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Aid groups have stopped using a new sea route to get aid to Gaza after an Israeli strike on the World Central Kitchen convoy that killed seven workers on Monday, April 1. Ships had been leaving from the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. Cyprus is a popular vacation destination, and for thousands of years, it has been a center of commerce and migration. National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek walked the length of the island in 2014. He was and still is on a 24,000-mile walk, retracing the first human migration out of Africa.Salopek caught up with The World's Carolyn Beeler to discuss the juxtapositions of Cyprus' past and present. Carolyn Beeler: Paul, you got to Cyprus on a modern diesel-powered ship. But how did the first inhabitants of that island get there?Paul Salopek: Yeah, they arrived by sea also, of course. From what we know about the archeology of Cyprus, they were some of the earliest settlers to make villages, making this transition from hunter-gatherers to being settled. When they got to Cyprus, way back 12,000 years or so ago, there were miniature hippopotamuses and elephants on the island, and they ate them all. And then they settled down and started farming.In one of your dispatches, you wrote that Cyprus is one of the oldest inhabited islands on earth. What do we know about those early inhabitants other than that they barbecued pygmy hippopotamuses?Well, they eventually became very powerful as the centuries rolled by because they started to discover that they controlled a very valuable resource, which was copper. And so, leading into the Copper Age, which led into the Bronze Age, they were sitting on top of a giant bank account. And as a consequence, what's happened to Cyprus, it's interesting, even in today's news, given the tragedies that are happening in the Middle East right now, is that it became invaded and overrun by so many different civilizations. Back to, you know, the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, Persians, Byzantines, Arabs, Ottomans, just the list goes on and on. It's just been washed over, as if by waves, by different groups of people. Two faiths: earthly vs. cosmic rewards, Famagusta, northern Cyprus. Join the journey at outofedenwalk.org.  Credit: Paul Salopek/National Geographic  You can see that by looking at a map of Cyprus. Nestled in the eastern Mediterranean, it's so close to Africa, Europe, and Asia. How much does its location and those waves of conquest factor into the island's culture today?I think that that kind of DNA imprint has got to be there. You know, it's kind of a layer on layer on layers in the many thumbprints of the people who've been there. And I suspect it'll continue today because of the instability in Israel and neighboring Lebanon. They just got 2,000 migrants who showed up on boats trying to escape that area, as the war started to spread into Lebanon. So, the waves continue.Going back to your crossing of the island on foot, what was that like? Can you tell me about it? Well, it was unique in this long, crazy journey of mine because normally, I walk with what I call walking partners. It's just baked into the DNA of the project that I walk with local people who act like the cultural interpreters of the landscapes they call home, making the storytelling much better. But because I was in a rush to reach the next country, Turkey, and because Cyprus is relatively small, I decided to hoof it across the island alone.How did that impact your experience of the place not having those local partners?Cyprus was unique. I've gone through, I think, 20 countries so far. Cyprus is the only one that I walked through alone because I was in a hurry. I had an appointment to kind of reach a walking partner waiting in Turkey, so I hoofed it eight days across the island, up through these beautiful mountains covered with kind of carob trees, olive trees, hay-colored fields and white chalky roads. And I could get by [speaking] English because the most recent wave of nomads to come through Cyprus are tourists. And so there's a tourist industry there. Into the layered foothills of the Troodos Mountains, Cyprus. Join the journey at outofedenwalk.org.  Credit: Paul Salopek/National Geographic I'm curious. We've been discussing this place being a draw for people from all over. So, what kind of languages did you hear while walking across the island?It was like walking into a polyglot bazaar, where I saw African stevedores speaking North African languages. A little bit further on, they were Indian workers plowing the fields, listening to sitar music on their earbuds. And there Russian tourists laid out, you know, in pink ranks, baking under the sun. It was a very polyglot place. Empty rooms with a view. The hulks of old war-emptied hotels overlook Varosha's fabled beach, northern Cyrpus. Join the journey at outofedenwalk.org.  Credit: Paul Salopek/National Geographic Speaking of Cyprus, which is famously divided between Greek and Turkish areas, you crossed the line from one jurisdiction into the other. What was that like?This was another continuation of how borders figure into this walking project across the world. Sometimes, they stop me. I have to turn left or right and walk around whatever country is not letting me in. This was a case where that border — which had been militarized, they've been on the front line because of a war in Cyprus, between ethnic Greeks and ethnic Turks —  it was like a front line. It's called the Green Line. There were sandbags. There was kind of no man's land. But it was open. And trade was going back and forth. And when I talked to both the Cypriots on the Greek side and the Cypriots on the northern Turkish side, I said, "How are you guys living with this? It's been, you know, almost 50 years." They said, "Paul, we are more like each other than we are like Greece or Turkey." It was a kind of classic border culture, like the US-Mexico border. They have more in common with each other, this kind of hybrid zone of cultures, than they do with the big countries that border there.But you were just easily waved through this border, which seems very porous. It's interesting to reflect that that border is getting much more porous, whereas so many others worldwide are being hardened. Migration is trying to be prevented.That's absolutely right. That's kind of the high spots of that border, is that going from a front line that was mined and that would have been deadly to cross a few decades ago? It's actually kind of a bit blurry now. And let's see what happens. It's been in this cold, frozen war stasis condition, patrolled by the UN and whatnot. The hope I heard from the people on both sides was that there would be some weight to make that border go away altogether. Waiting. Sinan Pasha mosque, the converted 14th-century church of Saints Peter and Paul. Join the journey at outofedenwalk.org. Credit: Paul Salopek/National Geographic  It is, of course, still there. And there is a deserted resort straddling the line between Greek and Turkish zones. You called it Europe's ghost city. What was it like walking through that?There was this abandoned city. It used to have, apparently, 39,000 people or so in it. It was one of the most famous resorts in the Mediterranean. Big movie stars in the '70s, [like] Paul Newman and Sophia Loren, would go there for a holiday. Five-star hotels. And because it was on the front line and remains contested, it's been sitting and rotting under the Mediterranean sun. Empty. Seagulls live in those five-star suites now because there are no windows. The beaches are empty. It's been fenced off by the Turkish army. It was very bizarre like a Dresden-like ruin sitting on this beautiful, jewel-like beach setting.Parts of this interview have been lightly edited for length and clarity.Writer and National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek has embarked on a 24,000-mile storytelling trek across the world called the “Out of Eden Walk.” The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, has funded Salopek and the project since 2013. Explore the project here. Follow the journey on X at @PaulSalopek, @outofedenwalk and also at @InsideNatGeo.

It was in the ancient city of Petra, in 2013, when National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek said he came upon a crossroad filled with antiquity, fabulous monuments, palaces and grand avenues chiseled into a sandstone canyon far above the rift valley of Jordan. After walking for the better part of a year through the desolate deserts of the Horn of Africa and then into the almost equally desert and empty landscape of Saudi Arabia, Salopek said he was welcomed into  Jordan by a Bedouin musician named Qasim Ali. Qasim Ali sings the blues, Bedouin style, at Petra, the ancient heart of the Nabatean empire. Join the journey at outofedenwalk.org. Credit: Paul Salopek/National Geographic Ali sang the blues while playing the Rababa, an ancient stringed instrument. Salopek described it as a dramatic setting.“It kind of became the backdrop music for stepping from nomadism into millennia of settlement, into this highly contested, many-chambered heart that we call the Levant,” he said.The World's Marco Werman talked more with Salopek about his journey through Jordan and into the Israeli-occupied West Bank, following in the footsteps of the first humans out of Africa. Marco Werman: Your walk through Jordan was a kind of transition from the world of Bedouin herders and nomadic life to a world of farms and villages where early people first put down roots. How did walking it on foot help you appreciate human history?Paul Salopek: Well, it was kind of almost a schizophrenic reality, Marco. There was kind of walking through every day at three miles an hour out of the empty desert, and suddenly tomato farms started to appear. Irrigation canals … the whole infrastructure of modern-day farming. But at the same time, my project is about deep, deep history and the people I'm following, when they walked through, none of that was there. But something happened when we first migrated out of Africa, through this part of the world. As one archeologist told me, we finally sat down. We stopped moving so much. We settled. We invented agriculture. We started piling rocks on top of each other. We smelted metal. And this era, called the Neolithic, is the one, essentially, that we're still inhabiting today. A city-based, urban, settled lifestyle. This was one of the corners of the world where it began. Ghawarna women dye wool using oxide-rich mud. Modaita, the yawning camel is unimpressed. Join the journey at outofedenwalk.org.  Credit: Paul Salopek/National Geographic  You crossed a border in May of 2014, the Jordan River, and you walked into the West Bank through Israeli army checkpoints. Give us a sense of life in the Palestinian West Bank in 2014.Back at that time, it was a time of, relatively speaking, calm, right? I mean, there's always tension in this corner of the world, but there was no open warfare that I saw. But this, this was a foretaste, again, of this extraordinary maze of the Middle East, of the West Bank, which is partitioned, as you probably know, into three different administrative sectors: Israeli, Palestinian, and then mixed administrative control. There were checkpoints everywhere. There were barriers everywhere. For somebody coming from almost a year on foot, out of kind of relatively open horizons, it was dizzying. It was just a bit surreal. I was walking at the time with my Palestinian walking partner Bassam Almohor, and he said, “Paul, this is my life. I have to kind of change personality every time I cross one of these checkpoints.” And he was a walker, Marco. He was one of the founders of a walking club based in Ramallah. His philosophy was “My piece of Earth. This place I call home is so small that walking makes it big. This is how I keep my sanity.” Bullet on the road to Bethlehem. Join the journey at outofedenwalk.org.  Credit: Paul Salopek/National Geographic  Wow. Well, we know that things had been tense and violent in the West Bank before 2014 when you were there. Your journey also took you into the ancient city of Jerusalem. You walk the same paths as the ancient Egyptians, Jews, Greeks, Romans, early Christians and Muslims. How much did that sense of history color your view of the modern state of Israel?It was inescapable. I mean, there are just so many layers. Again, I deal with historians and archeologists. These are the people that I talk to to advise me on what compass bearing to move on as I pass along these ancient pathways of dispersal out of Africa. Another archeologist based in Jerusalem said, “Paul, Jerusalem was a village, a settlement that was prehistoric.” You know, it started to kind of appear in the consciousness of that inhabited landscape around the Bronze Age. I measured history, recorded history, from the time of that settlement to today, there had been 700 or more wars. But everybody that I met in that highly conflicted, highly contested, very small corner of the world has their own ways of trying to keep life good. And he said, “Paul, I focused not on those 700 wars but on the spaces of peace in between.” In Bethlehem, the Church of the Nativity. Join the journey at outofedenwalk.org.  Credit: Paul Salopek/National Geographic  So, as you follow the news from the Middle East today, what jogs your memories of walking the Holy Land on foot?This part of the world was new to me. I never covered it as a journalist, and I'd covered some pretty big episodes of mass violence among humans in Africa. I covered, for example, the Congo Civil War, which was one of the bloodiest and most devastating at the time in the early 2000s. The numbers there are staggering. In Central Africa, almost 5 million people died in that conflict. And so here I am, coming from out of Africa into the Middle East, where it's tiny, by African standards. And I was astonished at the amount of attention that was focused on it. It was like there was this global stadium built around this quadrant of the world, where the whole world was looking down on these conflicts among villages, among cities, among invisible lines. To be perfectly candid, I was kind of scratching my head. I said, “Why is this corner of the world getting so much attention when the rest of the world has far larger, gaping wounds, in terms of just bloodshed?” If you want to use a metric of human blood. But now, looking back from 13 years later, seeing what's happening now, I think that was a measure, sort of my naivete, of the fact that I was comparing human suffering to human suffering ... which is always a dangerous thing to do. And what we're seeing now is just how incredibly deep — it may be small, Marco — but how incredibly deep these fissures run. Yuval Ben-Ami at the Separation Barrier in East Jerusalem. Erected by the Israeli government to thwart terror attacks, it cleaves some Palestinian neighborhoods in half. Join the journey at outofedenwalk.org.  Credit: Paul Salopek/National Geographic  It struck me when you said you'd been in Africa for that long. You actually started in the Out of Eden Walk. You've kind of followed, in a way, the Levantine Corridor that humans left many thousands of years ago into the Middle East. I wonder how, on foot, that changed how you see this tense modern world.When you walk for very long periods – and I'm talking months and years – across horizons ... you kind of enter a mental state where you look at the surface tensions of the world. You look at the cities, the conflicts, the way we've treated the planet, the way we've subjugated and, in many ways, destroyed nature. And I'm not saying that it makes you fatalistic, but there's a sense of equanimity that comes with it. A sense of, “God, this is all going to be scraped away.” Everything we say is going to be scraped away during the next glaciation. And all of our monuments, all of our heroes, all of our statues are going to be kind of in the moraines of these glaciers, 12,000 years from now. That doesn't make me feel fatalistic. It doesn't make me shrug. It gives me a sense of, sort of, I don't know, of … patience, if you will, with this troublesome species that we are — both so very good and very bad.Parts of this interview have been lightly edited for length and clarity.Writer and National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek has embarked on a 24,000-mile storytelling trek across the world called the “Out of Eden Walk.” The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, has funded Salopek and the project since 2013. Explore the project here. Follow the journey on X at @PaulSalopek, @outofedenwalk and also at @InsideNatGeo.

As sunset approached, a colorful feast was underway at Hugo Losada's home. Twenty blue and gold macaws flew into his garden to feed on sunflower seeds and fruits.One of the parrots perched on Losada's head like a big hat and fed on a banana that he held in his hand.“These birds just fill me up with joy,” said Losada, who has been feeding macaws for the past two years. “You can even go on vacation, and they'll sort out how to get their own food.” A group of blue and gold macaws flies around Caracas, Venezuela in search of food. The birds were initially brought to the city as pets, but now hundreds of them roam around the city freely.  Credit: Manuel Rueda/The World Every day, hundreds of macaws fly around Venezuela's capital city in search of food, dazzling residents with their bright colors and peculiar calls.The birds are not native to Caracas. And they were brought to the city under dubious circumstances. But now, they roam the city freely and have formed a special relationship with its people. Hugo Losada feeds a group of blue and gold macaws that visit his garden every afternoon. The doctor says the birds bring him joy and relaxation.  Credit: Manuel Rueda/The World “The macaws distract me and pull me away from negative thoughts,” said Lucy Cortez, a graphic designer who works from home.Every day, she feeds a group of blue and gold macaws that fly up to her apartment and perch on a small ledge where she also has some plants. “I don't know if there's any other place in the world where you can interact with macaws from your window.”Lucy Cortez, graphic designer in Caracas“It's very special,” Cortez said. “I don't know if there's any other place in the world where you can interact with macaws from your window.” Lucy Cortez feeds macaws that fly up to her apartment in Caracas. She says the macaws provide her with a welcome break from her job as a graphic designer.  Credit: Manuel Rueda/The World Macaws were first brought to Caracas in the 1970s by people who bought them in rural areas of southern Venezuela and smuggled them into the city as pets.They were kept in cages in people's homes. But they were noisy, and eventually, some people got tired of them and let them fly away.Maria Lourdes Gonzalez, a biologist who studies these birds, said that the macaws found palm trees where they could make nests. And several tree species, like mango trees, provided them with food.The birds reproduced successfully over the years thanks to the city's mild weather and its abundant sources of food, and also because Caracas lacks the predators that hunt macaws in South America's rainforests, like monkeys and eagles.“In the wild, their survival rate is like one nestling for every two nests,” Gonzalez said outside her office at Simon Bolivar University, where macaws can be easily spotted in the afternoon. “Here, in Caracas, they lay three eggs and all of them will survive.”According to Gonzalez there are at least 600 macaws flying around the city that have descended from pets, including the blue and gold macaws, and also scarlet macaws that are native to the Amazon. These birds mingle with the one native species of macaw, a small apple-green one known as the maracaná or Ara Severus. But only the macaws that descended from pets seem to have little fear of humans. The apple green macaw known as the maracaná is native to Caracas. Unlike the blue and gold macaws that descend from pets, maracanas tend to avoid contact with humans.  Credit: Manuel Rueda/The World “They teach their nestlings to come to humans to get food,” Gonzalez said. “And they love to be in contact with us because we give food to them.”As the birds become easier to spot, they have become a symbol of Caracas, where they appear on murals and souvenirs. Some locals also run Instagram accounts dedicated to the birds.Karem Guevara runs an account with more than 100,000 followers. She leaves food for the birds on the ledges of her apartment's windows and films them as they eat and play.“There are people who have left Venezuela and miss seeing these birds,” she said. “And for them, this account is like a window so that they can continue to enjoy this spectacle.”The city's small tourism industry has also embraced the trend, with some agencies offering macaw-spotting tours.In the busy neighborhood of Las Mercedes, the Ololo Hotel attracts the birds to its terrace every morning by leaving out a tray with sunflower seeds. That way the guests can take photos with the birds while they're having breakfast.“The macaws sort of bring tourists to us,” said Jean Paul Simon, the hotel's owner. “We have guests who just come here to have some breakfast and, even though they're not staying with us, they just come here to see the macaws.”But even though the birds are popular with the city's residents, the macaws' future in Caracas isn't guaranteed. Blue and gold macaws are native to the Amazon. They were initially smuggled into Caracas as pets. Credit: Manuel Rueda/The World Biologist Maria Lourdes Gonzalez explained that the birds only nest in old palm trees, whose trunks have been hollowed out by a local insect. Old palm trees don't have leaves, and the city government has been removing some of them because they're not pretty. “Now, we have a huge population [that needs] to reproduce and, each year, there are less and less spaces to reproduce,” Gonzalez said.So far, there hasn't been an outcry to save the macaws' habitat. Gonzalez said that if city workers continue to knock down the old palm trees, some of the birds might try to migrate to nearby cities that are 20 or 30 km away.She said that, ultimately, the future of these birds depends on the humans who brought them to the city in the first place.“This is an introduced species,” she said. “It's a decision from the people if this population stays in Caracas or has to leave.”Related: ‘Birds are everywhere!' Women bird guides in Uganda set a global example

On a recent day in the Cardamom Mountains of southwest Cambodia, a local resident steered a boat along a calm waterway, pointing out plants grown by community members: durian, banana, jackfruit, avocado. This area has seen increased patrolling by the Cambodian military, environmental officials and staff of the New York-based nonprofit Wildlife Alliance, according to the man, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution. “All of this farmland belongs to people. Starting from the border of the forest, that's where people have enjoyed farming every year for a long time,” he said. “We've done farming here for many years already before they came to do conservation.” Cambodia's monsoonal wet season drenches Toap Khley village in the Southern Cardamom National Park's Areng Valley. Credit: Anton L. Delgado/Southeast Asia Globe The small farms dotting the riverbank are part of a protected area that is now being enforced through a forest carbon offset project known as the Southern Cardamom REDD+ Project. A new report from Human Rights Watch found that the project had violated the rights of Indigenous Chong people who live here, documenting forced evictions, arrests and harassment. The project brought in more than $18 million by 2021 through carbon credit sales. Companies including Delta Air Lines, Stella McCartney, McKinsey and Boeing bought the credits in an attempt to reduce their overall carbon footprint, in this case, by supporting a project that patrols a conservation area to prevent deforestation. The industry has faced a slew of critical coverage in the last few years, with accusations that projects have overstated their climate benefits. The research from Human Rights Watch indicates that these projects can also harm local and Indigenous groups in the name of conservation.  A sign in Chamnar village, the furthest community in Areng Valley, indicates that a new water tower was supported by the Southern Cardamom REDD+ project within the national park. Credit: Anton L. Delgado/Southeast Asia Globe Empty boats line one side of the riverbank, as the Chong Indigenous fishers and farmers are restricted from crossing over to cultivate their crops, the resident explained.The local people support conservation of forested areas, he said, but want to continue cultivating crops in areas that have long been agricultural plots. Instead, members of his community have been arrested for collecting sustainable forest products, had their crops destroyed and huts burned down, according to the report.“People are farming on land that they have customarily thought belongs to them but the interpretation of the project is that this farming amounts to an environmental crime,” said Luciana Téllez Chávez, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch and the lead author of the report. “Some people have also been jailed for basically just performing the activities that have formed the core of their livelihoods for generations.”Luciana Téllez Chávez, senior researcher, Human Rights Watch“Some people have also been jailed for basically just performing the activities that have formed the core of their livelihoods for generations.” A bathroom, supported by the Southern Cardamom REDD+ Project within the national park, is visible from the rain-drenched gate of a home in Samraong village. Credit: Anton L. Delgado/Southeast Asia Globe This carbon offset project was able to sell credits at higher prices because it received additional certifications reserved for projects that specifically benefit local and Indigenous communities. But Human Rights Watch found that the process of obtaining "free, prior and informed consent" from residents did not begin until 2 and 1/2 years after the project had already started. “I cannot imagine a more egregious problem than reversing free, prior and informed consent. If you say that happened and the opposite happened, why should I trust anything you say anywhere else?” said Danny Cullenward, a climate economist and lawyer. For Cullenward, the report findings are made even worse by the fact that some of the issues were documented in the project's own audits years before the investigation. The auditing firm SCS Global Services, for instance, noted that the free, prior and informed consent meetings with residents began 31 months after the January 2015 project start date, but still determined that the project was “in conformance” with certification requirements. “Every single party in this transaction has a financial interest in there being more credits issued,” Cullenward said. “It's a lose-lose situation here because, either one of the parties has really screwed up at its job or the rules are so weak, you really don't want to have any confidence in their application elsewhere.”The credits are certified by the US nonprofit Verra, the world's leading carbon credit certifier, which is meant to confirm that the projects produce certain environmental and social benefits. Verra began its own investigation of the project after Human Rights Watch shared its preliminary findings in June. Joel Finkelstein, Verra's senior director for media and advocacy, told The World that the allegations are appalling. He believes Verra's auditing system is something the organization can really stand behind.“It's a system designed to get to meaningful, credible, high-integrity climate impact and ethical processes in these projects,” he said. “If that was not the case here, our investigation will find that out and there will be censures for that, too.”Verra would not provide a timeline for when its investigation will be completed, and said its policy is to not provide commentary while an investigation is ongoing. SCS Global Services said in an email that its policy was to not comment on ongoing reviews. Cambodia's Environment Ministry did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Wildlife Alliance said in a statement that the Human Rights Watch report “fundamentally distorts the reality of the project.” A local resident walks down the red road to Chamnar Village in the Areng Valley of the Southern Cardamom National Park. Credit: Anton L. Delgado/Southeast Asia Globe At his family home, a Chong Indigenous man in his late 50s said the rangers and officials carrying out the carbon offset project have cut down crops grown by his community. "They should be protecting only the forest, not [patrolling] the plantations and trees that people have planted for years,” the man said, who also asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from the Wildlife Alliance. He still farms in the area despite the patrols, but is afraid of being spotted. He doesn't earn enough for his family's daily living expenses, and had to take out private loans for $150."I only ask the companies that gave to [Wildlife Alliance] and the REDD+ Project to review the map that overlaps with people's land,” he said. “Do not hurt the people anymore."The authorities don't go after people who have excavators, he said, but they come for people with small farms like him. Additional reporting and translation by Phon Sothyroth.

It's so hot in the middle of the day in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, Karis Magnin said, she would never go to Kite Beach when the sun's out. But by 11 p.m., the temperature drops to around 88 degrees Fahrenheit, and the humidity also decreases a little. The beach is open all night. “It's comfortable, and the breeze is nice,” Magnin said as she sipped her iced tea and ate bratwurst at a table near the sand, with her friend, Ashley Taylor Smith, on a recent night.The two weren't alone — the beach was packed, and the boardwalk was abuzz.Scientists say 2023 was the hottest year on record, and that it was hotter than it's been in thousands of years. Cities and towns all over the world have been affected, and many, like Dubai, have started to find ways to adapt to the hotter new reality. In May of 2023, the municipality of Dubai designated several night beaches — open 24 hours and free to access — to make the city more attractive, improve quality of life and boost tourism, according to a government video posted on X. Dubai Municipality produced a video, which it posted on X, about its night beaches. Credit: Dubai Municipality on X In the face of the region's extreme weather, night beaches are one way to appeal to more people, it adds.The beaches in Dubai are uniquely equipped for the adjustment. They have floodlights, digital screens projecting safety information, late-night dining options, games, jogging areas and rides. And the lifeguards remain on duty into the wee hours of the morning to counter the risks of swimming at night.EJ Yco, who runs the iced tea stand at Kite Beach, said he generally opens at 2 p.m., but that people don't usually start showing up until 7 p.m. or 8 p.m. Before then, it's just too hot and humid.“You cannot stay outside or you're going to burn up,” he said. “So, the people like to come at night.”Melissa Finnecane, a behavioral scientist and also the vice president of science and innovation at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that coastal communities all over the world have been scrambling to find ways to deal with the effects of climate change. Families play on a public beach with the Burj al-Arab hotel behind them in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Friday, May 29, 2020.  Credit: Jon Gambrell/AP In Fiji, resorts have started offering more indoor activities for guests who need a break from the heat or shelter from storms; the coastal town of Montauk in New York has created a plan to relocate part of the community inland; and in the Maldives, the government has built an artificial island to make up for land lost to sea-level rise.  “We do have to think about adaptation strategies,” she said, adding, “We really are going to be struggling more and more.”  Finnecane said that the most-important consideration is still preventative measures, such as reducing carbon emissions. But mitigating the effects of climate change is not just an engineering challenge.“Social infrastructure, meaning the places people gather to spend time and build strength as a community,” are also important, she emphasized. Like at Kite Beach — where Magnin and Smith looked out at the gulf waters illuminated by floodlights. “This is great,” Smith said. “It just feels really relaxed. You can make a day out of it” —  or a night.

