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water pollution
How Do We Manage a World in Water Bankruptcy?
According to the UN, the world has moved beyond water crisis into systemic, chronic scarcity threatening public health, economies, and ecosystems while making global cooperation increasingly existential.
Jan 22, 2026
According to a major new report from the United Nations University, global water systems are no longer in crisis, but have entered a state of chronic failure, with shortages that extend far beyond temporary shocks or short-term recovery.
Released on January 20 by the UN University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era concludes that the planet has entered the era of global water bankruptcy. This indicates that long-term water use now exceeds renewable inflows, leaving much of Earth’s natural systems damaged beyond realistic repair. In other words, societies have already exhausted or polluted the natural buffers—rivers, aquifers, wetlands, and glaciers—that once sustained them. Droughts, shortages, and pollution events are increasingly becoming persistent features of daily life. In this post-crisis condition, the authors argue, it is best not to describe the situation as a crisis at all, but as water bankruptcy.
At the press conference set to release the report, Kaveh Madani, lead author and director of the UNU-INWEH, emphasized that this is not a semantic shift, but a clear warning that the dominant way governments, markets, and international institutions think about water is no longer fit for reality.
“For decades, scientists, the media, and policymakers have warned about a global water crisis… what we document in this report is a different reality emerging in many places: a persistent failure state in which water systems can no longer realistically return to their historical baselines,” Madani said.
Applied to water, bankruptcy management requires confronting overuse, acknowledging irreversible losses, and aligning development goals with hydrological limits.
The report does not claim that the entire planet is bankrupt. Water bankruptcy is assessed basin by basin and aquifer by aquifer. However, as regions across the globe simultaneously overdraw water and erode the natural systems that sustain it, the world faces a fundamentally altered risk landscape, with cascading threats to food security, agricultural markets, rural livelihoods, and climate feedbacks.
What distinguishes water bankruptcy from familiar narratives of scarcity is the scale of irreversibility. According to the report, societies have not only overdrawn annual renewable water flows, but have also liquidated long-term savings stored in groundwater, wetlands, glaciers, soils, and river ecosystems.
Over the past five decades, the world has lost approximately 410 million hectares of natural wetlands—almost the land area of the European Union—resulting in the disappearance of vital ecosystem services such as flood control, water purification, and habitat provision, valued at more than US$5 trillion. Groundwater depletion is even more consequential. According to the analysis, around 70% of the world’s major aquifers show long-term declining trends. Excessive pumping has already caused land subsidence across nearly 5% of the global land area, including dense urban zones that are home to close to 2 billion people. In some regions, land is sinking by up to 25 centimeters per year, permanently reducing storage capacity and increasing flood risk. These damages are not easily undone. Compacted aquifers, subsided deltas, dried-up lakes, and extinct species represent long-term, irretrievable losses.
As Kaveh Madani emphasizes, “This is not another warning about a future we might still avoid everywhere… It is a diagnosis of a world where, in many basins, the old normal is already gone.”
The current human cost and future risks of water bankruptcy are also staggering. According to the report, nearly three-quarters of the world’s population lives in countries classified as water insecure or critically water insecure. About 2.2 billion people still lack safely managed drinking water, 3.5 billion lack safely managed sanitation, and roughly 4 billion experience severe water scarcity for at least one month each year. The risks are compounded given more than half of global food output is located in regions where total water storage (including surface water, soil moisture, snow, ice, and groundwater) is already declining or unstable.
The report’s crux is that the global water agenda remains stuck in a crisis-response mindset that is no longer fit for purpose. Such alarming figures are partly the result of governments, utilities, and basin authorities continuing to treat chronic overshoot as a temporary emergency. Short-term emergency measures, supply expansion, and incremental efficiency gains dominate policy discussions, even as underlying water balances continue to deteriorate. Ultimately, this only deepens ecological damage and entrenches unsustainable water-use practices.
Madani was clear at the press conference: “Expecting a wicked problem of this scale to have a simple solution is as naïve as the reductionist solutions that helped get us into the current state,” he said.
Instead, the United Nations University calls for a shift to what it terms bankruptcy management, a concept borrowed deliberately from finance. Applied to water, bankruptcy management requires confronting overuse, acknowledging irreversible losses, and aligning development goals with hydrological limits. It also demands protecting remaining aquifers, wetlands, soils, rivers, lakes, and glaciers, rather than treating these life-sustaining systems as expendable capital to prop up unsustainable growth.
The report itself also highlights the social and political dimensions of water bankruptcy, stressing that it is not solely an environmental issue. The costs of hydrological overshoot fall hardest on those least responsible and least able to adapt: smallholder farmers, Indigenous communities, and the urban poor. The authors caution that demand reduction is not politically feasible if treated as a purely technical exercise, noting that abruptly cutting water access for farmers could trigger unemployment, social unrest, and broader instability. Effective management, they argue, must be paired with political and economic transitions that protect livelihoods, provide compensation and risk support, enable shifts in crops and practices, and help economies decouple jobs and growth from ever-rising water use.
