News Feeds

Kate and Aaron are joined by Professor John Leshy, one of the nation’s top scholars of public lands law, to discuss a new essay of his that argues America’s public lands are entering a new Gilded Age, complete with robber barons, corruption, and deregulation.

We also talk about a new exposé revealing Doug Burgum to be a really bad boss who’s breaking the law, and about Border Patrol breaking ground inside Big Bend National Park.

News

• Inside Doug Burgum’s rocky tenure at Interior – POLITICO
• “Warfare on the People.” Big Bend Residents Fear the Border Wall Will Cut Off Public Lands. – Outside
• Mapping it out: onX tool connects Montanans to public land comment opportunities – Bozeman Daily Chronicle

Resources

• On Shaky Ground: America’s Public Lands Face an Uncertain Future 
• Keep Parks Public Tour — RSVP to Tucson!
• On Common Ground: An American Inheritance
• Watch this episode on YouTube

Produced by Aaron Weiss, Lauren Bogard, Kate Groetzinger, and Lilly Bock-Brownstein
Feedback: podcast@westernpriorities.org
Music: Purple Planet
Featured image: Basin and Range National Monument; Source: BLM Photo Bob Wick

The post Are America’s public lands entering a new Gilded Age? appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

This article It’s time for movements to rethink social media was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Last September I made a short video that was by far the most viral piece of content I’ve ever put out.

I can’t trace all the views, but at least a million people watched it across Instagram and TikTok, and possibly elsewhere. Neighbors in Athens, Greece told me they’d come across my face in their feed; Chinese accounts captioned the video and reposted it. I felt like I’d made a dent in the universe and — I’m not going to lie — a little bit special.

The video wasn’t pop wisdom or a dance routine. It had a job to do: get people to sign a petition, created by DiEM25 and Progressive International, to block Germany’s genocide-enabling former foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, from becoming president of the U.N. General Assembly. 

And on that, it failed. By the end of my week of internet mini-fame, the number of signatures had barely shifted. It had 49,000 signatures that July, two months before I posted. I watched it closely that week, and it barely moved.  Baerbock got the job – the petition now asks her to resign. 

I know a few things about digital communication. For two decades it’s been a key part of what I do — I’ve written about it, researched it, advised movements on it. The petition wasn’t mine, but the video was. And I couldn’t make it work. 

Maybe the video could have been packaged better, or the petition link made easier to find. Maybe my pitch was entertaining but not compelling. Maybe a petition was never the right vehicle for stopping Baerbock in the first place.

My organizer friends thought it went great. They congratulated me on the numbers. Nobody asked about the petition.

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That last part is what’s bothered me since. Because if a million views and no signatures is considered a success, we’re measuring the wrong thing.

And that opens up a bigger question, one I don’t think we ask often enough: When we use social media in our organizing, what are we actually doing? Is it worth the time we put into it? And is there a way of doing it that actually builds something?

Why we’re all on there anyway

Social media is now a given for organizers, and for good reason. We’ve been using it to fill public squares for well over a decade, from Occupy to Black Lives Matter to last year’s Gen Z protests across the Global South. To get around media blackouts and show the world what power does when it thinks no one’s filming, from Ferguson to Gaza. To make and sink political careers. To tank the stock prices of corporations that deserve it. 

Social media has changed how we communicate. It’s forced us to be quicker, sharper and more entertaining. Because attention is scarce — and we’re competing for it against everything else.

But beneath all of this, most of us are working from the same assumption: that platforms are where the work happens. That the posting is the organizing. That if we get the reach, the rest will follow.

What changed

That assumption has a history. Those of us who were around in 2011 will remember that social media held a different kind of promise. We thought we could topple governments and kings, if only we could get enough people onto the streets. And social media was very good at getting people onto the streets, as long as the anger was already there.

Sometimes that was enough. Tunisian dictator Ben Ali went. Egyptian dictator Mubarak went. But when it didn’t hold — when Occupy dissolved, when Tahrir Square gave way to a military government, when the squares emptied — we told ourselves it wasn’t the right moment, or that the repression was too heavy.

My sense is that a lot of us still carry that same idealism about social media’s power. But two things have changed since then.

The first is that governments got very good at pushing us back. They stifle protest at the source now, with monitoring, arrests and social media operations of their own. Movements can still get around censorship, and often do. But the state has learned to work on the same terrain. Amnesty International has documented how last year Kenyan authorities used the same platforms as the Gen Z movement to threaten and discredit organizers.  And where that isn’t enough, the state can reach for the platform itself — banning it, as Nepal did in 2025, or changing who owns it, as happened with TikTok in the U.S.

The second is that the platforms themselves changed shape. We went from follower feeds to recommendation feeds. What you post no longer goes to the people who chose to hear from you — it goes wherever the algorithm sends it, if it goes anywhere at all. Attention is concentrated on a handful of corporate platforms whose incentive is to keep you scrolling, not to help you organize.

That second shift is the one we’ve underrated in terms of its impact on our ability to organize. In 2011 we posted, our followers saw it and we organized in the replies — as I did during the Athens riots. Distribution and coordination happened in the same place, at the same time.

Comments still exist, of course. But when a post reaches few of your followers, and reaches strangers instead, the reply thread stops being a place where a group can form. It becomes a place where individuals arrive one at a time and leave the same way.

And yet we still use these platforms like it’s 2011. We shoot things off into the ether and hope something will stick — that people will hear our calls to rise up and somehow self-organize. Or that if we point at a problem often enough, everyone will arrive at the same solutions we did. And each time something or someone does break through, it feels like luck.

That doesn’t mean a post can’t start something. In India, after the chief justice called unemployed young people cockroaches, a student in Boston asked on social media what would happen if all the cockroaches came together. Within weeks the Cockroach Party had formed, with millions of followers and protests in several states, and almost no organizing in between. That was three months ago. They have since won a major victory, but nobody yet knows what it will become.

A spontaneous movement can still form from social media. You just can’t plan for it, and you can’t repeat it. And yet a lot of what we do is built on waiting for it.

The tools changed. Our habits didn’t.

Why we didn’t change with them

In some ways this is understandable. Social media is the shiniest and most responsive part of our toolkit. It’s free. We all know how to use it. We understand the algorithms, the buzzwords, the memes, how to play the game. And above all, it answers immediately.

Nothing else in organizing does that. A meeting doesn’t tell you how it went. A training doesn’t report back for six months. And a list doesn’t tell you anything at all until you ask it to do something.

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So we borrow like crazy from the people for whom social media genuinely is the whole job: activist influencers. They build an audience out of perceived closeness — a parasocial relationship, the illusion of intimacy and reciprocity. That’s a real skill, and it has its uses. But an audience is only enough if attention is the goal. It isn’t a base. Nobody shows up on a Tuesday night because they feel close to someone on a screen. 

Meanwhile, the dull part of the work gets skipped — the meetings, the follow-up calls, the trainings, the arguments about what we’re actually demanding and from whom. And that’s the part that turns attention into power. As Zeynep Tufekci argues, social media allows networked movements to reach scale without building the capacity that scale used to require.

You can see what that costs. In Bangladesh, Nepal and Madagascar, protests driven by social media brought governments down — but in each case, what filled the space was something that already existed. An established party in Dhaka, a party formed three years earlier in Kathmandu, the army in Antananarivo. Not the movements themselves.

Worse, I think our use of these platforms has begun to shape our strategy. We optimize for what the platform rewards, because that’s the number that gets sent straight back to us. The silent but vital parts of the organizing work get subtly deprioritized — or stop happening at all.

What it looks like when someone gets it right

In February 2025, Americans angry about Elon Musk’s growing political influence started posting about his company, Tesla. Selling their cars, filming these sales and complaining online. It could have stayed there.

What moved it off the feed was small and specific. A Boston University professor saw a showroom protest in New York City run by the group Rise and Resist, held the same action in her own city and posted about it on Bluesky. Others copied her. A few people built a website and a map, and the whole thing ran under one hashtag: #TeslaTakedown. 

