Since the 1970s, categorical exclusions (CEs) within the National Environmental Policy Act have applied only to activities that have been consistently and scientifically reported to not have a significant effect on the environment. The thinning of forest and woodland density of areas up to 5,000 acres, a significant increase from the current 70 acre limit, would undoubtedly have a significant impact on the environment, as demonstrated by the large repertoire of scientific research highlighting the critical role of forests in storing atmospheric carbon. Furthermore, the forest ecosystem has become increasingly vulnerable to wildfire due to human activity and climate change. Wildfires present extreme threats to human health, with over 15,000 deaths being attributed to wildfire particulate matter over the last 15 years. Even without any major escalation in the deterioration of our forests, the scale and impact of wildfire smoke on human health is projected to increase.
Altered fire regimes based on the principles of wildfire suppression, which this proposed revision uses in its justification, do not recognize the natural benefit of fire and have been shown to exacerbate fire-associated emissions. With such a critical issue at hand, the consultation of scientists and local communities is imperative, which is not reflected in this proposal. Thus, Woodwell strongly opposes the broadening of this CE for the Bureau of Land Management.
Scientific Objection to the Categorical Exclusion for Forest and Woodland Density Management
The proposed revision of this CE is based on the strategy of mechanical thinning. However, there is little to no scientific evidence concluding that the act of mechanical thinning alone universally lessens the risk of wildfire, as integrated fire management strategies are extremely dependent on the context of the ecosystem in which it is deployed. Woodwell research has found that without tailoring the wildfire strategies to their specific environment and pairing it with other more traditional wildfire management methods, these actions may have adverse consequences.
Under conditions of increased temperatures, which would be further amplified by increased carbon emissions driven by deforestation, burned area is expected to increase. With the incredible danger that wildfires pose to human safety, any actions that may degrade natural ecosystems and amplify wildfire impacts must be coupled with extensive environmental review, not the absence of such. By foregoing environmental review through the expansion of this CE, the Federal government is inviting the potential to further endanger our forest ecosystems and the lives of Americans.
The Critical Role of Forests in Carbon Sequestration
The proposed rule fails to recognize the integral role that forests play in carbon sequestration. BLM forests contain about 8 million acres of old growth and 13 million acres of mature forest – about ⅔ of the total area of BLM forest. Mature and old-growth forests, with their much older and larger trees, hold more carbon. Mature and old-growth forests are also more resilient and adaptive in the face of disturbances such as wildfires, which makes them a high priority for environmental protection. It is hard to imagine that these carbon-dense ecosystems would be excluded from logging under the proposed CE.
Woodwell researchers have also found that even beyond the cooling effects of sequestered carbon, forests provide biophysical cooling effects on a local and global scale. This unique quality promotes local climate stability, reducing extreme temperatures year round.
Since 2001, forest fire carbon emissions have increased by 60%. It is projected that by mid-century, wildfires in the northern region of North America would alone contribute to a cumulative net source of nearly 12 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide emissions into our atmosphere, further exacerbating temperatures and subsequent wildfire ignitions.
Impacts on Climate Resilience and Risk Mitigation
While the proposal argues that expanding forest thinning will reduce wildfires, scientific research has frequently called on officials to implement natural climate solutions to increase ecosystem resilience and limit climatic threats such as wildfire.
Fire is a natural and integrally important process in the life cycle of our forest ecosystems. Woodwell scientists study and promote traditional methods of fire management of local and indigenous peoples who recognize the environmental benefits of fire via prescribed burns. Trained professionals can employ these tactics of prescribed or controlled burns to reduce the build up of natural fuels, benefiting plants and wildlife by recycling the carbon back to the earth.
Conversely, we have found that more modern fire suppression tactics have led to oversuppression, contributing to the buildup of dry fuel on the forest floor. Combined with the ever warming temperatures destabilizing atmospheric conditions, increasingly frequent lightning strikes ignite these more flammable forests.
regular fires to periodically clear out this fuel, the land has become more vulnerable to intense and widespread fires. Woodwell is especially concerned with the proposed expansion of the CE of forest and woodland density as it relies on the tactic of mechanical thinning and strives for wildfire suppression, thus risking increased rates of wildfire. In order to properly manage fires in a way that creates a healthier and safer environment, fire management must utilize fire itself.
The proposed revision’s emphasis on mechanical thinning and logging also raises concerns regarding human impact. Anthropogenic influences such as population density, a human footprint index, and roadless volume all have significant statistical correlations to fire occurrence. Previous actions, such as the rescission of the 2001 Roadless Rule, have already demonstrated the harm that logging and other commercial activities pose to forests. Recent research has shown that roads increase the likelihood of wildfire ignitions because human activities are the most common cause of wildfire; once an area becomes accessible, the probability of wildfire increases. The massive expansion from 70 acres to 5,000 acres eligible for the CE of forest and woodland density would only incite more logging activities and the
acceleration of associated fire occurrence.
Lastly, this announcement fails to elaborate on the “additional tool” which it claims will assist decision-makers in planning areas to implement fuel treatments. Without a demonstrated and sound scientific basis for this tool, the likelihood that project decisions will reflect consideration of forest values beyond timber production is cast into doubt.
Conclusion
The proposed expansion of the Categorical Exclusion rejects scientific evidence and prioritizes logging activities over the safety of American citizens. Woodwell urges the Department of the Interior to:
- Integrate the implementation of prescribed or controlled burns to lessen excess vegetation in wildfire mitigation, as opposed to suppressing fires and building flammable materials.
- Engage and consult with local communities to create collaborative and tailored fire management strategies based on the particular ecosystem in which they will be deployed.
- Provide details about the “additional tool” that will assist in designating fuel treatment areas, specifically its scientific basis and values.
- Evaluate each project for the impact of estimated carbon emissions on the broader environment.
- Maintain the CE of 70 acres for tree and woodland density so as to minimize forest disturbances and build ecosystem resilience to wildfire at minimum. Ideally, perform environmental assessments under NEPA for all projects regardless of size.
Woodwell Climate Research Center urges the Council on Environmental Quality to reconsider aspects of this Categorical Exclusion to ensure that the pursuit of efficiency does not compromise the scientific rigor and comprehensive scope necessary for effective environmental review under NEPA. Accelerating logging activities and forest deterioration via inappropriate thinning will only amplify the wildfire risk that this proposal claims to address. It is imperative that the Bureau of Land Management’s NEPA implementing procedures facilitate, rather than hinder, the full consideration of environmental impacts, cumulative effects, and health of our citizens.
In a new joint “Feeding Resilience” report, the Center for Climate and Security, an institute of the Council on Strategic Risks, along with the Woodwell Climate Research Center, shows that climate change is sharply increasing the risk of crop failures in global breadbaskets, which would pose serious threats to Europe, the NATO alliance, and global stability, at a moment of multiple geopolitical shocks. In India and Europe, for example, climate change in the next decade and a half is set to increase the chance of key crops failing by between two- and six-fold. This rising risk comes as the world is already facing severe food shocks due to the wars in Iran and Ukraine, and is entering into a potentially unprecedented El Niño season. The report offers a range of policy recommendations to address this major risk.
The report, Global Breadbaskets: Food System Resilience as a Strategic Imperative, draws on a range of global crop models to assess the growing risk of climate-driven agricultural failures in ”key producers of wheat, maize, and rice” like Europe and India, and examines the cascading geopolitical consequences of a world in which multiple breadbaskets fail at once.
The lead author on the report, Tom Ellison, Deputy Director of the Center for Climate and Security, stated: “We have plenty of examples of how crop failures can contribute to political instability, from the French Revolution to the Arab Spring. In today’s environment, global breadbasket failures could strain NATO priorities, prompt unrest in key countries, and upend trade relationships. Amid climate change, geopolitical uncertainty, food shocks from the war in Iran, and Russian hybrid warfare, investing in a resilient food system isn’t in competition with security–it’s a key part of it.”
Co-author of the report, Noah Fritzhand, Research Fellow at the Center for Climate and Security, added: “With the implementation of NATO’s updated baseline resilience requirements come July and adoption of the EU’s new integrated framework for climate resilience later in 2026, member countries have an opportunity to prioritize investments in resilient food systems, at home and abroad, that can both limit exposure to climate risks and meet Europe’s strategic goals.”
Dr. Alexandra Naegele, co-author of the report and Research Scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center, noted: “Climate change doesn’t just threaten crop yields and grain quality—it destabilizes entire food systems, from labor and livestock to food storage and transport. These impacts are colliding with a powerful El Niño taking shape, which is expected to weaken the monsoon, trigger heatwaves, and reduce rainfall across India. Quantifying these climate-driven risks is an essential step toward building resilient food systems and safeguarding global food security.”
Co-author of the report, Monica Caparas, Research Scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center, concluded: “The consequences of a breadbasket failure extend far beyond the region where it occurs. As globally important food-producing regions face growing risks of climate-driven disruption, the effects can ripple through livelihoods, supply chains, food assistance systems, and geopolitical relationships. Understanding and preparing for breadbasket failures is both a national security priority and a humanitarian imperative—one that can help protect lives, reduce instability, and strengthen food resilience before a regional shock becomes a wider crisis.”
