Scientists just found something weird inside moss

Tiny desert plants may have unexpected fungal roommates

University of California - Riverside

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​Moss collected at the Anza-Borrego Research Station. Tiny features help researchers identify the species. 

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Credit: Kian Kelly/UCR

Mosses are survivors. They can dry into what looks like green dust, only to spring back to life minutes after rain. They can grow on rocks, in deserts, and there’s talk of using them to terraform Mars someday. According to new research, mosses have also been hiding something.

UC Riverside researchers studying desert mosses have found evidence, presented in the journal New Phytologist, that these ancient plants may host fungi inside their tissues. This relationship has not previously been documented. 

If confirmed, the finding could rewrite what we know about moss biology and even offer clues about how plants first colonized land roughly 470 million years ago.

More than 85% of land plants partner with fungi that help plants pull nutrients from soil in exchange for sugars made through photosynthesis. Around three-quarters of plants team up with a well-known fungal group called arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, or AMF. Mosses, however? For decades, scientists have believed all 10,000 species were loners.

“That’s been the model,” said Jason Stajich, a UCR professor of microbiology and plant pathology and co-author of the study. Mosses, he explained, simply didn’t need fungi.

Investigating the accuracy of this model, UCR doctoral researcher Kian Kelly visited scorching landscapes in the Mojave and Sonoran deserts, where temperatures climb over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. There he found strange living communities called biological soil crusts that consist of fungi, bacteria, algae, mosses, and even microscopic animals.

“Sometimes I couldn’t find the same species of moss,” Kelly explained, describing long stretches of wandering through extreme heat trying to collect matching species in the desert and less arid climates for comparison purposes. The authors were curious whether differences in climate might cause differences in fungal communities found inside of the mosses. This could help predict the effects of climate change on mosses as aridity increases in drylands. 

Back in the lab, researchers ground up moss samples and searched for DNA from fungi living inside them. And they found it. In particular, they were surprised to find mycorrhizal fungi, which cannot survive without a plant partner. 

But the fungi inside desert moss was not the same as the fungi found inside moss grown in less harsh conditions.

"We suspect that certain fungi are more helpful for surviving hotter, drier climates," Kelly said.

The fungal species inside the mosses also did not match what the researchers found in the surrounding dirt. That suggested the fungi weren’t random contamination or freeloaders munching dead plant tissue. Instead, something more deliberate might be going on.

But DNA alone isn’t enough to prove fungi are actually living in a plant. So, Kelly turned to microscopy.
One night, after staining moss tissue with a blue dye that sticks specifically to fungi, he peered through a microscope and spotted branching fungal structures inside moss cells.

“As soon as I saw that, I knew we had something really interesting,” Kelly said.

The fungal structures looked a lot like arbuscules, which are tiny tree-shaped formations fungi normally build inside plant roots to swap nutrients. Except mosses don’t have roots. In this case, the structures appeared in moss leaves. The researchers call them “arbuscule-like” because they’re not quite the same as the textbook versions seen in other plants. Future studies will need to show whether nutrients are moving between mosses and fungi before anyone can officially call the relationship a true symbiosis.

Still, if the partnership turns out to be real, it could help scientists more fully understand the origins of life on this planet. Mosses are closely related to some of Earth’s earliest land plants, meaning this discovery might offer a glimpse into the kinds of alliances that helped life crawl out of ancient oceans and survive on dry land in the first place.

The findings may also open new avenues for the restoration of damaged landscapes. Many desert mosses are essential parts of soil crusts that are increasingly threatened by warming temperatures and human disturbances. A single footprint can take decades to heal. If fungi help mosses survive heat, drought, or climate stress, researchers think the relationship could someday inspire ways to boost struggling desert habitats.

For now, the discovery serves as a reminder that the smallest patches of life may hold big secrets.

“The desert,” Kelly said, “is full of things people overlook. Sometimes, the biggest surprises are the ones growing quietly beneath our feet.”

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Photos show moss's ability to spring back to life with exposure to moisture. Same species on both sides. 

Credit

Kian Kelly/UCR

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Journal

New Phytologist

DOI

10.1111/nph.71211 

Article Title

Novel Glomeromycotina–moss associations identified in California dryland biocrusts

 

New study led by South African scientists reveals how sea-ice microbes survive the Southern Ocean’s harsh winter, with implications for climate change

This study further reinforces the importance of the Southern Ocean marginal ice zone as a critical hotspot for global sulfur cycling where biogeochemical processes for climate regulation are enhanced.

Stellenbosch University

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The samples for the study were collected during the Southern Ocean Seasonal Experiment (SCALE) austral winter expedition on board the SA Agulhas II polar research vessel from 11 to 22 July 2022.

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Credit: Dr Mayi Buthelezi

A study led by South African scientists reveal that during winter the sea-ice around Antarctica harbors a reservoir of microbes of which most have one thing in common – the ability to produce and breakdown a compound known to protect organisms in extreme environments.

The compound, known as DMSP (dimethylsulfoniopropionate), is one of Earth’s most abundant organic sulfur compounds in the marine environment. Apart from its ability to protect organisms against environmental stressors, its degradation yields dimethylsulfide (DMS) and methanethiol (MeSH) which are important climate-cooling gases.

In polar regions, however, the role of DMSP remains understudied. In the case of the Southern Ocean, sea ice has until recently been considered an inhospitable environment whose microbial communities contribute little to the ecology of the polar region.

In a new study published in Nature Communications today (18 June 2026), scientists reveal up to 38-fold higher DMSP concentrations in Southern Ocean sea-ice versus the surrounding seawaters during the Southern Ocean austral winter. This finding matters because at its maximum in September, the ice extends to cover about 20 million km2 encircling the Antarctic continent in a 400 to 1 900-km wide ring of ice.

The study was led by scientists from Stellenbosch University in South Africa, in collaboration with scientists from the United Kingdom and Italy.

Southern Ocean sea-ice a reservoir of DMSP

Dr Mayi Buthelezi, a marine microbiologist from Stellenbosch University and first author on the paper, says their findings reveal that Antarctic sea ice is a concentrated reservoir of DMSP.

“Together with these high concentrations of DMSP, we also found an abundance of algal marker genes which are encoding for DMSP production, as well as diverse and previously unidentified bacterial producers. These processes are central to sustaining the ecological and physiological adaptions of microorganism in these extreme environments,” he explains.

Their findings reveal the widespread metabolic pathways for DMSP cycling in Southern Ocean sea ice microbes. It further underscores the role of this seemingly uninhabitable environment as a dynamic reservoir and transformation hub influencing climate-cooling cycles in the polar region.

Prof. Thulani Makhalanyane, holder of the South African research chair in African Microbiome Innovation at SU and senior author, says their findings contribute to our understanding of the role of the Southern Ocean in terms of global nutrient cycles and climate control.

“The specific contributions of microbial communities to Earth systems remain underappreciated. Until now we have just basically tried to describe what types of microorganisms are in the Southern Ocean, and how they differ from those that are found in other marine ecosystems that are not limited in trace elements such as iron and manganese.

“With this study we show how microbial communities are contributing to the recycling of important sulfur-related compounds with important contributions in climate cooling. Now we need to find ways to add these microbial communities as components to Earth system models to aid in predictions,” he explains.

Dr Stéphane Pesant, co-author and senior marine data curator at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) in the United Kingdom, says the results of this study contributed key knowledge to the research and innovation project AtlantECO (Atlantic ECOsystems assessment, forecasting and sustainability), a collaboration between scientists in South Africa, Brazil and Europe.

“With the recent expansion of data infrastructures, bioinformatics skills and artificial intelligence, we are starting to exploit a treasure trove of historical data, and to identify important gaps in the geographic coverage of those observations. This study contributes to fill those gaps,” she adds.

Sampling the Southern Ocean in winter

The samples for the study were collected during the Southern Ocean Seasonal Experiment (SCALE) austral winter expedition on board the SA Agulhas II polar research vessel from 11 to 22 July 2022. During austral winter, the Southern Ocean sea ice expands far to its northern boundary. Coupled with some of the strongest winds on the planet, it is very difficult to access this region at this time to collect samples. That is why this type of data is of disproportionally high value (compared to an overrepresentation of data collected during summer).

Dr Buthelezi, who participated in this expedition, says his first objective was to determine the structure, composition and abundance of microorganisms during this time of year. But it soon became clear that he would also need to understand the ecological significance of finding such high concentrations of DMSP in this environment.

“Although DMSP production is exclusive to some microbial groups, the process is not metabolically expensive,” he explains. “Under stressful conditions, when organisms cannot afford to spend excessive energy for growth, they express metabolic pathways for either intercellular synthesis or extracellular import of DMSP as a buffering mechanism to survive. At the same time, DMSP is a vital source of carbon and sulfur for microorganisms, which further explain the multifaceted roles of DMSP within microbes trapped in sea ice.”

Elevated DMSP production in sea ice compared to seawater is clearly supported by metagenomic data showing enrichment of genes capable for DMSP synthesis. The results further show enhanced microbial demand for DMSP as an antistress in freezing and hypersaline environments of the sea ice. In sea water, the high abundance of genes for DMSP degradation compared to those for production shows that in this relatively less stressful environment microbes also disproportionately utilise DMSP as a sulfur and carbon source.

Altogether, the presence of DMSP cycling pathways in seawater and sea ice are sufficient markers for the production of the volatile climate-cooling gases dimethylsulfide and methanethiol. This study further reinforces the importance of the Southern Ocean marginal ice zone as a critical hotspot for global sulfur cycling where biogeochemical processes for climate regulation are enhanced.

Did you know

• The sea-ice ecosyste is an extreme, low temperature environment with internal temperatures perpetually subzero, ranging from minus 1 degrees Celcius to minus 20 degrees Celcius in winter.
• At its maximum extent in wintertime, the ice extends to cover about 20 million km2 encircling the Antarctic continent in a 400-1,900-km wide ring of ice.
• Microbial communities are central to primary and secondary production of the global ocean, including the Southern Ocean. In this environment they are essential for nearly half of the atmospheric carbon uptake and nutrient recycling which is important for Earth’s climate system.

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Sampling in pancake sea-ice from the SA Agulhus II [VIDEO] 

Various video clips of sampling in the Southern Ocean from aboard the research vessel the SA Agulhas II.

Credit

Dr Mayi Buthelezi

Dr Mayi Buthelezi, a marine microbiologist from Stellenbosch University, collecting sea ice core samples from the Southern Ocean in July 2022.

Credit

Prof. Oliver Mogase

Close-up of pancake sea ice [VIDEO] | 

Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-026-73596-x 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Dimethylsulfoniopropionate metabolism shapes microbial ecology and physiological adaptation during the austral winter in Southern Ocean sea ice and seawater

Article Publication Date

18-Jun-2026

 

Climate change is now causing more local extinction in temperate regions than the tropics, surprising study shows

A global study of more than 5,100 species of plants and animals challenges long-held assumptions about which species are most threatened by climate change.

University of Arizona

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While many tropical species such as this Asian Tree Frog are threatened by climate change, species in temperate regions are affected by local extinction to an even greater degree, according to the new study.  

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Credit: John Wiens

Imagine returning to a favorite hiking trail 15 years after your first visit and discovering that many of the plants and animals that once lived there are gone. While these species may still exist elsewhere, these disappearances – known as local extinctions – are among the clearest signs that climate change is already transforming ecosystems and threatening species across the globe.

