Deena Robinson & Martina Igini / Global Commons
The world is grappling with a host of pressing environmental challenges that demand immediate attention and action. From climate change-induced disasters, biodiversity loss and plastic pollution to the rise of artificial intelligence, the 16 biggest environmental problems of 2026 paint a stark picture of the urgent need for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Earth.Org / January 9, 2026
- Traditional Agriculture
Studies have shown that the global food system is responsible for up to one-third of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, of which 30% comes from livestock and fisheries. Crop production releases greenhouse gases such as nitrous oxide through the use of fertilizers.
60% of the world’s agricultural area is dedicated to cattle ranching, although it only makes up 24% of global meat consumption.
Agriculture not only covers a vast amount of land but it also consumes a vast amount of freshwater, another one of the biggest environmental problems on this list. Arable lands and grazing pastures cover one-third of Earth’s land surfaces and together, they consume three-quarters of the world’s limited freshwater resources.
Scientists and environmentalists have continuously warned that we need to rethink our current food system; switching to more sustainable farming methods and a more plant-based-oriented diet would dramatically reduce the carbon footprint of the conventional agriculture industry.
- Soil Degradation
Organic matter is a crucial component of soil as it allows it to absorb carbon from the atmosphere. Plants absorb CO2 from the air naturally and effectively through photosynthesis and part of this carbon is stored in the soil as soil organic carbon (SOC). Healthy soil has a minimum of 3-6% organic matter. However, almost everywhere in the world, the content is much lower than that.
According to the United Nations, about 40% of the planet’s soil is degraded. Soil degradation refers to the loss of organic matter, changes in its structural condition and/or decline in soil fertility and it is often the result of human activities, such as traditional farming practices including the use of toxic chemicals and pollutants. If business as usual continued through 2050, experts project additional degradation of an area almost the size of South America. But there is more to it. If we do not change our reckless practices and step up to preserve soil health, food security for billions of people around the world will be irreversibly compromised, with an estimated 40% less food expected to be produced in 20 years’ time despite the world’s population projected to reach 9.3 billion people.
- Food and Water Insecurity
Rising temperatures and unsustainable farming practices have resulted in increasing water and food insecurity.
Globally, more than 68 billion tonnes of top-soil is eroded every year at a rate 100 times faster than it can naturally be replenished. Laden with biocides and fertiliser, the soil ends up in waterways where it contaminates drinking water and protected areas downstream.
Furthermore, exposed and lifeless soil is more vulnerable to wind and water erosion due to lack of root and mycelium systems that hold it together. A key contributor to soil erosion is over-tilling: although it increases productivity in the short-term by mixing in surface nutrients (e.g. fertiliser), tilling is physically destructive to the soil’s structure and in the long-term leads to soil compaction, loss of fertility and surface crust formation that worsens topsoil erosion.
With the global population expected to reach 9 billion people by mid-century, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) projects that global food demand may increase by 70% by 2050. Around the world, more than 820 million people do not get enough to eat.
As UN Secretary-General António Guterres remarked at a high-level virtual meeting in 2020, “Unless immediate action is taken, it is increasingly clear that there is an impending global food security emergency that could have long-term impacts on hundreds of millions of adults and children.” Guterres urged for countries to rethink their food systems and encouraged more sustainable farming practices.
In terms of water security, only 3% of the world’s water is freshwater, and two-thirds of that is tucked away in frozen glaciers or otherwise unavailable for our use. As a result, some 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to water, and a total of 2.7 billion find water scarce for at least one month of the year. By 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population may face water shortages.
- Fast Fashion and Textile Waste
The fashion industry accounts for 10% of global carbon emissions, which makes it one of the biggest environmental problems of our time. Fashion alone produces more greenhouse gas emissions than both the aviation and shipping sectors combined, and nearly 20% of global wastewater, or around 93 billion cubic metres from textile dyeing, according to the UN Environment Programme.
What’s more, the world generates an estimated 92 million tonnes of textile waste every year, a number that is expected to soar up to 134 million tonnes a year by 2030. Discarded clothing and textile waste, most of which is non-biodegradable, ends up in landfills, while microplastics from clothing materials such as polyester, nylon, polyamide, acrylic and other synthetic materials is leeched into soil and nearby water sources.
