US President Donald Trump and Congress are moving to overturn Joe Biden’s 20‑year mining ban on more than 225,000 acres of Superior National Forest in northern Minnesota, using the Congressional Review Act after Interior officials argued the ban was not properly filed in the Congressional Record. If lawmakers reject the ban within 60 days, the Trump administration could reissue long‑contested federal leases for Antofagasta’s Twin Metals underground copper‑nickel‑cobalt‑PGM project, located in the Duluth polymetallic belt. The mine would be Minnesota’s first underground operation since 1967 and the next major US nickel producer as the country’s only existing nickel mine nears closure.

A coalition of UK environmental professionals is calling for natural capital – including rivers, wetlands, soils and urban green space – to be formally designated as critical national infrastructure (CNI). The group argues that assets providing flood attenuation, coastal protection and urban cooling deliver system-level resilience comparable to power, water and transport networks, and should therefore receive similar statutory protection and long-term funding. For civil and geotechnical engineers, this would push nature-based solutions such as floodplains, saltmarsh and sustainable drainage systems further into core infrastructure planning and asset management.

UK ministers have pushed back the Development Consent Order decision for the two 1.5GW Dogger Bank South offshore wind farms, extending the statutory deadline from 10 January 2026 to 30 April 2026. The schemes, totalling 3GW in the North Sea, would require extensive offshore foundations, subsea cabling and grid connection works comparable in scale to the existing Dogger Bank A, B and C projects. The four‑month delay prolongs design and procurement uncertainty for marine geotechnical campaigns, fabrication yards and onshore grid reinforcement planning.