When I was first invited to participate in the Climate Generation cohort attending COP 28, I was especially interested in learning more about the global impact of climate change on food systems, especially with regard to Indigenous peoples. Once I figured out the logistical challenges of navigating Expo City in Dubai, I spent much of my time at the Food & Health pavilion as well as the nearby Indigenous peoples pavilion. My hope was to augment my work in food sovereignty with a deeper, global understanding of the challenges posed by climate change. And to see the negotiating process up close as a way of clarifying my own responsibility to the health of the earth.
While I appreciated the learning experience that was provided by each session that I attended, there were a few peak experiences that helped reshape my understanding of climate change and the myriad ways in which we, as individuals, can help mitigate these changes.
COP 28 provided a global perspective through the United Nations, as well as a lens into work being done by various governmental levels, from state to city to organization. Since my return home, I’ve been thinking about how I can help translate my understanding of this multi-level, international movement into individual and community based action, especially when there is already widespread fear and paralysis about the future.
One of the experiences that offered pragmatic, useful insight into the negotiating process was an informal conversation our group had with Abby’s sister, who was a climate negotiator for the US. She helped clarify the seemingly overwhelming challenge of achieving consensus among 196 countries with different cultures and very different needs. Within that context, and despite all the politics, I could see the value of this process as it allowed for countries to advocate and educate about their particular climate challenges. Given the political reality of countries failing to achieve their NDCs or even slow down fossil fuel consumption, it also seems unlikely that the United Nations will find the political will to move fast enough to achieve the 1.5 degree goal, and to do it in a just and equitable manner with regard to developing and Indigenous countries. So how can other levels of government, other sectors, artists, farmers, teachers, youth, elders, all contribute to making changes that don’t wait for the UN to fix this for us?
How do I translate the goals of phasing out fossil fuels, empowering Indigenous communities to lead, and limiting warming to 1.5 degrees into my own life?
When I attended the session promoting Minnesota as a model that was hosted by the America Is All In pavilion, it was highly gratifying to learn more about Minnesota’s commitment to a goal of 100% renewable energy sourced electricity by 2040. But the panel was mostly white and completely ignored both the needs and contributions of Indigenous and people of color in Minnesota. Especially disturbing was the statistic quoted in opening remarks that the Midwest would rank 5th in the world for emissions, bypassing many countries, only to have the role of agriculture not mentioned at all. When I asked how much of Minnesota’s emissions are the result of agriculture and what is being done to hold that sector accountable, the panelist from Fresh Energy reassured me that she was on the governor’s advisory panel. Somehow, that didn’t answer my question. Another interesting statistic from that session: one acre of solar panels will generate 18x the amount of energy produced by an acre of corn to be used as ethanol.
One of COP’s great highlights for me turned out to be Soil day at the Food pavilion, with an entire day of programming dedicated to the topic of Soil. I listened to the recordings for most of the sessions, feeling somewhat obsessive in learning as much as I could about the connection between Soil, Nature and People (the overall theme for the day). There was a strong call for Soil to be included in the global stocktake as it was increasingly important to monitor the capacity for countries to maintain stable, healthy food systems. Soil stores 3x more carbon than the atmosphere and healthy soil has the ability to sequester 15 billion tons of carbon, which means that soil plays an important role in the climate crisis.
I also learned that half of the world’s land could be unusable within decades and that we can only achieve a sustainable food system by improving soil health. Soil health unites all food producers because it offers the means to deal with the growing food crisis as well as the ongoing biodiversity crisis. Most importantly, a transition to regenerative agriculture practices that maintain healthy soil, healthy crops, and healthy animals has the potential to help produce 40% more food by 2050 with zero emissions. Now that’s an inspiring goal!
By the end of the week, my head was packed full of ideas, statistics, perspectives, fears, hopes, and new insights. On my last day at COP, I decided to take a break and finally visit the Green Zone. That’s when I wandered into a series of small moments and experiences that would help me redefine and clarify my relationship to healing and protecting the health of the earth and responding to the challenges posed by climate change.
