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Researchers at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe) in Kenya are using advanced satellite imaging data to improve food security. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, East Africa currently faces the greatest burden of acute food insecurity globally. Across the continent, nations continue to face substantial food crises driven by climatic fluctuations including drought and flooding as well as economic pressures like high food and fertilizer prices.

“Accessibility is the first step towards governance,” Tobias Landmann, Senior Research Scientist at icipe, tells Food Tank. “If you want to be independent of the Global North, you must have control over that analysis-ready data.”

icipe recently assumed full ownership and operation of the geospatial observation platform Digital Earth Africa (DEA). “This transition represents a powerful step toward sustained African ownership, ensuring the program continues to deliver critical Earth observation data and insights for the continent,” remarks Lisa-Maria Rebelo, Managing Director of DEA.

“icipe has an African mandate, working in all 54 countries to provide bio-efficient, biological solutions to farmers,” Landmann tells Food Tank. “[DEA] coming to icipe underpins that concept because now we can use big data that’s co-developed in Africa for Africa.” Digital Earth Africa’s technical advisory committee has included organizations such as the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa as well as the African Regional Institute for Geospatial Information Science and Technology.

By working with entirely Africa-led data, the platform completely changes how continental trends are studied. Containing some of the most ecologically diverse regions on Earth, Africa offers an unparalleled frontier for geospatial and topographic analysis, providing food system researchers and actors with the comprehensive data needed to safeguard community ecosystem health.

The Waterbodies Continental Service, for example, monitors over 750,000 water bodies across the continent with a minimum spatial resolution of 10 meters. As a part of DEA, this high-resolution imaging data allows researchers to track variables including nutrient enrichment across streams, rivers, and lakes as well as the proliferation of invasive plant species.

“Prosopis juliflora is an invasive shrub that we are mapping in Kenya and Ethiopian drylands. The shrub is basically invading all the water bodies, impeding biodiversity, aggravating drought… we don’t know where the intervention areas are,” explains Landmann. He notes that the platform’s analysis-ready data is designed directly to improve policy reporting. But because the African continent is dominated by small farms, the degree to which satellite imaging can improve agricultural productivity is context-dependent.

An FAO report finds that nearly 75 percent of all farm holdings in sub-Saharan Africa are two hectares or less—with just over half of all farms less than a single hectare. “We run a procedure based on Earth observation satellite data to see the deficiencies unique to certain [crop] fields,” states Landmann. “And that is a challenge because very often the fields are very small, smaller than the minimum mapping unit.”

“The most important stressor [icipe] can map is actually drought, water deficiency, or in irrigation terms, ‘water use inefficiency’ or deficits,” says Landmann. Extreme weather events such as El Niño can exacerbate drought and flooding across different parts of Africa, meaning that having up-to-date, accurate satellite imaging is crucial to analyze the spatiotemporal effects of such events on African farms.

“We scaled a very unique concept that was actually developed by Digital Earth Australia and then transferred to Africa called ‘geo-medians.’ So, our geo-medians are legendary. It’s a game changer,” says Landmann.

Geo-medians work by stitching together images captured by satellites at different times. This means that even when cloud cover obstructs a single photo, researchers still have a clear view of the entire landscape.

According to Landmann, policy frameworks and regional actors can immediately ingest this perfectly harmonized, long-term historical data into their systems. This allows them to bypass complex pre-processing and efficiently track macro-trends like deforestation, crop intensification, or changing water cycles over several years to inform long-term climate legislation.

Beyond agriculture, satellite data can also help researchers monitor water quality, air quality, urbanization trends, biodiversity loss, carbon neutrality, and value chains, Landmann adds. “There are so many kinds of use cases that you wouldn’t necessarily think about. There’s always a bias towards agriculture and food systems, which is understandable, but multiple thematic areas can benefit from this great data set.”

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Photo courtesy of U.S. Geological Survey

The post Big Data for Food and Climate Resilience in Africa: Digital Earth Africa Moves to icipe appeared first on Food Tank.

Less than 24 hours after President Donald Trump dramatically reduced the size of both Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, mining interests began staking claims on lands stripped of protections.

At least nine mining claims have been filed on land formerly included in the two monuments since Trump cut each by around 90 percent in July. Seven claims were filed by Kimmerle Mining on land removed from Bears Ears, and two were filed by Craig Rosequist on land removed from Grand Staircase-Escalante. Kimmerle Mining filed claims in Bears Ears after Trump’s 2017 rollback and opened a small uranium and vanadium exploration site.

The claims do not authorize immediate mining, and they may not be honored because they were filed before monument protections officially expire on September 11, but they can be easily refiled after that date. Also, the Trump administration is currently considering allowing claim holders to do exploratory work like digging and clearing on Forest Service land without notifying the agency or receiving any type of permit.

Trump job cuts and changes are making wildfires harder to fight

A combination of larger and more numerous fires and changes by the Trump administration are making it harder for officials to deploy and manage firefighters effectively this year, veteran firefighters and union officials told the New York Times.

The administration has so far cut more than 5,800 jobs from the Forest Service, as well as stood up a new Wildland Fire Service. The result is confusion, supply problems and slower responses, according to former Forest Service officials and the union representing the agency’s workers.

“We just don’t have enough people in the system, not for this kind of fire season,” Mike Dudley, who retired in 2018 as a Forest Service regional director, told the Times. “We’re paying the price for it right now.”

Quick hits Lake Powell hits record low, another sign of crisis on the Colorado River

Los Angeles Times | USA Today

Opinion: Why the Reflecting Pool matters

RE:PUBLIC

Mining executives bought stock in their own firm days before Trump shrank Bears Ears

Grist

Heat waves are melting western snowpack twice as fast, study finds

CPR News

Trump appointee Michael Boren asked aircraft to fight small wildfire near his Idaho ranch as Utah burned

Salt Lake Tribune

Inside the bitter war over cows and wilderness at Point Reyes

Los Angeles Times

Column: Public lands are our shared legacy

WyoFile

US Attorney General Blanche backs Pirro after Trump criticism over Reflecting Pool

Reuters

Quote of the day

This is why the Reflecting Pool matters. It’s all about trust. Yes, it’s a small thing in the grand scheme of Interior’s 640 million acres and hundreds of responsibilities. But if Burgum’s department will fabricate or claim they have evidence to prosecute citizens for crimes they didn’t commit—and allegedly withhold information from federal prosecutors—what does that mean for the decisions Interior makes that we can’t see?”

—Christopher Keyes, RE:PUBLIC

Picture This

@LaikenJordahl

NEW: drone footage shows just how far contractors are tearing into Big Bend’s Mariscal Mountain. All of this destruction has been inflicted in just two days. You can’t pick a flower or take home a rock you find in a national park. But somehow, for no justifiable reason, in a place where nobody crosses the border, CBP contractors are gouging their way deeper into this great American national park.

Governor @GregAbbott_TX, you’ll forever be remembered as the one who let the feds tread all over your state’s sovereignty and natural heritage. Your silence is a rubber stamp on this destruction.

Feature image: Indian Creek, an area removed from Bears Ears National Monument by President Donald Trump; Photo by Bob Wick, BLM

The post Mining claims filed on land removed from Utah monuments appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Ahead of the White House’s planned cryptocurrency and prediction markets roundtable on Wednesday, The Revolving Door Project released the following statement:

“Donald Trump is not content with the billions of dollars in corrupt crypto wealth he has amassed since winning the 2024 election. On Wednesday, he’ll turn the White House into a hub for his crypto and prediction markets cronies to lean on independent agencies and a gridlocked Congress for a more permissive regulatory environment for these predatory corporations. The event will serve as a reminder to Congress of crypto’s deep ties to the president, and of their willingness to spend unprecedented sums in campaign efforts. But the fusion of Trump and crypto’s interests should not dictate federal law, especially when voters are broadly disgusted by the corrupting influence of these industries.” said RDP senior researcher Henry Burke.

RDP assistant director Timi Iwayemi added, “The cryptocurrency industry is eager to establish a financial system where scams and money laundering flourish. Their prediction market partners envision a society where gambling is venerated as a legitimate investment strategy. Their well-heeled political operation might have brought them significant influence in Washington, but it has come at a cost. Trump’s blatant corruption has eroded public trust, and prediction markets have jeopardized the legitimacy of our markets. This should be a tough pill for lawmakers to swallow. Wednesday’s meeting is a last-ditch effort to bring Congress onside and hand a victory to two of the most brazenly corrupt entities in the country: Trump and the crypto industry. But regulators and legislators should not be cowed. As recent election results have shown, crypto’s millions can only go so far, and voters are tired of their attempts to buy our democracy.”

The Revolving Door Project has been tracking Trump’s corruption closely, as well as the efforts by the crypto and prediction market industries to purchase influence in Washington. Below is a sample of relevant work on the topic:

Who’s in Crypto’s Corner?

Prediction Markets Are Learning From The Addiction Industry

Crypto Bill Offers Potentially Huge Tax Benefits To Trump Family

Why Are Any Democrats Supporting a Bill That Was Championed by the Crypto Industry?

RDP Condemns the Blockchain Association’s Deceitful Letter From “Law Enforcement Officials”

Trump’s ability to set crypto rules makes $TRUMP coin even more problematic

We Can’t Count on Trump’s SEC to Tell Us If He Is Manipulating the Market

Sean Patrick Maloney’s Vanishing Ethics Pledge

How Crypto Is Buying DC One Revolver At A Time

This June customs officers in Hong Kong intercepted eight cartons supposedly containing frozen fish fillets on their way from Mexico to Vietnam. The packages, they found, also included 149 kilograms (about 330 pounds) of dried fish bladders suspected to come from protected totoaba, a critically endangered fish species that swims in the Gulf of California.

