Pacific nations are at the world’s biggest climate talks making the familiar plea to keep global warming under 1.5C to stay alive, as scientists say the world will now certainly surpass the limit — at least temporarily.
At the opening of the COP30 climate summit in Belém Brazil, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres made the same call that Pacific nations have for years.
“Let us be clear, the 1.5-degree limit is a red line for humanity. It must be kept within reach and scientists also tell us that this is still possible,” Guterres said.
“If we act now at speed and scale, we can make the overshoot as small, as short and as safe as possible.”
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) confirmed in its State of the Climate update that greenhouse gas emissions, which are heating the planet, have risen to a record high, with 2025 being on track to be the second or third warmest year on record.
“It will be virtually impossible to limit global warming to 1.5C in the next few years without temporarily overshooting this target,” WMO secretary-general Celeste Saulo said.
“But the science is equally clear that it’s still entirely possible and essential to bring temperatures back down to 1.5C by the end of the century.”
Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) climate justice campaigner India Logan-Riley said the world was now in “deeply unstable territory” with the “very existence” of some Pacific communities now at risk.
COP31 – a Pacific COP? As this COP starts, there is still uncertainty over where COP31 in 2026 will be hosted.
Both Australia — in conjunction with the Pacific — and Türkiye have bid to host the event.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has written twice to his counterpart looking for a compromise to break the deadlock.
Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr, who is in Belém, said it was important for Australia to be successful in its bid.
“We’re here in Brazil and the Amazon, and the focus next year needs to be a ‘Blue COP’, we need to focus on the oceans,” President Whipps said.
“One of the things I always tell people is, in some countries they only face droughts, or they may face a storm but in the Pacific we suffer from all of them; sea-level rise, storms, droughts, extreme heat.
“Other people, they can’t relate or they think it may be unreal.”
One of those people, US President Donald Trump, told the UN last month the climate crisis is “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”.
Palau has a particularly close relationship with the US as one of the Compact of Free Association (COFA) nations. The agreement gives the US military access to Palau, which in return is given financial assistance and for Palauans the right to work in the US.
Whipps said Trump’s comments were unfortunate, and more reason for COP to come to the Pacific.
“I would invite President Trump to come to the Pacific. He should visit Tuvalu, and he should visit Kiribati and Marshall Islands.”
Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr, who is in Belém . . . the renewable energy transition “gives us energy independence”. Image: UN Photo
100% renewable Pacific
The Pacific is aiming to be the first region in the world to be completely reliant on renewable energy, a campaign which being led by Whipps.
“Leading the energy transition not only helps the planet by reducing our carbon footprint, but also gives us energy independence, [it] allows us to create jobs locally, and it keeps the money circulating.”
Whipps wants Palau to be running completely off renewable energy by 2032.
Meanwhile, the UN emissions gap report shows the world is on track for 2.3C to 2.5C global warming, if nations stick to Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
However, it is an improvement from last year’s report, which predicted 2.6C to 2.8C of warming.
Pacific Islands Climate Action Network (PICAN) policy advisor Sindra Sharma said the report laid bare the fact that global ambition is nowhere near where it needs to be.
“[The new forecast] still is quite unacceptable for vulnerable communities and small island states in particular, because we’ll feel the effects the fastest with crossing anywhere beyond 1.5 even 1.51 it’s going to have significant implications.
“We’ve always had all the solutions to be able to do so and it’s just a lack of political will. It’s a choice that’s being made consistently and that choice is going to affect every single one on this earth.”
Sharma is hopeful there will be positive outcomes at this year’s COP, despite ongoing geopolitical tensions, which are in part driven by it being hosted close to the Amazon Rainforest — often referred to as the lungs of the earth — and marking 10 years since the Paris Agreement was signed.
It is also the first time Pacific nations have confirmation from the world’s top court that failing to protect people from the effects of climate change could violate international law.
“The advisory opinion that we have now is the first time that we’re going into COP with this kind of legal clarity and the legal clarity is telling us that there’s due diligence in terms of limiting warming to 1.5C.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
A new book by Thea Riofrancos called, Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, shows how the push for critical minerals like lithium and cobalt is creating a new wave of mining while perpetuating old patterns of exploitation and environmental destruction. She writes:
The energy transition is not a peaceful bridge, but a crucible where past, present, and possible futures collide.
She traces the story to the immediate aftermath of World War II. During the post-war years Western oil giants, namely Standard Oil and the Seven Sisters, controlled nearly all Middle Eastern and Venezuelan crude and in doing so established a global system of dependency. The “Seven Sisters” group included:
Standard Oil of New Jersey
Standard Oil of New York
Royal Dutch Shell
Anglo Persian Oil Company
Standard Oil of California
Gulf Oil, and
Texaco
Capitalism, colonialism, and the race for lithium
Riofrancos places lithium at the centre of the green energy transition. The lightweight metal is crucial in modern society, powering rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles, smartphones, and countless more electronic devices used today. Ironically, the foundation for this technology, as she traces, was laid in the 1970s by Exxon when it formed part of Seven Sisters under its previous name, Standard Oil of New Jersey.
Commercial lithium extraction in the US, she contends, is enabled by the 1872 General Mining Law. The legislation still governs lithium mining throughout America, and yet the supposed landmark law lacks environmental safeguards and water protection. As Riofrancos explains:
[it was] explicitly designed at the time of its passage to transfer Indigenous lands to white settlers.
Chile is also central to the story of lithium extraction, as told by Riofrancos, as well as the political changes that rocked Chile during Salvador Allende’s three-year stint as president.
just as copper was central to Allende’s vision of democratic socialism, so, too did it prove pivotal to the coup that deposed him on September 11, 1973.
When Allende moved to nationalise the copper industry, seizing the property of American mining firms, the US response was swift and severe. The Nixon administration hit back severely, leveraging funding strikes and blocking aid — placing Chile’s economy in a chokehold. This created, the author argues, an opening for the ascent of General Augusto Pinochet and his dictatorship (1973 – 1990).
State-owned Codelco now mines just a quarter of Chile’s copper. Meanwhile, firms like SQM control the Atacama’s lithium. Riofrancos notes SQM is “already infamous for its links to the Pinochet dictatorship.” She adds that its “scandals were so many that it boggles the mind.”
The Atacama Salt Flat, which boasts one of the the world’s richest lithium deposits, is now the heart of Chile’s lithium rush. The power conglomerates maintain hold these resources was on full display at the 2019 industry convention. Major producers — SQM, Albemarle and Tianqi — fiercely rejected a plan by London Metal Exchange (LME) to standardise the lithium futures market, fearing greater transparency and a level playing field among lithium producers. Still, beneath these theatrics, local communities remain an afterthought.
More of the same: UK Minerals Strategy
A new UK Critical Minerals Strategy is imminent. Think tanks and environmentalists, including the government-adjacent Royal United Services Institute have demanded a more “muscular” policy. However, based on the 2022 plan proposed by the then-Conservative Government, their strategy perpetuates existing patterns of extraction and inequality. It repackages the old model of extraction that treats the Global South as a resource frontier — more of the same.
The flagship company Pensana abandoned the UK in favour of the US whose incentives tipped the balance in their favour.
However, the core problem was revealed in its plan: the mine is in Angola, but the refinery and jobs were planned for Hull. This shows the UK strategy still treats Angola as a source of raw materials while trying to keep the valuable processing in the Global North, repeating a colonial division of labor where the South provides the resources.
Riofrancos warns that while lithium is needed for climate solutions existing efforts must be decoupled from colonial practices of extraction and exploitation to avoid greenwashing. Though she concedes that there are no easy answers to the current extraction race.
Still, the current path of green extraction empowers the same corporate behemoths. A just transition offers a way out of the centuries-old cycle of extraction. This means less mining, not more; robust public transit over endless electric cars, and a circular economy that prioritises material reuses materials. Above all else, it must restore power over resources to local communities.
British national newspapers devoted more than triple the space to advertising polluting industries such as oil, airlines, and sports utility vehicles than they did to covering last year’s United Nations climate talks, according to a new study.
Total high-carbon advertising — including for fossil fuel companies, cruises, and banks financing oil and gas – amounted to 5,086 column inches on two key dates during 2024’s COP29 climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, relative to 1,745 column inches for the negotiations themselves.
With the next round of talks, known as COP30, getting underway in Belém, Brazil, newspapers will likely repeat the pattern, warned Andrew Simms, co-director of the New Weather Institute think tank, which conducted the research.
As deadly storms rip through the Caribbean, a new United Nations report delivers a sobering warning: the world is failing to prepare for the climate it has already created.
UNEP’s Adaptation Gap Report 2025, aptly titled Running on Empty, finds that developing nations will need between US$310 and 365 billion annually by 2035 to cope with intensifying climate impacts. Yet, international public finance for adaptation fell to just US$26 billion in 2023, down from US$28 billion the previous year. The result: only one-twelfth of what’s needed is being delivered.
This gap is not an abstract number. It’s visible in the wreckage of homes, farms, and economies across our region. Last week, Hurricane Melissa, the strongest-ever storm to hit Jamaica, tore through the Caribbean, leaving destruction equivalent to nearly 30% of the island’s GDP. With at least 75 lives lost and damages exceeding US$50 billion, Melissa is not just another storm; it is a case study in the cost of global inaction.
A rapid attribution study found that climate change made Melissa four times more likely and increased its wind speeds by 7%, raising damages by around 12%. For Haiti, Jamaica, and other small island developing states (SIDS), such storms bring unbearable losses eroding livelihoods, tourism revenues, and vital infrastructure. These countries contribute the least to global emissions yet bear the highest costs.
The pattern repeats globally. This year’s monsoon floods in Pakistan displaced seven million people and destroyed thousands of homes. Whether in South Asia or the Caribbean, the message is clear: the failure to invest in adaptation is costing lives.
Adaptation is not a distant goal; it is an urgent necessity. It means building stronger flood defenses, adopting climate-smart agriculture, and developing social protection systems that safeguard the most vulnerable. Research by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) shows that every US$1 invested early in resilience saves more than US$5 in avoided losses. Yet, the world continues to spend far more on disaster relief than on prevention.
This failure is not just wasteful—it is self-defeating. Every dollar delayed multiplies the human and economic toll. In Haiti, where communities are already grappling with political instability, weak infrastructure, and high poverty, each storm magnifies vulnerabilities. The Caribbean, with its densely populated coastal areas and economies heavily dependent on tourism and agriculture, cannot afford to treat adaptation as optional.
At COP29 in Baku, governments pledged through the Baku to Belém Roadmap to mobilize US$1.3 trillion by 2035, including at least US$300 billion annually for developing nations. On paper, this looks ambitious. In reality, it falls far short of what is needed. Adjusted for inflation, adaptation costs could reach US$440–520 billion per year by 2035, and the US$300 billion target covers both mitigation and adaptation, with no separate adaptation goal yet defined.
Adaptation finance was meant to help nations prepare for rising seas, harsher droughts, and lethal floods. Yet, when those funds don’t arrive, countries are forced to borrow. In 2023, 59 least developed countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) paid US$37 billion to service their debts and received only US$32 billion in climate finance. These aren’t productive investments but emergency debts taken just to rebuild what has already been lost.
This is the new face of global inequality: countries that contributed least to the crisis are being made to pay twice—first through climate impacts, and then through debt. And while the rhetoric of “resilience” fills summit halls, the financial architecture remains rigged against the Global South. Only 15% of adaptation finance in recent years has been delivered as grants; the rest comes as loans. For every dollar of “climate support,” developing nations are paying back many more in interest.
The moral and economic absurdity is staggering. The IIED estimates that every US$1 invested in early adaptation saves at least US$5 in avoided losses. Yet the international community continues to treat resilience as an afterthought, not a necessity. Meanwhile, the Loss and Damage Fund—announced with much fanfare at COP28—remains largely empty, starved by the same rich countries that have pumped trillions into fossil fuel subsidies and corporate bailouts.
There are three urgent steps the global community must take to avert this collapse.
First, adaptation finance must be non-debt-creating. Grants, not loans, should form the backbone of resilience funding. Climate disasters are not development failures—they are external shocks imposed on vulnerable economies by centuries of industrial pollution. To charge interest on survival is an act of climate injustice.
Second, global lending must be reformed. Multilateral development banks and the IMF should integrate climate vulnerability into debt assessments and offer automatic debt suspension clauses in the wake of major disasters. The current model—where countries borrow at high rates to rebuild while creditors profit—is morally bankrupt.
Third, regional adaptation cooperation must be strengthened. From MENA’s shared drought resilience to South Asia’s early warning systems, collective investment in adaptation can deliver massive social and economic dividends. Regional funds, backed by concessional finance and local expertise, can bypass the bottlenecks of global bureaucracy.
Adaptation is not charity. It is reparative justice and economic common sense. Without it, the world’s poorest will be forced to rebuild the same roads, schools, and homes after every storm, each time at a higher cost. The Global South cannot be asked to “resilience its way” out of a crisis created by others while sinking deeper into debt.
If climate justice means anything, it must start by freeing the Global South from paying twice, once for emissions it didn’t cause, and again to survive them.
As deadly storms rip through the Caribbean, a new United Nations report delivers a sobering warning: the world is failing to prepare for the climate it has already created.
UNEP’s Adaptation Gap Report 2025, aptly titled Running on Empty, finds that developing nations will need between US$310 and 365 billion annually by 2035 to cope with intensifying climate impacts. Yet, international public finance for adaptation fell to just US$26 billion in 2023, down from US$28 billion the previous year. The result: only one-twelfth of what’s needed is being delivered.
This gap is not an abstract number. It’s visible in the wreckage of homes, farms, and economies across our region. Last week, Hurricane Melissa, the strongest-ever storm to hit Jamaica, tore through the Caribbean, leaving destruction equivalent to nearly 30% of the island’s GDP. With at least 75 lives lost and damages exceeding US$50 billion, Melissa is not just another storm; it is a case study in the cost of global inaction.
A rapid attribution study found that climate change made Melissa four times more likely and increased its wind speeds by 7%, raising damages by around 12%. For Haiti, Jamaica, and other small island developing states (SIDS), such storms bring unbearable losses eroding livelihoods, tourism revenues, and vital infrastructure. These countries contribute the least to global emissions yet bear the highest costs.
The pattern repeats globally. This year’s monsoon floods in Pakistan displaced seven million people and destroyed thousands of homes. Whether in South Asia or the Caribbean, the message is clear: the failure to invest in adaptation is costing lives.
Adaptation is not a distant goal; it is an urgent necessity. It means building stronger flood defenses, adopting climate-smart agriculture, and developing social protection systems that safeguard the most vulnerable. Research by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) shows that every US$1 invested early in resilience saves more than US$5 in avoided losses. Yet, the world continues to spend far more on disaster relief than on prevention.
This failure is not just wasteful—it is self-defeating. Every dollar delayed multiplies the human and economic toll. In Haiti, where communities are already grappling with political instability, weak infrastructure, and high poverty, each storm magnifies vulnerabilities. The Caribbean, with its densely populated coastal areas and economies heavily dependent on tourism and agriculture, cannot afford to treat adaptation as optional.
At COP29 in Baku, governments pledged through the Baku to Belém Roadmap to mobilize US$1.3 trillion by 2035, including at least US$300 billion annually for developing nations. On paper, this looks ambitious. In reality, it falls far short of what is needed. Adjusted for inflation, adaptation costs could reach US$440–520 billion per year by 2035, and the US$300 billion target covers both mitigation and adaptation, with no separate adaptation goal yet defined.
Adaptation finance was meant to help nations prepare for rising seas, harsher droughts, and lethal floods. Yet, when those funds don’t arrive, countries are forced to borrow. In 2023, 59 least developed countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) paid US$37 billion to service their debts and received only US$32 billion in climate finance. These aren’t productive investments but emergency debts taken just to rebuild what has already been lost.
This is the new face of global inequality: countries that contributed least to the crisis are being made to pay twice—first through climate impacts, and then through debt. And while the rhetoric of “resilience” fills summit halls, the financial architecture remains rigged against the Global South. Only 15% of adaptation finance in recent years has been delivered as grants; the rest comes as loans. For every dollar of “climate support,” developing nations are paying back many more in interest.
The moral and economic absurdity is staggering. The IIED estimates that every US$1 invested in early adaptation saves at least US$5 in avoided losses. Yet the international community continues to treat resilience as an afterthought, not a necessity. Meanwhile, the Loss and Damage Fund—announced with much fanfare at COP28—remains largely empty, starved by the same rich countries that have pumped trillions into fossil fuel subsidies and corporate bailouts.
There are three urgent steps the global community must take to avert this collapse.
First, adaptation finance must be non-debt-creating. Grants, not loans, should form the backbone of resilience funding. Climate disasters are not development failures—they are external shocks imposed on vulnerable economies by centuries of industrial pollution. To charge interest on survival is an act of climate injustice.
Second, global lending must be reformed. Multilateral development banks and the IMF should integrate climate vulnerability into debt assessments and offer automatic debt suspension clauses in the wake of major disasters. The current model—where countries borrow at high rates to rebuild while creditors profit—is morally bankrupt.
Third, regional adaptation cooperation must be strengthened. From MENA’s shared drought resilience to South Asia’s early warning systems, collective investment in adaptation can deliver massive social and economic dividends. Regional funds, backed by concessional finance and local expertise, can bypass the bottlenecks of global bureaucracy.
Adaptation is not charity. It is reparative justice and economic common sense. Without it, the world’s poorest will be forced to rebuild the same roads, schools, and homes after every storm, each time at a higher cost. The Global South cannot be asked to “resilience its way” out of a crisis created by others while sinking deeper into debt.
If climate justice means anything, it must start by freeing the Global South from paying twice, once for emissions it didn’t cause, and again to survive them.
Pacific civil society groups say 2025 has been a big year for the ocean.
Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) representative Maureen Penjueli said the Pacific Ocean was being hyper-militarised and there was a desire for seabed minerals to be used to build-up military capacity.
“Critical minerals, whether from land or from the deep ocean itself, have a military end use, and that’s been made very clear in 2025,” Penjueli said during the Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) 2025 State of the Ocean webinar.
“They’re deemed extremely vital for defence industrial base, enabling the production of military platforms such as fighter aircraft, tanks, missiles, submarines.
“2025 is the year where we see the link between critical minerals on the sea floor and use [in the] military.”
PANG’s Joey Tau said one of the developments had been the increase in countries calling for a moratorium or pause on deep sea mining, which was now up to 40.
“Eight of which are from the Pacific and a sub-regional grouping the MSG (Melanesian Spearhead Group) still holds that political space or that movement around a moratorium.”
Deep-sea mining rules
Tau said it came as the UN-sanctioned International Seabed Authority tried to come to an agreement on deep-sea mining rules at the same time as the United States is considering its own legal pathway.
“It is a bad precedent setting by the US, we hope that the ISA both assembly and the council would hold ground and warn the US.”
He said unlike US, China spoke about the importance of multilateralism and it for global partners to maintain unity within the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) agreement which has not been ratified by the United States.
Also in February was the deep sea minerals talanoa, where Pacific leaders met to discuss deep sea mining.
“Some of our countries sit on different sides of the table on this issue. You have countries who are sponsoring and who are progressing the agenda of deep-sea mining, not only within their national jurisdiction, but also in the international arena,” Tau said.
In May, UN human rights experts expressed concern about the release of treated nuclear wastewater.
Japan’s government has consistently maintained the release meets international safety standards, and monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency shows there is no measurable impact beyond Japan’s coastal waters.
Legal and moral problem
However, Ocean Vision Legal’s Naima Taafaki-Fifita said as well as being an environmental issue, it was also a legal and moral problem.
“By discharging these radioactive contaminants into the Pacific, Japan risks breaching its obligations under international law,” she said.
“[The UN special rapporteurs] caution that this may pose grave risks to human rights, particularly the rights to life, health, food and culture, not only in Japan, but across the Pacific.”
Taafaki-Fifita said it was a “deeply personal” issue for Pacific people who lived with the nuclear legacy of testing.
In September, what is known as the “High Seas Treaty” received its 60th ratification which means it will now be legally effective in January 2026.
The agreement allows international waters — which make up nearly two-thirds of the ocean — to be placed into marine protected areas.
Taafaki-Fitita said it was important that Pacific priorities were visible and heard as the treaty became implemented.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
In an open letter released at the Belém Climate Summit, special envoys for strategic regions have expressed their support for the COP30 presidency and for all leaders committed to advancing climate crisis action.
Former New Zealand prime minister Dame Jacinda Ardern, the “voice” for Oceania, was among the seven climate envoys signing the letter.
The document acknowledges the progress achieved through the Paris Agreement and the Dubai Consensus, while underscoring the need for further advances “in light of the Global Stocktake” and warning of the growing challenge posed by climate disinformation.
The text calls for unity and concrete action to bridge the “triple gap” between climate finance, adaptation, and mitigation.
These bottlenecks, it emphasised, could not be resolved solely through revisions to Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), but required tangible policy measures.
The Baku to Belém Roadmap is highlighted as a vehicle for developing innovative solutions to unlock large-scale investments while reducing financing costs.
In addressing the spread of climate disinformation, the special envoys underlined the need for coordinated responses, collective strategies, and reinforced regulatory frameworks.
The letter was signed by Special Envoys Adnan Z. Amin (Middle East), Arunabha Ghosh (South Asia), Carlos Lopes (Africa), Jacinda Ardern (Oceania), Jonathan Pershing (North America), Laurence Tubiana (Europe), and Patricia Espinosa (Latin America and the Caribbean).
The open letter to leaders in Belém and to the COP30 presidency from the special envoys for strategic regions
We, the Special Envoys for our respective regions, wish to express our strong support for the Brazilian Presidency and all leaders committed to climate action at Belém.
COP30 presents both a significant opportunity and a profound challenge. To remain aligned with the ambition of the Paris Agreement amidst an increasingly complex geopolitical environment, we must demonstrate decisive progress. Multilateralism, grounded in international law and guided by the Paris Agreement, remains our most effective framework.
A clear signal from COP30 that the international community stands united in its determination to confront climate change will resonate globally. Our shared commitment to fully implement the Paris Agreement is the strongest collective response to a crisis that is disproportionately affecting vulnerable households and countries, devastating lives, livelihoods, and the ecosystems upon which we all depend.
We should also recognise the progress achieved since the Paris Agreement in 2015. The rapid growth of clean solutions is bending the trajectory of global emissions; where we had been on track to exceed a devastating temperature increase of more than 4°C, we are now able to project a level of less than 2.5°C.
But we need greater progress. We are not on track to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, and in particular, we are taking insufficient action to keep 1.5°C within reach, or even enough to keep warming well below 2°C. And every tenth of a degree of additional warming will mean harsh consequences for the world.
COP30 must acknowledge and address the “triple gap” in mitigation, adaptation and finance. Doing so requires an accelerated effort across the next decade, mobilising the full range of tools, resources, and partnerships available to us. This is at the heart of the goal of COP30: to advance the full implementation of both the Paris Agreement and the UAE Consensus, informed by the Global Stocktake presented at COP28 in Dubai.
To accelerate progress, we must maintain a laser focus on concrete, coordinated action.
The Action Agenda is a powerful reservoir of those actions, which must be structured, monitored, and supported for effective delivery. Addressing the gap should not be understood solely as revising Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), but rather as translating ambition into policies that enable each country to overperform on its existing commitments. And the policies we take, as has been amply demonstrated in our successes to date, can marry not only climate benefits, but also contribute to growing our economies, promote our national security, improve the welfare of our citizens, and promote a healthy environment.
Tripling global renewable energy capacity is a goal within reach. Collectively, we have the technology and resources: what is required now is scaled investment in all regions. The Baku to Belém roadmap to mobilise US$1.3 trillion annually for developing countries outlines both established and innovative solutions to deliver investment at scale at reduced costs of finance. To operationalise it, clear milestones, mandates, and responsibilities are needed.
Ministers of finance should take the lead in defining the priorities. Creating fiscal space, minimizing debt burdens, effectively mobilising domestic and international finance, and ensuring enabling policy environments, alongside increased investment in the Global South, are all essential to making this roadmap credible and implementable.
Strengthening resilience and adaptation are equally critical. Climate impacts are increasingly a major barrier to sustainable economic and social development. We must work together to define the indicators that do not impose resource-intensive reporting burdens but instead help our economies and societies adapt to their local circumstances and become resilient.
We must engage the insurance sector, central banks, and private investors to close the protection gap that threatens long-term developmental gains.
Countries pursuing the transition away from fossil fuels should define roadmaps, in line with their national circumstances, while fostering dialogue between producers and buyers of fossil fuels. Roadmaps to end deforestation and restore ecosystems are equally necessary. Taken together, these pathways can allow countries to implement the long-term strategies submitted in previous years.
For the first time, COP30 will also confront the challenge of climate disinformation: a growing threat that undermines public trust and policy implementation. Combatting this challenge requires coordinated approaches, shared strategies, and strengthened regulatory cooperation. We must shine the spotlight on our collective progress, in general, but also cases in particular where countries have met their climate targets ahead of schedule, demonstrating a positive bias for action.
Lastly, we need an evolution of the climate regime that makes implementation more effective and inclusive. Progress depends on joining forces with the local authorities, economic sectors, governments, and civil society. Subnational leaders, from governors, to regional authorities, mayors, and community representatives, must be empowered to reinforce and complement NDCs and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs). COP30 is the moment to have them at the table and to craft a new approach that brings all relevant actors together in a global effort to safeguard our common future.
It is the moment to remind ourselves of the need for solidarity, and to recognise our agency — we have it within our power to change the future for the better.
Signed:
Adnan Z. Amin (Special Envoy for Middle East), chair, World Energy Council; CEO of COP28; former director-general, International Renewable Energy Agency
Arunabha Ghosh (Special Envoy for South Asia), founder-CEO, Council on Energy, Environment and Water
Carlos Lopes (Special Envoy for Africa), chair, Africa Climate Foundation; former executive
secretary, UN Economic Commission for Africa
Jacinda Ardern (Special Envoy for Oceania), former Prime Minister of New Zealand
Jonathan Pershing (Special Envoy for North America); former US Special Envoy for Climate Change
Laurence Tubiana (Special Envoy for Europe), dean, Paris Climate School; CEO, European
Climate Foundation; former French Special Envoy for Climate Change
Patricia Espinosa (Special Envoy for Latin America and the Caribbean), former executive
secretary, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
As the homes of Gaza’s families lie in ruins, its farmlands and water supply now also pose lethal risks in environmental and health catastrophe.
SPECIAL REPORT:By Elis Gjevori
Israel’s war on Gaza has not only razed entire neighbourhoods to the ground, displaced families multiple times and decimated medical facilities, but also poisoned the very ground and water on which Palestinians depend.
Four weeks into a fragile ceasefire, which Israel has violated daily, the scale of the environmental devastation is becoming painfully clear.
In Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, what was once a lively community has become a wasteland. Homes lie in ruins, and an essential water source, once a rainwater pond, now festers with sewage and debris.
For many displaced families, it is both home and hazard.
Umm Hisham, pregnant and displaced, trudges through the foul water with her children. They have nowhere else to go.
“We took refuge here, around the Sheikh Radwan pond, with all the sufferings you could imagine, from mosquitoes to sewage with rising levels, let alone the destruction all around. All this poses a danger to our lives and the lives of our children,” she said, speaking to Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim Alkhalili.
The pond, designed to collect rainwater and channel it to the sea, now holds raw sewage after Israeli air attacks destroyed the pumps. With electricity and sanitation systems crippled, contaminated water continues to rise, threatening to engulf nearby homes and tents.
Grave impacts
“There is no doubt there are grave impacts on all citizens: Foul odours, insects, mosquitoes. Also, foul water levels have exceeded 6 metres high without any protection; the fence is completely destroyed, with high possibility for any child, woman, old man, or even a car to fall into this pond,” said Maher Salem, a Gaza City municipal officer speaking to Al Jazeera.
Local officials warn that stagnant water could cause disease outbreaks, especially among children. Yet for many in Gaza, there are no alternatives.
Gaza contaminated water risk Video: Al Jazeera
“Families know that the water they get from the wells and from the containers or from the water trucks is polluted and contaminated … but they don’t have any other choice,” said Al Jazeera journalist Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City.
Palestinian Ambassador to Brazil Ibrahim al-Zeben at COP30 . . . “the deliberate destruction of sewage and water networks has led to the contamination of groundwater and coastal waters.” Image: SBS TikTok screenshot APR
Destroyed water infrastructure At the COP30 Climate Summit in Brazil, described the crisis as an environmental catastrophe intertwined with Israel’s genocide.
“There’s no secret that Gaza is suffering because of the genocide that Israel continues to wage, a war that has created nearly a quarter of a million victims and produced more than 61 million tonnes of rubble, some of which is contaminated with hazardous materials,” he said.
“In addition, the deliberate destruction of sewage and water networks has led to the contamination of groundwater and coastal waters. Gaza now faces severe risks to public health, and environmental risks are increasing,” al-Zeben added.
Agricultural land ‘destroyed’
Israel’s attacks have also “destroyed” much of the enclave’s agricultural land, leaving it “in a state of severe food insecurity and famine with food being used as a weapon,” he said.
In September, a UN report warned freshwater supplies in Gaza are “severely limited and much of what remains is polluted”.
Piles of Gaza garbage have bred many pests and spread diseases. Image: AJ screenshot APR
“The collapse of sewage treatment infrastructure, the destruction of piped systems and the use of cesspits for sanitation have likely increased contamination of the aquifer that supplies much of Gaza with water,” the report by the United Nations Environment Programme noted.
Back in Sheikh Radwan, the air hangs thick with rot and despair. “When every day is a fight to find water, food, and bread,” journalist Mahmoud said, “safety becomes secondary.”
A New Zealand pro-Palestine protester with a watermelon “Free Palestine” placard at traffic lights in a West Auckland rally yesterday. Image: Asia Pacific Report
By late 2024, dredgers began carving through the seabed off the coast of Presidente Kennedy, a small town in southern Espírito Santo, once known for its quiet beaches. This is the chosen site of Porto Central, Brazil’s next mega-port and one of the most ambitious private logistics projects in the country’s history.
Promoters describe Porto Central as “one of the largest industrial port complexes in Latin America”, a project meant to redefine Brazil’s export future. Yet, behind the promises of jobs and progress, tension is growing along this quiet stretch of coast. Critics are questioning who truly benefits from this ambitious initiative and who bears the hidden costs.
Porto Central spans 2,000 hectares, an area roughly the size of 2,800 football pitches, with a 25-metre-deep access channel capable of hosting giant VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier) vessels. A single VLCC can carry approximately two million barrels of crude oil.
The project would host up to 54 terminals serving oil and gas, agribusiness, minerals, containers, and even renewable energy. Construction is divided into five phases, with total investment estimated around R$16bn (approximately $2.9bn).
Porto Central — A city by the sea
Porto Central’s attraction is geography. Sitting halfway along Brazil’s coastline, it promises to reduce transshipment and shorten export routes for oil and gas, grains, and iron ore.
Several major backers, including TPK Logística S.A., the Dutch company Van Oord, and the European subsidiary of US-based company Modern American Recycling Services (M.A.R.S.), are supporting Porto Central’s vast project, a deepwater hub designed to link Brazil’s pre-salt oil fields, agribusiness, and mining industries directly to global trade routes.
The pitch is clear and simple: reduce transshipment costs, shorten export routes, and compete with maritime giants like Rotterdam, Singapore, and Shanghai.
Phase 1 involves four core components: dredging 60 million m3 of seabed (the equivalent of 25,000 Olympic swimming pools); constructing a south breakwater with rock quarried 26 km inland; building a deep-water bulk and liquids terminal for oil transshipment; and developing a 65-hectare back area to assemble pipelines and foundations. Implementation began in late 2024, with full operational capacity planned for the end of the decade.
Yet, beneath the display of engineering confidence, lies a tangled web of risks.
Dredging up damage
The socio-environmental stakes are immense. Porto Central’s environmental impact report (RIMA) outlines a list of risks rarely seen in such concentration: seabed dredging that could raise turbidity suffocating coral and fish, altering sediment flow, accelerating coastal erosion.
Protected species, including sea turtles, dolphins, and even migrating whales, use this stretch of coast to feed and breed. Noise, ship traffic, and artificial light threaten those rhythms.
Artisanal fishermen, farmers, and quilombola communities, many of whom operate within sight of the dredging site, risk losing both fishing grounds and income. Past compensation programmes for similar projects have proved inconsistent.
In 2023, Brazil’s environmental agency, Ibama, issued an installation license (LI) to Porto Central relating to Phase 1 of the project, requiring extra monitoring and mitigation. Environmentalists warn that enforcement capacity remains limited.
Voices
Local voices warn that the ecological and social costs of Porto Central could far outweigh its promises. Teacher, environmentalist and activist, José Roberto da Silva Vidal, who has been following the project’s impact in Presidente Kennedy, spoke with deep concern:
It’s heartbreaking to see what’s happening to our land and sea as Porto Central moves forward. The restinga forests are being cleared, rocks are blasted apart, and the water that sustains life here is under threat. Every new truck, every machine adds to the damage releasing more emissions into an already fragile atmosphere. Calling this progress ignores the truth we’re all facing — the planet is warning us, and yet we keep choosing to look away.
On the front line against the Porto Central project, the grassroots group REDI, gives voice to fishing families and riverside communities whose lives and traditions are at risk. FASE Espírito Santo stands with them, supporting local communities, defending their land and waters, and demanding accountability from those pushing destructive projects.
Marcos Pedlowski, a researcher and associate professor at the State University of Northern Rio de Janeiro (UENF), expresses deep concern about the potential impact of Porto Central on the small, fragile town of Presidente Kennedy. His worries are based in nearly two decades of research and firsthand experience living among those affected by the Açu Port, another large-scale project located less than 100 km from Porto Central:
Presidente Kennedy is a poor, quiet place, unprepared for a project of this size. When thousands of workers arrive, life here will change overnight, and not for the better. We’ll see more social tension, more prostitution, more alcohol and drugs. Violence will rise, and the community will be left to deal with the consequences.
He warns that these social risks are tied to deeper political realities:
We already live with corruption and heavy-handed policing in Espírito Santo. When you add a project like Porto Central to that mix, you’re setting the stage for even greater injustice.
For Pedlowski, what’s happening in Presidente Kennedy is part of a larger story, one he has seen unfold before along Brazil’s coast:
These are what I call sacrifice ports. The investors know the damage they’ll cause: the erosion, the pollution, the displacement of fishermen and quilombola families. But the profits speak louder. Behind all the promises, what’s really at play is the takeover of land and sea, with the state working hand in hand with corporate power.
A fossil fuel magnet
Some of Porto Central’s confirmed clients are hardly green. The company has signed contracts with Brazil’s state-owned oil and gas company, Petrobras (2021), Norwegian Equinor (2024), Chinese CNOOC (2024), and Spanish Repsol Sinopec (2025), to handle crude oil and derivatives.
José Maria Vieira de Novaes, Porto Central’s CEO, described oil as “one of the anchors of the project”, citing government forecasts of booming exports and limited existing infrastructure.
“The existing terminals can’t absorb what’s coming,” he told Folha Business in 2022.
While Brazil pledges to decarbonise, its newest mega-port is potentially built to accelerate fossil-fuel throughout.
According to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), Ronaldo Moreira Vieira is listed in the Panama Papers database. Being listed “active” in that database means the entity was operational at the time of the 2016 leak, evidence of involvement in offshore structuring. Though not proof of illegality, the revelation invites scrutiny over transparency and beneficial ownership.
Several of these companies operate within the same region as the port. Some are active in real estate and energy, the very sectors poised to benefit from Porto Central’s rise. Such overlap could allow Novaes to benefit indirectly from Porto Central’s infrastructure expansion, a potential conflict of interest that blurs the line between public good and private gain.
Hazards and mitigation
Brazil’s environmental agency, Ibama, has already required Porto Central to conduct additional sediment and noise studies before advancing major phases of construction. While the company claims to operate under “international environmental standards”, localNGOs accuse it of pre-empting full approval.
The list of some of the potential hazards reads like an environmental check-list from hell: destruction of marine habitats from dredging, disturbance to turtle nesting and marine mammal migration, erosion of beaches from altered sediment flow, pollution from oil spills, waste and sewage, noise and vibration from heavy machinery disturbing wildlife and residents, salinisation of groundwater, introduction of invasive species via ballast water, accident and spills during ship-to-ship transfer, destruction of mangroves, long-term erosion along the Presidente Kennedy coastline.
Porto Central vs Açu Port: a tale of two mega ports
Both Porto Central and Açu Port, located less than 100 km apart along Brazil’s southeast coast, share grand visions, deepwater and export terminals, and industrial zones promising jobs and growth.
Açu, launched in 2013 in São João da Barra, in Rio de Janeiro state, has matured into a functioning port and energy hub. Yet, academicresearchreveal deep scars: displacement of fishing families, salinisation of water tables, and unfulfilled social compensation. Research papers describe community disruption and environmental degradation as long-term legacies of the project.
Carlos Freitas, an environmentalist with the NGO REDI, says the story repeating in Presidente Kennedy is painfully familiar. His group has been working with fishing families and the farmers in the MST (landless workers’ movement) settlements near Morro da Serrinha, where quarrying for Porto Central’s construction has already disrupted lives.
What happened at Açu Port is happening again here – the same promises, the same silence about the damage. They call it progress, but what we see is destruction disguised as development.
He explains that company meetings are called with only a few days’ notice, leaving little room for real participation. Meanwhile, explosions from the quarry scare off animals, cause livestock miscarriages, and shake the homes of farming families.
People are being misled with talk of jobs and growth, while explosions shake their land and animals flee. In the MST settlements, families are watching their crops and animals suffer. Porto Central isn’t bringing life to this region – it’s taking it away.
This illustrates a shared Brazilian dilemma, rapid industrialisation without governance or ecological safeguards.
Logistics
Beneath the promise of progress lies uncertainty. The project relies on unfinished national logistic links, including the EF-118 railway between the capital of Espírito Santo, Vitória, and Rio de Janeiro, EF-352 linking the states of Espírito Santo, Minas Gerais and Goiás, and highway upgrades on BR-101 and BR-262. Without them, Porto Central could become a bottleneck. The port’s promoters insist the state government’s commitment will guarantee completion, but Brazil’s infrastructure history is littered with stalled railways.
Add to that the climate challenge, as rising seas and stronger storms could test the port’s defences before it’s even operational.
Ambition and accountability
Porto Central sums up Brazil’s eternal paradox: vast potential, fragile governance.
It could, in theory, anchor Brazil’s future in global trade. Yet, without transparency, oversight, and rigorous socio-environmental stewardship, it risks becoming another cautionary tale, of profit for a few and pollution for many, a crossroads between development and destruction.
With ownership structures stretching into offshore secrecy jurisdictions, and leadership linked to a constellation of private companies, accountability remains elusive.
Whether Porto Central becomes Brazil’s Rotterdam, or its next development scandal, will depend less on engineering than on ethics.
For many locals, the question isn’t whether Porto Central will rise, but who it’ll serve once it does.
Porto Central did not respond to a request for comment.
In the last five years, certain environmental justice groups and their agents have enjoyed the selective largesse of mainstream environmental groups and governmental agencies at the federal and State level. On the one hand this has increased the ubiquity of environmental justice, at least rhetorically, as well as the operating budgets for select environmental justice organizations. But we must ask ourselves what was/is the cost for certain environmental justice organizations to enjoy being selected and hand picked as the “leading” groups and primary spokespeople for the environmental justice movement? And, equally important, what effects do these “selections” have on the larger environmental justice movement, especially those community-based, grassroots organizations that are accountable to the poorest and most polluted communities in the nation and, in some cases, as the case with Cancer Alley in Louisiana, the entire world?
Leonid Pshenichov, a 70-year-old biologist, has been arrested by the Kremlin for “undermining Russia’s industrial trawling for krill in Antarctica.” He’s been accused of High Treason. He was arrested while preparing to travel to Australia to attend a conference for protecting Antarctic marine life.
According to Russian authorities, Leonid is a citizen of the Russian Federation who defected by joining Ukraine’s delegation to an Antarctic conference, known as the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources. The accusation claims Leonid is using his position to undermine Russia’s fishing of krill in Antarctica by supporting a Ukrainian proposal to “restrict krill harvesting.”
The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, consisting of 27 member states since 1982, proposes creation of a protected area around the Antarctic Peninsula specifically to protect krill, the prime ingredient in the marine food chain in the Southern Ocean. “This year, for the first time, the number of krill fished in Antarctic waters reached what scientists believe is an unsustainable level.” (Russia Arrests Ukrainian Biologist for Backing Curbs on Antarctic Krill Fishing, The Guardian, Oct. 26, 2025)
Russia and China have blocked proposals for Marine Protected Areas (MPA) in the region for decades. Members of the Commission have called for member states Australia, the US (really?) Japan, and others to condemn Moscow’s actions. Of note: Leonid has conducted research for the Commission since 1983 and as a Ukrainian scientist since 1994. He and family reside in Kerch, Crimea. According to several scientists familiar with his work: His contribution t0 the Commission is “difficult to overestimate.”
Dan Crockett, executive director of the conservation charity Blue Marine Foundation, claims Pschenichnov has been imprisoned for “nothing more than providing scientific evidence about the impact of krill fishing on the Antarctic ecosystem,” Ibid.
Krill Superheroes: According to the National Science Foundation, Antarctic krill are the “Superheroes of the Southern Ocean.” The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA, which is on Trump’s chopping block) refers to krill as: “Tiny Krill: Giants in the Ocean Marine Life Food Chain.”
NatureCommunications describes krill as marine animals that create “the largest monospecific aggregations (swarms) in the animal kingdom,” which means they are easy prey for hungry whales as well as gigantic fishing trawlers.
Moreover, climate change has a position in the life cycle of krill: The Importance of Antarctic Krill in Biogeochemical Cycles, Nature Communications, October 2019, explains the significance of krill as a significant carbon sink: “The role of phytoplankton in atmospheric CO2 drawdown and fish production has been the central focus of many biogeochemical studies,” Ibid.
Industrial Scale Krill Fishing
“The huge trawlers move forward, slowly. Just a short distance from one another, each brand their nets – hundreds of metres in length – before submerging them in the icy waters of the Southern Ocean.” (Licensed to Krill:The Industry Pressures on the Southern Ocean, Oceanographic, September 4, 2025).
As of 2025, Alistar Allan remembers: “Recounting his experience of the fishing effort documented back in 2022 and 2023, Alistair Allan, Antarctic Director at the Bob Brown Foundation admits that he was “blown away” by what he saw, “amazed by the concentration of fishing effort in this small patch of ocean,” Ibid.
Krill fishing by gargantuan trawlers has steadily grown from 106,00o tons in 2006 to 518,000 tons in 2025. Krill is used in salmonid fish farming and as pet food and by humans for its remarkable omega3 content.
At this year’s United Nations Oceans Conference in Nice, France personalities such as renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle and actor Benedict Cumberbatch called for a complete ban on krill fishing, claiming the industry is a “non-essential activity.” And making matters even worse, industrial fishing not only negatively impacts one of the most fragile ecosystems of the planet but also directly worsens the climate crisis by eliminating a significant carbon sink.
“If you look at where krill goes, it’s into things that we really do not need,” says Alistair Allan. “It’s not providing an essential foundation for global food security; it’s not feeding the world. It’s been put into pet food, it’s put into salmon aquaculture to feed farmed fish, and it goes into supposed health supplements,” Ibid.
As it happens, human-oriented bizarre nature scenarios keep showing up in the oddest circumstances, for example, the Southern Ocean experiences a surrealistic battle scene of sea mammals, like whales, and human craving for health perfection and abrupt climate change and gigantic metallic trawlers at sea all simultaneously attacking tiny, very small, shrimp-like crustaceans typically 1-2 cm long found at the base, literally the foundation, of the marine food chain. Under normal circumstances the often-transparent creatures use quick backward swimming to escape predators. But trawler nets with total stretch length of 133 m (440 feet) and a mouth perimeter of 300 m (990 feet) wide are a bit too much for quickie escape techniques that have been perfected for centuries. The modern world may be too much for krill that miraculously withstood the aging of time with two lineages of krill surviving the mass extinction event 65 million years ago. Well now, give humans only maybe 200 hundred years to nearly wipeout 65 million years of rugged evolution. Something doesn’t seem right.
The average krill fishing trawler catches roughly 100 tons of krill per day, which is equivalent to 100,000,000 krill per day per ship, so it takes an average trawler about 10 days to catch one billion (1,000,000,000). Krill fishing trawlers can stay at sea for several weeks to months at a time, and sometimes for an entire season (up to 8 months), by using transshipment to offload their catch onto refrigerated cargo vessels (reefers) at sea.
This article is proof positive that civilization is in deep, deep trouble, as it scavenges for the last remaining, most fundamental to life, creatures on the planet. Nothing else compares to such a perfect metaphor for a dying civilization as “harvesting krill.” Welcome to the world of insanity and some strange level of stupidity.
As a footnote to this story and as an alternative to industrial fishing of krill: Ashlan Cousteau, award-winning environmental journalist, producer, and co-founder of EarthEcho International is tackling the krill crisis with a simple but transformative solution. Through her new company, SeaVoir, she’s launched an algae-based omega-3 that delivers the same nutrition as fish and krill oil at the same cost — without harming marine ecosystems.
Log landing, Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
Two bills making their way through the Senate are continuing the administration’s attack on national forest land, with both taking different approaches to moral panics Trump is currently stirring up: blaming Democrats for lackluster wildfire management and immigration.
The first bill, the Fix Our Forests Act, was introduced by Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah). Upon first glance, the act has some worthy goals, specifically addressing wildfire threats in high-priority fire sheds and improving tools to reduce wildfire risks and improve forest health. It would create a “Fireshed Registry” that contains geospatial data on wildfire exposure, hazardous fuels management, and tracking project effectiveness, and establish a Wildland Fire Intelligence Center to provide fire managers with scientific and technical analysis, similar to the work being done by California’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force.
But as critics have pointed out, there are some troubling inclusions. The first centers on environmental reviews, specifically the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA). Sections 101(c), 103(e), and 105(e) all specify that various aspects of fireshed management — designation of fireshed management areas, establishment and maintenance of the Fireshed Registry, and fireshed assessments — are exempt from NEPA requirements. In a sign-on letter, environmental justice organizations warned that the removal of NEPA requirements would eliminate essential scientific and public input, potentially leading to inaccurate assessments and decisions.
Another concern is Section 106, which grants various authorities the power to undertake fireshed management projects across thousands of acres for virtually any reason. These projects have broad objectives, such as “removing vegetation or other activities to promote healthy forest stands” or “to reduce hazardous fuels,” which opens the land to logging activity under the guise of wildfire prevention. The sign-on letter described this inclusion as “log first, look later,” and Earthjustice released a statement calling the act “nothing more than a boon to the logging and wood pellet industry.”
Last week, the bill passed the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry and has been placed on the Senate’s Legislative Calendar.
The second bill, the Border Lands Conservation Act, was introduced by Sen. Mike Lee (R- Utah) at the beginning of October. The bill mandates that the Secretaries of the Interior, Agriculture, and Homeland Security survey all existing roads on federal land, including national parks and forests, and, if necessary, construct new, accessible roads to deter illegal border crossings. The bill also calls for the installation of “tactical infrastructure” on forest land – meaning “observation points, remote video surveillance systems, motion sensors, vehicle barriers, fences, roads, bridges, drainage, and detection devices.” Like the previous bill, the Border Lands Conservation Act is not concerned with the environmental impact these projects would have on the land.
More concerning, as some critics have pointed out, the bill defines land covered under the legislation as “located in a unit, or in a portion of a unit, or within one or more parcels of land that shares an exterior boundary with the southern border or northern border.” Hypothetically, a massive national park or forest such as Big Bend National Park in Texas, Glacier National Park in Montana, and the Tongass National Forest in Alaska would fall under the jurisdiction of this bill. And if that last one sounds familiar, Trump has been openly calling for logging in the Tongass National Forest. The Border Lands Conservation Act would give the administration cover under the guise of national security to do whatever it wants.
Thankfully, unlike the Fix Our Forests Act, there has been little movement on the Border Lands Conservation Act, which was referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources at the beginning of October.
Both the Fix Our Forests Act and the Border Lands Conservation Act are fundamentally attempts to gut park and forest land. It’s all part of the administration’s larger plan to prioritize resource extraction over environmental protection — going back to Trump’s executive order in March asking agencies to increase timber production on federal land. Either of these bills could significantly compromise the long term well-being of these vital natural areas.
Keeping a line of sight to the challenges of both COP30 in Brazil next week and also the subsequent Pacific’s COP31. A Pacific perspective.
COMMENTARY:By Dr Satyendra Prasad
As Pacific’s leaders and civil society prepare for the United Nations Climate Conference in Brazil (COP30) next week, they also need to keep a line of sight to the subsequent Pacific’s COP31.
As they engage at COP30, they will have in their thoughts the painful and lonely journey ahead in Jamaica and across the Caribbean as they rebuild from Hurricane Melissa.
The Blue Pacific needs to build a well-lit pathway to land Pacific’s priorities at COP30 and COP31. The cross winds are heavy and the landing zone could not be hazier.
At the recent Pacific Islands Forum Meeting in Honiara, Pacific leaders called for accelerating implementation of programmes to respond to climate change. They said that finance and knowhow remained the binding constraints to this.
The Pacific’s leaders were unanimous that the world was failing the Pacific.
Climate-stressed infrastructure Pacific leaders spoke about their infrastructure deficit. The region today needs well in excess of $500 million annually to maintain infrastructure in the face of rising seas and fiercer storms.
There are more than 1000 primary and secondary schools, dozens of health centres across coastal areas in Solomon Islands, PNG, Vanuatu and Fiji that need to be repaired rehabilitated or relocated.
The region needs an additional $300-500 million annually over a decade to build and climate proof critical infrastructure — airports, wharves, jetties, water and electricity and telecommunications.
The Blue Pacific’s infrastructure distress is a cocktail that poisons its human development progress. This has lethal consequences for our elderly, for children and the most vulnerable.
As a region has fallen short in convincing the international community that the region’s infrastructure distress is quintessentially a climate distress. This must change.
Fiji’s former ambassador to the UN Dr Satyendra Prasad . . . “the ball may be in the Pacific’s court on how successfully we can harness this rare opening.” Image: Wansolwara News
The constant cycle of catastrophe, recovery and debt are on autoplay repeat across the world’s most climate vulnerable region. The heart-braking images coming out of Jamaica and the Caribbean in the wake of Hurricane Melissa makes this same point.
The Blue Pacific as a region attracts a woefully insufficient share of existing climate finance. Less than 1.5 percent of the total climate finances reaches the world’s most climate vulnerable region today. This is unacceptable of course.
Is our planet headed for a 3.0C world? At COP30, the world will see what the new climate commitments (NDCs) add up to. Our best estimates today suggest that the planet is headed for a 3.0C plus temperature rise. Anything above 1.5C will be catastrophic for the Blue Pacific.
Life across our coral reef systems will simply roast at 3.0C temperature increase. The regions food security will be harmed irreparably. This will have massive consequences for tourism dependent economies. Bleached reefs bleach tourism incomes.
The health consequences arising from climate change are set to worsen rapidly. As will the toll on children who will fall further behind in their learning as schools remain inaccessible for longer periods; or children spend long hours in hotter classrooms.
For Pacific’s women, the toll of runaway temperature increase will be heavy — on their health, on their livelihoods and on their security. It will be too heavy.
A deal for the Pacific at COP30 The world of climate change is becoming transactional. Short termism and deal making have become its norm.
As Pacific leaders, its civil society, its science community and its young engage at COP30 in Brazil, they are reminded that the Blue Pacific needs more than anything else, a settled outlook climate finance that will be available to the region. Finance must be foremostly predictable.
The region should not feel like it is playing a lottery — as is the case today. Tonga must know broadly how much climate finance will be available to it over the next five years and so must Papua New Guinea.
At Bele’m, the world will need to agree to a road map for how the climate financing short fall will be met. This is a must to restore trust in the global process.
The weight on the shoulders of host Brazil is extraordinarily heavy. Brazil is the home of the famous Rio Conference in 1992 where the small island states first succeeded in placing climate change, biodiversity loss on the global agenda.
The Small Islands States grouping is chaired by Palau. President Whipps Jnr will lead the islands to Brazil. He will no doubt remind the host that the world has failed the small states persistently since that moment of great hope at the Rio Conference in 1992.
Belém hosts the UN Climate Summit, an international meeting that will bring together heads of state and government, ministers, and leaders of international organisations on 10-21 November 2025. Image: Sergio Moraes/COP30/Wansolwara News
Pace of climate finance There are three principal reasons why climate finance must flow to the Pacific at speed.
First, is that most countries in our region have less than a decade to adapt. Farms and family gardens, small businesses, tourist resorts, villages and livelihoods need to adapt now to meet a climate changed world.
Second, if adaptation is pushed into the future because of woefully insufficient finances — the window to adapt will close.
As more sectors of our economy fall beyond rehabilitation, the costs of loss and damage will rise. Time is of the essence. And on top of that loss and damage remain poorly funded. This too must change.
The Pacific needs to do many things concurrently to build its resilience. Everything for the Blue Pacific rests on a decent outcome on financing.
The region needs to make its clearest argument that its share of climate finance must be ring-fenced. That its share of climate finance will remain available to the region even if demand is slow to take shape.
The Pacific’s rightful share of climate finance over the next decade is between 3-5 per cent of the total across all financing windows. This is fundamentally because based the adaptation window is so short in such a uniquely specific way.
This should mean that the Blue Pacific has access to a floor of US$1.5 billion annually through to 2035. This is very doable even if global currents are choppy.
TFFF and Brazil’s leadership Brazil has already demonstrated that it can forge large financing arrangements through its leadership and creativity. It will launch the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) at COP. PNG’s Prime Minister has played an important role on this. We hope that forested Pacific states will be able to access this new facility to expand their conservation efforts with much higher returns to landowners.
Beyond Bele’m COP30 in Brazil is an opportunity for the Pacific to begin to frame a larger consensus — well in time for COP31. It is my hope that Australia and Pacific’s leaders will have done enough to secure the hosting rights for COP31.
A ‘circuit-breaker’ COP31 Fiji’s former Deputy Prime Minister Biman Prasad and Australia’s Climate Minister Chris Bowen recently said that COP31 must be “a circuit breaker moment” for the Blue Pacific.
The reversals in our development story arising from the climate chaos have become too burdensome. Repeated recoveries means that every next recovery becomes that much harder.
Ask anyone in Jamaica and Caribbean today and you will hear this same message. Their finance ministers know too well that in no time they will be back at the mercy of international financial institutions to rebuild roads and bridges that have been washed away and water systems that have been destroyed by Hurricane Melissa.
Climate finance by its very nature therefore must involve deep changes to the architecture of international development and finance. The rich world is not yet ready to let go of privilege and power that it wields through an archaic financial international system.
But fundamental reform is a must. Fundamental reform is necessary if small states are to reclaim agency and begin to drive own destinies.
Future proofing our societies The risks arising from climate change are so multi-faceted that economic, social and political stability cannot no longer be taken for granted.
Conflicts over land lost to rising seas, the strain on education, health and water infrastructure, deepening debt stress take their toll on institutions through which stability is maintained in our societies.
The Blue Pacific needs to work with this elevated risk of fragility and state failure. This reality must shape the Blue Pacific expectations from a Pacific COP.
Building on the excellent work underway in climate ministries in Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa, PNG and across the region through the SPC, SPREP, OPOC, I have outlined what the Pacific’s expectations could be from a Pacific COP31.
COP31 must be about transformation and impact. The Blue Pacific’s leaders should seek a consensus that includes both the rich industrial World and large developing countries such as China and India in support of a Pacific Package at COP31.
A Pacific COP 31 package The core elements of a Pacific package at COP31 are:
Ensuring that the Loss and Damage Fund has become fully operational with a pipeline of investment ready projects from across the Blue Pacific.
Securing the Pacific Regional Infrastructure Facility (PRIF) as a fully funded and disbursement ready financing facility with a pipeline of investment ready projects.
Securing ring-fenced climate finance allocations for the Blue Pacific at the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and across international financial institutions.
Securing support for Blue Pacific’s “lighthouse” multi-country (region wide) transformative programs to advance marine and terrestrial biodiversity protection and promote sustainability across the Blue Pacific Ocean.
A COP decision that is unambiguous on quality and speed of climate and ocean finance that will be available to small states for the remainder of the decade.
Securing sufficient resources that can flow directly to communities and families to rapidly rebuild their resilience following disasters and catastrophes including through insurance and social protection vehicles.
Ensuring that knowhow, resources and mechanisms for disaster risk reduction are in place, are fully operational and are sustainable.
An Ocean of Peace for a climate changed world Fiji’s Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka has championed the Blue Pacific as an Ocean of Peace. Its acceptance by Pacific leaders opens up opportunities for the region’s climate diplomacy.
The Pacific’s leaders accept that the Ocean of Peace anchors its stewardship of our marine environment to the highest principles of protection and conservation. An Ocean of Peace super-charges the Pacific’s efforts to take forward transboundary marine research and conservation, end plastic and harmful waste disposal, end harmful fisheries subsidies and decarbonise shipping.
It boosts the Pacific’s efforts to main-frame the ocean-climate nexus into the international climate change frameworks by the time a Pacific COP31 is convened.
A window of hope Between COP30 and COP31 lies a rare window of hope. The Blue Pacific must leverage this.
Both a Brazilian and an Australian Presidency offer supportive back-to-back opportunities and spaces to take forward the regions desire to project a solid foundation of programs that are necessary to secure its future.
Uniquely the ball may be in the Pacific’s court on how successfully we can harness this rare opening in the international environment.
Dr Satyendra Prasad is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Fiji’s former ambassador to the UN. He is the Climate Lead for About Global. This article was first published by Wansolwara Online and is republished by Asia Pacific Report in partnership with USP Journalism.
Porcupine Caribou Herd in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Photo: Fish and Wildlife Service.
On October 23, the Trump administration launched fresh attacks on three iconic wildlands in Alaska, places that Wilderness Watch, our members and supporters, and our conservation allies have fought to safeguard for decades.
These places, which teem with native wildlife, are the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Izembek Wilderness, and the areas near and through Gates of the Arctic National Preserve threatened by the Ambler Mining Road construction.
Arctic Refuge Coastal Plain
The 1.56 million-acre coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has been a target for oil and gas development ever since the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) failed to provide much needed and deserved wilderness protection. The wild coastal plain is the birthing grounds of the fabled 200,000-member Porcupine caribou herd, relied upon for subsistence living by the Gwich’in native people, and provides critical habitat for polar bears, migratory birds, and other native wildlife.
In 2017, Trump signed a tax bill that required two lease sales in the coastal plain. The second sale did not attract one single bidder, and the Biden administration later suspended and cancelled leases from the first sale. On October 23, the Trump administration announced that it will hold an oil and gas lease sale in the coastal plain this winter, and would reinstate seven cancelled oil leases from the previous sale that had been acquired by the State of Alaska.
Izembek Wilderness
Izembic Wilderness. Photo: Kristine Sowl, US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Located near the tip of the Alaska Peninsula in southwest Alaska, the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, over 95 percent of which is designated as the 308,000-acre Izembek Wilderness, is a remote stretch of land where a quarter-million migratory birds—including virtually the world’s entire population of Pacific black brant—congregate each fall. Nearly 7,000 caribou make their annual trek into the Wilderness where they overwinter, and hundreds of sea otters swim with their young in the Izembek Lagoon, occasionally in the vicinity of migrating orcas, gray whales, minke whales, and Steller sea lions. Massive brown bears—as many as nine per mile—lumber through wilderness streams during peak summer salmon runs.
For years, the native village of King Cove has demanded to build a road through the heart of the Izembek Wilderness to access a year-round airstrip at Cold Bay. Initially the access was to transport seafood from the now-shuttered Peter Pan seafood plant in King Cove. In recent years that demand has morphed into access for emergency medical evacuations, despite a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers analysis that showed that non-road alternatives for transportation would be more reliable, less expensive, and would not harm Izembek and its wildlife.
Last month, the Trump administration announced that it had finalized a land exchange with King Cove to delete lands from the Izembek Wilderness so that the road could be constructed, and the land patents have already been exchanged. The Izembek Wilderness will lose 490 acres of land through which the road corridor would be built in exchange for 1,739 acres of King Cove Corporation lands outside of the Refuge.
Ambler Road
Gates of the Arctic National Park. Photo: Paxson Woelber.
The 211-mile Ambler Road has been proposed to reach the mining claims of a private Canadian mining company south of the Brooks Range. If built, the Ambler Road would stretch west from the Dalton Highway—the Haul Road leading to the Prudhoe Bay oil field on the North Slope—to the mining claims. Along the way, this “road to ruin” would cross Gates of the Arctic National Preserve and the Kobuk Wild and Scenic River, both ecologically significant public lands that make up part of the largest remaining wild, roadless area in the entire nation.
The Ambler Road also would cross nearly 3,000 streams, 11 major rivers, major caribou migration routes, and would bisect a wide swath of the southern Brooks Range, home to numerous Athabaskan and Iñupiat villages, as well as grizzly bears, wolves, and Dall sheep. If built, the Ambler Road would undoubtedly lead to more use and motorized intrusions into the National Preserve and nearby Wildernesses. Road noise, dust, and vehicle headlights would further degrade the area’s wild character.
The Biden administration ruled against building the Ambler Road after the first Trump administration approved it. On October 23, Trump’s Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum, reissued right-of-way permits for the 211-mile road.
What Happens Next?
While these Trump actions are certainly potentially catastrophic for these three iconic Alaska wildlands and their wildlife, the story is not yet over. Litigation may well slow or stall these decisions, including several active, related cases we’re currently involved with that address oil and gas leases in the Arctic Refuge.
Wilderness Watch and our allies will continue to fight to protect the priceless areas, and we thank our terrific members and supporters who have sent in literally tens of thousands of comments over the past years in order to protect these incredible wild places and their critters. Stay tuned!
Written by: Stephen Legault, Senior Manager, Alberta Energy Transition and Aly Hyder Ali, Program Manager, Oil and Gas
Prime Minister Mark Carney has been out of the banking game for a little while, but not so long that he shouldn’t be able to recognize a bad investment pitch when he sees one.
The federal government is considering fast-tracking Pathways Alliance’s plan to build a carbon capture and storage (CCS) operation in Alberta. In theory, CCS is a process by which the carbon produced through the extraction of oil and gas is captured and pumped into underground reservoirs where it is rendered inert. That’s the theory, but it’s not really being done anywhere in practice. The governments of Alberta and Canada have already offered to cover up to 62 per cent of the costs of this 16.4 billion dollar boondoggle. The oil companies are looking for an even sweeter deal.
The Pathways Alliance is composed of Canadian Natural Resources, Cenovus Energy, ConocoPhillips Canada, Imperial Oil, MEG Energy, and Suncor Energy. Together, these companies reported nearly $30 billion in profits in 2024.
These wealthy corporations are looking for a handout of taxpayer money, not to support the global transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, but to build questionable technology that will allow them to continue mining bitumen in the oil sands, while increasing greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas industry.
CCS is not a new technology, but despite having been developed more than fifty years ago, a recent report by the World Resources Institute states that “Today, CCS captures around 0.1% of global emissions.”
CCS has repeatedly failed to deliver on its promises, while simultaneously creating serious problems, including gas leakage and water contamination. Funding such consistently underperforming technology would be an indefensible waste of taxpayer dollars. While CCS serves as a brilliant tactic for the oil and gas industry to delay meaningful climate action and energy transition, it represents a terrible strategy for Canadians who expect their federal government to meet its Paris Agreement GHG emissions targets.
Despite their massive ad campaigns, oil and gas companies know CCS won’t significantly reduce their GHG emissions. The Pathways Alliance’s project is expected to reduce 10-12 MT of CO2 by 2030. For context, early estimates of the oil and gas industry’s GHG emissions in 2024 were 212 MT of CO2.
What’s worse is that behind closed doors, Pathways has raised concerns about the reliability of CCS technologies in direct communications with policymakers and has opposed government mandates for CCS. They have emphasized the “uncertainty” and “technology readiness” of CCS applications.
So, some of the wealthiest corporations in Canada, which are producing even more climate-changing carbon emissions during a global crisis, want 16 billion dollars from taxpayers’ pockets to deploy technology that they admit is uncertain at best, and will only remove five per cent of emissions from their operations -if it works perfectly, which it likely won’t.
Prime Minister Mark Carney was a banker first, and a politician second, so he must recognize a boondoggle when he sees one. He must recognize the Pathways Alliance pitch for what it is: wealthy corporations trying to bilk Canadians out of their hard-earned money to further enrich themselves and their shareholders at the beginning of the end of the oil and gas sector.
Not enough is yet known about the seafloor to decide if deep sea mining can start in the Cook Islands, says an ocean scientist with the government authority in charge of seabed minerals.
The Cook Islands Seabed Minerals Authority (SBMA) returned last week from a 21-day deep-sea research expedition on board the United States exploration vessel EV Nautilus.
The trip was also funded by the United States and supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The Nautilus in the Cook Islands. Video: RNZ Pacific
High-resolution imagery and data were collected in a bid to better understand what lives on the seafloor.
SBMA knowledge management officer Dr John Parianos said the findings would guide decisions about seabed mining.
“One day someone will have to make a decision about what to do and it’s clear today we don’t know enough to make a decision,” Parianos said.
On its return, EV Nautilus was confronted by a group of Greenpeace Pacific protest kayakers holding signs that read: “Don’t mine the moana”.
One of the protesters, Louisa Castledine told RNZ Pacific she was conscious both NOAA and Nautilus had a reputation for being “environmentally friendly” but was concerned about research being “weaponised”.
“This research is being used to help enable and guide decision making towards deep-sea mining,” said Castledine, who is the spokesperson for Ocean Ancestors.
“It’s the guise in which this research is being used, and it’s who sent them is the challenge, because who sent them is quite clear on their intent in mining.
In August, the US and the Cook Islands agreed to work closer in the area of seabed minerals to “advance scientific research and the responsible development of seabed mineral resources”.
It came off the back of the Cook Islands signing a five-year agreement with China to cooperate in exploring and researching seabed minerals.
In 2023, the first ever high resolution Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) footage was obtained for the nodule fields at the bottom of the Cook Islands seafloor. Image: Screengrab/YouTube/Cook Islands Seabed Minerals Authority/RNZ Pacific
Jocelyn Trainer, a geopolitical analyst with Terra Global Insights, said both countries were interested in the metals to enhance military capabilities but it was not the primary market.
“Volumes are greater for other industries such as the renewable energy sectors and in China there’s huge demand for electric vehicles.”
Trainer said China was ahead of the US in obtaining critical minerals through land mining and mineral processing.
“The US is seeming to choose to start with the supply side of things, get the minerals, and then perhaps work up the knowledge of production and refining.”
Castledine said the region was in the middle of a “geopolitical storm” with the US and China vying for control over deep-sea minerals.
“The USA is building their military might within the Pacific and this is one of those ways in which their reach is moving more into the Pacific and more specifically into Cook Islands waters.”
The Nautilus expedition focused on discovery and the chance to test new deep-sea technology.
Expedition lead Renato Kane said bad weather threatened the mission. However, it cleared up in time to send their ROVs down.
“We’ve had six really successful dives to the sea floor. We’re diving these vehicles down to over 5000 meters depth and the length of these dives were on average, about 30 hours each.
“So we’ve got a lot of high definition video footage for scientific observation on the sea floor.”
Central to the expedition’s success was the testing of a new, ultra-high-resolution camera, the MxD SeaCam, designed for deep-sea research at depths of up to 7000 metres.
The camera combines a compact broadcast camera with custom-built titanium housing to capture 4K images with remarkable clarity.
A large Corallimorpharia . . . although it looks like an anemone, it is closely related to corals. Image: Supplied/Ocean Exploration Trust/RNZ Pacific
Dr John Parianos said it was some of the best footage ever recorded several kilometres below the surface.
He said footage would help create the Cook Islands first public catalogue of deep-sea life.
“We’ve benefited from probably the highest resolution images ever taken at these depths in the whole world ever,” he said.
“We need to make a catalogue of the types of life in the Cook Islands seabed so that researchers in the future can reference it. Having such high-quality images means that the catalogue will be even better quality than what exists internationally today.”
Tanga Morris, who was responsible for logging data of both biological and geological discoveries on the expedition, said she was in awe of the various life forms they observed.
“One of the main ones that’s quite dominant down in the deep sea would be deep-sea sponges. We’ve seen them in different species, morphotypes, and sizes, even a whole garden of them.”
A glass sponge from class Hexactinellida on a stalked anemone. Image: Ocean Exploration Trust/RNZ Pacific
Other creatures found were sea stars, anemones, octopi and eels — some of which have possibly never been seen before.
“A few people have asked questions like, ‘have you guys spotted any unidentified species?’ And I think we have come across a few, but then it will take a while to really be sure.
“But if so, what a great milestone it is for us to acknowledge that within our Cook Island waters.”
An unknown species of Casper octopus. Image: Ocean Exploration Trust/RNZ Pacific
Dr Antony Vavia, a senior research fellow at Te Puna Vai Marama, the Cook Islands Centre for Research, said the opportunity to go onboard and study deep-sea organisms firsthand was an eye-opening experience.
“Everything that I’ve seen down there has been a bit of a wow for me. [I’m] just amazed at how much life is down there. I was talking to my former supervisor, and he described us as the ‘astronauts of the sea’.”
A notable feature of the EV Nautilus was its 24/7 online livestream.
He said people from around the world tuned in during dives to see the deep-sea discoveries for themselves.
“Being able to show what our ROV — what is ROV, the little Hercules, is seeing in real time, and so having the wholesome thought that we’re not on this exploration journey alone.
“But the fact that we can broadcast it to anyone that is interested and invested in learning more about our deep sea environments is incredibly rewarding, because you feel like you’re pulling in others to be a part of this discovery.”
Dr Vavia who is also a lecturer at Auckland University of Technology, said many schools and university groups had got involved, broadcasting the deep-sea right into their classrooms.
“The opportunities to reach out to schools from a primary school level all the way up to university has been a great opportunity to showcase the science that we’re doing here, and hopefully to inspire younger generations and those that are already in the pursuit of careers in marine science or doing work on board research vessels such as the EV Nautilus.”
The EV Nautilus crew said this element of the voyage helped to answer the public’s questions on what life is found on the seabed.
A brisingid sea star resting on a rock. Image: Ocean Exploration Trust/RNZ Pacific
Crew member and journalist Madison Dapcevich said they hoped their passion inspired future scientists.
“Something that’s really great about Nautilus is we do have this like childlike wonder. We do get really excited about sponges, which most people are not that excited about.
“And then it’s also a great pathway for early career professionals. So we do have an internship and fellowship programme, and those applications are open right now through to the end of the year.”
The teams findings that will form their first public catalogue of deep-sea life will be a foundation for future research and one day, the difficult decisions about what lies beneath.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
London-listed miner Pensana has abandoned its planned £250 million rare-earth refinery near Hull, opting instead to build the facility in the United States, despite being the “poster child” of the UK’s critical minerals strategy. The strategy was an attempt for the UK to be part of a supply chain dominated by China, the US, and Australia.
However, Pensana chairman Paul Atherley told the BBC that the UK government’s £5 million offer for the Hull refinery was “nowhere near enough” to compete with American incentives. He gave the example of MP Materials. The Pentagon is buying $400m of MP Materials stock.
