It’s been two weeks since Khalil Abu Yahia, his wife, and two daughters were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza.
Every day that passes, I try to put words to paper, as others have before me, to offer a tribute to this very special friend and partner.
But writing about Khalil, rather than writing with Khalil, is devastating. Writing about Khalil is impossible to do without him and without his words – words that defied those that tried to silence him and keep us apart.
I lit the Jewish ceremonial memorial candles last weekend in memory of Khalil, his family, and others who have been killed in this incomprehensible violence.
I recalled a message Khalil sent me on my birthday this year: “As they say, don’t count your candles, but see the light they give.”
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As I write this in disbelief, I know that Khalil would be comforted that his partners are holding on closely to his words as a source of light, and as a source of hope for a just future, and a climate resilient future, in all of this.
I first met Khalil in the summer of 2021. As regional climate specialists, Mor Gilboa and I were setting out to write an investigative report on the effects of climate change on life in Gaza.
While Mor is a long-time Israeli climate and environmental justice activist, and I had spent years working on water security in Gaza, it was clear from the start that we could not do justice to this issue without the guidance and partnership of a local expert.
A friend of mine suggested we reach out to Khalil, a passionate and curious student and researcher from Gaza.
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At that point, Khalil had been connected to friends and political activists across Israel and abroad through solidarity efforts with Gaza’s Great March of Return protests.
Khalil agreed to be a part of our reporting team. This decision was not a simple one – publishing with Israel-based co-authors was a major risk for Khalil.
Our initial conversations were spent getting to know each other, learning about our political outlooks, understandings of justice, and goals for this report.
We began a relationship building process that was made near-impossible by the barriers that prevented us from knowing each other in the first place.
Over the next six months, Khalil, Mor, and I began researching and writing. We wanted to understand and articulate what climate breakdown in Gaza looks like.
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We scheduled meetings based on when Khalil would have electricity access, while we wrote about the chronic instability of electricity supply in Gaza and how it affects the availability of essential services, including health, water, and sanitation.
Very quickly, we understood how deeply the very same barriers that made it difficult for us to know each other and work together – particularly the decades-old siege on Gaza and relentless cycles of Israeli bombardments – were also fundamentally changing the way Gazans can build climate resilience.
Under Israel’s uncompromising restrictions on the movement of people and materials in and out of Gaza, the most basic life-supporting infrastructure, including clean water and continuous electricity, have been under threat for years.
These resources are also the most susceptible to climate breakdown and are fundamental in building climate resilience.
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The blockade on Gaza, which has been maintained by Israel and Egypt since 2006, along with frequent rounds of violence, has fueled an economic and humanitarian crisis in Gaza for the past fifteen years. Gaza can barely ensure livable conditions at present, let alone in an increasingly uncertain climate future.
While Mor and I would try to meet together to co-write about this crisis from our homes in Tel Aviv/Jaffa – a city far more equipped to deal with climate breakdown than the Gaza Strip, we could only dream of meeting Khalil.
Meeting online was also challenging: his limited access to the internet reduced our ability to work efficiently, hold stable zoom calls, or co-work on the same document. But we made up for it in dozens of voice notes and messages.
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Khalil’s voice notes always started the same: “Hi Natasha! Hi Mor! How are you? I hope you are doing well.”
He would offer us a range of wishes, always attuned to whatever developments in our life we had shared with him.
He congratulated me on my sister’s wedding, he wished me a speedy recovery when I had Covid-19 while we were working to meet a writing deadline.
“I wanted to ask about you.” He said to me in one voice note, “I hope you are ok and that you are fighting this Corona. I am really very worried about you and thinking about you. I know it’s maybe a bit difficult to fight this Corona, but I also know that you are up to the task. Please, if you want anything, just don’t hesitate, just ask me. Regards, and sending love.”
Our process of writing together in many ways was an act of resistance to the systems we were writing about.
We built a friendship, first and foremost, and we also got to shed light on the situation in Gaza through our reporting.
Reflecting over these last couple of weeks, Mor reminded me about one of the conversations we had with Khalil while we were working together.
“During one of our video calls, I was sitting outside on a bench in Jaffa. Khalil shared about his grandmother who fled from Jaffa to Gaza in 1948, and how much he would like to come visit here. He asked me to show him the area around me on video. I remember his great excitement and also his desire to come and see Jaffa.”
“I was also excited to meet him,” Mor continued, “and in general to research climate and environmental issues in Gaza. This has interested me for many years, but is almost inaccessible to me as an Israeli… Getting to know him was a point of light in a very large and lasting darkness.”
I felt like we were defying the odds in building this partnership. In one of the tributes to Khalil published last week, Maya Rosen and Erez Bleicher reflected on Khalil’s belief in the radical potential of friendship, and how Khalil – whose name means friend in Arabic – reminded them that borders could be overcome and that the systems keeping us all apart could be broken.
“Khalil understood that a just solution must be found for everyone who lives here,” Mor shared with me. “Even as someone who lived for over two decades under blockade, poverty and oppression, his heart was wide, loving, open and optimistic.”
Khalil deeply embodied this in our work by showing curiosity, offering love and support, and letting us into his own experience. He shared openly when he was frustrated or upset in the process, inviting us to do the same, and through this we built a radical friendship that lived beyond our reporting.
Our report was published in +972 Magazine in January 2022. Through the voices of residents across Gaza, who Khalil took great efforts to meet and interview, we offered an analysis on the bleak future for Gaza.
We called it “a climate change hotspot within a hotspot that is being denied both its basic humanitarian needs, and the capacity and resources to prepare for and minimize the impacts of climate breakdown.”
Since we published the article, we kept closely in touch. We exchanged birthday wishes, photos, and other life updates, but also exchanged reflections on developments in our research.
Khalil would update me and Mor on things like Gaza experiencing the first day in a while of having 24-hours of electricity across the Strip, when a new water desalination plant was constructed but didn’t have the fuel to operate fully, or when he saw our article being posted or shared in networks he was connected to.
Over the past month, we also stayed connected. But we didn’t talk about the intersections of the climate crisis with the ongoing bombardment.
We didn’t talk about how safe water supplies are almost entirely inaccessible, how frequent electricity blackouts have devastated Gaza’s ability to provide essential services, or how toxic white phosphorous bombs are being used indiscriminately across the Strip.
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It is near impossible to think about the climate crisis amongst this much death and destruction; but the reality is, this last month has set Gaza even deeper into a humanitarian crisis, and its two million residents are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change than ever.
With severely limited access to food, water, energy, and health services, and with the devastation to homes and shelters across the Strip, the population has very little capacity to cope with any major climate event or disaster.
On top of this, the increasing restrictions on Gazan movement or humanitarian support is barring their access to key adaptation strategies, such as migration or adaptive agriculture.
Plainly, whatever the end of this violence brings, Gaza will need to prioritise reconstruction and restoration over advancing climate resilience.
Khalil understood this, and in the messages I received from him before he died, he still held onto his vision for an alternative future.
He sent wishes of safety. He shared updates on his family and his efforts to escape the bombings.
Khalil shared his thoughts and reflections on this hope for something different. “I believe that my voice will hopefully change something,” he wrote, “to make people move or, at least, speak truth to power.”
Even with the barriers and systems that divided us higher than ever before, he also continued to share his love.
“I hug you deep inside my heart,” Khalil wrote to me. It was his last message to me before he was killed.
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Over ten thousand Gazans have been killed since October 7, and I keep asking myself how many other people like Khalil did we lose to this violence, who we never had the opportunity to meet, to work with, or to love.
In the same way that Khalil understood his own mortality as a Gazan, especially in these last few weeks, I also know that he believed that safety, justice, and freedom for all people was possible.
I hope that I, and the many others he inspired, will continue to be rooted in his optimistic yearning and unwavering commitment to solidarity and justice. Rest in power, Khalil.
Natasha Westheimer is researcher and practioner in the fields of climate change and water governance in Israel/Palestine
The post “I hug you deep inside my heart”: In memory of Khalil Abu Yahia appeared first on Climate Home News.
“I hug you deep inside my heart”: In memory of Khalil Abu Yahia
SYDNEY, Thursday 30 October 2026 — In response to reports that the Albanese government is set to introduce draft legislation this year that would seek to ban data centres in Australia’s suburbs, Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:
“These reports are a testament to the growing community opposition to these completely inappropriate AI factories that have sprung up across our suburbs, and Big Tech corporations should take heed — the data centre build-out must not happen without the endorsement of the Australian people.
“But the government can’t simply ship this problem out to regional Australia without addressing the fundamental issues with this extractive new industry.
“We’re already seeing a trend of AI data centre proposals moving to the regions, in areas that are more water-scarce, more environmentally sensitive, and next to sources of fracked and coal seam gas to support their massive BYO gas-fired power plans — a pattern we’ve seen play out in the United States.
“From the Beetaloo Basin in the NT to the Western Downs in Qld, we’re seeing a wave of AI data centre proposals that would see new gas fast-tracked to support their massive energy demand, and threaten to completely derail Australia’s energy transition.
“Just as suburban Australians are asking, “what for?”, regional communities like Berry Springs and Dalby do not want dirty data centres setting up shop with absolutely no benefit to their communities. Greenpeace is calling for a moratorium on AI data centre developments until strict and enforceable safeguards are in place to protect our climate and our communities.”
-ENDS-
Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
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In the thick of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in 2024, the UN climate talks were rattled by what can only be described as a major PR disaster. The BBC, Reuters and The Guardian all carried headlines, attributed to leading climate policy experts, that the COPs were “no longer fit for purpose”.
The articles outlined a series of reforms called for in an open letter signed by 22 eminent scientists and politicians, including a former UN secretary-general and previous UN climate chief, with a further 150 lending their support. The headlines shook confidence in the COP process, just as governments were wrestling over a new climate finance goal.
The Club of Rome – which handled the media relations for the letter – hurried to say that its “constructive, supportive ideas” had been “misinterpreted”. Negotiators kept calm(ish) and carried on, in the end landing the finance goal after some high-stakes drama on the final day.
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To my surprise, when I went back this week to read the letter again, I could not find the offending line about the COPs not being fit for purpose. The Club of Rome has yet to respond to my query about its disappearance.
Whatever happened to the wording, that sentiment has been widely shared. COPs have ballooned in size while the importance of their outcomes seems to have diminished since the 2015 Paris Agreement (with the exception of the 2023 COP in Dubai where countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems).
The same on the surface
Two years on from those painful headlines in Baku, has anything changed for the better? You might be forgiven for thinking not. Official decisions are still made by consensus rather than the majority voting some have called for to stop blockers.
Tens of thousands of officials, activists and business execs still scurry around the halls to an ever-growing list of side events, roundtables and dialogues, while deals still come down to rows, all-nighters and jargon-filled texts adopted to rounds of applause.
But it would not be true to say that COPs have completely failed to respond to the very real need to translate the words of the Paris Agreement into action in the outside world.
Global warming is projected to be around 1.3C lower this century than it would have been if the world had not committed to tackle the climate crisis under that accord. Developing countries have a valued space at COPs in which their voices have equal weight in decision-making, unlike in many other international fora. And most importantly, perhaps, there has been a subtle shift, tipping the balance away from negotiating towards doing.
Brazil branded last year’s summit in Belém as the “COP of Implementation”, corralling the sprawling Action Agenda into six axes. This was a bid to impose some structure on the mushrooming efforts between governments, UN agencies, cities, businesses and civil society to set targets and spur faster results on their pet issues, from methane emissions to health and adaptation in conflict zones. COP30 alone saw the launch of 120 “plans to accelerate solutions”.
COP30 roadmaps off the cuff
Meanwhile, as the formal negotiations drew to a close, it was clear that consensus decision-making was evolving into something a little more improvised.
With only around half of all countries on board with the idea of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago announced his team would put one together over the coming year, along with another on how to meet a global goal to halt deforestation by 2030. Those roadmaps will be launched next week, presented and discussed at COP31, though it’s still unclear whether or how they’ll be incorporated into the formal negotiating agenda.
Some leading policy-makers don’t think that matters too much. Speaking to journalists before the Antalya summit, COP30 CEO Ana Toni and Dutch climate minister Stientje van Veldhoven said “coalitions of the willing” can move ahead without needing consensus from the COPs. This, they said, was evident this year at the first global conference on TAFF, co-chaired by van Veldhoven and attended by 60 countries.
“Consensus or no-consensus in the general COP doesn’t make a difference for the choices I have to make in my country to get my country to phase out fossil fuels,” said the Dutch minister. The Netherlands recently became one of the first to publish a national TAFF plan.
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This thinking has permeated the management and expected outcomes of this year’s COP too. Earlier this year, Türkiye, supported by international energy agencies, floated the idea of a voluntary goal to boost electrification to 35% of the world’s final energy consumption by 2035 – and this is now being touted as one of the main results to be expected from Antalya.
Türkiye is also championing a pledge on AI and climate, while co-host Australia is pushing to ease access to climate finance for least developed countries and small island states.
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None of these needs consensus. But with a political cover decision already in the works, as trailed by the COP presidents, they – and perhaps the fossil fuel roadmap – may find a home in the official text if language acceptable to most can be found, giving them them additional weight.
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Formal reform is underway too, if quietly. UN climate chief Simon Stiell is leading a review informed by ongoing consultations with a group of 15 well-respected climate policy experts, three of whom signed the open letter in 2024.
Among them is leading Swedish climate and sustainability scientist Johan Rockström who has strong ideas about how to make COPs function better, including a switch to majority voting. He told the same press briefing nothing stands in the way of this, because the rules of procedure for making decisions at COPs have never been formally agreed.
Still, to get away from the default setting of consensus would require agreement on a new system that may be impossible to achieve given the rise in bullying tactics by fossil fuel heavyweights.
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The deliberations with the high-level policy gurus, as reflected in a summary of June’s session in Bonn, largely echo what’s already happening organically, calling for stronger partnerships and accountability both in and between the Action Agenda and negotiations. It doesn’t mention voting.
A general overview of the reform exercise says that “improving and optimizing the [UN climate] process over the medium to long term… will be critical to fostering trust, enhancing collaboration, and catalyzing increased ambition”.
In the short term, don’t hold your breath for anything concrete on reform at COP31 but watch for signs in what ends up dominating the headlines from Türkiye.
The post Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines appeared first on Climate Home News.
Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines