Category: environment

  • The high costs of cheap food

    The high costs of cheap food

    From New York to Jakarta, the scene is the same: Shelves overflowing with cheap, ultra-processed snacks and sugary drinks have become the new normal for millions of children. As a result, for the first time in history, more children are obese than underweight.

    UNICEF’s new Feeding Profit report explains why: Across the globe, cheap and intensely marketed ultra-processed foods dominate what families are able to put on the table, while nutritious options remain out of reach.

    Across the world, one in 20 children under five and one in five children and adolescents aged five to 19 are overweight. The number of overweight children and teens in 2000 almost doubled by 2022, with South Asia experiencing an increase of almost 500%. In East Asia, the Pacific, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, the increase was at least 10%.

    Ultra-processed foods and beverages, defined as industrially formulated, are composed primarily of chemically-modified substances extracted from foods, together with additives and preservatives to enhance taste, texture and appearance as well as shelf life.

    These foods — which are often cheaper, nutrient poor and higher in sugar, unhealthy fats and salt — are now more prevalent than traditional, nutritious foods in children’s diets.

    Can we wean ourselves off ultra-processed foods?

    Studies show there’s a direct link between eating a lot of ultra-processed foods and an increased risk of overweight and obesity among children and adolescents. Among teens aged 15-19 years, 60% consumed more than one sugary food or beverage during the previous day, 32% consumed a soft drink and 25% consumed more than one salty processed food.

    Today, children’s paths to healthy eating are shaped less by personal choice than by the food environments that surround them. Those are the places where and conditions under which people make decisions about what to eat. They connect a person’s daily life with the broader food system around them, and are shaped by physical, political, economic and cultural factors that help determine what foods are available, affordable, appealing and regularly eaten.

    Such environments are steering children toward ultra-processed, calorie-dense options, even when healthier foods are available.

    Around the world, countries are beginning to push back. In Mexico, where nearly four million children aged 4-10 are obese, the government took a bold step in March 2025. It banned the sale of ultra-processed foods and sugary drinks in schools.

    The new rules go beyond restriction: Schools must offer fresh, regional foods such as fruits, vegetables and seeds, promote water as the default beverage, and establish health education programs. The policy also calls for regular health monitoring, mandatory fortification of wheat and corn flours, and more opportunities for physical activity, with penalties for schools that fail to comply.

    Taking steps to slim down our diets

    In September 2025, Malaysia’s Ministry of Education followed similar steps. It now prohibits 12 categories of ultra-processed foods and drinks in school canteens, from instant noodles and skewered snacks to frozen desserts and candy.

    But even as countries rewrite their food policies, millions of families still face difficult choices at the market.

    Shauna Downs, associate professor of food policy and public health nutrition at Rutgers University, has seen firsthand how hunger and obesity can coexist within the same communities in her research on informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya.

    “People are able to find nutrient-rich foods, like leafy greens, fruits, and vegetables, and animal-source foods, but they’re often expensive, and what they can get that’s cheaper is things like mandazi [fried dough], which provide energy, and they taste good, but they’re not getting the nutrients they need,” she said.

    Families that want to buy the nutrient-rich foods are forced into heartbreaking choices, Downs said.

    “So now they’re making a decision between ‘Am I gonna buy this food from the market, which my family needs, or am I gonna pay for my child to go to school?’” she said.

    Looking at food environments

    By spotlighting the food environment, consumers and researchers alike can move past the tired “eat less, move more” narrative to fight childhood obesity and ask a better question: Why wasn’t the healthy plate the obvious, easy and most affordable choice in the first place?

    Long before ultra-processed foods flooded grocery shelves, they quietly took over another key part of children’s lives: school cafeterias. Back in 1981, the Reagan administration cut US$1.5 billion in U.S. school food funding, pushing public institutions to rely on convenience over nutrition.

    Pamela Koch, associate professor of nutrition and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, said that one of the things cut was for funding for schools  upgrade their kitchens.

    “That was the same time as the food supply was becoming more and more [saturated] with highly-processed food, and a lot of food companies realized, ‘Wait, we could have a market selling to schools. Schools don’t have money to buy supplies’,” Koch said.

    Companies began offering deals: Sign a long-term contract and receive a free convection oven to reheat ultra-processed foods. For schools facing budget cuts and limited staffing, the decision was simple. The cost of that convenience would echo for decades.

    Let’s start with school meals.

    The nonprofit Global Child Nutrition Foundation, highlights school meals as an essential lever for transforming food systems: Create demand for nutritious foods, improve the livelihoods of those working in the food system and promote climate-smart foods. However, the cost of scaling up national programs depends on the strength of supply chains, underlying food markets, logistics and procurement models.

    Countries that depend on imported food, already challenged by infrastructure and expensive trading costs, will face additional challenges in delivering healthy school meals.

    In much of the world, climate stress and weak infrastructure are making nutritious food both more difficult to grow and more expensive to purchase.

    Small-scale farmers, sheep and cattle farmers, forest keepers and fishers — known collectively as smallholder farmers — grow much of the food in low-income countries. They face worsening yields due to climate change, land degradation and lack of access to the technology and resources that support sustainable food production.

    At the same time perishable foods are becoming more expensive because the global supply chain — how food gets shipped from a farm in one country through distribution networks to store shelves in another country — is increasingly threatened by political tension, the lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change.

    Durability over nutrition

    Kate Schneider, assistant professor of sustainable food systems at Arizona State University, said that smallholder farmers grow food as their livelihood. “They’re not able to grow enough food, which is partly a story of climate change,” Schneider said. “Multiple generations now have been farming … year after year on the same land, but without external inputs –– fertilizers and modern, high-yielding seeds –– they are resulting in very low yields.”

    Even when fresh fruits and vegetables are available, logistical barriers make it easier to sell ultra-processed foods. Fresh produce is heavy, vulnerable to spoilage and expensive to move, especially in countries with poor transport networks.

