Experts urge 'global health emergency' as climate harms accelerate
As heat deaths, drought and food insecurity accelerate worldwide, nearly 150 researchers from more than 30 countries are calling for climate change to be declared a "global health emergency."
The health and economic toll of planetary heating has risen sharply in the decade since countries signed the Paris climate accord — a landmark deal to stop climate change that was hailed by the World Health Organization (WHO) at the time as "the most important public health agreement of the century."
Yet, climate change was responsible for more than half a million heat deaths in 2023 alone and nearly 3 million since 2016. The area affected by extreme drought, which threatens food and water supplies and raises the risk of disease, grew more than 700% faster than in the decade before. And heat cost the world an estimated $1.07 trillion (around €962 billion) in lost potential income last year, all according to the annual Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change.
"This cannot continue," said Alan Dangour, director of climate and health at Wellcome Trust, one of the world's largest charities, which funded the Lancet report. "We must change course and put the health and well-being of people at the heart of our response to climate change — measuring success not through emissions targets or degrees Celsius but by lives saved and health outcomes improved."
Climate-linked health harms growing faster than before
The latest findings from the Lancet study show how rapidly the health risks are growing by comparing this decade to the one before the Paris Agreement was signed.
Heat is the starkest example. Climate change was responsible for 68% of heat-related deaths between 2016 and 2023, up from 55% in the previous decade. The yearly increase in climate-driven heat deaths more than doubled over the same period.
But deaths are only "the tip of the iceberg," said Ollie Jay of the University of Sydney's Heat and Health Research Center. "Except that iceberg is not melting, it's growing every year." Beneath the surface are also heatstroke, lost sleep and worsening chronic health conditions.
The economic harms are mounting too. Working in extreme heat puts people at risk of heat exhaustion, illness or injury and, ultimately, losing income and livelihoods.
Heat wiped out 573 billion potential working hours in 2025, with farmworkers bearing the brunt. Vulnerable economies in Africa and South-East Asia were hit hardest with losses reaching 5% of GDP, compared with 0.5% in the more developed economies.
"The economic toll is battering vulnerable sectors and communities the hardest," Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown, who is based at University College London, told journalists at a press briefing.
Water extremes are intensifying too. Satellite data show that since 2003, 43% of the world's land has been steadily drying out, while 37% has been getting wetter. Together, that is more than 80% of land shifting to extremes that threaten crops, food supplies and sanitation.
Drought can leave people without safe drinking water and raises the risk of infectious disease, while floods bring drowning, injury and contaminated water.
Heat waves and droughts pushed nearly 128 million more people into food insecurity in 2024, compared with the 1981–2010 average.
"This isn't a gradual worsening; it's a step change," Romanello said.
What would declaring a global health emergency change?
To save lives and protect human health, experts are calling for a new WHO instrument to help countries share information, coordinate responses, monitor threats and disburse funds. The United Nations and its member states would create the mechanism.
The closest existing version of this is the WHO's Public Health Emergency of International Concern mechanism (PHEIC) used during the COVID-19 pandemic and mpox outbreaks. But built with short-term emergencies in mind, it falls short of addressing a complex threat that requires sustained global action across multiple sectors, like climate change.
The world needs a broader approach, "so that we're not responding to emergency after emergency," said Romanello. "We're doing a cohesive long-term response that builds resilience, builds capacities and builds the possibilities of countries to avoid further emergencies."
Progress happening but not nearly fast enough
Romanello told journalists that "we have more than enough proof" that such action does improve health outcomes. "Early warning systems informed by climate, have already seen a reduction in the adverse impacts of these extreme weather events," she said.
The growth in renewable energy has also partly aided a reduction in deaths from fossil fuel air pollution in half of 140 countries assessed since 2016, preventing an estimated 323,000 deaths a year.
And 56 countries now have national plans to adapt their health services for climate impacts, such as heat waves and disease outbreaks, up from just 14 in 2015.
But progress remains too slow, according to the report.
Fossil fuels, the burning of which releases emissions fueling planetary heating as well as other pollutants, still supply more than 80% of the world's energy.
Energy-related emissions hit a record high in 2024. The world's 100 largest oil and gas companies are on track to produce 150% more oil and gas by 2040 than is compatible with limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit). A year ago, that figure was 138%.
Investing in an old technology
Governments continue to fund fossil fuels, with net subsidies doubling since 2016 to $6.2 trillion. In 2024, 10 countries spent more on such subsidies than on their entire health systems.
Yet as fossil fuel prices rise and renewables become cheaper, these polluting technologies are becoming increasingly uneconomical, said Romanello.
Romanello likened new fossil fuel investment to "investing in Blockbuster when you have Netflix," — a bet on an old technology, referring to the once ubiquitous video rental store that failed to adapt to streaming.
Meanwhile, money to help health systems adapt to climate change is scarce. Developing countries estimate they need around $3.3 billion a year for such adaptations, which the Lancet authors say is likely an underestimate. Only about a third of that was committed in 2024. Foreign aid reductions, led by the US and followed by Germany, which made the second-largest cut, are widening the gap.
"This report is a stark warning that climate change is a health emergency," said Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand and chair of the Lancet Countdown's board. "What's missing is not evidence, but the political will to act on it."
Edited by: Jennifer Collins
Can we regrow damaged seagrass meadows?
Half a dozen divers are navigating the cold waters of the Baltic Sea off the coast of Dahme, a small beach town in northern Germany. Keeping the roots intact, conservationists carefully lift shoots from a donor meadow of seagrass and place them in a bag.
They only take a few shoots from each spot, which will be planted where the conservationists hope to regrow another meadow. They've already picked out a prime area for the young plants, which need sandy sediment, shelter from waves and currents and sufficient light and oxygen to thrive.
The scientists see the work as critical. Myriam Spicka, who heads the NGO Seagrass Conservation, says she has "seen the changes" in the more than 30 years she's been diving. And she is not the only one who has witnessed the destruction.
Scientists estimate that around 60% of the Baltic coast's seagrass meadows have disappeared.
"That's the bad news," said marine ecologist Thorsten Reusch from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel . "The good news is that the decline has stopped."
Why should we care about seagrass?
Underwater seagrass meadows feed and shelter fish, crabs, shellfish and many other species. They improve water quality and slow waves, helping protect shores from erosion. And they store carbon in the seabed about 30 to 50 times faster than forests.
Around 70 species of seagrass can be found along the coasts of more than 150 countries. Some grow just below the surface, others at depths of 60 meters or almost 200 feet.
"Some countries have far more seagrass, particularly in the Indo-Pacific," said Reusch. "There, it can play a major role in their carbon balance."
But the value of seagrass goes beyond carbon storage. Its meadows in the Baltic are among the sea's most valuable habitats. They shelter wildlife, stabilize the seabed and act as natural filters by trapping particles and nutrients.
How can seagrass be replanted on a larger scale?
Planting individual seagrass shoots is painstaking work so people like Reinhard Helbig are trying to make it easier.
Through ZosteraTec, the start-up he co-founded, he helps restore marine habitats, including seagrass meadows damaged by offshore activity, such as wind farm construction. His work begins on the beach.
"Stormy weather helps us. Waves and currents wash seagrass out of the seabed. A day or two later, it washes up here, still fresh," he said.
The collected shoots are grown and multiplied in ZosteraTec's aquaculture. Several months later, the marine saplings are laid on a plant support. A specially developed machine binds the planted strands with biodegradable thread. The resulting lengths can be laid on the seabed with less diving work.
"We plant here on land to cut down on underwater work. That means fewer dives, and we can do the painstaking work on shore," Helbig said.
Could planting seeds be a solution?
Researchers at the Geomar Helmholtz Center in Kiel are also testing new ways to restore seagrass across larger areas, including using seeds.
Marine ecologist Esther Thomsen reaches into an aquarium tank and pulls out a flowerpot containing seagrass.
"Ten percent of the plants in our meadows produce seeds. You can clearly see the seeds sitting inside the seed pod," she said.
"The big advantage of restoring meadows from seed is greater genetic diversity. And in the future, we should be able to sow seeds over much larger areas," explained Thomsen.
Reusch from Geomar said they currently "think the most promising way to grow meadows that can withstand climate change is to plant individual shoots as a foundation, then sow seeds between them to increase genetic diversity."