These days, the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea region are known for being conflict zones. But 60,000 years ago, they were pathways out of Africa for our oldest ancestors. National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek has been following the migration routes of early humans from their origins in Africa, across the globe, to the southern tip of South America since 2013.He began in Ethiopia and then continued his journey through Djibouti, a small East African country that borders Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia."I crossed into Djibouti across a border that was desert on one side, desert on the other. Just unchanging dryness," Salopek told The World. "Temperatures [would go] up to 120 degrees during the day. There was a drought, so there had been no rain for a year." My chapeau gets a long overdue washing by Houssain Mohamed Houssain—in boiling sulfur water. Delousing was included. Join the journey at outofedenwalk.org. Photograph by Paul Salopek, National Geographic Credit: Paul Salopek/National Geographic But the extreme weather conditions weren't what haunted him most. "I was literally walking in many places, the same corridors of dispersal, of early humans, literally on top of their bones, in some cases going through ancient fossil fields." Silver Sea. The finish line for the African leg of the walk: the Gulf of Tadjourah, Djibouti. Join the journey at outofedenwalk.org. Photograph by Paul Salopek, National Geographic Credit: Paul Salopek/National Geographic He was stirred by the past's connection to current world events and the fact that migrants still walk the same ancient trails today."I wish it were being propelled by positive forces. But as we all know, it's often negative reasons for leaving. It takes enormous pressure to get people to uproot and move. And I think we need to remember that as we deal with these very complex issues of mobile populations."Listen to the full interview by clicking on the blue player above to learn more about Paul Salopek's experiences in Djibouti and his journey on the Red Sea. Writer and National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek has embarked on a 24,000-mile storytelling trek across the world called the Out of Eden Walk. The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, has funded Salopek and the project since 2013. Explore the project here. Follow the journey on X at @PaulSalopek, @outofedenwalk and also at @InsideNatGeo.

When dispatch rider Efo Pascal recently returned to Accra on his motorbike from one of his delivery rounds, he came back with a dusty black sweater and helmet. “Since the whole of last week and this week, the dust is too much, and it is really bad. This is my first delivery today yet, see how dirty I look,” he said.Ghana is in the grip of this year's harmattan season — characterized by dry, dusty winds between the end of November through March — as winds from the Sahara desert reach West Africa.Since December, the skyline in Accra has been hazy with excessive dust flying in the air.Last week, Accra's air quality was labeled hazardous by the Ghana Meteorological Agency, the Environmental Protection Agency and other air quality monitoring platforms. The harmattan season is not new to Ghana, but experts say climate change is intensifying these harsh weather conditions and leading to increased health hazards. Pascal said that driving at night has become dangerous due to visibility problems. And his health, too, is taking a hit. He said he's already been to the hospital twice in the past two weeks due to breathing problems. “Breathing was really hard for me, especially at night."Efo Pascal, dispatch rider, Accra, Ghana“Breathing was really hard for me, especially at night. I had pains in my chest, and I was coughing,” he said as he pulled medicine out of his pocket. “The doctor said I had some infections from the air. That's why they gave me antibiotics,” he said.Yet he still struggles with his breathing. Last August, a team of scientists published new research indicating a substantial correlation between air pollution and antibiotic resistance, resulting in about 480,000 premature deaths in 2018.Pascal said he fears his health may deteriorate. And he's not the only one. Patience Denu, a teacher at the Fountain Basic School in Accra, said the current dry weather is making some children sick. Inside the school courtyard, children usually run around or chat with friends during recess — but the weather is taking a toll. “They [the children] are always complaining of headaches."Patience Denu, teacher, Fountain Basic School, Accra, Ghana“Their faces, all dry, their lips are breaking and all that. Because of that, they are always like, ‘My head…I'm feeling tired…' They are always complaining of headaches,” she said. Patience Denu is a teacher at Fountain Basic School in Accra, Ghana.   Credit: Ridwan Karim Dini-Osman/The World Denu said the situation is making schoolwork tedious. When the children don't feel well, she said the children have to spend a few days at home. The school may shut down if the situation does not improve, she added.  Emmanuel Osei Waziri is dropping off his children at school. He said he's concerned about Accra's worsening air quality. Emmanuel Osei Waziri, who recently dropped off his children at school, said he's worried. “The dust is everywhere, and it's hard to shield them from it. How do I even tell if it is not already affecting their lungs? We are still monitoring whether we may have to keep them at home for some time until the air becomes normal,” he said.Surge in respiratory illnessesSome hospitals are now seeing a surge in respiratory tract infections among children.At the Child Health Emergency unit of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra, Mabel Okine said her 2-year-old has been coughing excessively and having breathing difficulties in the last two weeks.“This is the third time I am bringing her to the hospital. We have tried prescriptions and even home remedies, but she is still not getting better. I sell water by the road and usually strap her on my back. So I think the air has entered her system,” she said.Pediatrician Dr. Frank Owusu Sekeyere said they are recording 30 respiratory tract infection cases per day compared to just six cases every two months before the harmattan season started. “So, the children are coming in with either a runny nose or they are snorty, coryza [acute mucous] and then, they are also coughing. And then sometimes, they also come with signs of respiratory tract infections."Dr. Frank Owusu Sekeyere, Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Accra, Ghana “So, the children are coming in with either a runny nose, or they are snorty, coryza [acute mucous], and then, they are also coughing. And then sometimes, they also come with signs of respiratory tract infections. What we also see is that fine particles in the air are worsening preexisting conditions. The situation is quite disturbing,” he said.'Health effects of climate change are very real'Accra now sits alongside Delhi, in India, as one of the most highly polluted cities in the world. The fastest-growing African city of 4 million people sees a daily influx of 2.5 million business commuters. And the city is already grappling with the effects of climate change due to rapid urbanization and industrialization.Selina Amoah, head of environmental quality at the EPA, said this year's harmattan season is worse than years prior. “From our monitoring locations along the roadside, we realized that the pollution levels are high — and this is largely due to climate change. Rising temperatures, changing wind patterns, and increased desertification have all contributed to the severity of the weather,” she said. Selina Amoah is head of environmental quality at the Environmental Protection Agency in Ghana.  Credit: Ridwan Karim Dini-Osman/The World The expansion of desert areas has led to an increase in dust that is then carried by the harmattan winds. Amoah said climate change can influence the intensity and duration of the harmattan season, potentially leading to more severe dust storms or altered patterns of dust transport. This can also have a detrimental impact on air quality.“The only thing we can do now is to take precautions to stay safe."Selina Amoah, head of environmental quality, Environmental Protection Agency, Accra, Ghana“The only thing we can do now is to take precautions to stay safe,” Amoah said. They are encouraging people to stay indoors and wear a mask if they must go outdoors. They are also asking the public to refrain from burning garbage outside and to use water to douse their surroundings in dusty areas.Dirty air results in 4 million deaths annually around the world. In Ghana, this translates to at least 28,000 premature deaths every year. Yet, just 1% of global development aid is spent on tackling air pollution.Akosua Kwakye, with the World Health Organization office in Ghana, said that air pollutants and greenhouse gasses often come from the same sources — coal-fired power plants and diesel-fueled vehicles.“What we are experiencing in Ghana shows that the health effects of climate change are very real."Akosua Kwakye, World Health Organization, Accra, Ghana“What we are experiencing in Ghana shows that the health effects of climate change are very real. There's evidence to indicate that issues like respiratory infections, cardiovascular diseases and even some cancers are attributable to the events of climate change,” she said. Akosua Kwakye is with the World Health Organization office in Ghana. She wants air pollution and climate change to be addressed collaboratively.   Credit: Ridwan Karim Dini-Osman/The World In 2022, the World Bank disclosed that global health-related damages linked to outdoor air pollution reached $8.1 trillion, equivalent to approximately 6.1% of the global gross domestic product. And the burden disproportionately affects low- and middle-income countries like Ghana.Experts like Kwakye say that Ghana should begin to embrace green initiatives to include cleaner, renewable energy sources, phase out subsidies that promote use of polluting fuels, and plant more trees. But Emmanuel Appoh, an environmental scientist at the University of Ghana who inspects sensors at an Air Quality Evaluation facility, said the latest data shows no signs of improvement any time soon.“The current state of air quality is very unhealthy, and you have a lot of dust in the atmosphere. It is not encouraging at all. Hopefully, this does not lead us into a public health crisis,” he said.

Murat Aktuğralı meets with other grieving parents — to discuss their legal case — in a small classroom next to the volleyball court where his son Aras used to play.In early February of last year, boys' and girls' volleyball teams from the town of Famagusta traveled to the eastern Turkish city of Adiyaman for a volleyball tournament.They all stayed at the Isias Hotel, known to be one of the nicest places to stay in Adiyaman, with 10 floors and good online reviews. The kids, all between the ages of 11 and 14, took rooms together in the hotel.On Feb. 6, 2023, at 4:17 a.m., a massive 7.8-magnitude earthquake ripped across southern Turkey. A second 7.5-magnitude earthquake followed several hours later. More than 59,000 people were killed in the destruction, both in Turkey and northern Syria.The Grand Isias Hotel collapsed in the quake, killing 72 people altogether, including 24 volleyball players, nine teachers and parents, and a group of 40 tour guides. Murat Aktuğralı and Ruşen Karakaya stand in the gym where their children played volleyball together in Famagusta, northern Cyprus. Twenty-four children and several parent- and teacher-chaperones were killed in the collapse of the Isias Hotel in Adiyaman during the earthquakes on Feb. 6, 2023. Grieving parents have established a Champion Angels Association to help pursue a legal case against the hotel's owners. Credit: Durrie Bouscaren/The World  Now, Aktuğralı and other parents whose children died in the hotel collapse are helping to bring a landmark criminal case to court against the hotel owners and people involved with the construction.“In my mind, justice is never possible. We will never get our kids back. But by the result of this trial, we hope it will be a good example for the future,” Aktuğralı said. “This punishment will show those people, those crooks, that they will be punished if they do something wrong.”Early on, Turkish authorities took hotel owner Ahmet Bozkurt into custody, alongside his two sons and business partners.Eleven defendants are accused of “conscious negligence” while overseeing the hotel's construction. The indictment says the building was illegally converted from a residence into a hotel in 2001 and that the hotel had illegally erected an additional floor, The Guardian reported. A portrait of the Aktuğralı family. Aras is second from the right. Credit: Courtesy of the Aktuğralı family Hasan Esendağlı, who is part of the legal team on behalf of the parents, said that they are making the argument that the hotel wasn't built safely, especially for an area with a known earthquake risk.“We're trying to figure out who is responsible,” Esendağlı said. “Whether it was engineers who took part in the construction, the architect, or the municipality who gave permission.”In the first hearing of the trial on Jan. 2, the hotel owner said he believed his hotel was the strongest building in the area. He argued that his hotel was built to code but that in an earthquake of this magnitude, it was inevitable that some buildings would fall.He said that he, too, was grieving the deaths of his guests.In Famagusta, the parents said that the hotel's owners have never contacted them, even to give condolences. Hasan Esendağlı, who is part of the legal team on behalf of the parents, said that they are making the argument that the hotel wasn't built safely, especially for an area with a known earthquake risk. Credit: Durrie Bouscaren/The World  Aktuğralı said that on the night of the earthquake, he ran to the door to try and reach the kids — but couldn't open it to get into the hallway. So, he took cover between the beds in the room.“I was talking to the walls, praying that the hotel would withstand the shaking, and all of a sudden, it was like an atomic boom.”The president of northern Cyprus arranged a rescue team, which flew to Adiyaman that day with a group of parents, hoping to find the kids alive under the rubble. But their rooms had completely collapsed.“It was like a mountain of sand. Our kids and the parents and their teachers, they didn't have any chance to survive.”Ruşen Karakaya is the mother of Selin, a 14-year-old player on the girl's team. Selin Karakaya, left, who died in the hotel collapse, and her mother Ruşen Karakaya. Credit: Courtesy of Ruşen Karakaya Once in a while, Karakaya drives to Selin's high school — to sit in the parking lot where she used to pick her up.Karakaya is part of the lawsuit that the children's parents have brought forward.“It's not fair. An earthquake didn't kill our kids. The building killed them,” she said. “We're talking about murderers here. That's why we are right now fighting for justice.”The next hearing for the case is set for April 26.

Eleven years ago — almost to the day — a National Geographic Explorer, Paul Salopek, began to walk across the globe. His trek started in Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa, and it will eventually take him all the way to the southern tip of South America. Salopek started by traversing the route of the first human migration, about 60,000 years ago, in Africa.  “I'd gone there prepared to kind of walk in a sunlit desert, and it was a rainy day in a small village near the site of one of the earliest modern Homo sapiens skeletons ever found there, like 150-160,000 years old,” Salopek recalled.The World caught up with Salopek to learn more about the starting point of his journey in Herto Buri, Ethiopia in 2013.  Marco Werman: I know you weren't walking by yourself the whole time. Tell us about some of the people you traveled with.Paul Salopek: Yeah. So, this project, I remind my readers, is not just “Paul's journey.” In fact, I'm just one participant in this long, over-the-horizon traverse that involves walking with local people and local storytellers. So, I'm almost never alone. And that's by design. So, at the very beginning, I was walking with several gentlemen who were camel pastoralists pushing around camels, goats and cattle across this very dry, desiccated kind of skeletal landscape. And these guys were great. I mean, they were tremendous singers. As you may know, pastoralists often communicate with the animals that they're taking charge of, so they had love songs they were singing to their camels.Ahmed Alema Hessan, your guide, is also a clan leader and a former camel driver. Tell us about Ahmed.Well, he's a really fascinating global character. And this is only in the age that Marco, you and I live in, in our lifespan, that there would be somebody you'd find like this. But here's a guy who had, I think, an elementary school education who grew up as a pastoral nomad in the [Great] Rift Valley of Africa and who was deeply identified with his ethnic group, the Afar. But at the same time, he had been working with world-class paleoanthropologists. Like the best people around the world, including Ethiopian paleoanthropologists from the capital, Addis Ababa, who had come out to look for human fossils. And he was very adept at identifying human fossils. So, he was this guy who straddled two worlds: the ancient and the new. And on his little phone, and back then, think about it, in 2013, these were flip phones. These weren't smartphones out in this corner of the world. His contacts were the most brilliant minds from the University of California, Berkeley, to the local police commander, you know, who you had to check in with to kind of keep us from getting in trouble across the way.And while we're on the subject, Paul, I know you said this is not a “Paul walk,” but where are you from? And why did you want to do this? So, my background is that I was born in the US but raised in Mexico. I've been kind of multicultural from 5 years old, growing up in a society that wasn't my birth culture. I'm kind of a guy who's a little bit culturally amorphous. I think it's given me the skill set to be able to do the job that I was doing for many years leading up to this big walk, which was being a foreign correspondent. That kind of journalism, for me, had kind of plateaued. I did as much as I possibly could. I'm proud of the work. I learned a lot, but I wanted to slow myself down and get off the airplanes, right, and get off the rental cars and actually kind of move from story to story on foot and actually inhabit the stories long enough to have a little bit deeper comprehension of them; whether it was the climate crisis, cultural endurance or what have you. Slowing down seems to be key to what I call “slow journalism.” Ethiopia, 2013. National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek walks in the Afar Desert. Join the journey at outofedenwalk.org. Photograph by John Stanmeyer, National Geographic. Credit: Photograph by John Stanmeyer, National Geographic So, Ethiopia, where you began this trek, has gone through some serious upheaval since you were there — a war in the Tigray region that drew in neighboring countries. Does having walked across Ethiopia provide you with a longer, maybe a more nuanced, view than most outsiders would have had of the land and its people?What walking does is it plants you in a panorama that is natural and human. You have to move, navigate your way through it and problem solve your way through it using the same resources as the people who are around you. It puts you even more on a better level playing field with them. You're not driving up in a fancy car and rolling down the window and asking for directions, you're walking to them. And they have a chance to see you approach, and they get ready for you, and I get ready for them, and there's a real meaningful human encounter at three miles an hour.Yeah, that's a big difference.But also slowing yourself down, you see how incredibly complicated societies are. There are more than 70 ethnic groups in Ethiopia, right? There are three big ones, but there are 60-some-odd others. Walking allowed me to immerse myself in a corner of Ethiopia that I would never get to know, that had its own problems with human aggression and conflict. In this case, between the Afar and another pastoral group called the Issa over resources, right? So, I would never have really been able to be exposed to that kind of deeper, far older story without kind of walking through it. Ethiopia, 2013. National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek follows local guides into the Afar Desert on a 24,000-mile walk to retrace the human diaspora. Join the journey at outofedenwalk.org. Photograph by John Stanmeyer, National Geographic. Credit: Photograph by John Stanmeyer, National Geographic A bunch of years ago, I visited a place in Addis Ababa, a place that I know you've been to. The National Museum where the bones of the world's earliest known hominid are kept, Lucy. She's been discovered in the northern part of the Great Rift Valley. For the Ethiopians you met while walking, what does it mean that there in their country is this fundamental connection to the beginning of humankind?Oh, a huge amount of pride. The Ethiopians will tell you, “We're the cradle of it all," right? And the answer is yes, they are. There is one kind of site where fossils have been preserved that are extremely old, and they go even older than Lucy. Lucy's like 1.8 million [years old] or so. They found Ardipithecus, which is 4 million years old in that country. But what I have to remind my readers is there's no kind of distinct "cradle," in quotes. I mean, the true fact is that they're ancient fossils up in northwestern Africa, they're discovering some very old ones in southern Africa, and they're probably several different notes of the origins of our kind.Parts of this interview have been lightly edited for length and clarity.Writer and National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek has embarked on a 24,000-mile storytelling trek across the world called the “Out of Eden Walk.” The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, has funded Salopek and the project since 2013. Explore the project here. Follow the journey on X at @PaulSalopek, @outofedenwalk and also at @InsideNatGeo.

To hear a related interview on The World with Sam Fabian, zoologist and author of study, click the audio player above.It's an observation as old as humans gathering around campfires: Light at night can draw an erratically circling crowd of insects. In art, music and literature, this spectacle is an enduring metaphor for dangerous but irresistible attractions. And watching their frenetic movements really gives the sense that something is wrong — that instead of finding food and evading predators, these nocturnal pilots are trapped by a light.Sadly, centuries of witnessing what happens have produced little certainty about why it happens. How does a simple light change fast, precise navigators into helpless, flittering captives? We are researchers examining flight, vision and evolution, and we have used high-speed tracking techniques in newly published research to provide an answer.Moths to a flame?Many old explanations for this hypnotic behavior have not fully panned out. An early notion was that the insects might be attracted to the heat of a flame. This was interesting, as some insects really are pyrophilic: They are attracted to fire and have evolved to take advantage of conditions in recently burned areas. But most insects around a light are not in this category, and cool lights attract them quite well.Another thought was that insects were just directly attracted to light, a response called phototaxis. Many insects move toward light, perhaps as a way to escape dark or entrapping surroundings. But if this were the explanation for the clusters around a light, you might expect them to bump straight into the source. This theory does little to explain the wild circling behavior.Still another idea was that insects might mistake a nearby light for the moon, as they attempted to use celestial navigation. Many insects reference the moon to keep their course at night.This strategy relies on how objects at great distance seem to hover in place as you move along a straight path. A steady moon indicates that you have not made any unintentional turns, as you might if you were buffeted by a gust of wind. Nearer objects, however, don't appear to follow you in the sky but drift behind as you move past.The celestial navigation theory held that insects worked to keep this light source steady, turning sharply in a failed attempt to fly straight. An elegant idea, but this model predicts that many flights will spiral inward to a collision, which doesn't usually match the orbits we see. So what's really going on? Scientists used high-speed stereo motion capture to document how the presence of artificial light at night affects insects' flight behavior. Credit: Samuel Fabian, CC BY-ND  Turning their backs to the lightTo examine this question in detail, we and our colleagues captured high-speed videos of insects around different light sources to precisely determine flight paths and body postures, both in the lab at Imperial College London and at two field sites in Costa Rica, CIEE and the Estación Biológica. We found that their flight patterns weren't a close match for any existing model.Rather, a broad swath of insects consistently pointed their backs toward the lights. This is a known behavior called the dorsal light response. In nature, assuming that more light comes down from the sky than up from the ground, this response helps keep insects in the proper orientation to fly.Artificial light at night interrupts the normal flight patterns of insects. This compilation video shows an orbiting behavioral motif in which insects circle the light.But pointing their backs toward nearby artificial lights alters their flight paths. Just as airplanes bank to turn, sometimes rolling until the ground seems nearly straight out your window, banking insects turn as well. When their backs orient to a nearby light, the resulting bank loops them around the light, circling but rarely colliding.These orbiting paths were only one of the behaviors we observed. When insects flew directly under a light, they often arched upward as it passed behind them, keeping their backs to the bulb until, eventually flying straight up, they stalled and fell out of the air. And even more compelling, when flying directly over a light, insects tended to flip upside down, again turning their backs to the light but then abruptly crashing. Three different observed turning behaviors in which flying insects turn their backs to artificial light. Credit: Jamie Theobald, CC BY-ND Why have a dorsal light response?Although light at night can harm other animals — for example, by diverting migrating birds into urban areas — larger animals don't seem to lose their vertical orientation. So why do insects, the oldest and most species-rich group of flyers, rely on a response that leaves them so vulnerable?It may have to do with their small size. Larger animals can sense gravity directly with sensory organs pulled by its acceleration, or any acceleration. Humans, for example, use the vestibular system of our inner ear, which regulates our sense of balance and usually gives us a good sense of which way is down.But insects have only small sensory structures. And especially as they perform rapid flight maneuvers, acceleration offers only a poor indication of which way is down. Instead, they seem to bet on the brightness of the sky.Before modern lighting, the sky was usually brighter than the ground, day or night, so it provided a fairly reliable cue for a small active flyer hoping to keep a steady orientation. The artificial lights that sabotage this ability, by cueing insects to fly in circles, are relatively recent.The growing problem of nighttime lightingAs new technology spreads, lights that pervade the night are proliferating faster then ever. With the introduction of cheap, bright, broad-spectrum LEDs, many areas, such as large cities, never see a dark night. This upward view at the authors' field research site in Monteverde, Costa Rica, shows how artificial light competes with the night sky. Credit: Samuel Fabian, CC BY-ND Insects aren't the only creatures affected. Light pollution disrupts circadian rhythms and physiological processes in other animals, plants and humans, often with serious health consequences.But insects trapped around a light seem to get the worst of it. Unable to secure food, easily spotted by predators and prone to exhaustion, many die before the morning comes.In principle, light pollution is one of the easiest things to fix, often by just flipping a switch. Restricting outdoor lighting to useful, targeted warm light, no brighter than necessary, and for no longer than necessary, can greatly improve the health of nocturnal ecosystems. And the same practices that are good for insects help restore views of the night sky: Over one-third of the world population lives in areas where the Milky Way is never visible.Although insects circling around a light are a fascinating spectacle, it is certainly better for the insects and the benefits they provide to humans when we leave the night unlit and let them go about the activities they so masterfully perform under the night sky.Samuel Fabian is a postdoctoral research associate in bioengineering at Imperial College London; Jamie Theobald is an associate professor of biological sciences at Florida International University, and Yash Sondhi is a postdoctoral research associate in entomology at the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera & Biodiversity at the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida.This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Paul Salopek has been walking across the world for the past 11 years. He's tracing the historic path of human migration from Africa through Asia and into the Americas.The journey is part of his "Out Of Eden Walk" project in collaboration with the National Geographic Society.To date, he's walked 16,000 miles and just recently was in China where he crossed seven provinces. He will return to China this spring — he plans to cover 24,000 miles altogether. The World's hosts Marco Werman and Carolyn Beeler talked with Salopek about his experiences in China and beyond. See some of the sights from his journey in the photo gallery below. To hear the full interview with Salopek, click on the audio player above. Madain Salih, Saudi Arabia, 2013. Paul Salopek wanders through the ancient Nabataean ruins of Madain Salih, carved into sandstone outcrops some 2,000 years ago. These structures were used as tombs for the wealthy during the Nabataean era. The kingdom stretched from its capital Petra in Jordan south to Madain Salih in the Hejaz region of present-day Saudi Arabia. Join the journey at outofedenwalk.org.  Credit: Photograph by John Stanmeyer, National Geographic Afar, Ethiopia, 2013. National Geographic Fellow and writer Paul Salopek and his Ethiopian guide, Ahmed Alema Hessan, leave the village of Bouri in the Afar region of northwestern Ethiopia. Join the journey at outofedenwalk.org.  Credit: Photograph by John Stanmeyer, National Geographic Afar, Ethiopia, 2013. National Geographic Fellow and writer Paul Salopek follows local guides into the Afar Desert on a 22,000-mile walk to retrace the human diaspora. Join the journey at outofedenwalk.org.  Credit: Photograph by John Stanmeyer, National Geographic Anatolia, Turkey, 2014. National Geographic Fellow and writer Paul Salopek leads his mule past a royal tomb near Nemrut in eastern Turkey. Join the journey at outofedenwalk.org.  Credit: Photograph by John Stanmeyer, National Geographic  Writer and National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek has embarked on a 24,000-mile storytelling trek across the world called the “Out of Eden Walk.” The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, has funded Salopek and the project since 2013. Explore the project here. Follow Salopek on X at @outofedenwalk and also at @InsideNatGeo.

