Climate Crisis

The tourist boats that typically navigate Kenya’s renowned Lake Naivasha have recently taken on a new role: rescuing hundreds from inundated homes.

Though the lake’s water level has been increasing for more than a decade with repeated flooding, residents of the modest Kihoto district are stunned by this year’s unprecedented scale.

“It hasn’t happened like this before,” said resident Rose Alero.

According to local officials, the Rift Valley lake has advanced an unprecedented 1.5km (about 1 mile) inland.

“People are suffering,” said Alero, a 51-year-old grandmother, noting that many neighbours have fallen ill.

In her home, water reaches waist height, while throughout the district, toilets are overflowing.

“People are stuck … they have nowhere to go.”

The devastation is widespread: hundreds of homes are completely underwater, churches are destroyed, and police stations are submerged, surrounded by floating vegetation.

During one sudden water surge, children evacuated a school on improvised rafts.

Joyce Cheche, Nakuru County’s disaster risk management head, estimates 7,000 people have been displaced by the rising waters, which also impact wildlife and threaten tourism and commerce.

The county has provided transport assistance and implemented health measures, Cheche said, though financial compensation has not been offered yet.

Workers in the crucial flower export sector are avoiding work, fearing cholera and landslides.

She also highlighted the danger of encounters with the lake’s numerous hippos.

“We didn’t see it coming,” Cheche admitted.

At the lake’s edge, bare acacia trunks that were once lush now stand submerged in waters advancing about 1 metre (3.3 feet) daily.

This phenomenon affects other Rift Valley lakes and has displaced hundreds of thousands.

Numerous studies primarily attribute this to increased rainfall driven by climate change.

However, Kenyan geologist John Lagat, regional manager at the state-owned Geothermal Development Corporation, points to tectonics as the main cause, noting the lakes’ position along a major geological fault.

When English settlers arrived in the late 19th century, the lake was even larger before shifting tectonic plates reduced it to just 1km (0.6 miles) in diameter by 1921.

Subsequent tectonic movements increasingly sealed underground outflows, trapping water, Lagat explained, though he acknowledged that increased rainfall and land degradation from population growth also play a “substantial” role in flooding.

“We are very worried,” said Alero from her flooded home, dreading the upcoming rainy season.

“We can’t tell what will happen.”

Indian-administered Kashmir – On the night of September 2, Shabir Ahmad’s home was swallowed by mud and swept into the river after relentless rains triggered a landslide in Sarh village in Indian-administered Kashmir’s Reasi district.

“I had been building my house brick by brick since 2016. It was my life’s work. Only less than a year ago, I had finished constructing the second floor, and now there is nothing,” the 36-year-old father of three children told Al Jazeera.

Ahmad’s was among nearly 20 houses in Sarh lost to the Chenab River that night, including one belonging to his brother, as dozens of families helplessly watched their farmlands, shops and other properties worth millions of rupees vanish without a trace.

“We don’t even have one inch of land left to stand on,” said Ahmad from a government school in Sarh, where his family and other villagers were sheltering after the deluge.

The tragedy at Sarh was among the latest of increasingly frequent climate disasters across India that destroy lives and livelihoods, and displace millions of people to an uncertain future.

According to the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), climate-related disasters forced more than 32 million people from their homes in India between 2015 and 2024, with 5.4 million displacements recorded in 2024 alone – the highest in 12 years. This makes India one of the three nations most affected by internal displacements due to climate change in that period, with China and the Philippines being the top two.

Moreover, in the first six months of 2025, more than 160,000 people were displaced across India due to natural disasters, as the country received above-average rainfall, triggering huge floods and landslides, and submerging hundreds of villages and cities.

Zero adaptation money for two years

To help millions of people like Ahmad who are vulnerable to the climate crisis, India’s Ministry for Environment, Forest and Climate Change launched a National Adaptation Fund on Climate Change (NAFCC) in 2015. Its goal was to finance projects that help communities cope with floods, droughts, landslides, and other climate-related stresses across India.

Managed by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), the flagship scheme supported interventions in agriculture, water management, forestry, coastal protection, and climate-resilient infrastructure. Between 2015 and 2021, it financed more than two dozen projects, benefitting thousands of vulnerable households.

During a roundtable in Brazil’s Belem city last month – before the 30th United Nations climate change conference, or COP30, which officially opened on Monday – India’s minister for environment, forest and climate change, Bhupender Yadav, said the global meet should be the “COP of adaptation”.

“The focus must be on transforming climate commitments into real-world actions that accelerate implementation and directly improve people’s lives,” he said, according to a statement released by the Indian government on October 13. He highlighted “a need to strengthen and intensify the flow of public finance towards adaptation”, said the statement.

In another statement last Tuesday, a day after COP30 opened, India said climate “adaptation financing needs to exceed nearly 15 times current flows, and significant gaps remain in doubling international public finance for adaptation by 2025”.

“India emphasised that adaptation is an urgent priority for billions of vulnerable people in developing countries who have contributed the least to global warming but stand to suffer the most from its impacts,” said the statement.

But the actions of the Indian government back home do not match those words at the climate summit.

Government records show NAFCC received an average of $13.3m annually in the initial years of its launch. But the allocation steadily declined. In the financial year 2022-2023, the fund’s spending was just $2.47m. In November 2022, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change moved NAFCC from the category of a government “scheme” to a “non-scheme”, providing no clear outlay for funds.

Since the financial year 2023-2024, zero money has been earmarked for the crucial climate adaptation fund.

As a result, several climate adaptation projects in areas prone to floods, cyclones and landslides have been stalled even as widespread climatic devastation continued to kill and displace people. While presenting the federal budget in parliament in February this year, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman did not even include the words “climate change” and “adaptation” in her hour-long speech.

“Announcing lofty adaptation goals abroad while starving the fund that safeguards our own citizens is misleading and a moral failure,” Raja Muzaffar Bhat, an environmental activist in Indian-administered Kashmir, told Al Jazeera, calling Yadav’s statements in Brazil “a gross distortion of reality and a dangerous distraction”.

Al Jazeera reached out to the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change for their comments on cutting NAFCC funds, but has not received any response.

An official in the Environment Ministry, however, defended the government’s shift in funding priorities, claiming the authorities have not abandoned climate adaptation efforts.

“Funds are now being channelled through broader climate and sustainability initiatives rather than standalone schemes like the NAFCC,” the official told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

‘Climate injustice at its most blatant’

Meanwhile, climate crises continue to kill and displace people across India.

In the Darbhanga district of Bihar, India’s poorest state, 38-year-old Sunita Devi has been displaced five times in seven years as floods in the nearby Kosi River repeatedly destroyed her mud house built on bamboo stilts.

“We live in fear every monsoon. My children have stopped going to school because we shift from camp to camp,” she said, holding on to the family’s only lifeline: A government ration card that allows them to buy food grains at subsidised rates or get them for free.

This year saw one of the worst monsoons across India, as above-average rains killed hundreds and displaced millions. In Bihar alone, floods affected more than 1.7 million people, killed dozens and submerged hundreds of villages.

