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Negotiations on finance at a key UN summit where governments are expected to ramp up “insufficient” nature conservation policies have reached a stalemate, as countries struggle to agree on where new sources of funding for biodiversity will come from. Ahead of the COP17 nature summit taking place in Yerevan, Armenia, a UN assessment report showed […]
Tens of billions of dollars in international climate finance have been pledged this decade for a “just energy transition” in the Global South. Most of the money, promised by wealthy governments and banks, will be funnelled into infrastructure – mainly shuttering fossil fuel power plants or installing renewables. But these investments in the shift to […]
Jurema Werneck, Ruhat Sena Akşener and Samantha Klintworth are directors for Amnesty International in Brazil, Türkiye and Australia, respectively. The climate crisis is also a human rights crisis – claiming lives and turning life upside down for countless communities across the world. But while those profiting from fossil fuel expansion retain privileged access and influence […]
Print article Share Article Contents Expand menu Close ‘Moving the goalposts’ ‘£1bn shortfall’ Accounting changes Methodology The UK has beaten its target to provide £11.6bn of climate aid to developing countries by 2026 – but only through “questionable accounting”. As part of its obligations under the Paris Agreement, the UK pledged to give at least […]
Print article Share Article Contents Expand menu Close The UK has supported around 500 climate projects since 2021 UK climate aid has reached record levels – but is set to drop Afghanistan received more bilateral climate aid than any other country Development banks and private-sector funders are among the biggest beneficiaries Methodology The UK has […]
Trade measures that impose tariffs and penalties on cleantech and emissions-intensive goods are poised to re-emerge as a challenging issue at the UN climate talks in Türkiye next month, after China signalled it wants COP31 to focus on ensuring the free flow of green technologies. China, which dominates global manufacturing of cleantech equipment, has staunchly […]
Countries’ climate plans would cut global emissions only half as much by 2035 as the UN projected a year ago, its annual assessment showed, after the US exit from the Paris Agreement and weaker new pledges worsened the outlook. Taking into account the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) of 154 countries, which cover about 71% of […]
Print article Share Article Contents Expand menu Close What is driving high energy bills? What has been done to limit bills so far? What options are there for bringing down bills? Is there a ‘cheap power’ alternative if the UK slows down? Can electrification of homes and businesses help cut bills? Energy bills in the […]
Print article Share Article Contents Expand menu Close Surface mass balance Total mass balance Surface melt Snowfall Iceberg calving The impact of global weather Three decades of decline Greenland in the global sea level picture Greenland has now marked the 30th consecutive year where it lost more ice than it gained. This guest post is […]
African governments are developing policies to manage waste from solar panels, batteries and other clean tech equipment as installations surge, with officials warning the energy transition could create a new environmental problem unless it is accompanied by investment in recycling and reuse. Many African households and businesses are increasingly turning away from unreliable grid power […]
The surprise re-election of Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Sunday, in a tight race against right-wing candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, has raised hopes the country can meet a flagship target to end deforestation in all its biomes by 2030 and advance international fundraising to protect rainforests. Defying expectations to win an unprecedented fourth […]
Print article Share Article Contents Expand menu Close NEV record Impact of Hormuz NEV demand down Exports surge For the first time, new-energy vehicles (NEVs) made up 67% of new car sales in China in September, according to the latest data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA). The figures show that NEVs, which include […]
Other than the Australian and Turkish co-hosts, the only G20 nations to address the COP31 leaders’ summit with speakers at the “head of state or government” level will be the UK, Brazil and China, according to a provisional list released on Wednesday. The list, which is published by the United Nations and subject to change, […]
Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat is director of the China-Indonesia Desk at the Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS). Bhima Yudhistira Adhinegara is executive director of CELIOS. Indonesia bills its plans to mix wood with coal at dozens of power plants as a way to cut electricity generation emissions as the country transitions towards clean energy. […]
The board of the UN’s Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage agreed on Thursday to set aside $20 million to help Nepal recover from the devastating climate-driven flood it suffered in August. At an extraordinary online meeting, board members unanimously invited Nepal’s government to submit a proposal for how to use the money, which […]
Print article Share Artificial intelligence (AI) is developing at a rapid pace and is increasingly being used by scientists to better understand climate change. AI is perhaps best-known for its use in “large language models”, such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. However, the field is vast. From weather forecasting to analysing satellite images, climate scientists […]