    “When we’re thinking about fresh items, they’re perishable, and they need a cold chain,” Schneider said. “You’re paying, when you buy an apple, for the three that also rotted.”

    Meanwhile, ultra-processed products like soda avoid this problem entirely: “It’s cheaper for them to have a ton of different bottling plants around countries than to distribute long distances,” Schneider said.

    The result of these challenges is a global system that rewards durability over nutrition and continues to make healthy food increasingly out of reach.

    Connecting sustainability of diets and the environment

    The EAT-Lancet Commission 2.0, a scientific body redefining healthy and sustainable diets, offers a different view: The ultra-processed foods fuelling obesity are also pushing food systems beyond climate and biodiversity limits.

    Its newly published report says that nearly half the world’s population can’t afford a healthy diet, while the richest 30% generate more than 70% of food-related environmental damage.

    The planetary health diet suggests a plant-rich diet that consists of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and beans, with only moderate or small amounts of fish, dairy and meat.

    To build healthier and more just food systems, experts also recommend a whole list of other things: make nutritious diets more accessible and affordable; protect traditional diets; promote sustainable farming and ecosystems; reduce food waste.

    And all of this should be done with the participation of diverse sectors of the society.

    The responsibility of transforming food systems falls not only on governments but also on donors and financial partners, development and humanitarian organizations, academic institutions and civil society. The stakes are high, but so is the potential to change. With bold, coordinated action, the next generation of children can be nourished by healthy food, while building food systems that sustain both people and the planet. 

    Questions to consider:

    1. How is obesity connected to the environment?

    2. What are some governments doing to try to tackle the obesity crisis?

    3. What changes could you make to your diet to make it healthier?

     

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  • Empowering youth through environmental storytelling

    Empowering youth through environmental storytelling

    Through storytelling, we can bring climate-related data to life. Through storytelling, young people can use their voice and the voices of those around them to turn something complex, global and overwhelming, into something local, tangible and meaningful. Through storytelling, young people can help shift narratives and bring to the forefront stories of action and of hope.

    This is the idea behind the EYES climate storytelling curriculum.

    Now available on the eyesonclimate.org website, the curriculum is the culmination of the Empowering Youth through Environmental Storytelling project (EYES), an Erasmus+ co-funded project by News Decoder, The Environment and Human Rights Academy (TEHRA) and Young Educators European Association.

    The Climate Change 101 unit begins with the basics: human activities driving climate change and what temperature increase means for our planet. Students are tasked with producing an article that explains the topic to a younger audience.

    A unit on Climate Injustice walks students through the uncomfortable reality that those causing climate change are suffering the least from its impacts. Those who have contributed the least? They tend to be in the grip of climate change.

    Human stories from a man-made disaster

    We know that learning about the devastations of the climate crisis can leave young people feeling anxious and angry. We also know from the teachers who piloted the EYES curriculum that it’s important to localise these topics.

    So in the Climate Injustice unit, students are tasked with finding a human story: someone to illustrate climate injustice at play in their local area or region.

    Hearing stories about people lets us understand the reality of an issue. Telling these stories gives young people a device for meaning-making and a platform for agency.

    In our Systemic Change unit, students learn about the interconnected mechanisms that keep our economy rooted in endless economic growth and fossil fuel use. They learn about the ‘deep’ leverage points for making change — the rules, the goals and the mindset of a system. They research case studies on commodity supply chains and form their questions into a story pitch.

    Our curriculum runs across school subjects for students between 15 and 18 years of age. Other units include: Tipping Points, Planetary Boundaries, Human–Nature Connection, The Carbon Budget, Doughnut Economics and a Climate Justice Case Study.

    Solutions are out there.

    In Systemic Solutions to the Climate Crisis, we showcase seven inspiring examples of climate solutions from around the world, from local projects such as community-owned solar panels in Mexico to the transition to renewables in Uruguay, to global movements such as recognising the rights of nature or degrowth in the Global North.

    Meaningful action can happen at any scale. By engaging with these case studies, students can see that stories of just and transformative systems change happen all around them.

    There are so many stories yet to be told, and that in itself is empowering.

    To bolster student projects, the curriculum includes units on journalism and storytelling: The Principles of Journalism, Fact Checking and Misinformation, Interviewing and How to Write a Pitch, Write an Article and Produce a Podcast.

    “Storytelling can turn young people into active users of climate knowledge, and even change makers,” said Andreea Pletea, The Environment and Human Rights Academy programme manager. “Students can even help shift dominant narratives by bringing to the surface systemic solutions to the environmental crises that also address inequalities.”

    Causes and systems

    Aside from storytelling, the main focus of the EYES curriculum is on systems thinking and climate injustice.

    “We invite learners to go upstream to the root causes of the crises we face, and question why, despite increasing awareness, meaningful action often lags behind,” Pletea said. “Seeing the big picture particularly through systems thinking and global justice can also help young people make sense of what’s going on in their own local context.”

    Pletea said that ultimately, the goal is to plant a seed. “That all of us, including young people, are more than consumers,” she said. “We are citizens with a voice and power to act and demand change, and especially when we come together.”

    The EYES project itself began as a seed. TEHRA and News Decoder came together to improve climate change education through storytelling, and created a set of materials that were piloted in multiple education contexts across Europe, Africa and Latin America.

    The seeds to stories

    In Slovenia, Kenya and Colombia, pilot students exchanged letters on their local experiences of climate change. In Kosovo, a Roma community of young people visualised their personal experience of climate change through art.

    At a summer camp in Belgium, students played climate change games, pulled apart the individual carbon footprint and were guided through a nature meditation. In Kenya, students visited the precious Karura national park and wrote stories about tipping points and the value of forests.

    The feedback from students and educators, including at a three-day educators workshop in Brussels in October, helped shape and restructure the curriculum. It evolved into a set of off-the-shelf resources that can be used by multiple teachers in one school or independently by learners.

    If you are an educator, we invite you to dive into climate change with your students and use the EYES curriculum. Students need to learn about the root causes of the climate crisis so that they know in which direction to head — in their future careers as much as in their personal set of values.

    Through storytelling, young people can engage with the reality that is climate change, both as authors and as listeners. Storytelling is the way we understand ourselves: why we act the way we do and how together we can solve the problems that humankind has caused.

    Questions to consider:

    1. How can storytelling can turn someone into an active user of climate knowledge?

    2. What types of climate activities did students in different countries do through the EYES lessons?

    3. What stories about climate change have you found interesting to read or hear about?

     

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  • Are you storing toxic waste in your home or car?

    Are you storing toxic waste in your home or car?

    Los Angeles, California has one of the largest economies in the world. It also has the largest concentration of electric vehicles in the United States. Los Angeles is my hometown and the same place where recent wildfires burned whole neighborhoods to the ground.

    With the fires came the destruction of thousands of lithium-ion batteries in cars, electronics and kitchen appliances.

    The fires started on 7 January 2025, and ended 24 days later. In October of 2025, police arrested a man from the state of Florida for starting the fire, but it was the near perfect environmental conditions that caused the fires to grow fast and move quickly. These fires are thought to have caused an estimated economic loss of between $28 billion and $53.8 billion, and have destroyed upwards of 16,000 structures.

    The fires wreaked havoc on my local community for an entire month. Just miles from my house, I witnessed the destruction these fires caused. Entire residential street blocks lined not with houses, but with rubble. I saw people milling about in front of houses, and I watched one woman stare with a stone-cold look on her face at the remains of a house burned to ashes.

    My family and many others were lucky we were far enough from the fires that we didn’t suffer any loss. Still, even those who didn’t lose their homes suffered from poor air quality.

    “Our business was down 75% immediately after the fires,” said Leila Jersualem, a local business owner. “Because soccer is an outdoor activity, air quality was a frequent concern voiced by our families.”

    Chemicals complicate cleanup.

    The fires also caused the release of many chemicals into the air. One of the most dangerous chemical transmitters, it turns out, are lithium-ion batteries that release toxic gases when burned and can explode when lit on fire.

    Due to this, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had to safely remove more than a thousand burnt lithium-ion batteries from homes and vehicles, among other places.

    A schoolmate I interviewed at the time lived in the Pacific Palisades area. He told me he couldn’t enter his house due to toxic chemical residue from these destroyed batteries and other substances. He also didn’t think he’d ever move back in because of the dangers from these chemicals, which find their way onto household items and surfaces. Months later, he has still not moved back in.

    Cleanup from the Los Angeles fires has become an arduous task. Chris Myers, a lithium-ion battery tech specialist for the EPA, told reporter Erin Stone in nonprofit news site LAist that to clean up the batteries special teams collect them in sealed containers and take them to places where they can be discharged into a saltwater brine solution that extracts any remaining energy.

    The batteries are then crushed, and sent to a recycler who salvages critical minerals.

    The dangers from batteries are global.

    Myers told Stone that the heat from fires can cause a “thermal runaway” — the heat gets so intense that it causes a chemical reaction that creates more heat. When this happens, the batteries can emit toxic chemicals harmful to people in the area, and the chemicals, such as hydrogen chloride and hydrogen cyanide, can cause problems in the respiratory system.

    If a lithium-ion battery catches on fire, anyone within 25 meters has to evacuate and move out of the danger zone.

    Around the world, there were many incidents regarding the safety of lithium-ion batteries. In New York City, lithium-ion batteries were the leading cause of fire-related deaths in 2024. Additionally, lithium-ion batteries make up half of all garbage truck-related fires around the United States.

    One of the largest lithium battery storage and power plants caught on fire in Northern California in January 2025. The nonprofit news site Politico found that, in France, the number of fires at waste facilities caused by lithium batteries in common household items doubled between 2019 and 2023. In South Korea, more than 22 people were killed from a lithium battery explosion in a factory south of Seoul in June 2024.

    There are other problems with lithium ion batters. Conditions at lithium mines have raised some ethical questions, for example. In the U.S. state of Nevada, new lithium mines permitted by the Trump administration are preventing indigenous people from accessing sacred cultural areas, and raising fears of harm to drinking water and overall health of the local people.

    Do the benefits outweigh the danger?

    With all this danger, why are the batteries so prevalent in our homes? It is difficult to deny how useful they’ve been in humanity’s quest for clean energy.

    When comparing lithium-ion batteries to the internal combustion engine, we can see that over a car’s entire lifetime, ones with lithium-ion batteries will contribute less of a carbon footprint.

    It’s not far off to say that lithium-ion batteries have renovated our modern world.

    But even though there are many positives to using lithium-ion batteries, such as renewable energy, they’re only a small part of the actual solution and there are some alternatives.

    Vanadium flow batteries and sodium-ion batteries, for example, are considered viable alternatives to lithium-ion batteries. Sodium-ion batteries are faster to charge, and have a longer lifespan than lithium-ion batteries.

    Weighing alternatives

    The vanadium flow battery doesn’t decay and can contain the same level of recharge throughout the entire batteries’ lifetime. Also, unlike lithium batteries, vanadium flow batteries are non-flammable, making them much safer, especially in the event of fire.

    However, like lithium-ion batteries, they take significant resources to make, and their environmental and social impacts are high.

    When buying a car, getting a battery-powered car may be better for the environment, but consumers should be aware of the dangerous impacts of lithium-ion batteries.

    The effects of these batteries are felt everywhere, some good and some bad. The implications of them in the Los Angeles fires, however, raise questions on how safe they are to people and the environment.

    Further advancement of other parts of the climate solution must take place soon if we want to make a big impact in safer renewable energy.

    Questions to consider:

    1. What makes lithium-ion batteries dangerous?

    2. What alternatives to lithium-ion batteries are there for electric cars?

    3. What products do you use in your home that might contain a lithium-ion battery?

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  • Why so much confusion over climate change?

    Why so much confusion over climate change?

