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
Floods in the south, drought in the north
EXTREME WEATHER: China has been hit by extreme weather over the past two weeks. About 35% of its corn production was affected by severe drought in north China where some rivers had “dried up a month ago”, reported Reuters. In the south, torrential rain and flooding killed at least 38 people in Guangdong province – China’s most populated – as well as eight people in Hunan province and two in Anhui province. Local newspaper Guangxi Daily reported that this week’s floods in Guilin, capital city of Guangxi province, were the largest in the area since 1998. Chinese president Xi Jinping “has urged all-out efforts to fight floods and droughts, and to ensure solid work in disaster relief”, said state agency Xinhua. Some 33 rivers in China “exceeded warning levels”, according to Xinhua.
-
Sign up to Carbon Brief’s free “China Briefing” email newsletter. All you need to know about the latest developments relating to China and climate change. Sent to your inbox every Thursday.
GLOBAL WARNING: Yang Pingjian, director of the environmental sociology department at the Chinese Academy of Environmental Sciences, wrote in China Environment News that “the adverse effects of climate change have become more and more obvious: heavy rainfall, typhoons, hail and other extreme weather occur” in China. The National Climate Center said that China is “experiencing more frequent and intense heatwaves due to global warming”, reported China Daily. The “average onset of high temperatures (those exceeding 35C) has advanced by 2.5 days per decade” and the average heatwave starting date has moved from 24 June in 1981-1990 to 7 June in 2011-2020, the outlet added. New research covered by the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post found that “widespread heat stress will be felt by most of China’s population by the end of the century due to climate change, with the north of the country expected to be hit hardest”.
SUMMER PRESSURE: These high temperatures may cause peak electricity consumption to grow by more than 100 gigawatts (GW) year-on-year during this summer’s peak period, putting pressure on “ensuring power supply”, China Securities Journal reported. Writing in financial newspaper Caixin, Qin Qi, China analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) noted that this expected 100GW increase is “similar to 2022’s growth, which saw power shortages and blackouts”, adding that this “highlighted the need for a more flexible inter-provincial electricity trading mechanism”. She also pointed to the need for flexible grid operations and demand-side measures to help China “effectively manage peak demand pressures without compromising its climate commitments”.
Renewable energy pushed thermal power into decline
THERMAL DECLINE: A surge in solar power and hydropower in China in May led to a 4.3% decline in thermal power – mainly coal – that month, Bloomberg reported, adding that this supported earlier Carbon Brief analysis finding China’s emissions may fall this year. The drop in thermal power was the largest since 2022 and could continue as long as China does not “reprioritise carbon-heavy investment to revive growth”, the outlet added. Hydropower generation rose 38.6% year-on-year in May 2024 and solar by 29.1%, state-run industry newspaper China Energy Net said.
SOLAR CAPACITY: China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) pledged in a press conference to “guide production capacity expansion” and “prevent unnecessary investments” in the country’s solar manufacturing sector, following a call for help from industry participants “grappl[ing] with a surge in capacity”, according to finance newswire Yicai. Economic news outlet Jiemian quoted Li Chuangjun, director of the NEA’s new energy and renewable energy department, saying at the press conference that the industry should “avoid repetitive construction of low-end solar capacity”.
NO OVERCAPACITY?: NEA head Zhang Jianhua said at the same press conference that “whether from the perspective of comparative advantage or of global market demand, China’s new energy industry does not have a so-called ‘overcapacity’ problem”, state-run newspaper Science and Technology Daily reported. Zhang added that “supply moderately exceeding demand is helpful for achieving technological progress and reducing product costs”, and that the solar industry specifically is characterised by a strong private sector, “sufficient” competition and companies “choosing to expand production” due to “optimistic outlooks towards future markets”, according to the newspaper.
