2024年3月，中国的二氧化碳（CO2）排放量下降了3%。这标志着自2022年12月放宽防疫措施、重启经济活动以来，中国碳排放量连续14个月的增长告一段落。
Carbon Brief基于官方数字和商业数据进行的新分析显示，中国CO2排放量在2023年或已达峰。
2024年3月CO2排放量下降的驱动因素包括光电和风电的快速增长，这满足了电力需求增长的90%，以及建筑活动的减少。
石油需求增长也陷入停滞，表明疫情后的经济反弹可能已临近尾声。
如果中国能维持去年创纪录的清洁能源建设水平，该国有望在2023年实现碳达峰。
然而，整个行业和政府对清洁能源的增长前景看法不一。如果中国尚未实现碳达峰，如何弥合分歧将是决定碳达峰何时到来的关键因素。
该分析的其他关键发现包括：
- 尽管电力需求强劲增长，但光电和风电的增长推动化石燃料发电量份额从前一年的67.4%下降至2024年3月的63.6%。
- 由于中国房地产建设活动的持续萎缩，2024年3月钢铁产量下降了8%，水泥产量下降了22%。
- 电动汽车现在约占中国道路上汽车总量的十分之一，将汽油需求增长拉低了约3.5个百分点。
- 去年创纪录的太阳能新增发电装机中，约45%是规模较小的分布式光伏，导致看似出现了“数据缺失”问题。
为什么三月排放量出现下降？
根据中国国家统计局发布的初步能源消费数据，2024年第一季度中国的碳排放量总体显著增加。
今年1月和2月的碳排放量仍较2023年的低基数大幅增长，彼时中国经济仍因刚结束不久的清零防疫措施而受到抑制。
因此，与2023年同期相比，2024年第一季度的CO2排放量同比增长了3.8%，煤炭消费量增长了3%，石油消费量增长了4%，天然气消费量增长了11%。
转折点出现在今年3月份。由于该月份的煤炭消费量降低了1%，石油消费保持平稳，而水泥产量则下降了22%，导致3月CO2排放量同比下降了3%。尽管天然气消费量增长了14%，但由于其在中国能源结构中占比较小，从而影响有限。
如下图所示，自2022年12月放宽疫情限制措施后，中国的碳排放量从2023年2月开始回升。
因此，2023年1月至2月的同比比较仍然受到去年疫情导致的低基数影响，这使得3月的数据成为能够清楚地反映碳排放趋势的首个月度数据。
近年来，中国碳排放量增长的主要推动力来自电力部门（见下文）。
反之，3月碳排放趋势转为下降，主要原因也是电力部门的排放量增长的大幅放缓。由于光电和风电的强劲增长，电力部门3月的碳排放量仅同比增长了1%。
如下图所示，尽管电力部门的排放量企稳，但建筑业对钢铁和水泥的需求持续下降，这才是3月份碳排放量减少的最主要原因。
钢铁产量下降了8%，因此炼钢厂的主要燃料炼焦煤的产量也随之降低。水泥产量同比骤降了22%。
由于政府对房地产行业高杠杆的打击和对金融风险的管控，以及建筑行业过去的繁荣导致了产能过剩，房地产行业投资已连续第三年收缩，这使得上述排放趋势可能会继续维持。
尽管建筑业需求出现收缩，但中国对钢铁和其他能源密集型金属的需求并未出现预期的大幅下降。
这背后的原因是制造业的快速增长和对该行业的投资，而在设施建设和工业机械生产中都需使用金属制品。
但是，随着全球各种商品和大宗货物的市场逐渐饱和，这种制造业的增长不太可能持续下去。当局的经济政策现在强调“新质生产力”，这是推动经济增长摆脱对传统重工业的依赖的最新尝试。“新质生产力”指高端的制造和研发，这些领域的能源密集程度大多比中国的传统工业部门更低。
从2024年3月其他行业的情况来看，运输用油的需求在经历了几个月的强劲增长之后，变得与去年同期相比近乎持平。这表明疫情后的需求反弹可能正在逐渐消失。
航空燃料（+35%）和汽油（+7%）产量仍在增长，说明客运需求出现增长。但柴油产量增长停滞（+1%），原油加工量也仅增加了1%。
电动汽车的增长正显著削减石油需求量。根据过去十年的累计销售数据估计，电动汽车在道路上所有车辆中的占比从去年的7.0%增加到10.5%。这表明，电动汽车的普及使汽油需求增长降低了3.5个百分点。
天然气需求出现大幅反弹，同比增长14%。此前天然气价格高企导致需求下降。天然气消费的增长主要来自工业和家庭部门。
随着燃气电厂利用率有所恢复，电力部门的天然气消费量增长了8%，但这仅占总体增长很小的一部分。
天然气在中国能源结构中的占比曾连续增长了二十多年，在2021至2023年间有所下降，现在开始恢复增长。
近期推动碳排放量增长的一个因素仍在继续：化工行业的煤炭消费量增长了14%，延续了2022和2023年两位数的增长趋势。
尽管目前还没有足够的数据来估算4月份的CO2排放量，但当月的工业数据表明，3月排放下降的趋势仍在继续。
由于光伏发电满足了大部分的电力需求增长，火力发电量——主要来自煤电——缓慢增长了1.3%。钢铁、水泥和焦炭产量分别下降了8%、9%和7%，反映出建筑需求的持续减少。炼油量下降了3%。
国内煤炭开采量下降了3%，而进口量增加了11%，这意味着总供应量减少了5%。
天然气需求进一步强劲增长，进口量增长了15%，国内产量增加了3%。在能源密集型行业中，化工和有色金属行业的产量继续保持较快增长。
光电和风电满足需求增长
企稳的电力部门排放量值得关注，因为电力需求继续以7.4%高速增长，而受长期干旱的影响，水电利用率低于长期平均水平。
过去几年，工业用电推动电力需求迅速增长。3月，工业需求增长放缓，但服务业的反弹维持了整体需求的增长。
近一半的用电需求增长来自工业，其中有色金属、化工、机械和电子等行业是最主要的需求增长的领域。服务业贡献了需求增长的三分之一，主要源自批发和零售贸易，另有六分之一来自家庭用电。
在2022年历史性的热浪引发一波空调购买潮的推动下，家庭用电需求在过去几年也出现了激增，尤其是在以前没有空调的低收入家庭。
尽管电力需求快速增长，但由于分布式光伏电站的大规模部署，规模以上工业发电量增速放缓至3%。
（与大型集中式太阳能发电场相比，分布式光伏电站指的是装机规模较小的发电系统，通常安装在家庭和企业的屋顶上。）
总体而言，由于2023年光电和风电装机的创纪录增长，光电和风电发电量占比已达到22%，并在3月实现了近90%的同比增长。非化石燃料发电量占比从去年的32.6%上升至36.2%。
分布式光伏对发电的贡献越来越大，但这在一定程度上被中国月度电力数据的报告方式所掩盖。国家统计局只发布大型光伏和风力发电站的月度发电量。它还系统性地上修了前几年的数据，这表明其没有实时捕捉新进入市场的企业的发电量。
由于去年创纪录的光伏新增装机容量中有45%是分布式发电，对小型光伏装机的排除对这些数字的影响比以往大得多。
这在中国和海外引起很多困惑，特别是报告的用电量数据远大于发电量数据，这显然是不可能的，彭博社甚至称其为“数据缺失问题”。
然而，用电量和规模以上工业发电量之间不断扩大的差距表明，分布式光伏在满足用电需求方面的贡献越来越大。
与月报数据不同，中国的年度统计公报中没有“缺失”的数据，因为年度统计包括所有电厂，无论其规模。例如，2023年的年度统计公报显示，光伏发电量是月度统计的两倍，风电发电量则多出了10%。