Officials estimated the smuggled fish bladders — organs that help with buoyancy and that are known as fish maw after they’ve been dried — had a street value of more than $3 million.

The international trade in fish maw, which can come from many fish species, is responsible for the bycatch deaths of countless other marine organisms, including the vaquita, one of the world’s most endangered marine mammals, whose population currently numbers fewer than 10.

Fish maw is one of the most valuable seafood products in the world, and that demand is spurring increased catch of a growing number of large and threatened fish species, according to a 2020 report from TRAFFIC, a nongovernmental organization addressing wildlife trade.

Dried fish maw for sale at a market in Hong Kong. Photo credit Yvonne Sadovy, PhD

Scientists and conservationists continue to raise the alarm about huge increases in the catch of these species, which has mostly gone unrecognized, unreported, and unregulated.

A Rapid Expansion

Though the fish maw trade is expanding in terms of the numbers of species and countries involved, it has a long history of human consumption.

“In prepared form, it’s used primarily by those from Southern China,” says Dr. Yvonne Sadovy, the emeritus chair of the IUCN Species Survival Commission Groupers and Wrasses Specialist Group. “It’s a seafood delicacy long used for special family and business dining occasions. In more recent years it’s been heavily promoted for health and beauty uses because of its collagen content. In the past it’s even been used in many countries … for beer and wine clarification.”

Experts now say the fish maw trade, which is poorly studied and mostly unregulated, is exploding in size.

A fish market in Brazil with hundreds of fish bladders from various species for sale. Photo credit: Patricia Charvet

“Our situation now is similar to the early days of the shark fin trade,” says Stan Shea, the marine program director of BLOOM Association Hong Kong. “In the past nobody understood the scale of the shark fin trade, volumes and values, which countries and territories were involved. It’s the same for fish maw now.”

Indeed, as successful conservation regulations for the shark fin trade come into effect in Hong Kong and elsewhere, the fish maw trade seems to be replacing much of it.

“I don’t remember seeing a lot of fish maw in the dried seafood markets that I visited during the 1990s and 2000s, but it’s striking that today fish maw is visually far more abundant than shark fin,” says Sarah Fowler, the scientific advisor for the Save Our Seas Foundation. Fowler also pointed out that the fish maw trade involves lots of the same trade routes as the old shark fin trade and has a similarly devastating impact on both target species and bycatch species.

Dangerous Effects on the Wild

Many of the fish species targeted for their swim bladders — especially large fish — are themselves overfished or endangered, including sturgeon, totoaba, and bahaba. As with the shark fin trade, rarer species are more valuable.

“A century ago just a handful of species were used for the fish maw trade,” Dr. Sadovy tells me. “Today all of those original species are of conservation concern, and the number of species used in the trade has greatly increased.”

Dried fish maw from many species for sale at a fish market in Hong Kong.
Photo credit: Animal Welfare Institute, courtesy Sue Fisher

Dried fish maw from many species for sale at a fish market in Hong Kong. Photo credit: Animal Welfare Institute, courtesy Sue Fisher

And the gillnets used to catch these fish are indiscriminate, resulting in bycatch issues similar to those facing the vaquita. In a paper titled “Maw Money Maw Problems,” scientists documented bycatch of critically endangered sawfish, sea turtles, and dugongs in nets targeting fish for their fish maws in Papua New Guinea. In Bangladesh scientists documented bycatch of critically endangered sharks and rays.

The lack of data on this trade and its impacts is itself a conservation problem, making it difficult to target effective conservation interventions.

“Because the huge increase in demand for fish maw is still very recent, the impacts of new fisheries popping up all over the world to supply this booming trade have mostly not been assessed,” Fowler tells me.

First Steps to Address This Problem

Even with data gaps, what we know so far is alarming and shows a clear need for urgent conservation intervention. And the scope of the trade suggests a clear path for intervention: The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

“Given that the trade involves over 110 countries that we know of, CITES is very important to help regulate it,” Stan Shea told me.

Searching for “fish maw” online yields store results. Revelator screenshot July 15, 2026

While CITES only hosts a Conference of the Parties every three years, this July, its Animals Committee met  to discuss the agenda for the next COP. In March a coalition of environmental nonprofits called on the committee to establish a working group focusing on documenting the fish maw problem in support of future solutions, and to put the fish maw trade on their agenda as a standing item.

“The Animals Committee can play an important role in improving scientific knowledge of maw fisheries and their impacts,” says Sadovy. “Several IUCN specialist groups are ready to contribute to the proposed working group to compile information on the species in trade, trade dynamics, and conservation status.”

Many of the scientists’ requests — including establishing a formal working group to focus on fish maw issues and putting the fish maw trade on the agenda as a standing agenda item — did not receive enough support at the Animals Committee meeting.

But one of the requested action items — asking major fish maw fishing nations to document what species are targeted and their conservation status, along with trade routes — was successful.

The experts I spoke with were broadly happy with the outcome.

Meanwhile, the calls for change proceed on other fronts. A recent TRAFFIC report called for the creation of a dedicated World Customs Organization code for fish maw, training for law enforcement, and drafting national-level conservation legislation to regulate the fish maw trade.

We still have a long way to go before we can fully understand and regulate the fish maw trade, but the experts interviewed with this article agree that it’s now a race to protect affected fish populations and species.

“There is a real need to manage fisheries which heavily target species for their maw,” Sadovy says, “because these include some of the most valuable and vulnerable exploited fish species in the world.”

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Previously in The Revelator:

Saving the Vaquita: New Promises and New Threats

 

The post Fish Maw: An Emerging Ocean Conservation Nightmare appeared first on The Revelator.

China is leading the world on renewable energy, last year installing more wind and solar capacity than every other country put together. But its buildout has unfolded at such a ferocious pace that China is now generating much more electricity than its power grid can handle, meaning that huge amounts of clean power are going unused.

Read more on E360 →

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Emissions from land-use change – including deforestation, loss of peatland and forest degradation – have been falling over the course of the 21st century.

The latest Global Carbon Budget report, formally published in May in the journal Earth System Science Data, notes a “statistically significant decrease” in land-use change emissions since the late 1990s.

The 21st-century decline in land-use emissions has accelerated in recent years, with the report highlighting a “steep drop” after 2015.

Writing for Carbon Brief in November 2025, climate scientists Dr Zeke Hausfather and Prof Pierre Friedlingstein noted that land-use emissions in 2025 had decreased by “around 32% compared to their average in the 2000s”. 

Via six charts, Carbon Brief explores how – and why – land-use emissions have fallen over the past quarter of a century as fossil-fuel emissions have continued to climb.

• How have land-use emissions changed?
• Why have land-use emissions fallen?
• Which countries are behind falling land-use emissions?
• Which countries are leading on forest regrowth?
• Why are estimates of land-use emissions uncertain?

Article Contents Expand menu

• How have land-use emissions changed?
• Why have land-use emissions fallen?
• Which countries are behind falling land-use emissions?
• Which countries are leading on forest regrowth?
• Why are estimates of land-use emissions uncertain?

How have land-use emissions changed?

Deforestation, forest degradation, loss of peatlands and harvesting trees for wood all release carbon into the atmosphere.

Collectively, these emissions are known as land-use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) emissions, referred to here as land-use emissions. 

Each year, global land-use emission trends are analysed in the Global Carbon Budget report. The report, produced by dozens of scientists, documents how human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are changing over time.

Key findings from the annual report are released each year in the autumn, before being published formally in an academic journal the following year following a peer-review process.

(For more on the findings of the 2025 report, read Carbon Brief’s summary.)

The latest edition of the Global Carbon Budget report notes that, in the four decades to 1999, net CO2 emissions from land-use change remained “relatively constant”, sitting at around 6.6bn tonnes of carbon dioxide (GtCO2) per year.

However, since the late 1990s, global land-use emissions have been falling. 

The 2025 report estimates that land-use emissions over 2015-24 averaged at 5GtCO2 a year. This is around 23% lower than the average over 1995-2004 and 19% lower than 2005-14, it says.

In contrast, global emissions from fossil fuels and cement have increased every decade since 1959, rising from an average of 11GtCO2 in the 1960s to 35.9GtCO2 over 2015-24, it says. 

“Preliminary data” included in the report suggests that land-use emissions in 2025 clocked in lower than their 2014-25 average, at 4.1GtCO2, as fossil-fuel and cement emissions reached a new high of 38.1GtCO2. 

(For more on how land-use emissions are calculated, see: Why are estimates of land-use emissions uncertain?)

The chart below shows how land-use emissions have been falling in the 21st century and have helped to temper the overall rise of human-caused emissions.

Global CO2 emissions separated out into fossil and land-use change components between 1980-2025. Data from Friedlingstein et al (2026). Chart by Carbon Brief. Why have land-use emissions fallen?

The Global Carbon Budget attributes falling land-use emissions since the late 1990s to decreasing emissions from deforestation, in particular “permanent deforestation”. 

Permanent deforestation refers to the complete removal of trees for the conversion of forest to another land use, such as agriculture, mining or the construction of towns and cities. This sets it apart from other forms of deforestation, such as logging and rotational farming, where the canopy is removed on a more temporary basis.