A message from President & CEO Dr. Max Holmes
My house was built in 1870. It has been heated by wood, coal, oil, natural gas, and now electricity drawn from the sun. In one sense, that is a mundane property record. In another, it is the entire history of human energy, compressed into a single address.
Wood came first. It always does. Since our ancestors learned to control fire, biomass has been the default answer to cold and darkness. The house would have had a cast-iron stove, fed by wood cut from nearby forests. This is how virtually every human being on earth stayed warm for tens of thousands of years, and many still do. It worked, but it was labor-intensive, land-hungry, and contributed to deforestation.
Coal replaced wood in the industrializing Northeast not because it was loved but because it was dense, cheap, and abundant. A ton of coal contained far more energy than the equivalent volume of wood and could supply cities that had long since stripped their surrounding forests. Then came oil – heating oil delivered by truck, burned in a furnace that could be thermostatically controlled. Oil heat was modern. It was convenient. It was what the house was running on when my wife and I bought it in 2000. The following year, we switched to natural gas, piped directly to the boiler—cleaner than oil, cheaper at the time, and widely regarded as a “transition fuel.” Last year, we made what I believe will be the final transition: heat pumps, powered by electricity, with solar panels on the roof and a contract for renewable energy for anything we draw from the grid.
The sequence—biomass, coal, oil, gas, electricity—is not just our home’s story. It is the arc of modern civilization. And the direction of travel has always been the same: toward fuels that are denser, cleaner, and more controllable, and away from those that are dirtier, heavier, and harder to move. Electricity, especially when generated from wind and sun, is the logical end of that arc. The sun and wind are limitless natural resources and our ability to harness them into electricity will only continue to be more efficient. The energy transition the world is now debating is not some radical rupture; it is the next step in a journey that has been underway since the first furnace replaced the first wood-fired stove.
The only real question is speed. And here, the conflict now consuming the Persian Gulf offers an unexpected answer. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz following the outbreak of military conflict with Iran has removed close to one-fifth of global oil supplies from the market. Prices have reached $100 per barrel or higher. Nations that import the majority of their fuel from the Persian Gulf are facing genuine shortages. The head of the International Energy Agency has called it the greatest global energy security challenge in history.
The conventional assumption might be that an oil shock slows the energy transition – that higher prices make everything more expensive and governments retreat to fossil fuels out of desperation. History suggests the opposite. The 1973 Arab oil embargo helped to launch solar research, energy efficiency standards, and nuclear expansion. Countries around the world are again confronting the danger of energy dependence. That recognition tends to produce investment in alternatives, not capitulation to the status quo.
There are headwinds, of course. The current U.S. administration has been openly hostile to renewable energy, rolling back incentives and attempting to prop up coal and oil production. But administrations are temporary. Solar panels and heat pumps are not. The economics of clean energy have already crossed the threshold at which policy resistance can reverse them; what governments can do now is slow the transition at the margin, not stop it. And a geopolitical crisis that makes the cost of fossil-fuel dependence unmistakable—not in future climate projections but in today’s energy prices—has a way of clarifying minds.
My house has been through this before. It didn’t choose its fuels for ideological reasons; it followed the logic of cost, availability, and technology. The world’s energy system will do the same.
At a time when climate victories are scarce, an acceleration of the energy transition is reason for hope. Those with the financial means—and perhaps the broader good fortune to live in a time and place where the choice is available—can lean into this transition, doing what they can to speed the inevitable shift away from fossil fuels and toward what I believe will be humanity’s ultimate energy source: clean electricity generated from renewable sources.
The energy transition alone will not solve the climate crisis, but it is an essential step in that direction.
Onward.
Last week, the climate science and policy community was saddened by the passing of Rafe Pomerance, a longtime leader and advocate in the fight against climate change.
Pomerance was one of the first people to sound the alarm over climate change on Capitol Hill. He played a pivotal role in the climate movement, connecting scientists with policymakers and the media.
One of those scientists was Dr. George Woodwell—Pomerance and Woodwell shared a partnership rooted in the belief that science needed a strong voice in Washington. Together, they helped bridge the gap between scientific understanding and public action, advancing some of the first congressional conversations on climate, and helping lay the foundation for today’s climate movement.
