At a young age, I learned quickly how oil wealth and power could burn the land while people struggled. I saw heat rise off the streets, the Nile strained, and the air thickened with injustice. In my teenage years, through Aotearoa, being on the edge of the Pacific, I felt the ocean breathing heavy, swallowing the shores of islands that have done the least to cause this harm.
Eight full-time M.S. in Climate students were honored with the inaugural Dean's Graduate Scholarship, a prestigious award reserved for recognizing academic and professional excellence in the field. The $50,000 scholarship aims to financially support students as they continue their academic journey at the Climate School.
In the environmental nonprofit sector, "centering frontline voices" has become a familiar slogan, often detached from how decisions are made or resources allocated. It appears in grant proposals, conference agendas, and organizational values statements. And yet, too often, those voices are still positioned as illustrative rather than authoritative-invited to animate strategies already decided, asked to translate lived experience into language legible to funders, or flattened into narratives that travel more easily than the truths they carry.
It was a tense moment. A group of about 50 people from the Munduruku, an Indigenous people in the Amazon basin, had blocked the entrance to the Cop30 venue in protest, causing long lines of delegates to snake down access roads, simmering in the morning heat. The Munduruku, unhappy about the ruination of their forest and rivers by industry and their lack of voice at Cop30, demanded to speak to Lula da Silva, Brazil's president.
Papua New Guinea has voiced frustration after Australia ditched a bid to co-host next year's UN climate talks with its Pacific island neighbours. We are all not happy. And disappointed it's ended up like this, foreign minister Justin Tkatchenko told Agence France-Presse after Australia ceded hosting rights to Turkey. Australia had been pushing to host Cop31 next year alongside south Pacific nations which are increasingly threatened by rising seas and climate-fuelled disasters.
Three years ago, when Nigerian activist OduduAbasi Asuquo received her invitation to the UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belem, Brazil, she began preparing for an experience she knew would differ from previous summits. The reason, she says, was the People's Summit, which was scheduled to take place in parallel to COP30. Over the weekend, thousands of people gathered a short distance from the main COP30 meeting at the Federal University of Para for the People's Summit.
Neither does it negate the reality that the Global South including the almost 700 million-strong Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), virtually all of which are tropical countries is on the front line of the climate crisis. Typhoons Tino and Uwan, which recently struck our region, especially the Philippines, are the latest proof of this and a reminder of the urgent need for climate justice.
Hundreds of environmental and human rights groups and activists have penned a letter urging the upcoming UN climate conference, COP30, in Brazil to place justice and reparations for people unfairly affected by the climate crisis, colonialism and slavery at the centre of talks. The signatories, which include Brazil's Instituto Luiz Gama and the Caribbean Pan African Network (CPAN), urged organisers on Friday
A large crowd of close to 2,000 people marched through downtown Toronto Saturday afternoon as part of Canada-wide protests calling on the new Liberal government to prioritize the climate, Indigenous rights, migrants and workers ahead of the fall budget. Protesters' concerns included Prime Minister Mark Carney's support for new fossil fuel projects, potential public service cuts as well as other issues like Indigenous rights, anti-war activism and more.
The Lebanese-American designer, writer and advocate's entire oeuvre - from her research to her art - is rooted in the belief that everything is political. Having been displaced from Lebanon to Canada as a child, a survivor of war and a refugee, this is something she experienced first hand at a young age. An enormous truism whittled down to three words, 'Everything is Political'; at once a tagline - and the title of Semaan's digital and print publication ( EIP ).