The Global Carbon Budget also points to “increasing [CO2] removals” from forest regrowth as a reason for falling land-use emissions since the turn of the century.

(For more on the countries and policies that have driven these changes, see: Which countries are behind falling land-use emissions? and: Which countries are leading on forest regrowth?) 

Looking at more recent trends, the report attributes a “steep drop” in land-use emissions in the decade since 2015 to the “combined effect” of a “peak” in peat fire emissions in 2015, as well as a “long-term decline” in deforestation emissions in many countries over 2010-20.

The chart below shows how deforestation and forest growth have been responsible for the bulk of change to land-use emissions over the 21st century.

Global deforestation and forest growth, 1980-2020, split into emissions from deforestation, including permanent deforestation and deforestation in shifting cultivation cycles; emissions from peat drainage and peat fires; removals from forest growth, including afforestation, reforestation and shifting cultivation cycles; fluxes from wood harvest and other forest management; and, finally, emissions and removals related to other land-use transitions. Data from Friedlingstein et al (2026). Chart by Carbon Brief.

Over 2015-24, the sequestration of CO2 through reforestation and afforestation efforts offset two-thirds of deforestation emissions, according to the Global Carbon Budget report.

Specifically, it notes that deforestation was responsible for an average of 6.96GtCO2 of emissions each year over 2015-24. Forest growth, on the other hand, removed 4.76GtCO2 a year. 

Just under half – 2.2GtCO2 – of carbon removals over 2015-24 was from afforestation and reforestation efforts and the remaining 2.56GtCO2 were driven by forest regrowth from shifting cultivation cycles, it says. 

Forest regrowth from shifting cultivation refers to the recovery of a forest after a plot has been farmed for a short period and then abandoned.

This is shown in the chart below below, which shows how carbon removals from forest regrowth have offset emissions from deforestation. 

Global deforestation and forest regrowth, 1980-2020, split into four sub-components. Data from Friedlingstein et al (2026). Chart by Carbon Brief.

In the near-term, the Global Carbon Budget attributes its projection of a drop in land-use emissions between 2024 and 2025 to the “end of El Niño conditions”. 

(The naturally occurring weather phenomenon typically leads to the drying out of peatlands in the tropics and causes more planned deforestation fires to burn out of control.)

Prof Pierre Friedlingstein, director of the Global Carbon Budget office and a professor at the University of Exeter, tells Carbon Brief there is “no indication” of what might happen in the future, but adds that land-use emissions trends over the 21st century are “going in the right direction”. He says:

“If you are optimistic, you hope the trend will not reverse and start increasing again. But we don’t know for sure. The assumption, given current land policies across the world, is that deforestation should continue to decline.”

Which countries are behind falling land-use emissions?

The countries that contributed the most to land-use emissions over 2015-24 were Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Indonesia, according to the Global Carbon Budget.

It notes that these three countries together contributed more than half – 57% – of global land-use emissions. 

Over the first quarter of the 21st century, falling land-use emissions in Brazil and Indonesia have combined with increased afforestation and reforestation in China to drive down overall land-use emissions, according to the Global Carbon Budget.

This is illustrated in the chart below, which shows how China’s land-use emissions have dropped below zero, as Brazil and Indonesia’s emissions have declined.

Land-use emissions by country, 1980-2025. Data from Friedlingstein et al (2026). Chart by Carbon Brief.

Friedlingstein says that the decline in land-use emissions since the 2000s has been “primarily driven by a decline in deforestation in Brazil”.

He tells Carbon Brief that tree clearance in the South American country rose in the 1990s then started to fall after a peak in the 2000s:

“There was a bit of up and down – mainly due to politics and who was in charge in Brazil – [whether the president] was [Luiz Inácio] Lula [da Silva] or [Jair] Bolsonaro. But the long-term trend in Brazil is a decline in deforestation due to forest protection policies.”

Rates of deforestation in Brazil’s “legal Amazon” states of Acre, Amapá, Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima and Tocantins, as well as more than half of Maranhão. Data from INPE / PRODES (TerraBrasilis). Chart by Carbon Brief.

These policies included a 2004 “action plan” for the prevention and control of deforestation in the Amazon, a 2006 soy moratorium, which banned the purchasing and financing of soya produced in deforested areas of the Amazon, as well as the expansion of protected areas across Brazil during the second half of the 2000s.

Prof Julia Pongratz, a professor of physical geography and land-use systems at the University of Munich and contributor to the Global Carbon Budget, says Brazil is the “single most important contributor to the early-2000s global land-use change emissions peak and subsequent decline”.

She says that the largest contributor to an “acceleration” in the decline of global land-use emissions in the past decade has been Indonesia, which she notes has “rewetted more peatland area since 2017 alone than Europe in its entire history”. 

Around the world, peatlands are exploited and damaged by humans for a range of purposes, including converting the land for agriculture and peat extraction for horticulture and fuel. Peatland wetting refers to the process of restoring water levels in drained peatlands in order to return them to their natural, waterlogged conditions, which allows for peat formation and carbon storage. 

Another reason for Indonesia’s downward trend in land-use emissions is that there have been fewer spikes in emissions caused by fires related to human land-use activities over the last decade, says Pongratz.

Emissions from ecosystem fires are not always counted towards national and regional land-use emissions budgets, which estimate the sum of human-caused emissions. Deforestation fires and those related to peatland drainage are included, whereas fires caused by droughts and heatwaves are not. 

Pongratz says it is “hard to separate natural and land-use drivers completely”, given that deforestation and peatland fires often “get out of control and cause spikes in emissions” during dry El Niño conditions. 

(For more on uncertainties in land-use emissions data, see: Why are estimates of land-use emissions uncertain?)

Pongratz notes that international trade regulations that have helped to drive down land-use emissions in Brazil and Indonesia have had a lesser effect in the DRC, where the root drivers of deforestation are different:

“Emissions in the DRC have increased, then stayed high in the last two decades. This is partly related to population growth and expanding smallholder and subsistence farming. 

“The picture is different in Brazil and Indonesia, which are much more driven by export; international regulations aiming at curbing deforestation thus have larger effects in these countries.”

Which countries are leading on forest regrowth?

Reforestation and afforestation schemes that draw down carbon from the atmosphere have helped to reduce the overall emissions from land-use change over the course of the 21st century.

As noted above, the 2025 Global Carbon Budget report highlights how the removal of carbon from forests offset two-thirds of deforestation emissions over 2015-24. 

The report says that China, the EU and US account for the highest levels of carbon sequestration from reforestation and afforestation, collectively drawing 1.1GtCO2 per year over the 2015-24 period. 

This, it says, is “partly related to expanding forest area as a consequence of the forest transition in the 19th and 20th centuries and subsequent regrowth of forest”.

The chart below, which draws from the latest edition of the “state of carbon dioxide removal” report, shows how carbon uptake by forests has increased over the last 20 years in a number of countries, most notably in China.

Current levels of carbon dioxide removal from afforestation and reforestation
by country, 2005-24. Data from 3rd “state of carbon dioxide removal” report (2026). Chart by Carbon Brief.

In China, a raft of reforestation and improved land management policies were introduced in the 1990s which have led to the rehabilitation of tens of millions of hectares of forests. Research has shown the schemes have significantly increased the country’s uptake of carbon and switched its land from a carbon source to a carbon sink. 

The Global Carbon Budget highlights that substantial carbon removal from reforestation and afforestation occurred in other regions, such as Brazil, Russia and Indonesia. However, in these regions, emissions from deforestation and other land-use changes “dominate”, it says.

Why are estimates of land-use emissions uncertain?

Tallying the world’s emission from land-use change is complex.

The Global Carbon Budget estimates an uncertainty range of 2.6GtCO2 per year for its average annual global land-use emissions figure for 2015-24 – more than half the overall figure of 5GtCO2.

To calculate overall land-use emissions for the annual Global Carbon Budget report, researchers create an average from three land-use models: BLUE, OSCAR and LUCE.

These models combine satellite and statistical information on land cover and land-use changes from global and regional datasets.

Pongratz, who is involved in the LUCE model, explains that scientists can measure the exchange of CO2 between land and atmosphere, but are not able to determine whether CO2 is being released or sequestered from a managed area as a result of human activities or other climate or environmental factors. She continues: 

“For this, you need to turn to modelling, where you can isolate drivers – and, again, models are uncertain and the land-use input imperfect. This is why we use all available model estimates – three at the moment.”

The Global Carbon Budget highlights that its three different models treat different components of the land-use emissions “budget” differently. 

While models agree “relatively well” about emissions from permanent deforestation, they take different approaches in their approach to shifting cultivation patterns, which increases both emissions and removals, as well as wood harvesting, it says.

Moreover, it notes that land-use emissions and removals occur on different timelines. While carbon removals generated by forest growth and soil recovery are “slow”, there is an “instantaneous component” to emissions from deforestation, it says.

(For more on the challenges in analysing changes to the global carbon cycle, see Carbon Brief’s recent in-depth interview with Prof Philippe Ciais, one of the world’s leading experts on land-use emissions.)

The Global Carbon Budget notes that its confidence in its 2025 projection for overall land-use emissions remains “low” given that the figure is based on deforestation, degradation and peat fire emissions, which are “only a proxy” for land-use change.