事实上，如果按照月度数据中的装机容量和利用小时数来计算发电量，得到的数据与年度报告数据非常接近。这清楚地表明，尽管统计局的月度数据中没有纳入分布式光伏的发电量，但其的确为满足电力需求做出重大贡献。
清洁能源热潮继续
去年光电和风电新增发电装机容量约300吉瓦（GW），这推动了3月份碳排放量的下降。这种热潮在2024年前三个月加速，与去年相比增长了40%。
太阳能发电新增装机容量46吉瓦，同比增长36%；风电新增装机容量16吉瓦，同比增长50%。
通常来说，第一季度的新增装机容量增速一般较低，而且由于报告滞后，相当多的新增装机在年底才被报告。
强劲的同比增长表明，对新项目能否成功并网的担忧并未影响新增装机容量增加的步伐。即便今年剩下时间里增速会有所放缓，但迄今为止的数据表明，去年创纪录的增速可能会在2024年持续。
今年1月至3月，太阳能电池板产量在去年的高基数上又增长了20%，表明中国和海外的需求强劲。
电动汽车产量增长了29%，汽车总产量恢复了下降趋势，这使得电动汽车占比持续快速攀升，在第一季度达到了31%，而去年同期为26%。
由于光电和风电项目的经济效益显著，对新增装机的主要限制来自并网。因担心无法消纳新增发电量，去年多个省级电网运营商已开始限制新增光电和风电项目。
这凸显了中国电网运营上的短板，因为风电和光电占中国总发电量的份额仍然有限，仅为15%。相比之下，两者在欧盟电力系统中的占比为27%，德国、西班牙和希腊达到40%。
中国已开始采取行动解决该问题。国家发改委已开始放宽光电和风电并网的要求。这将增加风光项目投资者的不确定性，但提高了电网运营商的消纳能力，从而支持发电装机和发电量的增长。
国家发改委还发布了一项推动储能发展的政策，承诺到2027年，电力系统将能够支撑新增风光装机容量，同时将因电网问题而浪费的发电量比例保持在较低水平。
虽然光电和风电已开始满足大部分或全部用电需求的增长，但煤电投资仍在继续。第一季度，火电装机的新增速度同比略有放缓，但各省2024年的“重点项目清单”中包括超过200吉瓦的火电项目，其主要是燃煤电厂。
未来仍充满变数
中国3月份碳排放量的下降可能标志着自2020年以来碳排放的强劲增长出现了转折点。正如 Carbon Brief 去年秋天发布的一篇分析所述，目前清洁能源的增长率有可能使该国提前实现碳达峰。
因此，清洁能源增长是否会持续，是影响中国未来排放路径的关键问题。但是，外界对于未来风电和光电的发展速度仍存在很大分歧。
中国光伏行业协会在其“保守”情景中预测，2024年至2030年间年均新增装机容量为225吉瓦，比2023年的217吉瓦略有增加。在“乐观”情景下，这一数字将加速至每年280吉瓦。根据该协会预测，中国的太阳能总装机容量将从目前的660吉瓦，到2030年增加到2200至2600吉瓦。
据风电行业数据，要实现2060年碳中和目标，中国需要在2021年至2025年间每年新增超过50吉瓦的风电装机。从2026年起，每年新增装机超过60吉瓦。这是一个相对适中的轨迹，因为2023年风电新增装机容量已经达到76吉瓦。
另一方面，国家能源局局长章建华在最近一篇文章中写道，清洁能源的新增装机容量应保持在每年100吉瓦以上，但这不到2023年实际水平的一半。这意味着他认为最近的加速增长是反常的，可能难以持续。
与之类似，在国家能源局2024年的工作计划中，从总发电装机容量和非化石能源发电容量占比，可以推算出非化石能源新增装机的目标在170吉瓦左右。（尽管2023年工作计划的目标是160吉瓦，但实际新增接近300吉瓦。）
下图展现了对于光电和风电发展的不同愿景。深蓝色线代表了章建华的预期，即年新增装机容量将回落到2020年至2022年水平；浅蓝色和红色线是可再生能源行业预测的增长趋势，其大致保持在2023年的水平，或稳步增长。
到2030年，光伏行业协会和国家能源局就光电和风电的装机目标差距为1400至1800吉瓦。如果新增的清洁能源发电量在2030年能够取代煤电，那么碳排放量将比当前水平下降10至15%。到2035年，随着风电和光电进一步发展，碳排放量将比当前水平下降20至25%。
章建华在文章中指出了一些挑战，以解释为何他认为清洁能源新增发电容量水平较低，包括储能价格机制尚未健全，能源转型政策合力亟待加强，以及集中连片新能源发展用地、用海空间不足等。
尽管如此，减缓光电、风电和相关储能的新增装机速度将给中国经济泼上一盆冷水，因为这些清洁能源行业已成为经济增长的一个关键来源。
此外，最近对这些行业生产能力的大量投资，只有在清洁能源设备需求持续增长的情况下才能得到利用和回报。
政府雄心的减弱也反映在今年设定的较为保守的官方目标上。根据环保部最近设定的目标，2024年碳强度（每单位GDP的排放量）的目标降幅为3.9%。
尽管这一目标超过过去三年碳强度年均仅下降1.5%的水平，但考虑到GDP增速目标是“约5%”，该碳强度目标实际将允许碳排放量增长逾1%。
在2021年至2023年碳排放量快速增加之后，中国已经严重偏离了2025年和2030年的碳强度目标，而2024年的年度目标未能缩小这一差距。
3.9%正是实现“十四五”规划中碳排放强度下降18%的目标所需的年均下降幅度。因此，该目标避免了落后幅度进一步扩大，但对弥补迄今为止的进展滞后毫无作用。
国家发改委还设定了一个相对保守的目标，即到2024年将“化石能源强度”降低2.5%，这将允许碳排放量增加2%以上。
章建华还认为，在2026至2030年期间，清洁能源应满足70%的能源消费增长，这一目标也与清洁能源新增装机容量放缓的趋势一致。
这意味着，能源消费增长的30%仍将通过增加化石燃料的使用来满足，因此CO2排放量也将继续增加。
持续增长的碳排放量意味着中国将面临无法实现2030年的碳强度承诺的风险，而这是中国在《巴黎协定》下提交的国际气候承诺的一部分。因为假设GDP年均增长5%或更低，根据这一承诺，从2023年到2030年，能源部门的CO2排放量没有增加的空间。
因此，中国能否实现其气候承诺，取决于清洁能源增长是否会继续显著超过中央政府制定的目标，亦或是这些目标在未来是否会提高。
数据来源
本分析数据来源于中国国家统计局、国家能源局、中国电力企业联合会、中国海关官方发布的数据以及行业数据提供商WIND资讯。
电力行业煤炭消费量是根据煤炭发电量和燃煤电厂每月平均发热量来估算的，以避免官方煤炭消费量影响近期数据的问题。煤炭发电量根据火力发电总量和燃煤、燃气、生物质电厂报告容量和利用小时数计算，以得到综合火力发电数据。
当数据来自多个来源时，本文交叉引用不同来源并尽可能使用官方来源，调整总消费数控，以匹配国家统计局报告的消费增长和能源结构变化。
2024年第一季度的数据进行了调整，以匹配国家统计局初步官方数据中报告的整个季度的同比增长率。但无论有没有这种调整，三月份排放量下降的结论都成立。
二氧化碳排放量估算基于国家统计局默认的 2018 年燃料热值和中国最新国家温室气体排放清单中的排放因素。水泥二氧化碳排放基于截至 2023 年的年度估算。
对于石油消耗量，表观消耗量是根据炼油厂吞吐量计算，减去石油产品的净出口量。
The post 分析：月度碳排放量下降或表明中国已在2023年碳达峰 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Climate Change
Cropped 11 February 2026: Aftershocks of US withdrawals | Biodiversity and business risks | Deep-sea mining tensions
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. This is the last edition of Cropped for 2025. The newsletter will return on 14 January 2026.
Key developments
Economic risks from nature loss
RISKY BUSINESS: The “undervaluing” of nature by businesses is fuelling its decline and putting the global economy at risk, according to a new report covered by Carbon Brief. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) “business and biodiversity” report “urg[ed] companies to act now or potentially face extinction themselves”, Reuters wrote.
BUSINESS ACTION: The report was agreed at an IPBES meeting in Manchester last week. Speaking to Carbon Brief at the meeting, IPBES chair, Dr David Obura, said the findings showed that “all sectors” of business “need to respond to biodiversity loss and minimise their impacts”. Bloomberg quoted Prof Stephen Polasky, co-chair of the report, as saying: “Too often, at present, what’s good for business is bad for nature and vice-versa.”
Tensions in deep-sea mining
-
Sign up to Carbon Brief’s free “Cropped” email newsletter. A fortnightly digest of food, land and nature news and views. Sent to your inbox every other Wednesday.
JAPAN’S TAKEOFF: Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, announced on 2 February that the country became the first in the world to extract rare earths from the deep seabed after successful retrievals near Minamitori Island, in the central Pacific Ocean, according to Asia Financial. The country hailed the move as a “first step toward industrialisation of domestically produced rare earth” metals, Takaichi said.
URGENT CALL: On 5 February, the International Seabed Authority (ISA) secretary general, Leticia Reis de Carvalho, called on EU officials to “quickly agree on an international rule book on the extraction of critical minerals in international waters”, due to be finalised later this year, Euractiv reported. The bloc has supported a proposed moratorium on deep-sea mining. However, the US has “taken the opposite approach”, fast-tracking a single permit for exploration and exploitation of seabed resources, and “might be pushing the EU – and others” to follow suit, the outlet added.
CAUTIONARY COMMENT: In the Inter Press Service, the former president of the Seychelles and a Swiss philanthropist highlighted the important role of African leadership in global ocean governance. It called for a precautionary pause on deep-sea mining due to the potential harmful effects of this extractive activity on biodiversity, food security and the economy. They wrote: “The accelerating push for deep-sea mining activities also raises concerns about repeating historic patterns seen in other extractive sectors across Africa.”
