climate

Under blazing skies at a tea plantation in India’s northeastern state of Assam, worker Kamini Kurmi wears an umbrella fastened over her head to keep her hands free to pluck delicate leaves from the bushes.

“When it’s really hot, my head spins and my heart begins to beat very fast,” said Kurmi, one of the many women employed for their dextrous fingers, instead of machines that harvest most conventional crops within a matter of days.

Weather extremes are shrivelling harvests on India’s tea plantations, endangering the future of an industry renowned for beverages as refreshing as the state of Assam and the adjoining hill station of Darjeeling in West Bengal state, while reshaping a global trade estimated at more than $10bn a year.

“Shifts in temperature and rainfall patterns are no longer occasional anomalies; they are the new normal,” said Rupanjali Deb Baruah, a scientist at the Tea Research Association.

As changing patterns reduce yields and stall output, rising domestic consumption in India is expected to shrink exports from the world’s second-largest tea producer.

While output stagnates in other key producers such as Kenya and Sri Lanka, declining Indian exports, which made up 12 percent of global trade last year, could boost prices.

Tea prices at Indian auctions have grown by just 4.8 percent a year for three decades, far behind the 10 percent achieved by staples such as wheat and rice.

The mildly warm, humid conditions crucial for Assam’s tea-growing districts are increasingly being disrupted by lengthy dry spells and sudden, intense rains.

Such weather not only helps pests breed, but also forces estate owners to turn to the rarely used practice of irrigating plantations, said Mritunjay Jalan, the owner of an 82-year-old tea estate in Assam’s Tinsukia district.

Rainfall there has dropped by more than 250mm (10 inches) between 1921 and 2024, while minimum temperatures have risen by 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit), the Tea Research Association says.

The monsoon, Assam’s key source of rain, as summer and winter showers have nearly disappeared, brought rainfall this season that was 38 percent below average.

That has helped to shorten the peak output season to just a few months, narrowing the harvesting window, said senior tea planter Prabhat Bezboruah.

Patchy rains bring more frequent pest infestations, leaving tea leaves discoloured, blotched brown, and sometimes riddled with tiny holes.

These measures, in turn, add to costs, which are already rising at 8 to 9 percent a year, driven up by higher wages and prices of fertiliser, said Hemant Bangur, chairman of the leading industry body, the Indian Tea Association.

Planters say government incentives are insufficient to spur replanting, crucial in Assam, where many colonial-era tea bushes yield less and lose resilience to weather as they age beyond the usual productive span of 40 to 50 years.

India’s tea industry has flourished for nearly 200 years, but its share of global trade could fall below the 2024 figure of 12 percent, as the increasing prosperity of a growing population boosts demand at home.

Domestic consumption jumped 23 percent over the past decade to 1.2 million tonnes, far outpacing production growth of 6.3 percent, the Indian Tea Association says.

While exports of quality tea have shrunk in recent years, India’s imports have grown, nearly doubling in 2024 to a record 45,300 tonnes.

That adds expense for overseas buyers, said executives of India’s leading merchants, at a time when global competitors such as Kenya face similar problems.

A top Trump administration official on Wednesday said the U.S. Department of Energy will cut billions of dollars in funding for energy projects in Democratic states.

“Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being canceled,” said Russell Vought, director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, in a post on X.

“The projects are in the following states: CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OR, VT, WA,” Vought said.

All 16 states listed did not vote for Trump in the 2024 election.

Vought said more information about the cuts would come from the U.S. Department of Energy, which also announced this week that it will open 13 million acres of federal lands for coal mining and provide $625 million to recommission or modernize coal-fired power plants.

In a news release, the department confirmed that it had terminated more than 300 financial awards associated with 223 projects, amounting to $7.56 billion. The department did not specify the project names or locations, but said the awards had been issued by multiple offices, including the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations and the Office Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

According to the DOE, the projects were canceled following a review that found they did not “adequately advance the nation’s energy needs, were not economically viable, and would not provide a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars.” About a quarter of the awards had been issued by the Biden administration between election day in November and Trump’s inauguration in January, the agency said.

California Senator Adam Schiff said Vought’s post amounts to political retaliation.

“Our democracy is badly broken when a president can illegally suspend projects for Blue states in order to punish his political enemies,” Schiff wrote on X. “They continue to break the law, and expect us to go along. Hell no.”

Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro described the move as “purely vindictive” and said it will result in higher energy prices across the country.

“Terminating critical energy projects in Democratic states weaponizes policy for political revenge and will only drive energy bills higher, increase unemployment, and eliminate jobs,” DeLauro said in a statement. “It is reckless and betrays both common sense and public trust.”

California and other states on Vought’s list have been working to advance clean energy projects such as solar power and offshore wind. Republican states working on similar efforts — such as Texas, the largest producer of wind energy in the U.S. — were not among Vought’s list of cuts, despite also receiving funding from the Department of Energy.

Vought, one of the authors of the conservative platform document Project 2025, has been actively involved in reshaping the federal government during the second Trump administration. Vought on Wednesday also announced that the U.S. Department of Transportation was freezing $18 million for two infrastructure projects in New York City “to ensure funding is not flowing based on unconstitutional [Diversity, Equity and Inclusion] principles.” The projects include a train tunnel connecting New York and New Jersey and a subway line running along Second Avenue in New York City.

His posts came on the first day of the U.S. government shutdown.

The recipients of the canceled awards will have 30 days to appeal the termination decisions, according to the DOE, which said some of the projects included in the announcement have already begun that process.

A typhoon that ripped roofs from homes has killed dozens of people across Vietnam and the Philippines, officials from both countries said, as a weakened Storm Bualoi crossed into neighbouring Laos.

The typhoon battered small islands in central Philippines last week, toppling trees and power pylons, unleashing floods, and forcing 400,000 people to evacuate. A Philippine civil defence official on Monday said the death toll there had more than doubled to 27, with most victims either drowning or being struck by debris.

Scientists warn that storms are becoming increasingly powerful as the planet warms due to human-induced climate change.

In Vietnam, Bualoi made landfall as a typhoon late on Sunday, generating winds of up to 130 kilometres per hour (80 miles per hour). At least 13 people were killed, while a search is ongoing for 20 others, disaster authorities stated in an online update.

More than 44,200 houses were damaged, including many with roofs torn off, predominantly in the central province of Ha Tinh. At least 800 homes were flooded and nearly 6,000 hectares (15,000 acres) of crops were inundated, according to the update.

At least nine people died when a typhoon-related whirlwind swept through the northern Vietnamese province of Ninh Binh early on Monday, according to the local disaster agency. One person was killed in the province of Hue and another in Thanh Hoa, with about 20 people reported missing by local and national disaster authorities.

More than 53,000 people were evacuated to schools and medical centres converted into temporary shelters before Bualoi made landfall in Vietnam, the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment said.

Four domestic airports, as well as parts of the national highway, were closed on Monday. More than 180 flights were cancelled or delayed, according to airport authorities. Parts of Nghe An and the steel-producing central province of Ha Tinh were without power, and schools were closed in affected regions.

Since making landfall in Vietnam, Bualoi has weakened as it moved across the border into Laos. It came in the wake of Super Typhoon Ragasa, which killed 14 people across northern Philippines. The country is struck by an average of 20 storms and typhoons each year, routinely affecting disaster-prone areas where millions of people live.

In Vietnam, 175 people were killed or went missing due to natural disasters from January to August this year, according to the General Statistics Office. Total damages were estimated at $371m, almost triple the amount during the same period in 2024, it said.

Typhoon Yagi killed hundreds of people in Vietnam in September last year and caused economic losses worth $3.3bn.

Yusuf Abdullahi stood beside the only well left in his town, its rim ringed with rust and water tinted a cloudy brown. For decades, the people of Bultu Briya, a village in Nigeria’s northeastern Adamawa State, had pulled their lives from this liquid in the ground, whether drinking, cooking, or watering their animals. But now, he said, the well has turned against them.

When the rains came last year, children who drank from the well fell sick with diarrhoea and clutched their stomachs in pain. The community had no choice but to abandon it forever. 

In Bultu Briya, desertification has seeped into the very veins of the villagers’ lives. Runoff washes through the encroaching sand each rainy season, leaching minerals like potassium into the water and leaving it contaminated, according to villagers, who claim it has made the water poisonous. More than 2,000 people once relied on this well, but many have already gone to nearby towns, across the border into the Niger Republic, and even as far as Libya, chasing survival in places where the sand has not yet stolen the water.

Behind Abdullahi, the desert stretched out in ridges of sand where millet fields once ripened and acacia trees once stood. The land that fed generations is now barren, and its people scattered. 

Bultu Briya was not always like this. Half a century ago, the Sahara Desert stopped far to the north, and life here followed the rhythm of the rains. In the 1980s, families could still fill their granaries with millet and sorghum. Children herded goats through pastures that turned green after the storms, and wells ran deep enough to sustain people and livestock.

That world has since vanished. 

Over the past four decades, the Sahara has expanded by nearly 10 per cent, pushing its southern edge steadily into the Sahel. In Nigeria alone, desertification currently threatens 11 of the country’s 36 states, with dunes advancing at an estimated 0.6 kilometres per year. In Yusufari, a local government area of Yobe State, satellite analysis shows that between 1984 and 2021, vegetation cover shrank by over 90 per cent, while surface water declined by more than 70 per cent.

Land cover change in Yusufari from 1984 to 2021

Graphics by HumAngle/CCIJ (2022), Data: Landsat Landcover analysis

By the early 2020s, the shifting dunes had crept so close to Bultu Briya that fields that were once heavy with grain were reduced to ridges of sand, and the acacia trees that anchored the soil were uprooted one by one.

The sand has already consumed neighbouring villages. In Tulo-Tulo and Bula-Tura, dunes pressed so close that families abandoned their homes. In Zakkari, a town 30 miles away, residents say they have not harvested a whole crop in more than seven years.