The report notes that 2023 is the final year in which it calculates land-use emissions directly from land-use statistics across all three bookkeeping models. For more recent years, full statistics are not yet available across the models and scientists instead turn to short-term proxies.

related Factcheck: No, Europe is not having its ‘quietest’ year for wildfires 30.07.2026 Extreme weather World falling short on 22 of 23 nature targets for 2030, says draft UN report 29.07.2026 International policy Analysis: 84% of nations miss deadline to identify ‘nature-harming’ subsidies by 2025  28.07.2026 International policy COP30: Could Brazil’s ‘Tropical Forest Forever’ fund help tackle climate change? 05.11.2025 COP30 Belém

The post Why land-use emissions have fallen by a third this century – in six charts appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Monthly anti-Ford protest rallies across Ontario have been ongoing since February 2026. The province-wide actions, originally started after Ford changed freedom of information laws to...

The post Fight Ford and fight for public education on August 29 first appeared on Spring.

We cannot transform this “neoliberal system” by fighting alone in our territories. It requires a global response and the globalization of our struggle to push back against this globalization of corporate power.  

The post #10Sept2026 Call-to-Action: International Day of Action against Free Trade Agreements and the WTO appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Terms of Reference (ToRs) for event rapporteur Continental Convening on strengthening African civil society climate action on food systems and agriculture towards COP32 Introduction and Background

Agriculture remains the backbone of most African economies, employing a significant proportion of the population while simultaneously being highly vulnerable to climate variability and extreme weather events. Rising temperatures, shifting rainfall patterns, prolonged droughts, floods, and land degradation are already undermining agricultural productivity, disrupting food supply chains, and worsening nutrition outcomes across the continent. These impacts are disproportionately felt by smallholder farmers, pastoralists, women, youth, and indigenous communities whose livelihoods are directly dependent on natural resources.

At the same time, agriculture and food systems offer one of the most powerful entry points for climate action in Africa. They are critical for advancing adaptation, given their direct link to resilience and livelihoods, and they also present opportunities for mitigation through sustainable approaches like agroecology. Gradually, global climate policy spaces under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are recognizing the importance of agriculture and food systems, including through ongoing workstreams related to the Sharm el Sheikh Joint Work on Implementation of Climate Action on Agriculture and Food Security and outside negotiation spaces for example the establishment of the Food Systems Hub at COP30.

With the thirty second Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP32, scheduled to take place in Ethiopia in 2027, Africa is presented with a historic opportunity to shape global climate discourse from within the continent. The outcomes of ongoing negotiations, for example the operationalization of the Belem Adaptation indicators under the Belem-Addis Vision, are expected to culminate around this period, making it essential for African actors to be strategically aligned and influential. The period leading up to COP32 therefore represents a critical window for building a strong, unified, and well-coordinated African civil society voice on climate action in food systems.

In light of the above, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), in collaboration with likeminded African CSOs and partners has planned to hold a convening which will bring together various African CSOs working on advancing the food systems agenda within climate discussions. The convening will act as a space for these CSOs to plan their collective engagement in forthcoming regional and global climate events including COP31 and COP32.

To ensure strategic documentation of the proceedings from this multi-stakeholder gathering, AFSA seeks to engage a professional and experienced conference rapporteur to document the discussions from the convening.

        Purpose of the Assignment

The Rapporteur(s) will be responsible for documenting the discussions, outcomes, and key messages emerging from the gathering. This includes compiling a detailed report, capturing highlights, preparation of summary briefs and the civil society actors’ declaration from the convening.

            Key Responsibilities

• Attend and document all sessions, including plenaries, breakout discussions, and informal reflections.
• Accurately capture key points, recommendations, action items, and stakeholder contributions.
• Support the documentation of the declaration/call to action/communique that will come out of the convening.
• Produce a comprehensive final report of the event (10–15 pages).
• Draft a 2-page summary brief highlighting outcomes, key messages, and next steps.
• Ensure all outputs reflect the event’s diversity, policy depth, and strategic direction.
  
  
  

  Deliverables

• Daily session summaries (submitted each evening during the event)
• Draft declaration/call to action/communique that will come out of the convening (support editing and compilation with facilitators)
• Final Event Report (submitted within 5 working days post-event)
• Summary Outcome Brief (2 pages, for advocacy and dissemination)
  
  Qualifications and Experience

• Proven experience in reporting, documentation, and synthesis at high-level policy or cultural events.
• Strong background in food systems, climate change advocacy, African development, policy is highly desirable.
• Excellent writing, analytical, and listening skills.
• Ability to work independently and under pressure to meet deadlines.

  
  Duration and Location
  
  The consultancy will span 8 working days, including 3 days of on-site documentation and 5 days of post-event reporting and revision. The event will be held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and physical presence is required during the event.
  
  Reporting and Supervision
  
  The Rapporteur(s) will report to the Programme Coordinator for Climate Change and Agroecology at the AFSA Secretariat, working closely with the event coordination team and relevant thematic leads.
  
  Application Process
  
  Interested applicants should submit:

1. An application letter outlining their understanding of the assignment and proposed approach.
2. A CV highlighting relevant experience and sample previous reports.

Submissions should be sent to afsa@afsafrica.org and copy simon.bukenya@afsafrica.org not later than 21st August 2026.

The recent disruption of global fertilizer supplies motivates reassessing key myths that shape perceptions of agricultural policies. A century into modern conventional agriculture, still unfolding impacts on soil, water, biodiversity, farmers, and consumers fuel growing recognition of the need for farming and food system reform. Regenerative farming systems focused on building soil health offer the potential to reshape agriculture and chart a new path toward a sustainable future, but challenge the wisdom underpinning conventional, degenerative farming practices. My new book, ReGen: A New Future for Farming, Food, and Health, shares how regenerative farming practices that upend conventional thinking can reverse the age-old pattern of soil degradation.

In studying the history of soil degradation around the world I came to see how conventional farming today involves both physical and chemical disturbance of soil and soil life. As soil degradation from physical disturbance (tillage) reduced natural fertility, farmers came to depend on synthetic fertilizers to maintain high yields. Whereas organic farming eliminates chemical disturbance and no-till farming eliminates physical disturbance, regenerative farming systems do not rely on routine tillage or agrochemical use and instead minimize or avoid both styles of disturbance.

Over decades studying and writing about soil depletion and regenerative farming systems around the world, I’ve learned to see through key myths of modern agriculture that undermine progress to addressing one of humanity’s oldest problems—and our collective future. Three myths in particular stand out.

Myth 1 is that we must choose between protecting the environment and feeding the world. In my experience, conventional agronomists, journalists, and policymakers tend to assume inherent conflict between sustainable farming and the challenge of feeding everyone. But while commonly cited studies report 10 to 20 percent higher yields in conventional crops compared with organic crops, a 1990 study that compared organic and conventional yields found that in almost half the direct comparisons, organic yields were comparable to or exceeded conventional ones. And a subsequent 2007 global study expanded the comparison and found that organic yields were less than 10 percent lower on average than conventional yields in the developed world but exceeded conventional yields in the developing world. The study estimated that organic farming using legumes as cover crops could supply enough nitrogen to offset synthetic fertilizer use and still meet global food demands on currently farmed land.

Similarly, a 2015 review found that diversified organic crop rotations decreased the yield difference to less than 10 percent and concluded that enhanced investment in organic research could potentially eliminate the difference. And a 2018 study found that yield differences declined over time, with just several years of soil building in organic systems sometimes fully closing the yield gap. I’ve seen this first-hand on regenerative farms around the world that matched or exceeded conventional yields on neighboring farms—after restoring soil health.

In short, rebuilding healthy soils could sustain high yields—just not with now-conventional practices. We don’t have to degrade soil health to feed the world.

Myth 2 is that regenerative farming can’t scale up to replace conventional methods. While mainstream commentators tend to reflexively question whether or not regenerative farming can be done at scale, I’ve visited huge farms I’d consider regenerative. The largest covers 20,000-some-odd acres in South Dakota. On this highly mechanized farm the transition to no-till, cover crops, and diverse rotations dramatically improved soil health relative to that on neighboring farms. The effect on the soil was obvious across a dirt road at the edge of the farm. The neighboring, routinely tilled conventional field was bare, cracking, and pale, in stark contrast to the moist, mulch-covered dark earth of the regenerative field.

While this shows that large, highly mechanized farms can build healthy soils, lots of small farms present another way to scale up regenerative farming. Making small farms more profitable and economically viable could scale out soil-building farming systems. Both large and small farms can regenerate healthy, fertile soil but different approaches work best for different places and sizes of farms. Large farms are well suited for regenerative production of grains and row crops suitable for mechanized farming (such as soybeans, sunflowers, and canola), whereas small farms are well suited for regenerative vegetable production.

Moreover, large farms are not inherently more efficient or productive. A 2021 global review found that small farms produced higher yields, grew a greater diversity of crops, and harvested more food per acre than large farms. In other words, scaling up regenerative farming could entail supporting both large and small farms in different settings. The real question isn’t so much whether regenerative farming can scale up as it is about how to tailor practices on farms large and small to build rather than degrade soil health.

Myth 3 is that we need genetically modified (GM) crops to feed everyone. GM crops are a well-known flash point in agriculture, and it is common to hear their proponents claim we need them to feed the world. Indeed, when first introduced, GM crops were promoted as ways to boost crop yields and reduce pesticide use. Neither promise panned out.