News and views
- ARGENTINE AUSTERITY: The Argentinian government’s response to the worst wildfires to hit Patagonia “in decades” has been hindered by president Javier Milei’s “gutting” of the country’s fire-management agency, the Associated Press reported. Carbon Brief covered a new rapid-attribution analysis of the fires, which found that climate change made the hot, dry conditions that preceded the fires more than twice as likely.
- CRISIS IN SOMALIA: The Somali government has begun “emergency talks” to address the drought that is gripping much of the country, according to Shabelle Media. The outlet wrote that the “crisis has reached a critical stage” amid “worsening shortages of water, food and pasture threatening both human life and livestock”.
- FOOD PRICES FALL: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s “food price index” – a measure of the costs of key food commodities around the world – fell in January for the fifth month in a row. The fall was driven by decreases in the price of dairy, meat and sugar, which “more than offset” increasing prices of cereals and vegetable oil, according to the FAO.
- HIGH STANDARDS: The Greenhouse Gas Protocol launched a new standard for companies to measure emissions and carbon removals from land use and emerging technologies. BusinessGreen said that the standard is “expected to provide a boost to the expanding carbon removals and carbon credit sectors by providing an agreed measurement protocol”.
- RUNNING OUT OF TIME: Negotiators from the seven US states that share the Colorado River basin met in Washington DC ahead of a 14 February deadline for agreeing a joint plan for managing the basin’s reservoirs. The Colorado Sun wrote: “The next agreement will impact growing cities, massive agricultural industries, hydroelectric power supplies and endangered species for years to come.”
- CORAL COVER: Malaysia has lost around 20% of its coral reefs since 2022, “with reef conditions continuing to deteriorate nationwide”, the Star – a Malaysian online news outlet – reported. The ongoing decline has many drivers, it added, including a global bleaching event in 2024, pollution and unsustainable tourism and development.
Spotlight
Aftershocks of US exiting major nature-science body
This week, Carbon Brief reports on the impacts of the US withdrawal from the global nature-science panel, IPBES.
The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw the US from the world’s main expert panel that advises policymakers on biodiversity and ecosystem science “harms everybody, including themselves”.
That’s according to Dr David Obura, chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, or IPBES.
IPBES is among the dozens of international organisations dealing with the fallout from the US government’s announcement last month.
The panel’s chief executive, Dr Luthando Dziba, told Carbon Brief that the exit impacts both the panel’s finances and the involvement of important scientists. He said:
“The US was one of the founding members of IPBES…A lot of US experts contribute to our assessments and they’ve led our assessments in various capacities. They’ve also served in various official bodies of the platform.”
Obura told Carbon Brief that “it’s very important to try and keep pushing through with the knowledge and keep doing the work that we’re doing”. He said he hopes the US will rejoin in future.
Carbon Brief attended the first IPBES meeting since Trump’s announcement, held last week in Manchester. At the meeting, countries finalised a new “business and biodiversity” report.
For the first time in the 14-year history of IPBES, there was no US government delegation present at the meeting, although some US scientists attended in other roles.
Cashflow impacts
Dziba is still waiting for official confirmation of the US withdrawal, but impacts were being felt even before last month’s announcement.
Budget information [pdf] from last October shows that the US contributed the most money to IPBES of any country in 2024 – around $1.2m. In 2025, when Trump took office, it sent $0, as of October.
Despite this, IPBES actually received around $1.2m extra funding from countries in 2025, compared to 2024, as other nations filled the gap.
The UK, for example, increased its contribution from around $367,000 in 2024 to more than $1.7m in 2025. The EU, which did not contribute in 2024 but tends to make multi-year payments, paid around $2.7m last year. These two payments made up the bulk of the increase in overall funding.
Wider effects of US exit
Dziba said IPBES is looking at other ways of boosting funds in future, but noted that lost income is not the only concern:
“For us, the withdrawal of the US is actually much larger than just the budgetary implications, because you can find somebody who can come in and increase the contribution and close that gap.
“The US has got thousands of leading experts in the fields where we undertake assessments. We know that some of them work for [the] government and maybe [for] those it will be more challenging for them to continue…But there are many other experts that we hope, in some way, will still be able to contribute to the work of the platform.”
One person trying to keep US scientists involved is Prof Pam McElwee, a professor of human ecology at Rutgers University. She told Carbon Brief that “there are still a tonne of American scientists and other civil society organisations that want to stand up”.
McElwee and others have looked at ways for US scientists to access funding to continue working with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which the US has also withdrawn from. She said they will try and do the same at IPBES, adding:
“It’s basically a bottom-up initiative…to make the message clear that scientists in the US still support these institutions and we still are part of them.
“Climate science is what it is and we can’t deny or withdraw from it. So we’ll just keep trying to represent it as best we can.”
Watch, read, listen
UNDER THE SEA: An article in bioGraphic explored whether the skeletons of dead corals “help or hinder recovery” on bleached reefs.
MOSSY MOORS: BBC News covered how “extinct moss” is being reintroduced in some English moors in an effort to “create diverse habitats for wildlife”.
RIBBIT: Scientists are “racing” to map out Ecuador’s “unique biological heritage of more than 700 frog species”, reported Dialogue Earth.
MEAT COMEBACK: Grist examined the rise and fall of vegan fine dining.
New science
- Areas suitable for grazing animals could shrink by 36-50% by 2100 due to continued climate change, with areas of extreme poverty and political fragility experiencing the highest losses | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- The body condition of Svalbard polar bears increased after 2000, in a period of rapid loss of ice cover | Scientific Reports
- Studies projecting the possibility of reversing biodiversity loss are scarce and most do not account for additional drivers of loss, such as climate change, according to a meta-analysis of more than 55 papers | Science Advances
In the diary
- 9-12 February: Climate and cryosphere open science conference | Wellington, New Zealand
- 18 February: International conservation technology conference | Lima, Peru
- 22-27 February: American Geophysical Union’s ocean sciences meeting | Glasgow, UK
Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org
The post Cropped 11 February 2026: Aftershocks of US withdrawals | Biodiversity and business risks | Deep-sea mining tensions appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Climate Change
IPBES chair Dr David Obura: Trump’s US exit from global nature panel ‘harms everybody’
The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw the US from the intergovernmental science panel for nature “harms everybody, including them”, according to its chair.
Dr David Obura is a leading coral reef ecologist from Kenya and chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the world’s authority on the science of nature decline.
In January, Donald Trump announced intentions to withdraw the US from IPBES, along with 65 other international organisations, including the UN climate science panel and its climate treaty.
In an interview with Carbon Brief, Obura says the warming that humans have already caused means “coral reefs are very likely at a tipping point” and that it is now inevitable that Earth “will lose what we have called coral reefs”.
A global goal to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 will not be possible to achieve for every ecosystem, he continues, noting that a lack of action from countries means “we won’t be able to do it fast enough at this point”.
Despite this, it is still possible to reverse the “enabling drivers” of biodiversity decline within the next four years, he adds, warning that leaders must act as “our economies and societies fully depend on nature”.
The interview was conducted at the sidelines of an IPBES meeting in Manchester, UK, where governments agreed to a new report detailing how the “undervaluing” of nature by businesses is fuelling biodiversity decline and putting the global economy at risk.
- On US leaving IPBES: “Any major country not being part of it harms everybody, including themselves.”
- On reversing nature loss by 2030: “We won’t be able to do it fast enough at this point.”
- On the value of biodiversity: “Nature is really the life support system for people. Our economies and societies fully depend on nature.”
- On coral reefs: “We will lose what we have called coral reefs up until this point.”
- On nature justice: “The places that are most vulnerable don’t have the income, or the assets, to conserve biodiversity.”
- On IPBES’s latest report: “One of the key findings is all businesses have impacts and dependencies on nature.”
- On the next UN nature summit: “We need acceleration of activities and impact and effectiveness, more than anything else.”
Carbon Brief: Last month Trump announced plans for the US to exit IPBES and dozens of other global organisations. You described this at the time as “deeply disappointing”. What are your thoughts on the decision now and what will be the main impacts of the US leaving IPBES?
David Obura: Well, part of the reason that I’ve come to IPBES is because, of course, I believe in the multilateral process, because we bring 150 countries together, we’re part of the UN and the multilateral system and we’re based on knowledge [that provides] inputs to policymaking. We have a conceptual framework that looks from the bottom up on how people depend on nature. I’m also doing a lot of science on Earth systems at the planetary level, how our footprint is exceeding the scale of the planet. We have to make decisions together. We need the multilateral system to work to help facilitate that. It has never been perfect. Of course, I come from a region [Kenya] that hasn’t been, you know, powerful in the multilateral process.
But we need countries to come together, so any major country not being part of it harms everybody, including themselves. It’s very important to try and keep pushing through with the knowledge and keep doing the work that we’re doing, so that, over time, hopefully [the US will] rejoin. Because, in the end, we will really need that to happen.
CB: This is the first IPBES meeting since Trump made the announcement. Has it had an impact so far on these proceedings and is there any kind of US presence here?
DO: This plenary is like every plenary that we have had. The current members are here. Some members are not. And, of course, we have some states here as observers working out if they’re going to join or not. And then we have a lot of private sector observers and universities and so on. The impact of a country leaving – the US in this case – has no impact on the plenary itself, because they’re not here making decisions on the things that we do.
We, of course, don’t have US government members attending in technical areas, but we do have institutions and universities and academics here attending as they have in the past. So, in that sense, the plenary goes on as it goes on – the science and the knowledge is the same. The decision-making processes we have here are the same. And, as I said earlier, what has an impact is the actual action that takes place afterwards, because a lot of the recommendations that we make are based on enabling conditions that governments put in place, to bring in place sustainability actions and so on. When governments are not doing that, especially major economic drivers, then the whole system suffers.
CB: When you were appointed as chair of IPBES more than two years ago, you said that your aim was to strengthen cohesion and impact and also get the findings of IPBES in front of more people. So how would you rate your progress on this now that it’s been about a couple of years?
DO: Well, like any intergovernmental process, we have a certain amount of inertia in what we do and it takes a few years to consult on topics for assessments and then to do them and to improve them and get them out.
One of the main things we’re discussing right now is we have had a rolling work programme from when IPBES started until 2030 and we need to decide on the last few deliverables and how we work in that period. We are asking for a mandate to spend the next year really considering the multiple options that we have in proposing a way forward for the last few years of this work programme. I feel that the countries are very aligned. We have done a lot of work, produced a lot of outputs. It is challenging for governments and other stakeholders to read our assessments and reach into them to find what’s useful to them. They make constant calls for more support, in uptake, in capacity building and in policy support.
The second global assessment in 2028 will be our 17th assessment [overall]. We would like to focus on really bringing all this knowledge together across assessments in ways that are relevant to different governments, different stakeholder groups, different networks to help them reach into the knowledge that’s in the assessments. And I think the governments, of course, want that as well, because many of them are calling for it. Many of the governments that support us financially, of course, want to see a return of investment on the money that they have put in.
CB: Nations agreed to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. Back in 2023 we had a conversation for Carbon Brief and you said that you were “highly doubtful” this goal could be achieved for every ecosystem by that date. Where do you stand on this now?
DO: I work on coral reefs and part of the reason I’ve come to IPBES platform is because the amount of climate change we’re committed to with current fossil fuel emissions and the focus on economic growth means that corals will continue to decline 20, 30, 40 years into the future. I think of that there’s no real doubt. The question is how soon we put in place the right actions to halt climate change. That will then have a lag on how long it takes for corals to cope with that amount of climate change.
We can’t halt and reverse the decline of every ecosystem. But we can try and bend the curve to halt and reverse the drivers of decline. So, that’s some of the economic drivers that we talk about in the nexus and transformative change assessment, the indirect drivers and the value shifts we need to have. What the Global Biodiversity Framework [GBF, a global nature agreement made in 2022] aspires to do in terms of halting and reversing biodiversity decline – we absolutely need to do that. We can do it and we can put in place the enabling conditions for that by 2030 for sure. But we won’t be able to do it fast enough at this point to halt [the loss of] all ecosystems.
