The action comes after Department of Homeland Security contractors cut down three neighboring Fremont cottonwoods estimated to be 200 to 250 years old.

“Destroying these ancient cottonwoods is a death sentence for an entire ecosystem,” said Russ McSpadden, Southwest conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “These magnificent cottonwoods survived centuries, nourishing wildlife through floods and drought, only to be bulldozed for the Trump administration’s disastrous border wall. The San Rafael Valley is one of the most biologically rich landscapes in North America. It’s both a refuge and crucial corridor for jaguars, ocelots, black bears, pronghorn and hundreds of bird species.”

Today’s action is believed to be the first tree sit aimed at stopping U.S. border wall construction.

The three cottonwoods cut down earlier this week stood along a rare stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border where mature trees once formed a transboundary canopy. The trees provided nesting habitat, shade and shelter within an increasingly scarce riparian ecosystem that supports hundreds of animal species. One protester was arrested Monday while trying to protect those trees and nesting migratory birds.

Federal officials said preconstruction surveys would be conducted during Arizona’s active nesting season, but observers at the site reported that no surveys for nesting migratory birds were completed before the trees were destroyed.

The area also contains prehistoric archaeological sites that preserve evidence of thousands of years of Indigenous presence in the borderlands. Ongoing construction threatens cultural resources that would be permanently lost if disturbed.

The Department of Homeland Security is constructing the border wall under authorities that waive dozens of the nation’s cornerstone environmental and cultural resource protection laws, allowing construction to proceed without reviews normally required under laws including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act and the National Historic Preservation Act.

In a letter sent today to the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Center called for an immediate halt to construction in the Lochiel area. The letter urged the agencies to conduct comprehensive biological and cultural resource surveys, consult with Tribes with ancestral and cultural connections to the San Rafael Valley, protect the remaining ancient cottonwoods, and assess the ecological and cultural resources at risk.

Videos and photos for media use are available here.

Cottonwood tree destruction for border wall construction in Lochiel, Arizona. Credit: John Kurc. Image is available for media use.

Today, the Federal Reserve held the federal funds rate steady at 3.50% to 3.75%, its fifth straight meeting without a move. For working families, this means no relief on mortgages, credit cards, or car loans. Although inflation briefly cooled in June, that temporary relief was driven by cheaper gas during a ceasefire that Trump derailed.

Since then, gas prices have again crossed $4 per gallon and Trump’s new tariffs have increased the risk that inflation will accelerate. Despite mounting signs of labor market weakness, the Fed’s decision today signals they believe that the inflation Trump reignited is not done yet.

Groundwork’s Chief Economist Breyon Williams shared his reaction:

“The president’s reckless economic policies have done irreparable harm to working families’ budgets. Inflation remains elevated, with no immediate relief in sight for Americans. Even Trump’s hand-picked Fed chair, Wall Street sweetheart Kevin Warsh, knows the president’s actions are driving up prices for consumers and creating an influx of uncertainty for the economy. Today’s decision to hold rates steady is a reflection of a stalled labor market and persistent inflation.”

To speak with Breyon or any of Groundwork’s experts about Warsh’s first meeting, reply to this email or reach out to press@groundworkcollaborative.org.

BACKGROUND

Inflation remains above the Federal Reserve's target, and the latest energy price shock has yet to show up in the data.

• Tomorrow's Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) report is expected to show prices increased 3.7% in June from a year ago, and largely reflects inflation before Trump dismantled his own ceasefire. Since then, gas prices have climbed back above $4 per gallon, creating renewed inflationary pressure that will not show up in tomorrow’s report.
• The San Francisco Fed warned this month that inflation remains "elevated and uncertain," citing renewed volatility in energy markets and accelerating core inflation.
• Trump is determined to keep prices high using tariffs. After the Supreme Court struck down most of Trump’s Section 232 tariffs, the administration fell back on temporary Section 122 tariffs, which expired last week. Instead of giving working families some relief, the administration immediately imposed new Section 301 tariffs to keep taxing everyday goods that consumers buy. And more tariffs are already on the horizon: Trump has signed an additional 50% tariff on a wide range of Canadian goods, scheduled to take effect next month, and a 100% tariff on patented drugs are planned in 2028.
• Businesses’ costs are still climbing. The latest wholesale inflation data suggest businesses are still contending with persistent cost pressures that have yet to fully reach consumers. Wholesale inflation rose 5.5% in June from a year ago.
• The Federal Reserve's July Beige Book found that contacts in 9 of the 12 Federal Reserve Districts reported price increases, with businesses repeatedly citing higher energy costs from the conflict in the Middle East and tariffs as key drivers.

The Federal Reserve meets amid growing evidence that the labor market is losing momentum.

• The job market is frozen. Hiring has stalled and layoffs sit near historic lows, a labor market environment that leaves workers feeling stuck and job seekers feeling shut out.
  • Recent job gains were sluggish, with employers adding just 57,000 jobs in June. Payroll gains in April and May were revised down by a combined 74,000 jobs.
• More Americans are leaving the workforce. A total of 720,000 people exited the labor force in June, pushing participation to its lowest level since March 2021.
• Workers are spending longer searching for jobs, and millions of Americans still cannot find full-time work. More than one in four unemployed Americans (27.3%) have been out of work for at least six months, up from 23.3% one year ago. About 4.7 million Americans are working part-time because they cannot find full-time jobs, pushing the broad U-6 unemployment rate, which captures workers who are unemployed, marginally attached, and part-time but want full-time jobs, to 7.9%.

The economy is expected to grow at a slower pace, with AI investment propping up the headline numbers. The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow model estimates the economy grew at a 1.6% annualized rate in the second quarter, well below the 2.1% pace recorded in 2025. Much of the expected growth reflects continued investment in AI infrastructure and data centers rather than broad-based strength across the economy.

This article is part of Food Tank’s primer series, “Food Tank Explains.” Each installment unpacks the ideas, innovations, and challenges shaping today’s food and agriculture systems, offering clear insights into complex topics. To explore more articles in the series, click here.

Blue foods are foods harvested from water. They include fish, seafood, and seaweed—wild caught or farmed—and are derived from marine, freshwater, or aquaculture systems. They play an essential role in the livelihood, cultures, and nutrition of millions, and can strengthen global food security and support sustainable food systems.

Dating back over 100,000 years, harvesting blue foods is one of the earliest forms of food gathering. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 800 million people rely on blue foods for income, with wild capture fishing alone employing about 33 million people.

Blue foods are particularly significant to coastal, island, and river communities. In West African coastal nations, fishing supports 7 million livelihoods and generates US$5 billion annually. Pacific islands rely heavily on tuna revenues, which bring in US$7 billion each year. And for the 30 million coastal Indigenous peoples around the world, who eat four times more seafood than the global average, the ocean has sustained their livelihood for thousands of years.

For many aquatic communities, blue foods form a central part of cultural identity, shaping rituals, traditions, and daily life. In Batanes Province, Philippines, where researchers say fishing is far more than just a livelihood, some families relocate during fishing seasons to remain near important fisheries.

Communities in western Korea gather annually for Daedonggut to honor fishers who have died at sea and pray for a bountiful catch. Nigeria’s Argungu Fishing and Cultural Festival and Mali’s Antogo ceremony both center on communal fishing, celebration, and the sharing of harvests.

In Fiji, nearshore seagrass meadows historically enabled the women of Dawasamu to harvest aquatic foods for their community while remaining close to home. “Our food, medicine, and life came and continues to come from the ocean,” says Kii’iljuus Barbara Wilson of the Cumshewa Eagle Clan. “We are Ocean People.”

Aquatic foods provide nutrition to 3.3 billion people, contributing around 90 percent of protein intake in some communities. Many are rich in essential micronutrients—including iron, zinc, calcium, and vitamin A—and fatty acids. These nutrients support cognitive development, cardiovascular health, and immune function, and are linked to reduced rates of stunting, maternal and infant mortality, and heart disease.

They present “huge opportunities for better nutrition and healthier diets,” according to Jim Leape, Co-director of Stanford’s Center for Ocean Solutions, and a board member for the Blue Food Assessment (BFA).

Even small quantities can have a significant nutritional impact, Rosamund Naylor, a member of the BFA’s Science Committee, tells Food Tank. Fish increase micronutrient availability, Naylor explains, increasing the degree to which nutrients from other foods can be absorbed and utilized by the body.

As corporate consolidation reshapes much of the food system, the blue food sector remains largely operated by small-scale producers, providing about 40 percent of the global catch and generating US$77 billion annually. Small-scale fisheries rely heavily on women, who comprise half the sector’s workforce. Women support every stage, playing a crucial but often underdocumented role in harvesting and marketing.

Despite their substantial contribution to livelihoods and nutrition, blue food systems have even greater potential to strengthen global food security and mitigate the food system’s environmental impacts. Global fisheries recently produced 178 million tons of aquatic animals and 36 million tons of algae in one year, a record high. FAO projects that by 2030, those numbers could grow by 15 percent, a massive potential growth in the food supply.

And according to the U.N., most blue food systems provide animal-source protein with relatively low greenhouse gas emissions and impacts on biodiversity. Certain systems, like aquaculture of mussels and clams, can improve their environment.

But researchers and organizations, including the World Bank and the U.N., agree that without stronger governance and sustainable practices, blue foods could shift from an opportunity to an additional source of environmental strain.

Environmental changes threaten over 90 percent of blue food production, and fishing practices are depleting some of the world’s most important ocean stocks. A third of wild seafood populations cannot regenerate quickly enough to meet demand.

Aquatic food systems are also threatened by unsustainable fishing, according to the BFA. And they are rife with unethical practices, says Mark Kaplan, Co-Founder and Partner of the blockchain-based traceability system Wholechain.

“Integrity and supply chain stakeholders are not synonymous,” Kaplan tells Food Tank. “That’s why traceability is so necessary.” He believes that with greater transparency comes improved sustainability.

Integrating blue foods into policymaking alongside land-based foods offers another opportunity to strengthen these systems, blue foods advocates say. “I would like food policymakers to not think twice about including blue foods in food system strategies,” says Naylor. According to Chef and Advocate Andrew Zimmern, “we have to include our blue spaces everywhere that we’re talking about our green spaces.”

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 Alfredo Abreu Vasquez

The post Food Tank Explains: Blue Foods appeared first on Food Tank.

Newly-released internal documents from Shell suggest that a desire to avoid incurring the costs of shutting down its oil pipelines and cleaning up spills from them was part of the energy giant’s motivation in selling off its onshore oil assets in the Niger Delta.

The company has been accused by campaigners of cutting and running by selling its controversial oil infrastructure to African firms without the resources to deal with the pollution or decommission the pipelines, leaving Nigeria’s oil-rich southern region worse off.

Climate Home News has previously revealed that highly-polluting gas flaring in the Niger Delta has soared since the sell-off, while Shell avoids responsibility and continues to profit from the oil assets it sold.

• May 6, 2026 Investigations How Shell is still benefiting from offloaded Niger Delta oil assets Shell used its exit from onshore operations in Nigeria to boost its climate credentials, but new reporting shows that the firm continues to trade oil from its former business Read more
• Feb 5, 2026 Investigations Gas flaring soars in Niger Delta post-Shell, afflicting communities   Since the multinational sold its assets in Nigeria’s oil hub, data analysis for Climate Home News shows flaring has risen, harming locals and the climate Read more

The documents – which were cited in UK court proceedings and featured in a new Amnesty International report released on Wednesday – show that in June 2013 a Shell presentation to a policy forum on Nigeria considered options for “handling potential liabilities related to [Shell] past oil spills”.

The presentation identified 375 square kilometres of mangrove forests – an area the size of a large city – which had been affected by oil spills and asked “do we have the appetite to take on this open-ended problem?”