Despite faith that GM crops would increase yields, corn yields in Europe, where GM corn is not allowed, increased at the same pace as in the United States. This means the GM character of U.S. corn was not what boosted yields. Instead, the parallel increases in Europe and North America came from crop breeding that benefited farmers on both sides of the Atlantic. This raises the question of what could be achieved if we dedicated research support to breeding crops for performance under organic or regenerative farming systems at levels comparable to what society showered historically on conventional agriculture and GM crops.

Among the most commercially successful GM crops are those engineered to tolerate the herbicide glyphosate. Crops engineered for resistance to glyphosate provided farmers with an easy button for weed control, boosting adoption of no-till farming. As a result, global herbicide use increased, causing cascading, inadvertent changes to soil life that harm soil health.

Still, I can see potential applications for which GM crops could prove useful for building soil health. For example, GM crops might enhance drought tolerance or nutrient density if we applied the technology toward such goals. So far, however, GM crops have tended to enable and rely on the use of products that scramble soil life, enhance pest resistance, and produce unintended consequences that create demand for more agrochemical products. That’s a better agribusiness model than agricultural strategy. While building soil health is not necessarily incompatible with GM crops, it matters how the technology is deployed.

Looking beyond the myths that fueled conventional thinking about agriculture over the past century, regenerative farming can help usher in a new, soil-health building future for farming, food, and health. To sustain intensive farming into a post-oil future, we need to integrate what we’ve learned about soil ecology in recent decades into soil-building farming systems based on minimizing both physical and chemical disturbance.

Conventional thinking misses critical aspects of how farming affects soil, soil life—and us. Soil degradation stems from farmers approaching soil ecology backwards, undermining soil life instead of enabling and engaging trillions of tiny farmhands.

Like it or not, agriculture will change this century as a growing global population confronts a shifting climate and ongoing soil loss and degradation. Business as usual risks the wellbeing of generations to come, we’ve got to do something different with our soils. Fortunately, regenerative agriculture could turn the tide of soil degradation. The hardest step may prove to be seeing through key myths of modern agriculture.

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 Satish Chand, Unsplash

The post Op-Ed | A New Future for Farming, Food, and Health appeared first on Food Tank.

Did you know about this soaring conservation success story?

Each week, Food Tank is rounding up a few news stories that inspire excitement, infuriation, or curiosity.

HHS Announces Policy Reforms Targeting Food Safety and Nutrition

This week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced two policy reforms targeting food safety and nutrition. 

The agency, alongside the U.S. Department of Agriculture, submitted the first proposed definition of ultra-processed foods. They say that the absence of a definition has limited research consistency across the federal government. 

The other proposal would require manufacturers to notify the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) when concluding that the use of a substance added to human or animal food is Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS).

For the last two decades, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has allowed food and beverage industries to self-certify that a new food chemical is safe, or legally GRAS, without federal oversight. Whether companies inform the FDA of the new ingredient is voluntary. This loophole has allowed an unknown number of GRAS determinations every year. 

Some food and nutrition advocates aren’t impressed by the actions of HHS. Author and nutritionist Marion Nestle responded to the announcement, asking, “You have to be kidding. That’s all?” She says, “food advocates for years have called for making GRAS notifications mandatory.  So this move is obvious, and long-awaited.” Nestle also points out that even if the new requirement is an improvement, companies are still responsible for the science “and will still be hiring its own experts to say the additive is safe.”

Senate Farm Bill Fails to Advance

The Senate Agriculture Committee failed to advance a Farm Bill last week. 

The Committee’s Chair, Senator John Boozman (R-Ark) says they will reconvene for another vote in September. But he says it will be a “miracle” if the legislative package is signed into law before the midterm elections in November.

Zippy Duvall, President of the American Farm Bureau Federation, expressed frustration with the outcome, stating that the country needs a “strong, bipartisan bill” at a time when food producers and rural communities “are facing multiyear losses.”

Some advocates were relieved to see the Farm Bill fail in its current state. Milton Jones, President of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union said it “cowers to powerful agricultural interests and leaves working families out to dry.” And Food & Water Watch’s Food Policy Director Rebecca Wolf calls the legislation “deeply flawed.”

Now, Wolf says, “Congress should use this opportunity to create a new Farm Bill that builds a resilient food system – not double-down on the same corporate model that created these problems in the first place.”

Microorganisms Offer Hope to Boost Sustainable Farming in Mexico

Researchers have identified microorganisms that show promise for improving crop productivity, restoring soils, and reducing dependence on artificial fertilizers and pesticides in Mexico. 

The findings come from a project led by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), in partnership with Michoacan’s Agrosano program from the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, the National Institute of Forestry, Agricultural and Livestock Research, and the Universidad Michoacana.

Scientists discovered native microorganisms in soils found in Michoacan and Oaxaca, as well as in marine environments, which can promote plant growth, improve nutrient availability, and offer protection against pests and diseases.

The research is focused primarily on small producers, who will be able to reproduce and apply biological inputs in their own fields. Participating farmers are already reporting gains in productivity even as they reduce the use of agricultural inputs and lower their production costs. 

COP31 Focuses on South-South Collaboration

Ahead of the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP31), Turkiye is pitching a new initiative to strengthen south-south cooperation. 

If established, the South-South and Triangular Cooperation Climate Initiative will focus on helping countries with practical solutions, expertise, technologies, and financing while supporting climate resilience and the implementation of their nationally determined contributions.

“COP31 presents a timely opportunity to demonstrate how South–South and triangular cooperation can drive climate implementation,” Dima Al-Khatib, Director of the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation, said during a recent policy dialogue in Ankara. 

The initiative is still a proposal, and decisions need to be made around funding and governance, but the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) see it as an extension of work that’s already underway in Turkiye under the country’s Zero Waste Initiative. 

TİKA’s President Abdullah Eren says a practical roadmap can “transform ideas into concrete partnerships” and “deliver tangible outcomes for COP31.”

Extension Model Brings Solutions for Nigerian Farmers

Smallholder farmers in the northern and northeastern parts of Nigeria are increasingly exposed to climate shocks and violent conflict. To help, the Sasakawa Africa Association (SAA) is bringing them a solution that combines demonstration plots, community guides, post-harvest storage, and market connections to empower farmers and improve yields while building climate resilience. 

New research shows that in a single year, SAA’s Value Chain-Based Extension (VCBE) model reached 455,200 producers across Nigeria. Their demonstration plots introduce farmers to new agriculture techniques that build climate resilience and result in bigger harvests.

Targeted training, focused on developing community guides, helps to spread knowledge even further. These guides teach farmers about climate-smart practices that protect their land from degradation. SAA is also showing households how to use local crops to prepare healthy meals and introducing storage bags and containers that keep grains safe from pests and weather. 

CGIAR researchers say that these aren’t short term fixes. Instead SAA is “creating a lasting ripple effect that lifts entire communities.”

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 Dylan de Jonge, Unsplash

The post Food Tank’s Weekly News Roundup: Senate Farm Bill, Soil Microorganisms, and South-South Collaboration appeared first on Food Tank.

As farmers face escalating wildfires in Europe, ECVC is warning of the serious consequences this climate emergency is having for farming communities and calls for emergency aid.

The post Europe: Farmers Call for More Agroecology as Heatwaves, Wildfires and Droughts Devastate the Region appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Stormy times at sea, as U.S. ships endure months-long, record-setting deployments for a war nobody wanted that still has no clear objective, reason for being or end in sight and their thousands of hapless burned-out sailors endure bad food, water, plumbing and morale so low some are leaping overboard, or trying to, to end it all. Blame oblivious messianic Nazi clown Kegseth and fellow zealots who lured the faithful and gullible in and then abandoned them - a sordid regime hallmark.

On land, of course, things aren't much better these days. In short inept order, Trump has trashed the economy, deporting or terrorizing away over a million brown-skinned workers for the latest dismal jobs report; ordered toxic, nonsensical changes to longtime vaccine policies based on debunked theories, what "some people say," and the fever dream of a lethal "vaccination thing" the size of a soda bottle poured into "a little child's body"; spent over $900 million of our money on vanity construction projects in D.C nobody authorized or asked for; and invested $20 million on gloves for already abusive ICE thugs to give painful electric shocks to "non-compliant" victims in "a recipe for harm to the public" and what could possibly go wrong.

Meanwhile, the Iran debacle lurches on. The Pentagon is frantically shifting money from equipment, training and missile defense funds to pay for it, oil reserves and munitions stockpiles have shrunk to record lows, our 122% debt-to-Gross-Domestic-Product ratio means U.S. debt is now greater than the value of everything we produce in a year, "including The Odyssey," and Pete Kegsbreath shrugs it off with an inane, "It takes money to kill bad guys." He's so desperate to get his obscene $1.5 trillion, $3.18 billion a day - the biggest defense budget increase since World War II - he hijacked a ceremony renaming Joint Base Charleston to Joint Base Lindsey Graham by urging Congress give it to him 'cause there'd be "no greater tribute" to the guy who never met a war he didn't like.

A partisan hack, he's failed at...everything. He sabotaged his own agenda by blowing off half the Senate, locking Dems out of classified briefings on defense spending in a move even GOPers decried. He kowtowed to Grifters 'R Us by appointing to a tech advisory body handling billions in defense contracts two bros with ties to Don Jr.'s venture capital gig, various wingnuts and others "here to raid the cupboards." Required to give Congress 2025 (pre-Iran) data on civilian harm after gutting programs to mitigate or even track it, he declared no civilian casualties in boat strikes that killed over 220 "narcoterrorists" and Yemen actions that killed hundreds more, in a report officials called "sickening," "a fucking joke," and "a total whitewash."