Tesla’s weak spot was its showrooms: physical places, with addresses and opening hours, belonging to a company whose value rested heavily on its founder’s reputation. Organizers picked a time and stuck to it — they protested at the same place, every week. By March there were protests at Tesla showrooms in more than 250 cities across the globe.

Previous Coverage

The real reason Musk retreated

The organizers’ own account of why it worked comes down to two things: Presence beats planning, and regularity builds community. That isn‘t an argument against strategy — choosing the showrooms was a strategy, and a good one. It’s an argument against making people wait while you perfect it. In a moment of anger, people didn’t need a planning document. They needed to be told where to go and what to do.

And the sign-ups ran through Action Network, the organizing platform. Not through the comments of the movement’s social media posts. So when those posts stopped performing, the movement still had its list.

Morocco’s Gen Z protests are another example of how to do it right. Last year brought a wave of protests in Morocco, against corruption, inequality and the state of public services. The movement called itself GenZ 212, after Morocco’s country code.

It got the word out on Instagram and TikTok, but it used the communications platform Discord as its backbone. People were sorted into regional channels, reflecting where they actually lived, and decisions were taken in nightly discussions that ended in votes. One estimate put the number of people on the channels at 250,000 last October.

It was untidy; it was sometimes chaotic. But Discord, which has no recommendation feed, did something for Morocco’s protesters that a feed couldn’t: It enabled them to make decisions under pressure, as a group, and to adapt. When the first days brought arrests, the movement moved its protests into working-class neighborhoods. When deaths followed police intervention, members reconvened to establish what had actually happened and to argue for peaceful protest, countering attempts to paint them as reckless.

Like most of the major Gen Z movements we’ve seen, GenZ 212 was leaderless and decentralized. The distinction here isn’t leaders versus no leaders. It’s whether there’s a room where a question can be settled and a decision can be made.

What these movements have in common

One word: a handoff.

In both cases organizers recruited on social media, just as in 2011. But they didn’t stay there. They moved people quickly into spaces they controlled. Here it happened to be Action Network and Discord; it could as easily have been a mailing list, a forum, a group chat or a room with chairs in it. What matters is that it wasn’t an algorithmic feed.

This reframes the arguments we keep having about which social media platforms to be on and which to quit. Platforms rise and fall, and whichever one holds the attention next, it will still only be the top of the funnel. The better question is: What does a movement need to own so that an algorithm change, or a ban, can’t decapitate it?

Case in point: The Gen Z movement in Nepal, operating on Discord, was able to simply route around the sweeping government ban of social media platforms last year. And the movement brought the government down. 

The handoff has to be engineered

But there’s a catch to the handoff: The architecture of the platforms works against you.

Platforms downrate anything that makes people leave the app — that’s the one behavior the whole system is built to prevent.  Their architecture says it plainly: Instagram doesn’t let you put a link in a caption. TikTok confines them to your bio. And on Facebook, posts containing a link have gone from about one in seven to one in 66 — by Meta’s own count.

So the handoff can’t be an afterthought. It has to be designed as carefully and deliberately as the hook.

That means putting your ask wherever the platform allows it — the profile link, the first reply — and telling people where it is, because they won’t hunt for it. It means ideally making the destination a date (“we’re on a call Thursday at 7 p.m.”) rather than a page. It means writing the follow-up before you post, because most sign-ups go cold in the first few days if nothing lands in their inbox. And it means one named person owning what happens next — one person who responds to the people who signed up, who runs the call, who they can reply to and get an answer.

Be clear about what you’re counting

The other half is measurement, and it’s the half we get wrong most often. The platforms hand us a pile of data for free, and we take it, because it’s there. But going viral is not a win. It was never the goal.

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So decide what you’re counting before you publish, and make it something on the other side of the handoff: click-through from the clip to the sign-ups, attendance or completed actions. Set a target. And when the numbers that come back are poor, fix the handoff rather than the hook. 

If your video gets 200,000 views and 40 signups, the problem probably wasn’t the video. Look at what you asked people to do, whether they could find it and what arrived once they’d done it. Every piece of content needs somewhere to go.

Back to the video

My petition problem may not have been the hook. It may have been the thinness of what was behind it.

A form is fine. Tesla Takedown used one. But that form led to a protest at a named showroom at a named time, run by a host with people behind them. Mine led to a signature. If even a fraction of the people who saw that video had been given something more to do  — a call the following week, run by someone with a name, with one clear task at the end of it  — there would have been something left when the attention moved on.

Work out the handoff before you work out the hook. That‘s the whole lesson, and it took me a million views to learn it.

This article It’s time for movements to rethink social media was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

New AFSA report finds hunger up 58% across AGRA’s target countries since 2006 — while Senegal, never part of the programme, cut hunger in half

Twenty years ago, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa launched with a promise: commercial seed, synthetic fertiliser and better market access would lift yields, raise incomes and cut hunger across the continent. This week, as AGRA marks that twentieth anniversary with a continent-wide celebration tour, a new report from the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) puts that promise against the record — and finds it broken.

The Green Revolution Has Failed Africa: Twenty Years of Evidence and What Works Instead, released today, is the most detailed independent assessment yet of what two decades and billions of philanthropic dollars actually bought the thirteen countries AGRA prioritised. The numbers are stark. The count of chronically undernourished people across those countries has risen 58% since 2006 — nearly double the 31% increase already flagged in an earlier assessment in 2020. That’s against a programme that set out, explicitly, to cut hunger in half.

Fertiliser use more than doubled over the same period. Cropland expanded by 46%, as forests and grazing land were cleared for cultivation. Yet staple-crop yield growth actually slowed compared with the twelve years before AGRA began. Much of the additional food produced came from farming more land, not farming it better — and the crops that historically carried households through drought, millet and sorghum among them, lost ground as maize monocultures spread.

Malawi illustrates the paradox at the centre of the report: it recorded the strongest yield growth of any country studied, and hunger still climbed there by 61%. Growing more of one crop, the report argues, is not the same as building a food system that can feed people through a bad season.

The report singles out Senegal as the clearest counter-example. Never an AGRA focus country, Senegal achieved over the same period exactly what AGRA set as its own target and failed to reach: it cut hunger in half, bringing it below 5% of the population, while using roughly half the fertiliser applied in a comparison country like Zambia. Millet production rose 85%, sorghum 75%. Senegal did this by keeping its farming systems diversified rather than narrowing them to a single input-heavy package.

“The agroecological alternative isn’t theoretical. Farmers are already building it — restoring soils, protecting their seeds, diversifying their farms and reducing dependence on expensive external inputs,” said Million Belay, General Coordinator of AFSA and a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems. “It’s time to fund what works.”

The report lands alongside a second, independent assessment — Requiem for Africa’s Green Revolution, by Timothy A. Wise of Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute, published August 17 — reaching similar conclusions from separate data.

For Mutinta Nketani, National Coordinator of the Zambia Alliance for Agroecology and Biodiversity, the findings describe a country she watches every day. Zambia spends up to 72% of its national agriculture budget subsidising a single input package, and maize yields there rose just 14% while cultivated land nearly doubled. “After billions poured into AGRA-aligned policies, farmers have only grown hungrier and more in debt,” she said. “We cannot continue this way.”

The report’s release is timed deliberately. African governments are currently drafting the next ten-year agricultural strategy under the Kampala CAADP framework — the document that will direct billions in public, development and climate finance for the decade ahead. The African Union’s own scorecard found that not one of forty-five countries met its targets under the previous ten-year plan. AFSA’s report warns that the new strategy risks carrying the same model forward at greater scale, through the African Development Bank and the World Bank, with input-heavy programming increasingly rebranded as “climate adaptation” to draw in climate finance.

The report’s central recommendation is a redirection, not new spending: 10% of existing agricultural finance shifted toward farmer-managed seed systems, soil health and diversified production by 2028, rising to 25% by 2030 and 33% by 2035. National agroecology laws already exist in six African countries, with five more currently drafting their own — evidence, the report argues, that this isn’t a future experiment but a policy path communities have already chosen.

“African farmers must stop being treated as beneficiaries of someone else’s transformation,” Belay writes in the report’s foreword. “They must be its authors.”