University of Arizona researchers compared local extinctions from recent climate change among more than 5,100 plant and animal species from around the world, including hundreds of species of moths and beetles, hundreds of fishes and birds, many mammals, frogs, salamanders, and lizards, and almost 3,000 species of plants.

In the study published in Nature Climate Change, the researchers found that 49% of temperate species experienced local extinction at the hottest parts of their ranges, compared with only 33% of tropical species.

The research drew on repeated biodiversity surveys from nearly 40,000 sites worldwide, allowing them to compare historical records with resurveys conducted years or decades later, making it the largest analysis of climate-driven local extinctions conducted to date.

"For decades, scientists generally believed that temperate species were less vulnerable to climate change," said Gopal Murali, the lead author of the paper and former postdoctoral scholar at the University of Arizona. "We were surprised by our results, which showed that was not the case."

These results were consistent across many different groups of organisms, including insects, vertebrates, plants, and marine and freshwater species.

"I actually published a study of 976 species in 2016 using the same type of data that showed the exact opposite pattern, with more local extinction among tropical species," said John Wiens, senior author of the paper and a professor in the University of Arizona Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in the College of Science. "That's part of why we were so surprised."

To understand the unexpected pattern, the researchers analyzed multiple climate-related factors, including long-term warming trends, rainfall changes, drought conditions and heat waves across global sites. They also excluded sites that may have been affected by non-climatic stressors, such as deforestation.

The researchers found one main explanation for the pattern: temperate regions are warming faster than tropical regions.

"The world has changed since 2016," Wiens said. "There's been more heating in the temperate zone, especially at higher latitudes, and it's possible that the pattern has simply flipped in recent decades, and that helps explain the reversal in findings. For animals, we did not find that tropical extinctions were less common than we thought before. Instead, we found that temperate extinctions had outpaced tropical extinctions."

The researchers found that the maximum increase in temperature over a 25-year period was approximately 3.3 degrees Fahrenheit in tropical regions. In temperate regions, the maximum increase was about 6 degrees Fahrenheit – nearly twice as much.

The team also examined how species responded to warming in each region. For decades, scientists believed that tropical species would be especially vulnerable to climate change due to their physiology. Because tropical species evolved under relatively stable temperatures year-round, they were thought to have less tolerance for temperature changes than temperate species, which experience greater seasonal temperature variation.

"While faster warming in temperate regions appears to be the primary driver of local extinctions, we also found that temperate species are at least as sensitive to rising temperatures as tropical species," Murali said.

The observed local extinctions do not necessarily mean that the entire species went extinct, but they do show that the populations cannot survive the changing environmental conditions. Similar losses across a species' range can lead to extinction of the whole species.

"People often think that a species will simply move into cooler areas as the climate warms, but we found that more than 70% of the species were not doing so," said Wiens. "Essentially, the life and death of the majority of species may be determined by these local extinctions and whether local populations can survive in place or not."

For some species, moving to cooler habitat may not even be possible. Animals may be unable to cross highways, cities, or other developed landscapes, while fish and other aquatic species are often confined to specific lakes and rivers. On mountains, species can continue moving uphill as temperatures rise, but many may simply run out of mountain.

On some mountains, such as Mount Lemmon near Tucson, people can see the dead trunks of tree species that used to thrive at lower elevations that now only occur at higher elevations, said Wiens.

The study also revealed important differences in the patterns of extinction within tropical and temperate species. In tropical regions, climate-related local extinctions were concentrated at the warmest parts of each species' range. In temperate regions, however, populations often disappeared in many locations throughout the species' ranges.

"In the past, we have been laser-focused on the warmest areas," said Wiens. "But it turns out that nowhere is really safe for populations of many temperate species."

Across all species included in the study, researchers found that 45% had gone locally extinct at the warmest part of the region where they were previously found. For many groups, that number exceeded 50%, including insects, terrestrial vertebrates, and marine species.

