Subject: This month: Who controls our cities, lands and digital spaces?

Was this forwarded to you? Sign up here

Dear Friend,

This month brings new research on urban development, natural resources and digital power, alongside analysis on Myanmar, trade, borders and Palestine. Plus, catch up on recent events, interviews and recommended reading.

Cities Beyond Growth

Putting post-growth ideas into practice at the city level

The Cities Beyond Growth Handbook and new Policy Primer bring together lessons from cities across Europe and practical approaches to building more democratic, caring and sustainable urban economies — from housing, energy and food to mobility and digital technology

Please consider a donation towards TNI to help us continue to be an independent and positive resource in creating an equitable, democratic and peaceful world. We know change is possible when we unite and give movement to ideas. Thank you for your support.

Support our work

A Mining Project in a Protected Wetland

Grassroots Resistance to Extractivism at the Tala Hamza–Amizour mine in Algeria

As Algeria expands its mining sector, the Tala Hamza–Amizour zinc and lead project is pushing ahead in the protected Soummam Valley. This longread examines the environmental risks, struggles over land and water, and the resistance of local communities confronting a project promoted in the name of economic development and national sovereignty.

Cuba, Nicaragua and Palestine

A Shared Struggle Against Colonialism and Imperialism

From the Cuban and Sandinista revolutions to the Palestinian struggle for liberation, movements across Latin America and the Middle East have forged deep ties of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist solidarity. This article traces the historic connections between Cuba, Nicaragua and Palestine, exploring how their revolutionary struggles have influenced one another and what this shared history means for international solidarity today.

Who governs the algorithms of the green transition?

The questions that need to be ask

Artificial intelligence is quietly reshaping green industrial policy — energy planning, grid management, critical mineral supply chains — yet almost no one is asking who controls it. This piece argues that doing so requires three inseparable questions: what technology is deployed, who governs it, and for what purpose it is used.

Telling the Story of EU Border Externalisation

This document complements Telling the story of EU border militarisation, examining the EU’s expanding “Fortress Europe” approach to migration deterrence. Far from stopping crossings or smuggling, these policies have pushed people onto more dangerous routes, eroded human rights, strengthened corporate influence and contributed to political instability and polarisation across Europe.

Digital Fortresses Webinars

The 3-part webinar series will take place online weekly from 2nd September - 16th September at 7PM (CEST).

Join the Digital Fortresses webinars to explore how digital infrastructures underpin systems of power across different sectors and geographies — and how they can be resisted. Bringing together researchers, activists, organisers, artists, journalists, workers and technologists, the series will map connections, identify chokepoints and explore strategies for collective resistance. Register now and join the conversation.

Call for essays: Understanding today’s digital fortresses

TNI is inviting researchers, activists and writers to contribute essays examining the digital infrastructures that underpin systems of military, policing and border violence — and how they affect migrants and racialised communities. Please send your proposal by 11 September.

Find out more

Aquaculture and the Bioeconomy in the Arctic Circle

Inside Norway's aquaculture bioeconomy: high-tech fixes for salmon farming and kelp collapse — and the justice questions the biotech doesn't answer.

RCEP Must Keep ISDS Out for the Sake of Climate Action

Civil society groups in Southeast Asia are calling on Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) governments to uphold the exclusion of Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) in the RCEP General Review, warning that its inclusion would undermine the public interest and impede a just energy transition. More than 70 civil society organizations have signed a joint statement opposing the inclusion of ISDS in the RCEP General Review thus far.

Myanmar

Land, Forests and the Struggle for Survival

A Three-Decade Journey in Ye Chaung Phya (Bee Ree)

A Commentary by Kun Wood

Land is vital in the struggle of the Mon people for survival, political freedom and human rights. Protection and ownership, however, have fallen victim to the cycles of conflict since Myanmar’s independence in 1948. In this eyewitness commentary, Kun Wood analyses the challenges and loss felt by Mon people, both farmers and those displaced by civil war, in the Bee Ree region since the 1995 ceasefire of the New Mon State Party with the military regime. New land policies and the adoption of restitution, redistribution and regeneration principles offer hope. But there is still a long way to go.

When the United League of Arakan controls Western Myanmar

Analyzing new developments in military, political and humanitarian issues in Arakan

A Commentary by Naing Lin

Arakan has become a major resistance land, witnessing the takeover of administration and most townships in Rakhine State by the United League of Arakan since the 2021 military coup. In this commentary, Naing Lin examines the challenges in governance, community rebuilding and security the ULA and local peoples now face. The historic cause for Arakan self-determination and sovereignty has undoubtedly revived. But many difficulties remain, including international relations, displacement and humanitarian crisis, inter-ethnic bridge-building and the continuing attacks of the military regime in Naypyitaw which appears determined to impose dominant control on the country.

"Land is Our Life"

The Struggling Lives of Pa-O Farmers amid Land Confiscation, Climate Change and Rural Collapse

A commentary by the Pa-O Youth Organisation and Transnational Institute

Amidst conflict, Pa-O farmers have long faced multiple challenges as they struggle for cultural survival and daily existence in southwest Shan State, including land confiscations, military conscription and climate change. Many young people leave for Thailand to seek new lives. In this commentary, the Pa-O Youth Organisation interviews local farmers to analyse the deepening hardships and systemic nature of repression. Land rights protection, the restitution of seized lands and an end to conscription and other coercive practices by the military regime and its proxies are clearly essential.

FROM TNI: Annual Report 2025

In a year shaped by escalating conflict, authoritarianism and climate crisis, TNI continued to work alongside movements worldwide to strengthen solidarity, develop transformative ideas and advance practical alternatives. This Annual Report highlights how, together with our partners, we supported struggles for justice, democracy, peace and systemic change throughout 2025.

Towards Palestinian Liberation — in the media

The book Towards Palestinian Liberation is generating discussion across a range of media. Read the latest review in Middle East Eye, and listen to conversations with editor Hamza Hamouchene on Macro N Cheese, FREE with Clara Mattei, Politics Theory Other, and Decolonial Dispatch.

YouTube picks

How a Meme Sparked a Gen Z Revolt in India

Anuradha Chenoy, retired JNU professor and TNI Associate, examines the rise of a new Gen Z protest movement in India and what it reveals about youth politics, democracy and dissent under Narendra Modi’s government. Beginning with the satirical “Cockroach Janata Party” and anger over exam paper leaks, student suicides and India’s education crisis, the movement grew through memes, social media and street protests across dozens of cities. Chenoy argues that its deeper significance lies in young people overcoming political fear and organising across caste, religion and gender around education, unemployment, inequality and democratic rights.

Talk World Radio: Josephine Solanki on Militarized European Borders

On Talk World Radio, TNI's Josephine Solanki discusses wars, migrations, and borders. As a project coordinator she works on the militarisation of the European Union, EU migration and border policy, and related topics. She is also a member of the international Abolish Frontex network. She will also be a speaker at the online annual conference of World BEYOND War coming up in November which is on the topic of borders.

What we're reading

Fossil Fuel Free Amazon 2026 — International Rights of Nature Tribunal
The Limits of Evidence in Global Drug Control: Reflections on the WHO Coca Leaf Review
Designation of Autistici/Inventati as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist — U.S. Department of State
Newsletter No. 65: Against the Tide of Industrial Aquaculture — Nyéléni Newsletter
Newsletter invitation: How Can Europe and Latin America Defend Democracy and International Law? — Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Regional Center on Peace and Security

Support our work

Transnational Institute - putting ideas into movement since 1974

Subscribe

Subject: This month: Who controls our cities, lands and digital spaces?

Aquaculture and the Bioeconomy in the Arctic Circle