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The study was published as President Donald Trump was blasted for an executive order that one critic said shows he wants to turn the Alaskan Arctic into the "the world's largest gas station."
For thousands of years, the land areas of the Arctic have served as a "carbon sink," storing potential carbon emissions in the permafrost. But according to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change Tuesday, more than 34% of the Arctic is now a source of carbon to the atmosphere, as permafrost melts and the Arctic becomes greener.
"When emissions from fire were added, the percentage grew to 40%," according to the Woodwell Climate Research Center, which led the international team that conducted the research.
The study, which was first reported on by The Guardian, was released the day after President Donald Trump issued multiple presidential actions influencing the United States' ability to confront the climate crisis, which is primarily caused by fossil fuel emissions, including one directly impacting resource extraction in Alaska, a section of which is within the Arctic Circle.
Sue Natali, one of the researchers who worked on the study published in Nature Climate Change, toldNPR in December (in reference to similar research) that the Arctic's warming "is not an issue of what party you support."
"This is something that impacts everyone," she said.
As the permafrost—ground that remains frozen for two or more years—holds less carbon, it releases CO2 into the atmosphere that could "considerably exacerbate climate change," according to the study.
"There is a load of carbon in the Arctic soils. It's close to half of the Earth's soil carbon pool. That's much more than there is in the atmosphere. There's a huge potential reservoir that should ideally stay in the ground," said Anna Virkkala, the lead author of the study, in an interview with The Guardian.
The dire warning was released on the heels of Trump's executive order titled "Unleashing the Alaska's Extraordinary Resource Potential" that calls for expedited "permitting and leasing of energy and natural resource projects in Alaska," as well as for the prioritization of "development of Alaska's liquefied natural gas (LNG) potential, including the sale and transportation of Alaskan LNG to other regions of the United States and allied nations within the Pacific region."
The order also rolls back a number of Biden-era restrictions on drilling and extraction in Alaska, which included protecting areas within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil and gas leasing.
"Alaska is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet, a trend that is wreaking havoc on communities, ecosystems, fish, wildlife, and ways of life that depend on healthy lands and waters," said Carole Holley, managing attorney for the Alaska Office of the environmental group Earthjustice, in a statement Monday.
"Earthjustice and its clients will not stand idly by while Trump once again forces a harmful industry-driven agenda on our state for political gain and the benefit of a wealthy few," she added.
Trump wants to turn the Alaskan Arctic into the "the world's largest gas station," said Athan Manuel, director of Sierra Club's Lands Protection Program, in a statement Monday. "Make no mistake, Trump's rushed and sloppy actions today are an existential threat to these lands and waters, and the communities and wildlife that depend on them."
One wonders if the world had paid even the slightest attention to Gaza and the cries of people trapped behind walls, barbed wire, and electric fences, whether the current war and genocide could have been avoided.
The first official reference to Gaza becoming increasingly uninhabitable was made by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, or UNCTAD, in 2012, when the population of the Gaza Strip was estimated at 1.8 million inhabitants.
The intention of the report, The Gaza Strip: The Economic Situation and the Prospects for Development, was not merely to prophesize, but to warn that if the world continued to stand idle in the face of the ongoing blockade on Gaza, a humanitarian catastrophe was imminent.
Yet, little was done, though the U.N. continued with its countdown, increasing the frequency and urgency of its warnings, especially following major wars.
Even after the devastating war on Gaza ends and the rebuilding of the strip concludes, the ecological and environmental harm that Israel has caused will remain for many years to come.
Another report in 2015 from UNCTAD stated that the Gaza crisis had intensified following the most destructive war to that date, the year before. The war had destroyed hundreds of factories, thousands of homes, and displaced tens of thousands of people.
By 2020, though, based on the criteria set by the U.N., Gaza should have become "uninhabitable." Yet, little was done to remedy the crisis. The population grew rapidly, while resources, including Gaza's land mass, shrank due to the ever-expanding Israeli "buffer zone." The prospects for the "world's largest open-air prison" became even dimmer.
Yet, the international community did little to heed the call of UNCTAD and other U.N. and international institutions. The humanitarian crisis—situated within a prolonged political crisis, a siege, repeated wars, and daily violence—worsened, reaching, on October 7, 2023, the point of implosion.
One wonders if the world had paid even the slightest attention to Gaza and the cries of people trapped behind walls, barbed wire, and electric fences, whether the current war and genocide could have been avoided.
It is all moot now. The worst-case scenario has actualized in a way that even the most pessimistic estimates by Palestinian, Arab, or international groups could not have foreseen.
Not only is Gaza now beyond "uninhabitable," but, according to Greenpeace, it will be "uninhabitable for generations to come." This does not hinge on the resilience of Palestinians in Gaza, whose legendary steadfastness is hardly disputed. However, there are essential survival needs that even the strongest people cannot replace with their mere desire to survive.
In just the first 120 days of war, "staggering" carbon emissions were estimated at 536,410 tons of carbon dioxide. Ninety percent of that deadly pollution was "attributed to Israel's air bombardment and ground invasion," according to Greenpeace, which concluded that the total sum of carbon emissions "is greater than the annual carbon footprint of many climate-vulnerable nations."
A report issued around the same time by the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) painted an equally frightening picture of what was taking place in Gaza as a direct result of the war. "Water and sanitation have collapsed," it declared last June. "Coastal areas, soil, and ecosystems have been severely impacted," it continued.
But that was over seven months ago, when parts of Gaza were still standing. Now, almost all of Gaza has been destroyed. Garbage has been piling up for 15 months without a single facility to process it efficiently. Disease is widespread, and all hospitals have either been destroyed in the bombings, burned to the ground, or bulldozed. Many of the sick are dying in their tents without ever seeing a doctor.
Without any outside assistance, it was only natural for the disaster to worsen. Last December, Médecins Sans Frontières issued a report titled Gaza: Life in a Death Trap. The report, a devastating read, describes the state of medical infrastructure in Gaza, which can be summed up in a single word: non-existent.
Israel has attacked 512 healthcare facilities between October 2023 and September 2024, killing 500 healthcare workers. This means that a population is trying to survive during one of the harshest wars ever recorded, without any serious medical attention. This includes nearly half a million people suffering from various mental health disorders.
By December, Gaza's Government Media Office reported that there are an estimated 23 million tons of debris resulting from the dropping of 75,000 tons of explosives—in addition to other forms of destruction. This has released 281,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the air.
Once the war is over, Gaza will be rebuilt. Though Palestinian sumud (steadfastness) is capable of restoring Gaza to its former self, however long it takes, a study conducted by Queen Mary University in the U.K. said that, for the destroyed structures to be rebuilt, an additional 60 million tons of CO2 will be released into an already severely impacted environment.
In essence, this means that even after the devastating war on Gaza ends and the rebuilding of the strip concludes, the ecological and environmental harm that Israel has caused will remain for many years to come.
It is baffling that the very Western countries, which speak tirelessly about environmental protection, preservation, and warning against carbon emissions, are the same entities that helped sustain the war on Gaza, either through arming Israel or remaining silent in the face of the ongoing atrocities.
The price of this hypocrisy is the enduring suffering of millions of people and the devastation of their environment. Isn't it time for the world to wake up and collectively declare: enough is enough?
In times of insecurity and conflicts worldwide, it is important to remember that international research collaboration has a role to play in building bridges—and a brighter future for all.
Global expectations for sustainable development took another hit in 2024. Carbon emissions reacheda new high, world leaders settled on an underwhelming climate finance goal, and countries failed to sign the global plastic treaty.
There was, however, one major accomplishment. In September, at the United Nations (UN) Summit of the Future, Member States adopted the Pact for the Future reconfirming their commitments to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Pact underscores the critical role of science, technology, and innovation (STI) and outlines several key action items — from increasing the use of science in policy making, to promoting interdisciplinary collaboration to tackle complex global challenges, to supporting developing countries in harnessing STI for sustainable development.
If implemented, these measures will transform the global scientific community and science systems worldwide, requiring fundamental shifts in the organization, practice, and funding of science.
As the landscape of actors working towards the SDGs continues to grow, complexity and fragmentation are likely, which could undermine the effectiveness of individual SDG-related efforts. As such, global research efforts and research funding require strategic coordination and prioritization. In recent years, the scientific community has developed a number of research priority frameworks, including the Six Transformations, Unleashing Science, and Towards Sustainable Transformation, that can help steer global collective efforts and accelerate progress towards SDGs.
The Pact also emphasizes the need to increase the use of science in policy making. Although there is significant research on the SDGs, it is often ignored in public debates on societal transformations and rarely used in policy processes. While resolving this challenge is a complex matter, creating practical interfaces between science and policy could certainly help.
A recent initiative of the World Bank, the Coalition for Capacity on Climate Action (C3A), seeks to bridge the gap between science and Ministries of Finance. It is a prime example of how to better integrate climate science considerations in economic and financial decision-making processes. The SDSN SDG Transformation Center is also working directly with governments, including in Benin andUzbekistan, to support efforts in developing science-based pathways for SDG implementation, identifying SDG priorities and context-specific solutions, and aligning policies and financial flows with such priorities. Initiatives like these hold great potential to be scaled and replicated across countries.
As the Pact stresses, responding effectively to current and future challenges requires the engagement of all relevant stakeholders. At the recent Annual C3A Symposium, participating Ministries of Finance emphasized the critical importance of engaging diverse dimensions of expertise to better understand the complexity and dynamic processes of global challenges and changes. Transdisciplinary research can be an effective tool, as it embraces diverse scientific and societal views and helps to identify common context-specific solutions. By providing space for dialogue, learning, and trust building, transdisciplinary research also helps break down the silo mentality that still persists across many institutional structures. But, for this approach to become common practice, both funders and research institutions must introduce incentives and innovative funding models to reduce the structural barriers to transdisciplinarity.
As it stands, engaging in transdisciplinarity can be risky for scientists, especially for early-career researchers. Stakeholder engagement efforts are rarely recognized, and opportunities for transdisciplinary career development within disciplinary institutions are limited and not oftenrewarded. For several years, the International Science Council (ISC) has promoted the creation of environments and reward systems conducive to transdisciplinary research. While transdisciplinarity has become a more frequent requirement in research calls, much remains to be done to fully harness the benefits of knowledge co-production across disciplines and societal actors.
The design of research funding programmes also plays a critical role. Beyond basic research-linked activities, funding mechanisms should support public engagement, science–policy interfaces, capacity development, community-building, and peer learning. Research funding needs to also enable the accumulation, application, and deployment of knowledge. Longer-term funding is especially needed for international research collaboration on societal transformations towards sustainability.
While no single country can address complex sustainability challenges, the scale of current support for global multilateral scientific collaboration on pressing global challenges still remains marginal. Despite a few examples of global sustainability research collaborative funding efforts, including the ISC Science Missions for Sustainability and the Belmont Forum, research funding mostly prioritizes national scientific efforts over international research collaboration, with only 5% of research projects dedicated to multilateral collaboration.
Ongoing public science funding cuts and rising geopolitical tensions — which have become particularly apparent over the past years — are not conducive to cross-border scientific initiatives. But in times of insecurity and conflicts, it is important to remember that international research collaboration on global sustainability challenges provides a common language and critical mechanism that helps bridge the divide between nations. Strengthening international research collaboration and implementing the STI actions outlined in the Pact for the Future is, therefore, a necessity for ensuring a more peaceful, sustainable, and resilient future for all.