Published

8 hours ago

May 15, 2026

Alice Rush

For communities who have lived beside rivers for thousands of years, change in the water is never just a data point —it is a message.

Water as a Living Relative

In many Indigenous traditions across Canada, water is not a resource to be measured and managed. It is a relative, a living system with memory, voice, and place in the web of life. And this worldview, far from being incompatible with environmental science, turns out to produce some of the most sensitive monitoring on the continent. Because Indigenous communities live in close, generations-long relationship with rivers, lakes, and wetlands, they notice changes early and they notice things that instruments alone often miss.

What Elders Knew Before the Data Arrived

Along the Peace-Athabasca Delta in northern Alberta, a wetland of international ecological significance and Ramsar World Heritage status —Dene and Cree community members were observing changes in river flow, ice formation, and water quality for decades before formal scientific monitoring confirmed their observations. Mikisew Cree guides and Elders who have navigated the delta’s waters across a lifetime track changes in water depth at critical passages, noting that summer flows have declined and that boat navigation is increasingly difficult in areas that were once reliably deep.¹ Research confirms that ice conditions and break-up patterns in the Peace-Athabasca Delta have changed measurably, with Mikisew Cree First Nation Elders reporting that ice “just melts away” where dramatic break-ups once occurred.²

The Keepers of the Water

Organizations like Keepers of the Water, an Indigenous-led network working across the Arctic Drainage Basin, have built formal programs that combine Elder observation with modern tools measuring oxygen, salinity, temperature, and pH.³ In the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, community-owned aquatic monitoring programs near Sachs Harbour and Ulukhaktok have been collecting water quality data since 2019, producing novel long-term datasets from areas where government monitoring has historically been absent.⁴

A National Network of Indigenous Monitors

Through the federal Indigenous Community-Based Climate Monitoring Program —which provides approximately $8 million per year; dozens of First Nations, Métis Settlements, and Inuit communities across Canada have established their own water and environmental monitoring programs.⁵ In the Peace-Athabasca Delta, this funding has supported hydrometric stations, buoys, and trail cameras providing real-time data on water and ice conditions. These programs produce ecological intelligence that no southern laboratory can replicate.

Why This Matters for All of Canada

University of Saskatchewan researcher Dr. John Pomeroy, Canada Research Chair in Water Resources and Climate Change (2003-2024), has described the current situation plainly: western Canada is entering new climate territory, with more severe droughts and more intense rainfall events.⁶ The rivers and lakes that Indigenous communities have observed through ceremony and practice for millennia are now among the most important early warning systems Canada has. Integrating that knowledge respectfully and in genuine partnership into national water policy is both good science and a long-overdue recognition of who has been watching longest.

Passing the Knowledge Forward

In communities across the north, Elders speak about passing water knowledge to their children not as nostalgia, but as urgent practical preparation for a changing world. That ethic captures what Indigenous-led water monitoring represents at its core: an ancient responsibility made newly urgent by a crisis these communities did not create but are among the first to confront.

Blog by Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock

Photo by Philip Davis on Unsplash

References

[1] CBC News. (2022, October 3). Climate change is drying up the Peace-Athabasca Delta. Can the people who live there adapt? https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/climate-change-Indigenous-adaption-Peace-Athabasca-Delta

[2] State of the Athabasca-Bow-North Saskatchewan River Basin (SOAER). Peace – Water Quantity. https://soaer.ca/peace-water-quantity/ [Mikisew Cree First Nation Elders reporting on ice conditions and break-ups]

[3] Keepers of the Water. (2024). About Keepers of the Water. https://www.keepersofthewater.ca/

[4] Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC). (2024). Indigenous Community-Based Climate Monitoring Program. Government of Canada.

[5] CIRNAC. (2024). Indigenous Community-Based Climate Monitoring Program. Government of Canada. Approx. $8 million per year.

[6] Pomeroy, J. (Various). Canada Research Chair in Water Resources and Climate Change. University of Saskatchewan. https://www.usask.ca/research/chairs/pomeroy.php

The post The River Is Telling Us Something: Indigenous-Led Water Monitoring as Canada’s Climate Early Warning System appeared first on Indigenous Climate Hub.

The River Is Telling Us Something: Indigenous-Led Water Monitoring as Canada’s Climate Early Warning System

Climate Change

Analysis: UK no longer top UN Green Climate Fund donor after latest aid cut

Published

6 hours ago

May 15, 2026

Alice Rush

The UK is no longer the top contributor to the UN’s flagship Green Climate Fund (GCF), after the government announced that it only intends to honour half of its most recent pledge.

Amid wider cuts to its climate aid for developing countries, the UK informed the GCF in May that it will reduce its commitment for the 2024-27 period to £815m ($1.1bn).

In doing so, the Labour government is drastically cutting a Conservative pledge of £1.62bn ($2.16bn), hailed by former prime minister Rishi Sunak’s government as “the biggest single funding commitment the UK has made to help the world tackle climate change”.

This “record” pledge also meant the UK became the top GCF funder, after the Trump administration withdrew $4bn in pledged US funds in 2025.

Now, the UK follows the US in becoming the second major donor to cancel substantial funding, leaving aid experts concerned that other developed countries will follow suit.

As the chart below shows, the UK’s total past and promised contributions to the GCF have now dropped below those of Germany, France and Japan.

GCF pledges by top 10 donors. Dark bars indicate pledges from the initial resource mobilisation in 2014 and the first replenishment round in 2019, while light blue bars indicate pledges from the second replenishment round in 2023. Source: NRDC GCF pledge tracker.