Pensana follow the money
The now-scrapped facility was designed to process ore from Pensana’s Longonjo mine in Angola. The mine is one of the world’s most significant rare earth projects currently under development. The decision marks a significant blow to Britain’s critical minerals strategy, coming just three years after the project was celebrated as a cornerstone of the UK’s initial critical mineral strategy in 2022.
The BBCreported that a spokesperson for the Department for Business and Trade said:
It is disappointing that Pensana has decided not to proceed with this development, but it is ultimately a commercial decision for the company. We will publish a new Critical Minerals Strategy soon to help secure our supply chains for the long term, and we’re reducing industrial electricity costs for businesses as part of our modern Industrial Strategy.
The strategy was intended to be published in Spring 2025 – it was last revised in 2023.
According to Pensana’s latest annual report, the Longonjo Rare Earth Project has received $268 million in investments from financial institutions, including Angola’s sovereign wealth fund (FSDEA), the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), Absa Bank, and Britain’s M&G Investment Management.
British loss
The move sees Britain lose both the strategic refinery and the 126 skilled jobs it would have created at the Saltend chemicals park. And, despite British investors like M&G, Pensana will prioritise the American market instead.
Leading military ‘think tank’ RUSI warns that UK strategy has been overtaken by “forceful” critical minerals dealmaking by US President Donald Trump. RUSI references the Global Witness report that reveals a pattern where the Angolan government pays Trump-linked lobbyists at Squire Patton Boggs, the DRC government contracts with Trump-tied Ballard Partners, and Ukraine has signed a direct minerals-for-security deal with the US government. While RUSI is not directly encouraging this behaviour by Trump, it is implying that the UK must develop a more “muscular” position.
Absent from mainstream discussions has been the “ravages of neo-colonial corporate extractivism,” and steps to limit extraction in an ecological crisis. Campaigners have said that any:
UK trade agreements covering critical minerals must preserve and protect the right of ‘producer countries’ to pursue these kinds of policies, ensuring they can use their mineral wealth to support their economic development.
Increased militarism
Further to this, the UK government announced fresh trade negotiations with Greenland to strengthen cooperation on critical minerals. Usually, these negotiations are billed as attempts:
To diversify away from Beijing’s dominance of the global critical minerals supply chain.
And while this Chatham House op-ed recognises that extracting critical minerals without proper environmental safeguards risks further harm to Indigenous rights and the environment, it still operates within the framework of securing resources for the Global North rather than challenging the fundamental extractive model.
Campaigners have also pointed out that many minerals on the UK’s critical minerals list are not required for the green transition pathway, but rather for the defence and aerospace sectors. As ever, capitalist business interests – particularly those of a global race to mine the Earth’s resources – are a poor disguise for the issues actually at the root of extractivism: the ransacking and abuse of Indigenous communities, land, and a degradation of natural resources.
A feature story authored by a student journalist highlighting the harm plastic pollution poses to human health in Fiji — with risks expected to rise significantly if robust action is not taken soon — has won the Online category of the 2024 Vision Pasifika Media Awards — Cleaner Pacific.
Launched during the 7th Pacific Media Summit by Niue’s Prime Minister, Dalton Tagelagi, the awards celebrate excellence in environmental news reporting across the Pacific Island region.
The theme, Cleaner Pacific, spotlights the urgent need to tackle plastic pollution, one of the triple planetary crises threatening the planet, alongside climate change and biodiversity loss.
A story titled Managing Solid Waste in Gizo, a tough task, by award-winning Solomon Islands journalist, Moffat Mamu, of the Solomon Star, and also a USP graduate, won the Print category.
Coverage of the Vatuwaqa Rugby Club’s efforts to keep their community clean, by Fijian journalist Joeli Tikomaimaleya of Fiji TV, picked up the Television category.
Wansolwara’s Niko Ratumaimuri . . . winner of the Student category of the Vision Pasifika Media Awards.
The 2024 Vision Pasifika Media Awards is a partnership facilitated by SPREP with the Australian government through support for Pacific engagement in the INC on plastic pollution and the Pacific Ocean Litter Project (POLP), Office of the Pacific Ocean Commissioner (OPOC) and the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA).
SPREP Director-General Sefanaia Nawadra said: “We are drowning under a sea of waste! The Pacific media is critical in ensuring we in the Pacific understand the challenges of waste and pollution and share ways we can work towards its effective management.
“Many of our waste issues originate from outside our region and our Pacific media must help our countries advocate for global action on waste especially plastic.”
Early morning, Crater Lake National Park. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
What kind of a shutdown is this, anyway?
Congress has deadlocked over the terms of funding the government, so (in theory, at least) there is a government shutdown in which all federal operations are supposed to be shuttered. But Trump ordered staff to continue processing oil and gas leases and permits to drill on public lands.
The USDA just rolled out a policy that gives ranchers outsized control of lands managed by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. At the same time, government services that actually benefit the general public are grinding to a halt. So is this really a government shutdown, or merely an opportunity for Donald Trump to raid America’s public lands while sabotaging government operations he finds objectionable?
Let’s start with the National Parks. In the past, locked gates at the entrances of National Parks triggered a firestorm of public controversy. The current administration is playing this politically, by keeping most gates open at National Parks through the shutdown, while sending home two-thirds of the workers responsible for managing and overseeing park protections and visitor services. The inadequate staffing means that services are strained and the agency cannot adequately protect park resources, which led to vandalism at many units during the last Trump administration shutdown, according to former Park Service senior staff.
There’s been a swirl of controversy over the Trump decision to ramp up beef imports from Argentina, giving them special protections from tariffs. So, in the middle of the government shutdown, the U.S. Department of Agriculture decided to throw ranchers a bone by rolling out a new policy to open up currently-protected public lands to leasing for beef production, and give private ranchers a special sense of entitlement to interfere in public land management. Somehow, that happened while the U.S. Department of Agriculture was closed. Did Trump’s tariff policies trigger a National Beef Emergency that could somehow be invoked to fast-track the livestock lobby’s priorities for controlling public lands?
Meanwhile the administration is plowing ahead with its ‘Energy Dominance’ agenda to maximize fossil fuel production, by keeping federal at work rubber-stamping oil and gas leases and drilling permits. This allows fast-tracking of the oil industry’s spread across public lands. At the same time, federal wildlife biologists, botanists, archaeologists, and other environmental compliance experts have been sent home. You can draw your own conclusions.
Last week, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum signed permits authorizing the construction of the Ambler Road, a gravel highway slated to penetrate the Alaska wilderness and open up pristine lands to mining, to the detriment of caribou migrations and salmon runs. The next day, the Department of Interior announced that it was opening up the Arctic Coastal Plain to drilling, sweeping aside longstanding protections for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The Trump administration is also using the shutdown as an excuse to advance its DOGE agenda to permanently fire federal workers and dismantle federal agencies through a process known as Reductions in Force. Unions have filed suit to stop this, and the courts (which themselves are now beginning to shut down) have issued a Preliminary Injunction to block this end-run around federal law.
Members of Congress are starting to notice that the Trump administration is cheating by keeping federal bureaucrats hard at work on its pet projects, while complying with the congressional direction to halt federal spending for programs it sees as less important. Several lawmakers have alleged that these examples of selective compliance are violations of the Antideficiency Act. The decisions by the Executive Branch to ignore the legal mandates of the Legislative Branch is one more example of how the constitutional balance of power that undergirds American democracy is actively being undermined.
Certainly, the American public is feeling the effects of the shutdown, as the Trump administration furloughs staff dedicated to administration priorities. Commercial air travel is facing mounting problems due to staffing shortages, even though air traffic controllers are being required to come to work without pay. Federal loans to small businesses, federally-backed mortgage applications, and federal revenue streams for states are being interrupted. Tribal governments have declared states of emergency. There are long-term losses in government efficiency. And if you’re one of the 750,000 federal employees put on unpaid leave, the impacts to your life will be direct and personal.
Environmental compliance is certainly getting shut down on federal lands. But if you’re an extraction-based industry that exploits public lands for private profit, it’s an opportunity to pillage the public lands while nobody is looking. And the Trump administration is actively enabling these corporate raiders, to the detriment of public lands and wildlife.
As Brazil prepares to host COP30 in Belém this November, a new investigation by Repórter Brasil exposes how the country’s boomingbiofuel industry is driving deforestation, labour abuse, and land conflict, all in the name of sustainability.
Approved in October 2024, Brazil’s biofuels bill highlights the true cost of its clean energy drive. The rapid expansion of ethanol, biodiesel, and so-called sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is reshaping rural Brazil, threatening key ecosystems, and widening inequality.
The report, based on fieldwork, legal records, and supply-chain mapping, paints a more complex picture of an industry Brazil plans to showcase as the cornerstone of its decarbonisation strategy at COP30.
Brazil’s biofuels: A climate leader with a carbon shadow
Since launching the Proálcoolprogramme in 1975, Brazil has positioned itself as a global pioneer in renewable fuels. Today, it produces more than 37 billion litres of ethanol and 9 billion litres of biodiesel a year, and it aims to generate 2.8 billion litres of SAF by 2035.
Brazil’s biofuel and feedstock exports hit record levels in 2024, with 1.88 billion litres of ethanol shipped mainly to the United States and the European Union. The country also exported 98.8 million tonnes of soybeans, mostly to China and Europe, along with 408 tonnes of palm oil to the US and European markets.
Public money has poured into it too. The state development bank, BNDES, and Brazil’s innovation agency, Finep, have channelled R$11.7bn (approximately £1.6bn) into the sector since 2022, largely through the government’s Climate Fund.
These numbers will be at the centre of Brazil’s message in Belém, that home-grown biofuels can help deliver on its Paris Agreement pledge to cut emissions by up to 67% by 2035.
Yet, deforestation remains Brazil’s main source of greenhouse gases. According to the report, “land-use change” (LUC), driven by agricultural expansion for fuel crops, is cancelling out many of the supposed climate gains.
Soy: the Cerrado sacrificed
Nowhere is that contradiction clearer than in the Cerrado, a vast tropical savanna known as Brazil’s “water reservoir”. It has become the country’s main frontier for soy, which supplies 70% of Brazil’s biodiesel.
The area planted with soy in the Cerrado region has grown sixteen-fold since 1985, and the biome overtook the Amazon in 2023 as the most deforested region.
The investigation found that even soy from illegally cleared land still finds its way into biodiesel supply chains through a practice known as “soy laundering”.
One supplier linked to multinational trader Bunge cleared nearly 100 hectares of protected vegetation. Others in the Matopiba region (spanning the states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia), stripped 11,000 hectares between 2021 and 2023.
Half of Europe’s soy imports now come from Brazil. Yet, under the EU’s new anti-deforestation law (EUDR), much of the Cerrado remains exempt because it’s classified as “non-forest”.
Conservationists warn that this loophole could keep the chainsaws running, even as Brussels tightens the rules.
Beef tallow: the cost of ‘green’ diesel
Beef tallow, another raw material for renewable diesel and SAF, tells a story of hidden emissions and human cost. Framed as a “waste product”, it’s tied to cattle farming, the single largest driver of Amazon deforestation.
Brazil exported 320,000 tonnes of beef tallow last year, up 30% more than the previous year, with 94% going to the US.
The investigation links these exports to serious abuses. Repórter Brasil traced shipments from meatpackers accused of sourcing cattle from rancher Bruno Heller, accused by federal police of being the “largest deforester in the Amazon”, and from farms where inspectors recued workers held in slavery-like conditions.
In 2024, the Saudi oil firm Aramco was among the companies that bought from a supplier later implicated in such a case.
Certification systems fail to catch these risks. Under schemes such as ISCC (International Sustainability & Carbon Certification), traceability starts at the slaughterhouse, not the farm, leaving the origins of “waste” fat unmonitored.
Because the animal phase is excluded from carbon accounting, diesel based on tallow can appear “low carbon”, even when linked to forest loss and forced labour.
Palm oil and violence in Pará, COP30 host
In the state of Pará, where COP30 will take place, the expansion of palm oil has brought violence and violations.
In the towns of Acará and Tomé-Açu, riverside and quilombola (descendents of Afro-Brazilian slaves) communities, and Tembé Indigenous families, report land seizures, blocked river access, and armed security around plantations operated by BBF (Brasil Biofuels), which supplies palm oil for biodiesel and SAF.
Court records examined by Repórter Brasil show 1,697 labour lawsuits against palm oil companies in Pará alone, one of the highest counts in Brazil. Workers complained of lack of drinking water, toilets, and fair pay.
Sugarcane: slavery reborn
Sugarcane, the symbol of Brazil’s ethanol pride, has also being tainted. In 2023, inspectors rescued 32 workers from degrading conditions on a plantation supplying ethanol producer Colombo Agroindústria, a supplier to Raízen, the world’s largest sugar and ethanol company. The workers had no toilets, clean water, and proper bedding.
A separate inspection at a corn-ethanol construction site in Mato Grosso uncovered the country’s largest rescue in years: 563 workers trapped in debt bondage, sleeping in overcrowded, unlit rooms. The project had been financed with R$500m (approximately £69.7m) from the Climate Fund.
“The workers arranged for old, dirty, and torn mattresses to be placed directly on the floor or on makeshift beds to avoid contact with venomous animals in their accommodation,” inspectors reported.
Experts attribute the surge in abuses to the outsourcing of plantation labour, which allows large companies to distance themselves from conditions on the ground while still profiting from cheap labour.
Jorge Ernesto Rodriguez Morales, lecturer and researcher in environmental policy and climate change governance at Stockholm University, spoke about the environmental impact of bioenergy production:
“Current climate policy positions biomass-based fuels as a replacement for fossil fuels in the transport sector, with sugarcane ethanol as a flagship solution for greenhouse gas reduction in international climate negotiations. However, scaling up bioenergy production can have serious socio-environmental impacts.
“Like food production, ethanol requires land, water, and nutrients, meaning that a large-scale expansion could intensify the negative side effects of agricultural growth.”
Indirect emissions
These stories expose the gap between Brazil’s rhetoric and reality. While the government’s Renovabio programme rewards producers of “low carbon” fuels with tradeable credits, it ignores the indirect emissions caused when forests are cleared elsewhere to replace farmland converted to biofuel crops.
Studiesshow Renovabio ignores the impacts of Land Use Change (LUC) through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for calculating greenhouse gas emissions from biofuel.
Safeguards
Brazil’s biofuels bill offers an ambitious plan, one that could decide whether Brazil’s renewable fuel revolution survives its own contradictions. It calls for crop expansion to be limited to land that is already cleared or degraded, and for full traceability of every plantation and processing plant through geolocation mapping.
To address the issues with supply chain, the report urges the government to extend cattle sector tracking systems to bovine tallow, linking each batch of fat used for biodiesel to the individual animals it came from through records and invoices, allowing auditors to follow the trail from slaughterhouse to refinery.
Suppliers would face mandatory screening for ties to deforestation, forced labour, or illegal land repossession with public disclosure of results.
Experts agree the reforms are overdue, but they warn they will fail if costs fall solely on small farmers.
For researchers and campaigners, the demand for transparency must ultimately come from the markets that buy Brazil’s fuels. Without that pressure from Europe, the US, and global investors, the country’s energy transition risks remaining a promise on paper, while its forests and workers continue to pay the hidden price.
The moment of truth in Belém
Nearly 50 years after Proálcool began, Brazil’s biofuel dream stands at a crossroads. It has delivered technical innovation and jobs, but it has also deepened old inequalities (exploitation of workers known as bóias-frias ) and accelerated deforestation in some of the country’s most fragile biomes.
Morales spoke about the Brazilian government’s position and priorities concerning the expansion of biofuel production:
“In foreign environmental policy, the Brazilian government has historically been reluctant to prioritise environmental protection over economic growth, often attributing major environmental issues to developed countries.”
As COP30 approaches, the government plans to promote the Belém Commitment for Sustainable Fuels, pledging to quadruple global production by 2035. But without stronger safeguards, Brazil risks turning its climate initiative into an environmental liability.
As delegates gather in Belém, Brazil’s green promises are on trial: will biofuel politics crush them, or is the climate summit just witnessing another round of empty rhetoric?
The Republican-controlled US Senate voted Thursday to scrap a Biden-era policy that protected millions of acres in the Alaskan Arctic from fossil fuel drilling, even as the government shutdown continued with no end in sight. The final vote on the resolution, led by Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), was 52-45, almost entirely along party lines. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) was the only Democrat to…
“The days of stupidity” are alive and well in the USA after the Department of the Interior cancelled a Nevada solar farm slated to become the world’s largest. The 185-square-mile, 6.2-GW Esmeralda 7 solar and battery storage installation would have powered almost two million homes, but was unceremoniously dumped according to President Donald Trump’s wishes as indicated in his typical Truth Social style. Not only is Trump’s post full of lies about energy costs, such policy is casting a dark shadow over the economic future of the USA.
In the early 1980s, the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory director Roland Hulstrom calculated that a 10,000 square-mile photovoltaic (PV) solar farm could power the entire US grid. Spread across existing rooftops – factories, warehouses, parking lots, and over 100 million American homes – the impact would be marginal. Colorado School of Mines professor John Fanchi made a similar calculation in 2004 for wind power: 12.7 million 4-MW turbines spread over 50,700 1-GW farms could power the entire globe.
A 2008 Scientific American cover story, “A Grand Plan for Solar Energy,” outlined how the US could free itself from foreign oil and slash greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 using solar power: “The energy in sunlight striking the earth for 40 minutes is equivalent to global energy consumption for a year.”
In a 2012 New York Times op-ed, “Solar Panels for Every Home,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. noted that solar panel prices had dropped 80% in five years and could generate electricity at or below grid prices in 20 states, succinctly stating “We have the technology. The economics make sense. All we need is the political will.” Today, solar power provides unmatched cheap electricity across 50 states.
So what happened? Slow to ramp up as in the short-tail of any revolution, solar is now the world’s fastest growing energy sector, providing a record 600 GW or 70% of new energy capacity across the globe in 2024. Why turn the lights off of a successful made-in-America technology first demonstrated as a 6%-efficient “solar energy battery” in 1954 at Bell Labs? By 2030, more than half of all electrical power will come from the sun.
Money is the obvious reason as in Big Oil’s stranglehold on a petroleum-run world that gobbles up over 80 million barrels per day, subsidized to the tune of trillions of dollars a year. No surprise natural gas exports permits were fast-tracked, offshore oil-drilling leases increased, and electric-vehicle tax credits axed soon after Trump’s 2024 inauguration. No surprise he constantly derides the green competition.
Presumed “creeping socialism” is another reason. If consumers can power their own homes and cars, who needs to buy oil? Home solar for all means a loss of top-down utility control as “prosumers” buy and sell to each other, borrowing electrons from neighbours as easily as a cup of sugar with savings downloaded directly via phone app.
China’s dominance is also a concern, now the number-one manufacturer of solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles as well the supplier of rare-earth metals needed in today’s magnet-powered motors. Included in the transition to renewables is a growing transfer of political power from West to East.
Today, energy generation costs are cheapest for onshore wind at $37/MWh followed by utility PV at $38/MWh, while nuclear power is almost four times as expensive. Coal power has become so unprofitable that a bid to buy 167 million tons of coal at under 1 cent/ton was rejected.
Integrated battery energy storage systems to reduce the “dark doldrums” (down-sun time and wind lull) are also on the rise, while “intermittency firming” is improving. Expanded microgrids, home storage, and virtual power plants are also a threat to American dominance and the entire oil-run economy. The real scam is lying about a growing green economy, raising energy prices, and discouraging investment.
Nor is solar destroying farmers. Just the opposite as solar and wind provide farmers with a guaranteed income (“double cropping” or “agrivoltaics”) in the always uncertain agricultural sector, made more uncertain by tariff-driven losses as US silos remain full of unsold produce.
Is it worry over change, NIMBYism, or something as simple as the wrath of Donald Trump after planning authorities declined to stop a wind farm near one of his loss-making Scottish golf courses? Or a modern-day Don Quixote railing against non-existent giant adversaries in a fit of anti-science madness?
Stupidity has a formidable American pedigree, from circus showman P.T. Barnum’s “There’s a sucker born every minute” to author and social critic H.L. Mencken’s “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American consumer.” George Orwell also didn’t see much intelligence in the “governing classes” as he wrote about belching chimneys, stinking slums, and organized poverty in The Road to Wigan Pier, his scathing exposé on the ugliness of industrialization in the coalfields of northern England. Orwell also warned about the folly of starting a civil war amid rising authoritarianism, tyranny, and misinformation.
As with any maturing technology, there are challenges ahead, such as improving grid resilience, interconnectivity, and security, same as in the time of the early electrical pioneers Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Samuel Insull, when less than 1% of the American population was grid-tied.
Who could imagine 130 years after the first electrons were sent 22 miles from Niagara Falls to Buffalo, a US president would try to stop the sun from shining and the wind from blowing? You might as well proclaim gravity a lie.
We should be stopping planet-destroying global warming, armed conflict, and cyber attacks, not hindering the roll-out of a proven clean, green, and sustainable energy technology. Stupid is as stupid does.
The fact that billionaire Bill Gates wrote a memo recommending that the world shift its focus on climate (particularly on emissions reductions) to “human welfare”, poverty, and health is getting a lot of media play.
The NY Times gave it prominent attention, a provocative headline, and even a photo (the shovel is apt, because Gates is shoveling a lot of bullshit):
Gates is obviously trying to change the subject and he perfectly timed his PR campaign to distract from another disastrous UN Report, released yesterday, which documents the total failure of the entire voluntary commitment based Paris framework: (BBC):
Only 64 countries have submitted new plans to cut carbon, the UN says, despite all being required to do so ahead of next month’s COP30 summit.
Added together these national pledges would fail to keep the world from warming by more than 1.5C, a key threshold to very dangerous levels of climate change.
While the UN review does show progress in curbing carbon emissions over the next decade, the projected fall is not enough to stop temperatures surging past this global target.
Greenpeace put a rather sharper (and technocratic) point on this failure than the BBC (Greenpeace statement):
Greenpeace is calling for this year’s UN climate summit COP30 to deliver an emphatic response to the glaring ambition gap exposed in the UNFCCC’s synthesis report aggregating 2035 climate action plans.
The UNFCCC’s Synthesis report found that the submitted NDCs (which only represent 33% of global emissions), while progressing from previous NDCs, would lead to emission reductions of 11%-24% by 2035 compared to 2019.[1]
This is far short from the 60% reduction (for the same period) that countries committed to in the outcomes of the first Global Stocktake, agreed at COP28 in Dubai in 2023.
In addition to being an obvious distraction, the Gates memo gets almost everything wrong and his core argument is easily dismantled. Follow.
Gates begins on the wrong rhetorical foot by smearing the people he disagrees with:
There’s a doomsday view of climate change that goes like this:
In a few decades, cataclysmic climate change will decimate civilization. The evidence is all around us—just look at all the heat waves and storms caused by rising global temperatures. Nothing matters more than limiting the rise in temperature.
His substantive argument is easily demolished.
Gates begins with this dubious and factually unsupported claim:
“Emissions projections have gone down, and with the right policies and investments, innovation will allow us to drive emissions down much further.”
Yes, some optimistic projections may have gone down. But what are the assumptions of those projections? Are they realistic? Gates doesn’t reveal or back up the assumptions that underlie these optimistic projections (which include infeasible technology like carbon capture).
Just a few paragraphs later, Gates contradicts himself on those rosy projected reductions – it now looks like they will increase dramatically as a result of a doubling in energy demand:
“That’s [2-3 degree warming] well above the 1.5°C goal that countries committed to at the Paris COP in 2015. In fact, between now and 2040, we are going to fall far short of the world’s climate goals. One reason is that the world’s demand for energy is going up—more than doubling by 2050. […]
Unfortunately, in this case, what’s good for prosperity is bad for the environment. Although wind and solar have gotten cheaper and better, we don’t yet have all the tools we need to meet the growing demand for energy without increasing carbon emissions.”
If we don’t yet have all the tools (or viable technologies, legally enforceable requirements, or remotely the political will), then the so called “emissions projections” Gates relies on are based on techno-utopian assumptions.
And Gates gets the big picture on climate policy priorities exactly backwards – and he again begins with a smear on a so-called “doomsday outlook”:
“Unfortunately, the doomsday outlook is causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals, and it’s diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world.”
He’s got that exactly backwards: in reality, climate adaptation has almost displaced emissions mitigation.
And if Gates is so committed to “human welfare”, poverty reduction, and health, why does he justify US humanitarian aid program – virtually eliminated by Trump – as a program to preserve US power?
“If the United States retreats, others will fill the gap, and not all of them will bring our values, our priorities, or our interests to the table. Preserving American global influence will require restoring the staff, systems, and resources that underpin it—before the damage becomes irreversible.”
“If the US retreats”? If?
Trump has retreated, dismantled and defunded US AID and other humanitarian programs – and he’s burned the boats.
So, it’s all really about US “interests” and power.
And we know that “US interests” are code for the profits of the billionaires like Gates and the Neoliberal finance capitalism backed extractive imperialist status quo.
On 13 October 2025, Nina Lakhani, climate justice reporter the Guardian, published this interview with Mary Lawlor, UN special rapporteur for human rights defenders, who presented her final annual thematic report during an interactive dialogue at the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly’s Third Committee. The Special Rapporteur’s report focused on the contributions of human rights defenders addressing climate change and working to realise a just transition from fossil fuels, and the risks they face in carrying out this work.
Mary Lawlor, the UN special rapporteur for human rights defenders since 2020, has documented hundreds of cases where states have sought to smear and silence climate defenders engaged in peaceful protest, non-violent civil disobedience and litigation.
“Attacks against climate defenders have surged over the course of the mandate, and we now see outright repression against people who are organizing for climate action. It’s some of the states that have claimed to be the strongest supporters of human rights defenders including the UK, Germany, France and the US, that are most often repressing climate activists and where the right to protest is being denigrated and delegitimized.
“These big countries spew out the rhetoric about 1.5C, but they don’t mean it. They are playing the game to suit themselves. It’s business as usual,” Lawlor said in an interview with the Guardian.
It documents state repression including police violence and surveillance, civil litigation deployed to deliberately wear down and silence climate defenders known as Slapp (strategic lawsuits against public participation), as well as bogus criminal charges ranging from sedition, criminal defamation, terrorism and conspiracy to trespass, to public disorder and to disobedience.
One trend documented by Lawlor is the conflation of non-violent climate action with terrorism. In 2022, the French minister of interior at the time, and current minister of justice, accused the national environmental movement Les Soulèvements de la Terre of “ecoterrorism”. The government sought to close down the group, but the country’s highest administrative court eventually overturned the effort.
Lawlor is adamant that climate activists are human rights defenders. They use non-violent protest, disruptive civil disobedience and litigation to stop fossil fuel projects and pressure elected officials to take meaningful action precisely because they are trying to protect the right to food, clean water, health, life and a healthy environment.
But it’s not just fossil fuels. Human rights are now being targeted in the rush for critical minerals and new sources of non-fossil energy. The same repressive playbook is being used by governments and private companies involved in land grabs, pollution and Indigenous rights violations in pursuit of a green transition.
“Governments are repressing human rights defenders and the current trajectory is incompatible with the realization of human rights for all. It’s just a road to destruction … I think states are behaving in a criminal fashion,” Lawlor said.
“No system, no power, no government, no big company seeking profit should trump the rights of billions of people in the world. And that’s what’s happening. It’s the rich, the powerful that are creating such a disaster for humanity.”
Nako Dost Muhammad (image on left) had never heard the hum of a fan. Living in a village named Kolahu in Tump, a tehsil in district Kech tucked between dusty hills and near the edge of the Iranian border, Nako’s life has been cloaked in darkness.
Since 2016, the electricity connections in their village had been completely cut off, making them rely on the dim, choking flame of a kerosene lamp. He remembers a night when his grandson was bitten by a scorpion. There was no proper light to see where the creepy creature had gone, no decent transport to take the boy to a dispensary or a fan to stop them from sleeping on the floor. From the school in the village to the dispensary nearby, none had power.
Until last month, Nako recalls, when a solar-panel-laden Zamyad vehicle from Turbat arrived. A local contractor and three other people came with unfamiliar tools: a metal pole, a solar panel, a fan, wires and, intriguingly, a battery that had neither sulphuric acid nor distilled water in it, he says. He was told by the contractor that he was among the 40 recipients from the village to receive “a home solar solution” under a new provincial scheme from the Energy Department of Balochistan.
Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest province in terms of area, remains the most energy deprived region. Almost 36 per cent of Balochistan is connected to the national grid and the connected ones receive erratic supply, according to a report presented in the National Assembly of Pakistan. Therefore, in this void, solar technology has been a boon. The Energy Department of Balochistan in collaboration with the People’s Republic of China is now providing home solar systems through a 15,000 solar home system grant aid by the China International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA) and the South-South Cooperation Assistance Fund (SSCACF). These include 250 Watts panels, wiring kits, charge controllers and critically lithium-ion batteries to store power to be utilised during night.
Lithium Solar Charge Controller
Nako didn’t know what a “lithium-ion battery” was, nor had he heard of Guangdong, a Chinese province, stamped on the battery casing. What he knew about was a solar panel that caught sunlight, a battery that stored something invisible and that by the evening, his home — one mud house — would have two working lights and a fan to sleep just like in the city.
These lithium-ion batteries that are used to power electric scooters in Karachi or power up laptops and mobile phones in Lahore, are now providing electricity to the far away hamlets of Balochistan, often forgotten by the National power grid. From the fertile lands of Pishin district in the North to the draught-hit district of Gwadar in the South, these Chinese-made lithium-ion batteries, compact yet powerful, are converting sunlight into steady electricity in the night.
A Tale of two chemistries
“Lead acid batteries are the grandfather of energy storage invented in 1859,” Says Abdul Saboor, a chemistry professor in Atta Shad Degree college, Turbat. “They are cheap, recyclable and are locally manufactured by firms like Exide, Osaka and AGS. But they are heavy, require maintenance and give away 50 per cent of the charge stored in them. Unluckily, depending upon usage, their life span varies from 2 to five years.”
By contrast, he explains, lithium-ion batteries especially the Lithium-iron Phosphate variants are now the heart of solar systems, electric scooters, and backup power. They last longer, are lighter and discharge up to 90 to 95 per cent.
So what is the fine print?
“The cost”, says a consumer from Tump. “A 100Ah battery in the market costs Rs. 28,000 while a lithium-ion battery in that range would cost you Rs. 80,000.”
This expensive cost puts the lithium-ion batteries out of the reach of the middle class people. Another resident from Turbat confided in me that he purchased a lithium-ion battery in Gwadar — similar to the ones distributed under the provincial scheme — for Rs. 60,000, giving birth to a black market driven by high demand of the lithium-ion batteries and their quality.
Made in China: A Double-Edged Sword
Almost all, 90%, of the lithium-ion batteries in Pakistani markets are imported from China, with the remaining 10 per cent from United States and Bahrain. Brands like Dynavolt, CATL and BYD arrive through CPEC-linked logistics chains or local distributors from Karachi’s Saddar or Lahore’s Hall Road.
Between August 2023 to July 2024, Pakistan’s lithium-ion battery import from China stood at a staggering 710 shipments, according to Volza Pakistan’s Import data. Reports from the Pakistan’s Customs and Pakistan Bureau of Statistics show that from the fiscal years of 2019 to 2024, the import money for lithium-ion batteries increased from $12 million to a jaw-dropping $49 million.
Another report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), shows the lithium-ion batteries import in 2024 in the country was totalled around 1.25 GWh and additionally 400 megawatt-hour( MWh) in the months of January and February of 2025 alone. This report also reiterates that if this current trend to solarize the country with solar-plus-battery installation continues, luckily, Pakistan’s 26 per cent of peak electricity demand would be met by 2030. For now, importing batteries from China is a blessing, but there is a cost to this convenience.
Pakistan currently lacks local manufacturing capacity for lithium-ion batteries. We have no lithium mining, no cell production capabilities and no infrastructure to recycle e-waste. Given that the world lithium supply chain is tense due to geopolitical rivalries, Pakistan’s entire dependency on a single supplier could cause trade shocks.
“Probably, there would be a continued import of lithium-ion batteries from China or passive assembly units in the days to come.” Expresses, Asumi Heibitan, an Electric Engineer graduate from Bahaudin Zakriya University, Multan. “ If there is a shift in export policy by Beijing, a shipping issue or a geopolitical service cut-off, Pakistan won’t have any alternative supplier.”
There would also be an issue of equity just beyond trade risks, Asumi warns. A 5kWh lithium-ion battery with solar panel and inverter would cost more than two lakh__ an unaffordable price for most of the low-income families. Though schemes like the Energy Department of Balochistan would make a dent, but many marginalised communities remain excluded to-date.
On a different aspect, The Electric Vehicles Policy 2020-2025 of Pakistan has also envisaged to turn 30 per cent of all the vehicles into EVs by 2030. BYD alone envisions to assemble EVs in Pakistan by mid-2026, but with a single lithium -ion battery ally and sky-rocketing prices of such batteries in the global market, Pakistan’s nascent dream of Electric Vehicles could collapse overnight.
Environmental Hazards
Pakistan also doesn’t have any formal lithium-ion recycling capacity, which means the end-of-life batteries — typically containing poisonous metals like cobalt, manganese, nickel and lithium salts — would end up in waste sites, weakening soil health and water contamination. Resultantly, Pakistan is going to be a dumping ground for e-waste, without policies on lithium waste management.
“We are sleepwalking to an e-waste crisis.” says Bahram Baloch, a student from BUITEMS, Quetta. “ It is like buying thousands of ships with no ship-breaking yards in sight.”
Unfortunately, none of the technical universities of the country, be it UET Lahore, BUITEMS in Quetta or NED University offer specialized courses on battery assembly, recycling and management. This educational gap would definitely force reliance on foreign Chinese or German consultants for large-scale energy projects.
Though geological surveys by the Pakistan Mineral Development Corporation (PMDC) also suggest the possible availability of lithium in the Chagai district in Balochistan and the Gilgit-Baltistan region, this would, definitely change Pakistan from a consumer to contributor but Chinese extraction models, local rights and environmental safety factors also remain fragile.
The way ahead and the continued import
While the world advances to a more sophisticated green energy future, the continued import of Chinese-made lithium-ion batteries not merely becomes a trade practice but raises broader national policy questions: Should the country rely on this traditional imported green tech or start developing its own local manufacturing capacity? What if the these tens of thousands of installed lithium-ion batteries pile up on garbage heaps with no future disposal plans? Is it wise to build a green energy future with products that Pakistan doesn’t control?
Our neighbours and others have answers to offer. India, one of the importers of lithium-ion batteries is now heavily investing on its production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for Advanced Chemistry Cell (ACC) battery storage. It has also enacted the Battery Waste Management Rule of 2022 to manufacture and recycle lithium-ion batteries locally and to manage e-waste. Bangladesh is working with private companies to make lithium-iron phosphate batteries and even small African countries, for example, Rwanda is investing on such pilot projects while we are left behind a import-only paradigm, in spite of investing on incentives to localise, assemble and innovate.
A way for a safe and greener future requires coordinated developments on multiple fronts. First, the government ought to encourage local battery assembly units by offering tax incentives, cheap loans and technical trainings. This will not only create jobs for the locals but also reduce the dependency on imports. Simultaneously, bilateral agreement with China should go beyond trade, like joint technology developments on battery maintenance and assembly units in SEZs (Special Economic Zones) in Gwadar under CPEC. On the other hand, the Pakistan Council of Renewable Energy Technologies in collaboration with NADRA and provincial Energy Departments should start mapping lithium-ion battery installations nationwide so that they could forecast future replacement and predict as well as manage waste volumes.
While Public education on battery safety standards, life span and quality should be prioritize. We also need to diversify our import sources from South Korea, UAE and Japan to avoid any jerk from global lithium-ion battery supply.