In Odisha, another impoverished eastern state, fisherman Ramesh Behera*, 45, watched his house in Kendrapara district’s Satabhaya village collapse into the Bay of Bengal in 2024, as rising seas continue to erase entire hamlets. “The sea swallowed my home and my father’s fields. Fishing is no longer enough to survive,” he told Al Jazeera.

Behera was forced to give up his family’s traditional livelihoods – fishing and farming – and was driven into distress migration to survive. He now works as a manual labourer in Srinagar, the main city in Indian-administered Kashmir.

In West Bengal state’s Sundarbans Islands, one of the largest mangrove forests in the world, rising seas and coastal erosion have consumed lands and homes, forcing thousands of families in the fragile ecosystem to relocate.

In the southern state of Tamil Nadu’s Nagapattinam district, 29-year-old Revathi Selvam says saltwater intrusion from the Bay of Bengal has poisoned her farmland and their paddy harvest has collapsed.

“The soil is no longer fertile. We cannot grow rice any more. We may have to leave farming altogether,” she told Al Jazeera, adding that many in her village are considering migrating to the state capital, Chennai, to work as construction workers.

In the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, 27-year-old hotel worker Arjun Thakur saw his livelihood vanish when a cloudburst in 2024 buried the small tourist lodge where he worked. “The mountain broke apart. I saw houses collapse in seconds,” he recalled.

Thakur now stays with his relatives in the state capital Shimla, unsure if he can ever return to his native place.

Yet, with funds for NAFCC gone, people like Devi, Behera, Selvam and Thakur have no access to a government scheme that helps them cope with their tragedies.

A government official, who previously worked with NAFCC, told Al Jazeera several schemes approved by the government under NAFCC were never implemented after funds began to dry up as early as 2021, exposing thousands of households to a recurring climate crisis.

“The fund was created to help vulnerable communities adapt before disasters struck, and to reduce the kind of repeated displacement we are now witnessing,” the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

“Once the allocations stopped, states lost a key channel to protect people living on the front lines of floods, landslides, and droughts. Now, these families are left to rebuild on their own, again and again.”

Activist Bhat said the government’s attitude to the NAFCC “signals that adaptation is no longer a priority, even as India faces record internal displacement from climate extremes”.

“People are losing homes, farms, and livelihoods, and the government has left them entirely to their fate. If this continues, the next generation will inherit a country where climate refugees are a daily reality,” he said.

“This is climate injustice at its most blatant.”

‘Migration no longer a choice but a survival strategy’

Climate Action Network South Asia is a Dhaka-based coalition of about 250 civil society organisations, working in eight South Asian countries to promote government and individual action to limit human-induced climate change. Its estimate says roughly 45 million people in India could be forced to migrate by 2050 due to the climate crisis – a threefold increase over current displacement figures.

“We are a vast nation with hot and cold deserts, long coastlines, and Himalayan glaciers. From tsunamis on our shores to flash floods, cloudbursts, and landslides in the mountains, we face the entire spectrum of climate extremes,” Bhat told Al Jazeera.

Bhat said it is not just nature causing displacement, but also unchecked “development” of vulnerable areas.

“Earlier, floods or cloudbursts were occasional, and population density was low. Now, haphazard construction around mountain passes, waterways and streams, along with rampant deforestation, has amplified these disasters,” he said.

“People who once fled New Delhi’s air pollution to settle down in [the Himalayan states of] Himachal Pradesh or Uttarakhand now find themselves living under a constant threat of landslides. Migration is no longer a choice but a survival strategy.”

Bhat warned that neglecting people affected by climate-related displacement could cause the world’s largest climate migration crisis.

“We are no longer behaving like the welfare state promised in our constitution. We pay taxes like a developed country but get services that leave people to die in a climate crisis… We are utterly unprepared for the mass migrations that will inevitably come from both our mountains and our plains,” he said.

Back at the temporary government shelter in Kashmir’s landslide-hit Sarh village, Ahmad fears an uncertain future for him and his family.

“If land and shelter are not provided, we will not merely be homeless; we will become refugees in our own land, cast aside without place or protection,” he said.

“When the state neglects the consequences of climate change, it issues a declaration: You are free to drown, but not free to rebuild.”

Tens of thousands of people have thronged the streets of an Amazonian city hosting the COP30 talks, dancing to pounding speakers in the first large-scale protest at a United Nations climate summit in years.

As the first week of climate negotiations limped to a close with nations deadlocked, Indigenous people and activists sang, chanted, and rolled a giant beach ball of Earth through Belem under a searing sun.

Others held a mock funeral procession for fossil fuels, dressed in black and posing as grieving widows as they carried three coffins marked with the words “coal”, “oil” and “gas”.

It was the first major protest outside the annual climate talks since COP26 four years ago in Glasgow, as the last three gatherings had been held in locations with little tolerance for demonstrations – Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Azerbaijan.

Called the “Great People’s March” by the organisers, the Belem rally came at the halfway point of difficult negotiations and followed two Indigenous-led protests that disrupted proceedings earlier in the week.

“Today we are witnessing a massacre as our forest is being destroyed,” said Benedito Huni Kuin, a 50-year-old member of the Huni Kuin Indigenous group from western Brazil.

“We want to make our voices heard from the Amazon and demand results,” he added. “We need more Indigenous representatives at COP to defend our rights.”

Their demands include “reparations” for damages caused by corporations and governments, particularly to marginalised communities.

After a 4.5km (2.8-mile) march through the city, the demonstration halted a few blocks from the COP30 venue, where authorities deployed soldiers to protect the site.

Inside the venue, COP30 President Andre Correa do Lago admitted that the first exhaustive week of negotiations had failed to yield a breakthrough and urged diplomats not to run down the clock with time-wasting manoeuvres.

Countries remained at odds over trade measures and weak climate targets, while a showdown looms over demands that wealthy nations triple the finance they provide to poorer states to adapt to a warming world.

From communities in the Philippines battling climate-driven displacement and devastating floods, to solemn mass burials of Palestinians in Gaza, and demonstrations in Brazil as it hosts COP 30 – here is a look at the week in photos.

Indigenous and other climate activists say they need to ‘make their voices heard’ as UN conference hits halfway mark.

Thousands of people have marched through the streets of the Brazilian city of Belem, calling for the voices of Indigenous peoples and environmental defenders to be heard at the United Nations COP30 climate summit.

Indigenous community members mixed with activists at Saturday’s march, which unfolded in a festive atmosphere as participants carried a giant beach ball representing the Earth and a Brazilian flag emblazoned with the words “Protected Amazon”.

It was the first major protest outside the conference, which began earlier this week in Belem, bringing together world leaders, activists and experts in a push to tackle the worsening climate crisis.

Indigenous activists previously stormed the summit, disrupting the proceedings as they demanded that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva take concrete action to ensure their territories are protected from growing threats.

Amnesty International warned in a recent report that billions of people around the world are threatened by the expansion of fossil fuel projects, such as oil-and-gas pipelines and coal mines.

Indigenous communities, in particular, sit on the front lines of much of this development, the rights group said.