    Bwambale estimates that less than 1% of the global population truly grasps the implications of climate change. “Even worse are Ugandans,” he said.

    Gerison pointed out that much of the population of Uganda is young. “With 80% below the age of 25, many haven’t witnessed the full extent of climate changes,” he said.

    A diminishing crop is easily understood.

    Janet Ndagire, Bwambale’s colleague, said it is difficult for Ugandan natives to connect with climate campaigns. They often perceive them as obstacles to survival rather than crucial interventions.

    “Imagine telling someone who relies on charcoal burning for survival that cutting down a tree could be hazardous!” Ndagire said. “It doesn’t make sense to them, especially when the tree is on their plot of land.”

    Reflecting on personal experiences, Ndagire recalled childhood days of going to sleep fully covered. Nowadays it is too hot to do that, he said.

    Ssiragaba Edison Tubonyintwari, a seasoned bus driver originally from western Uganda but currently driving with the United Nations, recounts the challenges of driving between 5 and 9 AM in the Albertine rift eco-region especially around the Ecuya forest reserve.

    “It would be covered in mist,” said Tubonyintwari. “We’d ask two people to stand in front, one on either side of the bus, signalling for you to drive forward, or else, you couldn’t see two metres away. Currently, people drive all day and night!”

    Irish potatoes in the African wetlands

    What happened? Tubonyintwari pointed to unauthorised tree cutting in the reserve, residential constructions and the cultivation of tea alongside Irish potatoes in the wetlands. The result was rising temperatures.

    His account supplements a Global Forest Watch report which puts commodity-driven deforestation above urbanisation.

    It’s notable that Tubonyintwari didn’t explicitly use the term “climate change,” yet the sexagenarian can effectively explain the underlying concept through his detailed description of altered environmental conditions.

    Global Forest Watch reports alarming deforestation trends, with 5.8 million hectares lost globally in 2022. In Uganda, more than 6,000 deforestation alerts were recorded between 22 and 29 November this year.

    The consequences of such environmental degradation are dire. Ndagire emphasised that those who once wielded axes and chainsaws for firewood are now the very individuals facing reduced crop yields due to extreme weather conditions.

    Even as Uganda grapples with the aftermath of a sudden surge in heavy rains from last October, Bwambale questions the country’s meteorological department, highlighting the failure to provide precise explanations and climate-aware preparations.

    These interconnected narratives emphasise the need for accessible climate campaigns and community-driven solutions. As COP28 gathers elites, the call for a simplified narrative gains prominence, mirroring successful communication models seen during the Covid-19 pandemic; else it’s the same old throwing of good money after bad.

    Questions to consider:

    1. Why does deforestation continue in places like Uganda when people know about its long-term consequences?

    2. In what ways are high level discussions about climate change disconnected from people’s everyday experiences?

    3. In what way do you think scientists and environmentalists need to change the climate change narrative?

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  • When a company’s enviro claims sound convincing …

    When a company’s enviro claims sound convincing …

    Many companies contribute to the climate crisis and make a profit doing so. As consumers and governments pressure them to reduce their carbon emissions, they look for ways to make themselves appear environmentally friendly. This is called green marketing.

    As a journalist, you need to learn to spot what a business really means by its green marketing.

    Greenwashing is when a brand makes itself seem more sustainable than it really is, as a way to get consumers to buy their product. For example, let’s look at fashion, an industry that is responsible for between 2 and 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

    In the absence of environmental legislation around the fashion industry a business might get themselves certified under a sustainability certification scheme — these are standards developed by governments or industry groups or NGOs to measure such things as energy efficiency or processes that are low carbon or carbon neutral. There are more than 100 different such certification programs.

    Companies tout these certifications. But a 2022 study by the Changing Markets Foundation (CMF) found that the standards set by the majority of the 10 or more popular certification initiatives for the fashion industry aren’t difficult to meet and lack accountability.

    Artificial claims about sustainability

    Fast fashion relies on cheap synthetic fibers, which are produced from fossil fuels such as oil and gas. And while you might assume that clothing with labels such as “eco” or “sustainable” might have fewer synthetics, you’d unfortunately be wrong.

    Another study by CMF found that H&M’s “conscious” clothing range, for example, contained 72% synthetics — which was higher than the percentage in their main collection (61%). And it’s not just H&M. While the same study found that 39% of products made some kind of green claim, almost 60% of these claims did not match the guidelines set out by the UK Competition and Markets Authority.

    The same is happening in the meat and dairy industry. Companies say they are reducing their environmental footprint by engaging in “regenerative agriculture”, a farming approach that aims to restore and improve ecosystem health. They argue that it reduces greenhouse gas emissions and helps store carbon in the soil.

    But relying on carbon storing in soil is not enough. An article in Nature Communications found that around 135 gigatonnes of stored carbon would be required to offset the emissions that come from the agriculture sector. This is roughly equivalent to the amount of carbon lost due to agriculture over the past 12,000 years, according to CMF.

    But companies grab onto these empty promises, perhaps knowing that the general public might only see regenerative agriculture and other “green narratives” as promising.

    Look for real solutions to climate change.

    For example, Nestlé tells their customers that it is addressing the carbon footprint of the agriculture industry by supporting regenerative agriculture, stating on its website that in 2024, some 21% of the ingredients they source come from farmers adopting regenerative agriculture practices.

    When you understand that regenerative agriculture is not the solution it has been made out to be, only then can you see through Nestlé’s branding.

    So how can you spot greenwashing?

    Let’s say you saw a press release from a company in an industry that has historically relied heavily on fossil fuels. It tells its readers that it plans to be carbon neutral by a certain date, or that it’s using recycled materials for a large portion of its production, or that its future is “green”.

    You might first wonder, is this an example of how companies are moving away from fossil fuels and towards a green future? How can you tell?

    1. Be skeptical.

    When something has to tell you that it is green, it might not be. Start your investigation right there.

