Cubans have been navigating chronic blackouts for years. A routine built around flickering light has created a sort of collective muscle memory for the country’s inhabitants. “They turn the electricity on at 7 a.m., and they turn it off at 1 p.m.,” says Ramon, a vegetable delivery worker who lives in Güira de Melena, 50 kilometres from Havana. “They turn it back on until 10 p.m… It’s a fixed cycle.”  

This power-supply free fall has also expedited the energy transition. In the midst of a crisis, the renewables lifeline appears, albeit incrementally.

The stranglehold on oil shipments has placed renewed emphasis on a plan to transition to renewable energy. At the start of 2025, just 4% of Cuba’s electricity came from renewables. By the end of this year, that is supposed to jump to 17%, according to Ramses Montes, director of national energy policy and strategy at the Cuban Ministry of Energy and Mines. China has been donating thousands of solar panels to Cuba, as part of its Belt and Road Initiative. Brazil sent 300 solar panel kits in 2025, and a new activist-led campaign is raising funds to install the equipment in schools. 

In March, Cuba’s Communist Party announced via Granma, its official newspaper, that it would soon begin installing 5,000 panels donated by China, following another major blackout that plunged two-thirds of the country into darkness. Half of the panels will head to maternity homes, seniors’ centres, hospitals, banks, radio stations and other public infrastructure.  

There are about 30 solar fields in operation now on the island, with plans to add 92 more by 2028 with the help of China. But for the average Cuban, who earns around $16 a month if employed by the state, the options are slim. Many people rely on coal or firewood to cook and stay warm. Most Cubans can’t afford to install solar panels, which can cost thousands of dollars. Electric power generators that run on fuel are a more affordable option, but they are noisy and still cost-prohibitive. A 4,600-watt generator uses about 15 litres of gasoline every 12 hours, with each litre of gas costing as much as US$8 on the informal market.  

Christa Hernández is among the privileged few who were able to install solar panels last year. At that point, the scheduled blackouts were between two and six hours in Havana. But Hernández, who owns the hostel Kerida and the Cimarrón dance school, could see that the power situation was going to make or break her business. Gasoline generators were too loud. She looked into buying solar panels on Amazon, but her credit card kept getting blocked. Finally, she connected with a friend living in the United States who purchased the panels for her, and then she hired a company in Miami that packed them up and delivered them to her doorstep in Cuba. All the equipment, including batteries and shipping, cost US$12,000.  

Our workers come in from their homes already tired, because they weren’t able to sleep, because there is no electricity, there is no water, there is nothing.

— Christa Hernández, business owner in Havana

“We made the switch just in time, because soon after, travel agencies stopped working with hostels that did not have that safety net,” Hernández says. “We’re one of the few privileged people who can invest in this,” she adds. If you don’t have a business, or family who live outside the country, it’s impossible to make the investment.  

“The neighbourhood is very dark. When you look outside, you see how few people have light,” she says. “Life is not the same. You go out into a darkened Cuba, where the cost of everything goes up and there is suffering.”  

“Our workers come in from their homes already tired, because they weren’t able to sleep, because there is no electricity, there is no water, there is nothing.”  

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires–based journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights. Berta Reventós is a Buenos Aires-based Latin America correspondent who works for Spanish media and reported from Cuba.

The post As darkness falls on Cuba, solar provides a lifeline appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“For us, it’s very important,” says Guindani, an advocate of cooperative food systems who comes from a family of farmers. The shelves of Raízes’s modest showroom were stocked with the fruits of their labour: organic white rice, chocolate made from Bahian cocoa and coffee beans from the southern reaches of Brazil’s Minas Gerais state. Plus a trendy yellow ballcap boasting “Agroecologia” on the front for good measure.  

But nothing can compete with the international exposure of COP. Raízes received another boost thanks to famed Indigenous Brazilian chef Tainá Marajoara, who was in charge of catering for world leaders at the conference and had invited the start-up to showcase its products alongside her. “All the work and effort we’ve put so far into raising awareness around our brand really has been a drop in the ocean,” Guindani says.  

Guindani started the Raízes do Campo project in 2018 in an attempt to help transform the food supply model in Brazil, bringing small-scale producers closer to Brazilian consumers and creating a more equitable system to deliver fair earnings to farmers. The start-up officially launched in 2022, marketing products by hundreds of cooperative producers under a single brand. Its line includes coffee, chocolate, rice, beans, sugar and fruit juices. Three years later, it now represents some 3,000 producers. Along the way, Guindani has come up against myriad challenges, everything from needing barcodes in order to sell in supermarkets to understanding product placement in the aisles. She has learned that the one of the greatest challenge revolves around storytelling – how to help consumers understand the higher costs of sustainable products that abide by an agroecology ethos.  

“We couldn’t market this coffee as if it is any coffee from any hacienda,” Guindani says. So they created something called the “spiral of agroecology,” which assigns value along three pillars: social, economic and environmental. They meet with each cooperative to learn about their process, and then try to guide consumers to understand the attention that the producer places on each of those pillars. So, for example, if there are no women who are part of the management of the cooperative, it may rank lower on the social spiral. “The consumer has to understand that there is a difference,” says Guindani, who has long worked in the farming cooperative movement in Latin America. “At Raízes do Campo, our idea was to turn the families into the protagonists.” 

Proponents of agroecology took COP30 as an opportunity to showcase how small-scale and family farming can transform food systems and provide lasting solutions to climate change. It is the first time that family farming has occupied a formal space at the climate conference, says Paulo Petersen, a Brazilian special envoy for family farming at COP30.  

Petersen wants policymakers to recognize family farming as a “decisive actor” in restructuring food systems that are currently responsible for one-third of greenhouse gas emissions globally. In Brazil, family farming is the backbone of its food system, even if it is largely invisible. Family farms make up 77% of Brazil’s five million rural properties, according to the World Bank, and produce most of what more than 200 million Brazilians eat. While COP30 did not produce an agreement regarding agroecology, Petersen says, their voice was stronger than ever: “Our presence in different spaces at COP was about creating our own narrative.”  

The role that food systems play in the climate battle has only recently joined the global conversation. But it’s Big Ag that takes up most of the room, even now as the narrative shifts into technological advances that promote “regenerative” or “climate intelligent” agriculture. Industrial agriculture has sought to encompass family farming in its messaging and lay claim to practices that support biodiversity and equity. 

“Family agriculture is not part of Big Ag,” Petersen stresses. “What has happened in the last 50 years is that industrial agriculture has disconnected agriculture from its natural environment, production from consumption, and nutrition from health,” he says. Monoculture farming and commodities-based agriculture destabilize the ecological environment in a way that is then remedied with pesticides and chemical fertilizers, he says, which have their own detrimental effect. 

“Family agroecology is a recognition of the peasant farmer methods of doing agriculture, that is based on diverse production, biodiversity, culture and local markets,” Petersen says. Its principles are not just ecological but economic, since a large part of the production is to feed the families themselves. That which is meant for sale requires local markets – but the farmers are at the mercy of powerful middlemen.  

Guindani has seen this first-hand, and how those unequal power balances leave families with meagre returns. “Since they are small pieces of land, and small productive units, they don’t have enough of a volume to make it to the bigger market,” she says. So, it’s the wholesale buyer that ends up occupying an outsized role, scooping up the product, generating volume and leaving the earlier links of the value chain further behind.   

At Raízes do Campo, our idea was to turn [family farmers] into the protagonists.

– Carla Guindani, executive director, Raízes do Campo

In order to reap the benefit of the agroecological family-farming model, it has to be integrated into food distribution systems that reduce energy consumption in processing, packaging, refrigeration and transport and shorten the chain of intermediaries. That means that public investment can’t just be directed at the small farmer; it must be invested in the entire supply chain that creates the conditions for it to make a wider impact.  

Petersen points to policies in Brazil’s semi-arid region in the northeast that helped turn around an area that is home to half the country’s family farms, and is particularly vulnerable to droughts. The policies provided public services and social protection to farming families, including a cistern system with access to potable water. And it devised local chains of supply and demand that supported small-scale farms. The result is an area that is now more resilient and better able to withstand the shocks of droughts that have become more extreme.  