Monumental amounts of clothing textile are also dumped in developing countries, as seen in Chile’s Atacama Desert. Millions of tons of clothes arrive annually from Europe, Asia, and the Americas. In 2023, 46 million tons of discarded clothes were dumped and left to rotten there, according to Chilean customs statistics.
This rapidly growing issue is only exacerbated by the ever-expanding fast fashion business model, in which companies relies on cheap and speedy production of low quality clothing to meet the latest and newest trends. While the United Nations Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action sees signatory fashion and textile companies commit to achieving net zero emission by 2050, a majority of businesses around the world have yet to address their roles in climate change.
- Artificial Intelligence
In the World Economic Forum’s 2025 Global Risks report, climate change and risks related to artificial intelligence (AI) topped the chart for the top 10 global risks in the coming decade. The report also points to the interconnections of economic, geopolitical, societal risks with environmental and technological risks.
2025 has seen a tremendous growth of AI technologies around the world, which are benefiting climate fields from weather forecasting and conservation to disaster risk reduction. But the technology comes with serious environmental and ethical implications, fueling concerns about its largely unregulated growth.
The environmental impacts of AI stem from energy consumption in training the AI models, inference from daily use of AI tools, water usage to cool the data centres that power it, and hardware carbon footprint. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently revealed that just saying “please” and “thank you” to ChatGPT adds tens of millions in computing costs due to higher energy use.
Open AI reportedly consumed some 1,287 MWh of electricity to train its GPT-3 model – the equivalent to the energy needed to power over 120 US homes for a year. Due to the sheer volume of queries processed daily, inference accounts for over 60% of AI’s total carbon footprint.
A study on the water footprint of AI highlighted that depending on when and where AI is deployed, GPT-3 consumes a 500ml bottle of water for roughly 10-50 medium-length response. The same study also found that the water withdrawal from global usage of AI is projected to reach 4.2-6.6 billion cubic meters in 2027, exceeding the total annual water withdrawal from Denmark by 4-6 times.
Despite these impacts, there is still no standardised method to measure AI-related emissions due to the lack of transparency from providers, variability in the carbon intensity of local power grids, and the diversity of AI tools in use. So, while the allure of AI’s potential is undeniable, we must confront its negative impact head-on.
- Overfishing
Over three billion people around the world rely on fish as their primary source of protein. About 12% of the world relies upon fisheries in some form or another, with 90% of these being small-scale fishermen – think a small crew in a boat, not a ship, using small nets or even rods and reels and lures not too different from the kind you probably use. Of the 18.9 million fishermen in the world, 90% of them fall under the latter category.
Most people consume approximately twice as much food as they did 50 years ago and there are four times as many people on Earth as there were at the close of the 1960s. This is one driver of the 30% of commercially fished waters being classified as being “overfished.” This means that the stock of available fishing waters is being depleted faster than it can be replaced.
Overfishing comes with detrimental effects on the environment, including increased algae in the water, destruction of fishing communities, ocean littering as well as extremely high rates of biodiversity loss.
As part of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal number 14 (SDG 14), the UN and FAO are working towards maintaining the proportion of fish stocks within biologically sustainable levels. This, however, requires much stricter regulations of the world’s oceans than the ones already in place.
In July 2022, the World Trade Organisation banned fishing subsidies to reduce global overfishing in a historic deal. Indeed, subsidies for fuel, fishing gear, and building new vessels, only incentivise overfishing and represent thus a huge problem.
- Cobalt Mining
Cobalt is quickly becoming the defining example of the mineral conundrum at the heart of the renewable energy transition. As a key component of battery materials that power electric vehicles (EVs), cobalt is facing a sustained surge in demand as decarbonisation efforts progress. The world’s largest cobalt supplier is the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where it is estimated that up to a fifth of the production is produced through artisanal miners.
Cobalt mining, however, is associated with dangerous workers’ exploitation and other serious environmental and social issues. Southern regions of the DRC are not only home to cobalt and copper but also large amounts of uranium. In mining regions, scientists have made note of high radioactivity levels. In addition, mineral mining, similar to other industrial mining efforts, often produces pollution that leaches into neighbouring rivers and water sources. Dust from pulverised rock is known to cause breathing problems for local communities as well.