Mountain guide Eduardo Mostazo was born and raised in Cáceres, a small city in southwest Spain close to Portugal, which has suffered a rural exodus. Now it faces a new threat: a proposed lithium mine which Mostazo and other local activists fear could contaminate water sources and the nearby mountain, threatening birds such as the endangered Spanish imperial eagle.
Their struggle to protect the pristine environment highlights a growing challenge for Europe, as the continent races to start extracting and producing minerals like lithium that are critical to the clean energy transition, instead of relying on imports from China and other emerging economies.
Yet, while bureaucrats in European capitals are under pressure to secure supplies on their soil, communities where the resources are located question whether they will benefit from their exploitation.
They told Climate Home they need more information before agreeing to host mining projects on which they feel they have not been adequately consulted, and want stronger guarantees that the rush for minerals won’t harm the nature on which local livelihoods depend.
Explainer: Why the world is racing to mine critical minerals
In Cáceres, mining company Extremadura New Energies (ENE) – a subsidiary of Australian Infinity Lithium – has promised to create 1,500 jobs during the mine’s construction and 700 jobs during 26 years of operation.
Nonetheless, locals worry that a mine could damage today’s economic mainstays of tourism and agriculture. “There is no talk of alternatives,” said Mostazo. “When a proposal comes from a big company with lots of millions, there’s the impression that the politicians don’t really investigate [the impacts], they go blind with the promise.”
Breaking Europe’s mineral dependence
As part of its efforts to boost clean energy and electrification, the European Commission wants to shrink its dependence on Chinese-produced minerals by ensuring that at least 10% of critical raw materials such as lithium, copper and nickel are extracted within Europe by 2030.
The International Energy Agency estimates that global demand for lithium – a key component in electric car batteries – could increase by up to 42 times by 2040 from 2020 levels. Currently, the EU imports four-fifths of its extracted lithium and 100% of its processed lithium.
Santos Barrios, professor of crystallography and mineralogy at the University of Salamanca, said Europe’s mineral dependency “is a very big problem” because those materials come from countries that often lack social and environmental protection.
“They import it from other places where it is much cheaper to extract it than here, but at the cost of losing many things along the way,” he explained. The ideal situation, he added, would be to no longer rely “on countries that are not completely transparent, such as China”.
To speed up progress ahead of its 2030 deadline, in March the European Commission approved 47 strategic mining projects, which will benefit from fast-tracked permitting processes and easier access to EU funding.
Spain and Finland are the EU countries with the most strategic projects involving extraction or integrated extraction and processing of critical raw materials, with five projects each.
ENE applied but was not selected due to delays in the permitting process, with its request for a licence still sitting with the regional government, which has requested the company to submit more detailed information on the project.
Requests for project documents denied
Only 40 kilometres north, in Cañaveral, meanwhile, many locals were disappointed to learn that a nearby mining project led by the company Lithium Iberia had made the list.
A citizens’ group opposing the mine – worried about the potential impact on water sources and nature – is preparing a letter to the president of the European Parliament asking for access to the project documentation, including its environmental impact assessment and the methodology used to evaluate applications.
The European Commission has previously denied such requests, citing it as sensitive business information, said Julio César Pintos Cubo from the green group Ecologistas en Acción.
Others, such as Friends of the Earth Europe, have also argued that the strategic projects under the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act erode transparency and have failed to engage civil society, as neither the Commission nor EU member states have granted access to the documents submitted by the applicants.
“EU law must not be weakened to benefit poorly regulated companies – something that is unfortunately common in the mining sector – while the administration abandons transparency, water and environmental regulations, aligning itself with the mining lobby,” said Pintos.
A Commission spokesperson told Climate Home the strategic minerals projects had been assessed by independent experts, who were asked to evaluate – among other criteria – whether they can be “implemented sustainably”.
Lack of “democratic accountability” threatens success
Experts are warning that limited transparency and local participation in selection of the EU’s strategic projects could have negative impacts on their implementation.
“There will be opposition because the European Union is taking these decisions in Brussels following an accelerated procedure for new projects. There has been no deep consultation and there is a lot of pressure to achieve these objectives,” said Marco Siddi, a researcher with the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.
The absence of “democratic accountability” around these high-stakes mining projects could provoke a social reaction similar to that of the yellow vests, Siddi warned, referring to the unrest that erupted in France in 2018 after the government tried to hike fuel prices as a green measure.
Lithium tug of war: the US-China rivalry for Argentina’s white gold
The Commission spokesperson told Climate Home that each country’s authorities have the main responsibility for implementing these strategic projects, including carrying out consultations with local people “in accordance with national rules”.
Barrios, the researcher, said all opinions should be considered and environmental damage minimised, “but the last word has to be left to qualified personnel”.
The Extremadura government in Spain did not respond to a request for comment on whether and how communities had been consulted on the strategic project in Cañaveral.
Earlier Raquel Pastor, the region’s director general for industry, energy and mining, told Climate Home News that “projects of any kind that generate employment, wealth, and development in the region are welcomed, as long as they comply with all regulations, including environmental ones, of course, and with the law.”
Businesses aim to do no harm
The mining companies, for their part, have promised in most cases to minimise the impact of their operations on nature and contribute positively to rural development.
ENE’s CEO Ramón Jiménez Serrano told Climate Home that the Cáceres mine – which also plans to host a nearby processing plant – would only use treated wastewater and therefore would not impact local water supplies. Despite this, the company’s application for a permit with the local water authority was denied.
According to Steve Emerman, an independent geophysics and mining expert who has testified before the European Parliament on the issue, “there is no precedent for any modern, industrial mine that has been operated and closed without environmental contamination”.
On a cold and windy January afternoon, 150 kilometres north of Cáceres, 100 people from nearby villages – including the local priest – packed into the cultural centre in Ciudad Rodrigo, a town in the region of Salamanca, for a session on the impact of another proposed lithium mining project in the area.
This project, led by another Australian mining company, Energy Transitions Minerals, is still in its early stages, and is not on the EU’s list of strategic projects. But there is growing concern about how it could affect the region’s landscape and traditional jobs. According to the company, Salamanca is the European region with the highest concentration of critical raw materials, including lithium, copper and tantalum.
Increasingly, foreign-owned companies want to jump on Europe’s critical minerals bandwagon. Many are so-called junior mining companies that lack the financial and technical capacity to actually extract the materials from the ground, explained Emerman. “They just want to get the permit, then they will sell it to someone who can carry out the project,” he said.
Doubts over corporate sustainability plans
Locals fear this could be the case in Bosnia and Herzegovina, an EU candidate country where the lithium rush has reached the small northeastern town of Lopare. In 2023, the Swiss-owned junior mining company ARCORE AG announced it had struck “gold” in the densely forested area of rolling hills and rich lithium deposits, and is currently awaiting approval of a concession agreement from the Republika Srpska authorities, one of the country’s two governing units.
Environmental lawyer and activist Azra Berbić thinks it likely that another company with more resources and funding will purchase that agreement and carry out the lithium mining. ”We’ve seen this story before. This is why the local communities are so worried… they fear the agreement will be sold to a company like Rio Tinto,” she said.
So far the British-Australian conglomerate, one of the world’s largest mining companies, has shown no formal interest in Lopare. But Rio Tinto has faced a backlash over its environmental and labour practices around the world, including in neighbouring Serbia where its $2.4 billion investment in a proposed lithium mine in Jadar ignited mass protests in 2024.
Announcing that project in 2021, the company said it aimed to minimise the impact on communities by building the Jadar mine “to the highest environmental standards”, including dry stacking of tailings so they can be reclaimed without a dam and treating water so that 70% comes from recycled sources.
Human rights must be “at the core” of mining for transition minerals, UN panel says
In the case of Spain’s Cáceres, ENE has said it will use 100% renewable energy for its operations, although CEO Jiménez admitted that not all the above-ground machinery needed can yet run on electricity.
And in Salamanca, the regional government’s spokesman for energy transition minerals, Jorge Gil Mediavilla, told Climate Home that “although less money will be earned, the company has agreed to renounce open-cast mining in order to carry out small, highly concentrated underground mining operations”.
Yet, some experts are sceptical about the viability of the Salamanca project. “I doubt that it could be profitable,” said Antonio Areas, a veteran mining entrepreneur from the area, while geologist Antonio Aretxabala noted it would be the first underground lithium mine in the world.
Ángel Sánchez Corral, spokesman for local anti-mining platform El Rebollar Vivo in Salamanca, said many local communities remain unconvinced by the EU’s push for homegrown production of critical minerals and politicians’ promises of economic growth and jobs.
“The declaration of strategic projects by the EU is a step backwards in terms of environmental protection and social and territorial rights for the benefit of extractive and speculative companies – it makes us lose confidence in the EU institutions,” he said.
Reporting for this article was supported by the Magmatic School of Environmental Journalism.