EU and China to discuss electric vehicle tariffs
NEW TALKS: After expressing opposition to the EU’s additional tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) and announcing an anti-dumping investigation into pork products from the EU, China agreed to a new discussion over the tariffs this week, the Financial Times reported. Bloomberg said the talks “may buy time” for China to “sow enough opposition” between EU member states, as Beijing suggested German luxury automakers “could benefit if Berlin convinces the EU to drop tariffs”.
MIDDLEMAN GERMANY?: Germany’s economy minister Robert Habeck, who visited China last weekend, showed there was an “open attitude of China and some politicians in the EU in seeking dialogue and cooperation amid trade friction”, said a Global Times’ editorial. Habeck said the EU’s tariffs measures were “not a punishment” and its “doors are open for discussions”, Reuters reported. The German Chamber of Commerce in East China, a business advocacy group, also argued that the EU tariffs “cannot offer protection to German carmakers or increase their competitiveness”, SCMP reported. Reuters said that China’s share of Germany’s EV imports rose to 40.9% in the first quarter of this year.
CHINA COMPROMISE?: China’s state-controlled Global Times newspaper wrote “observers said the best outcome the Chinese side wants is that the EC, the executive body of the EU, scrap its tariff decision before 4 July and abide by WTO rules”. Another state-run newspaper China Daily said in an editorial that Beijing is “willing…to try and resolve the reasonable concerns of the EU” and hopes that Brussels will avoid escalating frictions “by meeting China halfway”. In an interview with the Financial Times, Zhu Min, a member of China’s “five-year plan” committee, argued there was no “overcapacity” or “dumping” of cheap EVs on the European market. He said the price of EVs is higher overseas than in the domestic market and that China’s domestic buyer rebate also applied to foreign EV brands, such as Tesla in China, added the outlet.
EU-China climate dialogue and Li’s new commitment
CHINA-EU TALKS: Amid their ongoing tariff dispute, China and the EU held the fifth “high-level environment and climate dialogue” on 18 June, said Xinhua. The Chinese vice premier Ding Xuexiang and the European Commission’s Maroš Šefčovič agreed there were “common interests” and discussed “climate change and protecting the ecological environment”, the state news agency continued. Ding also said the EU’s tariff plan was “typical protectionism” which is “not conducive to the EU’s green transformation”, added the agency. China’s minister of ecology and environment, Huang Runqiu, and the EU’s commissioner for climate action, Wopke Hoekstra, signed “an updated memorandum of understanding to enhance cooperation on emissions trading”, the Chinese International Environment Net reported.
PREMIER’S REMARKS: The Chinese premier Li Qiang announced yesterday that “China is committed to addressing climate change and has been proactively developing green industries such as new energy” at the World Economic Forum’s “summer Davos” meetings in Dalian, China, Xinhua reported. Li said “the green transition itself holds immense potential for development” and that all nations should “create more growth drivers for the green economy”, added Xinhua. Reuters said Li also “hit back” at overcapacity accusations from the US and EU, arguing that China’s production of clean energy technologies “first met our domestic demand, but also enrich[es] global supply”. At a domestic conference, president Xi encouraged technology innovation and said Chinese EVs “add[ed] new momentum to the global automotive industry”, according to Xinhua.
Spotlight
How is China adapting to increasingly frequent flooding?
In recent years, China has seen more frequent floods caused by heavy rains. Dozens of people have died in south China this month due to torrential rain and flooding. In April, floods caused damage worth 12bn yuan ($1.65bn) – “the worst [losses] in 10 years”.
In this issue, Carbon Brief looks at the reasons for China’s recent floods and how the country is trying to adapt. A full version of this article will be published on Carbon Brief’s website.
Rising floods
There are various factors behind the frequent heavy rain and flooding in China in recent years.
In a press briefing covered by China Daily, Zheng Zhihai, chief forecaster at the National Climate Centre of the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), said that “higher than normal temperatures” were behind frequent heavy rainfall in southern provinces since April.
China Daily noted: “This temperature increase has elevated the atmospheric moisture levels, intensified convective processes, and led to more frequent occurrences of heavy rainfall.”