June Rubis is a steering group committee member for the Cali Fund, from Sarawak in Malaysian Borneo. At COP16 in Cali, governments made a significant commitment: at least half of the funding from the new Cali Fund should support the self-identified needs of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, including women and youth. It was a […]
The UK government has approved extraction at the Jackdaw gas field in the North Sea, despite acknowledging that this decision could make it harder for Britain to convince other countries to move away from fossil fuel production. UK energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh approved the drilling on Wednesday after months of high-profile debate, fuelled in part […]
Print article Share A surge in wholesale costs driven by expensive gas is responsible for nearly 90% of the rise in UK household electricity bills since 2020, reveals new analysis. The figures, shared with Carbon Brief by thinktank Nesta, show that wholesale gas costs are also behind the vast majority (77%) of the increase in […]
When the Turkish COP31 presidency presented its priorities to international business leaders for the first time in New York in September, among those invited to give the private sector’s first response was Ali Koç, scion of one of Türkiye’s wealthiest families. On stage, the vice chair of the board of Koç Holding said the family […]
The United Nations has said the world must cut greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 6% per year to limit global warming enough to be able to return to the 1.5C goal by 2100, as decades of insufficient climate action have now made an overshoot inevitable. In a video message accompanying the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) […]
A temporary breach of the 1.5C global-warming limit is now “inevitable” following “decades of insufficient climate action”, says the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). In its “sobering” annual assessment of the global “emissions gap”, UNEP says that exceeding the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C limit is “imminent and unavoidable”. This year’s report, titled “The point of return”, says […]
Three countries have been named by the Paris Agreement’s compliance committee for failing to submit a nationally determined contribution (NDC) and repeatedly snubbing offers of help with their climate plans. After months of internal debate over whether to identify serial non-responders, the Paris Agreement’s Implementation and Compliance Committee (PAICC) named the three countries which have […]
Print article Share Article Contents Expand menu Close What timeline options were delegates debating? How did the timeline discussions unfold? What were the main points of disagreement? Why is the IPCC in a ‘serious funding crisis’? How have scientists reacted? What other issues remain unresolved? How are the IPCC AR7 reports progressing? How might the […]
Scientists have vowed to keep working on the next flagship set of reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), after a political row over the timeline for their release saw its latest session suspended on Friday evening without agreement. During the weekend, government officials and scientists alike expressed disappointment over the inability to […]
An Lambrechts is a biodiversity politics expert at Greenpeace International with extensive experience in biodiversity-related multilateral negotiations. She is the head of the Greenpeace delegation at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP17 happening in Yerevan, Armenia. In 2022, COP15 delivered the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. […]
The board of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) will decide on Thursday on whether to “provisionally set aside” $20 million for Nepal to deal with some of the effects of the climate-driven flood it suffered in August. The motion, seen by Climate Home News, has been drafted by a group of […]
The World Bank president said on Friday his organisation will continue to support some gas projects in developing countries alongside renewables, nuclear and hydropower, despite criticism from climate campaigners who say fossil gas is expensive and polluting. “Homes, mines, factories, farms, and growing cities – what do they need? Reliable, affordable baseload power,” Ajay Banga […]
Print article Share Some 58% of countries have met a UN call to submit new pledges on addressing nature loss – two years after the original deadline – according to Carbon Brief analysis. Countries were asked to submit new pledges, known as national biodiversity strategies and action plans (NBSAPs), by the start of the COP16 […]
Meena Raman is deputy director at Third World Network (TWN), a public interest lawyer and an expert on international climate negotiations. Leon Sealey-Huggins is senior campaigner in global climate justice and just transition at War on Want. Both organisations are members of the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ). The world urgently needs the […]
A first set of biodiversity plans filed by countries to reverse nature loss are “insufficient” to meet this decade’s global targets, including a landmark goal to protect at least 30% of the world’s land and marine ecosystems by 2030, a landmark UN report warned on Thursday. The State of Biodiversity Action, put together by a […]
Print article Share The amount of finance for nature delivered to date “falls far short” of what is needed to meet the UN’s global goals, according to a report released ahead of the COP17 biodiversity summit. The global stocktaking report, prepared by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (UN CBD) ahead of this month’s summit […]
Latin American governments cracked down on forest clearing in 2025, leading global deforestation to fall by the most this decade, but political shifts and the likely impact of a strong El Niño threaten to undo those “fragile” gains, a new report has found. Seven million hectares of forests – roughly the size of Ireland – […]