At the Woodwell Climate Research Center, Pomerance served as Distinguished Senior Arctic Policy Fellow, as well as Chairman of Arctic 21—a network of organizations that focused on communicating the consequences of climate change on the Arctic to policy makers and the public.
Author Nathaniel Rich wrote a 2018 article and 2019 book both titled Losing Earth, which tells the story of a handful of scientists, politicians, and strategists who were among the first to try to convince the world to act on climate change and the fossil fuel industry’s fight to stop them. Woodwell Climate interviewed Pomerance about the article, which featured both him and George Woodwell as leaders in raising awareness of the climate threat.
When asked how he felt about his work on climate progress, Pomerance responded, “I knew very early that this would become a dominating issue on the planet. We started out and nobody knew anything about it and now everyone does. Was it worth it? Absolutely.”
Pomerance’s legacy lives on not only through the policies and progress he influenced, but through the generations of scientists, advocates, and leaders he inspired along the way. Dr. Max Holmes, Woodwell Climate President and CEO, counted Rafe as a “colleague, an inspiration, and a friend — someone who will be dearly missed but always remembered,” a sentiment echoed by Woodwell staff and people around the world.
Rest in peace, dear Rafe.
Background
Solar energy and battery storage costs have decreased dramatically as prices remain stagnant for natural gas, coal, and nuclear. Over the past decade, solar prices have decreased by 14% per year and battery prices have dropped 20% per year according to data from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)1. Energy forecasts, however, typically assume only minor improvements in renewable prices, causing now-infamous predictions of renewable capacity growth such as the International Energy Agency (IEA) projections, which over the past 15 years have repeatedly underestimated solar deployment2. As such, we project power prices from an alternate scenario that assumes future innovations allow the cost declines of the past 15 years to continue through 2050. Using this scenario, we demonstrate the risk to legacy power systems from potential cost improvements in solar and batteries.
As of 2025, it is cheaper to build a solar plant than a fossil or nuclear power plant for daytime power in most locations, but expensive batteries limit the cost-competitiveness of solar power outside of daylight hours. While utility-scale batteries are currently prohibitively expensive for use outside of peak hours, a continuation of recent price decreases would lead to solar and batteries being the cheapest source of power within a decade, creating major challenges for legacy power plants.
The combination of rapid improvements in renewables and stagnant prices for fossil energy sources also creates a challenge for manufacturers dependent on legacy power systems. This energy-price pressure causes large impacts on energy-intensive manufacturing, creating offshoring risk for strategically and economically important industries such as aluminum, data centers, and some advanced manufacturing.
Methodology
Electricity prices were calculated from 2025–2050 under four scenarios: Solar Ascendant, a solar and batteries heavy scenario in which 90% of power is generated from solar and 10% from hydropower, with battery storage equal to half of daily solar output to cover nighttime power needs; Current Mix, which assumes the current mix is used in future years; Coal Resurgent, a fossil-based scenario with 10% hydro, 10% nuclear, 40% coal, and 40% natural gas; and the IEA Current Policies Scenario3. Electricity demand is forecast to grow by roughly 50% by 2050, necessitating the construction of new power plants that have substantially higher effective operating prices than full depreciated legacy power plants. The Lazard Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) is 469%, 67%, and 155% higher for nuclear, coal, and natural gas, respectively. As such, in all scenarios the midpoint of the Lazard LCOE estimates4 for newly constructed and fully depreciated power was used for all sources except for solar and batteries, which are assumed to be entirely new and non-depreciated. To simplify analysis, wind and solar generation are grouped together in the IEA Current Policies Scenario forecasts. This simplifying assumption is partially motivated by current deployment trends, as wind capacity growth in 2025 was less than 1/4 of solar capacity growth5.
For solar, the Lazard LCOE for new solar was used as the starting estimate for 2024, with future prices projected following the observed 14% per year decline from IRENA. For batteries, Bloomberg BNEF’s 2024 price estimate6 was used as the starting value, with a 20% per year price decline calculated from historical IRENA data. For solar and batteries, the price of new construction rather than depreciation was used to allow for a conservative estimate of prices. A five-year average age of installed capacity was assumed, causing a five-year lag in price declines. For the manufacturing and services cost analysis, energy inputs and prices were gathered from a variety of sources and reflect constant 2025 efficiency and prices. Electricity inputs are taken from industry sources, with energy input prices for each of the four products calculated by multiplying the electricity required by the cost from each energy mix.