Wildly out of his Planet-Fox-depth, he "helped" craft a military, political and moral fiasco in Iran that has left an equally clueless Private Bonespurs reportedly on the brink of "giving up" on a war that's yielded no nuclear deal and left an ever-more powerful Iran in charge of the vital Hormuz Strait, planning to charge tolls, and demanding $300 billion in reconstruction funds. Heckuva job, or what Dan Rather calls "one of the most catastrophic failures by a president in American history." Plus, Iran hardliners are saying they won't negotiate with the U.S. again until the current moron is gone. And he's so scared he just snuck out of Turkey hiding in a catering truck, prompting a barrage of brutal memes and toons. Sure, Donnie, nobody's laughing at America anymore.

Still, because an all-time low number of young Americans are inexplicably showing interest in military service, Christofascist Pete has turned to Jesus for more bodies, arguing the war in Iran is actually "part of God’s divine plan." (Also, so are Coke bottles that read ""Jesus is Lord," or they did until the Muslims took over.) Queasily merging Trump's botched "excursion" with a messianic Christian battle to bring the return of Jesus Christ, Pentagon social media accounts are running multiple, melodramatic ads featuring "warfighters" doing gallant warfighting things alongside the message "SEND ME." Hastily cribbed from Isaiah 6:8, it's when God asks the prophet Isaiah, “Whom shall I send?” and Isaiah replies, “Here am I. Send me.”

In many Christian traditions, the passage means willingly accepting God’s call to serve as one sees fit. In evangelical culture, says one historian, it's often a standalone text" used to render that mission divine. What they skip: the following description of a judgment on cities "without inhabitant" and a land "utterly desolate," the devastation falling on "the nation doing the sending." Asked to clarify the message here, a Pentagon spokesperson demurred: "Nothing to offer you on this." Never mind the inevitable uproar if a Muslim cleric cited the Quran before killing 170 schoolgirls and threatening nuclear annihilation, or the fact "blatant Bible-thumping" implying a religious war confirms longtime Iranian agit-prop the U.S., aka "Great Satan," is waging war on Islam.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation was already “inundated” by calls from soldiers complaining about zealot commanders invoking the rhetoric of Christian Zionist messianism; one declared Trump "anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark His return to Earth." The calls, says MRFF president and veteran Mikey Weinstein, "have one damn thing in freaking common - the unrestricted euphoria of commanders (who see) Biblically-sanctioned war as an undeniable sign (of) Christian End Times." Now it's gotten worse: The messaging is more hysterical, and thousands of sailors, stuck on record-long deployments, are more desperate to escape what have become "their floating nightmares."

This week, reports surfaced of a growing but unknown number of sailors jumping overboard in apparent suicide attempts after months of isolation, rotten food, broken plumbing, no mail, a dubious mission and morale, writes Jonathan Larson, "lower than Trump’s approval ratings" thanks to the longest, most ill-planned deployment in history. "Deployments have been extended repeatedly under the command of Hegseth and Trump," he notes, "who, in their defense, are to running history’s largest military as a water buffalo is to knitting." Since Nov. 21, 2025, he adds, 5,000 sailors have been on the USS Abraham Lincoln ship, "supporting U.S. operations against Iran, whatever those might be at the moment for whatever reason we’re going with today."

He goes on, "Deployment, was supposed to end in May, much like the war was supposed to end in weeks. That can happen when you're fighting a war your commander in chief says isn’t a war, for reasons that shift like the tides, that he already won, and that made pretty much everything worse for the entire world." The USS Lincoln sailors have been at sea for almost nine months, including 250 record-setting days without touching land. There've been two stops: Guam where most had to stay aboard, and Oman where those allowed off had to stay inside a compound. Most deployments run 6 to 7 months, "roughly how long human beings can operate in a floating industrial city working (on) a flight deck actively trying to kill them before they start to come apart."

It's not the first ship stranded by "leaders" endlessly extending a deployment because they didn't bother planning to rotate in a relief ship like a real military. Earlier, the USS Gerald R. Ford spent 326 days at sea, Venezuela to iran, famously suffering plumbing breakdowns - once, 205 over four days - from sewage overwhelming pipes. In April, food complaints also began surfacing, with sailors or their relatives posting images of half-empty meal trays, gross slabs of gray "meat," and "meals" of two tortillas and a half-cup of rice. Hegseth, with time only for lethality, called them fake news. Others called bullshit: "Half a cup of rice and 2 tortillas on a $13 million warship while $600 million in gold trim goes up where the East Wing used to be. Tally the score, America."

On the Lincoln, sailors and families say conditions are akin to ICE detention: Broken toilets, contaminated drinking water, long periods without hot water for (moldy) showers, no fresh produce 'cause it can't survive the trip, no milk in months, some frozen meat that's still often rotten, basic supplies like soap and toothpaste running out, mail so disrupted care packages get lost in transit for months (if relatives can afford gas to go to the post office). Now come reports of at least six sailors, possibly more, going over the rail "just for relief." Parents say they worry their kids will "die on that ship," that they and their shipmates "think constantly about going over the side"; one woman's husband wrote he hopes "he doesn't wake up tomorrow."

Last week, after enough reports of friends pulling friends back from the edge the ship's loudspeaker began asking people to stop trying to jump, about 200 relatives organized two town halls in San Diego to ask Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao and other officials, Are you going to bring our people home before or after somebody dies? The meetings were tense and tearful. The wife of a sailor who jumped, and spent an hour in the water before being put on medical leave, said the Navy didn't tell her for four days: "It was handled very poorly - they’re just trying to cover this up." A woman whose husband, a 13-year veteran who tried to jump, said now he's scared he'll get a dishonorable discharge, ruining his career, from the people who put him there, and, "That is not fair."

A high school senior whose mom is there wondered if she'd be home for the year’s milestones; she said it’s been hard to connect the past few months and when they do, “She’s definitely down. It sucks.” A father whose son is aboard said he always sounds exhausted. “I don’t want to worry this deployment will get the best of my son," he said. “That would be an unbearable burden on my heart.” Many said it's getting harder to feel proud of the service of relatives afraid they're killing innocent civilians; the first person to admit that drew applause from the crowd. Asked about the meetings, Hegseth, who's crowed about "death and destruction from the sky all day long,” dismissed those and other concerns: "We make sure that every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide them at every single moment."

Joining Cao at the town hall was Vice Admiral Joseph Cahill, who reportedly told relatives of the long-suffering sailors, “I cannot even tell you how proud we are of them." He also said counselors and chaplains were available to help meet their loved ones' "spiritual needs," though one observer noted Hegseth has largely replaced them with "Christofascist proselytizers and ravenous, bloodthirsty, unthinking, religious berserkers whose approach appeared to be controversial among people at (the) meeting currently married to some of Hegseth's aspirational berserkers." Families were told USS Theodore Roosevelt would soon relieve the Lincoln; new reports say USS George Washington will, but no of course the Pentagon isn't confused, why do you ask?

Sen. Richard Blumenthal wrote a letter to Hegseth and Cao expressing his "serious concerns" about conditions and demanding "a formal accounting," including answers to multiple questions, by August 27. He reflects a broad consensus the Pentagon is "burning through people like they’re disposable" as morale at sea is "cratering." "This is what the abuse of active-duty personnel looks like when it’s policy instead of scandal," writes Dean Blundell. "Mission planning is supposed to include the humans executing the mission. When your operational tempo requires denying reality in April, ignoring the warnings in July, and managing suicide attempts by loudspeaker in August, you don’t have a strategy. You have a slow-motion command failure."

Still Hegseth, who "treats every question about his conduct as an enemy operation," keeps pushing back on bad food and self-harm reports that have “completely misrepresented” things. His latest retort came during a manic, jittery Panama visit - "The Internet Wants Him to Take a Drug Test" - where he welcomed Colombia’s new right-wing president to a new "Counter-Cartel Coalition" that rebrands the drug economy as a terrorist enterprise. Its very statesman-like motto: "We do bad things to bad people." Now, he brags, he's "putting cartels on notice like ISIS" to "execute ruthlessly" blah blah and if you think boat strikes are war crimes just withdraw from the ICC, "the institutional equivalent of unscrewing the smoke detector because it keeps going off." What an asshole.

In a Friday speech in New York, meanwhile, Private Bonespurs blathered "after we finish defeating Iran, pretty soon I'll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States." (Iran disagreed.) He also said it's ok to be paying more for gas because "we're doing a great service to the world." Earlier, he randomly ordered the Navy to replace, for old time's sake, the electromagnetic systems carriers use to launch fighter jets with 50's-era steam-powered catapults he always liked,. Mark Kelly: He "should stick to ballrooms, bankruptcy, and bullshit.” Then he was asked if he agreed the burned-out sailors' deployment on the USS Lincoln was too long. "No, no, no," said Mr. Empathy. "Not nearly long enough." In response, many people reportedly flocked to him, saying 'thank you, sir,' with tears in their eyes. Then he went back to sticking gold gimcracks on "his" house.

Update: It seems sailors' families are some pissed at the "frustrating, false and careless" responses of Trump/Kegsbreath to legit concerns about the well-being of loved ones stuck in never-ending deployments on the Lincoln. No wonder, given each detail that emerges paints a bleaker picture. They describe "emaciated" sailors losing 20-30 pounds - "If they're losing weight, that means you're starving them" - undrinkable water, and such poor mental health support the one "deployment resilience counselor" quit months ago, a visiting Navy official told them "we can simply exercise our brains to make ourselves happy,” and the only psychiatrist has a five-week wait "unless you do like three of our shipmates and jump off the ship or take 27 sleeping pills." One sailor: "Keep praying for us." His mom: "My son signed up to serve his country. But why isn’t his country serving him?"

A large multicultural group of activists and organizers at the Solidarity Economy Assembly in Durham, NC in July 2026. Photo by Nica Guerrero.

Y’all. We don’t have to tell you that the organizing happening in the south is next level. That’s why Durham, North Carolina was a perfect place to gather for the Solidarity Economy Assembly for our Futures, hosted by the New Economy Coalition, of which MG is a proud member.

Panel featuring Anna Jeffries, Judge Beverly Scarlett, and Georie Bryant, moderated by Donnay Edmund, with sound bowls in the foreground. Photo by Nica Guerrero.

We had the honor to hear from the Black & Indigenous Solidarity Economies panel including Anna Jeffries of Handèwa Farms and the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, Judge Beverly Scarlett of Indigenous Memories, and Georie Bryant of the Symbodied marketplace. They challenged us to explore our relationships to land, to honor our ancestors, and imagine what polyrhythmic solidarity (different rhythms coming together to create one song) can look like in our movements.

People moving their bodies during a theatrical exercise at the Solidarity Economy Assembly.

Some of our Creative Wildfire team facilitated “Rehearsing the Next World,” a performance jam session weaving together speculative fiction, theater of the liberated/oppressed, improvisation, political performance, and other body-based tools for collective narrative creation.

We also participated in other member-led sessions, including “From Shock to Climate Survival,” led by Climate Mobilization Project. Grounded in learnings from CMP’s own work to resource and develop climate survival hubs (such as community farms, solar projects, mesh networks, cooperative housing on BIPOC-owned land, water resilience systems, and mutual aid networks), we explored concrete economic openings for solidarity economy development and what our initiatives need in order to become scalable engines of grassroots economic change.

A Black femme walking between trees towards a white house with a brick chimney at Historic Stagville. Photo by Nica Guerrero.

We visited Historic Stagville, where Georie Bryant offered reflections on land, its histories, and how that connects to labor struggles. We also spent time with Judge Beverly Scarlett on a native plant walk. And we turned up with organizers from the Union of Southern Service Workers, who are doing exactly what their name suggests—organizing the south, primarily low-wage service workers who need an organizing home.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs on stage speaking to a crowd at the Solidarity Economy Assembly in Durham, NC.

On assembly day, Black feminist scholar, poet, author, and activist Alexis Pauline Gumbs offered a powerful grounding that reconnected us to our collective spirit and the deeper reasons we gather. We then convened  in regional groups to reflect on shared needs, possibilities, and the tools needed to strengthen our polyrythmic movements. Across the west coast and Pacific Northwest, aka Salmon Nation, we identified our needs and desires for more regular land-based gatherings across our broad bioregion, as well as coordinated resource mobilization.

We left the Solidarity Economy Assembly so nourished, inspired, and fired up! Huge thanks to our friends and partners at the New Economy Coalition, and all the member organizations and allies who made the gathering so generative, soulful, and fun!

The sun sets on the now-empty cobblestone streets of Erfurt. Just hours earlier, roughly 17,000 activists from across Germany had converged on the eastern German city in one of the country’s largest antifascist mobilizations in decades (“Widersetzen,” literally “to resist”). They failed. Despite mass blockades, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) still held its party congress.

The critique is a familiar one: thousands descend on a city, disrupt business as usual for a day, then head home while the far right carries on. If the blockade failed, what was the point? For revolutionaries, the answer lies in a different question, however: Once the buses leave, what remains?

In Erfurt, quite a lot. Just months before the congress, the city had almost no organized antifascist activity. By the eve of the blockade, hundreds of local residents had passed through action trainings, more than 800 attended a citywide organizing assembly, and over 3,000 Erfurters joined the blockades. One resident remarked that it “felt like 1989 again.”

To understand how this transformation took place, I spoke with two organizers who relocated to Erfurt months before the congress. Their story is about how this city became the backbone of one of Germany’s largest acts of civil disobedience—and the kind of power that is built long before the blockades.

Aaron: Can you introduce yourselves? What kind of organizing were you involved in before Erfurt, and what led you to make the decision to move there?

Carlu: I’m organized in Marx21, a revolutionary socialist organization in Germany. I started organizing when I was 18 in the climate movement with Fridays for Future, then went into Wir fahren zusammen (“We ride together”—an alliance between climate activists and bus drivers), where I really started organizing and talking to people. In 2024 I switched to SGR (SGR, “Students Against the Far Right”) in Freiburg because of the resistance protests against the AfD party congresses.

I organized mobilizations from Freiburg for Essen, Riesa, and Gießen (the previous sites of AFD congresses). At some point I thought, I can do it another time, and maybe 100 or 200 more people will come from Freiburg—but it doesn’t make a huge difference if the city where the congress is taking place isn’t part of the protest.

So Charlie and I decided we had to move there. We had to organize the city itself. Looking back at Gießen (the previous direct action), there was no store open, nobody from the town was really involved. Twenty thousand people came from all over Germany, blocked the party congress for one day, then went back home. We thought we had to do it differently. To win local people over and organize them, we had to move there beforehand.

Charlie: I’m also organized in Marx21, a revolutionary socialist organization in Germany. I started organizing at 18 in the climate movement, first with Ende Gelände (Here and No Further), then End Fossil Occupy (both direct action climate justice groups), later the Kurdish movement, Wir fahren zusammen, and finally SGR around the first AfD party congress in Essen. Since then I’ve organized students at Freie Universität Berlin to travel to the AfD blockades.

After Gießen, a good friend who had gone earlier to organize came back totally frustrated. The local movement didn’t seem to want to blockade the AfD party congress, and he was basically alone. We realized we needed to change things. We had to go earlier and build a real structure that would last longer than a few days.

Aaron: What did you find when you arrived? What organizing already existed, what was the political atmosphere like, and where did you see opportunities or challenges?

Charlie: There was no real structure. There were youth organizations from the conservative CDU (RCDS), the center-left SPD (Jusos), and The Left (Linksjugend [‘solid]), but none of them were really active. There was also an open antifascist meeting once a month, but it didn’t really want to be part of Widersetzen.

There were a few people who had organized Widersetzen the last time, and coalitions like Zusammenstehen, Weltoffenes Thüringen, and Auf die Plätze—broad local alliances against the far right, but none of them were really mobilizing for July 4. When we arrived, maybe five or ten people were organizing.

We also met with a Left Party (Die Linke) politician who told us, “Erfurt is out-mobilized. There’s no chance.”

Carlu: I think they thought, “Okay, we’ll build a little infrastructure so people can come from all over Germany and make the protest happen.” But nobody really thought it was possible to organize people from Erfurt into the civil disobedience.

Aaron: Walk us through those first weeks. Where did you begin, and what were your priorities?

Carlu: The first thing we did was the organizing seminar at the end of March—a weekend training on how to build organizing committees, develop new leaders, and practice one-on-one organizing conversations. We managed to mobilize four or five people from Erfurt. There were about 80 people there from all over Germany, but only a handful from Erfurt. After the seminar, we thought we would go home and come back ten days later. Instead, we stayed. We had so many one-to-one meetings and group meetings to plan that we realized we couldn’t leave.

A few days later we mapped the entire university and the city—all the cafés, bars, restaurants, lecture halls, professors. We mapped everything we could. That was really the starting point.

The next step was an action week at the university. More than one hundred people from all over Germany came to help organize the campus.

Aaron: When did you realize the campaign was really taking off? What do you think made the difference?

Charlie: During the action week we spent three days talking to students across campus. For the first time, local students started thinking, “Oh my fucking God—we can actually win people. We can actually organize this campus.” By the end of the week, there was hardly anyone left who hadn’t heard about the SGR.

Eventually came our first public SGR meeting. We expected to get a room at the university, but the administration refused us any space. So we had two days to organize an open-air meeting with a stage, music, and speeches. More than 600 people came.

The most important thing was that the students organized almost all of it themselves. We helped with moderation and speeches, but every part of the meeting was organized by the students.

A week later we held the first public Widersetzen meeting in the city. We had spent days knocking on doors and talking to people, but we still weren’t sure anyone would come. Within minutes the room was full. More than 400 people showed up. That’s when we knew it was possible to organize the city, too.

Aaron: Once you knew it was possible to organize the city, how did you build the campaign from there?

Charlie: After the first Studis gegen Rechts and Widersetzen meetings, we split the campaign into two. At first we thought, “This is crazy.” We’d only just arrived in Erfurt, and now we were trying to run two campaigns instead of one.

One focused on the university, organizing students through their departments. The other focused on the city. We divided Erfurt into eight neighborhoods and had delegates responsible for each one. At every meeting, there were about 15 to 20 minutes of campaign-wide updates, then people split into neighborhood groups for about 45 minutes to organize locally. Over the months, people organized neighborhood festivals and built their own community groups.

That made a huge difference because it wasn’t always the same five people standing on a stage. As more people stepped into organizing roles, almost everyone knew someone helping lead the campaign—they were their neighbors.

