Since December, more than 1,000 Nigerian students and staff have been abducted and held for ransom by criminal gangs in the dense forests of the country’s remote northwest.

These gangs, locally called bandits, have been operating in northwestern Nigeria for more than a decade, but when they were infiltrated by members of the Islamist militant group Boko Haram in December, the abductions and violence escalated. There are still 300 students who have not been returned to their families.

Earlier this month, officials in the northern Nigerian state of Kaduna took the drastic step of suspending all schooling out of concern for students’ safety.

So why do these mass abductions keep happening? Well, for starters, “kidnap-for-ransom is the most lucrative industry in Nigeria today,” Bulama Bukarti, senior analyst in the extremism policy unit of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, said.

Not only has Bukarti studied violent extremist groups in sub-Saharan Africa, including Boko Haram, for over a decade, he also hails from the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno, just a mile away from where Boko Haram originated.

So I called him up to find out more about why the Nigerian government has failed to rein in these bandits and stop the kidnappings and what, if anything, the international community can do to end the crisis.

Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.

Jariel Arvin

How are the more recent mass kidnappings in Nigeria different from Boko Haram’s 2014 abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls?

Bulama Bukarti

These particular abductions are being carried out by economically motivated groups, locally referred to as bandits, which have recently been infiltrated by some elements of Boko Haram. The bandit groups have been operating in the northwestern part of Nigeria for over a decade. But they have grown in strength and sophistication in the last few years, especially during the previous eight months.

In December 2020, they started a string of mass abductions of students. These are different criminal gangs without any central leadership. Official estimates from affected states indicate there are about 30,000 members. They operate primarily in the northwestern and central parts of Nigeria, where there are vast mountainous forests that have been mismanaged for years. 

There’s no access roads or government presence there. So what these gangs do is get out of the forest on motorbikes and abduct students or anyone they can find and take them into the woods and hold them for ransom. 

Jariel Arvin

So what influence did Boko Haram’s abduct-for-ransom plots have on the bandits?

Bulama Bukarti

Everybody in Nigeria, including the criminal gangs in the northwest, saw Boko Haram receive a ransom payment of €3 million (about $3.7 million) [to free some of the Chibok schoolgirls]. In 2018, there was another mass abduction in which 110 girls were taken. Reports surfaced about how the hostages were released, and there were rumors of money being paid, including in a UN report. And in the last two years, at least one of the criminal gangs was infiltrated by Boko Haram.

As I said, since December [2020], there have been eight mass kidnappings affecting six different states of Nigeria, in which over 1,000 students and teachers were taken. As we speak, three different gangs are holding more than 300 students.

Jariel Arvin

So does that mean that the other 700 students have either escaped or been released?

Bulama Bukarti

The 700 were released after providing proof of paying the ransom. After the first kidnapping last December, the state government negotiated with the criminals, ultimately delivering the ransom but denying it publicly. Shortly afterward, audio circulated over WhatsApp in northern Nigeria, in which one of the middlemen who took the ransom from the government to the criminals tells the gang leaders: “This is the amount they gave you.” That audio has never been published, but the released boys told the Wall Street Journal they were also told the ransom had been paid.

A couple of months ago, the Nigerian president asked governors to stop paying ransoms to avoid making matters worse — further evidence that ransoms were being paid. In some cases, they were paid by the [state] governments. But many governments have stopped paying now, so the burden falls on the parents of abducted students.

Over 100 million Nigerians live below the poverty line, so parents struggle to raise enough money to save loved ones. Some end up selling their homes or land. Some incur colossal debt that they can never repay. Others go to markets, mosques, and churches to crowdfund the money. 

This tells you about the level of poverty, but it also reveals how brazen the transactions are. It’s not a secret anymore. If people are raising money in markets by saying, “Please help us pay a ransom,” the security agencies are definitely aware that ransoms are being paid. Police officers themselves have been kidnapped, and their families have been forced to pay ransoms for their release.  

Jariel Arvin

Why is this happening?

Bulama Bukarti

Kidnap-for-ransom is the most lucrative industry in Nigeria today. Two weeks ago, I made a Zoom presentation with the deputy director of Nigeria’s intelligence agency, the Department of State Services. In the first six months of this year alone, he said, kidnappers have extorted 2 billion naira ($4.9 million) from ordinary Nigerians.

First, because kidnapping pays, it continues to grow. Secondly, there are no consequences to crime. In the eight mass kidnappings since December, none of the gang leaders responsible have been arrested. None of them have been brought to justice for their crimes. 

Jariel Arvin

Why are the abductors not prosecuted? Why are there no consequences?

Bulama Bukarti

That’s a bit of a difficult question. For starters, prosecuting these criminal gangs requires arresting them, which requires robust security to track them and stop them. That’s just not happening right now.

The second factor is the Nigerian government. In a national TV interview last month, President Muhammadu Buhari said he has become overwhelmed by the situation in the northwest. Nigerian security forces are stretched too thin because at least six different violent hot spots are creating crisis situations in Nigeria today.

In the northeast, there’s Boko Haram, while in the northwest, there are these criminal bandits. In the north-central region, there’s a cropland crisis [with the amount of arable cropland shrinking and conflicts between herders and farmers erupting over resources]. To the southeast, there’s a separatist movement. And in the Niger Delta, there are oil-pipe pirates. At the same time, in the southwest, kidnap-for-ransom, a cropland crisis, and separatist tensions are all raising concerns.

In addition, Nigeria’s military is now deployed to over 90 percent of the country on active duty, so Nigeria is currently a country at war with itself. The only thing missing is a formal declaration. 

There are also fundamental logistical challenges, like not enough access to communication equipment. Villagers often speak of how they could spot an attack before it happened, but the closest military formation said that they didn’t have the means to confront the criminals who end up attacking. 

Along with the mass kidnapping of students, hundreds of villages have been razed. Security forces are spread thin. Nigeria is a country of 200 million people, but there are less than 350,000 police officers. Officially, virtually 50 percent of these officers are attached to VIPs like governors, private citizens, and companies. Another 20 percent of police do administrative work. So you can say that only 30 percent of Nigerian’s 350,000 police are fighting crime in the country.

Moreover, their budget and capacity for fighting crime are meager, and they lack basic technology. The police are also poorly paid. So, as a result of all this, you’ll find a local government responsible for 2 million people with only 30 police officers. For example, in Katsina state, where the president is from, the governor said there were only 30 police officers for 100 villages in August last year. That’s a preview of the entire country.

But there are also theories that the abduction situation in the northwest is getting worse because of political choices. Many Nigerians feel that since most criminal gangs are from the president’s tribe, he’s treating them softly. This theory may not be accurate, but it is passionately held in many communities in Nigeria, further exacerbating tensions and stoking social divisions.

Jariel Arvin

To recap, the kidnappings continue happening because they pay well, there are no consequences to crime, and security forces are ill-equipped and overburdened?

Bulama Bukarti

Yes, but I’d also mention the geography of the northwestern part of Nigeria, where there are dense, mountainous forests that have been mismanaged for years. The northwest also borders Niger. So, it’s close to jihadist groups operating in the Sahel. Because of porous borders and corruption, weapons are easily smuggled from Libya through Niger to Nigeria. 

The official estimate is that there are now over 6 million illegal weapons, primarily AK-47s, in a country where possessing any weapon is prohibited. 

So the geography of the area and openness of the border is exacerbating the issue, but also the availability of opioid drugs, which help the criminal groups continue wreaking havoc. They need to be energetic during operation, so they get high.

The last thing I would mention is that by arrangement, Nigeria’s public boarding schools are located on the outskirts of towns. Most of these schools are vulnerable because they lack even basic fencing.