Results
Renewable technologies such as solar, wind, hydro, and batteries differ fundamentally from fossil fuel and nuclear sources in that power can be generated without the purchase of fuel, allowing for a far lower price floor. Solar is already the cheapest source of new power generation as of 2025, and our forecast finds this trend becomes more pronounced, with solar power more than 90% cheaper than coal, nuclear, or natural gas by 2050 (Figure 1). However, solar is only capable of producing power during daylight hours, necessitating a separate power source. Conventional fossil fuel and nuclear-based power plants generally struggle to operate intermittently or incur far higher costs, necessitating alternate nighttime-only sources such as batteries7.
Currently, utility-scale battery storage is prohibitively expensive outside of evening and morning windows of peak power prices. Nevertheless, global utility-scale battery capacity increased 90% annually from 2010–2023, with 92 GW or roughly 0.2% of global electricity generation installed in 2025 alone8. Our forecast finds that by 2029, battery prices will decrease enough that overnight storage of daytime solar is not only feasible, but cheaper than conventional energy sources. This major inflection point indicates the year when fossil fuel power generation, even from existing fully depreciated plants, will not be economically competitive with a mix of solar power and batteries. From 2030 onwards, existing natural gas and nuclear plants will operate at a higher price than renewables during both daylight and nighttime hours, leading to the shuttering of existing plants, similar to the decommissioning of coal plants, which have been undercut by cheaper natural gas in developed economies in the past few decades. Solar power requires no inputs and generates excess energy during peak daylight, which is purchased and stored at very low prices by utility-scale batteries and sold at night at higher rates. Continuous improvements in solar farm costs lower daytime power prices, while improvements in batteries lower prices of nighttime power. Meanwhile, fossil and nuclear input prices and operation costs remain static, causing legacy power plants to be wholly uncompetitive.
The economics of input-free renewable power are straightforward and global, but the rollout will vary substantially by country, creating cost-competitiveness challenges for domestic manufacturers. We model power prices from four energy mixes: solar with batteries; the global average 2025 energy mix; a mixture of 10% hydropower, 10% nuclear, 40% coal, and 40% gas; and the IEA Current Policies scenario (Figure 2). For the solar and batteries scenario, we assume the average power generation facility is five years old, meaning that the 2030 energy price reflects 2025 generation costs. We find that solar with batteries is the cheapest energy mix beginning in 2033 and costs only 0.4 cents per kWh in 2050, less than 10% of the costs from other energy mixes. While these prices are astonishingly low, moderate improvements in efficiency and substitution of cheaper materials are capable of achieving these dramatic price improvements9.
This tenfold divergence in domestic power prices creates large differences in energy input costs. Here, we calculate energy input costs in manufactured goods, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of the price of the finished good, demonstrating that impacts are largest in goods that are energy-intensive and low-margin (Figure 3). Aluminum production is particularly impacted, with 8% lower manufacturing margins from the current energy mix compared to the solar and batteries mix in 2035, increasing to 20% lower margins in 205010. The strategic importance of aluminum production for military use, combined with the inability to be cost-competitive, creates an interesting conundrum for policymakers with legacy power systems: either allow cost-pressures to offshore manufacturing to potential adversaries, or pursue expensive subsidies to maintain domestic production. Similar issues are seen in data centers, which represent a major economic and technological opportunity, as well as a growing strategic resource due to defense applications. However, following projected cost improvements in renewable power, data centers will face cost pressures leading to relocation to countries that have pursued cheaper renewable power, creating domestic shortages and leverage for host countries with cheap power. Manufacturing margins for steel production and vehicles are much less affected, though a 1–2% decrease in margins could still shutter some domestic facilities. As such, higher-margin specialty manufacturing is likely to be less impacted, though there is a minor increase in offshoring pressure.
Conclusion
A continuation of observed price declines for solar and batteries results in solar and batteries being the cheapest power mix for most locations by 2033, with 90% lower costs from solar and batteries compared to other power mixes by 2050. The sharp decrease in battery prices will allow stored excess daytime solar energy to be cheaper than fossil sources for nighttime power needs by 2030. Given these rapid battery price declines, policymakers should plan for solar overcapacity to power future battery storage. Countries that lag in deployment of solar and batteries risk uncompetitive power prices, creating offshoring risk for strategically and economically important industries such as aluminum production and data centers, as well as other low-margin, high-energy processes.
Forecasts of solar and battery deployment have consistently underestimated growth by projecting minor decreases in costs, despite consistent observed exponential cost declines. Recent forecasts continue to underestimate cost improvements, with an early 2025 forecast somehow managing to project 2050 battery prices would be higher than observed prices later that year, despite forecasting price declines11. Rather than assuming limited technological improvements, we choose to model a scenario where innovation continues at the observed annual rate. Because batteries and solar are still relatively early in development and remain far from perfected, we believe that continued innovation is a more reasonable assumption than stagnation for the next few decades, motivating this modeling exercise.