Almost immediately, I was drawn to a large wire and paper sculpture of a massive bee swarm, a piece that promoted Beethechange, an international organization that is supporting bees and pollinators. I was invited to make an origami bee that I could attach to the tail section of the sculpture. The first step was to write a climate intention on the small paper. I wrote, “I will take care of my relatives,” as providing habitat for all pollinators, and especially native bees, is the primary focus of my gardens. Shifting from a week of long meetings to hands-on artmaking was a reminder of the immense power of art to tell this story by emphasizing what we cherish, rather than always trying to motivate people with statistics and reports that can fuel fear and anxiety. This was the core belief I carried with me to COP, that we are strongest when we are protecting what we love.
From there I went in search of the Expo City urban farm that I had been hearing about. On a landscape formed primarily from sand and heat, the garden was impressive, with row upon row of healthy, vibrant vegetables, from kale and tomatoes to corn. Sensing my interest, the farmer came over and we bonded by strolling the rows and appreciating each plant. We talked about the biofertilizer he used that was produced from chicken manure at the farm’s primary location, an hour from Dubai. I asked why he mounded his rows, because I had seen a waffle method used in the arid climate of Arizona to retain water. He explained that the irrigation system along each plant stem could water roots more easily when they were raised. Along our walk, he told me that he was originally a wheat farmer from Syria, had lost everything in the war, and was starting over as a farmer in Dubai. When we passed the hydroponics building, he shrugged and said, it’s only good for growing leaves. What he really meant was that you can’t grow wheat in hydroponics. He added, even if we go to the moon, we need to build soil. And that formed the second small epiphany of my day, that I want to focus on soil as one of the relatives that I care for by improving the health of the soil in my garden. There’s no better way to learn than by getting your hands dirty. By building soil in my own garden, I can extend that understanding to Minnesota’s agricultural issues (5th in emissions!), building food sovereignty on reservations, and to the challenges facing small farmers globally.
I also wanted to connect one last time with the Indigenous Peoples pavilion so I attended a presentation by NDN about their work to establish LandBack as an international movement. Four incredibly smart, passionate, and dedicated Indigenous women spoke eloquently about the critical importance of reclaiming Indigenous land as the keeper and foundation for place-based Indigenous knowledge. One of them, an NDN grantee, spoke about the seed sovereignty work she was engaged in back on her Haudenosaunee reservation. I approached her afterwards to thank her for speaking on behalf of the seeds. As we talked, she told me that her mentor, Terry Lynn Brant, had just passed a few days earlier. I was shocked by the news as I had worked with Terry Lynn and was indebted to her for the seed knowledge she had shared with me. It was such a poignant reminder that we only have so much time on this earth to do our work. Terry Lynn will be remembered as a generous and brilliant, traditional leader.
At the end of the afternoon, my last official stop was the press conference for the Rights of Plants, hosted by WECAN. The Rights of Nature Movement offers a systemic framework for defending biodiversity, communities, and our climate. This growing movement challenges the dominant society perception of nature as a resource to be owned and exploited. Supporters feel that legal protections for Nature, similar to human rights, will persuade humanity to take care of their relatives, recognizing that we are all interconnected. To me, this is a fundamental expression of Indigenous thought, or as the Dakota say, Mitakuye Owasin, we are all related. This is why Indigenous people need to be at the forefront of the climate change movement, leading the way with traditional ecological knowledge.
And finally, as I continue to think about the ways in which I can weave these various threads of change more deeply into my life–bees, soil health, seed sovereignty and LandBack, and the Rights of Plants—I am also grateful for the open-ended process and creative space provided by Climate Generation.
By not imposing burdensome or rigid expectations, they allowed room for exploration and learning, allowing us to move within a creative process.
The deadlines we did have provided structure for reflection, which was also appreciated, given the overwhelming nature of the experience. I felt respected as an artist and given the room I needed to forge my own relationship to climate change and COP 28. This experience will continue to ripple through my writing, my garden, and my community. Pidamaye ye!