The next year, in 2014, Shell’s then CEO Ben van Beurden was warned by colleagues that closing down the company’s pipelines in the south of Nigeria would cost billions of dollars and take several decades.

The year after that, in 2015, Shell began to divest its Niger Delta oil businesses by selling its stake in a pipeline to Nigerian oil company Aiteo for $1.7 billion.

“Well aware” of the costs

At the time of this divestment, Amnesty International’s report says Shell “appears to have been well aware of the massive costs of decommissioning the entirety of its aged and decaying infrastructure. Rather than cover these costs, it appears that Shell decided to sell.”

The process continued, with Shell selling all its remaining onshore oil operations to a local consortium called Renaissance. At the time, Shell said its divestment “aligns with its intent to simplify its presence in Nigeria” and focus investment on offshore oil.

UN experts accuse top oil firms of rights violations over Nigerian asset sales

Despite calls for the sale to be blocked, Nigeria’s oil regulator gave it fast-track approval. Mark Dummett, deputy director and head of business and human rights at Amnesty International, told Climate Home News that this allowed Shell to “cut and run”, while communities remained trapped with polluted land, poisoned water and no justice. 

Some of the affected Niger Delta communities have since taken the oil giant to local and international courts. In 2015, the Ogale and Bille communities filed a UK legal action against Shell and its Nigerian subsidiary over serious oil pollution which is scheduled to be heard in March 2027.

Shell had not responded to a Climate Home News request for comment by the time of publication. But in a statement included in the Amnesty report, the company rejected “the characterisation and portrayal of Shell” presented by the rights group findings, which it said did not reflect the “challenging operating environment in the Niger Delta at the time, including large-scale oil theft, sabotage and illegal refining carried out by organised criminal gangs”.

For blighted Niger Delta communities, oil spill clean-ups are another broken promise

The oil major added that it is “committed to honesty, integrity and respect for people, and to conducting business in an ethical and transparent manner”, noting that it had worked with Nigerian authorities, the state-owned partner and communities to clean up spills. Decontamination and restoration efforts continue in the delta under a government-led programme.

Olanrewaju Suraju, chairman of the Nigeria-based HEDA Resource Centre, an environmental justice NGO which partnered with Amnesty on the report, criticised Shell for taking oil and profits from the region and leaving pollution behind. “Communities in the Niger Delta deserve truth, justice, clean-up and full remedy,” he said in a statement.

The post “Do we have the appetite?” – Shell’s fear of Niger Delta clean-up costs revealed appeared first on Climate Home News.

This past weekend, Restore the Delta and the Mormon Slough Restoration Association (MSRA) hosted a public visioning meeting to help finalize a broad vision for restoration of the Mormon Slough and conceptual designs for two pilot sites: the Solari Ranch area and a site behind the Emergency Foodbank near downtown Stockton. 

The successful event brought together community members, City of Stockton leaders, and other key stakeholders to share ideas and help shape a collective vision for transforming the long-neglected corridor into a healthier, more resilient community resource. 

As Michelle Mendoza, Flood and Land Restoration Program Manager at Restore the Delta, told ABC 10, “We ultimately want to see water running through the slough, but in the short, near term, we can definitely see having local vegetation, native vegetation being put in, removing invasive species, and bringing in park amenities for folks.”

Stockton resident Latoya Fox also expressed her enthusiasm saying, “Seeing that we have projects that we have started to start moving forward to a better future for the community to use for entertainment purposes or just to have fun is great.”

The feedback gathered during this meeting, along with input from the previous public visioning session and additional community outreach including engagement with more than 3,000 households over the past nine months, will now help guide the landscape architecture team as they begin finalizing restoration plans. 

Restore the Delta would like to send heartfelt appreciation to everyone who took the time to participate and share their ideas. We’d also like to thank the San Francisco Estuary Institute for helping facilitate productive discussions, as well as the Buena Vista Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians, San Joaquin County Supervisor Mario Gardea, City of Stockton Vice Mayor Jason Lee, and City of Stockton Councilmember Mario Enriquez, for joining us and supporting this important effort.

Reports that OpenAI’s rogue AI agent compromised a second company’s environment after the recent Hugging Face cyber incident underscore the growing national security and public safety implications of frontier AI systems. According to reporting from Reuters and Axios, the AI agent, which reportedly escaped containment during internal safety testing before conducting a multi-stage cyberattack against Hugging Face, also exploited a vulnerability within a customer environment hosted through Modal Labs. While Modal stated that its own infrastructure was not compromised, the incident demonstrates that the consequences of the attack extended beyond a single organization and affected additional real-world systems.

“OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is in Washington this week and he should not be allowed to leave D.C. without Congress seeking to understand, from him, publicly how one of the company’s most advanced AI systems escaped its intended testing environment and reportedly carried out offensive cyber operations affecting multiple companies,” said J.B. Branch, Director of Federal AI Governance at Public Citizen. “Voluntary disclosures after the fact are not a substitute for congressional oversight. The American people deserve a full accounting of what happened, why existing safeguards failed, and what concrete steps are being taken to prevent it from happening again. Most importantly, Congress must act, not rely on voluntary action by Big Tech companies. AI systems are creating real-world consequences. Congress should treat this with the urgency it deserves.”

“The federal government must develop emergency authorities and response capabilities for advanced AI systems. If a frontier model demonstrates dangerous autonomous behavior, the government cannot be left relying solely on private companies to decide when — or whether — to pause, contain, or disable it. A credible national emergency preparedness framework is now an essential component of AI governance.”

Public Citizen urges Congress to hold immediate oversight hearings, obtain all relevant incident reports and technical findings, and evaluate whether additional statutory safeguards — including mandatory incident reporting, independent safety evaluations, cybersecurity standards for frontier AI systems, and pre-deployment oversight for exceptionally capable models — are necessary to protect the public.

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Neha Pathak

Most of us sense it without being told why: A walk in the woods or an hour in the park leaves us calmer, clearer, and restored. Increasingly, modern science agrees. A growing body of evidence links time in nature to better physical and mental health – and a major new effort is working to document exactly what that evidence shows.

That effort is called the Nature Record, and its survival is a story in itself. It began as the National Nature Assessment, a federal undertaking modeled on the long-running National Climate Assessment and mandated by a Biden-era executive order. Roughly 180 scientists volunteered to develop about a dozen chapters. The project had reached an early public-comment draft when the Trump administration canceled it. Rather than abandon the work, the authors decided to finish it independently under a new name, with foundation funding and National Academy of Sciences review.

Howard Frumkin, a physician-epidemiologist and a professor emeritus at the University of Washington, led the assessment’s chapter on human health. Yale Climate Connections spoke with him about how the report survived, what the science says about nature’s health benefits, why those benefits aren’t shared equally, and what it all means for communities and the healthcare system.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Yale Climate Connections: The connection between nature, health, and climate change pulls together fields that don’t usually sit at the same table. How do you frame that intersection?

Howard Frumkin: This intersection of the natural world and human health – in the context of climate change – draws on three different lineages intellectually.

The first is the scientific evidence on the health benefits of nature contact, which is what the Nature Record is focusing on. So if you or I take a walk in a forest or in a park, we have nature contact, and something about that is good for us. We don’t fully understand. It might be the visual appreciation of beautiful nature; it might be phytoncides – biogenic chemicals that we’re inhaling. It could be the quiet, could be the physical activity. But nature also delivers benefits without direct contact: The upstream ecosystem in the watershed that delivers clean water is good for health. We may never go up there, but we still benefit from it.

The second is the whole literature on climate solutions, indicating that coastal mangrove forests and sponge cities and tree canopy deliver benefits both in terms of climate mitigation and adaptation: We can store carbon, reduce temperatures of neighborhoods, we can manage storm water.

Then there’s a third line of thinking, which has to do with the human relationship with the natural world. In Indigenous and tribal wisdom, there’s talk of reciprocity, the shared relationship that we have as part of nature, the obligations for stewardship, the legal concepts of the rights of nature. All of that is related to, but different than, the climate benefits piece because it’s explicitly not instrumental; it’s not transactional; it’s relational. You come into that thinking about the right relationship that we as humans should have with the natural world – not because of what it gets us.

Yale Climate Connections: So how did the Nature Record come to be, and how did the project survive after the federal government withdrew its support?

Frumkin: It was a pretty simple concept: the idea that you can’t take good care of what you don’t know. There was a perception that if we were to be good stewards of our natural heritage in this country, we needed an inventory. We needed to take stock of what we had, and not just at a fixed moment in time but over time to understand the trends that were affecting nature and the benefits it delivers. The model for doing that was the National Climate Assessment, which is the every-four-year assessment of climate change in the U.S. – how it’s unfolding, what the impacts are on humans – mandated by federal legislation back in the 1990s. It comes with lots of federal procedures, in terms of scientific rigor, transparency, public review, and so on. Out of that conceptual commitment to taking stock of what we have, and using the model of the National Climate Assessment, an executive order in the Biden administration mandated the creation of the National Nature [Assessment].

It got as far as a “zero order draft,” – what regular people call an outline – that was published in the Federal Record and made available for public comment. And no sooner did that happen than the Trump inauguration happened, and the Trump administration killed the National Nature Assessment.

By then we had rostered around 12 chapters with around 15 authors each, so we had 180 authors all volunteering time, representing academic institutions and agencies and NGOs across the country. And pretty much in the blink of an eye, everybody said, “Let’s do it anyway … This work is so important, and the value is so clear that we don’t need to be a federal undertaking.”

There were some legal issues, like we couldn’t use the same name; federal employees could no longer participate because of potential risks to them and to the project. We found foundation support in early 2025, and by mid-2025 [it was] clear that we had enough money, energy, and commitment that we could continue. We landed on the Nature Record, and we’re proceeding almost in some ways as if it were a federal document – with transparency, National Academy of Sciences review, very careful documentation of all factual claims – partly because rigor will give a lot of credibility to the report, and partly because it would be a good thing for this to return to being a federal effort. If we have followed all the rules, dotted all the i’s, and crossed all the t’s, this can be reimported into government.

That said, being nonfederal offers some advantages. We can be more flexible and nimble, more creative in the ways we undertake outreach and build partnerships, and publicize and disseminate what we find. In some ways, this is a blessing in disguise. We have, for example, a national poetry effort running alongside the Nature Record, and we’ve published a book of poetry. We’ve engaged young people in graphic arts related to the benefits of nature. Bringing that creativity to bear has been a really nice part of the project.

Yale Climate Connections: When you dug into the evidence for the health chapter, what were the biggest takeaways or trends you saw?

Frumkin: The first key message is that, in general, nature contact is good for people; it’s health-promoting. The second is that those benefits are unequally distributed across society. Some of us have much better or easier access to nature than others. It’s an equity issue, because poor people and people of color disproportionately tend to have less access to parks and high-quality park programming, through the legacies of redlining and other historical trends.

But it’s not just that conventional form of equity that’s important. People with disabilities have difficulty accessing natural places. Older people have difficulty because too many parks lack accessible trails and shade, and children often lack access because safe, easy access to green space is rare in many communities.

Another trend is more screen time and less green time. People are spending less time outdoors. On the other hand, there are some emerging technologies that may facilitate nature contact, such as Merlin [the birdsong identification app], which may help deepen people’s appreciation of nature, and there’s reason to think that being more familiar with it deepens nature connectedness.

Four takeaways about health and nature from the Nature Record

• Nature contact is broadly good for human health.
• Those benefits are unequally distributed – by race, income, age, and disability.
• Long-term trends, such as rising screen time and falling green time, are reshaping how people benefit – for better and worse.
• Evidence-based interventions, like well-designed park programming, can reliably strengthen nature’s health benefits.

Yale Climate Connections: If the evidence that nature helps is solid, how much do we actually know about why – and about how much nature is enough?