    For example, if you were looking at Nestlé’s regenerative agriculture campaign, you would need to find out what regenerative agriculture is and how much it is indeed reducing greenhouse gas emissions. You can do this by starting with a good Google search: e.g “regenerative agriculture and greenhouse gas emissions”.

    Once you click on a number of articles that report on this topic, you’ll be able to read about the different studies and data into the topic. Follow the sources used when an article cites a study or data. The article should hyperlink or list the sources. But those hyperlinks might take you to other secondary sources — other articles that cited the same data.

    For example, an article might cite this statistic: sustainability certifications increase consumer willingness to pay by approximately 7% on average. The article might cite as the source this study published in the journal Nature. But that article isn’t the original source of that data. It came from a 2014 study published in the Journal of Retailing.

    So try to find the primary source and see how credible or reputable it is. Who conducted the research in the first place?

    If you wanted to find out what H&M’s “conscious” range really meant, you would start by looking at H&M’s website and reports to look further into their claims. Then, follow those claims.

    2. Research the wider industry.

    Whether you’re reporting on fashion, agriculture or any other industry, look into where its emissions are coming from, which companies are claiming what and what the evidence says needs to be done in order for these industries to reduce their emissions.

    Providing context is important. What percentage of global greenhouse gas emissions is this industry responsible for? Is it getting better or worse? What legislation is in place to reduce emissions from these industries? In order for you and your audience to understand the greenwashing of any company, this background information is vital.

    3. Go straight to the company.

    Once you’ve conducted some initial research, follow up with the company if you are using it as an example or focus for your article. On Nestlé’s website, for example, you can find contact details for their communications, media or PR department. Send them an email saying something like the following:

    “I am writing an article on regenerative agriculture and I’ve found some studies that show that soil sequestration through these practices are in fact not enough to be a real climate solution. Can you please provide me with a comment on what Nestlé thinks about this?”

    They might not answer, but that also says a lot. If they don’t reply to you after one or two follow-up emails, you might try calling them.

    If you try several times and in different ways to contact them and they failed to respond, you can state that in your article. That way your readers know you made the effort.

    Claims from corporations that they are doing all they can to help the planet are easy to make. But if we really want to slow down climate change, significant efforts have to be made. And it is the role of journalists to hold companies to account for the claims they make.

    Questions to consider:

    1. What is “greenwashing”

    2. What is one example of greenwashing?

    3. What criteria do you use when deciding whether to buy a company’s product?

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  • When young girls pay the cost of climate change

    When young girls pay the cost of climate change

    Jaffarabad, Balochistan: When floodwaters swept through Shaista’s village in 2022, they didn’t just take her family’s home and farmland, they also took away her childhood. Just 14 years old, Shaista was married off to a man twice her age in exchange for a small dowry. 

    Her father, a daily wage laborer, said it was the most painful decision he has ever made.

    “I didn’t want to do it,” he said, his eyes fixed on the cracked earth where his fields used to be. “But I have four other children to feed and no land to farm. We lost everything.”

    Stories like Shaista’s are becoming increasingly common across Balochistan, Pakistan’s poorest province. In 2022, devastating floods there driven by record-breaking monsoon rains and accelerated glacial melt linked to climate change, displaced over 1.5 million people.

    There is worldwide recognition that extreme weather events — not just floods, but drought, heatwaves, tornados and hurricanes — are becoming more frequent and less predictable as the planet warms. These events have devastating and long-term consequences for people in poor regions. 

    Young girls as assets 

    In districts like Jaffarabad and Chowki Jamali, the aftermath of the disaster has left families grappling with deepening poverty, food insecurity and crushing debt. For many, marrying off their young daughters is no longer just a tradition, it’s a form of survival.

    A 2023 survey by the Provincial Disaster Management Authority reported a 15% spike in underage marriages in flood-affected regions. Child rights activists warn that these numbers likely underestimate the scale of the crisis, as most cases go unreported.

    “In flood-hit areas, families are exchanging their daughters to repay loans, buy food or simply reduce the number of mouths to feed,” said Maryam Jamali, a social worker with the Madad Community organization. “We’ve documented girls as young as 12 being married to men in their forties or fifties. This isn’t about tradition anymore, it’s desperation.”

    Bride prices, once a source of negotiation and family prestige, have plummeted due to the economic collapse. Activists report instances where girls are married for as little as 100,000 Pakistani rupees (roughly US$360), or in some cases, simply traded for livestock or debt forgiveness.

    “There are villages where girls are married off like assets being liquidated,” said Sikander Bizenjo, a co-founder of the Balochistan Youth Action Committee. “It’s not just a violation of rights, it’s a systemic failure rooted in climate vulnerability, poverty and legal gaps.”

    Marriage as debt payment

    In Usta Muhammad, another flood-ravaged district, 13-year-old Sumaira (name changed) was married off just weeks after her family’s mud house collapsed. Her parents received 300,000 rupees (a little over $1,000) from the groom’s family, which they used to rebuild their shelter and repay moneylenders. 

    Now pregnant, Sumaira, has dropped out of school and rarely leaves her husband’s house.

    “I miss my friends and school,” she told us softly. “I wanted to become a teacher. But my parents said there was no other way.”

    Child marriages like Shaista’s and Sumaira’s carry lasting consequences: early pregnancies that endanger both mother and child, disrupted education, psychological trauma and lifetime economic dependence. 

    A study following the 2010 floods found maternal mortality rates in some affected regions were as high as 381 per 100,000 live births, one of the highest in the world.

    “These girls are thrust into adult roles before they’re ready,” said Dr. Sameena Khan, a gynecologist in Quetta. “They face dangerous pregnancies, and many have no access to medical care. Their childhood ends the moment they say ‘yes’ or are forced to.”

    Giving girls an alternative to marriage

    The crisis unfolding in Balochistan is not unique. Across the world, climate shocks and civil strife are causing displacement that intensifies the risk of child marriage. 