“When we were growing up, there was no desert here,” said Mohammed Bukar, 51, who has lived in Zakkari all his life. “As children, we cut grass for our livestock. Now farming is finished. Before, we filled a granary. Now we can’t even fill a sack.”

Scarcity of resources like food and water forced many of his neighbours to leave long ago. Some boarded buses bound for Lagos or Abuja, while others slipped quietly into the Niger Republic, hoping for better soil. Those who remain survive on what little their goats can graze. “We sell our animals just to eat,” Bukar said.

As armed conflict, extremist violence, rural terrorism, and economic despair uproot locals in the heart of the Sahel, a catastrophic climate collapse is accelerating transnational mobility. A HumAngle investigation, involving cross-border reporting and interviews with climate refugees in Nigeria, Cameroon, and the Niger Republic, reveals that the phenomenon driving families away from home is beyond just war, as climate crises toughen up. Matched with open-source analyses and satellite imagery investigation, the on-the-ground reporting shows how desert encroachments, poisoned or vanishing water resources, and extreme weather are making communities unlivable across the Sahel, sparking a refugee crisis driven by a hostile climate.  

The exodus

In many villages across northeastern Nigeria, the story is more chilling: As the desert advances, the farms collapse, the water dries up or becomes contaminated, and people leave. Some journeys are short. Families in Yobe, for instance, walk across the border into the Niger Republic, where relatives have settled in refugee-like encampments. Others are longer and more perilous. In Bultu Briya, 31-year-old Sani Bagira was preparing for his third attempt to reach Libya.

In his first attempt, he walked through Niger to Agadez and then paid smugglers for a ride north. It took him a week to reach Libya. He worked for two years as a farmhand, harvesting tomatoes and melons, before returning home with his savings. But the money was gone. His second journey lasted four years. He says he had no choice but to try again this time. But it was not rosy at their destination either.

“In Libya, they don’t love us,” he said. “They cheat us, they shoot us. You work three months and they throw you out without pay. But at least there, you can eat. Here, nothing.”

He rubbed his palms together, dry and cracked from years of farm work that no longer yields gain. “If we had food and water, we would never go,” he said, sitting on a low stool outside his mud-brick home, referring to his home town in Nigeria, “but here, we would die.” 

In 2022, the United Nations Refugee Agency predicted and warned that countries across the Sahelian states might face a new wave of conflict and mass displacements driven by rising temperatures, resource scarcity, and food insecurity. These predictions are turning into a dangerous reality as described, and the human toll is devastating, as many communities live in ruin or are devoid of human existence.

“Rising temperatures and extreme weather in the Sahel are worsening armed conflict, which is already destroying livelihoods, disrupting food security, and driving displacement,” said the global agency’s Special Advisor for Climate Action, Andrew Harper, in the report. “Only a massive boost in collective climate mitigation and adaptation can alleviate the current and future humanitarian consequences.” 

The report examined 10 Sahelian countries, including Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, and Senegal. It stated that unchecked climate emergencies like floods, droughts, and heatwaves will force more people to leave their homes for a saner world. 

HumAngle interviewed scores of locals trapped outside their homes, desperately searching for food and water sources, fertile lands and safer places to trade and thrive. While some showed interest in returning home to re-establish their lives, others said home was not a place to return to, as it reeks of ruins and devastation. 

Lukmon Akintola, the knowledge associate at the Global Centre for Climate Mobility, elaborated on the UN Refugee Agency’s predictions, stressing that transboundary climate migration is not the real problem but the lack of management on the part of authorities. The climate mobility expert believes that the best way to contain the climate-driven refugee crisis is to have conscious policies, such as planned relocation and climate adaptation schemes. He said that transboundary crises might emanate from these movements without conscious efforts. 

“Why are they moving? The lack of water? Build boreholes for them. Why do they want to move? There is desert encroachment. How can we build trees? But while we are trying to do that, do we have some sustainable solutions? Building trees is a nature-based solution,” he advised, noting that the government can adopt short-term solutions while planting trees for the long term.

“One way to manage people moving in and out is to help them adapt to their current location. Invest in adaptation strategies, starting from a blueprint or a policy, but also, like I said, engage with them. What do you want? Would you like to migrate? So I’m saying that even if they want to move, it will be because their agency decides to, and they are moving with the right knowledge.”

‘Without water, there’s no life’

Water is the difference between staying in one’s place and leaving in much of the Sahel; in Yobe State, it is the difference between life and death.

At the abandoned well in Bultu Briya, 45-year-old Yaana Mohammed pointed to the empty shaft. Built decades ago with World Bank funds, the well is now condemned. Villagers stopped using it after the water killed four animals: a ram, a cow, and two goats.

The well is located beside a potassium-contaminated pond, which leaves its water tinged with potassium. 

“It is not good to drink,” said Mohammed. “But that’s all we have.” He raised his voice, as if speaking to an unseen official. “We have called the government many times. They came, they assessed, but nothing happened. For the sake of Allah, give us a borehole. Without water, there is no life.”

Locals told HumAngle that they now trek five to seven kilometres in search of safer water. Some walk to Kuwaska and Bula Modu, nearby villages with solar-powered boreholes and hand pumps. Those with motorcycles, cows, or camels carry jerry cans. The rest go on foot, trudging under the sun with plastic containers balanced on their heads. 

“We are in dire need of this water,” Abdullahi said.

While Mohammed and hundreds of his fellow villagers struggle for water, billions of naira earmarked for environmental protection, including projects meant to halt desertification, continue to vanish without accountability.

At the centre of this story is the National Ecological Fund, established in 1981 as Nigeria’s flagship program to confront erosion, flooding and desert encroachment. It was meant to be a lifeline for communities like Bultu Briya, but it has become a cash cow for political elites over the decades. Billions flow into the fund each year. In 2023 alone, more than ₦8 billion (about $5 million) was directed to the three northeastern states most vulnerable to desertification: Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe. However, audits have repeatedly shown that the money rarely reaches the ground.

Yobe offers a unique case study. In 2020, state officials announced a three-million-tree planting scheme, budgeted at ₦3 billion ($2 million), to create green shelterbelts around towns like Bultu Briya and Zakkari. Such belts, if implemented, could have slowed the encroaching dunes.

While the plan looked ambitious, on the ground, there was nothing.

Villagers remember a brief appearance and launch of the project and a token distribution of seedlings to officials present for the launch. The government dubbed the place Dasuwa forest, giving hope to the community of a new expanse of forest area in the Lawan Kalam community in Yobe State. But most of the plants dried up during the dry season without water. 

When we visited what was supposed to be the Dusuwa Forest in August 2025, we confirmed that the project had effectively disappeared. Except for a handful of dried seedlings in sight, the supposed forest is without trees. 

“The government has a way of launching the project during the rainy season so that the seedlings can survive with human efforts. But as soon as it’s the dry season, nobody monitors the plants and they quickly dry up,” says Usman Adamu, a youth leader in Yobe state.

In Bultu Briya, where dunes have contaminated the water, villagers said the tree planting scheme never reached them. Yusuf, a community member, explained that while they heard of trees being planted in other villages, Bultu was left out entirely. 

Despite this, Yobe secured an even bigger climate project in 2024. The African Development Bank gave the state a $50 million loan to plant 40 million trees, more than ten times the scale of the failed scheme. The announcement infuriated communities that had never seen a grove since the first project.

“If they cannot plant three million trees, how will they plant forty million?” asked Adamu.

When asked about these failures, Yobe State’s Ministry of Environment insisted the government is taking steps to combat desert encroachment. Officials pointed to partnerships with the United Cities and Local Governments of Africa, the UN Development Programme, and World Bank–backed initiatives like ACReSAL and the SOLID project. They also cited an advocacy tour to desert-prone LGAs and a tree-planting competition to reward residents who nurture seedlings.

However, the ministry did not address the central question of accountability, especially the one asking why the 2020 tree-planting project was left unmonitored, why the seedlings dried up, and who, if anyone, was held responsible.

On the question of water, the Ministry of Water Resources distanced itself from responsibility. “Only the Ministry cannot solve the issue,” a message forwarded to our reporter from a Ministry of Water Resources official read. “However, the local government council is responsible for solving the issue. As I am speaking to you now, no complaint from that village has reached us.”

But villagers say they have been calling for boreholes and clean water for years, and that officials came to “assess” the situation without bringing relief.

Speaking on the mishandling of climate financing in Yobe state, Lukmon of the Global Centre for Climate Mobility, a US-based organisation, found a gap in how the tree-planting schemes were funded. He noted that it is clear some funds channelled to tackle climate shocks in Yobe took the top-down approach, meaning that the funders only engaged the state actors and ignored affected locals.

“I would say the agency of local actors is vital to address climate mobility. You don’t just pass it from top to bottom. You need to work with people on the ground, a bottom-up approach. This is highly intersecting with existing challenges, and one of the ones that we have mentioned is that there is a big problem of ungoverned spaces, a big problem of poor socio-economic realities, and the climate change issue is just exacerbating these existing issues,” he stressed.

A sea of sand

The Yusufari local government is primarily arid, with agricultural activity limited to its southernmost regions. The predominant vegetation is Shrub/Scrub, a low-growing, woody plant community that includes grasses and herbs, adapted to the dry conditions. Trees are sparse, consisting of individual, drought-resistant desert species found in patches within the shrubland. Satellite analysis indicates vegetation covers less than 10 per cent of the land surface.

What villagers describe in Yusufari is visible from space. Satellite data shows that the northern part of Yobe has become one of the most fragile environments in the Sahel.

NASA’s GRACE satellites, which measure underground water, reveal that while some parts of the Sahel region have gained water in recent years, Yusufari has not. Its groundwater levels have stayed flat for two decades. That means wells are not being replenished the way they are in nearby areas.

On the surface, the story is the same. A land cover analysis by the European Space Agency shows that Yobe has about 12 per cent of its land dedicated to cropland, the highest share in the entire corridor. But satellite records reveal that Yobe, unlike its neighbours, is losing much of the farmland that sustains its people. 

Over the past 20 years, vegetation in Borno, Yobe’s neighbour to the east, has actually increased, and even Diffa and Zinder across the border in Niger have shown signs of improvement. Yobe, however, has gone in the opposite direction, with satellite data indicating a loss of nearly a quarter of its vegetation cover in just two decades. This makes the state especially vulnerable to desert-induced land degradation, since most of its population depends directly on farming for food and survival. 

“From above, the view is unmistakable,” said GIS analyst Mansir Muhammed, who led the study. “Yusufari is an island of villages in a sea of sand. In this kind of condition, environmental displacement is just inevitable.”

Pressure across borders

The effects of environmental collapse in areas like Bultu Briya and Yusufari are an exodus. But most are leaving the frying pan for the fire. 

Farmers in Adamawa’s Ganye town are now crossing into Cameroon, where they clash with local communities over land and water resources. In Yobe, villagers who flee into the Niger Republic face hostility from hosts who are also battered by drought. Migration flows in both directions. Cameroonians, fleeing their climate shocks, are moving into Nigeria’s Adamawa state. The influx has strained schools, markets, and water sources. The competition for resources is feeding suspicion between neighbours.

In Niger, desertification is close to a permanent threat, with over 50 per cent of the land showing signs of degradation, according to environmental assessments. A World Food Programme report noted that the country loses nearly 100,000 hectares of productive land to erratic rainfall, rising temperatures, and frequent droughts and floods yearly. The human toll is that about 2.2 million people are acutely food insecure, while an estimated 1.5 million children suffer from moderate acute malnutrition and 400,000 more from severe malnutrition.

Cameroon, too, is feeling the pressure. Communities in the northern regions bordering Nigeria and the Sahel face declining rainfall and increasingly erratic seasons. Competition for water, pasture, and arable land is intensifying and leading to localised conflicts that echo across the porous national borders.

Satellite imagery shows that those who flee Yusufari into neighbouring areas of Chad and northern Cameroon are likely to meet with advancing aridity and competition for land. Data from the Living Atlas’s World Atlas of Desertification, analysed using United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) metrics, classifies the entire Yusufari belt, stretching across Nigeria into Niger, Chad, and Cameroon, as an arid zone highly “susceptible to desertification.” In other words, migration along this corridor often leads people from one fragile landscape into another that is equally at risk.

Even where conditions look slightly better, the relief is often short-lived. Diffa and Zinder in Niger have shown some signs of greening and water recovery, but their soils remain fragile and dry. For instance, satellite imagery indicates that Diffa alone is nearly 80 per cent bare land. And the northern regions in Cameroon struggle with the same aridity as Niger. 

Hostile sky, horrible land

When Abubakar Mohammed of Borno state decided to move to Cameroon, the climate of drought and dune crises was at its peak. The season carried a smell of scorched earth, he said, but beyond that, repeated sounds of gunfire from Boko Haram terrorists were enough reason to leave. Mohammed had been a farmer in Borno all his life. But the rains grew erratic over the years, the lake receded, and the soil cracked under the sun’s relentless glare. Then came Boko Haram.

“They came at night,” Abubakar recalled, his voice low. “We heard the shouting, the shots. They burned the storehouse. We ran with nothing.” His family joined a stream of neighbours heading east, toward the border with Cameroon. The journey was long, the air thick with fear and the uncertainty ahead. The culprit for this mass exodus is a deadly combination of climate and conflict, two intertwined forces setting families apart and homes shattered in the northeastern region of Nigeria.

Abubakar’s forceful migration is a macrocosm of this deadly crisis, but he’s obviously not the only one moving with the violent climatic wind toward the Cameroon border. Farming was once stable back home, but that changed with a noticeable shift in the weather. “The water we had the previous year was not the same this year,” he lamented, pointing to a severe change in rainfall patterns. This water scarcity wasn’t just a natural phenomenon; it was exacerbated by massive tree felling, a direct contributor to desertification and drought. As the land dried up, the competition for water and viable grazing land turned deadly.

This is where the conflict began. The drying farmlands of the north pushed herdsmen south, forcing them to trespass on cultivated lands to feed their cattle. “They will come and put their cattle in people’s farms,” Abubakar said, describing a situation where dialogue was no longer an option. When farmers like him tried to protest, the response was swift and violent. “If we talk, they fight us. And some were killed as a result.” 

The conflict wasn’t a minor inconvenience; it was a full-blown crisis that cost Abubakar his two brothers and his elder brother. This brutal violence, coupled with a breakdown of law and order where “even soldiers know about the situation,” left him and his family with no hope for safety or justice. Their home was burned, and they were forced to flee for their lives. The six-day journey to Cameroon was a desperate escape from a land that no longer supported them.

For 25-year-old Christiana Yusuf, the decision to leave was not made in a single night of violence, but over years of watching the land betray her. In Adamawa State, her small plot had once yielded enough maize to feed her children and sell at the market. But the rains had shifted, arriving late and ending early. When they did come, they came in torrents, washing away seedlings in muddy floods.

“First the drought, then the floods,” she said. “We could not plant in time. We could not harvest enough. And then the fighters came.”

The Boko Haram fighters turned already fragile livelihoods into impossible ones. Markets closed. Roads became dangerous. Even tending to a field became a gamble with life. By the time Abubakar and Christiana reached the Cameroonian frontier, they were part of a much larger exodus. In the Far North Region of Cameroon, local authorities and aid agencies were already struggling to cope with the influx. Many new arrivals came from Nigeria’s Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe states, areas hit hardest by the twin crises of climate and conflict.

In Cameroonian villages like Fotokol and Kousseri, Nigerian families found shelter in makeshift camps or with host communities. But the welcome, though warm, was strained. “We share what we have,” said a Cameroonian farmer interviewed by aid workers, “but the land is not enough for all of us now.”

Now in a camp in Cameroon, Christiana still clings to her identity as a farmer, growing small patches of maize and onions. “My body is used to farming,” she said. Even in a new country, the scars of climate-induced conflict and loss of livelihood run deep. Abubakar learned to live in the camps with ration cards and water queues. Christiana tried to keep her children in school, but classrooms were overcrowded, with few teachers. The host communities, affected by erratic rains and climate disruptions, struggled to absorb the newcomers. Back home, competition for land, water, and grazing intensified. In some areas, especially in Yobe state, disputes between farmers and herders, fueled by climate-driven scarcity, erupted into violence, displacing even more people.

We spoke of scores of Nigerians who fled to Cameroon, especially in the Adamawa and Far North regions. All of them echoed one fact: The twin forces of climate and conflict driving them away from home persist. Although their host communities might be hostile to them, they said, going back home is never an option. For both Abubakar and Christiana, Cameroon was not an end, but a pause. They dream of returning to Nigeria, to a land that can once again sustain them. But they know that return is a dangerous fantasy without peace and a climate they can depend on.

“I want to go home,” Abubakar said, “but home must be safe. And the land must live again.”

Until then, they will remain among the thousands whose lives have been reshaped by the collision of two forces, one born of human conflict and the other of a changing planet. In the Lake Chad Basin, neither shows signs of relenting.

From frying pan to fire

Interestingly, the Niger Republic is both a transport hub and a destination for many migrants fleeing climate hostility in northeastern Nigeria. When most locals from Nigeria flee to Niger, they find the place not quite different; the climate shocks in the country terrify its citizens, just as in Yobe, Borno or Adamawa. While many have resorted to starting their lives all over again in Niger, others, like Sani, will only stop where the grass is greener. Sani would stay for a few months in Niger before finding his route to Libya, through Agadez. His reason? “Niger’s extreme weather is not any better.”

Many young Nigerian climate migrants have ventured into illegal gold mining in the Djado area of Nthe iger Republic. They would labour for days under the hellish weather before touching a gold cut. The terrain is hazardous, as terrorists exploit it, and host communities are not exactly welcoming. Water resources are the bone of contention, even on the Djado mining site. In rural communities, water is scarce, just as in villages in the Yusufari axis of Yobe state. This condition puts migrants in a tight situation, competing with local Nigeriens for limited resources. 

“We were working in atrocious conditions,” said Mahamadou Ibrahim, a local miner from the Maradi region, who claimed to have worked with dozens of Nigerian climate migrants on the Djado gold site. “I’ve never seen a site as difficult as Djado.” According to him, the main difficulty was the lack of water. Najib Harouna, another miner in Djado, described the situation to our correspondent: “First of all, you have no shelter. These are makeshift sheds, built with straw reinforced with plastic.  If it rains, all the rain pours down on you, and you can always hear gunfire in the vicinity. And then, there are the abuse and exploitation.

“Some well owners take people to drive them into the bush, do a week or two weeks digging, if you haven’t found anything, you can’t leave, unless you pay them what they spent on you.”

The gruelling conditions of working on the Djado mining site forced Sani to Libya, but when he got there, a more appalling situation brought him back to his home country. But there is more to the danger of moving to another man’s land in the name of climate hazards: continual communal clashes.

Locals in the Niger Republic told our correspondent that they often brawl with Nigerians seeking greener pastures over land and water resources. Ironically, Nigerian climate migrants are moving to communities in Niger facing similar issues to what pushed them beyond borders. What the locals told HumAngle matched a 2021 study by the International Organisation for Migration on how climate change is driving internal migration within towns in the Niger Republic and even beyond the country’s borders.

IOM’s investigators interviewed over 350 rural households in Niger and 147 internal climate migrants who had moved from different areas to Niamey. The study showed that rising temperatures (75.5 per cent), droughts (63.9 per cent), and strong winds (34.6 per cent) are the climatic drivers of forced displacements and migrations in the country.