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Frumkin: One of the most interesting parts of this is that although we have pretty solid evidence that nature contact benefits health, we know precious little about how it works. So you may walk through a forest and benefit from seeing the natural beauty of the forest. We have lab evidence that T cells do better after contact with natural compounds than they otherwise would. It may be that the benefit comes from the fact that you’re walking through the forest with friends, and social contacts in natural settings are soothing and restorative. It may be that natural settings call on us just to get out there and take a walk, and the physical activity is a really effective promoter of good health.

Not knowing the pathways and mechanisms of benefits makes it a little difficult to prescribe. And we don’t know a lot about the varieties of nature and which ones are more or less effective. Do you need trees, or do shrubs do the trick? Do you need immersion, or viewing nature out the window? Do you need the real thing, or might virtual nature provide some of the same benefits? Do you need to get out every day, or does a few times a week suffice? So these are a lot of questions we still need to try to answer.

The potential benefits of nature contact are strong, much less expensive than pharmaceuticals, free of side effects, and don’t need to be prescribed by a licensed healthcare provider. The cost-benefit implications are potentially enormous if we get it right and understand best how to optimize those benefits.

Yale Climate Connections: As a physician, I hear a real fear of nature from patients: ticks and mosquito-borne disease, allergies, wildfire smoke, and extreme weather – and climate change is heightening those risks. How do you balance nature’s benefits against these threats?

Frumkin: Rarely in life can you eliminate risk altogether, but you can manage risk.

The risks of being outside: Well, there’s a risk of sunburn – but we can manage that risk with sunblock and with protective clothing. The risk of ticks – that’s a real risk. But we can manage that risk: inspecting ourselves after we’ve been in tick-infested areas and using bug repellent to keep the ticks away. So for each risk, we can reduce the risk by managing it well.

Yale Climate Connections: How do you hope communities will use the Nature Record?

Frumkin: So for communities, here’s an example. Almost every community in the country now has a housing shortage, and there is a need to build more housing. And to do that in economically and environmentally efficient ways generally means density. Density can collide with protecting nature. This report will make it clear that balancing the protection of nature with fulfillment of other human needs – like housing – is a key set of trade-offs we need to tackle and be explicit about.

Using the insights from this report, design strategies that both protect nature and provide nearby nature contact and also provide housing and transportation – which means in many cases nonmotorized transportation, active transport, cycling, and walking. The design of communities needs to take into account all these needs: environment, human, and equity.

Yale Climate Connections: Hospitals and health systems have a natural connection to health, not only through the care they provide but also through the spaces they create. As they consider land use decisions, including parking needs and opportunities for green space, what should they keep in mind?

Frumkin: Two thoughts. One is that we know a lot about how to build green, and that means the buildings themselves, with biophilic principles. It means the environmental performance of the buildings – what are called green buildings – and it means the situation of buildings in lots, protecting nearby nature. That’s a good way to build; it’s economical. There may be increased up-front costs, but they’re generally recoverable in a short number of years, and they deliver health benefits to patients and staff.

The second message is that nonprofit hospitals are required to carry out community health needs assessments and to invest in community health based on the findings of those assessments.

Nature deficit is a community health need, and in my view ought to be a part of every community health needs assessment. To the extent that it’s documented, hospitals can consider investing funds in local parks, either for developing parks or planning programming in parks that we know improve community health.

I would urge hospitals to think about nature deficit as one of those community health needs and then consider investments in nature contact for people in their catchment areas as a means of promoting public health.

Yale Climate Connections: Finally, what makes you most hopeful?

Frumkin: For me, one of the biggest potential sources of despair is the polarization and ideological hysteria that seems to be sweeping our country and many others as well. But this topic offers a counterbalance, because across the political spectrum people love the natural world and appreciate it.

Hunters and anglers and campers may be far right politically, but they have common cause with environmentalists who may be on the political left. There aren’t too many domains that can unite us across the ideological divide that bedevils the country now, but this is one.

I think the fact that we’re approaching this entire Nature Record in an apolitical way, and framing it in terms of benefits that all Americans can enjoy, gives me hope that we may be able to help overcome one of the biggest challenges we face.

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The global goal to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030 “will not be achieved” unless action by countries “accelerates rapidly”, says a draft UN report.

Countries are falling short on 22 of the 23 targets for 2030 they set under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), the “Paris Agreement for nature”.

That is according to a draft version of a global report prepared by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), published on 26 July.

The report will be finalised ahead of the next nature summit, COP17, taking place in Armenia in October of this year.

The second draft of the global report has undergone “peer review”, but will still be subject to “technical edits” before being formally published ahead of COP17.

The final version will inform a global review of countries’ progress towards meeting the world’s 2030 nature goals, which will take place in Armenia.

Below, Carbon Brief explains why the report has been produced and what it says about countries’ progress in areas such as restoring ecosystems and raising funds for biodiversity.

• Global report
• Overall findings
  • Protecting and restoring nature
  • Climate and biodiversity links
  • Subsidies
  • Mobilising finance
  • Genetic resources
  • Pollution
  • Invasive species

Article Contents Expand menu

• Global report
• Overall findings
• Protecting and restoring nature
• Climate and biodiversity links
• Subsidies 
• Mobilising finance
• Genetic resources
• Pollution
• Invasive species

Global report

In Montreal, Canada, in 2022, nearly every country in the world agreed to the GBF. The overall “mission” of the framework is to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. Its “vision” is to bring the world into “harmony with nature” by 2050.

The GBF includes a list of 23 targets for 2030. They cover an expansive range of topics, from restoring ecosystems, to addressing pollution and providing developing nations with finance to help cover the costs of protecting nature.

As part of the GBF and its underlying documents, countries agreed to a schedule for monitoring their progress towards achieving the 2030 targets.

This included the preparation of a “global report” of progress coordinated by the CBD, which will inform a “global review” undertaken by countries at COP17.

The global report draws on countries’ national reports, which were due to be submitted to the UN in February of this year. It also draws on countries’ national nature plans, known as “national biodiversity strategies and action plans” (NBSAPS) and national targets, which were both due in 2024.

Not all countries have met the call to publish these documents and targets. According to the UN, 45% of countries published NBSAPs in time to be considered for the report, 83% had submitted at least one national target and 66% had produced their new national report. 

The first draft of the global report was published on 29 June 2026. This draft was subject to a “peer review process”, which invited countries and observers, such as NGOs and businesses, to submit comments on all aspects of the report.

The second draft, which has been revised based on the peer review, was published on Sunday 26 July. (This was just ahead of COP17 preparatory talks being held in Nairobi from 27 July to 1 August.)

A final version of the global report will be formally published ahead of COP17, which will take place from 19-30 October.

Overall findings

The second draft of the global report says that the GBF has led to “unprecedented” interest in tackling biodiversity loss, but adds:

“However, unless collective implementation accelerates rapidly, the 2030 targets and mission will not be achieved.”

It says that countries have taken some action to address all 23 targets, but that “no target presents a fully positive picture”.

(The first draft has slightly softer language. It “concludes that the world is not yet on track to collectively meet the global ambitions that the parties to the convention set when they adopted the framework”.)

The report identifies “two distinct gaps in progress”, relating to ambition and implementation.

First, that the national targets and plans submitted by countries “do not yet fully reflect the scope and level of ambition” of the global targets in the GBF.

Second, countries are not taking sufficient action to achieve their targets, according to the report.

It adds that progress is “particularly lagging” for addressing the “indirect drivers of biodiversity loss”, such as harmful business practices and government subsidies promoting them.

In addition, countries are showing “consistent gaps” in making progress on taking action to protect “marine, coastal and inland water ecosystems”.

The report produces a “scorecard” assessing countries’ progress towards meeting each of the 23 targets of the GBF.

The scorecard includes an “overall score” of between 0 and 1 for each target. This is calculated by considering countries’ self-reported progress in their plans and targets, as well as an assessment of progress based on a set of agreed indicators.

The results are split into four categories: 0-0.25 is red, 0.25-0.5 is orange, 0.5-0.75 is yellow and 0.75-1 is green.

The report gives a “green” score for just one target, indicating overall positive progress. This is target 8, on “minimising” the impact of climate change on biodiversity, including through mitigation and adaptation.

Elsewhere, the draft says that countries have “reported gaps in the scale and timely provision” of “financial resources, capacity-building and development, technical and scientific cooperation, access to and transfer of technology, and knowledge sharing”. It adds:

“These barriers can result in uneven capacities and cause specific technical and financial constraints for all parties, but particularly for developing-country parties. It is likely these constraints are even more pressing for least developed countries and small island developing states.”

Protecting and restoring nature

Target 3 of the GBF is for countries to protect “30% of Earth’s land and sea for nature” by the end of the decade. 

This commitment – referred to as “30 by 30” – is widely considered the flagship target of the agreement.

Target 3 of the Global Biodiversity Framework. Credit: UN CBD

The report says that countries are making “progress in expanding and managing protected areas, especially for marine and coastal areas”. But it adds that “current ambition and implementation remain insufficient to fully achieve all aspects of the target”.

It continues that, according to countries’ available national targets, “monitoring and reporting of some elements of the target remains low”. This includes “those relating to equitable governance of protected areas” and “recognition of Indigenous and local territories”.

The report adds that countries “face significant challenges in implementation, particularly related to lack of finance and capacity”.

(An investigation by Carbon Brief and the Guardian in 2025 revealed that more than half of nations that have submitted UN biodiversity plans do not commit to “30 by 30” within their borders.)

Another conservation measure included in the GBF is target 2, which aims to ensure that at least 30% of land and sea areas are under restoration by 2030. 

Target 2 of the Global Biodiversity Framework. Credit: UN CBD

The report says that “restoration efforts are expanding”. However, it says that “current commitments to restore areas and implementation of those commitments remain below the level required” to achieve target 2.

It adds that countries’ national targets are “generally well aligned with target 2”, but that “addressing the effectiveness of restoration efforts is often absent”.

Moreover, the report adds that monitoring of progress is “constrained by inconsistent definitions and monitoring approaches for ecosystem degradation and restoration”.

Another “major barrier” is a lack of available finance for developing countries looking to restore ecosystems, it says.

Climate and biodiversity links

Target 8 of the GBF is the only one to specifically address climate change, one of the major drivers of biodiversity loss.

It says countries should “minimise the impact of climate change” on biodiversity through mitigation and adaptation, including “nature-based solutions” and “ecosystem-based approaches”.

Target 8 of the Global Biodiversity Framework. Credit: UN CBD

Target 8 was the only one to achieve a “green” marking in the report’s scorecard of progress (see: Overall findings).

The report says that actions to make biodiversity more resilient against climate change are “progressing”. Yet “implementation remains constrained by data gaps, limited means of implementation and the need for stronger coherence between biodiversity, climate and disaster risk reduction planning”.

It continues that countries’ national targets “generally” show “good alignment” with target 8, across “all elements apart from efforts to minimise the impacts of ocean acidification”.

It adds that the deployment of nature-based solutions and ecosystem restoration is not yet at a “sufficient scale”.

Subsidies 

Overall progress is “insufficient” on target 18, which calls on countries to identify subsidies and other incentives that are harmful for biodiversity by 2025, says the GBF report. 

It also outlines that nations should “eliminate, phase out or reform” these subsidies in a “proportionate” way, reducing them by at least $500bn per year by 2030. 

Countries should first target the “most harmful” incentives, while simultaneously scaling up positive incentives for nature, it adds. 

Target 18 of the Global Biodiversity Framework. Credit: UN CBD (2022)

The report finds that countries have made some progress in assessing, compiling inventories and commissioning studies on harmful subsidies. 

But issues remain, such as incomplete data and the lack of agreed definitions on which subsidies are deemed “harmful”. 

Several national reports also note “entrenched interests and political barriers to subsidy reform”, says the report. 