Sea level rise has also been cited as a primary factor behind China’s coastal floods, as it increases the intensity and frequency of storm surges and raises baseline water levels.
The El Niño-Southern Oscillation, a natural climate cycle that entered its warmer El Niño phase in mid 2023, was partly to blame as it raised sea surface temperatures and directed vast amounts of water vapour from the South China Sea and the Bay of Bengal towards southern China, found one analysis.
Dr Faith Chan, head of the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China, told Carbon Brief that the rainfall pattern in Guangdong during this April was quite similar to the intensive rainstorm on 6-8 September in 2023 after Typhoon Haikui.
In addition to the natural causes, human activity also played a role. Chan said:
“Of course, the El Niño effect enhanced the wet and low-pressure moist current in the east coast of China and the west Pacific. But human-induced climate change led to the greenhouse effect and caused sea temperature to rise, which caused more storms and low-pressure rain belts. That is a fact.”
Indeed, Prof Yang Chen of the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences told Carbon Brief that human-caused intensification of heavy rainfall over China had been even larger than expected.
Adaptation measures
China has built a number of large water projects to prevent flooding, such as the south-north water transfer projects in the Yangtze river that was launched in 2002.
In the most recent “national water network construction planning outline” published by the State Council – China’s top administrative authority – constructing “national water networks” by 2035 is labelled as the “backbones” of future flood prevention.
China also launched the “sponge city programme (SCP)” in 2015.
Sponge cities cost the government 1.5–1.8bn yuan ($210-250m) between 2015 and 2018. They are designed to collect, purify and re-use at least 70% of the floodwaters through “green-blue facilities”, such as green roofs, permeable pavements and stormwater parks, in urban areas. The overall system was meant to resolve the issues of urban heating, freshwater scarcity and flooding all at once.
But the 2021 floods in Zhengzhou, a showcase sponge city, laid bare the inadequacy of the SCP in the face of climate change.
A paper suggested the SCP, which is designed to withstand one-in-30-year rain events, has limited effectiveness against more intense downpours.
Additionally, SCP can create a false sense of security, which encourages more people to move to high-risk areas, leading to an increase in population and assets in exposed areas that require ever-increasing protection in a cycle referred to as a “levee effect”, said Chen.
Meanwhile, a lack of coordination added another layer of difficulties. Zheng Yan, researcher at China Academy of Social Sciences, noted in the aftermath of the 2023 Beijing flood that government bodies often looked after their own jurisdiction and aimed only to move the problem and divert the floods quickly, which piled pressure on cities in downstream areas.
Looking abroad
As flooding is a challenge faced by cities across the world, there is a plethora of ideas and technologies that China can draw on.
Rotterdam, a Dutch delta city of 600,000 people that is surrounded by water on four sides, has built water storage facilities, such as an underground parking garage with a basin the size of four Olympic swimming pools. It has also installed green roofs and facades to absorb rainwater.
Japan has built an intricate network of concrete tunnels and vaults about 14 storeys beneath the Saitama prefecture in the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan’s capital city, that could hold more than 1,000 Olympic pools of rainwater.
Both cities’ underground flood diversion facilities are often used as a prime example of a viable flood defence system for urban cities on the frontline of climate change.
Hong Kong has a similar underground stormwater storage system beneath the sport pitches of the Happy Valley Racecourse, designed to withstand one-in-50-years flood events.
Chan said it is difficult to compare flood mitigation measures as each city is very different in terms of geography, demographic, densities and topography.
Nevertheless, he told Carbon Brief:
“In my opinion, China’s megacities should think about using underground spaces to store the sudden extreme discharge from super intensive rainstorms…Tokyo and Rotterdam are quite wise in that regard for using their underground spaces.”
This Spotlight is written by freelance climate journalist Jia Ning Tan for Carbon Brief.
Watch, read, listen
CHINA IN SPACE: The Economist’s “The Intelligence” podcast aired an episode about China becoming a “superpower” in the physical sciences.
RUSSIA-CHINA PIPELINE: A Financial Times podcast said Russia and China are “deadlocked” over a gas pipeline deal.
FARMING LAND: The Chinese communist party’s magazine Qiu Shi published an article by Hunan province’s communist theory study group on protecting arable land and the “political responsibilities” related to it.
CARBON FOOTPRINT: Finance outlet Southern Finance Omnimedia’s social media account 21 Low Carbon published an explanation of China’s new “national unified carbon footprint management system”.
$940m
The total value of an international “sustainability bond” issued by the Bank of China for investment in “renewable energy, sustainable water resources and wastewater management infrastructure projects” in the countries that joined China’s Belt and Road Initiatives (BRI). (The total value of loans for BRI countries reached $87bn in 2016 and $3.7bn in 2021.)
New science
Climate Policy
China and the US – two of the world’s biggest methane emitters – should make their methane policies more “climate-centric”, according to a new study. Existing policies relating to methane are concentrated in the energy sector and are “largely driven” by safety, pollution concerns and use of resources, rather than reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the study said. The researchers suggested that both countries should focus on methane mitigation and “consider more climate-centric policies”.
Energy Policy
The Chinese government has employed economic incentives to offset the financial impact of the clean energy transition, but “these measures may not fully address the underlying issue of climate apathy, wherein individuals prioritise immediate interests over long-term climate concerns”, a new study said. Surveying 4,700 Chinese adults each year for three years, the study found that those on low incomes were less likely to support climate policy, with “climate apathy” explaining a much larger share of this effect – some 38% – than “economic burden”, which only explained 8% of the effect on policy support. The authors concluded: “Addressing climate apathy is a cost-effective strategy to boost policy support.”
Investigating the impact of weather on stroke in summer
International Journal of Biometeorology
A new study collected data of stroke hospitalisation in the city of Tianjin, China, from 2016 to summer 2022. The study found a direct link between temperature extremes and hospitalisation: “83% of the Inpatient-heavy events within the study period were caused by a combination of dramatic temperature changes and continuous high temperatures.” The authors concluded: “More attention should be paid to the combined effects of continuous high temperature and sudden temperature changes in summer stroke prevention.”
China Briefing is compiled by Wanyuan Song and Anika Patel. It is edited by Wanyuan Song and Dr Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to china@carbonbrief.org
The post China Briefing 27 June 2024: Extreme weather; New talks on EV tariffs; Coal power decline appeared first on Carbon Brief.
China Briefing 27 June 2024: Extreme weather; New talks on EV tariffs; Coal power decline
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Absolute State of the Union
‘DRILL, BABY’: US president Donald Trump “doubled down on his ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda” in his State of the Union (SOTU) address, said the Los Angeles Times. He “tout[ed] his support of the fossil-fuel industry and renew[ed] his focus on electricity affordability”, reported the Financial Times. Trump also attacked the “green new scam”, noted Carbon Brief’s SOTU tracker.
COAL REPRIEVE: Earlier in the week, the Trump administration had watered down limits on mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, reported the Financial Times. It remains “unclear” if this will be enough to prevent the decline of coal power, said Bloomberg, in the face of lower-cost gas and renewables. Reuters noted that US coal plants are “ageing”.
OIL STAY: The US Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments brought by the oil industry in a “major lawsuit”, reported the New York Times. The newspaper said the firms are attempting to head off dozens of other lawsuits at state level, relating to their role in global warming.
SHIP-SHILLING: The Trump administration is working to “kill” a global carbon levy on shipping “permanently”, reported Politico, after succeeding in delaying the measure late last year. The Guardian said US “bullying” could be “paying off”, after Panama signalled it was reversing its support for the levy in a proposal submitted to the UN shipping body.
Around the world
- RARE EARTHS: The governments of Brazil and India signed a deal on rare earths, said the Times of India, as well as agreeing to collaborate on renewable energy.
- HEAT ROLLBACK: German homes will be allowed to continue installing gas and oil heating, under watered-down government plans covered by Clean Energy Wire.
