🗞️ In Climate News

• 🇺🇸 Three Greenpeace entities collectively must pay Energy Transfer, which was co-founded by a prominent Trump donor, more than $660m.

  • A pipeline company’s victory in court over Greenpeace, and the huge damages it now faces, will encourage other oil and gas companies to legally pursue environmental protesters at a time when Donald Trump’s energy agenda is in ascendancy, experts have warned.

• ❄️ Glacier meltdown risks food and water supply of 2 billion people, says UN

  • Two-thirds of all irrigated agriculture in the world is likely to be affected in some way by receding glaciers and dwindling snowfall in mountain regions, driven by the climate crisis, according to a Unesco report.

• 🐺 Court orders Trump administration to address pesticide risks to endangered species

  • This isn’t the first time pesticide safety has come before the Trump administration. In 2017, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) conducted an analysis revealing that two pesticides — malathion and chlorpyrifos — were so toxic they posed an existential threat to more than 1,200 endangered animal and plant species, according to an investigation by The New York Times.

• 🇮🇩 ‘Sustainable’ palm oil firms continue illegal peatland clearing despite permit revocation

  • Palm oil companies in Indonesia continue to operate on protected peatlands and clear forests, despite having their forestry permits revoked and being certified as sustainable, a new report alleges.

  • Local environmental NGOs Pantau Gambut and Kaoem Telapak investigated three companies operating in Central Kalimantan province on the island of Borneo: PT Agrindo Green Lestari (AGL), PT Citra Agro Abadi (CAA) and PT Bangun Cipta Mitra Perkasa (PT BCMP). Their findings implicate all three in illegal peatland conversion, deforestation and recurring fires.

• 🇪🇸 Heavy rains in southern Spain trigger flooding and evacuations

  • Unrelenting rains in southern Spain have triggered flash floods and evacuation orders in the Andalusian provinces of Málaga and Córdoba, where 19 waterways are at red level for risk of flooding. One body has been found and at least three more people are reported missing.

• 🇲🇿 Widespread damage in Mozambique following passage of Cyclone Jude

  • ECHO estimates more than 10,500 people were displaced in Madagascar and almost 5,000 in Malawi. In all, at least 400,000 people were affected across the three hit African countries.

    Cyclone Jude first made landfall in northern Madagascar on March 8, displacing thousands who had to stay in temporary shelters, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported.

• 🇧🇷 Brazil declares environmental emergency ahead of 2025 fire season

  • The measure, decreed by environment minister Marina Silva on Feb. 27, gives authorities extra powers and resources to nip wildfires in the bud before they spread uncontrollably.

  • Brazil’s federal government will hire an additional 250 federal firefighters and give six of the eight Amazonian states 45 million reais ($8 million) to bolster state-level fire brigades.

• 🇪🇨 Ecuador declares environmental emergency after oil pipeline rupture

  • A landslide triggered by intense rainfall ruptured Ecuador’s Trans-Ecuadorian Oil Pipeline System (SOTE) on 13 March, causing a major oil spill that has polluted around 80km of river across the province of Esmeraldas. 

  • The company suspended pumping operations and dispatched technical teams to assess the damage and deploy containment barriers. 

• 🇧🇷 ‘Unprecedented’ Supreme Court bill threatens Indigenous rights in Brazil

  • Land invasions, increasing violence and congressional bills against territorial rights enshrined by the 1988 Federal Constitution. But now the latest threat has come from the Supreme Court through a draft bill to open up Indigenous territories to mining and other economic activities, an “unprecedented” move in Brazil’s history by an institution that’s entitled to protect the rights of minorities — and the Constitution, Indigenous rights’ advocates said.

📈 Cool Trends

• 🎨 Cleaning polluted beaches and providing careers to Artisans in high-impact communities

• 🎽 Creating biodegradable and carbon neutral textiles, engineered from food waste

♾️ eco-story

The restoration of Indigenous women’s traditional roles through rematriation represents a powerful force in environmental leadership and climate action. This movement recognizes and reinstates women’s sacred responsibilities as water protectors and land guardians, roles deeply embedded in many Indigenous cultures’ traditional governance systems.

Indigenous women’s leadership emerges from matriarchal traditions where women held significant decision-making power in environmental stewardship. These traditional governance models recognized women’s unique relationship with water as life-givers and their profound understanding of environmental cycles and relationships. Today, this traditional authority finds new expression in climate action and environmental protection.

The rematriation of environmental leadership manifests through the restoration of women’s traditional decision-making roles and sacred responsibilities to water and land. This process involves revitalizing matriarchal governance systems that have historically guided sustainable resource management. Women’s ecological knowledge, passed down through generations, provides crucial insights for addressing current environmental challenges. The integration of traditional female leadership models emphasizes the importance of intergenerational knowledge transfer and cultural continuity while celebrating women’s environmental wisdom.

🌏 The Culture Column

📺 What we’re watching: The Last Ice

📸 Profile of the week: @akahansen
📖 What we’re reading: A World Without Ice, by Henry N. Pollack
🤯 Shocking fact we learnt this week: Trees can suffer from loneliness