Only one-quarter of countries’ national targets that are “highly aligned” with target 18 are “on track” to be met, it finds. Most show “insufficient progress”. 

It notes that 38% of countries have addressed the 2025 aim to identify harmful subsidies in their national targets “to some extent”. 

Countries’ national reports do not “provide a sufficient basis to determine” whether this goal was met, says the report, but available evidence “suggests” that it was not. 

Recent analysis by Carbon Brief found that just 16% of the 134 national reports submitted so far appear to meet the aim. 

The report outlines that half of countries have set national targets addressing plans to eliminate, phase out or reform harmful incentives. Almost 60% mention scaling up positive incentives, it adds. 

Just 27%, however, address the issue of reducing subsidies by at least $500bn annually by 2030. Also, only 5% set quantitative national targets to reduce subsidies.

There are two headline “indicators” to measure progress on target 18. The first shows that 30% of countries have outlined information on their nature-positive incentives.

The second indicator shows that 22 countries submitted the value of their biodiversity-harmful subsidies, which amounted to a total of $268bn spent on harmful subsidies over 2022 to 2025 – averaging $67bn each year. 

Carbon Brief’s analysis had identified an estimated $270bn each year, based on a wider list of submissions from 32 countries. (More countries submitted national reports since the CBD’s deadline to be included in the global report in February.) 

All of these figures remain well below the estimated trillions of US dollars spent annually. 

The report notes that different methodologies could lead to global subsidy estimate “inconsistencies”, meaning that reported values are likely “underestimates”. 

The amount of positive incentives in place is also likely underestimated, it adds. 

The report says that harmful subsidies may have declined by around 20% in recent years, based on figures consistently reported by a minority of countries over 2022-24. 

Despite this, the total value of subsidies “remains higher than the resources that parties reported mobilising for biodiversity”. (See: Mobilising finance.) 

Mobilising finance

Overall progress on raising biodiversity finance has been “insufficient”, according to the report. 

Goal D of the GBF, shown below, states that countries must close a $700bn biodiversity gap by 2030 through ending harmful subsidies ($500bn per year) and mobilising resources from the global north to south ($200bn per year). 

Goal D of the Global Biodiversity Framework refers to a $700bn biodiversity finance gap. Credit: UN CBD (2022)

This target aims to raise “at least $200bn per year” by 2030 from “all sources”, including domestic, international, public and private funding. 

In all, countries reported raising a cumulative total of $186.4bn over four years, according to the report. 

While it adds that it “is still too early to conclude”, the report states that the total finance mobilised so far “falls far short” of what is needed to close the biodiversity finance gap.

Target 19, shown below, states that developed countries and others should boost finance for nature to “at least $20bn” per year by 2025 and “at least $30bn” by 2030. This falls to developed countries and others that “voluntarily assume” the obligation of contributing.

However, the report suggests that the milestone of raising “at least $20bn per year by 2025” was “likely not achieved”. 

Target 19 of the Global Biodiversity Framework. Credit: UN CBD (2022)

Between 2020 and 2023, reporting countries cumulatively raised just $17.7bn in international public funding for biodiversity, according to the report. 

This amounts to an average of $4.4bn per year between 2020-23, with the total touching its highest at $5.2bn in 2023. 

The report cautions that this figure “should be read as a minimum”, as it does not account for all potential flows of biodiversity finance. 

Both estimates “fall below the $20bn milestone”, although the report adds that a “definitive assessment will only be possible” once data for 2024 and 2025 are included. 

An earlier draft of the report included language noting that biodiversity-related “official development assistance” remains “well below the agreed 2025 milestone”. This was cut from the summary in this latest iteration of the report.

References to the OECD reporting a “shortfall in funding” and projecting “a decrease for 2024 and 2025” – suggesting the $20bn target was “unlikely to be met” – were also removed from the latest draft. 

The chart below shows how international public funding for biodiversity has varied from 2020 to 2023, according to the report. 

The yearly sum of official development assistance provided by donor countries (blue) for biodiversity conservation (in billions) and the average share of national GDP (in %) represented by their national value (red). Source: UN CBD 2026

By comparison, domestic spending makes the largest cumulative contribution to biodiversity finance, at ($135.9bn) over the four years. However, spending has “declined” as a share of GDP. It also notes that spending varies “greatly”, from 0.1% to 2.7% of GDP. 

According to the report, many countries highlighted that national budget allocations for biodiversity are “far too low” and that biodiversity “frequently loses out to competing development priorities”, including “defence, food security and infrastructure”.

At COP15 in Montreal, the EU and several other countries pushed for the inclusion of “all sources” of finance in the final text – including private finance and “innovative” schemes. 

Private and “innovative” biodiversity finance – which spans a plethora of sources such biodiversity offsets and debt-for-nature swaps – was eventually included in target 19.

The report, however, notes that private finance “peaked in 2021 and fell afterwards” and “remains particularly undeveloped”, with a cumulative total of $32.7bn between 2020-23. 

At the same time, the report notes that only 26% of all countries had reported data on private biodiversity finance, making it harder to assess funding declines in 2022 and 2023.

Genetic resources

The report finds there has been limited progress on sharing genetic biodiversity data. 

”Digital sequence information” (DSI) refers to genetic data derived from biodiversity, which is often sourced from species in biodiversity-rich developing countries. 

These countries have long called for an international mechanism to ensure that the benefits of DSI are shared fairly with the people living where the resources were “discovered”, including Indigenous communities.

At COP16, countries agreed to the first-ever global fund, called the Cali Fund, for companies profiting from genetic data to contribute to conservation goals on a voluntary basis.

However, experts have cautioned that much rests on whether countries develop strong national laws to support the COP16 agreement. This could include incentivising companies in their regions to contribute to the fund. 

In the GBF, target 13 and goal C address elements of DSI, including the sharing of benefits from genetic resources and their digital derivatives.

Target 13 of the Global Biodiversity Framework. Credit: UN CBD (2022)

According to the report, 79% of countries submitted national targets that address legal, policy and administrative measures to enable benefit-sharing from DSI. Some 71% included measures to facilitate access to genetic resources. 

The report finds that the “strongest progress” has been in developing laws and policies, which are now at an intermediate stage. 

The “most fundamental regulatory barrier”, according to many countries cited, is the lack of a “dedicated” national framework to enable access to genetic resources and share benefits with communities. 

This would involve enacting laws compatible with the GBF, setting up digital registries to catalogue and trace genetic resources, as well as implementing tracking systems to monitor how they are used. It would also include a financial mechanism to pay communities for the use of their traditional knowledge. 

Goal C of the Global Biodiversity Framework covers benefit-sharing from genetic resources and DSI, as well as protection of traditional knowledge. Source: UN CBD (2022)

Progress in monitoring monetary and non-monetary benefits from DSI is “much weaker” and is “particularly limited” for measures related to the Cali fund.

According to the report, most parties have “no monitoring systems [for evaluating benefits from genetic resources] in place, or [are] still developing them”. It says they add that the benefits from genetic resources are hard to track “across borders and along value chains through to the final product”.

For those that have tracked benefits, it says that countries reported a cumulative $6.9m in receipts from the use of genetic resources between 2022 and 2025. It adds that “several parties reported that they had received no monetary benefits” to date. 

Countries also reported more than 960 non-monetary benefits, ranging from technical training to research participation. The report cautions that these “fluctuated over time rather than increasing consistently, and cannot be seen as indicative of global benefit-sharing”. 

In December 2025, Carbon Brief reported that the Cali fund had received only one contribution of $1,000 as an “icebreaker”. No other major companies have stepped up to fill the fund. 

Meanwhile, the report states that the formal protection of traditional knowledge held by Indigenous peoples and local communities remained “underdeveloped”. 

It says that a “significant number” of countries raised concerns about gaps in recognition of Indigenous peoples’ rights and dedicated registries to document their traditional knowledge. 

The report says it is not yet possible to assess progress towards goal C:

“To date it is not possible to comment on whether benefits are being shared fairly and equitably nor on the role played by traditional knowledge and Indigenous peoples and local communities. Therefore, progress towards goal C cannot yet be assessed.”

Pollution

Target 7 of the GBF focuses on tackling pollution from pesticides, chemicals, plastic and other sources. 

It calls for countries to reduce pollution risks and negative impacts “from all sources” to “levels that are not harmful” to biodiversity and ecosystems by 2030. 

It also aims to reduce excess nutrients in the environment and overall risks from pesticides and hazardous chemicals by “at least half”. 

The draft report finds that there is no significant change or insufficient progress on 60% of national targets categorised as being highly aligned with target 7. Only one-third of these national targets (35%) are on track to be achieved by 2030. 

On average, it says countries have addressed around half of the various elements of target 7 “to some extent” in their national targets. 

The most frequently-mentioned aspect of the target – addressed by 72% of countries – refers to reducing pollution from all sources by 2030. 

One headline indicator related to target 7 focuses on the concentration of pesticides in the environment. 

Just five countries out of 125 submitted estimates on this, according to the report. It says only one country has met the aim of halving the overall risk from pesticides on a national basis so far.  

Measures to address plastic pollution are the most frequently reported actions by countries in relation to this target, including bans on single-use bags and straws. 

A number of countries in Europe and Asia have also implemented measures to reduce nutrient losses from fertilisers and slurry. 

A “major challenge” for countries in advancing pollution aims is “effectively and fairly considering and managing impacts on food security and livelihoods”, according to the report. 

Several countries point to a lack of national funding to implement measures towards achieving this target. 

Some developing countries also list poor wastewater-treatment infrastructure as a “persistent challenge” on this issue. 

Invasive species

Invasive alien species refers to those that have moved to and become established in a region outside their natural habitat, as a result of human activities. This has negative impacts for local biodiversity and ecosystems.

Target 6 of the GBF calls for countries to, among other things, reduce the rates of introduction and establishment of invasive alien species by 50% by 2030. 

The draft report says countries are “taking action” on this target, but progress is “difficult to assess”. 

Two-thirds of national targets aligned with target 6 show “no significant progress or insufficient progress”, it finds. Fewer than one-third are on track to be achieved by 2030 and just 1% of these national targets have already been achieved. 

But most countries have made progress in putting in place measures to manage invasive species – mostly focusing on reducing the introduction rate and impact of species. 

Countries have addressed around half of the different elements of the invasive species target “to some extent” in their national targets, finds the report. 

But fewer than one-third (30%) have set national targets that put a numeric goal on reducing invasive species. 

Island biosecurity programmes and measures to intercept invasive species at country borders are among the actions countries have put in place to tackle the issue. 

The report lists some barriers countries say stand in the way of achieving the target. These include a lack of baseline data from which to measure a 50% reduction rate, poor early-detection systems and a lack of funding for long-term reduction efforts. 

Some countries also cite capacity and technical challenges in monitoring invasive species, according to the report. 

They say many of these species “go unnoticed for years before impacts become apparent”, it adds, with countries arguing that setting a specific reduction target is “challenging”.

Related Factcheck: No, Europe is not having its ‘quietest’ year for wildfires 30.07.2026 Extreme weather Analysis: 84% of nations miss deadline to identify ‘nature-harming’ subsidies by 2025  28.07.2026 International policy UK withdraws millions in funding from world’s second-largest rainforest in Congo  15.07.2026 Nature Livestock heat deaths in transit doubled in UK record-hot summer of 2025 25.06.2026 Food and farming

The post World falling short on 22 of 23 nature targets for 2030, says draft UN report appeared first on Carbon Brief.

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Rising temperatures are redistributing the risk of childhood malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, resulting in areas of “new risk” in the east and south of the continent, but also “relief hotspots” in western Africa.

This is according to a new study, published in Nature, which provides the “most comprehensive look to date at the impact of climate change on any infectious disease”.

The research finds that since the year 1900, climate change has resulted in one extra case of malaria for every 1,000 children in sub-Saharan Africa on average. 

Over the 21st century, climate change is expected to drive down malaria rates across the continent on average, as temperatures rise above the optimum range for mosquitoes. 

However, the authors emphasise that continent-wide averages hide more detailed local trends. 

They find that cooler parts of Africa face an increase in malaria risk, as rising temperatures have made the regions more suitable for malaria-carrying mosquitoes, while warmer regions see a suppression in malaria cases.

The lead author tells Carbon Brief that this is the first study to use “attribution” – a field of climate science which uses models to compare conditions in a world with global warming to one without – to assess the impact of climate change on malaria.

The study also reveals that climate change is not the main driver of shifting malaria risk in Africa, with public health measures and government policy making a more significant impact.

The “most important” message from the study, according to another expert, is that to eliminate malaria entirely, “effective surveillance, prevention and treatment remain substantially more influential – and more actionable – than climate change alone”.

Childhood malaria

Malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people every year. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 610,000 people died due to the disease in 2024.

The disease is transmitted to humans by bites from mosquitoes infected with the malaria parasite. Malaria spreads most rapidly in warm, wet regions, where the parasite-carrying mosquitoes can live and breed.

However, malaria is preventable. A total of 42 countries – mainly in Europe and the Americas – have eliminated the disease entirely through a combination of measures including insecticide use, draining the swamplands that provide breeding habitats for mosquitoes and improving basic healthcare services .Global mortality from malaria declined by 90% over the 20th century. 

Today, the vast majority of malaria cases are recorded in Africa, which was home to 95% of malaria cases and deaths in 2024. Children under the age of five make up three-quarters of all African malaria deaths.

The malaria-causing parasite can be detected using a blood test. Over the last century, scientists, government officials and healthcare professionals have collected thousands of blood samples from people across sub-Saharan Africa and tested for the presence of the malaria parasite.

In 2017, scientists brought together more than 50,000 samples collected from sub-Saharan Africa over 1900-2016. This data provides a “snapshot” of the amount of malaria in the population in any year in the last century the study explains.

Dr Colin Carlson is an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Yale school of public health and lead author of the study. He tells Carbon Brief that malaria in Africa is “extraordinarily well documented”, as a result of academic interest and colonial rule in the continent.

The size and quality of the malaria dataset are “exceptionally rare”, Carlson says. He explains that the dataset stretches back to before the impacts of human-caused climate change were strongly felt, making it “extraordinarily” valuable for this analysis. 

The chart below shows the percentage of children between two and 10 years old who tested positive for the malaria parasite over 1900-2016. Each dot indicates one blood test result and the pink vertical bars indicate periods of “successful malaria prevention intervention”, such as the 1955-69 global malaria eradication programme.

The percentage of children between two to 10 years old who tested positive for the parasite that causes malaria between 1990 and 2016. Source: Carlson et al. (2026) Attribution

The authors use the blood test survey data to develop a statistical model separating out the climatic, social and economic factors that affect malaria, such as temperature, rainfall, economic development, healthcare and population changes. This allows the authors to isolate the effects of the climate on malaria.

They find that malaria prevalence in children peaks when average monthly temperatures reach 24.9C, dropping off in warmer and cooler climates. 

Mosquitoes also need stagnant or slow-moving water in which to lay their eggs. The authors find that periods of drought tend to decrease malaria prevalence one-to-two months later, whereas floods increase prevalence two-to-three months later. However, they conclude that rainfall is “less important than temperature” in predicting malaria rates.

They then combine the statistical models with climate models, to simulate childhood malaria rates in a range of past and future climates. 

First, the authors simulate malaria rates in the present day, by running the models using the climate of 2000-14. They then carry out the same analysis, using the climate of a hypothetical world without human-caused climate change.

By comparing the two, the authors were able to attribute the impact of climate change on malaria rates across Africa.

The link between climate change and malaria in Africa is complex and “surprisingly contentious”, according to the authors. For example, they write that “malaria resurgence in the east African highlands became a particular point of contention, with over a dozen studies arguing for or against climate change as a substantial driver”.

It adds:

“Today, malaria experts generally agree that climate change has contributed to elevational shifts in malaria epidemics and the geographical ranges of mosquito vectors. However, the cumulative effect of climate change on the burden of malaria is still an open question.”

Lead author Carlson says this paper is “one of the first impact attributions on infectious disease” and the first attribution study on climate change and malaria. He adds:

“I think it’s the most clarity we’ve had on the malaria question.”

Dr Teresa Yamana, an associate research scientist at Columbia University, who was not involved in the study, praises its “rigorous” methodology. She tells Carbon Brief that the work “demonstrates the potential of climate attribution methods to quantify the impacts of climate change on infectious diseases”. 

Warming world

The findings show that “climate change isn’t just making malaria worse or better – it’s moving it, says study author Prof Tamma Carleton, an assistant professor at UC Berkeley:

“Whether a place sees elevated malaria risks or reduced burdens under climate change depends on how hot it is today. We see relief in the hotspots and new risk nearly everywhere else.”

For example, in the Ethiopian highlands, low temperatures – which are unsuitable for mosquitoes to live and breed – have historically limited the spread of malaria. However, the region has seen childhood malaria rates increase by more than eight cases per 1,000 children since the year 1900 as rising temperatures have allowed the insects to expand their habitat.

The authors also found a similar increase in malaria prevalence in cooler southern African countries.

In contrast, global warming is pushing average temperatures above the ideal range for mosquitoes in many hotter parts of Africa, driving down malaria rates. The authors find that in western Africa, climate change has caused a reduction of four malaria cases per 1,000 children per year by 2014, reducing prevalence by 1-2%.

Overall, climate change has resulted in one extra case of malaria for every 1,000 children in sub-Saharan Africa since the year 1900, the study says.

The authors also run their models for three future climate scenarios: low (SSP1-2.6), intermediate (SSP2-4.5) and very-high (SSP5-8.5) emissions pathways. Comparing these to the present-day model results shows how climate change could affect malaria cases over the coming century. 

They find that the trends observed so far will largely continue into the future – meaning climate change will lower the prevalence of malaria in warm regions and increase the prevalence in cool regions.

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The study concludes that under the intermediate scenario, which is broadly in line with current climate policies, warming will drive down childhood malaria cases by about three cases per 1,000 children in central Africa and 16 cases per 1,000 children in west Africa by the end of the century. 

By contrast, cases could increase by around 20% over the same period in regions such as the Rift Valley and coastal southern Africa – a rise of 30 cases per 1,000 children.

The maps below show changes in childhood malaria prevalence due to climate change in today’s climate (left) and the climate of 2096-2100 under the intermediate scenario (right). 

Red indicates an increase in malaria prevalence and blue indicates a decrease. Greyer colours indicate greater uncertainty in the model results. White indicates regions where no data was collected.

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Carlson tells Carbon Brief that this is “the first study to really confidently answer the highland East Africa debate”. 

Eradicating malaria

Healthcare workers, governments and scientists have been working to eliminate malaria for decades.

On average, the authors find that climate change will reduce the prevalence of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, as temperatures rise above the optimum range for mosquitoes. This effect is more pronounced at higher warming levels. 

Under the low emissions scenario, about 1 case per 1,000 children will be averted by the end of the century. Meanwhile under the highest emissions scenario, average prevalence falls by 20 cases per 1,000 children, marking a 9% reduction.

The graph below shows childhood malaria rates over 1990-2024 in the historical climate (blue) and in a world without climate change (grey). These estimates are shown relative to baseline prevalence across 1901-30.

After the year 2014, the plot shows projected future changes in malaria prevalence, relative to a 2015-20 baseline, in the low (purple), intermediate (pink) and high (green) scenarios.

Malaria prevalence in the historical climate (blue), historical climate without global warming (grey), low emissions scenario (purple), intermediate emissions scenario (pink) and very-high emissions scenario (green). Source: Carlson et al. (2026)

Carlson emphasises that this does not mean that climate change is “good news” for healthcare in sub-Saharan Africa. He explains that climate change will bring a wide range of negative health impacts that will strain healthcare systems, adding: 

“A world that is too hot for malaria is not a good world for the health of children.”

He also notes that climate change is “not the primary driving factor of malaria dynamics”. For example, he notes that malaria prevalence fell over 2000-15, by about 16 percentage points, after the disease was identified as a “critical global target of the Millennium Development Goals”.

This reduction is 200 times greater than the increase seen so far because of climate change, Carlson says. He adds: 

“It would not be tremendously hard both to keep malaria out of new places and to eliminate it where it is maybe going to get a little bit of an assist from climate change.”

Dr Adugna Woyessa is a senior researcher at the Ethiopian Public Health Institute and was not involved in the study. He has previously carried out research on malaria in eastern Africa.

Woyessa praises the study, telling Carbon Brief that the research could bring about a “paradigm shift” in efforts to eliminate malaria. He argues that the study is a “tool for engaging giant development partners”, adding that “future work will be needed to situate these global trends in local contexts”.

Dr Janey Messina is an associate professor in the school of geography and the environment at the University of Oxford and was also not involved in the study. She praises the paper’s “strong” method.

However, she cautions that the findings “should not be interpreted as forecasts of total future malaria burden”, because they only model the impact of climate change on malaria, while excluding “social, demographic and public-health determinants”, such as inequality, migration, conflict and changing access to malaria interventions.

She adds:

“One of the paper’s most important messages is this: effective surveillance, prevention and treatment remain substantially more influential – and more actionable – than climate change alone.”

Carlson, C. et al. (2026) The past and future impact of climate change on childhood malaria in Africa, Nature, doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10840-w

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The post Climate change is driving a ‘shift’ in childhood malaria risk across Africa appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Nearly two decades after 350.org was founded, one of the most common questions we still get is “what does your name mean?” Well, it’s less complicated than you’d think.

350.org stands for 350 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere, which is considered the safe amount to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis.

We need our atmosphere to contain less than 350 ppm of CO2, but it currently contains around 430 (you can learn more about science here and check the daily CO2 levels here). Our fight is to keep fossil fuels in the ground in order to return as fast as possible to that safe level.

So our name, 350.org, is a compass to bring us back to safety and an homage to the science that guides us. But it is much more than a number. It’s also a reminder of where our home is, and who’s with us in this journey.

Here’s a video we made way back in 2008, which captures this concept:

The post Do you know what’s in a name? appeared first on 350.

When the Break Free From Plastic (BFFP) movement was founded in 2016, Taller Ecologista had already been challenging the production and consumption model that turns plastic into a global problem for years. It is therefore no surprise that the Argentine organization was one of the movement’s founding members and that, 10 years later, it remains one of the most active voices in Latin America.

For Cecilia Bianco, coordinator of Taller Ecologista’s Toxics Program, the organization’s history demonstrates that the fight against plastic pollution has never been solely about waste. “Our mission is to protect the environment by ensuring that we have sustainable cities. We know that plastic has impacts throughout its entire life cycle, and in cities, what we see most is the waste aspect, but the problem begins much earlier”.

Founded in 1985, Taller Ecologista currently works in the areas of energy sovereignty, wetlands and water for life, socio-environmental education, food sovereignty, zero waste, and toxic substances. Although its areas of focus are diverse, there is a common principle: understanding that nature functions as an interconnected system. “That is one of the great lessons,” explains Bianco. “We have different areas of focus, but we know that nature isn’t fragmented like our organizations are”.

Changing the Conversation About Plastic

For many years, the dominant narrative held consumers almost exclusively responsible for plastic pollution. Sorting waste, recycling, and disposing of trash properly seemed to be sufficient solutions.

For Taller Ecologista, joining BFFP meant finding an international community that was asking exactly the same question they were: Who is really responsible for this crisis? “What drew us in was understanding that the cause wasn’t strictly the consumer’s responsibility. It was always said that the consumer was to blame. Today, it’s very clear that those who produce that packaging and those who market these products bear enormous responsibility”.

That shift in focus has shaped much of the organization’s work over the past decade. Brand audits—one of the tools promoted globally by BFFP—made it possible to systematically identify which companies are responsible for the plastic waste found on beaches, in rivers, and in public spaces. Taller Ecologista was one of the first organizations in the region to implement this methodology, and 10 years later, it continues to lead the way in Argentina.

Bianco recalls that the impact grew over time. “At first, it was very difficult to get the media’s attention. Today, there is significant interest in the results.” But the true value of these audits lies not solely in producing data. “BFFP’s greatest contribution was demonstrating that the problem lies not only in waste management, but also in how the product is designed and in the decisions made by those who bring it to market”.

From Diagnosis to Solutions

Beyond highlighting the problem, Taller Ecologista has spent years developing concrete alternatives to reduce single-use plastics. In Rosario, it championed proposals that are now part of public policy, such as replacing disposable tableware with porcelain or metal at the City Council. It also promoted “Zero Waste” ordinances in various cities across the province of Santa Fe and has participated in drafting regulatory proposals to eliminate disposable straws.

At the same time, the organization develops community initiatives that seek to demonstrate that other consumption models are possible. Among these is the reusable cup bank for social organizations, which prevents the use of thousands of disposable cups during events; “Frascos vienen y van” (Jars Come and Go), a project that recycles glass containers for reuse by solidarity economy enterprises; and the promotion of bulk sales and refill systems that reduce packaging waste. “Thanks to the awareness-raising efforts of Taller Ecologista, more businesses have joined the initiative. More and more people are bringing their own containers, and that helps spread these practices”.

The organization also works to highlight the link between plastic pollution and the petrochemical industry. Its technical expertise has even led it to advise Argentina’s Environmental Prosecutor’s Office on investigations related to the impacts of fracking within the petrochemical industry. “We’re able to access these opportunities thanks to our networking,” says Bianco. “We never work alone”.

Producing Plastic While Trying to Reduce It

Argentina not only consumes plastic but also produces the raw materials needed to manufacture it. “We are a country that produces plastic, plastic precursors, and raw materials. There is also a very powerful industry, linked to Brazil, that has enormous economic clout,” explains Bianco.

That economic power is also reflected in the difficulty of passing regulations. Bianco cites as an example the repeated failed attempts to pass a national packaging law and points out that behind every proposal to reduce single-use plastics, there is usually strong resistance from the industry.

That is why he believes change cannot depend solely on individual decisions. “People often ask how to use less plastic, and there isn’t always a simple answer. We need changes at much higher levels. That’s why the Global Plastics Treaty is so important,” she adds.

Beyond Recycling

One of the messages Taller Ecologista has been promoting is to debunk the idea that recycling, on its own, will solve the crisis. Bianco argues that for decades, the industry has used recycling to shift responsibility onto the public.

Although she acknowledges that recycling plays an important role, she warns that the reality is much more limited than is usually communicated. “Those who work in material recovery know that a significant portion of plastics simply has no market,” she adds.

Furthermore, she explains that many plastics contain mixtures of toxic chemicals that remain present even after recycling. “The key is to be transparent about what plastics contain. We’re not just talking about a polymer; there are also numerous chemical additives whose presence we’re often unaware of”.

The Power of a Global Network

After a decade with BFFP, Bianco is clear about what he considers one of the movement’s greatest achievements: building an international community capable of sharing evidence, lessons learned, and strategies to address a common problem. “We feel a strong sense of solidarity with organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean. We share very similar economic and political realities, and many solutions that work in one country can be adapted to another,” she says.

But the network’s reach extends beyond the region. Participating in BFFP means understanding that a piece of packaging found in an Argentine river can be part of a global pattern of production and consumption. “It’s a global perspective. There are products that may not directly affect us, but we know they’re having enormous impacts in other parts of the world, and we collaborate because we understand that the problem is shared,” she explains.

This coordination also strengthens organizations when they face disinformation campaigns or political setbacks. “When you’re feeling discouraged, another organization that’s made progress always comes along. So you celebrate that success and keep moving forward”.

A treaty to transform the system

For Taller Ecologista, the Global Plastics Treaty represents a historic opportunity to change the rules of the game. Bianco acknowledges that the negotiations will be long and complex, especially in a geopolitical context marked by international tensions. However, she believes the process is already bringing about significant changes.

“I always say that the treaty is the path. That path is full of opportunities to highlight the damage caused by plastic, to demonstrate that recycling, as it exists today, isn’t enough, and to discuss how products are designed,” she says.

As more scientific evidence accumulates, she explains, it becomes increasingly difficult to sustain the industry’s traditional narratives. “BFFP has become a massive international platform for disseminating scientific information on the impacts of plastics. That information is now unstoppable”.

Building a Movement

Organizations like Taller Ecologista show that the most profound transformations do not occur solely in international negotiation forums. They are also built in cities, through local ordinances, brand audits, businesses that adopt refill systems, people who reuse containers, and, above all, through alliances that cross borders.

When asked what she would say to someone who wants to get involved in the fight against plastic pollution, Bianco doesn’t start by talking about campaigns or technical knowledge. She talks about collective work. “You have to be patient, stay informed, and be flexible. But above all, you have to work as a team, with other organizations. That’s essential,” she says. And before ending the conversation, he offers one final reflection that sums up both Taller Ecologista’s experience and the spirit of BFFP: “Working with organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean is wonderful. It’s truly exciting.”

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China has released its “15th five-year plan for the development of renewable energy”, outlining key targets and policies for the sector in 2026-2030.

A key focus of the plan is boosting renewable generation and consumption as a share of China’s overall energy mix.

It calls for continued capacity additions of wind and solar – albeit at lower levels than previous years – as well as hydropower, biomass and other clean-energy sources.

Specifically, China will aim to install 3,500 gigawatts (GW) of renewables capacity by 2030,  2,800GW will be wind and solar. 

The country had previously pledged to install 1,200GW of wind and solar by 2030, a goal that China met six years early.

Another major theme is the provision of wind and solar supply that is “dependable” and “grid-friendly”.

Setting a target for “firm capacity” from wind and solar could help to entrench their role as a provider of “energy security”, according to analysts.

The government also aims to boost renewables consumption by developing non-power uses of renewable energy, in sectors such as steel and chemicals.

Below, Carbon Brief examines the key targets and policies outlined in the five-year plan and what they mean for China’s energy transition.

• Why are China’s five-year plans important?
• What overarching renewables targets are in the plan?
• Why does the plan focus on ‘firm capacity’ for renewables?
• What does the plan say about ‘distributed’ energy?
• What does the plan say about non-electricity use of renewables?
• What does the plan say about China’s cleantech dominance?

Article Contents Expand menu

• Why are China’s five-year plans important?
• What overarching renewables targets are in the plan? 
• Why does the plan focus on ‘firm capacity’ for renewables?
• What does the plan say about ‘distributed’ energy?
• What does the plan say about non-electricity use of renewables?
• What does the plan say about China’s cleantech dominance? 

Why are China’s five-year plans important?

Five-year plans are key to China’s political system. An overarching plan, covering all socioeconomic issues of importance to policy leaders, is published at the beginning of each five-year cycle. 

The plan for the 15th five-year period (2026-2030) was published in March 2026. 

It includes what the government considers to be the most important targets and policy signals for climate and energy. For example, binding targets for carbon intensity, the share of non-fossil energy in total energy consumption and total energy production capacity.

Following this overarching document, five-year plans focused on specific sectors or themes are then published over the course of the five-year plan period.

This year, the government has already published several five-year plans related to energy and climate change. One covers the development of the “new-type” energy sector more broadly. Another wraps climate goals together with other environmental targets under the “Beautiful China” programme.

By contrast, the renewables five-year plan focuses specifically on the development of hydropower, wind, solar, biomass, geothermal and wave energy.

It was published in late July by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country’s top economic planning agency, and the National Energy Administration (NEA). 

It covers topics including capacity and generation targets, as well as efforts to increase integration and reliability of wind and solar. It also has policies to encourage “non-power use” of renewable energy and ways to strengthen innovation of clean-energy technologies.

What overarching renewables targets are in the plan? 

China will aim to install 3,500 gigawatts (GW) of renewables capacity by 2030, according to the five-year plan.

Of this, 2,800GW will be wind and solar – a pledge reiterated from China’s action plan for peaking carbon emissions, which was released earlier this month. 

The goal more than doubles a previous 2030 target for wind and solar to reach 1,200GW, which China met six years early.

As of June 2026, the country has installed just under 2,000GW of wind and solar capacity, as well as 454GW of hydropower. Biomass, geothermal and wave energy hold very small shares of the overall energy mix. 

As such, China would need to build 160GW of wind and solar each year – and just under 220GW of renewable capacity in total – to meet the targets.

The country installed 277GW of new solar alone in 2024 – and 315GW in 2025. 

China’s total installed capacity of renewable energy from 2016-2025, and its target for 2030. Source: National Energy Administration, Carbon Brief.

A key part of meeting the targets will be the development of large-scale clean-energy bases in China’s northern regions. These will generate power to be exported elsewhere via ultra-high voltage lines. The plan also encourages greater “local consumption” and installations of distributed energy (see below).

The plan says that further research will be directed at increasing the renewable share of electricity generated by these large-scale energy bases to 100%.

A recent report by the thinktank Global Energy Monitor (GEM) finds that output from these bases “continues to be paired with coal-fired generation in the name of balancing and system flexibility”. It says that currently, coal generates 42% of the power transmitted to the rest of the country from these bases.

China will also add more hydropower, says the plan, with capacity rising from 448GW in 2025 to 570GW in 2030. Some 160GW of this will be pumped-storage hydropower.

Meanwhile, the plan sets a target for renewable power generation to reach 6,000 terawatt-hours (TWh), 4,000TWh of which would come from wind and solar. 

This would be a 50% increase in five years as renewables generated just under 4,000TWh of electricity in 2025, according to the National Energy Administration.

By 2030, the plan says that total consumption of renewable energy will stand at 1.8bn tonnes of coal equivalent (Gtce).

This would be up from 1.2Gtce in 2025, which represented about one-fifth of China’s total energy consumption of 6.2Gtce that year.

The renewable targets in the plan are lower than those suggested in a recent study by high-profile Chinese scholars.

The study, from the department of energy and power engineering and the Institute of Climate Change and Sustainable Development at Tsinghua University in Beijing, assessed the “likelihood of China attaining its carbon peak” under different pathways.

It found that, in order to meet its climate commitments, China would need to either install more than 4,000GW of “non-fossil energy capacity” before 2030, or to “maintain a total energy consumption” below 6.5Gtce.

The table below outlines some of the key renewables targets for 2030, as specified in the plan.

Key targets for 2030, adapted from 15th five-year plan for renewable energy  Type20252030Percentage changeRenewable energy use 1.2Gtce1.8Gtce53%Total renewables capacity2,340GW3,500GW50%Wind and solar capacity1,840GWMore than 2,800GW52%Of which: Solar thermal1.8GW15GW733%Hydro capacity450GW570GW27%Of which: Pumped storage hydropower66GW160GW142%Wave energy–0.4GW–Renewable generation4,000TWh6,000TWh50%Of which: Wind and solar2,300TWh4,000TWh74%Non-electricity use60Mtce150Mtce150%Renewable hydrogen0.25Mt2Mt700% Why does the plan focus on ‘firm capacity’ for renewables?

As well as increasing the overall size of China’s renewable power supply, the country must also maintain an “uninterrupted and reliable power supply”, officials from the NDRC and NEA told state news agency Xinhua in coverage of the new plan.

To support this goal, the plan says that the development of renewables will “enter a new stage”. This will mean that “improving quality and serving as a reliable alternative” to fossil fuels will be as important as “expanding scale”.