Despite their sober diagnosis, the authors do not end in resignation, arguing that water could—and existentially must—still serve as a unifying axis in an increasingly fragmented world. Given water intersects climate, biodiversity, food systems, public health, land use, and political stability, it remains one of the few domains where coordination is both necessary and unavoidable.
“Investing in water is an investment in delivering on all of those [aforementioned] agendas,” said Madani, at the report’s launch. “And in rebuilding cooperation in a fragmented world.”
Similarly, authors stress the importance of upcoming political milestones: the UN Water Conferences in 2026 and 2028, the conclusion of the Water Action Decade, and the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals deadline. They argue these moments offer a rare window to reset the global water agenda to move beyond incremental efficiency gains and emergency responses toward explicit recognition that many river basins and aquifers have already crossed thresholds where historical conditions cannot be restored.
Yet translating this clarity into action faces stark political and institutional realities. The UN system, tasked with leading such a reset, remains mired in member states cutting funding, worsening geopolitical polarization and international conflict, and key bodies—including the Security Council—grossly failing to uphold the UN Charter’s basic human rights mandates. In practice, declarations and frameworks proliferate, deadlines are extended, but meaningful, coordinated action remains slow, uneven, or hollow. Water may be uniquely cross cutting, yet it is not immune to these structural constraints or the apparent erosion of accountability. Crucially, it also requires that primarily Western, early-industrial economies reckon with histories of inequitable use and extraction that have both driven water shortages and contributed to the persistent inequities of scarcity today.
As with other pressing global crises, the consequences of water bankruptcy may unfold faster than governments and institutions can respond, but the authors argue that naming the problem clearly could galvanize civil society and decision-makers into meaningful action before it’s too late.
“Our message is not despair,” Madani concluded. “It’s clarity. The earlier we face the real balance sheet, the more options we still have.”
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Trump’s Budget Plan Would Make America Sicker, Hungrier, Poorer, Dirtier, and Hotter
His spending vision depicts a country where basic government functions—like keeping water safe and providing safety nets—are destroyed and corporate polluters can do what they please in the name of profits.
Jul 22, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump is using every tool at his disposal to carry out his destructive agenda. From the passage of his Big, Ugly bill in Congress to his avalanche of executive orders, he’s breaking down basic government functions to clear the way for billionaire benefits and corporate profits. His latest tactic? A spending plan that would dismantle federal programs that keep us safe from pollution, support farmers and families, respond to disasters, and more.
At the end of May, Trump released a proposal for agency spending to guide congressional committees as they craft the next annual spending bill. Not to be confused with the recently passed Big, Ugly Bill, the upcoming spending legislation will fund the basic workings of the federal government for the fiscal year ahead (in this case, October 2025 to September 2026).
Trump’s spending proposal (called his discretionary budget request) makes his vision for the country crystal clear: Unsafe food, dirty water, and worse health for the many. Industrial polluters spewing toxic chemicals, and a destroyed ability to respond to the climate crisis that endangers all of us. Millions of farmers, families, and workers struggling to get by, while corporations amass yet more profits.
In the wake of Trump’s Big, Ugly Bill, his latest spending proposal is the opening salvo of another battle. Congress is now working to enact this vision, using this Trump proposal as a framework for its annual spending legislation. Here’s what’s at stake and how we’ll fight back.
Trump Promises Dirtier, Privatized Water
Not long ago, the United States’ rivers were so choked with pollution, they caught fire. Federal laws, like the Clean Water Act, changed that. Now, vast swaths of the country can depend on their taps for clean water.
Trump would drag us closer to those dark days by slashing programs that prevent pollution. His cuts would be a boon to corporate polluters who would rather preserve their profits than clean up their act.
Trump’s proposal has made his policy intentions clear—dirty water for all.
At the same time, he’s going after funding for infrastructure improvements we need to make our water safe and affordable. Federal government funding is crucial for water infrastructure for states, Tribes, and municipalities. However, this funding has plummeted in recent decades, and Trump wants to cut them even more drastically.
Trump’s deep cuts to water funding also serves as a ploy to encourage water systems to sell off their water systems to private corporations. And we already know that private water systems lead to less local control of water, higher water bills, and worse customer service.
Specifically, his spending plan called for:
Slashing Research and Regulation of Toxic Pollution
His plan calls for a 54% cut from the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA is key for researching and regulating toxic chemicals that poison our water. Without a strong EPA, we can’t address threats to our water like PFAS “forever chemicals” and microplastics.
Virtually Eliminating Funding for Drinking Water
Trump’s plan calls for a nearly 90% cut to the Drinking Water and Clean Water State Revolving Funds, the main channels for federal dollars to states and localities for safe and clean water (that’s a cut of more than $2 billion).
Trump wants to completely eliminate these funds going forward, encouraging states to find “alternative funding sources” that could lead to private equity takeovers of local water supplies.
Dirtier Beaches and Dirtier Water
Trump’s plan calls for a complete elimination of many programs that provide clean water grants. That includes all EPA grants for beach protection, pollution control and prevention, clean and safe water technical assistance, and more.
Leaving Tribes and Rural Communities High and Dry
His plan would make huge cuts to water and wastewater grants specifically for Tribes and rural communities.