“85 per cent of the population of Niger depends on the environment for their livelihood. Unfortunately, environmental and climate shocks such as droughts, floods, wildfires, erratic rainfall, and desertification are intensifying and impacting the livelihoods of communities. This is causing a growing number of people to leave their homes,” said Barbara Rijks, IOM Chief of Mission in Niger.

Way forward through COP

Sahelian states have been spotlighted as hotspots for extreme climate crises. During COP29 in Baku, African leaders tried to negotiate immediate climate financing to contain the region’s hostile climate shocks and environmental setbacks. Although a New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) was established to raise $300 billion annually by 2035, the conference failed to deliver effective mechanisms to support the Sahel in combating climate hostility.

According to UNHCR, over 129.9 million people are forcibly displaced worldwide, with the Sahel contributing significantly due to compounding climate shocks and governance failures. The report noted how weak institutions, corruption, and limited capacity to manage conflict have hindered effective climate response, exacerbating forced migration and instability. Climate analysts reviewing the outcome of COP29 have urged the summit to prioritise African-led resilience strategies and transboundary climate adaptation risks (TCARs). Ahead of COP30 in Belém, Brazil, the analyst said the stakes for the Sahel are higher than ever, as African leaders call for binding standards for transparent governance and inclusive climate finance.

Climate mobility expert Lukmon said COP30 must confront the widening climate reality gap by scaling adaptation and financing resilience using a bottom-up approach. For the Sahel, the expert noted, this means investing in community-led solutions, strengthening governance frameworks, and ensuring that climate action translates into tangible protection for those most at risk.

“At the core of COP is the ability to discuss various aspects of climate change and forge partnerships. It is crucial to highlight that human mobility in the context of climate change is a growing reality, encompassing more than just forced displacement. Those of us working in this space prefer the term ‘mobility’over ‘migration’ to address related issues, including planned relocation,” he said.

Dorcas Ekupe and Amma Mousa contributed cross-border reporting/research. Mansir Muhammed analysed satellite images and illustrated maps. Satellite imagery was sourced from Google Earth Pro.

This story was supported by the Pulitzer Centre.

China’s new target for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions has been branded “disappointing” and “underwhelming” by climate experts, who warn the pledge falls far short of the action needed to avert climate catastrophe.

But the goal also raised hopes that China, which until now has only promised to stop emissions from rising, may be underpromising the level of cuts it can deliver amid a massive expansion in the country’s renewable energy capacity.

In a video address to the United Nations on Wednesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China would lower its emissions by 7-10 percent from their peak by 2035.

It was the first time that China, the world’s biggest polluter, outlined a goal for cutting emissions outright.

Xi, who called the shift away from carbon “the trend of our time”, also pledged to raise the share of non-fossil fuel sources in energy consumption to more than 30 percent, and increase wind and solar capacity sixfold compared with 2020.

While a significant moment in the global fight against climate change at a time when the United States is abandoning efforts to cut emissions, China’s target fails by some distance to align with the goals of the Paris Agreement, said some analysts.

“It’s unfortunately very disappointing: This target will not drive down emissions – it is below what China is likely to achieve already under its current climate policies,” Bill Hare, CEO of Berlin-based policy institute Climate Analytics, told Al Jazeera.

“China can do a lot better than this, and it hardly reflects its highest possible ambition.”

The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) has estimated that China would need to cut emissions by about 30 percent to be consistent with the Paris accord.

The agreement, adopted by 195 countries in 2015, calls for the rise in the average global temperature to be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

China’s actions on climate are viewed as especially critical following the US’s exit from the Paris accord under President Donald Trump, who used his UN speech this week to call the scientific consensus on climate change the “greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”.

“China’s underwhelming headline target misses a chance to deliver real leadership,” Li Shuo, director of China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, told Al Jazeera.

“Beijing is choosing to tiptoe forward when science calls for a full sprint. The pledge would, unfortunately, still put the world on a pathway to catastrophic climate impacts.”

Xi’s announcement left key questions about the emissions target unanswered, including how Beijing would define peak emissions.

Many climate experts believe that China’s emissions have already peaked or will do so this year, though some observers caution that the trend has been driven as much by the decline in business activity during the COVID-19 pandemic as the rollout of renewable energy.

China has had a paradoxical influence on global efforts to address climate change.

While responsible for roughly one-third of global emissions, the country is also a leader in green energy.

China produces about 80 percent of the world’s solar panels and 70 percent of its electric cars, according to the International Energy Agency.

The country also manufactures about 60 percent of wind turbines worldwide, according to London-based energy think tank Ember.

At the same time, China has continued to invest heavily in coal.

Last year, construction began on nearly 100 gigawatts (GW) of new or suspended coal power projects, the most in a decade, according to the CREA.

“China’s new pledge clearly falls short of expectations. Despite President Xi’s earlier promise to strictly control new coal power, the country has just approved more projects than at any point in nearly a decade,” Andreas Sieber, the associate director of policy and campaigns at 350.org, told Al Jazeera.

“The targets announced today, which are vague on the base year and conservative on renewables, leave ample room for continued emissions growth from coal-heavy sectors.”

Still, climate experts expressed hope that China’s target could be a signal of more transformative change to come.

While China’s announcement fell short of expectations, Beijing has a tendency to set targets that it can “confidently deliver”, said Yao Zhe, a Beijing-based policy adviser to Greenpeace East Asia.

“What’s hopeful is that the actual decarbonisation of China’s economy is likely to exceed its target on paper,” Yao said in a statement responding to the target, adding that her organisation’s latest analysis showed that emissions from China’s power sector could peak this year.

In a world “increasingly driven by self-interest”, China is in a stronger position than most to spur climate action, the Asia Society’s Li said.

“The country has emerged as a global clean tech superpower, and its dominant role in this sector could enable it to surpass current targets,” he said.

“Over time, this could push China toward a more proactive role on the international stage.”

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom criticized President Trump’s rejection of climate science as economic self-sabotage and “an abomination,” warning the country is “doubling down on stupid.”

The remarks came a day after Trump told world leaders at the United Nations that climate change is a “hoax” and “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”

“What an embarrassment,” Newsom told former President Clinton during a live-streamed fireside chat during Climate Week in New York City.

Newsom’s rebuttal came during a series of high-visibility appearances on the East Coast, including a spot on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on Tuesday where he called Trump an authoritarian and raised the prospect of the president attempting to remain in office illegally after his term ends.

Newsom homed in on Trump’s climate change denials while speaking to New York Times reporter David Gelles at the paper’s Climate Forward forum on Wednesday, saying thermometers are not political.

“You don’t have to believe in science. Believe in your own damn eyes,” Newsom said.

Newsom accused Trump of trying to recreate the 19th century by dismantling clean-energy standards and incentives, adding that the rollbacks cede momentum to China in electric vehicles, renewable energy innovation and other technologies. Newsom said California has worked for decades to be a leader in environmental policies that reduced smog, cleaned up waterways and created the market that led to an influx of electric cars and green technologies.

“There’s no Elon Musk, there’s no Tesla, without California’s regulatory framework,” Newsom said. “It wouldn’t exist.”

On Wednesday, his office said the state now has more than 200,000 public and shared electric vehicle charging points throughout the state — with nearly 70% more ports than gasoline nozzles.

Newsom said California’s economy has thrived amid investments in green energy.

Critics, including U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, said Wednesday that California’s focus on green energy has come at another price — high electricity bills.

“If you’re blue-collar, you’re working class, that hurts your quality of life,” said Wright, who spoke onstage with Gelles after Newsom.

Last week, Newsom signed a sweeping package of climate and environmental bills that he said would push California toward a clean-energy future while making an effort to stabilize gasoline prices.

Among those bills was an extension of the state’s nation-leading cap-and-trade program through 2045. That program caps greenhouse gas emissions and raises billions for the California climate initiatives. The program also will provide $20 billion for the state’s controversial, much-delayed high-speed rail project, which U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy called a “boondoggle.”

With Trump pulling back electric car subsidies and attempting to override fuel efficiency standards, Newsom said California is “the only game in town right now as it relates to large scale environmental leadership.”

The governor’s series of appearances this week underscored how the fight over climate change — and Trump’s insistence that it’s a “green scam” invented by “stupid people” — has become another deeply political talking point. Newsom didn’t waste time pointing that out.

“It’s a disgrace what Donald Trump has done, and it is a disgrace what his administration is doing to the environment,” Newsom said.

In his appearance on Colbert’s show, Newsom reupped his view that Trump’s government is an authoritarian regime.

“People ask, well, is ‘authoritarianism’ you being hyperbolic?” Newsom said. “Bulls—, we’re being hyperbolic. If you’re a Black and brown community, it’s here in this country.”

Vice President JD Vance said Newsom’s allegations about the Trump administration are dangerous.

“Here’s what happens when Democrats like Gavin Newsom say that these people are part of an authoritarian government, when the left-wing media lies about what they’re doing, when they lie about who they’re arresting, when they lie about the actual job of law enforcement, what they’re doing is encouraging crazy people to go and commit violence,” Vance said, speaking about the gunman who opened fire onto a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement location in Dallas on Wednesday.

Vance added that anyone whose political rhetoric encourages violence against law enforcement can “go straight to hell.”

Newsom, on the social media site X, mocked Vance’s comment about going to hell.

“Though when I watch you speak I certainly feel like I’m already there,” Newsom wrote

Newsom on Tuesday also said he believes Trump will attempt to ensure he remains president after his term ends.

“I fear that we will not have an election in 2028, I really mean that in the core of my soul, unless we wake up to the Code Red — what’s happening in this country, and we wake soberly to how serious this moment is,” Newsom said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom answering the Republican redistricting power-grab in Texas with a plan of his own is a powerful example of how Golden State Democrats are standing up to President Trump and firing up their base. But while the partisan fireworks draw attention, California Democrats are also quietly offering a different kind of model for the national party that may prove more meaningful in the long run. They’re not just resisting Trump; they’re actually governing.

Forget what you think you know about California and its lefty Democrats. They’re inching to the center, meeting voters where they are, and it’s improving people’s lives.

Just look at San Francisco, long seen as a dysfunctional emblem of failed progressive governance.

The city’s new mayor, Daniel Lurie, a nonprofit leader and philanthropist, has shaken off left-wing taboos and focused on delivering results. Instead of defunding the police, he’s hiring more officers and cracking down on shoplifting and drug crimes. Instead of demonizing the business community, he’s partnering with them. He’s also reforming zoning laws to make it easier to build more housing, which should ease the city’s affordability crunch and the homelessness crisis. Lurie has been in office less than a year, but already crime is plummeting and his approval rate has reached 73%.

National Democrats can find a lesson here: Voters care about results, not just empathy and ideology.

In Sacramento, Newsom and legislative Democrats are taking a similar tack, with a stubborn focus on affordability and the courage to stare down opposition, even in their own coalition. For example, the Legislature recently reformed the California Environmental Quality Act, a well-intentioned 50-year-old law that had been twisted to obstruct construction projects, clean energy development and public transportation. This angered some powerful environmental activists, but it will ultimately help bring down costs for housing and energy.

CEQA reform is emblematic of California’s new, more balanced approach on some thorny issues, like energy and climate. The state recently announced that two-thirds of its power now comes from clean energy sources — a major achievement. At the same time, Newsom and the Legislature agreed to a package of bills that will increase oil drilling while extending the state’s cap-and-trade program. Together, the package can reduce energy costs for Californians and strengthen our state’s chances of reaching carbon neutrality by 2045. Some environmental justice advocates and climate purists oppose the deal, but it’s an example of how to make progress in the long term while addressing affordability in the short term.

Immigration is another example: Newsom and other leading California Democrats continue to stand up to the Trump administration’s inhumane immigration policies, including suing to stop the deployment of troops to Los Angeles. But they also recently passed a budget that pulls back on costly plans to provide health insurance to all low-income undocumented immigrants.

This reflects the new California model: principled resistance and pragmatic governance. The results speak for themselves. The Golden State recently surpassed Japan to become the fourth-largest economy in the world.

Democratic leaders are making these moves because they are listening to voters who consistently say that the high cost of living is their top concern.

In 2024, these concerns contributed to a surprising number of Californians abandoning Democrats, even with Kamala Harris, the state’s former U.S. senator and attorney general, on the ticket. Trump flipped 10 counties and boosted his support in 45. Since 2016, 72% of California counties have gotten redder, including many with heavy Latino populations.

Democrats are paying attention and are wisely changing course. Being responsive to voter concerns doesn’t have to mean sacrificing core values, but it does require new approaches when the old ways aren’t working.

Karen Skelton (whose father is a political columnist for the Los Angeles Times) is a political strategist, having worked in the White House under Presidents Clinton and Biden and at the United States Departments of Energy, Transportation and Justice.

“I agree with President Donald Trump.” Polish President Karol Nawrocki told the UN General Assembly that an “ideological madness” had taken over Europe in recent years, leading to “bad decisions on migration” and a “green craziness.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed a sweeping package of climate and environment bills aimed at reducing the cost of electricity, stabilizing gasoline prices and propping up California’s struggling oil industry.

At a bill signing ceremony at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, Newsom told state lawmakers and representatives from labor, business, climate and energy groups that the package was a compromise, designed to push California toward a clean-energy future while still ensuring the state has enough affordable gasoline to meet drivers’ needs.

“Everybody recognized this moment and worked together across their differences, which were not insignificant,” Newsom said.

The bills signed into law include an extension of the state’s nation-leading cap-and-trade program through 2045. The program, rebranded as cap-and-invest, limits greenhouse gas emissions and raises billions for the state’s climate priorities by allowing large polluters to buy and sell their unused emission allowances at quarterly auctions.

The cap-and-invest program should funnel up to $60 billion through 2045 into lowering utility bill costs for California households and small businesses during months when prices spike, officials said. Another $20 billion will go toward the state’s trudging high-speed rail project, and $12 billion to public transit.

California’s greenhouse gas emissions have fallen 20% since 2000, while the state’s gross domestic product increased 78% over the same time period, Newsom’s office said.

The most controversial bill in the package was SB 237, which will allow oil and gas companies to drill up to 2,000 new wells per year through 2036 in Kern County, the heart of California oil country. The bill effectively circumvents a decade of legal challenges by environmental groups seeking to stymie drilling in the county that produces about three-fourths of the state’s crude oil.

Some environmentalists fumed over that trade-off, as well as over a provision that will allow the governor to suspend the state’s summer-blend gasoline fuel standards — which reduce emissions but drive up costs at the pump — if prices spike for more than 30 days or if it seems likely that they will.

That bill was introduced as part of an effort to stabilize volatile gas prices as Valero and Phillips 66 prepare to close refineries in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles County’s South Bay that represented an estimated 20% of the state’s refining capac ity.

Environmental groups said the bills still represent progress, particularly as the Trump administration and the Republican-led Congress step away from clean energy policy.

“D.C. has not led,” said Katelyn Roedner Sutter, the California state director for the Environmental Defense Fund. “California will.”

Through AB 825, California is also laying the groundwork for an electricity market among Western states. The bill is designed to make it easier to share solar and wind power across state lines, meaning California can export excess solar energy while importing wind energy from gustier places like New Mexico and Wyoming.

“Today is a big win for the Golden State,” said state Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg). “If you pay utility bills and you want them lower, you win. If you drive a car and hate gas price spikes, you win. If you want clean drinking water, you win. If you want to breathe clean air, you win today. It’s a pretty big winner’s circle.”

Last year’s record heat led to prolonged droughts and extreme floods across the globe.

Climate change is making the Earth’s water cycle increasingly erratic, resulting in extreme swings between deluge and drought across the world, the United Nations has warned.

The UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in a report released on Thursday that the global water cycle was becoming ever more unpredictable, with shrinking glaciers, droughts, unbalanced river basins and severe floods wreaking havoc.

“The world’s water resources are under growing pressure and, at the same time, more extreme water-related hazards are having an increasing impact on lives and livelihoods,” WMO chief Celeste Saulo said in a statement accompanying the release of the annual State of Global Water Resources report.

The international group of scientists assessed freshwater availability and water storage across the world, including lakes, river flow, groundwater, soil moisture, snow cover and ice melt.

Last year was the hottest on record, leading to prolonged droughts in northern parts of South America, the Amazon Basin and Southern Africa.

Parts of Central Africa, Europe and Asia, meanwhile, were dealing with wetter weather than usual, being hit with devastating floods or deadly storms, said the report.

At a global level, WMO said, 2024 was the sixth consecutive year where there had been a “clear imbalance” in the world’s river basins.

“Two-thirds have too much or too little water – reflecting the increasingly erratic hydrological cycle,” it said.

While the world has natural cycles of climate variability from year to year, long-term trends outlined in the report indicate that the water cycle, at a global scale, is accelerating.

Stefan Uhlenbrook, WMO director of hydrology in the water and cryosphere division, said scientists feel it is “increasingly difficult to predict”.

“It’s more erratic, so either too much or too low on average flow per year,” he said.

As global warming drives higher global temperatures, the atmosphere can hold more water, leading either to longer dry periods or more intense rainfall.

Uhlenbrook said: “The climate changing is everything changing, and that has an impact on the water cycle dynamics.”

The WMO also flagged how the water quality in vital lakes was declining due to warmer weather, and glaciers shrank across all regions for the third year in a row.

The meltwater had added about 1.2mm to the global sea level in a single year, contributing to flooding risk for hundreds of millions of people living in coastal zones, the report warned.

The WMO called for more monitoring and data sharing across the board.

“Understanding and quantifying water resources and hydrological extremes … is critical for managing risks,” the report said, flagging the dangers of droughts, floods and glacier loss.

Herat, Afghanistan – At the Islam Qala border, the relentless wind carries stinging dust that clings to skin as temperatures soar to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), transforming the ground into a scorching furnace.

Families huddle in narrow strips of shade, children protecting their faces with scarves as they await assistance.

For many, this harsh landscape represents their first glimpse of home after years in exile.

Since September 2023, more than four million Afghans have returned from Iran and Pakistan, almost 1.5 million of them in 2025 alone. Simultaneously, International Organization for Migration (IOM) data reveals nearly 350,000 Afghans were displaced within the first four months of the year, including internal displacement and cross-border migration.

This mass movement stems primarily from deteriorating economic conditions and escalating climate change impacts.

In Iran, Afghans were not merely temporary workers; they were vital to the economy, filling essential roles in construction, agriculture, and manufacturing. Their departure has created significant gaps in Iran’s workforce, while those returning face profound uncertainty in Afghanistan.

“Now I have nothing – no job, no home, and no one to turn to,” says Maryam, a widow with two children, who had lived in Iran for six years.

Despite suffering from kidney problems, her greatest pain comes from watching her 15-year-old son, Sadeq, search for work instead of attending school. He keeps his educational aspirations secret to spare his mother additional worry. For Maryam, this unspoken dream weighs heavier than any physical ailment.

The World Bank’s 2025 Development Update indicates Afghanistan’s economy remains precarious.

The massive influx of returnees has intensified unemployment pressures, with an estimated 1.7 million additional young people expected to enter an already overwhelmed labour market by 2030. Without substantial investment in skills development, entrepreneurship, and job creation, many may be forced to migrate again.

Since 2024, IOM has provided skills training to nearly 3,000 returnees, internally displaced people, and vulnerable host community members. The organisation has also supported more than 2,600 businesses — 22 percent of which are owned by women — helping to generate almost 12,000 jobs, including over 4,200 for women.