Even though the government declared the Safe Schools Initiative in 2014, following the Chibok abduction, there are still many vulnerable schools that criminal gangs can easily break into. Students are then used as a bargaining chip to get governments and politicians on their knees, praying for their release, while the criminal gangs make millions.

Jariel Arvin

Okay, so how do we end the crisis of mass abductions in Nigeria?

Bulama Bukarti

The first thing is to step up military and intelligence efforts, which requires building up the capacity of the Nigerian military and intelligence agencies to contain the criminal groups. It’s tough to avoid [having to use] violence against groups committing massacres of students and civilians every week or taking mass numbers of people into the bush for ransom. 

The capacity of the Nigerian police also needs to be built up. Police need more manpower, equipment, and, most importantly, better leadership, which also requires tackling corruption. When it comes to the situation in the northwest, there’s also a need for transnational cooperation, especially with Niger, which shares a 1,600-kilometer border with Nigeria. About three of the six most-impacted states border Niger.

And we now know that the criminal gangs operate in Nigeria and slip into Niger to hide and vice-versa. One clear example of this is when an American, Philip Walton, was abducted in southern Niger last October; he was rescued in the northwestern part of Nigeria.

So the criminal gangs are already operating transnationally. Unless the Nigeria-Niger border is secured, the bandits will continue working transnationally. Weapons and ammunition will be smuggled from Libya to Niger and from Niger to Nigeria.

As we speak, there are lots of military operations going on in the northwest. But there is no emergency number [for citizens to call] the military to inform them when attacks are underway. Right now, they must get in touch with a politician who knows someone in the police, who knows someone in the military, for help. Not having basic phone numbers for contacting the military indicates that even basic technology isn’t used to its full advantage.

Even deploying basic technology to track the numbers the gangs use to communicate with parents isn’t being done. It would be easy to find their location. Criminal gangs have now started accepting ransom payments through bank transfers. 

Jariel Arvin:

So they could easily track down these criminals?

Bulama Bukarti:

Yes, but Nigerian banks are so archaic that they need a court order to freeze the accounts. And while that happens, the delay in the legal system means that the criminals have time to withdraw the money and disappear. Since I tweeted reports of criminals using bank transfers for ransom earlier this week, several victims have shared with me, and publicly, that they were stopped and forced to swipe their bank cards and empty their accounts to the gangs.

This shows how normalized paying ransom to bandits is becoming in the country and that basic technology is not being used to track and crack down on the criminals. 

And that goes back to this question of political choice, and that’s why some Nigerians believe that maybe it is because the federal government doesn’t want to tackle this problem. This feeling is partly fueling separatist groups in southern Nigeria. 

More broadly, there are 17 security and law enforcement institutions in Nigeria — all of them under the federal government and directly answering to the president. Since state governors have minimal powers to do anything about physical security, the problem lies in the federal government’s hands. But the government isn’t doing enough to tackle the situation.

The last thing I would mention is that there’s no central body for coordinating these security groups. In some cases, there’s a rivalry between the police and the military. The military doesn’t want the police to succeed because then that means the police will have more public goodwill.

The security architecture is in complete disarray because there is no coordinated policy among security agencies or governors in affected states. This weakness is exploited by criminal gangs. Ending the crisis requires leadership from the federal government, which means developing a clear policy on the northwest and the criminal gangs. It also means getting state governors on the same page to pursue a single policy that can work.

Jariel Arvin

Is dealing with security concerns going to be enough to help Nigeria recover from years of mass kidnappings?

Bulama Bukarti

Thanks for asking that question, because a critical point I wanted to mention is that security efforts can help contain the situation, but they will not solve the underlying causes. There are deeply-seated socioeconomic and political grievances pushing young people to criminality and violent extremism in Nigeria’s northwest and central parts. 

We know that the overwhelming majority of these criminal gangs, if not all, have never gone to school. So they’ve never had the opportunity to get an education — and that’s one of the grievances they’ve expressed in their messages. Without proper education, many of these groups can’t find employment in the Nigerian system — so they resort to crime.

So investing in quality education is one of the ways to get at the root causes. Today there are 10 million Nigerian children who are out of school. Over 70 percent are located in the northern part of Nigeria, where this crisis is going on. The more children we leave out of school today, the more candidates for committing crimes and terrorism we will see tomorrow.

Besides quality education, we need to invest in the economy and develop infrastructure in these rural areas, including in the remotest areas. Building essential access roads will stop many of these criminals because security forces can then pursue them into the forest. Investing in infrastructure can help create good-paying jobs that will take people away from criminality and extremism.

Another important thing that must be done is to add other initiatives to strengthen the social contract between ordinary Nigerians and the state. The average Nigerian doesn’t see the worth of democracy in the country because it hasn’t worked for them. Nigeria’s democracy works for the few in Abuja, the federal capital, and those in government in the states, so there is this widespread frustration with democracy.

The lack of good governance must be addressed through investment in the economy, education, infrastructure, and other initiatives to take people out of abject poverty and strengthen the social contract.

Jariel Arvin

I spend most of my time reporting on climate change. Do you see any connection between environmental issues and the current violence plaguing the country?

Bulama Bukarti

Climate change is a key driver of this conflict. Most of these criminals were once pastoralists (animal herders). They feel their grazing reserves have been taken over by climate change impacts, if not taken for further urbanization of big foreign companies. So Nigeria must tackle environmental issues too.

There is also increasing desertification, turning fertile agricultural land barren, and increasing rainfall, leading to floods or prolonged droughts, which take a toll on subsistence farms. Competition over scarce land and water resources, exacerbated by the impact of climate change, is leading to communal tensions, complicating the security situation in the northwestern region and across Nigeria. 

Jariel Arvin

We’ve spoken a lot about what Nigeria must do to end the kidnapping crisis. So what can the US and the rest of the international community do to support the effort?

Bulama Bukarti

Money alone won’t be enough to help. Simply too many militants have made what I call a “great discovery”: They can become rich by abducting people. So it will be tough to take them back to pastoralism. Getting them to return back to their old ways of life is almost impossible. 

But I think the West can help in two significant ways. The first is to help with capacity-building for the Nigerian security forces with weapons and ammunition. The US recently delivered six jets to help the military fight extremism and criminality, which was welcomed across the country.

I know that there are human rights concerns regarding the military and the police. Some of those are valid concerns, but the way out is not [for the US and other Western countries] to stop helping, but to use the assistance to get the army and the authorities to respect human rights and the rule of law.

Second, the US can support the Nigerian government, civil society organizations, and companies to help create jobs and educate young people in Nigeria. The US is currently doing a lot of work in Nigeria; unfortunately, its military assistance is not yet taking place in its northwest region. 

Last August, the US Africa commander told the media that al-Qaeda has infiltrated the northwest and criminal gangs. Unless we do something to tackle criminality through security and treat the root causes in the medium and long term, we allow a fertile soil for extremism to develop.

For example, suppose extremist groups like Boko Haram [which is located in the northeast] were to consolidate in the northwest. In that case, they will quickly make the situation worse, furthering a vicious cycle where you have criminal groups working with violent extremists. So the US and other countries have a solid impetus to intervene to help the Nigerian government in the security sector and with long-term development.

The best way forward is for the Nigerian government to build its security capabilities with international support, address underlying root causes, and stop paying lip service to these issues by saying they are doing their best. Because, unfortunately, their best is nowhere near enough. 

The assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse last week has left a dangerous power vacuum in the country.

Three men are currently vying for power: acting Prime Minister Claude Joseph; Prime Minister-designate Ariel Henry, who was set to take office the day Moïse was murdered but hadn’t yet been sworn in; and Senate President Joseph Lambert. And because of the political dysfunction stemming largely from Moïse’s dismantling of the country’s political institutions, it’s not clear who actually has the legitimate claim to power.

Joseph has assumed power and has requested US military intervention to help secure the country in order to prepare for new elections in September.

The Biden administration sent a delegation of US officials to Haiti on Sunday to help secure key infrastructure and aid in the investigation into Moïse’s assassination, but it has so far shown little appetite for sending US troops.

Yet it does support holding elections soon. On Monday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for elections to take place as scheduled in September. “We urge the country’s political leaders to bring the country together around a more inclusive, peaceful, and secure vision and pave the road toward free and fair elections this year,” Blinken told reporters.

But some Haitian civil society groups say this is the wrong approach. They argue there’s no way to hold free and fair elections in Haiti this year given the collapse of the country’s institutions. And they’d kindly like the US and the international community to stay out of it.

“The international community and the US should just let us figure out our problems and solutions,” Rosy Auguste Ducena, a lawyer and human rights defender with the Haiti-based National Network for the Defense of Human Rights, told me. “Some governments will be asking for elections in September, but today, the situation on the ground is more complex than that.”

Auguste Ducena and her colleagues are instead demanding that the country form a transitional government and chart a new course for the future of Haiti. They want to postpone elections — potentially for several years — to give the transitional government time to rebuild the country’s political institutions.

I called Auguste Ducena to find out more about what’s happening on the ground right now, why she thinks a transitional government is the right way to go, and what, if anything, she thinks the US and the international community should do to help bring stability to Haiti.

Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.

Jariel Arvin

What’s the latest on the ground? Who has power right now?

Rosy Auguste Ducena

The situation is a little bit confusing since there’s a fight for power in Haiti. Before his assassination, Moïse changed his prime minister to Ariel Henry [but he wasn’t sworn in yet]. So we have two prime ministers, because Claude Joseph, who was still prime minister at the time of Moïse’s murder, thinks he should be in charge. Henry is also asking to be prime minister too. And there is another group that is asking for the president of the Haitian Senate to become president.

Jariel Arvin

Who of those three would you say has a right to power? 

Rosy Auguste Ducena

This is also confusing, because in the years leading up to his assassination, Moïse destroyed all the state institutions, so we don’t know what to do. Since January 2020, there hasn’t been a Parliament, because Moïse did not recognize the elections at the time. An article in the constitution states that if there is an emergency, the prime minister can assume power for a temporary period of two or three months.

This is why our organization, the National Human Rights Defense Network, kept asking the executive branch to organize elections. We did not know that the president would be assassinated, but we have long felt that the political situation was not operating as it should. Unfortunately, this is what we have now. But I would also say that in reality, Joseph is the one who’s in charge because he’s the one who’s been making decisions for the state. 

Jariel Arvin

What, if anything, can the US and the rest of the international community do to respond to what’s happening in Haiti?

Rosy Auguste Ducena

The international community has always been involved in every step of history in Haiti. Today, civil society is asking to have the opportunity to resolve the crisis within Haiti. We should not have any foreign intervention by the military or any other type of intervention, because at the end of the day, we haven’t had good results from intervention so far. 

In general, the international community and the US should just let us figure out our problems and solutions. Some governments will be calling for elections in September, but today, the situation on the ground is more complex than that.

This is not only a question of who’s going to be in charge of the country. It’s about corruption. It’s about fixing key state institutions that are not working. This is about who we are as a people and as a nation. So we are asking for the respect of other countries. We want to be treated like a nation, not like a little sister or brother you tell what to do.

Jariel Arvin

So what has Claude Joseph, the man in charge, said about civil society’s demands for a transitional government?

Rosy Auguste Ducena

Nothing. I think Joseph feels comfortable since he can promise to hold elections in September, which is impossible. Now that the international community is with him, he feels comfortable.

Jariel Arvin

What about security concerns? There have been reports about gang violence. How can you ensure that the gangs would even respect a transitional government? 

Rosy Auguste Ducena

There are a few points to make on the security situation. First, Jovenel Moïse and his staff created the problem that we have now because they decided to give guns and ammunition to the gangs to stay in power. We want any government responsible for providing weapons to the gangs to stop. 

So today, what we also want is the reinforcement of the National Police and its institutions to fix the security problem. Secondly, from 2005 to 2007, we had the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), and we also had security problems, and they did not intervene [to help]. Finally, at the end of 2007, they intervened because we demanded that on the ground. So you actually can have foreign interventions in your country but still have security problems.

And thirdly, we know that we are a nation. We know that we are part of the world. And we cannot act alone. So we ask for respect and to be treated like a nation with its future in its hands. We might require counseling from other countries, but we don’t want other nations telling us precisely what to do.

Jariel Arvin

You mentioned that reinforcing the National Police would be helpful. How will that happen? How would a transitional government prevent corruption among the police? Do you trust them?

Rosy Auguste Ducena

On paper, we have well-structured police. We have special groups for intervention on the ground and community policing. We also have structures to investigate police agents to see if they are implicated in human rights violations. What we need today to do is to match the reality to what we have on the paper. 

Another critical point is that our police lack the equipment necessary to do their jobs well. We’ll never know how well the Haitian police can respond until they get the materials they need to do police work. So firstly, we need to give the police the chance to show us if they can improve the security situation.

And then secondly, of course, we know that there is a lot of corruption — not only in the police but in the judiciary as well, everywhere in state institutions. So we will need to work on that, too. This is why I said this is not only a question of elections. This moment is a question of what kind of state Haiti will be in the future. Before even thinking about the election, we need to know what kind of institutions we have. 

Jariel Arvin

This sounds like it’s going to be a long process. So how would the transitional government be selected? 

Rosy Auguste Ducena

My organization doesn’t know exactly how it will be selected, but we would advise that it should be a very inclusive government built by corruption-free people. If there’s a plan and a schedule presented to Haiti’s people, we can work to figure out what’s going to be good for the country. If the international community says, “Let’s have an election as soon as possible,” at the end of the day we will still have the same problems that we had before.

So, today, the best thing is to maybe have a [transitional government] for more than two years, but be sure that we are working to fix the corruption problem, and issues with the judiciary system, because today the judiciary is not working at all.  

Jariel Arvin

If the international community doesn’t support a transitional government and elections do go forward, do you think there’s any hope for Haiti?

Rosy Auguste Ducena

If we have elections in September, the situation will be worse. And, unfortunately, we will have people asking to leave the country again. Secondly, if we have elections, many political parties will decide not to be involved and not to participate. We should have fair and free elections for every political party to run. I think what the United States is afraid of is to have many more people asking for political asylum. But if we have an election in September, this is something that we should be fearful of.

Jariel Arvin

Do you have any information on the latest in the investigation into the assassination of President Moïse? Do you think it’s necessary to find out first who’s responsible for his murder before a transitional government is possible?

Rosy Auguste Ducena

Maybe we should have the transitional government come into power before closing the investigation, because our greater view is that those around him assassinated him. So, if they remain in power, they can hide evidence implicating them in Moïse’s assassination.

There should be a very intensive investigation, because this is a very extraordinary crime that happened. And today, we can see that we have information coming from everywhere, which is very confusing. And the main problem is that those who were around him are still in power.

Jariel Arvin

I know you can’t say for sure, but I wonder why people close to him would want him dead?

Rosy Auguste Ducena

We don’t actually know why. But why we think those who were around Moïse assassinated him is because he did not trust anyone. He was permanently secured. There were always lots of cars and people around him at the palace. And we also know that his house was also very secure. So it would not be easy for anybody to come and get inside and kill him and get away. So this is why we think that those around him have assassinated him. 

Jariel Arvin

Not even one week since the assassination of Moïse, there’s been so much information that’s come out. It seems like the police are doing a pretty good job so far — finding and arresting people, putting together the plot. How have they been able to do this work? Do you think the US officials coming on Sunday was helpful?

Rosy Auguste Ducena

Those who are around him have power. They can manipulate the media and police information. They receive reports before anybody else. So they are still in control, and this is scary.

I think that immediately after the assassination of Moïse, those who were responsible for his security should have been interrogated. Since they were witnesses, they should give information about what happened. But they weren’t arrested, which means they had time to potentially manipulate their stories. This is scary because they can arrest people, can hold press conferences to harass those responsible for the assassinations.

And then, on the other hand, [we] have many different outside versions of what happened that are also surfacing. And this is a reason they should not be in power, because otherwise, maybe we won’t have a thorough investigation.

Jariel Arvin

So this transitional government you envision, which would already be in charge of rebuilding and defining the future of Haiti, should also be in charge of investigating his assassination? Isn’t that a lot for one transitional government to do? 

Rosy Auguste Ducena

Yes, but maybe we should try it. Because in past years, we used to have electoral transitions only. And this is something that never worked because we always have crisis after political crisis after elections, with people saying that the process was not fair or free. So maybe we should try something else — and something from Haitians.

After more than 10 years, the embattled Keystone XL pipeline has officially been abandoned.

In a Wednesday statement, the Canadian developer TC Energy said that after reviewing its options with the government of Alberta, Canada — its partner on the $8 billion project — the company had decided not to move forward.

The decision ends the long battle over the proposed pipeline expansion, which would have delivered more than 800,000 barrels of carbon-intensive tar sands oil per day from Alberta to Steele City, Nebraska. Once there, the pipeline would have met with existing pipeline infrastructure to travel farther south to oil refineries in the Gulf Coast.

Construction on the project has been halted since January, when President Joe Biden issued an executive order revoking the pipeline’s permit on his first day in office. In doing so, Biden made good on his promise to the climate activists who helped get him elected.

Yet activists and experts say the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline is just a start. They also want existing Keystone XL infrastructure to be removed and for Biden to cancel other cross-border fossil fuel expansion projects, like the Line 3 pipeline expansion in Minnesota.

Here’s how the Keystone XL pipeline was finally defeated — and why climate and Indigenous activists say their fight is still far from over.

The Keystone XL pipeline, briefly explained

The Keystone XL pipeline became an almost perfect example of the various stakeholders — Native communities, climate activists, scientists, policymakers, farmers, landowners, and everyday citizens — engaging in the broader debate about climate change.

Canada-based TC Energy (formerly TransCanada) first proposed the 1,200-mile Keystone XL pipeline in 2008 as a way to quickly pump 830,000 barrels of tar sands (a.k.a. oil sands) per day from Canada’s Alberta province across the border to Steele City, Nebraska. Once there, the Keystone XL extension would converge with existing pipeline infrastructure, traveling south to Texas for processing in Gulf Coast oil refineries.

When the idea for Keystone XL was conceived back in the 2000s, the project made a lot of sense — the US economy depended on oil, and supporters of the pipeline claimed it was in both countries’ interest to find a way to transport oil efficiently across the continent. With oil prices high and demand steady, Alberta’s oil sands easily racked up $200 billion in investment.

But there are considerable differences between oil from Alberta’s tar sands and conventional oil, which quickly began to wear on the region.

For starters, extracting oil from Alberta’s oil sands, which contain bitumen (tar), a dense type of petroleum, takes a lot of energy. Most of Canada’s tar sands oil is trapped beneath boreal forest — only 20 percent of the oil is located near the earth’s surface, where it can be easily mined, which means the forest must be cleared for the most intensive mining.

The majority of the oil is mined by injecting hot water into wells 75 meters below ground to liquefy the oil for pumping, which is why tar sands oil has a reputation for being among the dirtiest types of oil.

Many Indigenous rights groups and people from communities along the proposed route argued the pipeline extension would have disastrous impacts for Native communities in Alberta: A lot of the water used to help extract oil from Alberta’s oil sands comes from the Athabasca River. Studies have linked leaks from oil sands pipelines like Keystone XL to significant degradation of nearby land and water resources.

A major concern is tailings ponds, the product of toxic waste from mining in the tar sands that can sicken communities and wildlife that depend on the land to survive.

“The land is our solution, the water is our solution, the air is our solution to meet our needs,” Jesse Cardinal of the Kikino Metis Settlement, director of Keepers of the Water, a collective of First Nations who have come together to protect the nearby Mackenzie River Basin, told me. Cardinal helped lead the Tar Sands Healing Walk, a grassroots movement to bring people face to face with the destruction of the oil sands as a way of healing.

Environmental groups took note of Indigenous opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline. After then-President Barack Obama’s climate legislation suffered a stinging defeat, the climate movement coalesced around getting the Keystone XL pipeline canceled in 2011.

Inspired by Indigenous-led opposition to the pipeline, several environmental groups organized two weeks of sit-ins in front of the White House in the fall of 2011, leading to the arrest of more than 1,200 people. The arrests brought increased media attention at a time when there was relatively little national coverage of climate-change-related issues.

James Hansen, who has been called the “father of global warming” for his role in testifying before Congress about the science of human-induced climate change way back in 1988, attended the protests at the White House. At the time, Hansen said unchecked exploitation of Canada’s oil sands would be “game over” for the climate.

Facing immense pressure from the anti-Keystone movement, Obama finally canceled the pipeline in 2015. He defended his decision in a press conference, saying the pipeline wouldn’t make gas any cheaper or improve American energy security. He added that approving the pipeline would ultimately undercut US global leadership on climate change, which he’d previously said was a red line for approving Keystone XL.

In January 2016, TC Energy filed a lawsuit against the US for canceling Keystone XL, using the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to request $15 billion in damages for what the company said was the arbitrary suspension of the project. The company then waited to try its luck with the next administration — which turned out to be Trump’s.

Keystone XL starts — and stops — under Trump

In January 2017, just days into his presidency, President Donald Trump issued an executive order inviting TC Energy to reapply for a presidential permit for Keystone XL to cross the Canadian border. He also promised a speedy process, just over a year after Obama had said the pipeline extension wasn’t in the national interest.

A few months later, the State Department granted the permit.

But Obama’s reasons for canceling Keystone XL — it wasn’t in America’s national interest, and it conflicted with US leadership on climate change — were still valid, and activists (and much of the public) were still paying attention.

“Before Obama’s decision, pipeline companies and the oil industry assumed every pipeline would get approved regardless of how poorly conceived the project was,” the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Anthony Swift told me.

After Obama’s decision, it became more difficult to justify Keystone XL to the public.

“Public scrutiny around Keystone XL and the permitting process has shifted the expectation that pipelines would be rubber-stamped on its head. Now the public does want to see a robust analysis and a confirmation process that does make it difficult to move such pipelines forward,” Swift said.

Because oil spills from tar sands pipelines are commonplace, scientists and activists argued that a “robust analysis” to examine the risks to water resources and the communities that depend on them should be conducted before the Keystone XL project goes forward.

In 2016, the National Academy of Sciences released a study that said diluted bitumen (which composes the majority of tar sands oil) differed from the other types of oil traveling through US pipelines in a way that makes it more susceptible to hazardous leaks. In 2017, 210,000 gallons of oil leaked from the existing Keystone pipeline in South Dakota.

“Any fact-based environmental review reveals reasons policymakers should not grant permits to fossil fuel expansion projects like Keystone XL in a world that is trying to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change,” said Swift.

But the need for an environmental review didn’t stop the Trump administration from trying to rush through Keystone XL.

In January 2020, Trump’s White House made a last-ditch attempt to fast-track Keystone XL and similar projects across the country by limiting implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires the federal government to conduct assessments of the environmental, economic, and social impact of its actions before getting started on any project.

But in July 2020, the Supreme Court killed any hope of completing Keystone XL under the Trump administration, siding with environmental groups from Montana who argued that the Army Corps of Engineers’ permitting process for the Keystone XL pipeline should undergo a full environmental review because it would cross bodies of water.

Biden killed the pipeline for good — but demand for it had already weakened

Demand for oil, which had already been declining for some time, was hit hard in 2020 by falling investment, severe storms that hurt production, and the coronavirus pandemic. And in recent years, Alberta’s oil sands industry, once booming with money, has had trouble attracting investment.

“With falling oil prices, both because of the pandemic and generally down since 2014, the industry is under a real squeeze, and we’ve seen a lot of players exit the market,” Sven Biggs, Canadian oil and gas programs director at Stand.earth, an environmental grassroots organization, told me back in March.

“ConocoPhillips, Shell, Statoil from Norway, [and] the Koch brothers have sold their stakes in the tar sands and moved on, which means there’s less need for these pipelines than previously expected,” Biggs added.

TC Energy had a difficult time attracting private investors to Keystone XL — it was only capable of putting shovels to the ground in the project with the help of a subsidy from Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, who approved more than $1 billion in public funds in the spring of 2020 to help the project.

So when Biden pulled the plug for good on Keystone XL, climate concerns and falling investment in Alberta’s oil sand led experts to believe that Keystone XL was dead.

But for many Indigenous groups, climate activists, and people from communities impacted by fossil fuel infrastructure, the fight is bigger than Keystone.

“The Keystone XL pipeline was never about any single pipeline. It’s about establishing a litmus test rooted in climate science and climate justice for government projects and infrastructure,” Kendall Mackey, manager of 350.org’s Keep It in the Ground campaign, told me in March.

The next big battle — to stop the Line 3 pipeline expansion — is already here

Keystone XL is dead, but the Indigenous-led fight to halt the Line 3 pipeline project is already here. The battle has been heating up since December when Enbridge, the Canadian multinational responsible for the project, began construction.

If completed, the roughly 340-mile pipeline expansion project will transport 1 million barrels of tar sands oil per day from Alberta across much of northern Minnesota to Superior, Wisconsin.

Enbridge says the project will create thousands of jobs and pump billions of dollars into Minnesota’s economy. The company also told Vox via email that it has done everything required under the law to receive approval for the pipeline and ensure it operates safely.

But Indigenous activists are calling on Biden to cancel Line 3 like he did Keystone XL because they say it poses a significant risk of oil spills that could destroy precious water resources, wetlands, and ancestral lands. According to one report, opening Line 3 will have the equivalent climate impact of bringing 50 new coal plants online.

The intensity of opposition to the pipeline reached a crescendo earlier this week as thousands of protesters converged on Minnesota. Close to 200 people were arrested.

And now that TC Energy has finally ditched Keystone XL, the pressure is on for President Biden to ax Line 3.

Four years after President Donald Trump began to pull the US out of the landmark Paris climate agreement, President Joe Biden and his top officials are reengaging with world leaders and making aggressive commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The Biden administration has an unequivocal message at the two-day Leaders Summit on Climate this week: America is back.

The biggest news out of the virtual event was the commitments various countries made to reduce their emissions. At the top, Biden formally pledged America would cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 52 percent relative to 2005 levels by 2030 — the most ambitious target the US has set to date. Still, as Vox’s Umair Irfan laid out, some believe the goal is not big enough given the sheer scale of the current climate crisis and the pace of warming.

The message from Biden and US climate envoy John Kerry throughout the two days was that the US cannot do this alone. Historically, the US is the biggest emitter of carbon, and America is currently the second-largest greenhouse gas emitter, after China.

“America represents less than 15 percent of the world’s emissions,” Biden said Thursday. “No nation can solve this crisis on [their] own, as I know you all fully understand. All of us — and particularly those of us who represent the world’s largest economies — we have to step up.”

Targets announced by other nations were more modest. The big pledge from Chinese President Xi Jinping is to reduce coal consumption between 2026 and 2030. But Xi’s announcement was short on specifics, and China’s overall targets — hitting peak carbon emissions by 2030 before getting to net-zero emissions by 2060 — remained unchanged.

Even if the pledges from the US and other countries were broadly encouraging, the real test of whether these countries will actually make good on them is yet to come. Many are putting economic growth first after a year of stagnation due to the Covid-19 pandemic; air pollution levels are already soaring again in China.

Biden and his climate team face another big deadline with the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP26, set for November in Glasgow.

For now, here are the winners and losers from the first big climate change summit of the Biden era.

Winner: Joe Biden

After four years of climate policy languishing under Trump, Joe Biden was determined to send a message: Climate is the centerpiece of his economic agenda.

“When people talk about climate, I think jobs,” Biden said during his Thursday speech. “Within our climate response lies an extraordinary engine of job creation and economic opportunity ready to be fired up.”

A somewhat unlikely climate champion after years as a political moderate, Biden came into office with a number of big climate and clean energy goals. On his first day in office, he reentered the US into the Paris climate agreement and issued a flurry of executive orders to accelerate the transition off fossil fuels, protect biodiversity, and address environmental injustice.

To underscore America’s renewed commitment, Biden this week announced an ambitious new nationally determined contribution (NDC). Actually getting there will require a massive transformation of the US economy toward clean energy and a big investment in electric vehicles.

This very concept — rerouting the American economy to be powered by wind, solar, nuclear, and other renewables — is the big idea in Biden’s economic vision. He’s pledged 100 percent of America’s energy to be carbon-free by 2035, and his infrastructure and jobs plan calls for a clean electricity standard, tax credits to accelerate wind and solar development, and $174 billion to be put into electric vehicle infrastructure alone.

But Biden also has a challenging road ahead in actually implementing this policy; he needs Congress to pass it. He can certainly direct his agencies to tighten vehicle emission standards and use the power of federal procurement to help get the US there, but passing his infrastructure plan is crucial for reaching the goals.

“That one package doesn’t make or break the 50 percent target,” Nathan Hultman, the director of the University of Maryland’s Center on Global Sustainability, told Vox. But “it’s certainly extraordinarily helpful. There’s no doubt.”

Negotiations are already underway on Biden’s infrastructure plan, and the next few months could determine exactly how bold the US goes on clean energy. But Biden’s pledge was a good start. —Ella Nilsen

Winner: Climate activists

It’s hard to imagine President Biden choosing to hold this summit or to center his economic agenda on climate change without the persistent pressure of a wide range of climate activists — young and old, in the US and around the world. In the past few years, they have doggedly and persuasively demanded that world leaders increase their ambition and follow through on climate plans.

Biden’s climate summit and the new pledges are examples of the success of applying that pressure. 

The breakout star of Biden’s climate summit is 19-year-old climate justice activist and organizer with Fridays for Future Xiye Bastida. In fiery remarks delivered during a session on climate solutions, Bastida, who relocated to New York from Mexico with her family at the age of 11 when they were displaced by drought and floods, demanded governments act decisively using the tools available to end the climate emergency. 

When pushed to address Bastida’s concerns at a press conference following the summit, climate envoy Kerry said President Biden’s climate summit is a big step in the right direction. “Is it enough? No. But it’s the best we can do today.”

Bastida clearly had made an impression. Speaking at a White House press conference later on Thursday, Kerry described her impassioned plea as “profoundly meaningful” and “moving.”

“That’s where a lot of the younger generation is today, appropriately,” Kerry said. “Pretty upset at the adults — the alleged adults — who are not getting their act together to make happen what needs to happen.”

In the US, the Sunrise Movement is sure to continue to push the Biden administration to scale up its infrastructure plan. And activists around the world will maintain pressure on world leaders in the buildup to COP26 in Glasgow. —Jariel Arvin

Loser: John Kerry’s faith in markets

US climate envoy John Kerry is enormously optimistic about what’s happening in the private sector around clean energy.

Talking to reporters at a Thursday White House briefing, Kerry said that even if another Trump-like politician comes along with regressive climate policies, it won’t necessarily matter. His reasoning? The market is trending too much toward clean energy to go back.

“No politician, no matter how demagogic or how potent and capable they are, is going to be able to change what that market is doing, because it will have moved,” Kerry said, pointing in particular to the heavy demand for Tesla’s electric cars in the US. “It’ll have four years of entrenchment. And those jobs will be there.”

This is not the first time Kerry’s faith in markets has come up. In remarks to the Institute of International Finance, Kerry said he believed “no government is going to solve this problem” of climate change, adding, “Solutions are going to come from the private sector.”

Kerry has good reason to feel this way. The cost of renewable energy has fallen sharply over the past few years; it’s now cheaper than fossil fuels.

“The costs have plummeted quite rapidly, they’ve gone faster than expected,” Hultman told Vox. “You actually have a lot of choices that are clean, at the same cost, [or] sometimes lower costs than alternate, dirtier technologies.”

But Kerry’s faith in the private sector as the silver bullet is somewhat naive. The private sector is an important partner to meet ambitious climate goals, but it will also take serious investment across all levels of government to get there.

Having lived through the Trump years, members of the Biden administration seem very aware that progress can be short-lived. They want to get shovels in the ground on projects and build out physical infrastructure like 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations, offshore wind turbines, and solar farms before another US leader tries to go in the opposite direction.

Furthermore, the market forces at play now happened in part due to government intervention. Investment and production tax credits in President Obama’s 2009 stimulus bill spurred tremendous development in renewables. The low cost of solar panels didn’t happen in a vacuum. “It was driven, at every stage, by smart public policy,” Dave Roberts wrote for Vox in 2015.

The private sector can be an important partner in combating climate change. But plenty of experts warn it needs strong signals from the highest levels of government, and it can’t be implicitly trusted to do the right thing. —EN

Loser: The coal industry

One message came out loud and clear from the summit: In a world committed to climate action, government support for coal power is rapidly waning.

In the United States, where the coal industry is being pushed out of the market by cheaper energy sources, there are 191 plants still operating. To hit Biden’s target of reducing greenhouse gas pollution by 50 percent, it’s likely that all of them will have to shutter before 2030. That is the conclusion of multiple studies on the paths to reach Biden’s goal, including from the environmental groups Environmental Defense Fund and Natural Resources Defense Council, the research groups Energy Innovation and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the coalition America Is All In.

According to Energy Innovation, “Without eliminating coal emissions by 2030, achieving US emission reductions in line with a 50 percent reduction is impossible.” Even the United Mine Workers, the major labor group representing coal miners, has acknowledged that reality by embracing Biden’s infrastructure package — and a transition to clean energy — in the days leading up to the summit.

His plan already asks Congress to pass a national clean energy standard that would raise utilities’ renewable targets and ratchet down their coal and gas dependency by a deadline of 2035. And his EPA is already working to prepare new power plant regulations that take the place of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan and the weak Trump rule that the courts struck down.

But coal’s decline hasn’t been as swift in many other parts of the world, where renewable energy and natural gas have been slower to replace it. In major economies like China, India, Japan, and Indonesia, governments have continued to rely on coal — and finance the development of new plants overseas.

That’s why several new commitments to phase out coal consumption and financing at the summit are so notable. China’s President Xi reiterated his country’s goal to hit peak pollution sometime before 2030 but elaborated for the first time on a specific timeline for the coal industry. In China’s next five-year economic plan, from 2026 to 2030, it would “strictly limit” the increase in its consumption of coal, he said. Another major announcement came from South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who said the country would cut off all overseas financing of coal.

None of this means coal will disappear overnight. But major world leaders signaling the demise of coal and coal financing is a clear sign the fuel is becoming a smaller fraction of the world’s energy mix. —Rebecca Leber

Winner: Countries rich in tropical forests

Even as economies slowed last year from the pandemic, tropical deforestation worldwide paced ahead — jumping 12 percent, compared to 2019. And that number came with a big toll on the climate: carbon emissions equal to roughly double the annual tailpipe emissions of cars in the US, according to the World Resources Institute. A large chunk of those emissions can be tied to Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Bolivia, which saw the highest rates of deforestation last year.

Enter a new coalition, launched Thursday, that seeks to funnel at least $1 billion in payments to countries that show they’re preventing tropical deforestation and its associated emissions. The US, Britain, and Norway are driving the effort along with a number of major corporations, including Amazon, Nestlé, Unilever, and Salesforce, forming what the group called “one of the largest ever public-private efforts to help protect tropical forests.” 

“Bringing together government and private-sector resources is a necessary step in supporting the large-scale efforts that must be mobilized to halt deforestation and begin to restore tropical and subtropical forests,” Kerry said in a statement when the group, known as the Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance Coalition (LEAF), was announced Thursday. 

Under the project, countries, states, or provinces in tropical forest countries would receive money after proving they reduced deforestation or forest degradation. Each ton of avoided carbon emissions would yield a carbon credit worth at least $10 that companies could then buy to offset their own emissions (though, as the press release states, corporate “contributions to the LEAF Coalition come in addition to, and not as a substitute for, internal emissions reductions”). 

The initiative is similar to an existing and complicated effort, known as REDD+, that involves high-income countries paying lower-income nations for avoided emissions from deforestation. REDD+ has been criticized for doing little to curb forest loss since it was set up more than a decade ago. 

LEAF differs in that it involves private companies, but the effort could face similar challenges, such as in proving what’s called “additionality” — that deforestation would have occurred had it not been for a country’s efforts. Some environmental groups have also pointed out that $1 billion isn’t much and said the project won’t work unless Indigenous land rights are recognized and enforced.

“Rich countries and corporations are getting a bargain,” Savio Carvalho, global campaign lead for biodiversity at Greenpeace International, said in a statement. “One billion dollars is a drop in the bucket when governments are spending trillions to support sectors that are destroying nature and our climate.” —Benji Jones

Loser: Republicans

In the days leading up to the summit, House Republicans halfheartedly and unsuccessfully tried to reverse the cemented narrative that their official climate platform is to deny scientific reality. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy published a video touting the Energy Innovation Agenda, a package of “dozens of bills and solutions” the GOP has to address climate change and infrastructure as a counterpoint to Biden’s agenda. 

The campaign launched at a time when GOP lawmakers are realizing that climate denial and foot-dragging are poor politics, especially when it comes to appealing to a younger conservative base that wants to see a plan to combat the crisis.

But the Republican proposals only offer piecemeal solutions, like planting more trees, managing forests, and extending tax credits for technological innovation like carbon capture. And there’s more of the same in their broader messaging, like their continued opposition to the Paris climate agreement. The agenda introduced by McCarthy and 40 fellow Republicans just reiterates that fossil fuels remain the centerpiece in the GOP’s vision of the American economy, and no number of trees planted will offset that. 

Republicans’ too-little-too-late push is a reminder to the global community of how unserious the party remains on climate change and that it intends to continue the isolationist policies of the Trump administration rather than broker international agreement. 

Even members of the Republican Party who have urged their counterparts to take climate change seriously for years found the proposals lacking. As Bob Inglis, a former Republican Congress member who has devoted his work to advancing conservative climate solutions, told E&E News’s Nick Sobczyk, “It’s true that Republicans are taking small steps and basically testing the waters with their base, and that’s the reality of what we’re dealing with, and I assume that world leaders would see that.” —RL

Winner: The natural gas industry

While the summit attendees sent a clear signal that coal is on the way out, they were far more lukewarm on another major contributor to climate change: natural gas. To hit the world’s 1.5 degree Celsius target, we’ll have to rein in methane, a type of greenhouse gas that is especially effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere and dangerous for global warming. While methane can come from a variety of sources, such as agriculture and landfills, environmentalists see regulating the oil and gas sector as the first place to start, by keeping the gas in the ground.

Yet the industry seemed to get a pass at the summit — most leaders sidestepped methane and natural gas entirely in their speeches and announcements. Surprisingly, it was Russian President Vladimir Putin who drew the most attention to methane but stopped short of offering concrete commitments to halt plans to build natural gas pipelines. The less focus from world leaders on the oil and gas industry’s methane problems, the better, from the eyes of the industry, because it signals that there won’t be more regulation coming anytime soon.

In the US, addressing methane is critical to meet Biden’s goal of slashing greenhouse pollution by 2030, but Biden has only offered a few clues for how his administration plans to tackle it. The fact sheet from the White House on Biden’s target only gives methane a brief and vague mention, saying, “The United States will also reduce non-CO2 greenhouse gases, including methane, hydrofluorocarbons, and other potent short-lived climate pollutants.” The nonprofit Clean Air Task Force has urged the US to adopt a target of reducing oil and gas emissions to 65 percent below its 2012 levels by 2025.

Regulation in the US is still coming. Biden’s new EPA administrator Michael Regan promised the administration will roll out more aggressive policies to curb existing and new natural gas methane leaks than the Obama administration and plans to unveil its plans sometime by September.

But the overall silence at the summit still signals that the world is not yet ready to ditch natural gas as quickly as it plans to ditch coal. —RL

Loser: The goal to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius

The 2015 Paris climate agreement has a topline goal of limiting the increase in global average temperatures this century to below 2 degrees Celsius, but it also has a secondary, more ambitious target of keeping warming below 1.5°C.

Back in 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change put out a major report looking at just how hard it would be to meet the 1.5°C target. It found that every degree of warming matters, with higher temperatures extracting a higher human and economic toll. The report concluded that to reach this goal, the world has until 2030 to slash greenhouse gas emissions by half or more from present.

And 1.5°C is hardly a “safe” climate. The world has already warmed by at least 1°C on average, and the effects have been devastating. The longer the world waits to act to limit emissions, the harder it will get.

The new US climate target — a 50 to 52 percent cut in emissions relative to 2005 by 2030 — “looks like it is consistent” with the 1.5°C goal, according to a senior White House official on a call with reporters on Wednesday. But according to Climate Action Tracker, a US commitment in line with this target would actually need a 57 to 63 percent cut.

Many other countries have also said they are using 1.5°C as their benchmark for their climate commitments. Rhetorically, it seems there is widespread support for being more ambitious. However, it’s clear there’s a cavernous rift between commitments and actions. Global greenhouse gas emissions have only grown since the 2018 IPCC report. While there was a lull in this growth last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, emissions are poised to rebound around the world, including in the US, as economies reopen.

So now the world has to make even more drastic cuts to greenhouse gases — and in less time. It’s easy to paint a target years into the future. It’s much harder to take aim today. And right now, that target is nowhere in our sights. —Umair Irfan

For a long time, the face of the climate movement was white. But with growing public awareness of climate change came the recognition that its impacts are disproportionately experienced by Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color.

The problem, according to many Black climate advocates, is that awareness is not enough.

Tamara Toles O’Laughlin is one of the best-known advocates for what she calls the “Black climate agenda”: a movement that seeks to correct the failures of the climate movement to include Black people and that wants to see racial justice at the center of climate policy conversations.

A lifelong environmental activist, Toles O’Laughlin is the former director of the North American region of 350.org, an international environmental organization founded in 2007 that uses a grassroots approach to build support for ending fossil fuels.

The Black climate agenda is about more than just representation. It’s about equity and righting the wrongs that have been done in the past to make a just future possible. In her vision, the agenda should include policies like climate reparations that address the disproportionate impact climate change has had on Black communities, as well as Indigenous people and other communities of color.

There are some initial signs that the righting of wrongs is already starting to happen, at least in the US. 

Through the American Rescue Plan, the Biden-Harris administration allocated $5 billion to help Black farmers who have long suffered from racially discriminatory agricultural policies. Biden’s American Jobs Plan, meanwhile, aims to address “longstanding and persistent racial injustice,” including by allocating 40 percent of the benefits from investments in climate and clean energy infrastructure to “disadvantaged communities.”

But while many Black climate advocates agree that these sorts of measures are a big step in the right direction, they are also historically conscious of the need to keep up the pressure.

“I’m excited about implementation and deployment and about taking steps to make sure that all this fantastic language becomes fantastic programming, incredible regulation, enforcement, accountability, and transparency [from] the Biden-Harris administration as it ages,” O’Laughlin told me. 

I spoke with O’Laughlin to find about more about the Black climate agenda, what its goals are, and how it plans to go about achieving them.

Our discussion, edited for length and clarity, is below.

Jariel Arvin

What exactly is the Black climate agenda?

Tamara Toles O’Laughlin

Like all movements, the Black climate agenda isn’t just one thing. I’m not the only person working on it, nor am I the only person who will help to perfect it. The Black climate agenda is everything that we must do at this moment to make sure that there are Black people in the future and that we’re not just surviving, we are thriving. 

The individual elements are coming together and lots of communities are coming to the same conclusion: The world of climate and environment has not included the lives, expertise, or experiences of Black people. And given that that is the case, it is up to us to work to support our lives, our sanctity, and the safety and future of the next generation.

We are more likely to become refugees when the impacts of climate change become too much to bear, given that the system has failed to serve us. If we do not carve out a Black climate agenda, there’s no reason to believe anybody else will.

Jariel Arvin

Wow. That’s tough.

Tamara Toles O’Laughlin

It’s tough because it can sound like we’re erasing the efforts of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color to work together. But Black people have always been the litmus test for change in this country. Black people are always left in the margins by systems of policy working together to diminish us, leaving us chronically underserved from generation to generation — even in our mother’s wombs.

So, when the hate is that deep, we have to come up with our schedule and agenda for survival.

Jariel Arvin

When you say “we,” who exactly do you mean?

Tamara Toles O’Laughlin

I mean Dorceta Taylor, Bob Bullard, Peggy Shepard. Vernice Miller Travis, Michel Gelobter, Michael Dorsey — these are the kinds of people who make those who know them nervous, because they have never been anything other than unapologetically Black, whether they worked at the Ford Foundation or they worked outside the doors demanding change in philanthropy or they wrote the stories of people who were fighting for change and just to not be poisoned.

One of my favorite friends, leaders, and colleagues on this is Colette Pichon Battle — partly because she’s talking about Louisiana and the Gulf South, which is rapidly losing land as fast as we can count it. The movement in the South includes Chandra Farley, who’s working on energy justice in the South at the Partnership for Southern Equity, and Kristal Hansley, who’s lifting the business itself by having started the first Black solar company in Baltimore City in the 2000s. 

We are all people who have come to this conclusion, surfacing at the same time. We just haven’t been spoken to as though we are the strategists and architects that we are. We might be asked to move into the camera — we are asked to explain our pain because it’s entertaining to people — but conversations around strategy are too often had without us. And then that absence shows up in politics. It shows up in the policy. And it shows up as a failing— which leads us to have lost all this time in the climate crisis.

Jariel Arvin

So given all the past failures, how’s the Biden administration doing on fulfilling the Black climate agenda?