Aaron: As July 4 approached, how did the campaign build toward the blockade?

Charlie: May was kind of a low phase. We spent those weeks trying out different ways of organizing the university and the city. The door-knocking campaign worked. The neighborhood organizing worked. The seminar outreach worked. We were constantly testing things, seeing what people responded to, and building on what worked.

Then came Science Against Fascism week. Students organized more than 70 seminars, going from class to class to persuade lecturers to turn their courses into part of a campus-wide week on fascism and anti-fascism. During the same week, we held the student assembly and, soon after, the city assembly. Those were our first real structure tests.

Then, in the last week before July 4, another hundred people came from across Germany to help organize. We talked to the whole city again. We talked to the whole university again. In the end there were around 3,000 people from Erfurt on the streets.

But actually, my favorite moment of the whole campaign wasn’t July 4. It was the night before.

As more people stepped into organizing roles, almost everyone knew someone helping lead the campaign—they were their neighbors.

We held the final action meeting in a church. People came in six different time slots of about 250 people each to get the information about where to meet the next morning. That was insane. It wasn’t just students anymore. It was the whole city coming to this church.

There was a real focus on the churches throughout the campaign. We held action trainings in churches, meetings in churches, and our plenaries in churches. It changed how people saw Widersetzen. Our strategy was “Erfurt lädt ein”—Erfurt invites you. It wasn’t radicals coming to Erfurt. It was Erfurt inviting people to come.

My parents never would have come to a Widersetzen protest before because they were scared. But they came now because they saw what was happening in Erfurt. It wasn’t just leftists running through the streets. The whole city was there—old people, young people, everyone.

Carlu: One especially memorable moment for me was at the final action meeting. We asked everyone if they were ready to stop the AfD party congress and the whole room stood up.

Really, throughout the campaign we didn’t just ask people what they thought about the AfD party congress. We asked, “What are you afraid of? What do you want to do against it?” Then we invited them to do something. No one had ever asked people in Erfurt that before.

Charlie: Another thing was that we always framed this vision. We told people that on the morning of July 4 they would look out their window and see the neighbor they’d never spoken to putting on a Widersetzen vest. They would put on their own vest, leave home at the same time, and the whole city would begin walking together toward the meeting point.

A friend told us afterwards that’s exactly what happened. She woke up around four in the morning, looked out her window, and saw her neighbor putting on his vest. They’d never spoken before. A few minutes later they left their homes for the blockade. It was the thing we had been telling people throughout the campaign. Then, on the morning of July 4, it was actually true.

One older person told us it felt like 1989 again. The last time they’d felt that sense that something was moving—that history was happening around them—was before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Hearing that was really incredible.

Aaron: You didn’t stop the AfD congress. For many people, that’s where the story ends. But after everything we’ve talked about, that seems like a very narrow way of measuring what happened. What do you think remains in Erfurt now, and what comes next?

Charlie: Of course, in the end we didn’t stop the party congress from happening. We always told people, “We need you because together we can stop this.” But what we achieved was that there wasn’t a single road into the congress that was open. We were so many people that it was impossible to get through the civil disobedience. That was a crazy win.

Of course, we can never trust the state in the fight against fascism. In the end they’ll always find a way around us. It was the SPD Interior Minister marching in the front row of the anti-fascist demonstration while secretly planning with the police to shuttle AfD delegates into the city between 1 and 3 a.m. During the day they marched with us; at night they protected the fascists. That really showed people you can’t trust the state in the fight against fascism—it radicalized people. Even my mom was like, “What the fuck just happened?”

Now it’s their responsibility to … decide what comes next. If they don’t do it themselves, they’ll never really own it.

It’s a win that we made it so the fascists only felt safe between 1 and 3 a.m. They couldn’t move through the city during the day because society was so clearly against them. We didn’t stop them—the state did everything it could to get them in—but we won Erfurt.

And that’s what remains. We built structures and helped people discover their own ability to organize. We had a meeting yesterday (July 8) to look back on the campaign and think about what comes next. People were saying things like, “We have to look at this strategically,” and I was thinking, you weren’t saying that four months ago. They learned so much. They made such big steps. They know themselves what is best for the movement now.

I don’t know exactly what comes next in Erfurt—we still have to talk with the people here. In the end, it’s not our decision. We came here to help start a movement and build structures. Now it’s their responsibility to build the group and decide what comes next. If they don’t do it themselves, they’ll never really own it. They know how to organize now, and they can do it in their own way. We’re trying to put as little pressure on them as possible, because it’s important that they decide what is best for the movement. I really trust them.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Steffen Prößdorf; modified by Tempest.

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A group of people sitting at tables in a gymnasium watching a speaker in front of a stage.

On July 15th, MG hosted the second of our newly re-started Community Dinners, this time in East Oakland.

Several dozen MG homies came out to Roots Community Health at the Parker Elementary School campus to savor some phenomenal potluck dishes — from Thai green curry and fresh-from-the-garden summer salads to mint basil lemonade and a vegan cheese charcuterie board. 

While we enjoyed the feast and the kids played nearby, MG’s Quinton Sankofa shared with us how teachers, parents, students, and community members occupied Parker Elementary when it was slated for closure by OUSD, and saved it as a community resource. Quinton also shared more about the powerful work being done in East Oakland by the Brotherhood of Elders Network and their partners on the 40×40 council to move resources to Black communities to meet their own needs in the face of increased public and private disinvestment. 

Inspired by plant starts offered by our friends at the Gil Tract Community farm at our first community dinner, we began what we hope will be a regular practice of bringing seeds to the dinner to share with each other. MG’s Gopal Dayaneni shared Yakteen (heirloom Palestinian gourd) Kousa  (Palestinian summer squash) seeds from Palestine.

We’re aiming to host the dinners at a range of accessible spots across the Bay. If you have a spot to offer, please let us know!

Construction of the SunZia Wind and Transmission Project is now complete, and the project's 550-mile transmission line is delivering renewable energy generated by 914 wind turbines from New Mexico to...

After a five-year long legal battle, the Constitutional Court of South Africa has blocked Shell and local partner Impact Africa’s permit to explore for oil and gas off the country’s East Coast, in a landmark victory for local communities and civil society.

“Today’s judgment makes me feel very happy and proud that the ocean is not for profit for mining companies,” said East Coast resident and environmental campaigner Siyabonga Ndovela. 

The verdict culminates a years-long process in which non-profits Sustaining the Wild Coast, Natural Justice, Greenpeace Africa, and others took legal action against Shell, Impact Africa and the South African government for failing to consult affected communities – a legal requirement in the country.

The Constitutional Court ruled that Shell and Impact Africa had not complied with resource governance law, had failed to meaningfully conduct public consultation and had failed to consider the impact on climate change, cultural rights, livelihoods and ecological harm. 

The ruling references last year’s landmark advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice, which states that countries have a legal duty to prevent and repair damage to the climate system. The South African judges argued climate change “transcends borders” and that states’ obligations “must be understood within the broader framework of international law.”

“This case must also be understood against the backdrop of well-documented struggles by coastal communities to protect their land, marine resources and ways of life in the face of extractive activities that they believe threaten their very existence,” wrote Justice Narandran Kollapen.     

Protesters march to the Constitutional Court in 2025 (Photo: Ihsaan Haffejee/GroundUp)

The Constitutional Court found that the exploration right had been unlawfully granted by the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources.The ruling upholds a 2022 regional court decision against Shell and overturns a 2024 appeal that allowed the company to conduct fresh public consultations under the original exploration right. Today’s decision means the right, initially granted in 2014, must be set aside.

Celebrating the decision, Sherelee Odyar, oil and gas campaigner at Greenpeace Africa, told Climate Home News that the court confirmed “serious failures” in the awarding of exploration rights to Shell and Impact Africa, which “can not simply be corrected later”.

The Wild Coast is a biodiversity hotspot which has been conserved over generations by coastal communities who rely on the ocean and land. “Our land and sea are central to our livelihoods and our way of life. Over generations we have conserved them, and they have conserved us,” reads the founding statement in the case. 

A Shell spokesperson said it noted the ruling, responding that “we are committed to responsible offshore exploration, meaningful stakeholder engagement and environmental stewardship.”

The Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources did not respond to requests for comment at the time of publication.

“Renewed strength” for communities

The ruling adds to a series of legal challenges brought by civil society groups against oil companies and the government as South Africa has expanded oil and gas development since 2014 under Operation Phakisa, a plan aimed at “unlocking the economic potential of the oceans”.

On the West Coast, Walter Steenkamp, Chair of Aukotowa Fisheries Cooperative, which is involved in a separate ongoing legal action against TotalEnergies, said that “today’s court case gave me renewed strength.”

The case could also set a precedent for future oil developments, said Alessandro Mazzi, legal governance researcher at the University of Wageningen. He added that the verdict “sends a strong signal to investors that where projects affect people’s land, livelihoods and environment, meaningful consultation and genuine ecological assessment are an integral part of responsible investment”.

Janet Solomon, coordinator of advocacy group Oceans not Oil, said that the Court’s emphasis on democratic participation, culture, livelihoods and the health of future generations in handing down the verdict signals a shift in jurisprudence on environmental governance, saying that this focus “may prove to be the judgment’s most enduring legacy.”

The post South Africa’s top court blocks Shell’s offshore oil exploration right appeared first on Climate Home News.