Diane Wilson is a Dakota writer, educator, and bog steward, who has published four award-winning books as well as numerous essays. Her novel, The Seed Keeper, received the 2022 Minnesota Book Award for Fiction, and her memoir, Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past, won a 2006 Minnesota Book Award and was selected for the 2012 One Minneapolis One Read program. She has also published a nonfiction book, Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life, a middle-grade biography, Ella Cara Deloria: Dakota Language Protector, and co-authored a picture book—Where We Come From. Wilson is a Mdewakanton descendent, enrolled on the Rosebud Reservation. She is the former Executive Director for Dream of Wild Health, an Indigenous non-profit farm, and the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, a national coalition of tribes and organizations working to create sovereign food systems for Native people.
Diane is a Climate Generation Window Into COP delegate for COP28. To learn more, we encourage you to meet the full delegation and subscribe to the Window Into COP digest.
The post FOOD FOR THOUGHT appeared first on Climate Generation.
Climate Change
Scientists Outplant Experimental ‘Flonduran’ Corals in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park
Researchers are testing whether cross-breeding elkhorn corals from Florida and Honduras can help restore lost genetic diversity and improve the threatened species’ ability to withstand warmer waters.
Nearly three dozen young lab-grown elkhorn corals were outplanted onto reefs in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park this spring, including a group of “Flondurans,” marking the first time this experimental cross-breed of Florida and Honduran elkhorn corals was introduced to the remote park about 70 miles from Key West.
Scientists Outplant Experimental ‘Flonduran’ Corals in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park
Climate Change
DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
UK, Europe and India battle heatwaves
‘MIND-BOGGLING’ MAY: The UK and continental Europe have set “mind-boggingly crazy” temperature records for May amid a deadly heatwave, reported the Financial Times. According to the Associated Press, the UK “smashed a century-old temperature record for the second time in 24 hours on Tuesday”. The newswire added that records “also fell in France, where temperatures reached 36C on Monday in the country’s south-west”. On Wednesday, Portugal hit a record May temperature of 40.3C, said BBC News.
‘BRUTAL REMINDER’: In parts of Italy, the heatwave triggered blackouts, reported Reuters. The heatwave has also been linked to more than a dozen deaths in the UK and France, including from people drowning and suffering heat-related deaths while competing in sporting events, said ABC News. Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of UN Climate Change, said the intense heatwaves were a “brutal reminder” of the cost of global warming, reported Politico. Carbon Brief has in-depth coverage of the record-shattering heatwave.
INDIA’S DEADLY HEAT: In the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, more than 100 people died within three days following an intense heatwave, reported the Khaleej Times. The publication noted that authorities urged people to stay indoors and avoid direct exposure to the heat. Meanwhile, some parts of India are “grappling with power cuts as record-breaking heat has pushed electricity demand to an all-time high”, reported Reuters.
Around the world
- CRUDE DIPS: The International Energy Agency (IEA) said global investments in oil projects will fall below $500bn in 2026, continuing a three-year decline, reported Bloomberg. Carbon Brief’s analysis of the data shows the US’s “data-centre boom” means it is now investing more in fossil-fuel power than China.
- DODGING NET-ZERO: The world’s biggest miner, Australian giant BHP, has backtracked on climate action by halting or delaying projects to cut “vast” amounts of emissions, according to a Guardian investigation.
- SOLAR SLIP: China’s new solar installations dropped for a fourth straight month, reflecting weakening domestic demand, said Bloomberg.
- NO LOGGING: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell last year to its lowest level since 2019, according to a new report, said Agence France-Presse.
- EXECUTIVE ACTION: Puerto Rico’s governor announced a state of emergency to fight a surge in coastal erosion, citing the need to protect natural resources and vulnerable communities, reported the Associated Press.
Four million
The number of homes in the UK with air conditioning, double the figure from three years ago, reported the Guardian. There are 29m households in the UK.