The findings could have important implications for conservation planning. For years, tropical species were widely considered to face the greatest risks from climate change. While the new study does not suggest that tropical species are safe, it does indicate that temperate species may be in greater danger than previously recognized.

The researchers emphasized that the study is not based on projections of future impacts. Instead, it documents real biological changes that have already occurred.

"People often think climate change is something that will affect species in the future," said Murali. "But for both tropical and temperate species, we're already seeing the effects. The patterns we documented show that biodiversity is already changing in ways we are still working to understand."

 

A European fire salamander (Salamandra salamandra), one of the temperate species included in the study that has experienced climate-related local extinctions. 

Credit

John Wiens

 

This dead alligator juniper (Juniperus deppeana) from near Bisbee, Arizona is one of the temperate species included in the study that has experienced climate-related local extinctions. 

Credit

John Wiens

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Journal

Nature Climate Change

DOI

10.1038/s41558-026-02669-y 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Temperate local extinctions from climate change are outpacing tropical extinctions

Article Publication Date

18-Jun-2026

Op-Ed


Is Affordability a Climate Issue? Philadelphia Hunger Strikers Said Yes.

A recent hunger strike in Philadelphia demonstrated the expanding scope of environmental justice organizing.

By Andrew Lee , 

Truthout

June 15, 2026

Cherelle Parker is seen during her first press conference after winning the Democratic nomination for mayor in Philadelphia on May 22, 2023, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.Gilbert Carrasquillo / GC Images

On May 21, activists with the Philadelphia chapter of the youth-led environmental justice group Sunrise Movement began a protracted hunger strike, vowing to starve themselves until Mayor Cherelle Parker committed to spending an extraordinary $1.19 billion municipal budget surplus on community programs. They were demanding investments in renewable energy alongside demands not traditionally associated with the environmental justice movement, including affordable housing, food justice, and increased funding for rec centers and public libraries.

When the activists began planning the campaign, called Make Philly Affordable, last December, they knew they needed broadly popular demands to win the support of working-class Philadelphians. To develop the campaign’s seven demands, Sunrise Movement activists assembled a de facto coalition comprising a broad swathe of local progressive groups including economic justice, racial justice, education, and transit equity organizations. As the hunger strike entered its second week, Brit Christopher from the Good Energy Collaborative at Swarthmore College and Seth Anderson-Oberman of Reclaim Philadelphia, which emerged from Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign, joined as participants.

“The climate crisis compels us to act now and our cities need to be prepared. Our city is going to need to make sure that they are adequately preparing for the most devastating impacts of the planetary crisis,” Sunrise Philly hunger striker Giavanna Troilo told Truthout.

Sunrise Movement Philly’s members aren’t the only green activists pushing the boundaries of the environmental justice movement amid worsening climate catastrophe, accelerating authoritarianism, and international war.

In New York, Sunrise Movement activists confronted Sen. Chuck Schumer over his links to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “AIPAC has corrupted our democracy and bought off our politicians,” the Sunrise Movement wrote in a post, “and working people are paying the price.” In Los Angeles, Sunrise Movement members participated in a mass direct action to protest Home Depot’s collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as part of the Boycott Home Depot Coalition. Last year, the group formally expanded its mandate to include combatting authoritarianism. At the same time, Sunrise was labeled a “pro-terror group” by the far right Capital Research Center.


Sunrise Movement activists assembled a de facto coalition comprising a broad swathe of local progressive groups including economic justice, racial justice, education, and transit equity organizations.

Noted climate activist Greta Thunberg made international news when she sailed on the June 2025 Gaza Freedom Flotilla. The following year’s flotilla received operation support from Greenpeace’s vessel the Arctic Sunrise. Thunberg explained that “there is no way of distinguishing” between her climate activism and her pro-Palestine activism.

“No matter what the cause of the suffering is, whether that is CO2, whether that is bombs, whether that is state repression or other forms of violence,” Thunberg told Democracy Now!, “we have to stand up against that source of suffering.”

White Skin, Green Masks

Contemporary environmental activists are framing social justice as central to their work in a way that some storied environmentalists of the past would have found incomprehensible. U.S. environmental politics, both reformist and radical, have a fraught history when it comes to racial justice in particular.

John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, celebrated Indigenous people being “dead or civilized into useless innocence.” Almost eight decades later, a Sierra Club official would found the anti-immigrant hate group Federation for American Immigration Reform. Edward Abbey, author of the iconic eco-saboteur novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, fretted over non-white birth rates while confessing that he “certainly [did] not wish to live in a society dominated by blacks, or Mexicans, or Orientals.” Dave Foreman, co-founder of the radical environmentalist group Earth First!, militated against legal immigration and went so far as to argue for letting the victims of the Ethiopian famine of the mid-1980s starve.

A 2019 study found that leading environmental NGOs remain disproportionately white, including 96 percent of senior staff at environmental foundations. Meanwhile, the U.S. climate justice movement, especially at the grassroots, has steadily incorporated social, economic, and racial justice as integral elements of its work.

In 1991, the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit adopted 17 Principles of Environmental Justice, including “the fundamental right to political, economic, cultural and environmental self-determination of all peoples.” The 1996 Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing, ratified at a meeting of 40 activists hosted by the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice, called for social movements to practice a pervasive inclusivity that “requires more than tokenism.”

By the time of the alter-globalization movement in the late 1990s, radical environmentalists were working alongside labor activists, Indigenous organizers, and anarchist militants, a coalition whose heterogeneity is echoed in the broad Make Philly Affordable demands of today’s hunger strikers. Thousands of environmental activists joined members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in an attempt to halt construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016, with the water protectors’ struggle and the broader #NoDAPL campaign drawing a clear connection between tribal sovereignty and environmental justice.

Against Apocalypse

The co-mingling of environmental and social justice demands has only grown stronger with the rise of U.S. authoritarianism, the unprovoked U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, and the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

“The U.S. military is the greatest carbon polluter that we have globally,” Philadelphia hunger striker Giavanna Troilo told Truthout. “The U.S. military is the climate crisis. The U.S. military is committing genocide as well as ecocide, and they are one and the same.” An analysis by the Climate & Community Institute found that the first two weeks of the U.S. war on Iran created over 5 million tons of carbon dioxide, more than was generated by the entire country of Iceland in 2024. Meanwhile, the dramatic increase in ICE deportation flights has released hundreds of thousands of metric tons of greenhouse gases as well.

The Trump administration has gutted the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with one former EPA policy adviser opining that it ought to now stand for the “Environmental Pollution Agency.” In April 2025, Trump issued an executive order to revitalize the “beautiful, clean” domestic coal industry through sweeping deregulatory efforts across the federal government. This January, the United States’s (second) withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement went into effect. Scientists expect the climate to warm by more than 2.6°C by the end of the century, with catastrophic implications including agriculture failure, ecosystem collapse, severe flooding, and lethal heat. The authoritarian right has fully committed to an end-times fascism of “monstrous, supremacist survivalism,” while Democrats in opposition have largely abandoned even referencing climate change.

“There is no serious way to think about stopping the climate crisis under a fascist government. The path to climate lies through getting rid of the authoritarian government we’re in,” said Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the Sunrise Movement.

U.S. activists aren’t alone in drawing the connections between authoritarianism and climate collapse. In 2025, a European network called The Surge launched combined demonstrations with environmental, anti-fascist, and anti-war organizations in 33 cities. “We have the climate crisis, the rise of fascism and the far right throughout the world, and the rise of wars and the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people,” said network spokesperson Leonor Canadas. “Right now, the movements opposing these things are losing, and if we are to change the pathway on which we’re headed, we must come together.”

“There’s fascism and the apocalypse, and on the other side there’s utopia and organizing,” said Philadelphia hunger striker Erica Brown. “The result of these fascists, the result of these authors of the apocalypse, is our world being destroyed. So anybody who is an organizer needs to know that those are the stakes.”

Brown described feeling as committed and resolved as ever when she spoke to Truthout on the 17th day of her hunger strike, three days after being rushed to the hospital and released. Brown fasted until June 11, the longest of any of the hunger strikers, before calling off the nonviolent direct action once the City Council voted to pass the next fiscal year’s budget without the social programs insisted upon by activists. She believes that the Make Philly Affordable campaign is nonetheless just beginning, having already succeeded in heightening tensions between City Council and the Mayor’s office, demonstrating the nondemocratic nature of traditional municipal politics, and cohering a new, diverse coalition of social justice organizations with shared goals.

“This is a fight,” Brown said, “that’s for the rest of our lives.”


This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Andrew Lee is the author of Defying Displacement: Urban Recomposition and Social War from AK Press. His work has been published in outlets including Teen Vogue, Yes! Magazine, and The New Inquiry.

Bonn Conference Confirms Climate Action Impossible Unless Corporate Capture of UN Process Ends

“A climate process that remains vulnerable to obstruction and corporate influence cannot deliver the action this crisis demands,” said one group.


Delegates take part in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Mid-Year Subsidiary Bodies meetings, or SB64, in Bonn, Germany on June 8, 2026.
(Photo by LDC Group on Climate Change/Facebook)

Brett Wilkins
Jun 18, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

As international climate talks backed by the United Nations wrapped up Thursday in Bonn, Germany, campaigners stressed that policymakers must do more to curb the influence of polluting industries if such negotiations are going to have any hope of helping the world bring the fossil fuel era to an end.

The Bonn climate talks—officially the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Mid-Year Subsidiary Bodies meetings, or SB64—serve as a technical and diplomatic staging ground for the next UN Climate Change Conference, or COP31, which is scheduled to take place in Antalya, Türkiye this November.

With current national climate pledges remaining far from what’s needed to limit planetary warming to 1.5°C—the increasingly moribund target at the heart of the Paris Climate Agreement—experts and campaigners are taking aim at the UNFCCC’s reliance on consensus-based decision-making, which allows a handful of fossil fuel-producing nations and the oil, gas, and coal industries to block ambitious climate action and weaken international agreements.

“At the climate talks in Bonn, States failed to make meaningful progress and pushed back on already established agreements, exposing a critical truth: Climate justice should not be vetoed, and reform of the UNFCCC is needed to enable climate action at the speed and scale the crisis demands,” Lien Vandamme, senior campaigner at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), said in a statement Thursday.

Vandamme added that “effective multilateralism is the only way out of the climate crisis, and this process does not live up to that expectation.”

Rallying under a “Friends of Science” banner, dozens of nations are calling out coordinated attacks by fossil fuel producers and the oil, gas, and coal industries on science that threatens their economic prospects.

“We see coordinated efforts to cast doubt on the best available science driven by a narrow set of interests, not by the needs of our people,” lead Panamanian negotiator Ana Aguilar said during a Wednesday press conference.

“We have seen this playbook before,” she added. “Manufacture doubt, delay the response, and let the vulnerable people pay this bill.”

Lead Fijian negotiator Sivendra Michael put it more bluntly, telling reporters, “Anyone that is blocking references to science—they are not our friends.”

There has been some progress. As CIEL noted:
It is encouraging that, after more than three decades, the UNFCCC has begun to acknowledge concerns around the corporate capture of the process. The open dialogue on transparency and integrity that happened in Bonn represents an important—but long overdue—step towards addressing the influence of polluting industries in the climate negotiations. This dialogue must be the start toward a meaningful, comprehensive policy to address corporate capture of climate negotiations. A climate process that remains vulnerable to obstruction and corporate influence cannot deliver the action this crisis demands.