The plan, therefore, proposes targets for the “firm capacity” from wind and solar (置信出力). This is the amount plants or grids can be relied on to produce during critical supply periods, in conjunction with on-site storage.

The target for wind is a firm capacity of at least 11% of total installed capacity by 2030, while the equivalent goal for solar is 6%. 

Wind and solar will also be expected to supply more than 20% of total demand in peak periods during the summer and winter evenings, says the plan. It expects “reliable peak-shaving capacity from renewable sources” to reach more than 300GW.

The new targets are a “positive move”, says Yao Zhe, global policy advisor at Greenpeace East Asia, as it “only applies during peak load and critical supply periods, when coal power is typically used to stabilise the power supply”. 

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She adds that this could, theoretically, “prevent the construction of new coal-fired power projects that are proposed and approved for the reason of meeting peak demand”.

The new metrics mark a change in focus, says Lyu Wenbin, director general of the Energy Research Institute – a state thinktank under the NDRC – in an “explanatory reading” posted on BJX News. He says it “marks a shift in renewable energy development from the mere pursuit of installed capacity to…also taking into account system support capabilities”. 

The plan pledges to “accelerate the construction of grid-friendly wind and solar power stations”. It says this will enhance “reliable peak-load generation” and strengthen renewables’ ability to ensure “safe and stable operation” of the grid.

It says this will particularly be a focus in the energy-hungry east, central and south areas of China.

It sets out a slightly different focus for areas that already have a high share of renewables in their power mix, such as north-west China. Here, the aim will be to develop wind and solar parks that are “capable of providing voltage, frequency and inertia support”.

“This is a real challenge”, says James Norman, research analyst at GEM. He says these challenges are particularly acute in some circumstances:

“[For example], when the share of wind and solar is very high, relatively few synchronous generators (like coal) are online or large volumes of electricity are being transferred through high voltage DC lines.”

The plan mentions many technological solutions to address the problem, he tells Carbon Brief. However, he adds, there are no quantitative details for the issue. For example, he notes there is no target for “how many gigawatts of wind and solar must gain grid-forming capability”. This is in contrast to the goals for overall renewables capacity or generation.

Norman was a co-author on the recent GEM report, which identified further barriers to renewable uptake. It said these include transmission bottlenecks, alongside systemic features such as dispatching and power-contract mechanisms. 

As a result, said the report, renewable power – especially solar – is increasingly being “curtailed”, particularly in north-western and northern provinces.

Yao also notes that the plan does not “spell out specific measures to address systemic constraints” around the electricity grid and the role of coal in the power sector. 

“I interpret this as evidence that the vested interests are still strong in the policy debate,” she adds.

What does the plan say about ‘distributed’ energy?

Alongside gigawatt-scale clean-energy megabases, China also aims to expand construction of “distributed” energy. This means smaller-scale installations, such as rooftop solar.

More than 300GW of “distributed new energy” is to be added over 2026-30, some 60GW per year.

The plan aims for distributed new energy to be adopted in sectors such as industry, transport, buildings and agriculture. 

Applications include the use of distributed solar and wind in industrial parks, coal mines and oilfields, as well as encouraging residents to install solar panels on buildings and developing rural clean-energy grids.

In some regions, distributed solar and wind is “likely to meet a large proportion of local demand”, says Prof Pan Jiahua at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou). He tells Carbon Brief that micro- and mini-grids using such resources will be particularly important in central and coastal China.

The 60GW annual target for new distributed energy is not “overly ambitious”, says Isadora Wang, head of China at the thinktank Transition Asia. She tells Carbon Brief that distributed solar additions, alone, exceeded 100GW in both 2024 and 2025.

Cosimo Ries, analyst at the consultancy Trivium China, agrees that the target is reachable. The biggest question mark, he tells Carbon Brief, is whether it will continue to make sense for industry and utilities to build distributed power at the volumes seen during the 14th five-year plan period. 

He adds that market conditions for distributed solar have deteriorated sharply over the past two years. He says a range of factors have hit investor confidence:

“[Distributed solar faces] growing exposure to market trading, worsening returns in spot markets, growing risks of curtailment and new policies limiting or forbidding the selling of power back to the grid.”

What does the plan say about non-electricity use of renewables?

The plan also sets goals for renewable energy’s role in “non-electricity use”.

This means using renewable energy for purposes other than generating electricity, through converting it to other forms, such as heat or mechanical energy.

The government is aiming for non-power use to nearly triple from 60m tonnes of coal equivalent (Mtce) in 2025 to 150Mtce in 2030. 

Ries tells Carbon Brief that he thinks this target is “one of the main highlights” of the plan. However, he notes that limited available data means it is hard to assess the level of its ambition. He adds that, given the relative conservatism of China’s other recent clean-energy targets, this one may also be met relatively easily.

Key applications for non-power use of renewables include “green hydrogen, ammonia and methanol”, says the plan. It also points to using wind and solar for heat, as well as to biomass and geothermal for heating and cooling. 

Green hydrogen, ammonia and methanol are the “centrepiece” of the non-power push, according to state-owned newspaper Economic Information Daily.

For hydrogen alone, China plans to scale up renewable hydrogen production to 2m tonnes in 2030, up from 250,000 tonnes in 2025.

Today, non-power use of renewables accounts for only around 1% of China’s total energy consumption, NEA and NDRC officials said in a Q&A. They added that there is “considerable room for growth” in sectors such as industry, transport and buildings.

Potential new applications include the use of wind and solar for heat. This could see the use of centralised wind and solar heating stations in the chemicals, textiles, pharmaceuticals, papermaking and food sectors. 

New projects in the steel and cement sectors should use locally-generated wind and solar to power electric-arc furnaces and kilns, adds the plan.

Wang tells Carbon Brief that she believes the naming of individual sectors is a “clear indication” that they will be included in China’s renewable consumption quotas. These already cover aluminium and other heavy industry sectors.

She adds that power and heat demand from the named sectors may help absorb distributed renewable energy. It will also serve as a testing ground for matching demand with supply through increased grid flexibility and power price reforms.

To Ries, the growing focus on non-power use signals that China’s decarbonisation efforts are “now entering deeper waters”. That means regulators are turning from easier-to-abate sectors, such as aluminium, to more challenging industries, such as steel.

The plan could create a “second growth curve” for the new-energy industry, says He Zhao, in a commentary for China Power News Net. He, the vice-president of the China Electric Power Planning and Engineering Institute (EPPEI). says this might begin with non-power use, before shifting to fuel, feedstock and heat substitution.

What does the plan say about China’s cleantech dominance? 

The next five years is a prime opportunity for China to “consolidate our leading position across the entire industrial chain” for clean-energy technologies, says the plan.

It adds that the government will “strengthen technological innovation” and accelerate the roll-out of new applications of artificial intelligence in China’s renewable-energy system. 

A particular focus for new R&D will be “cutting-edge, original and disruptive technologies”. It also points to technologies that “enhance the reliability of renewable energy” as a substitute for fossil fuels.

The plan names technologies for further development. For wind power, these include “reliable and low-cost” blades, ultra-tall towers and new types of floating platforms. It also mentions the development of “high-altitude wind power”. For solar, it points to the development of perovskite and other “high efficiency” solar cells, as well as space-solar technologies.

The plan also pledges to develop a power market that supports the “full entry” of renewable-energy companies. It underscores that companies should plan for an increasingly market-based and competitive environment.

Meanwhile, the government will also deepen cooperation with other countries on clean energy and “advance” global climate cooperation, it says.

A priority will be “strengthening” international coordination on investment and development in “green energy projects”. Another is “actively promoting the free circulation of China’s high-quality green technologies and products in global markets”.

Chinese exports of clean-energy technologies have been surging, especially since the closure of the strait of Hormuz. 

At the same time, Chinese investment in clean-energy projects in Belt and Road Initiative member states totalled $20bn in the first half of 2026. This is also driven by the crisis.

The US, EU and others have launched tariffs and pricing mechanisms to curb imports of Chinese cleantech. This has contributed to pushback from China, against what it and others refer to as “unilateral trade measures”. 

China is transitioning from a “major energy nation” (能源大国) to an “energy powerhouse” (能源强国), writes the Energy Research Institute’s Lyu in his explanatory reading. He says this will enable China to increasingly shift to building “systemic” advantages in developing clean-energy technologies.

He continues that, from 2026-2030, China will “move to the very forefront of the global stage” on clean energy, “venturing into uncharted territory”. This will create both “major new challenges and significant opportunities” for the country, he adds. 

Related Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change? 06.08.2026 China policy Interview: Dr Sun Yixian on his new database tracking Chinese climate ‘leadership’ 09.07.2026 China policy Q&A: What do China’s provincial five-year plans say about climate and energy? 18.06.2026 China policy Analysis: Solar overtakes gas power in Asia for first time ever 12.06.2026 Oil and gas

The post Q&A: What does China’s 15th ‘five-year plan’ for renewables mean for climate change? appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Giant sequoias are built to live with fire. Their thick, spongy bark shields the underlying wood from flames. The lower trunks are largely devoid of foliage, offering little fuel to help fires reach the canopy. Heat pops open their dense cones, releasing seeds for the next generation.

But today’s fires, supercharged by climate change and underbrush left by decades of fire suppression, are too much even for these long-lived behemoths. In 2020 and 2021 wildfires in western California raged through sequoia groves, killing thousands of the trees in Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks.

In the aftermath scientists are learning that the most effective way to help save these trees is to fight fire with fire. In places within the parks where land managers had reduced underbrush by intentionally setting low-intensity fires, sequoias were 77% less likely to die, according to new research in Nature Communications.

 “Prescribed burns are effective at reducing giant sequoia mortality, even for today’s extreme wildfires,” said lead author Dan Dixon, who was a University of California Davis postdoctoral researcher when the study was conducted. “If the goal is protecting giant sequoias, prescribed fire is an essential tool.”

Prescribed fires have long been considered a critical—if underutilized—strategy for turning down the temperature in today’s era of megafires. The aim is to return fire-adapted forests to something closer to the conditions in which many of them evolved, when fires often acted more like cleansers than destroyers.

Triggered by lightning or Indigenous peoples, flames would regularly burn through forest understories, turning bushes and fallen trees to ash while leaving big, healthy trees relatively unscathed. Rarely, it’s thought, did they spawn the canopy-destroying firestorms of recent years, fueled by dense undergrowth left from a century of aggressive fire suppression.

Despite the reported benefits of prescribed fire, the effect at a very detailed level, such as the fate of an individual tree species, hadn’t been clearly demonstrated. Then, the Castle (2020) and KNP Complex (2021) fires happened. Over two years, these fires burned more than 1,000 square kilometers of forest in California’s Sierra Nevadas. That included some of the last remaining groves of the giant sequoia, a species found only in that region. The largest tree species on Earth, they can live more than 3,000 years and grow to the mass of 15 blue whales. In those two years, as many as 13,000 sequoias are thought to have perished.

 

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“These trees live for so long and have experienced so much variability of climate, differences in wildfire, drought—they’ve seen it all,” Dixon said. “Having so many die in just two years was unprecedented.”

It also offered scientists an unusual opportunity. Since the 1960s, park managers had used prescribed burning in some of the sequoia groves. This gave researchers a chance to compare the fates of trees in landscapes that had been intentionally burned, and ones that had been untouched by fire for years until the devastating wildfire struck.

To tease out the differences, researchers used high-resolution satellite images that could show individual trees. They then trained a computer program to pick out giant sequoias and distinguish between live and dead trees before and after the fires. Finally, images of the forest created using LIDAR, a powerful imaging technique capable of peering through foliage, enabled the scientists to discern details including tree heights, spacing and other details about the forest structure.

