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Earlier this month, as Chilean President Gabriel Boric announced the arrival of 28 new data centers in the country, Rodrigo Vallejos watched the livestream with skepticism.
Even as Boric assured that investment in these buildings would be “environmentally responsible,” Vallejos had his doubts. After all, he has spent the past two years monitoring data centers in Chile — including those operated by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft — and found them to have a significant impact on water supply in the country. Since 2022, Vallejos has been one of the leading activists filing citizen observations regarding Microsoft’s new data center in Santiago’s metropolitan area.
Vallejos told Rest of World that he and other activists are pushing for environmental compensation, and transparency around the water and energy consumption of each data center, among other requests.
Chile’s government has turned the capital city of Santiago and its metropolitan area into one of the biggest data center hubs in Latin America by bringing in new investment through free trade agreements. According to Boric’s public statement, there are 22 data centers in the country, 16 of which have been approved for construction in Santiago’s metropolitan area since 2012. Worried about the spread of these water-guzzling buildings amid an ongoing drought, locals like Vallejos have been pushing back. Rest of World spoke with local residents, environmental experts, and members of three activist groups who have squared off against U.S. tech giants in an attempt to stop new centers from being built and demand more environmental accountability from the companies behind them.
“It’s turned into extractivism,” said Tania Rodríguez, a member of the Socio Environmental Community Movement for Land and Water (Mosacat), an activist organization. “We end up being everybody’s backyard.”
The latest front of local resistance is Amazon’s proposed data center in Huechuraba, a district in Santiago’s metropolitan area. In 2023, after the company filed environmental documentation for its second data center in Chile, a group of people filed almost 50 observations with the country’s Environmental Impact Evaluation System (SEIA) — run by the Environmental Evaluation Service (SEA), a public organization that reviews environmental impact in order to approve projects. Amazon’s legal representative asked the SEA to extend its April deadline to address these observations, and submitted its response this week. 
According to the SEA website, environmental impact declarations — during which citizen observations can be filed — are reviewed by environmental state bodies.
On average, a small data center building that uses a regular water-based cooling system and consumes 1 megawatt requires about 25 million liters of water every year to keep its computers from overheating. Some of the world’s largest data centers require more than 100MW to operate. Chile has registered a national drought, with historically low levels of rain, since 2010.
The companies “use water, dry up the territory, but don’t give anything back to the population,” Vicente Bardales, a member of the Quilicura Socio Environmental Resistance group, told Rest of World. Quilicura, on the northwestern edge of Santiago’s metropolitan region, is home to Google’s data center. A Microsoft data center is expected to be constructed in the next two years.
Google opened its first Latin American center in Chile in 2015. The country “has the ideal combination of trustworthy infrastructure, well-trained personnel and the commitment to a transparent and favorable regulation for businesses,” Google explained on its website. The company was also drawn to Quilicura as it provided “good access to road networks, as well as water and electricity,” Investments and Services Dataluna Limited, Google’s support entity providing IT-facility management in Chile, said in its declaration of the project’s environmental impact to the SEIA in December 2014.
According to official documents seen by Rest of World, by 2018, this data center was authorized to extract 50 liters of water per second from underground wells — more than 1 billion liters per year.
In 2019, Google announced its plan to build a second data center across town. Rodríguez said she and Mosacat activists went through all of the company’s documentation, and realized the new center was going to use about twice the volume of water as Quilicura. In 2020, according to official documents from the SEIA, Google’s second data center was authorized to extract 228 liters of water per second — more than 7 billion liters annually.
Mosacat activists staged a series of demonstrations between 2019 and 2023. In response, Santiago’s environmental tribunal looked into the project. Earlier this year, the tribunal suspended the project until Google reassessed its environmental impact.
Google’s case was paradigmatic, according to Marina Otero Verzier, an architect and visiting professor at Columbia University, whose research focuses on data centers worldwide. The ruling sent “a clear message,” she told Rest of World. “Data centers have an ecological impact in the context of a climatic crisis.”
Activists meanwhile rekindled their efforts against other data centers that had already received environmental approval or were in the process of getting it.
In 2020, Microsoft announced its plan to build a $317-million data center. Vallejos and other activists filed several requests asking the company how the building would affect one of the region’s largest water reserves; 118 reports about citizen concerns related to the project were added to Microsoft’s SEIA file.
Microsoft was misleading, said Vallejos. When the company made more information about the project public, it claimed it would have a cooling system that would eliminate the need to use water for more than half a year. In documents submitted to the SEIA and seen by Rest of World, however, Microsoft specified that its cooling system would rely partially on water.
Microsoft’s environmental approval was granted in early 2023, and the center is currently under construction. It is estimated to become fully operational in 2026, according to SEIA documents.
Microsoft and Google did not respond to a request for comment from Rest of World. 
An Amazon Web Services spokesperson told Rest of World the company has complied with all the requirements of the Declaration of Environmental Impact (DIA), a self-assessed declaration about the project’s environmental impact, for its Padre Hurtado and Huechuraba data centers. The spokesperson also stated that the company is committed to giving back more water than the amount it uses in its direct operations globally by 2030 to the communities in which it operates.
According to a public statement by Valentina Durán, executive director of the SEA, there’s an approval rate of 94% for environmental evaluations.
One of those is Amazon’s first center in the country, which received environmental clearance earlier this year and is set to open in 2025.
Pushback against data centers has been fragmented by neighborhood, but some activists plan on presenting a united front in the face of Boric’s announcement. Their fight has one main objective: stricter legislation.
Locals say the companies behind data centers should be required to submit a more robust environmental impact study — known as EIA — that includes a description of the actions they will take to impede or minimize the significantly adverse effects.
Some companies have attempted to make environmental reparations in Chile. After it built its first data center, Google announced it would invest in planting a forest to offset its air pollution — though not its high water consumption. The Google Urban Forest was inaugurated in 2019 in Quilicura, about 16.5 kilometers (10 miles) from Santiago’s city center.
The project is run by the municipal authorities, Google, and Cultiva, an environmental and reforestation organization. Claudio Saavedra de la Barra, the coordinator for Cultiva’s reforestation program, told Rest of World about 1,600 local species have been planted in the 2.6-hectare park — mostly waist-high, dry trees and shrubs — which is closed to visitors. Calling it an interesting pilot project, he said that a larger forest was probably needed to offset the amount of pollution emitted by Google’s data center.
The forest created a new wooded area in a region that was previously deserted and full of trash, Saavedra de la Barra said.
According to Otero Verzier, these types of projects could eventually be a way to hold companies accountable for the damage they wreck on the environment. “But this forest is dry … It’s not the most adequate way to do so,” she said.

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The U.S. National Science Foundation has announced a $35 million award to the University of Chicago to operate the brand new Synchrotron for Earth and Environmental Science (SEES) facility that will develop, manage, operate and support user access to synchrotron-based experimental and analytical capabilities. Synchrotrons accelerate beams of particles at very high speeds in order to study the structural and chemical properties of molecules.  
Synchrotrons in the U.S. are operated by the U.S. Department of Energy. Every year, they give hundreds of geoscientists the capabilities to complete their research. This new facility will act as a central organization to help provide access to a suite of analytical instrument capabilities at synchrotron beam sources across the country. SEES will provide on-site technical support, develop new instrumentation and techniques, foster research training and outreach to promote scientific progress, and advance understanding of Earth’s materials and processes. 
SEES is vital for the U.S. to advance Earth and environmental sciences. This facility will enable scientists to investigate key information on how critical minerals form and which ones make up planet Earth. Research will address topics that have direct societal benefits such as natural hazard mediation, environmental stewardship, future technological advancements and human health.  
“The new SEES award will provide Earth and environmental scientists with a ‘seat at the table’ to access over 30 synchrotron beamlines at DOE laboratories, including 19 new beamlines that were not previously supported by NSF,” said Maggie Benoit, program director in NSF’s Division of Earth Sciences. “SEES will provide state-of-the-art optics, sensors and data analysis capabilities to support transformational Earth and environmental research.” 
SEES represents not only a partnership with the University of Chicago but also a partnership between NSF and DOE. SEES will enable access to DOE-funded beamlines at Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource. The expansion of the number of beamlines under this award will provide significant new benefits for the field of environmental science. SEES will be working collaboratively with programs at these synchrotron light sources to conduct a significant portfolio of education and outreach activities. 
For more information about SEES, visit the University of Chicago’s Geoscience Synchrotron Users Group webpage. 
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The authors’ research found that by providing consumers with information on the environmental and social impact of home deliveries, omnichannel retailers could capture $100 billion worth of market share from Amazon. It would also allow them to increase margins and make their own businesses more sustainable.
The allure of online shopping is undeniable. As Amazon has shown, consumers can receive delivery of almost any product with the simple click of a mouse or touch of a screen. No wonder e-commerce sales have more than doubled over the past five years and continue to grow.

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There are roughly 7,000 languages spoken around the world. Indigenous groups speak more than 4,000 of them, despite making up less than 6 percent of the global population. 
These languages often hold secrets to the inner workings of the planet, from the best times to plant certain crops to the healing properties of critical medicinal plants. However, a growing body of research shows that climate change is driving the loss of native languages worldwide—in big ways and small. 
Extreme weather events such as hurricanes and drought are pushing Indigenous peoples and local communities away from their historical lands and languages, while changes in the timing of seasons or the distribution of different species are rendering many native words obsolete. 
Language is Power: Each language spoken around the world carries bits of history within it. Indigenous languages in particular hold many insights into the environment.  
For example, on a research expedition in 2022, Indigenous communities from Papua New Guinea helped scientists from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology find the elusive black-naped pheasant pigeon, which was thought by Western science to be extinct for 140 years. The bird is known as “Auwo” to the local people of this region. 
“I think what our finding really tells us,” Jordan Boersma, a Cornell ornithologist on the expedition, told Atmos. “is that local people are [typically] going to know the birds in these areas better than we do.”
Similar clues about wildlife and plants can be found within the 274 Indigenous languages spoken in Brazil, which has the highest concentration of biodiversity of any country in the world. Languages common in island nations such as Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands offer unique insight into the ocean and where fish have historically been abundant. 
This type of ecological expertise is part of the reason why Indigenous lands and seas are overall better conserved than their western counterparts, which my colleague Katie Surma wrote about in February. 
The Climate Connection: As climate change rapidly alters ecosystems, centuries-old vocabularies are increasingly disappearing from dialects, experts say. Extreme weather and rising seas are driving mass migrations around the world, similar to the forced migration and colonialism that has long threatened Indigenous cultures in the past and continues today. 
“If the story of climate and language has long been one of harmony, the climate crisis is the plot twist,” Anastasia Riehl, a linguist from Queen’s University in the United Kingdom, wrote for the Guardian in a piece about how sea-level rise is killing languages. “In a tragic reversal, it is precisely those areas of the Earth that were the most hospitable to people and languages, to species of all kinds, that are now becoming the least hospitable.” 
The connection between climate change and language loss is perhaps the easiest to understand for Sámi people who speak North Sámi, an Arctic language that has more than 300 words for snow, in a region that is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the world. Changing ice conditions have affected how the Sami people talk about snow and its impact on reindeer herding or salmon fishing, practices that are crucial to their culture and lives, reports the BBC. However, at least one new word has been added to their language. 
“Climate change is a new word in North Sámi: it’s dálkkádatrievdan. It has become commonly used nowadays,” Klemetti Näkkäläjärvi, president of Sámi Climate Council and researcher at the University of Helsinki and the University of Oulu, told the BBC. “Sámi people speak about climate change quite a lot, especially reindeer herders.”
A recent report found that more than 90 percent of languages could disappear over the next century. Climate change is not the only issue contributing to this decline; research shows that colonialism has played a large role in regionally dominant languages overshadowing native tongues in school systems. As a result of these compounding factors, the United Nations declared 2022-2032 the “Decade of Indigenous Languages” to draw attention to the issue and urge countries to revive local dialects. 
Indigenous Language to Combat Climate Change: Some Indigenous groups are scrambling to record as much oral history as they can before it is lost. Working with linguists and researchers, the Gwich’in people of northeastern Alaska are currently compiling a glossary of Indigenous environmental terms to help future generations understand how climate change has affected ecosystems. 
“The terms our ancestors used are sometimes no longer applicable to what we’re seeing, and that is – wow,” researcher Annauk Olin, who is from Shishmaref, an Inupiat community just north of the Bering Strait on the Chukchi Sea coast, told the Alaska Beacon. “How are young people going to understand the environment of yesterday and tomorrow and today?” 
Meanwhile, Tuvalu—which could be submerged within a century, scientists say—is working on creating a digital replica of itself in the metaverse to avoid history being lost forever under rising seas. Some communities have started working with Western scientists to catalog their knowledge and language, and integrate it into climate approaches. 
Research shows that these types of partnerships between Indigenous peoples and Western scientists have effective conservation outcomes. However, Indigenous knowledge has often been exploited for profit without credit or payment, so many groups are wary of sharing their insights—and equity will be crucial to long-term success, experts say. 
“Indigenous languages contain inventories of species, classification systems, etiological narratives and, above all, ways of managing diversity, a fundamental technology for the preservation and biorestoration of the environment,” wrote Altaci Corrêa Rubim/Tataiya Kokama, a researcher at the department of linguistics, Portuguese and classical languages of the Institute of Letters of the University of Brasília, in a piece for the G20 website. “Language loss implies the loss of knowledge that is crucial to dealing with the climate and environmental crisis of our time.” 
On Thursday, Vermont became the first state to require oil companies to pay for the role they’ve played in climate change-fueled disasters and the damages they caused. The state’s Republican Gov. Phil Scott allowed the bill to become law without his signature.
This “Climate Superfund Act” will assess emissions released by fossil fuel companies from 1995 through the end of 2024, and determine how much these businesses owe. Journalist Olivia Gieger wrote about this novel bill for Inside Climate News in April if you want to dive in deeper. 
Meanwhile, temperatures in Pakistan reached as high as 127 degrees Fahrenheit in parts last Sunday—around 30 degrees shy of the heat required to fry an egg. Despite this sweltering heat, many poor individuals are continuing to work in the rice fields so they can afford food and water for their families, reports The New York Times. 
“If we take a day or half-day break, there’s no daily wage, which means my children go hungry that night,” Sahiba, a 25-year-old farmworker in Pakistan, told the Times. 
In Germany, a climate activist is now on the 88th day of a hunger strike, in an effort to demand that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz formally recognize a climate disaster. Doctors say the protester Wolfgang Metzeler-Kick’s life is in “acute danger” and the drop in his blood sugar could result in epileptic seizures or a coma, according to a statement from Scientist Rebellion. My colleague Keerti Gopal interviewed Metzeler-Kick and his doctors to learn more about the activist’s current state and the motivations behind his protect if you want to learn more. 
Kiley Price is a reporter at Inside Climate News, with a particular interest in wildlife, ocean health, food systems and climate change. She writes ICN’s “Today’s Climate” newsletter, which covers the most pressing environmental news each week.
She earned her master’s degree in science journalism at New York University, and her bachelor’s degree in biology at Wake Forest University. Her work has appeared in National Geographic, Time, Scientific American and more. She is a former Pulitzer Reporting Fellow, during which she spent a month in Thailand covering the intersection between Buddhism and the country’s environmental movement.
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Ukraine began tracking war-related environmental damages when the invasion began in 2022. Since then 5,000 incidents have already been identified, which it considers to be environmental crimes.
Ukraine’s environment has been the “silent victim” of the Russian invasion, according to the country’s environment minister Ruslan Strilets, but thanks to app-wielding Ukrainian citizens, he can now put a price on the damage – more than €56 billion so far.
Ukraine’s minister for environmental protection and natural resources spoke with Euractiv, during his visit to Brussels on Wednesday 29 May. Strilets made clear that he had one priority in mind – making Russia pay for the pollution its invasion has inflicted upon Ukraine’s soil and air.
Follow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official.
Eyeing post-war reparations, or at least future peace negotiations, the minister foresees these efforts will lead to “the first case in human history” of environmental reparations being paid by one state to another.
Ukraine began tracking war-related environmental damages when the invasion began in 2022. Since then 5,000 incidents have already been identified, which it considers to be environmental crimes, or in his words, “cases of ecocide”.
Citizens are being asked to contribute to the effort. To help them report data, Ukraine has developed a mobile application, which they can use to report fires and toxic spills.
The app also provides Ukrainians with the latest information on air, soil, water and radiation pollution.
When asked for a typical example of ecocide,  Strilets cited the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in June 2023, leading to huge flooding. “We have lost more than 14km³ of fresh water. Thousands of tons of demolition waste, washed into the Black Sea[…] A huge territory of our forest was flooded, and we understand that the half of this forest will die.”
Ukraine estimates the cost of this alone at €3.8 billion.
Ukrainian environmental protection today
The Minister said that it was “not hard” to prioritise environment protection during war time.
“Ukraine is a civilized country which understands that the environment is the future,” he said, adding that “everybody understands it, from the President to the staff of other ministries.”
As evidence he pointed to a high-level government working group focused on the environment, co-chaired by former European Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström and Andriy Yermak, the head of office of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Though acknowledging there is a trade-off between environmental protection and business activities, he argued that “it’s absolutely possible to find this balance.”
Food such as wheat is a key export for Ukraine, generating important revenues necessary to keep the country’s economy afloat. He explicitly linked Ukraine’s clean-up efforts with its farming output, noting that 150,000-155,000 km2 of Ukrainian territory is potentially mined, and much of this is agricultural land. “If we will not clean up this territory, the grain will not be good for export,” he explained.
Though highlighting air, soil and water pollution, he was less focused on wider biodiversity impacts. He was sceptical of the possibility for destroyed landscapes being rewilded – exploding mines could create forest fires – and when asked whether Ukraine would be open to setting aside land for nature restoration, his response was firm: “Let’s speak about it after the war.”
After the fighting stops
He was positive on Ukraine’s role in the energy transition – particularly how it could supply highly-demanded critical raw materials, like lithium.
He had just met the European Commission’s ‘battery czar’, Executive Vice President Maroš Šefčovič, and that Ukraine has updated legislation and digitalised geological data so that the country could be “the partner of the EU” in critical raw materials.
For the decarbonisation of industry, war has brought both opportunities and challenges.
Citing EU rules on environmental industrial pollution, which heavy industry had resisted prior to the war. “But today the Russians destroyed the bigger part of our heavy industry. And implementing the European directive is the single way to restore this heavy industry , with the best available technologies.”
However in the immediate term there are limits to Ukraine’s transformation potential: “First of all, we need to talk not about decarbonisation […] we need to talk about the decrease in pollution levels,” the Minister underlined.
When asked whether new Ukrainian factories could incorporate zero-carbon manufacturing processes, for example using hydrogen, he pointed out the challenges of attracting large investments for such projects, in a country which is still at war.
“We need to remember that we have much bigger challenges than our industry,”  he emphasised, pointing out that land mines today still litter up to a third of Ukraine’s territory.
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WHO member states approved the first resolution on climate and health to come before the World Health Assembly in 16 years – even as 50°C temperatures in Delhi, flooding in southern Brazil and devastating Caribbean storms are driving home the message to more and more countries that climate change is real.
In several hours of late-night debate, states large and small, landlocked and ocean-bound, described in painful detail, their efforts to cope with growing trends of climate-triggered storms and drought, sea level rise, and food insecurity – all leading to more deaths and disability from noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), health emergencies, vector-borne diseases as well as mental health impacts. 
Developing countries along with rich nations also detailed new plans to promote greener health systems and climate-smart food production, ban single-use plastics, and better manage urban waste and other forms of environmental contamination – noting their deep inter-relationship with climate action. 
Whereas the last resolution adopted by the WHA in 2008 focused mostly on health sector “adaptation” to climate change, the new resolution carves out a much broader and more proactive roll for member states and their health sectors in efforts to shape future trends as well as respond to the inevitable.  Among the measures, it urges member states to commit to:
“The very survival of our species will depend on this,” said Colombia’s delegate during a late evening debate over the draft resolution, to which over three dozen countries signed on as co-sponsors. He deplored the dearth of climate finance for developing nations which have contributed the least to the climate problem.
“Sadly, climate ambition is still not supported with adequate and sufficient finance to respond to the huge needs of this crisis. Every year, finance gutters growing to the tune of billions of dollars, we’re not seeing a clear path to a tangible solution,” he said. 
The words “fossil fuels” or even “clean energy” don’t appear in the text – something civil society groups such as the World Heart Federation and some member states, including The Netherlands,  which co-sponsored the resolution along with Peru, lamented. 
Even so, the Dutch delegate expressed hope that WHO’s example of achieving net zero in its own operations – a feature of WHO’s new four-year strategy (2025-2028), would inspire member states to do the same, saying:  
“The Netherlands believes transitioning away from fossil fuels is a public health imperative and hopes the new WHO roadmap to net zero will inspire member states to follow suit.”
Extreme weather driving awareness
Despite such gaps in the text, nation after nation talked about how the reality of the devastating effects of extreme weather and sea level rise is driving more awareness of the need to act. 
That included small island states, such as Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic, and larger nations, from Pakistan to upper-income Mexico and high-income New Zealand. 
“Our delegation would like to approach this matter with a sense of urgency given the effects of the climate crisis that we’re living through,” Mexico said. “According to the World Meteorological Organization, Mexico had the weather event with the highest economic losses during 2023 – hurricane Otis,” she added, noting that in recent weeks, the country has now been facing a severe heatwave. 
“Climate change undermines the very foundations of our societies, threatening the security of our food systems and the safety of our homes and livelihoods. small island developing states including our sisters and brothers in the Pacific face threats to their very existence,” said New Zealand.
Member states from the United Kingdom to Indonesia also applauded the resolution’s strong stance on advancing clean and greener health care – including through the new WHO Alliance for Transformative Action on Climate and Health (ATACH). 
Launched at the UN Climate Conference (COP 26) in Glasgow in 2021, nearly 100 member states have joined the initiative, which promotes climate resilient health facilities – through knowledge exchange and voluntary country commitments to a stepwise set of low-carbon and, ultimately, net-zero targets.
“Indonesia is in the process of integrating a performance indicator on climate resilience and health facilities in the health sector master plan – meaning net zero emissions in health facilities by 2030,” said one delegate, describing the country’s plans and progress. She called upon WHO to support member states in accessing investments from the Green Climate Fund “and other financing mechanism dedicated to climate and health for promoting the implementation of green hospitals.” 
Delegates’ statements also reflected an  increasingly nuanced understanding of the interlinkages between climate stability, biodiversity, sustainable food production and health. 
One Health – an issue that has become a volleyball in the pandemic agreement talks between rich and poor countries – even received a positive reference mention in the climate and health resolution – which a numbe of developing countries underlined as important.
“It’s important to bear in mind the importance of the One Health approach in the climate and health work,” said Colombia,”in particular, given the needs of protecting vital vital ecosystems like the Amazon, which is the most biodiverse ecosystem in the world –  and that plays a key role in climate in global health. “
Said Mexico, “climate justice for small scale farmers must also be coupled with the transformation of the food system”. She referred to the country’s ban on farm chemicals like glyphosate, as well as genetically modified corn. The Mexican moves have been hotly opposed by agribusness. But critics say both the GMO corn and glyphosate, a pesticide, have knock-on consequences for ecosystems, human health, livelhioods and sustainable food production.  
Ethiopia, meanwhile, is planting billions of trees to combat deforestation, soil erosion and flooding. The initiative has made tree planting a national past-time – although some critics have said it  needs better planning. In parallel, the country is promoting more “climate smart agriculture,” to improve nutrition and reduce biodiversity loss; improved urban waste management and electrification of transport. 
But finance remains key, Ethiopia’s delegate also underlined saying: “We urgently need increased international financing, technology transfer and capacity building support to protect our people from the climate.” 
Plastics pollution was also described as a dangerous blight to health, climate and environment by countries as diverse as Thailand and Tanzania.
The new climate resolution should help measures to “reduce plastic pollution in the health sector”, observed Thailand, adding that the country is also “working to reduce exposure to micro-plastics, which have been found in human food, water, and air – causing oxidative stress, neurotoxicity, and developmental toxicity,” said the country’s WHA delegate, noting a recent ban on single use plastic bags, as well as initiatives to better manage health sector waste, much of it from plastics.
While not specifically mentioned in the climate resolution, most plastics are produced by by products of fossil fuel extraction, as the International Council of Nurses noted in a statement – and therefore the issues are intertwined.
And the fossil fuels industry has ambitious plans to increase plastics production over the next 25 years – compensating for possible slackening of demand in the transport and energy sectors.
UN member states’ are meanwhile also engaged in tough negotiations over a treaty to curb plastic waste – facing off against stiff industry interests. WHO has proposed that it join the global treaty talks, providing expert advice to negotiators, and to a UN Environment Science Policy Panel on chemicals, waste and pollution. The panel is set to convene in Geneva for it’s third meeting from 17-21 June.   
The WHO proposal to join the UN Environment Science Panel, as well as member state references to the linkages between health, climate and plastics brought a stiff response from the Russian Federation:
“We’d  like to draw your attention to how inadmissible it is to shift our focus from the issue of the impact on health of climate change – and pollution through plastic waste in order to focus on combating plastic itself,” the Russian delegate stated. “We must ensure an impartial, objective comprehensive comparison of plastic products with products made using alternative materials.”  
“Russia cannot support the idea of WHO providing Secretariat functions for the Science Policy Panel to contribute further to the sound management of chemicals and waste,” the delegate added. . 
He also called for WHO to keep the health care sector out of the center of deliberations over new UN treaty on plastics pollution – despite healthcare’s outsize consumption of single use plastics.
“We do not support the proposal that the main goal of the international treaty on plastic should be the issue of health care,” said the Russian delegate, disassociating the Federation from references to the WHO ATACH initiative on health sector resilience, as well. 
Prior to it’s approval, the draft climate and health resolution also was the focus of a back door struggle on its references to gender-related language, also led by Russia and other socially conservative  states.  
To reach consensus, references to “‘gender responsive/sensitive’ climate action and health systems” were removed from the final draft. That was in response to critics who said the words could imply recognition of  LGBTQI groups  – whose activities are banned and even criminalized in many countries around the world. 
The final draft saw just one single reference to “action on climate change and health that is more integrated, coherent and advances gender equality, in line with Sustainable Development Goals.”
Even so, the Russian Federation disassociated it from that reference, as well, after the draft was aprpoved, saying that terms like gender in/equalities “does not enjoy agreement.” 
Retorted Belgium, on behalf of the European Union: “We are rolling back on many years of substantial progress on human rights and gender, reducing our ability to mitigate climate change and of WHO to lead effective programs on the ground.” 
Image Credits: Flickr – joiseyshowaa, https://www.netcare.co.za/News-Hub/Articles/environmental-sustainability-at-the-heart-of-new-hospital-design, Tiksa Negeri / Dialogue Earth, Photo by Hermes Rivera on Unsplash, Plastics Atlas, 2019.
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Do you really care about access and equity in global health? Your contributions are urgently needed to support our mission in open access global health journalism and our network of correspondents in Africa, Asia, New York and Geneva. Their reporting connects the dots between the regional realities and the big global debates. Every contribution – big or small – helps us sustain our reporting for the benefit of all.
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Opinion editor’s note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.
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As the presidential election gets closer, opinions about Donald Trump and his questionable character and ethics generate many opinions, including voting for him as the “lesser of two evils.”
Very few, if any, of the commentaries and letters mention the most important issue of our time, one that should leave no doubt as to the “lesser of two evils.” That issue is climate change. Trump campaigns on opening more land to drilling. Need I say more?
I find it ironic that the news is dominated by two types of stories: Weather events directly attributed to climate change, and Trump’s legal woes (of which there are many).
If ever in our history there was a time to vote single-issue, this is it. We’ve reached the climate-change cliff, and we need leadership in all facets of government willing to make the difficult decisions required to mitigate climate change. Clearly, Trump will not do that.
Nancy Hassett, Big Lake, Minn.

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I have been inundated with emails from President Joe Biden, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and many others asking for donations. They are asking for small amounts — $10 to $100. I give what I can. Then I was reading about Trump’s meeting with oil executives and his promise to expand oil and gas drilling, and eliminate clean energy programs and any improvements to clean energy infrastructure. For those efforts he wants the oil execs to give him a billion dollars.
So here I sit, giving my $20 or $50 or maybe even $100 and it all seems so pointless. How can we, average citizens, compete against the superwealthy who are ready and willing to spend millions and millions to get their way? Citizens United has become the death knell for equitable democracy. God help us all.
Michael D. Thomsen, St. Paul

In a May 31 letter to the editor, a writer asked if anyone believes a large influx of non- or poor English speaking students will improve our kids’ education. My answer, as the parent of three current and former Minneapolis Public Schools students, is an emphatic yes.
My children have gained a much broader, inclusive and empathetic view of the world by attending diverse schools. Do I wish schools had more funding to support students who are learning English and others with special needs? Also an emphatic yes. Because of their positive experiences, my children have learned a crucial life lesson the writer has not: Xenophobia and racism are never the answer.
Erin Burns, Minneapolis

Thursday’s home opener for the Minnesota Aurora women’s soccer team was fantastic. The team played with precision, excellent teamwork and great skill — a 7-0 win. The passing was well executed, the goals were all skillfully won and the defense played strong. But the coverage in the Sports section focused entirely on the DJ, who admitted to being distracted by texts of the Timberwolves game (“Aurora dance to home opener victory,” May 31). Did the Star Tribune forget to send a sportswriter to the Aurora game? Oh, come on! When will women’s sports be treated with the respect they deserve? Star Tribune, you can do better than this!
Debbi Jo Dieter, Hopkins

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The best women hockey players in the world deserve better coverage. Thank goodness for A Bar of Their Own. It was opened this year by Jillian Hiscock to feature women’s sports. It was the one place I was aware of where I could watch the deciding game of the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) for the championship in its first season. I called the day of the game and Mary very pleasantly assured me it would be on. It was only available on YouTube according to the Star Tribune sports listing.
Local media was at A Bar of Their Own getting fan reactions. This game needed better national, state and local coverage. The Minnesota Timberwolves got massive coverage from print, radio and television media. There was far less coverage of this amazing story of the PWHL playoffs. Thank you, A Bar of Their Own, for opening a venue dedicated to women’s sports. We so enjoyed watching our women athletes being awarded for the first time the prestigious Walter Cup. Chants of “Minnesota,” “We want the Cup” and “We have the Cup” echoed throughout the well-behaved, cheering crowd.
Too bad more folks could not have seen this game. This needs to change. The PWHL is a movement. I envision that this league will continue to flourish and these world-class athletes will receive proper media coverage in the future.
Gordon Hayes, Eagan

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In the early days of feminism, there were signs that read: “We will have achieved true equality when a mediocre woman can go as far as a mediocre man.”
Recent local sporting events prompt me to rephrase this observation to: “We will have achieved true equality when a winning team of women can receive as much press coverage as a losing team of men.”
Gaynell Schandel, Arden Hills

Our light rail may be back. Recently, I took the Blue Line from the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport’s Lindbergh terminal to downtown Minneapolis (25 minutes to the Nicollet Mall station). This was at about 2 p.m. on a weekday. Wait time was reasonable (8 minutes). The car was clean. The riders were well-behaved. Significantly, there were two uniformed security employees walking the platform at most of the stations, including Lake Street. I hadn’t taken the light rail for a while because of safety concerns. I’m glad I gave it another try. I will do so again. Kudos to Metro Transit for adding the security personnel.
Jack Moore, Minneapolis

My grandchildren advised me that peanut products are not allowed in schools or public events as there might be someone so sensitive to them as to lead to severe reactions or even death. Peanut butter has been the staple of my life of 76 years, beginning at an early age in a frugal family of eight, and I rarely get through any day without it. Peanut butter sandwiches were lunch for all my school years and beyond, now likely a sore sight relative to the massive deli sandwiches today. I have tried all the various other nut butters, but peanut butter remains my favorite, good with almost everything: toast, pancakes, smoothies, dips, sauces, etc.
Thank goodness there may be hope for reducing the peanut allergy (“Babies exposed to peanuts less likely to be allergic years later,” May 30). Health advisers cautioned us some years ago that peanuts caused cancer and were best avoided; then in 2000 they advised allowing peanut products only after age three. More recently, in 2017, peanut product exposure was recommended at 4-6 months to minimize later allergies, and we are now seeing the positive results.
At scout camp years ago a camp counselor did a routine skit of dealing with a wad of peanut butter stuck to the roof of his mouth that was hilarious and left us all in stitches of laughter. Hopefully, the scourge of peanut allergies will also have a happy ending to advance this treasured staple of joy.
Michael Tillemans, Minneapolis

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Why biophilia is the new travel trend | World Economic Forum  World Economic Forum
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