Branded the “Great People’s March” by organisers, Saturday’s rally in Belem came at the halfway point of contentious COP30 negotiations.

“Today we are witnessing a massacre as our forest is being destroyed,” Benedito Huni Kuin, a 50-year-old member of the Huni Kuin Indigenous group from western Brazil, told the AFP news agency.

“We want to make our voices heard from the Amazon and demand results,” he said. “We need more Indigenous representatives at COP to defend our rights.”

Youth leader Ana Heloisa Alves, 27, said it was the biggest climate march she has participated in. “This is incredible,” she told The Associated Press. “You can’t ignore all these people.”

The COP30 talks come as the UN warned earlier this month that the world was on track to exceed the 1.5C (2.7F) mark of global warming – an internationally agreed-upon target set under the Paris Agreement – “very likely” within the next decade.

If countries do as they have promised in their climate action plans, the planet will warm 2.3 to 2.5C (4.1 to 4.5F) by 2100, a report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) found.

“While national climate plans have delivered some progress, it is nowhere near fast enough, which is why we still need unprecedented emissions cuts in an increasingly tight window, with an increasingly challenging geopolitical backdrop,” said UNEP chief Inger Andersen.

Despite that urgency, analysts and some COP30 participants have said they don’t expect any major new agreements to emerge from the talks, which conclude on November 21.

Still, some are hoping for progress on some past promises, including funding to help poorer countries adapt to climate change.

During the last government shutdown six years ago, the main narrative when it came to public lands was the damage caused by unsupervised visitors. Trash cans and toilets overflowed with waste. Tourists reportedly mowed down Joshua trees to off-road in sensitive areas of Joshua Tree National Park.

This time around, national parks were directed to retain the staff needed to provide basic sanitation services, as I reported in a recent article with my colleague Lila Seidman. But meanwhile, something bigger and more coordinated was unfolding behind the scenes, said Chance Wilcox, California Desert program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association.

“We’re not seeing Joshua trees getting knocked down, things getting stolen, damage to parks by the American people, but we are seeing damage to parks by this presidential administration on an even larger scale,” Wilcox told me last week before lawmakers struck a deal to reopen the government.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Wilcox and other public lands advocates allege that President Trump’s administration used the shutdown to expedite an agenda that prioritizes extraction while slashing resources dedicated to conservation and education. What’s more, they fear the staffing priorities that came into sharp relief over the past 43 days offer a preview of how these lands will be managed going forward, especially in the aftermath of another potential mass layoff that could see the Interior Department cut 2,000 more jobs.

When I asked the Interior Department about its actions during the shutdown, a spokesperson responded via email that the administration “made deliberate, lawful decisions” to protect operations that sustain energy security and economic stability. “Activities that continued were those necessary to preserve critical infrastructure, safeguard natural resources, and prevent disruption to key supply chains that millions of Americans rely on,” the spokesperson wrote.

As a resident of the Mojave Desert on the outskirts of Joshua Tree National Park, I’ve taken particular interest in this topic. Out here, summer days can top 110 degrees, a trip to the grocery store is an hours-long excursion and there are rattlesnakes. Lots of rattlesnakes. But one huge bonus is the proximity to public lands: We’re surrounded by the park, the Mojave National Preserve and hundreds of miles of Bureau of Land Management wilderness.

These spaces not only provide endless entertainment for residents like my 3-year-old daughter, who would rather be turned loose in a boulder field than a jungle gym, but they play a key role in drawing visitors from around the world who support the stores, restaurants and other establishments that underpin our local economy.

Sentinel Rock in Hidden Valley, Joshua Tree National Park.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

In short, the health of our community depends on the health of these landscapes. Now, their future seems increasingly uncertain.

During the shutdown, roughly 64% of National Park Service employees were furloughed, according to a Department of the Interior contingency plan. At Joshua Tree National Park, those sidelined included Superintendent Jane Rodgers, along with most of the staff responsible for scientific research, resource management and educational and interpretive programs, according to a source at the park who asked not to be named out of fear of retaliation.

Over at the BLM, roughly 26% of staffers were furloughed. Among those who were allowed to keep working: employees responsible for processing oil, gas and coal permits and leases, along with items related to other energy and mineral resources, according to the contingency plan, which cited the president’s declared national energy emergency as rationale. As a result, the federal government issued 693 new oil and gas drilling permits and 52 new oil and gas leases on federal lands during the shutdown, according to tracking by the Center for Western Priorities.

Also during the shutdown, the BLM continued to move ahead with plans to consider the expansion of the Castle Mountain Mine, which is surrounded by California’s Castle Mountains National Monument. Already, the Interior Department had approved a different nearby mine, the Colosseum, ending a years-long dispute in which the National Park Service had alleged the mine was operating without authorization.

In Alaska, the Trump administration moved to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas leasing and approved a long-disputed push to build a 211-mile industrial road through the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve to allow for mining in a remote corner of the Northwest. The U.S. also took an equity stake in a company focused on mining exploration in that area, part of a growing trend that some experts have described as unusual.

And in Utah, the BLM is now reconsidering an application, which has been rejected seven times, to build a four-lane highway through desert tortoise habitats in the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area.

There’s real fear among federal employees and advocates that this dynamic — an emphasis on developing public lands, as stewardship and research efforts languish — will become the new reality, said Jordan Marbury, communications manager for Friends of the Inyo. What’s more, he said, is that some worry the administration will point to the shutdown as proof that public lands never really needed all that staffing in the first place.

“It could get to the point where conservation is totally an afterthought,” he said.

More recent land news

Operators of the 1,000-acre Inglewood Oil Field must stop pumping by the end of the decade, if a state edict holds up in court. My L.A. Times colleague Doug Smith looks at what will become of one of the Los Angeles region’s last great pieces of undeveloped land, which offers a rare opportunity to address the pressing needs of open space and affordable housing in underserved neighborhoods.

Homes sit in the shadow of the Inglewood Oil Field.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Five California tribes have established an intertribal commission to co-manage Chuckwalla National Monument, marking a historic step toward tribal sovereignty over sacred desert lands. Times environment reporter Tyrone Beason examines how this will work — and why it’s a big deal.

President Trump has tapped former New Mexico Rep. Steve Pearce to lead the BLM — which manages about 10% of land in the U.S. — after his first pick, oil and gas lobbyist Kathleen Sgamma, withdrew her name from consideration in the wake of reporting on comments she made criticizing Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Industry trade organizations are praising Pearce’s nomination, while environmental groups allege that the former Republican Party of New Mexico chair is a climate change denier with a record of supporting expanded oil and gas drilling on public lands and shrinking national monuments, the Santa Fe New Mexican reports.

Lawmakers have begun to use the Congressional Review Act, which enables Congress to overturn recent federal rules with a majority vote, in an unprecedented way: to revoke specific land management plans that limit mining and drilling in specific places, Inside Climate News reports. So far, lawmakers have rescinded BLM plans that ended new coal leasing in Montana’s Powder River Basin and that limited development in North Dakota and portions of Alaska. They are now seeking to do the same in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve. That’s despite warnings from legal experts, environmental organizations and hunting and fishing groups that these precedents could paralyze the ability of agencies to manage public lands.

A few last things in climate news

Negotiators for seven Western states say they are making progress in ongoing talks over how to share the diminishing waters of the Colorado River, according to our water reporter Ian James. Still, a deadline set by the Trump administration came and went Tuesday without any regionwide agreement on water cutbacks, Ian reports.

The Trump administration plans to allow new oil and gas drilling off the California coast, but energy companies may not be interested in battling the state’s strict environmental rules to try and tap into limited petroleum reserves, our climate policy reporter Hayley Smith writes. Citing these obstacles, some experts told Hayley the move may be politically motivated: It’s likely to set up a fight with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has said that any such proposal will be dead on arrival.

Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks to reporters at the COP30 Climate Summit in Belém, Brazil, on Tuesday.

(Alessandro Falco)

Speaking of Newsom and Trump, the California governor is in Belém, Brazil, for the annual United Nations climate policy summit, which the Trump administration is sitting out. My colleague Melody Gutierrez, who’s also there, looks at how California hopes it can fill in the gap left by America’s absence as Newsom positions himself for a 2028 presidential run.

Meanwhile, diplomats have accused top U.S. officials of threatening and bullying leaders from poorer or small countries to defeat a historic deal to slash pollution from cargo ships that was slated by be approved by more than 100 nations, according to a bombshell New York Times report. Federal representatives denied that officials made threats but “acknowledged derailing the deal and repeated their opposition to international efforts to address climate change,” the paper reported.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more land news, follow @phila_lex on X and alex-wigglesworth.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Indigenous protesters stormed the UN’s COP30 climate summit in Belem, Brazil, clashing with security officers inside the venue. They were demanding stronger action to stop deforestation and mining in the Amazon rainforest.

Hundreds of people have joined an Indigenous-led protest on the second day of the UN climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belem, highlighting tensions with the Brazilian government’s claim that the meeting is open to Indigenous voices.

Dozens of Indigenous protesters forced their way into the 30th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) on Tuesday evening after hundreds of people participated in a march to the venue.

“We can’t eat money,” said Gilmar, an Indigenous leader from the Tupinamba community near the lower reaches of the Tapajos River in Brazil, who uses only one name, referring to the emphasis on climate finance at many of the meetings during the ongoing summit.

“We want our lands free from agribusiness, oil exploration, illegal miners and illegal loggers.”

A spokesperson from the UN, which is responsible for security inside the venue, said in a statement that “a group of protesters breached security barriers at the main entrance to the COP, causing minor injuries to two security staff, and minor damage to the venue”.

The protest came as Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has highlighted Indigenous communities as key players in this year’s COP30 negotiations, even as several industries continue to further encroach on the Amazon rainforest during his presidency.

Lula told a leaders summit last week that participants at the COP30 would be “inspired by Indigenous peoples and traditional communities – for whom sustainability has always been synonymous with their way of life”.

However, Indigenous participants taking part in rolling protests in and around the climate change meeting say that more needs to be done, both by Lula’s left-leaning government at home and around the world.

A joint statement ahead of the summit from Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon Basin and all Biomes of Brazil emphasised the importance of protecting Indigenous territories in the Amazon.

As “a carbon sink of approximately 340 million tons” of carbon dioxide, the world’s largest rainforest, “represents one of the most effective mitigation and adaptation strategies”, the statement said.

The statement also called for Indigenous territories to be excluded from mining and other activities, including “in particular, the Amazon, Congo, and Borneo-Mekong-Southeast Asia basins”.

Leo Cerda, one of the organisers of the Yaku Mama protest flotilla, which arrived at the summit after sailing 3,000km (1,864 miles) down the Amazon river, told Al Jazeera that Indigenous peoples are trying to secure nature not just for themselves but for humanity.

“Most states want our resources, but they don’t want to guarantee the rights of Indigenous peoples,” Cerda said.

As the flotilla sailed towards COP30, Brazil’s state-run oil company, Petrobras, received a licence to begin exploratory offshore oil drilling near the mouth of the Amazon River.

“You cannot make climate policies without indigenous people at the negotiation table.”

This Indigenous activist flotilla just sailed the entire length of the Amazon River to take their message to the #COP30 climate conference. pic.twitter.com/55YjlZgJct

— AJ+ (@ajplus) November 11, 2025

Cerda also said it was important for Indigenous people to be present at the conference, considering the fossil fuel industry has also participated in the meetings for several decades.

According to The Guardian newspaper, some 5,350 fossil fuel lobbyists participated in UN climate summits over the past four years.

Representatives from 195 countries are participating in this year’s summit, with the notable absence of the United States. Under President Donald Trump, the US has fought against action on climate change, further cementing its role as the world’s largest historical emitter of fossil fuels.

Most recently, Trump has torpedoed negotiations to address emissions from the shipping industry.

Notably, this year’s meeting is the first to take place since the UN’s top court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), ruled that countries must meet their climate obligations and that failing to do so could violate international law.

About 50,000 people are expected to attend the 12-day climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belem.

The 30th annual United Nations climate change conference (COP30) has started in the Brazilian city of Belem, with leaders calling for countries to take a united approach against global warming.

“In this arena of COP30, your job here is not to fight one another – your job here is to fight this climate crisis, together,” the UN’s climate chief, Simon Stiell, told delegates on Monday.

Some 50,000 people from more than 190 countries are expected to attend the 12-day event, which is being held at the edge of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest.

Addressing the conference, Stiell said that previous climate talks had helped, but that there was “much more work to do”.

The UN climate boss noted that countries would have to move “much, much faster” in driving down greenhouse gas emissions. “Lamenting is not a strategy. We need solutions,” he said.

His comments came as a new UN analysis of countries’ climate plans found that the pledged reductions fall far short of the drop needed by 2035 to limit temperatures to 1.5C (2.7F) above pre-industrial temperatures.

If this threshold is breached, the world will experience far more severe impacts than it has so far, experts say.

“Climate change is no longer a threat of the future. It is a tragedy of the present,” Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva stressed at the start of COP30.

Brazil’s leader condemned those seeking to undermine efforts to combat the climate crisis.

“They attack institutions, they attack science and universities,” he said. “It’s time to inflict a new defeat on the deniers.”

The United States is not sending any delegates to COP30 in keeping with President Donald Trump’s anti-climate change stance.

“It’s a good thing that they are not sending anyone. It wasn’t going to be constructive if they did,” the US’s former special envoy for climate, Todd Stern, said of the Trump administration’s decision.

COP30 President Andre Correa do Lago said the US’s absence “has opened some space for the world to see what developing countries are doing”.

Pablo Inuma Flores, an Indigenous leader from Peru, urged world leaders to do more than simply give pledges at this year’s conference.

“We want to make sure that they don’t keep promising, that they will start protecting, because we as Indigenous people are the ones who suffer from these impacts of climate change,” he said.