“What we’re saying is that there isn’t a policy for the climate,” Petersen says. “There are policies for food sovereignty, and it’s those policies that generate mitigating effects around greenhouse gas emissions, that promote adaptation, food security, women’s empowerment and local economies. It’s a win-win effect.”  

For Guindani, the focus continues to be on telling the story of Brazil’s family farmers, who are key to a more sustainable future.

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires-based journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights. 

The post In Brazil, family farmers push back on Big Ag appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In the aftermath, demonstrations both in favour of and against the U.S. action have cropped up around the world.

Glinelide Aponte was sandwiched among thousands of Venezuelans in Argentina’s capital of Buenos Aires on January 3, celebrating the ouster of a man they blamed for forcing them out of their homeland. Some eight million Venezuelans, or one-quarter of the population, are estimated to have fled their country since 2014, according to UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency, fanning across the world in search of a better life and upending regional immigration politics.

Aponte, 28, left seven years ago. She first took a bus to Lima with friends, then travelled on to Buenos Aires, where she has built a life, working and in a relationship. Her decision to leave was largely based on chronic shortages that made it impossible to plan for the future. “There was nothing, from basic supplies, food, even transport to be able to go to university,” Aponte says. The news of Maduro’s removal was “one of the happiest days of my life,” even if she admits to confusion over what could happen next. “We were in a very difficult position,” she says, one that “can’t get worse.”

While the legitimacy and legality of the U.S. stealth attack on Venezuela in the early-morning hours of January 3 are deeply contested, the possible ripple effects extend far beyond the courts. The United States appears to have abandoned any nominal respect for sovereignty, particularly where its energy ambitions lie, and unlike with previous regime changes in Latin America, its intentions have been crystal clear. “We are going to run the country until such time that we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” President Donald Trump said in the hours after the attack. Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, are being held in New York City and have been formally charged in a narco-terrorism conspiracy that includes the importation of cocaine to the United States. They have both declared their innocence.

Indeed, beyond the shock and awe, U.S. imperialism has, arguably, never been so transparent. Trump has already taken steps to claim what he declared was a prime motivation: Venezuelan oil, which had suffered a severe decline in recent years, because of mismanagement and also U.S. sanctions that crippled Venezuela’s petroleum-dependent economy.

Trump’s administration has elected to keep the rest of the regime established by Maduro’s predecessor, the populist socialist Hugo Chávez, in place and work with Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who has been sworn in as interim president. On Monday, Trump declared himself the “acting president of Venezuela” in a post on his social media site Truth Social. The Trump administration made the surprising choice of backing Rodríguez as interim leader, rather than María Corina Machado, the leader of the right-wing opposition whose party is widely seen as having won the 2024 elections in Venezuela and who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to return democracy to her home country. Last week, Machado said she would share her Nobel Prize with Trump, something the committee that awards the prize says she is not able to do.

Legal experts around the world have condemned the U.S. intervention. “I remain deeply concerned that rules of international law have not been respected with regard to the 3 January military action,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said before a meeting of the Security Council last week. “The [UN] Charter enshrines the prohibition of the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”

The response from the international community has been divided, with countries in Latin America such as Brazil, Colombia and Mexico roundly criticizing the unilateral move, along with Russia and China. But other powers, including the European Union and Canada, refrained from explicitly saying the United States went too far, focusing instead on their long-time refusal to recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate leader following electoral fraud and well-documented human rights abuses.

“The European Union calls for calm and restraint by all actors, to avoid escalation and to ensure a peaceful solution to the crisis,” a statement signed by 26 EU member states, not including Hungary, declared.

But the U.S. action is about more than a dictator. It is the starkest evidence of a new era in foreign policy that reactivates the Monroe Doctrine, an 1823 declaration by the United States that sought to assert dominance in the Western Hemisphere. The reinterpretation has been dubbed the “Donroe” doctrine, and Trump has since made controversial insinuations of possible interventions in Colombia and Mexico. Denmark’s Arctic territory of Greenland is once again in his crosshairs. “One way or another, we’re going to have Greenland,” he said over the weekend. “If we don’t take Greenland, Russia or China will.”

The geopolitical chess board is shaky. What the U.S. intervention in Venezuela means for energy policy is still unclear. U.S. forces have intercepted five oil tankers since Maduro was removed, and Trump has said that Venezuela will be “turning over” up to 50 million barrels of oil to the United States. It stands to reason that Canada, as a primary exporter of oil to the United States, will bear some impact, although the timeline for ramping up production in Venezuela is unclear, with analysts suggesting it could take years.

But there are other signals of important changes, namely the release of more than 100 political prisoners, which by some estimates represents about 10% of those incarcerated under Maduro’s regime.

The post In the wake of U.S. capture of Maduro, the geopolitical consequences are just emerging appeared first on Corporate Knights.

It’s the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement, that lofty climate pledge that has helped push – in some cases reluctantly – countries toward carbon-cutting measures. COP30 organizers are determined to make this year different, shifting from “ambition to implementation,” and they’re making the point with a backdrop of stark inequality.  

“We cannot hide the fact that we are in a world with lots of inequalities and where sustainability and fighting climate change is something that has to get closer to people,” André Aranha Corrêa do Lago, president designate for COP30, said in an interview with the Associated Press. “President Lula wants this to be the COP of truth. He wants people to be told the truth about how climate change will affect their countries,” he added in September.  

Brazil proved to be its own study in contradictions in the lead-up to Belém, which has made headlines for a dearth in accommodations for the influx of thousands of delegates, as well as a controversial new highway cutting through rainforest to facilitate the conference. South America’s largest country, with a population of more than 212 million, Brazil has sought to regain environmental bona fides that were left in tatters under the previous administration of Jair Bolsonaro, when deforestation ran rampant in the Amazon.  

Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, former union leader turned president, assumed his third term in office in 2023 with bold pledges to end deforestation in the Amazon by 2030, boosting the use of satellite monitoring and other mechanisms to guard against illegal logging and mining in the so-called lungs of the earth. He also established a dedicated ministry for Indigenous Peoples as a way to protect their rights, setting out to demarcate their territories. In the lead-up to COP30, Brazil launched a tropical-forest conservation fund that aims to raise US$125 billion. Hosting COP30 was an important show of his government’s environmental commitment. Brazil has pledged to reduce its emissions by 59% and 67% below 2005 levels by 2035. But various activists and organizations have drawn attention to the cracks in Brazil’s narrative, not least for its plan to continue to exploit its oil reserves.  

Lula has pushed for Brazil to drill in the mouth of the Amazon, arguing that the development will help the country complete its energy transition. The Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources approved the drilling of an exploratory well in an offshore oil field in the Amazon, a site that had long been in the sights of the national oil company, Petrobras. The petroleum giant had previously been denied rights to explore, in large measure because of doubts over its ability to respond to oil spills or other accidents in the ecologically sensitive area. In its October approval, the environmental watchdog said the company had made various improvements to its emergency response plan, which led to the green light. 

Brazil is also pushing ahead with new mining projects for critical minerals, with as many as 800 mining companies exploring in the Amazon. “There is no energy transition without mining,” Alexandre Silveira, minister of mines and energy, said in early 2024. 

“Brazil cannot lead the world to a cleaner, healthier future by loosening environmental regulations, promoting a fossil fuel build out, and allowing mining projects that violate Indigenous sovereignty and destroy carbon sinks like the Amazon,” Patricia Rodriguez and Jan Morrill wrote in a commentary for Earthworks, an organization that advocates against oil, gas and mining pollution.   

The question of environmental regulations has exposed fault lines within Lula’s administration. Environment and Climate Change Minister Marina Silva, an internationally acclaimed environmentalist, slammed a decision by the Brazilian Senate in May to approve a bill that loosened environmental licensing rules, calling it a “death blow” to important protections in Brazil. Her position in turn drew the ire of industry and other sectors. The legislation was later modified, earning Silva’s support. 

But the showdown underscored the powerful forces that are at play in Brazil, which has taken an even more prominent role on the international stage as President Lula presents one of the clearest voices of opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump and his trade war tactics.  

In opening remarks at COP30 last week, Lula stressed the need for true climate commitments, to “take the scientific warnings seriously” and “face reality.” He closed by thanking people for coming to the Amazon.

“Many people did not believe that it was possible to bring a COP to an Amazonian state, because people are more used to parading around big cities,” he noted. “We wanted people to come here to see what the Amazon really is.”

The post Brazil’s balancing act at COP30 appeared first on Corporate Knights.

At the same time, the climate emergency is entering a new and even more dangerous phase as global heating accelerates, sparking mass migration, devastating floods and wildfires, and large-scale die-offs in the ocean.

Meanwhile, money is streaming into renewables and clean technology at a record pace. Last year, global investment in the energy transition passed $2 trillion for the first time, and green funds are soaring. Climate lawsuits are increasing in number and racking up wins, climate risk reporting is becoming more entrenched around the world, and electric vehicle adoption is racing forward in many countries.

How is the next generation of climate leaders responding to these developments?

We sent a survey to young sustainability leaders whose work and dedication has earned them a spot on our annual 30 Under 30 ranking. This list of emerging changemakers is now in its 11th edition, so while not all those surveyed are under 30, they are all millennials or Gen Z. Broadly, we think of them as influential pathfinders in the youth movement for a cleaner economy and a healthier planet.

We make hope through our actions. Hope is a verb, not a noun, and we create it with every step we take towards a better future.

– Dana Decent, director of climate and health at the Definity Foundation

We wanted to know how they are thinking about the future of climate action in Canada. Sixteen people responded to the survey. Here’s what they said.

What levers are most effective for change?

Nine of the 16 felt that policy and politics are the most effective lever for change, followed by science and innovation (3), markets (2) and arts and culture (1). None picked litigation.

“We know that policy/politics is the only arena for real change at scale; it is the way to shift markets and enact broad-scale, multi-sectoral change,” writes Gareth Gransaull, a non-profit leader in Toronto and one of last year’s 30 Under 30 honourees. “There is no single institution besides the nation-state with the power to manage large-scale societal transitions.”

“We can’t give up on the political arena just because it has become more challenging,” Gransaull argues. “We just need to get serious about how to mobilize real grassroots movements to shift the Overton window, influence partisan politics and recapture real democratic control of the government.”

“We need multiple levers acting together, and to think one is more important than others is incorrect,” writes Dana Decent, director of climate and health at the Definity Foundation in Halifax, Nova Scotia, who made the list in 2016. “Alternative levers that are important to reduce emissions and adapt, such as building power in social movements, shifting values and mindsets, or building alternative economies that focus on people and planet.”

Canada’s climate leadership

These sustainability torchbearers say that Canada is seriously dropping the ball on climate. When asked how they would rate Canada’s climate leadership out of 10, more than half picked 5 or 6. The average rating was 4.6.

“Canada has made important commitments and investments toward net-zero, but the pace of action doesn’t yet match the urgency of the crisis,” writes Smiely Khurana, founder of The Sustainable Act and Climate Wellness Network, who was one of 2024’s 30 Under 30 picks. “There’s strong innovation and leadership at local and grassroots levels, but federal and provincial policies still too often prioritize short-term economic interests over long-term planetary health.”

“The current path of abandoning reduction targets in favour of intensity targets and pursuing an energy-superpower approach in international trade can hardly be described as climate leadership,” writes David Klar, a 2018 honouree. “It ignores major developments south of the border, namely the creation of the National Energy Dominance Council . . . By the time Canada’s proposed fossil fuel infrastructure build-out is complete, the U.S. nuclear power sector will likely have significant cost, national security and climate advantages.”

What’s not working?

Sustainability advocates everywhere are reevaluating their strategies. We asked respondents what aspect of the climate movement isn’t working or needs to change.

Tyler De Sousa, a 2023 honouree and the co-founder of Circulr, writes that we need to get past “focusing on climate purity, or the idea that we cannot work with those who don’t fully embrace our beliefs about climate or sustainability.”

Julien O. Beaulieu, a doctoral researcher in the United Kingdom who made the list in 2023 and who served as a judge in this year’s ranking, writes, “We need to stop speaking to the people who are already convinced and focus on the reasons that make opponents and skeptics doubt.”

What’s giving you hope?

We asked respondents what gives them the most hope for the future of the climate movement in Canada.

De Sousa is energized by the increasing interest in electric vehicles and the circular economy. Beaulieu finds hope in the “relentless mobilization from individuals in all spheres who keep doing the hard work.” For Hawa Mariam Keita, a 2021 honouree, hope lies in international cooperation and policies implementation. One anonymous respondent pointed to the election of a growing number of climate-aligned MPs in the latest Parliament.

“Canadians care about the environment and we’ve made monumental progress,” writes Kurtis Layden, a 2022 honouree who is now the director of policy for the minister of fisheries.

“The growing focus on climate wellness, community connection and collaboration across disciplines gives me hope,” Khurana writes. “Seeing more young people, artists and BIPOC leaders bringing creativity, empathy and storytelling into the climate space shows that this movement is evolving into something more holistic, human and resilient.”

“The next generation of Canadian climate founders are incredibly technical, impact-driven and globally ambitious,” writes Leah Perry, a senior associate for the Innovation Fund at Wittington Ventures in Toronto, who made the 30 Under 30 list in 2022. “They’re building companies that prove climate solutions can scale and can compete internationally.”

“I find hope in uncertainty. Outcomes don’t look good, and I fear climate impacts will worsen before we change for the better. But we don’t know for sure what will happen and there is hope in that space,” Decent writes. “We also make hope through our actions. Hope is a verb, not a noun, and we create it with every step we take towards a better future.”

The post How young sustainability leaders see the future of the climate movement appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Leah Gotkin

28, Toronto, ON
Senior manager, climate change – Scotiabank

Leah Gotkin began her career promoting electric vehicle adoption in Canada, then advanced sustainability strategies at Upswing Solutions, with an emphasis on equity and Indigenous engagement. Now at Scotiabank, she drives the bank’s $350-billion climate-finance initiative and supports decarbonization across high-emission sectors.

 

"My courage comes from a belief that climate action can unlock shared value. Everyone has a ‘why,’ and the beauty of working in climate is that competing ‘whys’ can co-exist."

Marissa Louie

25, Toronto, ON
Associate manager, climate reporting – TD Bank Group

Marissa Louie has helped TD Bank Group strengthen its ESG disclosures and has been instrumental in shaping communication around its plan to achieve net-zero by 2050. She led a rigorous review of external disclosure practices to help ensure credible climate-reporting in alignment with regulatory and stakeholder expectations and acted as a lead writer for its the TD and Indigenous Communities in Canada report.

"Sustainability reporting can be a catalyst for change. It’s not just about producing reports – it’s about connecting ambitions, promoting transparency and accountability, and integrating sustainability into business-as-usual."

Samita Rimal

27, Halifax, NS
Specialist, energy transition – Eastward Energy

Samita Rimal became Nepal’s only female graduate of hydropower mechanical engineering in 2019. Today, she leads Nova Scotia’s first green-hydrogen production and blending project. She has also co-founded the Student Energy chapter in Newfoundland.

“Growing up in Nepal’s energy poverty and now leading energy transition projects in Canada, I’ve learned that true progress comes from the courage to question, learn, unlearn and relearn.”

Adrien Roy

29, Toronto, ON
Manager – Quinn and Partners

Adrien Roy has completed more than 60 climate projects focused on baselining greenhouse gas emissions, modelling decarbonization pathways, and building net-zero transition plans and strategies. He has helped set six science-based net-zero targets covering 1.5 million tonnes of GHGs.

“In 2025, the climate battle is shifting from developing new solutions towards implementing existing solutions at scale. It’s become clear that no single person, company or technology will solve the climate crisis independently. The courage needed to win this battle is therefore rooted in collaboration.”

 

Armaan Makhani-Kotadia

22, Waterloo, ON
Youth climate educator and planetary health researcher – McMaster University | The Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care | TEDx

At McMaster University, Armaan Makhani-Kotadia has contributed to a campaign to reduce plastic water bottles on campus and install more water refill stations, and he co-founded a fund that awards marginalized students for sustainability initiatives. He is also part of the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care, contributing to national networking hubs and training resources to address greenhouse gas emissions from healthcare buildings.

“My courage is guiding me to weave together health, equity and climate action – threads too often kept apart. I bring the skill of transforming climate anxiety into agency, helping young people step into their own power as leaders rather than bystanders.”

Annabelle Liao

24, Vancouver, BC
Project lead | founder and director — Kambo energy group | Project Arrowroot

Annabelle Liao has held roles in cleantech at Foresight Canada, climate finance at Vancity, and community wealth building at Social Innovation Canada. Beyond that, she’s volunteered in grassroots and international organizations advancing global climate action and led a team at ClimaTalk that created resources to de-jargonize international climate negotiations. She also founded and is the director of Project Arrowroot, an NGO funded by the Canada Service Corps and Re-Earth Initiative that paves paths to green careers for young people.

“I place my hope in the 95% of young people around the world who are worried about the impacts of climate change and the 85% of Canadian high school students who want more climate education.”

Sehjal Bhargava

28, Saskatoon, SK
Family medicine physician – University of Ottawa, Harvard University

Sehjal Bhargava’s passion for affecting the social determinants of health has led to a focus on climate change and its impacts on health. She has served as Saskatchewan chair and is currently Ontario co-chair of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. In 2021, she launched PaRx, a program that encourages Saskatchewan physicians to prescribe time in nature to improve patients’ health.

“As a physician, I firmly believe that we are only as healthy as our environment. I am driven by experiences to look outside of the clinic and toward policies that focus on improving the health of people and the planet.”

 

Ali Tapaquon

29, Oskana kâ-asastêki, SK
Principal and founder – Tatâga Inc.

Ali Tapaquon is founder and CEO of Tatâga Inc., a consultancy that integrates traditional ecological knowledge with modern strategy to advance environmental, social and cultural sustainability. Tapaquon developed the Reconciliation Assessment Report – a tool that helps organizations operationalize sustainability through Indigenous rights, knowledge systems and anti-racism.

“My sôhkitêhêwin (courage) comes from the teachings of my culture and Peoples. Our ways are rooted in responsibility and stewardship for the land, waters and skies. I intentionally practise Indigenous strategy to guide organizations in seeing climate action not as a technical fix, but as a relational duty to future generations and to themselves.”

Yazan Zamel

25, Toronto, ON
President – Sustainable Engineer Association 

As an energy-efficiency consultant, energy analyst and now guided projects coordinator at Student Energy, Yazan Zamel champions net-zero energy projects in low-income communities. He has coordinated more than a dozen solar installations in underserved areas, reducing diesel reliance. He is president of the Sustainable Engineers Association at the University of Toronto and founder of the Ray of Hope program that connects refugees and youth with education and jobs.

“I find hope in young people realizing that their voices matter and in communities lighting up with renewable power, which is proof that climate justice is possible when we act together.”

 

Zeina Seaifan

25, Montreal, QC
Scholar-activist – McGill University | Shake Up the Establishment

Zeina Seaifan is a scholar-activist pursuing a PhD at McGill University, researching migration and environmental justice. She now leads the policy committee at Climate Sirens, a feminist climate-justice organization where she mentors 12 women in climate advocacy, and volunteers at Shake Up the Establishment. Seaifan has led national environmental consultations, co-authored policy reports and created accessible educational tools for youth and newcomers.

“Worldwide, climate devastation is informed by the twin flames of colonialism and extraction. We’re advocating for sustainable systems rooted in Indigenous perspectives and other overlooked knowledges.”

Andrea Kilibarda

26, Montreal, QC
 Co-founder, head of client delivery and impact – Climate Finance Advisors

Andrea Kilibarda co-founded a climate-finance advisory firm based in Montreal. To date, her firm has supported the sustainable alignment of approximately $3 billion in assets on behalf of asset owners, collectively targeting a reduction of approximately 500,000 tonnes of financed carbon-dioxide-equivalent emissions by 2050. She has also worked with developing countries on plans to align finance with sustainability and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“We are facing the greatest financial challenge of our time: closing the $7.4-trillion annual climate finance gap. I find hope in the growing movement of purpose-driven leaders building a new investment paradigm that reimagines capital as a force for good.”

Rasul Huseynzade

20, Vancouver, BC
Youth ambassador, sustainability champion, policy adviser and human rights advocate – Jane Goodall Institute – Roots & Shoots

A former UN Development Programme champion and UNICEF youth advocate, Rasul Huseynzade has co-founded various youth-led organizations, including The Children’s Union, a regional Fridays for Future and Youth for Climate Turkiye. He currently serves as a youth adviser to the Jane Goodall Institute, Aga Khan Foundation, It Gets Better Canada and The King’s Trust Canada. He is also a climate ambassador for the World Bank Group.

“I had to go through many difficulties, but I feel like this journey shaped me in every way, because it taught me to be a team, it showed me that change doesn’t come easy and it doesn’t just happen; it made me realize that change is a process.”

Astrid Wilson

27, Bella Bella, B.C.
Economic development coordinator – Heiltsuk Economic Development Corporation

Astrid Wilson is intimately involved in supporting sustainable, culturally grounded economic development in her home community of the Heiltsuk Nation, on the central coast of British Columbia. In 2022, she helped organize the Commission for Environmental Cooperation’s Joint Public Advisory Committee gathering, in Victoria, ensuring that Indigenous voices and perspectives were meaningfully included in international environmental dialogues.

Kiemia Rezagian

28, Windsor, on
Engagement and training director – Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment

Kiemia Rezagian has designed and run an advocacy and mobilization program for physicians, spearheaded by the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. The program aims to empower physicians to increase their involvement in climate crisis advocacy. To date, it has trained some 150 health professionals, and its success is based in large measure on Rezagian’s leadership.

“Doctors see every day how unhealthy environments lead to sickness and even death. I’m helping them tell these stories so more people see what is at stake.”

 

Paris Liu

24, London, ONTARIO
Master’s student in environmental policy at Sciences Po; former climate change project assistant at ICLEI Canada – Sciences Po 

Paris Liu co-developed McMaster University’s first climate change civil engineering course and co-founded a national working group through the Canadian Federation of Engineering Students to embed climate education into engineering curricula across Canada. She spearheaded zero-waste programs at McMaster, including Coffee to Compost, diverting more than 270 kilograms of waste from landfill, and co-founded Students for Bike Share, a campaign to secure discounted bike share passes for undergrads.

“I am especially passionate about exploring how low-carbon, resilient solutions can tackle both the climate and housing crises, particularly in post-disaster contexts.”

Sarah Machane

29, Montreal, QC
Innovation lead – CASCADES

Sarah Machane works to embed sustainability into the everyday practices of healthcare providers. Through her role with CASCADES (Creating a Sustainable Canadian Health System in a Climate Crisis) as the innovation and regional lead for Quebec, she has helped reduced unnecessary diagnostics and supported initiatives such as reducing carbon dioxide emissions from anesthetic gases and lowering medical imaging’s carbon footprint.

“For me, courage is about consistently showing up, even when we feel out of place and the challenges feel so much bigger than us. My energy goes into community: strengthening networks, trying to break silos and helping people connect across disciplines.”

Fatou Dieng

29, Montreal, QC
Climate solutions lead – Manifest Climate

As an immigrant, Fatou Dieng has worked to elevate the voices and needs of marginalized communities. As a climate strategist, she helps organizations understand and implement climate-related strategies and regulations. She has advocated at the Quebec National Assembly for the creation of a youth committee on climate and sustainability. In Senegal, she helps steward her family’s farm as a site of resilience, food sovereignty and ecological restoration.

“My courage comes from entering spaces that many of my people cannot access. When I speak of a ‘happy ending,’ I mean not only the fight against climate change and its unequal impacts but also our struggles against oppression, injustice, genocide, and racial and social disparities.”

Samuel and Michael Marty

undisclosed/23, Frog Lake First Nation

Samuel: Renewable relations liaison
Michael: Community energy manager

Samuel and Michael Marty are cousins and proud members of Frog Lake First Nation. With the goal to make their community self-sufficient and not reliant on fossil fuels, they have both been working to advance clean energy initiatives. Through capacity built from Indigenous Clean Energy’s programs, Samuel has been leading clean energy projects ranging from net-zero housing design to community communications that showcase his Nation’s green energy initiatives. As clean energy manager, Michael is advancing projects that reduce carbon emissions while fostering economic self-sufficiency and cultural resilience among Indigenous youth.

“We are all inherently stewards of the land. Mother Earth has nurtured us with the love and generosity only a mother can give. Now, it is our turn to return that love, to care for our planet with the same compassion.”

Samuel

“I find hope in seeing our communities not just adapt but thrive, building resilience, cultural pride and sustainable futures together.”

Michael

Julia Wright

21, Montreal, QC
CEO – MycoNurseries

Fungi enthusiast Julia Wright co-founded a “mushroom club” to grow oyster mushrooms from spent coffee grounds. They have transformed the project into MycoNurseries, a registered non-profit that grows and distributes mushrooms to food-insecure communities while providing experiential education to youth about sustainable fungiculture. Wright also works at McGill University’s Office of Sustainability as a Sustainable Labs intern.

​​“The climate crisis can be overwhelming, but I believe that even small actions, when many do them, can make a difference. I place my energy into acting locally and practically."

Sonia Vinogradova

26, Ottawa, ON
Co-founder – Spark Source Consulting

As co-founder of Spark Source Consulting, Sonia Vinogradova builds what she calls triple planetary solutions: projects that treat energy, ecology and economy as one system. She has led two solar installations on farms in Eastern Ontario, saving 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually and cutting energy costs by 40%. She has secured more than $70,000 in public funding for clean energy and is scaling the model through new partnerships.

“The solutions to create a low-waste, low-emissions economy exist, and I’m implementing them.”

Inaam Chattha

22, Toronto, ON
Medical student – Green Mind Canada

As an immigrant who grew up in a remote Albertan town, Inaam Chattha understands how climate change, mental health and access to resources are deeply connected. He founded Green Mind Canada to create space for young people to talk about climate anxiety. He also wrote three children’s books that help children understand climate emotions and feel empowered to act. He is an Ocean Wise ambassador.

“My courage is guiding me to nurture spaces where young people can share their fears about climate change and feel empowered to act.”

Tianna Philippot

28, Teulon, Manitoba
Founder – Renewable Roots

Tianna Philippot is from rural Manitoba (Treaty 1, homeland of the Red River Métis Nation) and largely credits her connection with the environment to her Indigenous identity. Philippot is the founder of Renewable Roots, an organization dedicated to connecting her community to accessible and sustainable agriculture. Her wheelchair-accessible greenhouse will operate on clean energy in a repurposed container, demonstrating the interconnected relationship of food and energy sovereignty.

“I am continuously understanding the depth of the interconnected relationship between personal and climate resilience. Each exists because of unwavering determination and thoughtful navigation through pain, grief, passion and desire for balance.”

Jumanah Khan

29, London, ON
Owner and director; research associate – White Egret Consulting; Dalhousie University

As program manager for ALUS (Alternative Land Use Services) Elgin, Jumanah Khan led the restoration of more than 400 acres of environmentally sensitive land, managed substantial budgets and coordinated with diverse partners to enhance biodiversity and ecosystem benefits. Her efforts include the diversion of an estimated four tonnes of total phosphorus from Lake Erie and its tributaries. 

“My skills lie in translating data into narratives – helping transdisciplinary knowledge and worldviewsspark community-driven action.”

Clara Phillips

25, Iqaluit, Nunavut
Development project manager – Nunavut Nukkiksautiit Corporation

Clara Phillips is the development project manager for Nunavut Nukkiksautiit Corporation, based in Iqaluit – Nunavut’s first 100% Inuit-owned renewable-energy developer. Phillips is currently managing the construction of the Anuriqjuak Nukkiksautiit Project, a wind and battery energy storage project located in Sanikiluaq, Nunavut. The goal of the project is to offset the community’s diesel fuel use by 70% while securing a revenue-sharing agreement with the Sanikiluarmiut people.

“I prioritize listening, an undervalued but essential skill in creating meaningful change and supporting community-led clean energy projects..”

Lara Varty

26, Courtenay, B.C
Coordinator, sector innovation – Foresight Canada

Lara Varty is an integral part of Foresight Canada’s B.C. Net Zero Innovation Network that is helping the province hit its target of a 40% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. She has supported the development of four cleantech innovation clusters centred on mining, water, forest bioeconomy and transportation. Her efforts have contributed to the network’s key accomplishments, including securing $78 million in private cleantech investment, forming 100 new partnerships and launching 26 projects with Indigenous participation.

“Creating space for honest and open dialogue about what barriers are in place in addressing climate issues is the first step in creating change.”

Lily YangLiu

16, White Rock, B.C.
Co-founder/high school student – DMUN Foundation

Lily YangLiu is deputy executive director of the DMUN Foundation, a youth-led, non-profit advocacy platform. She co-developed a climate curriculum with university professors and early childhood educators and has delivered workshops to students across British Columbia. In 2022, she launched Daily Climate News, a bilingual social media series engaging followers in China across WeChat and Xiaohongshu. 

“I try to create spaces where advocacy is not just about sacrifice or urgency, but about community, creativity and resilience, recognizing that we are human, not machines.”

Gordon So

29, Toronto, on
Head of sustainability – Relocalize

Gordon So is an integral part of Relocalize, which creates microfactories that are closer to distribution points, eliminating middle-mile transportation and reducing cold storage needs. So spearheaded Relocalize’s carbon impact analysis in collaboration with the Oxia Initiative.

“Courage, to me, is proving that climate solutions don’t have to wait until 2050. They can transform industries today. I find hope in knowing that when better options exist for both business and the planet, they will always win.”

Alison Gu

29, Burnaby, B.C
City councillor – City of Burnaby

At 24, Alison Gu became the youngest city councillor elected in Burnaby, the third-largest municipality in British Columbia. She spearheaded a policy in her early days at city council that ensures all climate change motions include an equity lens, support reconciliation and be nature-based where possible. Since then, Gu has sat on a task force seeking to reduce building emissions with retrofits and pushed for infrastructure improvements to deal with severe weather events. 

“I place my energy in the fights that teeter the line in being attainable and bold, realistic and impactful. I find hope mostly in loving community, but also in the small wins, knowing that every one has a real impact on people.”

Kimia Shafighi

27, Montreal, QC
CEO and founder – Biocene

Through Biocene, Kimia Shafighi is tackling the urgent issue of harmful algae blooms, which are exacerbated by climate change and threaten water quality, public health and biodiversity in urban and rural aquatic environments. Her innovation removes these blooms from the water and transforms them into valuable biomass, such as biofuel, bioplastics and biocoke, turning a major environmental hazard into a circular economic opportunity.

“Each step forward, no matter how small, reinforces my belief that change is possible. In the end courage is knowing it might not work, but doing it anyway, and doing it together.”

Drew Bernard

28, Lennox Island, P.E.I.
Project manager and housing administrator, L’nu Energy – L’nu Energy

Drew Bernard is a proud Mi’kmaq leader and the energy lead for Lennox Island First Nation, where he is guiding the development of multiple utility-scale solar and wind projects. As co-founder and VP of Awtij Energy, a member of P.E.I.’s Net Zero Advisory Committee, and project manager and housing administrator at L’nu Energy, Bernard has been unlocking energy solutions for homes, fleets and infrastructure across Atlantic Canada.

“I find hope in the rising strength of Indigenous voices across Turtle Island and beyond, and I place my energy everyday in uplifting Indigenous values on the world stage.”

The post Creative defiance appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Loach says she wrote It’s Not That Radical because she felt it was missing from the climate movement canon. She has been surprised, and encouraged, to see who it reaches: young people have told her they have switched career paths as a result, philanthropic organizations set up new funds for climate justice work, and a corporate CEO was moved enough to discuss it during therapy sessions. 

“We can have something better, and it’s time for us to try different ways of getting that,” she told Corporate Knights senior editor Natalie Alcoba in a wide-ranging interview. It has been condensed for space.

Natalie Alcoba: If you don’t mind, maybe we can start with where you are. Where are you travelling from and where are you going? 

Mikaela Loach: I’m coming from the Elmley Nature Reserve. It’s one of the places in the U.K. that has been actively rewilded. It was really interesting to be there. It was a trip with Finisterre, an outerwear brand, which stocked my book in their stores. It’s bizarre that a surfing brand has stocked a non-fiction book, but it’s also been cool because people have found out about the book. And I’m just heading back home, which is somewhere else in the U.K. 

NA: What is your season like? Tell me a little bit about what you’ve got going on broadly. 

ML: I co-run a school of organizing with Jess Mally [an anti-racism educator] for young Black people in London. It’s on Black liberation and climate justice. It basically exists to try to get people the tools they need to organize around these issues and build them up, so hopefully they will go out and organize many more people. I’m really excited about that. The whole thing is in person, which is also really lovely. It’s called Awethu, which comes from the South African anti-apartheid chant “Amandla! Awethu!” – which means “The power is ours.” “Awethu” means “it’s ours”; we want this school to be everyone’s who is a part of it. 

NA: How did you come up with the incubator? 

ML: I have been organizing in the climate justice movement for about 10 years now. In the U.K., the climate movement is disproportionately white middle class and is not representative of the people who have been most impacted by this crisis. And that has a really big impact on what solutions are being prioritized, or even seen as solutions. And also, it means that a lot of Black people feel they can’t be in these spaces. I struggled a lot in the climate movement with that. 

We make it really clear [to applicants of the incubator] that we don’t really care loads about how impressive you are. What we care about is if you care about your community and want to do something about it. 

NA: I’m going to ask the most obvious question that I’m sure you’ve been asked many times. Which is: why did you write It’s Not That Radical? 

ML: Great question. No, but really, I’m grateful to be asked – because sometimes people don’t ask. The main reason was that I just felt that the book I wanted to do didn’t exist. I think there are a lot of really brilliant books on climate justice that are written towards the movement only and that use language that only people in the movement will understand. They are brilliant and great, but they’re not books that I can give to my friend who I grew up with who hasn’t had the same life experience I had or the same educational experience that I had.

I wanted to write something that would feel like a friend was talking to you about this and they’re not trying to sound smart and they’re not trying to look down on you, but instead it’s a conversation between people that feels like an embrace. It won’t be heavy in jargon whilst still retaining a lot of research and the core of the politics. I think it’s very possible for us to make strong, clear, good arguments that are still accessible. I wanted to compel the reader to do something, and not just to feel better for knowing more. 

NA: A lot of what I took away from the book was trying to create an understanding that in the midst of something so overwhelming, there is hope. Is that something that is for you a daily challenge – to look for that? 

ML: Definitely. So, today at this retreat they asked me to say a bit about storytelling. In that particular moment, I felt quite overwhelmed with grief, and it felt quite difficult to answer that question then. I answered it by being honest – which is that the way we tell the best stories is to be honest. If you’re talking about hope but you’re not being honest with yourself about the deep grief you feel about the world and what is being lost, then it’s not going to resonate with people because it’s not real. How we get real hope is by understanding where we are now. So I ended up talking about grief in that moment. The fact that children are being starved to death and bombed in Palestine. I feel such deep grief, sometimes I want to fall into it and let it overcome me. But I know that is not the solution. To have hope doesn’t require us to put blinders on and not see what is going on around us. We also need to see how change has happened before and realize that it doesn’t have to be this way. 

“To have hope doesn’t require us to put blinders on and not see what is going on around us.”

NA: I find when we go really micro, even just through a conversation, you can feel something shifting. Is that how you approach it? 

ML: Yeah, I do a mix of the micro and the macro. On social media, I am providing education for 10 million people a month who see my videos for a fleeting moment. Whereas at Awethu – and what I actually love about community organizing – is that it’s about the relationships. This is also the difficult part of community organizing because as people, we can be very annoying. Let’s be real. And being in community means being okay with being annoying. I think that’s the only way we’ll change things, if we know our neighbours and have these conversations. Social media obviously has a role, but it’s not everything. Something we need to all learn is that it’s OK to disagree and it’s OK to listen to each other and not only try to convince that person but listen to what they’re saying. That’s how you’re going to convince people. Make them feel like they are being heard. If people feel dismissed, they’re not really going to hear what you’re saying. 

NA: I assume, also, you can’t really get to a more just world without being OK in that discomfort of not agreeing. 

ML: One hundred percent. I was in New York because Bill Gates asked me to speak [at his foundation’s annual event]. [Loach disagrees with philanthrocapitalism and billionaires controlling the solutions we pursue.] What I said in that speech was that I felt deeply uncomfortable being in this space, saying these words that would not be received best in this space. And I knew they would feel uncomfortable in the audience hearing things that disrupted their world view. But I hoped with this shared discomfort that we could all be transformed through this conversation. 

NA: Even beyond discomfort, you talk about disrupting and damaging the industries that are causing the crisis. What kind of call to action is that? 

ML: I think tackling the climate crisis in a way that the ruling class are very happy with us doing so has not worked. The climate crisis has gotten significantly worse. There are actually parts of it that we cannot reverse. There are parts that we can. In the Niger Delta, the life expectancy is between 41 and 45 years of age because of the damage that Shell has done to the area. My friend was there recently and sent me photos of the water that people have to drink there, and it is literally oil. And that is because of Shell’s extraction. But we have been too nice to Shell for too long. These actions are not respectable and they’re not OK. I’m very supportive of actions, especially in the face of the genocide – we’ve seen dockworkers use their unions [to refuse] to board Israeli goods that will be used in the genocide. Those kinds of actions are disruptive and say we will not be complicit. And we will actually cause you financial damage so you will stop this. Obviously, these corporations want us to ask nicely because they can just write us a new greenwashed ad campaign that tells us that they’re not actually fossil fuel companies, they’re renewable-energy companies, even though less than 6% of their operations are renewables. 

“What is being asked of you is to be a little bit brave and to every day be a little bit brave again.”

NA: Do you think we are closer to understanding and disrupting the idea that climate change isn’t the great equalizer but, as you put it in your book, the great multiplier, enhancing inequality? Has that message gotten through? 

ML: Within the climate movement, I think there has been a significantly dramatic shift. Outside these movement spaces, I think there’s starting to be. I’ve gone and given keynotes across Europe and the U.K., and it will be in those spaces that people come up and say, “I’ve never thought about the climate crisis that way. I’ve never thought about its connection to colonialism or that we aren’t all in the same boat, we’re in the same storm.” 

NA: And understanding that is necessary for change to happen? 

ML: The reason that I write about things like the Overton window, the window of possibility, what is perceived as possible, is because these things have material impacts. What the majority of people believe is true impacts what becomes possible or true, because it makes policy possible or change possible because it is well received. When transformational changes or revolutions have happened, they have been possible because a wide amount of people understood why they were necessary or felt that change was needed. 

Organizing means that communities learn that when the conditions are right, they know what to do. So, say, for example, there is an immigration raid in your area; if your community is organized, then they can prevent your neighbour from being taken. That has happened many times in the U.K. That is happening in the U.S. But that only happens if a community understands why they should care about their neighbours and then organizes to know who to call and what to do in that situation. We need to understand both the why and the how. 

NA: What is your message to young people? 

ML: What is being asked of you is not to do right now the thing that seems absolutely, petrifyingly, terrifying and risky to do. What is being asked of you is to be a little bit brave and to every day be a little bit brave again. And to always try and push yourself outside of your comfort zone. You’re not being asked to become someone different or be so far away from who you really are. We need a diverse movement with different perspectives and different ideas and different skills. And what now might seem risky and scary, 10 years from now may seem comfortable to you because you’ve been pushing yourself to be a little bit brave every time. I think that’s how we actually create change.

The post How to be a little bit brave appeared first on Corporate Knights.

From increased respiratory illnesses to morbidity, from adverse effects during pregnancy to the mental toll exacted in the aftermath of wildfire destruction, the blazes that have become an increasingly visceral sign of a warming planet are exacting a painful blow. “There is no safe level of exposure to wildfire smoke: the more exposure we get, the worse a range of health outcomes,” Marshall Burke, an associate professor in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, said earlier this year, in the midst of one of the worst wildfire seasons Los Angeles has seen.

Wildland wildfires are gobbling up about 26% less landmass than they did two decades ago, according to research led by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health and published by Science magazine. But the number of people exposed to fires has shot up some 40%, in part because people are living closer to areas now prone to igniting.

Wildfire smoke contributes to the deaths of about 40,000 people a year in the United States alone, a study published this year in Nature found, and that number is forecasted to rise to 70,000 people by 2050. A similar study published by the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research in 2024 found that wildfire smoke contributes to about 16,000 deaths in the United States, and that number could climb to close to 30,000 deaths by the middle of the century.

“There is consistent and significant evidence of an association between wildfire smoke exposure and an increased risk of emergency room visits, hospital admissions, physician visits, or medication dispensations for respiratory conditions.

– Health Canada

“This really points to the urgency of the problem,” Minghao Qiu, the lead author of the report, told NPR. “Based on our results, this should be one of the policy priorities, or the climate policy priority, of the U.S., to figure out how to reduce this number.”

Another study predicted that wildfire smoke will kill 1.4 million people every year by the end of the century. And while headlines are often focused on North American or European blazes, it’s in Africa where the greatest risk is playing out. The UN University study found that 85% of global exposure to fire was in Africa.

Half a pack a day

Wildfires are a major source of pollution. In fact, they are 10 times as toxic as air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels, a recent Stanford University study found. Smoke from wildfires can affect air quality in the immediate vicinity and stretch out over great distances. As flames gobbled up forests in Northern Ontario and Alberta this past June, Toronto briefly recorded the worst air quality reading in the world, while parts of the United States were covered by a smoky haze. In Detroit, for example, air quality readings during the wildfire summer were akin to smoking a quarter or half a pack of cigarettes a day, according to one pulmonologist.

“There is consistent and significant evidence of an association between wildfire smoke exposure and an increased risk of emergency room visits, hospital admissions, physician visits, or medication dispensations for respiratory conditions,” according to a study of available research conducted by Health Canada in 2024. There is “significant” evidence, for example, linking asthma to wildfire smoke exposure. Women, children and seniors faced increased risk of respiratory morbidity, the study noted.

Read more of our wildfire coverage

Canadian groups call for dramatic increase to wildfire defence funding

Massive wildfires are forcing governments worldwide to budget more for disaster

Canada is under attack by wildfires. It’s time to respond like it’s national defence.

The fight against wildfires is getting increasingly high-tech

A more nascent area of research is the impact that wildfires have on reproductive development. Researchers note that while there is limited comparative information, the most consistent evidence is for low birth weight and preterm birth as a result of wildfire smoke. The timing of exposure to wildfires also matters – with evidence pointing to the second and third trimesters as being the most delicate, and the severity of wildfires and proximity also influencing adverse birth effects. It’s not just about exposure to wildfire smoke; the mere occurrence of wildfires may also have an impact. “This is an important consideration, as increased maternal stress leading to the adverse birth outcomes could result from both wildfire smoke exposure and occurrence,” a 2024 Health Canada report warned.

Likewise, both exposure and occurrence may be taking a toll on mental health. A number of studies have found increased rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression in both children and adults, which is in line with the climate grief that many people express in an age of seemingly constant environmental crises. The impacts of a wildfire may stretch on for months, or even years. However, it’s not clear that wildfire smoke specifically is linked to adverse mental health effects, “given the difficulties in differentiating the impacts attributable to smoke from those due to trauma associated with the wildfire occurrence (for example, potential loss of property or livelihood, physical threat, evacuation).”

For Qiu, the Stanford researcher, the importance of adaptation is ever more glaring in our learning-to-live-with-wildfire future: “We need to explore what types of adaptation strategies are most useful.” He points to improving access to air purification at home and creating networks of clean-air centres to help people avoid exposure during smoke days.

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires–based journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights.

The post Emerging research reveals stark health threats from wildfire smoke appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Days after OpenAI became the most valuable private company on the planet, a letter of intent was signed with a little-known Argentine firm called Sur Energy to develop all aspects of the $25-billion project.

“Sur Energy plans to ensure that the data-center ecosystem is powered by secure, efficient, and sustainable sources,” OpenAI said in a statement this week. The company said it “welcomes the potential opportunity to be an offtaker.” An offtake agreement – or a commitment to buy a portion of the energy produced – with OpenAI would help Sur Energy secure financing for the large-scale power facility.

“This milestone is about more than just infrastructure, it’s about putting AI into the hands of more people across Argentina,” added Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, who praised the country’s programming prowess and said it was among the top Latin American countries for developers building on OpenAI tools. “We’re excited to work with Argentina as it builds toward becoming an AI hub for all of Latin America.”

The deal falls under the umbrella of Stargate, a company formed in the United States to shepherd $500 billion worth of investments to secure data capacity for OpenAI. Plans are in place for five U.S. sites – two in Texas, one in New Mexico, one in Ohio and another in an as yet undisclosed location in the Midwest – that together have the potential to generate nearly seven gigawatts of data-centre capacity over the next three years.

The five locations are expected to generate 25,000 onsite jobs and “tens of thousands of additional jobs across the U.S.,” OpenAI said. The company has said the jobs will range from short-term construction roles to full-time operational jobs, but the employment heft appears to be in the set-up phase. Bloomberg reported that Stargate’s first data centre, for example, was slated to create 57 permanent jobs.

OpenAI has development agreements for data centres in the United Kingdom, Norway, Japan and South Korea. The specifics of the Argentina data-centre proposal are not yet known, nor is it clear how many jobs will be created in Argentina, which is going through a volatile economic period as its currency falters. President Javier Milei’s government has implemented deep spending cuts to rein in public spending and offered new incentives for foreign investment, under which the new data centre is said to have landed.

OpenAI is operating full speed ahead in growth and energy usage. It launched in November 2022, and by July 2025, some 18 billion messages were being sent each week by 700 million users, according to a study that was co-authored by researchers at Harvard, Duke University and OpenAI. That represents about 10% of the global adult population. “For a new technology, this speed of global diffusion has no precedent,” the usage report’s authors noted. The study found that non-work messages have grown faster in the last year of study and now represent more than 70% of all messages sent.

Last month, OpenAI unveiled Sora 2, its latest video-generation model that is “more physically accurate, realistic and more controllable than prior systems.” Its test videos included a figure skater performing jumps with a cat on her head and a man doing backflips on a boogie board in a lake.

Sophisticated computing carries a high energy cost

A study this year found that AI use already represents 20% of data-centre consumption and is on track to double by the end of 2025. The International Energy Agency said data centres represented up to 1.5% of global electricity consumption in 2024. Various studies have shown that the energy required to answer even the simplest of queries uses a significant amount of water, which is used to cool the data centres working hard to create all the AI slop now filling the Internet.

The consumption levels are fast changing as the technology changes, and there are competing assessments, but the cumulative impact seems clear. Google, for example, reported that it consumed more than six billion gallons of water to cool all its data centres in 2023.