The post Europe’s lithium rush leaves mineral-rich communities in the dark appeared first on Climate Home News.
Europe’s lithium rush leaves mineral-rich communities in the dark
The fossil fuel crisis triggered by the Iran war should push nations to speed up their shift towards clean energy and break their dependence on volatile sources, energy and climate ministers said on Tuesday.
Murat Kurum, Türkiye’s climate minister and COP31 president, said the crisis was yet another demonstration that fossil fuels cannot guarantee energy security, making it crucial for countries to diversify by investing in renewable energy.
“We know that relying solely on fossil fuels means walking towards volatility, insecurity and climate collapse,” he told fellow ministers at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, an annual gathering in Berlin that traditionally opens the global climate diplomacy calendar.
Ministers from more than 30 countries, along with United Nations representatives, are meeting until Wednesday to lay the groundwork for a deal to accelerate climate action at COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye.
They will debate how to ramp up efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, mobilise climate finance amid shrinking international aid budgets, and leverage a strained multilateral system to deliver results.
Fossil fuels not the answer
The gathering is taking place in the shadow of what some energy analysts have described as the largest oil and gas supply disruption in history. The conflict in the Middle East has sent oil and gas prices soaring, with growing ripple effects on food production and industrial manufacturing.
Australia’s escalating fuel crisis meant the country’s energy minister Chris Bowen, who will also be in charge of COP31 negotiations, cancelled his trip to the Berlin summit. Joining by videolink, he said the crisis is a “unique opportunity” to underline the message that “energy reliability, energy sovereignty and energy security are entirely in keeping with strong decarbonisation”.
-
Solar surge kept fossil electricity flat in 2025 as China and India made ‘historic’ shift
Energy think tank Ember said fossil fuel electricity fell slightly in both countries simultaneously for the first time, tipping the global balance -
US pressure puts World Bank’s climate plan at risk
Closed-door talks over the World Bank’s climate agenda have stalled, as the US pushes to scrap green targets and expand support for fossil fuels
“Doubling down on fossil fuels is not the answer to this crisis,” he added. “Wind cannot be subject to a sanction, the sun cannot be interrupted by a blockade. These are all reliable forms of energy, which must be supported by storage”.
Electrification is a “megatrend”
Echoing Bowen’s remarks, Germany’s climate minister Carsten Schneider said the current crisis will be “an accelerator [of the energy transition] because it will help many people understand and realise how dependent we are on fossil fuels”.
He added that “electrification is turning into a global megatrend” but called for more discussion on how to ensure that industry and transport become less reliant on oil and gas across the world.
At last year’s climate talks, countries failed to agree to start a process to draft a global plan to shift away from oil, coal and gas. But the Brazilian COP30 presidency is taking it upon itself to deliver this roadmap before the summit in Antalya.
Discussions are expected to kick into higher gear at the first-ever conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels due to start at the end of this week in Colombia. COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago has said the roadmap should be published in September.
Clear plans needed
Addressing the Petersberg summit, the head of the United Nations António Guterres said that transition roadmaps can help countries manage urgent choices during the ongoing fuel crisis while advancing a just transition to a clean and secure energy future.
“We must respond to the energy crisis without deepening the climate crisis,” he added. “Short-term measures must not lock in long-term fossil fuel dependence and expansion”.
The ministers argued that, despite the US withdrawal from international climate diplomacy under President Trump, other countries remained committed to working together to tackle the climate crisis.
But Türkiye’s Kurum scolded the more than 40 governments that have not yet published their national climate plans, more than a year after the official UN deadline. These are mostly smaller nations, but the group of laggards also includes Vietnam, Argentina and Egypt.
“We will ensure that countries fulfil the fundamental requirements of the COP,” he said, adding that his team is working intensely with the UN to ensure these plans – known as nationally determined contributions – are submitted.
“Without diagnosis, you can’t treat”, he said.
The post Fossil fuel crisis offers chance to speed up energy transition, ministers say appeared first on Climate Home News.
Fossil fuel crisis offers chance to speed up energy transition, ministers say
Ilka Vega is the executive for economic and environmental justice at United Women in Faith, the largest denominational faith organisation for women in the United States.
For climate justice advocates around the globe, many of the United States’ environmental policies have felt dangerous. In this moment, Earth Day might feel sobering as we acknowledge the gravity of these dangers. However, we cannot allow bad actors at the national level to shake our spirit. Instead, we can harness the energy of Earth Day and mobilize our communities for change.
Of course, while local action is powerful, it is against a backdrop of rollbacks to environmental protections. In 2026, the current US administration has continued on its track of undermining climate action, taking us back decades on efforts to mitigate and adapt to the escalating climate crisis.
In January, the US withdrew from several international climate organizations and treaties, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement. In February, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) repealed the Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding, which will make it more difficult to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and pollutants.
More destructive weather extremes
Climate change is not a future threat – it is affecting people right now. And it is not an abstract concept. We have seen its impact in tangible ways.
In 2025, the mainland United States experienced the fourth hottest year on record. In February of this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported an average surface temperature 2.12° F higher than the 20th-century average.
Tornadoes, tropical cyclones, floods and other natural disasters devastated communities around the world, and have been growing more frequent and destructive due to climate change. Frontline communities disproportionately suffer these effects. Women and children are most likely to be displaced and are more likely to suffer gender-based violence when natural disasters and weather emergencies occur.
-
Türkiye sets COP31 dates and appoints Australian cattle farmer as youth champion
In an open letter, Murat Kurum gives details of the October Pacific pre-COP and the November COP31 leaders’ summit in the Turkish city of Antalya -
Fossil Free Zones can be on-ramps to the clean energy transition
Oil and gas blocks overlap with a fifth of forests in the Amazon, Congo Basin and SE Asia – policies are needed to transition away from fossil fuels and halt deforestation together
As climate change devastates communities, it is important that we take practical steps to prevent future harm. We can work with each other to encourage new practices, even without the support of powerful people. Our force can have an impact on communities beyond our imaginations. I have seen this in action, from my own neighborhood to organizations across the US and around the world.
Communities resisting the old and building the new
For example, last year in Texas, people from all walks of life came together to protest the toxicity of fossil fuels in front of oil and gas CEOs. In Oak Flat Arizona, an Apache stronghold is still resisting a destructive copper mine project despite setbacks that threaten to shatter their sacred lands.
One woman in La Mesa, California led efforts to engage nearby school districts in discussions about joining the EPA’s Clean School Bus program. In the wake of hurricanes, First Grace United Methodist Church in New Orleans used their solar panels to offer relief through charging and cooling for neighbors experiencing power outages.
Q&A: Look beyond Trump for the full story on US climate action, says university dean
In Marange, Zimbabwe, Environmental Buddies Zimbabwe installed energy-efficient stoves in their community. A project with similar goals, Eco-Green Gold in Bolgatanga, Ghana trained 40 women to produce charcoal from grass as an eco-friendly alternative to wood-based charcoal. They both are creating opportunities for their neighbors while reducing deforestation and promoting renewable energy.
Shared responsibility for a cleaner, safer planet
These communities have shown that we all have a responsibility to fight for a cleaner, healthier and safer Earth. That responsibility does not end when the government is not doing enough; rather, it becomes imperative that we boost our efforts.
Although there is only so much we can do about the actions of a powerful government and wealthy corporations, we can influence what happens in our own communities – and that influence matters.
Individual actions build powerful movements; change must always begin at the local level. When we see people around the world organizing and taking direct action, we realize the true scale of what is possible. Every effort, no matter how small, becomes part of a larger movement that cannot be ignored.
We hold onto the unwavering belief that we can still turn the tide on climate change – and it is that hope that drives every step of our work toward a better, sustainable future.
The post Earth Day is an opportunity for communities to show the way on climate action appeared first on Climate Home News.
Earth Day is an opportunity for communities to show the way on climate action
Kaveh Zahedi is the Assistant Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Director of FAO’s Office of Climate Change, Biodiversity and Environment. Ko Barrett is the Deputy Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Every crop, every animal and every fish has a thermal limit, the point where additional heat stops being normal weather and starts doing damage. In food systems, that threshold arrives sooner than many people realise.
For key agricultural species, the danger zone often sits between 25 and 35°C at the moments that matter most, such as flowering and reproduction. As climate change drives more days into the mid-40s°C in major breadbaskets, those limits are already being crossed. The result is lower yields, weaker livestock, stressed fisheries, higher fire risk and farmworkers – the backbone of the system – forced into unsafe conditions.
A new joint FAO-WMO report, released on April 22, shows that extreme heat is already cutting production and exposing agricultural workers to dangerous conditions. One analysis found that beef cattle mortality reached as high as 24% in some documented heatwaves. Marine heatwaves were linked to an estimated $6.6 billion loss in fisheries production. And the outlook worsens as temperatures rise. For every 1°C of warming, maize and wheat yields are projected to drop 4–10%.
Adapting to a hotter world will take long-term investment in science, technology and infrastructure if food supplies are to keep pace with demand. We will need more heat-tolerant varieties and breeds, new farming practices, and we will need to make hard choices about what can still be grown as conditions change. But we also need a plan for next season, not just 2100.
With more severe heat likely in the coming years and another El Niño poised to test unprepared systems, the priority is to move from crisis response to heat readiness. That starts with early warnings and practical measures to help farmers protect harvests, supply chains and their own safety.
Heat warnings farmers can use
Weather forecasts should give farmers time to act before extreme heat turns into loss. That is the strategy behind Early Warnings for All, the UN initiative coordinated by WMO with partners including FAO. But early warning only works when reliable observations, modelling and verification turn weather and climate data into forecasts farmers can actually use.
Cambodia’s Green Climate Fund-funded PEARL project, supported by FAO, upgraded and installed new weather stations to feed a phone-based app that sends forecasts with crop- and region-specific guidance. When forecasts exceed 38°C, alerts recommend maintaining soil moisture with mulch, shading vegetables, delaying sowing rice seeds, and shifting irrigation to cooler hours.
That advice is part of a practical set of heat measures that help farmers reduce losses before extreme heat turns into crisis. In some cases, that means shading crops with cloth or solar panels, increasing water storage, installing low-cost cooling misters, or adjusting planting windows. Cattle generate heat when they eat, so feeding them in cooler hours can help.
Poultry cannot sweat, so shade is essential. Where extreme heat is becoming the norm, farmers may need to move from cattle to more heat-tolerant goats and sheep, or even switch crops. Evidence from Pakistan shows these adjustments can pay off. A FAO-GCF project field-tested the combination of heat- and drought-tolerant cotton and wheat varieties with mulching and adjusted planting windows. Over six seasons, returns reached as high as $8 for every $1 invested.
Extreme heat doesn’t only damage food in the field. It also speeds up spoilage after harvest, turning heat stress into income loss and poorer diets. An estimated 526 million tonnes of food, about 12% of the global total, is lost or wasted because of insufficient refrigeration. In Jamaica, a GCF-funded, FAO-supported programme treats cold storage as climate adaptation, using solar-powered cold storage to help smallholders keep produce market-ready when heat hits.
Protecting workers
Cold chains and toolkits matter, but they don’t protect the people doing the work. Extreme heat is one of the biggest threats to farmers’ health, driving dehydration, kidney injury and chronic disease, and taxing public health systems in the process. More than a third of the global workforce, around 1.2 billion people, face workplace heat risk each year, with agriculture among the hardest-hit sectors.
-
Middle East war is another wake-up call for fossil fuel-reliant food systems
Much of the world’s food production depends on fossil fuels for fertiliser and transportation, and the crisis in the Gulf will push up prices – and, in turn, hunger -
We must invest in early-warning systems to tackle crises like Kenya’s drought
With more than 3 million Kenyans facing acute hunger, better mechanisms are needed to help communities reduce devastation from future drought cycles
We already know what basic protection looks like, and it is already being put into practice in Cambodia, where the extreme heat advisories are paired with advice for farmers to shift heavy work to cooler hours and ensure access to water, shade and rest breaks.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and WMO are calling for the same approach at a wider scale: adjusted work–rest schedules, access to shade and safe drinking water, training to recognize heat illness, and integrating weather and climate information into workplace risk management.
Why preparation pays
The tools to prepare for extreme heat already exist. The problem is that funding still falls far short of the scale of the risk, and rural communities are too often overlooked by the assumption that extreme heat is mainly an urban problem.
In 2023, agrifood systems received just 4% of total climate-related development finance. Without more investment, early warnings won’t reach the people who need them most, extension services will remain under-resourced, and basic protections for crops, livestock and workers will stay out of reach.
Preparing in advance is cheaper than absorbing the same losses year after year. It can stabilise production and prices now, while buying time for the bigger scientific and structural shifts agriculture will need in a hotter world.
We don’t need a new playbook. We need to use the one we already have. The FAO-WMO report lays out the risks of extreme heat. Now is the time to use that evidence to protect food systems and the people who sustain them.
The post Extreme heat is rewriting food security. The best fixes are already within reach appeared first on Climate Home News.
Extreme heat is rewriting food security. The best fixes are already within reach
-
Climate Change8 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases8 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change Videos2 years ago
The toxic gas flares fuelling Nigeria’s climate change – BBC News
-
Renewable Energy6 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits