How Advanced Transmission Technologies Can Revamp the Aging US Power Grid
The North American power grid is often referred to as “the world’s largest machine.” What may appear to be a haphazard collection of power plants and lines is actually an interconnected, highly engineered system of three networks stretching millions of miles across southern Canada and the continental United States. Its operators perform miracles every day, instantaneously connecting electricity supply from thousands of power plants with the demands of over 400 million people. Amazingly, this machine is 99.95% reliable; the average U.S. customer loses power only twice a year for a total of five hours.
However, 70% of the grid is over 50 years old, and it’s being tested in unprecedented ways. The American Society of Power Engineers gave the U.S. grid a grade of C- in its 2021 report card. Energy demand is growing for the first time in decades, spurred by resurgent manufacturing (much of which was spurred by investments in the Inflation Reduction Act), rapacious data center growth (largely due to artificial intelligence), and nascent electrification of industries once built on fossil fuels, such as the shift from gas-powered cars to electric vehicles. Meanwhile, increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events have battered the grid in recent years, costing consumers billions in extra energy expenses.
To safely and affordably meet increased electricity demand while decarbonizing the grid, we must build new high-voltage long-distance transmission lines (HVTLs). But this won’t happen overnight: New HVTLs take an average of 10 years to build and cost an average of $1 million per mile. Meanwhile, electricity customers nationwide paid $11.5 billion in congestion costs in 2023 — nearly double the amount they paid in 2020. Congestion occurs when there is not enough transmission capacity to deliver the cheapest sources of electricity, and higher-cost resources must be dispatched instead to meet demand.
The U.S. power grid needs help. Advanced transmission technologies are an important part of the solution.
High-voltage long-distance transmission lines are spread across a wind farm in Altamont Pass, Calif. By deploying advanced transmission technologies, the U.S. can expand and modernize the power grid. Photo by B. Christopher / Alamy Stock Photo. What Are Advanced Transmission Technologies?Advanced transmission technologies are a promising set of tools that can be used to quickly and cheaply expand the capacity and improve the operation of the existing grid. The category includes both grid enhancing technologies that can be installed on top of the existing grid, as well as advanced conductors that can replace and increase the capacity of existing lines. These technologies are well-tested and have already been widely deployed across the world.
Despite their “advanced” label, many advanced transmission technologies are surprisingly simple in concept. Take improvements to the line ratings for example: To limit the risk of overheating, transmission lines have historically been rated “statically,” meaning they only transmit power up to a threshold, conservatively set to be safe under the hottest conditions (when lines are unable to carry as much power as when it's cooler).
However, colder temperatures and higher winds actively cool transmission lines and therefore allow them to safely carry more power than their static line rating would suggest. This means that almost all statically-rated lines could be transmitting at least 10% more capacity 90% of the time. When simple sensors are installed, new “dynamic” line ratings (DLRs) can be adjusted in real time as wind and temperature shifts, allowing around 30% to 50% more power to be transmitted in favorable climates.
Other advanced transmission technologies use complex technologies to improve grid efficiency. For example, advanced power flow control devices (APFCs) allow grid operators to control how power is flowing across the grid by changing the resistances of different power pathways. Electricity, like water, flows along the path of least resistance. Building on this analogy, The WATT Coalition describes APFCs as “partial dams” which can be used to redirect “water” (power) across different channels, ensuring that more of the grid is used efficiently. APFCs boost overall system capacity and reduce congestion costs.
What Are the Benefits to Scaling Advanced Transmission Technologies?Perhaps the greatest advantage of advanced transmission technologies is that they can be deployed in a fraction of the time it takes to build new transmission lines. On the shorter end, DLR projects take an average of only three months to complete. Even more ambitious projects, like converting a line so that it transports direct current power instead of alternating current power, can triple the capacity of an existing line in half the time it takes to build a new line.
Secondly, advanced transmission technologies are cheaper to build than new transmission lines and unlock far more economic benefits than costs. Upgrading transmission lines with new, higher capacity advanced conductors can provide similar gains in capacity compared with building new transmission lines, yet they can be anywhere from five to 10 times cheaper per-mile. Grid enhancing technologies like DLR can provide an even greater cost-benefit return. In 2018, the Midwestern utility AEP spent $500,000 to install DLR on 25 miles of its lines. In only 10 months of monitoring, the system saved more than $15 million in congestion costs, providing a whopping 30 to 1 benefit-cost ratio in less than a year of operation.
Finally, advanced transmission technologies can improve reliability and public safety by reducing the likelihood of grid failures and wildfires. Take DLR, for example: On our warming planet, temperatures may sometimes be hotter than the ones used to conservatively set static line ratings. Whereas static lines will maintain line current even in high heat, lines with DLR will sense the extreme weather and lower current, reducing the risk of the line sagging into vegetation and igniting a fire. Advanced conductors also mitigate wildfire risk by reducing sag, while APFC systems can help quickly deenergize parts of the grid when needed.
Though the study of advanced transmission technologies for wildfire mitigation is an emerging field, governments are already recognizing their potential. For example, Utah’s recently passed HB 212 directs utilities to study advanced transmission technologies for their wildfire mitigation potential as part of the utilities’ integrated resource plans.
What Progress Is Being Made to Implement Advanced Transmission Technologies?Hundreds of utilities have already deployed advanced transmission technologies successfully in the U.S. Survey studies compiled by the Idaho National Laboratory for grid enhancing technologies and advanced conductors attest to their high benefit-cost ratios, ease of implementation and quick payback periods. To date, most of the advanced transmission technology projects undertaken by U.S. utilities have been voluntary and limited in scope. However, there are hopeful signs that U.S. policymakers are beginning to recognize the potential of advanced transmission technologies to meet our grid challenges quickly and cost-effectively and will enact legislation to make them more widespread.
Policy activity on advanced transmission technologies has been particularly robust at the state level. Since 2023, more than 10 states governed by both Republicans and Democrats have adopted advanced transmission technology legislation. Proving momentum, in 2025 alone, 17 states saw the introduction of related bills. These bills primarily work by requiring utilities and other transmission owners to study advanced transmission technologies as alternatives to building new lines. For example, South Carolina’s recently passed H 3309 requires utilities to assess advanced transmission technologies as solutions for transmission needs within their integrated resource planning process.
Activity at the national level is happening as well. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking (ANOPR) last June that included a framework for requiring DLR on transmission lines. This has received broad support in comments from consumer advocate groups, utilities and grid operators. Supporters of a DLR requirement argue that such a regulation is necessary to secure “just and reasonable” electricity rates — core to FERC’s mandate — because of the cost savings that DLR unlocks for consumers.
What Are the Major Barriers to Deployment and How Can We Overcome Them?Advanced transmission technologies have not been widely deployed in the U.S., and many utilities, regulators, policymakers and consumers remain unaware of their benefits. Requirements to study advanced transmission technologies in utility proceedings such as integrated resource plans and (including those recently passed by Indiana and Ohio) will help to raise awareness of their benefits while giving advocates greater leverage to push for their adoption. and Ohio) will help to raise awareness of their benefits while giving advocates greater leverage to push for their adoption.
Governors can also work to encourage adoption. In 2023, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey convened a working group to study advanced transmission technologies and make recommendations for their adoption in New England. Governors can also include them in their budget requests, as New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham did in the 2026 budget by calling for a $1 million grid modernization grant program.
Ironically, the low costs of advanced transmission technologies, which make them such promising tools to quickly meet grid challenges, are also a barrier to their implementation. Simply put, they don’t make utilities as much money. Under traditional “cost of service” business models, regulated utilities are allowed to recover their capital costs plus an allowed rate of return through electricity prices.
As several advocates have pointed out, this incentive structure means that utilities can make more money by pursuing capital-intensive projects like new transmission lines over cheaper advanced transmission technology projects. Furthermore, these projects are not yet eligible for cost recovery in some states, meaning utilities aren’t able to profit from deploying advanced transmission technologies. Things are slowly changing, however; recent bills passed in Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Indiana have authorized cost recovery for these technologies.
Reforming outdated business models should be considered to spur adoption. One such proposal called “shared savings” would allow utilities to recoup some of the savings that result from projects in their electricity rates. Another policy idea, called performance-based ratemaking, would tie utility profits to meeting certain performance targets that incentivize advanced transmission technologies — for example, a target to increase the amount of power a utility can carry on its existing system. Finally, shifting from incentivizing to explicitly requiring utilities to deploy advanced transmission technologies in the public interest, as FERC did with the DLR ANOPR, is another way to deploy these technologies at scale.
A Critical InvestmentAt a time when customers face rising energy bills and terawatts of clean energy languish in queues to interconnect to the grid because of a lack of grid capacity, advanced transmission technologies represent our best hope for quickly and cost-effectively reducing the pressure on our grid. These technologies are essential complements to new lines and must at least be considered by utilities and regulators when they review proposals to increase transmission capacity.
In the U.S., momentum is growing to deploy advanced transmission technologies at scale, and an abundance of evidence shows that these technologies are safe, effective and affordable. Let us build on this momentum to secure the prosperous clean energy future we all deserve.
WRI's Ian Goldsmith contributed to this report.
advanced-transmission-technologies.jpg Energy U.S. Energy U.S. Energy Topics electric grid Clean Energy U.S. Climate Policy-Clean Power Type Explainer Exclude From Blog Feed? 0 Projects Authors Joe HackInvestors Look to Nature to Shield Against Growing Financial Risks
Since the start of 2025, a quiet yet profound shift has begun to reshape global finance. In January, BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, publicly acknowledged that "nature capital" — including biodiversity, water, soil and geology — plays a vital role in sustaining long-term corporate performance. For the first time at this scale, natural capital is being treated not as an externality but as a core asset class.
BlackRock isn't the only one. In early March, Goldman Sachs Asset Management introduced its Biodiversity Bond Fund: a groundbreaking fixed-income instrument dedicated to financing biodiversity protection and restoration.
Just weeks later, Norway's Government Pension Fund Global, which manages $1.6 trillion in assets, released an assessment of nature-related risks across approximately 90% of its portfolio, examining how investee companies both depend on and impact ecosystems.
These developments reflect a growing consensus among financial institutions: The current finance system must be reshaped to account for the foundational role of nature.
Putting Nature on the Balance SheetNature is disappearing at a staggering rate. The latest Living Planet Report revealed that wildlife populations plummeted by more than 70% on average over the last 50 years. Forests, the ocean and other critical ecosystems are in peril due to human-driven destruction and climate change. This collapse of natural systems can have devastating consequences both locally and globally, from the disappearance of fisheries and loss of coastal livelihoods to large-scale food system disruptions, natural disasters and economic instability.
Yet despite these growing risks, much of the financial system still prioritizes short-term returns, often at the expense of long-term environmental and economic resilience. As a result, capital continues to flow toward activities that overtax and degrade ecosystems (think: overfishing, unsustainable logging or razing rainforests for agriculture). In 2022, the private sector invested at least $5 trillion in activities that directly harm nature. This was 140 times more than it spent on nature-positive activities, according to the UN Environment Programme.
Even sustainable finance largely passes over nature. While green bonds are a growing asset class, the majority of proceeds are directed toward climate-related projects, with relatively few allocated to biodiversity.
But this status quo cannot hold in the face of ongoing ecosystem decline. With over half of global GDP highly dependent on nature, the risks are not just environmental — they are financial.
From a long-term investment standpoint, failing to account for nature degradation exposes portfolios to escalating material risks and jeopardizes future growth and revenue. One recent study finds that a collapse in key ecosystem services like wild pollination, marine fisheries and timber provision could result in annual economic losses of $2.7 trillion (2.3% of global GDP) by 2030. Another found that physical nature risks could reduce the valuations of seven major U.K. banks by 4%-5% over the next decade.
Financial institutions are also under mounting scrutiny thanks to emerging regulations — such as the EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) and EU Taxonomy — that mandate the disclosure of nature- and climate-related risks. The cost and consequences of noncompliance are rising and are becoming financially material.
As the financial sector begins to reckon with these risks, growing recognition of nature's value by influential players like BlackRock and Goldman Sachs signals that the tide is turning. Now, mainstream financial institutions must build on this momentum — leveraging their roles as lenders, investors, insurers and advisers to actively steer capital away from nature-destructive activities. A critical first step is to begin accounting for nature on the balance sheet.
Ecosystem services like pollination, healthy soils and water regulation underpin much of the global economy. Photo by Lakshmi Narasimha/Unsplash Nature-Based Solutions: A Strategic Response to Growing Nature RisksThere are two powerful ways that banks, asset managers, insurers and other financial actors can drive meaningful change for nature.
For one, financial institutions can act as direct drivers of sustainable finance by allocating capital to initiatives that protect, enhance or restore ecosystems. This includes direct investments in nature-based initiatives through dedicated funds (like Mirova's Natural Capital Fund) or investing in companies that embed nature-positive practices (such as regenerative agriculture) into their operations and supply chains.
Second, financial institutions can help enable broader, system-level change through their financing decisions. For instance, banks could divest from companies that fail to comply with regulations such as the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). Or they could deploy financing structures that reward nature-friendly business models — from sustainability-linked loans to performance-based finance. In doing so, financial institutions can help reshape markets and realign incentives to favor long-term ecological and economic resilience.
In this context, "nature-based solutions" offer a powerful tool for the finance sector. Nature-based solutions are actions that leverage healthy ecosystems to address some of today's most pressing issues, such as climate change and disaster risk, while also benefitting people and nature. This could include restoring upstream forests to support climate regulation and improve water flows for hydropower; adopting sustainable farming practices to boost soil health and productivity; installing green infrastructure in cities to manage heat and flooding; or deploying biotech innovations, such as algae for wastewater treatment.
These are real, emerging investment opportunities that can deliver substantial returns and long-term benefits for nature. Take Natura & Co., a global beauty brand that integrates biodiversity-based sourcing from the Amazon into its core business. By investing in supplier communities and nature-positive practices, Natura has not only mitigated supply chain risk, but also tripled its stock price between 2015 and 2020. This surge in market valuation reflects stronger financial returns as well as growing investor and consumer confidence in a nature-positive business model.
Similarly, the AXA WF ACT Biodiversity fund invests in companies contributing to ecosystem preservation and restoration. With reported returns of approximately 10%, it demonstrates the financial viability of such investment approaches.
Investing in solutions like these offers financial institutions an opportunity to align impact with returns and position themselves at the forefront of a rapidly evolving market landscape. Meanwhile, it can help them mitigate nature-related risks, enhance portfolio resilience, and stay ahead of tightening regulatory and sustainability standards.
Investing in businesses and activities the protect, restore or sustainably use ecosystems can offer long-term financial returns. Photo by Barkah Wibowo/Unsplash Unlocking Finance for NatureWhile financial institutions increasingly recognize the importance of nature and biodiversity, most still lack the practical tools and guidance necessary to integrate nature-related considerations — and especially nature-based solutions — into their investment and lending decisions.
These investments are often technically complex and require specialized knowledge that remains underdeveloped within mainstream finance. Many institutions struggle with internal capacity constraints, including limited expertise to evaluate, structure and manage nature-based assets effectively. This can make it hard to identify investable opportunities or appropriately assess nature-related risks and returns.
In addition, the investment landscape for nature-based solutions is still immature. There is a limited pipeline of high-integrity, scalable projects. Many are small in size, requiring aggregation or blended finance to be viable, which often comes with high transaction costs. Long time horizons (10-30+ years), uncertain return profiles and limited liquidity present further barriers — particularly when compared to traditional assets, such as equities, real estate or bonds, that offer more immediate financial returns.
But there are ways forward.
New WRI research offers a comprehensive framework to help mainstream investors understand, invest in and leverage nature-based solutions effectively. It shows how financial institutions can leverage existing tools — such as sustainability-linked loans, blended finance structures and high-quality impact measurement frameworks — to begin integrating nature-based solutions into core investment processes today. In doing so, financial institutions can go beyond isolated project-level investments and begin catalyzing broader system change by influencing investee companies to shift entire value chains toward nature-positive outcomes.
Financing Nature Is Financing the FutureProgress this year signals a growing recognition of nature-related risks and opportunities among major financial actors. But this is only the start. To truly turn the tide, we need a systemic shift within the financial sector — one that prioritizes long-term impacts over short-term gains and fully integrates nature-related risks into financial decision-making and balance sheets. It is time to act now, moving from inspiration to operation to prevent ecosystems from passing irreversible tipping points.
For institutions looking to future-proof their portfolios, respond to evolving regulations and stay competitive in a sustainability-driven market, investing in nature-based solutions offers both an opportunity and an advantage. By embedding these solutions into their strategies, financial institutions can send powerful market signals to companies across their portfolios, encouraging nature-positive practices and further investment in ecosystem protection and restoration.
Ultimately, investing in nature is not just about doing good for the planet — it's a smart strategy to secure long-term value in an era of mounting ecological and financial volatility.
To learn more, read WRI's new Financial Sector Guidebook on Nature-Based Solutions Investment.
nantong-china-river-restoration.jpg Finance Finance nature-based solutions Type Commentary Exclude From Blog Feed? 0 Related Resources and Data Financial Sector Guidebook on Nature-Based Solutions Investment: Aligning Investment With Impacts and Showcasing Examples Projects Authors Helen Ding Courtney Nina McLarenA Comprehensive Guide for Safer Roads and Livable Cities
Road traffic crashes kill about 1.19 million people each year and seriously injure another 20 million to 50 million. Pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists — the most vulnerable road users — account for half of these deaths and injuries. Even people in motor vehicles are at considerable risk, particularly on high-speed roads. Of all contributing factors, excessive speed is universally recognized as the leading cause of fatal and serious traffic incidents worldwide.
Guide for Safe Speeds: Managing Traffic Speeds to Save Lives and Improve LivabilitySpeed-related risks are both widely known and highly preventable. Proven solutions exist, and it is well understood where and how to effectively apply them. In collaboration with the World Bank, WRI has developed the Guide for Safe Speeds: Managing Traffic Speeds to Save Lives and Improve Livability. This guide presents strong evidence to support informed decision-making and addresses common misconceptions about speed management.
Why Speed Management Matters Beyond SafetyManaging speed isn’t just about safety — it’s also a powerful tool for improving quality of life, especially in urban areas. Slower traffic speeds reduce air and noise pollution, create safer spaces for walking and cycling and even help alleviate urban congestion, despite common misconceptions. These improvements encourage active mobility and support public health by reducing exposure to harmful pollutants and promoting physical activity.
Adopting a New Approach to Speed LimitsInstead of reacting to crashes after they occur, the guide promotes a forward-looking, systemic strategy grounded in the Safe System approach. This model recognizes that while human error is inevitable, both road fatalities and serious injuries are preventable and unacceptable.
Central to the guide is the Roads-for-Life (R4L) framework — a practical, research-backed methodology for setting and evaluating speed limits. It follows four principles to ensure all speeds limits are safe and credible. Safety for all users is recognized as the guiding principle with community wellbeing, predictability and network availability as supporting principles to ensure equity, practicality, consistency and compliance.
R4L not only helps determine safe speeds for existing roads but also assesses the safety implications of design speeds for new road projects. By aligning speed limits with road design and supporting them with the appropriate infrastructure, the framework enhances safety for all users within livable communities.
The Roads-for-Life Framework approach guides speed management implementation to achieve safer, more livable streets.
While our transportation and traffic systems have historically prioritized vehicle movement over the safety of other users, this guide offers tools to help shift toward systems that create a safer environment for everyone.
In many countries, speed limits are still determined based on the “desired” speeds of drivers. However, this approach overlooks a critical reality — the speeds drivers choose are not inherently safe, particularly for vulnerable road users (VRUs). The R4L framework provides a more context-sensitive approach, using a road hierarchy to set speed limits, in urban and rural roads, based on the specific road environment, the type of infrastructure and the mix of users present.
The Roads-for-Life Framework matrix helps select safe speed limits based on road type, function and presence of vulnerable road users in urban areas.
Building on this framework, the guide provides tools for decision makers and infrastructure engineers to implement effective speed management strategies and action plans. Once a city identifies a road for speed reduction interventions, it should classify the road type based on its capacity to move people and goods and the presence of vulnerable road users. Then, using the matrix, it can identify the safe speed limit. For example, an urban road with single lane roads in each direction, lined with coffee shops and small businesses where people frequently cross the street, would be classified as an “urban human activity road.” The safe speed limit for this road is a maximum of 30 kph (about 20 mph).