Erika Lennon, CIEL’s senior attorney, pointed to April’s First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia, as a hopeful sign. The Santa Marta conference, which was free of major polluters like the United States, China, Russia, and India, took aim at what climate defenders called the “shamefully weak” draft text—called the Multirão Decision—produced at last November’s COP30 in Brazil. The final document removed all mentions of fossil fuels amid pressure from oil and gas-producing nations like the United States, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, and the presence of a record number of industry lobbyists.

“The Santa Marta Conference demonstrated that a fossil fuel phaseout is not out of reach,” Lennon said Thursday. “But Bonn showed that the institutions meant to deliver that accountability remain constrained by outdated rules and undue influence from polluting interests.”

“We need effective multilateralism and an effective climate regime, not one that is incapable of delivering accountability or tackling the root cause of the climate crisis, fossil fuels, at the speed and scale the crisis demands,” she added. “As attention turns to COP31, governments must confront the structural barriers that continue to delay meaningful action, from consensus rules that allow a small number of states to block progress, to the absence of robust safeguards against conflicts of interest, or violations of the rights of meaningful participation of representatives from climate-vulnerable communities.”

Nations allege ‘attacks’ on science at key climate talks

AFP
June 17, 2026

Delegates representing the EU, Switzerland and dozens of developing nations accused some countries of undermining the scientific consensus on global warming at climate negotiations underway in the German city of Bonn – Copyright AFP/File ANDRE PAIN

Crucial negotiations ahead of the COP31 summit have been frustrated by a “small group of fossil fuels interests” attacking the science of climate change behind closed doors, envoys said Wednesday.

Delegates representing the EU, Switzerland and dozens of developing nations accused some countries of undermining the scientific consensus on global warming at climate negotiations due to conclude on Thursday in Bonn, Germany.

“There are powerful interests desperate to protect their wealth and influence,” said Fiji’s head of delegation Sivendra Michael, flanked by supporters in T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “Science is Not Negotiable”.

“We are seeing certain countries holding the process hostage as vulnerable people suffer heat stress, and king tides and storms, drought and famine,” he said.

Bonn is where texts are drafted and differences narrowed ahead of the decisions taken by political leaders at the UN-sponsored COP31 climate talks which are due to start November 9 in Antalya, Turkey.

The preparatory talks had seen “coordinated attacks across the negotiation rooms by the small number of fossil fuel interests”, said Manjeet Dhakal, an adviser to the 44-nation Least Developed Countries bloc.

These countries had tried to remove references to the IPCC — the UN’s expert scientific panel on climate change — and the need to limit warming to 1.5C in draft texts under negotiation, Michael said.

– Pressure for delay –

No country was singled out by name.

But oil-rich Saudi Arabia had opposed language expressing concern about the El Nino weather pattern and requesting the IPCC provide regular updates on climate science, reported the independent Earth Negotiations Bulletin.

India suggested deleting any reference to “irreversible changes”, added the bulletin, which tracks UN treaty negotiations and is permitted to observe talks not generally open to journalists or the public.

Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich states have been accused of frustrating climate action by exploiting the consensus-based process by which the UN-sponsored Conference of the Parties summits are governed.

India, Saudi Arabia and China have pushed for the publication of the IPCC’s next major climate assessment to be delayed by a year until 2029, a move opposed by the EU among others.

“The EU calls on all parties to uphold science, support the IPCC and promote information integrity here in Bonn and beyond,” said Demetris Psyllides, a representative for the 27-nation European Union.

Scientists say keeping global warming as close as possible to 1.5C relative to pre-industrial levels is essential to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

That limit was agreed by nearly 200 nations in the Paris Agreement of 2015 but could be breached by 2030.

On Tuesday, the chair and chief negotiator of the Alliance of Small Island States said she was “extremely troubled by the attempts to delink and undermine the best available science” at Bonn.

Samoan diplomat Anne Rasmussen urged all countries to “stop playing games. Do not abandon your commitment to the 1.5C goal”.