Tamara Toles O’Laughlin

The Biden administration has a better listening ear than any other presidential administration to date. Not just because the last one sucked — which would be very easy to say — but because in the entire history of American presidents, we have always had [slavery and its legacy], the birth problem of the American experiment, the suppression of women and children, and Black bodies, intellectual power, and capacity. But we’ve never had a president who admitted that the system was in on it.

The $2 trillion infrastructure plan —  what Biden thinks it will take to rebuild America, includes a clear admission that Black people have been restricted by racially restrictive covenants, which in places including Baltimore lasted until 1985.

So when we start to talk about intergenerational wealth and a transfer of power, it isn’t just about the failure of the GI Bill to fully reach Black and brown people, or every single law that’s ever been passed having exclusions to keep us Black people oppressed, but the idea that we could not own a home where we want legally in this land that we built until this generation presents a multigenerational problem that has to be reckoned with. 

And so, while there are many things to be said about whether the Biden-Harris administration will meet all of our goals, needs, and desires without us advocating for them, I do think some admissions are coming from the executive branch that have never come before, which is that we are not just “historically disadvantaged” — we have been harmed, excised, and intentionally not supported at every level. 

One of the most striking early pieces of the American Jobs Plan that I saw that I was excited about was the truth that racial injustice and discrimination equals less innovation because it suppresses potential. What president has ever said that? 

Jariel Arvin

Could Obama have said that? I’ve been wondering how much of the Biden-Harris administration’s success on climate can be attributed to their policies and the people that have pushed Biden to adopt this progressive climate agenda versus it just being a natural progression of where we have to be at this point as a society. It’s 2021 right? We can’t continue to pretend like this stuff doesn’t exist.

Tamara Toles O’Laughlin

I can’t speak to what it’s like to be Barack Obama, but I can speak as someone who’s been first, only, and different my entire life trying to do this work. Up to even my last role where I was the first African American in the history of this work to lead a white-lead climate organization, I can tell you that it takes a certain amount of life force to have the momentum to break through a glass ceiling, which makes it pretty difficult to move in the other direction, to go back and clean up the glass.

I think having to choose which battles you want to fight is a problem of false scarcity, and Obama was as much victim to that as any other Black person who’s ever stood up to lead anything and been the first. 

Jariel Arvin

According to Biden’s Jobs Plan, 40 percent of federal investments are going to go to communities of color. What does that look like? How does the money trickle down — I hate to use that word, but how does the money get to where it needs to go?

Tamara Toles O’Laughlin

I wish he had used the words that you used. As candidate Biden became President Biden, somehow that language around the 40 percent to Environmental Justice became 40 percent of the benefits of clean energy investments. And what gets lost when we turn the phrase into “benefits”? A benefit could be that it’s sunny outside. It’s too ambiguous a term. And it may need to be legally defined.

Jariel Arvin

Wait — so it’s now the benefits, not the total investment?

Tamara Toles O’Laughlin

And this is a strategically different word, which means we’re going to have to litigate. We’re going to have to push for policy. Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectionality teaches us that there are multiple forms of harm happening at any given point to a person or in a place — so “disadvantaged communities”? Disadvantaged by whom? And relative to what?

If it’s coming out of the Environmental Protection Agency, we’ll have to hold Administrator Michael Regan accountable. If we are talking about the Council for Environmental Quality, Brenda Mallory is the person who’s ultimately responsible for that.

I think the intentions are good. I am excited about the winds of change. But for them to blow into my community, we’re gonna have to get specific because the benefits of investments are not the same as investments.

Jariel Arvin

Do you think that there’s any potential to see climate reparations for Black folks?

Tamara Toles O’Laughlin

Climate reparations are the future, because there’s no chance that we can get all the people who need to be supported the help they need to survive climate change if we don’t figure out how to move money and people and opportunities in the direction of people who have been harmed. So, given that we have a president and a Cabinet that’s for accountability, one measure of their success is how quickly we can move loss and damage into a global framework and climate reparations into a domestic framework.

We won’t live to experience all of it, even if we live 100 years. The problems will go on, and so the reinvestment will have to happen over generations. And only a climate reparations regime as a part of a Black climate agenda can ensure that that happens because the work of reparations has always been the work of care and repair, and the work of climate reparations is the work of care and repair for people and planet.

Jariel Arvin

Is there enough awareness among the everyday Black population about the Black climate agenda? If not, how do you think the movement can be spread to everyday Black people who are feeling climate impacts — like how long summers last and how hot they’re getting — but who are not yet plugged into the strategy that you’re talking about?

Tamara Toles O’Laughlin

I do think that our communities are aware of it in the same way that fishermen and folks who spend time on the water are aware of it — we see that the things we count on to tell us that time is passing are changing. We live in urban environments, which have the urban heat island effect, which can make some places feels like August from May to December.

These are things that we can not only tell, but we also feel in our bodies. We have asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and all too often heart attacks at higher rates due to proximity to fossil fuel generation and pollution.

I think what we fail to do is use our concepts, understanding, and language when we talk to our communities. It’s why one of the ways I describe myself is as a “jargon destroyer.” Because I think the key to helping folks to see themselves in the vision of the future and to put some furniture in it is to get them to be really clear that this is happening to them and that they are also part of the solution.

Some of it is about who the messengers are. If LeBron James decides he cares about something, a whole lot of other people do too. Regina Hall has had a project on Wednesdays, called Woman Crush Wednesday, through the Solutions Project, where she has highlighted a Black woman activist every Wednesday for the last few years. We need more of that.

The Uproot Project — which is this project for journalists of color who cover the environment — gives me a lot of hope because I feel like we could start to tell these stories in our language, which will invite more people into caring about it.

I’ll tell you, as we are on the precipice of Earth Day, my awakening wasn’t just being given an opportunity to do this work, but recognizing that there was an entry point that didn’t mean I had to become someone else. Even if I couldn’t find people like me in the early Earth Day celebrations, it was exciting to me to know that other people cared about what I cared about.

Jariel Arvin

That has me thinking about not only Black people in America but also Black people worldwide. Do you think there’s potential for a global movement around the Black climate agenda that includes Black people in the Caribbean, in Africa, in Europe, and elsewhere?

Tamara Toles O’Laughlin

You can’t see it, but I’m smiling from ear to ear. I have said it everywhere that there is no national climate policy — it is all a global one, because we messed up so badly that there’s no chance any one of us can fix it.

But also because Black people have been the stewards of the earth everywhere we’ve ever been. What is it Jay-Z says, “Put me anywhere on God’s green earth I’ll triple my worth,” right?

One of my favorite people to talk to on Twitter is Oladosu Adenike, an ecofeminist for Lake Chad. There are also folks in the Pacific, there are activists across Africa like Rukiya Khamis fighting coal and in Asia and the Philippines and Tokyo and Hong Kong who have been doing this work with folks with very little power.

In every part of the world where there are Black people, there are stories about our stewardship. And I think that those will either become stories of climate survival or of us becoming climate refugees. If we’re not telling the story of Haiti, of Africa and the Caribbean diaspora, and the African diaspora writ large, we are failing to tell the story. So it is incredibly important to me that a Black climate agenda includes a global perspective.

Jariel Arvin

Final thoughts?

Tamara Toles O’Laughlin

There are no scenarios where we win on the climate where we don’t deal with issues of racial injustice or environmental racism. And that starts with harm to Black and brown people, and it ends with the end of harm to Black people.

The strategy of movements and the movement of movements is really about recognizing that there isn’t just one person who’s doing it — we are all part of an elaborate network holding up the arch to justice. It’s heavy, and we need each other.

That’s the gorgeous thing about this movement. It’s the reason why we can have a Black climate agenda and I don’t have to care at all about what my white friends feel about it because they know that it’s true too.