The UK government warned the Carbon Capture and Storage Association’s (CCSA) annual conference on Tuesday that the fledgling industry should prepare to receive less financial support from taxpayers in the future. As the left-wing Labour government, under its new leader Andy Burnham, seeks to boost military spending in line with NATO allies, it is reportedly […]
Sandra Guzmán is director at the Climate Finance Group for Latin America and the Caribbean (GFLAC), and Raju Pandit Chhetri is lead climate finance negotiator for the least-developed countries at the UNFCCC. Recent catastrophic floods in Nepal starkly remind us that the climate crisis demands urgent action. The initial estimate that the country will need […]
When oil and gas shipments stopped flowing through the Strait of Hormuz at the start of the Iran war, Southeast Asian nations were left reeling as the supply crunch laid bare their acute reliance on fossil fuel imports. As prices soared, governments in the region scrambled to introduce emergency energy-saving measures – from a four-day […]
Cleaner cooking projects in the UN carbon market will have to set aside a share of their credits to insure against the risk that the trees they save are lost to fire, drought or logging, after the market’s regulator rejected calls to exempt the sector. The requirement is part of a new rulebook that the […]
Print article Share Next week, diplomats from around the world will descend on Yerevan, Armenia, to negotiate a series of decisions under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Between 19 and 30 October, 196 parties will gather to hammer out the precise wording of the dozens of legal texts that make up the decisions […]
Piers Forster is Professor of Physical Climate Change and Director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at the University of Leeds. He has previously served as a lead author on several IPCC assessment reports. Evidence of a rapidly changing climate and our improved scientific understanding is compelling nations to act, but not always in […]
The launch of the Africa Energy Bank (AEB) has been put back yet again, raising doubts about the institution’s future ability to finance fossil fuel projects – its main objective – as global lenders retreat from such investments over climate concerns, experts told Climate Home News. The bank, which had been billed to launch in […]
A booklet published by the UK’s opposition Conservative party includes a “cost of net-zero” that appears to have been doubled by a spreadsheet error. The “common sense” policy document argues that “what people ultimately want is a government competent enough to solve the problems for which it takes responsibility”. In a section that says “sophisticat[ed]…modelling” […]
After witnessing and hearing stories of Pacific islands’ vulnerability to climate change, senior climate officials have promised to strengthen efforts to limit global warming to 1.5C, despite an expected overshoot, and to help the region adapt to rising seas and other impacts. More than 30 world leaders, ministers, climate negotiators and international development bankers travelled […]
A Dutch NGO has filed the first climate complaint under the European Union’s trade rules, arguing that New Zealand violated the environmental provisions of its free trade agreement with the bloc by weakening its climate regulations. The case will test whether binding climate provisions in the EU’s free trade deals can be enforced to hold […]
Australia and Türkiye have agreed to take forward a “presidency-led decision for COP31” after consulting with different countries and groups, Australia’s climate change and energy minister said on Wednesday at the pre-COP meeting in Fiji. The announcement that November’s climate conference will produce what is known among negotiators as a “cover decision” lays to rest […]
After witnessing the effects of sea-level rise in the low-lying island nation of Tuvalu, Pacific leaders on Tuesday used the pre-COP31 summit in Fiji to voice their frustration at the difficulties they have experienced in tapping the global climate finance system. A small group of government leaders, climate negotiators and heads of development banks and […]
Jacynta Fa’amau is a Pacific campaigner at global grassroots climate movement 350.org and a secretariat member of Pacific Climate Warriors. The first thing that struck me was the sheer size of Queensland’s Saraji coal mine. Standing at the edge of the enormous pit, my brain scrambled for words as I scanned the earth’s open wound […]
When José Antonio Kast took office as Chile’s new president in March, one of his first moves was to put the brakes on plans to expand two protected marine parks – raising doubts about the country’s high-profile bid to host the headquarters of the High Seas Treaty. But during the UN General Assembly last month, […]
Mohamed Adow is the founder and director of Power Shift Africa. What does it mean to ask a continent to adapt to a crisis it did little to create? For Africa, that question has stopped being philosophical as it is answered every day in flooded communities, failed harvests, disappearing livelihoods and public budgets stretched by […]
Extreme heat poses a growing threat to pregnant women and their babies, both before and after birth, the UN climate chief said on Monday, calling it “a new faultline in the global climate crisis, and one which is potentially fatal”. Speaking on the first day of the pre-COP31 meeting in Fiji, where new research was […]
Several major banks that helped set up the UN’s now-defunct Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) in 2021 have since continued to lend money to coal companies, a new report has revealed. Bank of America, Barclays, Citibank, Deutsche Bank and Santander were heavily involved in the NZBA and the associated Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) […]