An investigation by The Washington Post published last year found that the amount of water required to cool the data-centre processing for a 100-word AI-composed email via ChatGPT4 was more than a 500ml bottle of water. Meanwhile, in a blog post earlier this year, Altman said that the average ChatGPT query uses about 0.000085 gallons of water, or “roughly one fifteenth of a teaspoon.”

With scant details available about what shape the data centre will take in Argentina, the discussion about what such a piece of infrastructure could mean has yet to coalesce.

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires–based journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights.

The post OpenAI selects Argentina for its first data centre in Latin America appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Traditionally, Pakistani women have accumulated jewellery, particularly gold jewellery, as an investment – ornate accoutrements that double as savings accounts for families and may be passed on to future generations. Lately, as an electricity revolution takes hold, women are trading some of that jewellery for a different kind of bling, using the proceeds to finance rooftop solar panels.

“People are understanding it is a very good investment,” says entrepreneur Waqas Moosa, a member of the Pakistan Solar Association.

It’s one sign of the solar boom that is happening in the fifth-most populous country in the world. Across industry and class, solar has planted seeds and is flourishing on Pakistan’s rooftops. Turnkey homes now include solar panels as if they were fridges. Young people save up for photovoltaic kits before they buy cars. There are hundreds of solar importers and thousands of installers. Charitable organizations that run orphanages and schools now also provide loans for small solar solutions.

We’ve almost doubled our business every two to three years. It’s been very fast growth.

Waqas Moosa, CEO, Hadron Solar

The speed and scale of Pakistan’s solar incursion is, as many observers put it, the result of a perfect storm of factors, including a society already used to fending for itself on energy as a result of an unreliable power grid that was prone to brownouts; International Monetary Fund–driven austerity measures that, along with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, pushed up the price of conventional electricity; and a glut of cheap solar panels available from its industrious neighbour, China.

“Sometimes when the markets align and people decide that they want to go a certain route, things can happen,” says Muhammad Mustafa Amjad, program director at Renewables First, a Pakistan-based think tank.

A thriving new energy economy

Solar uptick is happening fast across significant parts of the Global South. Nations that face a similar set of circumstances, such as poor access to energy and suffocating electricity prices, are being enticed by the economics of increasingly affordable Chinese solar panels and free access to the sun.

A recent report by energy think tank Ember found evidence of a nascent solar boom in Africa. Imports from China rose 60% over 12 months, with 20 countries in Africa posting record panel imports, led by Nigeria, which imported 1,500 megawatts in the 12 months preceding June 2025. But that is dwarfed by the growth in Pakistan, which imported more solar panels than all of Africa during the same time period, despite having one-sixth of the population.

Over the span of four years, Pakistan bought US$4.1 billion worth of solar panels, according to Bloomberg. In 2024 alone, the nation doubled the gigawatts of panels it brought in. The statistics underscore a fundamental shift. The energy transition in this country is very much people-led, Amjad says. He co-founded Renewables First in 2021 as a way to help understand the energy transition from a Global South perspective. “A lot of policies are often dictated by the IMF and the World Bank, and they do not necessarily result in good things on the ground,” he says.

The availability of Chinese-made solar panels has been key to fast adoption. In 2024, the average price of a solar panel plummeted from 32 cents per watt to 17 cents, according to an analysis conducted by Renewables First. The solar-panel market turned into a lucrative money-making venture for traders, middle players and investors, which shifted economic activity from the struggling real estate sector to renewables, the think tank observed.

“We’ve almost doubled our business every two to three years; it’s been very fast growth,” Moosa says on a phone call from Lahore, where the company that he co-founded in 2014, Hadron Solar, has benefited from Pakistan’s solar surge. Some of the rapid growth has been spurred on by government incentives, such as tax breaks and more affordable financing loans for residential buyers.

The Pakistan Solar Association has between 400 and 500 members, Moosa says, which are mid- to large-sized companies that are typically in the import and distribution business. He estimates that there are tens of thousands of other people who are in the installation business.

Hadron mainly sells directly to users, whether they be residential, commercial or rural. More recently, it began selling component parts to smaller providers and installers, a sign of the pyramidal growth of solar, which started with those with the disposable income to install large units on their roofs and has now spread across a wider income strata. In villages or less affluent communities, you may find smaller kits on balconies.

A fundamental shift in the energy user – from a consumer to a “prosumer,” which is what the industry calls someone who buys higher-quality electronic products – has helped drive this explosive solar growth. A 2015 change to the national regulations allowed users to install small-scale renewable-energy systems such as solar and made it easier for people to generate their own energy without having to jump through bureaucratic hoops. As solar-panel prices plummeted around the world – by 42% in 2023 alone – the cost of grid electricity soared in Pakistan. Now, typical solar installations can break even in two to four years.

But it’s not just residential users who are turning to solar: the business and farming sectors are also making the shift. Agriculture accounts for one-quarter of Pakistan’s gross domestic product, and half of its labour force. It relies heavily on tube wells to irrigate predominantly dry land. Various initiatives from the federal and provincial governments aim to solarize swaths of the tube wells, spurred on by both a jump in diesel prices and spikes in electricity tariffs, making solar energy “not just an environmentally friendly option, but an economic necessity for many farmers,” researchers from Renewables First note.

“The Stone Age did not finish because we ran out of stone, the Iron Age did not finish because we ran out of iron, and the oil age is not going to finish because we ran out of oil or fossil fuels,” Moosa says. “It basically ends when the new technology is ready to take the throne. And today, renewables are in the right place.”

Lessons for the Global South

The sheer speed of change has meant that Pakistan has had to transition “on the go,” which is “a characteristic that is present in a lot of Global South countries,” Moosa notes.

Along the way, difficulties have cropped up. Chief among them is the tug-of-war between the centralized energy company and the decentralized push to democratize access to energy. The traditional dynamic of energy distribution in which there is one provider and multiple buyers has changed, as people gain the ability to generate their own. This is especially relevant in countries of the Global South that already grappled with energy insecurity, such as Nigeria, where large chunks of the country did not have access to reliable power.

RELATED

Novel project in California has solar panels stretching across water canals

Solar energy is good for the planet, but it could be bad for birds

The rooftop solar revolution is accelerating — and all eyes are on Asia

Rising energy rates have created a feedback loop in Pakistan: in recent years, thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest ballooning utility bills, leading some to turn to solar as an alternative, in turn destabilizing the already shaky finances of the central distributor. The impact is disproportionately felt by people who still cannot afford the upfront costs of solar panels, despite the various mechanisms available to lower the price.

Pakistan is also seeing the effects of the “duck curve,” the name given to the graph that shows the rise and fall of electricity supply and demand fuelled by solar energy. In the middle of the day, energy demand on the grid slumps because people turn to their own supply of solar, and then it soars in the afternoon and evening as that supply drops.

While the solar boom in Pakistan is happening both off- and on-grid – meaning that some users have been selling power back to the central system – the sheer number of people turning to solar and then needing to jump on the grid when the sun sets has presented a whole set of problems that strains the grid’s capacity.

“Obviously there is a problem,” Moosa says. “I think the battery is going to play a very big role, and where the battery falls – either ahead of the meter or behind the meter – is going to have a big impact on how the grid of the future is going to look.” Meaning, will the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) continue to incentivize consumers to sell their power to the central grid, and store it in community battery packs, or will it alienate them and push them to buy personal battery packs, or off-grid battery solutions?

Currently, NEPRA is revising its net metering system and has proposed reducing the rate at which it buys power back from consumers. “We anticipate that a lot of consumers will start choosing to go for batteries,” Moosa says, which could have profound implications for the relevance and sustainability of the central grid.

“I think that is where Pakistan is going to add value,” Moosa says, for the rest of the world, “because we’ve already reached the point where we have to make decisions.”

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires–based journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights.

The post Pakistan’s solar boom is China-powered but people-led appeared first on Corporate Knights.