The full report, launched today at a press conference moderated by author and academic Raj Patel with Belay, Nketani, Famara Diedhiou and Timothy Wise, is available now.

Read the full report: The Green Revolution Has Failed Africa

On Sept. 16, 2025, an estimated 100,000 people flooded the streets of Cuenca, Ecuador’s third-most populous city, in one of the largest environmental mobilizations in the country’s recent history. Protesters marched under a simple slogan: “We are water.”

The demonstration was aimed at stopping mining projects in Quimsacocha, a fragile, high-altitude ecosystem that supplies water to hundreds of thousands of people across southern Ecuador. But beneath the immediate conflict over mining lies a deeper struggle over how people understand their relationship with the natural world.

For decades Ecuador has been at the center of a global experiment. In 2008 it became the first country in the world to recognize the Rights of Nature in its Constitution, transforming ideas rooted in Indigenous cosmologies into enforceable legal principles. Yet translating those ideas into political reality has proven far more difficult than writing them into law.

To understand how environmental movements bridge radically different worldviews — from Indigenous understandings of territory to the language of constitutional law, science, and public policy — I spoke with David Fajardo Torres, an environmental activist, lawyer, and member of Yasunidos, a movement defending Ecuador’s ecosystems from extractive industries.

Our conversation explored how narratives shape environmental conflicts, why metaphors such as “We are water” can mobilize entire communities, and what Ecuador’s experience reveals about the challenges of communicating across competing visions of nature, development, and progress.

This interview was conducted during a research visit in Ecuador in November 2025, carried out as part of the research field work for a Ph.D. dissertation in philosophy and social communication.

Environmental movements often struggle to turn complex ecological issues into stories that people can relate to. Yet in Cuenca the slogan “We are water” helped mobilize more than 100,000 people. What makes that metaphor so powerful?

In Cuenca one of our most powerful narratives connects the city — not merely as an urban center, but as a territory shaped by a long and ancient history — to water. We are water people. That idea has become the central metaphor that unites communities and guides our resistance to mining projects.

These projects threaten the páramos, the high-altitude Andean ecosystems that serve as natural water reservoirs. The páramos regulate water flows, sustain extraordinary biodiversity, and supply freshwater not only to Cuenca, but also to the Amazon basin and Ecuador’s Pacific coast.

El Cajas National Park is a high-altitude wetland area with many lakes, streams, and páramo ecosystems that store and filter water. Photo by Alice Deliau.

For us the phrase “We are water” is both symbolic and literal. Human beings are made largely of water, but the expression goes beyond biology. It reflects how we understand ourselves: as part of rivers, lakes, forests, and páramos rather than separate from them. It allows us to connect three dimensions of Cuenca at once — Cuenca as a city, Cuenca as a territory, and Cuenca as an ecosystem.

This narrative has proven remarkably effective. During the mass mobilization in September, many people referred to the protest as Cuenca’s Fifth River, a reference to the city’s historic nickname, Santa Ana de los Cuatro Ríos — the City of Four Rivers. The metaphor captured something deeper than political opposition to mining. It expressed a biocultural identity in which water is not merely a resource but a defining part of who we are. Without its rivers, Cuenca would not exist.

On Sept. 16, 2025, an estimated 100,000 people flooded the streets of Cuenca with the message “Kimsa cocha no se toca” (“Quimsacocha Is Not to Be Touched”), uniting communities to protect one of Ecuador’s most important water sources from pollution from mining activities. Photo by Alice Deliau.

Cuenca’s identity is rooted in conflict between nature and industry?

Cuenca was founded three times: first by the Cañari people, then by the Incas, and later by the Spanish colonizers. Despite these very different civilizations, all three settlements shared one essential foundation: water.

The valley is crossed by four rivers and countless smaller waterways known as quebradas, which remain just as important to the region’s ecological health. Water has shaped every chapter of Cuenca’s history and every layer of its identity.

This is not a new conflict. As early as the colonial period, local authorities faced a choice between gold and water. Extracting mineral wealth often threatened the water sources on which communities depended. Time and again, Cuenca chose water.

That choice continues today. For more than three decades, local communities have defended water sources in areas such as Quimsacocha and Río Blanco against mining projects, gradually building support far beyond rural communities and into the city itself.

In 2021 nearly 80% of voters in a local referendum supported a ban on mining in the páramos that supply water to the region. Four years later, tens of thousands of people returned to the streets to reaffirm that decision. For us this is not simply an environmental debate. Water remains the foundation of our identity, and defending it means defending the future of Cuenca itself.

Cuenca, Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. During the mass mobilization in September 2025, many people referred to the protest as Cuenca’s Fifth River, a reference to the city’s historic, colonial nickname, Santa Ana de los Cuatro Ríos — the City of Four Rivers. Photo by Alice Deliau.

One of the recurring tensions in environmental politics is whether nature should be protected because it serves human needs (anthropocentric view), or because it possesses intrinsic value and rights of its own (biocentric). Is this a real conflict, or are we dealing with different ways of understanding the same relationship between humans and nature?

That’s a very good question. In Ecuador we are increasingly realizing that it is impossible to fulfill human rights without also respecting the rights of nature. Most human rights ultimately depend on healthy ecosystems.

If we destroy the ecosystems on which we depend, we undermine the very conditions that make a dignified life possible. For us, that is the central horizon: living with dignity.

This idea is deeply connected to the philosophy of Sumak Kawsay. It is often translated as “good living,” but that translation is incomplete. A better interpretation would be vivir en plenitud — living in fullness or living in harmony. At its core, Sumak Kawsay is about flourishing alongside nature, not apart from it.

From this perspective, there is no fundamental separation between humanity and nature. We are one species within a much larger web of life. Ecology, after all, is the sum of the relationships that sustain life on this planet. Every species, every ecosystem, plays a role within that network.

The problem is that modern capitalist societies have encouraged us to see not only a distinction between humans and nature, but a hierarchy. Humans are placed at the top, while nature is reduced to an object that exists to serve our needs.

You mentioned anthropocentrism and biocentrism. In Ecuador, however, we increasingly speak about ecocentrism. Ecocentrism shifts the focus away from individual actors — whether humans or nature — and toward the relationships that connect them. It is not about separating humanity from nature, but about understanding the complex web of relationships that makes life possible.

Scientific concepts such as ecology increasingly emphasize relationships, ideas that seem to resonate with many Indigenous worldviews. Can scientific language serve as a bridge between Indigenous knowledge and the modern industrial world?

It can, and I think it is one of the keys — but not the only one. In many cases Western science is only now beginning to understand ideas that Indigenous peoples have lived with for centuries: the importance of relationships, diversity, and interdependence. The difference is that modern science often seeks universal explanations, a single framework capable of describing the world as a whole.

Indigenous worldviews tend to operate differently. They do not necessarily aspire to explain everything through one universal lens. Even among Indigenous peoples, there is enormous diversity. The Shuar and the Amazonian Kichwa, for example, have distinct ways of understanding the world.

For the Shuar, the forest is not an external environment but a community to which they belong. The Amazon is so rich and biodiverse that it provides everything necessary for life. Because they see themselves as part of that living system, the goal is not endless accumulation or growth but maintaining the relationships that sustain life.

Mining companies often argue that modern science allows them to extract resources responsibly. They present environmental studies and technical expertise as evidence that mining can coexist with ecological protection. How persuasive is that narrative?

One of the biggest mistakes is to focus only on what can be measured. Statistics and technical reports are important, but they never tell the whole story.

In Ecuador we work with a concept known as the dialogue of knowledges — a conversation between different ways of understanding the world. This idea is reflected in our Constitution, particularly in the articles recognizing the Rights of Nature.

Take the concept of Pachamama. It is often translated as “Mother Earth,” but that translation is incomplete. Pacha refers not only to the Earth, but to the space-time in which life unfolds — the Earth, the stars, the sun, the moon, and the cycles that connect them. Mama means mother. In that sense, Pachamama is closer to a living cosmos than to a simple environmental concept.

Nature, by contrast, is a concept that emphasizes relationships. Those relationships are not confined to the planet itself. Life on Earth depends on the sun, the moon, and countless natural cycles that can be observed scientifically — from the tides to seasonal rhythms. In Ecuador’s Constitution, Pachamama and nature are treated as equivalent concepts, allowing us to defend the Rights of Nature through both scientific and Indigenous knowledge.

As a lawyer specializing in the Rights of Nature, I build cases using multiple forms of knowledge. We rely on science, Indigenous knowledge, and the knowledge of rural and peasant communities, all of which are essential for understanding and defending ecosystems.

The problem is that many mining companies rely on a very narrow understanding of science. Their science is designed primarily to facilitate extraction and economic growth. It leaves little room for dialogue between different ways of knowing.

I am not criticizing science itself. There is a science that seeks to understand nature, question its own assumptions, and engage with other forms of knowledge. That kind of science is indispensable. But there is also a science that serves capital, markets, and extractive industries. The challenge is to distinguish between the two.

For us, the Rights of Nature are possible only through a genuine dialogue between scientific and Indigenous knowledge. Otherwise we risk reducing Pachamama to a slogan or falling into simplistic narratives about nature that fail to address the complexity of the living world.

Rivers Puyo and Pastaza, November 2025. Puyo and Pastaza rivers support Amazonian aquatic ecosystems: provide habitats for fish, amphibians, insects, and riverside plants. They also help maintain rainforest biodiversity, but are sensitive to pollution, deforestation, and urban growth. Photo by Alice Deliau.

What do you mean by the narrow narrative of Pachamamismo?

For us, Pachamamismo can become a shallow narrative when it reduces complex realities to slogans. Much of the contemporary discourse around Pachamama risks becoming symbolic rather than transformative.

To challenge the narratives of mining companies and extractive industries, we need something deeper: a genuine dialogue between different forms of knowledge. And when I speak of science, I do not mean only biology or physics. I also mean anthropology, sociology, law, and other disciplines. Indigenous peoples, too, possess their own systems of knowledge, law, and social organization. What matters is the conversation between them.

This is important because knowledge itself is never fixed. What a society considers rational, scientific, or legitimate changes over time. The challenge is not to replace one worldview with another, but to create a dialogue between them.

At the heart of the conflict over mining and extractivism lies a struggle between two competing visions of development. One assumes that development follows a universal path, with nature treated primarily as a resource and humans placed above it. The other begins from a different premise: that humans are part of nature and that development should strengthen, rather than undermine, the ecological relationships on which life depends.

For us the key question is not whether development should occur, but what role human societies should play within the ecosystems they inhabit. The answer will be different in every territory. The ecological realities of Cuenca are not the same as those of Poland, just as their histories and relationships with nature are different.

In Cuenca our responsibility is to protect water sources, páramos, rivers, and lakes. That requires adapting our institutions and planning systems to ecological realities rather than forcing ecosystems to adapt to economic demands.

Today, we have powerful tools that help us think this way. The Ecosystem Approach developed by the IUCN and the concept of planetary boundaries developed by the Stockholm Resilience Centre both remind us that human societies operate within ecological limits. Those limits are not obstacles to development; they are the conditions that make life possible.

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The post We Are Water: Metaphor As a Tool for Environmental Policies Communication appeared first on The Revelator.

OATI seeks federal funding for widespread deployment of dynamic line rating software, near-real-time inter-regional coordination and AI-enhanced resource dispatch — none of which requires new poles or wires, the company says.

By WildMon, August 2026Across Latin America, thousands of autonomous recording devices are capturing the sounds of forests every day. Hidden within these recordings is valuable information about...

Residents in a Yorkshire Wolds village have asked the prime minister for help in their opposition to local gas drilling plans.

Foxholes parish council and the community campaign group have written to Andy Burnham outlining their fears about proposals by Egdon Resources to explore for gas on the edge of their village.

Photo: DrillOrDrop

The application seeks to drill through a principal chalk aquifer that supplies water to 900,000 people. The proposed site is in a productive farming area. It is also near the soon-to-be designated Yorkshire Wolds National Landscape, which will give the area the protection and status of a national park.

The letter said Egdon’s application, to be decided by North Yorkshire Council, has raised concerns about strategic water resources, food security, climate change, nature recovery and economic resilience.

It said these were national concerns:

“The Yorkshire Wolds are a remarkable natural asset. Protecting them should be a shared national responsibility.”

It added:

“While this is a local planning application, we believe it raises issues of wider national importance concerning water security, climate resilience, food production, nature recovery and the future direction of energy policy”.

The letter’s signatories, David Eddy, chair of Foxholes with Butterwick Parish Council, and Laura Bell, campaign lead of the Drawing a Line in the Chalk campaign, asked Mr Burnham to:

• Ensure nationally-important groundwater resources, chalk streams and agricultural landscapes received appropriate protection in planning and environmental decision-making
• Ensure that the most up to date scientific evidence was properly considered where development could affect strategic water resources
• Clarify how further fossil fuel exploration was being reconciled with commitments on climate change, nature recovery, food security and resilience
• Meet representatives of the parish council and Drawing a Line in the Chalk campaign

The letter, published online today, welcomed the principle, supported by government, of empowering communities and ensuring that local voices were heard in decision-making:

“We … respectfully ask that it is applied to communities such as ours, where residents are seeking reassurance that decisions affecting essential natural resources are being made using the best available evidence and with proper regard to long term consequences.”

The letter said the protection of water resources from the Yorkshire Wolds chalk aquifer “must be considered a matter of national resilience”.

It also said:

“The Yorkshire Wolds are also a highly productive agricultural landscape. The farms and food businesses that operate here contribute to the nation’s food supply at a time when the Climate Change Committee has highlighted the growing risks that climate change poses to food security and the need to strengthen resilience across our food system.

“Protecting the natural systems that underpin agriculture, particularly clean and reliable water supplies, healthy soils and functioning ecosystems is therefore not simply an environmental concern. It is an issue of economic resilience and national security.”

Mr Eddy and Ms Bell said:

“Residents are not opposed to a secure energy future, although renewables are clearly the way forward here. They are asking that decisions made today do not compromise the water, landscapes, food producing capacity, ecosystems and tourist activity upon which tomorrow’s generations will rely.”

They added that Egdon’s estimates suggested the expected gas resource at Foxholes was the equivalent of six days UK gas use in winter:

“Hardly energy security, particularly given it will be sold on the international markets.”

They said:

“Communities are entitled to ask whether new fossil fuel exploration in environmentally sensitive locations is consistent with wider commitments on climate change, biodiversity recovery, water resilience and long-term energy strategy.”

They said local concerns about the proposal included:

• Has the latest geological and groundwater evidence been fully incorporated into decision-making?
• Have the risks to the principal chalk aquifer, including contamination pathways, been adequately assessed?
• Are the full climate implications of fossil fuel extraction being properly considered?
• Do existing planning and permitting regulations protect sufficiently nationally-important water resources, landscape and ecosystems?

The letter stated:

“The issue is not simply whether one exploratory well proceeds. It is whether our planning and regulatory systems are sufficiently robust to protect the natural assets upon which communities, businesses, agriculture and future generations depend.

“In order to enable communities to engage fully with such planning applications, we need to ensure that within the planning process the most up-to-date scientific data is also made available to those affected by the planning applications to create a level playing field.

“And that equality of representation is further supplemented by increased time at the public planning committee meetings where applications are to be heard.”

Starting on Monday, about 10,000 government negotiators, scientists, journalists and campaigners will gather at a purpose-built venue in a national park in Mongolia’s capital Ulaanbaatar to discuss how to stop land turning into desert as the world warms.

Drought is currently sweeping much of the Northern hemisphere, leaving normally green urban parks looking like dry savannah, causing crops to fail, food prices to rise and billions to be shaved off economic output. 

On Wednesday, Britain’s prime minister chaired an emergency meeting of the government’s Cobra committee. These are usually reserved for wars, terrorist attacks, riots and pandemics – but this one was on the extreme heat and drought the UK has been suffering since May. 

With many countries facing far worse with fewer resources than the UK, the issues to be discussed at the UN’s COP17 summit in Mongolia – often overlooked – should be nearer the top of policy-makers minds.

But what is COP17?  What will be decided and announced there over the next two weeks? How does it relate to climate change and how will it help restore the lands on which we all rely for our food, water and other essential resources? Climate Home News explains all below.

What is COP17?

It is the conference of parties (COP) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). The parties are 196 governments, which includes all of the countries recognised by the UN.

The convention was conceived at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, at the same time as the other two larger “Rio trio” conventions on climate and biodiversity. 

While the climate convention’s COP takes place every year, the UNCCD COP happens only once every two years. COP17 will be its seventeenth gathering.

Negotiators at COP16 in Riyadh (Photo: IISD/ENB | Anastasia Rodopoulou) What is desertification?

It is the process by which land degrades and becomes more like a desert, making it harder – and sometimes impossible – to grow crops or graze livestock there.

Climate change and other human activities – like excessive irrigation which depletes ground water – are making this process worse, causing poverty, hunger, health problems, forced migration and loss of species.

It’s a widespread problem. The UN estimates that half a billion people live within areas that have experienced desertification since the 1980s and that two-fifths of the world’s land is degraded.

What has it got to do with climate change?

The planet’s climate is heating up, mainly due to humans burning fossil fuels, and drying out its land. This kills plants and exposes the soil which can then be blown away by wind and washed away by water.

Without a top layer of soil, plants struggle to grow again and the land gets closer to being a desert. So combating desertification is a way of adapting to climate change.

It is also a way of lessening the pace of climate change, as land degradation releases carbon dioxide previously stored in healthy soils and plants.

What will be negotiated at COP17?

The main issue is what form a new initiative to tackle drought could take. The last COP saw Africa push hard for this to be a protocol – a kind of binding sub-treaty to the UNCCD.

But the US, Europe, Argentina and others argued that would take too long to set up, cost too much and take money away from what can be spent on the ground. They prefer a legally weaker alternative – a framework instead of a protocol. 

Negotiations went late into the last night of talks in Riyadh, with the Saudis hosting informal consultations, but eventually governments had to agree to disagree and pick up talks again in Ulaanbaatar. 

As Earth dries out, countries fail to reach drought agreement

Governments will also negotiate a new policy on protecting rangelands and pastoralists from degradation. Rangelands are areas where animals graze. They cover around half the Earth’s land and include almost everything other than forest, deserts, farms, glaciers and cities. Pastoralists are people who herd animals on these rangelands, often moving from place to place to find fresh pasture. 

COP17 host country Mongolia has a lot of both – and pushed successfully for the UN to declare 2026 the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists. It is keen to agree a decision at COP17 bringing those issues more to the forefront of the UNCCD.

Negotiators will also debate the UNCCD’s post-2030 strategic framework, which they hope to adopt at COP18 in 2028. Campaign groups like the World Wildlife Fund want a stronger focus on biodiversity and nature-positive food systems.

What will happen when?

The COP will formally open with a ceremony on Monday August 17, followed by opening statements by governments and the adoption of the agenda.

Negotiations will begin, mostly behind closed doors for two weeks until the closing plenaries on Friday August 28.

While talks rumble on in the background, the second week will see senior government representatives including ministers get involved, with a “high-level segment” running from August 24-26.

A delegate at COP16 in Riyadh (Photo: IISD/ENB | Anastasia Rodopoulou)

They will discuss issues like drought resilience, finance and pastoralist communities. This is likely to be when any announcements – of new funding, for instance – are made.

On Monday August 24, there will also be an open dialogue between government officials and civil society members. Here, local practitioners are likely to share stories of how they are helping their communities reverse land degradation. UNCCD prides itself on being a bottom-up convention.

Unlike climate COPs, which often end a day or two over time, UNCCD COPs usually finish on the evening of their last day and – while they have gone late into the night – have never run into the next day.

What else should we watch out for?

At the last COP two years ago, host Saudi Arabia led the creation of an initiative called the Riyadh Global Drought Resilience Partnership to help 80 of the poorest nations deal with drought. 

It received $12 billion in pledges, mainly from Gulf-based development finance institutions. Saudi Arabia is expected to report back on whether these pledges have been delivered and how the money will reach those in need now.

There are also hopes that governments will announce financial support for Mongolia’s Rangelands Flagship Initiative, which aims to mobilise investment in projects to fight land degradation.

Who will preside over COP17?

While the last five and the next two climate COPs have been or will be presided over by men, COP17 will be woman-led with Mongolia’s foreign minister, Battsetseg Batmunkh, as president.

Mongolia’s foreign minister and COP17 president Battsetseg Batmunkh (Photo: Uugansukh Byamba)

This will also be the first COP for the UNCCD’s new executive director Yasmin Fouad. Before being appointed environment minister in her native Egypt, Fouad was a scientist and lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s special report on desertification. She played a key role at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt in 2022.

Although Saudi Arabia’s UNCCD COP presidency is ending, the Gulf power house will likely continue to be influential. It has supported the COP financially as part of the Riyadh-Ulaanbaatar action agenda and will be following up on initiatives announced two years ago.

While Saudi Arabia is often blamed for obstructing progress at climate talks, as a desert nation it is generally thought to have played a constructive role at UNCCD COPs.

What are the negotiating dynamics?

The UNCCD has six main negotiating groups: Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Northern Mediterranean, Central and Eastern Europe, and developed donor countries. Governments can also speak in their own capacities.

While divisions between the Global North and Global South do exist at UNCCD COPs, they are not as stark as at climate COPs. The Global South’s umbrella group – the G77 and China – usually only speaks on finance issues, on which developing countries tend to be united.

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Civil society groups are present but not as vocal or as confrontational as at climate COPs. There are generally no protests and campaigners tend to try to hold governments accountable more quietly. There are likely to be far fewer journalists than at climate COPs too.

What role will the US play?

While the US has left the UN’s climate convention, it remains in the UNCCD and is expected to bring a delegation of officials from its departments of agriculture and state. It is likely to resist any renewed push from Africa for a drought protocol.

The post Will the world’s drying lands get relief from COP17 in Mongolia? appeared first on Climate Home News.

A new state bill in Pennsylvania aims to restrict construction of data centers on prime farmland.

If passed, House Bill 2588 will prohibit local officials from designating farmland as the only type of land where a municipality can build hyperscale data centers. It will also ban data centers of any size from being built on land where at least half of the soil is suitable for farmland, per the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s soil classification for land use.

House Representative Marla Brown introduced the Bill. It was referred to the Pennsylvania House of Representative’s Local Government committee, but has not yet been voted through, according to Brown.

 “I have a large farming community in my district in Western Pennsylvania,” Brown tells Food Tank. “I started investigating data center development, and in my community one of them is actually in a residential area, and some of it would be on farmland. That raised huge red flags for me in terms of the risk for future development.”

Data centers—facilities made up of large servers that store and process information—are in high demand as digital services, including generative artificial intelligence, continue to grow. They require large, reliable sources of energy and in the United States, are mostly being built in rural areas. Pennsylvania is the country’s second largest electricity-producing state, and 75 percent of its land is rural.

Leading up to the passage of the state budget last month, data center regulation was the focus of several bills proposed by Pennsylvania lawmakers, including Brown’s. Agriculture is one of the state’s biggest industries, generating US$132 billion per year and housing nearly 600,000 jobs, according to Pennsylvania’s Department of Agriculture.  

“Why the need to go to farmland? Maybe because they see it as an easy sell to the farmer, [who] could make some quick money,” Brown says. “That’s what scares me—we’re making harsh decisions and overlooking very important needs for the future.” 

In Salem Township, which has a population of around 4,000, nearly 100 Pennsylvanian families made an average of US$5.5 million by selling their land to the same developer. In other parts of the state, community members—citing concerns about rising land costs, the loss of natural resources, and the erosion of local lifestyles—have rejected data center proposals. Earlier this year, one 86-year-old Pennsylvanian was praised for turning down the US$15 million a developer offered for his 261-acre farm.

Brown’s Bill, if passed, will make it more difficult for data center developers to obtain farmland, particularly in areas with high concentrations of land suitable for agriculture. But for farmers, the influx of proposals is just one of the latest additions to an already complex network of challenges.

“Beginning farmers are struggling to find farmland after they get training, and access to farmland is a real issue,” Jeff Tkach, CEO of the Pennsylvania-based Rodale Institute, tells Food Tank. “How do we get new and aspiring farmers when farmland is so expensive and frankly unattainable? And now this added pressure from data centers and even the warehouse industry is making that even more complex.”

The Rodale Institute, located outside of Allentown, is a research hub and farmer training program that specializes in regenerative, organic agriculture. Tkach believes legislation like Brown’s can play a part in preserving Pennsylvania’s farmland and other natural resources. But it must be part of a “broader strategy,” he says, to increase public investment, farmer retention, and the viability of regenerative farming operations.

“It’s not just about keeping data centers out of our community, and making sure we have good legislation in place to protect farmland—that should go without saying,” Tkach says. “But how do we build on that and make our farms better for everyone, including the farmers themselves?”

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Photo courtesy of Geoffrey Moffett, Unsplash

The post Data Centers Want Pennsylvania’s Farmland—This Bill Could Protect It appeared first on Food Tank.

• August 13, 2026

SA’s Increasing Energy Costs Put Pressure On The Most Vulnerable Among Us

As winter grips South Africa, millions of households are facing an impossible choice between keeping the lights on, putting food on the table, and paying essential expenses such as school fees and transport costs. The Green Connection believes that the country’s current tariff structure may be deepening poverty and inequality while forcing ordinary citizens to shoulder the cost of institutional failures over which they have no control.

“Every tariff increase could further entrench inequality and may place an unbearable burden on families already struggling to make ends meet. The problem extends beyond inflationary pressures, pointing to an electricity pricing system that compels consumers to pay for historical inefficiencies, cost overruns, governance failures, and mistakes associated with major infrastructure projects. For many South Africans, rising electricity tariffs are no longer simply a matter of economics but a matter of survival,” says The Green Connection’s Outreach Ambassador, Neville van Rooy.

Since 2015, Eskom has implemented 12 consecutive annual tariff increases – all approved by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA). Electricity costs have dramatically increased over the past two decades, rising by around 190 per cent in real terms while continuing to outpace inflation. Meanwhile, in 2023, StatsSA reported that more than 23 million South Africans live below the lower-bound poverty threshold, highlighting concerns that rising living costs could place many households at risk of falling into extreme poverty.

The Green Connection notes that the pressure is especially severe for households that purchase electricity through municipalities. Unlike customers who buy electricity directly from Eskom, municipal consumers often pay additional charges because local authorities must recover the costs of maintaining infrastructure and funding essential public services. As a result, the same tariff increase can have vastly different consequences depending on where people live and how they access electricity.

Electricity transmission lines (left), Prepaid Electricity meter (right)

“The current situation demonstrates how deeply energy insecurity is affecting vulnerable communities. Winter has once again exposed the reality facing millions of people across South Africa. Families are being forced to make impossible decisions between electricity, food, medicine, school fees, and other basic necessities. These are not abstract policy discussions. These are real decisions being made in real homes every day,” adds van Rooy.

According to Lisa Makaula, Advocacy Lead at The Green Connection “Increasing tariffs, without addressing the underlying problems within the system, simply shifts responsibility onto those who are least able to bear the cost. The public may effectively be paying for a R54.7 billion mistake made by someone else. That is fundamentally unjust. Communities should not be expected to absorb the costs of poor planning, regulatory failures, or infrastructure mismanagement. Accountability must become part of the conversation.”

In January 2026, The Green Connection submitted recommendations to NERSA regarding Eskom’s Multi-Year Price Determination process – its second input into the MYPD6 evaluation process – emphasising the need for greater transparency, stronger public participation, and a comprehensive review of the country’s electricity pricing framework. The organisation argues that the existing approach is unsustainable because it relies heavily on assumptions linked to costly coal infrastructure projects, including Medupi and Kusile, despite the growing affordability of renewable energy technologies.

According to The Green Connection, the country’s continued reliance on fossil fuels is placing unnecessary pressure on consumers while slowing progress towards a more affordable and resilient energy future.

Makaula says that South Africa has reached a turning point in how electricity should be priced, and that the Electricity Pricing Policy – which has been approved by Cabinet – should be an opportunity to correct injustices of the past. She says, “We cannot continue relying on outdated models that ignore changing economic and technological realities, and that no longer serve the interests of the people. Renewable energy is already cheaper to build than new coal infrastructure, yet electricity pricing continues to be influenced by assumptions rooted in a broken system. The pricing overhaul should serve the public interest because access to affordable energy should not be a luxury but is essential for dignity, health, education, and economic opportunity.”

The Green Connection maintains that greater public participation is essential if long-term solutions are to be developed. According to the eco-justice organisation, communities must be given meaningful opportunities to participate in decisions that directly affect their lives. The country’s long-term energy security depends on embracing a just transition that prioritises affordability, sustainability, and accountability. This includes expanding investment in renewable energy, improving transparency within the electricity sector, and ensuring that vulnerable households are protected from excessive price increases.

The Green Connection also believes that the reform of South Africa’s Electricity Pricing Policy presents an important opportunity to align electricity pricing with current energy needs while shielding vulnerable households from escalating costs. This should include expanding and strengthening Free Basic Electricity provisions so that poor and working-class communities are better protected from tariff increases. Electricity pricing must support equitable access to energy and ensure that people are not penalised simply for remaining connected to the national grid.

As South Africans continue to confront rising living costs, The Green Connection is calling for urgent intervention to prevent even more households from being pushed into poverty. “The country is facing a defining moment,” says van Rooy. “We cannot build a just society while people are being forced to choose between warmth, food, education, and electricity. Access to affordable energy should strengthen communities rather than push them further into hardship. If we fail to act now, the social and economic consequences may affect future generations.”

Community comments:
Reinett Pullen, a small-scale fisherwoman and community activist from the Eastern Cape, believes that rising electricity costs are placing unbearable pressure on fishing communities that depend on reliable power to sustain their livelihoods. Deborah De Wee, environmental activist and founding member of the Spirit of Endeavour Fisherwomen in Doring Bay, is of the opinion that escalating electricity prices are driving already vulnerable fishing households deeper into poverty. Voices from Elands Bay echo these concerns, warning that unaffordable electricity tariffs may result in fishing families, pensioners, and unemployed residents struggling to survive as household costs continue to outpace already limited incomes.

Pullen says, “For fishing communities, electricity is not a luxury. It is the difference between putting food on the table and going hungry. We rely on electricity to preserve our catch, feed our families, and sustain our livelihoods, yet every increase in tariffs forces us to make impossible choices between electricity, food, education, and other basic necessities. A just energy transition cannot be measured only by market efficiency but also by whether it protects those who already carry the heaviest burden. We urge NERSA and government to put affordability, social justice, and meaningful public participation at the centre of all electricity reforms. Access to affordable electricity is not a privilege. It is essential to our dignity, our livelihoods, and our future.”

De Wee says, “In Doring Bay, our livelihoods depend on the sea, but our income is seasonal and uncertain. Electricity costs, however, continue to rise regardless of whether families have an income or not. Many households are surviving on social grants, while others are being forced to return to collecting firewood because electricity has become unaffordable. We are spending more money than ever for fewer units of power, and for many families, electricity now lasts only a few days before they have to buy again. This is not just an energy issue. It is a poverty issue, a dignity issue, and a community survival issue. Policymakers must recognise that people cannot continue to absorb endless increases while struggling to meet their most basic needs. Affordable electricity is essential if communities like ours are to have any chance of a secure and dignified future.”

Small-scale fisher in Elands Bay, Patrick Adonis says, “Electricity tariffs are currently beyond what we can afford. Our households are struggling, our expenses are greater than our income, so we have to stretch every cent as far as possible. But the electricity increases and tariffs have gone through the roof. This hits us very hard, and it is affecting us as the fishing community of Elands Bay in a very negative way.”