We’re now in 2026, so this is three years plus after the GBF was adopted. We still need greater action from all countries and all stakeholders and businesses and so on. That’s what we’re really pushing for in our assessments.
CB: Biodiversity loss has historically been underappreciated by world leaders. As the world continues to be gripped by geopolitical uncertainty, conflict and financial pressures, what are your thoughts on the chances of leaders addressing the issue of biodiversity loss in a meaningful way?
DO: What are the chances of addressing biodiversity loss? I mean, we have to do it. It’s really our life support system and if we only focus on immediate crises and threats and don’t pay attention to the long-term threats and crises, that only creates more short-term crises down the line, we make it harder and harder to do that. I hope that what I’m hoping we get to understand better through IPBES science, as well as others, is that we’re not just reporting on the state of biodiversity because it’s nice to have it, but it’s [because] diversity of nature is really the life support system for people. Our economies and societies fully depend on nature. If we want them to prosper and be secure into the long-term future, we have to learn how to bring the impact and dependencies of business, which is a focus of this assessment, in line with nature. And until we do that, we will just continue to magnify the potential for future crises and their impacts.
CB: You mentioned already that your expertise is in coral reefs. A report last year warned that the world has reached its first climate tipping point, that of widespread dying of warm water coral reefs. Do you agree with that statement and can you discuss the wider state of coral reefs across the world at this present moment?
DO: The report that came out last year in 2025 was a global tipping point report and it’s actually in 2023 the first one of those [was published]. I was involved in that one and we basically took what the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] has produced, which [is] compiled from the [scientific] literature [which said] that 1.5-2C was the critical range for coral reefs, where you go from losing 70-90% to 90-99% of coral reefs around the world. [It is] a bit hard to say exactly what that means. What we did was we actually reduced that range from 1.5C-2C to 1-1.5C, based on observations we’ve already made about loss of corals. In 2024, the world was 1.5C above historical conditions for one year. The IPCC number requires a 20-year average [for 1.5C to be crossed]. So, we’re not quite at the IPCC limit, but we’re very close. Also, with not putting in place fast enough emission reductions, warming will continue.
Coral reefs are very likely at a tipping point. And, so, I do agree with the statement. It means that we lose the fully connected regional, global system that coral reefs have been in the past. There will still be some coral reefs in places that have some natural protection mechanisms, whether it’s oceanographic or some levels of sedimentation in green water from rivers can help. And there’s resilience of corals as well. Some corals will be able to adapt somewhat, but not all – and not all the other species too. We will lose what we have called coral reefs up until this point. We’ll still continue to have simpler coral ecosystems into the future, but they won’t be quite the same.
It is a crisis point and my hope is that, in coming out from the coral reef world, I can communicate that this is, this has been a crisis for coral reefs. It’s a very important ecosystem, but we don’t want it to happen to more and more and more ecosystems that support more [than] hundreds of millions and billions of people as well. Because, if we let things go that far, then, of course, we have much bigger crises on our hands.
CB: Something else you’ve spoken about before is around equity being one of the big challenges when it comes to responding to biodiversity loss. Can you explain why you think that biodiversity loss should be seen as a justice issue?
DO: Well, biodiversity loss is a justice issue because we are a part of biodiversity and – just like the loss of ecosystems and habitats and species – people live locally as well. People experience biodiversity loss in their surroundings.
The places that are most vulnerable and don’t have the income, or the assets, to either conserve biodiversity, or need to rely on it too much so they degrade it – they feel the impacts of that loss much more directly than those who do have more assets. Also, the more assets you have, the more you can import biodiversity products and benefits from somewhere else.
So, it’s very much a justice issue, both from local levels experiencing it directly, but then also at global levels. We are part of it [biodiversity], we don’t own it. It’s a global good, or a common public good, so we need to be preserving it for all people on the planet. In that sense, there are many, many justice issues that are involved in both loss of biodiversity and how you deal with that as well.
CB: How would you say IPBES is working towards achieving greater equity in biodiversity science?
DO: One of the headline findings of our values assessment in 2022, which looked at multiple values different cultures have and different worldviews around the planet, [was that] by accommodating or considering different worldviews and different perspectives, you achieve greater equity because you’re already considering other worldviews in making decisions.
So, that’s an important first step – just making it much more apparent and upfront that we can’t just make decisions, especially global ones, from a single worldview and the dominant one is the market economic worldview that we have. That’s very important.
But, then, also in how we do our assessments and the knowledge systems that are incorporated in them. We integrate different knowledge systems together and try and juxtapose – or if they can be integrated, we do that, sometimes you can’t – but you just need to illustrate different worldviews and perspectives on the common issue of biodiversity loss or livelihoods or something like that.
We hope that our conceptual framework and our values framework really help bring in this awareness of multiple cultures and multiple perspectives in the multilateral system.
CB: When this interview is published, IPBES will have released its report on business and biodiversity. What are some of the key takeaways from this?
DO: Our assessments integrate so much information that the key messages are actually, in retrospect, quite obvious in a way. One of the key findings it will say is that all businesses have impacts and dependencies on nature.
Of course, when you think about it, of course they do. We often think, “oh, well ecotourism is dependent on nature”, but even a supermarket is dependent on nature because a lot of the produce comes from a natural system somewhere, maybe in a greenhouse or enhanced by fertiliser, but it still comes from natural systems. Any other business will have either impacts on the nature around it, or it needs tree shade outside so people can walk in and things like that.
So, that’s one of the main findings. It’s not just certain sectors that need to respond to biodiversity loss and minimise their impacts. All sectors need to. Another finding, of course, is that it’s very differentiated depending on the type of business and type of sector.
It’s also very differentiated in different parts of the world in terms of responsibilities and also capabilities. So small businesses, of course, have much less leeway, perhaps, to change what they’re doing, whereas big businesses do and they have more assets, so they can deal with shifts and changes much better.
It’s a methodological assessment, rather than assessing the state of businesses, or the state of nature in relation to businesses [and] they pull together a huge list of methodologies and tools and things that businesses can access and do to understand their impacts and dependencies and act on them. Then [there is] also guidance and advice for governments on how to enable businesses to do that with the right incentives and regulations and so on. In that sense, it helps bring knowledge together into a single place.
It has been fantastic to see the parallel programme that the UK government has organised [at the IPBES meeting in Manchester]. It has brought together a huge range of British businesses and consultancies and so on that help businesses understand their impacts on nature. There’s a huge thirst.
To some extent, I would have thought, with so much capacity already in some of these organisations, what would they learn from our assessments? But they’re really hungry to see the integration. They really want to see that this really does make a big difference, that others will do the same, that the government will really support moving in these directions. There’s a huge amount of effort in the findings coming out and I’m sure that that will be felt all around the world and in different countries in different ways.
CB: As we’re speaking now, you’re still in the midst of figuring out exactly what the report will say and going through line-by-line to figure this out. Something we’ve seen at other negotiations…has been these entrenched views from countries on certain key issues. And one thing I did notice in the Earth Negotiations Bulletin discussion of yesterday’s [4 February] negotiations was that it said that some delegations wanted to remove mentions of climate change from the report. Has this been a key sticking point here or have there been any difficulties from countries during these negotiations?
DO: The nature of these multilateral negotiations is that the science is, in a way, a central body of work that is built through consensus of bringing all this knowledge together. It’s almost like a centralising process. And, yes, different countries have different perspectives on what their priorities are and the messages they want to see or not.
We still, of course, deal with different positions from countries. What we hope to do is to be able to convene it so that we see that we serve the countries best by having the most unbiased reporting of what the science is saying in language that is accessible to and useful to policymakers, rather than not having language or not having mention of things in in the agreed text.
How it’ll work out, I don’t know. Each time is different from the others. I think one of the key things that’s really important for us is that you do have different governance tracks on different aspects of the world we deal in. So, the [UN] Sustainable Development Goals, as well [as negotiations] on climate change – the UNFCCC, the climate convention, is the governing body for that. There’s two goals on nature – the Convention on Biological Diversity and other multilateral agreements are the institutions that govern that part.
We have come from a nature-based perspective, with nature’s contributions to a good quality of life for people…We start in the nature goals, but we actually have content that relates to all the other goals. We need to consider climate impacts on nature, or climate impacts on people that affect how they use nature. The nexus assessment was, in a way, a mini SDG report. It looked at six different Sustainable Development Goals.
We try and make sure that while on the institutional mechanisms, certain countries may try and want us to report within our mandate on nature, we do have findings that relate to climate change that relate to income and poverty and food production and health systems [and] that we need to report [outwardly] so that people are aware of those and they can use those in decision-making contexts.
That’s a difficult discussion and every time it comes out a little bit differently. But we hope we move the agenda further towards 2030 in the SDGs. We have an indivisible system that we need to report on.
CB: The next UN biodiversity summit COP17 is taking place later this year. What are the main outcomes you’re hoping to see at that summit?
DO: The main outcomes I would hope to see from the biodiversity summit is greater alignment across the countries. We really need to move forward on delivering on the GBF as part of the sustainable development agenda as well. So there will be a review of progress. We need acceleration of activities and impact and effectiveness, more than anything else.
That means, of course, addressing all of the targets in the GBF. Not equally, necessarily, but they all need progress to support one another in the whole. We work to provide the science inputs that can help deliver that through the CBD [Convention on Biological Diversity] mechanisms as well. We hope they use our assessments to the fullest and that we see good progress coming out.
CB: Great, thank you very much for your time.
The post IPBES chair Dr David Obura: Trump’s US exit from global nature panel ‘harms everybody’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
IPBES chair Dr David Obura: Trump’s US exit from global nature panel ‘harms everybody’
The hot, dry and windy weather preceding the wildfires that tore through Chile and Argentina last month was made around three times more likely due to human-caused climate change.
This is according to a rapid attribution study by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) service.
Devastating wildfires hit multiple parts of South America throughout January.
The fires claimed the lives of 23 people in Chile and displaced thousands of people and destroyed vast areas of native forests and grasslands in both Chile and Argentina.
The authors find that the hot, dry and windy conditions that drove the “high fire danger” are expected to occur once every five years, but that these conditions would have been “rarer” in a world without climate change.
In today’s climate, rainfall intensity during the “fire season” is around 20-25% lower in the areas covered by the study than it would be in a world without human-caused emissions, the study adds.
Study author Prof Friederike Otto, professor of climate science at Imperial College London, told a press briefing:
“We’re confident in saying that the main driver of this increased fire risk is human-caused warming. These trends are projected to continue in the future as long as we continue to burn fossil fuels.”
‘Significant’ damage
The recent wildfires in Chile and Argentina have been “one of the most significant and damaging events in the region”, the report says.
In the lead-up to the fires, both countries were gripped by intense heatwaves and droughts.
The authors analysed two regions – one in central Chile and the other in Argentine Patagonia, along the border between Argentina and Chile.
For example, in Argentina’s northern Patagonian Andes, the last recorded rainfall was in mid-November of 2025, according to the report. It adds that in early January, the region recorded 11 consecutive days of “extreme maximum temperatures”, marking the “second-longest warm spell in the past 65 years”.
Dr Juan Antonio Rivera, a researcher at the Argentine Institute of Snow Science, Glaciology and Environmental Sciences, told a WWA press briefing that these weather conditions dried out vegetation and decreased soil moisture, which meant that the fires “found abundant fuel to continue over time”.
In the northern Patagonian Andes of Argentina, wildfires started on 6 January in Puerto Patriada and spread over two national parks of Los Alerces and Lago Puelo and nearby regions. These fires remained active into the first week of February.
The fires engulfed more than 45,000 hectares of native and planted forest, shrublands and grasslands, including 75% of native forests in the village of Epuyén, notes the study.
At least 47 homes were burned, according to El País. La Nación reported that many families evacuated themselves to prevent any damage.
In south-central Chile, wildfires occurred from 17 to 19 January, affecting the Biobío, Ñuble and Araucanía regions.
They started near Concepción city, the capital of the Biobío region, where maximum temperatures reached 26C. In the nearby city of Chillán, temperatures reached 37C.
From there, the fires spread southwards to the coastal towns of Penco-Lirquen and Punta Parra, in the Biobío region.
The event left 23 people dead, 52,000 people displaced and more than 1,000 homes destroyed in the country, according to the study.
These wildfires burnt more than 40,000 hectares of forests, “tripling the amount of land burned in 2025” across the country, reported La Tercera.
The study adds that more than 20,000 hectares of non-native forest plantations, including Monterey pine and Eucalyptus trees, were consumed by the blaze and critical infrastructure was affected.
A WWA press release points out that the expansion of non-native pines and invasive species “has created highly flammable landscapes in Chile”.
Hot, dry and windy
Wildfires are complex events that are influenced by a wide range of factors, such as atmospheric moisture, wind speed and fuel availability.
To assess the impact of climate change on wildfires, the authors chose a “fire weather” metric called the “hot dry windy index” (HDWI). This combines maximum temperature, relative humidity and wind speed.
While this metric does not include every component that could contribute to intense wildfires, such as land-use change and fuel load data, study author Dr Claire Barnes from Imperial College London told a press briefing that HDWI is “a very good predictor of short-term, extreme, dry, fire-prone conditions”.
The authors chose to analyse two separate regions. The first lies along the coast and the foothills of the Andes around the Ñuble, Biobío and La Araucanía regions in central Chile. The second sits across the Chilean and Argentine border in Patagonia.
These regions are shown on the map below, where red circles indicate the wildfires recorded in January 2026 and pink boxes represent the study areas.
The authors also selected different time periods for the two study regions, to reflect the “different lengths of peak wildfire activity associated with the fires in each region”.
For the central Chilean study area, the authors focus their analysis on the two most severe days of HDWI, 17-18 January. For the Patagonian region, they focus on the most severe five-day period, which took place over 2-6 January.
To put the wildfire into its historical context, the authors analyse data on temperature, wind and rainfall to assess how HDWI over the two regions has changed since the year 1980.
They find that in both study regions, the high HWDI recorded in January is not “particularly extreme” in today’s climate and would typically be expected roughly once every five years. However, they add that the event would have been “rarer” in a world without climate change, in which average global temperatures are 1.3C cooler.
The authors also use a combination of observations and climate models to carry out an “attribution” analysis, comparing the world as it is today to a “counterfactual” world without human-caused climate change.
They find that climate change made the high HDWI three-times more likely in the central Chilean region and 2.5-times more likely in the Patagonian region.
The authors also conduct analysis focused solely on November-January rainfall.
Both study regions experienced “very low rainfall” in the months leading up to the fires, the authors say. They find that fire-season rainfall intensity is around 25% lower in the central Chilean region and 20% lower in the Patagonia region in today’s climate than it would have been in a world without climate change.
Finally, the authors considered the influence of climatic cycles such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a naturally occurring phenomenon that affects global temperatures and regional weather patterns.
They find that a combination of La Niña – the “cool” phase of ENSO – combined with another natural cycle called the Southern Annular Mode, led to atmospheric circulation patterns that “favoured the hot and dry conditions that enhanced fire persistence and severity in parts of the region”.
However, they add that this has a comparably small effect on the overall intensity of the wildfires, with climate change standing out as the main driver.
(These findings are yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal. However, the methods used in the analysis have been published in previous attribution studies.)
Vulnerable communities
The wildfires affected native forests, national parks and small rural and tourist communities in both countries.
A 2025 study conducted in Chile, cited in the WWA analysis, found that 74% of survey respondents did not have appropriate education and awareness on wildfires.
This suggests that insufficient preparedness on early warning signs, response measures and prevention can “exacerbate the severity and frequency of these events”, the WWA authors say.
Aynur Kadihasanoglu, senior urban specialist at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center, said in the WWA press release that many settlements in Chile are close to flammable pine plantations, which “puts lives and livelihoods at risk”.
Additionally, the head of Chile’s National Forest Corporation pointed to “structural shortcomings” in fire prevention, such as lack of regulation in lands without management plans, reported BioBioChile.
In Argentina, the response to the fires has been hampered by large budget cuts and reductions in forest rangers, according to the WWA press release. Experts have criticised Argentina’s self-styled “liberal-libertarian” president Javier Milei for the cuts and the delay to declaring a state of emergency in Patagonia.
According to the Associated Press, “Milei slashed spending on the National Fire Management Service by 80% in 2024 compared to the previous year”. The service “faces another 71% reduction in funds” in its 2026 budget, the newswire adds.
Argentinian native forests and grasslands are experiencing “intense pressure” from wildfires, according to the study. Many vulnerable native animal species, such as the huemul and the pudú, are losing critical habitat, while birds, such as the Patagonian black woodpecker, are losing nesting sites.
The post Climate change made ‘fire weather’ in Chile and Argentina three times more likely appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Climate change made ‘fire weather’ in Chile and Argentina three times more likely
Cropped 11 February 2026: Aftershocks of US withdrawals | Biodiversity and business risks | Deep-sea mining tensions
Cropped 11 February 2026: Aftershocks of US withdrawals | Biodiversity and business risks | Deep-sea mining tensions
Nuclear’s Next Chapter: newcleo Raises $88M to Scale SMR Powered by Nuclear Waste
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Greenhouse Gases6 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Climate Change6 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Spanish-language misinformation on renewable energy spreads online, report shows
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change Videos2 years ago
The toxic gas flares fuelling Nigeria’s climate change – BBC News
-
Renewable Energy2 years ago
GAF Energy Completes Construction of Second Manufacturing Facility