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Andreas Sieber is head of political strategy at 350.0g. Cat Abreu is director of the International Climate Politics Hub. From the US abduction of Venezuela’s president at the start of this year to the Iran war which rumbles on, disruption is the new normal for global geopolitics, more often than not linked to conflict over […]
Low-income Indian workers, many of them migrants from rural areas hit by climate change, are paying for worsening extreme heat through lost working days and health complications, with the cost equivalent to 2% of national GDP per year, new research shows. The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), a London-based think-tank, worked with local […]
A United Nations investigation into deep-sea mining firms will continue after the world’s top maritime court rejected their bid to suspend the inquiry triggered by a US-backed push to extract critical minerals from the ocean floor. In two orders issued on Saturday, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) declined to halt […]
The European Commission has put forward new plans to cut emissions under the EU carbon market more slowly, from 2031 onwards. On 17 July, the commission presented its long-awaited proposal for reform of the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS). It recommended a number of changes, including giving companies free allowances to cover their emissions for […]
Scientists have found that the deadly floods across parts of West Africa in recent weeks were made more likely and intense by human-driven climate change, while the expansion of cities into flood-prone areas amplified the devastation, raising the thorny problem of how to better protect poorer urban communities. A report from the World Weather Attribution […]
Perrine Fournier is a trade, mining, and forest campaigner at Fern. The threat that mining critical raw materials poses to some of the planet’s most important ecosystems is beyond dispute. To prevent it, some places on Earth must be declared off-limits for mining under any circumstances. Work has already began to identify them. A global power struggle to secure […]
Governments are holding “critical” talks this week on a global treaty to curb plastic pollution, as some countries and activists warn that key issues – including measures to rein in soaring plastic production – are being sidelined. Diplomats are meeting in person in Nairobi for the first time since negotiations were suspended in chaos nearly […]
As governments gathered at the Our Ocean Conference in Kenya’s coastal city of Mombasa this month, pledging over $6 billion for marine protection, sustainable fisheries and offshore wind, one issue remained largely absent from the main stage: the continued expansion of offshore oil and gas. From Norway, Brazil and Guyana to South Africa, Angola and […]
Eric Mackres is senior manager of urban analytics for the WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities and attended London Climate Action Week during the June 2026 heatwave. Usama Bilal is an associate professor of epidemiology and co-director of the Urban Health Collaborative at Drexel University. As thousands gathered in London for one of the year’s […]
When Tropical Storm Ana made landfall in Malawi in 2022, it hit the Southeast African country’s electricity system hard, destroying a third of its hydropower capacity and causing nationwide shutdowns. Even before the storm, Malawi’s power supply – generated mostly from renewables including solar and hydro – had been unreliable for many years, suffering from […]
The World Bank has scrapped its headline climate finance target under pressure from the Trump administration, but experts believe the survival of its wider climate programme should preserve support for clean energy and resilience in developing nations. Following tense negotiations between its government shareholders, the global lender announced this week it would extend its Climate […]
In Guatemala’s southwest region lies a large lake with a storied history. Lake Atitlán is one of Central America’s most critical local sources of drinking water, and is surrounded by volcanoes, a thriving tourism industry and an ancient Mayan culture. The Sololá region has long been home to Indigenous communities who have been attracted to […]
A new global rainforest fund, unveiled by Brazil at COP30, will likely struggle to meet its initial funding target this year, after the UK failed to announce an expected pledge during London Climate Action Week and other donors have been slow to come on board. The Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) was launched on the […]
The Green Climate Fund (GCF) will have nearly $6 billion more to spend on emissions-reduction and climate adaptation projects in developing countries, after its board agreed to a management proposal to reduce the proportion of money it has to keep in reserve. At a meeting in Tajikistan this week, the government representatives who make up […]
Rich Wilson is CEO of the Iswe Foundation and co-founder of the Global Citizens’ Assembly. The numbers are stark. According to the 2026 Global Report on Food Crises, 266 million people across 47 countries experienced high levels of acute food insecurity last year, nearly double the figure recorded a decade ago. Meanwhile, disruptions to oil, gas […]
Shaun Martin is vice president for adaptation and resilience at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in the United States. “Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative.” A century later, H.G. Wells’s warning reads less like philosophy and more like a prediction for the near future. Last week, the World Meteorological Organization forecast […]
Four Ugandan farmers filed a case with London’s High Court on Tuesday, aiming to stop the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) from starting to operate by asking the court to apply Uganda’s laws against the project’s UK-registered company. The controversial 1,443-kilometre (897-mile) pipeline, majority-owned by French energy company TotalEnergies, aims to carry crude from […]
As countries gathered in Geneva this week for the first UN dialogue on the governance of artificial intelligence, campaigners said the debate around the fast-evolving technology has overlooked the potential harm it could cause to nature and biodiversity. Not only has nature been absent from discussions on the environmental impacts of AI data centres, which […]
As governments and institutions pledged billions for offshore wind, cleaner shipping and marine protection at last month’s Our Ocean Conference in Mombasa, countries are increasingly turning to the ocean as a source of jobs and climate action. But civil society groups warn that the push to expand the “blue economy” may reproduce familiar inequalities unless coastal communities have a […]
Wamuyu Manyara is country director for Trócaire Malawi and Tarcizio Kalaundi is its climate resilience officer. This week, the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) faces a significant decision that will determine its ability to address the harms being done by climate change. Discussions on the Fund’s Resource Mobilisation Strategy must get the […]
Tucked among forested slopes and pristine valleys in a corner of northeastern India, young villagers have been busy knocking on doors – hoping to convince sceptical elders that graphite mining would bring much-needed jobs to their distant region. “The youth in our village migrate to cities for work. What’s better than to have jobs near […]
Disruptions to global fuel markets caused by the war in Iran have hit Africa’s efforts to expand clean cooking with gas, prompting the International Energy Agency (IEA) – backed by the US, a major fossil gas exporter – to launch a programme aimed at strengthening security of supply. Although a fossil fuel, liquefied petroleum gas […]
The board of the UN’s fledgling Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) has decided to consider its first package of projects for support at its next meeting in December, confounding expectations that it might back an initial set of four proposals this week. The fund faces a substantial dilemma about how to select […]
Suresanathan Murugesu is the country director of Action Against Hunger in the Philippines The Philippines is caught in an extreme weather trap. Here, forecasts for a strong El Niño in the months ahead do not just indicate a period of drought – they also point to torrential rain and flooding. It could hardly come at […]
The UN body that regulates mining in international waters has defended its authority over ocean governance after two subsidiaries of deep-sea mining firm The Metals Company (TMC) launched legal action to halt an investigation into their conduct. Speaking at the International Seabed Authority’s (ISA) annual meeting in Kingston on Monday, secretary-general Leticia Carvalho said the […]
Lindsay Fenlock is a senior researcher in the Climate and Energy Program at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). Nikki Reisch is a human rights lawyer and social justice advocate who leads the Climate & Energy Program at CIEL. Much has been written about when fossil fuel companies knew their products cause harm to […]
Climate and environment campaigners have urged the Kenyan government to halt plans for a proposed 700,000-barrel-per-day oil refinery backed by Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, warning the project threatens one of East Africa’s most ecologically sensitive coastlines. The refinery, which is planned to be situated in Lamu County on Kenya’s northern coast, will be East Africa’s […]
Mohamed Adow is the founder and director of Power Shift Africa. At London Climate Action Week, electrification moved from the margins of climate policy to the centre of the road to COP31. The launch of the Electrify Now campaign gave fresh momentum to a target floated at the Bonn climate talks: by 2035, electricity should […]
China and India have declined to back any of their old United Nations carbon credit projects seeking to sell offsets under the new UN market, driving a cull of nearly three-quarters of applicants, analysis of official data shows. Only 415 out of more than 1,500 projects and programmes hoping to move from the Clean Development […]
Recent weeks have seen a flurry of reports from public health authorities and scientists that estimate the deaths caused by Europe’s record-breaking summer heatwaves. In France, the national public health agency reported 2,025 excess deaths over the week where the heatwave peaked in June. Authorities in Germany and Netherlands put the excess death toll during […]
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed. An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change. This week Heat and firewaves ‘FIREWAVE’: Wildfires ravaged Europe and North America this week. France utilised water-dumping planes collecting from the Seine to contain a fire in the Fontainebleau forest near Paris, according to the Associated Press. The Financial […]
The UK has abandoned projects worth tens of millions of pounds that were meant to help protect Congo rainforests and support local people. Together, these initiatives would have made up around half of the £200m that the UK pledged to support conservation in the Congo basin – the world’s second-largest rainforest. When it hosted COP26 […]
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight. This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter. Subscribe for free here. Key developments Global drought and heat DRY THEN WET: A recent heatwave and months of low rainfall has led […]
The UK’s incoming prime minister Andy Burnham has remained tight-lipped on his views on climate change during his leadership campaign. When asked his views on reversing Labour’s manifesto pledge to stop new North Sea drilling in June – a move that the oil-and-gas industry and right-wing media have pushed for in recent months – he […]
Last month, COP31 president-designate Murat Kurum launched a target for 35% of the world’s final energy to come from electricity by 2035. In an interview with Carbon Brief, Kurum says that the target was not a political choice, but instead reflects the latest evidence on “what is needed to keep 1.5C within reach”. The ongoing […]
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed. An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change. This week ‘Catastrophic’ climate impacts RECORD HEAT: Western Europe experienced its hottest June on record – some 3C above average – according to analysis covered by the Guardian. It said the finding came “as the UK enters its third heatwave of […]
As successive heatwaves hit Europe, air-conditioning (AC) has emerged as a new front in the international “culture war” over climate action. France, Germany and the UK have experienced record-breaking heat and thousands of heat-related deaths this summer, with June temperatures in many regions passing 40C. This has drawn attention to the relatively low rates of […]
AI companies want to capture the value created by entire industries. That concentration of wealth and power is society’s greatest risk Opposition to AI datacenters has emerged as a primary theme in US politics, one that – surprisingly – doesn’t fall along party lines. We applaud people coming together for constructive debate on any issue, […]
The number of global climate initiatives launched or run by China has been growing since 2009, a new study shows. But whether this will translate into China taking up the mantle of climate leadership remains an “open question”, says Dr Sun Yixian, study co-author and professor of sustainability governance at the University of Bath. Sun’s […]
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China Briefing. China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here. Key developments Rain, typhoons and heat GUANGXI FLOODS: Severe floods hit south-western China’s Guangxi province after heavy rains, killing 39 people and leaving another nine missing, reported the […]
Welcome to Cited, your essential guide to new climate research. In the news ‘HEAT ALERT’: At least 25 people died as a “heat dome” smothered the eastern half of the US, reported the Guardian, with more than 20 states under “stifling temperatures more than 100F (38C)”. More than 140 million people were under heat alerts, […]
In June 2026, a record-breaking heatwave swept across Europe, with France among the first and hardest hit countries. In a new analysis, we estimate that the extreme conditions caused more than 2,700 heat-related deaths in France. We also show how France’s extreme temperatures in June exceeded projections from climate models. Our findings illustrate the human […]
The World Bank has abandoned a target for 45% of the funding it gives developing countries to be “climate finance”, following months of pressure from the Trump administration in the US. However, a concerted effort by developed- and developing-country shareholders has seen the bank hold onto its “action plan” for tackling climate change. The multilateral […]
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed. An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change. This week Heating up NOT FREE FROM HEAT: “Dangerous, record-breaking” heat altered plans for 4 July celebrations across the US this weekend, reported the Associated Press. New York and Boston hit 100F (37.8C) on Thursday, said the newswire. CNBC […]
Candidates are being nominated to take over as the UN secretary general, when António Guterres steps down after nearly a decade in the role at the end of 2026. Since becoming the ninth secretary general on 1 January 2017, Guterres has been a strong advocate for climate action, saying in January 2026: “We have been […]
A major ocean conference has ended in Mombasa, Kenya, with just a handful of countries committing to high-level political declarations on banning deep-sea mining, protecting climate-resilient coral reefs and combatting illegal fishing. The Our Ocean Conference (OOC) brought together more than 5,000 delegates to discuss marine issues and make voluntary commitments to advance ocean sustainability. […]
Despite recent shifts in federal energy policies, our analysis shows that the US transition to renewable energy is continuing. The current administration has enacted a range of changes to prioritise fossil-fuel energy and environmental deregulation in the US, while withdrawing support for renewables. Yet solar, wind and battery storage accounted for over 90% of new […]
For the first time in the UK, more new electric vehicles (EVs) have been sold over a 12-month period than petrol cars, according to Carbon Brief analysis. The news comes amid a battle over the future of the UK’s “zero-emissions vehicle” (ZEV) mandate, which the car industry and some unions are pushing to water down. […]
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China Briefing. China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here. Key developments New five-year plans GENERATION TARGET: China today released its 15th five-year plan for building a “new-type energy system”, according to finance news outlet Cailianshe. It said […]
Twice as many animals died due to heat stress en route to slaughterhouses during the UK’s record-hot summer in 2025 compared to 2024, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Government figures showed that nearly 6,600 animals – mostly chickens – died in transport as a result of the sweltering summer heat in England and Wales […]