All of us at Friends of the Earth believe that this challenging moment can serve as the starting point for positive transformation — for our communities, for our democracy, and for our planet. In 2026, we will continue to be at the forefront of this change, leading us toward a more healthy and just Earth.

Saying “no” to dirty energy subsidies

In February, we launched the United to End Polluter Handouts (UTEPH) coalition focused on repealing wasteful fossil fuel subsidies. The coalition released reports exposing the Trump administration’s massive giveaways to the fossil fuel industry.

We also defeated dirty energy giveaways, including decreasing the lifespan of the hydrogen production tax credit; defeating the Renewable Fuel Standard pathway for problematic methane biogas-electricity; and analyzing the GOP’s expansion of the 45Z clean fuel credit, which will provide outsized benefits to the ethanol, soy, carbon capture, and factory farm industries.

Confronting false climate solutions

Marine geoengineering is one of the attempts to remove atmospheric carbon dioxide by increasing ocean alkalinity,, or by dumping iron into surface waters to trigger phytoplankton blooms.

Our Climate team helped lead the charge against marine geoengineering internationally, presenting the dangers of this idea at the London Convention/London Protocol (LC/LP) meeting and at New York Climate Week. Our initiative propelled LC/LP to issue a strong statement outlining efforts to develop a regulatory framework to ban marine geoengineering and to allow carefully vetted scientific research.

We co-authored a report on marine geoengineering, outlining the extraordinary scaling-up marine geoengineering would need to be climate relevant – manipulating 10-20% of the ocean’s surfacefor decades or even centuries; and how the risks would impact ocean basins and coastal community.

Fighting climate disinformation

We won a victory for information integrity at COP30 in Brazil, where 13 countries signed the Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change. Friends of the Earth supported this work to hold social media platforms accountable in 2025 with our coalition, Climate Action Against Disinformation. We worked on the European Union’s landmark Digital Services Act, which has since levied a fineagainst Elon Musk’s Twitter/X, charging the platform for its deceptive practices.

Preserving the arctic

After years of campaigning, the International Maritime Organization approved the North-East Atlantic Emission Control Area (ECA). Once fully implemented, it will be the largest ECA to date, cutting ships’ emissions of particulate matter, sulfur oxides, and nitrogen oxides across the territorial seas and exclusive economic zones of Greenland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands.

We pushed the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to grant permanent consultative status to the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC). The ICC is the first Indigenous organization to be included at the IMO and represents over 180,000 people across Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Russia’s Chukotka region.

Protecting the Pacific Northwest

Friends of the Earth worked with Washington state legislators and other partners to successfully introduce legislation requiring cleaner ship fuel use. 

In December, the Washington State Board of Pilotage Commission implemented regulations requiring small oil tankers, barges and articulated barges (ATBs) to use a tug escort through a portion of Southern Resident Killer whale critical habitat.

Making ports and waterways cleaner

We worked with national and grassroots organizations to release our first Clean Ports Report Card, grading ports on four categories: Emissions Inventory, Clean Air Planning, Emissions Reduction Actions, and Community Engagement.

Several port regions where we work have secured major EPA Clean Ports Program grants – including the Port of New York and New Jersey, the Maryland Port Administration, the South Carolina Ports Authority, the Port of Wilmington (Delaware), and others. These investments will help modernize port operations and cut diesel pollution by accelerating the transition to cleaner, zero-emission equipment – improving air quality and health outcomes for nearby communities while reducing climate emissions.

Plastics shed microplastics through everyday use, and toxic chemicals are found in our bodies and environments across the globe. Friends of the Earth worked with other environmental organizations to release Exiting Petrochemicals which was endorsed by over 70 organizations. This report demands financial institutions stop funding the expansion of petrochemicals, including plastic production in the United States. 

Taking on the Trump administration

We prevailed in our Endangered Species Act lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s inadequate Biological Opinion on the impacts of offshore oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The federal court ordered the government to strengthen protections for the rare Rice’s whale, sea turtles, and other imperiled marine species from offshore drilling. 

Also, a court declared that the federal government relied on faulty environmental analysis for new offshore drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico. Although we are still waiting for the court to determine the appropriate remedy, we are optimistic that this case is a positive development for our other active litigation over recent fossil fuel giveaways in the Gulf.

We enforced federal open-government requirements, compelling the U.S. Department of State to produce records seeking evidence of suspected bias in its liquefied natural gas (LNG) policy decisions.

We sent the federal government back to the drawing board to revise its analysis of environmental harms from the carbon-intensive Willow Master Development oil-drilling and exploration project in Alaska.

Friends of the Earth and the Center for Biological Diversity sued Trump’s National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Coast Guard for failing to analyze how California shipping lane designations harm whales and sea turtles. Ten gray whales were killed by ship strikes in these lanes in 2025. This is our second lawsuit targeting better protection for whales from the risk of ship strikes off California’s coast.

Fighting for the planet internationally

Friends of the Earth U.S. joined Friends of the Earth Mozambique in filing a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Export-Import Bank’s (EXIM) approval of almost $5 billion in financing for the Mozambique Liquid Natural Gas project. The project has already displaced thousands of locals, been the site of alleged human rights violations, and will cause significant environmental destruction if completed. What’s more, the EXIM board was filled by President Trump without legally required Senate consent. 

With Members like you standing at our side, Friends of the Earth will spend 2026 continuing to hold polluters and the government accountable for the harm they cause to people and the planet. 

Improving school food 

Our Climate Friendly Food Program helped more than 100 school districts increase offerings of organic and plant-based school meals. By working directly with school districts and USDA Department of Defense (DoD) Fresh Program vendors, we’ve helped 466 California school districts purchase nearly $6 million in organic produce –  $3.5 million in 2024–25 alone. There are now 35 organic items seasonally available to more than 2 million students through this program, which in turn, supports the livelihoods of dozens of organic farmers. 

Advocating for animals and public health

We organized a sign-on letter and built a new coalition of more than 50 organizations urging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ban ractopamine, a chemical substance fed to factory farmed animals to rapidly increase their weight that poses risks to animal and human health. Our collective petition drive has generated more than 80,000 signatures and will be delivered to the FDA in the coming months. 

Throughout 2025, the media has covered our manure biogas research to show that factory farm gas is an ineffective climate solution. In Maryland, we helped defeat a bill to incentivize manure biogas through state procurement. At the federal level, the U.S. Department of Agriculture paused issuing loans on digesters following a petition we helped file with the agency making the case to stop funding factory farm gas through its renewable energy grant and loan program.

Confronting global industrial agriculture

After four years of sustained community advocacy with support from Friends of the Earth, the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB) Invest accountability mechanism (MICI) confirmed 7 serious policy violations linked to their harmful 2021 loan to Pronaca, a giant meat corporation in Ecuador. The decision marked a rare and significant accountability milestone for communities affected by IDB-financed industrial livestock projects.

Meanwhile, we expanded our support for the global Stop Financing Factory Farming campaign and helped propel the International Financing Corporation (IFC) to significantly reduce factory farming investments. And we organized a Global Day of Action across five continents and 12 cities calling on the World Bank Group to stop financing factory farming. 

With help from our Members, Friends of the Earth will continue the fight to transform our agriculture system in 2026, ensuring it produces food that is healthy for people and the planet.

Fighting for environmental justice

Our Southeast team consulted with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and worked with the North Carolina Environmental Justice cohort on Solar for All’s community engagement plan. Friends of the Earth played a key role in helping design and launch a community advisory board and served as an environmental justice advisor for Governor Josh Stein’s administration.

Rallying communities against pollution

In St. Pauls, North Carolina, we helped organize residents in opposition to the proposed expansion of the Robeson County regional landfill – a facility that is already leaking PFAS (so-called ‘forever chemicals’) into ground and surface water, household wells, a nearby swamp, and the countywide water system. 

St. Pauls residents packed the county commissioner meeting in August and turned in 500 signatures on a petition to halt landfill expansion plans, to stop taking waste from Fayetteville Works (a PFAS source from Chemours and Dupont Corporations), and to close the wastewater treatment plant in St. Pauls.

Pushing for clean energy

Friends of the Earth co-founded the Southeast Coalition for Clean Energy (SECCE), which is organizing with communities across eastern North Carolina to oppose a “pilot program” that would turn industrial animal-waste methane into energy.

Started and run by Piedmont Natural Gas, a wholly owned Duke Energy company, the program would collect methane from sources such as hog and poultry factory farms and landfills and sell it to customers as fuel. Community members and advocates warn the project would worsen local pollution, harm nearby residents, and lock in fossil-fuel infrastructure – slowing North Carolina’s transition to truly clean energy. Friends of the Earth is working with SECCE and local partners to stop the program.

In 2026, with help from our Members, Friends of the Earth will continue empowering residents of the Southeast to confront polluters and push for the protections they want for their communities.

Winning at the state level

Friends of the Earth helped win passage of Connecticut Senate Bill 9 in May, a major step forward for pollinator protection. The new law bans the use of bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides (“neonics”) on turf statewide – helping ensure that an estimated 500,000 acres of state land will remain neonic-free. Connecticut now joins a growing group of states taking action to curb these harmful pesticides, including California, New York, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Maryland, Vermont, and New Jersey.

Confronting corporate pesticide pollution

As a result of our Bee-Friendly Retailer Scorecard campaign, Sprouts Farmers Market became the latest company to establish a pollinator health policy addressing pesticides, joining 12 other companies listed on the Scorecard that have adopted their own policies.

We held a week of action zeroing in on Target, mobilizing hundreds of people to call or email the company and urge it to do more to protect pollinators. Our campaign also included a LinkedIn ad campaign that reached 149,000 accounts, 84% of which were employees of Target, including many senior company leaders.

To add pressure on the company to do more to eliminate pollinator-toxic pesticides from its supply chain, we released a study finding 29 pesticides in Target’s house brand baby food, including 10 pesticides banned in the EU. 

Focusing on farming

We released our new report, Rethinking No-Till, highlighting the ways pesticide corporations are greenwashing “regenerative agriculture” to prop up chemical-intensive farming.

Sounding the alarm on risky new biopesticides

Friends of the Earth led a California coalition to ensure that a new generation of genetically engineered biopesticides will be subject to statewide rules and rigorous risk assessments so these products won’t be deployed without clear, science-based safeguards for pollinators and ecosystems.

In October, we participated in the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) 2025 Congress, co-sponsoring an IUCN resolution for a moratorium on genetic engineering of wild species and working on resolutions related to releasing genetically engineered animals into the wild. This resolution aims to protect native species and fragile ecosystems.

Pushing banks toward biodiversity

As part of the steering committee of the Banks and Biodiversity Initiative, Friends of the Earth is leading academics and civil society and peoples’ groups’ efforts to hold banks accountable for their impacts on biodiversity and critical ecosystems, including the call for banks to adopt our proposed No Go areas.

Our advocacy and collective efforts led to the adoption of some No Go areas by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in 2025. The ADB strengthened its requirements for free, prior, informed consent. We are co-leading the civil society working group that is engaging the International Finance Corporation, to incorporate critical biodiversity protections in its forthcoming, updated Performance Standards.  

Confronting international finance

Our team worked closely with members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, persuading Democrats to vote unanimously in favor of our suggested measures regarding the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation’s (DFC) reauthorization. Though the amendment failed, we successfully convinced Democrats to vote for strengthening transparency, accountability, and safeguards for the DFC. 

Meanwhile, our research revealed that overseas fossil fuel financing decreased by up to 78% in 2024 — a drop of between $11.3 billion and $16.3 billion.