All told, they examined 19 sequoia groves in the national parks totaling an estimated 26,403 of the giant trees. They spotted almost 8,000 trees killed by the fires – nearly a third of all the trees. The prescribed burning turned out to be a major factor in whether trees lived or died. In groves where a prescribed burn had been done within the previous decade, there was a 77% lower chance of a tree dying from the fires, according to a statistical model paired with the observations. There was even a notable benefit in places where the prescribed fire had happened between 10 and 15 years earlier.

If all the trees had been treated with prescribed burns, the scientists estimate it would have saved another 3,900 sequoias.

Though the new findings provide strong evidence for the benefits of burning, that’s not the case for other popular forms of forest treatments, such as selective logging to thin out overcrowded forests. While none of the groves had received such thinning, the scientists attempted to simulate the potential effects by looking at the LIDAR data to compare tree deaths in places with different forest structure – such as the density of trees. Those factors appeared to have no effect on the likelihood of sequoias dying.

That doesn’t mean such treatments are of no value, the scientists cautioned. It’s possible that fire conditions were so extreme that it erased benefits that might appear in less severe fires. It’s also possible these ancient, more structurally complex forests benefit less from selective logging than previously logged forests that have grown back.

The main message is clear, however. If people want to help sequoias withstand future fires, they’re going to need to learn to love fire.

Dixon, et. al. “Previous prescribed burns saved thousands of ancient sequoias 1 during historically unprecedented wildfires.” Nature Communications. July 11, 2026.

Photo: ©Katherine E Kerlin

A UN effort to keep the threatened 1.5C warming limit alive is exposing deep divisions over the future of fossil fuels, pitting climate-vulnerable nations seeking a faster move away from coal, oil and gas against major emerging economies and producers that oppose targeting particular energy sources.

As countries weigh in on the “Belém Mission to 1.5”, a new process launched at COP30 last year to address the global shortfall in climate ambition, submissions show that small island nations and least developed countries (LDCs) want the initiative to help speed up a shift away from fossil fuels. Their calls for a focus on emissions-cutting measures in the energy sector are supported by the EU and the UK.

But the “like-minded developing countries” (LMDC) bloc – which includes China, India – and Arab states led by Saudi Arabia have warned against singling out specific energy sources or using the mission to assess how individual countries are performing on emissions cuts. Instead, they want its scope narrowed to identifying primarily what rich countries should do to cut their own emissions and provide more climate cash to developing nations.

Keeping 1.5C “within reach”

The split hints at a fight to come at COP31 in November over what the work programme’s findings should say and how much weight they should carry in the summit’s outcome.

Governments launched the Belém Mission to 1.5 at last year’s UN climate summit in the Brazilian Amazon city, after the latest round of national climate plans left the world set to shoot past the Paris Agreement temperature goals. Full implementation of current pledges is expected to limit global warming to only around 2.3-2.5 C by 2100, according to the UN. 

Comment: The case for making polluters pay has moved into the mainstream

The current and two preceding COP presidencies – Türkiye, Brazil and Azerbaijan – are gathering views from governments on how to raise the ambition of national climate plans (NDCs) and adaptation plans (NAPs).

The initiative will culminate in a report at COP31 outlining priority actions for keeping the 1.5C goal “within reach”. But the proposals submitted by individual governments and negotiating blocs representing nearly four-fifths of all countries point to wildly diverging visions of what the Belém Mission should achieve, especially on the transition away from fossil fuels. 

Tracking COP28 commitments

The Marshall Islands has proposed an ambitious package of concrete actions that would enable deep emissions reductions, led by a global commitment to build no new oil, coal and gas infrastructure. Together with its fellow Pacific island of Vanuatu, it also calls for a formal process to monitor progress towards the COP28 energy commitments, map fossil fuel subsidies and help countries phase them out.

The EU also said in its submission that the Mission to 1.5C is “well placed” to provide updates on how countries’ national climate plans have incorporated the COP28 agreement, including the commitment to accelerate a transition from fossil fuels in energy systems. 

Sultan Al Jaber and Simon Stiell celebrate as the Cop28 agreement is passed (Photos: Cop28/Mahmoud Khaled) Sultan Al Jaber and Simon Stiell celebrate as the Cop28 agreement is passed (Photos: Cop28/Mahmoud Khaled)

Countries wanting to build on the COP28 Dubai agreement have struggled to find a dedicated space for those discussions in the face of opposition from fossil fuel producers and big emerging economies.

The COP28 outcomes in response to the first stocktake of global climate action represent “one package… and not a pick-and-choose menu”, the European Commission emphasised in a thinly veiled reference to comments made by the Saudi energy minister in 2024 that the Dubai deal was an “à la carte menu” allowing nations to choose their own priority. 

Push to boost NDC ambition

The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) also advocated in its submission for “high-level approaches” towards developed countries and other major emitters ahead of COP31 to spur them to produce updated NDCs with additional emissions-cutting measures. 

Vanuatu called on the COP presidencies overseeing the Mission to 1.5C to “exhibit leadership” by taking steps at home to phase out fossil fuels and reduce their “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies. 

Azerbaijan and Türkiye continue to rely heavily on fossil fuels in their energy systems, while Azerbaijan and Brazil remain significant oil and gas producers with plans to expand output.

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In its submission, the LDC group of the world’s poorest nations says the failure to align global climate commitments with a pathway to keep warming under 1.5C is driven primarily by insufficient ambition from major emitters. 

The Mission to 1.5C should focus its efforts on the “highest-impact” and “most feasible” solutions to curb emissions such as phasing out fossil fuels, it added. 

Both the island nations and the LDCs, as well as the African group of nations, stress that significantly scaling up financial resources, and making it easier to access them, are necessary steps to enable the global energy transition. 

Focus on “emissions”, not energy sources

Fossil fuel producers and several large developing economies, however, argue that the mission risks straying beyond its mandate if it singles out particular fuels or evaluates countries’ climate plans.

The Arab group, which is led by Saudi Arabia and includes the UAE, Qatar and Egypt, wrote that it should maintain a focus on “emissions management” rather than targeting specific sectors or energy sources. 

Their submission says investments in fossil fuels “must increase” both to better manage the emissions associated with their production and to meet growing energy demand.

The LMDCs, a negotiating bloc that includes China and India, similarly argue that climate action should address emissions regardless of how they are produced, warning that energy sources should not be traded off against the need for growth. “Poverty eradication and sustainable development remain a key challenge for developing countries, which cannot be compromised in the name of 1.5°C,” the group’s submission says.

No “parallel” processes

For both Arab states and LMDCs, the mission’s primary goal should be to identify how rich countries that are historically responsible for the bulk of emissions can be required to further cut their greenhouse gases and channel more money to developing countries. 

Both groups also caution against allowing the initiative to evolve into what they describe as a “parallel process” that could assess countries’ climate plans or create new expectations for what developing countries should do. Instead, they argue, it should simply produce a report identifying options for international cooperation.

The two sides disagree just as sharply on what should happen to the mission’s report once it lands. AOSIS and the LDC group explicitly want its findings carried forward into the COP31 outcome decision text and used to inform future negotiating rounds. The LMDC bloc, on the other hand, wants a guarantee that the report will not be used to support other processes.

The post UN bid to keep 1.5C alive exposes deepening divisions over fossil fuels appeared first on Climate Home News.

As tech companies have built hundreds of hyperscale data centers to power the artificial intelligence boom, they have triggered conflicting predictions over how these facilities will affect the nation’s power grid. Critics have argued that data centers will raise power bills and increase carbon emissions. Supporters claimed they could increase investment in infrastructure and clean energy, leading to lower prices and emissions.

We now have a clearer picture about at least one consequence of the data center boom, and it isn’t encouraging. A report released last week from the Energy Information Administration found that carbon emissions from the U.S. power sector rose by 4 percent last year — larger than the increase in the economy overall, where emissions only ticked up 2 percent.  The agency attributes this rise to a 13 percent increase in coal power generation, partially driven by the proliferation of large-scale data centers.

The national increase in power sector emissions represents the reversal of a longstanding trend. Before the AI boom, U.S. power consumption had been flat for decades. Utilities, grid operators, and energy planners had assumed that pattern would continue, and many planned to retire their older and dirtier coal plants with the expectation that natural gas and renewables could replace them. Instead, electricity demand is rising much faster than anticipated. Data centers could make up more than 10 percent of U.S. electricity usage by 2030, and they operate around the clock, including when wind and solar farm output is low. That demand has extended the life of some aging coal plants.

“Commercial load is starting to grow, and that’s part of the data center story,” said Steve Piper, the director of energy research at S&P Global Energy, a market intelligence firm. “It’s kind of a rising tide lifts all boats phenomenon. While we think structurally coal will decline over time, [the AI boom] is going to slow down that decline.”

The increase in power sector emissions would have been even bigger were it not for the fact that solar and wind energy also surged last year. Utilities can now tap cheap, carbon-free energy during much of the day, which means they are less reliant on fossil fuel-burning plants that make up the backbone of the energy system. Solar now produces more power than coal during sunny months when demand is low. The climate problem is that while solar is still growing, coal is not shrinking. 

The other driving factor behind last year’s increase was that coal became cheaper relative to natural gas, the country’s largest power source. As natural gas exports have increased, domestic gas prices have risen relative to coal.

The coal industry has also been buoyed by increased political support. President Donald Trump and Energy Secretary Chris Wright have vowed to revive the nation’s moribund coal industry by supporting new coal power plants and helping build an export terminal that can ship coal to Asia. Wright has issued temporary emergency orders to prevent the retirement of at least half a dozen coal plants around the country, forcing utilities to run plants they had previously sought to shut down. His department has argued that these orders are justified because hot and cold weather are straining the power grid.

But these orders aren’t actually the reason that coal emissions have rebounded. The plants that Wright has kept open are running at a lower capacity than they did before Trump took office, in large part because there are still cheaper sources of power than coal out there. 

Take for example the J.H. Campbell coal plant in Michigan, owned by Consumers Energy. It was the first major coal facility that Wright prevented from closing. At the time, Wright said that the plant’s operation was necessary so that Michigan “[did] not lose critical power generation capability as summer begins.” Yet in each of the last three quarters, the plant has generated less electricity than it did in the equivalent quarter the previous year.  

Instead, the increase is happening across the country. Outside of the Western U.S., nearly every state generated more coal power in 2025 than it did in 2024. One of the biggest jumps came in Virginia, home to the world’s largest AI cluster, where utilities almost doubled their coal power generation to serve the state’s growing clusters of data centers. Nearby coal states like Pennsylvania and West Virginia also stepped up their generation to match data center demand. 

The report is especially concerning since decarbonizing the electricity sector, which accounts for about 25 percent of U.S. emissions, is an essential step toward meeting national climate targets. Unlike in the transportation sector, where electric vehicles still face significant cost and infrastructure barriers, and heavy industry, in which natural gas is still needed to make steel and cement at scale, the power sector has real cost-effective alternatives to fossil fuels.

Once electricity became cleaner, switching cars, home heating, and other sectors from fossil fuels to electricity would sharply reduce emissions.  

And there were signs of progress: Emissions from the power grid have fallen by about one-third from their peak around 2005 as utilities have replaced old coal plants with less carbon-intensive methods such as natural gas turbines, which emit about half as much carbon per watt of electricity. The rapid build-out of solar and wind power was supposed to reduce power emissions even further. 

The stubborn presence of coal is a problem for that progress.

“Coal generation may sort of have a floor in our forecasts,” said Piper. He said he expects that in the long run, coal will continue to decline, but that “it will take something else” to dislodge it from the power grid altogether. And until we have a grid with enough round-the-clock power to render the dirtiest fuels unnecessary, the nation’s journey away from fossil fuels will be stuck at the starting gate.  

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline It’s official: Data centers are slowing America’s shift away from coal on Jul 29, 2026.