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5 Near-term Decisions Will Affect the Ocean for Years to Come

wil.thomas@wri.org — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 20:08:44 +0000

5 Near-term Decisions Will Affect the Ocean for Years to Come wil.thomas@wri.org Tue, 07/28/2026 - 16:08

The last year has been a consequential one for ocean conservation, as well as a reminder of how much work remains to protect the world’s largest ecosystem.

First, the good news:

Ocean conservation now features more prominently in national and international policies than ever before. For one, the High Seas Treaty (also known as the “BBNJ Agreement”) entered into force at the beginning of 2026, transforming years of negotiations into an operational framework for protecting and sustainably managing nearly two-thirds of the ocean. For the first time, countries agreed to establish marine protected areas in international waters and strengthen environmental governance across the high seas. Meanwhile, the EU launched its Ocean Pact to deliver healthier, more connected seas in Europe. A World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies entered into force, targeting harmful fishing practices. And more countries than ever before included ocean-based measures in their latest national climate plans, known as “nationally determined contributions,” or NDCs.

The recent Our Ocean Conference further boosted momentum. Held in Mombasa, Kenya in June 2026, the summit mobilized over $7.5 billion and 369 new commitments to make progress against the conference’s six themes.

These instances of progress are helping to reframe the ocean not just as a victim of exploitation, but as a viable source of solutions from energy security and economic competitiveness to food provision and climate resilience. Research finds that every $1 invested in the ocean yields at least $5 in benefits. For example, employment in ocean industries could grow by 51 million jobs over the next 20 years if we continue to invest in a sustainable ocean economy. “Blue food” production could sustainably grow by roughly 30-75% by mid-century, almost entirely from low-impact aquaculture and rebuilt fisheries. And expanding offshore renewable energy could provide the emissions-savings equivalent of taking 800 million gasoline-powered cars off the roads every year.

But at the same time, the ocean is sending out increasingly urgent warning signals. Ocean temperatures have steadily risen over the past five decades. The effects are visible in the form of greater sea level rise, ice melt, acidification, species death and more. Meanwhile, unsustainable practices such as overfishing and widespread pollution continue to take their toll. Research finds that 35% of fish stocks are classified as overfished, and 19-23 million tonnes of plastic leaks into lakes, rivers and seas every year.

Sea surface temperatures (top 20cm) have risen more than 1 degree C (1.8 degrees F) above the preindustrial (1861-1890) average, with the sharpest increases occurring over the past five decades.

Maximizing the positive impacts of the ocean economy hinges on progress going further, faster. To that end, five near-term opportunities could offer crucial ocean wins:

1) A Meaningful Presence at the Next UN Climate Summit (COP31)

Climate negotiations have historically overlooked the ocean's role in delivering emissions reductions and building resilience. But with research finding that more than 90% of new NDCs submitted last year included at least one ocean-based action, this may finally be changing.

I co-authored a letter signed by more than 150 ocean experts, scientists and leaders calling for the next UN climate summit (COP31) to place the ocean at the center of the agenda. The letter highlighted the ocean’s vast current and potential contributions to halting and reversing climate change. For example, the ocean absorbs over 90% of excess heat and captures a quarter of global CO₂ emissions. Research shows ocean-based actions like offshore renewables and mangrove restoration can provide up to 35% of the emissions reductions needed to hold warming below 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F), a critical threshold for human wellbeing.

Our letter called for six actions to yield a consequential outcome — from making ocean-climate solutions a core theme of the COP31 World Leaders Summit to integrating ocean priorities into negotiation texts on mitigation, adaptation, finance and more. These actions would ensure the ocean would get its best opportunity to deliver on its potential to tackle climate change.

The “pre-COP” in Fiji in October, alongside a leaders’ meeting in Tuvalu, will provide an early indication of whether governments are prepared to elevate the ocean from a side conversation to a core component of climate action.

2) Deliver the IMO’s Net-Zero Shipping Framework

If the shipping sector were a country, it would rank among the world's 10 largest greenhouse gas emitters. Shipping is therefore one of our greatest opportunities to cut emissions while strengthening global trade and even creating new sustainable “blue jobs.”

In 2025, governments approved the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) Net-Zero Framework, committing to a mandatory marine fuel standard and carbon price for shipping. However, formal adoption was delayed for a year, leaving the sector with continued regulatory uncertainty. Even once formally adopted, the agreement will likely only deliver on a fraction of the emissions cuts needed to achieve the IMO’s own 2030 climate goals, which call for at least a 40% reduction of carbon emissions across international shipping by 2030.

Crucially, under the current draft, ships would only pay when they exceed certain emissions-intensity thresholds, with different penalty levels depending on performance rather than a universal carbon levy applied to every ton of greenhouse gas emissions. This approach not only weakens the economic incentive to switch away from fossil fuels, it also allows ships to continue using conventional fuels while paying relatively modest compliance costs.

With roughly 80% of global trade carried by sea, decarbonizing shipping is essential to curbing climate change without compromising economic growth. The IMO's framework is an important step forward, but governments must ensure it is ambitious enough to accelerate the transition to zero-emission shipping and send a clear market signal that the future of maritime transport is clean.

Success in 2026 would mean adopting a legally binding framework in December that closes the gap to the IMO’s 2030 targets, rewards first movers, raises sufficient revenue for a just clean energy transition, and gives fuel producers, ports and shipowners a credible investment signal.

3) An Ambitious Plastics Treaty

Plastic pollution is one of the most visible and pervasive signs of ocean degradation. Plastic has been found in even the deepest ocean trenches and in the tissues of marine animals. Producing plastics also fuels climate change, leaches chemicals and costs us money — about $75 billion per year in environmental damages. Plastic pollution can deplete fish stocks, while plastic-littered beaches deter tourism.

Countries have met seven times since 2022 after the UN Environment Assembly adopted resolution 5/14, which requested that an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop an ‘instrument’ to address the full lifecycle of plastic, from production to disposal. But they have yet to agree on an actionable treaty. Key sticking points center on the regulation of plastic production and the chemicals used, as well as whether solutions should be undertaken as a global or national approach.

While there has been progress to find compromises, the central question is whether governments can agree on a treaty that addresses the full plastics lifecycle. A treaty focused only on downstream waste management would leave the plastic “tap” running. While the next formal negotiations won’t happen until early 2027, an informal Heads of Delegation meeting will take place in Bangkok, Thailand in September. This gathering will be key to break the deadlock and rebuild consensus before formal negotiations resume.

4) Implement Biodiversity Commitments

It’s been nearly four years since countries adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Signatories agreed on goals for biodiversity conservation and restoration, including the much-publicized ‘30 by 30 agreement,’ where 196 countries committed to collectively conserve at least 30% of the world's land and ocean by 2030.

Since 2022, countries have been working to translate the agreement into national action. Already, more than 160 sets of national targets have been submitted and over 80 countries have updated their National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs). This is all captured in national progress reports, which a record 125 countries have submitted ahead of the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP17) taking place in October in Armenia.

COP17 will be the first major opportunity to assess collective progress under the Global Biodiversity Frameworkand identify where action must accelerate. The UN’s Global Report provides a detailed analysis of every target, including progress toward halting and reversing biodiversity loss as well as the gaps, pressures and challenges hindering momentum.

For the ocean, this means moving beyond headline commitments to protect 30% of marine areas and asking harder questions: Are protected areas effectively managed, equitably governed and ecologically representative? Are countries restoring coastal ecosystems, reducing pressures from overfishing and pollution, and aligning biodiversity plans with climate and development strategies?

Success at COP17 will depend not on announcing new targets, but on strengthening implementation, closing the conservation finance gap and improving accountability.

Signatories to the Global Biodiversity Framework committed to conserve and restore 30% of the world's land and ocean by 2030, a critical goal for marine ecosystems. Photo by LP Snaps/Shutterstock

5) National Sustainable Ocean Plans

The previous four opportunities depend on global agreements. Action within a country’s national waters is also needed.

Sustainable Ocean Plans are a way for countries to turn global targets into coherent national action. They provide a framework to help different sectors and stakeholders — from fisheries, shipping and offshore energy, to coastal communities and Indigenous Peoples — align on a shared vision for ocean use. Sustainable Ocean Plans can help countries identify where conservation, economic development and climate action can reinforce one another while reducing conflicts between competing activities.

Momentum behind this approach is growing. More than 30 countries committed to 100% sustainable ocean management through initiatives such as the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy (Ocean Panel), the 100% Alliance and 8 Gulf of Guinea countries. New initiatives are also emerging to provide technical and financial assistance to countries developing Sustainable Ocean Plans. These include Ocean Action 2030’s Rapid Assistance Fund and the Nippon Foundation’s new Sustainable Ocean Planning and Management platform, which was announced at an inaugural Island States Ocean Summit.

Yet wider uptake is necessary to ensure the ocean isn’t managed in silos. One example of where Sustainable Ocean Plans could have widespread impact is in the European Union, where the EU Commission is exploring ways to increase connectivity and holistic management of their waters. If the EU made Sustainable Ocean Plans a requirement for each coastal member state, improving governance and conflict resolution, achieving climate and biodiversity goals, coordinating across sea basins, and improving ocean monitoring would be well within reach.

Ramping Up Ocean Action

The coming months will determine whether governments can translate growing recognition of the ocean's value into concrete outcomes. Put simply, they must recognize the ocean as an essential part of solving global challenges — especially in the wake of food and energy pressures heightened by the war on Iran.

The ocean is a deep source of solutions that can improve livelihoods, strengthen resilience and support a more secure global economy. If leaders seize this moment, 2026 may be remembered as the year the world began treating the ocean not simply as something to protect, but as an essential partner in addressing the defining challenges we face today.

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Ocean-based climate actions such as expanding offshore wind turbines can dramatically reduce emissions while creating jobs and other benefits. Photo by Michael John Manning/Shutterstock

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Maximizing the positive impacts of the ocean economy hinges on progress going further, faster. Key summits and decision points this year could tip the scales in the right direction.

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STATEMENT: U.S. EPA Move to Reverse California’s Clean Air Act Waivers Plays Politics with Public Health

darla.vanhoorn@wri.org — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 15:13:13 +0000

STATEMENT: U.S. EPA Move to Reverse California’s Clean Air Act Waivers Plays Politics with Public Health darla.vanhoorn… Fri, 07/24/2026 - 11:13

Washington, D.C. (July 24, 2026) — This week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sent two California Clean Air Act waiver approvals to Congress, seeking to overturn them via the Congressional Review Act. These waivers allow California to protect people living in the state’s densely populated port regions from dangerous pollution emitted by ocean-going vessels at berth and commercial harbor craft.

Following is a statement from Sue Gander, Director, U.S. Transportation, World Resources Institute:

“The federal government’s continued attacks on California’s Clean Air Act waivers are playing politics with public health. Retaining these waivers would dramatically reduce the amount of nitrogen oxides and particulate matter that pollute the air Californians breathe, while also cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

“The very agency created to protect public health is instead endangering it. In the process, it's undermining the regulatory certainty that businesses rely on and jeopardizing billions of dollars in investment in low- and zero-emission berthing and harbor operations.”

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As Temperatures Climb, the Ocean Takes the Brunt

sarah.brown@wri.org — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 16:20:57 +0000

As Temperatures Climb, the Ocean Takes the Brunt sarah.brown@wri.org Wed, 07/22/2026 - 12:20

From scorching temperatures in South Africa to unprecedented heat waves in Europe, extreme heat is breaking records and transforming people’s lives across the world. While we feel this heat most immediately in our home and workplaces, the reality is that most of it actually ends up in the ocean.

The ocean absorbs about 91% of the excess heat trapped by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. This growing “energy imbalance” explains why ocean temperatures keep breaking records and why sea levels keep climbing. Those same greenhouse gas emissions are also changing the chemistry of seawater.

The effects of these changes are increasingly being felt on land. But for those working in the ocean space, climate change is already here. The ocean is our clearest indicator of climate change — and the effects of these changes are sobering.

The Rate of Ocean Warming Has More Than Doubled

Because of its huge volume and water’s high heat capacity, the ocean acts as a giant heat reservoir for the planet, absorbing 91% of the excess heat caused by greenhouse gases emitted over the last century. That’s equivalent to the heat of about 7.6 billion cups of tea being poured into the ocean every second.

As a result, ocean temperatures have steadily risen, with myriad impacts on people and the planet — from more intense storms and climate patterns like El Niño to species migrating in search of cooler, more suitable waters and growing threats to the crucial fisheries we depend on for food security and livelihoods.

Sea surface temperatures (top 20cm) have risen more than 1 degree C (1.8 degrees F) above the preindustrial (1861-1890) average, with the sharpest increases occurring over the past five decades.

Sea surface temperatures, measured in the top 20 centimeters of the ocean, have risen steadily over the past five decades, reaching a record in 2024. Similarly, the upper 2,000 meters of the ocean stored more heat than ever before in 2025 — marking the ninth consecutive year of record-breaking heat storage. On top of that, the rate of warming observed between 2005 and 2025 was more than double the rate recorded between 1960 and 2005. Not only is the ocean warming — it’s warming faster.

This trend is one of the clearest indicators we have of climate change, and one that’s particularly visible at the poles. Arctic sea ice reached its lowest annual maximum extent on record in March 2025 and again in 2026 (about 14.3 million square kilometers in both years). In 2025 Antarctic sea ice recorded its third-lowest annual maximum extent (about 17.8 million square kilometers) and second-lowest summer minimum (about 2 million square kilometers). As reflective white sea ice disappears, it exposes the darker ocean water below, which absorbs more heat, creating a feedback loop that further accelerates warming.

Antarctic sea ice hit its third-lowest annual maximum extent on record in September 2025. Image by Michala Garrison/NASA Earth Observatory, using data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Sea-Level Rise Has Almost Doubled

While dwindling sea ice is alarming, it's just the tip of the (melting) iceberg.

By the end of 2025, the global average sea level was about 11 centimeters higher than it was in January 1993. The rate of this increase has sped up from roughly 2.65 millimeters per year (1993–2011) to about 4.75 millimeters per year (2012–2025). This acceleration is driven by both the thermal expansion of seawater as it warms and the melting of land-based ice from glaciers and ice sheets.

Sea Ice vs. Land Ice: The Impact on Sea Levels

Sea ice forms and floats on the ocean, so when it melts, it does not add a significant amount of water to the ocean in the same way that melting land ice does. However, because sea ice is mostly fresh water and the ocean is salty, the meltwater is slightly less dense than the surrounding seawater. As a result, it occupies a slightly larger volume than the seawater it displaced by the floating ice, causing a small increase in sea level — around 3% of the effect of melting land ice.

These changes are reshaping ecosystems, altering ocean circulation and contributing to rising sea levels worldwide. Higher sea levels increase the frequency of high-tide flooding, worsen storm surges, accelerate coastal erosion and allow saltwater to intrude into freshwater supplies and farmland. The consequences are not only environmental but also social and economic and will be felt for generations.

Low-lying nations and coastal communities are already experiencing many of these impacts. In The Gambia, for example, rising seas are pushing saltwater farther up the Gambia River and into surrounding farmland. In some villages, once-productive rice and vegetable fields have been abandoned because the soil has become too salty for crops. As suitable land becomes scarcer, communities are running out of options to grow food.

In places where relocation is no longer possible, some governments are creating pathways to allow people freedom of movement to move to a new country. One example is Tuvalu in the South Pacific, where an agreement with Australia allows eligible Tuvaluans to migrate as rising seas increasingly flood areas that once remained dry at high tide. Tuvaluans are facing the consequences of a crisis to which their country has contributed very little. Beyond the loss of homes and infrastructure, sea-level rise raises profound questions about identity and sovereignty, such as: what happens to a country if its people are forced to leave?

In Tuvalu, the land and ocean often has little distance apart, making the island nation particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels. Photo by Dmitry Malov/iStock

The Ocean’s Chemistry Is Changing

As well as absorbing heat, the ocean is also a major carbon sink, absorbing roughly 25% of human-generated carbon dioxide emissions. However, this service comes at a cost.

As carbon dioxide dissolves into seawater, it alters ocean chemistry. While acidification varies across the ocean, observations show that the average acidity of surface ocean waters worldwide has increased by around 30% since the preindustrial era. This spells trouble for marine life and those who rely on it.

Coral reefs, shell-forming species and other marine organisms are especially vulnerable because acidification reduces the availability of carbonate ions needed to build calcium carbonate shells and skeletons. These impacts can ripple across the ocean: Ecosystems like coral reefs support around 25% of life in the ocean, as well as crucial food webs. The decline of these ecosystems alone will affect fisheries, food security and other coastal economies that depend on them.

The effects of more acidic ocean environments have been seen before when oyster hatcheries in Oregon and Washington experienced mass larval die-offs. These were later linked to more acidic, low-aragonite seawater entering hatchery tanks and impeding crucial processes for the larvae to make their shells. This proved to be a huge issue for the region that is significant within the shellfish trade and was valued at about $111 million when it came close to collapse, before growers adopted monitoring and water-treatment systems.

Because acidification is progressing faster in some regions than the global average, some places may face ecological impacts sooner and with greater intensity than global averages suggest. Sustained ocean surface warmth also contributes to deoxygenation and lowers nutrient resupply. Layer onto that marine heatwaves and increased acidity and we have compounded pressures on reefs, kelp forests, shellfish, food webs and, ultimately, coastal livelihoods and national economies.

Climate Change Is Accelerating. So Must Our Response

The ocean is sending us an unmistakable message: Climate change is accelerating, and our response must accelerate with it. Limiting every fraction of a degree of warming matters, because it means less heat accumulating in the ocean, less sea-level rise locked in for future generations and greater resilience for the communities and ecosystems that depend upon a healthy ocean.

The science is increasingly clear that some degree of ocean change is now unavoidable. Deep ocean warming and interior ocean acidification are effectively irreversible on our timescales. This does not mean giving up. It means doing everything we can now to reduce near-term risks by protecting natural buffers such as mangroves, reefs, wetlands and seagrasses; planning coastal infrastructure and services so that communities stay safe when floods, storms or heatwaves overwhelm them; and acting earlier, using forecasts and ocean-observation systems to protect people, livelihoods and ecosystems before impacts hit — all while continuing to cut emissions. Achieving that depends on three key actions happening together:

Viewing adaptation as essential. For coasts, the acceleration in sea‑level rise is the metric that should be resetting adaptation timetables. The impacts of a warming, acidifying ocean must be factored into infrastructure investment, urban planning, disaster preparedness and national development strategies today, rather than treated as future challenges.
Investing in healthy ocean ecosystems. Mangroves, saltmarshes, seagrasses, coral reefs and other coastal ecosystems help buffer shorelines, store carbon and sustain livelihoods. Protecting and restoring these systems will not stop ocean warming, but it can help societies absorb its impacts while delivering multiple economic, social and environmental benefits.
Making ocean data visible. Ocean metrics should be presented alongside emissions so leaders have a clearer picture of climate progress and risk, as well as how they directly affect ecosystems, food security and coastal safety.

The encouraging news is that many of the solutions already exist. Sustainable Ocean Plans, ecosystem protection and restoration, climate-resilient fisheries management, resilient coastal infrastructure and accelerated decarbonization can all help reduce risk while supporting long-term prosperity. The challenge is now delivering at the pace and scale that ecosystems and communities demand.

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The ocean is warming, rising and changing as a result of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, making it one of the clearest signals of a changing climate.

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STATEMENT: European Commission Sets 46% Electrification Target Alongside Carbon Market Reform

sophie.brady@wri.org — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 14:39:51 +0000

STATEMENT: European Commission Sets 46% Electrification Target Alongside Carbon Market Reform sophie.brady@wri.org Fri, 07/17/2026 - 10:39

Brussels (July 17, 2026) — The European Commission today released its Electrification Action Plan alongside a revision of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), pairing the two initiatives to strengthen Europe’s competitiveness, energy security and industrial decarbonization.

The Plan sets an indicative target for electricity’s share of final energy consumption to reach 46% by 2040 — double today’s share. The ETS review would reshape the post-2030 carbon market and direct significantly more revenues towards investment in decarbonizing energy-intensive industries, whilst, controversially, allowing polluting emission permits for a longer period.

Following is a statement from Clem Perry, Global Clean Energy Supply Lead at WRI’s Polsky Center for the Global Energy Transition:

“The EU’s Electrification Plan and the ETS review reflect a simple reality: replacing volatile, polluting fossil fuels with clean electricity is essential to Europe’s competitiveness, security and prosperity. Europe has cleaned up its power supply, but now it must bring that clean power into transport, buildings and industry to break its dependence on imported fossil fuels.

“Doubling Europe’s electrification rate by 2040 would reshape the continent’s economy, but reaching that goal will require far more than an indicative target. Europe must electrify smarter, not just faster. It can't simply plug millions of new electric cars, heat pumps and data centers into the grid and hope it holds up. The Action Plan rightly recognizes that new demand can be a source of flexibility, rewarding businesses and households for using or storing energy when clean power is abundant, and easing demand when grids are constrained. Delivering that vision will require modern grids and storage, clear market rules and dependable incentives and revenues for flexibility.

“The Plan still lacks a dedicated strategy for heating and cooling. As heatwaves in Europe become more frequent, longer and more intense, clean, efficient and affordable, heating and cooling must be central to the Plan's implementation to protect people from extreme heat.

“The ETS review must reinforce Europe's shift to clean electrification. Directing more carbon-market revenues towards industrial decarbonization is welcome, but extending free allowances and slowing the decline in emissions permits must come with firm, enforceable investment conditions. Otherwise, Europe risks weakening the very business case for clean electrification that the Plan is intended to strengthen.

“Done right, electrification can create jobs, attract investment, lower bills for families and businesses and reduce Europe's reliance on volatile imported fossil fuels. The Plan appropriately confronts taxes, levies and fossil fuel subsidies that make electricity needlessly expensive. Now the Commission and Member States must deliver by lowering energy costs, accelerating grid connections, financing the shift to electric heating, transport and industrial processes and rewarding flexible demand.”

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When Policies Restrict Clean Energy, Electric Bills Go Up

alicia.cypress@wri.org — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 18:25:27 +0000

When Policies Restrict Clean Energy, Electric Bills Go Up alicia.cypress… Thu, 07/16/2026 - 14:25

In recent months, more than 100 wind farms in 21 states were stalled as part of a sweeping effort by the U.S. government to halt renewable energy development. Since 2025, total cancellations of clean energy projects have grown to more than 21 gigawatts (GW) of capacity — enough to power 2 million homes.

These efforts, along with other federal policies, are not only restricting the supply of clean energy, but could cost Americans billions of dollars at a time when one in three Americans is foregoing necessities like food and medical care to pay their rising utility bills.

That affordability crisis is also being driven by delayed grid investments, infrastructure-damaging extreme weather events and the surge in data center demand. Since 2019, electricity rates nationally have increased 33%. With utilities requesting record rate increases, relief won’t likely come anytime soon.

A new study by the consulting firm National Economic Research Associates, commissioned by the Corporate Energy Buyers Association, finds that continuing to constrain deployment of new solar and wind projects could add $11.6 billion annually to household energy bills from 2027 through 2033. Commercial and industrial customers would pay an additional $5.7 billion annually in electricity and natural gas costs, bringing the total added cost over the seven-year period for all consumers to $121 billion.

If current U.S. federal government actions continue to needlessly take clean energy sources off the table, Americans will face even higher energy bills.

Wind turbines stand at the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon in Utah. As electricity bills soar, the federal government is restricting a more cost-competitive option. Photo by M Outdoors/Shutterstock.

Restricting Clean Energy Increases Energy Costs

Some of the federal actions that are stalling wind and solar energy development include restrictive federal permitting practices that specifically target clean energy, attempts to stop work and revoke already-issued permits for nearly completed clean energy projects, halting military reviews of proposed wind farms for radar and flight paths, and requiring U.S. Interior secretary approval of wind and solar projects on federal lands and waters. Together, these actions kill or delay projects, increase financing and project development costs, and create uncertainty that discourages investment.

Meanwhile, the administration is pushing for mandates to operate expensive coal generation, fast tracking permitting of fossil fuel projects, and taking steps to prioritize fossil fuel resources for grid connection.

Even when federal courts overturned some of the administration’s efforts to squash renewable energy projects — as they did after a stop-work order halted the nearly-complete 700-megawatt Revolution Wind project off the coast of Rhode Island and four other offshore wind projects — there are still consequences. The imposed barriers send a chilling message to investors, businesses and industry, leading to increased project costs that are ultimately passed on to consumers. While the U.S. Department of Justice is no longer pursuing efforts to defend these offshore wind project stop-work orders in court, other efforts to derail wind and solar projects continue.

The Business Case for Clean Energy

There’s a strong business case for advancing clean energy: Solar, wind and battery storage are among the fastest to deploy, most widely available, reliable and cost-competitive sources of new electricity when allowed to compete in the market on a level playing field — particularly with respect to federal permitting processes and approvals.

The U.S. needs a diverse set of resources, including clean energy, to meet rapidly surging demand. In many regions, renewables are the most economically sound and sustainable choices, which is why as of earlier this year, adoption has reached 370 GW or enough to power 80 million homes.

For one, clean energy can be fast.

Wind, solar and battery storage can rapidly come online so long as they can connect to the grid and don’t face permitting restrictions. Onshore solar and wind plants can be planned and fully operational in as little as two years; storage can take even less.

Wind, solar and battery storage projects experience substantially fewer and less significant project delays than natural gas or nuclear plants. This is not a recent phenomenon — historical data show renewable projects are brought online faster than fossil fuel projects. And nuclear projects can take even longer.

The most recent U.S. example, Georgia’s Vogtle nuclear plant expansion, took 15 years to build after construction began in 2009. It was completed in 2024 following billions of dollars in cost overruns, becoming the most expensive power project in U.S. history. Expansions planned at other existing nuclear plants, however, are expected to come online more quickly — some within the next few years.

For renewables, faster deployment and cost effectiveness have helped drive their growth, with more than 90% of new electricity capacity in 2024 coming from wind, solar and battery storage sources.

In contrast, gas-fired power plants are facing long delays for parts and approvals. Current wait times for large natural gas turbines are now between five and seven years. These delays aren’t just due to the turbine technology — they’re a sign of pervasive under-capacity of the turbine manufacturing system.

As a result, some large new data centers are turning to reciprocating gas engines, modified jet engines and other sources to power facilities to come online more quickly. Plans for these often off-grid projects have skyrocketed and now total about 90 GW nationally, according to Cleanview, which tracks U.S. power and data center development. While these may be the fastest fossil fuel resources to deploy, they are not energy-efficient or designed for steady, long-term power generation for large loads, making this a suboptimal long-term strategy. The increased reliance on gas is also likely to raise consumer energy bills.

Second, clean energy is cost-competitive.

Solar and wind are the lowest-cost options for new electricity generation in many regions, using a measurement known as the Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE). The LCOE analysis published annually by Lazard indicates that prices of all types of generation are rising, but that solar and wind are less expensive than conventional generation options, even without subsidies. Renewable projects that can come online quickly enough to still be eligible for federal tax credits are even more affordable. According to Lazard, costs for battery energy storage, which help address the variable output of renewables, are rising due to tariffs and foreign sourcing restrictions, but wind and solar combined with storage are still cost-competitive.

Historically, market-driven renewables have been a bargain for most consumers. A recent analysis by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that states with large amounts of market-based renewables tended to have lower electricity prices.

Electricity generation prices from wind and solar are also more stable and consistent over time compared to fossil fuels, as renewables don’t depend on fuel purchases that can be affected by regional or global markets. While domestic shale gas can be ramped up to meet demand, fossil fuel prices can change dramatically based on geopolitical events. While the Iran War has had minimal impacts on U.S. natural gas and electricity prices so far, it has significantly raised domestic gasoline prices and disrupted global oil and natural gas markets. In 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupted natural gas supplies to Europe so severely that it also led to increased electricity and natural gas costs for many U.S. homeowners, while costs for renewables remained mostly unaffected.

Moreover, supply chains for natural gas infrastructure have been unable to keep up with demand for gas-fired capacity, leading to rising prices. Between the fourth quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, average natural gas turbine prices increased from roughly $2,000 per kilowatt to roughly $3,000 per kilowatt. Some gas-fired generator projects are reporting costs at two-and-a-half times what they would have cost just a few years ago. And gas turbine costs are only expected to increase in the near future, according to research from GridLab.

While prices for wind and solar are also rising, this is due to high demand as well as labor shortages, tariffs, permitting challenges and rising insurance costs. LevelTen Energy released data showing that power purchase agreement prices for solar and wind rose by 13% and 24%, respectively, in the first quarter of 2026, compared to a year earlier. Prices for wind energy were substantially higher because of the scarcity of available projects — a result of permitting restrictions imposed by federal agencies and other actions to discourage project completion. Competition for resources is also playing a role. For example, earlier this year, Amazon outbid utility Puget Sound Energy by $1 million in an auction for what will become one of the largest U.S. solar projects.

Third, clean energy helps with reliability.

A diverse mix of energy resources can make the grid more reliable. While wind and solar projects do not operate around the clock, they have proven to help with reliability during severe weather while fossil fuel plants became inoperable. During 2021’s Winter Storm Uri, an ice storm that left 4.5 million people without power and caused 246 deaths, 55% of the generating capacity that experienced unplanned outages and reduced output came from natural gas generators. Conversely, wind and solar only made up 23% of that capacity.

A similar story holds true for Winter Storm Elliott, a blizzard in 2022 that impacted 2.1 million people and caused blackouts in several parts of the southeastern U.S. During the storm, wind and solar accounted for just 5% of the generating capacity that experienced unplanned outages and reduced output. Conversely, natural gas generators accounted for 63% of unavailable capacity, while coal generators made up 23%.

Moreover, solar and wind resources have been increasingly deployed with battery storage to extend their operating hours and further reduce the costs of serving load. Other new technologies, like grid forming inverters, are also helping solar and wind resources provide more grid services that support grid reliability.

A wind and solar farm in the California desert. U.S. policies that restrict clean energy risk taking a fast, reliable and cost-competitive energy source off the table. Photo by Jason Finn/Shutterstock.

Restricting Clean Energy Raises Costs and Puts Our Economic Competitiveness at Risk

The global market for clean energy is valued at over $1 trillion today and expected to quintuple in the next decade. If the U.S. abandons clean energy development at home, it will risk our ability to meet energy demand while handing this huge, growing market to global competitors.

Key competitors around the world, including China, are already dominating the global supply of renewable capacity, ramping up their investments and reaping the benefits.

The U.S. needs a comprehensive electricity strategy that uses the best possible options — especially low-cost clean energy — to relieve price burdens and risks, remain competitive in the global market and decrease economic dependence on other countries. Comprehensive transmission and permitting reform at the federal level should also be included.

At a time when affordability concerns are widespread across the country, perpetuating current practices and restrictions could pose significant additional costs to all energy users. Rather than interfering with clean energy investments, the federal government should be empowering the industry to work toward expanding clean energy to affordably, reliably and quickly meet our growing electricity needs.

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Federal efforts to halt renewable energy development could be adding billions of dollars to energy bills — even as clean energy remains a fast, reliable and cost-competitive option to meet rising demand.

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Powering Forward: Resilient Workforce Strategies for the US Clean Energy Transition

alicia.cypress@wri.org — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 12:45:20 +0000

Powering Forward: Resilient Workforce Strategies for the US Clean Energy Transition alicia.cypress… Thu, 07/16/2026 - 08:45

The transition to a clean energy economy is transforming labor markets, making workforce adaptability critical to sustaining long-term industry growth.

New clean energy policies can rapidly increase labor demand, while global material shortages and trade policies can delay projects and disrupt hiring. At the same time, seismic megatrends such as soaring electricity demand, digitalization, artificial intelligence and demographic changes are reshaping where people live and how they work.

As this political and economic uncertainty becomes the norm for the clean energy industry, experts at the intersection of clean energy and workforce development are calling for a “resilient clean energy workforce.”

But what does a “resilient clean energy workforce” mean?

Rather than training workers only for skills relevant to highly niche jobs, this concept relies on two core principles:

Broad-based skills development: Equipping workers with adaptable, transferable skills so they can pivot between technologies and sectors as labor market demands shift.
Reducing barriers: Creating equitable, supportive strategies that address systemic barriers, creating opportunity for all interested workers to participate in the clean energy economy.

Using insights from more than a dozen expert consultations and the latest research, we examine the obstacles and opportunities to building a resilient clean energy workforce.

No Single Unified Data Source Tells the Whole Clean Energy Jobs Story

A widely acknowledged hurdle in the green and clean energy economy is that no universal definition or standardized tracking of clean energy jobs exists. Researchers, government agencies and industry groups often use different criteria and have come to different conclusions about the share of green and clean energy jobs in the economy or how many jobs have been created.

Two approaches are commonly used to define green and clean energy jobs — top-down, industry-focused and bottom-up, occupation-focused (both described below). While both approaches have limitations, each might be better suited for a different analytical need.

The top-down, industry-focused approach measures green and clean energy employment by reviewing entire establishments or industries that produce green and clean energy goods and services using the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), a standardized 2- to 6-digit hierarchical coding system that classifies business establishments based on their primary economic activity and production processes. However, NAICS inherently lumps emerging clean energy sectors into broad legacy categories. There are no separate NAICS codes for hybrid and electric vehicle manufacturing, smart grid technology or green building construction. Energy efficiency work overlaps heavily with general construction, making it impossible to separate a "clean" energy retrofit from a standard remodel.

Earlier state agency analyses used the NAICS system (see examples from Washington, California, and Maine) to measure clean energy jobs by mapping subsets of existing industry codes to clean energy sectors, such as solar power generation (NAICS 221114) or battery manufacturing (NAICS 335911). Other studies have used the NAICS system as a foundational framework, combining it with other data sources to measure clean energy jobs. The annual U.S. Energy Employment Report (USEER) supplements NAICS codes with targeted employer surveys to isolate the exact percentage of a company’s revenue or workforce dedicated to clean energy technologies.

Survey data, as those used to supplement USEER, are subject to self-reporting bias, varying response rates and higher margins of error for smaller geographies or niche technology subgroups. The reliance on expensive, detailed surveys to separate out green and clean production also make it harder for states and local governments to implement this approach.

The bottom-up, occupation-focused approach, using Standard Occupational Classification and O*NET, is more widely used in economic and labor research to identify and quantify green and clean energy jobs. This approach goes back to 2009 when O*NET, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor, identified occupations impacted by the green and clean energy transition. Grouped into three categories, these occupations are:

Green increased-demand occupations such as electricians, who will see growing demand for their services as deployment of renewable energy and energy-efficient electrical systems increase, but will not see significant changes in their core skills.
Green-enhanced skills occupations, such as roofers installing environmentally sustainable systems, where essential duties remain, but green technologies alter required skills and tasks.
Green new and emerging occupations, such as solar photovoltaic installers, weatherization installers and technicians, and geothermal technicians, created because new technologies require new skills.

The occupation-focused approach has limitations, too. First, it doesn’t account for workers who only spend part of their time on clean energy tasks. Second, it assumes that all workers in a specific occupation are doing green or clean energy work, even if they actually work in a non-green industry.

“Electricians do a lot of things and some of those things are clean energy and some of them aren’t,” said Kate Gordon, chief executive of CA Forward, a think tank focused on driving a more sustainable, resilient and inclusive economy across California. “A person could go install a hot tub in the morning and then install a heat pump in the afternoon. It is really hard to break that out.”

Rather than precisely counting green or clean energy jobs, Gordon and several other experts we spoke to suggested discarding the notion of a static green job and instead ensuring research focuses on how the transition is affecting workers and their occupations.

“If we are good at the clean energy transition, then an electrician who works on hot tubs and heat pumps is going to do more and more heat pump work and then they'll basically become a clean energy worker. Accurately counting the clean energy worker isn't the most important issue. The most important issue is: Are you transitioning the economy?” Gordon said.

Simply counting jobs also fails to address “the more granular needs of individual workers,” said Joe Kane, a workforce researcher and former fellow at the Brookings Institution. “What sort of education and training do they need? Projections and job creation estimates don’t really shed too much light on that aspect, in my opinion.” We explore this concept in more detail, below.

Different approaches to understanding the green and clean energy labor market are complementary and can be used in different contexts. For example, policymakers, labor advocates and environmental organizations rely on the USEER analysis to identify which clean energy jobs are growing and where to advocate for new legislation and policies to accelerate the clean energy transition. On the other hand, government, community colleges, trade schools and other training providers can use the occupation-focused approach to build localized workforce and training programs because it analyzes data based on job skills rather than what the company produces.

Broad Skills Development Helps Workers Adapt, but Identifying Transferable Skills Remains a Challenge

By emphasizing broad, transferable skills over highly specialized, single-job proficiencies, workers can easily pivot between sectors, shielding regional economies from localized downturns, technological disruptions and cyclical shocks.

There is a well-established consensus in labor economics that the transferability of a worker’s skills is the primary determinant for predicting their economic resilience and mobility. If a worker loses their job to an economic shock (e.g., automation) or policy changes, highly transferable skills allow them to easily pivot and find a new role. These workers typically experience smaller wage drops when changing jobs.

The industry experts we consulted emphasized the need for building diverse and broadly applicable skills to help students and job seekers navigate the up and down nature of transitions and the labor market.

“One of the pivots that I'm seeing now is the need to make sure that skills currency is there, and people know how to speak about the skills that they're gaining regardless of where it's going to be applied,” said Sarah Bennett from the CREST Initiative at Jobs for the Future. “And that's true for a lot of our folks who are training EV battery technicians or EV installation and maintenance charging stations right now where their skills are applicable as electricians or as advanced manufacturing workers. We need to make sure that individuals themselves are competitive outside of a single job title, outside of a single sector and that we are equipping them to have the language to be able to talk about it.”

States are increasingly recognizing the need to train workers for transferable, broad-based skills rather than narrow occupations. Ohio and Indiana are implementing strategies that focus on cross-industry, foundational manufacturing skills to help workers pivot between EVs, semiconductor, aerospace and general machinery sectors. Instead of focusing solely on equipping internal combustion engine workers for the EV industry, Ohio’s educational and training pathways are focusing on building skills, such as digital literacy, data management and electronics.

Michigan’s Energy Workforce Development Consortium offers another example. The partnership takes a collaborative approach, creating programs that address the needs of multiple employers, while simultaneously building transferable skills among workers.

“What we do is we go by an 80% to 20% rule, that within the consortium typically there's about 80% of the skills and competencies that are needed by all employers,” said one of the workforce experts we spoke with from the Michigan state government. The remaining 20% is then tailored to the needs of a specific company.

A few organizations have developed resources to aid job seekers and employers. The Center for Energy Workforce Development and the Interstate Renewable Energy Council have mapped career pathways focused on renewable energy and energy efficiency industries. Interactive maps, such as the Solar Career Map and the Green Buildings Career Map, chart dozens of occupations, potential advancement routes and required credentials. For example, these maps show how baseline skills can translate into roles in other industries. The Skills Matching Explorer by Resources for the Future is designed to help coal, oil and natural gas workers find matching, high-growth and well-paying jobs in other industries.

However, these tools are static, taxonomy-based guides mapping out career pathways and transferable skills. They do not provide dynamic labor market information that shows changes in occupational demand or skills gap at the granular geographic level. Workforce planners and policymakers are increasingly using proprietary platforms like Lightcast and Julius Education for granular, subnational forecasting that help companies, educators and governments make informed workforce decisions.

Skilled Trades Workers — the Backbone of the Clean Energy Transition — Face Severe Shortages and Localized Data Gaps

Hands-on technical careers that require specialized training rather than a four-year college degree will form the backbone of the clean energy economy, physically building and maintaining clean power systems and infrastructure. These trades jobs, which include electricians, ironworkers, welders, cutters, solderers, braziers and HVAC technicians, are rarely pictured when people think of green or clean energy jobs. Many skilled trades predate the modern green and clean energy economy. Because they are not “new” job categories, their vital role in clean energy infrastructure is underreported.

“If you only focus on the clean energy industry, you might be missing a lot of adjacent and important occupations,” said workforce researcher Kane. “We’re going to need electricians; we’re going to need HVAC technicians. How we talk about that, how we measure that, and how we communicate that is really important.”

Beyond the skilled trades, the clean energy industry relies heavily on white-collar professionals, such as lawyers, accountants, insurance agents and environmental permitting specialists. However, the experts we consulted particularly focused on the critical role of the skilled trades in making the energy transition successful.

Trades jobs offer shorter training periods via apprenticeships, vocational training and short-term certificates, as well as lower costs and faster entry into the workforce than traditional routes. Trades jobs also provide stable, well-paid careers for individuals and an adaptable talent pipeline that can seamlessly shift between different energy technologies — skills between electricians, HVAC technicians and solar photovoltaic installers are highly transferable, though specific additional certifications may be required for each. When clean energy projects experience delays, skilled trades workers can shift to other lucrative construction, maintenance or upgrade projects, preventing prolonged unemployment.

However, the U.S. is facing a significant shortage of skilled trades workers as more experienced workers reach retirement age faster than the younger generation can replace them. For decades, societal norms pushed a four-year college degree as the primary pathway to success. Now, a growing number of Americans are beginning to view the skilled trades as an equally valid path to success.

The demand for trade jobs is expected to remain high to support the clean energy transition and booming construction of AI data centers, though debates surround the true scale and longevity of data center employment impacts. Gordon of CA Forward noted that the risk of white-collar automation may encourage more young Americans to pursue careers in skilled trades as many of these kind of jobs are seen as “AI-proof.” Leading companies such as BlackRock and Google are investing heavily in skilled trades workforce development to prevent labor shortages from derailing the country's infrastructure and AI buildout.

Locating these specific opportunities is complicated by hyper-local market dynamics. Analyses may show a massive demand for electricians nationally, but macro-level data fail to show exactly which counties or cities need those workers. Many opportunities are passed through word-of-mouth and personal networks, bypassing mainstream and scraper-based job boards. This frequently fails to capture the true picture of the local skilled labor market.

Finally, the entry path for trades jobs relies on apprenticeships, specialized vocational schools and direct employer hiring. Unlike college degrees, there is no standardized central database for tracking these vocational credentials, which can make it difficult to accurately track incoming talent, project localized labor shortages or allocate funding efficiently.

Wrap-Around Services Help Support the Clean Energy Workforce

Technical training is only the first step. Many individuals, especially those from disadvantaged and vulnerable communities, face barriers that make it difficult to maintain employment or even participate in training programs. Gender and racial gaps in the U.S. energy sector continue to persist. According to one analysis, as of 2025, close to three-quarters of the U.S. energy workforce identified as male or white.

“What I've seen in working with participant populations is they need support,” the Michigan workforce expert said. “There are so many of our learners who have barriers to getting to education. It could be whether they're taking care of parents, whether they're taking care of children, whether it's the weather or transportation.”

Extensive analysis confirms that wrap-around services, such as transportation, childcare, meals and housing assistance, help ensure that workers have the necessary support system to start a job and remain employed for the long haul. However, fiscal constraints and shifting legislative priorities can push them to the back burner.

As most clean energy jobs require on-site construction, retrofitting and infrastructure development, transportation to job sites can be a significant barrier for industry workers. Many jobs are also emerging in suburban or rural areas where land is plentiful for siting large clean energy projects, but there’s inadequate public transit for the potential city-based workforce. Upfront costs associated with purchasing, insuring and maintaining a vehicle are frequently prohibitive for entry-level trainees or those transitioning from unemployment.

Madelyn Koch from Philadelphia Energy Authority’s workforce development team highlighted how this challenge impacted the decisions they made in creating training programs around solar projects: “There’s strong demand for solar energy in both urban and rural areas. The issue with that is our program graduates experienced transportation barriers,” she said. “Public transportation is not great in terms of getting folks outside of the region and many of our graduates don't have cars or a driver's license. So, we expanded our focus more on the clean energy space broadly in terms of energy efficiency, focusing on HVAC and green residential construction.”

Governments, labor alliances and the private sector are recognizing the need to incorporate wrap-around services into their programs by combining state, federal, private and philanthropic dollars to address these challenges. For example, the Michigan Auto Workforce Hub created the Reliable Rides playbook, which helps employers implement transportation solutions (like vanpools or car-sharing programs) to get workers to their jobs. The state is also supporting small and medium-sized manufacturers by providing pilot grants of up to $20,000 each to launch localized employee transportation programs.

The industry and workforce experts we spoke with also highlighted the need to identify solutions for tackling less visible obstacles that can impede job performance or career development. These include building communities of practice where there are opportunities to meet others who look similar and where individuals, particularly from underrepresented groups, can openly discuss their challenges and network to identify career opportunities and mentors or build a network with fellow students or jobseekers.

“I'll give you one example that really moved me from a few years ago: An individual came to me and said, ‘Do you know anyone from my demographic group in clean energy?’ The individual said he needed a role model and wanted to be mentored but did not know someone he was comfortable with,” explained Richenda Van Leeuwen, the executive director of the Clean Energy Leadership Institute (a highly regarded national fellowship program for emerging young leaders) and a longtime clean energy leader. “The barriers can be invisible barriers, such as if nobody else in the leadership looks like you, then who do you go to for mentoring?”

Steering the Clean Energy Transition with Data-Driven Agility

As the clean energy transition intersects with other megatrends like digitalization and AI, workforce development must be as agile as the energy systems being built. Developing a resilient clean energy workforce will require many things, but a foundational element is a continuous, data-driven strategy. As policies and technology priorities fluctuate, decision-makers can't rely on static forecasting. Instead, building a truly resilient clean energy workforce requires access to localized labor data, the ability to anticipate skill shortages and surpluses to dynamically adjust training pipelines and to validate transferable skills that empower workers to thrive — no matter what shifts tomorrow brings.

A collaborative ecosystem is required to facilitate a sustained, equitable and predictable clean energy workforce. While federal agencies and state governments, private technology and energy companies, and philanthropy are prime catalysts to provide critical investments, educational institutions, organized labor and non-profit organizations are essential in delivering the data-driven foundation for the U.S. clean energy economy.

WRI Managing Editor Alicia Cypress contributed to this article.

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Can Humanity Regain Control Over Fire?

alicia.cypress@wri.org — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 12:20:00 +0000

Can Humanity Regain Control Over Fire? alicia.cypress… Wed, 07/15/2026 - 08:20

Of all the traits that distinguish Homo sapiens from every other creature on Earth, none has been more consequential than our relationship with fire.

We are the only species that can control, sustain and deliberately start fires — and we have been doing so for an extraordinarily long time. Fossil and archaeological evidence suggests that our near-ancestor Homo erectus was already transporting burning material from one site to light fires elsewhere as far back as 1.5 million years ago. The ability to actually ignite fire on demand appears to have emerged some 400,000 years ago.

The consequences were profound. Cooking food expanded and enriched the human diet, reducing the energy cost of digestion and freeing metabolic resources for brain development. Controlled fire cleared insects, drove away predators and transformed hunting. Fire fertilized fields through slash-and-burn clearing, and it forged weapons. By the time cities emerged, fire had already shaped how people lived for millennia.

In the industrial age, fire continued to transform human society. Steam engines, locomotives, internal combustion engines and jet turbines are all fire in mechanical forms. Today, fire in its myriad modern guises powers nearly everything: a natural gas burner on the stove, a diesel generator in a hospital, the fossil fuel-fired data center that houses servers running artificial intelligence models. A species that once mastered fire to survive on the savanna now burns fossil fuels at a rate that is remaking the planet's atmosphere.

But ironically, in the era many scientists call the Anthropocene — the age of human dominance — it appears that humanity may be losing control of its defining technology.

A Planet on Fire: Alarming Trends

The numbers are stark. Data from WRI's Global Nature Watch (formerly, Global Forest Watch) confirms that fires are burning more than twice as much tree cover globally as they did just two decades ago — a trend that has persisted for at least three years. In 2025 alone, fire accounted for 42% of the 25.5 million hectares of tree cover lost worldwide, an area roughly the size of the United Kingdom, according to analysis from the University of Maryland's GLAD Lab.

There was some cautiously encouraging news in 2025: Tropical primary forest loss fell 36% from the record-shattering levels of 2024, partly reflecting decisive government action in countries like Brazil. But experts are clear-eyed about what that decline means. Elizabeth Goldman, co-director of WRI's Global Forest Watch, notes that part of the decline simply reflects a statistical lull after an extreme fire year. With El Niño conditions — possibly very strong ones — set to return in mid-2026, the underlying trajectory remains deeply worrying, with parts of Indonesia, the Amazon, Australia and Canada at greatest fire risk. It’s also important to note that healthy moist tropical forests do not burn on their own. Unlike some forests and grasslands, where fire is a natural ecosystem feature, rainforest fires are almost always sparked by human activity, including fragmentation that creates canopy gaps and edges that weaken resistance to fire.

Figures from 2024 underscore why. Fires fueled by Brazil's worst drought on record caused 66% of that country's primary forest loss — more than 6 times the share in 2023. The feedback dynamics involved are precisely what climate scientists have long warned: Hotter and drier conditions created by a warming climate make forests more combustible, while burning forests release carbon that further accelerates warming. Current trends suggest this dangerous “feedback loop” is gaining momentum.

Meanwhile, the forest conservation target to reverse forest loss by 2030 that more than 140 countries committed to in 2021 remains far out of reach. Current loss rates are roughly 70% too high to be on track.

Beyond tropical forests, the broader fire picture is equally alarming. The 2019-2020 Australian bushfire season burned over 18 million hectares, killed dozens of people and wiped out nearly 3 billion animals. The 2023 Canadian wildfire season was the worst in recorded history. The 2025 Los Angeles fires destroyed entire neighborhoods and caused economic damage in the tens of billions of dollars. These events — once extraordinary — are becoming the norm.

Bushfires swept through Australia in 2019 and 2020 burning 18 million hectares of land and killed nearly 3 billion animals. Photo by AscentXmedia/iStock.

Two Paths to Regain Control of Forest Fires

The concept of hazard versus risk is central to how firefighters and forest managers think. Hazard refers to the conditions that make fire likely to start and spread — dry vegetation, strong winds, temperatures elevated by climate change or other factors. Risk focuses on people: where they live, how land is managed, and what economic and political incentives shape those choices. Hazard is increasingly driven by forces — climate change, drought — that no single country or community fully controls (though many contribute through activities that spew greenhouse gas emissions). But risk is, in principle, entirely within our power to reduce. That distinction points toward two interconnected paths to regaining humanity’s control over fire.

Path One: Learning from Those Who Never Forgot

For most of human history, fire was a tool to be wielded with knowledge, precision and care — not an enemy to be suppressed. Indigenous and traditional communities across every inhabited continent developed sophisticated fire management systems that adapted to local ecologies, seasonal rhythms and the particular fire behavior of specific landscapes. This knowledge was not primitive or accidental. It was refined empirically, passed down through generations and embedded in cultural practice.

Colonialism largely dismantled these systems. In California, Spanish missionaries punished Indigenous people for setting fires as early as 1793; that prohibition was renewed by the state legislature in 1850. In Australia, British settlers actively suppressed Aboriginal burning, viewing it as evidence that Indigenous peoples did not truly “occupy” the land — a legal and moral claim that justified dispossession. Across Africa, colonial administrations systematically criminalized traditional fire practices that had maintained savanna ecosystems for thousands of years.

As a recent analysis in the Journal of Environmental Management documents, the suppression of Indigenous fire management has had lasting ecological consequences that we are only now beginning to fully reckon with — everything from higher catastrophic fire risk to habitat alteration and associated collapse of entire populations of species.

The evidence for reviving Indigenous-led fire management is compelling. Research from WRI and WWF-Australia finds that Indigenous-managed lands — which are disproportionately affected by wildfires — consistently lose less tree cover, store more carbon and support greater biodiversity than surrounding areas when communities have genuine authority over fire management.

For example, the Charagua Iyambae, a newly established Indigenous territory in southern Bolivia, helped prevent the spread of forest fires for two years in a row by investing in early warning systems and enforcement of land use-policies.

The Yurok, Karuk and Hupa nations of Northern California have been slowly winning the right to resume cultural burning after more than a century of suppression. Results show that traditional burning reduces fuel loads and can prevent the catastrophic crown fires that have devastated the region in recent years. In Australia, Aboriginal communities in Arnhem Land have developed a savanna fire management program that both reduces emissions and generates carbon credits — a model that has attracted significant interest from Latin America, Africa and Asia.