The GCF is the largest dedicated UN climate fund and is seen as a vital way of raising grant-based climate finance for developing countries. It oversees more than $20bn worth of funding across 354 projects and programmes.

Developed countries, such as the UK, are obliged under the Paris Agreement to provide climate finance. One of the main ways to do this is through specialised climate funds, such as the GCF.

However, despite countries committing to increase their climate finance over time, progress in scaling up GCF contributions between funding rounds has been gradual.

With its now-revoked £1.62bn pledge in 2023, the UK was among the donors that had increased its GCF pledging compared with the previous 2019 funding round.

The latest reduction means the UK will now provide around 45% less funding than it did during the 2019 round. This is the biggest reduction between rounds by any major donor, apart from the US.

In an email to the GCF board, reported by the Financial Times, the fund’s executive director Mafalda Duarte said the UK’s actions were “expected to have a material impact on the delivery” of the fund’s projects.

According to the newspaper, Duarte noted that the move came as the UK cuts its overall aid budget in order to “invest more in addressing growing security threats”.

In March, the UK government announced plans to spend “around £6bn” of its aid budget on climate projects in developing countries over the next three years.

Carbon Brief analysis suggests that this spending amounts to roughly halving the UK’s annual climate finance, when accounting changes and inflation are factored in.

The post Analysis: UK no longer top UN Green Climate Fund donor after latest aid cut appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Analysis: UK no longer top UN Green Climate Fund donor after latest aid cut

Climate Change

Federal Budget must give Aussies a ‘fair shake of the sauce bottle’: Greenpeace

Published

6 hours ago

May 15, 2026

Alice Rush

SYDNEY, Tuesday 12 May 2026 — Ahead of tonight’s Federal Budget, the following statement can be attributed to David Ritter, CEO of Greenpeace Australia Pacific:

“As the Albanese government hands down the budget, it has an obligation to both look after households today, and to set Australians up for a flourishing future.

“The government has an opportunity to give Aussies a fair shake of the sauce bottle by taxing gas corporations fairly, accelerating the clean, affordable renewable solutions we already have, backing its own nature law reforms with appropriate funding and by protecting our oceans, forests and climate from polluting gas projects.

“The massive swell for fairly taxing gas corporations shows the public mood has permanently shifted; most Australians rightly do not accept that gas corporations like Woodside and Santos should make obscene war profits, while everyday people face soaring bills, and natural wonders like Scott Reef are threatened by reckless gas drilling projects.

“The global energy shock has exposed the dangers of our dependence on coal, oil and gas, and made clear that our future security and prosperity is in clean, affordable and homegrown wind and solar power.

“This must be a budget to benefit Australians, not gas corporations.”

Greenpeace Australia Pacific’s 2026 Federal Budget expectations can be found here.

–ENDS–

Notes:

Greenpeace has spokespeople available for interview before and after the budget announcement, including experts who can speak on Australia’s climate and emissions, the gas tax, Woodside’s Browse project, Labor’s new nature law, and our renewable future.

Media contact:

Kimberley Bernard on +61407 581 404 or kbenard@greenpeace.org

Federal Budget must give Aussies a ‘fair shake of the sauce bottle’: Greenpeace

Climate Change

‘A new low’: Greenpeace responds to Woodside’s flawed emissions reduction and renewables modelling

Published

7 hours ago

May 15, 2026

Alice Rush

PERTH, Tuesday 12 May 2026 — In response to Woodside’s Browse economic modelling released yesterday, the following comments can be attributed to WA Campaign Lead at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, Geoff Bice:

“Greenpeace has analysed Woodside’s report on the polluting Browse gas project against independent modelling of WA’s energy system and emissions, and found glaring holes in the case made for the project.

“Woodside has reached a new low by modelling WA’s emissions reduction and energy transition pathway based on wildly expensive and risky decarbonisation options simply to justify its reckless Browse development at Scott Reef, initially rejected by the WA Environmental Protection Authority on environmental grounds.

“The WA Government cannot allow climate policy to be directed by climate vandals like Woodside. The clearest way to get WA’s emissions down is by setting clear emission reduction targets, which Greenpeace continues to call for.”

Key points from Greenpeace’s analysis of Woodside’s modelling follow:

Gas is the most expensive form of available electricity generation, according to the CSIRO; IEEFA also found that Browse gas would be about four times higher than the current average production cost of domestic gas in WA.
Direct air capture (DAC): The model assumes WA will be able to capture 6.9Mt of CO₂/year by 2050. Worldwide, the current total volumes captured are 0.01 Mt CO₂/year. DAC is currently priced at a minimum of $USD-400/tonne with many estimates ranging higher. Even reduced to $200/tonne, the cost per year of the volumes modelled becomes a staggering $1.38 billion, or $34.5 billion by 2050.
Carbon dumping, or carbon capture and storage (CCS): The model requires 40 times the amount of sequestration that occurred last year at WA’s only CCS operation on Barrow Island (32.4Mt compared to 1.3Mt). Barrow Island CCS has consistently failed to meet requirements and last year alone cost $344m (at 265 AU$/tCO₂). At those prices the Woodside modelling results in a cost per year by 2050 to be $8.6 billion.
Woodside’s Pluto gas facility has been supplying less than 4% to the WA market, far short of the 15% required under the WA domestic gas reservation policy.
Woodside includes $1.6 billion payable via the Offshore Petroleum Levy. The Levy was implemented to offset offshore decommissioning costs to the taxpayer but is set to expire in 2030 — 3 years before the Browse field is proposed to come online.