It takes time to see results
Whether a planting mission is successful is revealed months or even years later.
Thomsen and her colleagues are visiting the first seagrass meadow planted in Germany's Baltic waters in 2021. The divers count shoots, check how densely they grow and record how the meadow has developed.
They then compare it with the donor meadow that supplied the plants. Only that comparison reveals whether the new crop has merely survived or is beginning to function more like a natural one.
"We've just checked the seagrass meadow, and it's really dense. We counted lots of shoots per square," Thomsen said. "It's looking really good."
This article is based on a Global Us video report.
Edited by: Tamsin Walker
EU moves to loosen rules on pesticide use as experts sound the alarm
As part of its drive to "streamline and simplify" EU laws, the European Commission has proposed sweeping changes for agriculture and food safety legislation. These include a move to ease rules controlling the use of pesticides and herbicides, which help fight pests and weeds.
Under current EU rules, which date back to 2011, primary pesticide components, or active substances, are only granted approval for limited periods of no more than 15 years.
The European Commission's proposed revamp of the system would make indefinite greenlighting — including of the controversial glyphosate, which has been linked to cancer and kills almost all plant life — the default. Safety reviews would only be done in exceptional cases, and regulatory authorities, not the industry, would bear responsibility.
The commission has said its goal is to cut costs, simplify work for authorities and help farmers stay competitive. Scientists and doctors, however, warn that concerns over human health and environmental impact from these toxic substances are being brushed aside.
Why does the EU want to deregulate pesticides?
The European Commission has said it's responding to complaints from farmers and the agriculture industry to clarify EU rules that govern pesticide use.
A joint statement released in May by 19 food associations, including CropLife Europe, which promotes pesticides, said complicated administrative procedures and a lengthy approvals process meant farmers were "left without any effective solutions to protect their crops against insects, weeds and diseases," putting food security and livelihoods at risk.
"The existing system of periodic renewal assessment of every active substance has become unsustainable," the commission's press service told DW, citing "chronic delays" and "bottlenecks" in the approval of new, more sustainable products.
In recent negotiations, EU member states said open-ended authorizations should be restricted to "low-risk active substances."
But their stance is still wanting to extend initial approval periods for other substances to up to 15 years, and a maximum of 25 years for renewals.
Herbert Dorfmann, a center-right Italian member of the European Parliament, said there is currently a yearslong delay in approving new pesticides, including more eco-friendly options, meaning farmers are forced to rely on older substances. Or, if these are banned, go without altogether.
The commission wants to "make the system more efficient and responsive," while guaranteeing that "the protection of human and animal health and the environment remain the highest priorities."
Dorfmann, who as co-rapporteur is responsible for interinstitutional negotiations on the issue, backs the commission's stance, saying the EU needs "to open up the system for innovation."
He aims to bring the parliament's proposal on the new pesticide rules to a vote among EU lawmakers before the end of the year.
How do pesticides affect human health, environment?
Ecologists and medical experts, however, have spoken out forcefully against the proposed changes, saying the potential implications for human health and the environment are being downplayed.
In September, more than 500 experts from across the EU signed an open letter calling on the European Parliament to suspend its consideration of the new regulations and conduct an independent investigation into health and environmental impacts.
On October 7, UN rights experts also backed the call for a full review into whether the proposed changes violated the EU's obligations under international human rights law, especially with regard to agricultural workers and children.
Pesticides can persist in the environment, contaminating water and degrading soils. They can also drive biodiversity loss and poison other animals higher up the food chain.
When it comes to humans, the European Environment Agency has said it was "not yet possible to estimate the burden of disease linked to current levels of exposure to all pesticides."
However, exposure to chemical pesticides, including banned substances that still persist in the environment, has been linked to various cancers, chronic respiratory disease, neurological disorders and developmental delays, as well as problems with fertility and behavior.
And exposure is widespread: A survey conducted between 2014 and 2021 found that 84% of urine samples from both children and adults in five European countries contained residue from two or more pesticides.
Martina Vijver, scientific director and ecotoxicology expert at Leiden University in the Netherlands, said experts were "deeply concerned" that the EU's current plan "will weaken rather than strengthen the level of protection for pesticide regulation."
Speaking at the European Parliament in September, she said regular reassessments were key to evaluating the safety of pesticides with new findings, pointing out that the perception of risk changes over time.
"The regulatory system must remain capable of correcting yesterday's decisions with tomorrow's knowledge," she said.
More than 50 substances banned since 2011
Salome Roynel, a policy officer at the Pesticide Action Network Europe, an NGO based in Brussels, said the harmful effects of pesticides aren't often fully understood until years later, when the product is up for reconsideration.
"New science emerges all the time," she told DW, highlighting how 56 active substances have been banned in the EU since 2011 as a result of periodic reviews.
That includes the insecticide chlorpyrifos, previously used in orchards and on vegetable and cereal crops, which has been tied to harmful effects on children's brain development.
Roynel said it was "obvious that there was some kind of alignment" between the changes proposed by the EU institutions and the demands of the pesticide lobby.
This echoes a new report by nonprofit research and campaign group Corporate Europe Observatory, which said Dorfmann and other lawmakers had "copy-pasted […] industry demands" into their regulatory proposals.
Dorfmann denied the lobby influence, telling DW he had met with "both sides, industry and environmental associations," in public debates on the issue.
"The main objective is not to keep old products in the market. The main objective is to bring new ones to the market," Dorfmann said.
Part of that plan, he added, would be to help more environmentally friendly "biocontrol" products and low-risk substances to bypass current administrative hurdles and get on the market faster.
Farmers need 'incentive' to switch to safer pesticides
It's an idea previously championed by Vijver, who agrees that the current system means more environmentally friendly pesticides are stuck in an administrative "traffic jam." She told DW that biocontrol products could go in a green "bus lane" to ease the way to approval at the European Food Safety Authority, while maintaining crucial safety reviews to filter out the more dangerous products.
Roynel also supports the plan to speed up approval for biocontrol substances, but said it needs to be part of a wider system change that includes financial support, monitoring and training to use these new products, as well as maintaining the restrictions on more harmful chemical pesticides ― not further deregulation.
"If farmers get easier access to synthetic pesticides tomorrow, they would have no incentive to switch to biocontrol," she said. "It's important to put [biocontrol pesticides] on the market and we fully support that, but… it will not be the silver bullet."
Edited by: Tamsin Walker
Rising emissions and temperatures: The cost of Trump's climate retreat is now clear
For over a decade, scientists have warned the world must limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) to avoid the most severe consequences of climate change.
That goal is no longer within reach.
Decades of "insufficient" action on cutting the fossil fuel emissions heating the planet means overshooting 1.5-degree temperature threshold is now "imminent and unavoidable," according to the United Nations Environment Program's (UNEP) annual Emissions Gap Report.
If current climate policies continue, temperatures will rise by an average of 2.8 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels within this century. But even if countries meet their new climate pledges, global warming is still projected to reach 2.6 degrees Celsius. Both scenarios would tip the world into a period of catastrophic weather extremes.
The projections reflect a gap between what governments promise to do and the action they are taking to curb emissions. Some 167 countries have submitted climate action plans to the UN, covering 83% of global greenhouse gas emissions. But those pledges to cut emissions fall far short of what is needed to limit warming.
Among the world's largest emitters, Indonesia, China and the United States saw emissions rise in 2025, according to preliminary estimates. The increase in the US "far exceeded that of all other countries," driven by a resurgence of coal — the dirtiest fossil fuel source — and rising electricity demand, partly linked to massive AI data center expansion.
The outlook has worsened in part because of US President Donald Trump's withdrawal of the United States from the historic Paris climate accord in which the world came together in 2015 to agree to halt climate change. The US is the second-largest annual emitter of climate-warping greenhouse gases.
Since Trump entered the Oval Office for a second time, his administration has taken a sledgehammer to climate policy, gutting environmental regulations and expanding oil and gas production.
"The main takeaway is simple — governments need to get on with enacting policies that cut fossil fuel use as soon as possible," said Bill Hare, CEO of the global science and policy institute Climate Analytics, of the report.
What does overshooting mean for the planet?
Exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius even temporarily sets humanity on a dangerous course, as it increases the risk of triggering potentially irreversible or difficult-to-undo "tipping points," like the loss of coral reefs, long-term retreat of ice sheets, and the Amazon Rainforest turning into a grassland.
As ecosystems disappear and sea levels rise, these changes could trigger a deadly chain reaction, releasing more greenhouse gases and accelerating warming, dramatically increasing the likelihood of deadly extreme weather.
This summer alone, Europe recorded more than 32,000 excess deaths related to heat and nearly 1,500 people died in a flash floods in Nepal and Tibet, after climate change laid the groundwork for a glacier to collapse.
But scientists maintain 1.5 degrees Celsius is not a magic number, and that every fraction of a degree of warming brings escalating risks. To reduce the risk of future damage, countries should still focus on rapidly transitioning away from fossil fuels, the largest contributor to global climate change, and toward renewable energy like solar and wind.
Now the best-case scenario is overshooting 1.5 degrees Celsius for a short time before bringing temperatures back down quickly.
"Overshoot is not surrender," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a press statement. "We can still keep it as small and as short as possible — and bring temperatures back below 1.5 degrees before the end of the century."
How can the world limit overshoot?
UNEP lays out a scenario in which the world sees warming peak at 1.7 to 1.8 degrees Celsius around mid-century, before falling back to 1.5 Celsius by 2100. Getting there would require steep emissions cuts of 69% by 2040, relative to 2025 levels.
It would also require removing 330 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it in the ground. But recent studies have cast doubt on the feasibility and costs of the technology, as well as the nascent carbon removal industry's ability to scale as quickly as required to meet climate goals.
The UN warns any delays will make the challenge harder, saying that every five years that emissions remain at current levels adds about 0.1 Celsius to projected peak warming.
"We must pull out all the stops to minimize peak warming and return to 1.5 Celsius by the end of the century," Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, said in a press release. "This is possible."
Climate policy works
Still, climate policies have proven effective in reducing emissions. The UNEP report draws on more than 200 studies that analyze how measures like carbon taxes, government climate targets, building codes and subsidies for low-carbon technologies are working.
Carbon-pricing schemes have been the most widely studied so far. China's pilot schemes reduced emissions by about 11%, while the European Union's emissions trading system saw an 8% cut, compared with projected levels without these policies.
"There are more opportunities than ever to accelerate action," according to the report, pointing to the boom in renewable energy since the adoption of the Paris Agreement a decade ago.
Global renewable electricity capacity has grown three times faster than anticipated, and solar build-out grew seven times faster. In 2024, more than 90% of renewable projects were cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives.
While total energy supply from coal, oil and gas has continued to rise, that's happened at a slower rate than was projected in 2015. And coal use is likely to peak and decline by the end of the decade.
"We have a wealth of success stories showing that emissions can be cut quickly," Andersen said. "It is now up to nations to urgently put in place policies that spark fast, deep and sustained emissions reductions, and put the world on track for a more stable climate and more stable economies and societies."
Edited by: Jennifer Collins
Sri Lanka: Death of iconic elephant raises habitat concerns
The recent death of an iconic male elephant in Sri Lanka has raised concerns over ongoing contact between humans and the giant animals, whose habitats have been greatly reduced.
The elephant known as "Kavantissa" had been considered to be the tallest living male elephant in the Sri Lanka. Thought to be around 45 years old and measuring roughly 3.3 meters tall (11 feet), he roamed Sri Lanka's northwest near the village of Galgamuwa, and was widely admired for his majestic stature.
In late September, villagers noticed the 5.5 ton-tusker (5,500 kg) was limping, and a closer look reveled a gunshot wound on his right leg. Despite the intervention of veterinary surgeons, the elephant died on October 16.
Sri Lanka records the highest number of elephant deaths annually and the second highest number of human deaths globally from violent interactions between elephants and humans, which usually happen when crop raiding elephants encroach on farmlands.
According to official statistics, since 2019, an average of 370 elephants and 125 humans have died in human-elephant conflict incidents each year.
The situation affects the natural habitats of elephants and the livelihoods of rural communities.
Home to about 10% of the global Asian elephant population and occupying about 2% of their total natural range, Sri Lanka has the highest density of Asian elephants in the world.
The Sri Lankan elephant is an endangered subspecies in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, and protected under Sri Lankan law, with punishment by fines and jail terms for wildlife-related offences.
A shrinking habitat for elephants
During the past few decades, forest cover in Sri Lanka has shrunk as the population has grown.
Statistics show the rural population of Sri Lanka increased from 8.25 million in 1960 to 17.8 million in 2020.
Agriculture remains the primary source of income for these rural communities. As a result, the land is cleared for agricultural activities.
According to Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC) statistics, in 2024, an estimated 7,451 wild elephants were recorded in Sri Lanka. About 70% of these wild elephants live outside protected areas.
Research shows elephants have a massive daily dietary requirement of about 150 kilograms (330 lbs.) of green matter, which drives them into farmland.
"Driven primarily by habitat loss, agricultural expansion, fragmentation of elephant corridors, and increasing competition for land and resources, human-elephant conflict continues to cause hundreds of elephant deaths and more than 100 human fatalities annually," said Ravi Corea, President of Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society, a Sri Lankan non-profit conservation organization.
The conservationist told DW that rural communities are severely affected, and the agricultural losses caused by elephants can threaten a family's primary source of food and income.
"This distinguishes human-elephant conflict from many human-wildlife conflicts in economically developed countries, where wildlife encounters, although sometimes serious, generally do not threaten household subsistence to the same extent," he said.
Elephants and humans clash
"Despite the efforts by the government to mitigate HEC, the numbers are rising demonstrating the continuing severity of the crisis," Corea added.
Elephants are shot, poisoned, or killed by improvised explosives hidden in food and train collisions, experts say.
In view of the escalation of human-elephant conflict, the Sri Lankan government in 2020 drafted a national action plan to mitigate the problem.
"The 2020 Action Plan provides a valuable foundation for reducing human–elephant conflict, but its recommendations must be strengthened through a comprehensive national conservation strategy with enforceable habitat protection at its core," Corea said.
"The ultimate measure of success must be not merely a reduction in human–elephant conflict, but the permanent protection of ecologically connected habitats, the survival of viable wild elephant populations and the ability of people and elephants to coexist sustainably for generations to come," he added.
Community-level initiatives protect people and elephants
Meanwhile, community-based programs by non-government organizations have proven effective and sustainable. These initiatives are complemented by elephant monitoring, scientific research, habitat assessments, community education, and the development of locally appropriate deterrents, Corea said
"Our flagship initiative Project Orange Elephant in Sri Lanka's Wasgamuwa region promotes the cultivation of citrus which elephants do not like to eat as a trophic deterrence. This reduces crop raiding while generating alternative income for farmers," Corea added, pointing to things like electric fencing protecting settlements and agricultural lands while encouraging local responsibility.
Another issue is confrontations on elephant corridors, that in some cases have discouraged children from walking to school.
Elephant corridors are designated strips of land that connect larger forest and habitat patches, allowing elephants to move safely between them for food, water, breeding, and seasonal migration.
To address this, the "EleFriendly" bus service in Wasgamuwa, provides safe transportation for schoolchildren through elephant corridors and has reduced dangerous human-elephant encounters along its original route by over 90%.
"An ethically just solution must protect human lives, livelihoods, and elephant populations simultaneously, said Kamal Shashendra, a Sri Lanka-based environmental ethics researcher.
He told DW that this required scientifically informed land-use planning, protection of elephant corridors, appropriate community-based fencing, effective early-warning systems, and fair compensation for affected families.
Edited by: Wesley Rahn
What Earth's sixth mass extinction event means for humans
From the tiniest microbes in the human gut to giant whales in the ocean, biodiversity is the sum of all life on the planet. It's another word for nature. And because nature is like a team, every player has a job.
When various species from trees to animals work together, they regulate weather, maintain soil health, purify water and support food production. These benefits are known as ecosystem services and they underpin human well-being.
"It is really an abstract concept, but we experience it absolutely every day," said Rebecca Shaw, chief scientist at conservation group WWF. "And we almost never think about it when nature is functioning."
But as biodiversity declines, Shaw and other scientists are calling on the world to really think about it. Because biodiversity is struggling as humans push ecosystems to the brink through intensive farming, burning fossil fuels and pollution from sources like plastic and chemicals.
Over the past 52 years, monitored vertebrate populations have collapsed by an average of 73%, while freshwater ecosystems are faring worse with a drop of 85%, according to WWF's recent Living Planet report.
It tallies with other studies that show a million animal and plant species face extinction unless humanity reduces its pressure on nature.
"It is a really steep decline," said Shaw. "What it's telling us is that nature is in trouble, and it's an early warning indicator that the fabric of life that we depend on for freshwater and food and for clean air is unraveling."
Some 200 countries are gathering in Yerevan, Armenia over the next two weeks for COP17, the latest UN biodiversity summit, to advance commitments to reverse nature's unraveling by 2030. But progress toward those targets remains insufficient, with funding and implementation among the biggest challenges.
What happens when ecosystem services decline or disappear?
Take wetlands as an example. Some 85% of these vital ecosystems disappeared between 1700 and 2000. One study from Canada's University of Waterloo found that habitats like marshes and swamps in southern Ontario provide C$4.2 billion (€2.63 billion) worth of water filtration services each year, removing nutrients like phosphorus and keeping drinking water sources clean.
The study found that as they disappear, water quality worsens, which massively increases the cost of treating it.
Another example is the decline in pollinators like bees and bats. More than 75% of global food crop types rely in part on animal pollination.
At the same time, soil and ecosystem degradation coupled with storms and heat waves linked to climate change are already damaging harvests. A recent UK government report stated that every critical ecosystem is on a "pathway to collapse," warning that nature's decline posed a grave threat to global food supply and geopolitical stability.
"The UK, like many other countries, relies on imports for much of the food and so is reliant on ecosystems around the world," said Louise McRae, a research fellow at the Zoological Society of London, who also contributed to WWF's Living Planet report. "This is why we need to care about global biodiversity."
Nature also provides the basis for many modern human medicines, with some 50% coming from natural compounds.
Penicillin, the first antibiotic, is produced by a mold and is estimated to have saved over 500 million lives. Before its discovery, a person could die from a simple cut. Around 70% of cancer drugs come from natural products or synthetic compounds "inspired by nature," according to the World Health Organization.
As biodiversity disappears, humans risk losing access to undiscovered treatments.
Does it really matter if one species disappears?
To return to the "nature as a team" metaphor, if a player disappears, sometimes a species with similar functions in the ecosystem can jump in as a substitute.
But not always, particularly if it's a "keystone species." They play a disproportionately large role in their environments, and their disappearance has significant knock-on effects.
The oyster is one such species. Wild oyster populations are facing massive declines, while 85% of their reefs have been lost worldwide. An adult oyster filters up to 50 gallons of water a day.
"No one would ever think they did anything but sit in a shell and be slimy," said Shaw. "But you lose oysters, you can lose water filtration and clean water, you can lose the habitat for many other species that we interact with or sometimes consume."
And, said Shaw, the humble oyster protects coastal communities from storm surges. If you lose it "you lose the coastal protection."
The loss of a single species can also lead to more disease. One study suggests a decline in red foxes in North America is linked to the spread of Lyme disease, a tick-borne illness that also affects humans.
Is humanity living through a sixth mass extinction, and is it too late to prevent it?
Extinction is a natural process. But the planet has experienced five mass extinctions, when a large proportion of species globally disappeared over a short geological period. The rate at which species are disappearing today suggests Earth is experiencing a sixth event driven largely by human activity, according to scientists.
Both McRae and Shaw called the declines extremely worrying, but said they shouldn't provoke despair.
Though she acknowledges that the underlying global trend is moving in the wrong direction and cannot be ignored, McRae said "the statistics are there to just motivate us to action rather than to cause alarm."
And the Living Planet report also highlights conservation successes, showing that nature can recover.
The number of green sea turtles, for example, had fallen significantly, but has now bounced back. This is thanks to a massive worldwide effort to protect nesting beaches and changes to fishing practices that reduce accidental capture.
Sea otters are another example. Prized for their fur, in the 1800s they were hunted to near extinction on the US Pacific Coast. When they disappeared, it meant sea urchins had no predators, leaving them free to decimate kelp forests.
That matters because as well as providing habitat for other species, these giant underwater groves protect coastlines from storm surges and absorb carbon, making them important for climate protection.
Following a ban on commercial hunting, sea otters have also rebounded, helping kelp forests recover.
"You can see that ripple effect that really had an obvious and a measurable impact. But critically, it can be reversed," said McRae, adding that biodiversity loss and climate change are intertwined and exacerbate each other but have joint solutions.
"We're learning how to turn things around at very small scales," said Shaw. "Now the real challenge is to turn things around at very big scale so we can see it in the global indicators."
Edited by: Tamsin Walker
India faces water and power shortages after weak monsoon
Ramesh Reddy, 44, put everything he had into his 3.5 acre (0.4 hectares) tomato farm in June. The farmer from Kolar district in the south of the state of Karnataka invested 320,000 rupees (€3,000, $3,357), borrowing 250,000 rupees at 24% annual interest and pledging his wife's wedding jewelry as collateral.
The harvest was meant to repay the loan and cover his son's overdue college fees. But then the farm's irrigation well ran dry. Within three weeks, the tomato plants had turned brown and Reddy could not salvage a single crate.
"I have lost everything I invested," he told DW. "I have no money left for the next crop and I don't know how I will repay the loan."
He is now negotiating a job as a security guard in the state capital, Bengaluru, and preparing to leave his farmland behind.
Driest monsoon in 11 years
For India, the monsoon is more than just a four-month rainy season. It replenishes reservoirs, supports agriculture and helps sustain water supplies and power generation across much of the country.
Nearly half of India's workforce depends on farming for their livelihood, doing jobs that are both tough and economically insecure.
This year, the country received 759.4 millimeters (ca. 30 inches) of rain between June and September, against a long-term average of 868.6 millimeters. The 12.6% deficit made it the country's driest monsoon in 11 years and the fourth driest this century.
Madhavan Nair Rajeevan, a climate scientist and former secretary in the Indian Ministry of Earth Sciences, said the main factor behind the poor monsoon was a severe El Nino. He had warned earlier that this global climate phenomenon posed a serious risk to rainfall.
"As far as the Indian monsoon is concerned, El Nino is the most important influencing factor, which we should consider very seriously,” Rajeevan told DW.
Water and power under pressure
The effects are now hitting India's water and energy systems. The country's major reservoirs ended the monsoon with less water than usual, leaving both farmers and the power sector with less buffer going into the months ahead.
Combined storage in the 178 reservoirs monitored by the Central Water Commission stood at 132.7 billion cubic meters, below the 10-year average of 151.1 billion cubic meters.
That shortfall is already being felt in electricity generation. Hydropower output fell nearly 16% in September from a year earlier, according to Grid India data. At the same time, electricity shortages reached 560 million kilowatt-hours, the highest monthly shortfall in more than three years. After sunset, when solar generation drops off, the grid has fewer options to make up the difference.
Coal-fired plants have, therefore, had to shoulder more of the load, but they face a problem of their own. Data from the Central Electricity Authority showed that around 40% of coal-fired plants had critically low stocks, with supplies below a quarter of the required level.
The government has ordered some private industrial power plants to operate at full capacity and feed surplus electricity into the grid.
Manufacturers are already feeling the strain. "Uninterrupted power supply is of paramount importance for manufacturing units, as power cuts disrupt production cycles," said Ashok Gupta, the president of the Mohali Industries Association, which represents nearly 600 small and medium-sized manufacturers.
"Such disruptions not only cause losses to manufacturers but also result in wastage of raw materials."
A hit to rural incomes
The economic impact of a poor monsoon can extend well beyond agriculture. Weaker farm output can hit rural incomes, employment and consumption, while higher food prices put further pressure on household budgets.
Arun Kumar, a retired professor of economics, said the effects could be wider than the headline economic numbers suggest, particularly because much of India's rural economy operates outside the formal sector.
"Economic development needs to be assessed through a wider set of indicators," Kumar told DW. He said weaker agricultural output could push up food prices while putting pressure on incomes and consumption.
Himanshu, a development economist at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, described the situation as a "twin shock" for rural households, with weaker farm incomes coming alongside higher food prices.
"When agricultural incomes fall and food prices rise, rural households face a squeeze on their purchasing power," he told DW.
The economist said that the uneven distribution of rainfall could compound the problem, with some farming regions suffering much heavier losses than the national rainfall figure indicates. "The impact on rural consumption could also be significant, as households facing lower incomes and higher food costs have less money to spend on other goods and services."
Outlook increasingly difficult to predict as climate warms
The pressure is also being felt in urban households. A survey in September by India's central bank found that households were expecting inflation to rise as food and fuel prices increasingly affected sentiment.
Sunita Sharma, a homemaker in New Delhi, said her usual shopping list now costs hundreds of rupees more than it did a few months ago.
"We have no option but to cut down on discretionary expenses just to afford basic, everyday meals," she told DW.
The prices of some staples have risen sharply recently. An analysis by ISignal using Department of Consumer Affairs data found that onions were 93% more expensive in September than a year earlier, while sugar prices rose by 28% and rice by about 8%.
The next test will be the rabi, or winter, crop. Farmers are now preparing to plant wheat, mustard and chickpeas, but success will depend largely on how much moisture remains in the soil after the weak monsoon.
Rajeevan said the longer-term outlook was also becoming increasingly difficult to predict as the climate warms.
"In a warming climate, longer dry spells and greater rainfall variability is a possibility," he said. "In future, in addition to the influence of El Nino events, we should expect the influence of a warmer climate."
Reddy, the farmer in Karnataka state, is now waiting to hear whether he has got the security job in Bengaluru and preparing to leave his farm behind.
Edited by: Srinivas Mazumdaru
Emerging economies are embracing solar power and skipping fossil fuels much faster than Europe or the US
As emerging economies and global living standards rise, is the world in for another fossil fuel boom? The data says not. Countries from Southeast Asia to Sub-Saharan Africa aren't investing in fossil fuels as the West did; they're investing in electricity powered by renewables.
When the US and Europe industrialized in the 19th and 20th centuries, they did so using fossil energy. From coal ovens, gas heating and combustion-engine cars to electricity produced in coal and gas power plants, entire societies relied on polluting fuels.
Yet while burning fossil fuels allowed industrialized countries to boom, it also caused the climate crisis that is linked to extreme weather events around the world today.
Renewable electricity is rapidly becoming the cheapest option
Many of the same countries that became economically powerful off the back of fossil fuels are now trying to transition to renewables, but centuries of legacy infrastructure hold them back.
Because a gas boiler won't run on wind power and a diesel truck cannot be solar-powered, societies looking to shift to green energy need to use more electricity and increase their share of renewables.
That is where many middle- and lower-income countries have an advantage. With less existing energy infrastructure built around fossil fuels, they are better placed for a faster rollout of renewable electricity sources.
In many instances, solar power in particular is now cheaper to produce than fossil electricity. And unlike large coal or gas plants, which take years to construct and millions in investments, solar and wind farms can be built quickly and with much less upfront cost.
At the same time, according to an analysis by renewables think tank Ember, electronic devices like refrigerators, electric stoves or air conditioners have all become much cheaper in the last decades, making electricity a more affordable option as an energy source for cooking, heating and more.
While electric cars are still a luxury item in most places, their prices are coming down too. And a UN study found that in India, Indonesia and Vietnam electric scooters and motorbikes already cost the same as petrol models. Yet a lot less to fuel.
All this means that renewable electricity is quickly becoming the best choice for the wallet — not just for the climate. And countries are taking note.
"We're seeing a leapfrog take place right across the emerging markets,” said Kingsmill Bond, energy strategist at Ember. "The whole of Asia is electrifying quickly, and the whole of Europe and the United States is stagnant."
Lower-income countries are electrifying faster
In 2023, only around a quarter of global electricity was generated by renewables. But that figure is rising fast, and almost all new capacity added these days is based on solar or wind power.
Lower-income countries already use less fossil fuels and more renewables than higher-income ones.
And large middle-income economies are outpacing richer ones as well. In 2023, solar power alone made up at least six percent and ten percent of electricity in India and Vietnam, respectively. The global average was five percent.
Lower-income countries are electrifying without the fossil detour
This boom has meant middle- and lower-income countries are electrifying fast, consuming less energy directly from fossil fuels than richer countries. Vietnam, for instance, is already using more electricity than the US, Europe and even China, and India is following the same path.
But the potential for energy leapfrogging might be particularly high in low-income countries, especially across Sub-Saharan Africa.
Countries such as Kenya, Ethiopia and Namibia are rapidly expanding their energy infrastructure to meet the demands of a growing, young population. But rural areas in many countries are not connected to electricity grids.
Joel Nana, project manager at South African NGO Sustainable Energy Africa says that "even when there is access to power, it's often not reliable."
Until a few years ago, he says, people defaulted to diesel generators to meet their energy needs. That came at a cost because importing fuel is particularly expensive in many African countries, meaning energy crises and oil price fluctuations hit much harder.
Renewables for energy access and independence
These factors make solar power a solution for both energy access and independence. And it has become so cheap that Nana says it's a "no-brainer."
"Some businesses can make back their investment in just two years, so why would you want to deploy anything else?” he said. "Solar has rapidly become the de facto default technology that everyone falls back on.”
And once it is set up, it is very effective. Sub-Saharan Africa is extremely well-suited to solar power. It gets more sun than almost anywhere in the world, and has enough space for solar farms to cover electricity demand hundreds of times over.
"If you add solar plus batteries, you can get cheap electricity about 90 percent of the time from the sun alone”, said Kingsmill Bond.
Countries like Namibia, South Africa, Kenya and Senegal have expanded their solar capacity massively in the past few years.
In a 2026 report for African Tech Futures Lab and Ember, Nana analyzed import data from China and estimated that around 100,000 solar panels were installed across Africa every day in 2026, up 45 percent from just the previous year.
Similar trends are emerging all across the world. In Pakistan, for example, people have been buying solar panels from China en masse in the past few years to avoid steep electricity grid prices and frequent power outages.
Cheap energy boosts economies
Aleksi Lumijärvi, director for knowledge, policy and finance at the International Renewable Energy Association says these decisions can have a major impact on the global economy in the coming decades.
"Industrial companies will find that it will be cheaper to move production to, for example, somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, because they have this cheap, clean solar power plus batteries available.”
Kingsmill Bond says where electricity is cheap and abundant, wealth will follow.
"You're going to have faster growth in the emerging markets, you will have fewer financial crises. It will make a material difference to people's quality of lives.”
Nana says the next step for African countries is to establish policies that ensure everyone benefits from the solar boom.
"We are heading towards the most decentralized grid in the whole world within the next five years,” he told DW. His mantra for governments, he says, is: "This is happening, whether you like it or not.” He expects a wave of new energy regulations, many of which are now in the final stages of negotiation, to come into effect across Africa in the coming months and years.
"Countries are realizing it's in their interest to integrate this technology into national strategies, to share the benefits and to make use of this competitive advantage."
Edited by: Tamsin Walker and Gianna Grün
All data and code behind this analysis can be found in this Github repository.
More data-driven stories by DW can be found here.
Southeast Asia's haze crisis: Have lessons been learned?
Indonesia's worst wildfire season in more than a decade is exposing just how much, and how little, Southeast Asia's response to haze has changed since 2015.
Forest and land fires have burned across parts of the Indonesian islands of Sumatra, Borneo and Papua for weeks, sending smoke across large areas of the country and into neighboring Malaysia and Singapore.
Indonesia's long 2026 dry season, coupled with this year's El Nino, has worsened what has become an almost annual crisis, exposing millions of people to hazardous smoke containing harmful microscopic particles.
More than 170,000 cases of acute respiratory infection were recorded in haze-affected areas of Indonesia between August and mid-September, according to the country's Health Ministry, including more than 40,000 cases involving young children.
The haze has forced hundreds of schools to close in Malaysia and pushed more than 1.4 million Indonesian students into remote learning, although the full economic cost is not yet known.
Will severe haze become more frequent?
This year's severe weather is only part of the explanation. Fire has long been used as a cheap way to clear land for agriculture in Southeast Asia, while the expansion of palm oil and pulpwood plantations has drained and degraded large areas of peatland.
The echoes of 2015 are hard to ignore. That year's fires burned roughly 2.6 million hectares of land, produced months of severe haze across Southeast Asia and cost Indonesia an estimated $16 billion (€14.2 billion) in economic losses, according to the World Bank.
The risk is growing that severe haze will become more frequent as climate conditions worsen, Paruedee Nguitragool, an associate professor at Chiang Mai University in Thailand, told DW.
"Haze, which used to be mainly a problem in maritime Southeast Asia, has become a concern for most countries in the region," she added.
Governments within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the regional bloc, "need to be more open to one another and work closely together."
"Farmers and companies need alternative methods of land clearing and incentives to adopt them, while land and forest rehabilitation must also be implemented," Nguitragool said.
"At the same time, consumers need to be more aware of whether the products they buy come from sustainable practices and whether burning was involved in their production," she added.
What changed after 2015?
The 2015 disaster triggered major policy changes. Indonesia strengthened peatland restoration, fire monitoring, enforcement and firefighting, while ASEAN expanded regional cooperation, David Mark Taylor, a professor of tropical environmental change at the National University of Singapore, told DW.
Indonesia established the Peatland Restoration Agency in 2016 to restore millions of hectares of degraded peat. Its mandate was later expanded to mangrove rehabilitation, with the agency renamed the Peatland and Mangrove Restoration Agency.
A permanent moratorium on new concessions in primary forests and peatlands also restricted further development in some vulnerable areas.
Authorities have also increasingly pursued companies in court. Last year, an appeals court ordered palm oil company PT Banyu Kahuripan Indonesia to pay around €14 million in environmental damages over fires covering more than 3,300 hectares of its concession. Other companies have faced much tougher restoration orders.
At the regional level, ASEAN adopted a new Peatland Management Strategy and a second Haze-Free Roadmap for 2023-2030, and the long-awaited ASEAN Coordinating Center for Transboundary Haze Pollution Control opened its secretariat in Jakarta in April, more than two decades after the 2002 ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution.
"But the underlying problem hasn't gone away, and neither has the driver," said Taylor.
Extensive areas of peat remain drained or degraded, including cleared land that has yet to be put into productive use. Such poorly managed or "idle" peatlands can become highly combustible during prolonged drought, Taylor noted.
There is also disagreement over how much restoration Indonesia has actually achieved.
The Peatland and Mangrove Restoration Agency ceased operating at the end of 2024, with its responsibilities returned to other government ministries and institutions, raising questions among environmentalists about whether they can maintain the same institutional focus.
ASEAN faces its own limitations. Its 2002 haze agreement is legally binding, but many targets and implementation plans depend on national governments acting on them. The regional bloc has few mechanisms to compel governments to meet those targets or punish failure.
But the ultimate driver for all of this "is the global demand for cheap, plantation-grown commodities, such as palm oil and pulp and paper, which most of us are responsible for," said Taylor.
"So long as that demand persists, so too will the pressure to convert peatlands and forests to plantations," he added.
Can ASEAN stop the next crisis?
This year's fires have turned attention from creating new agreements to how Southeast Asian governments can make existing mechanisms work.
"To prevent this from worsening further, there needs to be a real pooling of capacity among ASEAN. Indonesia, for all its efforts, does not have the capacity to manage it alone," Helena Varkkey, an associate professor at Universiti Malaya, told DW.
The existing ASEAN mechanisms for joint emergency response should be operationalized, she added, but this should have been arranged before the start of the haze season, as meteorological reports made it clear that a "Super El Nino" was comingearlier this year.
"Southeast Asian governments need to work together to prevent biomass-burning episodes by implementing stringent laws to stop peat and forest fires. They need to use all available technologies together to prepare for dry conditions," Mohd Talib Latif, a professor at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, told DW.
"Haze needs to be considered a disaster for this region," he added.
Edited by: Srinivas Mazumdaru
Climate leaders called for solar energy for 'everyone, everywhere' by 2030, but with three years to go, is that goal attainable?
In a world "set ablaze by war and warming," with ever-worsening climate disasters such as wildfires in Europe and collapsing glaciers in Nepal, solar energy provides a solution in the form of clean, affordable power, prominent climate leaders wrote in an open letter.
Signed by author Bill McKibben, former UN Climate Secretary Christiana Figueres and Canada's former Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna, the letter makes a clear call. It urges governments, businesses, institutions and the public to come together to provide clean, affordable energy to "everyone, everywhere by 2030" — from the close to one billion people who still lack access to reliable electricity, to the billions more who pay too much for dirty fossil fuels.
With just a little over three years to go until the decade is out, how realistic is this push?
"It's an ambitious target, but we've blown away in terms of where we thought we would be on solar and renewables," McKenna told DW. "So let's just keep on going."
Where are we currently with solar?
According to global energy think tank Ember,solar power has grown at its highest rate in eight years. In 2025, it increased by a record 30% over the previous year and has risen more than tenfold since 2015.
Solar is the cheapest form of electricity in the history of the world, said McKenna, who founded the climate advisory firm Climate and Nature Solutions, and the global coalition Women Leading on Climate.
"It is scaling way faster than anyone ever imagined."
As is battery technology used to store excess renewable energy.
"The cost of batteries have as well come down as the cost of solar modules," said Eicke Weber, a physicist and former director of Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems who went on to found the European Solar Manufacturing Council, among other things.
"We have the technologies available and we have enough money to finance it," he said, of a transition to widespread solar access.
In 2025, for the first time in 100 years, renewable energy sources overtook coal power in the global electricity mix, Ember's most recent analysis showed.
Where do we need to get to with solar?
At the moment, installed solar capacity around the world stands at 3 terawatts. 1TW equals 1000 gigawatts, and a single nuclear power plant has a capacity of 1GW.
Currently, the world produces about 1TW of new photovoltaic capacity each year, most of it in China. Weber says in order to fully change global energy supply to renewables, we would need about 50TW, adding that "we have more production capacities than we are selling."
Roughly 655 million people still lack accessto electricity.
"The pace of electrification in Sub-Saharan Africa has to triple to achieve universal access by 2030," McKenna said, pointing out how quickly this gap could be closed with solar.
Areas without electricity have the opportunity to leapfrog straight into clean technologies, she says, bypassing the fossil fuels that are heating the planet. Rising global temperatures are fueling extreme weather events such as drought, storms and flooding around the world.
"And there's a misunderstanding, which is often propagated intentionally by fossil fuel companies, that it's expensive, it's hard, it's unreliable. And that just isn't the case anymore," she said. "To be honest, the most unreliable thing is if you're trying to pass fossil fuels through the Strait of Hormuz."
Is solar for all, everywhere really doable in that short amount of time?
Hans-Josef Fell is used to the argument that certain things cannot be done. Widely known as a pioneer of renewable energy, he drafted Germany's Renewable Energy Sources Act, which established feed-in tariffs that catalyzed clean energy growth at home and beyond.
"The Renewable Energy Sources Act unleashed exponential growth that shattered every assumption about what was achievable. It overturned the scenarios and projections that policymakers and experts had considered realistic. In the end, reality outperformed all expectations," said Fell, who now heads the think tank Energy Watch Group.
Fell, who has lived off grid for five years, said achieving a global energy transition requires political and societal will that is "currently lacking around the world because public debate is dominated by fossil fuel interests."
According to calculations by his think tank, if global energy demand were met entirely by renewables, solar energy would account for roughly 60-70% of the supply. The rest would come from wind power, and other sources, such as bioenergy and hydropower.
Where to go from here?
Countries like China and Pakistan have already pushed ahead.
"It is in our hands right now in the year 2026 to say we drop everything, we concentrate on this problem. We don't need to wait for new research," Weber said.
"It is possible to achieve this, but it would require a very kind of moonshot program," he added, saying it would need serious political backing.
He says while it might be possible for Germany to pull off such as transition in two or three years, if the political will were there, it would likely take longer to achieve on a global scale. "We would need probably till 2040 to say that we have a goal of a worldwide 80%, 90% electricity from renewables."
"I would sum it up this way: If we as a global society tackle this properly, we might actually be able to make it happen," Fell said. "And even if we achieve only 90% of that goal, it would still be a remarkable accomplishment."