In a letter to COP30 that was published on Monday, dozens of scientists expressed their fears about the melting of glaciers, ice sheets and other frozen parts of the planet.

“The cryosphere is destabilising at an alarming pace,” they wrote. “Geopolitical tensions or short-term national interests must not overshadow COP30. Climate change is the defining security and stability challenge of our time.”

Speaking at this year’s COP30 in Brazil, UN chief Antonio Guterres called the inability to limit global warming to 1.5C (2.7F) a “deadly moral failure”.

But does the same apply when it comes to protecting the environment in conflict?

Israel’s two-year war on Gaza has created 61 million tonnes of rubble, with nearly a quarter contaminated with asbestos and other hazardous materials.

And scientists warn that Israel’s use of water, food and energy as weapons of war in Gaza has left farmland and ecosystems facing irreversible collapse.

In Syria, President Ahmed al-Sharaa has cited his country’s worst drought in more than six decades as evidence of accelerating climate change and warned that it could hinder Syria’s post-war recovery.

So, why isn’t conflict seen as a climate issue? And why is the environmental toll of war so often ignored?

Presenter: Adrian Finighan

Guests: Kate Mackintosh – deputy chair of the Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide

Elaine Donderer – disaster risk specialist

Farai Maguwu – director of the Zimbabwe-based Centre for Natural Resource Governance

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva urged the world to fight the spread of misinformation and come together to defeat those who deny the devastating impact of climate change.

The 30th annual United Nations climate change conference (COP30) begins on Monday in the Brazilian city of Belem. About 50,000 people from more than 190 countries, including diplomats and climate experts, are expected to attend the 11-day meeting in the Amazon.

Delegates are expected to discuss the climate crisis and its devastating impacts, including the rising frequency of extreme weather.

The hosts have a packed agenda with 145 meetings planned to discuss the green fuel transition and global warming as well as the failure to implement past promises.

Andre Correa do Lago, president of this year’s conference, emphasised that negotiators engage in “mutirao”, a Brazilian word derived from an Indigenous word that refers to a group uniting to work on a shared task.

“Either we decide to change by choice, together, or we will be imposed change by tragedy,” do Lago wrote in his letter to negotiators on Sunday. “We can change. But we must do it together.”

What is COP?

COP is the abbreviation for the Conference of the Parties to the Convention, which refers to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a treaty adopted in 1992 that formally acknowledged climate change as a global threat.

The treaty also enshrined the principle of “common but differentiated responsibility”, meaning that rich countries responsible for the bulk of carbon dioxide emissions should bear the greatest responsibility for solving the problem.

The UNFCCC formally went into force in 1994 and has become the basis for international deals, such as the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, designed to limit global temperature increases to about 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by 2100 to avoid the most catastrophic effects of global warming.

The first COP summit was held in the German capital, Berlin, in 1995. The rotating presidency, now held by Brazil, sets the agenda and hosts the two-week summit, drawing global attention to climate change while trying to corral member states to agree to new climate measures.

What’s on the agenda this year?

Brazil wants to gather pledges of $25bn and attract a further $100bn from the global financial markets for a Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), which would provide financing for biodiversity conservation, including reducing deforestation.

Brazil has also asked countries to work on realising past promises, such as COP28’s pledge to phase out fossil fuel use. Indeed, the Brazilian government’s overarching goal for this COP is “implementation” rather than setting new goals.

“Our role at COP30 is to create a roadmap for the next decade to accelerate implementation,” Ana Tonix, the chief executive of COP30, was quoted as saying in The Guardian newspaper.

At a summit last week before COP30, Brazilian President Lula Inacio Lula da Silva said: “I am convinced that despite our difficulties and contradictions, we need roadmaps to reverse deforestation, overcome dependence on fossil fuels and mobilise the resources necessary for these objectives.”

In a letter to negotiators released late on Sunday, Simon Stiell, the UN climate chief, said the 10-year-old Paris Agreement is working to a degree “but we must accelerate in the Amazon. Devastating climate damages are happening already – from Hurricane Melissa hitting the Caribbean, super typhoons smashing Vietnam and the Philippines to a tornado ripping through southern Brazil.”

Not only must nations do more faster but they “must connect climate action to people’s real lives”, Stiell wrote.

COP30 is also the first to acknowledge the failure to so far prevent global warming.

Who will participate?

More than 50,000 people have registered to attend this year’s COP in Belem, including journalists, climate scientists, Indigenous leaders and representatives from 195 countries.

Some of the more prominent official group voices will include the Alliance of Small Island States, the G77 bloc of developing countries and the BASIC Group, consisting of Brazil, South Africa, India and China.

In September, United States President Donald Trump told the UN General Assembly that climate change was “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”, based on “predictions … made by stupid people”.

Trump’s aggressive approach to deny the climate crisis has further complicated the agenda at the conference, which will have no representation from Washington. Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement twice – once during his first term, which was overturned by former President Joe Biden, and a second time on January 20, 2025, the day his second term began. He cited the economic burden of climate initiatives on the US. Trump has called climate change a “hoax”.

The US historically has put more heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the air from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas than any other country. On an annual basis, however, the biggest carbon polluter now is China.

COP30 organisers have been criticised for the exorbitant prices of hotel rooms in Belem, which has just 18,000 hotel beds. Brazil’s government has stepped in, offering free cabins on cruise ships to poorer nations in a last-minute bid to ensure they can attend.

As of November 1, only 149 countries had confirmed lodging. The Brazilian government said 37 were still negotiating. Meanwhile, business leaders have decamped to host their own events in the cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Brazil has also been slammed for clearing forest to build a new road to reach the conference venue.

What progress has been made since last year’s summit?

Renewables, led by solar and wind, accounted for more than 90 percent of new power capacity added worldwide last year, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency. Solar energy has now become the cheapest form of electricity in history.

Meanwhile, one in five of new cars sold around the world last year was electric, and there are now more jobs in clean energy than in fossil fuels, according to the UN.

Elsewhere, the International Energy Agency has estimated that global clean-energy investment will reach $2.2 trillion this year, which would be about twice as much as on fossil fuel spending.

At the same time, global temperatures are not just rising, they are climbing faster than ever with new records logged for 2023 and 2024. That finding was part of a study done every few years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The new research shows the average global temperature rising at a rate of 0.27C (0.49F) each decade, almost 50 percent faster than in the 1990s and 2000s when the warming rate was around 0.2C (0.36F) per decade.

The world is now on track to cross the 1.5C threshold by 2030, after which scientists warn that humanity will trigger irreversible climate impacts. Already, the planet has warmed by 1.3C (2.34F) since the pre-industrial era, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

At the same time, governments around the world spend about $1 trillion each year subsidising fossil fuels.

At a preparatory summit with dozens of heads of state and government, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: “The hard truth is that we have failed to ensure we remain below 1.5 degrees.”

“Science now tells us that a temporary overshoot beyond the 1.5 limit – starting at the latest in the early 2030s – is inevitable. We need a paradigm shift to limit this overshoot’s magnitude and duration and quickly drive it down,” he said on Thursday.