On a recent Sunday morning, a group of eight women birders met in the historic botanical garden in Entebbe, a town nestled along the shore of Lake Victoria.More than 400 bird species can be found in the garden. The women oohed and aahed as they spotted some of their favorites, including a broad-billed roller perched high in a cluster of trees and the rare sight of a female great blue turaco feeding one of her chicks. “Birds are everywhere. You can miss a lion, but you can't miss a bird!”Priscilla Kabarungi, Uganda Women Birders“I love birds!” said Priscilla Kabarungi, one of the tour leaders. “Birds are everywhere. You can miss a lion, but you can't miss a bird!”  “I love birds!” said Priscilla Kabarungi, one of the tour leaders. “Birds are everywhere. You can miss a lion, but you can't miss a bird!” Credit: Anita Elash/The World Most of the women in the group are training to become professional bird guides with Uganda Women Birders.Kabarungi joined the group last year and has already learned to identify more than 200 species. She also enjoys leading safaris, but said she really loves turning people on to the beauty of birds, especially people who aren't that interested at first. “By the time you finished talking to this person, this person will have got that love for birds, because of the colors, the calls,” she said. Machline Komujuni said birds bring back memories of her childhood in rural Uganda. Her mother taught her that birds use their calls to communicate with each other, sending messages when there's danger or the seasons are about to change. She said her mother was illiterate, but used Indigenous knowledge to understand the birds' messages.  Uganda Women Birders trains women to become professional bird-watching tour guides. Credit: Courtesy of Herbert Byaruhanga/Uganda Women Birders Komujuni said she adores parrots for their ability to mimic people. She discovered bird watching while studying hospitality at university and immediately decided to make a career of it. She said her ambition is to give clients the best birding experience possible. “I just want to be the best bird guide. I just want to identify every bird I come across, especially in my country."Machline Komujuni, Uganda Women Birders“I just want to be the best bird guide. I just want to identify every bird I come across, especially in my country,” she said. Komujuni already works for a travel company, but her salary as a booking agent is a fraction of what she could earn as a professional bird guide. Until recently, she struggled to find the money for training and basic equipment like binoculars and guide books. And as the mother of a 2-year-old, she said it's been a challenge to find the time to develop her skills.For most Ugandan women, household responsibilities come first, and that can conflict with the demands of early morning birding trips and two- or three-week-long birding tours.  “A man can wake up and move for birding without looking at the children,” she said. “But to a woman, if you ever wake up and just leave kids without having breakfast, leave kids without making sure they are all  OK, you have committed a crime.”   Women learn to identify hundreds of bird species and hope to become professional bird-watching guides.  Credit: Anita Elash/The World Ironically, it was a man who founded the Uganda Women Birders in 2013. Herbert Byaruhanga said men had dominated the tourism business for “a very long time.” Byaruhanga is one of Uganda's most distinguished guides, known for taking young apprentices under his wing. But he said he hadn't thought of including women until a birdwatching trip in Illinois, led by a female guide. “She was 65 years old, and she was able to whistle out birds. And I was like, wow, if she can do this at 65, what about our girls in Uganda?” he said.  Uganda Women Birders started in 2013, with a sole aim of increasing the participation of Uganda's women in nature guiding.  Credit: Courtesy of Herbert Byaruhanga/Uganda Women Birders In many parts of Uganda, whistling is reserved for men – one of the cultural taboos that has kept women out of the industry. Uganda Women Birders tackles those taboos by giving women the experience and resources they need to prove they can do the job. The club currently has more than 100 members. About 30 women earn a living as bird guides. Wendi Haugh, a cultural anthropologist at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York, said the club has had a global impact. “What's surprising is how few women guides there are in countries where you wouldn't think this would be an issue,” she said. Haugh is writing a book about the working lives of professional bird guides. She said that even in countries like the United States, women bird guides still battle stereotypes. “How capable are you really of doing this? Do you really know your stuff? Can you actually drive this vehicle? You know, they're up against that without the support the Uganda women guides have,” she said. Haugh said Uganda's women guides are known around the world and some countries have started their own clubs. Some travel agencies are also training women or asking specifically for female guides. Kabarungi said the opportunity to learn from her fellow women birders has given her the courage to challenge stereotypes. She has learned to drive a safari van and apprenticed as a mechanic, typically considered as masculine skills in Uganda.  To become a professional birder, she said, “you have to first put the woman in you aside and try to be a man somewhere in those skills.” Machline Komujuni said the club uncovered a dream she never knew she had. She still can't afford binoculars but she's confident that someday she will. “My dream is not yet fulfilled fully as I want, but at least I'm in the line of fulfilling it and I will make it.” she said. “I'm trusting myself that I will make it.” 

In 2017, Ellie Highwood was trying to think of what to gift a colleague who had a baby on the way.“I thought it would be nice to make them something that was meaningful,” said Highwood, then a professor of climate physics at the University of Reading in England. “So, I thought, OK, well, what can I do with blankets?” Though Ellie Highwood was not the first person to come up with the idea of a "global warming blanket," her tweet about her design went viral. It inspired a former colleague to take it to the next level and create global data visualizations of average temperatures spanning 100 years. Credit: X social media Highwood, who enjoyed crocheting in her free time, came up with what she called the “global warming blanket” as a gift for the baby. She crocheted 100 rows — each representing the year's global temperature, dating back 100 years, from 1916 to 2016.“I did 100 years so, up until the baby was born. And I started with dark blues and purples to represent colder-than-average temperatures,” she said. “And over time, transitioning through some of the greens and yellows into oranges, and then, reds and [a] deep red, burgundy kind of color.”Producing the temperature lines by hand, she said, is a way of internalizing the data. Highwood said she has since seen other scarves and blankets showing similar designs, including some that predated hers. But it was hers that went viral on X. Since then, the stripes, which have been reimagined and incorporated into everything from fashion to book covers, have become synonymous with raising awareness about climate change and global warming. One of Highwood's university colleagues found a way to take her crochet pattern to a whole new level.In 2018, climate scientist Ed Hawkins created a data visualization site of the climate stripes as a series of vertical lines ranging from blue to red, and left to right. Hawkins' visualizations represent temperature changes measured in each country, region or city over the past 100 years, according to his site, ShowYourStripes.info. Users can also create a visualization for the temperatures in their specific locations.  A data visualization of global "warming stripes" from the years 1850 to 2022. The image is generated via the #ShowYourStripes website, created by climate scientist Ed Hawkins. using dating sourcing from the UK Met Office. Credit: showyourstripes.info But no matter which location's data you look at, the general result is the same: As the years go by, the blues fade away, and orange, red and eventually, deep burgundy lines appear. This illustrates the rise in average temperatures in that location.“These graphics are specifically designed to be as simple as possible,” Hawkins writes on his website. “And to start conversations about our warming world and the risks of climate change.”The stripes are doing just that.Sustainable designer Lucy Tammam featured the climate stripes in her couture collection at London Fashion Week, while the Envision Racing Formula E team has the stripes on their newest cars. The stripes have also graced the covers of major publications including The Economist and climate activist Greta Thunberg's bestseller, “The Climate Book.” High-level US, France and Chile politicians have even worn the stripes as pins and face masks while pushing climate policies. Joost Brinkman, a co-founder of a Netherlands-based organization called Cycling4Climate, has also used the stripes in marketing materials and uniforms. “The design is pretty beautiful, so it gets attention anyhow,” Brinkman told The World. “And then, when you talk and explain what it's all about, people understand why we're doing this and embrace it.”No matter how far across the globe the climate stripes spread though, Highwood said the original blanket is still with its intended owner.“The baby was given the blanket,” she said. “The baby is now 6-ish. And still has the blanket. It's a little bit small. And I'm pretty sure her mom won't ever let her get rid of it.” 

Sumi Jaladas crawled out from a doorway on her hands and knees and kneeled in the dirt in front of her corrugated steel home to watch her neighbors in the small village of Jela Para. It had just stopped raining and many women and children were out playing and dancing along a muddy, brick walkway. Most of the men were away fishing in the nearby Bay of Bengal.   Sumi Jaladas says if her village has to escape rising water, she's dependent on her family to bring her to safety.   Credit:  Kazi Riasat Alve/The World Jaladas, 40, said she's never been able to walk. She uses a wheelchair but said she doesn't have the upper-body strength to use it on her own. To travel outside the neighborhood, she relies on a sibling to push her.Jela Para, part of the Sitakund municipality located in Bangladesh's southeastern Chattogram District, is prone to tropical cyclones and floods. When disaster strikes, villagers may need to evacuate quickly to a storm shelter or higher ground.  For someone like Jaladas, the thought of having to suddenly flee to escape rising water can be horrifying.Jaladas, who is unmarried, lives with one of her brothers and his family, and helps out with cooking. She said this is not an ideal situation, but feels that due to her disabilities, she would not be able to survive anywhere else.“I'd like to live in a better place and have my own home,” she said. “But, I also can't see well, so I can't make handicrafts or sew.” She said her brother is responsible for saving her life in an emergency situation.“It scares me. If my brother evacuates me, then I can evacuate, otherwise I just have to stay inside my house.”Sumi Jaladas, 40“It scares me,” she said. “If my brother evacuates me, then I can evacuate, otherwise I just have to stay inside my house.” Jaladas said she has no choice but to follow her brother's decisions. Sea-level rise and strong storms threaten communities across Bangladesh with extreme flooding. Global warming has exacerbated the threat, ruining farmland in coastal regions and compelling many to seek work and safety in other parts of the country.Over 13 million Bangladeshis could be displaced by climate change by 2050, according to a United Nations report.  Mohammad al-Amin, an environmental scientist at the University of Chittagong, said he has seen cyclones and tidal surges “totally wipe out” villages. An inlet in the Bay of Bengal in the Chattogram District causes a funneling effect, he explained, intensifying storms that have already gained strength due to warming ocean temperatures.   While these disasters endanger everyone, Amin said senior citizens and people with a disability are more likely to die. “They are the most vulnerable,” he said. Just over a billion people worldwide — 1 in 5 people — have some kind of physical, sensory or developmental disability. In many countries, including Bangladesh, numerous educational, economic and social barriers limit or prevent inclusion, which often extends into disaster management and recovery.Amin says that during climate-related emergencies, many people become concerned with saving themselves.  “They [people with disabilities] might be forgotten, it might not be possible to carry them to a cyclone shelter, which could be 3 to 5 kilometers [2 to 3 miles] away from their homes.”Nur Nobi, who is blind, always assumed his family would guide him to safety during such an emergency. But during a cyclone evacuation several years ago, he suddenly found himself alone.  "They left through the back door and forgot about me.”Nur Nobi, 51, disability advocate“I was in the front room of my house while my wife and children were preparing to evacuate to a cyclone shelter,” the 51-year-old said. “But, they left through the back door and forgot about me.” During a cyclone evacuation, Nur Nobi's family forgot about him as they fled to a storm shelter. Credit: Kazi Riasat Alve/The World He said it was too dangerous for him to evacuate to a cyclone shelter on his own due to the high winds blowing around debris and powerlines. Nobi asked a neighbor to help locate his family. Later, one of his daughters returned home and brought him to the shelter.  Nobi, who heads a disability advocacy group in the rural Sitakund district, said that despite the risks, relocation to a city is not possible for many people with disabilities. There aren't many job opportunities and physically getting around a small town can be easier, he said.Nobi said there are measures the government could take that would make it safer for people with disabilities during a climate-related disaster.  “There should be sign language interpreters to assist deaf people during evacuations,” Nobi said. “And people with a disability should be prioritized for evacuations ahead of a cyclone, and officials should take them to a shelter.”   Selina Akter, the mother of two severely disabled children in the village of Mirsharai, said that emergency transportation could alleviate the burden of having to make a difficult decision should they need to evacuate.  “Which child should I carry, this one or that one?”Selina Akter, mother of two severely disabled children“What else can I do, can I evacuate both of my children together by myself?” Akter said. “Which child should I carry, this one or that one?”  Selina Akter doesn't know how she'd be able to protect her two disabled children if a cyclone strikes her village. Credit:  Kazi Riasat Alve/The World She said that if they had to evacuate the village while her husband was away, she doesn't know how they would survive.  “If Allah [God] allows, I'll be able to evacuate my two children, otherwise I'll die here,” she said. Akter said she is unaware of any assistance for people with disabilities during emergencies.Bangladesh's national disaster management protocol and other laws are, in fact, “highly disability inclusive,” said Vashkar Bhattacharjee, a Chattogram-based disability rights advocate.The problem, he said,  is at the “implementation level.”Disability inclusion is “on the agenda of the Bangladesh government,” he said, but added that these provisions are mainly just “on paper.”Bhattacharjee, who is blind and advises the government on accessibility, said the effects of climate change on people with disabilities is still largely misunderstood by policymakers in Bangladesh. Vashkar Bhattacharjee says more research is needed to better understand the ways that climate change impacts people with disabilities.  Credit: Kazi Riasat Alve/The World But he cannot completely fault authorities, he said. Disability advocates and analysts also need to raise more awareness about this issue. He suggests more research and studies in this area, especially looking at how global warming affects women and Indigenous people with disabilities.Bhattacharjee, who participated in the COP21 climate conference in Paris, said that the organizations involved often exclude people who live in areas where severe weather poses the greatest threats. “People with disabilities who are directly impacted by climate change, their voices are not going in."Vashkar Bhattacharjee, disability rights advocate“People with disabilities who are directly impacted by climate change, their voices are not going in,” he said. “We need to connect these rural people into the national and international discussions.” Jahedul Islam, a 22-year-old university student, is working to ensure that no one with disabilities gets left behind in a climate emergency. Islam lives on the island of Sandwip, in the Bay of Bengal, where coastal erosion has displaced families for decades. Now, observers say stronger storms, floods and sea-level rise are worsening these risks. A powerful storm washed away Sandwip Island's downtown. Sea-level rise and cyclones made worse by global warming put communities at greater risk.  Credit:  Kazi Riasat Alve/The World Islam was born with a condition that affects how he walks, but he is able to go up the flight of steps that lead to the second floor of a municipal  building that doubles as a cyclone shelter.Islam said there are only a couple places like this on the island. “Some people with a disability never leave their homes ... But, sometimes, there's no other choice than to bring them to a cyclone shelter.”Jahedul Islam, 22, disability rights advocate“Some people with a disability never leave their homes,” he said. “But, sometimes, there's no other choice than to bring them to a cyclone shelter.”   Jahedul Islam started a volunteer organization on Sandwip that transports people with limited mobility to storm shelters. Credit:  Kazi Riasat Alve/The World Three years ago, Islam started an organization that dispatches volunteers to the homes of elderly residents, people with disabilities or anyone else who needs help when a storm strikes. They're brought to safer places via motorbike taxis.  “Weather conditions change so rapidly, every half an hour or hour, " he said. “If I'm outside my home and a storm happens, if there's not a shelter nearby, I wouldn't know where to go.”  And for some, that's a matter of life or death.Editor's note: Jason Strother's reporting was supported by the National Geographic Society. Kazi Riasat Alve and Sharif Ferdous Arko contributed to this story. 

It's hard not to think of Jurassic Park in the Laurel forest. The forest is vibrant green and shrouded in clouds. Ferns blanket the floor. The trunks of trees are carpeted in moss. It's otherworldly — one feels transported back in time.  Tourists can only access about 25% of the Garajonay National Park, on clearly designated trails. Forging your own is strictly forbidden. Credit: Gerry Hadden/The World Until you stumble upon a discarded plastic cup. “Someone here has finished their coffee, said Audrey Fava, a local trekking guide. “And they just tossed their cup on the path. It doesn't happen too often, but we do find litter regularly in the parking lot.”Fava stuffed the cup in her backpack. In a way, the garbage and Fava's frustration with it say a lot about La Gomera today — the state of tourism and how locals feel about visitors and their impact. It's not a problem … yet. “This forest is very important,” Fava said. “They were once found across Europe, up until the last Ice Age. This one survived.”In fact, the forest has made it through various global freezes and mass extinctions, partly because the maritime climate has remained more or less unchanged. And because the place is so isolated. The Laurel Forest is almost always shrouded in mist, as clouds coming off the Atlantic collide with the high mountains. Credit: Gerry Hadden/The World Not all of the Canary Islands fit that description.The beach boardwalk on the island of Tenerife is just a 45-minute ferry ride away.  But it's packed with partiers, all-inclusive hotels and souvenir shops.“It's the loud neighbor [that] La Gomera doesn't want to become,” said Conchi Facundo, sitting in a quiet courtyard a short drive from the Laurel Forest. Facundo manages public access to the forest, which is in a big national park called Garajonay.  Just a 45-minute ferry ride from La Gomera, plenty of partying and sunbathing can be had in Tenerife. Credit: Gerry Hadden/The World “In its 40 years, the park has helped attract more people to the island,” Facundo said. “But it also serves as a bulwark against tourism on a massive scale.”She explained that the park is now a protected territory and that visitors can only access about 25% of it.You can't just walk anywhere on La Gomera. Nor can you build big hotels. As for roads, they've been kept to a minimum. The Laurel Forest hasn't changed much since the Tertiary period some 66 million years ago. Credit: Gerry Hadden/The World Facundo said it's all part of the island's strategy to keep tourism sustainable — by keeping it small.  Small, she said, can actually bring in more money. Because with mass tourism, you end up spending a lot more on infrastructure. “And the jobs associated with mass tourism tend to pay less and be more menial,” Facundo added. La Gomera allows only small hotels and rural lodges. People rent out their houses on platforms like Airbnb, too. It's all small-scale stuff. But one island tourism official, Fernando Martín, said he thinks it's already too much. “Too many locals are chasing easy tourist dollars, trying to rent rooms, and they've stopped doing things like growing food,” Martin said.Island agriculture in recent years has plummeted.“The fact that your lunch, and mine, is imported from off-island by boat is not sustainable,” Martin continued. “This, when we have land, we have water." Farming has fallen out of favor partly because of tourism, but 32-year-old Iru Izquierdo still works the land. She grows avocados. On a recent day, she was scraping weeds away from the tree roots. La Gomera farmer Iru Izquierdo tends to her avocado trees. She wishes the government would support local food production the same way it promotes its tourist attractions. Credit: Gerry Hadden/The World “Everyone's attention is on the tourists and how much we can earn off of them,” Izquierdo said. “No one is helping us.”But, she is trying to flip that dynamic on its head by getting the help she needs from the tourists themselves. She gives them a place to stay, and in return, they volunteer in her fields. Like this tourist, who only gave her first name, Marine. She's here with a companion. They're from northern France.“Farming is a great way to get into the local culture,” Marine said. “We might even find some techniques we can adapt on farms back home.”Izquierdo, the farmer,  hopes this can be a model for a kind of tourism that leaves sweat behind. Instead of plastic cups.

Bismark Owusu Nortey parked his truck along a road at an industrial hub in the Greater Accra region of southern Ghana, where thick plumes of black smoke poured into the sky. Owusu Nortey, who works with Ghana's Peasant Farmers Association, is there to transport inorganic fertilizer to Accra, for onward distribution to some of the country's over 3 million farmers. He said about 80% of fertilizers used by farmers are “inorganic,” which is mostly made from natural gas. Farmers like to use them because they are less expensive and support rapid crop growth.At the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, leaders from the US and EU have backed a phasedown of fossil fuels, with some qualifications. But many African countries say they deserve to exploit their natural resources and develop just like richer countries. The industrial hub of Tema, Ghana, is home to steel processing, oil refinery, processing, aluminum industries, and more. Credit: Ridwan Kareem Dini-Osman/The World Owusu Nortey said he's concerned that phasing out fossil fuels now could worsen hunger in a country where 2.5 million people are severely food insecure. Putting an abrupt stop to this type of fertilizer without viable alternatives could lead to lower yields — causing food shortages and higher prices and impacting overall availability.“If there is a plan to phase out the use of natural gas for fertilizer, then we might be creating some problems for farming, especially in a place like Ghana where our farmers rely a lot on fertilizers,” he said. But extracting, processing and transporting these fuels contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, which trap the sun's heat and exacerbate global warming. Runoff from fields treated with inorganic fertilizers can also lead to water pollution.  At the COP28 climate summit in Dubai this week, negotiators are debating whether to sign on to an agreement to phase out or down fossil fuels. A drastic reduction in carbon emissions is the only way to keep global warming from reaching catastrophic levels. The International Energy Agency has found that any new fossil fuel development is incompatible with limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the target temperature of the Paris Agreement.Yet, Ghana relies on fossil fuels for more than half of its total energy supply. And it's been producing oil and gas since major petroleum reserves were discovered in 2007. US Vice President Kamala Harris visited Ghana in March to pitch a green energy transition.Ghana's President Nana Akufo-Addo made clear in a joint press conference that he had a different idea — to tap the country's abundant natural resources, “with a vision of taking Ghana out of dependence on aid to a self-reliant economy beyond aid,” he said.Ghanians debate energy optionsAt a bustling fuel station in the capital Accra, resident Baba Ahmed pulled up in a black Toyota Corolla to get some gas.Ahmed said he understands the environmental impact of fossil fuels, but the country is not ready.  "A phaseout is really going to affect a lot of people, and so it is not a conversation we should be having now,” he said, adding that better infrastructure would have to be put in place.“And the costs would also have to come down in terms of buying those electric cars. It is going to be a difficult thing to really achieve,” he said. Rose Eshun, a  food-seller who sings to attract buyers for her boiled corn and roasted plantain has been using firewood and charcoal laced with kerosene for years to boil her corn.  Credit: Ridwan Karim Dini-Osman/The World In the sprawling neighborhood of Ashaiman, food seller Rose Eshun has been using firewood and charcoal laced with kerosene for years to boil her corn."Ever since I was a child ‘til now, we've been using firewood and charcoal for cooking. They're easy to find, they don't cost much, and they're very effective for cooking long hours,” she said. Eshun said despite the cost to her health, switching to so-called modern fuels would collapse her business.“The prices of clean gas and those kinds of things are way beyond my strength. Even my daily proceeds from this business cannot afford that.  No way, no way,” she said.Eshun said any move by the government to ban charcoal or firewood should take into account the economic realities of small businesses like hers.“We will meet any such attempts with fierce resistance. If the government wants us to stop using these traditional fuels, then the president should provide us with the money for clean fuel. It is as simple as that,” she said. Charcoal is readily available throughout Ghana, especially in regions where access to modern energy sources is both expensive and limited. However, the widespread use of charcoal contributes to deforestation, posing significant harm to the environment. Credit: Ridwan Karim Dini-Osman/The World That's essentially the message that the African negotiating bloc is presenting at the COP28 meeting this week: If you want a switch to greener energy sources, pay up. Africa is home to 18% of the global population but consumes about 6%  of the world's energy and emits an even lower percentage of carbon emissions. Poorer and developing countries argue that they did very little to cause the climate problem yet they're now being asked to move away from coal, oil and gas. “Africa cannot be held to be responsible for this problem and if you want to get Africa to do its bit, then it's a question of financing,” said Theo Acheampong, a Ghanaian energy economist at Aberdeen University. He said developed countries are more focused on global renewable energy targets while they're still subsidizing oil and gas production domestically, in the amount of $7 trillion. But African countries don't get access to the financing and technologies required to address the issue of energy poverty, he added. Over 600 million people in Africa lack sufficient energy. And in the next 30 years, the population of 1.4 billion on the continent will double, driving up energy demand even more. Acheampong believes that the goal of COP28 must also address energy security, access and affordability challenges in Africa. “And I strongly believe that oil and gas, as well as nuclear, as well as renewable and all these other energy forms should be a core part of the energy mix of African countries,” he said.But Chibeze Ezekiel, who leads the Strategic Youth Network for Development in Ghana, said he favors a full fossil-fuel phaseout. “We can't guarantee that we will have oil and gas forever. We can't guarantee that there will be coal forever. At some point, we may run out, and then what happens?” It's better to invest in renewable energy, he added.

