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Alebtong, Uganda – When Lucy Everlyn Atim returned home after six years working as a child rights activist in South Sudan’s refugee settlements, her favourite shea tree was gone.

Known locally as moyao, the tree had shaped her childhood. Every morning, she and her friends gathered beneath its branches to eat its sweet, creamy fruit before walking to school.

Its disappearance was not an isolated loss. Across northern Uganda, many more shea trees had been cut down for charcoal.

“I got concerned,” Atim, now in her mid-thirties and a climate activist, told Al Jazeera.

“The destruction of shea trees is alarming. These trees need to be protected, but people also need an alternative source of fuel.”

Uganda loses an estimated 122,000 hectares of forest each year, largely to charcoal production and logging. With about 90 percent of households relying on charcoal for cooking, indigenous species such as shea and Afzelia africana continue to disappear.

Research by Makerere University found that mature shea tree populations on fallow land fell from about 20 trees in 2008 to between 10 and 15 by 2017.

“There is still scant data on the declining shea tree population in northern Uganda,” Dr Patrick Byakagaba, the Makerere University environmental researcher who led the study, told Al Jazeera.

“More needs to be done to determine their density, sapling survival and regeneration.”

Tracking the decline is difficult, he said, because charcoal producers often uproot entire trees, leaving no stumps behind to count.

While working in South Sudan, Atim met a woman in Yida making fuel briquettes from discarded shea husks.

“I got curious. I knew this was something that could be replicated back home,” she recalled.

In 2023, she founded Moyao Africa Initiative, a social enterprise that turns shea waste into fuel briquettes, while helping women earn a living from processing shea butter.

The initiative employs six staff and works with more than 1,200 women organised in savings groups to collect shea waste, produce briquettes and process butter.

“In most households, women carry the burden of finding cooking fuel. By training them to make and sell briquettes and shea butter, we’re creating an income while providing an affordable alternative to charcoal,” she said.

Learning fuel

On a hot afternoon in Alebtong, 15 women sit on woven mats attending a training session led by Moyao Africa Initiative.

They are chairpersons of savings groups from across the district, learning to turn discarded shea husks into cooking fuel.

When the trainer asks about the process, the women answer almost in unison: collect the husks, crush them, mix them with clay and cassava flour, mould them, dry them and store them.

The lesson soon moves from theory to practice. Some women pound dried shea husks in wooden mortars while others dig up clay soil. Nearby, another group stirs thick cassava paste, the binder that holds the mixture together before it is pressed into moulds and left to dry in the sun.

Among them is Catherine Akello, chairperson of the Oteno Moyao Africa Women’s Group in Abwoc village.

Before joining the initiative, Akello valued only the shea kernels, which she processed into butter for her family. The husks were thrown away.

Now they have become a source of fuel.

“I don’t have to worry about buying charcoal whenever I want to cook because I make my own briquettes from shea husks,” Akello, a 47-year-old mother of five, told Al Jazeera.

“As a group, we’re also able to save money from the products we sell, and that helps us support our families when emergencies arise,” she said.

Demand is growing, but production remains limited by the seasonal shea harvest.

To meet it, Atim is saving to buy a carboniser, crusher and briquette-making machine costing about $530. The equipment would allow the initiative to process more shea waste and produce briquettes throughout the year.

“Our plan is to increase shea butter production from 600 litres to 6,000 litres. That means more shea husks and, in turn, more briquettes. It will help us meet demand even when raw materials are scarce,” she said.

Shared future

Renewable energy expert Bosco Odyek told Al Jazeera that turning shea husks into briquettes offers a practical alternative to charcoal by putting waste material to use.

Using a carboniser, he says, would produce cleaner-burning, smokeless briquettes that burn more efficiently.

Beyond fuel production, Moyao Africa Initiative runs environmental clubs in 20 schools across Alebtong District and works with the National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO) to distribute tree seedlings, encouraging communities to restore the landscape.

Paul Mwirichia, a humanitarian and development expert, told Al Jazeera that such initiatives are important but access to clean energy remains beyond the reach of many rural households.

“We have very good policies,” he said.

“The challenge is implementation. Government needs to support indigenous organisations like Atim’s because they understand the problems affecting their communities, and people trust them to address those challenges.”

For Atim, the work is about saving the tree that shaped her childhood.

The shea tree is gone, but she hopes turning discarded husks into fuel will mean fewer trees are cut down and more women can earn a living from keeping them standing.