“Even a temporary overshoot will have dramatic consequences. It could push ecosystems past irreversible tipping points, expose billions to unliveable conditions and amplify threats to peace and security.”

How did climate change affect the world in 2025?

The India-Pakistan heatwave began unusually early, in April this year. By June, temperatures had reached a peak of about 48C (118.4F) in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Hundreds of lives were lost, and crops were decimated.

Europe also faced extreme heat this year. Over the summer, the region endured a heatwave that pushed cities like Lisbon past 46C  (114.8F). In London, a prolonged period of elevated temperatures in late June caused an estimated excess 260 deaths.

At the same time, Mediterranean wildfires ravaged large tracts of Southern Europe with more than 100,000 people evacuated and dozens of deaths.

Turkiye suffered one of its worst droughts in decades, hitting agricultural areas. Rainfall dropped by up to 71 percent in some areas compared with the previous year, stressing ecosystems and energy and food production.

Hundreds of protesters gathered to demand government action on the worsening air quality and pollution in India’s capital New Delhi. Protesters say the government must come up with a time-bound plan to address the pollution crisis.

Climate-related disasters and conflict have displaced millions of people across the globe, the United Nations has warned before the opening of its annual climate change conference.

The UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a report, published on Monday to coincide with the launch of the 30th annual UN Climate Change conference (COP) in Brazil, that weather-related disasters caused about 250 million people to flee their homes over the past decade.

The migration agency issued its second major report on the effect of climate change on refugees – No Escape II: The Way Forward – in the run-up to COP 30, as it appears that the enthusiasm of countries to agree action to curb climate change continues to ebb.

“Over the past decade, weather-related disasters have caused some 250 million internal displacements – equivalent to over 67,000 displacements per day,” the report said. 

The UNHCR added that climate change is also increasing the difficulties faced by those displaced by conflict and other driving forces.

“Climate change is compounding and multiplying the challenges faced by those who have already been displaced, as well as their hosts, particularly in fragile and conflict-affected settings,” it continued.

Floods in South Sudan and Brazil, record heat in Kenya and Pakistan, and water shortages in Chad and Ethiopia are among the disasters noted in the report.

The number of countries facing extreme exposure to climate-related hazards is projected to rise from three to 65 by 2040.

Those 65 countries host more than 45 percent of all people currently displaced by conflict, it added.

“Extreme weather is … destroying homes and livelihoods, and forcing families – many who have already fled violence – to flee once more,” UN refugees chief Filippo Grandi said in a statement.

“These are people who have already endured immense loss, and now they face the same hardships and devastation again. They are among the hardest hit by severe droughts, deadly floods and record-breaking heatwaves, yet they have the fewest resources to recover,” he said.

By 2050, the report reads, the hottest 15 refugee camps in the world – in The Gambia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Senegal and Mali – are projected to experience nearly 200 days of hazardous heat stress per year.

Weakening commitment

The refugee agency’s report emphasised that while the effect of climate change is growing, the commitment towards dealing with it has been weakening.

The UNHCR hopes to reawaken efforts to fight the effects at the conference in Brazil.

Under President Donald Trump, the United States, traditionally the world’s top donor, has slashed foreign aid.

Washington previously accounted for more than 40 percent of the UNHCR’s budget. Other major donor countries have also been tightening their belts.

“Funding cuts are severely limiting our ability to protect refugees and displaced families from the effects of extreme weather,” Grandi said.

“To prevent further displacement, climate financing needs to reach the communities already living on the edge,” he said. “This COP must deliver real action, not empty promises.”

About 50,000 participants from more than 190 countries will meet in Belem, in the Amazon rainforest, to discuss curbing the climate crisis.

One topic on the agenda exposing the difficulties of agreeing on global action is the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM).

The policy is designed to prevent “carbon leakage” by requiring importers of carbon-intensive goods like steel and cement to pay the same price for embedded emissions that EU producers face domestically.

While the EU promotes CBAM as a necessary environmental tool to encourage greener practices, critics of the policy, including major trading partners like the US and China, view it as a veiled act of protectionism.

Developing nations, meanwhile, are concerned that it unfairly shifts the financial burden of climate action onto them.

A suffocating blanket of smog has engulfed India’s capital, permeating the air with an acrid smell as pollution levels soar, intensifying a public health emergency that has driven residents to demand governmental action.

By Monday morning, New Delhi’s air quality index had reached 344, categorised as “severe” and hazardous to breathe according to the World Health Organization’s recommended exposure thresholds.

In a compelling demonstration of public concern, dozens of protesters assembled in New Delhi on Sunday, calling for government intervention to combat the capital’s toxic air crisis as dangerous haze shrouded the city.

Children joined their parents at the demonstration, wearing protective masks and carrying placards, including one that starkly declared: “I miss breathing.”

New Delhi, home to a metropolitan population of 30 million people, persistently ranks among the world’s most polluted capital cities.

Every winter, a toxic smog obscures the skyline when cooler temperatures trap pollutants close to ground level, creating a deadly combination of emissions from agricultural burning, industrial operations, and vehicle exhaust.

Levels of PM2.5 – carcinogenic particles small enough to penetrate the bloodstream – regularly surge to concentrations 60 times above the UN’s recommended daily health guidelines.

“Today I am here just as a mother,” said protester Namrata Yadav, who attended the protest with her son. “I am here because I don’t want to become a climate refugee.”

At the protest location near India Gate, the historic war memorial, PM2.5 readings surpassed the World Health Organization’s recommended daily maximum by more than 13 times.

“Year after year, it is the same story, but there is no solution,” said Tanvi Kusum, a lawyer who explained she joined because she was “frustrated”.

“We have to build pressure so that the government at least takes up the issue seriously.”

Government measures to tackle the crisis have proven inadequate, including limited restrictions on fossil fuel vehicles and water trucks spraying mist to suppress airborne particulate matter.

“Pollution is cutting our lives,” declared a young woman who identified herself as “speaking for Delhi” and declined to provide her name.

Research published in The Lancet Planetary Health last year estimated that 3.8 million deaths in India between 2009 and 2019 were attributable to air pollution.

The United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, cautions that contaminated air dramatically increases children’s susceptibility to acute respiratory infections.

As evening descended on the smog-veiled skyline, the crowd expanded until police stepped in, forcing several activists onto a bus and seizing their protest materials, claiming they lacked proper demonstration permits.

One partially torn sign captured the essence of their plea: “I just want to breathe.”

On Marajo Island, at the confluence of the Amazon River and Atlantic Ocean in northern Brazil, life ebbs and flows with the tides.

For more than four decades, Ivanil Brito found paradise in her modest stilt house, just 20 metres (65ft) from the shoreline, where she and her husband Catito fished, cultivated crops, and tended to livestock.

“I was a very happy person in that little piece of land. That was my paradise,” she says.

That paradise vanished during a violent storm in February 2024, when relentless waters surged through Vila do Pesqueiro town, eroding the coastline that had nourished generations. “Even though we didn’t move far, it feels like a completely different world,” says Ivanil from their new settlement less than a kilometre (half a mile) inland. “This is a mangrove area – hotter, noisier, and not a place where we can raise animals or grow crops.”

