‘The Siege Must Be Broken’: Countries Called to Ship Fuel to Cuba After Trump Tariffs Struck Down

The US Supreme Court’s ruling “implies that Trump’s recent order imposing tariffs on countries selling oil to Cuba exceeds the president’s statutory authority.”

Julia Conley
Feb 20, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

With the centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s economic agenda—his use of an emergency law to impose tariffs on countries around the world—struck down by the US Supreme Court on Friday, analysts said the sweeping ruling should promptly end the Cuba blockade that his administration has pressured other governments to take part in, leaving millions of Cubans struggling with shortages of essentials.

The court ruled that the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not empower the president to “unilaterally impose tariffs,” as Trump has on countries across the globe, insisting that doing so would boost manufacturing and cut the trade deficit—despite mounting evidence that the tariffs have instead raised costs on American households.

A bicitaxi rides past garbage piled up on a street in Havana, Cuba on February 17, 2026.
(Photo by Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images)

Trump also invoked the IEEPA last month when he issued an executive order accusing Cuba of supporting terrorism and posing a security risk to the US, and threatening to ramp up the use of tariffs against any country that sends oil, which Cuba’s economy relies on almost entirely for energy, to the island nation’s government.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has long pushed for regime change in the communist country his family immigrated from in the 1950s, and the administration called on the Cuban government to make “very dramatic changes very soon.”

With Trump’s use of the IEEPA struck down by the high court, some advocates and observers said that countries should quickly reverse their decisions to join the US in keeping oil from Cuba.

“As far as I can tell, this strikes down Trump’s ability to tariff countries that provide oil to Cuba. Hopefully a measure of relief,” said Michael Galant, a member of Progressive International’s secretariat and a researcher on sanctions. “The siege must be broken.”




The court handed down the ruling as the manufactured crisis unfolding in Cuba largely faded into the background in the corporate media, but an article in the New York Times on Friday described how the lack of fuel shipments has left Cubans facing frequent blackouts, gas shortages, growing piles of trash in the streets of Havana and other cities as sanitation trucks aren’t running, soaring food prices, and suspensions of some medical care at hospitals.

Researcher Shaiel Ben-Ephraim also described how the “completely unprovoked” oil blockade that was started “with very little public discussion” has led to a “rising mortality rate among the elderly and those with chronic illnesses who cannot access life-support or specialized care” and a surge in diseases such as dengue fever and Orupuche virus, “which have become increasingly fatal due to the shortage of basic medicines and rehydration fluids.”

“All this has occurred within weeks. A sustained blockade could lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths. All with no debate, no approval from Congress and no provocation from Cuba,” said Ben-Ephraim.

Jorge Piñón, who researches Cuba’s oil supply at University of Texas at Austin, told the Times that the country’s fuel reserves could be entirely depleted by mid-March.

Trump issued his executive order on Cuba weeks after invading Venezuela, abducting President Nicolás Maduro, and pushing for control of the South American country’s oil supply. Venezuela has long been a top provider of oil to Cuba. Trump’s tariff threat led Mexico, which became a lifeline for Cuba after the flow of oil from Venezuela stopped, to halt its shipments.

Galant noted that Trump will likely “continue to do all that he can to starve the island,” and the president said soon after the Supreme Court announced its ruling that he would use different executive powers to impose a 10% global tariff, suggesting he was not prepared to back down on the tariffs he imposed before taking aim at Cuba.

But critics urged countries that have tried to help Cuba since Trump’s executive order, as Mexico has by sending humanitarian aid packages, to reverse their decisions to halt oil shipments to the island.

“So which countries are gonna start sending fuel to Cuba now?” asked organizer Damien Goodmon.

ECO CRIMINALS

Here's why Trump is dangerously wrong about how climate change threatens our health

The Conversation
February 14, 2026 

The Trump administration took a major step in its efforts to unravel America’s climate policies on Thursday, when it moved to rescind the 2009 endangerment finding — a formal determination that six greenhouse gases that drive climate change, including carbon dioxide and methane from burning fossil fuels, endanger public health and welfare.

But the administration’s arguments in dismissing the health risks of climate change are not only factually wrong, they’re deeply dangerous to Americans’ health and safety.