Back in Tump, the days are getting hotter. Nako Dost Muhammad tells the visitors proudly that he doesn’t fear the nights. His grandson can now study at the ungodly hours of the night without a kerosene lamp and that his wife doesn’t need to cook before dusk.
But his fear about the battery started after a teacher in the village told him that these batteries catch fire in temperatures above 60 centigrade. He wonders how long that box with Chinese letters would last, since he has received no receipt, no warranty cards and no ways to replace it.
For now, the lithium in his battery has travelled a long way — perhaps from a mining site in Chile to a factory in Guangdong in China, to the Karachi port, and then to a village with bumpy roads long forgotten by the National grid.
Lithium-ion batteries are a good fit for a country which aspires for a green energy future and with unreliable electricity but the way Pakistan is using them now — only importing with no local assembly units is a real risk. We need to decide whether we only want to be consumers of foreign technology or a country that localises, manages and innovates their own green energy solutions. Only the future will tell.
In January 2020, Danny Ray started a complicated job with the Oklahoma agency that regulates oil and gas. The petroleum engineer who’d spent more than 40 years in the oil fields had been hired to help address a spreading problem, one that state regulators did not fully understand.
The year prior, toxic water had poured out of the ground — thousands of gallons per day — for months near the small town of Kingfisher, spreading across acres of farmland, killing crops and trees.
Such pollution events were not new, but they were occurring with increasing frequency across the state. By the time Ray joined the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the incidents had grown common enough to earn a nickname — purges.
When oil and gas are pumped from the ground, they come up with briny fluid called “produced water,” many times saltier than the sea and laden with chemicals, including some that cause cancer. Most of this toxic water is shot back underground using what are known as injection wells.
Wastewater injection had been happening in Oklahoma for 80 years, but something was driving the growing number of purges. Ray and his colleagues in the oil division set out to find the cause. As they scoured well records and years of data, they zeroed in on a significant clue: The purges were occurring near wells where companies were injecting oil field wastewater at excessively high pressure, high enough to crack rock deep underground and allow the waste to travel uncontrolled for miles.
What Causes a Purge
Injection wells shoot oil field wastewater back underground at high pressure. This can fracture a hard layer of rock meant to contain the fluid. It can also push wastewater up through Oklahoma’s large number of inactive wells that have not been properly plugged with cement.
Haisam Hussein for ProPublica
By November 2020, at least 10 sites were expelling polluted water, according to internal agency emails obtained through public records requests.
The number of purges has grown steadily since. A Frontier and ProPublica analysis of pollution complaints submitted to the agency found more than 150 reports of purges in the past five years. Throughout that time, state officials were aware of the environmental and public health crisis as Ray and others at the agency investigated the proliferating purges and uncovered a complex stew of causes.
Ray often likens his home state, where oil has been drilled for more than a century and is a major industry, to a block of Swiss cheese, punctured with the nation’s second-highest number of “orphan” wells — inactive wells whose owners have abandoned them without properly plugging them with cement. The state has catalogued about 20,000 orphan wells, but federal researchers believe the true number may be over 300,000, based on historic industry data and airborne imaging techniques that identify old wells underground. These old wells provide easy pathways for the injected wastewater to zoom up thousands of feet to the surface, contaminating drinking water sources along the way.
Ray particularly worried about the volume of wastewater being crammed underground by high-pressure injection — tens of billions of gallons each year, enough to fill the Empire State Building over 300 times. Oklahoma’s vast landscape of unplugged holes combined with its large number of injection wells operating at high pressures creates conditions ripe for purges.
Number of Injection Wells in Top Oil-Producing States
Oklahoma has the third-largest number of injection wells in the country, much more than other prolific oil states, because of its long history of oil and gas extraction and distinct geology.
Sources: Environmental Protection Agency, Energy Information Administration
But Ray would come to learn that at the commission, identifying the causes of the purges was one thing. Stopping them — and preventing new ones — was a very different matter.
“I don’t know if we’re ever going to fix it or not,” said Ray, 72, who resigned in frustration three years later. “They don’t want to listen.”
A yearlong investigation by The Frontier and ProPublica reveals that the Oklahoma Corporation Commission did not mandate that responsible companies clean up the pollution belowground, as state law requires “when feasible.” Regulators say that once tainted by oil field brine, polluted groundwater is virtually impossible to treat. That makes preventing purges all the more critical — something the commission also failed to do, according to current and former employees. At times, records show, agency leadership sidelined employees who criticized the agency’s response.
Field reports from agency staff referred to individual incidents as “a threat to the environment and the safety of persons” or “a hazard to the ground water.” These notes describe orphan wells spewing toxic water near homes or into streams, leaving scars of salt residue. A homeowner reported that his grandchildren often play near a purging well. Ranchers have lost calves, which, drawn to the salty water, died after drinking it. But the full scale of Oklahoma’s purge problem — and state regulators’ awareness of it — has never previously been reported.
Officials with the agency’s oil division acknowledged in an interview with The Frontier and ProPublica that overpressurized wells are contributing to the purges. They say some of these incidents are a result of historic pollution in a state where oil and gas was extracted long before modern regulations, beginning in the 1960s, required companies to protect the environment and plug inactive wells with cement. They noted that the state has taken steps to reduce injection pressures on new wells in recent years and is committed to “doing the right thing, holding operators accountable, protecting Oklahoma and its resources, and providing fair and balanced regulation.”
“I am also confident that every employee and every view is heard and considered,” said Brandy Wreath, who as director of administration for the commission is responsible for the agency’s operations, in a follow-up statement. “We will continue to be committed to protecting Oklahoma and supporting the state’s largest industry to perform its role in a safe and economic manner. These goals are not mutually exclusive.”
Purges often occur at abandoned, unplugged oil wells as a result of high-pressure injection.Obtained by ProPublica and The Frontier
To Ray, those efforts were not enough in the face of a much bigger problem. If thousands of gallons of water was reaching the surface, he reasoned, that meant an incalculably greater amount was dispersing below ground. The thought scared him. Oklahoma relies on groundwater for over half of its annual water use.
“We have so much damage underground that we don’t even know about,” Ray said.
State Regulatory Failures
State regulators have direct authority over the pressure at which companies inject oil field wastewater.
But while investigating purges over the last five years, oil division employees have found hundreds of wells that were injecting more fluid than their permits allowed or at pressures above the legal limit, as indicated by the pressure gauge on each well and regular reports from companies to the state. During his tenure, Ray and others also discovered purges caused by wells operating within the pressure boundaries noted on the well permits. Oklahoma’s rules, they concluded, were part of the problem.
In a November 2020 email to a handful of employees, Mike McGinnis, deputy director of the oil division, described an abundance of overpressurized wells near a purge as “self-inflicted.”
“It looks like some of the approved injection pressures were set high in the permit,” he wrote. “May be hard to put that genie back in the bottle.”
Reducing permitted injection pressures was exactly the solution Ray felt was necessary.
The state approves the pressure at which companies can inject oil field wastewater based on whether injection would fracture a hard layer of rock meant to contain the fluid. Ray believed purges could be prevented by lowering pressure limits to the point where injection would not crack the softer sandy layers where most oil and gas is found.
Soon after starting his job, Ray began distributing long memos and dizzying equations calculating the pressure at which different rock formations break.
Ray’s efforts helped yield some short-term success. As new purges emerged and existing ones continued to flow, oil division officials in 2020 lowered injection pressures on a case-by-case basis. Regulators added layers of scrutiny for proposed injection wells and more frequently asked for maps showing wells that the pressurized water might collide with as well as data on the pressure at which rocks crack, according to agency officials.
But lowering injection pressures across the state proved impossible. In meetings, oil and gas industry representatives pushed back on proposed rule changes that Ray considered incremental. That same year, he had proposed a rule that would significantly reduce injection pressures statewide to Robyn Strickland, the oil division director at the time. Ray said Strickland cut him out of subsequent rule meetings.
“I never got an invitation to go back,” he said.
Strickland did not respond to requests for comment.
Oil field wastewater flows up from the ground on a farm near Enid, Oklahoma.Abigail Harrison
As 2020 came to a close, several purges in oil fields roughly 2 miles outside the small town of Velma in southwestern Oklahoma made the pressure problem impossible to ignore. Old wells were regularly expelling toxic salt water, one at a rate of 12,600 gallons per day, roughly enough to fill a backyard swimming pool.
Ray and other members of the oil division discovered that some nearby wells had been injecting at pressures that were too high or were shooting more wastewater into the earth than legally allowed,according to agency emails.
The owner of the injection wells, Citation Oil and Gas Corp., one of the largest operators in Oklahoma, agreed to plug some of the purging wells. Ray likened this approach to “Whac-A-Mole”: With so much injected water underground, plugging a few old wells wouldn’t reduce the likelihood of purges; the water would simply find a new outlet.
Citation did not answer questions about the Velma purge.
The agency reduced injection pressures for some of Citation’s wells and temporarily shut down others, but Ray believed that to permanently stop the purge, all injection near Velma needed to be halted indefinitely so the amount of fluid and pressure that had built up underground could be lowered over time. But he said his bosses didn’t agree and, in the Velma case and subsequent purges, allowed companies to continue injecting — or to restart after a short pause — at times near active purges.
“They would say things in our meetings, like, ‘Well, the operators might not go for that,’” Ray said.
“Hell, you’re supposed to be regulators.”
Wreath denied that the agency was overly lenient with oil companies and said that Ray advocated for changes that the oil division could not implement on its own.
“Danny may not have gotten things as fast as he wanted to, but he was heard,” Wreath said. “People were working on it and doing what they needed to do to do it properly and legally. We just don’t have the big stick of government to walk out and say, ‘Boom, you’ve got to start doing this.’”
Charles Teacle III, regulatory affairs chairman for the Oklahoma Energy Producers Alliance, an industry group, said most purges “tend to occur in areas that have a very long history of historical practices that do not represent how the industry operates today.” He did not specify which practices companies no longer engage in. Teacle said that when purges can be connected to a particular company, regulators work with the company to “develop a plan to address it and allow the operator to resume operations if possible.”
Several of the recent purges threatened to violate federal clean water laws, according to Environmental Protection Agency reports, so federal officials began conducting field inspections alongside state oil division employees. The EPA regional office in Dallas noted in a 2020 review of Oklahoma’s injection regulations that “inappropriate” injection appeared to add “pressure to an already over-pressurized system.”
The following year, Ray took his complaints about his agency’s injection pressure regulations to the EPA.
In August 2022, the Velma purge exploded to the surface again, more than a year after the agency’s initial investigation began. Thousands of gallons of oil field wastewater poured down a forested hillside, forming a “field” of water and flowing into a creek, according to an email from an agency employee. The agency discovered the fluid was 56 times more concentrated with salts and chemicals than the EPA’s standard for drinking water.
Contaminated water erupts from the ground during a purge in Velma, Oklahoma, in 2022.Oklahoma Corporation Commission, obtained by ProPublica and The Frontier
This time, oil division officials shut down all nearby injection. But a week later, wastewater flowed out of the ground at an even faster rate, a result of the pressure that had built up over time. A week after that, a mile away, another purge began.
As before, Ray chafed at what he saw as the agency’s reactive stance.
If an across-the-board pressure reduction was impossible, Ray hoped that the oil division would wield one of its available tools: legal action against companies creating the pollution. The oil division could take companies to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission’s administrative law courts, where judges could issue rulings that fine companies or enforce cleanups, as long as the three elected commissioners approved.
Agency leadership appeared to support this strategy. In an October 2022 email, field operations manager Brad Ice wrote that if pollution were found, the agency would order the company to halt injection and take steps to clean the area. And if the company disagreed or pollution continued, the agency would “file contempt for failure to prevent pollution” against the company.
But no contempt cases have been filed for purges in the last five years, according to commission spokesperson Trey Davis. Nor has the agency fined any companies for purges during that time, he said.
Davis identified two cases in administrative law court during that time in which the agency formally ordered companies to stop injection after a purge and to clean up the pollution — though he said the commission prefers “to lead with a handshake instead of a hammer.”
Despite creating purges, companies did not face punishment if they subsequently complied with agency requests to shut down injection wells, pump wastewater off the surface and restore the landscape, Davis and other agency officials said.
“We’re not a fine-driven agency,” said Wreath, adding that extended injection well shutdowns cut into oil company profits, making additional fines unnecessary. He noted that pursuing enforcement can take longer and cost taxpayers more than getting companies to cooperate voluntarily.
That cooperation, however, almost never involves cleanup of water resources tainted by purges. Oil division officials were able to identify just one time since 2020 that their agency approved a plan to clean up groundwater pollution caused by a purge. Removing pollution from underground water sources is incredibly difficult and very expensive, McGinnis, the agency’s deputy director, said.
By the fall of 2022, other agency staff had begun voicing frustration at what they perceived as the commission’s lack of action.
“I believe it is unconscionably reckless on our part as a regulatory agency not to act swiftly, while knowingly and willingly allowing the continued operation of activities under our jurisdictional control that are contaminating groundwater and presenting a potential endangerment to the health and safety of persons and the environment,” wrote Everett Plummer, at the time a supervisor at the agency’s oil division, in an October 2022 email to another supervisor that was forwarded to Ray and agency leaders, including Strickland.
“We are not addressing the root cause of the problem,” Plummer went on in the same email. “That root cause is overpressure.”
Less than a year later, Plummer sent another email, this time to Ray and another colleague, lamenting that Strickland and other agency leaders “won’t offer any help or technical input or solutions.”
Neither Strickland nor an agency spokesperson responded to requests for comment on Plummer’s email. Plummer declined to be interviewed for this story.
Some oil and gas companies know when their injection wells are operating at excess pressure and fracturing rock, allowing toxic water to disperse below ground, in violation of state standards, according to a hydrogeologist who worked in saltwater disposal for a large Oklahoma oil company. He pointed to wells he had worked on that were injecting 10,000 barrels of wastewater a day — more than the rock layer should be able to absorb. “You’re thinking, ‘Damn, where is it all going?’” he said.
The hydrogeologist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he still works in the industry and fears repercussions, said he worries the result is pollution the state doesn’t know about — until it breaks the surface.
“It was so disheartening to me,” he said, “because you should be able to go to OCC to actually address this stuff.”
Toxic Drinking Water
As Ray pushed his agency to respond more urgently to the purges, oil field wastewater was seeping into aquifers and drinking water sources scattered across the state.
In 2021, John Roberts, who works as an oil field pump truck driver, and his wife, Misty, asked the state to test their water. They live near the 500-person town of Cement in southwestern Oklahoma, where a series of purges encircled the town for nearly four years. One gushed a few hundred feet from the high school, just beyond the softball diamond.
For residents whose private water wells pulled from the local groundwater, these purges posed severe health risks in addition to killing grass and other vegetation on their land. When the state tested water from the Roberts’ well, samples showed levels of salts well above the EPA’s recommended maximum. Their well water also contained benzene, a notorious carcinogen linked to leukemia and other blood cell cancers, at six times the EPA’s limit for drinking water.
In these images taken by staff of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, salt residue covers the ground after a purge.Oklahoma Corporation Commission, obtained by ProPublica and The FrontierIn these images taken by staff of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, salt residue covers the ground after a purge.Oklahoma Corporation Commission, obtained by ProPublica and The Frontier
Subsequent agency investigations near Cement found a tangle of problems. Several wells were injecting at pressures far beyond the fracture point of the rock. A study commissioned by the state found that, within a few square miles, 22 of 28 injection wells were operating at pressures outside legal limits, were injecting into the wrong geologic formation and potentially causing cracks, or had an incomplete permit.
These wells were also injecting near more than 100 old wells that had been plugged with mud. Unlike a proper cement plug, mud is not strong enough to prevent the pressurized fluid from bursting out of the well.
Many of the injection wells were again owned by Citation, whose high-pressure injection had been shut down by the agency near the Velma purge about 60 miles away. Company representatives downplayed the number of purges, referring to them as “alleged” in emails to the agency. They maintained that the pollution was a remnant of historic oil and gas activity. But agency engineers pulled well records and field staff tracked oil field wastewater flowing less than a half mile from a church and a Dollar General on the edge of town. The state report analyzed water samples and injection data and found that the cause was overpressurized injection.
In 2023, the Robertses sued Citation in federal district court, alleging that the company’s injection was causing “new pollution and contamination on a daily basis.” Citation denied the allegations and argued that the case ought to first be decided by the commission’s administrative law court. The federal lawsuit is on hold until the administrative case with the Oklahoma Corporation Commission concludes.
Misty Roberts told The Frontier and ProPublica that the couple has installed filtration systems, which require upkeep to keep toxic chemicals out of their drinking water. “It’s a headache just knowing that if our filters get bad, it could come through if we don’t get them changed in time,” she said.
She said that Citation recommended that they pay to hook up to city water, but their neighbor refused to offer them an easement to dig a water line.
The company did not answer questions about the lawsuit.
“Citation Oil & Gas Corp. continues to work cooperatively with the OCC to further investigate the sources and causes of these alleged purges,” Bob Redweik, the company’s vice president of environmental health and safety and regulatory affairs, said in a statement.
The oil and gas industry’s toxic legacy can endure long after production has ceased.
For rancher Tim Ramsey, the pastures where he runs cattle in northeastern Oklahoma are littered with orphan oil and gas wells. Hiding in the tall grass or shaded by stands of oak and elm, many of the wells are leaking oil. Others regularly purged oil field brine. One, according to Ramsey, periodically blasted salt water and oil 40 feet into the air with a loud “SHHHH” sound. Ramsey has been submitting cleanup requests to the state for years. The state plugged the purging well last winter, but many more unplugged wells remain, according to state data.
The 67-year-old spent decades as a coal miner. The oil industry’s pollution angers him. Regulators’ failure to prevent that pollution angers him even more. He described the state as “so slow at doing anything.”
“My biggest beef,” he said, “is why did you let them get away with it to begin with?”
Tim Ramsey’s ranch land is littered with orphan oil and gas wells.September Dawn Bottoms for ProPublica
Similar disappointment ate at Ray in his final months at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. Despite his urging, the oil division did not pursue court cases against companies, even as the crisis seemed to be worsening. In spring 2023, he said he reviewed an internal spreadsheet identifying 42 purges, most of which were still actively flowing.
By August 2023, Ray had had enough and resigned.
An Enduring Crisis
Around the time of Ray’s departure from the agency, the oil division hired a prominent environmental consulting firm, Halff, to help settle disputes among its employees on how the state should respond to the purges.
The Frontier and ProPublica reviewed reports prepared by the firm about major purges. In each one, they had drawn the same conclusion as Ray: Overpressurized injection wells were causing purges, a dynamic intensified by the number of orphan wells and years of lax regulation, according to the reports.
But tensions remained. Shawn Coslett, manager of the pollution abatement division, became increasingly vocal about what he called a “culture problem” within the commission when it came to holding companies accountable for pollution, according to emails he sent to his managers and other colleagues.
Since 2023, Coslett had been pushing the agency to pursue Citation in court for its role in a major purge outside Ardmore that gushed wastewater on and off for years. In May 2024, Citation’s vice president of environmental health and safety emailed his team to let them know that Ice, the agency’s field operations director, agreed to hold a meeting between the company and the agency’s oil division with “limited attendance.”
“Shawn Coslett and his team would not be invited,” Redweik wrote.
The role of Coslett’s team in the purge investigation was subsequently reduced, according to internal documents. The agency marked the purge as “resolved” in April 2025.
Coslett declined to be interviewed for this story. Neither Ice nor Redweik responded to questions about Coslett’s work on the Ardmore purge.
Last December, Coslett also urged the agency in several emails to take action on a purge expelling 1,300 gallons of salt water daily on Choctaw Nation land in southeastern Oklahoma. It had been flowing intermittently for four years.
Coslett wanted the agency to create a sampling plan for barium, which had been found in the purging water at high levels, as well as other metals. In a December email to an oil division manager, he wrote that runoff from the site could eventually make its way into the headwaters of Lake Wister, a public water supply that serves tens of thousands of people.
The oil division did attempt to make some changes. In closed meetings with industry representatives last year, agency officials suggested requiring companies to test the fracture point for each injection well — exactly what Ray had recommended years before. But industry groups vigorously opposed the idea, agency officials told The Frontier and ProPublica, and it was not included in the formal proposal to change state rules for injection pressure that the agency submitted to the commissioners last September.
Wastewater from an orphan well shoots into the air.Obtained by ProPublica and The Frontier
In January, the commission ultimately approved a revised formula to calculate maximum injection pressures. But the new rules, effective this month, only apply to new wells. Retroactively reducing pressures would require action by the state Legislature. The higher pressures for Oklahoma’s more than 10,400 existing injection wells remain unchanged, allowing the problem that Ray identified to persist.
Coslett left the agency in March. Two weeks later, a new director arrived to lead the oil division: Jeremy Hodges, a former financial analyst and project manager for Continental Resources, the Oklahoma City-based oil and gas giant. He replaced Strickland, who recently took a job as chief projects officer for the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, a quasi-governmental organization that often advocates for industry interests.
In the weeks immediately before and after Hodges took over the oil division, the agency marked nearly 20 purge cases as “resolved,” including some of the most damaging and persistent pollution events, according to the agency’s database of pollution complaints.
In a September public meeting, Hodges sought to reassure the agency’s commissioners: Purges were under control, he said.
But interviews with current and former agency staff and oil and gas officials suggest that Oklahoma is still dealing with dozens of purges. One of these incidents killed about two dozen cattle in September after toxic salt water filled a creek leading to Fort Cobb Lake, a public water supply. That month, the state increased testing at the lake and said the public supply has not been impacted. Nevertheless, in October Gov. Kevin Stitt declared a state of emergency and called it “a serious threat to public health and safety” as thousands of gallons of wastewater continued to flow each day.
Toxic water from a purge killed about two dozen cattle on a ranch near Fort Cobb Lake in September.Screenshot of News9.com by ProPublica
Agency officials said field staff periodically check for signs of new activity at purge sites that they considered resolved. They did not comment on the purges near Lake Wister or Fort Cobb Lake. Hodges, who participated in an interview with The Frontier and ProPublica, did not provide comment beyond what other agency officials said.
In late August, Ray, who has returned to consulting for oil and gas companies, took a reporter to visit a purge site on a ranch in southern Oklahoma where the agency had closed a pollution complaint around the time Hodges took office.
That afternoon, in an otherwise dry streambed flanked by steep red-dirt walls, puddles sat baking in the sun, though it hadn’t rained in weeks. A film of oil shone on the water’s surface, bands of green mixed with purple and bright blue. On the banks, white salt scars showed the outline of old wastewater spills.
“It is hard to believe that anyone would turn their back on this problem and just pretend it simply does not exist,” Ray said as he surveyed the scene.
Farther up the gulch, the water formed a pool, which gave off a rank chemical smell. The oily surface appeared calm at first glance. But on closer inspection, bubbles were breaking the surface in several places. The water was coming up from beneath the ground.
Oil field wastewater bubbles into Wildhorse Creek in February 2025.Abigail Harrison
These incidents, sometimes called “purges,” have also contaminated the private water wells of people in rural areas.
Over the years, some Oklahoma residents have made complaints. But they haven’t always found an easy solution.
A rancher in northeastern Oklahoma told us he’s complained for years about wells leaking oil. The state plugged one well, which he said shot salt water and oil 40 feet in the air, but left others. In the southwestern part of the state, a couple found their drinking water had high levels of salt and benzene, a carcinogen. They sued an oil company, but their case is on hold.
As we continue our reporting on this issue, we need your help to understand how it’s affecting your community. Have you noticed purges or polluted water supplies in your area? Tried to address them? Do you have other information about oil and gas in Oklahoma that you’d like to share? Take a few minutes to fill out our form below.
We appreciate you sharing your story, and we take your privacy seriously. We are gathering these stories for the purposes of our reporting and will contact you if we wish to publish any part of your story.
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A Marshall Islands lawmaker has called on Pacific legislatures to establish and strengthen their national human rights commissions to help address the region’s nuclear testing legacy.
“Our people in the Marshall Islands carry voices of our lives that are shaped by this nuclear legacy,” Senator David Anitok said during the second day of the Association of Pacific Island Legislatures (APIL) general assembly in Saipan this week.
“Decades later, our people still endure many consequences, such as cancer, displacement, environmental contamination, and the Micronesian families seeking safety and care abroad. Recent studies and lived experience [have shown] what our elders have always known-the harm is deeper, broader, and longer lasting than what the world once believed.”
Anitok said that once established, these human rights commissions must be independent, inclusive, and empowered to tackle not only the nuclear testing legacy but also issues of injustice, displacement, environmental degradation, and governance.
“Let’s stand together and build a migration network of human rights institutions that will protect our people, our lands, our oceans, our cultures, our heritages, and future generations,” he said.
“Furthermore, we call upon all of you to engage more actively with international human rights mechanisms. Together, it will help shape a future broadened in human rights, peace, and dignity.”
Marshall Islands Senator David Anitok . . . “Let’s stand together and build a migration network of human rights institutions that will protect our people . . . and future generations.” Image: RNZ Pacific/Mark Rabago
To demonstrate the Marshall Islands’ leadership on human rights, Anitok noted that the country has been elected to the UN Human Rights Council twice under President Dr Hilda Heine — an honour shared in the Pacific only once each by Australia and Tahiti.
Pohnpei Senator Shelten Neth echoed Anitok’s call, demanding justice for the Pacific’s nuclear testing victims.
“Enough is enough. Let’s stop talking the talk and let’s put our efforts together — united we stand and walk the talk.
“Spreading of the nuclear waste is not only confined to the Marshall Islands, and I’m a living witness. I can talk about this from the scientific research already completed, but many don’t want to release it to the general public.
“The contamination is spreading fast. [It’s in] Guam already, and the other nations that are closer to the RMI,” Neth said.
He then urged the United States to accept full responsibility for its nuclear testing programme in the Pacific.
“I [want to tell] Uncle Sam to honestly attend to the accountability of their wrongdoing. Inhuman, unethical, unorthodox, what you did to RMI. The nuclear testing is an injustice!” Neth declared.
Anitok and Neth’s remarks followed a presentation by Diego Valadares Vasconcelos Neto, human rights officer for Micronesia under the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who discussed how UN human rights mechanisms can support economic development, health, and welfare in the region.
Neto underscored the UN’s 80-year partnership with the Pacific and its continuing commitment to peace, human rights, and sustainable development in the wake of the Second World War and the nuclear era.
He highlighted key human rights relevant to the Pacific context:
Right to development — Economic progress must go beyond GDP growth to include social, cultural, and political inclusion;
Right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment — Ensuring access to information, public participation, and justice in environmental matters; and
Political and civil rights — Upholding participation in governance, freedom of expression and association, equality, and self-determination.
Based in Pohnpei and representing OHCHR’s regional office in Suva, Fiji, Neto outlined UN tools available to assist Pacific legislatures, including the Universal Periodic Review, special procedures (such as thematic experts on water, sanitation, and climate justice), and treaty bodies monitoring state compliance with human rights conventions.
He also urged Pacific parliaments to form permanent human rights committees, ratify more international treaties, and strengthen legislative oversight on human rights implementation.
Neto concluded by citing ongoing UN collaboration in the Marshall Islands-particularly in addressing the human rights impacts of nuclear testing and climate change-and expressed hope for continued dialogue between Pacific lawmakers and the UN Human Rights Office.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A comprehensive analysis of UN data and scientific studies reveals that the environmental damage from recent conflicts will impact the region’s health and stability for generations.
The human cost of war is measured in lives lost and families displaced. However, a growing body of evidence from international organizations points to another, more enduring casualty: the environment. From the rubble-strewn landscape of Gaza to the fire-scorched lands of Lebanon and the industrial sites of Iran, military actions are unleashing long-term ecological disasters that poison the land, water, and air, threatening the foundation of life itself long after the fighting stops.
Gaza: An Unprecedented Environmental Collapse
In the Gaza Strip, the scale of environmental damage is so severe that experts are describing it as unprecedented.
A Toxic Tide of Rubble: The conflict has generated an estimated 50 to 61 million tons of debris, much of which contains hazardous materials like asbestos, unexploded ordnance, and human remains. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) warns that clearing this rubble could take up to 14 years and poses a severe risk of contaminating soil and groundwater.
Systemic Water Contamination: The destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure has led to a catastrophic water crisis. With 85% of water facilities inoperable, over 100,000 cubic meters of raw or poorly treated sewage are being discharged into the Mediterranean Sea every day, polluting the coastline and the aquifer. This has left over 90% of Gaza’s water unfit for human consumption, creating a breeding ground for waterborne diseases.
Deliberate Destruction of Agriculture: Satellite data shows that the conflict has destroyed or damaged approximately 80% of Gaza’s tree cover, including thousands of olive trees, and over two-thirds of its cropland. This systematic destruction of farmland and orchards has not only wiped out food sovereignty but also stripped the land of its natural defenses against desertification.
A Massive Climate Footprint: The climate cost of the war is substantial. A study shared with The Guardian found that the long-term carbon footprint of the first 15 months of the conflict, including future reconstruction, could exceed 31 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent—more than the annual emissions of many individual countries.
A Regional Pattern of Environmental Damage
The environmental devastation wrought by conflict is a silent, enduring crisis that extends far beyond the headlines from Gaza. A chilling pattern of ecological degradation is emerging across the region, where military actions are triggering environmental catastrophes that will poison the land, air, and water for generations. This is not merely collateral damage; it is a form of ecocide that undermines the very foundations of life and recovery.
Lebanon: A Landscape Scorched and Poisoned: Israeli military operations have inflicted profound ecological wounds on Lebanon. The use of incendiary weapons, including documented white phosphorus munitions, has transformed southern Lebanon into a tinderbox. Satellite imagery reveals a staggering 10,800 hectares reduced to ash in 2024 alone—an area four times the size of Beirut. This isn’t just burned land; it is the deliberate incineration of prime farmland and ancient forests, crippling local food security and biodiversity. The crisis extends to the sea: a single attack on the Jiyeh power plant in July 2024 resulted in a 10,000-ton oil spill, creating a suffocating marine disaster that threatens the entire Mediterranean coastline. The land is scorched, and the sea is poisoned.
Syria: The Obliteration of Natural Heritage and the Specter of Permanent Contamination: In Syria, the environmental cost is measured in both total loss and lasting peril. The Quneitra Governorate reported the “complete destruction” of the Kodna Forest, a 40-year-old natural treasure spanning 186 hectares. The calculated environmental damages exceed $100 million, but the true loss of a restored ecosystem is incalculable. Even more alarmingly, inspectors discovered traces of anthropogenic uranium at a bombed site—a finding that points to the use of controversial munitions and raises the terrifying prospect of long-term radiological and chemical contamination, rendering the area uninhabitable for decades.
Iran: A Short War with Long-Term Climatic and Radiological Consequences: The 2025 conflict in Iran, though brief, demonstrated how quickly modern warfare can pollute the global commons. Precision strikes on industrial sites like oil refineries and a gas depot in Tehran unleashed an environmental onslaught, spewing an estimated 47,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases and nearly 579,000 kg of toxic particulates into the atmosphere—directly contributing to climate change and regional health crises. Most critically, attacks on nuclear facilities at Natanz and Fordo forced the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to issue urgent warnings about potential radiological disasters. This gambit risked a catastrophe that could have crossed international borders, turning a regional conflict into a global environmental and public health emergency.
Legal Reckoning and a Long Road to Recovery
The systematic nature of the environmental destruction has led to calls for legal accountability. Research groups and Palestinian environmental organizations have called for the Israeli government to be investigated for the Rome Statute war crime of ecocide, which prohibits “widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment“.
Recovery, however, will be a monumental task. A joint World Bank, UN, and EU assessment estimated that rebuilding Gaza would cost $53.2 billion over the next decade, with a significant portion needed for environmental recovery and restoring water and sanitation systems. As one expert starkly put it, the scale of destruction is such that Gaza’s environment may have been pushed to a point where it can no longer sustain life.
The relentless conflicts scarring the Middle East are forging a silent, intergenerational crisis of environmental collapse that will long outlive the immediate violence, with comprehensive UN data and scientific studies revealing a region being systematically poisoned. The scale of destruction in Gaza is unprecedented, generating over 50 million tons of toxic rubble and destroying water systems and 80% of the agricultural land, creating a landscape experts fear may no longer sustain life. This pattern of ecocide is mirrored region-wide: in Lebanon, incendiary weapons and a major oil spill have scorched earth and choked the coastline; in Syria, ancient forests are obliterated and traces of anthropogenic uranium hint at permanent radiological contamination; and even brief conflicts, like the strikes on Iran’s industrial and nuclear sites, have spewed toxic particulates and risked global radiological disasters. The systematic nature of this damage has prompted calls for war crimes investigations for ecocide, while the staggering $53 billion price tag for Gaza’s recovery underscores that the true, enduring cost of modern warfare is a poisoned ecosystem that undermines any foundation for future peace and stability for generations to come.
With 2.1 million cattle in Montana, one might expect Governor Gianforte and our congressional delegation to know where cattle actually get brucellosis. But unfortunately, the governor and delegation appear locked into outdated, unscientific, and unsupported false assumptions that wild Yellowstone bison have transmitted brucellosis to cattle. They have not.
The grim result of these false assumptions is that thousands of our nation’s last wild bison are slaughtered when they cross the invisible border of Yellowstone National Park, supposedly to prevent wild bison from infecting private cattle, which can cause cattle to abort.
Contrary to the long-held assumptions, the study found that over the past 20 years it has been wild elk — not wild bison — that transmitted brucellosis to livestock 27 times.
Wild bison were not responsible for a single transmission, not one!
Despite being wild animals, Montana classifies and manages wild bison as livestock. Yet, now the state argues that American Prairie Reserve’s bison should not be allowed to graze on Bureau of Land Management’s grazing allotments, even though American Prairie acquired the legal right to use these grazing allotments when they bought the ranches to create and expand the American Prairie Reserve.
This is puzzling since the Montana Department of Livestock requires American Prairie Reserve to test their bison regularly. Unlike wild bison in Yellowstone National Park, the American Prairie bison are 100% brucellosis free.
Because Montana relies on provably false science, it also requires that almost all of the wild bison that cross Yellowstone National Park’s invisible boundaries should be killed. The result is that about one-quarter of Yellowstone’s herd of 5,000 bison are slaughtered in years when deep snow and their genetic instincts for natural migration force them to seek lower elevations for food and more favorable calving habitat.
Tens of millions of wild bison once roamed across western North America. Today, wild bison occupy less than one percent of their former range. In spite of this, the new Yellowstone Bison Management Plan does nothing to expand the bison grazing opportunities on public lands for the 5,000 wild bison that live almost exclusively in the Park. Perhaps that’s because Governor Gianforte sued the National Park Service to force the agency to kill more wild Park bison, falsely believing them a threat to the cattle industry.
When the Park Service prepared and approved its new bison management plan in 2024, the agency completely ignored the National Academies’ recommendations to switch the focus for brucellosis management in the Greater Yellowstone Area from wild bison to wild elk.
Although the Park Service insists that it used the “best available science,” it appears the agency shares our state’s misconceptions on where cattle actually get brucellosis. Consequently, not a single alternative in the Plan’s Environmental Impact Statement addressed the proven source of brucellosis transmission to livestock, which is elk, not wild bison.
Despite more than 20 years of “capture and slaughter” of tens of thousands of bison — the controversial “management” has failed to reduce the percentage of Yellowstone bison that test positive for brucellosis antibodies. And yet the government just reauthorized the slaughter, which has clearly proven to be ineffective at reducing brucellosis.
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies has taken the Park Service to court to require it to use the best available science and stop the pointless slaughter of our National Mammal. It’s clearly time that Governor Gianforte and our congressional delegation do the same. Wild bison should roam free and all Treaty hunting rights must be respected.
It costs us a lot of money to go to court. Please consider making a donation to the Alliance for the Wild Rockies to help us force the government to make management decisions based on science, not fear.