Solar power, and to a lesser degree batteries, require only free inputs, leaving materials, manufacturing, shipping, installation, and upkeep as the only costs. Each of these costs can be lowered with further improvement, with materials in particular showing promise as both solar and batteries are being developed with increasingly cheap and ubiquitous resources. Currently, battery and solar production require substantial fossil inputs from mining, shipping, and manufacturing. As renewable electricity becomes cheaper, these processes will electrify, further lowering prices. Similarly, developments in battery technology and manufacturing processes, as well as improvements in utility-scale deployment, present opportunities for massive price declines. Taken together, a continuation of observed decreases in renewable power generation costs is well within the realm of possibility, requiring a sober analysis of the economic and security challenges for countries that lag in deployment of renewable power generation.
One overcast week in January, Government Relations Director Andrew Condia, Research Associate Dominick Dusseau, and I found ourselves driving along the banks of the Mississippi River. Our road trip took us through Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas to speak with leaders in four small towns about their climate risk. Representing Woodwell’s Just Access program, we wanted to understand what information communities most need to help their towns envision a thriving future in the face of climate change.
The small towns of the Mississippi are interconnected in the challenges they’re facing, but also in their resolve. They are looking for solutions that will help them preserve their way of life, while readying their communities for a changed future. Like patchwork squares in a quilt, our conversations in each town formed a larger pattern: America’s small towns want to adapt. They just need the resources to do so.
Wilmot, Arkansas: population 400
We arrived in Wilmot around midday and were welcomed by Mayor Carolyn Harris, her team, and a spread of baked chicken, green beans with ham, rolls, sweet tea, and her special-recipe salad.
“When I say, ‘let’s do lunch’, we do lunch,” says Harris.
Wilmot’s pink-fronted town hall sits on the old main street facing Lake Enterprise, next to faded or abandoned buildings. Main Street used to have two movie theaters, a drug store, and a grocery, all of which shuttered as the population declined. The town is surrounded by farms, and agriculture drives the economy, though not as much as it used to.
This is a pattern across the Delta. Rural towns have shrunk dramatically over the years as the small family farm became a much harder economic proposition. According to Water Operator Theodis Kitchen, a fourth-generation resident, Wilmot is at its lowest population in decades.
The four communities we visited that week are all members of the DRIVE program, an initiative at the University of Memphis that helps Delta region towns pursue economic revitalization on their own terms. Mayor Harris is envisioning a new economy for Wilmot that will attract newcomers to the town through its recreation opportunities; the natural lands around Lake Enterprise offer fishing, hunting, and camping. But the impacts of climate change could complicate that picture.
The challenge, Water Operator Apprentice Derrick Jackson points out, is pollution from surrounding farms. Industrial agriculture makes common use of pesticides and defoliant sprays, and when it rains or floods, those chemicals travel. While this is already a concern, climate change could make it worse as more extreme floods or wildfires carry harmful chemicals into new areas.
“We would like to know the risk,” says Harris.
Jackson says that kind of information will help more than just Wilmot. Climate change is a shared burden here in the Upper Delta.
“[Climate change] doesn’t just affect this town, you know,” says Jackson. “It goes all the way down [Highway] 165. Pretty much every town has the basics of what we have. So anything that we are able to find that could help us, could help the next towns over.”
Eudora, Arkansas: population 1,700
The next town over is Eudora, Arkansas, led by Mayor Tomeka Butler. Butler assumed office on March 11, 2020. The previous mayor’s assistant introduced her to the office, handed her the keys, and wished her luck.
“I’m looking around like, that’s it? There’s no manual or anything?” says Butler.
Her first day on the job was the day COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. The year that followed, Butler learned quickly that the best way to keep her people safe was to share information and ask for help. Now, she approaches Eudora’s climate challenges in a similar way, joining networks like DRIVE and the Arkansas Black Mayors Association (ABMA) to broaden Eudora’s access to resources.
“I’m not an expert, but I love surrounding myself with the people who are,” says Butler.
Technical expertise on climate adaptation can be hard to come by in towns like Eudora, whose population is largely elderly or aging.
But small towns face the same climate risks as larger municipalities—regardless of whether or not they have the resources to address them. Eudora is the warmest populated area in Arkansas, and heat stroke is a major hazard for outdoor workers during the summer. Flooding also plagues the town.