Making Safe Speeds a RealityThe guide provides a step-by-step approach to developing, implementing and monitoring speed management at a national, regional or local level. It also offers solutions for specific locations — such as busy arterial roads shared by vehicles and VRUs — outlining effective local policies, interventions, processes and enabling conditions for supporting safe speed limits.
Using case studies and emphasizing evidence-based interventions, the Guide for Safe Speeds serves as a key resource for policymakers seeking to make the case for safe speeds, secure political commitment and gain community support. By embracing these strategies, they can create safer, more livable environments for everyone on the road.
The Guide for Safe Speeds was published with funding support from Bloomberg Philanthropies and UK Aid.
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Organized Crime in The Amazon: A Growing Threat to the World’s Greatest Tropical Rainforest
Brazil once again leads the world in the loss of primary tropical forests. New data shows the country accounted for 42% of global primary rainforest loss in 2024, largely due to widespread fires throughout the nation and in neighboring Bolivia, Colombia and Peru.
The 2024 spike in Amazon forest loss was due in large part to one of the worst fire seasons on record. But what’s often missed is the fact that recent fires in tropical primary forests are by no means a “natural” disaster. Rather, the conflagration represents a perfect storm of climate change-induced environmental conditions, governance failures and unchecked, organized criminality.
Fires in the Amazon are largely started by arson1 and related criminal activity accompanying agriculture, logging, mining and road building. In fact, a recent survey of government data concluded that 91% of forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon is linked to illegal activity like land-clearing for agriculture and artisanal mining, often orchestrated by well-structured international criminal enterprises.
Nature crime has long been an overlooked but growing driver of deforestation in the Amazon — one that’s pushing into new territories.
Tabatinga, Brazil lies at the heart of a thinly governed tri-border area in the northwestern Amazon. Photo by Matyas Rehak/Shutterstock Borderlands: Criminal Threats to the Amazon’s Most Remote RegionsForest loss in the Amazon has historically been greatest in the “arc of deforestation” stretching from east to west along the southern flank of the biome. This is also where the majority of the 2024 fires took place, where most forest conversion to agriculture and cattle ranching has occurred, and where most people in the Amazon live. But it is not the only part of the Amazon that’s threatened.
The twin cities of Leticia, Colombia and Tabatinga, Brazil lie at the heart of the thinly governed tri-border area of the northwestern Amazon, where Brazil, Colombia and Peru meet. A metropolitan area with a population of 110,000 lying just across the Amazon River from Peru, the two cities are the commercial center for a criminal economy that has boomed over the past 25 years. The proximity of these cities to their resource-rich rainforest hinterlands, connected to the wider world by the planet’s largest river system, has been fertile soil for the growth of organized crime.
It largely began with cocaine.
A wooden boat navigates a lagoon in the Javari Valley. Photo by Nowaczyk/Shutterstock Cocaine Blues: Drugs Take Root in the AmazonCriminal groups from Brazil and Colombia were initially attracted to the Amazon decades ago because of the trade in illicit drugs, principally cocaine. The coca plant (Erythroxylum coca) has traditionally been cultivated in the Peruvian Andes for thousands of years. More recently, coca cultivation has spread in the lowland Amazon to supply the illicit drug trade. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime reported in 2023 that cocaine’s use worldwide was at an all-time high.
Seizing on this insatiable global demand, a shifting constellation of Brazilian, Peruvian and Colombian organized crime enterprises have, over the past 25 years, systematically expanded coca cultivation and cocaine production in the tri-border area, including the critical transport route to Manaus about 1,000 kilometers downriver and onward to urban Brazil, Europe and elsewhere. A 2025 report by investigative journalism outlet Ojo Público determined that criminal organizations dominating the cocaine trade in the tri-border region were present in 54 of 75 border towns. While the razing of the rainforest for coca production in the tri-border area is not on the scale of clearing for agriculture and cattle in other parts of the Amazon, it is locally significant — particularly in the Peruvian border Province of Mariscal Ramon Castilla and in the neighboring Department of Putumayo in Colombia.
But moreover, cocaine development leads to other nature crimes that also fuel deforestation. In the tri-border area, Ojo Público found, for example, that drug trafficking is linked with the illegal timber trade — a sort of criminal “economy of scale.” Government suppression of airborne smuggling routes has also increasingly displaced drug trafficking and associated violence to the river routes, and hence to the Amazon border area.
Here, the criminal infrastructure built principally for cocaine is increasingly facilitating illegal deforestation, timber trafficking and illegal gold mining, via control of transport routes, corruption and intimidation of local authorities and communities, as well as the fear of violence.
Tree cover loss has steadily increased in the tri-border area, often driven by illegal activities. Data from Global Forest Watch.The convergence between nature crimes and drug trafficking in the Amazon is also greatly facilitated by the “flying money” rackets run by Chinese organized crime groups. Essentially, this is a combined barter-and-money-laundering system where precursor chemicals from China for the manufacture of fentanyl and other illicit drugs in Latin America are traded off the books for Amazonian wildlife, gold and other products of forest crime, thus serving as both a payment system and a method of laundering illicit funds.
Among those most impacted by this crime wave are Indigenous Peoples. The Amazon is home to some 1.5 million Indigenous People, whose ancestral territories are some of the most effective forest conservation areas. However, many Indigenous territories in the Amazon are not effectively protected by law or government authorities. This, in combination with their relative abundance of valuable timber, wildlife and gold, makes these areas attractive targets for illegal mining and logging.
Aerial view of an illegal gold mining operation. Photo by Tarcisio Schnaider/iStock All That Glitters: Illegal Gold Mining Fuels Environmental DestructionThe price of gold has skyrocketed in the past 20 years, and annual illegal gold flows now total more than $30 billion. Gold mining is a massive part of the illegal economy in the Amazon’s tri-border area and beyond, generating greater profits than cocaine. While some mining directly clears forests, other mining is river-based. It affects the entire forest ecosystem, including the Puré and Cotuhé rivers that traverse protected areas on the Colombian side of the border.
Gold mining directly damages forests through clearing and dredging rivers with heavy equipment. The widespread use of mercury, a potent neurotoxin, as an amalgamation agent to separate gold from ore not only poisons people, but also harms trees, birds and fish. Human health problem often persist even when mining stops, as has happened in Brazil’s Munduruku Indigenous territory.
Criminal groups are involved with gold mining in various ways. It is a main revenue source for Colombian non-state armed groups. Others use gold to launder illicit proceeds from the drug trade, bankroll massive dredges and other mining equipment, extort money from small-scale artisanal gold miners, or establish their own mining operations, often relying on forced labor. Criminal networks across Latin America are also involved in the trafficking of mercury.
Illegal gold mining is also prevalent in another Amazonian tri-border area where Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela meet; the illegal gold trade there has been openly promoted by Venezuela’s Maduro regime. The criminal utility of porous borders is well illustrated here: As recently as 2022, illegal Venezuelan gold was regularly smuggled into Brazil and onward to the United States and other international markets. After Inacio Lula de Silva assumed the Brazilian Presidency in 2023 and cracked down on illegal gold mining, the flow reversed, and traffickers began to smuggle illegal Brazilian gold into Venezuela, as well as into Guyana and Suriname.
Gold is not the only valuable mineral found in the Amazon. Organized criminal groups are reportedly seeking cassiterite, a chief ore of tin and a critical mineral for the green energy transition — sometimes called “black gold” — including in the Yanomami Indigenous territory of Brazil’s Roraima state.
A man carries a massive pirarucu fish in Leticia, Colombia. Photo by Nowaczyk/Shutterstock Fishy Business: Overharvesting the PirarucuThe Amazon is both a forest and the world’s greatest river system. Given the Amazon’s rich fisheries, it is not surprising that a booming illicit trade in high-value fish such as the protected pirarucu (Arapaima gigas) has become yet another criminal profit center in the Brazilian Amazon. The world’s largest freshwater fish is taken for its meat, scales and for the aquarium trade. It was pirarucu traffickers who in 2022 murdered British journalist Dom Phillips2 and Bruno Pereira, a member of Brazil’s Indigenous protection agency FUNAI, to thwart their investigation into illegal activities in the isolated Javari Valley on the Peruvian border. The region is home to one of the largest populations of uncontacted Indigenous People on Earth, but is also now a haven for drug and environmental crime. While some Indigenous and riverine communities fish sustainably for pirarucu and have helped fish populations rebound in some areas, the illegal trade still flourishes, having surged during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A jaguar rests in a tree in the Brazilian Pantanal region. Photo by Pedro Helder Pinheiro/Shutterstock New Frontiers: Ecuador’s Nature Crime CrisisAnd nature crime isn’t limited to the Amazon’s tri-border area. The Ecuadorian Amazon was largely spared the scourge of natural resource-related crime until recently. This changed dramatically in the past five years; there are thought to be at least 22 organized “narco-terrorist” groups operating in the country as of 2024. As in neighboring countries, narco-trafficking gangs in Ecuador have rapidly expanded into illegal logging and gold mining, often in national parks and Indigenous territories.
The global wind energy boom has also fueled organized crime in Ecuador, which holds large stocks of balsa (Ochroma pyramidale), the preferred timber for wind turbine blades. Ecuador produces over 90% of the world’s balsa, but booming Chinese demand over the past decade has decimated the country’s stock and spurred a wave of illegal logging that’s spilled into Peru.
Strategies for Reducing Nature Crime in the AmazonIn such a vast, resource-rich and thinly governed region, natural resource crime cannot realistically be eradicated, particularly given the entrenched durability of the trade in cocaine and other illicit drugs. But governments can reduce crime if they work together on deterrence and protect Indigenous People’s territories and rights.
Strengthening Cooperation on Nature Crime Among Amazon NationsNature crime thrives in thinly governed border regions where criminals take advantage of countries’ siloed jurisdictions by border-hopping to conceal crimes and evade capture. States need to cooperate more effectively than they do today to change this situation, particularly in the vulnerable borderlands.
An August 2023 summit of the heads of state of eight members of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) issued the Declaration of Belem, committing signatories to “promote the exchange of information and policy and intelligence cooperation to combat illegal activities and environmental crimes affecting the Amazon region.” Brazil followed up in 2024 by establishing an international policing and security center in Manaus that will eventually host officers from all ACTO member countries.
To make good on this commitment, countries need to strengthen and harmonize their laws pertinent to forest crime; increase information-sharing in real time among intelligence agencies, including remote-sensing information; and organize cross-border operations on trafficking in narcotics, timber, gold and wildlife. Cooperation among national financial intelligence units to detect and sanction money laundering and other financial crimes is also critical.
Brazil has already shown some success in thwarting illegal gold mining in the Yanomami Indigenous Territory that straddles the Venezuelan border. The country launched more than 4,000 suppression operations since 2024, which reduced illegal mining in the territory by more than 90% by early 2025.
Countries also need to strengthen their national legal frameworks. In April 2025, Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered the federal government to seize private properties where owners cause illegal deforestation or wildfires. Although likely to face appeal, the ruling is a major step towards blocking “regularization,” the process by which illegally cleared and acquired public land in the Amazon becomes legal, a main driver of deforestation. Unfortunately, that same month lawmakers in the Amazon state of Rondônia passed legislation granting amnesty to hundreds of cattle ranchers who had illegally cleared rainforest, in direct opposition to the Supreme Court ruling.
Effectively Protect Indigenous Rights and TerritoriesApproximately 163.8 million hectares — nearly 20% of the Amazon basin — consists of officially recognized Indigenous territories, home to an estimated 1.5 million people from more than 350 ethnic groups. These areas are comparatively better conserved than the rest of the Amazon and are also major carbon sinks. But legal recognition, by itself, is no talisman against invasion. Effective protection requires the removal — by force if necessary — of non-Indigenous gold miners, loggers, traffickers and other outsiders. Only the state has the legitimate authority to do this. And historically, the state has often come down on the side of the invaders.
With valuable resources in the sights of organized criminal gangs, territorial control will remain a struggle, with Indigenous Peoples often on the front lines. Allies can support Indigenous communities in monitoring their territories against incursions and securely reporting intelligence to trusted national and regional enforcement authorities.
Civil society organizations in Peru have made progress in this area by equipping Indigenous communities with geospatial monitoring tools and training, leading to a dramatic decrease in deforestation. Unfortunately, this promising approach was recently undermined by the Peruvian government itself, which effectively legalized deforestation in the name of “economic development.”
A more hopeful example comes from Colombia, which in early 2025 created a one-million-hectare territory to protect isolated Indigenous groups and the pristine forests they inhabit. This follows on a wider process to formally recognize 25 territories of more than 45 Indigenous Peoples as Indigenous Territorial Entities, together covering 36% of the Colombian Amazon.
Blue and gold macaws are one of many species that call the Amazon rainforest home. Photo by Passkorn Umpornmaha/Shutterstock Protecting the ‘Lungs of the Earth’As we think about the future of the Amazon, it’s instructive to reflect on the lives of two people whose fates have been intertwined with it. Marina Silva, who worked closely with rubber tapper and rainforest activist Chico Mendes until his murder in 1988, is now Brazil’s Minister of Environment, her second time in the post. She will play a critical role at the upcoming UN climate summit (COP30) in Belem, Brazil and is a champion of Amazon conservation.
Then there is Darci Alves Pereira, the man who confessed to murdering Chico Mendes on the orders of his father, a violent land-grabber in the Amazon state of Acre. Father and son were sentenced in 1990 to 19 years in prison, but “escaped” a few years later and, when recaptured, received early release. By 2024, Alves had changed his name, become an Evangelical preacher, and briefly served as local head of the political party of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former far-right president well-known for his opposition to Amazon conservation and hostility to Indigenous Peoples.
Many brave souls continue to defend the people and forests championed by Chico Mendes, Marina Silva, Dom Phillips and their compatriots. But the much more organized and powerful criminal successors of the Alves family are still very much with us, creating roadblocks at a time when momentum for forest conservation is needed more than ever. We ignore them at our peril.
Footnotes
1 Under drought conditions, a fire deliberately set to clear one area easily expands to adjacent areas. “Arson” may intentionally target a certain area, but spread to a much larger territory. If the original act of arson is deliberate, the perpetrator is culpable for all of the ensuring damage, whether caused intentionally or by reckless indifference to the likely consequences.
2 Dom Phillips’ posthumous book, How to Save The Amazon: A Journalist’s Fatal Quest for Answers was published in June 2025.
logging-amazon-rainforest.jpg Forests Latin America Brazil deforestation biodiversity Type Commentary Exclude From Blog Feed? 0 Projects Authors Charles (Chip) BarberWhat Is the EU Deforestation Regulation? 7 Key Questions, Answered
Between 2001 and 2024, the world lost 177 million hectares of tree cover that is likely permanent. Most of this loss was the result of clearing for farms, pastures and tree crop plantations. This daunting number is a wake-up call, underscoring the urgent need for stronger action to curb deforestation for farming and forest degradation from wood production.
As a major buyer of commodities largely responsible for fueling deforestation — such as palm oil, cocoa, coffee, soy, cattle and timber — the EU has both a responsibility and an opportunity to help shift global markets toward more sustainable supply chains. The EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), adopted in 2023, requires businesses to demonstrate that the products they sell or export to the EU do not originate from land that was recently deforested or degraded. It is a key step in responding to today’s deforestation and supporting countries in achieving their national policies on protecting forests, such as moratoria on farms or concessions in primary forests or on peat.
Yet despite its promise, the regulation has faced delays and pushback, threatening its timely implementation. At a time when forests are increasingly under threat, it’s more urgent than ever to understand the regulation and ensure its full and rapid implementation.
What Is the EUDR?The EUDR is a landmark law that came into force in June 2023. Its goal is to ensure that certain products sold in or exported to the EU do not come from land that was deforested or degraded after Dec. 31, 2020. The regulation is designed to prevent EU consumer demand from driving further forest loss or damage, while also reducing the region’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and global biodiversity decline.
The EUDR covers timber and six key agricultural commodities: cattle, cocoa, coffee, oil palm, rubber, soy, as well as products made from them such as beef, furniture and chocolate. To be sold in or exported from the EU market, these products must meet the following three conditions:
- They are deforestation-free.
- They have been produced in compliance with the relevant laws of the country of origin.
- They are covered by a due diligence statement, showing that the company has checked the origin and ensured the products meet EUDR requirements.
This means businesses must demonstrate that any EUDR-covered commodities were not produced on land that was deforested nor did they contribute to forest degradation after the Dec. 31, 2020 cutoff date. Although the regulation is legally in place, companies are not yet required to comply yet. The rules will apply starting from Dec. 30, 2025, for large enterprises and June 30, 2026, for small and medium-sized businesses.
Why Is the EUDR important?
The EUDR offers a major opportunity for the EU to reduce its role in global deforestation and biodiversity loss, as well as help create deforestation-free supply chains. It supports the commitment made by the 144 countries that signed the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration in 2021 to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030. It can also serve as a model for other major consumer markets looking to lower their environmental footprints.
Since 2014, the EU has been the second-largest importer of goods linked to tropical deforestation after China. In 2017 alone, it accounted for 16% of global deforestation tied to international trade — equal to 203,000 hectares of forest.
More recently, in 2021, the EU was among the world’s top five importers of five of the six agricultural commodities covered by the EUDR (cocoa, coffee, palm oil, rubber and soy) and the largest importer of cocoa beans and coffee worldwide1 . Among all the agricultural products the EU buys, beef, cocoa and palm oil were linked to the most deforestation in the countries they came from. In fact, out of 160 agricultural commodities imported by the EU, just six — beef, palm oil, soy, cocoa, coffee and rubber, as covered by the EUDR — made up 58% of the estimated forest loss tied to EU imports.
By reducing the EU’s forest-loss footprint and tackling deforestation risks in its supply chains, the EUDR could help reverse deforestation worldwide. In 2024, a record 6.7 million hectares of primary tropical forests were lost — nearly double the 2023 rate and equivalent of losing 18 soccer fields of forest every minute. While wildfires captured global attention, some of the increase was due to agricultural conversion and logging.
What Challenges and Setbacks Has the EUDR Faced?In December 2024, the EU postponed the start of EUDR compliance by 12 months to give companies more time to prepare to meet the regulation’s requirements. The rules will apply from Dec. 30, 2025, for large enterprises and June 30, 2026, for small and medium-sized businesses.
In May 2025, the European Commission published the regulation’s benchmarking classification system, which ranks countries as low, standard and high risk based on indicators assessing the deforestation risk linked to commodity production in each country. The ranking system was designed to help businesses and enforcement authorities in the EU to conduct due diligence and enforce compliance. The risk levels indicate the percentage of checks on shipments, with greater scrutiny given to higher-risk countries.
Now, new proposals call on the EU Commission to revise the benchmarking classification system introduced in 2025. Some EU member state representatives have suggested adding a “no-risk” category to exempt certain countries from due diligence requirements; another suggestion proposed removing the system altogether. But changes like these could create loopholes and ultimately weaken the regulation’s effectiveness. The European Parliament already rejected a similar idea in 2024 for that very reason.
The EUDR was agreed upon following a lengthy negotiation between EU institutions and member states, as well as impact assessments and extensive consultations. Derailing its implementation would penalize producer countries and companies that have already invested in compliance, and it would create confusion and uncertainty in the EU market. The regulation may not be perfect, but it’s a necessary step toward deforestation-free supply chains. Many companies have already shown that EUDR compliance is possible, and several have urged the EU to uphold the legal text and stick to implementation timeline.
Since adoption, the EUDR has faced criticism from both inside and outside the EU. Most concerns focus on cost and complexity of compliance, as well as fairness, particularly for smallholder farmers. In response, the European Commission, EU member states and other development institutions have ramped up investment in EUDR preparedness by issuing resources and guidance, with a particular emphasis on preventing smallholder exclusion from the EU market.
What Counts as Deforestation and Degradation Under the EUDR?The regulation's definition of a forest largely follows the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) which defines it as land larger than 0.5 hectares with trees taller than 5 meters and a canopy cover of at least 10% that is not primarily used for farming or urban development.
Under the EUDR, deforestation refers to clearing forest to make way for agriculture. The key factor is the conversion of land that was forest in 2020 into farmland — such as pastures or soy plantations. It’s a complete land-use change: the forest is no longer a forest.
- If that forest is cleared — whether by people or natural events like fire — and then converted into farmland, such as pastures for raising cattle or fields for soy or palm oil, it is considered deforestation.