Vila do Pesqueiro, home to about 160 families, lies within the Soure Marine Extractive Reserve, a protected area under the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation. Established to preserve traditional ways of life and sustainable resource management, the reserve now confronts the harsh realities of climate change. While fishing remains the primary livelihood, local cuisine and tourism provide supplementary income to the residents. Yet, intensifying tides and accelerating erosion threaten their existence.

For Ivanil’s son Jhonny, a fisherman studying biology at Universidade do Para, in the Marajo-Soure campus, these transformations are worrying. “The place where our houses used to be is now underwater,” he says. “For me, moving isn’t just about safety – it’s about protecting the place and the people who shaped my life.”

Meanwhile, residents like Benedito Lima and his wife Maria Lima have chosen to remain, despite their home now standing perilously close to the water’s edge. Leaving would mean surrendering their livelihood. “Every new tide shakes the ground,” Benedito says, gazing towards what used to be a safely distant canal. “This isn’t even the high-tide season yet.”

Climate adaptation here takes various forms. Some rebuild farther inland, while others adjust their daily routines to accommodate the sea’s advance. Community leader Patricia Ribeiro believes a collective resilience sustains Vila do Pesqueiro. “Our stories have always been passed down through generations,” she says. “This is our home, our ancestry. We want to stay here to protect what our families built. As long as we’re together, we won’t give up.”

As Brazil prepares to host the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in nearby Belem, communities like Vila do Pesqueiro exemplify what is at stake. Through its initiatives, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) says it supports efforts to enhance resilience, protect livelihoods, and ensure these families can continue living safely on their ancestral lands.

This photo gallery was provided by the International Organization for Migration.

As typhoon Tino (Kalmaegi, internationally) left over 200 Filipinos dead while affecting nearly 2 million people, President Marcos Jr declared “a state of national calamity.”

After the super typhoon Uwan (Fung-Wong) will add to the devastation, mass protests against huge flood control corruption are expected in the country.

In 2022, the Marcos Jr government pledged it would build on the legacy of the Duterte years and make Filipinos more prosperous and more secure. Critics claim both objectives have failed.

Billions of dollars lost to corruption                      

On July 27, Senator Panfilo Lacson warned that half of the 2 trillion pesos ($17 billion) allocated to the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) for flood control projects may have been lost to corruption in the past 15 years.

And yet, almost in parallel, President Marcos Jr stated his administration had implemented over 5,500 flood control projects and announced new plans amounting to more than $10 billion over the next 13 years.

Ever since then, Manila’s political class has been swept by allegations on corruption, mismanagement, and irregularities in government-funded flood management projects. In August, the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee launched a high-profile investigation into the irregularities, focusing on the “ghost” projects, license renting schemes and contractor monopolies.

Corruption has long been pervasive in Philippine politics, economy and society. In the Corruption Perception Index, the country has consistently scored among the worst in the region. Even in peacetime, it is at par with the civil war-torn Sierra Leone and oil-cursed Angola.

In the era of former President Duterte, corruption fight was spotlighted. Now it thrives again. According to surveys, 81% of Filipinos believe corruption has worsened since martial law was declared 53 years ago. It is compounding misguided economic policies.

Rising trade deficits, slowing investment                            

In the Duterte era, exports were led by electronics, with significant growth in tourism and business process outsourcing. Those times are now gone.

In the Duterte era, the effort was to attract multinationals, particularly Chinese firms, to serve as anchor companies that would foster Philippine suppliers. But due to the government’s geopolitics, Chinese – and increasingly Western – multinationals see too much economic and geopolitical risk in the country. And so, the investments that could have come to the Philippines have gone to Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand in the region.

Recently, even US Investment Climate Statement for the Philippines highlighted persistent corruption, a slow and opaque bureaucracy, and poor infrastructure as major disincentives to investors.

Lagging tourism                             

In Southeast Asia, Chinese tourism has played a vital role in the post-pandemic recovery. Before the pandemic, Chinese tourists accounted for 40-60% of the regional total.

Subsequently, regional recovery was fueled by Chinese tourism. The only exception? The Philippines.

In 2019, Chinese tourist arrivals in the country soared to over 1.7 million. As of September 2025, the Philippines has reported less than 204,000 Chinese arrivals for the year, a figure that is far, far below the government target. The country was banking on a 2-million visitors from China.

The sharp decline is attributed to geopolitical tensions, the suspension of the e-visa program, even safety concerns.

Even if the 2025 total would climb closer to 300,000, that would be just 15-20% of the 2019 level. It’s a catastrophic missed opportunity.

Sources: Trade deficits: Author, Philippine Statistics Authority; Tourism: Author, National Statistical Coordination Board Philippines; Exchange rate: Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas

BPO outsourcing at risk               

Digital economy is a major component of the GDP. But in the absence of domestic ICT anchor firms, the sector is at the mercy of Western offshoring. And that spells huge trouble at a time, when the West prioritizes trade wars, as evidenced by Manila’s costly losses in US tariff wars.

Meanwhile, geopolitics has alienated investments by Chinese ICT giants, which could have catalyzed ICT ecosystems in the country.

And there’s worse ahead. The Philippine outsourcing sector is a $30 billion industry that accounts for 7% of the Philippines’ GDP and commands 15% of the global market. Yet, one-third of its jobs in the Philippines are at risk from artificial intelligence (AI), with those in the BPO sector most vulnerable. Sadly, college-educated, young, urban, female, and well-paid workers in the services sector will be most exposed.

In addition to AI, US protectionist initiatives could perfect the jobs devastation in the Philippine outsourcing industry. Introduced in July, the bipartisan “Keep Call Centers in America Act” proposes to penalize US companies that offshore a significant portion of their call center jobs. The recent Halting International Relocation of Employment Act (HIRE Act) aims to curb outsourcing by imposing a 25% excise tax on payments to foreign workers.

If these realities kick in, US vulture capitalists can be expected to target and short the Philippines, which could compound challenges, as in the past.

Economic growth, missed opportunities                             

In early 2024, US news agency Bloomberg asked President Marcos Jr whether the Philippines could achieve an 8% growth rate. “Why not?” the president replied. “Yes, I think it is, I think it is doable.”

Yet, at the time, GDP year-on-year growth decelerated to barely 5.2%.

Have things got better? No.

In 2025, the government’s target was reduced to 5.5-6.5%. Just weeks ago, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) downgraded the Philippine growth projection to 5.4% this year. More recently, economic growth slowed to just 4.0% in the third quarter – the slowest since early 2021, when the COVID-19 pandemic caused a contraction.

Unsurprisingly, critics claim the incumbent economic policies have failed. Here’s a thought experiment about the extent of that failure. During the Duterte era, Philippine GDP increased from $329 billion to $404 billion, despite the pandemic plunge. On the back of that performance, IMF expected Philippine GDP to climb close to $640 billion by 2028.

Current IMF estimates suggest that by 2028, Philippine GDP would be less than $560 billion. So, the government is set to underperform by $80 billion.