“Most of the time it doesn’t matter if it’s a little rain or a big rain, particular areas are going to flood, and sadly, these areas are mainly where the elderly people live,” says Butler. “There’s been times where it has rained and I’ve literally had to put people on standby who have boats, because that will be the only way we’ll be able to get to them.”
But Butler tends to focus more on what assets Eudora does have, rather than what they’re lacking. As she drove us through town, pointing out neighbors’ houses that were built over creeks and streets that become impassable during light rain, she told us how the town is making progress because of the networks they’re a part of. Through ABMA, Eudora is participating in a watershed revitalization project, which will help the town abate flooding with green infrastructure. Mutual aid agreements with nearby towns’ fire departments have helped with emergency response. And, with help from a local researcher, the town will be piloting a vertical agriculture system in its old school building.
Woodwell is now also part of Butler’s ever-growing expert network. She hopes information from a risk assessment will inform her plans for a growing Eudora, giving her the information she needs to not only keep her people safe but help them thrive.
“I just be concerned about the people,” says Mayor Butler.
Tunica, Mississippi: population 1,000
With a close-knit community, yearly festivals, and a cheery mural across from town hall welcoming visitors, Tunica, Mississippi resembles what Main Street Program Director Laura Withers calls a “Hallmark movie town.” A few blocks from town hall, there is a central playground with slides and monkey bars. Right now, in the middle of a winter day, it’s pleasantly sunny. In the summer though, the combined heat and humidity make it a dangerous place to play.
“If you want to take your kids to play on the equipment, you can’t. It’s too hot to the touch. Mom cannot stand out there in the dead of summer. It’s too hot,” says Withers. “The bummer is that it’s hottest in the summertime when kids aren’t in school.”
Like much of the region, Tunica struggles with extreme heat. For Withers, whose job involves programming Tunica’s social amenities like the annual Rivergate Festival, extreme heat poses a risk to the features that make the town an inviting place to live.
“When people think about where they want to move or where they want to raise their family, at the end of the day, people want good education, nice parks, you know, quality-of-life type things,” says Withers.
Withers also handles grant-writing for Tunica. She says she’s noticed many applications now place an emphasis on infrastructural sustainability to make sure the money granted represents a long-term investment in the town’s success. Without concrete data on climate risks like flooding or extreme heat, Withers says her applications are not as competitive. For a town of Tunica’s size, grants are an important funding source for municipal projects.
“Anytime you can get the tiniest bit of a crystal ball into what you’re dealing with moving forward, whether it be climate or jobs or the school system or healthcare, whether it be good or bad, you can benefit from it,” says Withers.
Stanton, Tennessee: population 400 and growing
The longer we spent in the region, the more we saw the traditionally agricultural fabric of the Upper Delta interweaving with budding pockets of renewable energy infrastructure.
The uniformity of fallow fields was broken here and there by a towering range of wind turbines or bright rows of solar panels. As we pulled into the town of Stanton, Tennessee, about 50 miles northeast of Memphis, we passed BlueOval City—a 4,000-acre Ford manufacturing facility. The plant was originally established to be a center for electric vehicle manufacturing, but the company has since pulled back those promises, opting instead for “higher-return opportunities” in response to regulatory changes. Ford now plans to manufacture gas-powered trucks there as well as batteries.
Despite the pullback, the plant will still generate a massive influx of people—with some estimates up to 10,000—and accompanying development. Mayor Norman Bauer is trying to navigate the new future it represents.
“That is going to be the economic driver if we let it be, but my intent is for Stanton to grow on its own merit,” says Bauer.
DRIVE cohort members are encouraged to develop tailored solutions to the unique challenges facing their communities. For Stanton, that means getting the town “shovel ready,” as Bauer calls it, with the infrastructure to support a growing population. Stormwater management is top of that list. Flooding is already a concern where a drainage ditch cuts through town and frequently overflows.
“The first of the past dozen 100-year floods was in 1996 and they just kept coming,” says Bauer.
Without an updated land-use plan in place, development could worsen that. And without data on flooding and extreme rainfall risk, it will be much harder for Stanton to develop a plan that carries the town through what the future holds.
“We don’t know how it’s going to change, but we do have to look at the common fact that it is going to change. We do have to have a plan in place. This is one of those things where you can’t be reactionary,” says Bauer.
When I started at Woodwell this time last year, preparations for November’s COP30 in Brazil were in full swing. The prospect of international climate negotiations hosted in the Amazonian city of Belém provided a rare opportunity to focus attention on the under-appreciated roles of tropical forests in meeting climate mitigation and adaptation objectives. Woodwell’s presence at COP30—making presentations, speaking on panels, and meeting with national delegations—helped to deliver on that promise. Now our challenge is to maintain momentum on the many forest-related initiatives featured there.