In a small coastal village courtyard, at an art event celebrating El Hierro's volcanic heritage, they're burning through a lot of power. They've set up a big, brightly lit translucent cube with a dancer inside, and next to it is a slideshow of volcanic landscapes. Then there's the sound system playing this music.  No one here seems to be thinking about where all this electricity comes from. Probably because El Hierro has that more than covered.  There are 200-foot wind turbines with white blades that spin high up on a ridge over the Atlantic. The island has five of them.  Gorona del Viento's wind turbines are barely spinning these days due to diminishing winds. But when the five turbines are in full swing, they can provide the island — in tandem with the hydroelectric system they power — with 100% of its energy. Credit: Gerry Hadden/The World They stand at the center of a renewable energy project called Gorona del Viento (Wind-Powered Hydro), aimed at ridding the island entirely of fossil fuels. It's a public-private outfit with funding from Spain, the European Union and Spanish electricity giant Endesa. Spokeswoman Cristina Morales said the turbines generate up to 11.5 megawatts of electricity. That's more than the island needs — the turbines send half that juice to consumers. And as for the rest? “We use it to pump desalinated water — 2,500 cubic liters per hour — from a low reservoir up to another high on the mountainside,” Morales told The World. “Then, we release that water down through turbines. This generates whatever electricity shortfall we might have.”  On a good day, the system can provide 100% of the island's electricity between wind and water. On days when there's little wind, they can release more stored water, ramping up hydropower to compensate. If the wind stops altogether, the upper reservoir can keep El Hierro's lights on for up to three days.  Gorona's upper reservoir is some 2,100 feet above the lower one. The company can add even more electricity to the island's grid by pumping water up here and then releasing it through turbines. Credit: Gerry Hadden/The World  Gorona says it has reduced El Hierro's dependence on diesel-powered electricity by half in its decade of operation. There are some unique ingredients here that have made this possible. Starting with the people.Local councilman Antonio Chinea sits on Gorona's board. He said ideas for self-reliance tend to resonate with El Hierro's roughly 10,000 residents and that it's in their DNA. “We have long had a fend-for-ourselves mentality, being so isolated out at sea,” he said. “There are times when planes and boats cannot reach us due to bad weather, and we have to get by on our own.” The renewables plan was not only popular — there was lots of money for it from multiple funders who saw the island as a sort of test case — and then there was the wind — the consistent easterlies known as the alisios.It all added up to a perfect mix that seemed to put total reliance on renewables within reach. But then, the alisios began slowing down a couple of years ago. “There's barely a breeze right now,” Chinea said. “It's not normal for this time of year. It's hot, and there's hardly any wind. These periods of still air are becoming more frequent.”This stagnation causes wind energy, and thus hydropower, to drop. Gorona officials and locals blame the decreasing winds on what this whole renewables project was set up to combat: climate change. Inside Gorona's hydroelectric station, six huge red pumps stand at the ready. But the only sound you can hear is from the cooling fans. Many days have passed without enough wind to wake these giants. Gorona's six water pumps have grown more and more idle over the last two years because they're powered by wind energy — and there's less wind. Credit: Gerry Hadden/The World “I am not pessimistic about the future,” Gorona's Cristina Morales said. “But as a company, we do need to start adapting to these planetary changes.” Now that the winds are calming, Gorona is pivoting. The public-private partnership overseeing El Hierro's energy transition is offering big subsidies for solar panels and encouraging individuals to install them on their homes. With each panel, the demand on Gorona's lagging energy plant lessens. Solar panels installer Marcos Sanchez said he's crushed under his orders. In fact, to meet strict timelines attached to subsidies, he said he's forced to leave some installations nearly finished and then come back to button things up later. That's what he was doing as The World caught up with him.“This installation works,” Sanchez said, climbing up to a six-panel setup on a client's garage roof. “But, look, those dangling cables shouldn't be visible. They're carrying 700 volts of current. If something goes wrong here, it could be catastrophic.” Once done, Sanchez speeds off to his next job in his diesel truck. The island has transportation in its sights as well. Gorona now subsidizes electric vehicles. People are snapping them up — and charging them for free at new stations around the island. On a recent lunch break, local travel agent Divinia Carballo unplugged her red Opel Corsa from a station near her office. She said the island desperately needs more charging points. There are only about a dozen. Carballo added that people also need to learn some renewable energy etiquette.“There are people who plug in their car at a public charger in the evening and don't unplug until the morning,” she said. “You need to be a little bit aware that other people are waiting to charge up, too.” Small inconveniences aside, Carballo said the island's transition to renewables in recent years has given people hope and a sense of purpose. But the worry remains. Are the diminishing winds a temporary blip ... a lasting consequence of a warming planet? 

If the US is going to supercharge its production of electric vehicles and its batteries, it's going to need a lot more graphite.Graphite is a key battery component, and currently, much of the supply comes from China — particularly when it comes to the highly processed form used in electric vehicles (EV). Amid increasing tensions, the Chinese government placed new export controls on shipments of graphite on Dec. 1. And the recent move is getting attention in North America, where companies are eyeing graphite deposits that could feed the domestic supply chain. Some 30 miles outside Nome, supplies for Graphite One's remote mining exploration camp wait at a staging area the company uses for its helicopters. Credit: Berett Wilber/The World That includes Alaska's Seward Peninsula, the finger of land in the western end of the state that stretches toward Russia and the Bering Strait.This past summer, US Sen. Lisa Murkowski traveled to the area, to what the US Geological Survey says is the country's largest graphite deposit. She flew in by helicopter to the remote site tucked between mountains and a huge tidal estuary.There, she visited an exploration camp that belongs to a Canadian company, Graphite One. With help from the US government, it could one day become the site of a mile-wide, open pit mine. In Nome, US Sen. Lisa Murkowski walks away from a helicopter that flew her to the Graphite One project, a mining exploration camp that the Canadian company is developing to build an open pit graphite mine. Credit: Berett Wilber/The World While construction is still years away, the project is getting a grant of nearly $40 million from the US Department of Defense to speed up its development — a step that Murkowski supported.“If we're going to talk electric vehicles, if we're going to talk about the contents of your cell phone, you're going to want graphite,” she said in a video she later posted to social media. “You're going to want American graphite. And why not Alaskan graphite?”Graphite One is among a number of mining companies developing new mineral deposits in Alaska. And while this work is supported by the US government, many of the companies are headquartered in Canada or elsewhere.Gracelin Baskaran, a mining economist at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the US has not focused on mining in “a very long time.”“We have actually turned to companies like Rio Tinto, Anglo American, BHP,” she said. “We turn to these giant mining companies, and sometimes we forget that they're not American.”Some of the Indigenous people with ties to the area of the Alaska graphite deposit would rather see the graphite stay in the ground. Teller and Brevig Mission are the two Iñupiaq villages nearby, and Brevig Mission is only accessible by plane or boat. The nearest full-sized grocery store is 70 miles away, so many residents subsist on harvests of salmon, moose and berries in the vicinity of Graphite One's project. The main store in Teller lacks fresh produce and charges steep prices for groceries, making hunting and fishing essential for the village's Iñupiaq residents. Credit: Nathaniel Herz/The World “The further they go into the mine, our subsistence is just going to move further and further away from us,” said Gilbert Tocktoo, president of Brevig Mission's tribal government. “Sooner or later, it's going to become a question of: Do I want to live here anymore? Or do I want to make a choice to move?”Graphite itself isn't toxic, but Graphite One is still examining whether mining it could generate heavy metals. The mining techniques under consideration pose a relatively low risk, said Dave Chambers, president of the Montana-based Center for Science in Public Participation, which provides technical assistance to tribal and advocacy groups on mining issues. But, he added, that doesn't mean “no risk.”“There is always a possibility for some sort of catastrophic failure — but that doesn't happen very often,” he said. “There's also a possibility there will be no impact — that doesn't happen very often, either.”Some residents of the nearby villages say they're open to the development.“If it's good and clean, so be it — it's money,” said Nick Topkok, a Teller resident.Topkok, who was taking a break from hanging salmon to dry on the beach in his village of Teller, said he doesn't oppose Graphite One. Four in 10 residents live in poverty in Teller, and Topkok said a mine would create jobs in a place that needs them badly. Freshly cut salmon dries on racks in Teller, a traditional Iñupiaq village on Western Alaska's Seward Peninsula. Salmon are an essential food source for Teller residents, who must drive 70 miles on a gravel road to reach affordable groceries. Credit: Berett Wilber/The World He said it also might help the town finally get running water and sewer systems for the homes there; right now, nearly everyone in town uses what's known as honey buckets for their toilets.“It's money for 50 years or more,” he said. “I'll be dead by then. But it'll affect my kids financially.”Topkok's kids aren't in Teller right now. He said they moved away because there are no jobs in town. He's done some work driving boats for Graphite One in the past. And he said he thinks the mine can coexist with the locals and their fish and game harvests.“Anchorage, Alaska, you've got moose running around, you've got bears running around, they'll be adapted, you know,” he said. “It's going to take a year or two, and they'll be right there.”Graphite One's mine, if it's opened, would benefit the area economically. A regional Indigenous-owned corporation recently said it would invest $2 million in the project.But, ultimately, it's a foreign mining company that will be calling the shots — because Graphite One has the mining rights to the land, not Indigenous corporations or tribal governments. The Tuksuk Channel, which reaches inland to the Imuruk Basin and its surrounding tundra, is a vital area for harvests by residents of the nearby Iñupiaq villages of Brevig Mission and Teller. Credit: Berett Wilber/The World Graphite One's Canadian chief executive, Anthony Huston, pointed out that the project would come with other benefits: training, jobs and college scholarships.“I think to myself, ‘What can I do to give these people the potential for a job one day, the potential to put gas in their ski-doo, to be able to live and work and stay in their village, if that's what they choose to do?'” he said. “And that's where I see Graphite One really stepping in.”Huston said he understands the importance of protecting the environment and locals' subsistence harvests — and the company has spent some money to back up that commitment. Earlier this year, it decided to fly in fuel to its remote camp rather than barging it through an environmentally sensitive channel, which would have been cheaper. But objections remain. Conservation groups have challenged other large Alaska mining projects in the courts, and at least one has already expressed opposition to Graphite One. Company officials say they expect intense battles over permitting in the years to come.An earlier version of this story was produced by Northern Journal, APM Reports and Alaska Public Media as part of the Public Media Accountability Initiative, which supports investigative reporting at local media outlets around the country.

When the Paris climate pact was gaveled into existence at the COP21 UN climate summit in 2015, it was met with a standing ovation. After more than two decades of talks, 196 countries had signed on to a climate pact requiring countries to set emissions targets and report on them, with the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 or “well below” 2 degrees Celsius. Each subsequent summit hammered out the details of the historic agreement until, in Glasgow in 2021, COP26 President Alok Sharma declared the Paris “rulebook” complete. “For the first time ever, we will be able to see that when a country makes a commitment,” he said after the summit, “whether or not they have stuck to those.” Optimism soared after the Paris Agreement was established in 2015. But progress at UN climate talks since then has been incremental at best.“There's nothing more to negotiate,” said Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and longtime fixture at the climate summits. And yet, he said, “We're seeing no progress. We're actually regressing. We need to globally reduce emissions by 6-7% per year, and now, we're increasing [by] 1% per year.”Even if countries slash emissions as much as they've promised, global temperatures are expected to increase by between 2.5 and 2.9 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels by the end of the century, according to the UN Emissions Gap Report released last week. Rockström argues the system of countries setting voluntary targets and then reporting on their progress isn't working. “At least not so far,” he said. “So, there's a great and rising frustration. And the frustration is at a point of urgency.”Faith in the ability of the UN process to deliver meaningful results on climate change has waxed and waned over the years. And this year, it's at a low point. Rockström and others have called for a rethinking of the COP meetings, shifting them from what he sees as a showcasing of best intentions to an exercise in accountability. Rachel Kyte, a former World Bank climate envoy and dean emeritus of the Fletcher School at Tufts University, argues the Paris Agreement is working, just not nearly fast enough.“Governments have dropped the ball in many cases, or have struggled to pick up the ball, for countries with less capacity, since Paris,” she said. The COP28 president himself has said the world is “way off track” and needs a “major course correction.”But there's added skepticism that this climate summit, in particular, can deliver meaningful results, in part because of who that COP28 president is: Sultan al-Jaber, the head of the United Arab Emirates' state-owned oil company. He argues that oil and gas companies need to be part of the solution and at the table during climate talks.  “This is a global challenge that calls for global solutions from every stakeholder,” Jaber said at an industry conference in May. “And this industry, in particular, is integral to developing the solutions.”But critics have called his dual postings a conflict of interest. Environmental leaders have criticized his appointment, and more than 100 lawmakers in the US and EU called for his removal in May. This week, leaked documents and reports published by the Centre for Climate Reporting show that Jaber was prepared to lobby for oil and gas deals in official COP28 meetings.  “I think these documents show that the United Arab Emirates is not playing a neutral, impartial role in the COP process, which is its job,” said Michael Jacobs, professor of political economy at the University of Sheffield and former climate adviser to the UK government. One of the big debates set to happen at COP28 is whether to phase out fossil fuels. “So, it's really not appropriate for [the UAE], in the very same meetings that it is discussing the negotiations, which are aimed at phasing out fossil fuels, to be frankly trying to phase them up.” Jacobs said to get nearly 200 countries with widely divergent interests to agree to anything, COP presidents must be seen as advocating for the whole world's best interests, not just the host country's.  “And it will be very difficult, I think, for many countries to trust the UAE if it's been doing this, if it's basically been promoting its own interests through this process.” In response to questions from The World, a COP28 spokesperson wrote that the documents are “inaccurate” and “not used by COP28 in meetings.” They did not respond to questions about whether oil and gas business was discussed in meetings set up for Jaber in his capacity as COP28 president. Even with the controversy dogging this COP, there are some bright spots heading into the UN summit in Dubai.The US and China are talking about climate change again, and this month agreed to work together on increasing renewables and decreasing methane, the potent greenhouse gas. “It's not yet real change, but it is, I think, a clear signal that both countries recognize that China and the US have to work together, or else, we will fail to achieve anything at COP that's worth talking about,” said Gina McCarthy, a former US national climate adviser.Meanwhile, former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres has warned of the “self-fulfilling prophesy” of despair and has been cheered by recent economic indicators. “The cost of renewable energy has plummeted, meaning at this COP, countries can readily commit to tripling renewable energy by 2030,” Figueres said. That's on the table at COP28, along with a likely contentious debate about phasing down or out fossil fuels. Another key outcome to look for at the summit is how much money richer countries commit to a newly established loss and damage fund to help poorer nations deal with the devastation already being caused by climate change.  

Salah Fareeq Al-Feroun and his family have been farmers in southern Iraq for generations. In the living room of his house in al-Meshkhab in Najaf Province, his son Muhammad Ziyad takes out a photo of their 32-acre farm — located about five miles away from their home — which shows lush green grass as far as the eye can see, soaked in water. Photo of Salah Fareeq Al-Feroun's farmlands before the water shortages and government mandate to stop cultivating anbar rice.  Credit: Courtesy of Muhammad Ziyad But their farm doesn't look like that anymore. It's now barren and dry, with no one able to work the land anymore.Severe water shortages in Iraq have been affecting the cultivation of the country's signature anbar rice — Al-Feroun's main crop. The water has been drying up because of a combination of climate change and geopolitics.“[There's] no rice, no vegetables, [nothing],” Al-Feroun said. “There [aren't any plants], only wheat. This is the main river — dry.” Salah Fareeq Al-Feroun standing on his farm that is now dry and barren, Al-Meshkhab, Iraq, Aug. 30, 2023. Credit: Sara Hassan/The World Al-Feroun used to grow rice in the summer and wheat in the winter. Now he can only grow wheat. Because of the water shortages, he can no longer grow anbar rice, a long-grain white rice with a high fat ratio that is unique to Iraq, and which is traditionally served with every meal. The word anbar — sometimes also written as amber in English — is an Arabic word that refers to the rice's perfume-like fragrance. X post by @MohammedBaraka Credit: Mohammed Baraka/X post “Amber rice is very significant for its smell and it also [has a] very delicious taste,” al-Feroun said through a translator.For the past two years, though, the Iraqi government has banned farmers from cultivating the rice because it is a water-intensive crop. The paddy where the rice grows has to be fully submerged in water and takes around five months to mature. The government has only allowed for minimal farming of the crop in certain areas to preserve the seeds for future cultivation.Importing riceThis has forced Iraqis to import rice from other countries, including Iran, Pakistan and India. The imported rice has a different taste than anbar.“There used to be five types of anbar rice, but now there are only two,” explained Ahmed Salim, the manager of a store at Al-Warda Market in central Baghdad, as he poured out some rice into packets for weighing. “And the prices have more than doubled. We depend on Pakistani rice — Basmati.” Ahmed Salim, the manager of a store at Al-Warda Market, weighs packets of rice, central Baghdad, Sept. 24, 2023. Credit: Enas Razak Ibrahim/The World ‘The Cradle of Civilization'For centuries, Iraqis have relied on water from two main rivers: the Tigris and the Euphrates.They are what gave Iraq — or ancient Mesopotamia — the titles “The Cradle of Civilization” and “The Land Between Two Rivers.”But that land is drying up. Water sources drying up near Salah Fareeq Al-Feroun's farm, Al-Meshkhab, Najaf Province, Iraq, Aug. 30, 2023. Credit: Sara Hassan/The World Achref Chibani, who is a climate journalist, says that climate change is one factor and that it has a snowball effect. Anbar rice discoloring after a couple of years. The price of what's available now has more than doubled, forcing Iraqis to depend on imported rice, Baghdad, Iraq, Sept. 1, 2023. Credit: Sara Hassan/The World This past summer, temperatures in Iraq reached nearly 122 degrees Fahrenheit, and the country has experienced years of persistent drought.Extreme heat has also devastated crops in neighboring Turkey, which is where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers begin. There are water-sharing agreements among the countries that surround these rivers: Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria.Chibani says that the effects of climate change are exacerbated by poor governance and regional politics.“The impact of climate change will make geopolitics more obvious in the near future because close coordination will not be an option, it will be mandatory.”Achref Chibani, climate journalist“It's a combination of both, but the impact of climate change will make geopolitics more obvious in the near future because close coordination will not be an option, it will be mandatory,” Chibani said. A package of Iraqi anbar rice. Credit: Courtesy of Hamzeh Hadad He added that Turkey has also faced droughts and lower levels of rainfall and snowmelt in its southern mountains, which means less water is fed into the rivers. Meanwhile, Turkey has also embarked on massive construction projects in recent years, including the building of dams and hydroelectric power plants along the Tigris and Euphrates, which Chibani says is another factor.“And those decisions vis-a-vis projects in Turkey are affecting the quota of water in Iraq,” Chibani explained. Plus, the Iraqi government hasn't been involved in close negotiations over regional water-sharing because it's been preoccupied with its own internal security issues.International collaborationAl-Feroun, the farmer who can no longer grow anbar in his fields, agreed that climate change is a factor, but that geopolitics also plays a major role.In addition to being a farmer, he spent 25 years teaching at an agricultural secondary school for the Ministry of Education, which has given him insight into how geopolitics has played into what's happening on his farm. Salah Fareeq Al-Feroun's graduating class from the University of Baghdad, Al-Meshkhab, Najaf Province, Iraq, Aug. 30, 2023. Credit: Sara Hassan/The World Back at his home, there are large wooden cabinets filled with books and photos on the walls of his university graduation. And photos of himself, as a government employee, meeting with foreign leaders over the years. Salah Fareeq Al-Feroun at his home. He spent 25 years teaching at an agricultural secondary school for the Ministry of Education, Al-Meshkhab, Najaf Province, Iraq, Aug. 30, 2023. Credit: Sara Hassan/The World Al-Feroun said that a government minister visited farmers recently, telling them they would be compensated for their losses, but they have yet to see any assistance. He said that the government has to move beyond making visits and promises.“Our government has to have serious conversations,” he said, “not just with Turkey, but with the United Nations, the Arab League, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the Non-Aligned Movement to get our rights.”After generations of cultivating the fields, he hopes that his children will also have the chance to be able to continue the family legacy.Enas Razak Ibrahim contributed to this report.Related: This startup is fighting to keep Iraq's palm trees alive

Thousands of protesters in Panama have blocked roads and shut down major portions of the Pan-American Highway this week over a government decision to fast-track a contract with a copper mining company.Cobre Panamá is a massive copper mine owned by First Quantum Minerals that has been in production since 2019. In 2021, the Supreme Court declared the government contract with the mine unconstitutional for not living up to stipulations that it serves the "public good."Panamá has been renegotiating a new contract over the last two years, attempting to provide financial benefits to the state.And this contract was fast-tracked through Congress last week, sparking outrage on the streets. Some unions have announced multiple-day strikes while schools have been closed. A protester holds a sign that says, "Panama for sale," a notable jab at Panama's government. Credit: Michael Fox/The World Commerce Minister Federico Alfaro praised the deal on the Panama news outlet Telemetro. He said it would safeguard 40,000 jobs and provide windfall profits for the Panamanian state."The agreement ensures a minimum payment to the state of $375 million a year for the next 20 years” — more than 10 times what Panama previously received yearly from the mine, he said.But former ally to the president, lawmaker Zulay Rodríguez, attacked the deal on the congressional floor.“You have opened Pandora's box,” she said. “You are going to bring devastation, and death. Not just for the Panamanian people, but for our water resources.”It's a view widely shared by Panamanians across the country. Iselina Guerra said that she supports the protests as the backlash toward the government's decision could invoke a reversal. Credit: Michael Fox/The World “We are saying no to mining, no to exploitation,” said Juan Smith, who participated in a protest in Boquete, a town in the hills of western Panama. “It brings contamination with it. And it hurts the environment. That is not what we want.”He and other protesters say they want to see the new contract revoked and the mine shut down.Until then, the protests show no sign of slowing down.“Until the government revokes this deal, the people will be in the streets,” Smith said. Noriel Hernandez, a food truck worker at El Pariente, stands with a co-worker. Credit: Michael Fox/The World Last year, huge demonstrations against inflation and gas prices shut down the country for weeks. Many fear the country may be heading for a repeat, if the president doesn't revoke the contract.In an effort to calm the country, President Laurentino Cortizo responded to the protests in a national address on Tuesday.He said the mining deal was a huge victory, with negotiations carried out over two years and a sufficient process of community consultation.He also shot back at environmental concerns, stating, “we managed to include, among other aspects, a reforestation plan, a mine closure and postclosure plan, and permanent onsite supervision and control of compliance with its contractual obligations in environmental matters.” A protest sign written in Spanish that translates to "Panama is not for sale." Credit: Michael Fox/The World He told Panamanians that his government would start using money received as royalties from the mine next month to lift retiree pensions to a minimum of $350 a month. But many Panamanians said his statements only fanned the flames.“That is for a few. Not for everyone. Meanwhile, we are all affected by the mine,” said Iselina Guerra, who works at a corner store on the edge of Boquete. “This is about the environment. About the rivers that will be contaminated. While the president is only thinking about his own economic interests, not the well-being of all Panamanians.”Guerra said she believed the protests were the only way to force the government to revoke the agreement. Juan Smith protesting in the streets of Boquete, Panama. Protests are not just happening in this small mountainous town, and, in fact, have been ongoing throughout the country. Credit: Michael Fox/The World But the police are cracking down. There have been more than 40 arrests and violence. And areas that depend on tourism are concerned for the impact of the protests if they ripple on — particularly ahead of the country's Independence Day celebrations from Nov. 3 to Nov. 5.“You really count on those days for your business,” said Noriel Hernandez, who works at a roadside food truck in the hills of western Panama. “They're the busiest days of the whole year. When your business is going slow, that holiday is a huge lift, but with all this that is happening, we will see.”

Veterinarian Javier Bordas is very busy.On a recent morning, he rushed back into his small-town clinic in the village of Pont de Suert in Spain. He had just been at a cattle ranch near the French border, where he said he saw yet another case of Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease, or EHD.Dr. Bordas told The World that there were multiple outbreaks in the 10 days since the virus reached the region.“I saw three sick cows,” he said. “And I've just taken a blood sample from another. Ranchers have even called me from France, but I tell them I can't go.”The mosquito-borne virus first jumped from North Africa to Italy last year. Soon after, it appeared in southern Spain. It's now crossed the Pyrenees during the warmest fall ever recorded in Europe.“We're waiting for the cold to arrive,” Bordas said. “Normally, at this time of year, it should get down to just about freezing at night. If the weather were normal, I think this mosquito would disappear.” On the day Bordas spoke to The World, it was about 70 degrees. The week prior, temperatures were in the high 80s. People wore t-shirts and shorts instead of the down parkas normally seen in late October.Bordas' phone rang — a local rancher, Josep Feree, said he was bringing a sick cow down from the pastures to his barn just down the road. Rural veterinarian Dr. Javier Bordas fields call after call from ranchers whose cattle have been infected by Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease. EHD arrived in Europe in 2022 and quickly spread north across Spain, Italy and France. Credit: Gerry Hadden/The World Bordas sped off in his white work truck and reached the barn before Ferre. When the rancher showed up — the sick cow was nowhere to be seen. “We couldn't move her,” he said, exasperated. “She kept charging [at] us [when we tried]. She's been sick for a week now.”That means a week with little or no food and water — because one of EHD's main symptoms is excruciatingly painful sores on the tongue and mouth.Four of Ferre's 300 heads had caught EHD. Bordas checked on another one that had gone days without food. She was alone in a corner pen and could barely stand up. Ferre held the cow's mouth open, as Bordas shined a light inside.“You can still see some ulcers there,” he said. “But she's getting better. Look under her tongue. She had a sore that ran from one side of her mouth to the other." A cow recovering from EHD slowly chews on hay on a ranch in northeast Spain. EHD causes painful sores on cattle tongues and mouths, making it impossible to eat or drink. The virus can also provoke miscarriages and leave bulls sterile. Occasionally it is fatal. Credit: Gerry Hadden/The World Ferre pushed some hay her way, and the cow tentatively began to chew. There was a sense of relief. But it didn't last long.The big picture is that there's no cure for EHD beyond painkillers and prayers.“These days, this is all we ranchers are talking about,” Ferre told The World. “Here, luckily, so far, none of my cows have died.” Bordas visits ranches to make sure cows have been impregnated, as ranchers worry their bulls may be left sterile by EHD. Credit: Gerry Hadden/The World The mortality rate is low. But hundreds of cows in Spain have, in fact, died. Many more have had miscarriages. Infected bulls have gone sterile.The one preventative weapon ranchers have is old-fashioned bug spray.“The repellent we use works on ticks, so hopefully, it'll keep the mosquitos away too,” Ferre said.But if the disease's rapid spread northward is any indication, repellent won't cut it.“I think the mosquito got here so fast inside trucks,” Bordas said. “Because the first cases appeared on ranches right along the motorway. We get like 2,000 trucks a day passing through.”Initially, health authorities said mosquitoes wouldn't survive much at 3,000 feet above sea level. But with the summer-like conditions, Ferre said one of his cows got infected at twice that altitude.But can't they take the animals up even higher until winter arrives? “No, no. Quite the opposite,” Ferre said. “We need to bring the cows down now. Because they've grazed all the pastures clean. There's no food up there.”Ferre's cows must descend or face starvation — even if coming down means possibly getting EHD. 

A buzz of expectation filled the large red tent set up in front of the visitor's center at Panama's Center of Space Sciences over the weekend as crowds prepared for a once-in-a-lifetime viewing of a solar eclipse. Sarigua National Park, one of the driest spots in Panama, is probably one of the best places to see the astrological event during the country's rainy season.  Visitors walk over the dried bed to view the solar eclipse in Panama. Credit: Michael Fox/The World "I've never seen an eclipse in my life," said André Rodriguez, a 15-year-old astronomy buff, with braces and a picture of Saturn on his shirt. "And I'm super excited to hopefully get to see one today." Andre Rodriguez is an astronomy enthusiast.  Credit: Michael Fox/The World Skies were cloudy but the sun kept popping in and out. And then — first contact — the moment when the moon begins to carve its way across the sun. One person saw it. Then another. Everyone threw on their safety glasses and looked to the sky.“We're so excited,” said Madelaine Rojas, the country's first female astrophysicist and the founder of the Panama Center of Innovation in Space Sciences, CENACEP, a new nonprofit group dedicated to promoting space science across Panama. She had been organizing this event for months. Madelaine Rojas is Panama's first female astrophysicist and the founder of the Panama Center of Innovation in Space Sciences. Credit: Michael Fox/The World “This reminds us of the cosmovision of our ancestors," she said. "How they predicted these types of phenomena that were really important to them. The skies and the celestial bodies were the most important for them,” she said of the event's significance. But Rojas is also looking toward the future. She said they want to convert Panama into a hub for science and astronomy and are taking strides to make that happen. Earlier this year, Roja's Space Sciences Center signed a deal with Ecuador's Cotopaxi Universidad to help it develop AstroTourism, or astronomy tourism in the country. The focus will highlight the country's ethnocultural relationship with astronomy: ancient rock carvings, archeological sites, and Indigenous understanding of the skies, past and present. Gregory Guerrero helps a youngster look through the telescope.  Credit: Michael Fox/The World “But," she said. "We have something else, which is our connection as a hub of the Americas. In between the north and the south. This allowed us to host the Latin American Astronomical Olympics."  The event is like an international science fair for the stars and it took place in mid-October. Hugo Fares, 17, was among the students selected from across Latin America who attended. “The event was really cool,” said the long-haired student with glasses, who wore a yellow Brazilian Astronomy Olympics shirt. “Because we got to meet people from several countries, from Argentina to Colombia. And it was great getting to share experiences.” Hugo Fares, 17, takes a look into the telescope.  Credit: Michael Fox/The World Back under the eclipse, clouds slid past. The moon was about halfway across the sun. And then came the race — the country's first one held during an eclipse. It was only about a mile long, with a couple dozen people lined up, adults and children, alike. Medals were handed out by the first active astronaut ever to visit Panama, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev. He participated in the activities throughout the week."Keep running,” he said through a translator into Spanish. “Sports are important. As are the astronomy olympics.” Cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev, from Russia, watches the eclipse with Panamanians.  Credit: Michael Fox/The World It was almost time. The crowd congregated around a pair of telescopes set up on the dry salt marsh, pointed toward the sun. The clouds kept getting in the way. But then, they slid aside. And the moon moved into full position in front of the sun. Cheers erupted from the crowd.The moment they'd been waiting for. Everyone stared up with their eclipse glasses over their eyes.  A viewer takes a photo of the solar eclipse. Credit: Michael Fox/The World This was what's called an annular eclipse. It doesn't block the sun completely, but the moon creates what looks like a ring of fire. "The temperature has changed completely,” said Luis Rivera, a visitor in the crowd. “It's gotten chillier, with the sun behind the moon. And the eclipse is incredible. It's just incredible.”Astronomy buff André Rodriguez was floored."It's incredible," he said. "You can see it even better than expected. It's amazing. And so great to share this moment with all of these people who also love astronomy.” For many there, this was a once-in-a-lifetime event. Gregory Guerrero adjusts the telescope. Credit: Michael Fox/The World "Before, astronomy was something no one knew about here in Panama,” said Gregory Guerrero, an amateur astronomy enthusiast who brought one of the telescopes. "Now look. We're here with a cosmonaut, people from different countries, Brazil, journalists. It's really exciting to be here." And, he said, he hoped it was a sign of big things to come.

Shantilal Muttha, a former businessman turned social entrepreneur, was greeted by a crowd of excited students on a recent visit to the school he founded in Pune, India.  BJS students perform a song prepared for the founder, Shantilal Muttha, during his recent visit on campus. Credit: Justin Nisly/The World In the airy cafeteria, Muttha joked with children as they ate sweets and shared news with him about their progress. One teenage girl proclaimed that she wants to be a radio jockey when she grows up. “I like it here a lot,” she said. “In fact, I don't want to leave!” The teen lost her parents to death by suicide when she was only 7, as part of an ongoing crisis in India in which several thousand farmers facing financial strain take their lives each year. (Her name is being withheld to protect her privacy). Muttha established Bharatiya Jain Sanghatana, which oversees an educational rehabilitation school, specifically to support the complex needs of students who have experienced trauma and crises. BJS' unique approach — offering high-quality education and mental health support — could offer a model for disaster relief around the world. Shantilal Muttha, founder of Bharatiya Jain Sanghatana, stands in front of the school with teachers and staff.  Credit: Justin Nisly/The World The school's origins date back to a powerful earthquake 30 years ago, on Sept. 30, 1993. The magnitude 6.4 earthquake hit the districts of Latur and Osmanabad, killing approximately 10,000 people and destroying more than 50 villages. On the day of the earthquake, Muttha said he raced to Latur to distribute food and supplies. He was struck by the stunned looks on the children's faces and worried about the lasting trauma. Muttha himself knows about grief and survival. He grew up in a drought-prone area of Maharashtra and lost his mother as an infant. “I faced a lot of challenges in my childhood,” he said.Muttha found success in real estate, but it left him unfulfilled, he said. He closed his business at the age of 31 to focus more on humanitarian work. Less than a month after the earthquake, Muttha arranged with local authorities for 1,200 children from earthquake-stricken villages to study seven hours away, in the city of Pune, where he had access to resources as a businessman. Students live in dorms at BJS.  Credit: Justin Nisly/The World “We lost one generation because of [the] earthquake,” he said. “And now, I'm afraid we will lose the young generation because of psychology.”Teachers from Pune and across the country were eager to help provide education, shelter and mental health support to the students. To ease the transition, Muttha made a point to hire 20 teachers from the earthquake-struck regions. At first, Muttha rented a school for the students to quickly restart their education. Several years later, he purchased 10 acres of land and opened a sprawling campus in 1997. Ashok Pawar was one of the teachers who left his earthquake-damaged village to teach science at BJS. He said children struggled at first to adjust to their new environment. “After bringing them here, caring for them was really difficult. Sometimes, there were 200 children all crying together at one time.” Ashok Pawar, who lived in one of the village destroyed by the earthquake, moved to Pune in the aftermath and became a teacher and administrator. Credit: Justin Nisly/The World Many children were terrified to sleep in their eight-story dormitories, convinced they would collapse.But with time and access to therapists and teachers, most of the children formed bonds with each other and school staff. After several years, the original group of children began to graduate and leave. Muttha then decided to admit more students from across India, with a particular focus on children who had experienced disasters. An ongoing missionToday, about 400 students live and study on campus — many of whom have lost parents to death by suicide, natural disasters or COVID-19. The students have continuous access to trained medical staff, weekly therapist visits and meditation spaces. Approximately 125 teachers at the school also receive training on how to provide their students with mental health support. Students are encouraged to maintain strong connections to their families and communities and often return home for holidays. Students at BJS pose inside a decommissioned bus available as a play area on campus.   Credit: Justin Nisly/The World Children who have experienced these types of traumas typically have a very difficult time recovering without proper support, according to Irwin Redlener, founder of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University.Those deprived of emotional and psychological support and educational continuity lose opportunities for future success, he added. Particularly for children from impoverished backgrounds, “the outcome is very dim.”The trained pediatrician said initiatives like BJS are essential, noting the school's emphasis on maintaining continuous ties between students and their families. "The question is, could it be scaled up?"Redlener himself founded a program that directs aid to organizations in Ukraine that support the psychological and educational needs of children experiencing war in Ukraine.“It is very important that the rest of society figures out ways to remediate the educational loss of children who have been disrupted and also manage the emotional and psychological support that they might need,” he said. Lasting impactMore than 4,500 students have graduated from BJS over the past 30 years. The majority of the original 1,200 students now work in public service as scientists, social workers, police officers and teachers. Babasaheb Dudhbhate, a former student who suffered a leg injury in the 1993 earthquake, is now a history professor at a college in Pune. "Our past is very dark, and we can never forget that,” he said. “But from this dark past, Bhartiya Jain Sanghatana has given us a direction, an opportunity, a chance.” Babasaheb Dudhbhate was injured in the 1993 earthquake. Today he's a history professor at a college in Pune. Credit: Justin Nisly/The World When an earthquake struck the state of Gujarat in 2001, many BJS students immediately joined relief efforts on the ground. Each year, former students volunteer in one of the 50 villages destroyed by the 1993 earthquake. They teach farmers how to access government benefits and mentor younger students.For Muttha, this spirit of service was always one of the main goals of his institution. “After 10 years, 20 years, how their lives have changed!” he said. “And how they have impacted [hundreds of thousands] of people in their lives ... whatever they want to achieve, they can achieve. But they will take care of others.”Muttha hopes this approach to disaster relief — offering a high-quality education, a focus on mental health and prioritizing service — becomes a blueprint for others in India and beyond.

Every day, Célia Regina das Neves fishes among the mangroves in the Mãe Grande de Curuçá Extractive Reserve, a conservation area at the mouth of the Amazon River in Brazil. Neves relies on resources from the surrounding forests and mangroves for her livelihood, too. "I make baskets, and I make traps for shrimping," she said, referring to the plants in this lush landscape from which she weaves her gear, as well as the fishery that sustains her community.  But she worries about the future of the reserve and with it, her livelihood — as a result of plans to set aside land here for carbon offset efforts. Célia Regina das Neves is a fisher and local leader within the Mãe Grande de Curuçá Extractive Reserve, a conservation area at the mouth of the Amazon River in Brazil.  Credit: Cícero Pedrosa Neto/The World Carbon offsetting is a way for companies and individuals to compensate for their own carbon emissions by funding an equivalent carbon-dioxide saving effort somewhere else. Companies and individuals can buy "carbon credits" generated by these projects.President Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva's administration has embraced carbon credits as a way to protect the Amazon and mitigate climate change. Lula mentioned carbon credits as part of Brazil's path toward a "bioeconomy” at the COP27 climate conference in Egypt, and again on a state visit to China a few months ago. But many community activists in the Amazon, including Neves, say these types of projects can be problematic. Recently, the reserve's president, José Roberto Garcia de Moraes, signed an agreement giving Carbonext, a Brazilian carbon offset development company, the authority to monitor the area for the eventual sale of credits based on the carbon sequestered in biomass — mostly trees — on a piece of land here. The area is the size of Detroit. "[The project] will benefit all of us, both the mangrove forest and the fishermen," Moraes said, adding that carbon credits will generate income for people who really need it. Carbonext offered the reserve's association 50% of the carbon credits over a 20-year period. The credit value would vary with the price of carbon on the voluntary market."For us, fishermen and coastal dwellers, the project is important," he said.  Entrance to Mãe Grande Curuçá Extractive Reserve. Credit: Cícero Pedrosa Neto/The World Neves said the agreement was signed without any transparency. “This agreement was not communicated to the community. Community members didn't know it was signed," she claimed. And she sees it as ceding the community's land."It happened without any consideration about how all of this would take place: If families would be allowed to continue fishing, if the crab-catchers would be allowed to keep going down to catch their crabs. We don't know anything about any of this." Dock view of boats in Curuçá. Credit: Cícero Pedrosa Neto/The World In a written response to questions from The World, Carbonext stated: "Residents are always consulted about the demands that will be the focus of the initiatives implemented in the region,” adding that there would be no restrictions on fishing or other activities in the Curuça extractive reserve as a result of the terms of commitment.With no comprehensive official registry, it's hard to quantify the number of current offset projects in Brazil. This also makes it difficult to monitor and regulate new carbon credit projects that often occur in remote, rural communities. Claudia Horn is a research fellow at the London School of Economics who has studied carbon credits in the Brazilian Amazon for years.  As Brazilian lawmakers debate legislation for monitoring and enforcing carbon offset projects under so-called cap-and-trade, Horn said there are better ways to approach this that draw on mechanisms that promote human rights and act against deforestation."The demarcation of Indigenous lands, land reform, agrarian reform, all these are mechanisms that more directly have the effect, have a positive effect on Indigenous and traditional communities that are extremely poor," she said. But the pressure to embrace forest carbon offsets is significant, given the political power of agribusiness and other private-sector interests in Brazil. "Of course, there is a lot of pressure from corporations to have a carbon market because they will be the prime beneficiaries of it," she said.  Aerial view of the Mãe Grande Curuçá Extractive Reserve. Credit: Cícero Pedrosa Neto/The World Meanwhile, Curuçá is not an isolated case. Brazil's Pará state is full of carbon offset projects. In Indigenous Munduruku Territory along the Tapajós River, local leaders say that developers have been trying to make inroads as far back as 2007, shortly after the UN-backed “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation” (REDD) program was rolled out in Brazil. Munduruku leader João de Deus Kaba said that more recently, companies like Carbonext have been in constant, unsolicited contact. His community has mostly rebuffed these attempts. "We don't want — we will not accept — these types of contracts, in the case of carbon credits," he said.Companies like Carbonext act as intermediaries between local communities, independent auditors, and the companies or other parties interested in offsetting their emissions in the first place. A carbon credit auditor verifies that offsetting projects like Carbonext's are actually reducing or removing greenhouse gas emissions and that the carbon credits generated by them are valid.But legal expert Pedro Martins said these companies sometimes strong-arm community members into signing contracts. Martins said these contracts can be “abusive.” "They directly interfere with the use of the territory and not just for a short period of time. It's not a question of one, two or three years. Generally, these contracts are proposed for 30 years," he said. Martins pointed to one Pará community where people were not allowed to farm traditional lands after signing an agreement with a carbon project developer. He asked not to name the community or the company out of fear of retaliation.  "Even small fields are often the object of persecution in these cases by such companies," he said.After facing international criticism, Verra, the largest carbon credit auditor, said it is currently revamping its methodology to ensure locals still have access to their lands. The CEO was sacked in May in at least tacit acknowledgement of the bad press offset projects have received. Back in Curuçá, the lack of trust in carbon credit companies is palpable. Lifelong community member Manoel Santana da Trinidade, 67, said the lack of free, informed and prior consultation with communities is not acceptable, given how much territory and how many livelihoods are at stake."It has to be discussed first with the community members, explained to the community the reason, the motive behind why they are coming here to offer these credits," he said.

The auroch — giant, wild cows — date back nearly 10,000 years and once roamed freely across Europe. Until they were hunted to extinction by humans.The last ones died in Poland in 1627, according to Ricardo Almazán, a safari guide in the mountains of Albarracín, Spain, where a herd of modern-day aurochs can be found.  Safari guide Ricardo Almazán explains the concept of rewilding to a group of tourists. In this case, it's reintroducing giant extinct cows dating back nearly 10,000 years. The aurochs have been rebred from domestic cows that happened to share most of their ancestors' genes. Credit: Gerry Hadden/The World Today, the wild bovine — called tauros in Spanish — are here once again thanks to the nongovernmental organization Rewilding Spain.They are working to “rewild” the auroch — or bring back the animal hunted out of the area to restore the wilds as they were before — as opposed to only conserving what's currently there. Aurochs played a key role in the ecosystem — namely, grazing the largest brush and small trees to keep forests from growing too dense and prone to burning. Three species of vultures and feral horses are also being rewilded here. Reintroducing the auroch to the wild involves crossbreeding cows with the ancient genes of the aurochs, according to Lidia Valverde from Rewilding Spain.So, taking the “genetic features from different breeds of cows that we know that are descendants of that wild ancient cow” to create a new breed, she explained.But they're not introducing an entirely new species — scientists have managed to recover more than 90% of the aurochs' DNA, she said.Rewilding Europe, together with the Dutch Taurus Foundation, began the program to bring back the auroch in 2013.Now, the breeding of aurochs is happening in a selective way in Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Czech Republic, Romania and the Netherlands. And, more than 600 of the animals have been bred since the end of 2017, according to Rewilding Spain.Almazán said these new aurochs look and behave just like their forebears. They are reminiscent of fighting bulls, but up to three times bigger. An auroch may weigh over 2,000 pounds, with horns hovering 7 feet above the ground. They are Europe's largest herbivore. The aurochs, whose horns can reach 7 feet in the air and which can weigh up to 2,500 pounds, are now Europe's largest herbivore. They fell small trees when they walk through forests, helping let in sunshine to overly dense woods. Credit: Gerry Hadden/The World Almazán said their presence in the forest is evident in the fact that a lot of trees have been knocked down — the aurochs walk along and smash them flat and then eat the wood and everything.The cows' behavior has a larger, ecological benefit, he said. The new clearing has allowed the sun to reach the forest floor for the first time in years, giving other plants the chance to grow and attracting insects, birds and other grazers, like deer.Local farmer, Paco Rollola, who works with Almazán to help keep the aurochs from straying too far, said that lightning struck a tree nearby recently, but it didn't start a fire because there was no undergrowth around the tree.The aurochs had eaten it all, he said. Without them, he said, everything would have burned down.Valverde of Rewilding Spain said that the beasts are not only making this forest healthier, but they're also helping the local economy. This safari is proof.  It's slowly attracting tourists to an area seldom visited. Almazán's not getting rich off his rewilding safaris, but he's betting that driving tourists into the mountains to see feral horses, the aurochs and reintroduced species of vultures will one day pay off. Credit: Gerry Hadden/The World “We try to make a whole thing of rewilding,” she said, to create “something useful for local communities in a landscape that is featured with a strong depopulation.”

Mohamed Fouqi, a mosque director in Barcelona, Spain, has been busy stockpiling earthquake relief supplies in an empty classroom. He said people swing by daily to drop off donations to help victims of the devastating 6.8-magnitude earthquake that hit Morocco this month. Spain has the second-largest Moroccan diaspora in the world. Without an official national group to help with disaster relief, Moroccans in Spain who want to help earthquake victims are turning to neighborhood mosques.  They bring in everything from cash to cleaning products. But one item is sorely missing: tents. Winter is approaching in the Atlas Mountains and the Moroccan government says victims urgently need shelter. But few people go camping around here, Fouqi said. Still, Moroccans in Spain are finding ways to ship prioritized items by plane, boat and even driving their own cars south to the border. One nongovermental organization in Barcelona is trying to coordinate all these individual efforts. But it's tough.“I'm trying to organize the chaos,” said Mohammed Alamí, who runs Friends of the Moroccan People, known by its Spanish acronym ITRAN. Alamí said there's “a lot to tackle," from finding trucks and boats to taking aid across the straits of Gibraltar. He also said they have to avoid sending things that won't make it in, like medicine, for example. “It won't get through customs and just creates a bottleneck at the border,” Alamí said.He usually spends his days frantically searching for transport and getting customs clearances. And while he does that, he sends volunteer Ahmad Assousi to drum up support from the dozens of mosques around Barcelona. One day, Assousi popped into a large mosque in the nearby town of Cornellá. He introduced himself to the imam and began to explain ITRAN's efforts. He assured him that they had a free aid truck and all the border paperwork necessary. But the imam dismissed him. “I don't want to hear about trucks or even talk about trucks at all,” the imam said to Assousi. (He asked not to be named in this story). The imam told The World that the trucks always have problems entering Morocco, and he prefers to send aid by plane.Assousi eventually left frustrated. He said that all he's trying to do is “get everyone to work together.” “Meanwhile, Moroccans in the earthquake are waiting in the cold,” he said.But things are slowly inching forward. Mohamed Alamí, president of ITRAN, has now secured a free warehouse in downtown Barcelona. “Now, various mosques can store relief supplies here [and] coordinate together,” Alamí said. "And if all goes well, we can load a truck and send it to Morocco within days.”

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has sent energy costs surging, European leaders scrambling for alternative suppliers of gas, and redirected flows of Russian oil toward Asia.Some European countries also burned more coal in response to the energy shock.But the most transformational long-term change will be in increased investments in renewable energy, according to International Energy Agency chief energy economist Tim Gould.Gould spoke with The World's host Marco Werman about the war's longlasting impacts to energy markets.Marco Werman: It's been more than a year and a half since many Western countries vowed to stop buying Russian oil and gas. Has Russia been able to find other buyers or are they just producing less oil and gas than they were before the war?Tim Gould: So oil is much more easy to move around the world. And so by and large, Russia has been more successful in finding new buyers for oil than it has for gas; 80% of Russia's crude exports now go to China and to India. But gas is different. Gas, you transport by pipeline. And if your buyer at the end of that pipeline is no longer taking that gas, it's much more difficult to find alternative markets. So the effects on gas markets have been larger and I think they will have a longer-lasting effect on Russian production.Overall, what kind of impact has a war had on the consumption of fossil fuels, across the board? I'm thinking of those European countries that started burning more coal once the war started.So global oil demand is reaching some record levels and global gas demand is back to where it was prior to the crisis. And coal consumption worldwide has been at a close-to-record highs in recent years and setting new highs. But I think that picture of continuity misses some important things that have changed in markets. Because what's happened as a result of these very high fuel prices that we've seen is that many countries have doubled down on clean energy technologies. So, something dramatic has started to shift in the energy system. And a lot of that has to do with the with the strains, with the bruises, with the difficult market conditions that we've had during the crisis.Your details on the rise in coal and other fossil fuels makes me wonder about greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector last year as a result of the war. Did they tick up more than expected?They ticked up, but I don't think they ticked up more than expected. They did reach a new high, but if it wasn't for the increase in renewables, the increase in efficiency, that rise in energy related CO2 emissions would have been three times higher.So, you at the International Energy Agency, make projections about what the energy mix will look like in the future. What's your prognosis for the war's impact on the transition to renewable energy long-term? We see a peak in overall fossil fuel demand before the end of this decade, and it's I think it's quite an important moment in energy history. The aggregate picture is one where the fossil fuel demand starts to flatten out and then starts to decline.You kind of referred to this moment as a really important one in energy history. How big of a long-term impact do you think the war in Ukraine will have on the world's energy mix, Tim?We think at the International Energy Agency that when you look back in 2030, at the events of the last two years, this will be seen as an important turning point in the world's reaction to climate change. We are not reacting fast enough, but some important things have changed. Policies have become stronger, Deployment of important technologies has become stronger as well.Are you saying that without the war in Ukraine that the move to renewables would have been slower?I think it's undoubtedly true that if you look at the policy response in Europe, this has been an important spur for rapid deployment of a range of renewable technologies. Policies elsewhere have have reacted as well. And I think the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States is a good example. But there are examples in other countries too, of how high fossil fuel prices have spurred greater interest in cost-efficient, clean technologies as an answer to people's energy needs. We need a balanced range of technologies across a complex energy system. We need to ensure reliability, we need grids, we need all sorts of other infrastructure. And but I think action in many of those areas has received a boost as a result of what we've been through over the last two years.This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. 

In Europe's rush to wean itself off of Russian energy since the invasion of Ukraine, Norway has become an increasingly important supplier.Last year, the Nordic energy powerhouse became the top exporter of natural gas to Europe, boosting its production by about 8%. And with prices high, government revenues from the oil sector nearly tripled last year. These boom times are apparent in the west coast city of Stavanger, Norway's energy capital. The city government is using some of its budget windfall to make public transit free for residents, and the hustle and bustle has returned to the city after a pandemic lull. "The activity has definitely increased the last couple of years," said Kolbjørn Andreassen, who works for the industry group Offshore Norge. Andreassen, walking through a humming downtown harbor area near the city's well-preserved historic center, said that traffic jams are back and dinner reservations have grown harder to nab. "If you go to a restaurant today and try to book a table, the most-popular restaurants will be fully booked,” he said. “Even on Mondays.”Those inside the industry say conversations and attitudes about the oil and gas industry have shifted since the war in Ukraine started. Jez Averty, a vice president at Equinor, which produces more than two-thirds of Norway's oil and gas, said he believes their product is now seen as more important than it was before the war.  "It was probably important before. But it was a lot less visible,” Averty said, adding that sky-rocketing energy prices and energy shortages changed that for many Norwegians. Last year, oil and gas production was named a "fundamental national function," and Averty pointed out some companies were brought under the country's National Security Act. Averty said that this move "illustrates how important, strategically important, the oil and gas industry is now considered both for Norway and how important that is for Europe."Kjersti Dahle, a director at the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, saw the prewar conversation about oil and gas was focused on the harm it does to the environment. Now, she said, energy security is also part of the conversation. "The view of the oil and gas industry has become somewhat more balanced."Kjersti Dahl,  director at the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate"The view of the oil and gas industry has become somewhat more balanced,” Dahle said. Outside of Norway's energy capital, environmentalists and Green party members see what Dahle calls balance as a dangerous step backward for the country's climate policy. "If you go back to the autumn of 2021 with the huge climate marches, we really saw a change in the sentiment of the oil industry in Norway,” said Frode Pleym, the leader of Greenpeace Norway. A corresponding policy shift “started to actually move from nice words about climate to acting on climate.” Pleym said that all changed when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. "Now, the argument was [that] Norway needs to be a stable producer of oil and gas to Europe," Frode said. "Otherwise, [Vladimir] Putin will hold Europe at ransom."There is indeed more investment going into the Norwegian oil and gas industry. In June, the government approved the development of 19 new oil and gas fields.Dahle at the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate said maintaining even current production levels would require increased investment in exploration and extraction technology. "In order to produce more, we need to find more, and we need to be able to produce more from the fields that are in production," she said.New oil and gas fields take years to develop, and once online, can operate for decades. Dahle and her colleagues say it's too early to say whether high prices and demand triggered by the war in Ukraine will mean more production in the future. But that's what climate activists are worried about. According to the International Energy Agency, building new fossil fuel projects will make meeting the world's most-ambitious climate target impossible."It's contradictory to the commitments we've made in the Paris Agreement," said Ingrid Liland, a leader with Norway's Green Party. "Contradictory to the goals we have for reducing climate emissions." Equinor, which the Norwegian government owns a majority stake in, plans to maintain its exploration levels for oil and gas. Averty said that the decision was made about two years ago, prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. "What I think the war in Ukraine did was show to the external world that this was, in fact, very necessary and significantly increased support for that decision,” Averty said. It increased support among some people. But others are suspicious that the war in Ukraine is providing an excuse to plan for more oil and gas drilling instead of winding it down.   

Ropati Opa sat in the shade on the side of the road beside a carpet of tropical greenery with a massive, fringing coral reef sitting just offshore.He is the mayor of Leone, a seaside village on American Samoa, an island in the South Pacific between Hawaii and New Zealand. As such, it's his responsibility to help ensure that the coral there stays healthy.Corals attract fish that are beneficial to the Samoan ecosystem, and they buffer the island from strong waves. They also attract tourists who snorkel in the ocean to explore the reefs.“We need to have a good coral in this ocean,” Opa said. “It's very important. They have good fish.” Ropati Opa is the mayor of Leone, a seaside village on American Samoa. Credit: Ari Daniel/The World Despite prevailing narratives of coral bleaching and decline, the reefs of American Samoa have been particularly resilient to warming temperatures that have laid waste to other corals. Scientists there are finding out why, and looking for ways to use this knowledge to help reefs in other parts of the world.Dan Barshis, a coral biologist at Old Dominion University, has worked on the American Samoan reefs for 19 years.“It's like a black-sand beach, almost,” Barshis said of the shoreline, where gentle waves lapped against sand the color of coffee grounds.“We're going to go swim out and show you what a real South Pacific reef looks like,” he said, a pile of snorkeling gear beside him.He donned his gear, fell back into water the temperature of a warm bath, and swam out to the reef in about five minutes. “Our central question is what makes certain corals more tolerant to temperature,” coral biologist Dan Barshis said. “And what makes the strongest corals strong.” Credit: Ari Daniel/The World  He said that there were several signs that this reef was healthy. The corals were of many different types as well as sizes, indicating varying ages. A parrotfish swam by, and then a butterflyfish.After bobbing in the water for a bit, the current shifted as Barshis started to make his way back. It soon became tough going — he had to fight to get to shore.“Well, that was exciting. [A lot of] people think being a marine biologist is sitting around drinking mai tais and swimming with dolphins. But it wouldn't be an overstatement to say that we risk our lives for science,” he said once he reached land.Barshis takes such risks, spending long, physically demanding days studying the reefs ringing American Samoa because of the unique vibrancy of the corals there.“They're what we call bright spots,” Barshis said, referring to reefs that are able to withstand environmental pressures. “It is starting to become more of the exception than the rule.” Despite prevailing narratives of coral bleaching and decline, the reefs ringing American Samoa have been particularly resilient to warming temperatures that have laid waste to other corals. Credit: Ari Daniel/The World  Rising ocean temperatures due to global warming have led to the demise of other reefs. Ocean warming often leads to bleaching, when corals jettison the colorful algae that nourish them.“Looks like somebody poured bleach on the coral,” Barshis explained. “And they can starve and die if they're not able to recover.”Globally, coral cover has been declining over the last 15 years. But the picture is different here in American Samoa. The reefs here have bleached on occasion, but it has ultimately managed to shake the worst of it off and rebound. There are other rare bright spots dotted across the world's oceans.“Our central question is what makes certain corals more tolerant to temperature,” Barshis said. “And what makes the strongest corals strong.”That means looking at their genes.“We're sequencing their genomes to see what genes and what mutations might be causing them to be adapted for high-temperature events.”Genome sequencing could help scientists look for those genes in corals elsewhere in the world to identify and protect similarly resilient reefs. They could rebuild beleaguered reefs by seeding them with hardier young reefs from nearby. This approach would effectively buy corals time while humanity works to lower its emissions.Barshis and his team recently finished collecting the coral samples and running them through a homemade, portable temperature-tolerance test.“I tell people that we can set up a whole system — basically, a whole research lab in about four or five hours,” he said. Sana Lynch, Casidhe Mahuka, and Valentine Vaeoso (left to right) are proud that the reefs of American Samoa may help reefs elsewhere. Credit: Ari Daniel/The World  This ability is key because there's no official marine lab on American Samoa.His innovation consists of several coolers, a handful of heating and cooling elements and various customized electronic controlling devices. After conducting his tests, Barshis shipped the samples back to the American mainland where the coral genomes are currently being sequenced.This idea that the reefs here may help save reefs elsewhere is something that makes people in American Samoa proud.“It's a good feeling that we have something of great value here,” said Valentine Vaeoso, the former national coral reef management fellow on the island. “That it's possible that we have the answer that can help our brothers and sisters from other parts of the world to protect these amazing marine ecosystems.” Andra Samoa, a former member of the American Samoan House of Representatives, said as she looked out to the sea, "I see the future that's going to be challenging and also the future that requires champions." Credit: Ari Daniel/The World  Sana Lynch, who coordinates the Coral Reef Advisory Group, agreed. She pointed to our deepening understanding of the relationship between genetics and resilience: “Research like Dan's is important,” she said, “because we can use our coral diversity and hopefully expand the findings here to other places to increase coral abundance.”Barshis' work adds to a backdrop of coral conservation work on the island, championed by the American Samoa Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources. On top of restoration efforts, this also involves monitoring invasive algae and sponges in harbors and tracking bilgewater of incoming vessels, said Casidhe Mahuka, the invasive species coordinator for the department. Dan Barshis is a coral biologist who has worked on the American Samoan reefs for 19 years. Credit: Ari Daniel/The World  “When I look out there, I see the future that's going to be challenging and also the future that requires champions,” said Andra Samoa, a former member of the American Samoan House of Representatives, as she eyed the watery horizon.Some of these champions should definitely be humans, she said. But it's the coral that may hold valuable secrets in its genes that will help keep the reef ecosystem alive.

The city of Saint-Louis, in northern Senegal, is grappling with a dire reality: rising sea levels. The former administrative capital of French West Africa, Saint-Louis sits between the Senegal River and the Atlantic Ocean. Its highest point stands just 13 feet above sea level, and it gets waves from both fresh and seawater that have become a growing threat. Fishing is one of the main industries in Saint-Louis. But the city's fishing village of Guet Ndar is now on the verge of disappearing.“We had to walk very far to reach the ocean, but now we have it right in front of our houses.”Cheikh Badiane, retired fisherman“Growing up, what we used to see is not what we're seeing today,” said Cheikh Badiane, a retired fisherman who grew up in the neighborhood and still lives there with his children and grandchildren. “We had to walk very far to reach the ocean, but now we have it right in front of our houses.” Several decades ago, Badiane recalled, the water was half a mile away.  Now, it washes up to the houses on the shore, sometimes seeping through the windows.In 2018, a high-tide event destroyed many houses, mosques and schools in Guet Ndar. About 1,500 people were forced to move to Diougop, a displacement camp funded by the United Nations that's 5 miles away inland. Most of them still live there. Back in 2018, a school was destroyed by a high-tide event on the coast of Saint-Louis, Senegal. Credit: Maria Elena Romero/The World All the tents at the camp look identical, with white walls, a blue roof and little plastic windows. There are a few trees and everything is surrounded by sand. “We are here, but that's not what we truly want. We really miss the beachside,” said Sailo Boufal, a mother who has lived in the camp with her kids for four years, after their house was destroyed. She said the relentless heat is the worst part of it.“We don't have electricity. We are already dead because of the heat, nobody can go in the tents before 10 p.m.” Sailo Boufal, a mother at the displacement camp who says she and her kids miss the beachside, lies down on the floor of a grocery shop where she works. Credit: Maria Elena Romero/The World Boufal said she doesn't see a future for her family at the camp, even if the government builds new houses for them. So, she said she's considering getting on a smuggling boat and trying to make it to the Canary Islands, in Spain, like many of her neighbors have already done. Cheik Badiane, a retired fisherman in the vibrant fishing village of Guet Ndar. Credit: Maria Elena Romero/The World And even though retired fisherman Badiane's house was not destroyed at the time, he and his neighbors have received notice from local authorities warning them that they might also have to relocate soon.Badiane said, though, that he's reluctant to leave.“We have decided to become a coalition and stand strong against the government who wants to take us away from here,” he said. “This is all we know, and all we have.”But Mandaw Gueye, director of the Regional Agency for Development in Saint-Louis, said that in the next few years, about 15,000 more fishermen and their families are expected to move into the area close to the Diougop camp.“Even if they don't want to,” he stressed.He said the government is building a more permanent housing solution there, and arranging to provide shuttle buses for fishermen to reach the coast.There are also plans to build a new sea wall, scheduled to be completed by 2050, after previous ones failed to prevent floodwaters from reaching the village.But that might be too late.It's estimated that in West Africa, over 40 million people in these lowest-lying zones, will be exposed to sea level rises by 2030 — less than a decade away. The sea walls that have been previously built have not been effective in preventing flooding and erosion. Credit: Maria Elena Romero/The World Natural barriers at riskSome of the biggest and fastest-growing cities in African countries are on the coasts and vulnerable to rising seas, said Mark Duerksen, a researcher with the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, and an expert on urbanization on the continent.“It's an open question whether they will all survive and find strategies to host all the people who want to live and work along these bustling shorelines.” The Diougop camp, where some 1,500 people were displaced by sea level rise, is surrounded by sand. Credit: Maria Elena Romero/The World Frequent flooding, storms and coastal erosion are also destroying natural barriers like wetlands, coastal dunes and barrier islands, which create more vulnerability to sea level rise.“This is compounded in many African cities where there are relatively weak environmental protections and significant shortages of existing and affordable housing,” Duerksen added.The United Nations predicts that, over the next couple of decades, around 200 million people could be displaced as a result of flooding and shoreline erosion. The situation is particularly bad in West Africa, where a large percentage of the population lives on the Atlantic shore. Many young people in Saint-Louis have decided to leave for Europe by sea. "No Barca-Barsak" is a common phrase written on walls and ships in the fishing village of Guet Ndar. It roughly translates to “Don't go to Barcelona because you will end up in the cemetery.” Credit: Maria Elena Romero/The World An important cultural legacy that is also threatened by rising seas in Saint-Louis is the city center — a UNESCO World Heritage site, full of colorful architecture, where important jazz and dance festivals take place every year. It includes historical buildings from the 19th and early 20th centuries, which could all disappear with the rising waves.Local journalist Borso Tall contributed to this story.Related: Is it time for Senegal to end its romance with the French baguette?

It's known as the “Blue Blob”: a mysterious patch of cold water in the North Atlantic Ocean. It's just a dot in an otherwise vast, and warming, sea.But the blob has caught the attention of scientists. The cold water is bringing colder weather to Greenland and Iceland, and slowing the melting of their glaciers — at least temporarily. One of Iceland's largest glaciers is the majestic Langjökull, located about an hour and a half from the capital, Reykjavik.About 10% of Iceland is still covered by glaciers — what Icelanders call their “white diamonds.”On the drive up, the ice looks like a great white wave floating between the earth and sky — immense, immaculate and mesmerizing. Langjökull draws tens of thousands of visitors a year, many of whom arrive on tour buses that speed along the rough volcanic track towards the glacier's base camp. Millions of tourists come to base camps like this one, at Langjökull, to hike on the glaciers. About 10% of Iceland is still covered in ice. Credit: Gerry Hadden/The World The Shah and Chakore families recently visited the area from South Carolina. They're originally from northern India near the Himalayas, so they know about the importance of glaciers.“Well, if they all melt it will be a disaster, obviously,” Chandray Shah said.“If the glaciers are melting,” said Haman Chakore, “the whole world will be underwater.”In fact, Iceland's glaciers began melting a long time ago, going back at least to 1890 when ice melt was first measured. From then through 2019, Langjökull lost 29% of its mass. Langjökull looms like a white wave over Iceland's volcanic landscape. Credit: Gerry Hadden/The World But there may be a glimmer of hope for this so-called Blue Blob region, an area of ocean water more than one degree cooler than the North Atlantic average temperature. That might not sound like a lot, but glaciologist Guðfinna Aðalgeirsdóttir said it matters. The colder water is lowering the air temperatures on land.“From 1995 to 2010, we had about a meter of the surface thickness of the glaciers disappearing every year,” Aðalgeirsdóttir said. “And after 2010, at the same time as this Blue Blob was appearing, this rate of mass loss actually decreased” by about half.  “So, we see that the glaciers actually sense this cooling effect of this Blue Blob.”People in Iceland have also sensed the cooling temperature.“We see a rise in people buying warmer clothes later in the year,” said Johannes Johannesson, a salesman at a camping store in Reykjavik. “People are still buying jackets in June.”He said, though, that he'd never heard of the Blue Blob. Glacial run-off feeds Iceland's rivers and hydroelectric plants. The Blue Blob, a mysterious body of cold water in the North Atlantic, has brought colder weather to shore slowing the ice's melt. Credit: Gerry Hadden/The World Slowing glacial meltScientists know little about where the Blue Blob came from. But scientific modeling suggests it will be around for a while, said glaciologist Aðalgeirsdóttir, though not for long. She also stressed that it's not completely halting glacial melt, just slowing down the rate of loss.“So, this is like a regional North Atlantic effect,” she said, “that slows down the mass loss of the Icelandic glaciers until about 2050. And after that, it picks up again.”Cristian Eli Gunnarsson, who is a guide on the Langjökull glacier, has seen the retreat of the frozen giants firsthand. Since 2020, he said, this glacier has retreated a full mile, leaving just a rocky plain behind.Across the vast plain are a bunch of metal sign posts marking the years where the ice once was as it retreated: 1940, 1960, 1980. It's a timeline of loss — and it's accelerating.“The distance between the 1940 and 1960 [glacial melt] lines is the same distance from the 2020 sign to today. So, it is now 10 times faster. Which is ridiculous.”Cristian Eli Gunnarsson, a guide on the Langjökull glacier“The distance between the 1940 and 1960 lines is the same distance from the 2020 sign to today,” Gunnarsson said. “So, it is now 10 times faster. Which is ridiculous.” A series of signs marking where the Langjökull glacier once stood form a timeline of loss, as the ice retreats due to global warming. Credit: Gerry Hadden/The World He wondered how much time the Blue Blob is really buying them. And these days, he said that when he takes groups of people up on the ice, they find something different.“It's like walking in wet sugar,” he explained.He's worried he may be out of work soon, saying that tourists aren't likely to come for a slog through the slush.Related: How the Trump administration's climate denial left its mark on the Arctic Council

Ali Abbas Hasan has been a wheat farmer in southern Iraq for two decades. Each year, he planted his crops in the fall, and would need to water them four times a day.Year after year, he said, water became more scarce. His only source was the water coming from two major rivers in Iraq: the Tigris and Euphrates, which run from the north to the south of the country.Hasan made it work for a while, but he said recently the lack of usable water for his crops became so bad, he decided to sell his farm.“I loved farming,” he said. “It's beautiful work. It's hard to suddenly lose what you worked so hard for.”Hasan is not the only farmer who has sold his land in recent months. He knows several others who have done the same. Because no water means no crops and no income.Iraq's Ministry of Water Resources has warned that the country is facing its worst water shortage in a century. It said 7 million people are experiencing reduced access to water. Shrinking water levels, rampant salinity and contamination have left communities with no choice but to migrate.For centuries, people living in what's now the state of Iraq have relied on the Tigris and Euphrates, and they are still vital for millions of people. In 2016, the United Nations named the marshes of southern Iraq a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But this ecosystem is in danger, and experts are worried.“The Tigris and Euphrates will be completely dry by 2040,” Iraqi water expert Jamal Ibrahim al-Halbousi warned on television last month. “I don't think Iraqi leaders really understand. This is the end of Iraq as a country, as a civilization. Iraq won't exist without its two rivers.”Environmental activist Mahdi Laith shared a video that shows a man riding a boat in Iraq's marshes — in the floodplains between the Tigris and Euphrates — where a thick layer of dead fish is floating on top.“Our boat is sailing through dead fish,” the man said in the video, adding, “What a shame, what a shame.”Laith said when he sees videos like these, his heart breaks. He explained that people of Iraq's marshlands, known as the Marsh Arabs, have fished, farmed and raised water buffalos for centuries.But their troubles began in the 1990s when the government of Saddam Hussein drained large swaths of the marshlands to punish the people for rebelling against him.A series of canals diverted the water, drying up 90% of the marshes and displacing thousands of people. Over the years, the marshlands have slowly started to recover. But today, the region's people face a new ecological disaster.“When they lose the water, they cannot live anymore because they are losing their buffalos. So, they moved from the marshlands to other cities,” Laith explained.This week, the United Nations cautioned that southern Iraq is experiencing its worst heat wave in four decades. Their water levels have dropped significantly as well, it added.Ahmed Bayram of the Norwegian Refugee Council, listed several factors that contribute to Iraq's water crisis, including extreme heat waves, low rainfall and two decades of war that destroyed Iraq's water infrastructure.Making things worse is the construction of dams in neighboring Iran and Turkey.“These farming communities around the marshes have been there for centuries,” Bayram said. “Generation after generation have kept that land, have looked after that land. These families are now rethinking their future and that's what really worries us: when people leave their land.”When farmers leave, he added, Iraqis across the country suffer because lack of farming will lead to food insecurity.Last year, Bayram and his team found that some farmers in southern Iraq had lost up to 90% of their harvests.The water situation is not much better in cities.“The tap water is not usable unless you are using it to wash clothes or something like this,” said 39-year-old Zuhair Muhammad, who lives in Basra in southern Iraq, and relies on bottled water for drinking and cooking.Muhammad, who lives alone, spends about $7-$10 on bottled water per week. He can afford it, but many others can't. That's why people are moving to other parts of the country in search of better access to clean water.Meanwhile, as Iraq dries up and as the impacts of climate change makes life more difficult, people like Laith are trying to raise awareness about protecting the environment by posting on social media.“I'm in love with nature,” Laith said. “I want to be part of saving this nature and the biodiversity in Iraq.”

 It was a bright June day in Berlin, and four ultralight solar panels lining the front of a balcony were soaking up the sun. They were hanging from velcro straps just below some flower boxes.This balcony was at the office of We Do Solar, where co-founder Karolina Attspodina was showing her product: easy-to-install, plug-and-play at-home solar. “Anyone can actually put it up on their balcony, whether they're tech-savvy or not,” she said, pointing to an extension cord. “And everything works from a normal power socket.” On a sunny day, these panels can meet about a quarter of an average household's energy needs. That means, in the long run, huge cuts to energy bills.In February 2022, We Do Solar launched its product in Germany, and early interest was strong. Then, just a few days later, Russia invaded Ukraine. “As soon as, I think, the war started, people really panicked,” Attspodina said. “The demand just went sky high. We were sold out for quite some time.”Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year upended energy markets throughout Europe. But no country was hit harder than Germany. At the time, more than half of Germany's gas came from Russia. The country had to double down on fossil fuels in the short term: keeping coal-fired power plants open longer and building new liquefied natural gas terminals. But in the long term, the war pushed a government falling behind on renewable energy goals to enact some ambitious new policies. Some of those changes are going well, but they face headwinds elsewhere. For many individuals, soaring gas prices meant bringing solar power home. For the federal government, it meant a new renewable energy target: getting all of the country's electricity from renewable sources by 2035. To make that happen, Germany adopted a new set of ambitious energy policies last spring. That included removing value-added taxes on solar panels, which has kept We Do Solar busy. Attspodina, who's Ukrainian, sees these policies as a silver lining to the war.   “Sometimes I feel like something needs to happen for people to move and for people to change.”Karolina Attspodina, co-founder of We Do Solar“It is unfortunate that it happened in [the] way that this shift is happening because of the war and because of such a sad situation,” Attspodina said. “But sometimes I feel like something needs to happen for people to move and for people to change. And that's exactly what we're seeing right now.”Germany's new energy policy also classified switching to renewable energy as a matter of public safety that can override other public interests, like preserving views that are in place. That means that the government has new power to mandate changes. One being discussed now is requiring electricity-based heat pumps instead of gas boilers in new or updated heating systems. Henrik Beuster, a spokesperson at the city's grid operator, Stromnetz Berlin, said switching to heat pumps is necessary to reach Germany's climate goals. But the policy has been extremely controversial, partly because heat pumps are expensive. “In Germany, in general, we are not so flexible when it comes to change,” Buster said. “This is something where people said, ‘Okay, I have to do something, and it will be expensive for me.' So, I think this is what people might fear.”Beuster said that politicians should take a lesson from the success of solar and offer citizens incentives to opt in. Berlin, for example, is offering a 500 Euro credit for installing at-home solar. By not forcing people but rather offering them an incentive to save money, Beuster said that people would be more willing to make the switch for themselves.As part of its new renewable energy policy, Germany is also betting big on wind power: In the next decade, they plan to double their onshore wind capacity. That means that outside of cities, the German landscape is undergoing a transformation.Just two hours from Berlin lies the tiny village of Feldheim: Germany's first energy-self-sufficient town. After the end of the Cold War, this former communist farm collective decided to pool its resources toward a new shared goal: wind production. By 2010, the town of only 125 people was entirely energy-self-sufficient. Now, they've expanded their operations, and residents are reaping the benefits — paying a tiny fraction of the market price for their electricity, and earning a fraction of what's sold on the national market.Past acres of massive wind turbines, tour guide Kathleen Thompson says that since the town bought its first turbine in 1995, it's added 54 more that help keep the lights on throughout Germany.“We use less than 1% of the electricity that's being generated here in Feldheim,” Thompson said.For Germany to reach its goals, more places need to look like Feldheim. The government has committed to covering 2% of its land in wind power by 2032. That may not sound like a lot, but it would more than double the current capacity. But rural Germans have protested the wind intrusion in most nearby towns and nationwide. With hundreds of lawsuits stalling projects, the federal government will likely use its newly mandated power to push wind through.However, Feldheim's mayor Michael Knape says there's another way: If towns can lead their own change, everyone benefits. In the 1990s, he said, it wasn't so bureaucratic or expensive for a town to produce its own power. Starting in the mid-2010s, new regulations meant a shift in ownership from local citizens to large corporations.“We chose the right time period with the right laws in place,” Knape said. “I don't think that if we started today, Feldheim could afford to do the same.”To Knape, getting local buy-in should mean letting citizens actually buy in. Whether that's sharing ownership, like in Feldheim, or at least paying neighbors for building near their land. Germany may be learning that lesson. Its updated renewable energy policy includes new incentives and protections for community-owned renewables. And the government is simplifying the approval process for wind, solar and other projects.As German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in a speech last year, the country sees “Putin's war” as an “accelerator of necessary change.”Related: Renewable energy seen as an answer to Ukraine's wartime energy woes 

​​Last fall, Oscar Olivares completed what he said is one of the world's largest ecological murals made entirely out of bottle caps, in Guatire, Venezuela.It's 385 square meters, made out of 400,000 bottle caps and took about three months to complete, according to the 26-year-old visual artist from Caracas. Olivares' mural features colorful birds, including the macaw, found throughout South America. Credit: Courtesy of Oscar Olivares The endeavor would not have happened without community investment — residents of Guatire and neighboring towns collected over 1 million bottle caps for the project and also helped him complete the mural.In the process, Olivares was able to educate residents on the importance of recycling. He said that there is no real education or policies about living a sustainable lifestyle, so his bottle cap projects have led to more people wanting to recycle and be part of his work.The World caught up with Olivares to learn how he does it and how fighting climate change is a community effort. Carol Hills: Oscar, you started your career as an illustrator. Were you already interested in bottle caps as a way to make art, or did you think of them when you started thinking about pointillism and how to replicate that?Oscar Olivares: Well, it was a mixture of a lot of things. I received a proposal from a municipality in Caracas, and they had a lot of bottle caps they had collected, but they didn't know what to do with them. They wanted to make something with art, but they didn't know anything about what could be done with that. And they told me about that. At first, I was thinking about it, but, you know, I wasn't too interested in the project until I went to this museum in France. At the first moment, I thought we were just going to make one mural. When I returned to Caracas, I just took a lot of bottle caps, threw them on the floor, and said, ‘If I can make an eye, we can make everything with bottle caps.' This is the kind of art that when you are very close to it, you just see the bottle caps of the brands, some bottle caps [are] very ugly or very dirty because they come from the trash, you know. But when you walk a few steps far from the mural, you can see all the art. So, it was a result of a proposal from this municipality, but also because of this visit to the museum that changed my mind about it. Olivares said that he received over one million bottle caps donations from residents of Gautire, Venezuela and surrounding states. Many people became interested in his project and were looking for ways to learn how to properly recycle. Credit: Courtesy of Oscar Olivares Walk us through the process of planning a mural. How do you know how many bottle caps you'll need? How many different colors? And how do you design them?The first [thing] I need is the size of the wall. With the size of the wall, I know how many bottle caps. In one square meter, you need 1,100 bottle caps. With that, I begin to make the design of the mural. In the design, I have to think about what kind of colors I'm going to find to make these kinds of murals. Because, for example, in Venezuela, you can find more than 16 different tones of blue. That's not common in other countries. For example, in Mexico, you will find more tones of green. Oscar Olivares Credit: Isaac Paniza  Now, one of your murals, you say, is the largest eco mural in the world, and it's made completely out of bottle caps. Tell us about it.Yeah, that's a mural that is in Guatire. It's a town that is 30 minutes by car from Caracas. [The mural] has more than 400,000 bottle caps. In three months, the community of Guatire collected more than 1 million bottle caps for this mural; we have even bottle caps for more projects in the future. It was an amazing experience. I thought it was going to take us more than three months, but the people were so willing to help us. There were days when more than 100 people volunteered to help us with the mural.  Olivares and volunteers are surrounded by the recycled bottle caps that they used to build a colorful mural in Guatire, Venezuela. Credit: Courtesy of Oscar Olivares And what is this mural design of?We have a lot of things because it's very large — 90 meters long. We have the Parranda de San Pedro, which has some people dancing with flags and colors. Then we have four macaws; they're very beautiful birds with a lot of colors. [They're] very typical in Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia and the Amazon. After that, we have the troupial, Venezuela's national bird. We have a landscape of the mountains of Guatire, and at the end of the mural, there is the planet Earth because I think this kind of art is not just something for Venezuela, for the kids who are making it, but for the world.  Olivares paid tribute to Venezuela's national bird, the troupial when creating his eco-mural. Credit:  Courtesy of Oscar Olivares When people recycle bottles in the US, they tend to throw out bottle caps. I'm wondering, is that the case in Venezuela? And is your art, too, kind of a way to tell people, ‘No, don't throw out those bottle caps, save them, and we're going to use them for art.'Yes. Yes. It's very interesting because, in Venezuela, there are very few policies about recycling and very [little] information about how to recycle. There are a lot of people who want to recycle more, but they don't know how to do it. And the murals have been a very good way to collect the bottle caps in every place we go. For example, there are, and there have been murals in Caracas [where] people from another state have sent the bottle caps to help us in the mural. With volunteers' help, Oscar Olivares completed a 90-meter-long ecological mural made completely of recycled bottle caps. The bottle caps otherwise may have been thrown in the trash. According to Olivares, there are no hardline recycling policies in the country, and many don't know the proper way how to recycle.  His project has fostered conversations that are helping lead to sustainable practices. Credit: Courtesy of Oscar Olivares Do you have any future eco murals planned?It's very interesting and exciting because I plan to make the first eco-mural in the US. I'm going to announce it very soon. We also have plans to make some in Panama, Italy and a lot more in Venezuela. We have maybe more than 10 murals confirmed for the next two years. The most special thing is that it's not made just by an artist. It's by the people who collect the bottle caps. That is really taking consciousness about the Earth and recycling. A mural by Venezuelan artist Oscar Olivares which is set to expand to the floor. Credit: Courtesy of Oscar Olivares The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Last fall and winter, Russian attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure knocked out more than half of the country's capacity to generate electricity. According to UN estimates, the average Ukrainian household spent five of the final 12 weeks of 2022 without power.   Generators helped keep the lights on in many homes and businesses, but they were noisy, susceptible to breakdown and required a steady supply of diesel to keep them humming along. “At some point, too many of those generators came to Ukraine,” said Andrii Korol from the Energy Act for Ukraine foundation. “You walk on the street, it's like a street of generators.”Widespread blackouts are over for now, but Korol and others in Ukraine say the increased focus on energy security has raised interest and demand for renewable energy. Energy Act for Ukraine, which launched last April, is outfitting schools and hospitals with what it sees as a better alternative to generators: backup batteries that are charged by solar panels. The foundation aims to deploy 150 of these systems in Ukraine and has completed projects at two hospitals and one school so far. The school, which serves more than 2,000 students in the city of Irpin, was “able to function non-stop” through the winter thanks to the solar panels on the school's blue corrugated metal roof, according to director Ivan Ptashnyk.   Solar panels are seen on the school's blue metal roof.   Credit: Anastasia Vlasova/The World “There were in-person classes during winter, during blackouts, where students were in classes and were using power thanks to the solar panels,” Ptashnyk told The World through an interpreter earlier this summer. The rooftop solar panels charge up a bank of batteries in the school's basement that can meet the school's critical energy needs for the eight-hour school day, Ptashnyk said, including powering lights in classrooms, the basement bomb shelter and the internet.   The school also has a generator, but the solar energy, Ptashnyk said, is free.“We don't pay a dime for it, and this is our future.” Ptashnyk is not alone in that view.  Ivan Ptashnyk happily shows off the "free" solar energy that keeps his school running. Credit: Anastasia Vlasova/The World The Ukrainian government outlined ambitious targets for renewables last year in its national recovery plan. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the country will become “a leader in building modern green energy.” DTEK, Ukraine's largest private power producer headed by Alexander Selischev, is also touting its small but growing renewables business.  “Now we understand, especially after this winter, that energy matters,” Selischev said. “And more and more, our authorities, investors, general public understand that energy security and renewables, it's like the same.” All eight of DTEK's traditional thermal power-generating stations have been damaged by Russian strikes or occupation, according to Selischev. Most of the country's wind turbines are currently in occupied territory, but at least renewables can be more dispersed, Selischev said, less centralized and vulnerable to attack. “It's much harder to destroy thousands of turbines than destroy one thermal block,” Selischev said. “So, it's more safe.”  A bomb shelter at the school. Credit: Anastasia Vlasova/The World The company recently finished construction on the first phase of a new wind farm in southeastern Ukraine, just 60 miles from the front lines. It produces enough energy to power a small city, and Selischev said that completing it amid frequent air attacks sends an important message.  “We believe that our industry, our country, has a future, and we continue construction,” he said.The Ukrainian government is seeking to align itself more closely with Europe, including its energy sector. But it would need to roughly double its prewar renewable energy capacity to bring it up to the European average. So far, it's rare to see solar panels on a rooftop in Ukraine, “but that's already started to change,” said Hanna Rutkovska, a renewable energy expert at a leading Ukrainian environmental organization called EcoAction.Rutkovska told The World that interest in renewables has spiked since the full-scale invasion started.     “And I think that it changed because people who had money said, ‘Okay, I actually can give these high upfront costs, but I will have [an] energy supply during disruption,'” she said. “‘It will make my life normal — I want to work,' and renewables became this option for people.”EcoAction is offering grants to organizations launching renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. It has seen a strong demand for applications. It's also installed solar panels and a heat pump at a hospital outside of Kyiv.  “I think that during the recovery, we'll see much more of these projects,” she said.But to translate these small projects into a national energy transition, Rutkovska believes the national government needs to make clear whether it's prioritizing renewables over other power sources as it seeks international funding to rebuild. “We are talking a lot about it, and we see the Ukrainian government talking a lot about it,” Rutkovska said of a renewable-fueled recovery. “But we also need actions, and we need a clear plan and roadmap in our head.” Some more details emerged last week during a conference at which Ukraine courted international funding for rebuilding in London. The Ministry of Energy announced new targets for expanded wind, solar and energy storage capacity by 2050. But Rutkovska said the government still hasn't released the kind of renewable energy roadmap that experts like her are watching for. Related: A year of war in Ukraine: A timeline of key moments

Trigidia Jiménez was born in an Indigenous village in the Andean mountains of Bolivia at 14,000 feet above sea level. She grew up in a family of farmers, and she loved working the land. But like many others in her town, she moved to the Bolivian capital in search of new opportunities and eventually became an agricultural engineer. She worked and got married, but after 15 years of being in the city, she realized she wanted to return to the mountains. “I needed to be in touch with the sun, fresh air and work our land,” Jiménez told The World over Zoom.  Trigidia Jiménez said that her ancestors would eat a cup of cañahua for breakfast every day, similar to the way one eats oatmeal. Credit: Courtesy of Trigidia Jiménez Back in the Andes, she started thinking about an ancestral green that was almost extinct — cañahua. It's similar to the quinoa plant and virtually unknown outside of Bolivia and Peru. “That's what our ancestors used to eat every day. A cup of cañahua for breakfast,” Jiménez said. “We make it like oatmeal.”Cañahua is "nutritious, high in protein, amino acids and iron.” It has also proven to be very adaptable to climate change, according to Jiménez. Despite unusual and extreme weather conditions, the crop can grow “everywhere around here,” she said.Jiménez started small, with about an acre of land, producing enough grain for just one family. Two decades later, cañahua is being produced on approximately 5,000 acres. Bolivia's government offers subsidies to low-income families to buy cañahua, and that's helped build the market. “Now, this crop provides a source of income for 1,500 families,” she said.  A need for crop diversityAs climate change impacts agriculture in many parts of the world, the need for crop diversity is becoming more urgent. “We realized that we've been reliant on too few food crops,” Jeff Maughan, a professor of molecular genetics at Brigham Young University in Utah, told The World.He said it's a scary idea to just be reliant on five or six plant species when you start to think about diseases or changes in the weather. “It'd be like having a portfolio for your 401K, but only had five stocks in it,” he said. “Nobody would do that. You need to spread that security.”Twenty years ago, Maughan and other researchers at BYU got interested in quinoa as a higher protein crop for subsistence farmers in the Andean region. At the time, he recalled, people would ask him, “What is quinoa?”Today, quinoa is everywhere — from your favorite supermarket to fancy restaurants. Maughan and his team have successfully introduced the South American grain in Morocco, Rwanda and Saudi Arabia. “It's important to learn from Indigenous communities about foods they've been producing for thousands of years,” said Juan Gonzalez, an expert in sustainable development at Columbia University.He said that we're learning from how it's been done during most of human history so that we go back to that.  Cañihua is a nutritious grain originating from the Andes, now with over 200 varieties. It is often likened to the quinoa plant. Credit: Courtesy of Trigidia Jiménez “And what I mean by go back is not that everyone has their own plot of land and start producing their own food,” Gonzalez said. “That's not the society we live in, but rather learn from the techniques that are being used by more traditional communities and understand that there's value in that.”Trigidia Jiménez earned international recognition for helping to revive cañahua cultivation. “Cañahua made me a stronger woman," she said. “Powerful and happy.”It's also helped sustain the local communities where it's produced. Jiménez is now looking at ways to expand her business and export the ancient grain to the United States. 

Half Moon Bay is probably the most famous beach in Antigua and Barbuda. But on a gorgeous day in late May, it was completely empty. The only person on the sand was a tractor worker, removing sargassum, a type of seaweed that was covering the whole beach.“We got to do what we got to do,” said Avery Henry, the owner of Beach Bum Bar and Grill, a restaurant right at the beach. “In Florida now they are crying, and we have been crying for ages. But now they are starting to feel what we are feeling.” Avery Henry, the owner of Beach Bum Bar and Grill on Half Moon Bay, said tourists get here and turn around after they see the sargassum covering the sand. Credit: Gisele Regatão/The World Those planning a Caribbean trip this summer better check the sargassum forecast. This seaweed has been growing in excessive amounts in the Caribbean since 2011, and now growing in Mexico and parts of Florida, as well. Earlier this year, scientists detected a record bloom. In late May, the only person at Half Moon Bay in Antigua was a tractor worker, removing sargassum that was covering the whole beach. Credit: Gisele Regatão/The World On many islands, locals like Henry have to cope with piles of the macroalgae on the sand — and its stinky smell — which sometimes leaves his restaurant totally empty. Tourists get here and turn around, he said, which is a huge contrast from a few years ago.“At one point, Half Moon Bay was ranked top five in the world,” Henry said. Avery Henry, the owner of Beach Bum Bar and Grill on Half Moon Bay, was dealing with an empty restaurant as sargassum filled the sand. Credit: Gisele Regatão/The World In the ocean, sargassum is an important nutrient for fish and other sea animals. The problem is when it gets to the beach. As it decomposes, it attracts bacteria and produces a gas that smells like rotten eggs.Nobody is certain about what brought sargassum to the Caribbean 12 years ago, according to Chuanmin Hu, an oceanography professor at the University of South Florida. “As of today, it's still a mystery,” he said. “But there are some hypotheses, some of which are more plausible than others.”One viable hypothesis is that, in 2010, there was an ocean current much stronger than usual. It came from the northern Atlantic and pushed sargassum to the tropical Atlantic, where it found perfect conditions to grow. “Light, nutrients, temperature,” Hu said. “In the tropical Atlantic, everything is just right. So, we started to see more and more sargassum.”Hu's team detected a record amount of sargassum in the Caribbean in March.“I was a little scared, because I know the worst is yet to come in the summer,” he said. The May report showed a drop, but Hu said sargassum is still going to be all over the Caribbean, Mexico and parts of Florida, particularly in June and July. In the ocean, sargassum is an important nutrient for fish, but when it gets to the beach it decomposes, attracts bacteria and produces a bad smell. Credit: Gisele Regatão/The World Local authorities can try to collect sargassum in the ocean using boats, he said, but that's expensive.“It's hundreds of miles. It's not just a local thing. So, there's no way to stop this phenomenon in nature. This is just like, nobody can really stop a hurricane,” he said.A few miles from Half Moon Bay, another beach on the island of Antigua was sargassum-free last month.Fabio Giorgi, the general manager of The Inn at English Harbor, said that at this beach, Freeman's Bay, it only comes about three times a year.“You can see even today, there is some out there, there is some brown,” he said, pointing to dark puddles in the ocean. “But they don't come in, they keep going up, so we are lucky.” In Freeman's Bay, also in Antigua, sargassum is a rare appearance, and locals say it only appears on the beach about three times a year. Credit: Gisele Regatão/The World When the seaweed does come in, Giorgi said, they can call the environmental department to do the cleaning, but they take care of it themselves. The process takes about three days.“We clean, but there is still some in the sea when that happens, so then you need to wait until the next day for them to come up,” he said.While the sargassum keeps coming, local communities are also finding new uses for it. According to Hu, it can be used as fertilizer, and other things. “A lot of people make bricks, construction material from sargassum, and they make shoes, or even clothes,” he said.Hu said there might be some pharmaceutical use for sargassum as well, but research is in development. But for most of the Caribbean, there is still no remedy for it.

When Iryna Kazakova rolled her suitcase down the gravel road last month into Hallingelille, an ecovillage located about 6 miles outside of Ringsted, Denmark, she was greeted with warm hugs. Kazakova had just returned to Denmark after a two-month stay back home in the northeastern city of Kharkiv, in Ukraine, where she was visiting her parents. Kazakova had fled the city, located just 20 miles from the border with Russia, last summer after it had become a major target of attacks.“I decided that I want to go to Ukraine to understand if I can [be] able to live there for a long time ... to visit my friends, my family, and to understand if I'm strong enough to live with all these alarms and explosions,” she said.  Iryna Kazakova is one of the founders and coordinators of the Green Road project. She is currently based at Hallingelille ecovillage in rural Denmark. Credit: Pernille Baerendtsen/The World But upon her return to Hallingelille, Kazakova was reminded of the work still ahead as one of the founders and coordinators of the Green Road, an initiative to connect Ukrainian refugees with safe places to stay in ecovillages across Ukraine and throughout Europe. Over the last year, the Green Road project has helped relocate at least 3,000 displaced Ukrainians in 40 ecovillages throughout Ukraine and over 300 ecovillages in Europe, including Denmark. As the war continues in Ukraine, the Green Road has become a testament to the power of international friendships, networks and informal support in times of crisis.  Hallingelille is surrounded by seemingly endless grassy fields dotted with white dandelion flowers. Credit: Pernille Baerendtsen/The World Ecovillages are intentional communities formed by people with a common interest in sustainable living. According to the umbrella organization Global Ecovillage Network, there are over 10,000 ecovillages around the world — and no two are alike.The ecovillage movement is said to have originated in Denmark, with roots in the Danish co-housing movement of the late 1960s. Its 49 ecovillages are some of the most established in the world and often emphasize a communal lifestyle. Hallingelille, one of Denmark's newer ecovillages established in 2005, is among the many European sites on the Green Road map. An example of the unique ecologically designed structures at Hallingelille, an ecovillage in rural Ringsted, Denmark. Credit: Pernille Baerendtsen/The World This idyllic, rural community, surrounded by endless grassy fields dotted with white dandelion flowers, is home to about 50 adults and 20 children who live in 20 ecologically designed houses on land shared with several horses, sheep, pigs and a few loud roosters. A common house overlooking a peaceful lake is the heart of this community — members share communal dinners here at least twice a week. Over the last 15 years, residents have also built a sauna, a multipurpose warehouse, yoga and meditation center and an art studio. The group also works together to tend a forest, greenhouse and several vegetable gardens. Far from the bombs and explosions of an ongoing war in Ukraine, it's here where Kazakova works alongside other Ukrainian and Danish volunteers on ensuring that the Green Road project continues.Developing the Green Road visionKazakova said that a flurry of phone calls with her colleague, Anastasiya Volkova, founder of Permaculture in Ukraine, and Maksym Zalevskyi, president of Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) Ukraine, led to the idea that ecovillages could provide temporary shelter for Ukrainian refugees. Within the first few days of the invasion, calls poured in from members of Europe's Global Ecovillage Network ready to assist — from Germany to Denmark, Hungary to Poland — and these weekly calls became a lifeline, she said. “It was an island of stability in an unstable world for us,” she said. A map that would become known as the Green Road began to circulate online along with a Google sheet and volunteer contact information for every ecovillage willing to host within Ukraine and across Europe, including Hallingelille.  A screenshot of the map that later became known as the Green Road helps identify ecovillages across Ukraine and Europe where displaced Ukrainians can find refuge.  Credit: Green Road screenshot via Google Maps “During the first year of war — especially the first six months — we were quite busy, like we didn't know what would happen, so we had to prepare as much as we could. And that's also why we applied for all these funds,” said Camilla Nielsen-Englyst, the head of Denmark's National Association of Ecovillages (LOS), who also lives at Hallingelille. Denmark's Civil Society and Development organization granted about $90,000 to the Green Road project through an emergency fund — and honored them with an Initiative Prize in April. Several other individual and private donors and organizations have also raised funds and materials for the project.Nielsen-Englyst said that established working relationships with Ukrainians on prior permaculture and ecovillage design trainings, seminars and summits over the last six years made it possible to act quickly — and collectively — on a humanitarian response.  Camilla Nielsen-Englyst (center) is the the head of Denmark's National Association of Ecovillages (LOS) and also lives at Hallingelille. She is one of the key organizers of the Green Road.  Credit: Pernille Baerendtsen/The World There are currently five Ukrainian adults and five children who have followed the Green Road to Hallingelille.  Plants growing in the expanded greenhouse adjacent to the common house at Hallingelille, an ecovillage in rural Ringsted, Denmark. Credit: Pernille Baerendtsen/The World Nataliya Masol and Andriy Parashchenko, originally from Kyiv, were familiar with ecovillages and heard about the Green Road online. Using the map, they sought out shelter with their five children, with brief stays in Romania, the Czech Republic, Austria and Germany before arriving in Hallingelile. For Masol, expanding the greenhouse and planting tomatoes was the first thing she did when she arrived.“When we came from Ukraine, it was like, we have no job and we were searching for the job and it was like, the first thing I begin to do because I need to do something. And last year, we had a lot of tomatoes growing,” she said from the sund-renched greenhouse adjacent to the common house where a new batch of tomatoes grow. Olesia Panchenko, also from Kyiv, had stayed in Denmark before and decided to follow in Kazakova's footsteps to Hallingelile as a volunteer with the Green Road. Panchenko said it was a chance meeting with Kazakova at a permaculture design training in Ukraine a few years back that changed her life and set her firmly on an ecological path.Panchenko entered the country as a tourist and only planned to stay for two months or so. But last year, Denmark passed a law called the Special Act that allows Ukrainians to bypass the asylum system and expedites residency status for a period of two years. To receive the estimated $800 monthly stipend from the state, registered Ukrainians must take Danish-language classes and actively seek employment. For Panchenko, that means juggling between volunteer work with the Green Road project, language classes, an unpaid internship, and ecovillage responsibilities like planting trees and tending to the vegetable gardens, though she noted how the Danes don't necessarily take advantage of the vegetables, opting for the supermarket instead. “Usually, you have two types of villages. I think in Ukraine, it's a little bit different from Denmark, because in Ukraine, usually, it means that you live and learn to grow your own food. Mostly, you can be self-sufficient. And so, it's mostly about the eco-way, not [the] community way,” Panchenko said. Iryna Kazakova and Olesia Panchenko work on the Green Road project from Hallingelille, an ecovillage in rural Ringsted, Denmark. Credit: Pernille Baerendtsen/The World Andriy Parashchenko, who came to Hallingelille with his family, said he enjoys the community focus here. He landed a job nine months ago as an IT programmer and now makes a three-hour commute back and forth to Copenhagen two days a week, working remotely the rest of the time. He said he's earning enough to rent a house on Hallingelille where they plan to stay for now. “In Danish culture, I like [it] a lot and I'm learning a lot — how they can be relaxed in their life and be happy and relaxed and do the same work. And how to say — they can achieve the same goals as if working hard. So, I'm learning to work in the Danish way here — relax and enjoy life,” Parashchenko said. Hallingelille community members share a meal together in the common house that overlooks a shimmering lake. Credit: Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein/The World Support for Ukraine's ecovillagesWhereas Danish ecovillages have a strong emphasis on community, Ukrainian ecovillages have traditionally focused moreso on self-sufficiency.Before the war, Kazakova said about 600 people were living in simple, modest ecovillages scattered across Ukraine, and that number doubled when about 600 internally displaced people arrived hoping to survive the harsh winter. Most of the country's 40 ecovillages had some food supplies, simple infrastructure and a way to grow food, but not much in the way of accommodations or other critical supplies. “In the very beginning, we really needed just very simple things because people arrived in the ecovillages without anything. So, we bought food, clothes, some medicines and very, very simple things because there was nothing,” Kazakova said. But what the villagers had — they were willing to share, she added. Within the first six months, Green Road coordinators oversaw the delivery into Ukraine of 35 greenhouses, 10 two-wheel tractors, gardening tools, tanks for harvesting rainwater, food dehydrators and equipment for milking animals. They also sent several refrigerators, washing machines, beds and mattresses as well as building materials. Zalevskyi, who started GEN Ukraine in 2018 with the aim to unite and strengthen the country's existing eco-settlements, said that many people who fled to rural areas during the war came from Soviet-era industrial cities with no prior experience or interest in an ecovillage lifestyle. Maksym Zalevskiy is the founder of Ukraine's national ecovillage network and also a co-founder of the Green Road project.  Credit: Courtesy of Maksym Zalevskiy This has ushered in a “new wave of evolution for our ecovillages,” Zalevskyi said, adding that community-building and conflict resolution has been necessary to mediate the clashing of ideologies — pro-Ukrainian, pro-Russian, and pro-Soviet. “Our Green Road [connects] all of them and we [connect] because we help refugees ... we have no ideological conflict because war is for helping people in collapse. It [made] us a strong network because everyone wants to help,” Zalevskyi said. Over the last year, about 300 people eventually moved on to other living situations while 300 have stayed on in the ecovillages. The Green Road project is working with these groups to restore abandoned houses and learn new skills like nonviolent communication, decision-making, and permaculture methods that emphasize care for people and the land and fair sharing. “We want to save [our] communities and continue community-building and we [are] using tools and instruments ... to do that in harmony with people and mediate conflicts in all communities,” Zalevskyi said. The project has now shifted to a new stage geared more toward advocacy, capacity-building and networking. With plenty of bicycles to go around in Denmark, the group launched a bicycle project that they hope will generate income for displaced Ukrainians living in the ecovillages. They plan to collect used bicycles from Denmark to donate to about six ecovillages, and offer workshops on how to repair and build bicycles for resale.  The Green Road is now supporting bicycle workshops in Ukrainian ecovillages as an income-generating initiative. Credit: Courtesy of GEN Ukraine/Facebook Nielsen-Englyst, with LOS, noted that there have been challenges along the way. Hallingelille residents have had to adjust to new dynamics as hosts, and the relentless organizing to meet overwhelming needs has inevitably burned people out. “There are some compromises and some costs and sometimes, also some conflicts,” she said. “And I think that's also what we can see in Ukraine as well, that living together is not always easy.” Kazakova said she keeps “the millions of Ukrainians who continue to live in fear” at the forefront of her mind while living in Denmark. As the war continues in Ukraine, so does the Green Road toward a more peaceful and sustainable future.

On a bright spring day, Ayyad Mohmmed Ali stood at the edge of his farm, facing a row of about a dozen new construction sites nearby. A river separated his farm and the buildings.“It's really painful to see this,” he said. “In Iraq, we don't like to build vertically and now, you're seeing all these lands being turned into buildings.”Mohmmed Ali has planted date palm trees and vegetables at his boostan, which is Arabic for grove, for the past three decades.This green bit of land is his sanctuary, he explained. It's where he comes to escape the noise and pollution of the capital Baghdad, a city of roughly 8 million people. Ayyad Mohmmed Ali says his palm tree grove is his sanctuary, where he can escape the noise and pollution of Baghdad, a city of roughly 8 million people. Credit: Shawn Yuan/The World In the early 1980s, Iraq had an estimated 30 million palm trees. It used to be among the top producers of dates in the world. But war, construction and the impact of climate change have taken a toll. By 2009, there were fewer than 9 million date palms left in the country.“This is like the hair of the Iraqi desert and we're watching the Iraqi landscape go bald with the stresses of war,”Kali Rubaii, assistant professor, Department of Anthropology, Purdue University“This is like the hair of the Iraqi desert and we're watching the Iraqi landscape go bald with the stresses of war,” said Kali Rubaii, who teaches anthropology at Purdue University, and has researched the environmental impacts of war in Iraq.As part of her research, Rubaii interviewed date farmers who were displaced after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and she said the lack of date farming told a story of dispossession. Iraq used to be among the top producers of dates in the world, but war, construction and the impact of climate change have taken a toll on the country's palm trees. Credit: Shawn Yuan/The World Palm trees need consistent care: watering, pruning and fertilizing. And when farmers had to leave, the trees suffered.“So many people are forced to sell their land for very cheap and, oftentimes, farmers have found themselves working on land that they used to own,” Rubaii explained.Iraq has also been getting hotter and drier. According to the UN, it is the fifth-most vulnerable country to the impacts of climate change.“There's a section of the southern part of Baghdad, if you drive through, you can see a lot of trees that look like they've been decapitated,” Rubaii added, “because sometimes when trees die, they keel over or, if they're not surviving, sometimes they get cut from the top.”Making matters worse is Iraq's construction boom — especially in bigger cities like Baghdad. It means that more farmers are choosing to cut down palm trees entirely to make way for building projects. More farmers in Iraq are choosing to cut down palm trees to make way for building projects.  Credit: Shawn Yuan/The World “The farms have a problem,” explained Labeeb Kashif al-Gitta, “there is no water, there is no commercial income from this farm, so I cut the palm trees and I build buildings instead and get more profits.” Labeeb Kashif al-Gitta created the startup Nakhla with some friends in 2018 to help landowners maintain their palm trees. Credit: Shirin Jaafari/The World In 2018, Gitta and a few of his friends came up with an idea to help address the problem. They created a startup called Nakhla — Arabic for "palm tree."And the concept was this: homeowners with palm trees on their land could sign a contract with Nakhla to have the company take care of the trees.Many times, Gitta said, people just cut down the trees because they are too much work to maintain.“Palm trees, for them, is [a] very heavy project. They need to take care of it four times per year,” he said.Nakhla's team waters, prunes, fertilizes and vaccinates palm trees — to protect them from things like fungus.Come harvest time, Nakhla either packages and hands over the dates to the tree owner or takes the product to market, depending on the type of contract.These types of services are not common in Iraq, but Gitta said the company is growing.It is expanding its client base and recently signed a contract with the municipality of Baghdad to take care of the city's many palm trees.“Last year, in houses, we had 300 palm trees, in farms, we had 1,000 palm trees, and in the street, we had 6,000,” Gitta explained.The Iraqi government is also funding reforestation projects.But biologist Ayyad Wajeh al-Shahwany explained that to truly bring back Iraq's palm trees, a lot more needs to be done.Private projects like Nakhla and others are good, he said, but they need more support from the government and international organizations. In the early 1980s, Iraq had an estimated 30 million palm trees. But by 2009, there were fewer than 9 million date palms left in the country. Credit: Shawn Yuan/The World Kali Rubaii, from Purdue, said that many Iraqis see the value in helping to save the country's iconic palm trees.“People are stubborn and they are not going to stop. They are finding different grassroots tactics to keep their trees alive and also to keep the date economy alive, and maybe even grow it back.”Iraqi date palms are incredibly resistant plants, she added. They can cope with all kinds of environmental stress, like storms, wind and drought.They just need a little help to thrive.Related: 'It's a mass ecological crisis': Extreme weather in Iraq hits those already struggling the hardest

Passersby do a double take when they see Kaz Kobayashi and Ikki Goto.The two men glide through Tokyo's bustling Ikebukuro district in full-length samurai outfits, while wielding objects that look like swords. They are members of the Gomi Hiroi Samurai or the trash-collecting samurai. Kaz Kobayashi and Ikki Goto, part of the Gomi Hiroi Samurai group, are actors who perform as samurai who clean up Tokyo. Credit: Julia Kim/The World  “Yesterday was Friday so people are smoking and drinking around here, so there's a lot of trash,” Kobayashi said.On closer inspection, their samurai swords — or katanas — are actually just very long tongs, used to pick up litter. Kobayashi said the tongs are important for novelty value.“We're doing this as entertainment … but it can be tiring sometimes. It's tough, man.”The Gomi Hiroi Samurai do this three times a week. There's four of them, and they're professional actors. In their spare time, they volunteer to keep the streets of Tokyo clean. Goto formed the group in 2009. Since then, they have become a viral sensation on TikTok, with over 700,000 followers and counting.  Kaz Kobayashi and Ikki Goto, part of the Gomi Hiroi Samurai group, are actors who perform as samurai who clean up Tokyo. Credit: Julia Kim/The World   Here in Ikebukuro, they target back alleys and parking lots, which are rife with litter. Kobayashi and Goto, working in sync, slice and spin their tongs through the air, meticulously seizing cigarette butts one by one before tossing them into the wastebaskets strapped to their backs.Manaka Nishibiro, a nursery teacher trainee, watched them from a distance.“Picking up trash is unpleasant for most people, but their performance makes it look so fun,” Nishibiro said, adding that she hopes it might encourage others to do the same. Kaz Kobayashi and Ikki Goto pick up litter in Tokyo as part of an acting troupe, the Gomi Hiroi Samurai, who have an environmental mission. Credit: Julia Kim/The World  An hour later, Kobayashi and Goto took their wastebaskets to a recycling base. There, they separated out every piece of rubbish they've collected. They said that they hope to recruit more Gomi Hiroi samurai  in Japan — and around the world — to spread their message: “We punish immoral hearts.”It means that trash in and of itself isn't bad. Instead, it's people and the actions that stem from their negative mindsets. And a growing sense of negativity is something that Kobayashi said worries him.“This is a problem in Japan,” he said. “People don't go outside.” Kaz Kobayashi and Ikki Goto, actors, use their roles in the Gomi Hiroi Samurai as a way to entertain and encourage people to keep the outdoors clean. Credit: Julia Kim/The World  Last month, a government survey showed that 1.5 million people are living as social recluses in Japan. With loneliness and depression on the rise, Kobayashi said he hopes that their fun, zany take on something as mundane as trash-collecting helps people reengage with the outside world. Kaz Kobayashi and Ikki Goto, part of the Gomi Hiroi Samurai group, are professional actors who volunteer to clean up litter in Tokyo. Their mantra is “clean space, clear mind.” Credit: Julia Kim/The World   “Samurai is a warrior,” he said. “Our philosophy is to help people.”For these eco-warriors, “clean space, clear mind” is more than just a saying — it's the way of the Gomi Hiroi samurai.Listen to the other stories in the four-part Waste Pickers series on The World:Trash sorters in Ghana face health and safety risksIn Mumbai, waste pickers do the heavy lifting of recycling‘We were treated as disposable beings': Waste pickers in Colombia fought for their rights after 11 murder

Back in 1992, security guards at the Universidad Libre in the Colombian city of Barranquilla came up with a way to help the medical school — and themselves.On quiet nights, they lured waste pickers onto campus to collect old cans and cardboard boxes — it was a trap. The guards beat them with bats, and shot them, according to court documents. Then, they sold the bodies to the medical school, where the students needed cadavers to learn on.This went unnoticed for weeks, until one waste picker survived. After he was put in a bathtub full of formaldehyde, the man escaped and alerted the police. On March 1, as the city celebrated its annual carnival, officials found the bodies of 11 waste pickers in the university's morgue.“It's something that still makes us feel pain,” said Marisol Mogollon, a waste picker in Bogotá.  “Just to think that we were treated as disposable beings.” Waste picker Alfredo Rodriguez separates cardboard from plastic at a park in a wealthy area of Bogotá, Colombia. Credit: Manuel Rueda/The World  The crime shocked the nation but it also galvanized waste pickers in Colombia. They went from being one of the most marginalized groups in the country to being highly visible, fighting for their rights in the streets and in courts. Nowadays, Colombia is a global leader when it comes to granting rights to these workers, said Federico Parra, an urban anthropologist who specializes in grassroots organizations.“This [crime] created a huge movement that impulsed the waste pickers' organizations to fight for their rights,” he said.Many waste pickers in Colombia are now recognized as public service providers, and they can go anywhere in the city to collect goods that can be recycled — without fear. Miguel Lugo organizes cardboard at a warehouse run by ARAUS, the Usme Waste Pickers Association. Credit: Manuel Rueda/The World  A lot of them still get around the city on foot, pulling heavy wooden carts. But they have formed associations that own trucks, and collect their trash at designated points. Previously, waste pickers had to drag their carts for several miles to get to warehouses where they sold items like cardboard, bottles and tin cans.Alfredo Rodriguez is a waste picker in Chapinero, a wealthy district in the north of Bogotá. As he pulled his wooden cart along a street lined with office buildings and expensive apartments, he said the job still pays little, and requires long hours. But slowly, the conditions have been improving.“We used to fight over trash bags in the street,” he said. “Now, it's more orderly, and we also get gloves, face masks and boots with steel tips.”In Colombia, waste pickers have filed several lawsuits against city governments that have privatized waste collection and given some recycling responsibilities to government contractors.In 2011, the nation's Constitutional Court ruled that municipal governments had to take actions to protect waste pickers, because they are a vulnerable group that provides an important service. Miguel Lugo and William Lugo stop at a school where they are going to collect trash that can be recycled. The ARAUS waste pickers association owns a truck that has helped it to increase its monthly haul.   Credit: Manuel Rueda/The World  Following that groundbreaking ruling, cities like Bogotá have begun to require that contractors pay waste pickers a portion of the funds that they get from waste management taxes.So, in Bogotá, waste pickers don't just get paid for what they sell to warehouses each day. They also get a monthly fee that comes from the waste management tax. It's known as the tarifa.“We get anywhere from $30 to $90 from the tarifa, depending on how much [trash] we gathered,” said Sandra Martinez, a waste picker in Usme, a district at the southern edge of Bogotá. “It's not much, but it helps to pay the bills.”At the end of the month, waste pickers' associations also get paid a fee, which varies according to how many tons their members collect. Waste picker Emiliano Martinez pushes his cart through a neighborhood in Usme, where he collects trash door to door.  Credit: Manuel Rueda/The World  Jorge Ospina directs ARAUS, the waste pickers association in Bogotá's Usme district. His association has 75 members and gets about $5,000 a month from local taxes.“Thanks to the tariff, our association has enough money to rent three warehouses, and we've also bought a truck.” he said.At one of the warehouses, two employees stripped labels away from hundreds of plastic bottles, so that they could sell them to a local recycling plant.Thanks to the warehouse, there's no longer any need to sell trash to middle men. And the association's members can get better prices for what they collect. Waste picker Edgar Rodriguez loads cardboard on a truck owned by ARAUS, the Usme Waster Pickers Association. The truck helps the association to collect more trash and makes things easier for waste pickers in the district of Usme.  Credit: Manuel Rueda/The World But waste pickers in the city still face many challenges. Prices for some items, like cardboard, have fallen recently. And for some waste pickers it's also become harder to gather decent amounts of trash.Martinez said many Venezuelan migrants who are out of work are also roaming the streets of Bogotá looking for items that can be sold to recycling plants.“They open the trash bags before we can get to them,” she said. “And with the economic crisis, even homeowners are holding on to stuff, and selling it themselves to warehouses.”But the biggest challenge for Bogotá's waste pickers are large contractors that are also trying to get a piece of the recycling business. Jorge Ospina, (center) standing with other waste pickers who are affiliated to the ARAUS association. Ospina has been the group's director for more than 20 years and under his leadership they have been able to rent warehouses and get their own truck. Credit: Manuel Rueda/The World  Ospina, from the ARAUS association, said that some of these companies have even formed dubious associations that are trying to claim some of the monthly payments that are reserved for waste pickers.“Before the tariff system began, we only had around 40 waste pickers' associations in Bogotá,” he said. “But now, there are 450. The city government has to eliminate the fake organizations, so that only the authentic waste pickers benefit from the monthly payments.”Still, for many waste pickers in Bogotá, like Martinez, this is an industry that has changed for the better, even if these transformations were sparked by a horrible set of murders.“Our job has more recognition now,” she said. “We used to be perceived as junkies, or disposable people. But now, our role in the city is respected.”Listen to the other stories in the four-part Waste Pickers series on The World:Trash sorters in Ghana face health and safety risksIn Mumbai, waste pickers do the heavy lifting of recyclingTokyo's trash-collecting samurai takes a fun, zany approach to cleanup

Ali Mohammad, a recycler in Dharavi, an informal settlement in Mumbai, one of India's largest cities, sorts through a mountain of plastic ice cream cartons, which are destined to become anything from hair combs to water buckets.“The life of plastic never ends. It breaks, then, in one month or so, it comes back as another thing,” he said. Ali Mohammad sorts through ice cream containers for recycling. Credit: Justin Nisly/The World  After moving here from Uttar Pradesh, a large state in northern India, Mohammad has spent the past four years separating, washing and chopping plastic as part of Dharavi's bustling recycling operation.In Mumbai, home to 20 million people, waste ends up in Dharavi ​​with recyclers like Mohammad. A quarter of the people living here are employed in recycling at least 60% of the city's plastic — a recycling rate far higher than the average in the US.The recyclables that Mohammad digs through in a one-room, independent shop come from waste pickers who gather the recycling from the landfills and streets. Both groups of workers are crucial — and interlinked — in India, which is grappling with how to manage the rapid growth of plastics and other solid wastes. Ice cream containers from popular Indian brands wait to be recycled. Credit: Justin Nisly/The World  In Mumbai, a city crushed by the amount of garbage discarded each day, waste pickers help make this metropolis livable. And for every bottle and bag collected, that's less plastic that ends up in the ocean.The process begins in neighborhoods like Bandra, 20 minutes from Dharavi where Sheikh Salim gathered litter on the side of a road.Salim, a waste picker, set down an enormous bag and listed the contents so far: “There is paper, these are bottles, this is a metal container, a thin sheet of plastic.”He added, “I will take this waste to the scrap dealer who will weigh it and whatever, 150 rupees [$1.80], I will get.”From the scrap dealer, most of the dry waste will eventually go to a recycler. In Mumbai, that could be a small-scale operation in Dharavi.Though municipalities often also have a centralized, official version of waste management — for instance, garbage trucks that collect each day from households and some recycling centers — they tacitly rely on waste pickers and unlicensed recycling centers to augment their services. Separating the recycling Swati Singh Sambyal, an independent waste management expert, said that this interconnected waste management process is convoluted: “There's a formal system of management, there's an informal system of management, and that's where the chaos is.”Sambyal noted that since the Indian government issued its Solid Waste Management Rules 2016, the mindset of many Indians has been changing — and that is a good thing. Sheik Salim collects recyclables in his bag along a street in Bandra, in Mumbai, India. Credit: Justin Nisly/The World  These rules, which mandate that homes and businesses should separate dry, wet and hazardous waste, have sparked a growing awareness about the importance of scientifically managing trash.Still, many households don't. Instead, they might toss plastic water bottles in with food scraps and diapers. And Sambyal said that even when families do separate their trash, the city garbage collectors might toss it all together.“Perhaps, if I'm doing it [waste segregation] as a resident, it's being collected and then mixed, and then, say, going to a facility where it's burned. Me segregating then goes down the drain.”​Or, municipal sanitation trucks might just dump everything into landfills that other waste pickers then dig through, which is dangerous work.As experts consider ways of improving this system, Sambyal said an important question to ask is: “How do we formalize the informal sector, or if we're not able to do so, how do we bring them into our processes?”It's a question Sushila Sable is also asking. She is part of a women's empowerment group in Mumbai called Stree Mukti Sanghatana.For decades, she did the hazardous and difficult work of gathering recyclables from a nearby dumping ground. Now, she works to organize them.Sable said it is high time that waste pickers be officially recognized for their important role. Sushila Sable, a former waste picker, now manages a women's empowerment group. Credit: Justin Nisly/The World  “From the year 2008, we have been demanding that we be given an identity card, to be recognized and live a life as humane as possible given the circumstances we work in. But [we] have not got the identity card.”Official IDs protect them from police harassment, reduce the stigma of the job, and waste pickers say it could improve their access to subsidized housing, health care and education for their kids.New approaches to a growing challenge The good news is some Indian cities have already begun to incorporate waste pickers into their waste management systems. For instance, the city of Ambikapur, in the state of Chhattisgarh, has given several hundred waste pickers ID cards, so they can collect garbage from people's homes — where it's been presorted.Later, the dry waste will be separated into a whopping 156 different items. In Dharavi, an informal settlement in Mumbai, India, men separate plastic and metal components for reycling. Credit: Justin Nisly/The World  Ritesh Saini, based within the city government, is the local officer for the country's Clean India mission, Swachh Bharat. Saini explained that they divide their dry waste so carefully because “the more we segregate, the more revenue we can earn.”As an example, he cited an average water bottle.“The cap is separated, the plastic wrapper is separated, and the bottle body is separated,” and by selling each piece to a different vendor, Saini said, the city generates a lot more income. Raju Rajput (left) and his colleagues take a break from recycling plastic car bumpers in his shop. Credit: Justin Nisly/The World  Back in Dharavi, Mohammad said that business is booming for recyclers like him, as Indians throw away more trash than ever. In fact, the Indian government predicts that the country's plastic use will more than triple in the next decade.It's a big reason why waste pickers are asking for more protection and recognition for their role in waste management.“We work for cleanliness of the surrounding living spaces as well as protecting the environment,” Sable said. “Slowly, the world is recognizing us and our role.”Listen to the other stories in the four-part Waste Pickers series on The World:Trash sorters in Ghana face health and safety risks‘We were treated as disposable beings': Waste pickers in Colombia fought for their rights after 11 murderTokyo's trash-collecting samurai takes a fun, zany approach to cleanup

This story was produced with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.Thirty-six-year-old Johnson Doe has worked as a waste picker in the sprawling Kpone Landfill in Accra, Ghana, for 20 years. It's not the type of job he imagined for himself as a young man, but it's how he supports his wife, two children and his parents.”I wanted to be a military pilot but, you know, life happens,” he said. Waste pickers are the largest workforce in the recycling chain responsible for collecting and recovering up to 60% of all plastics.   Credit: Ridwan Karim Dini-Osman/The World Doe — and about a thousand other waste pickers there — collects items such as plastic bottles, aluminum cans and scrap metal, which he sells to recycling companies that buy them by weight. The money it brings in depends on market demand, Doe said, but typically, he makes $13 a day.Doe is among the more than 20 million waste pickers around the world — the largest workforce in the recycling chain — who recover up to 60% of all plastics globally. Additionally, their work helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions.And yet, in Ghana and elsewhere, waste pickers like Doe say they are rarely valued for what they do — they barely make a living, and are vulnerable to exploitation and exposure to pollution and toxic chemicals.“Many people think the mentally ill people are those who work at the dumpsite,” Doe said. “So, that's how they see us, like we are illiterate. Some people even call us criminals.”Everyday hazards at the landfillAt the Kpone Landfill, all sorts of insects, including maggots, and other pests can be found on decaying garbage, feasting on scraps of food and nesting in rotting material. Then, there's the medical waste scattered throughout — syringes, blood, pins, needles and other equipment. Waste pickers collect items such as plastic bottles, aluminum cans, and scrap metal and then sell them to recycling companies who buy them by weight. The prices they get for the materials depend on the market demand.  Credit: Ridwan Karim Dini-Osman/The World It puts waste pickers at risk of infectious diseases such as HIV and Hepatitis B and C, Doe said.Still, many of his colleagues sift through the garbage with their bare hands or worn-out gloves; some don't have any protective gear at all. Doe said he remembers a woman who, while sorting, punctured a plastic bag containing a toxic substance. The acid splashed on her body and burned her clothes.“Now, she's bedridden at home and looks completely deformed,” he said. Johnson Doe has been working at the Kpone Landfill in Accra, Ghana, for about 20 years now. He says it is his best option for making a living to take care of his wife, two children and his parents.  Credit: Ridwan Karim Dini-Osman/The World Emergencies happen a lot at the landfill, Doe said — with people collapsing from exhaustion, or getting dehydrated, or experiencing difficulty breathing. But they face stigma when seeking medical help, he said, as health workers often describe them as dirty and refuse to attend to them.Additionally, waste pickers at the landfill do not have access to clean water, handwashing facilities or sanitation facilities.Another waste picker, Grace Avemegah, said the situation can be especially problematic for women. “There are no washrooms here to change your sanitary towel during that time of the month,” she said. “This means you have to keep your pad on from morning until evening, which is not good for our health. When you become so pressed, you are compelled to do it in the open.”Challenges of managing medical wasteSolomon Noi, the head of waste management at the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, said that a lot of industries channel harmful substances to the landfill. Waste picker Grace Avemegah says it's difficult to practice good hygiene and for women to meet their menstrual needs due to absence of sanitation facilities at the Kpone Landfill in Accra, Ghana.  Credit: Ridwan Karim Dini-Osman/The World As a result, the air is heavily polluted, which can “choke your respiratory system, and therefore, we cannot rule out upper respiratory tract infections,” he said. Waste pickers inhale harmful gas and their skin is “exposed to certain corrosive and carcinogenic elements within the wastes that they are scavenging on.”Also, plastics leach hazardous chemicals into the environment, including endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which are linked to reduced fertility, pregnancy loss and irregular menstrual cycles, and other conditions, according to a 2020 report by the Endocrine Society and IPEN (International Pollutants Elimination Network).Noi said that the health risks faced by waste pickers are rife across the developing world, particularly in Brazil, India, Colombia, Mexico and the Philippines where the amount of waste being generated is rising rapidly, but the technological and financial tools to manage it don't exist.“That's why all these countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa record huge cases of waterborne diseases and infections like hepatitis, cholera and the rest,” he said. “So, it is a global problem that should be tackled at the global level through concerted efforts.”Noi said he would like to see universal health care — but also policy changes in Ghana. Waste pickers, who collect and sort recyclable materials from garbage, face widespread social stigma that often prevents them from accessing basic services including health care.  Credit: Ridwan Karim Dini-Osman/The World “We should have a sanitation master plan, and there should be effective and efficient bylaws that will compel particular industries to treat their wastes and render them nonharmful,” he said.Proper sorting and treatment of waste before it reaches the landfill, coupled with personal protective equipment, is crucial, said Michael Affordefe, a medical waste expert at the Accra School of Hygiene. “That is the only way we can break the chain of transmission of some of these infections from the medical waste,” he said.Ghana's Health Facilities Regulatory Agency is alarmed by the rate at which untreated medical wastes are being dumped at the Kpone Landfill, but it is challenging to prosecute noncomplying hospitals, according to Agyemang Badu, the agency's head of operations. “We know about the plight of the waste pickers, but you see, it is just quite recent that, as an agency, we were given a lawyer,” he said. “Prior to that, we didn't have any attorney to make sure that the enforcement bites.”Next year, nations are set to develop a legally binding agreement on plastic pollution. The new global plastics treaty aims to put waste pickers at the center of its strategy to curb plastic use and pollution.Listen to the other stories in the four-part Waste Pickers series on The World:In Mumbai, waste pickers do the heavy lifting of recycling‘We were treated as disposable beings': Waste pickers in Colombia fought for their rights after 11 murderTokyo's trash-collecting samurai takes a fun, zany approach to cleanup

Last Thursday, the El Fuego (The Fire) volcano in Guatemala took things to another level.A huge, mushroom-shaped plume of black smoke erupted into the sky as red-hot lava rocks sprayed over the hillside. Authorities took action, ordering more than a thousand residents to evacuate. Last Thursday, the El Fuego (“The Fire”) volcano in Guatemala took things to another level. A huge, mushroom-shaped plume of black smoke erupted into the sky as red-hot lava rocks sprayed over the hillside. Authorities took action, ordering more than a thousand residents to evacuate. Credit: Michael Fox/The World “It's best to avoid any problems,” one mother told a local TV outlet, as she sat inside a packed, yellow school bus, waiting to be taken to a shelter. Her toddler son stood on her lap, teething on the seat in front of them.“I have to be very careful with him,” she said. “He has lung issues, so it's impossible for me to stay.”Guatemalan officials said that 280,000 people were impacted by the fallen ash across the country. Local residents are not the only ones potentially in harm's way. Tour companies guide 100-200 people up the hillside to witness El Fuego each day. It's not an easy hike. Credit: Michael Fox/The World The mother and son were headed to one of two dozen shelters opened for residents outside of the volcano's path.“People are afraid after what happened in 2018,” one evacuee told a news agency, inside of a large gymnasium filled with families and their belongings. “So, they already have their bags ready, and when authorities say they have to evacuate, they are ready to go.”More than 300 people died in 2018 when El Fuego exploded, spewing smoke and ash, and causing pyroclastic lava flows to pour down hillsides and into populated areas. Shocking videos from that time show people running or racing away in a car as huge plumes of smoke stretch across an apocalyptic sky. A handful of tourists have perished on El Fuego over the years. But that's largely been due to the elements and the high altitude, not the volcano. Credit: Michael Fox/The World Local residents are not the only ones potentially in harm's way.Tour companies guide 100-200 people up the hillside to witness El Fuego each day. It's not an easy hike.Polish tourist Tomek Grzeda hiked up Acatenango with his family last month.“The first, big eruption after we got to the camp, our daughter started crying. Because she was afraid of the noise and how it looks — the lava coming from the volcano. It was incredible. Super powerful, but also scary,” he said. “But after that, we got used to it. We understood how it worked. The guide explained everything. We felt safe on the top.”El Fuego erupted all night long. But not like it did last week. More than 300 people died in 2018 when El Fuego exploded, spewing smoke and ash, and causing pyroclastic lava flows to pour down hillsides and into populated areas.  Credit: Michael Fox/The World Pablo Arcón, the head of Pablo's Tours, said they started to evacuate people off the mountain around 6 a.m.“We've never had a problem like rocks falling on the base camp, or something like that,” he said. “We evacuate because of the high concentration of ash and because of the roads, which can get knocked out and make it hard to get people home.”He said that's what happened in 2018. But no hikers died.A handful of tourists have perished on the mountain over the years. But that's largely been due to the elements and the high altitude, not the volcano. Tour companies guide 100-200 people up the hillside to witness El Fuego each day. It's not an easy hike. Credit: Michael Fox/The World Brayam Mendez is the head of environmental management for the Municipality of Acatenango. He said that you can't predict volcanoes, but they are used to El Fuego.“It always does this,” he said. “When there's a problem or activity increases, and you can't see through the ash, we close the park and there are no visits. But after a few days, we open it back up.”That's where they are now. Most residents have now returned home.Arcón said that he's expecting they'll get the green light from Guatemala's tourist agency to again start tours up the mountain later this week.