That’s the cost of missed opportunities – although the final cost could prove higher.

Source: Author, data from IMF

At least five people have been killed after Typhoon Kalmaegi hit central and highland provinces in Vietnam, destroying thousands of homes and cutting power to more than a million households.

When I tell people what I cover for the Los Angeles Times, they’re delighted. A typical response is, “Sounds like fun!”

My beat is focused on wildlife and the outdoors. And in this world of fierce contention, over seemingly everything, it sounds downright peachy.

This is plenty of joy and wonder in the work. I’ve reported on the rehabilitation of a fuzzy baby sea otter by a surrogate mom and the resurgence of a rare songbird along the L.A. River.

However, there is also plenty of strife, messy politics and difficult decisions. (My inbox reflects the high emotion. I get hate and love mail, just like other reporters.)

Take a saga I’ve been writing about for more than a year concerning a plan by federal wildlife officials to shoot up to nearly half a million barred owls over three decades to save spotted owls in California, Washington and Oregon. Even someone who knows nothing about the matter can guess it’s controversial.

Since the strategy was approved last year by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, animal rights groups have fought to stop it, gaining traction with some U.S. lawmakers. Bipartisan legislators signed onto letters urging the Trump administration to cancel it, citing costs they said could top $1 billion. Then, this summer, Republicans in the House and Senate introduced resolutions that, if successful, would overturn the plan for good.

It was a nightmare scenario for environmental nonprofits, which acknowledge the moral quandary involved with killing so many animals, but say the barred owl population must be kept in check to prevent the extinction of the northern spotted owl, which is being muscled out of its native territory by its larger, more aggressive cousin. They also dispute that ten-figure price tag.

Then, at the eleventh hour, there was an upset in alliances. Logging advocates said canceling the plan could hinder timber sales in Oregon, and threaten production goals set by the Trump administration. That’s right: Loggers were now on the same side as conservationists, while right-wing politicians were aligned with animal welfare activists. Talk about unlikely, uncomfortable political bedfellows.

The loggers’ plea may have tipped the scales. Louisiana Republican John Kennedy, who spearheaded the Senate resolution, said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum — whose portfolio includes timber — personally asked him to abandon the effort. Kennedy, in colorful terms, declined to back down. He called the planned cull “DEI for owls” and said Burgum “loves it like the devil loves sin.” The resolution didn’t pass, splitting the Republican vote almost down the middle.

You don’t have to go to Washington, D.C., to find epic battles over wildlife management.

In California, there’s been much discussion in recent years about the best way to live alongside large predators such as mountain lions and wolves.

Wolves in California were wiped out by people about a century ago, and they started to recolonize the state only 14 years ago. The native species’ resurgence is celebrated by conservationists but derided by many ranchers who say the animals are hurting their bottom line when they eat their cattle.

State wildlife officials recently euthanized four gray wolves in the northern part of the state that were responsible for 70 livestock losses in less than six months, my colleague Clara Harter reported, marking the latest flashpoint in the effort to manage them.

“Wolves are one of the state’s most iconic species and coexistence is our collective future,” said Charlton Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. “But that comes with tremendous responsibility and sometimes hard decisions.”

Even hulking herbivores such as wild horses stir passionate disagreement.

In the Eastern Sierra last month, I walked among dozens of multi-colored equines with members of local Native American tribes, who told me of their deep connection to the animals — and their heartbreak over U.S. government plans to send them away.

Federal officials say the herd has surged to more than three times what the landscape can support, and pose a safety hazard on highways, while also damaging Mono Lake’s unique geologic formations. Under a plan approved earlier this year, hundreds are slated to be rounded up and removed.

A coalition that includes local tribes — which have cultural ties to the animals that go back generations — disputes many of these claims and argues that the removal plan is inhumane.

“I wish I had a magic wand and could solve it all,” Beth Pratt, of the National Wildlife Federation, told me after my article on the horses was published.

Stay tuned. I’ll be writing this newsletter about once a month to dig into important wildlife stories in the Golden State and beyond. Send me feedback, tips and cute cat photos at [email protected].

More recent wildlife news

Speaking of wolves: The Trump administration ordered Colorado to stop importing gray wolves from Canada as part of the state’s efforts to restore the predators, a shift that could hinder plans for more reintroductions this winter, according to the Associated Press’ Mead Gruver. The state has been releasing wolves west of the Continental Divide since 2023.

More than 17,000 acres of ancestral lands were returned to the Tule River Indian Tribe, which will allow for the reintroduction of Tule elk and the protection of habitat for California condors, among other conservation projects, my colleague Jessica Garrison reports.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office called it “the largest ancestral land return in the history of the region and a major step in addressing historical wrongs against California Native American tribes.”

One year after the discovery of golden mussels in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, dense colonies cling to boats and piers, threatening water for cities and farms — and there’s no help on the way, reports CalMatters’ Rachel Becker. State agencies have prioritized protecting other areas in the state from the infested Delta, the hub of the state’s water supply.

Will traditional holiday fare such as crab cakes be on the menu this year? As fellow Times reporter Susanne Rust writes, the need to protect humpback whales in California’s coastal waters, combined with widespread domoic acid contamination along the northern coast, has once again put the brakes on the Dungeness crab commercial fishery and parts of the recreational fishery this fall.

A few last things in climate news

My colleague Ian James wrote about a big shift in where L.A. will get its water: The city will double the size of a project to transform wastewater into purified drinking water, producing enough for 500,000 people. The recycled water will allow L.A. to stop taking water from creeks that feed Mono Lake, promising to resolve a long-running environmental conflict.

California’s proposed Zone Zero regulations, which would force homeowners to create an ember-resistant area around their houses, have stirred backlash. One provision causing consternation may require the removal of healthy plants from within five feet of their homes, which some say isn’t backed by science. Those in favor of the rules say they’re key to protecting dwellings from wildfires. Now, as The Times’ Noah Haggerty explains, state officials appear poised to miss a Dec. 31 deadline to finalize the regulations.

Clean energy stocks have surged 50% this year, significantly outpacing broader market gains despite Trump administration policies targeting the sector, Bloomberg reports. Demand for renewable power to fuel artificial intelligence data centers and China’s aggressive clean-tech expansion are driving the rally.

Park rangers furloughed by the federal shutdown are teaching preschoolers and elementary school students about nature, earning some extra income, my colleague Jenny Gold reports.

One more thing

If you’re not quite ready to let go of the Halloween mood, I have good news. November generally marks the end of tarantula mating season. As I reported, male tarantulas strike out every year from their burrows in search of a lover. Finding one can be fatal, whether she’s in the mood or not. Females are known to snack on their suitors. Gulp.

While the arachnids inhabit areas such as the Angeles National Forest and Santa Monica Mountains year-round, mating season — when the males are on the move — offers the best opportunity to spot one. Through the month of November, you can also gaze at them at the Natural History Museum’s spider pavilion.

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This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more wildlife and outdoors news, follow Lila Seidman at @lilaseidman.bsky.social on Bluesky and @lila_seidman on X.