“We are leaving no one behind.”

July 4 (UPI) — President Donald Trump pardoned 11 people, including nine Clean Air Act violators, claiming they were just “fixing their car.”

The pardons were mostly for men who were prosecuted under the President Joe Biden administration for using, installing or selling “defeat devices,” software used to bypass emissions controls.

“It is my Great Honor to have just signed Pardons for six people who were persecuted by the Biden Administration, and were in, or being sent to, prison, for ‘fixing their car.’ While I know this sounds ridiculous, it is nevertheless a fact, and part of the Weaponization and Stupidity that our Country had to endure during four long years of Sleepy Joe Biden. I AM SETTING THEM ALL FREE, RIGHT NOW! President DONALD J. TRUMP,” the president posted on Truth Social Friday afternoon.

Lawyer Stewart Cables and lobbyist Jeff Daugherty, who represent five of the defendants, identified them to CBS News. They said Ryan and Wade Lalone, Matt Geouge, Tim Clancy and Mac Spurlock received pardons.

A White House official later confirmed the pardons to CBS News and said that five others had also been pardoned, three for similar pollution violations. Along with those already mentioned, the official identified the others as Joshua Davis, Barry Pierce, Aaron Rudolf, Adam Kidan, Jack Harvard and Jonathan Achtemeier.

“Thanks to God for putting it on Trump’s heart to approve these pardons, and thank God for Donald Trump,” Daugherty told CBS. He said Trump “is the only president who would have taken an interest in these parties, and the reason is he’s the only president to face such ferocious weaponization himself.”

A press release from the Justice Department in February 2025 announced the conviction of Achtemeier, saying “From the comfort of his home, this defendant caused environmental damage across the country, tampering with pollution controls on diesel trucks so that they spewed 30 to 1,200 times the pollutants of a legally configured truck,” Acting U.S. Attorney Teal Luthy Miller said. Miller now works in private practice.

Trump last fall granted clemency to Troy Lake, a Wyoming mechanic who served seven months in prison for violating federal emissions laws for disabling air pollution-control equipment on diesel engines.

In January, the Department of Justice ordered prosecutors to drop all cases and investigations related to the defeat devices.

Two of those pardoned Friday were convicted of crimes not related to pollution.

Jack Harvard was convicted of bank fraud charges in Texas in the 1980s and now runs the Texas Safari Ranch in Clifton, Texas, and Adam Kidan was sentenced to 70 months in prison in 2006. Kidan pleaded guilty to conspiracy and fraud charges related to his attempt, along with lobbyist Jack Abramoff, to purchase a casino for $147.5 million with a counterfeit wire transfer document. Kidan is a donor to Republican campaigns.

June 23 (UPI) — U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for AI companies to disclose what the environmental impact of data centers will be by 2030 during a speech Tuesday at London Climate Action Week.

Guterres said that the AI boom and the world’s dependence on oil are driving the climate crisis and laid out plans to curb the damage.

“These crises may seem separate but they share the same destructive origin: fossil fuels,” Guterres said. “And they demand the same answer: a fast, fair transition to clean energy and a surge in adaptation, resilience and climate justice for those already facing climate harm.”

The United Nations’ seven-point plan for energy independence includes quickly cutting emissions to reach net zero emissions by 2050. This would mean the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere are balanced out by the amount of greenhouse gases removed from the atmosphere.

The plan also calls for an acceleration of developing and adopting clean energy, transparency from AI firms on their environmental impact by 2030, ensuring the transition to clean energy is equitable in its job creation and community support, investment in early warning systems, expanding funding for developing countries and combatting climate disinformation.

The United Nations said scientists it supports are warning that average annual temperatures are likely to exceed the 1.5-degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels target set out by the Paris Climate Accords adopted in 2016. It notes that the United States withdrew from the agreement for the second time under President Donald Trump.

“Every fraction of a degree matters,” Guterres said.

Reporting from Washington — California is confronting the limits of its power to save federal environmental protections as Congress and the Trump administration take aim at a landmark law the state has relied on for decades to clean the air of noxious smog.

A push by Republicans to roll back parts of the Clean Air Act would affect California more than any other state, rattling its lawmakers and regulators. And their legal authority to pick up the fight against California’s smog on their own is constrained.

The House last month passed a bill fiercely opposed by doctors and public health groups, including the American Lung Assn. and the American Academy of Pediatrics, that would delay for years new anti-pollution standards aimed at ultimately preventing 160,000 childhood asthma attacks and as many as 220 premature deaths in California each year.