While these initiatives bring crucial stability and dignity, they represent only a fraction of what is needed. With increased funding, IOM can provide greater stability, reduce repeat migration risks, and help returnees rebuild dignified lives.

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

WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 (UPI) — As the United States faces shifts stemming from President Donald Trump‘s climate priorities and changes within the Environmental Protection Agency, Republican lawmakers held back-to-back hearings Tuesday to challenge climate intervention strategies and EPA enforcement under former President Joe Biden.

The House Oversight Committee hearings unfolded against the backdrop of major Trump administration moves to roll back environmental oversight.

Since January, the EPA has enacted changes that scrap emissions reporting and dismantle research offices, a signal Democratic lawmakers think the agency is prioritizing industry concerns and cost savings over transparency and scientific independence.

On Tuesday morning, the Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee met to discuss “Playing God with the Weather-A Disastrous Forecast,” which focused heavily on geoengineering and weather modification.

Later in the day, the Subcommittee on Federal Law Enforcement held a hearing on “From Protection to Persecution: EPA Enforcement Gone Rogue Under the Biden Administration,” which focused on instances of the EPA’s involvement in small businesses.

Chairman Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., opened the morning hearing by placing modern climate intervention in a long tradition of weather control, from Native American rain dances to Cold War era military projects, but warned today’s techniques of cloud seeding, carbon removal and blocking sunlight could pose unpredictable risks to human health and agriculture.

Greene argued that efforts to fight what she called a “climate change hoax” could lead to reckless global experiments.

“Some scientists think they can predict and control the impact of geoengineering, but even the best scientific models will never be able to capture all of God’s wonderful creation and nature’s mysteries,” she said.

Some lawmakers warned of unchecked experimentation with climate interventions, and the administration has signaled it will not pursue new regulatory frameworks for geoengineering research, but instead emphasize transparency and voluntary disclosure.

This was solidified when a video of EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin was shared at the hearing. Zeldin explained his commitment to total transparency by promising to publicly release all geoengineering research so that “baseless conspiracies” will be met “head on.”

On Friday, the agency proposed ending a rule that required about 8,000 facilities to publicly report their greenhouse gas emissions — a program that provided transparency into the country’s biggest polluters.

In the afternoon, the Subcommittee on Federal Law Enforcement looked at the EPA in a different light, focusing on what Republican lawmakers cited as an aggressive policy during the Biden administration.

“Instead of pursuing massive industrial polluters who employ highly paid legal defense teams, EPA under the Biden administration chose to focus on mom-and-pop shops, and with the shops that have limited means to argue their case against the legal might of the Department of Justice backed by the EPA,” Chairman Clay Higgins, R-La, said.

He added: “Often, EPA’s enforcement actions involved raids on shops by teams of armed EPA agents who intimidated small businesses with threats of criminal prosecution.”

The committee showcased small businesses as examples of what GOP
members called EPA’s overreach, including one from Higgins’ home state of Louisiana.

Kory Willis, owner and founder of Power Performances Enterprise Inc. of Baton Rouge, who runs a performance tuning shop, described an almost decade-long legal fight that culminated in a consent decree that nearly put him out of business.

According to an EPA press release in 2022, federal prosecutors described Willis’ company as among the country’s leading developers of “delete tunes” — software that disables emissions controls in diesel trucks.

Court records show his company tuned more than 175,000 vehicles, moving over $1 million in products monthly at its peak, with emissions expected to release more than 100 million pounds of excess pollutants over the lifetime of those vehicles.

Another witness, Eric Schaeffer, former executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project and EPA Office of Civil Enforcement director, subtly questioned Willis in his testimony.

“If you’re stuck behind a diesel truck, or a bunch of diesel trucks, in a traffic jam, and being showered with soot, live in an apartment next to a highway or the is city cooked by smog … don’t you have the right to breathe clean air? We used to think so,” Schaeffer said.

In its press release, the EPA said “Diesel emissions include multiple hazardous compounds and harm human health and the environment. Diesel emissions have been found to cause and worsen respiratory ailments such as asthma and lung cancer. One study indicated that 21,000 American deaths annually are attributable to diesel particulate matter.”

In March 2022, Willis and Power Performances Enterprise Inc. pleaded guilty to conspiracy and Clean Air Act violations, agreeing to pay $3.1 million in criminal fines and civil penalties and to stop selling defeat devices.

Schaeffer noted that the crackdown on defeat devices did not begin with the Biden administration.

“The launching of this enforcement initiative to crack down on the sale of these aftermarket devices started under the Trump administration in President Trump’s first term,” he said, pointing to EPA guidance at the time that warned of criminal penalties and urged companies to self-disclose violations.

Since then, federal courts have consistently upheld that the Clean Air Act covers aftermarket tampering devices.

Democratic members pushed back on the GOP positions, framing the hearing as not an examination of enforcement tools, but instead as part of the broader efforts for this administration to roll back environmental protections.

Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., highlighted the dismantling of environmental justice functions, warning that loosened oversight would leave vulnerable communities more exposed to soot, asthma and cancer.

For example, in July, the EPA announced it was dismantling its Office of Research and Development, the branch long responsible for the agency’s core scientific work, laying off many staff.

A new Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions will replace it — a change that EPA officials under Trump say will streamline research and save nearly $750 million.

Together, the hearings and EPA’s actions indicated a present and future narrowing of the agency’s enforcement reach, pulling back climate transparency rules and reframing scientific research.

Aerial video from the Philippines shows dozens of shanty homes burning in the Tondo area of Manila, where a fire displaced more than 1,100 families. Fire crews worked through Saturday night before declaring the blaze under control in the early hours of Sunday.

SACRAMENTO — In a bid to stabilize struggling crude-oil refineries, state lawmakers on Saturday passed a last-minute bill that would allow the construction of 2,000 new oil wells annually in the San Joaquin Valley while further restricting drilling along California’s iconic coastline.

The measure, Senate Bill 237, was part of a deal on climate and environmental issues brokered behind closed doors by Gov. Gavin Newsom, state Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister). The agreement aims to address growing concerns about affordability, primarily the price of gas, and the planned closure of two of the state’s 13 refineries.

California has enough refining capacity to meet demand right now, industry experts say, but the closures could reduce the state’s refining capacity by about 20% and lead to more volatile gas prices.

Democrats on Saturday framed the vote as a bitter but necessary pill to stabilize the energy market in the short term, even as the state pushes forward with the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy.

McGuire called the bills the “most impactful affordability, climate and energy packages in our state’s history.”

“We continue to chart the future, and these bills will put more money in the pockets of hard-working Californians and keep our air clean, all while powering our transition to a more sustainable economy,” McGuire said.

The planned April 2026 closure of Valero’s refinery in Benicia will lead to a loss of $1.6 billion in wages and drag down local government budgets, said Assemblymember Lori D. Wilson (D-Suisun City), who represents the area and co-authored SB 237.

Wilson acknowledged that the bill won’t help the Benicia refinery, but said that “directly increasing domestic production of crude oil and lowering our reliance on imports will help stabilize the market — it will help create and save jobs.”

Crude oil production in California is declining at an annualized rate of about 15%, about 50% faster than the state’s most aggressive forecast for a decline in demand for gasoline, analysts said this week.

The bill that lawmakers approved Saturday would grant statutory approval for up to 2,000 new wells per year in Kern County, the heart of California oil country.

That legislative fix, effective through 2036, would in effect circumvent a decade of legal challenges by environmental groups seeking to stymie drilling in the county that produces about three-fourths of the state’s crude oil.

“Kern County knows how to produce energy,” said state Sen. Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield). “We produce 80% of California’s oil, if allowed, 70% of the state’s wind and solar, and over 80% of the in-state battery storage capacity. We are the experts. We are not the enemy. We can help secure energy affordability for all Californians while enjoying the benefits of increased jobs and economic prosperity.”

Environmentalists have fumed over that trade-off and over a provision that would allow the governor to suspend the state’s summer-blend gasoline fuel standards, which reduce auto emissions but drive up costs at the pump, if prices spike for more than 30 days or if it seems likely that they will.

Some progressive Democrats voted against the bill, including Assemblymember Alex Lee (D-San José), the chair of the Legislative Progressive Caucus. The bill, Lee said, was a “regulatory giveaway to Big Oil” that would do little to stabilize gas prices or refineries, which are struggling because demand for oil is falling.

“We need to continue to focus on the future, not the past,” Lee said.

The bill also would make offshore drilling more difficult by tightening the safety and regulatory requirements for pipelines.

Lawmakers also voted to extend cap-and-trade, an ambitious climate program that sets limits on greenhouse gas emissions and allows large polluters to buy and sell unused emission allowances at quarterly auctions. Lawmakers signed off on a 15-year extension of the program, which has been renamed “cap and invest,” through 2045.

The program is seen as crucial for California to comply with its climate goals — including reaching carbon neutrality by 2045 — and also brings in billions in revenue that helps fund climate efforts, including high-speed rail and safe drinking water programs.

Also included in the package was AB 825, which creates a pathway for California to participate in a regional electricity market. If passed, the bill would expand the state’s ability to buy and sell clean power with other Western states in a move that supporters say will improve grid reliability and save money for ratepayers.

Opponents fear that California could yield control of its power grid to out-of-state authorities, including the federal government.

Activists from 40 countries sail from Tunisia to defy Israel’s blockade and deliver aid to Gaza.

An international convoy of boats, the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF), has set sail from Tunisia, aiming to defy Israel’s siege on Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid.

The GSF, which departed Bizerte Port on Saturday, includes more than 40 vessels carrying between 500 and 700 activists from more than 40 countries, according to Anadolu.

Participants say they are determined to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

Among those joining is Franco-Palestinian lawmaker Rima Hassan, a member of the French National Assembly, who announced her participation after boarding in Tunisia.

“Our governments are responsible for the continuation of the genocide in Gaza,” Hassan wrote on X, accusing European leaders of silence in the face of Israeli attacks on aid convoys. In June, she joined another Gaza-bound boat that Israeli forces seized in international waters.

he flotilla is supported by prominent activists, including Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, who has long been vilified by Israeli officials for her solidarity with Palestinians.

The flotilla reported this week that two of its ships – the Family, which had members of the steering committee on board, and the Alma – were attacked while anchored near Tunis.

Activists suspect Israeli involvement, noting that one of the vessels was struck by a drone.

Tunisia’s Ministry of the Interior confirmed a “premeditated aggression” and said an investigation had been launched.

Despite the attacks, flotilla organisers insist they will press ahead. “Faced with this inaction, I am joining this citizens’ initiative, which is the largest humanitarian maritime convoy ever undertaken,” Hassan said.

History of intervention

This is not the first time Israel has moved to stop such missions.

In early June, Israeli naval forces intercepted the Madleen ship in international waters, seizing its aid supplies and detaining the crew of 12 activists. Another vessel, the Conscience, was struck by drones in May near Maltese waters, leaving it unable to continue its journey.

Organisers say the GSF – named after the Arabic word for resilience – represents one of the boldest challenges yet to Israel’s control of Gaza’s coastline.

The attempt comes as the United Nations warns of famine in Gaza, with more than half a million people facing catastrophic hunger.

Khas Kunar, Afghanistan – Stoori was pulled out from under the rubble of his house in Kunar province after it was destroyed by the magnitude 6 earthquake which struck on the night of August 31. But the guilt of not being able to save his wife haunts him.

“I barely had enough time to pull out the body of my dead wife and place her on the rubble of our collapsed home before my children and I were evacuated,” the grief-stricken 40-year-old farmer says.

Authorities say about 2,200 people have been killed and more than 5,000 homes destroyed in eastern Afghanistan, most of them in Kunar province, where houses mostly built from wood and mud bricks crumbled in the shocks of the quake.

Stoori, who only gave one name, is now staying with his children in a sprawling evacuation camp 60km (37 miles) from his village – in Khas Kunar.

“My village has become a graveyard. All 40 families lost their homes. The earthquake killed 12 people in my community and left 22 others badly injured,” he says.

Winter is coming

In all, the UN says half a million people have been affected by the quake.

In this camp, which is lined with tents provided by international NGOs, nearly 5,000 people are sheltering, each with stories of loss and pain.

Thankfully, the camp has access to water and sanitation, and there are two small clinics ready to receive injured newcomers, as well as an ambulance which can be dispatched to collect people.

Right now, workers are digging a trench to install another water pipe, which will divert water to areas in need around the camp.

Just a few hundred metres away, what were once United States military warehouses have been transformed into government offices coordinating the emergency response.

The Taliban, which returned to power after US-led forces withdrew in 2021 after 20 years of occupation, has been overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster.

Tens of thousands of people are without any shelter at all just weeks before the onset of winter, and the mountainous terrain makes relief and rescue efforts difficult.

Najibullah Haqqani, Kunar’s provincial director for the Ministry of Information and Culture, says the authorities are working through a three-step emergency plan: Evacuate those at risk, provide shelter, food, and medical care in camps, and, eventually, rebuild homes or find permanent housing.

But the situation is becoming more challenging by the day. “Fortunately, we have received support from the government, local businesses, volunteers and international NGOs. They all came and helped with food and money for the displaced people,” he tells Al Jazeera.

‘The smell of dead animals fills the air’

More than 10 days after the tremor, new arrivals join the camp daily, inside the fortified walls of the former US base on the banks of the Kabul River.

Among them is Nurghal, a 52-year-old farmer from Shalatak village who was able to reunite with the surviving members of his family only on Wednesday morning. “From my large extended family, 52 people were killed and almost 70 were left badly injured,” he says. The devastation is “unimaginable”, he adds.

“The weather is cold in our area, and we don’t sleep outside this time of the year. That is why many people were trapped in their houses when the earthquake hit, and they were killed. Everything is destroyed back home, and all our animals are buried in debris. The smell of dead animals fills the air in my village.”

Life before the quake, he says, was stable. “Before the earthquake, we had everything we wanted: A home, livestock, our crops, and land. Now life is in the hospital and tents.”

Women face particular challenges in the aftermath of this disaster, as Taliban laws prevent them from travelling without male guardians – meaning it is hard for them to either get medical assistance or, in the case of female medical workers, to provide it.

The World Health Organization (WHO) asked Taliban authorities last week to lift travel restrictions for Afghan female aid workers, at least, to allow them to travel to help women in difficulties following the earthquake.

“A very big issue now is the increasing paucity of female staff in these places,” Dr Mukta Sharma, the deputy representative of WHO’s Afghanistan office, told the Reuters news agency.

Furthermore, since women have been banned from higher education by the Taliban, the number of qualified female medical staff is dwindling.

Despite these difficulties, the Taliban leadership says it is committed to ensuring that women will be properly treated, by male health workers if necessary.

Haqqani, Kunar’s provincial director for the Ministry of Information and Culture, tells Al Jazeera: “During the emergency situation, the military and volunteers evacuated and cared for everyone. On the second day, UNICEF set up a medical clinic in Nurghal district and they had female doctors as well. We took as many injured people as the clinic could handle there and they were treating everyone, male and female. In any emergency situation, there is no gender-based discrimination; any doctor available will treat any patients coming in. The priority is life saving.”

At a field hospital which has been set up inside the old US barracks by the displacement camp at Khas Kunar, six male doctors and one female doctor, 16 male nurses and 12 female nurses are tending to the injured. Currently, there are 34 patients here, 24 of whom are women and children – most of them were taken to Gamberi from their remote villages by Taliban military helicopters and then transferred the last 50km (30 miles) to the hospital by car.

The hospital’s director, Dr Shahid, who only gave one name, says male doctors and nurses are permitted to treat women and have been doing so without any issue.

‘A curse from the sky’

From his bed in the field hospital, Azim, a farmer in his mid-40s from Sohail Tangy village, 60km (37 miles) away, is recovering from fractures to his spine and right shoulder.

He fears returning to the devastation at home.

“The earthquake was like a curse from the sky. I don’t want to move back to that hell,” he tells Al Jazeera. “The government should give us land to rebuild our lives. My village has become the centre of destruction. My only request is to give us land somewhere else.”

Azim is still coming to terms with the loss of his loved ones. “Yesterday, my son told me that three of my brothers are dead. Some of my family members are in the Kabul and Jalalabad hospitals. And my wife is in Kabul military hospital,” he says.

Back in the evacuation camp, Stoori says he is holding onto hope, but only just.

“If God blesses us, maybe we can go back to our village before the winter comes,” he says.

“We have nothing left except our trust in God, and we ask the international community and authorities for help.”

Pacific Island leaders have kicked off their annual summit in the Solomon Islands, with climate change and security expected to take centre stage amid the battle for influence in the region between China and the United States.

The weeklong gathering began in Honiara on Monday with a meeting of the group’s small island states.

The leaders of the 18-member forum, including Australia and New Zealand, will head to the seaside settlement of Munda for a retreat on Thursday.

Notably, this year’s summit will take place without the forum’s two dozen donor partners, including China, the US and Taiwan, after a dispute over Taipei’s attendance caused the Solomon Islands to bar those observers.

Among 18 forum members, three have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, three have defence compacts with the US, and several are French territories. Thirteen of the members have ties with China.

Divavesi Waqa, the secretary-general of the Pacific Islands Forum, said this year’s meeting will cover “regional priorities”, including “climate change, ocean governance, security, [and] economic resilience”.

“These are not just policy issues. They are lived realities for our people,” Waqa told reporters on Sunday.

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele, who welcomed leaders from neighbouring countries to Honiara, said the meeting’s theme “Lumi Tugeda: Act Now for an Integrated Blue Pacific Continent” reflected the “urgency for regional unity and action”.

“If ever there was a time that demanded strengthened Pacific regionalism and collective action, it is now,” Manele said, according to a statement.

The Solomon Islands leader, who has sought to strengthen relations with Australia after Western criticism of his predecessor’s close ties with China, has previously defended his decision to bar foreign observers.

Manele told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) last month that the decision was temporary while the forum updates its procedures for non-member participation.

“The Pacific region must always lead, drive and own their own agenda and not be distracted by divisive issues pushed by external media,” Manele said, in apparent reference to reports that the decision was related to a decision not to include Taiwan in this year’s meeting.

“We are not under pressure from any external forces,” he said.

“Let me be very clear: Solomon Islands is a sovereign nation. Our government acts in the best interests of our nation and the region.”

At this year’s forum, the Pacific Islands leaders are expected to sign the Fiji-proposed “Ocean of Peace” Declaration, which the country’s Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka said comes as the Pacific region has “endured catastrophic calamities caused by climate change” as well as “its rich resources exploited by many”.

The proposal includes guiding principles, including “protecting and recognising the Pacific’s stewardship of the environment” as well as “peaceful resolution of disputes” and “rejection of coercion”, he said.

According to ABC, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will arrive in Honiara on Wednesday after visiting Vanuatu, where he is expected to sign a landmark pact to strengthen economic and security ties.

Vanuatu recently led an important case before the International Court of Justice, which saw the United Nations’ top court rule that states must act urgently to address the “existential threat” of climate change by cooperating to cut emissions.

Australia’s bid to host next year’s COP31 climate change meeting, as a Pacific COP, will be on the agenda in Honiara, amid criticism of Canberra’s mixed record on reducing its own emissions and fossil fuel exports.

Australia has previously pledged to work closely with its island neighbours to raise awareness of the challenges they face from rising sea levels and worsening storms.

The forum’s 18 members are Australia, the Cook Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, French Polynesia, Kiribati, Nauru, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.

Pakistan began evacuations last month after India released water from overflowing dams into low-lying border regions.

Nearly 300,000 people have been evacuated in the past 48 hours from flood-hit areas of Pakistan’s Punjab province following the latest flood alerts by India, officials have said, bringing the total number of people displaced since last month to 1.3 million.

A new flood alert was shared with Pakistan by neighbouring India through diplomatic channels early on Wednesday, said Arfan Ali Kathia, director-general of Punjab’s Provincial Disaster Management Authority.

Floodwaters have submerged dozens of villages in Punjab’s Muzaffargarh district, after earlier inundating Narowal and Sialkot, both near the border with India.

Authorities are also struggling to divert overflowing rivers onto farmlands to protect major cities, as part of one of the largest rescue and relief operations in the history of Punjab, which straddles eastern Pakistan and northwestern India.

The flood alert on Wednesday was the second in 24 hours following heavy rains and water releases from dams in India.

Thousands of rescuers using boats are taking part in the relief and rescue operations, while the military has also been deployed to transport people and animals from inundated villages, said Kathia.

Rescuers are also using drones to find people stranded on rooftops in the flood-hit areas. Kathia said more than 3.3 million people across 33,000 villages in the province have been affected. The damage is still being assessed and all those who lost homes and crops would be compensated by the Punjab government, he said.

Landslides and flooding have killed at least 30 people in India’s Punjab state, home to more than 30 million people, and nearly 20,000 have been evacuated since August 1.

In Pakistan, tent villages are being set up and food and other essential items are being supplied to flood-affected people, said Kathia, though many survivors complained about a lack of government aid.

Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif visited flood-hit areas in Muzaffargarh on Wednesday, meeting with displaced families at the camps.

About 40,000 people are in the relief camps, according to the National Disaster Management Authority. It remains unclear where the rest are sheltering.

Malik Ramzan, a displaced resident, said he chose to stay near his inundated home rather than enter a relief camp. “There are no liveable facilities in the camps,” he said. “Food isn’t delivered on time, and we are treated like beggars.”

Facilities at the camps “are very poor,” said Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder, reporting from Multan in Punjab. “There’s no clean drinking water, no proper toilet facilities, plus the fact that it’s very hot and humid, so it leads to dehydration.”

While these families have fans to keep cool in the heat, “there are frequent power breakdowns, so these people now are very vulnerable when it comes to their health and, of course, the outbreak of diseases.”

Last week’s flooding mainly hit districts in Kasur, Bahawalpur and Narowal.

Pakistan began mass evacuations last month after India released water from overflowing dams into low-lying border regions.

The latest floods are the worst since 2022, when climate-induced flooding killed nearly 1,700 people in Pakistan.

When the 2025 cloudburst hit Buner, a district located in northern Pakistan, villagers described how torrents of water came down upon their dwellings with such fury as never before seen. Entire settlements vanished behind walls of mud and rock. Survivors stood amidst the rubble of their houses, blaming fate, blaming climate change, and waiting for relief from the provincial government. But the mountains behind them spoke a different tale. Its slopes, stripped of forests and scarred by marble quarries, had long been preparing for this disaster.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is a province in northern Pakistan where the marble industry has grown very fast. By 2023, more than 6,000 marble factories were working in that province. These factories were mostly found in the Buner, Mardan, Swabi, Malakand, and Mansehra areas and also in the industrial belt on Warsak Road up to Mohmand and Bajaur. In just one city area alone, there were 350 units that Peshawar hosted. Yet alongside this economic boom came a quieter tragedy: about 1,091 units reportedly ran without environmental clearance from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Only 133 factories held the required no-objection certificates (NOCs). The rest continued to blast mountains, dump slurry, and strip forests unchecked.

The ecological costs have been devastating. Global Forest Watch figures demonstrate that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa lost an average of 4,690 hectares in tree cover per year between 2020 and 2024. Swat’s forest cover, which at one time was 30 percent in 1947, has now decreased to just about 15 percent in 2025. Deforestation led by marble quarry expansion and firewood extraction that caters to the needs of the urbanizing population results in barren slopes replacing natural watersheds. Mountain blasting destroys soil structure, leading to erosion and reducing the water absorption capacity of the land, thereby ensuring flash floods accompanied by landslides with every spell of heavy rain. The Buner flood was not a natural calamity, but rather it was the net result of years of environmental neglect by the PTI government.

Villagers, whose words seldom reach the ears of policymakers, tell of dry streams, washed-away topsoil, and lost animal corridors that happen when the forest disappears. Farmers watch their yields decline while factory owners argue the industry brings jobs and export earnings Pakistan needs. Yet the floods that now strike with greater intensity destroy far more than they ever build.

Here, the climate debate takes a dangerous turn. Pakistan is right to point out that it happens to be among the top five most climate-vulnerable countries while contributing less than one percent to global carbon emissions. But local actions—unregulated mining, illegal riverbed construction, and deforestation—weigh heavily in magnifying the impacts of a changing climate. Extreme weather may be global, yet the scale of destruction in places like Swat and Buner reflects local choices as much as global injustice.

What makes this tragedy sharper is the economic paradox at its core. The marble industry contributes almost $1.5 billion every year to the economy of Pakistan, and it is this region that supplies a major portion of exports from the country. But this same industry depletes those very ecosystems on which agriculture, tourism, and rural livelihoods depend. When floods destroy the crops, roads, and houses, the damage is more than what profits could be made out of marble extraction, hence leaving the communities in a cycle that has economic gains disappearing with ecological losses.

The provincial government’s unwillingness to act sits at the heart of the crisis, permitting unregulated factories to function as environmental grey zones. The provincial EPA remains underfunded and politically sidelined. Deforestation bans exist on paper but are rarely enforced. Mining royalties swell provincial coffers, while watershed restoration receives scant attention. More than one thousand illegal factories are operating without NOCs, and only a few face closure orders. The trade-off between short-term revenue and long-term ecological survival remains tilted towards profit.

The paradox is striking. The provincial government continues to blame the Global North for carbon emissions yet does not want to place regulations on companies that are destroying its own watersheds. International climate finance and disaster relief from Islamabad come after every flood, but the mountains continue to be stripped, the diggings continue expanding, and the risks multiply.

This does not have to be the case. If NOCs are strictly enforced, if mining companies undertake mandatory watershed restoration, and if provincial climate adaptation plans are integrated with industrial licensing, the trajectory can be altered. When mountain quarrying was regulated in Turkey and Nepal, mining was allowed to proceed, but only under conditions of ecological stewardship, which is only possible under strong governance.

Until then, the people of Buner, Swat, and Malakand pay. With every flood deadlier than the last, every disaster is met with a cycle of blame and appeals for relief. Yes, climate change is a global issue, but in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, it’s as much about local negligence as it is about distant smokestacks. Without governance reforms, no amount of international aid can stop those mountains from crumbling when the next storm comes.

Some countries (such as Bhutan and Sri Lanka) in South Asia have recently piloted community-based watershed rehabilitation efforts wherein local bodies keep checks on mining activities, which are accompanied by financial payouts for reforestation. If applied here, it has the potential to transform the current humanitarian recovery response into an upfront investment for risk reduction. This could pressurize provincial authorities of KP to enforce stricter measures and to plan for resilience in the long run.

The provincial government sinks into its political warfare with the center, treading on anti-state rhetoric while there are crises within its own borders. As elites trade barbs and chase power across the hall, ordinary people pay the price of floods and deforestation and unregulated mining.

In Punjab province, all three major rivers overflowed simultaneously, for the first time in the country’s history.

Nearly half a million people have been displaced by flooding in eastern Pakistan after days of heavy rain swelled rivers, according to rescue officials, who have been carrying out a huge rescue operation as the country struggles with a monsoon season of devastation.

According to a statement released Saturday by the Punjab Disaster Management Authority (PDMA), 835 people have died in the monsoon since June 26, with 195 in Punjab province alone.

Three transboundary rivers that cut through Punjab, which borders India, have swollen to exceptionally high levels, affecting more than 2,300 villages.

The regional Punjab government has initiated controlled breaches of key flood bunds to divert surging waters from the Chenab, Ravi and Sutlej rivers. All three major rivers overflowed simultaneously, for the first time in the country’s history, according to local media.

Nabeel Javed, the head of the Punjab government’s relief services, said on Saturday that 481,000 people stranded by the floods have been evacuated, along with 405,000 livestock.

Overall, more than 1.5 million people have been affected by the flooding.

“This is the biggest rescue operation in Punjab’s history,” Irfan Ali Khan, the head of the province’s disaster management agency, said at a news conference.

He said more than 800 boats and 1,300 rescue personnel were involved in evacuating families from affected regions, mostly in rural areas near the banks of the three rivers.

‘No human life left unattended’

The latest spell of monsoon flooding since the start of the week has killed 30 people, Khan said, with several hundred left dead throughout the heavier-than-usual season that began in June.

“No human life is being left unattended. All kinds of rescue efforts are continuing,” Khan said.

More than 500 relief camps have been set up to provide shelter to families and their livestock.

Farmer Safdar Munir in the city of Kasur said the floods took away his crops and all his belongings.

“So, we are pulling out our cattle as there is no fodder to feed our livestock. We have received no help from the government,” he told Al Jazeera.

Abid, another farmer, said: “The water came and destroyed everything. It is with great difficulty that I could save my livestock. My farm and crops are all underwater.”

In the impoverished town of Shahdara, on the outskirts of the provincial capital of Lahore, dozens of families were gathered in a school after fleeing the rising water in their homes.

Rains continued throughout Saturday, including in Lahore, the country’s second-largest city, where an entire housing development was half submerged by water.

The Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) forecast new rounds of widespread rain, wind and thunderstorms across multiple regions.

In mid-August, more than 400 Pakistanis were killed in a matter of days by landslides caused by torrential rains on the other side of the country, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, close to Afghanistan and the only province held by the opposition to the federal authorities.

In 2022, unprecedented monsoon floods submerged a third of Pakistan, with the southern province of Sindh the worst-affected area.