My own focus at COP30 was promoting ways to mobilize new sources of funding to meet the needs for tropical forest protection, estimated by the United Nations Environment Programme to total $68 billion annually. In the preceding months, I supported the Forest & Climate Leaders Partnership (FCLP)—a coalition of countries working to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030—to construct a “roadmap” on forest finance. The roadmap, launched in September during New York Climate Week, consists of six solutions ranging from carbon markets to sovereign debt management. The solutions are interlocking puzzle pieces that together could go a long way towards closing the finance gap.
One puzzle piece is the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), an innovative forest finance mechanism (described in the Fall 2025 edition of this magazine) launched by the Brazilian COP30 Presidency and endorsed by 66 countries. The Facility will make annual payments to tropical forest countries per hectare of forest conserved, providing an important complement to other sources of forest finance. Funding for the payments will be generated by the Tropical Forest Investment Fund (TFIF), which relies on long-term loans and guarantees from sponsor countries to leverage commercial debt finance, which will in turn be invested in higher risk, higher return bonds. An impressive $6.7 billion in pledges were garnered toward the Fund by the end of the COP.
Having been a champion of the TFFF, contributing to its design during my service in the office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate in the Biden Administration, I was pleased with this outcome. At the same time, I am also well aware of the hurdles still ahead. Most immediately, the pressure is on to raise additional sponsor capital quickly: the Norwegian contribution of $3 billion to the TFIF is contingent on reaching at least $10 billion by the end of 2026. The ultimate target for sponsor capital is $25 billion, no easy task in the current geopolitical environment.
There’s also a lot of work to do on the spending side of the TFFF. An initial TFFF secretariat hosted at the World Bank will need to finalize the technical criteria for country eligibility and payments. Many tropical forest countries will need assistance in meeting specifications for satellite-based forest monitoring systems and financial management systems to ensure that at least 20% of the payments are channeled to frontline Indigenous peoples and local communities. These groups are often the most effective forest stewards. Woodwell scientists are engaging directly with the TFFF secretariat and key stakeholders in the design process, as well as providing analysis to build investor confidence that payments will result in their intended impacts.
Fortunately, those countries will be able to build on the extensive capacity and institutional infrastructure that has been developed through jurisdictional REDD+ (JREDD+) programs over the last two decades. Such programs serve as the basis for forest carbon crediting at the scale of entire countries or large subnational states, provinces, or Indigenous territories. Crediting over such large areas reduces the risks to social and environmental integrity that have troubled project-scale crediting.
At COP30, I had the pleasure of facilitating the first meeting of a newly launched Scaling JREDD+ Coalition incubated by the FCLP. The Coalition brings together governments, non-governmental organizations, and private sector actors to collaborate to address barriers to increasing both supply and demand for JREDD+ credits. Participants in the meeting identified nine issue areas needing collaborative action. They volunteered to work on task forces to address obstacles on both the supply and demand sides of forest carbon markets, ranging from how to nest projects into jurisdictional-scale programs to how to communicate more effectively to prospective buyers. Woodwell is well-placed to contribute to this work, and for me, it aligns with my service on the board of a JREDD+ certification body.
One of the most promising approaches for aligning finance with forest conservation goals is to raise awareness of the risks posed by deforestation to agricultural productivity and national economies. A key puzzle piece in the FCLP forest finance roadmap is to redirect private investment in traditional agricultural supply chains toward production systems that conserve forest resilience and the climate-stabilizing services forests provide.
In support of this approach, Woodwell scientists are leading contributors to the growing body of evidence showing how forest loss compounds the destabilizing effects of global warming by increasing local temperature extremes and disrupting rainfall patterns. We featured these findings at several events in Belém, including closing the TED Countdown House program with an entertaining game-show format, in which teams in the audience competed to guess the answers to questions about the implications of these findings for agriculture, water, and health.
Over the course of 2026, Woodwell staff—in coordination with our colleagues at our Brazil-based partner organization, the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM)—will be engaging with the Government of Brazil as it develops another forest-related “roadmap”. Promised at the close of COP30, this roadmap will be more broadly focused on achieving the globally agreed-upon goal of halting and reversing forest loss and degradation by 2030. We’ll be working to ensure that the roadmap’s recommendations are informed by science. We’ll also be advocating for a process inclusive of the diverse countries, companies, and communities whose actions will determine whether or not the map leads to its desired destination.