Elands Bay resident, pensioner Michelle Engelbrecht says, “Why is electricity becoming so expensive? As a pensioner and a resident of Cederberg and Elands Bay, I am deeply concerned because electricity prices have gone up again. For people – who are already struggling to make ends meet – our way of life is being affected. How are we supposed to survive with only R2,400 each month (the pensioner’s grant) when more than half is spent just on electricity? It is simply unliveable. Today, I am being forced to go back to the old days of cooking our daily food over an open fire, because I cannot afford electricity. It’s simply too expensive. And what about those who are currently unemployed? Even if you are working, all you can afford is electricity, because the price keeps rising higher and higher. Is there no solution? We cannot continue to live like this.”

Elands Bay fisherman, Andries Booysen says, “Government and NERSA should take a careful look at these electricity tariffs, because excessive price increases are bringing us to our knees. The cost of living is already too high. It’s not fair that we are already struggling to keep our heads above water, and now we also have to bear the burden of these additional increases.”

May 26, 2026 Past News WEST COAST SEISMIC SURVEY CASE MOVES CLOSER TO HEARING

This Energy Month, the legal challenge between Aukotowa Fisheries Primary Co-operative, The Green Connection, and Natural Justice (the Applicants), and the government together with TGS Geophysical Company UK Ltd (the Respondents), concerning authorisation for offshore seismic surveys along South Africa’s West Coast and Northern Cape coastline, has entered a critical new phase.

June 4, 2026 Latest News JUDGMENT RESERVED: HIGH COURT CONSIDERS ARGUMENTS CHALLENGING WEST COAST SEISMIC SURVEY APPROVAL

On Tuesday afternoon, the Western Cape High Court concluded a two-day hearing in the ongoing legal challenge by Aukotowa Fisheries Primary Co-operative, The Green Connection and Natural Justice (the Applicants) against the State and TGS Geophysical Company UK Ltd.

June 26, 2026 Latest News Saldanha Red Dust Emissions Decision Referred to National Environment Department

On 25 June 2026, The Green Connection welcomed the West Coast District Municipality’s decision to reject Transnet Port Terminals’ application to renew an Atmospheric Emission Licence (AEL) for the Saldanha Iron Ore Terminal.

June 30, 2026 Latest News (Op-Ed) Ska Fela Moya: Don’t Give Up, Just Breathe The Fumes

When a corporation wraps itself in the language of human endurance while polluting the air that athletes breathe, we should name it for what it is. A lost opportunity.

The post SA’s Increasing Energy Costs Put Pressure On The Most Vulnerable Among Us appeared first on The Green Connection.

The number of Cheaper Home Batteries installations has passed the half-million mark, a huge new milestone for the hugely successful rebate that is slashing bills and delivering "enormous benefits" to the grid.

The post Home battery rebate hits 500,000 milestone as households “take control” and deliver grid benefits appeared first on Renew Economy.

Checks & Balances Project (C&BP) has briefed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General’s Office about its reporting on possible fraud involving Sussex County, Virginia, the Stony Creek Volunteer Rescue Squad and Supervisor Steve White.

C&BP filed a complaint with the inspector general on July 17, alleging potential fraud involving billing for ambulance calls conducted by the Stony Creek Volunteer Rescue Squad (SCVRS) and the lack of transparency in the squad’s finances.

SCVRS lost its federal nonprofit status in 2023, because it failed to file tax returns for three years. C&BP also reported that in the five years for which tax returns are available – 2015 through 2019 – SCVRS reported a $304,000 surplus.

Minutes from county supervisors’ meetings show that then-Fire Chief Nick Sheffield questioned the squad’s finances, saying it was impossible to determine where the squad’s money went. White then pressured then-County Administrator Richard Douglas to fire Sheffield and his deputy, Chris Bailey. Douglas refused. In September 2025, White engineered the defunding of the positions of Sheffield and Bailey. He later fired Douglas and assumed the role of county administrator, despite having a full-time job paying $110,000 with the state of Virginia.

The next month, records show, the county signed a memorandum of understanding with SCVRS to pay the squad $422,250 for ambulance services for the next year.

Website failures

C&BP has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the county seeking the response times of the emergency medical services groups that serve the county. That information should be posted on the county’s website, but any links to pages containing that information don’t work.

The failure to maintain the site and keep records available is an apparent violation of Virginia law.

Response times of the Stony Creek Volunteer Rescue Squad (SCRVS) run by Steve White, the chair of the county board of supervisors, are of particular interest. A ChatGPT search showed the SCVRS weeknight response times “consistently exceeded the 20-minute standard for several months.”

Ray Locker is the executive director for Checks & Balances Project, an investigative watchdog blog holding government officials, lobbyists, and corporate management accountable to the public. Funding for C&BP is provided by Renew American Prosperity and individual donors.

You may also want to read:

Checks & Balances Project seeks Steve White’s emails with state address

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C&BP seeks Sussex County records on firing of county administrator

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The post C&BP briefs Health and Human Services inspector general about reporting appeared first on Checks and Balances Project.

As droughts and wildfires damage economies, 350.org called on governments to push for a global tax treaty that can make big oil and gas corporations pay for mounting climate costs.

This week in New York, governments wrapped up negotiations for the UN Tax Convention with some governments strongly pushing for a global tax system aligned with the Paris Agreement and other environmental treaties, which can hold big polluters accountable for climate damage.

Campaigners called on governments to support a global tax on fossil fuel profits to raise critically needed funds to help communities and countries hit hardest by climate disasters and ensure a fast, fair shift to renewable energy. Revenues can also be directly channeled to households struggling to pay bills or put food on the table due to spikes in energy and food prices.

While tax treaty negotiations took a step in the right direction, several rich countries tried to halt progress by sidelining positions that push for stronger environmental taxation and taxing rights for developing countries.

Set to be finalized in 2027, the UN Tax Treaty talks will resume in December, with the inclusion of a “polluters pay” principle on the table. If adopted, a legally binding mechanism can be set up to collect a global tax on the profits of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies, which posted more than $90 billion dollars in profits in the second quarter of 2026 alone.

Lisa Rose, Campaigner at 350.org, said:

"Big Oil’s staggering second quarter earnings prove that the money we need for solutions exists, it’s just in the wrong hands. As droughts and heatwaves drain public budgets and push up the cost of living, countries need these funds now to protect people from extreme heat and rising bills. The momentum for permanently taxing fossil fuel profits is here. Our leaders must not squander this chance to put that wealth where it belongs – into building a safer and more livable planet, not a hotter and more destructive one.”

Josh Bayly, Director of Sustainability at Consumers International, said:

"Affordability stands out as the top consumer concern worldwide. Spiking energy and food prices have turned essential daily activities like cooking a meal or using the air conditioner into a dilemma for ordinary households. Globally, consumer trust in fossil fuel companies is low, and the outstanding profits they just posted only deepens this distrust. The UN Tax Convention gives governments a real chance to make the energy system fairer: tax excess profits to ease the burden on consumers.”

Notes to the Editor:

• Analysis by Eurodad and the Global Alliance for Tax Justice estimates that a 20% surtax on profits of the world's 100 largest oil and gas companies could have generated more than $1.08 trillion since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015.

The planet’s oceans are an ally for fighting climate change. They absorb about a third of all human-generated carbon dioxide emissions. Many researchers are looking at ways to speed up the ocean’s ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

One proposed solution is to dump iron into ocean waters. This would trigger a bloom of phytoplankton—microscopic plant-like organisms that use sunlight to produce food—which would pull large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

But research published in the journal Nature shows that not all places are equal when it comes to ocean iron fertilization (OIF). The carbon dioxide removal strategy could have unintended side-effects, and its ecological impact and effectiveness depends on where it is put into action.

The team from the University of California, Irvine has found that implementing OIF at higher latitudes rather than near the equator could reduce environmental impacts while still achieving removal of carbon dioxide

“The Central Pacific should be avoided for OIF due to the severe ecological risks, and the Southern Ocean may offer the best balance between carbon sequestration and ecological risk over decadal timescales,” says Jun Yu of UCI’s department of earth systems science.

 

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

 

Artificial OIF is more than a theoretical concept, Yu says. Researchers have conducted field tests in the past. But those short-term OIF experiments were designed to see whether iron “is the limiting nutrient for phytoplankton growth in ocean regions, not to serve as a climate solution.”

To work as a climate solution, OIF would need to be done at much larger scales over longer periods. That could have unintended environmental consequences such as biodiversity loss, expansion of oxygen minimum zones, and disturbance of fish habitats. That’s because the added iron can deplete nutrients from water. That results in less zooplankton, tiny organisms that serve as food for fish and larger marine animals.

Yu, J. Keith Moore, Adam Martiny and colleagues set out to see which regions can achieve efficient, durable carbon dioxide removal, and what the ecological impact would be. They used an ocean iron fertilization model to analyze the fertilization potential and ecosystem impact across ten ocean biomes over 60 years.

The team found that OIF removed up to 5.3 parts per million of carbon dioxide, or 0.70 gigatons of carbon dioxide per year. They also found that the areas with the largest plankton blooms, and hence the most effective at carbon dioxide removal, were the Southern Ocean and the equatorial Pacific.

However, the strategy depleted nutrients near the equator. Fertilizing 0.35% of the ocean in the equatorial Pacific leads to at least 10% decline in zooplankton. Meanwhile, fertilizing 0.2% of the Southern Ocean led to a 10% increase in zooplankton.

“The next step would be to explore the fishery impact of OIF, with additional model experiments at more locations in the Southern Ocean to test the benefits and risks,” Yu says.

Source: Jun Yu et al. Climate benefit and ecological cost trade-offs for ocean iron fertilization. Nature, 2026.

Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory

The company plans to double its manufacturing capacity as it continues to see a “strong supply-demand environment” for gas turbines in the U.S., CFO Hiroshi Nishio said.

This week we’re finally doing it! We’re going to Kingwood, Texas, and talking about the greenbelt trail system I’ve been telling everyone about for years. This is a storytelling episode, featuring guests John Walsh, Jerry Lunow, and Bill Neuhaus, so I hope folks enjoy hearing about NASA, timber companies, bike trails, and Houston’s bayous. But also, stick around to hear how a suburban development in Texas from the 1970s mirrors and pre-dated Dutch bike planning with special guest, Steve Vance from Streetsblog Chicago.

Now, as you know at Talking Headways, we offer you three ways to enjoy our fine content:

• Read the full transcript (with a few AI typos) by clicking here.
• Reading an edited segment below the player on this page.
• Or simply putting in those AirPods and clicking the audio player below to get the full dulcet tones of our host and his guests:

Here’s the partial excerpt:

Steve Vance: I did not think about the benefit of living in Houston when we moved there. It only came to light when we moved away from Kingwood in 1996 to Batavia, Illinois.

And then my perspective and appreciation for the design of Kingwood changed again when I visited Houten in the Netherlands in 2011, where I recognized some of the design principles in Houten were actually present in Kingwood. And I was shocked that somebody in the ’70s had this idea that has been replicated 4,000 miles away at around the same time, but also I think in Davis, California, there are some parallels between Kingwood and their bike path system and Davis’s bike path system.

Jeff Wood: Throughout the production of this episode, I couldn’t shake thinking about how the United States and the Dutch diverged in the 1970s. In 1973, an oil crisis hit and prices spiked. To many people, this is a line of demarcation. Gary Nelson notes that 1973 is the year that petroleum killed America, and auto-oriented sprawl clearly won out over communities designed for active transportation like walking, biking, and transit.

Some countries, such as the Netherlands, made deliberate choices, moving towards less energy-intensive modes as the United States shifted further towards auto dependence. In 1979, with more oil embargoes and the election of Ronald Reagan, auto dependence and urban sprawl were set in stone for another generation.

Steve and I enjoyed a rare Texas bubble, a place where you could bike everywhere if you wished.

Steve Vance: Growing up there, I was a free-range kid before that phrase even existed. And I had a bicycle, and I was able to ride my bicycle to any of my friends’ houses in other subdivisions and ride it to the grocery store, which I think was called Randall’s at the time, and the library and school and the pool in my subdivision or in my friend’s subdivision because there was a greenbelt trail system, a network that was grade separated through the forest.

And then when I moved to Batavia, like, I was put on lockdown. I was not allowed to bike to certain parts of Batavia or Geneva. There’s a road in that part of Illinois called Randall Road. It probably has a state highway number. But I was not allowed to cross that road. And the thing is, the grocery store was on the other side of that road, and thus I was severely restricted.

Things that were normal for me to do in Kingwood, I was not allowed to do in Batavia because Batavia had very little bike infrastructure, had almost no on-street bike lanes, although Kingwood didn’t have any because it had such a robust trail network. And then the middle school that I attended in Batavia was built on a greenfield site at the edge of town, and so I either had to take a bus or one of my parents had to drive me

Jeff Wood: Steve wanted to bike and walk. But as kids, we didn’t know why we couldn’t or what was really different aside from the fact that one place had accessible transportation and the other really didn’t.

Steve Vance: So later the Dutch Consulate sent planners to come to Chicago to work with the Chicago Department of Transportation’s bike lane designers and planners.

And some events were open to the public, and so I attended one where one of the Dutch planners explained this layered network system. So there’s a network of roads for cars and vehicles, and there’s a separate network for biking, and they will intersect at certain points and you make certain treatments so that those intersections are safe.

But between points, you have completely separate networks. They don’t have to be the same network with the bike path and the road in the same alignment. You can separate them. It was neat to learn in like 2010 that there was a name and a concept and a process for doing what I had experienced as a child in Kingwood for five years.

These Dutch planners would say, “Get a map out. Mark the points of interest that you’re trying to promote cycling to, and draw straight lines between them.” So you can see the beginning of a network. Obviously, you can’t build bike trails in a straight line because there are buildings and natural resources in the way, and so then you try to draw the straightest line possible between the two points.

And so if you look at a map of Kingwood and you mark all the playing fields and the schools and the pools, it’s, it’s basically the whole bike path or multi-use path, the Greenbelt Trail, was designed to just connect all of those things. It hit every point that someone like me or my sister needed to go to frequently on our bikes.

The network was there for that.

Headline News:

• “Trump-Connected Greenland Energy Company Falls On Its Face” • The self-declared US firm Greenland Energy Company was all set to drill for oil in Greenland. It had no permit, but it did have a personal connection from President Donald Trump. As may be expected, the plan soon unraveled and Greenland Energy put the plan on hold. [CleanTechnica]

Pump jack (US DOE image)

• “Extreme Weather And Jellyfish Knock One-Fifth Of France’s Nuclear Capacity Offline” • France normally gets around 70% of its electricity with nuclear power. But the country is experiencing a shortfall of over 20% in nuclear power production as it was hit by environmental-related outages linked to drought, extreme heat, and an invasion of jellyfish. [Euronews]
• “How Nuclear, Gas, Wind, And Solar Power Are Affected During Heatwaves” • When temperatures soared past 40°C in parts of Europe this year, nuclear reactors shuttered, gas plants’ efficiency fell, wind speeds dropped, and electricity networks sagged. But solar power production increased because the heat came with clear skies. [CleanTechnica]
• “Nordex Lands 82-MW German Citizen Deal” • Nordex Group took orders totaling around 82 MW from EFG Energy Farming Group to supply and install twelve wind turbines for citizen wind projects in Lower Saxony. Nordex said the orders cover the Erlte-Endel project in the district of Vechta and the Bad Essen project cluster in the district of Osnabrück. [reNews]
• “What To Know About Elon Musk’s Massive $16.8 Billion Chip Factory” • Elon Musk plans to build a $16.8 billion chip factory that he says is set to be the largest building in the world. Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, announced the project as chip makers worldwide ramp up production in response to a surge of demand triggered by advances in AI. [ABC News]

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

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