- BRAZIL FLOODS: At least 53 people died in floods in the state of Minas Gerais, after some areas saw 170mm of rain in a few hours, reported CNN Brasil.
- ITALY’S ATTACK: Italy is calling for the EU to “suspend” its emissions trading system (ETS) ahead of a review later this year, said Politico.
- COOKSTOVE CREDITS: The first-ever carbon credits under the Paris Agreement have been issued to a cookstove project in Myanmar, said Climate Home News.
- SAUDI SOLAR: Turkey has signed a “major” solar deal that will see Saudi firm ACWA building 2 gigawatts in the country, according to Agence France-Presse.
$467 billion
The profits made by five major oil firms since prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago, according to a report by Global Witness covered by BusinessGreen.
Latest climate research
- Claims about the “fingerprint” of human-caused climate change, made in a recent US Department of Energy report, are “factually incorrect” | AGU Advances
- Large lakes in the Congo Basin are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from “immense ancient stores” | Nature Geoscience
- Shared Socioeconomic Pathways – scenarios used regularly in climate modelling – underrepresent “narratives explicitly centring on democratic principles such as participation, accountability and justice” | npj Climate Action
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
The constituency of Richard Tice MP, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of Reform UK, is the second-largest recipient of flood defence spending in England, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Overall, the funding is disproportionately targeted at coastal and urban areas, many of which have Conservative or Liberal Democrat MPs.
Spotlight
Is there really a UK ‘greenlash’?
This week, after a historic Green Party byelection win, Carbon Brief looks at whether there really is a “greenlash” against climate policy in the UK.
Over the past year, the UK’s political consensus on climate change has been shattered.
Yet despite a sharp turn against climate action among right-wing politicians and right-leaning media outlets, UK public support for climate action remains strong.
Prof Federica Genovese, who studies climate politics at the University of Oxford, told Carbon Brief:
“The current ‘war’ on green policy is mostly driven by media and political elites, not by the public.”
Indeed, there is still a greater than two-to-one majority among the UK public in favour of the country’s legally binding target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, as shown below.
Steve Akehurst, director of public-opinion research initiative Persuasion UK, also noted the growing divide between the public and “elites”. He told Carbon Brief:
“The biggest movement is, without doubt, in media and elite opinion. There is a bit more polarisation and opposition [to climate action] among voters, but it’s typically no more than 20-25% and mostly confined within core Reform voters.”
Conservative gear shift
For decades, the UK had enjoyed strong, cross-party political support for climate action.
Lord Deben, the Conservative peer and former chair of the Climate Change Committee, told Carbon Brief that the UK’s landmark 2008 Climate Change Act had been born of this cross-party consensus, saying “all parties supported it”.
Since their landslide loss at the 2024 election, however, the Conservatives have turned against the UK’s target of net-zero emissions by 2050, which they legislated for in 2019.
Curiously, while opposition to net-zero has surged among Conservative MPs, there is majority support for the target among those that plan to vote for the party, as shown below.
Dr Adam Corner, advisor to the Climate Barometer initiative that tracks public opinion on climate change, told Carbon Brief that those who currently plan to vote Reform are the only segment who “tend to be more opposed to net-zero goals”. He said:
“Despite the rise in hostile media coverage and the collapse of the political consensus, we find that public support for the net-zero by 2050 target is plateauing – not plummeting.”
Reform, which rejects the scientific evidence on global warming and campaigns against net-zero, has been leading the polls for a year. (However, it was comfortably beaten by the Greens in yesterday’s Gorton and Denton byelection.)
Corner acknowledged that “some of the anti-net zero noise…[is] showing up in our data”, adding:
“We see rising concerns about the near-term costs of policies and an uptick in people [falsely] attributing high energy bills to climate initiatives.”
But Akehurst said that, rather than a big fall in public support, there had been a drop in the “salience” of climate action:
“So many other issues [are] competing for their attention.”
UK newspapers published more editorials opposing climate action than supporting it for the first time on record in 2025, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Global ‘greenlash’?