As physicians, epidemiologists and environmental health scientists, we’ve seen growing evidence of the connections between climate change and harm to people’s health. Here’s a look at the health risks everyone face from climate change.
Extreme heat

Greenhouse gases from vehicles, power plants and other sources accumulate in the atmosphere, trapping heat and holding it close to Earth’s surface like a blanket. Too much of it causes global temperatures to rise, leaving more people exposed to dangerous heat more often.

Most people who get minor heat illnesses will recover, but more extreme exposure, especially without enough hydration and a way to cool off, can be fatal. People who work outside, are elderly or have underlying illnesses such as heart, lung or kidney diseases are often at the greatest risk.

Heat deaths have been rising globally, up 23 percent from the 1990s to the 2010s, when the average year saw more than half a million heat-related deaths. Here in the U.S., the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome killed hundreds of people.

Climate scientists predict that with advancing climate change, many areas of the world, including U.S. cities such as Miami, Houston, Phoenix and Las Vegas, will confront many more days each year hot enough to threaten human survival.

Extreme weather

Warmer air holds more moisture, so climate change brings increasing rainfall and storm intensity and worsening flooding, as many U.S. communities have experienced in recent years. Warmer ocean water also fuels more powerful hurricanes.

Increased flooding carries health risks, including drownings, injuries and water contamination from human pathogens and toxic chemicals. People cleaning out flooded homes also face risks from mold exposure, injuries and mental distress.

Climate change also worsens droughts, disrupting food supplies and causing respiratory illness from dust. Rising temperatures and aridity dry out forests and grasslands, making them a set-up for wildfires.
Air pollution

Wildfires, along with other climate effects, are worsening air quality around the country.

Wildfire smoke is a toxic soup of microscopic particles (known as fine particulate matter, or PM2.5) that can penetrate deep in the lungs and hazardous compounds such as lead, formaldehyde and dioxins generated when homes, cars and other materials burn at high temperatures. Smoke plumes can travel thousands of miles downwind and trigger heart attacks and elevate lung cancer risks, among other harms.

Meanwhile, warmer conditions favor the formation of ground-level ozone, a heart and lung irritant. Burning of fossil fuels also generates dangerous air pollutants that cause a long list of health problems, including heart attacks, strokes, asthma flare-ups and lung cancer.
Infectious diseases

Because they are cold-blooded organisms, insects are directly influenced by temperature. So with rising temperatures, mosquito biting rates rise as well. Warming also accelerates the development of disease agents that mosquitoes transmit.

Mosquito-borne dengue fever has turned up in Florida, Texas, Hawaii, Arizona and California. New York state just saw its first locally acquired case of chikungunya virus, also transmitted by mosquitoes.

And it’s not just insect-borne infections. Warmer temperatures increase diarrhea and foodborne illness from Vibrio cholerae and other bacteria and heavy rainfall increases sewage-contaminated stormwater overflows into lakes and streams. At the other water extreme, drought in the desert Southwest increases the risk of coccidioidomycosis, a fungal infection known as valley fever.

Other impacts

Climate change threatens health in numerous other ways. Longer pollen seasons increase allergen exposures. Lower crop yields reduce access to nutritious foods.

Mental health also suffers, with anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress following disasters, and increased rates of violent crime and suicide tied to high-temperature days.

Young children, older adults, pregnant women and people with preexisting medical conditions are among the highest-risk groups. Lower-income people also face greater risk because of higher rates of chronic disease, higher exposures to climate hazards and fewer resources for protection, medical care and recovery from disasters.

Policy-based evidence-making

The evidence linking climate change with health has grown considerably since 2009. Today, it is incontrovertible.

Studies show that heat, air pollution, disease spread and food insecurity linked to climate change are worsening and costing millions of lives around the world each year. This evidence also aligns with Americans’ lived experiences. Anybody who has fallen ill during a heat wave, struggled while breathing wildfire smoke or been injured cleaning up from a hurricane knows that climate change can threaten human health.


Yet the Trump administration is willfully ignoring this evidence in proclaiming that climate change does not endanger health.

Its move to rescind the 2009 endangerment finding, which underpins many climate regulations, fits with a broader set of policy measures, including cutting support for renewable energy and subsidizing fossil fuel industries that endanger public health. In addition to rescinding the endangerment finding, the Trump administration also moved to roll back emissions limits on vehicles – the leading source of U.S. carbon emissions and a major contributor to air pollutants such as PM2.5 and ozone.
It’s not just about endangerment

The evidence is clear: Climate change endangers human health. But there’s a flip side to the story.

When governments work to reduce the causes of climate change, they help tackle some of the world’s biggest health challenges. Cleaner vehicles and cleaner electricity mean cleaner air — and less heart and lung disease. More walking and cycling on safe sidewalks and bike paths mean more physical activity and lower chronic disease risks. The list goes on. By confronting climate change, we promote good health.

To really make America healthy, in our view, the nation should acknowledge the facts behind the endangerment finding and double down on our transition from fossil fuels to a healthy, clean energy future.

By Jonathan Levy, Professor and Chair, Department of Environmental Health, Boston University; Howard Frumkin, Professor Emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, University of Washington;

Jonathan PatzProfessor of Environmental Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Vijay LimayeAdjunct Associate Professor of Population Health Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

This article includes material from a story originally published Nov. 12, 2025.

US lawmaker moves to shield oil companies from climate cases


By AFP
February 12, 2026


Dozens of cases against oil copmanies modeled on successful actions against the tobacco industry in the 1990s are playing out in state and local courts -- including claims of injuries, failure-to-warn, and even racketeering

 - Copyright AFP/File Patrick T. Fallon

Issam AHMED

A US lawmaker is drafting legislation to block a wave of state and local climate-damage lawsuits against fossil fuel companies, advancing a top priority of the oil and gas industry.

Republican Representative Harriet Hageman announced the effort during a hearing on Wednesday, following a letter last year from a group of attorneys general from conservative-led states urging the creation of a federal “liability shield” similar to the one Congress granted gunmakers in 2005.

Hageman also targeted so-called climate “superfund” laws, enacted in New York and Vermont and under consideration in other states, which require fossil fuel companies to help cover the costs of climate-related damages tied to the destabilization of the global climate system.

“Clearly, this is an area in which Congress has a role to play,” Hageman, of the oil-rich western state of Wyoming, told Attorney General Pam Bondi.

“To that end, I’m working with my colleagues in both the House and Senate to craft legislation tackling both these state laws and the lawsuits that could destroy energy affordability for consumers.”

Dozens of cases modeled on successful actions against the tobacco industry in the 1990s are playing out in state and local courts — including claims of injuries, failure-to-warn, and even racketeering, meaning acting like a criminal enterprise.

Michigan last month sued oil majors in federal court, alleging they had acted as a cartel in an unlawful conspiracy by preventing meaningful competition from renewable energy.

Environmental advocates see such lawsuits as crucial means for climate accountability as President Donald Trump’s second term has seen the United States go all-in to boost fossil fuels and block renewables.

Some cases have been dismissed, and none have yet gone to trial — though crucially, the conservative-dominated Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to intervene and block them.

Mike Sommers, president of the American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s largest trade group, spoke out against the cases in a keynote address last month.

Material on API’s website confirms the group wishes to “Protect US energy producers and consumers from abusive state climate lawsuits and the expansion of climate ‘superfund’ policies that bypass Congress and threaten affordability.”

Richard Wiles, president of the nonprofit Center for Climate Integrity, said in a statement the announcement was proof “the fossil fuel industry is panicking and pleading with Congress for a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

Any legislation however could face an uphill battle since Republicans only enjoy a slim majority in the House of Representatives and bills normally require 60 votes in the Senate, where they hold 53 seats of the 100 seats.

Greece’s Cycladic islands swept up in concrete fever


By  AFP
February 12, 2026


Milos Mayor Manolis Mikelis has called the construction project on the island an 'environmental crime' - Copyright AFP Aris MESSINIS

Yannick PASQUET

On the sloping shoreline of the Greek Aegean island of Milos, a vast construction site has left a gaping wound into the island’s trademark volcanic rock.

The foundations are for a hotel extension that attracted so much controversy last year that the country’s top administrative court ended up temporarily blocking its building permit.

Construction machinery still dots the site for a planned 59-room extension to the luxury resort, some of whose suites have their own swimming pools.

Milos Mayor Manolis Mikelis calls the project an “environmental crime”.

“The geological uniqueness of Milos is known worldwide. We don’t want its identity to change,” he told AFP in his office, adorned with a copy of the island’s most famous export, the Hellenistic-era statue of the love goddess Venus.

Fuelled by a tourism boom, real estate fever has broken out across the Cyclades archipelago, threatening to destroy iconic landscapes of whitewashed houses and blue church domes.

In December, several mayors from the Cyclades as well as the Dodecanese — which includes the highly touristic islands of Rhodes and Kos — sounded the alarm.

“The very existence of our islands is threatened,” they warned in a resolution initiated by the mayor of Santorini, Nikos Zorzos.

Tourism has become “a field for planting luxury residences to sell or rent,” said Zorzos, whose island — a top global destination — welcomes roughly 3.5 million visitors for a population of 15,500.



– Rejecting ‘plunder’ –



The “Cycladic islands are not grounds for pharaonic projects”, the mayors continued.

V Tourism, the company operating the hotel, argues that the expansion was approved in 2024 with “favourable opinions from all competent authorities”.

But Mikelis, the mayor, noted that there are legislation “loopholes” when it comes to construction.

Like Santorini, Milos is a volcanic isle that is home to one of Greece’s most unique beaches, Sarakiniko.

With its spectacular white formations rounded by erosion, the so-called ‘moon beach’ has bathers packed tighter than an astronaut’s suit during summertime.

Yet Sarakiniko is not protected under Greek law.

Another hotel project there was blocked last year, and the environment ministry has given the owners a month’s time to fill in its construction dig.



– ‘Voracious’ –



Ioannis Spilanis, emeritus professor at the University of the Aegean, says what is happening in the Cyclades “is voracious, predatory real estate”.

Once marginal land intended for grazing “have become lucrative assets. (Locals) are offered very attractive prices that are still low for investors.”

“Then you build or resell for ten times more,” he said.

In Ios, a small island with a vibrant nightlife, a single investor — a Greek who made a fortune on Wall Street — now owns 30 percent of the island, the mayors said in their December statement.

Tourism contributes between 28 and 33.7 percent of GDP, according to the Greek Tourism Confederation (SETE), making it a key sector that has propped up the country’s economy for decades.

Arrivals have been breaking record after record with more than 40 million visitors in 2024, a performance that was likely surpassed in 2025.

In Milos, which has more than 5,000 inhabitants, 48 new hotel projects are currently underway, according to the mayor, and 157 new building permits were awarded from January to the end of October 2025, according to the state statistical body.

On Paros, which has also experienced a real estate frenzy for several years, 459 building permits were granted over the same period, and on Santorini, 461.

The most ambitious projects in Greece are classified as “strategic investments”, a fast-track procedure created in 2019 to facilitate investments deemed priorities.

But “there’s often no oversight,” said Spilanis, the academic.



– Golden goose –



And many of the new constructions are far removed from traditional Cycladic architecture.

But the tourism industry is a vital source of income on islands which are usually deserted in winter, and offering few other job prospects.

“This island is a diamond, but unfortunately in recent years it’s become nothing but money, money, money,” fumes a resident who spends half the year in Germany.

“But if I say that in public, everyone will jump down my throat!” she said.

In a 2024 report, the state ombudsman of the Hellenic Republic stressed the deterioration in quality of life on islands where residents can no longer find housing, as many owners prioritise lucrative short-term rentals, while waste management and water resources are also under major strain.

But there are signs of a slowdown in the Cyclades.

Santorini last year saw a 12.8-percent drop in air arrivals between June and September, while Mykonos had to settle for a meagre 2.4-percent increase.

US lawmakers introduce bill to screen sales of potentially dangerous synthetic DNA

Reuters
Wed, February 4, 2026 



U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar declares her candidacy for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S., February 10, 2019. REUTERS/Eric Miller


SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Two U.S. senators this week introduced a bill that would create new rules around the sale of synthetic gene sequences ​that could be used to create bioweapons.

Synthetic genes are sequences of nucleic acids - the ‌building blocks of biological life found in DNA - created in labs for use in medical research, gene therapies and ‌crop development, among other uses.

In recent years, scientists have started using artificial intelligence to discover or design new sequences, which can then be synthesized on machines that can fit on a benchtop.

Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, and Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, this week introduced ⁠a bill that directs the U.S. ‌Department of Commerce to require the labs that do gene synthesis work to screen their customers and orders to ensure that bad actors ‍are not ordering dangerous sequences.

The bill would require the Commerce Department, with the help of other federal agencies, to compile a list of potentially dangerous genetic sequences.

“While access to genetic material allows scientists to study ​diseases, develop lifesaving medicine, and improve crops, without safety standards it could be misused, ‌including to create bioweapons," Klobuchar, the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate, said in a statement.

The bill also takes the first steps toward pulling together current biosecurity regulations, which are scattered across the U.S. government, to both streamline the regulations, keep pace with fast-moving technology companies and address safety gaps.

“American innovations in biotechnology are too important to fall into the ⁠hands of bad actors or be hamstrung by ​outdated federal policies," Cotton, the No. 3 Republican in ​the Senate, said in a statement.

Gene synthesis has captured the attention of lawmakers before.

Last year, the U.S. House of Representatives committee on China sent a ‍letter to the directors ⁠of the FBI and national intelligence, renewing its concerns about GenScript Biotechnology's work with U.S. companies because of its ties to China.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers in both ⁠houses of the U.S. Congress also last year introduced a bill that would require U.S. firms to obtain ‌an export license before sending gene sequence data to China.

(Reporting by Stephen ‌Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Michael Perry)


Senate Republican on suspected biolab found in Las Vegas: ‘Enormous problem’

Ashleigh Fields
Wed, February 4, 2026 

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on Tuesday said the suspected biological research lab found in Las Vegas poses an “enormous problem” to the public after investigators collected vials with “unknown liquids” at a private residence.

“This is a enormous problem. It’s under everybody’s, it’s under the radar. It’s very easy to obtain this kind of information, start doing this gain of function with CRISPR technology” Johnson said during an appearance on NewsNation’s “Katie Pavlich Tonight,” using the acronym for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats.

“This is a real threat to our national security,” he added.

Johnson referenced the possibility of individuals using CRISPR, which is a precise, efficient gene-editing technology derived from bacterial immune systems that acts as molecular scissors to modify, delete or correct DNA sequences, according to the Broad Institute, a non-profit biomedical research organization.

The technology also allows individuals to disable a gene or insert new genetic material.

Johnson told host Katie Pavlich that Congress has “no idea” how many illegal labs are operating across the country.

After an initial investigation, authorities believe the lab found in Las Vegas has possible ties to Jia Bei Zhu, who was arrested in 2023 for failing to obtain the proper permits to manufacture tests for COVID-19, pregnancy and HIV, and mislabeling some of the kits for a biolab in Reedley, Calif., according to The Associated Press.

Investigators also located “pathogen-labeled containers” with labels in English and Mandarin that read “dengue fever,” “HIV” and “malaria,” along with 1,000 mice, according to a federal report from the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.

“He is not involved in any kind of a biolab being conducted in a home in Las Vegas,” his attorney, Anthony Capozzi, told the outlet.

“What went on in that residence we are unaware of,” he added.

However, his name is listed as the registered agent of the Las Vegas-based company that owns the property where SWAT officers executed a search warrant of the alleged biolab, according to KLAS. The LLC purchased the home in 2022.

In court documents, the man previously told a judge he no longer runs the companies, though he remained listed in Nevada business records, KLAS reported.

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

UH OH

Old diseases return as settlement pushes into the Amazon rainforest

Human case numbers of yellow fever have grown alongside the border between forested and urban areas

University of California - Santa Barbara

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(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Human activity continues to expand ever further into wild areas, throwing ecology out of balance. But what begins as an environmental issue often evolves into a human problem.

Researchers at UC Santa Barbara investigated how changes in land use may be driving the growth in human yellow fever cases in the Amazon basin. Their analysis, published in Biology Letters, reveals that the growing border between forested and urban areas is causing an alarming uptick in cases.

“Yellow fever is increasingly infecting humans when they are living close to the forest,” said author Kacie Ring, a doctoral student co-advised by Professors Andy MacDonald and Cherie Briggs. “And this is because humans are encroaching into areas where the disease is circulating naturally, disrupting its transmission cycle in the forest."

Diseases like yellow fever had become rare in South America, mostly confined to monkeys in the jungles. The situation was a testament to the remarkable success of public health efforts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But the region is now in danger of redeveloping urban transmission cycles, where the disease spreads among the population without the need for a non-human host.

The geography of disease

Ring, MacDonald and junior research specialist Terrell Sipin collected data on the number of human yellow fever cases in districts of Brazil, Peru and Colombia within the Amazon Basin, obtaining records from each country’s public health agency. These records stretched back to 2000 for Brazil, 2007 for Colombia and 2016 for Peru.

The authors also culled data on land use from the MapBiomas Project, a large effort to classify land use and land cover. They divided use into categories such as pasture, agriculture, forest and urban areas.

The team compared case rates against three major geographic trends: the average patch size of forest in a given area; forest edge density, or the amount of forest perimeter in a given area; and the amount of interface specifically between forested and urban areas.

In simpler models that only considered the impact of edge density, the team did see a positive relationship with the probability of a yellow fever spillover event taking place. However, this contribution was dwarfed by the effect of forest-urban adjacency in more complex models. It was the proximity of settled areas to the forest that mattered most for predicting yellow fever spillover to humans. A 10% increase in forest–urban adjacency raised the probability of a spillover event by 0.09, or the equivalent of a 150% increase in the number of yellow fever spillover events in a given year. And this borderland is growing by around 13% per year, on average, in the regions included in the study.

When ecology doesn’t match epidemiology

Several recent studies have looked at the effect of forest fragmentation on the ecology of yellow fever in the wild. Measures of deforestation correlated with higher case numbers in monkeys and spread of the disease into new regions. In this light, the authors suspected metrics like patch size and edge density would have a significant effect on human cases.

But, in any model that included interactions between human society and the forest, it was this interaction that proved the strongest predictor of human cases. “It was a little surprising that the ecology wasn’t more predictive of the actual transmission to humans,” said MacDonald, a professor in UCSB’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management.

“It seems the thing that’s causing the disease spillover is that humans are moving closer to the forest edge,” Ring said.

The greater the perimeter between the forest and urban areas, the more exposure humans have to the disease. There are often greater infection rates among vectors at the forest’s edges, as well. For instance, higher temperatures and more standing water along the forest margins may lead to a greater number of more active mosquitoes.

The return of an old foe

Yellow fever wasn’t always rare in the Americas. The neotropics used to have the same sorts of urban transmission cycles as in Western Africa, where the disease is still a significant issue. Along with malaria, yellow fever was behind the failure of the French attempt to complete the Panama Canal. “They were losing workers left and right,” MacDonald said. “Over 20,000 workers died.” That said, humans didn’t know what caused yellow fever or malaria at that time, so they couldn’t attribute individual deaths to each disease.

It took new discoveries and massive vector-control initiatives to drive disease rates down to the point where the American enterprise could finally succeed in 1914. These efforts continued in the 1940s and ‘50s with simultaneous vaccination campaigns and mosquito eradication initiatives that finally freed South America of these urban transmission cycles by the 1940s. 

“But a campaign like this would never be executed in the modern day,” Ring added. “Widespread use of DDT led to long-term storage in the soil and contamination in drinking water.”

Unfortunately, cases have begun rising again, spilling over the expanding border between the forest and urban areas. “We can see the benefits of earlier efforts dwindling,” Ring said. “It shows that diseases can come up again if you don’t properly maintain the infrastructure of public health and vaccination.”

“The concern is that the more we have these spillover events, the more likely it is that we’re going to see these urban transmission cycles reemerging,” MacDonald added. 

While the paper doesn’t include data past 2021, data from the World Health Organization shows that case rates have continued to grow. In 2024, human cases of yellow fever were seen mainly across the Amazon region, according to a WHO report. Cases in 2025, however, have been detected mainly in areas outside the Amazon. The 212 cases confirmed before the report published represent a threefold increase compared to the 61 cases in 2024.

Because yellow fever is still relatively rare in the Americas, health agencies don’t have large stockpiles of the vaccine. “So, if cases change suddenly, then we’re unprepared to deal with it,” MacDonald said.

The team will continue to investigate the effects of changing land use on infectious diseases. Ring is currently looking at the interaction between deforestation and tick-borne diseases in Madagascar. Meanwhile, MacDonald plans to investigate how other kinds of land uses affect vector-borne diseases in the Amazon region. For instance, he’s curious how clearing forest for pasture and agricultural production influences the transmission of diseases like malaria, dengue and leishmaniasis.

MacDonald hopes his group’s work will help governments and communities in South America bring development in better accord with human and environmental health. As Ring said, “these emerging infectious diseases are indicators of broader environmental issues.”

 

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Journal

Biology Letters

Forty years of tracking trees reveals how global change is impacting Amazon and Andean Forest diversity

University of Liverpool

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New research published in Nature Ecology and Evolution reveals significant recent shifts in tree diversity among the tropical forests of the Andes and Amazon, driven by global change.

The study, led by Dr Belen Fadrique from the University of Liverpool, uses 40 years of records on tree species collected by hundreds of international botanists and ecologists in long-term plots to offer comprehensive insights into tree diversity change in the world’s most diverse forests.

Key Findings

At the continental level, the team found that species richness has remained largely stable, but this masks significant regional differences. In some extensive regions diversity was declining, while in others it increased.

The analysis revealed that forests in hotter, drier, and more seasonal areas tended to experience declines in species richness.  Meanwhile, some areas with more intact ecosystems and with naturally more dynamic forests actually gained species.

In the Central Andes, Guyana Shield and Central-Eastern Amazon forests the majority of forest monitoring plots lost species through time, while most in the Northern Andes and Western Amazon showed an increase in tree species number.

While temperature increase has an overall pervasive effect on richness, the research highlights that rainfall and its seasonal patterns play a major role in shaping these regional trends.

Notably, the Northern Andes is identified as a potentially critical "refuge" that could shelter species displaced by climate change.

The research team analysed data from a huge region spanning the South American tropics which is home to more than 20,000 tree species.

They worked over 40 years across ten South American countries in 406 long-term floristic plots, measured periodically since the 1970s and 1980s. By examining these unique records, the team was able to track changes in tree richness for the first time and identify the driving factors behind those shifts.

Impact of climate change on plant species

Plant species have limited options to survive climate change: they can alter their distributions as environmental conditions change, or they can acclimate to these new conditions. If species cannot move or acclimate, their populations will decline, potentially leading to extinction.

Dr Belen Fadrique is a Dorothy Hodgkin Royal Society and University of Liverpool Research Fellow with the Department of Geography & Planning. She is the lead author of the study and conducted the research when she was a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Leeds.

Dr Fadrique said: "Our work assessing species responses to climate change points to profound changes in forest composition, and species richness at multiple scales."

Flavia Costa, Professor at INPA (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia) in Brazil, added "This study underscores the uneven impacts of climate change on tree diversity across different tropical forests, highlighting the need for specific monitoring and conservation efforts in each region."

Professor Oliver Phillips from the University of Leeds, who leads the pan-Amazon RAINFOR network, emphasised the significant threat posed by deforestation: "Our findings stress the vital links between preserving forests, protecting biodiversity, and fighting climate change. It is especially critical to protect remaining forests where the Amazon meets the Andes. Only if they stay standing can they offer a long-term home to species in adjacent lowlands.”

The research team plans to continue their work to better understand the impacts of climate change on tropical tree diversity.  

Dr Fadrique added: “Future studies will focus on complex compositional questions, including the taxonomic and functional identities of species being lost or recruited, and whether this points to a large-scale process of homogenisation within the Andes-Amazon region”

The work was an international collaboration involving more than 160 researchers from 20 countries with many contributions coming from South American universities and partners. It benefited from the support of large research collectives, including RAINFOR, Red de Bosques Andinos, the Madidi Project, and the PPBio network.

The paper, titled "Tree Diversity is Changing Across Tropical Andean and Amazonian Forests in Response to Global Change", is available in Nature Ecology and Evolution: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-025-02956-5

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Journal

Nature Ecology & Evolution

Article Publication Date

23-Jan-2026