McKenna pointed to the need for blended finance, calling on governments, the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the private sector to put in money.
"What is irrational is continuing down the road of fossil fuels," she added. "That's irrational on the costs, the risks, the impacts. It's an old technology."
Edited by: Tamsin Walker
Spain grows fruit and vegetables for Europe, but it's running out of water
Donana National Park in southwestern Spain — one of Europe's most important wetlands, home to millions of migratory birds and threatened species like the Iberian lynx — is running dry. But rising temperatures and drought caused by climate change are only part of the problem.
The UNESCO-protected region on the Atlantic coast relies on an underground aquifer that's been tapped by hundreds of illegal wells. The reason: Europe's fruit and vegetable supply. Spain provides one-quarter of Europe's fresh produce, supplying colder parts of the continent with fruit and vegetables year-round.
The scale of water extraction in Spain is staggering: In 2016, WWF Spain estimated that the Donana wetland was home to over 1,000 illegal wells and more than 1,700 ponds illegally irrigating an area as big as 4,200 football fields.
"It's gotten hotter every year. And the water dries up so quickly," one local resident in the town of El Rocio, just north of the wetlands, told DW.
"For me, day to day, the main issue is my animals," said another, hitching his horse up to a tourist carriage. "I have to draw water for them, but the well doesn't have enough water to provide it all at once."
Strawberries are lucrative — but come with a cost
The Donana area used to be royal hunting grounds, consisting of marshes and ponds. In the early 20th century, parts began to be used for dryland farming, agriculture in arid regions that relies heavily on rainwater.
But in 1971, Spain — still under the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco — declared the region's irrigation to be of national interest. The Almonte-Marismas Plan, named after the aquifer it tapped into, was part of a massive, state-sponsored effort to increase food production.
Authorities decided to bet on strawberries, which they called "red gold." According to calculations based on FAO data, strawberries can yield up to €150,000 (about $170,000) in gross revenue per hectare per year, compared to roughly €20,000 for potatoes or €15,000 for grapes.
But growing strawberries at scale also meant using a lot more water. Authorities handed out generous quotas and allotments, seemingly without considering how much extraction the aquifer could handle. Even those legal quotas weren't enough for the ever-expanding fields.
Farmers turned to illegal wells and reservoirs to make up the difference. They built them to stockpile water, draining supplies from local residents and the UNESCO World Heritage Site next door.
"There was extreme drought and lack of attention from the administration," said Pedro Banez, of the Condado Water Users' Association. "And we found ourselves with a number of farms — or parts of farms — that fell outside the land classified as irrigable agricultural land."
Police, NGOs track down water thieves
The turning point came in 2019 when, following numerous reports of unlawful wells, a 2-year-old fell into deep, reportedly illegal borehole on farmland near Malaga and died. In the aftermath, Spain's Civil Guard police force created dedicated units focused on water theft.
Two years after that, in 2021, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that Spain had failed to protect the Donana aquifer, finding the country in violation of EU law.
Today, police and NGOs like WWF Spain track illegal extraction — near Donana, and other overtaxed agricultural regions across the country — using a mix of old and new tools. They start with satellite images of the region, comparing them against land rights maps to flag areas that appear greener than their legal status allows. Drones follow, giving investigators a closer look at where the water is actually coming from.
Some wells are completely illegal. Others are legal but extract more than they're allowed, which requires closer, on-site inspection to prove.
Investigators check the flow meters that measure how much water a well is pulling. Tampering is common, often using a powerful magnet which disrupts the internal mechanism of the flow meter, allowing water to pass through unrecorded.
Farmers caught extracting illegally can be charged with crimes against the environment and fraud. Most face fines, but sentences can run up to five years in prison.
Spain's government, farmers tackle water misuse
In a bid to undo decades of overuse, local and national authorities have negotiated a €1.4 billion joint plan. The government has continued shutting down illegal wells, sealing almost 300 in the Donana region alone.
Officials have also started buying up farmland, rewilding it and turning it into protected areas, while setting up funds to create jobs in other sectors like tourism and renewable energy.
Farmers, meanwhile, have had to change how they water their crops.
Many have switched to drip irrigation systems, where each plant gets its own individual dripper, paired with moisture sensors that report exactly how much water a plant needs. That cuts down on the overuse of both water and fertilizer.
Farmers have also begun planting less water-intensive crops and shifting their growing season to colder months.
Sustainable solutions to secure water
Spain isn't alone in confronting this problem. As economies mature, fruit and vegetable production starts being outsourced to places with cheaper labor, fewer restrictions and more sun.
Mexico, Brazil and Colombia grow food for parts of the US, while countries in southeast Asia export a lot of produce to China or Japan. Some countries in northern Africa, including Morocco and Egypt, also supply fresh fruits and vegetables to their European neighbors to the north. But, as in Spain, intensive agriculture has strained local water supplies.
Morocco has tried to turn the tide by using satellite comparisons to monitor irrigation and offering subsidies for farmers who switch to drip irrigation. In India, the government is trying to move farmers toward less water-intensive crops.
And in California, the US state has paid farmers to halt certain types of irrigation and introduced legislation to monitor and allocate water more sustainably.
Securing water, no longer seen as an unlimited resource, will increasingly be a challenge as the effects of climate change intensify. Addressing overextraction will take a coordinated effort from governments, farmers and the industries that depend on their water.
Additional research by Nicole Ris.
Edited by: Martin Kuebler, Sarah Steffen
Portugal police storm housing protest camps in Lisbon, Porto
Police on Sunday cleared out protest camps in Portugal's capital, Lisbon, and Porto after thousands of housing protesters marched against a rental bill.
Around 4:30 a.m. local time (0430 GMT), dozens of officers moved in to dismantle camps in Lisbon's Rossio Square and Porto's Dom Joao I Square, where participants had set up tents following peaceful marches against soaring housing costs on Saturday.
Police used shields and batons to disperse protesters, and said some of the demonstrators threw bottles and paint at officers as they stormed the camps.
Police arrest 13 in Lisbon, Porto
Six people were arrested in Lisbon and seven in Porto for refusing orders to disperse, according to a police statement. It said 13 police were injured as they tried to take down the camps, with eight taken to hospital.
The statement also said an unspecified number of civilians were also injured.
Meanwhile, one of the lawyers representing those detained in Porto said the police response was disproportionate, arguing that both the size of the operation and the actions were excessive.
Activist group Acampada Lisboa said more than 30 protesters were injured, including 10 who required hospital treatment.
It called a fresh rally against the police operation in the capital on Sunday afternoon. "We will not be silenced," the group said in a statement posted on social media.
Portugal's housing crisis
Hours before the eviction, more than 1,000 people marched through central Lisbon to protest against Portugal's deepening housing crisis.
Demonstrators are calling for the country's minority center-right government to scrap plans that would make evictions easier and end rent caps on new leases.
Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro has ruled out withdrawing the bill, though he has acknowledged that modifications could be made before the final vote.
Portugal is facing one of Europe's most severe housing crises, with house prices more than doubling since 2017.
Bolivia declares emergency as El Nino intensifies, threatens severe weather
Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz has declared a national state of emergency to mobilize resources and strengthen disaster response as the country braces for severe droughts and flooding linked to the El Nino weather phenomenon.
"This will be a phenomenon that will have very severe impacts in terms of drought and floods, and we need the cooperation of all institutions," Paz said.
Bolivia braces for extreme weather
The president's decree allows the deployment of additional rescue teams and calls for coordination between national and regional authorities, the armed forces and police.
According to a Bolivian government report, drought has:
- affected at least 78,000 families across seven of Bolivia's nine departments
- led to the loss of more than 75,000 cattle
Authorities have also warned of potential floods, flash floods, and landslides as the rainy season begins.
What is El Nino?
El Nino is a periodic warming of sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific that disrupts global weather patterns, often bringing drought to some regions and heavy rainfall to others.
The current El Nino developed in June and has strengthened rapidly since. It is now on course to become an exceptionally strong — sometimes called "super" — El Nino.
Researchers have estimated that the unusually high temperatures linked to the current El Nino could cause around 451,000 excess deaths worldwide from June 2026 to February 2027.
The United Nations has described the current El Nino, which is expected to peak in December, as "heading off the charts." Its impact could last years, with the UN urging nations in the Pacific to prepare for the worst.
Just in the past month, changing weather patterns associated with El Nino have been linked to:
- forest and land wildfires in Indonesia
- Supercharged Typhoon Champi in Taiwan
- Hurricane Isaias in the US Gulf Coast
- water and power shortages in India after weak monsoon
Taiwan: Typhoon Champi leaves 1 dead, over 500 injured
Typhoon Champi killed at least one person and left more than 500 people with injuries as it passed through Taiwan on Saturday.
Taiwan's fire department said the death toll remained at 1, after a man was swept away by waves from the island of Liuqiu. At least 527 others were injured during the heavy wind and torrential rain.
Several parts in Taiwan received heavy rain and strong winds that prompted authorities to cut off power, leaving thousands of people without power supply.
Some 280,000 households were knocked out of power, according to United Daily News, a local Taiwanese newspaper. By Saturday morning, the power supply was restored to 80% of the households.
Champi also led to 259 flights cancellations, an improvement from Friday, when the number was almost 1,000, the Transport Ministry said.
Several trees were downed amid strong gusts In the capital Taipei.
Authorities in several districts of northern and central Taiwan, including Taipei, declared a second day of office and school closures on Saturday.
Champi headed to China
The typhoon continued to weaken as it moved north towards the Chinese coast though it was not expected to make landfall there.
Chinese authorities have sent a team to the eastern province of Zhejiang as Champi approached, warning of strong winds and heavy rain through Sunday.
It said it had readied 400 rescue workers and 600 pieces of equipment, while more than 41,000 firefighters were on emergency duty.
Typhoon Champi started out as a super typhoon and one of the strongest storms in the Pacific this year. While it is weakening, Champi is still packing gusts of around 78 km/h (126 mph) near its center, according to Taiwan's Central Weather Administration (CWA).
Edited by: Zac Crellin
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Taiwan braces as El Nino-supercharged Typhoon Champi approaches island
Taiwan is bracing for potential impact as Typhoon Champi bears down on the island after weakening slightly, with nearly all businesses, shops and schools closed.
Over 1,300 people have been forced to evacuate to higher ground, and hundreds of flights have been cancelled across the region according to the Ministry of Transportation.
At least one person has already been killed after being swept out to sea and dozens more have been injured.
What do we know about Typhoon Champi?
On Friday, locals were still busy installing sandbags and metal barriers in front of doors and windows to defend against flooding, while authorities positioned inflatable boats and amphibious vehicles around the island to aid in rescue efforts.
In the capital Taipei, public transport was still operating, but at reduced capacity.
Taiwan's Central Weather Administration (CWA) says Champi is currently about 220 kilometers (137 miles) east of the island's southern shore.
The storm is projected to move past Taiwan's northeastern shore before turning north to China and eventually moving east into southern Japan. But forecasters say that any deviation from its current course could mean a direct hit for Taiwan.
Why are there so many big storms in the Pacific this year?
The storm is expected to bring torrential rain, massive waves and sustained high winds to Taiwan throughout Friday and Saturday. Military personnel are on standby to assist with rescue efforts throughout.
"As it approaches Taiwan's northeastern tip, the typhoon may slow down. If it slows down, its impact will last longer," CWA Administrator Lu Kuo-chen told reporters, adding, "People should be aware that the strong winds and extremely heavy rain will continue into the first half of tomorrow."
Forecasters say the storm's radius is currently about 320 kilometers, wide enough to blanket most of the island.
Fueled by this year's exceptionally strong El Nino season — a cyclical weather phenomenon that sees water temperatures in the tropical Pacific rise, in turn turbocharging storms, or inversely droughts — Champi attained "super typhoon" status as it built strength during its approach, with winds clocking 298 kmh (185 mph).
Though it has weakened, the CWA says Champi is still packing wind gusts of about 190 kmh as it approaches from the southwest.
This year's El Nino phase, which the United Nations on Wednesday described as "heading off the charts," is expected to peak in December. It's impact however, could last years, with the UN urging nations in the Pacific to prepare for the worst.
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Germany's search for a nuclear waste site
Hardly any environmental and political challenge is as complex as the disposal of radioactive waste from nuclear power plants. In almost all of the world's nuclear-powered nations — some 31 countries currently operate or once operated nuclear power plants — the issue remains largely unresolved, despite the fact that the first large-scale nuclear power plant went online in the Soviet Union in 1954.
Finland recently became the first country in the world to approve a repository for radioactive nuclear waste. Located 400 meters underground on an island in western Finland, it is situated at the site of one of the country's two nuclear power plants. The project took around 40 years to complete.
Germany's search underway for ten years
Yet in every other country, including Germany, the problem remains unresolved. To make an everyday analogy: The garbage has already been placed outside for collection, but the garbage truck has not yet arrived. There is simply no landfill to take it to. It is not a pleasant sight, yet hardly anyone wants to live near such a site.
Germany has made some progress: The specially established Federal Company for Radioactive Waste Disposal (BGE) has now been searching for a suitable site for almost ten years, one that, like the Finnish repository, would be located deep underground.
Most experts have long agreed on one point: Nuclear waste, especially the spent fuel elements from nuclear power plants, which will remain radioactive for many thousands of years, must be stored underground.
Only 5% of Germany's territory remains under consideration
Germany hopes to identify a site for a final repository by 2050. But that is still a long way off, which is why Environment Minister Carsten Schneider of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) wants to examine whether the search process can be accelerated.
And, the government says, at least there is a roadmap in place. "Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan have not yet advanced their procedures as far as we have," ministry spokesperson, Stephan Gabriel Haufe, said at a regular government press conference this week. "Finland is certainly the country making the fastest progress worldwide. But Germany is among the leading countries."
This week, the BGE announced that only 5% of Germany's land area, spread across 11 of the country's 16 states, remains under consideration as a potential site for a final repository. The agency is consulting geologists, nuclear experts, and physicists, as well as citizens and politicians. What is already clear, is that the nuclear waste generated during decades of nuclear power production will remain in Germany.
Germany has phased out nuclear power
Most of the waste is currently stored at or near the sites where it was generated. These include the 19 former nuclear power plants currently being decommissioned, as well as several research facilities.
In 2011, following the reactor disaster in Fukushima, Japan, Germany decided to phase out the commercial use of nuclear energy, and the last nuclear power plant was shut down in 2023. The waste, however, remains in interim storage.
"It must be shown that a repository will remain safe over a very long period of time," said BGE spokesperson Dagmar Dehmer. "In Finland, that means 100,000 years; in Germany, Switzerland, and France, one million years. But no matter how far into the future scientists project, the effort involved is enormous. It requires a detailed analysis of developments over time, the interactions between geology and technology, and the decay of radionuclides, as well as an assessment of how these factors affect safety."
400 meters underground, protected by a rock barrier
The procedure is indeed complex: First, potential sites are evaluated for their geological suitability. Will the rock formation remain stable at a depth of 400 meters? Could groundwater become contaminated? The goal is to identify a location where the repository would be surrounded by a rock layer around 100 meters thick, providing a natural barrier. Suitable geological formations include layers of clay, granite, and rock salt.
As the requirements become progressively stricter, fewer and fewer potential sites remain under consideration. Other factors, such as proximity to major cities, come into play only much later in the process. Few communities are likely to welcome a repository for radioactive waste, whether in an urban area or in the countryside.
Dehmer: 'Finland has great trust in government action'
Building and maintaining trust is also part of Dehmer's job. She often has to explain why it is important to deal with the legacy of the nuclear age, regardless of where people stand on nuclear energy.
Finland has succeeded in doing so, Dehmer believes. "There is a high level of trust in government action in Finland," she said. "The country's supervisory and licensing authority, STUK, is one of its most respected institutions. Germany can learn from Finland by remaining consistent, avoiding frequent changes in direction, and demonstrating the patience needed to achieve a successful outcome."
The disposal of nuclear waste is extremely expensive. Even today, the search for a final repository and the storage of nuclear waste at former reactor sites cost around €1.4 billion ($1.6 billion) per year.
Experts estimate that the final repository itself will cost roughly €14 billion ($16.4 billion) once completed. If all goes according to plan, 28,000 cubic meters of radioactive waste will eventually be stored deep underground on a permanent basis.
This article was originally published in German.