House Republicans lawmakers recently released their proposal for cuts to EPA and drinking safe and clean water programs, and while they aren’t as deep as Trump demanded, it would still be disastrous for our communities. And Trump’s proposal has made his policy intentions clear—dirty water for all.
Trump Takes Away Key Support for Farmers and Families
Trump’s spending plan also attacks programs that feed millions of families, support farmers and ranchers, and make our food more safe and sustainable. At the same time, Trump’s plan includes major giveaways to Big Ag. For one, he wants to completely eliminate funding for the EPA’s pesticides program and enforcement. The House Republican spending proposal would take a step in that direction by including Cancer Gag Act language to block EPA from improving rules for warning labels on pesticides.
Despite Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s rhetoric, his boss is working to make our food supply more dangerous for farmers, farm workers, and anyone who eats, helping pesticide companies to further profit from their toxic products.
Additionally, Trump would gut enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act. Without enforcement, meat corporations will get away with more dirty tactics in the market, putting livable incomes even further out of reach for farmers and ranchers.
Trump wants to:
Condemn People to Hunger
His spending plan slashes $748 million from the Agriculture Department’s (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (on top of what the Big Ugly bill already slashed).
These cuts threaten the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which helps more than 40 million people put food on the table. The cuts may also impact WIC, the SNAP program targeted to Women, Infants, and Children, and school lunch programs.
Roll Back Sustainable Agriculture
Trump’s plan reduces funding for the Nation Resources Conservation Service by almost 90%, from $916 million to $112 million. This threatens programs that support urban agriculture, conservation, and educational opportunities for farmers.
Undermine Conservation and Disaster Recovery
His spending plan slashes Farm Service Agency funding by $372 million, cutting loans and assistance to farmers for conservation and disaster recovery.
Completely Eliminate Good Food Programs
His plan zeros out key programs like the Source Water Protection Program, Geographically Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers, and Farmers Market and Local Food Promotion that support farmers and a more resilient and sustainable food system.
Trump Wants Big Oil to Wreak Havoc on Our Planet
Our reliance on fossil fuels is making us sicker and poorer. From toxic pollution, to volatile energy prices, to the climate crisis, the harms are vast and growing. Trump’s budget would add fuel to the fire by clawing back funding for clean, renewable energy and ramping up support for Big Oil and Gas.
This will put more profits in the pockets of fossil fuel tycoons, while fossil-fueled climate change makes our power bills even more expensive. At the same time, Trump’s proposal would completely eliminate the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps about 6 million people keep the lights on.
As if that weren’t bad enough, Trump would kneecap federal programs that predict and respond to life-threatening climate disasters, even as those disasters grow in frequency and intensity. In the wake of horrific flash flooding in central Texas, these cuts will kill people.
Specifically, Trump’s spending plan:
Promotes Dirty Fossil Fuels
His spending plan allocates $2 billion to a new “Fossil Energy Programming” line item and increases spending for fossil fuel research and development.
Slashes Solar, Wind, and Energy Efficiency
His plan cuts funding by at least $6.2 billion. That includes the elimination of USDA funding ($500 million) for renewable energy and energy efficiency programs for farmers. Trump also calls for eliminating the Department of Interior’s onshore renewable energy and offshore wind programs.
Halts Vital Climate Change Research
The plan calls for the total elimination of the research arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, closing all its weather and climate labs and slashes NASA climate monitoring.
Attacks Disaster Recovery
Trump’s plan eliminates a third of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) budget. Trump released his new proposal just days before he announced plans to start “phasing out” FEMA entirely.
Already alarms are being rung that the elimination of critical services due to mass layoffs and cuts at the National Weather Services and FEMA have hampered emergency preparations and response to the devastating floods in Texas.
Join Us in Stopping Trump’s Vision from Becoming Reality
Trump’s spending vision shows his hand in stark numbers. It depicts a country where basic government functions—like keeping water safe and providing safety nets—are destroyed and corporate polluters can do what they please in the name of profits.
If Congress follows his direction, we face a sicker, hungrier, poorer nation. More family farms will have to shutter. More pollution will flood our waterways. Lives and our livable future is at stake.
Congress controls the purse strings, and right now Congress members are writing this spending bill. We need to remind them that they answer to us—not Trump.
But we know that with concerted, strategic efforts, we can overcome much of Trump’s agenda. Already, we’ve defeated several terrible provisions moving through Congress. With dedicated supporters like you, we’ve stopped Republican efforts to roll back a key water safety rule and successfully defended school lunch programs from direct cuts and public lands from privatization.
In the end, Congress controls the purse strings, and right now Congress members are writing this spending bill. We need to remind them that they answer to us—not Trump. That’s why, over the next couple months, Food & Water Watch will relentlessly fight these cuts. Since inauguration day, Food & Water Watch staff, members and supporters have rallied dozens of times, sent tens of thousands of calls and emails, met with lawmakers and staffers, and made our voices heard in social media and news outlets.
This is the kind of energy and action we need to push our leaders in Congress to do the right thing. They must stand up against Trump and stand up for us.
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The International Finance Corporation’s Dubious Defense of Factory Farming
Instead of funding industrial agriculture the IFC should help small-scale farmers move to agroecology and regenerative farming which can boost yields, reduce the use of expensive inputs, and improve livelihoods.
Apr 30, 2025
The International Finance Corporation’s website brands many of the well-founded criticisms of industrial animal production as “myths.” This reflects the regrettably polarized debate between those who believe that industrial agriculture is needed to feed the growing world population and those who, like me, argue that a far-reaching transformation of our food system is needed.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) website states that it is a myth that industrial animal production is bad for food security. The truth, however, is that factory farming diverts food away from people; it is dependent on feeding grain—corn, wheat, barley—to animals who convert these crops very inefficiently into meat and milk. For every 100 calories of human-edible cereals fed to animals, just 7-27 calories (depending on the species) enter the human food chain as meat. And for every 100 grams of protein in human-edible cereals fed to animals, only 13-37 grams of protein enter the human food chain as meat.
The scale of this is massive. International Grains Council data show that 45% of global grain production is used as animal feed, while 76% of world soy production is used to feed animals. The inefficiency of doing this is recognized by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), which states that it is “essential to fight food insecurity and malnutrition… Reducing the use of much of the world's grain production to feed animals and producing more food for direct human consumption can significantly contribute to this objective.” I calculate that if the use of cereals as animal feed were ended, an extra 2 billion people could be fed even allowing for the fact that if we reared fewer animals we would need to grow more crops for direct human consumption. My figure is very cautious; other studies calculate that ending the use of grains as animal feed would enable an extra 3.5-4 billion people to be fed. Moreover, industrial livestock’s huge demand for these cereals pushes up their price, potentially placing them out of reach of poor populations in the Global South. So, sorry IFC, but it really is not a myth to say that industrial animal production is bad for food security.
To dismiss the harsh suffering endured by industrially farmed animals as a myth is extraordinary
The IFC website dismisses as a myth the argument that industrial animal production is bad for the environment. However, factory farms disgorge large amounts of manure, slurry, and ammonia that pollute air and watercourses. When ammonia mixes with other gases it can form particulate matter; this is a key component of air pollution, which can lead to heart and pulmonary disease, respiratory problems including asthma, and lung cancer.
Industrial livestock’s huge demand for cereals as feed has been a key factor fuelling the intensification of crop production. This pivotal link between the livestock and arable sectors is often not recognized. With its monocultures and high use of chemical pesticides and nitrogen fertilizers, intensive crop production leads to soil degradation, biodiversity loss, and overuse and pollution of water. In short, it erodes the key fundamentals—soils, water, and biodiversity—on which our future ability to feed ourselves depends.
Arjem Hoekstra (2020) calculates that animals fed on cereals and soy (industrially farmed animals) use 43 times as much surface- and groundwater and are 61 times as polluting of water as animals fed on grass and other roughages. Its adherents claim that factory farming saves land by cramming animals into crowded sheds. But in reality it eats up huge amounts of cropland for feed. European Union studies show that feed production accounts for 99% of the land use of the pig and broiler sectors. It is feed production—not the tiny amount of space given to animals on the farm—that makes factory farming so land-hungry.
The contention that industrial systems undermine the socioeconomic potential of small-scale farmers in the developing world is also branded a myth by the IFC. The World Bank, however, takes a different view. Its 2024 report Recipe for a Liveable Planet states, “The global agrifood system disproportionately and detrimentally affects poor communities and smallholder farmers who cannot compete with industrial agriculture, thereby exacerbating rural poverty and increasing landlessness.” Instead of funding industrial agriculture the IFC should help small-scale farmers move to agroecology and regenerative farming which can boost yields, reduce the use of expensive inputs, and improve livelihoods.
Also swatted aside as a myth is the mountain of scientific evidence that industrial livestock production results in poor animal welfare. To dismiss the harsh suffering endured by industrially farmed animals as a myth is extraordinary. In its own Good Practice Note on animal welfare the IFC lists what are commonly recognized to be the key characteristics of factory farming—confinement in narrow stalls, overcrowding, barren environments, painful procedures, hunger, and breeding for high yields leading to health disorders—and identifies them as “welfare risks” that need to be tackled. But now, in a remarkable volte-face, the IFC airily dismisses these problems as a myth.
IFC’s position stands in sharp contrast to UNEP, which states that “intensive systems deprive animals of some of their most basic physical and psychological needs.” World Bank economist Berk Özler has written about the value of policies under which low-income countries can grow without causing massive increases in suffering among farmed animals. He writes, “Perhaps many low-income countries can leapfrog the stage of industrial animal farming, towards something more sensible.”
I urge the IFC to recognize that industrial animal agriculture is destructive—destructive of food security, the environment, small-scale farmer livelihoods, and the well-being of animals.
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World Bank Leads Development Giants in Investing $2.27 Billion in Factory Farms
"We're calling on World Bank President Ajay Banja to phase out these investments, which are undermining his climate agenda," said one researcher.
Oct 21, 2024
The Green Climate Fund and 11 of the 15 multilateral development banks together invested at least $2.27 billion in factory farming in 2023, undercutting their stated climate goals, according to a report published Monday by the Stop Financing Factory Farming coalition.
The report, launched the same day as the start of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank's annual meetings in Washington, D.C., found that the World Bank was the worst offender. The bank—principally through its private-sector lending arm the International Finance Corporation (IFC)—put nearly $750 million toward industrial agricultural projects, five times more than any of the other banks.
"Factory farming is a leading driver of greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, biodiversity loss, animal cruelty, and water pollution," Merel van der Mark, head of Animal Welfare and Finance at Sinergia Animal, said in a statement. "Development banks have all pledged to align their investments with the Paris climate agreement, yet are failing to make the kinds of investments needed to keep the goal to limit global temperature rises to 1.5°C within reach."
"There are examples of better practices out there."
The report was based on 2023 disclosure information scraped from project webpages by the Early Warning System. It found that the Green Climate Fund and 11 of the 15 multilateral development banks had invested a total of $3.3 billion in animal agriculture generally, funding 62 projects. The banks also mobilized another $3.4 billion for the sector from other sources including banks and governments. The World Bank Group also led the pack in animal agriculture financing overall at over $1.5 billion.
Factory farming—or industrial agriculture—received most of that money, representing 68.3% of investments and 76.7% of supported projects. Only 2.3% of investments and 6.7% of projects involved non-industrial farming that might potentially be sustainable.
The report's authors said their research "reveals a concerning trend toward support for the industrialization of animal agriculture." This can occur through more monocropping of plants like soy or corn for animal feed; more warehousing of large numbers of animals in concentrated feed operations that release large amounts of climate-, land-, and water-polluting waste; and the construction of slaughterhouses.
The World Bank's investments in factory farming go against its own research. The bank released a report in May finding that the agrifood system generates a third of total greenhouse gas emissions, and that animal production and consumption make up almost 60% of those emissions. It even stopped serving meat in its staff cafe.
"The World Bank has set out an ambitious road map to drastically cut agricultural emissions while feeding the world. However, this good work is being undermined by its private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation," said International Accountability Project researcher Alessandro Ramazzotti. "Last year IFC invested $501 million in factory farming including a $47 million loan to a Chinese company for a multi-story pig farm, making it the largest investor of all the development banks. We're calling on World Bank President Ajay Banja to phase out these investments, which are undermining his climate agenda."
In addition, the groups behind the Stop Financing Factory Farming coalition—which is headed by Bank Information Center, Friends of the Earth U.S., Global Forest Coalition, International Accountability Project, Sinergia Animal, and World Animal Protection—call on all development banks to move their money from industrial agriculture to regenerative agriculture that boosts biodiversity, helps the environment, and strengthens local communities, following the model of the five banks in the report that did not invest in factory farms in 2023.
"There are examples of better practices out there," said Ladd Connell, environment director at Bank Information Center. "The Green Climate Fund supports some low-carbon projects, such as providing financial and technical support to smallholder women farmers in Cote D'Ivoire to help them adapt to climate change. Where banks invest in new livestock projects, they should be innovative and sustainable, following agroecological principles."
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The Path Toward a More Just and Sustainable Mineral Supply Chain
What’s needed to make the Minerals Security Partnership work on the ground
Sep 15, 2024
Azure waters and exotic islands are not the only attractions of Cabo Delgado in Mozambique. The province is home to the largest graphite reserve globally, prompting Syrah Resources’ Twigg to open the Balama mine. This is one of the dozen projects across the world chosen by the Minerals Security Partnership to secure and diversify the supply of raw materials.
The energy transition is dependent on critical minerals such as lithium and copper as the world electrifies transport and shifts to renewables. With most minerals currently controlled by China, many western countries are playing catch up. The Minerals Security Partnership (MSP), whose members include Australia, Canada, India, the U.S. and many European countries, is central to this effort.
History is full of not-so-pretty attempts by western nations to capture minerals supply chains, as many living in the Global South know first hand. So how can this partnership offer a truly different value proposition centered on sustainability and deliver truly responsible projects?
Strong transparent standards
Despite some effort, the current situation in the extractive industries is far from adequate. A recent report by the International Energy Agency notes that while governance in the minerals sector has somewhat improved, progress on water and greenhouse gas emissions is at best stagnating. (Add to this a deeply felt mistrust among communities and companies and you quickly realize how complicated the matters are.)
But it does not have to be this way. Most technologies for safer tailings management or better water treatment, rules for robust anti-corruption and human rights due diligence, and practices to engage communities and co-govern with Indigenous peoples all exist. They just need to be applied and upheld consistently. This is where the new minerals partnership can bring real value.
Yet right now the MSP principles lack any such concrete requirements. That’s a big omission. For example in the case of Cabo Delgado, concerns around involuntary resettlement of nearby communities and local value proposition abide. MSP-supported projects like this one will be judged as much by the volumes of critical minerals they supply as by their environmental and social stewardship.
The good news is that the MSP does not have to reinvent the wheel. The answer lies in applying the human right and environmental due diligence practices as stipulated in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) guidelines. The EU has recently done exactly that in its new battery law. This will require tracing, addressing and mitigating all manner of social and environmental risks, alongside upholding global treaties such as on Free, Prior and Informed Consent.
Any global miner, refiner, or recycler whose cobalt, graphite, lithium, and nickel are found in batteries on the European market will already have to track and mitigate all manner of social and environmental risks from 2026, including forced labor, water pollution, and biodiversity. MSP member countries can simply uplift these provisions into the partnership projects.
From rhetoric to action on the ground
Setting strong and transparent standards is the first step. These need to also be implemented so that they bring difference on the ground.
This means that the minerals partnership needs to quickly move from vision to a pipeline of responsible projects on the ground. So the focus should be on coordinating with local governments to bring local value and infrastructure, on engaging local communities to have a social license to operate and on bringing in finance instructions to make the projects happen.
Given how far ahead China is, there is no time to waste. A laser sharp focus to scale responsibly managed projects across the world is necessary to build a more diverse supply chain. But this should also come with better environmental stewardship and advancing the rights and livelihoods of those impacted, breaking from past behavior.
The Minerals Security Partnership shows global governments are waking up to the challenge of securing critical minerals responsibly. But whether projects like the Balama mine will become largest suppliers of quality graphite and raise the local community out of poverty will depend on how quickly responsible mining practices are scaled up on the ground.
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'Shocking' Share of Freshwater Fish Species at Risk of Extinction
"Ensuring freshwater ecosystems are well managed, remain free-flowing with sufficient water, and good water quality is essential to stop species declines... in a climate-resilient world," one scientist said.
Dec 11, 2023
More than 20% of the world's freshwater fish species are in danger of extinction, according to the first-ever assessment of the category by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The assessment was released Monday as part of an update to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species published to coincide with the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28). It found that 3,086 out of 14,898 listed freshwater fish species are at risk of disappearing, and at least 17% of threatened fish species are impacted by the climate crisis.
Barney Long, Re:wild's senior director of conservation strategies, said it was "shocking" that such a large percentage of "freshwater fish are now threatened with extinction and that climate change is now recognized as a significant contributing factor to their extinction risk."
"Climate change is menacing the diversity of life our planet harbors, and undermining nature's capacity to meet basic human needs."
The climate crisis can harm freshwater fish by altering seasonal rhythms, lowering freshwater levels, and increasing saltwater intrusion into freshwater ecosystems as sea levels rise. These changes only exacerbate the dangers freshwater fish already face: 57% of at-risk species are threatened by pollution, 45% by dams and water extraction, 33% by disease and invasive species, and 25% by fishing.
"Freshwater fishes make up more than half of the world's known fish species, an incomprehensible diversity given that freshwater ecosystems comprise only 1% of aquatic habitat," Kathy Hughes, co-chair of the IUCN Species Survey Commission Freshwater Fish Specialist Group, said in a statement. "These diverse species are integral to the ecosystem, and vital to its resilience. This is essential to the billions of people who rely upon freshwater ecosystems, and the millions of people who rely on their fisheries."
One example of a fish important to humans that is now at risk is Kenya's large-toothed Lake Turkana robber (Brycinus ferox). This species moved from "least concern" to "vulnerable" on the Red List because of dams, overfishing, and climate change-driven drought.
Another example is the Atlantic salmon, which has seen a "significant overall decline" in its population since around the turn of the 21st century, according to IUCN. This prompted the conservation body to revise its status from "least concern" to "near threatened." Atlantic salmon face a number of threats including dams, runoff pollution from logging and agriculture, diseases from farmed fish, overfishing, and the climate crisis.
"It appears that global climate change, resulting in rising sea, stream, and air temperatures, is a major driver acting on a wide range of factors influencing the Atlantic Salmon's life cycle," one study concluded.
It can do this by driving up stream and river temperatures so that they are too hot for fish to survive; increasing the range of invasive species; prompting fish to migrate early, which can decreases their chances of survival; and reducing prey availability, among other factors.
The overall Red List update also warned of the impacts of the climate crisis on species generally. For example, the Central South Pacific and East Pacific green turtles are now considered "endangered" and "vulnerable" respectively. The climate crisis adds to the stress on these animals by harming the seagrass they eat, threatening to flood nests with sea-level rise, and warming temperatures to an extent that decreases hatching success.
"Climate change is menacing the diversity of life our planet harbors, and undermining nature's capacity to meet basic human needs," IUCN director general Grethel Aguilar said in a statement. "This IUCN Red List update highlights the strong links between the climate and biodiversity crises, which must be tackled jointly. Species declines are an example of the havoc being wreaked by climate change, which we have the power to stop with urgent, ambitious action to keep warming below 1.5°C."
Conservationists emphasized the importance of protecting freshwater ecosystems in particular.
"Ensuring freshwater ecosystems are well managed, remain free-flowing with sufficient water, and good water quality is essential to stop species declines and maintain food security, livelihoods, and economies in a climate-resilient world," Hughes said.
Long agreed: "It is critical that we better safeguard our freshwater systems as they are not only home to precious and irreplaceable wildlife, but also provide humans with so many services that only the natural world can."
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Ignoring 'Mounting Threat to Clean Water,' EPA Denies Factory Farm Pollution Petition
"We know that animal factories are a huge source of water pollution and that our freshwater is in crisis, and yet EPA has failed to uphold its duty to protect our environment from this industry," said one advocate.
Aug 16, 2023
Public health and environmental advocacy groups said that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chose to benefit the factory farming industry instead of protecting communities and drinking water late Tuesday when it denied an anti-pollution petition filed in 2017 by nearly three dozen groups.
Food & Water Watch (FWW), the Center for Food Safety (CFS), and North Carolina Environmental Justice Network were among the organizations that filed the petition six years ago and sued the agency last year due to its "unreasonable delay" in answering the request for stronger rules to prevent water pollution from hundreds of thousands of factory farms across the United States.
The EPA responded to the legal challenge Tuesday by denying the original petition and announcing it would form a federal subcommittee to study the effects of pollution from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and make recommendations to the agency.
The subcommittee is expected to convene in 2024 and its work could take 12-18 months, leaving open the possibility that—should President Joe Biden lose his reelection campaign next year—the question of regulating factory farm pollution could be left up to a Republican administration.
"Factory farms pose a significant and mounting threat to clean water, largely because EPA's weak rules have left most of the industry entirely unregulated," said Tarah Heinzen, legal director for FWW. "EPA's deeply flawed response amounts to yet more delay, and completely misses the moment."
Though the EPA pledged to study the effects of water pollution from factory farms, the petitioners noted that the impact has already been well-documented.
According to the Sierra Club, "water pollution is possible at virtually any point in a CAFO's operation," as waste from factory farms is generally not treated for disease-causing pathogens, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, or heavy metals.
Animal waste spills and overflows can lead to contaminated runoff that ends up in waterways, stormwater can mix with manure and milkhouse waste that flows into drains, waste storage units can overflow or burst, and catch basins can inadvertently drain waste into waterways.
CFS said in a statement that factory farms "operate like sewerless cities" and can contaminate "drinking water with cancer-causing nitrates" as well as flooding homes with waste during storms and leaving communities without safe places for water recreation.
Citing the EPA's own data in a 2020 brief, FWW found that pollution from factory farms "threatens or impairs over 14,000 miles of rivers and streams and more than 90,000 acres of lakes and ponds nationwide."
"We know that animal factories are a huge source of water pollution and that our freshwater is in crisis, and yet EPA has failed to uphold its duty to protect our environment from this industry," said Amy van Saun, a senior attorney with CFS. "We have a right to clean and safe water and we cannot afford to wait any longer to stop the tide of pollution from animal factories."
The 2017 petition called on the EPA to improve the CAFO permitting process, as fewer than one-third of the largest 21,000 factory farms have National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits, which regulate the point sources which discharge pollutants into waterways.
Ben Lilliston, director of rural strategies at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, said that by denying the petition the EPA "chose to further a special exemption for factory farms that benefits global meat companies while undermining independent farmers raising animals in ways that protect our water."
"Today's EPA decision kicks the can down the road," he said, "instead of acting to protect rural communities and our nation's waterways."
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Pools of Waste: Landmark Analysis Exposes Factory Farming Filth
The analysis makes clear: 'Animal feeding operations are degrading the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of rural residents.'
Jun 22, 2016
A new and unsavory analysis by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and Waterkeeper Alliance sheds light on the true impact of industrial factory farms on communities and waterways in North Carolina and beyond.
On Wednesday, the groups released a set of first-of-their-kind interactive maps revealing the locations, size, and waste outputs of more than 6,500 concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) across North Carolina. These maps led researchers to what they call "an inescapable conclusion: Animal feeding operations are degrading the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of rural residents."
Among the data presented in the EWG-Waterkeeper maps and accompanying report, Fields of Filth:
- Ten billion gallons of wet animal waste (swine and cattle) are produced yearly in North Carolina, equivalent to 15,000 Olympic-size swimming pools.
- Annually, poultry operations in the state produce more than 2 million tons of dry animal waste.
- 4,145 waste pits make up 6,848 acres of North Carolina's countryside.
- Thirty-seven waste pits are within a half mile of a school.
- Two hundred eighty-eight waste pits are within a half mile of a church.
- One hundred thirty-six waste pits are within a half mile of a public water well.
- One hundred seventy waste pits are within the state's 100-year floodplain.
- Poultry housed in CAFO facilities outnumber residents by 20 to 1.
These facilities and their poorly regulated waste disposal systems "send disease-causing microbes and toxic chemicals into surface water and air," the report says--killing fish, contaminating drinking water, and raising the risk for respiratory problems, among other health impacts.
"With the public record exemption afforded by state regulations, the [poultry] industry has exploded throughout this beautiful region, and these maps finally show just how extensive that growth is."
--Sam Perkins, Catawba Riverkeeper
Indeed, the analysis shows that Duplin and Sampson counties—which alone produced about 40 percent of the state's total wet animal manure and 18 percent of the dry waste—" are beset with numerous air and water quality problems," the groups point out.