This is sometimes called “decolonizing fire” — a term that acknowledges historical injustice and the practical project of restoring Indigenous authority over fire management on their lands. It is not nostalgia. It recognizes that knowledge systems refined over thousands of years, in place-based relationships with specific landscapes, contain unique ecological insight. The task is to combine that ancient wisdom with the tools of modern science — geospatial monitoring, fire behavior modeling, carbon accounting — in ways that respect Indigenous leadership rather than subordinate it.

Of course, the world of the 21st century is not the world in which traditional fire practices evolved. Climate change is shifting fire seasons, making conditions hotter and drier in ways that require adaptation of time-tested techniques. California's Tribal nations, for example, have already adjusted the timing of their cultural burns as safe burning windows now occur later in the year than traditional practice. The goal is not to freeze traditional knowledge in amber, but to let it evolve in partnership with communities that hold it — with the legal standing, resources and political recognition they need to do so.

Path Two: Confronting the Political Economy of Fire

The second path is harder because it requires changing political and economic structures that have made fire catastrophe more likely. Fire does not simply happen: In most cases, it is set — deliberately for land clearing, or accidentally through negligence — or it is allowed to spread through failures of governance and land management. Understanding why fires are getting worse requires understanding who benefits from the conditions that produce them.

Agricultural expansion remains the leading driver of tree cover loss globally; fire is frequently the tool of choice for that expansion. In the Brazilian Amazon, arson is often the first instrument of land conversion — clearing forest to establish a claim to the land in a place where property rights are contested and law enforcement is weak. That lays the groundwork for establishing cattle ranches, soy farms and more. In Indonesia, peatland damaged by drought and poorly managed oil palm and pulpwood cultivation creates dried-out landscapes with extraordinary fire risks. In Central and West Africa, poorly governed forest frontiers invite charcoal production and smallholder encroachment that systematically fragment fire-resilient forests into fire-prone mosaics.

Commodity markets drive much of this. Global demand for soy, beef, palm oil and wood creates economic incentives for forest conversion that overwhelm the conservation signals from carbon markets and voluntary commitments. Subsidies to both commodity production and extractive industries like mining further tilt the playing field. Weak or indeterminate land tenure, particularly the failure to formally recognize and enforce Indigenous and community land rights, leaves forests legally unprotected and therefore exposed to opportunistic clearing. And corruption by powerful actors undermines enforcement even where laws exist on paper.

These are not forces of nature. They are policy choices, and they can be changed.

Stronger enforcement of existing forest protection laws, greater investment in fire prevention and suppression, land tenure for Indigenous and forest communities, fiscal reform that eliminates perverse agricultural subsidies to deforestation-linked industries, and supply chain due diligence requirements — such as the EU Deforestation Regulation — are all tools that address the political economy of fire rather than just its ecological symptoms. So is meaningful nature and climate finance that makes forest protection economically competitive with forest conversion.

None of these interventions are straightforward. All of them require confronting well-organized interests that profit from the status quo. But the alternative is a future in which fire management is an endless, losing struggle.

Wildfires in Los Angeles, California, last year, displaced more than 150,000 residents. Photo by ContributorFilms/Shutterstock.

Fire As Ally, Not Enemy

The goal is not a world without fire. Fire is not an aberration in terrestrial ecosystems — it is a fundamental ecological process, as native to fire-adapted savannas, Mediterranean shrublands and boreal forests as rain. Many of these ecosystems require periodic burning to maintain the biological diversity and structural complexity that make them resilient. The catastrophic fires we are witnessing are evidence that we have significantly disrupted the fire regimes that healthy ecosystems — and healthy human communities — depend on.

Regaining control means restoring fire to something closer to its proper ecological role: frequent, low-intensity, place-based and deliberately managed — rather than catastrophic, uncontrolled and driven by decades of accumulated fuel from overly strict fire suppression practices and other human disruptions such as forest fragmentation due to road building. That is what Indigenous fire practitioners have known for millennia and what the scientific literature is increasingly confirming. It also means reducing the human-driven pressures — in agricultural policy, in land governance, in fossil-fuel-based energy systems — that are pushing the climate toward conditions in which no fire management strategy will be effective.

The two paths are not separate. Traditional ecological knowledge and community governance of fire need the enabling political and economic environment that gives them a chance to work. Policy reform and institutional change need the deep, place-based knowledge that makes fire management ecologically effective rather than just administratively tidy. They must be pursued together, at scale, with the urgency that a planet increasingly on fire demands.

Humanity did not master fire by accident. We mastered it through observation, experiment, knowledge sharing, and — crucially — social institutions that governed its use. We can do so again. But only if we are honest about what we have lost, why we lost it, and what it will take to respond and recover.

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For millennia, fire was humanity's greatest tool. Today, it’s one of our greatest threats. Recovering control will require learning from the past while confronting the political choices of the present.

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STATEMENT: Over 30 Organizations Issue Letter to US Senate Opposing Year-Round Ethanol 'E15' Proposal

nate.shelter@wri.org — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 14:21:32 +0000

STATEMENT: Over 30 Organizations Issue Letter to US Senate Opposing Year-Round Ethanol 'E15' Proposal nate.shelter@wri.org Tue, 07/14/2026 - 10:21

WASHINGTON (July 14, 2026) — A group of over 30 environmental organizations shared the below open letter with the U.S. Senate opposing proposed "year-round E15" legislation that would allow gasoline blended with 15 percent ethanol to be sold throughout the year, an increase from the common 10 percent blend.

Letter text:

The undersigned organizations write to express strong opposition to proposals advancing “year-round E15.” On May 13, the House passed legislation which would effectively override key provisions of the Clean Air Act by permitting gasoline blended with 15 percent ethanol (E15) to be sold throughout the year—an increase from the common 10 percent (E10) blend. Given prior indications of Administration support for E15, which could then lead EPA to mandating it, enactment of this legal change could drive a ~50% expansion in ethanol use. This would ultimately lead to higher food and fuel costs for American families, as well as negative impacts on climate and the environment.

Higher Fuel and Food Costs. Although the current average price at the pump for E15 is lower than E10, the cost savings are an illusion. Ethanol’s energy content is one-third lower than that of gasoline, meaning that fuel efficiency of E15 is lower than that of E10, so drivers using E15 have to fill up more often. Wholesale prices of ethanol averaged 66 cents higher than gasoline per gallon between 2007-2025, once adjusting for ethanol’s lower energy content. However, subsidies and low consumer demand have helped keep E15 prices at the pump low.¹ In addition, gas stations will need massive investment because E15 is more corrosive—and those costs will likely get passed to consumers to the tune of billions of dollars nationwide. More than 95% of US gas stations do not currently sell E15, and the average upgrade would cost $133,000 per gas station.² The EPA estimated that even a more modest increase in biofuel use would impose around $41 billion in additional fuel and food costs over a 3-year period.³ The $41 billion includes $24 billion in higher fuel costs, and $17 billion in higher food prices, as elevated corn prices from E15 demand for corn cascade into the many food products that include corn or use it for animal feed (e.g., meat, dairy, poultry). At a time when American families are already confronting elevated costs, year-round E15 would ultimately impose additional burdens both at the pump and at the grocery store, along with huge costs for the businesses that would have to store and sell E15.

Climate and Environmental Impacts. A 50% expansion of ethanol use would require dedicating nearly 13 million additional acres to ethanol⁴—an area exceeding half the size of Indiana—with serious consequences for climate, natural resources, and wildlife. When Congress enacted the Renewable Fuel Standard in 2007, it required that qualifying biofuels achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. However, a growing body of scientific evidence now indicates that biofuels derived from food and feed crops probably result in higher emissions than conventional fossil fuels. This emerging science led the European Union, which had adopted large biofuel targets, to place much lower caps on crop-based biofuels. Similarly, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board reported in 2023 that recent estimates of corn ethanol emissions exceed those of gasoline.⁵ Reflecting these findings, even as the EPA increased biofuel requirements at the direction of the Trump Administration, it declined to conclude that food-based biofuels reduce emissions, even when combined with additional lower-emission biofuels derived from waste.

The emissions associated with corn ethanol stem not only from fossil energy inputs during production—which offset much of its purported benefit—but also from land-use changes. As cropland expands to replace food production diverted to fuel, forests and grasslands get converted to crop production, releasing massive amounts of carbon to the atmosphere.⁶ All told, land-use changes related to agricultural expansion account for approximately 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.⁷ In a world where agricultural yield growth is not keeping pace with rising food demands, increasing biofuels requires either increasing hunger⁸ or exacerbating emissions—neither of which is acceptable.

Beyond climate concerns, crop-based biofuels are associated with a range of additional environmental harms. These include heightened water pollution, increased strain on limited water supplies, and the conversion of millions of acres of valuable wildlife habitat into cropland. Such impacts have been documented extensively in the scientific literature⁹ and acknowledged by federal agencies.¹⁰

Distributional Effects. While EPA has found biofuel policies transfer billions of dollars from consumers to the agricultural sector, the benefits are unevenly distributed. Rising crop prices are quickly reflected in higher land values and rents. Over the past two decades, inflation-adjusted cropland values in states like Iowa have increased by 250%,¹¹ in part due to biofuel demand. Because a majority of farmland in the Corn Belt is leased¹²—and nearly 80% of that land is owned by non-farming landlords—most of the financial gain accrues to investors rather than working farmers.¹³

For these reasons, we respectfully urge you to oppose efforts to expand year-round E15 and instead support more effective, sustainable approaches to energy and transportation policy. We should not commit additional land, resources, or taxpayer dollars to policies that increase costs for American families, undermine our climate goals, and strain our natural systems.

Sincerely,

350 Seattle
American Bird Conservancy
Biofuelwatch
Center for Environmental Health
Clean Wisconsin
Climate Justice Alliance
Climate Reality Project, Sacramento Chapter
Conservation Law Foundation
CURE
Earthjustice Action
Endangered Habitats League
Food & Water Watch
Friends of the Earth US
Green America
Hip Hop Caucus
Inland Ocean Coalition
Jefferson County Farmers & Neighbors, Inc.
Kettle Range Conservation Group
League of Conservation Voters
Mighty Earth
Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy
Natural Resources Defense Council
Next 100 Coalition
One Mississippi
Partnership for Policy Integrity
Physicians for Social Responsibility
Prairie Rivers Network
Public Citizen
Regenerative Agriculture Coalition
Sierra Club
Sunflower Alliance
Waterkeeper Alliance
World Resources Institute

Sources:

¹“California Now Allows More Ethanol In Gasoline: Is This Going to Save Drivers Money?” ARE Update 29(2): 9–12 (2025). University of California Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics.
²EPA, “Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) Program: Standards for 2023–2025 and Other Changes, Regulatory Impact Analysis” (June 2023), p. 80 for gas station revamp costs and fuel economy, p. 342 for total number of retail stations, and p. 345 for number of stations selling E15.
³EPA (2023), p. 369 for estimates of food costs, and p. v for estimates of energy costs.
⁴This assumes additional demand of 2.4 billion bushels of corn per year and a corn yield of 186.5 bushels per acre (USDA 2026).
⁵Letter to Michael Regan from EPA Science Advisory Board, “Commentary on the Volume Requirements for 2023 and Beyond under the Renewable Fuel Standard Program” (RIN 2060-AV14) (September 29, 2023).
⁶“Environmental outcomes of the US Renewable Fuel Standard.” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 119(9) (2022); “Choices in Land Representation Materially Affect Modeled Biofuel Carbon Intensity Estimates.” Journal of Cleaner Production 349 (May 2022): 131477.
⁷“Global Carbon Budget 2021.” Earth System Science Data 14, 1917-2005 (2022).
⁸The land use and biofuel model favored by the biofuel industry estimates low land use change in part because it estimates that roughly half of the calories are not replaced because higher crop prices lead to reduced food consumption. “Do Biofuel Policies Seek to Cut Emissions by Cutting Food?” Science 347:1420-22 (2015).
⁹“Environmental outcomes of the US Renewable Fuel Standard.” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 119(9) (2022); “Cropland Expansion in the United States Produces Marginal Yields at High Costs to Wildlife.” Nature Communications 11:1 (2020); “US Agricultural Policy, Land Use Change, and Biofuels: Are We Driving Our Way to the next Dust Bowl?” Environmental Research Letters 10, no. 5 (2015).
¹⁰EPA, “Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) Program: Standards for 2023–2025 and Other Changes, Regulatory Impact Analysis” (June 2023).
¹¹USDA, Iowa Farmland Rental Rates 1994-2025 (accessed May 4, 2026).
¹²USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service's 2022 Census of Agriculture.
¹³“Millions Of Acres of U.S. Farmland Rented,” Farms.com (March 13, 2026).

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Fragmentation and Fires Are Threatening the World’s Last Intact Forests

ciara.regan@wri.org — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Fragmentation and Fires Are Threatening the World’s Last Intact Forests ciara.regan@wri.org Mon, 07/13/2026 - 07:00

Intact forest landscapes, or vast stretches of unbroken forested wilderness, are uniquely valuable because their scale and ecological integrity allow ecosystem services and functions to operate as a complete, self-sustaining system in ways that smaller, fragmented forests cannot. They regulate temperature and rainfall across continents, store huge amounts of carbon and provide habitat and migration pathways to support viable populations of native species. For many Indigenous Peoples, intact forest landscapes provide secure sanctuaries where traditional stewardship and ways of life can continue without disruption from outside.

But they’re also under threat.

According to the latest data on Global Nature Watch (formerly Global Forest Watch), the extent of the world’s intact forest landscapes decreased by 15% (195 million hectares) between 2000 and 2025. This is an area roughly the size of Mexico.

Furthermore, intact forest landscapes are shrinking at an increasing rate globally, from an average reduction of 7.1 million hectares per year between 2000 and 2013 to an average of 9.4 million hectares per year between 2014 and 2025.

Increasingly, human-caused fires[1] and mining, drilling and exploration are prominent drivers of the reduction in the extent of intact forest landscapes. Between 2020 and 2025, fires were the leading cause, accounting for nearly 40% of the reduction in their extent. If the trend doesn’t reverse, the world could lose much of its remaining unbroken forest tracts this century, posing problems for nature, the climate and human well-being.

How are intact forest landscapes defined?

Intact forest landscapes are patches of forests and natural treeless ecosystems that show no signs of significant human activity or habitat fragmentation (as detected by satellite imagery) and are large enough to maintain all native biodiversity. Some forms of low-intensity or historic human disturbances, such as scattered, small-scale shifting cultivation and low-intensity selective logging may be included in an intact forest landscape if the disturbance is too small to be detected by satellites.

In order to ensure that areas designated as intact forest landscapes are large enough to provide refuge for wide-ranging species, researchers used three criteria in addition to the requirement of no visible, significant human-caused disturbances: 1) minimum area of 50,000 hectares; 2) minimum patch width of 10 km; and 3) minimum corridor/appendage width of 2 km.

A portion of an intact forest landscape, or in some cases an entire patch, may no longer be considered an intact forest landscape if these criteria are no longer met due to human-caused alteration or fragmentation. For example, if a road is built across an intact forest landscape patch that causes the remaining patches to no longer meet the criteria, the entire patch would no longer be considered an intact forest landscape. As a result, that intact forest landscape area is lost and the total global area decreases. For each update of the global intact forest landscape map, researchers only assess areas currently designated as intact forest landscapes. Therefore, this methodology does not take into account forest regeneration and assumes that once lost, intactness cannot be regained.

Where and Why Are Intact Forests Becoming Fragmented?

Countries with the largest remaining areas of intact forest landscapes are found primarily in boreal and tropical regions. These regions also experienced the largest reduction in intact forest landscape area over the past 25 years. Only small areas of intact forest landscapes remain in temperate regions due to extensive commercial logging and agricultural activities prior to the year 2000.

The leading drivers of reduction in intact forest landscapes have changed over the past two and a half decades. From 2000 to 2013, timber harvesting was the primary cause of reduction, especially in the tropics, southern boreal and temperate zones, followed by agricultural expansion, particularly in the tropics. Human-caused fires were the third-largest driver, primarily in the northern boreal region.

Yet since 2020, fire has become the leading driver. The proportion of intact forest landscape reduction driven by human-caused fires adjacent to infrastructure, agricultural areas, and logging or mining sites has nearly doubled, from 21% to nearly 40%. The largest increase in fire-driven reduction in intact forest landscape area occurred in North America. In South America, which ranked second, fire surpassed agriculture as the leading cause of reduction. The increased impact from fires is due to a combination of factors: fragmentation and encroachment into intact forests from agricultural expansion, logging, mining, roads and other infrastructure have led to an increased probability of fire ignition, while at the same time climate change has fueled hotter and drier conditions that enable larger, more frequent and more severe fires.

Timber harvest (including clearcut and selective logging), the second-largest driver since 2020, has remained a prominent cause of intact forest landscape reduction, accounting for roughly 20% of total reduction during this period. It remained the primary driver of intact forest landscape reduction in Africa, Southeast Asia, and temperate Eurasia. The average annual intact forest landscape reduction due to timber harvest increased in boreal Eurasia, where clearcuts (a type of logging where all the trees in a specific area are cut down at the same time) expanded into northern forests. This expansion appeared to be linked to oil and gas infrastructure, which can provide access routes for timber extraction in areas where logging road construction had previously been prohibitively expensive.

The proportion of intact forest landscape reduction caused by mining, drilling and exploration has increased substantially since the early 2000s, from 12% to nearly 19%, and is now the third-largest driver. The largest increases were found in boreal forests in Russia, linked to the expansion of oil and gas production in eastern Siberia, followed by South America, largely due to expansion of gold mining.

As of 2025, Canada, Russia and Brazil had the largest area of remaining intact forest landscapes, making up over 65% of the global total. However, these countries also experienced the largest reduction from 2000 to 2025.

Russia experienced the largest reduction in intact forest landscape area between 2000 to 2025, with a decrease of 53 million hectares, followed by Brazil (33 million hectares reduction) and Canada (29 million hectares reduction).

Romania had the largest percent decline, losing all of its intact forest landscape area by 2013, followed by Paraguay, where the intact forest landscape area decreased by 81% by 2025. The Solomon Islands, Laos, Central African Republic, Nicaragua, Honduras, Liberia and Equatorial Guinea lost over half of their intact forest landscape area by 2025.

However, not all countries experienced a decline in intact forest landscape extent. Although they contain a relatively small area, Cuba and Japan had almost no change in their extent of intact forest landscapes from 2000 to 2025.

The Problem with Losing Forest Intactness

Intact forest landscapes are unique and irreplaceable. With many forests around the world being degraded and lost, intact forest landscapes offer important areas of high forest integrity. Intactness cannot easily be regained — once altered, complex assemblages of biodiversity are extremely challenging to restore.

For example, extending new roads into remote forest areas facilitates human access, which can lead to cascading changes: wildlife habitat loss, unregulated hunting, increased human settlement and population density, forest clearing from logging, forest loss from agricultural expansion, fires, and other changes that degrade forests and may eventually convert vast forest areas to other land uses.

Intact forests also offer a unique opportunity to mitigate two of the greatest environmental challenges Earth faces: climate change and species extinction.

Multiple measures of forest health

Various methodologies exist for designating forests that have significant ecological value. These include High Conservation Value (HCV) Forests, High Carbon Stock Forests and Forest Landscape Integrity, in addition to intact forest landscapes. Although these designations can all be used to identify forests that are important to protect, they differ with respect to their specific definitions, requirements and methodologies, and they each have strengths and limitations depending on the context and purpose for which they are used.

In some cases, these measures can be complementary. For example, the Forest Landscape Integrity Index measures the degree to which a forest’s structure, composition and function are free from modification by humans, and can show forest degradation on a spectrum. This can provide information about the variation in integrity outside the most intact areas. Meanwhile, intact forest landscapes are a binary classification, and the forests found within them have high integrity values.

Climate change mitigation and adaptation

Intact forest landscapes are critical for sequestering and storing carbon. Forests within remaining intact forest landscapes had an average annual net sink of -1.62 gigatonnes CO2 equivalent per year from 2001-2025, making up over 30% of the average annual global net carbon sink from forests. On average, tropical intact forests store three times as much above-ground carbon as non-intact tropical forests.

Meanwhile, northern boreal forests have huge soil carbon stores. While they store less above-ground carbon than their tropical counterparts, boreal intact forests occupy a vast area, making up 38% of global intact forest landscapes in 2025. These intact forest landscapes play an important role in the protection of permafrost, which is critical to preventing the release of climate-warming carbon and methane locked in soils.

In addition to climate change mitigation, intact forest landscapes are also critical for climate adaptation. They provide temperature regulation, mitigate flood risk, are water efficient, and show greater resilience to climate fluctuations.

Biodiversity protection, restoration and recovery

Additionally, scientists estimate that tropical forests contain over half of the world’s terrestrial vertebrate species, despite occupying less than one-fifth of global land area. Many of these species depend on intact forests for their survival.

Intact forests can also serve as benchmarks of natural ecosystems, guiding forest restoration within surrounding degraded landscapes. Because they retain their original biodiversity, seed sources, seed-dispersing animals and low levels of soil disturbance, they provide the biological and ecological reference points against which restoration success can be measured. Research shows that proximity to intact forest leads to faster and more species-rich natural regeneration in adjacent landscapes.

Remaining wildlife populations may be successfully protected within remaining intact forest landscapes and have the potential to increase and repopulate surrounding landscapes. For example, protection of the remaining intact forests was critical for the recent tiger population recovery in Thailand. Maps of intact forest landscapes provide a practical conservation tool to prioritize both protection and landscape-scale restoration planning.

In Brazil, the leading cause of deforestation is cutting and burning regions of the Amazon Rainforest for livestock pastures. Agricultural and pasture expansion can drive IFL loss. Photo by Frontpage/Shutterstock

How Can We Protect Intact Forest Landscapes?

Mitigation of fire risk

As climate change continues to fuel more frequent and intense forest fires, fire risk mitigation, prevention and rapid response will become increasingly important strategies to ensure the protection of intact forest landscapes. Because human activities that encroach and fragment intact forests increase their susceptibility to fire, establishing effective protection that maintains the intactness of these critical ecosystems is essential.

Policy recognition

The importance of intact forest landscapes has been recognized in conservation and climate policy. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), for example, recognizes the value of intact forest landscapes and the need to conserve them in their policy on primary forests, recommending that stakeholders take steps to mitigate threats to intact forests and identify appropriate management options. IUCN policies, which are adopted through multi-stakeholder processes among IUCN member organizations including civil society and governments, guide global conservation priorities. This recognition can help elevate the importance of intact forest landscapes in national and international policy.

For international agreements and national forest commitments that aim to halt forest loss — including the New York Declaration on Forests, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the Glasgow Leaders Declaration on Forests and Land Use and the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework — intact forest landscapes offer a measurable benchmark toward goals. They are also important areas to prioritize in order to achieve many of these international targets.

Recognizing and supporting Indigenous Peoples’ land rights

Research shows that the rate of intact forest loss is lower in areas that overlap with Indigenous Peoples’ lands — nearly 60% of intact forest landscapes globally — highlighting local communities’ critical role in managing these forests. Recognizing Indigenous Peoples’ land tenure rights and supporting their efforts to sustainably manage their lands can help avoid further fragmentation of intact forest landscapes.

Designating as protected areas

Research shows that designating intact forest landscapes as protected areas has proven effective at limiting their fragmentation. The rate of intact forest landscape reduction within strictly protected areas — IUCN categories I-III — was less than half the rate of reduction outside protected areas between 2000 and 2025. Yet only 37% of remaining intact forests are under some form of legal protection. In 2022, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework set an ambitious global target to conserve and equitably manage at least 30% of global land and water by 2030. Countries should consider intact forest landscapes high-priority candidates when they revise or expand existing protected areas.

Increase and innovate finance mechanisms

Additionally, it has long been recognized that more financial resources are needed for forest protection. While climate finance is accessible to countries with large areas of intact forest and low deforestation rates, such as through crediting for the protection of forests as part of the Architecture for REDD+ Transactions (ART) Environmental Excellence Standard, other recent initiatives are exploring new, innovative ways to increase financing. For example, the Tropical Forest Forever Facility is a proposed mechanism that aims to mobilize funding to reward tropical countries for each hectare of standing forests they maintain.

The latest intact forest landscape boundaries are now available on Global Nature Watch (formerly Global Forest Watch), along with tools and data to monitor how forest change is affecting them.

The authors would like to acknowledge members of the IFL mapping team who contributed to the intact forest landscape data update, including Anna Komarova (University of Maryland), and Igor Glushkov and Ilona Zhuravleva (Greenpeace).

Susan Minnemayer and Lars Laestadius contributed to a previous version of this article.

Editor's note: This article was originally published in 2017 and updated with the latest data at the time in 2022. It was last updated in June 2026 to reflect the latest data on intact forest landscapes.

[1] Fire-related disturbances are considered a factor that can lead to a reduction in intact forest landscape area only when they are likely to be caused by humans, rather than natural causes (such as lightning strikes). The intact forest landscape methodology differentiates natural fires from human-caused fires by assuming that burned areas that are adjacent to areas with human access (e.g., near infrastructure, logging sites or agricultural areas) are likely to be caused by humans.

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Intact forest landscapes in Torres Del Paine, Chile.

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Ocean Action Commitments Signal Strong Ambition, but Implementation Remains Urgent

alicia.cypress@wri.org — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 15:56:39 +0000

Ocean Action Commitments Signal Strong Ambition, but Implementation Remains Urgent alicia.cypress… Fri, 07/10/2026 - 11:56

July 10, 2026 — Efforts to safeguard the ocean for future generations are multilayered and complex. The global community has set ambitious goals like the 30x30 target, which aims to protect 30% of the global ocean by 2030. While high-level political commitments are an important expression of aligned global ambition, with less than half a decade remaining, the focus now is on implementation: mobilizing practical policies, tangible projects and sustained finance.

Since 2014, the Our Ocean Conference has been an important mechanism for mobilizing governments, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, philanthropy, local communities and the private sector to take action across six core areas critical to achieving a healthy ocean: the ocean-climate nexus, sustainable fisheries, the sustainable blue economy, marine pollution, marine protected areas and maritime security.

However, unlike other global meetings that focus on negotiated outcomes, the Our Ocean Conference invites voluntary commitments that serve as critical stepping-stones to achieving

Over the past 12 years, the conference has generated more than 3,000 commitments valued at over $175 billion in pledged finance. But now, the more critical question is not whether governments and civil society can make ambitious commitments, but how they can deliver them.

WRI, in its capacity as conference secretariat, has taken a deep dive into Our Ocean Conference commitments to better understand and encourage accountable, transparent delivery of these commitments. At this year’s 11th Our Ocean Conference, hosted in Mombasa, Kenya in June, WRI followed up on its 2025 working paper, Assessing 10 Years of International Commitments to Sustainable Ocean Action: A Global Stocktake of the Our Ocean Conference, with two new assessments of progress toward implementing Our Ocean Conference commitments.

The first report assesses global commitment delivery from 2025 to 2026, benchmarking progress delivered since the 10th Our Ocean Conference in Busan, South Korea, in 2025. The analysis, based on self-reported progress updates from global commitment-makers, indicates that since April 2025, 285 new commitments were made, representing $9.1 billion in pledged investments. During the same period, 284 existing commitments — delivering an additional $2.7 billion — were completed or reported progress through the Our Ocean Conference mechanism.

In a time of increasingly constrained funding, geopolitical instability and diverse challenges demanding the attention of governments, the Our Ocean Conference continues to serve as a mechanism for governments, civil society and funders to advance ocean action.

However, while countries and organizations are making moderate but measurable progress toward their commitments, greater urgency is needed to achieve meaningful, on-the-ground impact for the ocean and ocean-reliant communities. To date:

41% of all Our Ocean Conference commitments have been completed.
40% are in progress.
18% are not yet started.

These proportions closely reflect the status of commitments in 2025, indicating no notable shift toward increased aggregate delivery of commitments. It is important to account for realistic time needed to fully and effectively implement complex and multi-year commitments. At the same time, the ambition and urgency of implementation must ramp up if global targets are to be met by 2030.

Along with greater global ambition, it is critical that parts of the world that have been historically underrepresented in the Our Ocean Conference are engaged in the process. The ocean is a global system, with global challenges — and solving them will require solutions mobilized from all corners of the world. In alignment with this regional focus, WRI also brought together local research partners to assess the landscape of voluntary commitments made by and in Africa through self-reported data, surveys and interviews with organizations around the world.

The 11th Our Ocean Conference marked the first time it was held in Africa, placing a spotlight on the technical expertise, political leadership and innovative ocean solutions occurring across the continent. The Kenyan government brought together more than 5,000 participants and significantly expanded participation from African governments, representing one-third of attending government delegations and over African civil society organizations, whose perspectives are critical to the design and implementation of effective ocean solutions.

WRI’s reporting found that between 2014 and 2025, Africa made a notable commitment to ocean ambition, mobilizing 364 commitments across Africa and a collective financial pledge of $14.3 billion, $5.7 billion of which has been fully delivered. This represents 12% of global Our Ocean Conference commitments and 8% of total pledged finance.

However, this year’s conference yielded an even more striking result: more than 100 of the new commitments announced in Mombasa will be implemented in Africa or by African governments and organizations, increasing the total number of Africa-based or Africa-led commitments by 25% in just a single year. Kenya, as host, delivered 42 new commitments valued at $1 billion.

These impressive regional outcomes underscore the importance of diversifying regional representation and increasing access to global platforms like the Our Ocean Conference. By facilitating new partnerships, mobilizing additional resources and placing regional leaders at the center of the conversation, mechanisms like the Our Ocean Conference have the potential to significantly boost ongoing ocean action across the host region.

Lastly, WRI’s commitment analysis is expanding to better understand the enabling conditions and barriers that commitment-makers encounter that impact their success. This year’s report provides a solid foundation to enable effective, meaningful and timely implementation of future commitments made by and in Africa. Africa-based commitments that were successfully implemented shared key conditions including:

A participatory, inclusive approach that brings local communities and stakeholders into the process as commitments are implemented.
Efforts to build local expertise and capacity and utilize local knowledge, creating an environment for communities that live, work and best understand these ecosystems to sustain action over the long term.

On the other end of the spectrum, commitment-makers’ main barrier to effective implementation was access to sustained, secure finance. Many commitments undertaken by African organizations rely on short-term, project-based finance which can result in a patchwork of impacts on the ground, rather than systemic, meaningful change for ocean ecosystems and coastal communities.

The continued progress of Our Ocean Conference tells us that investing in the ocean continues to be a policy priority for governments, the private sector and civil society organizations because commitments to investments in a healthy ocean are also an investment in prosperity, resilience and security for future generations. However, as the conference enters its second decade and the 30x30 deadline looms closer, increasing urgency is needed from all corners of the world — not just through lofty new commitments, but in delivering the practical steps and finance needed to turn them from ambition to reality. Africa — home to the world’s youngest population, fastest-growing blue economy and diverse, abundant marine resources — has shown in hosting this year’s conference that it is poised to lead.

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STATEMENT: Over 30 Organizations Issue Letter to US Senate Opposing Year-Round Ethanol 'E15' Proposal

Fragmentation and Fires Are Threatening the World’s Last Intact Forests

Where and Why Are Intact Forests Becoming Fragmented?

The Problem with Losing Forest Intactness

Climate change mitigation and adaptation

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How Can We Protect Intact Forest Landscapes?

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Ocean Action Commitments Signal Strong Ambition, but Implementation Remains Urgent

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