    In 2024, News Decoder correspondent Katherine Lake Berz interviewed 14-year-old Ola, who nearly became a child bride after her Syrian family, displaced by war and facing severe poverty, began arranging her marriage to an older man. But before that coil happen, Ola was able to enroll in Alsama, a non-governmental organization that provides secondary education to refugee girls. In less than a year, she was reading English at A2 level.

    Alsama, which has more than 900 students across four schools and a waiting list of hundreds, has been able to show girls and their parents that education can offer an alternative path to security and dignity.

    In Balochistan, the absence of legal safeguards compounds the crisis. The Sindh province banned child marriage in 2013 under the Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act which set the legal age at 18 for both girls and boys. But Balochistan has yet to enact a comparable law. 

    Nationally, Pakistan remains bound by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which requires nations to end child marriage but enforcement remains patchy. And Pakistan is not one of the 16 countries that have also signed onto the Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of Marriages, which forbids marriage before a girl reaches puberty and requires complete freedom in the choice of a spouse. 

    Pakistan needs to reform its laws, said human rights lawyer Ali Dayan Hasan. “Without a clear provincial law and mechanisms to enforce it, girls are at the mercy of social pressure and economic collapse,” Hasan said. “We need legal reform that matches the urgency of the climate and humanitarian crises we are facing.”

    Attempts to introduce child marriage laws in Balochistan have repeatedly stalled amid political resistance and lack of awareness. Religious and tribal leaders argue that such laws interfere with cultural norms, while government officials cite limited administrative capacity in rural areas.

    Bringing an end to child marriages

    The solution, experts agree, is multi-pronged: legal reform, economic recovery and access to education.

    “We can’t end child marriage without rebuilding livelihoods,” said Bizenjo. “Families need food, land, healthcare and hope. If they can’t survive, they’ll continue to sacrifice their daughters.”

    Grassroots organizations like Madad and Sujag Sansar provide vocational training, safe shelters and legal awareness sessions in flood-affected areas. In one case, Sujag Sansar intervened to stop the marriage of 10-year-old Mehtab in Sindh, enrolling her in a sewing workshop instead.

    UNICEF estimates that child marriages could increase by 18% in Pakistan due to the 2022 floods, potentially reversing years of progress. The agency is urging governments to integrate child protection into climate adaptation and disaster relief programs.

    “Girls must not be forgotten in climate response plans,” said UNICEF Pakistan’s representative Abdullah Fadil. “Their future cannot be the cost of every flood, every drought, every crisis.”

    Back in Jaffarabad, Shaista now lives with her husband’s family in a two-room house. Her dreams of becoming a doctor have faded, replaced by household chores and looming motherhood. “I wanted to study more,” she said. “But now I have to take care of others.”

    Questions to consider:

    1. How does the marriage of young girls connect to climate change?

    2. How can societies end the practice of child marriage?

    3. Why do you think only 16 countries have signed the UN treaty that requires consent for marriages?

     

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  • Food: The one thing everyone needs

    Food: The one thing everyone needs

    On World Food Day we present you with a smorgasbord of stories to consume to show how food and the need to eat connects us all.

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  • Can the world wean itself off petroleum?

    Can the world wean itself off petroleum?

    It has been just six years since the Paris Climate Agreement set a race against time to rein in global heating. But the Earth is sending ever-harsher signals of alarm.

    When the accord was signed, we were on course for global heating of 4°C from the start of the industrial era to the end of this century. Now the figure is around 2.7°C. So something has been achieved, but relative safety comes at no more than 1.5°C.

    There is still a gap between the policies put in place over the past six years and what is needed to achieve that lower figure, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its annual outlook, published in October.

    Yet we know what to do: substitute renewable energy for the power we get from fossil fuels by mid-century; decarbonize industry and adapt land-use to trap carbon in soil and plants; adapt our means of transport and our growing cities to use less energy; and protect marine areas to enhance carbon absorption in oceans.

    “Two parallel and contradictory processes are in play,” wrote environmentalist and author George Monbiot in a Guardian opinion piece on November 3. “At climate summits, governments produce feeble voluntary commitments to limit the production of greenhouse gases. At the same time, almost every state with significant fossil reserves … intends to extract as much as they can.”

    Everything depends, he concluded, on which process prevails.

    Making strides in renewable energy

    Similar tensions are in play at industrial and economic levels. On the plus side, there is now a surprisingly strong backstory in renewable wind and solar energy, particularly solar, and particularly in the United States, the heaviest polluter historically per person, and China, the biggest polluter in absolute quantities of its emissions.

    The energy crisis resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February has prompted policies that will boost clean energy, the IEA added in its World Energy Outlook, which projects trends out to 2030.

    While the crisis has created a temporary upside for coal, in the long run, production of renewable energy will outpace the production of energy derived from fossil fuels, the report said.

    Another positive sign is the nascent hydrogen industry.

    Widely occurring and carbon-free, this gas could decarbonize long-distance travel and industries that are heavy emitters. Producing it without carbon emissions implies using intermittent renewable energy when it is over-abundant, a virtuous circle.

    However, none of this is yet at industrial scale — barring a few hydrogen-powered trains. Not all claims for hydrogen can be borne out, and it is not yet a viable financial concern.

    There is a significant plus on the political front with the election of Luiz Ignácio Lula da Silva as Brazil’s next president. He promises to end the record deforestation of the Amazon under his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, and is to take office in January.

    But there is no slowdown in fossil fuels.

    Yet investment in fossil fuels still dwarfs cash flowing into renewables, even though they offer economic advantages. The United States, for example, has ploughed over $9 trillion into oil and gas projects in Africa since it signed the Paris Agreement, The Guardian found.

    Africa, a continent starved of cash for energy but with vast potential for solar power, is now under pressure — including from international oil companies operating in its national parks — to exploit its fossil fuel resources just to bring electric power to its people.