"Animal agriculture operations are one of the leading sources of water and air pollution in the country and are making people sick," said Ken Cook, president and co-founder of EWG. "These maps show, for the first time, that thousands of CAFOs and the animal waste they produce are often adjacent to communities and vital water sources."
For instance, added Sam Perkins, the Catawba Riverkeeper:
We have 1,000 poultry houses in the Catawba River basin in North Carolina. With the public record exemption afforded by state regulations, the industry has exploded throughout this beautiful region, and these maps finally show just how extensive that growth is. Many of these operations cannot even take the simple measure of covering their waste piles with a simple tarp to prevent runoff. Downstream of many of these sites, the Catawba River is dammed into lakes, which serve as major regional drinking water reservoirs and provide tens of billions of dollars of property tax base critical to local economies. The toxin microcystin produced by harmful algal blooms--like those seen in eastern North Carolina and in Toledo, Ohio--fueled by nutrient runoff from these sites, would be disastrous for the Charlotte region.
Armed with the new data, aerial photos, and a better-informed public, the groups will now push policymakers toward more effective regulation of industrial agriculture.
"For far too long, North Carolinians have been kept in the dark about the true impact these industrial factory farms are having on communities and waterways," said Marc Yaggi, executive director of Waterkeeper Alliance. "Information is power, and now that these sites are definitively identified, we will hold accountable the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for enforcing the Clean Water Act and fixing these massive pollution problems."
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Voices From the Front Lines of the Flint Water Crisis
Feb 18, 2016
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder's successive emergency managers are now gone from Flint, but the wreckage of their rule there still pollutes many homes. The crisis in Flint is, on the surface, about water. In April 2014, the city switched from the Detroit water system, which it had used for more than 50 years, to the Flint River, ostensibly to save money. The Flint River water made people sick, and is likely to have caused disease that killed some residents. The corrosive water, left untreated, coursed through the city's water system, leaching heavy metals out of old pipes. The most toxic poison was lead, which can cause permanent brain damage. The damage to the people of Flint, the damage to the children who drank and bathed in the poisoned water, is incalculable. The water is still considered toxic to this day.
The Flint debacle also is about democracy. As a team of us from the "Democracy Now!" news hour traveled to Flint last weekend to report on the crisis, we received a text message from a native son of that city, Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael Moore. "Lead isn't the poison in Michigan. Fascism is," Michael wrote. "How do u toss a democratic election in the garbage and get away with it?"
Moore had just visited Flint to help organize a rally calling for the arrest of the governor. Rick Snyder ran for governor in 2010 as a fiscal conservative, and won in the tea-party wave of electoral victories that year. He pushed for a strengthened emergency-manager law, which would give him broader powers to take over city governments and school districts that were deemed (by a board that Snyder appointed) to be in a state of "financial emergency." The governor could then appoint an emergency manager with sweeping powers, overriding elected city councils and mayors, imposing severe austerity measures, selling off public assets and breaking existing contracts with labor unions. He did this primarily in black communities.
"We don't have just a water problem. We've got a democracy problem. We've got a dictatorship problem," Claire McClinton told me in Flint. She is a lifelong resident of the city, from a union family, and a lead organizer with the Democracy Defense League. She and her group were meeting just across the Flint city line at a restaurant in Flint Township, which never switched off the Detroit water. As they met, a woman approached them. Kawanne Armstrong was visibly upset, desperate to get clean water for her newborn grandson. Audrey Muhammad, one of those attending the meeting, offered her water that she had just bought for herself, which she had in her car. These two women, both, like 60 percent of Flint's residents, African-American, walked into the bitter cold to move gallon jugs of water from one car trunk to another. "It's for my grandson. He was born February 6. ... That's my concern," Armstrong told us.
We left that meeting and went to a Catholic church in Flint, where scores of people were preparing to head out, canvassing door to door to distribute water and water filters, and to assess the needs of each household. Union members from Detroit, social workers and plumbers from Ann Arbor, and many Flint residents were volunteering their time on a bitter-cold winter Saturday afternoon.
Last October, under enormous pressure, the governor was forced to switch Flint's water back to the Detroit source, but the damage to the pipes has been done, and toxins continue to leach into the water. Melissa Mays was in the church, as a founder of Water You Fighting For, an activist group. "All three of my sons are anemic now. They have bone pain every single day. They miss a lot of school because they're constantly sick. Their immune systems are compromised," she told us. She, too, is sick. "Almost every system of our bodies have been damaged." Despite her illness, she was out helping others.
The emergency manager is now gone, and the people of Flint have elected a mayor, Karen Weaver, who can actually represent them. She immediately declared a state of emergency, focusing national media attention on the crisis. She has demanded $55 million to jump-start the immediate repair of Flint's water system. Gov. Snyder has countered with a fund of $25 million, and insists that it be spent on contractors of his choice--conditions that Weaver rejects. "We're going to get rid of these lead pipes one house at a time, one street at a time, one neighborhood at a time, until they are all gone," Mayor Weaver said. "We cannot afford to wait any longer."
Two parallel investigations, state and federal, are underway in an attempt to determine if any crimes have been committed. The first step to healing Flint has been taken, though: the restoration of democratic control. All else will flow, like water, from that.
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