The Trump administration had already tried using regulatory authority to put the standards on hold for a year, but walked back that action Wednesday after California and 14 other states filed suit against the delay.

The bill advancing in Congress would go much further, permanently upending the way restrictions are imposed on the ozone and small particulate matter that make up smog. No longer would regulators base decisions solely on scientific findings about what level of smog is safe to breathe. The potential cost to business would for the first time loom large in setting limits, and ultimately guide such things as when people with breathing problems are warned to stay indoors.

“It would be disastrous to do this,” said Jared Blumenfeld, former regional director of the federal Environmental Protection Agency for California and other Western states.

“The Clean Air Act has been one of the most successful and revered public health measures taken anywhere on the planet. Everyone from China to India to European nations came to my office and said, ‘How do we achieve these kinds of gains?’ This all originated in Los Angeles at a time the air was so bad it led to the creation of the EPA.”

Many state lawmakers agree, and they are vowing to keep California in compliance with the Clean Air Act as it exists now — regardless of what happens in Washington. But that turns out to be a promise not easily kept.

“This is not an easy switch whereby Congress gets rid of the standard, and California just puts it back in place,” Blumenfeld said.

Some of the most damaging pollution released inside California’s borders can only be controlled by federal regulators. Among California’s biggest concerns is what is spewed from the exhaust pipes of trucks traveling through the state that are not subject to its strict emissions rules. Such fumes account for 60% of such heavy truck pollution.

The EPA has been under pressure to toughen federal rules for trucks to enable California to meet its obligations under the act. The state and EPA have also been working on research into new technologies to clean truck emissions.

Even if the industry-friendly Trump administration slows down those efforts, the act empowers states and activists to impose pressure on the EPA in court.

But that would change under the measure passed by the House, HR 806, which would weaken the air quality standards now motivating federal action.

“We need EPA to continue to move ahead aggressively,” said Kurt Karperos, deputy executive officer at the California Air Resources Board. “It has a responsibility under the Clean Air Act to take action.… We are concerned this would be used as a justification to slow down.”

The pushback against the Clean Air Act in Congress is rooted in complaints, often driven by industry, that the EPA under the Obama administration set standards for air quality that are impossible to reach without harming economies in places that are already struggling, like California’s Central Valley, home to some of the worst air in the nation.

Among the most effective allies for Republicans pushing to weaken standards is the head of the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, which regulates 25,000 square miles. It is home to 4 million Californians, who struggle with smoggy air and soaring asthma rates.

Seyed Sadredin, the district’s executive director, said there is only so much his agency is empowered to do, and now it faces severe federal sanctions for emissions from cars and trucks it has no authority to regulate.

Sadredin recently told Congress that local businesses will soon be prevented from expanding and big highway projects forfeited under Clean Air Act sanctions the valley faces — even after the region has done everything in its power to control pollution with some of the toughest restrictions in the nation.

“It all sounds nice and noble when you look down to the valley from the outside,” he said of the tough federal standards. “If you are with the elite crowd, you might say, ‘Let’s punish the valley for something they have no control over.’ We are talking real-life impact in a place suffering from double-digit unemployment, poverty, malnutrition. This has a real impact on our people. It is not just an academic argument.”

The San Joaquin board limited its support of the House measure to the part that would exempt air districts from sanctions in certain circumstances. A public outcry moved it to back away from its push to force the EPA to consider economic impacts in determining what air is safe to breathe.

But the economic impact language is still part of the House bill that the San Joaquin board helped get passed, creating no small measure of tension between Sadredin and other air quality experts who say his dire warnings served to benefit agriculture and drilling interests averse to stricter rules.

The valley is not going to lose big highway projects and businesses if it can’t control truck and car pollution it has no authority to regulate, according to state air regulators. But it will be pushed in the areas where it does have control, they say, including cutting pollution from oil and gas wells, and residential and agricultural burning.

“It is absolutely not in the cards,” Karperos said of the punishment Sadredin warns will befall the valley in coming years under current clean air rules. A good faith plan by the valley to further reduce emissions in the places it can would protect it from such sanctions, he said. But that plan will require more action by a region resistant to it.

“There are feasible strategies,” Karperos said. “The threat of sanctions is a red herring.”

Times staff writer Tony Barboza contributed to this report.

evan.halper@latimes.com

Follow me: @evanhalper

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