    The fossil fuel industry’s damage doesn’t end there. There has been drastic under-counting of carbon emissions, a new tracking tool backed by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore has found. Oil and gas companies have underestimated their emissions threefold, Gore said when launching the tool at the United Nations Climate Summit (COP 27) in Egypt this month.

    “For the oil and gas sector it is consistent with their public relations strategy and their lobbying strategy. All of their efforts are designed to buy themselves more time before they stop destroying the future of humanity,” The Guardian quoted Gore as saying.

    Investing in Africa

    Across the world, policies are in place to invest over $2 trillion in clean energy by 2030, half as much again as today, led by the United States and China, but also including the European Union, India, Indonesia and South Korea, according to the IEA.

    In the United States, solar was already becoming the star of the new energy scene, according to an annual report from Berkeley National Labs. The country added 1.25 terrawatts of solar capacity in 2021. That’s more than the installed solar capacity in the entire world, which reached 1 terrawatt in early 2022.

    That was before the Biden Administration enacted the Inflation Reduction Act, which brings extra impetus for the sector. The United States plans to add 2-1/2 times its existing solar and wind capacity every year between now and 2030 and grow its fleet of electric vehicles seven-fold, the IEA said.

    At the same time, Africa is desperate for energy investment.

    To provide access to electricity for its population, the continent would need $25 billion per year, the IEA said in its annual Africa Energy Outlook, published in June. “This is around 1% of global energy investment today, and similar to the cost of building just one large liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal,” it said.

    The continent has 60% of the world’s best solar resources but only 1% of installed solar photovoltaic capacity. This is already the cheapest source of power in many parts of Africa and would outcompete all other energy sources across the continent by 2030, the IEA said.

    The energy watchdog projects that solar, wind, hydropower and geothermal energy would provide over 80% of new power generation capacity in Africa by 2030. No new coal-fired power plants would be built once those now under construction are completed. Half the cost of adding new solar installations out to 2025 could be covered by investments that would otherwise have gone into discontinued coal plants.

    Yet this assessment leaves out the plans for increased oil and natural gas developments on the continent.

    Pressure from energy companies

    A report just published by Rainforest UK and Earth Insight 2022 found that the area of land allocated across Africa for such developments is set to quadruple under existing plans. That report focuses on the Congo Basin, but in East Africa, French oil major TotalEnergies is pushing ahead with a large-scale oil project and trans-continental pipeline in Uganda.

    A first cargo of liquefied natural gas has just left Mozambique after multiple delays caused by an insurgency in the region of the gas field, in a venture involving several oil companies.

    These oil and gas projects would lock the continent into fossil fuels for decades to come and blow a hole in the bid to keep global heating to no more than 1.5°C.

    These energy projects have wide support among African leaders, who contrast the immediacy of such investments and their benefits for their countries with the reluctance of Western nations to put up the finance agreed over a decade ago for energy transitions and preservation of biodiversity.

    African environmentalists question the wisdom of this carbon bomb. But it is hard to dismiss the idea that broken promises by the countries that have caused the climate crisis has driven Africa into the arms of the fossil fuel industry.

    TotalEnergies’ CEO Patrick Pouyanné argues that the world cannot quit fossil fuels before it has alternative sources of energy.

    “The mistake being made now is to think that the solution for the climate is to abandon fossil fuels,” he said in an interview with French TV station LCI on November 17. “The solution is first to build the new decarbonized energies that we need.”

    “If you do both at the same time, what happens?,” Pouyanné said. “Exactly what you reproach us for — prices rise because of the rarity of supply, because the demand for oil is not falling.”

    The monopoly power of fossil fuel firms

    These energy companies have long fought the switch from fossil fuels to renewables.

    Half a century ago, Total concealed a report it had commissioned that clearly explained how burning fossil fuels would cause global heating and the consequences we are seeing today.

    Other oil and gas companies, notably Exxon, acted similarly and responded to their findings by funding climate-denying think tanks and political lobbyists.

    More recently, as the evidence mounted, they turned their attention to lobbying for exemptions, even though the scientific consensus demands that to achieve the 1.5°C limit on warming, there can be no new oil, gas or coal exploration or extraction.

    A record number of fossil fuel lobbyists attended this month’s climate summit in Egypt (see the graphic here).

    Fossil fuels no longer make economic sense.

    The sector is a good example of reality flouting economic theory, which teaches that if a new technology reaches a point where it outcompetes an existing one, the new technology will replace the older one.

    This should be happening with solar versus coal, oil and gas — and indeed is predicted to happen by 2050. Meanwhile, harmful emissions continue to rise.

    Energy markets and the fossil fuel firms themselves do not obey basic economics for the simple reason that they are monopolies with the power to skew conditions in their favor.

    The oil producers’ monopoly, in the form of OPEC, has controlled production to keep prices higher for decades. In the 1990s, the big Western oil companies went through a frenzy of mega-mergers that created today’s top five — Shell, ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips — whose sheer size gives them disproportionate bargaining and lobbying power.

    Now activists are trying to gain support for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty as a way of reining in the root cause of the climate emergency. The initiative was put before the United Nations in September and the COP 27 climate summit in November.

    “Will you be on the right side of history? Will you end this moral and economic madness?” Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate asked global leaders at the summit.

    On that, the jury is still out.

    Landmark deal opens way for loss and damage fund

    It has taken 27 climate summits, but the COP 27 in Egypt finally managed to pull out an agreement to set up a specific fund to aid poor countries hit by damage caused by climate disasters. The deal was approved on November 20 after a marathon negotiating session.

    The proposal had been fought tooth and nail by the rich industrialized countries whose emissions have fostered global heating, stirring resentment among poorer countries who have suffered the most extreme consequences and have the least ability to mitigate the damage. 

    Details will be hammered out over the coming year, and there is as yet no money in the fund. It was nevertheless a major step forward.

    However, the final agreement failed to call for phasing out all fossil fuels and for warming emissions to peak by 2025, both heavily opposed by oil-producing countries, raising fears that the goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C by mid-century will not be achievable.

    Questions to consider:

    1. Where is a major boom in solar energy taking place?
    2. What is Africa’s energy dilemma?
    3. Why do you think fossil fuel majors have so much influence?

     

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  • Saying goodbye to our glaciers

    Saying goodbye to our glaciers

    Across the world two billion people — around a quarter of the world’s population — depend on glaciers for water to irrigate fields for agriculture, provide drinking water and to generate electricity.

    But these glaciers are melting before our eyes.

    Consider that 10% of Iceland is covered by glaciers but that is 1% less than a decade ago. That percentage will continue to decrease as the rate of change due to global warming has become dramatic.

    Glaciers are so iconic in Iceland that when one collapses, people hold a funeral. 

    It’s a ceremony created for humans to make people aware about the urgency of global warming. And it’s a poetic way of marking the end of one of nature’s most inspiring creations.

    A land where ice is prized

    The first funeral for a glacier took place in 2019. It was for Okjökull glacier, the smallest glacier in a land that is dominated by ice and snow. 

    Okjökull glacier, popularly known as Ok, was only a modest 15 square kilometres big and had been shrinking for decades. Icelanders regarded diminutive Ok with affection, even making it a character in children’s book. 

    So the emotional impact of watching Ok vanish was felt not only by the locals who had grown up with the glacier, but across Iceland. Icelanders are brought up learning songs and sagas about their spectacular island. The snowpack of their glaciers creates the wild rolling rivers and massive waterfalls throughout the island before the flow tumbles into the stormy North Atlantic.

    Now on the hill which had been covered by Okjökull is a rock with a brass plate with urgent words from Icelandic poet Andri Snær Magnason.

    A LETTER TO THE FUTURE

    Vatnajökull ice cap and parts of Hofsjökull ice cap, Iceland in September 2022. (Credit: Pierre Markuse via Wikimedia Commons)

    Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path.
    This monument is to acknowledge that we know
    what is happening and what needs to be done.
    Only you will know if we did it.

    Ice loss in Iceland

    Tiny Okjökull was nothing compared to the largest glacier in Iceland — and in Europe — the Vatnajökull ice cap.

    Despite its mass, scientists estimate that nine million litres of Vatnajökull’s glacial ice are being turned into water every minute. 

    The lakes and ice lagoons downstream of Vatnajökull, filled by meltwater, are bigger every year as the glacier itself shrinks.

    So should there be funerals for glaciers?

    Sigurdur Arni Thordarson, the pastor of Hallgrímskirkja Church in Iceland thinks so. His church was built to resemble the mountains and glaciers of Iceland and dominates the Reykjavík skyline.

    “For humans, the loss of a glacier is a real loss,” Thordarson said. “People who have a deep understanding and awareness of interconnectedness of life really feel the necessity of expressing the grief.”

    Snow melt in the Alps

    It seems a widespread sentiment. A few months after the ceremony in Iceland, hikers, many dressed in black, gathered on Pizol glacier in the Swiss Alps to listen as a priest gave a funeral service. 

    Another ceremony followed in 2020 for Clark Glacier in Oregon and soon after on a Mexican glacier named Ayoloco by the Aztecs. The Mexican geologists and ecologists who marked the day used the words written by Andri Snær Magnason that commemorate Okjökull.

    Crossing into another culture, Buddhists monks in Nepal held an ‘ice funeral’ in the Himalayas in May 2025 for Yala Glacier which had shrunk by two thirds in the past several decades. Attended by locals and climate scientists they gathered under traditional prayer flags across from the last visible ice. Even Yala’s altitude over 5,000 metres was no protection against deglaciation

    Two granite stones now mark the spot of the ceremony. One with the words of Magnason from Iceland, the other with an inscription from Nepali poet Manjushree Thapa:

    Hallgrimskirkja Church

    Hallgrímskirkja Church in Reykjavík, Iceland. (Credit: Mattias Hill via Wikimedia Commons)

    Yala, where the gods dream high in the mountains, where the cold is divine.
    Dream of life in rock, sediment, and snow, in the pulverizing ofice and earth, in meltwater pools the colour of sky. 
    Dream. Dream of a glacier and the civilizations downstream.

    In all these commemorations, Magnason’s alarm from Iceland have been echoed:

    …We know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you will know if we did it.

    The Third Pole

    The glaciers in the Himalayas are sometimes called the ‘Third Pole’ because they account for the most ice after the Arctic and Antarctica. 

    Around the world glaciers are melting faster than ever recorded but the Himalayas are warming at a higher rate than the global average, up to 65% faster. The Himalaya glaciers feed some of the great rivers of Asia — the Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra and Yangtze rivers which flow through some of the most populated areas on the planet. 

    The consequences of disappearing glaciers are starting to be felt. Mexican climate scientists who attended the Ayoloco ceremony pointed out that “without large ice masses on mountain peaks temperatures will increase.”

    All of our planet was created by massive geologic forces. Those forces are more easily observable in Iceland, being one of the newest land masses to be created on Earth. It is an island nation that was created by volcanoes but sculpted and defined by glaciers. It may be fitting that, in addition to the first glacier funeral ever held, the first Glacier Graveyard was created in 2024, to mark extinct glaciers and provide a reminder of what is at stake. 

    The glaciers remembered were taken from the first Global Glacier Casualty List. Soon after, the United Nations declared 2025 the International Year of Glacier Preservation. Now, all fifteen tombstones carved from ice to mark those vanished glaciers have melted.

     

    Questions to consider: 

    1. Should glaciers, like some rivers which have been granted legal rights, be regarded as living creatures?

    2. Does a ceremony like a funeral provide an inspiration for climate activism?

    3. What natural formations or environmental places are important to you? 

     

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  • Decoder Replay: Gold is valuable. But you can’t drink it.

    Decoder Replay: Gold is valuable. But you can’t drink it.

    We’re marking World Water Week, a gathering in Sweden intended to solve water-related challenges such as droughts, floods and food security. Let’s invest in it.

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