- However, if a forest is cleared, for example by fire (whether from human activity or natural causes) and is not used to produce any of the six EUDR-covered agricultural commodities, it is not considered deforestation under the regulations.
- Forests used for wood production are not considered deforestation unless they’re also used for agriculture, for example, cattle grazing under the tree canopy.
The EUDR also covers degradation. Land that was forest in 2020 can be used for wood production and remain classified as a forest, even if it’s temporarily unstocked, according to EUDR definitions. A forest used for wood production is not considered degraded unless there's a specific structural change, such as:
- Converting primary forest (native, untouched forest) into other wooded land (trees have 5%-10% canopy cover) or into plantation or planted forest.
- Converting naturally regenerating forest (which has largely grown back on its own) into other wooded land used or plantation forest.
The EUDR affects any company that imports, produces or exports specific products, and their derivatives, to or from the EU market. This includes operators (those placing products on the market or exporting them from the market) and traders (those distributing and selling products).
It applies to companies based in the EU and internationally, and to businesses of all sizes, from micro and small enterprises to large corporations. However, larger businesses face stricter reporting requirements than smaller ones.
The EUDR spans multiple sectors, from food and beverage (such as companies sourcing cocoa and coffee) to fashion (leather goods, for example) to the healthcare industry (products such as latex gloves).
How Are Countries and Companies Preparing for the EUDR?Under the EUDR, companies must prove that products linked to deforestation or degradation after Dec. 31, 2020, are not entering the EU market. This requires a due diligence process: collecting supply chain information (including geolocation), assessing the risk of deforestation and taking steps to eliminate any identified risk before the product can be put on the market.
Country-level effortsMany producer countries are already taking concrete steps to prepare for the EUDR, from adopting national plans to developing traceability systems and improving data transparency. For example, Indonesia, Ghana and Vietnam are investing in government-led efforts to make information available to companies that must comply with the regulation. Delaying enforcement or altering the regulation’s scope could undermine these leading producer countries.
Vietnam stands out as a strong example of how the EUDR is reinforcing national policies to combat deforestation. As a top exporter of rubber and coffee, the country has shifted its focus from illegal logging to broader deforestation risks in agriculture since the regulation’s introduction. In 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development adopted a national action plan prioritizing sustainable agricultural transformation. The following year, it launched a traceability system for coffee farms, piloting geospatial verification (such as satellite images) in key producing provinces. Developed through public-private collaboration, the system cross-references land-use maps and cadastral data to ensure EUDR compliance. Plans are also underway to expand it to rubber and cocoa.
Vietnam’s progress shows how the regulation can act as a catalyst for stronger policy alignment between global market demands and local sustainability goals.
EU member states are also preparing by using satellite and aerial earth observation data, such as forest maps from 2020 (the EUDR cutoff year) to detect deforestation, alongside other monitoring solutions and tools to support compliant imports.
Private-sector effortsCompanies across supply chains are ramping up EUDR preparations, sparking a wave of innovation in monitoring and traceability. Many are developing satellite-based systems to verify deforestation-free sourcing, training smallholder farmers to meet EUDR requirements and partnering with governments and NGOs to improve data sharing and risk assessment.
For example, Unilever and Meridia are working together to map smallholder farmers in Indonesia, making it possible to trace palm oil from plantation to mill. The Global Platform for Sustainable Natural Rubber (GPSNR) has created a system to help companies follow sustainability practices and demonstrate EUDR compliance. Open-source platforms like WRI’s Global Forest Watch are also supporting companies in verifying supply chains.
These efforts from governments, companies and EU countries show how the EUDR is already driving unprecedented action — transforming compliance from a burden into an opportunity to build more responsible and transparent supply chains. The challenge now is scaling these solutions across all commodities and regions.
What's Next for the EUDR?The EUDR represents a major milestone in the fight against commodity-driven deforestation.
The EU must reject attempts to weaken the regulation’s core requirements. Its effectiveness depends on maintaining its ambition without dilution or delay. Backtracking at this stage would undermine the EUDR’s credibility and send the wrong signal to global markets.
At the same time, the EU should also step up efforts to provide clear guidance to businesses, along with practical training and support to help them develop the skills needed for compliance, especially for small businesses that may otherwise struggle to meet requirements.
The European Commission, the European Parliament and Member States should stay the course and deliver the EUDR as planned. It is not only a necessary response to the crisis of forest loss, but also a vital tool to support and complement producer country efforts to halt deforestation by 2030.
Footnotes
1Timber and timber products are not included.
14244777628_a88be761e2_k.jpg Forests Europe deforestation regulation climate policy commodities corporate sustainability Type Explainer Exclude From Blog Feed? 0 Authors Bo Li Sarah Carter Tina Schneider Sophie Labaste Olivia CampbellThe US Can’t Build a Competitive Industrial Future without Centering Communities
As the global economy shifts toward cleaner and more efficient manufacturing and production, the U.S. has the opportunity to create healthier communities and increase climate resilience as it shapes a more prosperous economic future.
The U.S. industrial sector is both a backbone of the economy — employing around 8% of all U.S. workers — and a major source of pollution, accounting for nearly 30% of national greenhouse gas emissions and much of the country’s hazardous air pollution. People in places like Louisiana’s 85-mile stretch of Cancer Alley between Baton Rouge and New Orleans have long suffered from factories releasing harmful toxins into the air, land and water.
Decarbonizing the highest emitting industries — steel, cement and chemicals — by boosting energy efficiency, deploying carbon capture and storage where appropriate and shifting away from fossil fuels can simultaneously cut climate-warming greenhouse gases and the toxic air and water pollutants that endanger communities.
By leaning into the fast-growing global market for low-carbon products, U.S. industry can stay competitive without repeating past patterns of pushing pollution burdens onto people and ecosystems. However, if worker and community-focused safeguards are not considered, this shift could trigger job losses, disrupt local economies and, if technologies like hydrogen or carbon dioxide pipelines are poorly regulated, introduce new environmental and health risks for nearby communities.
A Tale of Two Industrial Communities
Government policies can make a big difference in the way workers and local communities experience the impact from decarbonizing industry facilities. Here we look at two examples:
Port Talbot, Wales, UK:
The case of Port Talbot in the United Kingdom highlights the economic risk to communities and the tradeoffs of industrial modernization without protecting workers. A steel hub since the early 1900s, the town hosted a steel plant with blast furnaces, which burn coal to produce primary steel from iron ore, releasing climate-warming carbon dioxide and other toxic pollutants.
Until recently, the plant owned by Tata Steel, employed thousands of workers, but pollution from its aging blast furnaces also exposed people in the nearby town to serious health risks. In October 2024, Tata Steel shut down the blast furnaces with a plan, supported by a 500 million pound (approximately $660 million) government grant, to replace them with a lower-polluting electric arc furnace installation.
However, this shift will result in 2,800 layoffs of workers with specialized knowledge and skills that are not easily transferable. Without an adequate transition plan, thousands of workers are at risk of being left jobless with few alternatives.
A worker inside one of Port Talbot's blast furnaces. Photo by Avalon/Construction Photography / Alamy Stock Photo.Middletown, Ohio:
Cleveland-Cliffs' steel plant in Middletown, Ohio had the potential to demonstrate how decarbonizing its facility using proactive government policies could create and protect thousands of jobs, while reducing harmful pollution. But shifting U.S. policy priorities and waning investment have since blurred the future for clean industrial projects like this one.
In 2024, Cleveland-Cliffs was selected to receive up to $500 million from the Department of Energy through its Industrial Demonstrations Program (IDP). The funding would have been used to replace one of its coal-powered blast furnaces with a less emissions-intensive direct reduced iron plant, which was expected to curb greenhouse gas emissions by 1 million tons per year, while also reducing toxic pollution to Middletown’s air and water. The changes would have created 170 new permanent positions and an additional 1,200 temporary construction jobs, while also preserving Cleveland-Cliffs’ overall 2,500 person workforce.
In early May 2025, however, the company said it would prolong the life of the heavily polluting blast furnace it had planned to replace in an effort to “better align with [the Trump] administration’s energy priorities.” Shortly after, the Department of Energy terminated $3.7 billion in IDP grants and other clean energy projects. However, the Cleveland-Cliffs grant was not among this list of terminations.
Centering Communities in Efforts to DecarbonizeOver the past six months, several federal policy reversals have clouded the outlook for clean-industry investment: the recission of several billion dollars in competitive grants for novel low-carbon projects, major corporate mergers in heavy industry were approved without emissions enforcement or guarantees for community reinvestment and carbon-pollution limits for power plants have been weakened.
Against this backdrop, efforts to reindustrialize and modernize American manufacturing to energy-efficient systems must still align innovation and climate action with economic revitalization, workforce development, environmental protection and public health improvements.
Importantly, the U.S. must not repeat past mistakes while creating and modernizing industrial facilities. Historically, fenceline communities — people who live near industrial facilities, which are often made up of residents from low-income backgrounds or communities of color — have long faced disproportionate pollution exposure and shouldered the public health burden of these industries.
Many fenceline communities exist today because of intentional government policies and practices, such as redlining and racially discriminatory zoning and disinvestment, which forced economically marginalized and politically excluded groups to live in what’s become known as "sacrifice zones." This reflects patterns of historic underinvestment and environmental harm imposed on economically and socially marginalized populations.
Fenceline communities are neighborhoods next to industrial facilities that experience direct exposure to its pollutants. Hum Images / Alamy Stock Photo.For example, people in fenceline communities throughout Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, which accounts for 25% of the petrochemical production within the U.S. from more than 200 factories, have an abnormally high cancer risk, with the risk being even higher for low-income people and people of color.
Prioritizing clean air and water, economic revitalization and community-driven decision-making is critical to addressing historical harms and making industrial decarbonization efforts durable. When communities are engaged meaningfully early on, policies and projects are more likely to earn public trust, avoid local opposition and secure the long-term support needed to sustain industrial transitions. Furthermore, such a shift can create economic benefits, such as reducing health care costs from improved air quality and fostering public and worker support for decarbonization initiatives, which are essential for durably scaling these efforts.
The shift away from fossil fuels has often failed to fully consider the needs of affected workers and fenceline communities. For instance, thousands of refinery workers could be left stranded as California phases down its petroleum refining. Beyond a handful of refinery-specific initiatives, just transition planning across the broader industrial landscape — particularly in steel, cement and chemicals — remains scarce.
If today’s industrial modernization and decarbonization efforts ignore workers, communities and environmental impacts, they could repeat past mistakes of accelerating plant closures without offering alternative economic opportunities, concentrating environmental risks in fenceline communities, eroding community trust and potentially delaying or canceling projects.
The Economic Case for a People-Centered TransitionRecent analysis from McKinsey & Company estimates that an economy-wide net-zero transition by 2050 could lead to 200 million new direct and indirect jobs while also causing a loss of 185 million jobs — resulting in a net gain of 15 million jobs worldwide by 2050. Without a well-managed transition, industrial decarbonization could result in local job losses and economic disruption.
Beyond avoiding the substantial economic risks and losses from climate change, modernizing U.S. industry in a way that prioritizes workers and communities can help revive historic manufacturing regions, attract investment and boost their economic prosperity. And at the same time, it would allow the U.S. to capitalize on deploying innovative new industrial technologies.
As the global economy shifts toward cleaner and more efficient manufacturing, innovative industrial production methods that utilize cleaner energy sources will become better positioned to compete globally. And as global markets and private sector buyers start prioritizing lower-carbon industrial products, U.S. government policies such as subsidies and technology demonstration grants are needed to proactively drive industrial innovation and ensure domestic industries don’t fall behind in a rapidly changing market.
At the same time, successful decarbonization projects will depend not only on market shifts and technological advancements, but also on how people are included. When the needs of workers, fenceline communities and local stakeholders are not addressed as part of transitions, companies risk encountering public opposition, costly legal challenges, project delays or cancellations, and increased costs associated with those risks, slowing progress.
For example, some experts have warned that if the financial and social burdens of the clean-industry shift — such as higher energy rates or job losses — fall disproportionately on lower-income households, workers or fenceline communities while benefits accrue elsewhere, public support for net-zero initiatives could erode, making it harder to pass and implement effective policies. And, while they recognize industry’s negative impact on air and water pollution, many members of fenceline communities rank economic considerations like job security as a far higher priority than local environmental well-being in surveys.
Fortunately for both industrial communities and the broader economy, environmental well-being and economic well-being are not mutually exclusive. For example, in the U.S., past policies that directed clean energy investments toward historically marginalized communities sought to support workforce transitions and strengthen declining local economies.
Strategies for Inclusive and Resilient Industrial DecarbonizationTo support responsible and equitable industrial decarbonization that aligns with economic opportunity and long-term community resilience, policymakers and developers should consider several strategies:
Create Industry Transition RoadmapsIndustry roadmaps that combine modernization pathways with steps for workforce transition can help policymakers proactively create long-term reskilling and job placement strategies when retrofitting, replacing and retiring heavy-polluting industrial facilities.Invest in Workforce Training and ReskillingDecarbonization should be paired with reskilling initiatives, wage protections, and local hiring mandates to minimize job displacement.
Targeted investments in vocational training, apprenticeship programs and STEM education can equip workers with the skills needed for new, clean industry jobs.
Prioritize Community BenefitsCommunity benefit plans or agreements, participatory planning processes and local advisory boards ensure fenceline communities have a key role in shaping industrial projects.
Developers and policymakers should engage communities early and consistently to increase transparency and trust in new decarbonization efforts.
Industrial decarbonization strategies should simultaneously advance local pollution reduction and environmental remediation, energy affordability and job creation.
Policies should avoid short-term economic disruptions by pairing emissions reductions measures with incentives for the use and reuse of recently closed or declining industrial sites for clean manufacturing, energy efficiency, and infrastructure investment.
Strengthening worker safety regulations and health protections ensures that industrial shifts do not lead to new forms of harm.
Embed Community Trust and Protective SafeguardsRequire every project to offer two-way engagement forums (listening sessions, advisory boards, co-design workshops) that communities can join if they choose.
Establish anti-displacement safeguards (e.g., property-tax relief, affordable-housing set-asides) to prevent gentrification as new projects raise land values.
Carrying Momentum Forward Amid Federal Rollbacks
In recent years, the U.S. federal government made considerable progress toward a more equitable transition to a low-carbon economy. For example, the Justice40 Initiative sought to ensure that some of the economic gains and environmental benefits of climate investments flowed to economically marginalized and environmentally overburdened communities. Incentives like the Energy Community Tax Credit Bonus were designed to help preserve jobs in regions historically dependent on fossil fuel industries.
However, many of these efforts at the federal level have been scaled back, weakened or eliminated in the first half of 2025. These rollbacks not only disadvantage communities and workers but could also create uncertainty for companies that may rely on stable incentives and local support.
Recent News: Nippon Steel Acquires U.S. Steel
Federal regulators approved Nippon Steel’s $14.9 billion acquisition of U.S. Steel on June 18, 2025, contingent on a national security “golden share” that lets federal officials block plant closures and other moves. Community and labor advocates warn that, without binding, enforceable guarantees for worker protections, meaningful community participation, and a shift to low-carbon steelmaking, the deal could jeopardize union jobs and lock in coal-based production — along with the $7 billion to $13 billion in annual health costs it already imposes on frontline neighborhoods.
In the absence of strong federal direction, state and local governments and forward-looking companies will need to take the lead on responsible and fair decarbonization. Several states, including Colorado and Illinois, have implemented workforce transition funds, targeting clean industrial investments that prioritize job retention and local economic benefits. Industry leaders can also adopt voluntary commitments that strengthen public trust and reduce project risks, such as prioritizing U.S.-based supply chains to avoid carbon leakage, investing in worker training, and engaging with host communities early and consistently to develop community benefits frameworks. These strategies go beyond good public relations — they also avoid delays, legal challenges and reputational damage.
Industrial modernization and decarbonization are not merely about cutting emissions — they are about building a more resilient, competitive and inclusive economy that benefits both industry and the communities that sustain it. By implementing fair and responsible policies and practices that recognize the value of workers and communities, the U.S. manufacturing can position itself toward long-term success in a rapidly changing global economy.
baton-rouge-indudstrial-area.jpg U.S. Climate Climate Equity environmental justice industry U.S. Climate Policy-Clean Power Type Commentary Exclude From Blog Feed? 0 Projects Authors Hannah Harasaki Willy Carlsen Ankita GangotraSTATEMENT: BRICS Countries Rally Around Assertive Climate Agenda Ahead of COP30
RIO DE JANEIRO (July 7, 2025) — The 2025 BRICS Summit concluded today in Rio de Janeiro, bringing together representatives from countries including Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa to advance a coordinated agenda on economic development, geopolitical cooperation and climate action.
Among the outcomes were calls for strengthened climate finance, improved carbon accounting and the creation of a developing country–led platform to align trade with sustainability goals. The summit also highlighted the role of technology transfer and resilience-building as integral to a more equitable global economy.
Following is a statement from Mirela Sandrini, Interim Executive Director, WRI Brazil:
“This year’s BRICS Summit sends the clearest signal yet that major emerging economies can step into a global leadership role to address the climate crisis. Spanning finance, trade, technology and resilience-building, the summit’s outcome underscores strong support for climate action from the countries gathered in Rio – even as the United States retreats.
“It is encouraging that BRICS nations called for more climate lending, deeper green bond markets and better carbon accounting – and created a new developing country-led platform to align trade with sustainability. Their commitment to protect tropical forests and scale up adaptation is a notable step towards safeguarding nature, building resilience and supporting human well-being. The specific mention of the Tropical Forest Forever Facility adds weight to that commitment. Crucially, they endorsed putting people and equity at the heart of a just transition to a low-carbon, climate-resilient future.
“South-South collaboration of this scale and ambition can inject much-needed momentum into international climate diplomacy ahead of COP30. But a key test will be how BRICS countries implement climate commitments at home – from cutting emissions and building resilience, to supporting other developing nations through investment and lesson-sharing. Most importantly, the world will be watching for their new national climate commitments due by September, ahead of COP30.
“Brazil deserves credit for bringing the BRICS together behind a more assertive vision for climate action. Brazil is deftly weaving climate diplomacy into the fabric of broader global agendas – from its G20 Presidency to BRICS and soon the COP30 summit. This integrated approach helps reduce fragmentation across international fora and positions climate policy as a cornerstone of global economic and financial reform – driving the inclusive, green growth the world urgently needs.”
Climate China India South Africa Brazil Russia Type Statement Exclude From Blog Feed? 0STATEMENT: The Republican Budget Bill Will Hurt the U.S. Economy
WASHINGTON D.C. (July 3, 2025) — Today, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R.1., the Republican budget bill, by a vote of 218 to 214 following the U.S. Senate’s 51 to 50 vote passage earlier this week.
The new law turns back the clock on America’s clean energy leadership, with provisions such as the rapid phaseout of critical wind and solar tax credits and introduction of onerous Foreign Entity of Concern (FEOC) restrictions, rendering many clean energy investments unworkable or uncertain at best. Taken together, these provisions will raise Americans’ electricity bills, eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs, decimate investments in U.S. manufacturing, and undermine the ability to meet rapidly growing demand for electricity.
Following is a statement from Dr. David Widawsky, Director, WRI US:
“While other countries are benefitting from accelerated investment in the clean energy economy, the U.S. is taking a step backwards.
“H.R.1. will undercut the Administration’s stated goal of ‘unleashing American energy’ and sends a chilling signal to families, businesses and investors alike. Abruptly phasing out clean energy tax credits will raise costs, slow innovation and jeopardize America’s energy security.
“Electricity demand is growing everywhere—and growing fast. The clean energy cuts in this bill will increase costs and constrain supply at a time when demand for electricity is surging. Working families, business owners and local governments will bear the brunt through higher electricity bills, fewer jobs, and reduced energy resilience to extreme weather. Billions of dollars of investment in infrastructure, manufacturing, energy savings will be lost; failure to keep pace with growing energy demand will make brownouts and blackouts more likely; air will become less breathable; and American economic growth will be at risk.
“Fossil fuels alone won’t meet the skyrocketing energy demand from manufacturing, AI, electrification, and increasingly frequent and intense heat waves that prompt more AC usage. But America can create a more flexible, agile, and resilient power system with renewables and grid upgrades. Clean energy sources are better positioned to come online quickly to meet growing electricity needs and spur economic growth. That’s exactly what companies, state and local governments, utilities and families have been counting on, planning for and investing in.
“Many Americans remain committed to a clean energy future—and we expect to see progress from the cities, states and businesses that have become labs for innovation in recent years. While this bill throws up many roadblocks to progress, these innovators can and must continue driving the country’s energy economy forward. Opportunities remain for them to do so through coalition building, providing innovative financing and policy solutions, and facilitating infrastructure development for critical projects that serve their communities.
We simply can’t afford to double down on outdated energy sources and policies. Despite this setback, we are not going to give up the race for the secure, affordable and innovative power system that Americans need – and deserve.”
United States climate policy Type Statement Exclude From Blog Feed? 0STATEMENT: EU 2040 Climate Goal Should Stay the Course Towards a Net-Zero Economy
BRUSSELS (July 2, 2025) - Today, the European Commission presented its formal proposal to cut the European Union’s greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2040, from 1990 levels.
The revised EU Climate Law aligns with the lower limit of the 90%-95% reduction range recommended by the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change in 2024. The 2040 target will be a critical input to the EU’s forthcoming national climate plan, or Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC).
Following is a statement by Stientje van Veldhoven, Vice President and Regional Director for Europe, World Resources Institute:
“A 90% emissions cut by 2040, as proposed by the Commission, keeps the EU on track for climate neutrality. It’s realistic, absolutely necessary and aligned with the bloc’s earlier commitment. If achieved, the EU will be well on its way to becoming carbon neutral by 2050.
The EU must back this credible 2040 target with a timely NDC by September with at least a 72.5% economy-wide emission reduction by 2035. This would set a clear, ambitious path for the green transition and show the EU is serious about leading the global energy race, investing in its industrial competitiveness and strengthening its energy security.
The proposed emission reductions must be delivered through domestic action. Overreliance on carbon credits would undermine the credibility of the EU’s target while diverting investment away from the EU’s clean tech industry. It is critical that monitoring and verification guardrails are put in place to limit the use of carbon credits to less than 3% of the target, ensure transparency and prevent emissions leakage.
The Commission also proposes leveraging carbon removal, which should be approached cautiously. While carbon removal can play a role in reaching the EU’s target, this must complement — not replace — deep emissions cuts. First and foremost, EU policymakers must take bold steps to phase out fossil fuels, scale up renewables, electrify transport and halt deforestation. Europe’s credible climate leadership will be vital as we approach COP30 in November.”
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Managing Extremes: How South African Cities Are Tackling Water Crises
With about 464 millimeters of rainfall per year — less than half the global average — South Africa is one of the driest countries in the world. Its semi-arid climate, uneven rainfall distribution and persistent droughts leave the country facing chronic water shortages. At the same time, ecosystem degradation and climate change are causing increasingly frequent and intense flash floods.
Unlike tropical regions in Central and West Africa, where rainfall is relatively reliable, or parts of Eastern Africa with steady seasonal rains, South Africa must manage the growing demand on its limited water resources with extreme care: With high evaporation rates that sometimes exceed average annual rainfall, less than 9% of the country’s rainfall runs into rivers and less than 5% recharges groundwater aquifers. In its cities, rapid urbanization and industrial demand place additional pressure on already fragile water systems.
South Africa is not alone — cities around the world are grappling with water crises. But some are adapting. Cape Town is restoring its watersheds to help the city withstand major droughts, while eThekwini (the municipality that includes the city of Durban) is investing in improved drainage, nature-based infrastructure and complementary systems, such as early warning flood alerts, to strengthen local responses to extreme rainfall. These efforts show how cities can rethink water management to become more resilient in a changing climate.
Too Little Water: Protecting Supply and Preventing DroughtIn 2018, Cape Town nearly ran out of water.
After three years of severe drought, the city was just weeks away from Day Zero, when reservoirs were nearly empty and the government was preparing to shut off the water taps to homes and businesses.
Between February and April that year, residents were gradually limited to 50 liters of water a day — just enough for an average shower — which they collected from designated distribution points. Thanks to strict rationing and other water-saving measures, Cape Town was able to avert the crisis — but it was an extreme example of how droughts can impact cities.
The Theewaterskloof dam in Western Cape during a drought in 2017 (left) vs the same dam with regular water levels in 2019 (right). Photo by vlbently/iStock (left) and Olga Ernest/WikimediaCommons (right)The Day Zero crisis exposed how fragile Cape Town’s water system was. The city relies heavily on surface water stored in dams, which fill from rainwater running off surrounding catchment areas. But those catchments are under threat, especially from invasive plant species like pine, wattle and eucalyptus.
These trees consume significantly more water than native vegetation, reducing the amount that reaches reservoirs and, ultimately, shrinking the city’s water supply. In fact, invasive species use about 4% of the country’s available water every year — enough to meet the needs of at least 15 million people.
To build a drought-resilient city, Cape Town has turned to nature-based solutions, including removing invasive plants and restoring degraded catchment areas. These efforts are not only eco-friendly — they're also much cheaper to implement than costly engineered alternatives such as groundwater exploration, desalination (removing salt from seawater) and recycling wastewater.
Implementing Nature-Based SolutionsIn the wake of the Day Zero crisis, the Greater Cape Town Water Fund was launched — a public-private initiative led by the city, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and other partners. It’s designed to protect Cape Town’s key catchment areas through a payment-for-ecosystem-services model. Through this initiative, the municipality and local businesses pool funds to pay upstream communities to restore the land that supplies the city with water.
These upstream stewards include small-scale farmers, private landowners, small community businesses and local youth and women. They’re trained to remove invasive plants using a mix of herbicides, ringbarking (stripping a deep band of bark from the tree trunk to cut off nutrients to the canopy) and manual clearing. Over the years, TNC has also trained a specialized team of high-altitude rope technicians to tackle invasive species on steep mountain slopes that are otherwise inaccessible.
So far, the Water Fund has cleared nearly 63,000 hectares of invasive alien plants. Where they once crowded out the region’s native flora, the iconic fynbos (a unique shrubland found only in South Africa), which includes native species like the King Protea and Sugarbush, is now taking root. This ecological shift is freeing more than 17 billion liters of water every year, helping the city move closer to its long-term goal of recovering 100 billion liters annually by 2050.
Vegetation near the Breede river. At the front grows Indigenous shrubs; in the background are invasive eucalyptus trees. Photo by Amanda GcangaAs well as removing invasive species, efforts are underway to restore native vegetation and rebalance ecosystems. In the Breede and Berg riverbanks, a partnership of environmental NGOs, government departments and water management bodies is working with local communities to slow the spread of invasive species and plant tens of thousands of native trees across the catchment.
These efforts are a win for both water security and biodiversity, as invasive species are replaced with eco-friendly indigenous trees and shrubs such as wild olives and fynbos. It's also brought employment opportunities — more than 300 jobs so far — as well as new recreational activities to the region. These nature-based interventions are not just cost-effective; they’re strategic. If invasive species continue spreading across Cape Town’s catchments, the city’s water losses could double by 2045.
A study by the Development Bank of Southern Africa on the country’s water investment gaps towards 2020 found that, despite high upfront costs, removal efforts reduce the need for expensive water infrastructure projects later on. When comparing total future costs, actively clearing invasive plant species reduces investment expenditures by 9% by 2050, while inaction increases costs by about 13% — a total potential cost savings of 22% for the country.
A local nursery for Indigenous plants use to restore the catchment areas after invasive species are removed. Photo by Amanda Gcanga Too Much Water: Preventing Flooding and Riverine RisksIn 2022, the eThekwini Municipality — home to Durban, a coastal city located in KwaZulu-Natal — faced the opposite of Cape Town’s drought crisis.
It suffered one of the deadliest and most damaging floods in South Africa’s history. More than a third of the region’s expected annual rainfall fell in just 24 hours, causing extensive damage to homes, infrastructure and ecosystems, costing the city more than $1.5 billion. More than 400 lives were lost, and tens of thousands were displaced.
eThekwini faces some of South Africa’s most complex river and flood-related challenges. Home to more than 7,400 kilometers of rivers and streams, and facing an increasingly unpredictable climate, the region is particularly vulnerable to both flash floods and prolonged inundation. Rapid, informal urban expansion adds further pressure. Settlements often spread along riverbanks and in low-lying floodplains, where housing, roads and drainage systems are ill-equipped to withstand the heavy seasonal rains that are intensifying with climate change.
Damage caused by floods in the KwaZulu-Natal province in April 2022 (left) and in May 2022 (right). Photo by KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government (left) and eThekwini Municipality (right)The city has taken bold steps to reform riverine management with the launch of its pioneering Transformative Riverine Management Programme (TRMP) in 2020 — one of the most ambitious efforts in the country to align communities, government and businesses around the value of restoring and protecting urban rivers.
Rather than treating river restoration as a narrow or localized issue, the TRMP takes a holistic approach, recognizing the many pressures that contribute to flooding in riverine areas, including informal settlements in floodplains, stormwater runoff, solid waste and debris in the city’s rivers, and invasive plant species in and around the city's water bodies. To address these issues, the municipality is working with communities along river corridors to help clear invasive plants and waste, promote river stewardship and maintain stormwater and sewer infrastructure. All of these actions help strengthen the city's natural and built infrastructure to better absorb and manage stormwater during heavy rains.
The program has also supported creating retention ponds (a basin that holds stormwater runoff and slowly releases it), weirs and wetlands to slow water flow and reinforce riverbanks. In addition, community-driven early warning systems have been introduced to alert residents ahead of extreme flood events.
These investments in flood resilience make financial sense in the long run. The TRMP helped eThekwini build a solid business case for riverine resilience, showing that every dollar spent could generate between 1.8 and 3.4 times its value in broader social, environmental and economic benefits.
In 2022 alone, the city spent upwards of $1.5 billion in flood recovery, including repairs to roads, sewage systems and power lines — a huge cost for the city. Under business-as-usual scenarios, eThekwini faces annual losses of $9 million in infrastructure repair costs. But with a city-wide TRMP, the city will be able to save upward of $100 million in future infrastructure maintenance and recovery costs, particularly for flood-resilience assets like its culverts (a pipe or tunnel that allows water to flow under roads, railways or pathways).
These interventions go beyond ecological and social gains. They also reduce risk for businesses and insurers. Major floods can lead to soaring insurance premiums for companies with high-value assets, as well as cause significant financial losses for insurers. In this context, the TRMP has helped elevate river management as a shared priority across public and private sectors. It also brings wider benefits, from job creation and urban greening to stronger institutional coordination — showing how a systems-based, participatory approach can generate meaningful progress in riverine resilience.
Toward a Shared Urban Water FutureThe experiences of Cape Town and eThekwini show how cities around the world can strengthen urban water resilience through community-based approaches and the protection of natural ecosystems. While water challenges can be severe, integrating nature-based solutions with forward-looking planning can help communities better manage water risks in a changing climate.
WRI in Johannesburg
In South Africa, these lessons are especially relevant to Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest economic hub. Faced with growing water risks, the city is looking ahead and rethinking how it manages its rivers and catchment areas through the City Water Resilience Approach.
While the Jukskei and Klip rivers are not major water supply sources, they are an important starting point for restoring nature and reducing flood risks. Through the SUNCASA project, Johannesburg and its partners are creating a plan to clean up the Jukskei River catchment, which will help address flood risks to local communities, businesses and infrastructure, and lay the groundwork for a similar initiative to eThekwini’s river management program.
On average, people in Johannesburg use about 275 liters of water a day — around 60% more than the global average. Because of this, protecting the Vaal and Lesotho catchments is critical in making sure the city has enough water in the future.
Recent droughts have shown just how fragile the system is. In 2024, water levels in the Vaal Reservoirs dropped to 35%, down from 75% in previous years. This makes it even more important to invest in ways to handle climate changes and water scarcity.
In 2022, WRI developed a Water Resilience Profile for Johannesburg under its Urban Water Resilience in Africa Initiative. It showed that managing the catchments well and coordinating across the whole river basin are top priorities, especially as the city of 6 million faces rising water demand and frequent shortages. Over the next few months, WRI will work on finding ways to invest and build partnerships to restore the Vaal River Basin, which also serves the larger Gauteng region with nearly 15 million residents.
For Johannesburg, and other cities across the world, climate change, rapid urban growth and aging infrastructure mean the economic, environmental and social costs of inaction will only keep growing. But restoring rivers and catchment areas offers a rare opportunity to tackle multiple challenges at once: floods and droughts, supporting biodiversity, improving equity, making public spending more efficient and helping secure long-term water supply. It’s a lesson worth learning from the cities already leading the way.
design-sem-nome-8.png Cities South Africa urban water resilience nature-based solutions floods drought rivers Type Commentary Exclude From Blog Feed? 0 Authors Amanda Gcanga Nikara Mahadeo Eden TakeleIstanbul Tackles Tourist Crowds and Climate Issues Together
Istanbul's Caferağa neighborhood has a longstanding reputation for its cultural richness and historic charm. Quaint cafes, restaurants and bars line the sidewalks. A thriving arts scene draws an eclectic crowd. More than 2.3 million visitors daily flock to the district in which Caferağa resides — but it's overwhelming the neighborhood's small community of 22,000 residents.
"The streets of Caferağa are struggling to bear the weight they carry," said Hanife Dağıstanlı, the neighborhood chief. "The sidewalks are too narrow and often blocked, and people are forced to step into the road just to keep moving." This overcrowding has made it hard for locals to navigate daily life, especially those who are older, have disabilities or are traveling with children or strollers. At the same time, heavy traffic contributes to Istanbul's worsening air pollution and discourages people from using cleaner travel options, like biking.
Caferağa's sidewalks overflow with parked cars, bikes, scooters and furniture, making it difficult for residents to get around. Photo by WRI TürkiyeCaferağa is not alone. Popular cities around the world are seeking ways to balance the economic boon of tourism with residents' needs and sustainability goals. Some (like Venice) now charge day-trippers an access fee to visit popular areas. Others (like Paris and Barcelona) are placing tighter restrictions on short-term rentals to curb tourism.
But Caferağa wanted to address its overcrowding differently: By collectively reimagining the neighborhood to be cleaner, safer and more livable for all.
In Caferağa, Urban Challenges CollideWhile Caferağa is far from the only urban hub facing crowded sidewalks, polluted air and gridlocked streets, it makes a strong case study for better urban design.
The neighborhood is shaped like a peninsula, funneling travelers through just two main entry points and concentrating traffic along a narrow street network. It is also home to about twice as many older residents per capita as the national average, making safe and accessible mobility a high priority.
Meanwhile, residents in and around Caferağa are increasingly grappling with the dangers of extreme heat and air pollution as the planet warms. Istanbul's summer heat waves are already worsening and could become much more severe in the years ahead. Traffic exhaust compounds the issue, making it more dangerous to be outside on hot days.
The government has taken note. Caferağa was recently designated as one of three pilot Low Emission Zones in Istanbul under the city's Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan, which aims to address congestion, air quality issues and mobility challenges. Major cities like Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Madrid and Rome have seen success using similar low-emissions-zone strategies to curb emissions and improve mobility. Due to its higher population of older adults, the Kadıköy district (which houses Caferağa) was also included in Istanbul's Street Transformation Program, which supports sustainable, people-friendly urban design.
But designating a neighborhood as a priority for transformation doesn't mean the work is done. On the contrary: It's only a starting point.
Creating a Livable City from the Ground UpIt started with a single square block. In September 2023, Caferağa temporarily transformed Mehmet Ayvalıtaş Square at the center of the neighborhood — a small but ambitious pilot project.
About WRI Türkiye's Deep Dive Initiative
The Livable Caferağa project is part of WRI's Deep Dive Cities Initiative, which fosters long-term engagement with city officials and residents to build more sustainable, resilient urban environments. The next phase of the project will expand to the entire Kadıköy district and include nature-based solutions for urban heat island mitigation. We aim to develop a comprehensive concept plan, complete with pilot applications, for integrating nature-based solutions into urban mobility projects in Kadıköy. Learn more about the project here.
By temporarily restricting vehicles and using water-based paint and modular street furniture, pedestrians reclaimed the adjacent square. New benches and greenery created places to rest. Colorful crosswalks near the primary school improved safety and visibility. The usually vehicle-dominated space became, almost overnight, a vibrant gathering place for locals and visitors alike.
While temporary, the redesign caught residents' attention and helped catalyze months of collaboration to reimagine Caferağa's streets. Through discussions with the local government as well as researchers, NGOs and WRI Türkiye's Deep Dive Cities team, the community landed on five core recommendations to improve quality of life and tackle sustainability issues simultaneously. All five are currently moving forward with the municipality at various stages of implementation.
Mehmet Ayvalıtaş Square after the temporary redesign. Photos by WRI Türkiye 1) Prioritizing pedestrian spaceStepping into the reimagined Mehmet Ayvalıtaş Square was a breath of fresh air for locals. The vibrant space stood in contrast to their typical experience navigating Caferağa's narrow sidewalks — which, according to Emel Budak, an older resident, are so overrun with cafe tables and haphazardly parked scooters that "it is almost impossible for elderly or disabled individuals to pass through."
Trees brought in for the temporary square redesign. Photo byThe pilot project highlighted the need for designated pedestrian zones throughout the neighborhood. Residents recommended wider sidewalks, accessible ramps, and raised, visible crosswalks to make the district safer — especially for people with disabilities.
Meanwhile, planting trees along major pedestrian routes would help improve air quality and cool the streets on hot days. Installing benches would create places to rest and socialize. And residents raised the need for tactile (textured) paving at places like crosswalks and curb edges to make it easier for those who are visually impaired to get around.
Collectively, these solutions can significantly improve walkability, comfort and safety. As the city begins to roll the changes out, residents will be able to provide continuous feedback through the municipality's Accessible Kadıköy platform, which may help inform future improvements.
2) Making room for bikes and scootersCaferağa's size makes it well suited for cycling or scootering, which can help cut down on vehicle traffic. But the neighborhood lacks a connected network of lanes. Parking is also an issue: Dağıstanlı told us that she receives countless complaints from residents about bikes and scooters blocking already crowded sidewalks.
Ride-share scooters in a designated parking area. Photo by WRI TürkiyeIn response, Kadıköy Municipality plans to grow its network of bike lanes from 18 km to 58 km by 2050, while developing an e-bike sharing system and designated bike parking.
Alongside addressing residents' concerns around safety and accessibility, this will support the district's broader sustainability efforts. With Kadıköy aiming for a 40% reduction in GHG emissions by 2030 and full climate neutrality by 2050, infrastructure for electric and zero-carbon transportation is essential.
3) Creating a new local shuttle systemCaferağa is conveniently located near major transit hubs. However, it doesn't have its own transportation system. This makes it difficult for people — especially caregivers and older residents — to navigate the neighborhood and access public transit like the metro system and ferry, which link Caferağa to the rest of the city.
Residents and the WRI Türkiye team proposed a new shuttle service for the neighborhood, called ModaBüs, to make local trips easier and provide connections to nearby transit centers. Kadıköy Municipality is now in the final planning stages, having worked closely with community members to identify 17 stop locations and assess proposed routes that will connect residential pockets with public spaces and transit points.
Set to launch in late 2025, ModaBüs will integrate with the wider public transport system — including metro, tram and ferry lines — providing first- and last-mile connectivity for the over 22,000 residents of Caferağa. It will operate free of charge for those with 65+ cards, disability cards, mother cards (which enable mothers to ride transport for free) and local residency documentation.
4) Developing a thoughtful approach to parkingWith overcrowding at the core of Caferağa's challenges, it's not surprising that parking (or the lack thereof) emerged as a key issue. But rather than adding more parking — which residents recognized would only hike congestion and pollution — the community suggested sustainable management strategies. These include limiting on-street parking in commercial areas, installing digital systems for more effective regulation and enforcement, and prioritizing parking for residents.
An interactive display for community members in Mehmet Ayvalıtaş Square. Photo by WRI TürkiyeNuran Kansu, an older neighborhood resident who often struggles to find parking during special events like football matches, suggested that "transforming nearby schoolyards or other suitable open spaces into temporary parking areas during such occasions would provide significant relief for residents." The community is also considering visitor parking fees to generate revenue that could support needed infrastructure upgrades and enforcement.
These proposals are still in the planning phase. Once approved, they will build on measures from Istanbul's Low Emission Zone strategy. Caferağa is also limiting the number of non-resident vehicles that can pass through the area, especially during peak hours on evenings and weekends.