Latest climate research
- Carbon Brief will soon be launching a new fortnightly newsletter focused on climate research. Sign up for free today.
- LGBTQ+ households in the US are “significantly more likely” to face energy poverty and insecurity than the general population | Energy Research & Social Science
- Global rice-paddy greenhouse gas emissions have doubled over the past six decades | Nature Food
- Vegetation greening and human-caused warming are the “main drivers” of a surge in flash floods over the last decade | Science Advances
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
A Carbon Brief investigation has shed light on the impact of weather-related flooding on National Health Service (NHS) facilities across the UK. At least 67 NHS hospital wards, departments and other sites have been forced to temporarily close or relocate due to weather-related flooding. The chart above shows sites of weather-related flooding incidents at NHS facilities. The size of the circles indicates the number of incidents reported at each site.
Spotlight
How solar mini-grids can ‘help boost’ Nigeria’s economy
This week, Carbon Brief covers a new report on Nigeria’s solar mini-grid industry.
Amid the impact of the US-Iran war on the Nigerian economy, a new report has argued that solar-mini grids can help to reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and create more than 200,000 jobs.
In Nigeria, Africa’s third-largest economy, the war has led to an increase in energy prices and a decrease in petrol consumption. Petrol is one of the country’s main sources of transport and household fuel. According to one estimate, prices have surged by up to 40% since the conflict commenced in February.
Although the Nigerian treasury has benefited from rising crude oil prices – the country is a major exporter of oil and gas – the impact has been most visible on the wider population.
Rising energy prices “have affected the purchasing power of workers”, Agnes Funmi Sessi, a labour union leader in Lagos, told Carbon Brief.
However, scaling the deployment of solar “mini-grids” could help the country move away from fossil fuels, stimulate rural economies and improve livelihoods, according to the new report authored by the thinktank, the Africa Policy Research Institute.
“We estimate that, by deploying over 10,000 mini-grids, the sector could create 212,688 direct full-time informal and productive-use jobs across the off-grid and under-grid market segments,” the report said.
A nascent industry
Solar “mini-grids” are small-scale, localised electricity generation and distribution systems powered by solar panels.
The report positioned Nigeria’s mini-grid sector as one of the fastest-growing in Africa, with the country having just 11 mini-grids in 2015 and 155 by 2024, along with at least 42 active developers.
Many of the companies within the sector are young and apply novel local techniques in their deployment of solar technology, the report said.
However, access to finance remains a huge barrier. According to the report, the sector may require up to $8bn to connect 35.4 million people to mini-grids.
“Most Nigerians want solar power in their homes, but it is a capital intensive business for vendors and customers,” Dr Ben Iheagwara, a renewable energy entrepreneur and policy analyst, told Carbon Brief.
The report urged the Nigerian government and its international partners to “attract private capital by de-risking investments and ensuring regulatory clarity and long-term planning”.
Other key recommendations for policymakers and stakeholders include investment in skills development and paying attention to the gender gap.
Powering rural communities
Many rural communities, which make up about 37% of the country, are disconnected from the national grid system, so often have to generate their own electricity through mini-grid systems.
According to Nigeria’s electricity regulator, NERC, a mini-grid is defined as a power generating system with an installed capacity of up to 10 megawatts.
A mini-grid can be powered by fossil fuels such as diesel or petrol, but solar power is now considered a cheaper and cleaner source.
With more than 80 million people lacking access to electricity in Nigeria, solar mini-grids are increasingly viewed as the lowest-cost electrification solution, the report said.
Watch, read, listen
MOVING FORWARD: The Energy Transition Show dug into electricity reform in South Africa, discussing the country’s coal legacy and the role of renewables.
ENERGY POVERTY: In an opinion article for Project Syndicate, executive director of the African Climate Foundation, Saliem Fakir, argued that the energy transition in emerging and developing economies is driven by economics and security rather than emissions targets.
VANISHING CITY: BBC News reported on a coastal community in Nigeria where the ocean has “already swallowed more than half of the town”.
Coming up
- 31 May: Colombia presidential elections
- 31 May-5 June: Global Environment Facility council meeting, Samarkand, Uzbekistan
- 2-5 June: The Venice Agreement for Peatlands workshop, Kisumu, Kenya
Pick of the jobs
- National Oceanography Centre, engagement assistant (external communications) | Salary: £28,254. Location: Southampton, UK
- Dangote Industries, decarbonisation specialist | Salary: Unknown. Location: Lagos, Nigeria
- City of New York, chief decarbonization officer | Salary: $261,469. Location: New York City
- Climate Central, writer and associate editor | Salary: $72,000-$75,000. Location: US (Remote)
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids appeared first on Carbon Brief.
At the African Development Bank (AfDB) annual meetings this week, several African leaders called for investments in electricity infrastructure which go beyond lighting homes to powering economies.
Applauding the AfDB for its energy programmes like Mission 300 – which aims to provide electricity access to 300 million Africans by 2030 – the Central African Republic’s President Faustin-Archange Touadera said that without power supply “we will not be able to achieve development”.
Speaking alongside him, the Republic of Congo’s President Denis Sassou Nguesso echoed this, saying that “as we need to help our people to turn towards agriculture, to turn towards livestock rearing, we also need to provide power to them.”
As the Mission 300 initiative advances, attention is increasingly shifting from simply connecting households to ensuring that electricity access translates into economic opportunities and livelihoods. That shift is driving the launch of a new Centre of Excellence for Productive Use of Energy being developed under Mission 300 by the philanthropically funded Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP).
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Kenya seeks regional coordination to build African mineral value chains
Kenyan President William Ruto is the latest African leader to announce an end to raw mineral exports as governments want to add more value to their resources -
Africa needs more than export bans to cash in on critical minerals, experts say
Restricting raw materials exports is well-intentioned but without other policies to foster domestic processing, they can backfire -
Africa records fastest-ever solar growth, as installations jump in 2025
Africa’s solar power installations have increased sharply, driven by utility-scale projects and privately financed rooftop and commercial systems
In an interview with Climate Home News, Carol Koech, GEAPP’s vice president for Africa, said the initiative is designed to ensure that electrification supports income generation, agriculture and local economic development rather than only basic household access.
Q: What is the Centre of Excellence for Productive Use of Energy aiming to achieve with Mission 300?
A: Mission 300 is increasingly being seen as a job platform and so the role of the Centre of Excellence in translating those electricity connections to jobs. So we want the centre to do four things. First, as a delivery engine, which enables countries to embed a cross-institutional advisor that supports the electrification components, but also other components that are happening in the country.
Second, we want the centre to be an innovation and strategy hub. Today, there’s really no place where you can go to find the state of the industry for productive use of energy across the globe, and we want to make the centre of excellence the place where you can go and get information about what technologies are available, where deployment is happening and how much is being deployed.
(Photo: Lighting Global/SunCulture/World Bank)
The third pillar is to coordinate and mobilise capital. We anticipate the centre coordinating internally within the ecosystem but also mobilising additional financing to help productivity. The last piece is how to scale businesses, enterprises and partnerships around this centre because we anticipate that as we grow this space, new industries will emerge and those industries will need to be supported.
Q: Why is productive use of energy becoming important under Mission 300?
A: Mission 300 gave us a bigger platform to demonstrate that energy is truly an enabler for economic development. It’s not sufficient to just provide a connection, but it is required that that connection truly translates to economic development for the communities that benefit.
We shouldn’t bring electricity and then start thinking about what people can do with it. We need to think about both at the same time and ensure electricity arrives together with the things that will make a difference in people’s lives. Historically, we’ve brought electricity and imagined a miracle would happen, but we know that hasn’t been the case.
The question is how to ensure universal access in the cheapest way while still transforming communities. Some mini-grids have been deployed in places where demand is extremely low, making them too expensive to sustain. But when mini-grids are paired with productive uses, the economics start to change. If businesses currently running on fossil fuel generators move to solar or renewable energy, operating costs fall and the business case for mini-grids becomes much stronger.
Q: How could this work in practice for agriculture and rural communities?
A: I’ll give you a practical example in our pilot country Zambia. Zambia has two programmes, they have the ASCENT programme for energy access and they also have the Zambia agribusiness and trade platform (ZATP). Some of the components of the ZATP programme – which is an agri-business program to help farmers to be productive – have a productive use component but don’t have an energy supply component. So we’re offering things like mills, processing facilities, irrigation and others. In some parts of Zambia, these productive use equipment has been supplied but has not been powered, so communities are not benefiting from that.
So the whole point is if we coordinate where the agribusiness programme is deployed together with where the energy access programme is deployed and layer those two programmes together in one place, then you could solve the energy access problem and solve productive use together and therefore have really meaningful outcomes for communities.
Q: How will the centre help both households and small businesses use electricity productively?
A: The question on whether we should electrify households or businesses is neither here nor there. We need to electrify all. The argument is really once we electrify businesses, the owners of those businesses will be able to pay what they need for their households as well as increase production for their businesses.
Electricity consumption is usually an indicator of economic development and by pushing productive use into households, especially where households are also smallholder farmers, the question becomes: how can electricity access translate to additional economic development for them? If you are connected onto a mini-grid, then you can actually use that connection to run irrigation, put in a dryer, or a cold storage system, whatever you require to improve your income but the fact that you have energy means that you can access productive use. Now, we need to ask ourselves how do these farmers or these households then get access to these appliances, because that’s another barrier.
Q&A: Will subsidy cuts for Chinese clean-tech exports hurt Africa’s solar boom?
The cost of these appliances is usually extremely high, and when you have programmes such as the ZATP running in Zambia, that’s already a public funding approach to making these appliances available and potentially reachable for farmers, either at household level, at farm level or at community level.
Q: How does this complement the already existing Mission 300 national energy compacts designed by countries?
A: Each of the national energy compacts have a productive use component, a pillar that talks about distributed renewable energy, productive use, and clean cooking. This is actually complementing the work of the countries, and this centre is like an available support, back office for countries to tap into as they implement their national energy compacts, if they have specific requirements and support for that pillar three.
So the advisers that will be embedded into countries, their role is to coordinate within country programs that are running where energy could make a difference. The advisers will be sourced from the country and so they will make sure that the donor money is coordinated to benefit the country fully. Their role will include going to ministries of agriculture or any related ministries and understanding where they are prioritising programmes that require electrification. In many cases, programmes and money have already been allocated, but this component is about how do we deploy it in a way that it actually truly brings a difference, so those advisers will do that.
Q: How will the centre address financing and private sector investment challenges?
A: What we’re really looking at is different financing mechanisms. In the past, we have provided subsidies and results-based financing to suppliers, distributors and manufacturers to help create markets for productive-use appliances. I see this as one mechanism the centre could use, but the bigger opportunity is aligning public funding across different programmes so that more of it can support productive uses, either through direct funding or subsidies.
Nigerians bet on solar as global oil shock hits wallets and power supplies
When it comes to private sector investment, the reality is that Africa’s energy sector still faces serious constraints. Most private investment has gone into power generation, particularly through independent power producers, and even then that has only been possible in places where the off-takers, usually utilities, are bankable.
To unlock more private capital, countries need the right policies, reforms and regulations, but even more importantly, utilities must become financially viable. If the off-taker is not bankable, then the project is not bankable.
Another major question is how to attract private investment into transmission infrastructure. There are different models being explored, but the reality is that public funding alone is not sufficient to achieve Mission 300, so finding new ways to mobilise private capital will be critical.
The post Q&A: How can African electricity access power jobs not just lightbulbs? appeared first on Climate Home News.
Q&A: How can African electricity access power jobs not just lightbulbs?
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