5) Optimizing local deliveriesOver 600 motorized delivery vehicles make their way around Caferağa each day, sustaining the community's tourism and service industries. But during peak hours, trucks and couriers often stop in narrow streets and block sidewalks. Loud late-night and early-morning deliveries disturb residents.
Scheduling deliveries during off-peak hours, designating specific loading zones and strengthening enforcement would improve quality of life in the neighborhood. It would also make a meaningful dent in carbon emissions: WRI estimates that transitioning even 30% of Caferağa's deliveries to electric or active transport (like bike couriers) could eliminate approximately 425 kg of CO2 emissions per week — roughly equivalent to eliminating 1,000 miles driven in a gas-powered car.
Taking inspiration from cities like London — where shifting to cargo bikes has reduced both delivery times and emissions — the community, including nearly 70% of local businesses, has expressed support for a comprehensive cargo bike delivery strategy for Caferağa. A pilot program is set to begin later in 2025.
Setting an Example Other Cities Can FollowThe changes proposed in Caferağa are not solely about infrastructure; they are about enhancing the quality of life for all residents.
These new strategies — and Caferağa's process to develop them — offer insights for other urban areas facing similar challenges:
- Community involvement is key. Participatory and inclusive planning processes are essential to developing successful solutions. By helping local stakeholders and residents to understand the challenges, and working closely with them to identify solutions, Caferağa arrived at a framework that truly meets community needs. Through regular neighborhood meetings and via the district's digital feedback platforms, residents will continue to shape and refine the improvements to their neighborhood.
- Testing out solutions and responding to feedback creates stronger buy-in. The pilot project implemented in Mehmet Ayvalıtaş Square invited community interaction and real-time feedback — and showed people what is possible through better street design. This effort catalyzed strong engagement from the beginning and added nuance to the final series of recommendations.
- The most successful solutions address multiple challenges at once. Working to address mobility needs, accessibility challenges and sustainability together can be more efficient and responsive to a community's needs. For example, adding shade trees and greenery along sidewalks and cycle lanes simultaneously reduces urban heat, encourages walking and biking, and fosters a sense of community among residents. Comprehensive efforts to calm traffic will make the neighborhood safer, more navigable and ultimately more sustainable.
Caferağa is one of Istanbul's most unique and dynamic areas. But its struggles with overcrowding and pollution will only worsen if left alone. The neighborhood's collaborative, iterative approach to addressing these challenges could set it on a better and more sustainable path — and inspire other neighborhoods to do the same. Now it's time to bring this shared vision for a Livable Caferağa to life.
square-redesign.jpg Cities Cities Urban Mobility Air Quality pollution Type Vignette Exclude From Blog Feed? 0 Projects Authors Yunus Emre Yılmaz Cemil Oğuz Eillie Anzilotti Madeline PalmieriGrowing Water Risks Threaten World’s Most Cherished Heritage Sites
Water is impacting some of the Earth’s most cherished places: The Taj Mahal, for example, faces water scarcity that is increasing pollution and depleting groundwater, both of which are damaging the mausoleum. In 2022, a massive flood closed down all of Yellowstone National Park and cost over $20 million in infrastructure repairs to reopen.
Water issues — whether it’s drought, scarcity, pollution or flooding — have become a threat to many of the more than 1,200 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. These natural landscapes and cultural landmarks around the globe, including the Taj Mahal and Yellowstone National Park, are recognized for their “outstanding universal value” to people and the planet.
Historic flooding at Yellowstone National Park in June 2022 washed away cabins and roads. Yellowstone is among many UNESCO World Heritage Sites threatened by water risks. Photo by NPS/Alamy.Places ranging from the biodiversity-rich Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, to cultural treasures like the sacred city of Chichén Itzá in Mexico, to bustling urban centers like Morocco’s Medina of Fez are facing growing water risks that are not just endangering the sites, but the millions of people who depend on them for food, livelihoods, a connection to their culture, or who just enjoy traveling to these destinations.
An analysis using WRI’s Aqueduct data shows 73% of all non-marine UNESCO World Heritage Sites are exposed to at least one severe water risk (water stress, drought, river flooding or coastal flooding), with 21% of sites facing dual problems of too much and too little water.
While the global share of World Heritage Sites exposed to high-to-extremely high levels of water stress is projected to rise from 40% to 44% by 2050, impacts will be far more severe in regions like the Middle East and North Africa, parts of South Asia, and northern China — areas where existing water stress is exacerbated by extensive river regulation, damming and upstream water withdrawals. In these regions, the combined pressures of infrastructure development and climate change pose a significant threat to both natural ecosystems and the cultural heritage they sustain.
Water risks — such as drought and flooding — are threatening many UNESCO World Heritage Sites around the globe. Hotspots like Petra in Jordan, the Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu in Peru and Sagarmatha National Park (the home of Mt. Everest) in Nepal, are facing growing problems of too much water, or too little. An analysis using WRI’s Aqueduct platform classify these sites and nearly 900 of the cultural and natural sites on UNESCO’s list as severe because they fall into high or extremely-high exposure categories.
Among the 1,172 non-marine sites we analyzed, 73% are exposed to at least one severe water risk; 21% face dual problems of too much and too little water.
Specifically, 40% (470) of world heritage sites are exposed to severe baseline water stress; 37% (434) face severe drought risk; 33% (391) of sites are exposed to severe riverine flood risk; and 4% (49) are exposed to severe coastal flood risk.
initFlourishScrolly( { trigger_point: "0%", offset_top: "50px" } ); @media screen and (max-width: 767px) { .fl-scrolly-step { width: 80vw !important; font-size: .95rem !important; text-align: left !important; } } @media screen and (min-width:768px) and (max-width: 1023px) { .fl-scrolly-step { width: 80vw !important; font-size: .95rem !important; text-align: left !important; } } @media screen and (min-width: 1024px) { #my-wrapper { margin-left: 35vw; width: 65vw; } .fl-scrolly-step { text-align: left !important; margin-left: -30.5vw !important; width: 25vw !important; box-shadow: none !important; } }Here, we look at how water stress, drought and floods are impacting these iconic landmarks, including the Ahwar of Southern Iraq, Mosi-oa-Tunya / Victoria Falls in southern Africa, the Chan Chan Archaeological Zone in Peru and the Migratory Bird Sanctuaries along the Coast of Yellow Sea-Bohai Gulf of China — along with some of the solutions aimed at ensuring these sites don’t disappear.
About the Data
WRI and UNESCO screened 1,172 non-marine UNESCO sites for four water risks: water stress (the ratio of water demand to renewable supply), drought, riverine flooding and coastal flooding. A result was considered severe if it fell into Aqueduct’s high or extremely-high category. Each indicator defines high risk differently (see Technical Note for details). UNESCO World Heritage Sites added after March 20, 2025, are not included in this analysis.
Water Stress in the Ahwar of Southern IraqHidden in the heart of the Middle East’s arid landscapes lies one of the world’s most extraordinary places — the Ahwar of Southern Iraq. In 2016, UNESCO added the Ahwar to the World Heritage list as a mixed site — recognized for both its natural values and cultural legacy. It’s one of about 470 UNESCO World Heritage Sites facing water scarcity due to issues like pollution and competition for its water resources.
Fed by the mighty Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the Ahwar is among the largest inland delta systems on Earth. These sprawling marshes are teeming with life that include millions of migratory birds like the rare basra reed warbler and large wild buffalo that wade through its reed beds.
Water buffalo wade among the reed houses built on the Ahwar's marshes in southern Iraq. Photo by Jasim Al-Asady / UNESCO.But nature is only half the story.
This realm was also the birthplace of human civilization. The Sumerians, inventors of writing, the wheel and the first cities, built legendary settlements like Ur, Uruk and Eridu on the fertile fringes of these marshes.
Today, the Marsh Arabs (Ma'dan), using ancient traditions, depend on the water, crafting floating reed houses and raising the water buffalo for food and income. Their way of life, adapted to the wetlands, tells a story of resilience that spans millennia.
However, intensifying use of water resources is placing greater strain on the Ahwar. Water stress — the ongoing competition over water — increases water pollution and threatens the ecological integrity, biodiversity and cultural significance of the Ahwar.
According to data from WRI’s Aqueduct platform, the Ahwar marshes face extremely high water stress, where over 80% of the renewable supply is withdrawn to meet human demand. Over the years, upstream dam construction, agricultural water use and periods of political instability — including significant drainage of the marshes in the 1990s — have reduced the freshwater flowing into the region. As a result, the area remains highly vulnerable during times of drought. In 2023, 68,000 people from central and southern Iraq were displaced by drought.
What survives today of the Ahwar is largely due to the determined efforts of local communities, international allies and nature itself fighting to heal. But the region is still at risk. Looking forward, climate change will only make the region hotter and drier. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ranks southern Iraq as one of the five most likely places to be impacted by climate change. By 2050, the Aqueduct platform shows that water stress is expected to intensify throughout the region.
The people of the Ahwar of Southern Iraq depend on the water for their homes, livelihood and cultural heritage. Photo by Jasim Al-Asady / UNESCO. Drought at Mosi-oa-Tunya/Victoria FallsStraddling the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe in southern Africa, Mosi-oa-Tunya (which means “the smoke that thunders")/ Victoria Falls is more than a stunning waterfall. It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1989 for its vital ecosystem and essential source of livelihood for tens of thousands of people. Despite its reputation for massive cascading water, Mosi-oa-Tunya/Victoria Falls has faced recurring drought over the past decade and at times dried up to barely a trickle.
Fed by floodwaters from the Zambezi River, Mosi-oa-Tunya/ Victoria Falls is crucial to the planet for several reasons.
Economically, Mosi-oa-Tunya/ Victoria Falls drives the tourism industry in both Zambia and Zimbabwe, drawing over 1 million visitors a year under normal conditions. Local tour guides, lodge owners, craft sellers and conservationists rely heavily on the flow of visitors. The water flowing from the falls also feed hydroelectric plants downstream that supply power to millions across southern Africa.
Ecologically, its riverine “rainforest” nurtures a rich diversity of wildlife and plants, including endangered and migratory birds like the Taita falcon. Rhinoceroses, elephants and lions roam the park in search of watering holes for drinking, bathing and hunting.
During a drought year, the thunderous Victoria Falls significantly dries up leading to both ecological and economic impacts to the southern Africa region. Photo by HandmadePictures / ShutterstockMosi-oa-Tunya/ Victoria Falls experienced droughts as recently as 2016, 2019 and 2024. Research on rainfall patterns near Mosi-oa-Tunya/Victoria Falls shows that the onset of the rainy season, normally in October, is arriving later in the year. That means in a drought year, it takes longer for relief to arrive; and the longer a drought continues, the more it affects the people, crops and economy around it.
In 2019, more than 300 people in Zimbabwe were attacked by animals in search of food and water; 45 million people in southern Africa were in need of food aid amid crop failures; and in Zimbabwe and Zambia, hydroelectric power shutdowns caused blackouts up to 18 hours a day — affecting millions while posing significant challenges to development and climate adaption goals.
An Aqueduct analysis found that Mosi-oa-Tunya/ Victoria Falls ranks as a medium drought risk, below the more than 430 UNESCO World Heritage Sites that rank as a high drought risk. This is primarily because relatively low population density and limited human development immediately surrounding the site reduces overall exposure. However, the site faces increasing pressure from tourism-related infrastructure development and data shows the probability of drought occurrence ranks high — a finding reinforced by the many recent droughts that have plagued the region.
Climate change is not only expected to make these droughts more frequent, but recovery is expected to last longer, especially in places that aren’t prepared. The time between droughts may not be long enough for the ecosystem to recover — which is particularly concerning for Mosi-oa-Tunya/ Victoria Falls.
Gushing water from Victoria Falls drives tourism and nurtures a rich diversity of wildlife and plants. Photo by Rawf8 / iStock. River Flooding in the Chan Chan Archeological ZoneBefore the Inca carved their stone temples into the heights of Cusco and Machu Picchu in Peru, the Chimú sculpted an empire from sunbaked earth called Chan Chan (which means “Sun Sun”). Nestled between the Pacific Ocean and the foothills of the Andes Mountains, the desert city of Chan Chan was once the largest city in pre-Columbian South America.
Today, it remains the largest adobe ruins in the world and a marvel of urban planning. The site was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1986 and simultaneously placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger, due to its overall vulnerability to natural erosion and extreme climatic events associated with the El Niño–Southern Oscillation phenomenon.
The Chan Chan Archaeological Zone in Peru is the largest adobe ruins in the world. Photo by Mariyam B / Shutterstock.Behind its intricately carved walls lies a complex cityscape of palaces, temples, homes, workshops and storehouses. Stretches of farmland once surrounded Chan Chan, supported by a sophisticated irrigation system that diverted water from the Moche and Chicama rivers. These advanced water management systems not only sustained the Chimú with water during times of drought, but may have also protected the city from El Niño flooding.
But the1,000-year-old adobe walls of Chan Chan were not built to withstand the intensified El Niño flooding of the 21st century.
The El Niño climate pattern warms the ocean and upends wind patterns, especially in the Pacific. In Peru, the warmer sea temperatures transform the normally dry winds into humid air that gathers in the foothills of the Andes. When fully saturated, this tropical atmosphere can release up to 10 times more rain than usual. Mountain rivers swell, hurtling toward the coast as torrents of water, mud and rock. Known locally as huaycos, these destructive mudslides sweep away everything in their path, from homes and roads to hospitals and schools.
Chan Chan is no exception. According to WRI’s Aqueduct platform, the UNESCO site and its surrounding region in La Libertad face extremely high risk to river flooding, a threat that is only expected to grow and is shared by more than 390 sites on the UNESCO World Heritage list. By 2050, the population affected by floods each year in an average, non- El Niño year in La Libertad is expected to double from 16,000 to 34,000 due to a combination of human activity and climate change. In an El Niño year, that increase may be much higher.
Modern agriculture has dramatically expanded around Chan Chan. All that irrigation has pushed up the groundwater level, leaving less room in the soil to absorb rainfall during storms. The result: more surface runoff and greater flood risk. At the same time, warming global temperatures are projected to make El Niño events more frequent and intense.
Some experts warn that Peru’s coast is already offering a glimpse of what climate change looks like in real time. Despite having disaster preparedness plans in place, Peru was hit hard by El Niño floods in both 2017 and 2023. Hundreds of people were killed, thousands were displaced — some permanently — and millions of residents were affected. From space, the scars of swollen rivers and devastating huaycos are visible near Chan Chan. On the ground, caretakers report that the site's delicate adobe structures are deteriorating from heavy rainfall and erosion.
Chan Chan has weathered centuries of time, wind and desert sun. Bold conservation and climate resilience measures are needed to prevent this ancient city — once a marvel of water mastery — from falling victim to the very element it once controlled.
Ongoing work at the Chan Chan Archeological Zone is aimed at keeping the adobe structures from deteriorating. Photo by padchas / iStock. Coastal Flooding Impacting the Migratory Bird Sanctuaries of the Yellow Sea and Bohai Gulf Coast of ChinaIn 2022, a bar-tailed godwit known as B6, being studied by the U.S. Geological Survey, captured global attention with an astonishing feat of endurance: On his very first migration, the 4-month-old bird flew nonstop from Alaska to Australia — a staggering journey of over 8,425 miles completed in just 11 days, setting a new world record.
But B6’s journey didn’t end there. He still had to return home and would likely need additional rest and fuel to make the equally long journey back. Like other bar-tailed godwits, B6 could have stopped in the intertidal wetlands of China’s Yellow Sea–Bohai Gulf coastline to feed and rebuild his strength before completing his migration.
Scientists tracked B6's round-trip migration between Alaska and Australia. Photo by Dan Ruthrauff / U.S. Geological SurveyFor 50 million migratory waterbirds like B6 that pass through this region each year, these tidal flats are more than just a pit stop, they are a lifeline that also provide shelter and breeding grounds.
However, the Migratory Bird Sanctuaries along the Yellow Sea and Bohai Gulf Coast of China, which was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2019, have faced pressures from nature and human activities. Large-scale development and encroaching coastal flooding are squeezing the wetlands to death.
For decades, land reclamation — converting sea areas into land by filling in marshes for agriculture, industry or urban development — led to the loss of extensive mudflat habitats. In 2018, China responded by banning land reclamation in Bohai Bay, a move widely praised by conservation groups.
But another challenge is harder to control: coastal flooding, which is currently impacting close to 50 sites on the UNESCO World Heritage list. Sea levels in Bohai Bay have risen at least 6 inches (about 0.15 meters) since 1980, driven in large part due to climate change. Even without storms, tidal conditions have temporarily raised sea levels by up to 1 meter (3.2 feet) in some areas, flooding the nearby cities.
As the sea pushes inland, it leaves less exposed mudflats where birds can find food — especially where protective infrastructures like seawalls and levees prevent wetlands from naturally shifting further inland. While essential for protecting human communities, these structures limit coastal habitats from adapting to rising seas. Losing this flyway could lead to a dramatic decline in bird populations, potentially reducing numbers by as much as 72% according to a study in the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
Mudflats along the Yellow Sea and Bohai Gulf coast in China. Photo by Yancheng Broadcasting Television / UNESCO.The effects of coastal flooding aren’t limited to birds. In Shandong Province, which includes parts of the Bohai wetlands, an estimated 21,000 residents are affected by coastal flooding each year, according to Aqueduct Floods data. That number could increase tenfold by 2050 due to a combination of climate change, sinking land — known as land subsidence — and population growth.
Despite the challenges, there are reasons for optimism. The 2018 ban on land reclamation was a major step forward, and local restoration projects are beginning to show positive results. In Nandagang Industrial Park, for example, coastal development was halted in 2015 to allow wetland restoration. In 2019, around 20,000 birds visited the site and by 2023, that number grew to 100,000.
Red-crowned cranes are among the rare species flocking to the migratory sanctuaries of the Yellow Sea and Bohai Gulf coast in China. Photo by Yancheng Broadcasting Television / UNESCO. Acting for the FutureEvery World Heritage Site, shaped by the people and nature that created it, has the power to transport you to a time and place. Yet many of these sites are facing their own distinct challenges over water. While the stories vary, the path forward is the same — solutions that can be implemented today to protect our heritage for future generations.
- Locally: restore vital landscapes that support healthy, stable water. Invest in nature-based solutions like planting trees to restore headwater forests or revitalizing wetlands to capture flood waters and recharge aquifers. These approaches can build resilience to extreme weather and address multiple water challenges simultaneously.
- Nationally: enact conservation policies to protect vital landscapes from unsustainable development.
- Internationally: elevate water’s status as a global common good. Establish equitable transboundary agreements on sharing water across borders.
Data visualizations by Sara Staedicke; story edited by Alicia Cypress.
taj-mahal-india.jpg Freshwater drought floods Water Security Aqueduct water pollution water risk climate impacts data visualization Type Finding Exclude From Blog Feed? 0 Projects Authors Samantha KuzmaA New Satellite Data App Supports Better Monitoring of European Forests
European forests are constantly changing as they experience the impacts of climate change and intensive harvesting. In Nordic regions, the area of tall trees — which store the most carbon — is declining as harvesting overtakes regrowth. In southern Europe, severe forest fires are decimating large areas during ever-hotter summers. In central Europe, insect outbreaks are increasing in production forests, and demand for biomass energy continues to increase.
Understanding where, why and how much forests are changing is crucial for the long-term health of Europe's forests and supporting ongoing policy discussions for improved forest management, as well as ensuring a sustainable bioeconomy — forests in the EU are estimated to generate €174 per hectare through the forestry and logging industry, and almost half a million people are employed in the industry.
There are different ways to monitor European forests: Historically, abundant and detailed ground data has been the main source of information, but a wealth of satellite data has been developed over the last few decades and has become increasingly important.
For example, the proposed EU Forest Monitoring Law, which aims to provide consistent monitoring of Europe's forests, is built on a combination of both ground and satellite data, and in early 2025, 78 scientists from 17 European countries signed a public letter describing the benefits of satellite data for EU forest monitoring needs. Many European initiatives, including the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), also rely on satellite data.
While there are many satellite data sets that give insights on European forests, including data with global coverage on WRI’s Global Forest Watch platform and annual tree height data for Europe from the University of Maryland, these do not provide targeted, comprehensive monitoring tools for the region.
Now, a new European Forest App, developed by researchers from WRI and Land & Carbon Lab in collaboration with GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences and building on the Forest Navigator Data Cube, supports better monitoring of European forests by providing tailored information and insights in an easy-to-use platform. This new tool demonstrates the value and availability of free and open satellite data for European forest monitoring needs.
About the New European Forest AppThe European Forest App provides harmonized and accessible data derived from multiple sources that are useful for European forest monitoring needs. It includes 12 indicators for forest change and condition: tree cover loss, gain, height, extent and stable forest extent (all based on data from the University of Maryland); and forest age, fragmentation state and change, long term disturbance, biomass, forest type and forest management, long term disturbance, and biomass.
European Forest App indicator details IndicatorSource and input dataDescriptionTree and forest characteristicsForest typeCopernicus 2018, based on 100-meter dataArea (ha) of broadleaved, coniferous and mixed forest areas in 2018Tree areaTurubanova et al. 2023, based on 30-meter dataArea of tree cover (ha) in six periods with 5-year intervals between 2001 and 2021Tree heightTurubanova et al. 2023, based on 30-meter dataMean tree height for 2001 and 2020 in areas of trees >= 5 metersForest ageBesnard et al. 2021, based on 1-kilometer dataArea of forest (ha) in specified age classes (e.g. <10 years, or between 50 and 100 years) for 2010BiomassAraza et al. 2022, based on 100-meter dataWoody aboveground biomass (Mg/ha) in 2020Forest changeTree cover lossTurubanova et al. 2023, based on 30-meter dataArea (ha) of tree cover lost in 5- and 10-year periods between 2001 and 2021Tree cover gainTurubanova et al. 2023, based on 30-meter dataArea (ha) of tree cover gained in 5- and 10-year periods between 2001 and 2021Stable tree cover extentTurubanova et al. 2023, based on 30-meter dataArea (ha) of tree cover which remained stable in 5- and 10-year periods between 2001 and 2021DisturbanceSenf and Seidl 2021, based on 30-meter data
Area of forest disturbance (ha) per year from 1986 to 2020
State of forestsForest fragmentationMa et al. 2023, metrics based on 30-meter data, with fragmentation calculated on a 5000-meter gridArea (ha) of forest in five different fragmentation classes in 2000 and 2020, and mean change in fragmentation from 2000-2020Forest managementLesiv et al. 2022, based on 100-meter data
Area of forest under different management classes in 2015
Users can select indicators from a dropdown menu and click on the map to see statistics calculated by country, province/state and district/municipality administrative levels. The example below shows areas of tree cover loss in different time periods and within and outside of natural and protected areas, and percent of tree cover loss within protected areas for a 10-year time period.
Users do not need geospatial data analysis experience to use and pull key insights from the app. The app also harmonizes data at different resolutions to show all at the same spatial unit.
It also shows all layers based on protected status and whether or not forest is natural, which is particularly valuable for assessing some of Europe’s most important forests.
Users interested in seeing more detail can follow these instructions to download the shapefiles showing the statistics.
Why Use Satellite Data Vs. Ground Data for Monitoring European Forests?Many European countries have robust monitoring of their forests based on extensive ground data, so what is the benefit of using satellite data?
First, not all countries have up-to-date or detailed national data, so satellite data can bolster national monitoring efforts for these countries.
Additionally, while ground data is detailed and precise, and is essential for calibrating and validating satellite-derived estimates, satellite data is complementary and offers many benefits for monitoring European forests:
- Globally consistent: Satellite data provides a large-scale comprehensive and common data source for all countries so that progress towards shared EU-wide goals can be tracked.
- Timely: Satellite data provides much more frequent updates than ground monitoring campaigns, which typically occur every five to 10 years.
- High quality: While no data is error-free, all the data on the European Forest App is based on peer-reviewed science and has open and transparent information on their quality, such as uncertainty measures, which can guide users in interpreting the information.
- Cost effective: Satellites can provide large amounts of data more cost effectively than other sources like airborne surveys or data collection in the field, which can be very costly. This makes it easier for companies and others to comply with regulations like the EU Deforestation Regulation.
- Open and free: Anyone anywhere can use the European Forest App for their own forest monitoring needs.
Ultimately, no one data source can meet all data needs — for example, risk assessments under the EU Deforestation Regulation can benefit from both ground and satellite data — so having quality data of both kinds is important.
How Does the European Forest App Differ from Global Forest Watch?For the past decade, WRI’s Global Forest Watch (GFW) platform has provided free, open-source, globally consistent data on the world’s forests. While GFW provides important data on European forests, the new app uses different data, including a Europe-specific data set from the University of Maryland’s (UMD) GLAD lab that is not available on GFW. Unlike the global data on GFW, this data set is optimized for Europe.
In Europe, where many forests are actively managed and are replanted or allowed to regenerate after harvesting, the app provides additional data on gain, extent and stable forest area, which is particularly important.
For example, for the indicators based on UMD data from Turubanova et al. 2023, the app is able to provide data for all five-year and 10-year periods between 2001 and 2021 (e.g. 2001-2011, 2001-2006 and so on), whereas a similar global data set based on tree height also from UMD on GFW only provides the option to change the baseline year for tree cover gain, and offers more limited options for extent (10 year intervals).
The app also includes other Europe-specific data types not available on GFW, such as forest age, that are relevant for discussions related to the EU Forest Monitoring Law and the EU Nature Restoration Law. Additionally, the app provides some historical data as far back as 1986, where GFW provides data from 2000 onwards. In Europe, where harvest cycles are longer and growth is slower than in many parts of the tropics, this long timeframe can provide valuable insights into European forest dynamics.
However, GFW offers some important data not available on the app, such as annually updated data on tree cover loss, contextual data like biodiversity hotspots, and near-real-time deforestation alerts. GFW also provides dozens of widgets with data-derived statistics, additional Help Center support and compatible tools such as Forest Watcher that support users for specific use cases.
While there is overlap between the European Forest App and GFW, and major trends revealed by the data remain the same, the data will not completely align in all cases — different data and methods will lead to slightly different results. Users monitoring European forests should consult both sources to identify which better suits their needs: those interested in only European forest information over longer timeframes may prefer the European Forest App, and those interested in other information, such as near-real-time disturbances, may prefer the GFW platform.
Explore the European Forest App here. If you have questions, please contact sarah.carter@wri.org.
Forests Europe data deforestation fires Type Project Update Exclude From Blog Feed? 0 Projects Authors Sarah Carter Manuka Khan4 Ways Financing for Development Can Deliver for People, Nature and Climate
The path to accelerating progress on global goals for people, nature and the climate depends on bringing together different sources of finance to align efforts and work better as a system. It also requires agreement to tackle systemic challenges, such as high capital costs and limited fiscal space. That’s exactly what this year’s Financing for Development Conference (FFD4) aims to deliver. It’s an opportunity to identify where more supportive, integrated frameworks could help countries more quickly shift, align and increase finance for sustainable development.
This opportunity comes amid a rocky global context. Poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation and rising fragility are not isolated crises — they are deeply interconnected and mutually reinforcing challenges that require an integrated response. Yet they are often addressed separately, resulting in unintended consequences and missed opportunities for sustainable solutions.
This gap is evident as we’re on track to achieve just 17% of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — which include targets for people, nature and the climate — by their 2030 deadline. The progress report also shows that since 2015, progress on the climate action goal (SDG 13) has gone backward on 30% of its targets, while the remainder show only marginal improvement.
The Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4)
The UN is organizing the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4) — taking place in Seville, Spain, from June 30 to July 3, 2025 — to take stock of the role finance plays in reaching the Sustainable Development Goals.
Bringing together leaders from every UN member country and organization, along with many international financial institutions and private-sector actors, FFD4 is a key venue to integrate climate and development finance and goals, and to reduce fragmentation in the international finance system through reforms at both national and international levels.
An outcome document known as the Compromiso de Sevilla (the Seville Commitment), was endorsed by UN member countries ahead of the conference, with the U.S. exiting the process.
FFD4 also comes at a time when multilateralism is under strain, as evidenced by recent cuts to Official Development Assistance (ODA) — finance provided by the governments to promote and specifically target the economic development and welfare of developing countries. ODA grew at an average annual rate of 7.6% from 2019 to 2023, but dropped 7.1% between 2023 and 2024, and may decline further amid shifting geopolitics, financial pressures in provider countries and a reprioritization of investments toward defense and other domestic priorities. Despite its past demonstrated resilience in response to crises, recent cuts by some of the wealthiest countries, including the U.S. and the UK, have raised concerns about future levels of ODA.
Despite these headwinds, there are four key areas where multistakeholder approaches to financing sustainable and equitable development can be better coordinated — at FFD4 and beyond.
1. Integrate Climate and Nature into Development PlanningSince the Earth Summit in 1992, financing for development and financing for climate and nature have largely evolved on separate tracks. But this parallel trend is reaching its limits. A central theme at FFD4 is the need to rethink sustainable development in light of new, compounding shifts in the global economy, climate and biosphere.
Addressing climate, nature and development goals together brings both the opportunity for economic growth — up to $26 trillion from bold climate action by 2030 — and recognizes the imperative for development to be climate-resilient and nature-positive. Climate transitions must also be inclusive if they are to be sustained.
The 2015 FFD in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, outlined the principles that this FFD must now turn into action, recommending concrete ways to incorporate climate and nature into development and economic decision-making. An independent expert report to the G20 emphasized the need to integrate climate and nature into macroeconomic planning through a whole-of-economy, whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach. This would allow countries to weigh the choices and trade-offs involved in meeting climate, nature and people goals, and to drive forward structural reforms that shift economies onto a more sustainable path.
There is a range of tools that countries will need to make this possible. In addition to new macroeconomic models and multistakeholder consultations, Wealth and Natural Capital Accounting offers a way for decision-makers to incorporate climate and nature into their analytical toolkit. The WAVES (Wealth Accounting and the Valuation of Ecosystem Services) partnership, coordinated by the World Bank, shows how governments are integrating natural capital accounting into macroeconomic planning, budget decisions and development policy in countries such as Colombia, Indonesia and Rwanda (WAVES core implementing partners). This approach to national accounting includes incorporating water resources, minerals, forests, biodiversity and tourism, helping shift decision making away from short-term GDP growth toward long-term sustainability.
International data-gathering frameworks offer another key opportunity for progress. Frameworks like the one underpinning the SDGs have helped governments adopt and monitor policies aligned with global targets. Many countries have already used these data to develop SDG action plans; now, innovative data-gathering methods can support more targeted development policies.
FFD4’s Compromiso de Sevilla underscores the need to support “high quality and disaggregated data and statistics [to] enable evidence-based policy decisions and enhance accountability and transparency, fostering public trust and international cooperation.”
But countries can’t do this alone. Data sharing and international cooperation are crucial for addressing global challenges such as climate change and nature loss. To help finance flow to climate and nature, the Compromiso de Sevilla emphasizes the importance of “economic, financial, risk, and resilience data [to be made] available to all financial market actors, including through capacity building for developing countries.”
In implementing the Compromiso de Sevilla, a shared global vision for data cooperation on SDGs could unlock international investment and bridge capacity gaps. Ministers of finance, climate and environment can jointly lead this effort.
2. Rewire Public Finance for Development, Climate and NatureThere are several areas where countries broadly agree on the need for national action but require a coordinated approach, given the interconnected nature of the global economy.
Coordinate subsidy reformIt is widely recognized that countries — both developed and developing — should reform environmentally harmful subsidies, including those related to fossil fuels ($7 trillion in 2022, 18% in “explicit” subsidies, where fuels are sold below retail cost through government support) and unsustainable agricultural practices ($619 billion in 2021). Ending these subsidies would help reduce environmental and atmospheric degradation; repurposing them could help reverse it.
But such shifts would have to be coordinated to ensure a just transition where no worker or country is left behind. Without coordination, any first mover is likely to face a competitive disadvantage. FFD4 should call on governments to lead in reforming subsidy frameworks and to work together to ensure a just and equitable transition.
Align and unlock investment flowsA holistic, country-level approach to financing, such as the concept of ‘country platforms’, could help match appropriate finance to transition needs. Country platforms are a way for governments to align public and private, national and international finance at scale behind country-led plans and policy reforms to deliver climate, nature and development goals.
These platforms have the potential to address policy risks by aligning stakeholders around a shared vision and creating an enabling environment for attracting private finance. They recognize the centrality of capacity building and technical assistance in supporting countries — especially the poorest and most vulnerable — to take a systemic approach. They also allow for the most strategic use of scarce concessional and blended finance by prioritizing structural reform and taking more programmatic approaches.
FFD4 calls to “support enhancing the ability of MDBs [multilateral development banks] and other PDBs [public development banks] to work better as a system, aligned with country-led development priorities and strategies”. It also calls on other development partners, financial institutions, relevant domestic actors, civil society and local governments to play their part in integrated approaches based on each actor’s comparative advantage. Countries are in the driver’s seat to initiate this convergence and advance country platform mechanisms.
3. Activate Private Investments in the Real EconomyRight now, mobilizing private investment aligned with people, nature and climate goals, and its potential to transform the real economy, is not happening fast enough or at sufficient scale.
Building on the 2015 Addis Ababa declaration, FFD4 aims to address the systemic issues that limit private sector investments in sustainable finance. The UN estimates developing countries face a $4 trillion investment gap to achieve the SDGs, particularly in sectors such as renewable energy and infrastructure, where the private sector plays a crucial role.
As stated in the Addis Ababa Accord, the private sector is a major driver of productivity, inclusive of economic growth and job creation; yet looking to private financiers to “fill in the gaps” has proven complex. To date, there has been a strong focus on the use of blended finance to de-risk and thereby mobilize more private investment. This includes using concessional finance (from MDBs, for instance) or philanthropic finance to catalyze investments in nascent markets where risks are currently too high, or returns too low, for investors to step in alone.
Reforming risk-sharing instruments — such as guarantees, first-loss capital and hybrid instruments — and blended finance would help bring these approaches to scale. In the G20 process, MDBs have been encouraged to take more programmatic approaches (e.g., guaranteeing portfolios rather than single projects) and to streamline and harmonize internal processes, both among themselves and with other PDBs. They have also been encouraged to unlock more institutional investment through originate-to-share models and by supporting the development of sustainable asset classes. The Compromiso de Sevilla also proposes promoting the use of risk management, risk mitigation and risk transfer practices too.
However, mobilization of private finance also requires a stronger focus on changes in fiscal incentives, regulatory environments, enabling conditions and business models, as well as changes in demand. It is important to achieve cost-effectiveness, improve returns and reduce risks in this way, rather than rely solely on blended finance. In some cases, this can be done by using better data on returns or by showcasing the dividends that can come from investing in adaptation.
When it comes to investing in climate and nature, delivery has been inconsistent and difficult to track, especially in the case of private finance. The conference is likely to call for UN member states to implement proposals by adopting standards, tools and metrics as targets, and to publish performance indicators to better measure private sector mobilization rates, sustainable finance mechanisms and their impacts on people, nature and the climate (e.g., continuing the GEMS effort).
4. Improve Global Cooperation on DebtAs developing countries face increasing repayment burdens due to rising interest payments on debt, about 40% of the global population lives in a country that spends more on debt servicing than on essential public services such as education and health.
The climate- and nature-relevant provisions of the Compromiso de Sevilla acknowledge the importance of accounting for climate and nature in debt frameworks and include the following:
- A request for a UN-led working group (with the IMF and the World Bank) to propose voluntary principles for responsible sovereign borrowing and lending, “to strengthen debt management,” including:
- Supporting more frequent use of state-contingent debt instruments, including climate-resilient debt clauses and debt pause clauses, which allow debt service suspension during climate or other external shocks. This would increase fiscal resilience.
- Encouraging wider uptake of such clauses across both official and commercial lending, with international financial institutions supporting implementation.
- Support scaling up debt swaps for the SDGs, especially those targeting climate and biodiversity outcomes, to “lower the cost of borrowing”:
- Promotes concessional finance based on vulnerability to enhance debt sustainability and climate-resilient development.
- Calls for simplifying debt swap processes, lowering transaction costs and ensuring country ownership.
- Launch an intergovernmental UN-led process to close gaps in the international debt architecture and explore options to enhance sustainability, aiming to “restore countries to a path of debt sustainability and continue to work toward debt restructurings being timely, orderly, effective, fair, negotiated in good faith, predictable, and coordinated”:
- This includes dialogues with all stakeholders (UN Members, Paris Club, MDBs, IMF, World Bank and private creditors) to address debt challenges and climate-linked vulnerabilities.
- This includes dialogues with all stakeholders (UN Members, Paris Club, MDBs, IMF, World Bank and private creditors) to address debt challenges and climate-linked vulnerabilities.
- Calls for reforming Debt Sustainability Assessments (DSAs) to “ensure that debt sustainability and credit assessments are accurate, objective and long term oriented”:
- Calls for more accurate, long-term DSAs that integrate climate and nature spending needs, and account for investments in resilience, nature protection and productive capacity.
- Account for multidimensional vulnerabilities and spillovers from monetary policy.
- Encourages open consultation on DSA reformulation, capacity building and for countries to conduct their own assessments.
Multilateral initiatives to support countries at risk of, or already in, debt distress are mainly led by the World Bank, the IMF and forums such as G20. However, gaps and challenges remain across these initiatives, limiting comprehensive support that considers factors like climate vulnerability as an indicator for debt management and risk assessments.
Taskforce
ActorsScopeDrawbacksCommon Framework for Debt Treatment (G20)Low-income countries in debt distress. Debt treatment (e.g., debt rescheduling, relief and write-off).The process is currently lengthy, needs to be expedited to benefit more countries and expand private creditors' participation.Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable Creditors and beneficiaries.
Co-chaired by IMF, World Bank and G20 Presidency, includes official creditor members from the Paris Club, new creditors, private creditors and borrowing countries.
Debt treatment (e.g., debt restructuring) for countries in default.Lack of clarity on options available to debtor countries throughout the debt treatment process, such as suspending debt service payments.Debt Sustainability Framework (LIC DSF) (IMF/WB)Low-income countries with long-maturity concessional debt and countries eligible for the World Bank's International Development Association (IDA) grants.Assess borrower risk using threshold and benchmark indicators such as GDP, exports and revenue to inform lending decisions and determine debt limits based on borrower needs and repayment capability.Lack of debt data and inconsistent definitions may affect countries' risk assessments and ratings.
Lack of data on vulnerability.
It is high time for a concrete breakthrough, one that takes a comprehensive approach to debt challenges and provides tailored solutions to free up fiscal space that countries need to invest in essential public services and resilient green growth. This should include measures addressing the drawbacks outlined in the table above.
The World Bank Group and IMF have had climate strategies since 2021, yet integrating nature into their fundamental economic frameworks is still lagging. For example, FFD4 proposals are needed on how investments in resilience, nature protection and productive capacity can benefit economic activity and financial stability, including specific timelines for integrating these elements into national accounts. IMF and WBG are well positioned to lead the implementation of these proposals.
Accelerating Sustainable Development ActionA systemic, transformational approach is essential for addressing complex, transboundary environmental challenges like climate change and environmental degradation, and to achieve the SDGs. This requires more inclusive and effective global governance. FFD4 presents an opportunity to enhance global cooperation on these issues, ensuring policies and actions are harmonized across borders and effective in addressing them.
The Addis Ababa Action Agenda laid the groundwork for the SDGs and outlined a clear map for mobilizing finance to deliver them. Yet, with SDG progress currently off track, the task in Seville is to accelerate momentum by rebuilding trust and confidence in global cooperation. Political traction and impetus are urgently needed to implement complex domestic reforms, scale up international support to climate, nature and development, activate the private sector, address debt vulnerabilities and enable finance to work better as a system.
FFD4 could be a unifying moment that brings together the aspirations of the Bridgetown Initiative, the Nairobi declaration, the Paris New Global Financing Pact and the Pact for the Future, along with wider development and nature finance commitments, into an integrated action agenda. Keeping leaders accountable for delivering on the indivisible integrity of the SDGs is paramount.
seville.jpg Finance sustainable development goals climate finance adaptation finance Type Technical Perspective Exclude From Blog Feed? 0 Authors Valerie Laxton Natalia Alayza Carolyn NeunuebelClimate Resilience Takes Root on India’s Mint Farms
Uday Raj Chauhan proudly sports a red t-shirt with "Maati ka lal" (son of the soil) printed on it. The shirt's acrylic lettering has worn off with use, but Chauhan's beaming smile could rival a toothpaste advertisement.
Indeed, toothpaste isn't far off the mark. Chauhan is a mint farmer, one of many in the Uttar Pradesh state of northern India who depend on the crop. "I would have migrated from the village long ago in search of [a] livelihood if it was not for mint," he says. "People in my village moved from a mud structure to a concrete house, thanks to mint."
Uday Raj Chauhan, a mint farmer in Uttar Pradesh. Photo by Ravleen KaurMentha Arvensis, a species of mint known as "mentha" in India, is used in countless everyday products — from medicines and pain relievers to candy, mouth fresheners, cosmetics and tobacco. India is by far the world's biggest producer and exporter of mentha oil, fulfilling around 80% of global demand. The bulk (70%) of this comes from Uttar Pradesh.
Yet what was once a stable cash crop is faltering. India's mint farmers now face stiff competition from synthetic menthol, coupled with rising production costs and high taxes. These challenges are only exacerbated by climate change, which is making harvests less reliable.
They aren't alone: Farmers and businesses around the globe are grappling with climate risks and market disruptions. But India's mint industry is also exploring solutions across the supply chain — from trade reforms to more climate-resilient crop varieties — that can offer lessons for resilience in a changing world.
Mint: The 'Green Gold' of India's Smallholder FarmersMentha farming has been a staple in Uttar Pradesh for over 40 years, particularly in the state's Barabanki region. Once a hub for opium cultivation, Barabanki leaned into mint farming in the 1980s and has been India's biggest producer since. Around the area, mint oil has earned monikers like "ATM" and "green gold."
"Mentha provides instant cash," says Dr. Sanjay Singh, Senior Principal Scientist at Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (CIMAP), a government-run research institute in Uttar Pradesh. "There are times when farmers don't even have enough money to buy essentials. That is when a mentha farmer would sell half a kilogram of [mentha] oil from his reserve."
Saroj Kumari Shukla, a resident of Barabanki district, is one such farmer. She lost her husband after 15 years of marriage and had to raise her six children alone. "I had a job, but it was not enough. Mentha came to our rescue in those days. Every time I had to pay the children's school fees, I would sell two kilograms of [mentha] oil," she said. "Even though my sons couldn't study much, today my four daughters are well-educated and working."
For Chauhan, mint has been a dependable source of cashflow. "Mentha brings an income in the season when no other crop grows. Its seed material, unlike chili and garlic, is also very affordable. It can be stored for [a long time] as it does not become rancid and doesn't even occupy space like other [produce]."
Demand Is Rising — but Production Is FallingThe global mint market is projected to grow from US$ 7.7 billion in 2025 to US$9.7 billion in 2030. In theory, this should be a boon not just for mint farmers, but for all those whose livelihoods are linked to the crop — from planting and harvesting to processing and exporting. "One million people are involved in the mint supply chain in India, with 100,000 farm families and 3,000-4,000 traders just in Barabanki," said Dr. Singh.
But even as farmers like Chauhan and Shukla are earning well from mint, many say its glory is fading.
Mint (left) and the roots used to grow it, called "suckers" (right) are both critical sources of income for farmers in Uttar Pradesh. Photos by Ravleen KaurIn Barabanki, mint oil production decreased from around 11,200 metric tons (MT) in 2022-2023 to 7,950 MT in 2024-2025, according to Rajit Ram Verma, Secretary of the Barabanki district's agricultural produce marketing committee. That's nearly a 30% drop.
Gaurav Mittal from Aromatic & Allied Chemicals Pvt. Limited, a leading mint oil manufacturer and exporter in Uttar Pradesh, estimates that the total production across India came down by 60%-65% from 2023-2024."We are linked to about 5,000 farmers in our region who supply directly to us. This year, many have shifted to sugarcane and other crops," he said.
How Is Mint Oil Produced?
In Uttar Pradesh, farming for mentha suckers (offshoots that grow from the base of the mint plant) begins in July-August. The crop is sown from suckers in March and harvested from May to June, fitting well between the seasons for potato and paddy, the other dominant crops in the region. Once the harvest is dried, its essential oil is extracted in locally fabricated steam distillation units owned and operated by individual farmers or farmer collectives.
Farmers sell this mentha oil to aggregators in the village who further sell it to traders, exporters and small-scale and medium industries. The oil is either exported as-is or processed into menthol crystals and byproducts like Dementholized oil (DMO), alpha-pinene, beta-pinene and menthone.
What's Ailing the Mint Industry?Traders, industrialists, scientists and farmers largely blame synthetic menthol for downturn in Barabanki's mint production.
Menthol crystals derived from mentha oil. Photo by Ravleen KaurPrices for natural mint oil can be volatile. When synthetic menthol — derived from Meta-cresol, a petrochemical — entered India around 2013, it offered an affordable alternative. "Since then, many Indian companies making menthol-based products shifted to it" said Tek Ram Sharma, a mint oil trader and chairman of essential oil company Ashri Naturals.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has also included synthetic menthol in its list of substances "generally recognized as safe". "Since synthetic menthol is approved for use in edible products, companies would not want to spend more on natural menthol," said Mittal. This has pushed prices down and driven some farmers to abandon natural mentha altogether.
Synthetics aren't the only challenge. Mint faces high taxes in India. The national government charges a Goods and Services Tax of 12% on mint oil, and Uttar Pradesh charges a 1.5% Mandi tax (a tax on agricultural produce sold in markets) to mint oil traders.
In addition, many farmers rely on locally fabricated steam distillation units for producing mint oil. These are inefficient, polluting and prone to fatal accidents. While CIMAP has developed and introduced safer, more fuel-efficient distillation units, many farmers cannot afford them.
Locally made distillation units for mint oil, like this one, are dangerous. But safer alternatives are too expensive for many farmers. Photo by Ravleen Kaur The Compounding Threats of Climate Change and Land DegradationMarket challenges may be the biggest hurdle for India's mint farmers today. But they also face twin threats farmers around the world are increasingly grappling with: climate change and land degradation.
Mint is grown in peak summer and requires substantial irrigation. According to one study, even when used optimally, around 10 million liters of water are required to irrigate 1 hectare (ha) of mint. By comparison, it takes about 7 million liters of water to irrigate 1 ha of wheat and 5 million liters to irrigate 1 ha of maize (corn). "As water scarcity increases, farmers in Sambal, Chanduasi and Amroha [districts in Uttar Pradesh] and in parts of Punjab and Bihar are quitting mentha," said Sharma.
Unlike these other regions, Barabanki has ample water thanks to its rivers and extensive canal network. But shifting weather patterns driven by climate change present their own problems.
Narendra Shukla, a farmer from Tandpur in Uttar Pradesh, has seen the region's escalating challenges firsthand. Photo by Ravleen Kaur"Untimely rainfall destroys ready harvest, while excess heat [over] the last two years has led to more pests and disease, even though heat also increases oil yield," said Sudheer Kumar, a farmer from Badalkapurwa village in Uttar Pradesh.
Layer in the fact that much farmland is degraded, and some farmers are facing an onslaught of challenges at once. "Drawing water from a borewell costs more now due to increased diesel rates. After 20 years of mint farming, soil is also polluted with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Production has gone down while diseases have increased. We need to spray pesticides at least once a week now," said Sanad Verma, another farmer in the region.
Verma adds that labor rates have more than tripled — from Rs 200 (US$2.32) to Rs 700 (US$8) per day — "because harvesting mentha and extracting oil in peak summer is a gruelling task."
While organic farming may help improve soil quality and yields in the long term, it is out of question for most mint farmers, who don't see monetary benefits in it. "A small farmer needs money all the time. Nobody will pay a better price for organic oil, so there is no reason to spend extra time and labour to cultivate organic mint," said Ram Savle Shukla of Tandpur.
How India's Mint Industry Is Building ResilienceFaced with mounting challenges — some local, some global — India's mint industry is finding new ways to adapt throughout the supply chain.
Lessons for Supply Chains Around the World
Farmers and small businesses are often on the front lines of the climate crisis. Yet large companies tend to overlook these supply chain partners in their climate risk assessments and sustainability efforts. WRI, through the Climate-Resilient Employees for a Sustainable Tomorrow (CREST) initiative, aims to create more resilient supply chains and help amplify the voices of the people within them. The Barabanki mint farmer is one of these voices. Explore more stories here.
At one end, traders and local politicians are pushing to reform taxes and trade policies that hamper the natural mint industry. In August 2024, a political representative from Barabanki worked with the Indian Parliament to separate natural and synthetic menthol in the country's trade code. This is meant to help ensure that potential issues with synthetics (such as defective products) will not impact the natural mint market.
Others are working from the ground up, helping farmers build resilience to climate and market shocks.
"Mint is CIMAP's baby. It took hard work to turn India from a mint importing country to the biggest exporter in the world. So we will do everything to sustain natural menthol in the market," said Dr. Singh from CIMAP.
In 2017, CIMAP introduced early mint technology (EMT). This involves training farmers to produce mint stolons (stems) in a nursery and then transplant them onto ridges to ensure minimal plant loss and damage. EMT can lower the cost of production by reducing the need for weeding, irrigation and fertilizer. By cutting water use 25%-30%, it also helps reduce pressure on limited supplies. "We found that the cost of cultivation with EMT has come down by 20% while crop yield has gone up by 15%," said Dr. Singh.
Experimental mint varieties developed by CIMAP have shown improved climate resilience and higher yields. Photo by Ravleen KaurCIMAP is also working to develop more resilient and productive mint varieties. In 2020, it developed and distributed "CIM-Unnati" — a hardy and high-yielding varietal that can better withstand extreme weather while yielding 180-190 kilograms of mint oil per hectare. (Other varietals produce 120-150 litres per hectare.) Almost 90% farmers in Barabanki now grow CIM-Unnati.
Chauhan — who runs a YouTube channel called "Mentha's new variety" — can attest to the benefits. "In 2020, I got 700 grams of a new variety of Menthol mint from CIMAP and made 1,000 saplings out of it. I propagated these saplings [on 0.25 hectares] of my land and got a profit of Rs 1.5 lakh (US$1,740) by selling mint suckers," he said. Encouraged, Chauhan started the YouTube channel to promote his enterprise. "Farmers from far and wide come to buy mentha suckers from me. This year, I rented 1.2 hectares of land to expand [production]."
Beyond this, CIMAP is looking for ways to help stabilize mint farmers' livelihoods. It supports activities like vermi compost production from distillation waste; mushroom cultivation; and beekeeping. "We are also exploring making disposable cutlery from mentha waste and aerosols from the water that comes out with oil at the time of distillation," said Dr. Singh. This is helping to diversify mint farmers income, boost their resilience and reduce dependency on one crop.
Savitri Devi, seen here holding a beeswax candle, is a member of the farmer group that CIMAP is supporting to help diversify their incomes. Photo by Ravleen KaurThanks to such initiatives, farmers like Chauhan are optimistic that mint prices will bounce back. And they are more securely positioned when climate extremes and other setbacks strike.
The Way AheadWhile large companies are increasingly focused on climate risks and sustainability, supply chain partners, such as smallholder farmers, tend to be left out of the equation. But this status quo can't continue. For truly resilient supply chains, stakeholders need to work together to ensure that everyone involved — from production through to sale — has the tools, skills and knowledge to weather climate and economic shocks.
This will require coordinated efforts from governments, research institutions and the private sector. Barabanki shows how collaboration and innovation can make a difference, with CIMAP supporting farmers directly while traders and local politicians push for market reforms. Looking ahead, more support from the government could offer new avenues for investment and improvement. For example, as Dr. Sudeep Tandon, CIMAP's Chief Scientist, points out, "Menthol is one crop in which farmers themselves do the first level of processing. The government gives subsidies for other agricultural equipment and machinery; why can't there be a price support mechanism for menthol distillation units too?"
Such efforts are critical for all who depend on India's mint supply chain. "Mentha has prevented distress migration in [Barabanki] to a large extent," says farmer Ram Lagan Pal. "[The] district's prosperity is only due to mentha." More support for resilience-building efforts can help ensure that this prosperity continues.
Ravleen Kaur is an independent journalist working on environmental and rural issues in India. See more of her work here.
ram-lagan-pal-jamouli.jpg Climate Climate Resilience adaptation climate change agriculture Type Vignette Exclude From Blog Feed? 0 Projects Authors Ravleen Kaur Elizabeth IssacSTATEMENT: Bonn Talks Leave Tough Questions for COP30 to Resolve
BONN, GERMANY (June 26, 2025) — The 2025 UN climate talks concluded today in Bonn after a challenging start, with a two-day delay over the agenda cutting into negotiation time. As a mid-year checkpoint before COP30, the largely technical talks aimed to bring countries closer on core issues including adaptation, mitigation and finance. While some progress emerged, political tensions slowed momentum.
Following is a statement from David Waskow, Director, International Climate Initiative, World Resources Institute:
“With four months to go before COP30, leaders need to start delivering: they need to put forward strong national plans to cut emissions and transform key sectors; scale up climate finance from all sources; and urgently implement and mainstream adaptation and resilience to protect lives, economies, and security. With the 1.5°C window closing fast, every fraction of a degree — and every decision — matters.
“Persistent political tensions and competing agendas led to limited and uneven progress in Bonn. Delegates did lay essential groundwork for better measuring adaptation — a key part for planning and accountability — and made some headway on just transition issues. What’s now needed is a strong dose of decisive, coordinated action to deliver real results.
“There can be no further delays in achieving the Global Stocktake priorities set in 2023 — from transitioning away from fossil fuels to tripling renewables, doubling energy efficiency and ending deforestation. Moving forward requires bold, system-wide change across every sector, driven by all levels of government, business, and civil society, recommitting to the Paris Agreement — together.”
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Co-Creating a More Sustainable and Livable Caferağa
In Istanbul’s Caferağa neighborhood, WRI Türkiye led a community-driven initiative to create a more sustainable, inclusive and livable urban environment. From April 2023 to July 2024, the Livable Caferağa project worked closely with residents to understand the neighborhood’s challenges around overcrowding, rising heat and pollution, and develop a set of responsive solutions.
For several years, the WRI Türkiye Deep Dives team in Istanbul has worked closely with the city to advance neighborhood-scale active mobility planning. Istanbul is currently pursuing a citywide Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP), which provides a broad framework for how the city can achieve a range of goals — from ensuring affordable, low-carbon public transport to encouraging a shift toward zero-carbon modes like walking and bicycling.
Creating Sustainable Cities
Through its Deep Dives initiative, WRI Ross Center works in a deep and sustained way with a network of cities to develop both long-term relationships and solutions to entrenched urban challenges.
Within this strategy, Caferağa was selected as a priority area for developing a low-emission zone. As a key cultural and tourism hub in the city, the neighborhood faces increasing pressure from traffic and congestion. To support the SUMP’s implementation, WRI Türkiye focused its Deep Dive efforts on creating a plan that would balance Caferağa’s cultural vibrancy with the city’s goals of emissions reductions, sustainable mobility and livability.
Empowering Communities to Shape a More Livable SpaceRecognizing that Caferağa’s residents were bearing the consequences of overcrowding and pollution — including exposure to traffic fumes and limited mobility on crowded sidewalks, especially for older adults, people with disabilities and parents with young children — the Deep Dive project team put the community at the center of developing livable and sustainable solutions. Through a broad outreach and engagement campaign with residents, local organizations, metropolitan and district officials, researchers and NGO representatives, the WRI Türkiye team gathered a range of perspectives and insights to guide the creation of the Livable Caferağa plan.
Beginning in July 2023, the WRI Türkiye team hosted a series of training sessions with community members and key stakeholders to build a strong and collective foundation of knowledge on how to create livable, climate-resilient neighborhoods. These sessions explored key aspects of pedestrian safety, active mobility planning and data-driven decision-making.
Together, the WRI Türkiye team and Caferağa stakeholders examined best practices for improving public spaces, balancing the needs of residents and visitors, mitigating climate challenges like extreme heat and implementing effective urban policies that support sustainable mobility.
A snapshot from the Criteria Development Workshop where participants collaboratively evaluated thematic criteria for active mobility planning in the Caferağa neighborhood. Image by WRI TürkiyeThe project also included four workshops hosted by the WRI Türkiye team in September 2023, accompanied by a pilot demonstration of pedestrian safety and public space enhancement solutions in Caferağa’s Mehmet Ayvalıtaş Square. Each workshop addressed a specific aspect of urban livability:
- Establishing criteria for an optimal neighborhood environment.
- Addressing the needs of people with disabilities.
- Understanding and mitigating urban heat islands.
- Drawing inspiration from peer cities for improving livability.
Through these regular capacity-building and engagement activities and workshops, the WRI Türkiye team co-created five key solutions for the district:
- Prioritizing pedestrian space — by widening sidewalks, adding accessibility ramps and improving crosswalk visibility, for example — to enhance safety and encourage sustainable travel.
- Creating a cohesive micromobility strategy with a robust neighborhood network and clear guidelines for bicycle and scooter parking.
- Expanding public transit access with a new community shuttle service to help cut down on congestion and improve air quality.
- Developing a thoughtful approach to parking restrictions — such as limiting on-street parking and prioritizing space for residents — in the district to support sustainability and livability.
- Optimizing local deliveries by establishing new schedules and loading zones, while encouraging the use of cargo bicycles for local services.
These strategies, now being formalized into a comprehensive plan, aim to preserve Caferağa’s vibrancy while addressing overcrowding and strengthening environmental resilience. Some, like the expansion of public transportation with the new ModaBüs shuttle service, will come as soon as the fourth quarter of 2025, while others, like revitalizing pedestrian spaces, will be tackled on an ongoing routine basis.
By involving the community at every step of the development process, the WRI Türkiye team ensured that the solutions were responsive to the needs and expectations of Caferağa's residents, and that the community felt a sense of ownership over the plan.
What’s Next for Deep Dives in Istanbul?The success of this Deep Dive Cities project will inform the next phase of the initiative, which will expand to focus on the entire Kadıköy district. In 2025 and 2026, the WRI Türkiye team will investigate nature-based solutions (NBS) for mitigating urban heat islands, building on the foundation established in Caferağa. With the aim to develop a comprehensive concept plan — complete with pilot applications — for integrating NBS into urban mobility projects, WRI will explore how these solutions can be embedded across Kadıköy’s urban mobility planning.
imagem1.png Cities Turkey Urban Development Urban Mobility Climate Resilience low carbon development Type Project Update Exclude From Blog Feed? 0 Authors Yunus Emre Yılmaz Cemil Oğuz Eillie Anzilotti Madeline PalmieriThese Countries Are Electrifying Their Bus Fleets the Fastest
In cities around the world, people are embracing electric buses, which provide a quieter, smoother ride without the harmful pollution from traditional gas and diesel buses. For example, bus riders in Pune, India, will skip boarding a diesel bus to wait for an electric bus, and in Santiago, Chile, riders rate electric buses more favorably than the rest of the public transit system.
Electric buses are necessary for reducing carbon dioxide emissions in the transport sector. Buses — including city, coach and school buses — make up approximately 5% of global transport carbon dioxide emissions. Electrifying the bus fleet could also provide a model for electrifying trucks, which make up about a quarter of transport emissions.
What will it take to electrify the world’s bus fleet, and which countries are stepping up to the challenge? Five countries — China, the Netherlands, Finland, Switzerland and Denmark — are already setting an example by growing their electric bus sales from less than 6% to more than 60% of total bus sales in six years or less. That pace exceeds what is needed globally between 2024 and 2030 to meet climate targets.
On a pathway to reach net-zero emissions and limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F), the world needs to grow electric buses from 6% of bus sales in 2024 to 56% by 2030, a span of six years.
Multiple countries have already proven this is possible. China, the Netherlands, Finland, Switzerland and Denmark all grew their electric bus sales from less than 6% to more than 60% in six years or less.
But sustaining growth in electric bus sales has sometimes proved difficult due to factors such as limited budgets, economic shocks from COVID-19 and technical barriers associated with the use of long-distance electric buses.
The rest of the world is behind but starting to catch up.
initFlourishScrolly( { trigger_point: "0%", offset_top: "50px" } ); @media screen and (max-width: 767px) { .fl-scrolly-step { width: 80vw !important; font-size: .95rem !important; text-align: left !important; } } @media screen and (min-width:768px) and (max-width: 1023px) { .fl-scrolly-step { width: 80vw !important; font-size: .95rem !important; text-align: left !important; } } @media screen and (min-width: 1024px) { #my-wrapper { margin-left: 35vw; width: 65vw; } .fl-scrolly-step { text-align: left !important; margin-left: -30.5vw !important; width: 25vw !important; box-shadow: none !important; } }Shifting to electric buses will require supportive local and national policies. The countries leading this charge can provide lessons on how to grow electric bus sales quickly.
The Global State of Electric BusesThere are about 780,000 electric buses on the world’s roads as of 2024. Electric buses include battery electric buses, plug-in hybrid electric buses and fuel cell electric buses. So far, 94% of all electric buses are battery electric, which are expected to continue to dominate the industry.
More than 90% of the world’s electric buses are located in China — nearly 700,000 in total. China experienced massive growth in electric buses from 2014 to 2018, a time when other countries had barely started deploying them. In 2017, Shenzhen became the first city in the world to electrify its entire bus fleet (16,000 buses). By 2023, the top 10 global cities with the most electric bus sales were in China, with Shenzhen, Shanghai, Chengdu and Beijing leading the way. Outside of China, Santiago, Chile is the city with the highest electric bus sales.
The European Union is home to 17,000 electric buses, with most of the sales growth taking place after 2018. Several European countries such as the Netherlands, Finland and Switzerland have achieved very high rates of electric bus adoption.
India, South Korea and the United States are each home to more than 10,000 electric buses.
China: The Primary Electric Bus PlayerChina started deploying electric buses more than a decade ago, becoming the leading electric bus manufacturer and market in the world.
At first, the government supported electric buses as a strategic industry. China saw a competitive advantage in pursuing EVs in an already saturated fossil-fuel-vehicle-manufacturing market. City buses were a good candidate for early electrification because they were a public purchase and had fixed routes with a range — on average 120 miles per day — that could operate on a single charge.
After years of unhealthy smog in China’s most high-profile cities, the desire to reduce air pollution and improve health also became a motivator. The central government began evaluating local officials’ performances based on their progress in reducing air pollution, which created an incentive for those officials to electrify transportation.
In 2009, China began an EV subsidy program in 10 pilot cities. Over time the program added 88 more cities. It was eventually replaced with a national EV subsidy program. The government also put in place favorable polices that lowered electricity prices for charging electric buses and gradually removed its existing subsidies for diesel buses.
Cities in China also designed their own policies to make electric buses financially viable. For example, Shenzhen provided city-level subsidies in addition to the national subsidies, which made it 36% cheaper to own an electric bus than a diesel bus over its lifetime. In some cases, the city leased the buses rather than buying them outright to spread out the costs over the leasing period.
Many cities also developed creative strategies to optimize charging and designed operations schedules to compensate for the electric buses’ shorter ranges and recharging needs. In a few examples, charging infrastructures were built that could be shared with electric cars. As Shenzhen, Shanghai, Chengdu, Beijing and many other Chinese cities became electric bus leaders and the industry matured, the government gradually scaled down the subsidies.
Nearly 100% of city buses sold in China are now electric, an impressive accomplishment, but about half of its bus market is privately-owned coach buses — used for tourism, business and intercity travel. Only 6% of coach bus sales are electric. Coach buses travel longer distances, where the limited range and long charging times of electric buses can become more challenging. When looking at city and private buses together, since 2017 electric bus sales have plateaued at a little over half of all China’s bus sales.
For almost a decade, China’s total bus market has been shrinking. Fewer new buses may be needed because so many were deployed in a short amount of time. Also, car ownership has increased rapidly and China now has the world’s most extensive high-speed train network. The COVID-19 pandemic also had an impact — urban bus ridership still has not recovered to pre-2020 levels, and the economic impacts may have decreased city budgets.
Chinese electric bus companies, however, continue to show they’re a dominant force in the industry. The top 10 electric bus companies worldwide are all Chinese and China’s exports account for 30% of the electric buses sold in Europe and more than 85% of the electric buses in Latin America.
The Netherlands: An Early Leader in EuropeThe Netherlands invested heavily in electric buses earlier than any other European country and now has more than 2,100 electric buses on the road.
In 2016, Dutch transit authorities set the most ambitious target in the world for all new bus sales to be zero-emissions by 2025, with the entire fleet to follow by 2030. The move, which was created as part of the Netherlands’ national climate plan to decarbonize transportation, triggered a rapid shift toward electric buses nationwide.
To facilitate the transition, public transit authorities gave longer contracts to the private electric bus companies that own and operate public transit buses in the Netherlands to help them recoup their investments (15 years instead of 8 to 10 years for diesel). Various cities and regions also provided financial support for the transition. For example, Amsterdam gave direct subsidies of up to 40,000 euros per bus (about $45,000 based on average 2019 and 2020 exchange rates — when the subsidies began implementation).
The country also used dynamic modeling to plan bus schedules and routes. In some cases, it also used opportunity charging systems that allowed for fast charging of the batteries during stops along the route.
After reaching more than 60% of bus sales, electric buses in the Netherlands fell in 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic caused financial constraints and supply chain bottlenecks, so many electric bus purchases were postponed. Today, the electric bus transition is still struggling due to overloaded electric grids and technical problems with charging. While the Netherlands has made impressive progress, it is in danger of missing its ambitious targets without making big investments in electric buses and supportive infrastructure.
The rest of the European Union has also been adding electric buses to its fleets. Electric buses increased from less than 2% of EU bus sales in 2018 to 19% in 2024. An important turning point came in 2019, when the EU adopted a Clean Vehicles Directive which set binding requirements for publicly-procured buses to be clean, with escalating targets as time goes on. Then in 2024, the EU released a target for a 90% reduction in city bus carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and a 43% reduction in coach and intercity bus emissions.
About 70% of the EU’s buses are manufactured by European companies, including MAN and Mercedes-Benz from Germany and Solaris from Poland. Chinese companies grew from 10% of the EU market for electric buses in 2017 to 30% in 2023.
Chile: Home to the Leading City for Electric Buses Outside of ChinaChile has more than 2,700 electric buses in operation as of April 2025, the most of any country in Latin America, with about 2,500 in its capital city. Santiago now has the largest fleet of electric buses of any non-Chinese city, making up more than a third of its total fleet.
In 2017, Chile established a national electromobility strategy and in 2021, it announced a goal of 100% bus electrification by 2035. By 2023, 46% of the buses sold in Chile were electric.
The push to clean up buses in Santiago — one of Latin America’s largest cities and home to 40% of Chile’s population — began out of a desire to reduce air pollution and reduce health impacts; the city was one of the most polluted in Latin America in the 1990s. Since then, the national government has developed climate policy and started regulating vehicle emissions as part of a comprehensive strategy to reduce air pollution.
In 2017, as the city entered a bidding process to renew its bus fleet, Santiago became the first city in Latin America to adopt European standards for diesel buses. The new standards increased the cost of diesel buses which made electric buses more financially feasible. Santiago also required each of its seven bus operators to have at least 15 electric buses.
Rather than manufacturing its own electric buses, Santiago imported them from Chinese companies like BYD, Yutong and others. The initial rollout cost about $300,000 per electric bus — which is more than diesel models — but each electric bus is expected to break even or be more cost-effective than diesel buses over its lifetime due to lower operating and maintenance costs.
Direct government subsidies were not required to create the financial ecosystem that made the bus rollout possible, but city and national support was still needed — for example, by offering backup financial guarantees to private sector bus operators to incentivize investment. Bus operators, bus manufacturers and utilities partnered together to figure out viable financial and logistical options. Like in the Netherlands, bus operators receive longer contracts for electric buses than diesel buses to recoup investments.
To build on its success, Santiago will need to turn over the rest of its bus fleet quickly. And to meet Chile’s ambitious goals for electric buses, additional cities will need to follow its example.
Promising Developments in India and Other CountriesIndia is the leader in electric buses among lower-income countries. It has more than 10,000 electric buses on the roads, and in late 2024, the national government approved a multi-billion dollar initiative to incentivize the purchase of 14,000 more. India’s electric bus rollout is deliberately targeting many cities which don’t have any organized bus transport to expand mobility access.
The government has kept electric bus prices affordable by buying them in bulk, including one of the biggest mass purchases of electric buses in the world. The goal for 2027 is 50,000 total electric buses on the roads. Compared to the more than 2 million public and private buses on the roads in India, this will be only a small fraction of the total fleet, but still a substantial endeavor.
To meet its goals, India is developing new financial mechanisms. In India, city governments typically contract with private companies to own and operate the buses. The companies pay the large upfront cost for the buses, while the city pays the companies back over time. However, delayed payments from cash-strapped local governments can create challenges. In response, India has developed a payment security fund so bus operator companies can purchase electric buses with confidence.
Beyond India, there are a few more leaders in developing countries with some impressive plans in development.
- Colombia has a target for 100% of new public transport sales to be electric by 2035.
- Ecuador has a target for 100% electric new public transport vehicles by 2030.
- Jakarta, Indonesia purchased its first 100 electric buses and has a target to fully electrify its fleet of 10,000 buses by 2030.
- Dakar, Senegal has launched Africa’s first all-electric bus rapid transit system, expected to carry 300,000 passengers per day.
Electric buses are just one part of the story for decarbonizing road transport. Governments can follow the Avoid-Shift-Improve framework: First, plan cities in a compact and transit-oriented way so people can avoid lengthy trips; second, incentivize more people to shift from private passenger cars to walking, cycling or public transit; third, improve and optimize transport to be as efficient as possible. For motorized vehicles, this means electrifying not only buses but also passenger cars and heavy trucks, while ensuring the electricity comes from increasingly clean sources.
While buses are not the biggest contributor to carbon dioxide emissions in the transport sector, the transition to electric buses can lead to reduced climate change, healthier air, happier riders, less congestion and improved access to jobs and services for lower-income groups. Electric buses can also serve as a test case for other high-emitting vehicle types like heavy trucks.
Leading countries like China, the Netherlands, Chile and India prove that a rapid transition to electric buses is possible and desirable.
Data for electric bus sales, sales share and fleet size in this article are from the International Energy Agency's Global EV Data Explorer, as of April 2025. Sales share data has been modified to include battery electric, plug-in hybrid and fuel-cell electric buses.
This article is part of a series of deep-dive analyses from Systems Change Lab examining countries that are leaders in transformational change. Other articles in the series analyzed countries leading on renewable power, electric vehicles, coal phase-out and coal cancellations. Systems Change Lab is a collaborative initiative — which includes an open-sourced data platform — designed to spur action at the pace and scale needed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C, halt biodiversity loss and build a just and equitable economy.
china-electric-buses.jpg Climate electric mobility transportation public transit data visualization Type Finding Exclude From Blog Feed? 0 Projects Authors Joel JaegerProtecting Naturally Regrowing Forests Is a Crucial — and Overlooked — Climate Solution
Protecting and restoring forests are essential for curbing climate change. But while efforts often focus on conserving mature forests and planting new trees (both of which are badly needed), a critical piece of the puzzle is often overlooked: managing naturally regrowing forests to increase the carbon they remove.
Until now, scientists did not have a detailed picture of the carbon removal value of naturally regrowing forests. But new research by The Nature Conservancy, WRI and partners shows that naturally regenerating "secondary forests" (which have regrown after being cleared by harvests, severe fires, agriculture or other disturbances) could be especially powerful for fighting climate change. It is the first to show where, and at what ages, they can have the biggest impact.
We found that secondary forests between 20 and 40 years old can remove carbon from the atmosphere up to 8 times faster per hectare than new natural growth — if they're allowed to reach those older ages. The catch is that many secondary forests don't regrow for this long, whether due to human activity (such as clearing or harvest) or climate-related disturbances (like fires or pests).
These findings highlight that countries may be underestimating the value of naturally regenerating secondary forests in their climate reporting — and that protecting them, or encouraging their regrowth for longer periods, offers untapped opportunities for climate action.
How Quickly Can Secondary Forests Remove Carbon?The rate at which natural forests remove carbon from the atmosphere varies with location and age. Within a forest's first 100 years of regrowth after being cleared or destroyed — the age range covered in this research — carbon removal rates generally start relatively slow, then accelerate, before slowing again. That means it may take many years before newly established forests provide their largest climate benefits.
Our new research provides the first global maps of how these carbon removal rates vary across space and time as secondary forests regenerate naturally. The maps cover any square kilometer on Earth where forests could grow. Previous estimates have not captured as much geographic or age variation or did not provide global coverage.
We found that naturally regenerating forests typically remove carbon fastest when they're between 20 and 40 years old. This means that older secondary forests can provide more immediate and often greater carbon removals than younger regrowing forests.
However, the age at which forests reach their peak carbon removal rates varies across the globe. Tropical and subtropical rainforests (such as the Amazon and the Congo Basin) and some temperate forests (such as in in the United States) capture carbon fastest at younger ages. Meanwhile, boreal forests (like in Canada and Russia), Mediterranean forests, and forested areas in tropical and subtropical savanna regions (such as the Brazilian Cerrado), reach their maximum — and generally lower — carbon removal rates at older ages.
Maximum carbon removal rates also vary vastly by region. On average, established secondary forests at their peak removal age absorb 10% more carbon than newly growing forests. But in some areas, the difference is as large as 820%.
Carbon removal rates change most dramatically with age in tropical and subtropical wet forests, while changes were least pronounced in Mediterranean forests and woodlands. However, there is variation within each of these ecoregions, highlighting the value of knowing how carbon removal changes through time for every square kilometer of potential forest.
About the Data
To better understand carbon removal by naturally regenerating forests, we developed a global machine learning model that maps carbon removal rates across naturally regenerating forests up to 100 years old. The model combines over 100,000 field plot measurements of carbon stocks at different forest ages for 66 environmental covariates and predicts carbon stocks at 1 kilometer resolution every 5 years as forests age. Then, from the carbon stock maps, we derived carbon accumulation curves. The resulting maps show how much carbon could be removed by allowing forests to regenerate without major disturbances for any forest age and any location where forests naturally occur. (Note that these maps predict what would happen if regeneration does occur, but do not show where natural regeneration could or should occur.)
Many Secondary Forests Never Reach Peak Carbon Removal AgeKnowing when forests remove the most carbon matters. The world urgently needs to scale up climate action over the next 25 years (2025-2050) to achieve net-zero emissions deadlines and protect the planet from the worst effects of climate change. This new data shows that older secondary forests are some of the most effective at removing carbon within this critical window. And it pinpoints when and where regrowing forests pack the biggest climate punch.
Yet despite their importance, naturally regrowing secondary forests are frequently ignored in climate policy — and they are under threat. Across the tropics, forests regenerate for an average of 7.5 years before being cut down, with only 6% reaching 20 years of regrowth. In the Brazilian Amazon, half of secondary forests are cleared within eight years. In Costa Rica, where the clearance cycle is one of the longest in the tropics, the average age for regenerating forest is still only 20 years.
This means that many secondary forests never reach their peak carbon removal years, undercutting their climate benefits as well as the benefits they bring to people and nature. In addition to faster carbon removals, allowing forests to regrow naturally — as opposed to more active planting — can provide benefits like restoring biodiversity and protecting waterbodies at much lower costs.
Fire is used to clear an area in the Brazilian Amazon for agricultural use. Many naturally regrowing forests do not reach old age, whether due to human activity or natural causes. Photo by Paralaxis/iStock What Does This Mean for Natural Climate Solutions?Restoring and protecting forests are proven, cost-effective and scalable ways to help tackle climate change. This new information provides valuable insights into how to prioritize forest management efforts to maximize their impact:
Secondary forests should be protected or kept growing for longer periods.
Currently, secondary forests are often not prioritized for protection. But it's now possible to quantify the carbon removals that are foregone by cutting these forests down at a young age. While keeping intact and mature forests standing remains crucial, this research shows that protecting secondary forests — or in the case of production forests, delaying clear-cutting until after the peak age for carbon removal — warrants additional attention, as they can often provide the greatest per-hectare carbon removals. Additionally, some forests do not survive to their peak carbon removal age due to windthrow, pests, fire or drought (which are natural disturbances but are exacerbated by climate change). To effectively protect secondary forests, they must be managed for resilience to these risks.
Large-scale natural forest regeneration must start now.
That way, new forests can reach the age at which their carbon removal is greatest within the window of time that carbon removal is most needed to reach climate goals. Our research shows that delaying natural forest regeneration by five or 10 years decreases potential carbon removals globally by a quarter or half through mid-century, respectively, compared to starting natural regeneration in all reforestable areas now.
Policymakers and land managers can begin to make more strategic forest management decisions.
These maps can inform where and when the returns will be greatest from regrowing forests and/or letting forests continue to grow as a natural climate solution. They can be combined with forest restoration opportunity maps to estimate carbon removal in new forests over specified time horizons. They can also be integrated with maps of the age of naturally regenerating secondary forests and forest loss risk maps to estimate how much more carbon these forests could capture if they are left standing over specified time horizons.
Countries can improve their carbon accounting and make more accurate climate projections.
Compared to the removal rates in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) greenhouse inventory guidelines, which are a common benchmark, the carbon removal rates we found are 26% lower for forests under 20 years old and 18% higher for those aged 20-100 years. (Differences vary by region.) This means governments and others that rely on IPCC rates are likely underestimating carbon removals by older secondary forests. Improved estimates could be used in developing Nationally Determined Contributions, place-based conservation and more.
Protecting secondary forests should go together with conserving mature forests (which have high carbon densities and biodiversity) and investing in restoring forests where they have been lost, which will bring long-term climate and nature benefits. In other words, it shouldn't be one or the other, but all of the above.
Conservation and restoration also need to be done in ways that benefit the more than 1 billion people who live near or rely on forests. Secondary forests are often used by low-income or rural communities to support their livelihoods, and their protection must consider the needs, knowledge and wishes of local communities.
Informing More Impactful Climate SolutionsWith forests under attack and under-valued, the world needs to muster every resource it can to show how much value forests provide and prioritize their protection. Maintaining existing secondary forests, protecting mature forests and enabling new forests to grow are all important for strengthening the global forest carbon sink — but these must be done while also providing food, fiber and other resources on finite land for a growing population.
Mapping carbon removal rates in forests is a rapidly advancing field. More ground data is needed from underrepresented regions, which includes most of the tropics (especially in Africa). We also need a better understanding of the human and environmental factors that affect carbon accumulation in forests. This can help inform where and how to focus forest protection efforts to maximize nature-based carbon removals within the context of social needs and other ecosystem benefits.
These maps provide another line of evidence for the value of forests. The new information can help practitioners and decision-makers focus forest restoration and protection efforts so that they are as effective as possible in averting further climate change.
This article was written in collaboration with Susan Cook-Patton and Nathaniel Robinson of The Nature Conservancy.
bavaria-forest-regrowth.jpg Forests Forests carbon removal forest monitoring deforestation nature-based solutions Type Finding Exclude From Blog Feed? 0 Projects Authors David Gibbs Susan Cook-Patton Nathaniel RobinsonSTATEMENT: Proposed Changes Threaten the Effectiveness of the EU Deforestation Regulation
BRUSSELS (June 23, 2025) – Earlier this year, the European Commission announced measures to simplify the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which is set to be enforced from 30 December 2025. Since then, a number of EU member states and political groups in the European Parliament have been pushing to further weaken the regulation — most recently during the Agriculture and Fisheries Council meeting in May 2025, and in parliamentary committee discussions this month.
These attempts include proposals to create a “no-risk” country category, which could exempt certain countries from key due diligence obligations — potentially creating a loophole for deforestation-linked goods to enter the EU market with reduced oversight; and to postpone implementation to allow more time for simplifying the EUDR.
Following is a statement from Stientje van Veldhoven, Vice-President and Regional Director for Europe, World Resources Institute:
“Renewed attempts to weaken and delay the EUDR are deeply concerning and could jeopardize global efforts to combat record-breaking forest loss. The latest data shows that in 2024 alone, the world lost 6.7 million hectares of tropical primary rainforest, an area nearly the size of the Republic of Ireland.
The proposed “no-risk” country category would erode the foundations of the EUDR's due diligence system, which is central to the law’s credibility and impact. WRI's analysis from November 2024 shows it could open up major loopholes and make the regulation much less effective.
While concerns about implementation challenges are understandable, it's important to acknowledge that many businesses have already taken steps to comply. Reopening the debate now — just six months before enforcement — could unintentionally penalize early movers and send the wrong signal about the EU's reliability as a market grounded in legal certainty and stability.
Implementation must be made practical and inclusive — but rolling back on core safeguards risks undermining trust in both the EU legislative process and Europe's commitment to forest protection. The European Commission, the European Parliament and Member States should stay the course and deliver the EUDR as planned, in collaboration with producers, businesses and countries.”