All of this sits against a challenging global backdrop, in which US president Donald Trump has been repeating climate-sceptic talking points and rolling back related policy.
At the same time, prominent figures have been calling for a change in climate strategy, sold variously as a “reset”, a “pivot”, as “realism”, or as “pragmatism”.
Genovese said that “far-right leaders have succeeded in the past 10 years in capturing net-zero as a poster child of things they are ‘fighting against’”.
She added that “much of this is fodder for conservative media and this whole ecosystem is essentially driving what we call the ‘greenlash’”.
Corner said the “disconnect” between elite views and the wider public “can create problems” – for example, “MPs consistently underestimate support for renewables”. He added:
“There is clearly a risk that the public starts to disengage too, if not enough positive voices are countering the negative ones.”
Watch, read, listen
TRUMP’S ‘PETROSTATE’: The US is becoming a “petrostate” that will be “sicker and poorer”, wrote Financial Times associate editor Rana Forohaar.
RHETORIC VS REALITY: Despite a “political mood [that] has darkened”, there is “more green stuff being installed than ever”, said New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells.
CHINA’S ‘REVOLUTION’: The BBC’s Climate Question podcast reported from China on the “green energy revolution” taking place in the country.
Coming up
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean, Brasília
- 3 March: UK spring statement
- 4-11 March: China’s “two sessions”
- 5 March: Nepal elections
Pick of the jobs
- The Guardian, senior reporter, climate justice | Salary: $123,000-$135,000. Location: New York or Washington DC
- China-Global South Project, non-resident fellow, climate change | Salary: Up to $1,000 a month. Location: Remote
- University of East Anglia, PhD in mobilising community-based climate action through co-designed sports and wellbeing interventions | Salary: Stipend (unknown amount). Location: Norwich, UK
- TABLE and the University of São Paulo, Brazil, postdoctoral researcher in food system narratives | Salary: Unknown. Location: Pirassununga, Brazil
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Greenhouse Gases
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
The Lincolnshire constituency held by Richard Tice, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of the hard-right Reform party, has been pledged at least £55m in government funding for flood defences since 2024.
This investment in Boston and Skegness is the second-largest sum for a single constituency from a £1.4bn flood-defence fund for England, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
Flooding is becoming more likely and more extreme in the UK due to climate change.
Yet, for years, governments have failed to spend enough on flood defences to protect people, properties and infrastructure.
The £1.4bn fund is part of the current Labour government’s wider pledge to invest a “record” £7.9bn over a decade on protecting hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses from flooding.
As MP for one of England’s most flood-prone regions, Tice has called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
He is also one of Reform’s most vocal opponents of climate action and what he calls “net stupid zero”. He denies the scientific consensus on climate change and has claimed, falsely and without evidence, that scientists are “lying”.
Flood defences
Last year, the government said it would invest £2.65bn on flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) schemes in England between April 2024 and March 2026.
This money was intended to protect 66,500 properties from flooding. It is part of a decade-long Labour government plan to spend more than £7.9bn on flood defences.
There has been a consistent shortfall in maintaining England’s flood defences, with the Environment Agency expecting to protect fewer properties by 2027 than it had initially planned.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has attributed this to rising costs, backlogs from previous governments and a lack of capacity. It also points to the strain from “more frequent and severe” weather events, such as storms in recent years that have been amplified by climate change.
However, the CCC also said last year that, if the 2024-26 spending programme is delivered, it would be “slightly closer to the track” of the Environment Agency targets out to 2027.
The government has released constituency-level data on which schemes in England it plans to fund, covering £1.4bn of the 2024-26 investment. The other half of the FCERM spending covers additional measures, from repairing existing defences to advising local authorities.
The map below shows the distribution of spending on FCERM schemes in England over the past two years, highlighting the constituency of Richard Tice.
By far the largest sum of money – £85.6m in total – has been committed to a tidal barrier and various other defences in the Somerset constituency of Bridgwater, the seat of Conservative MP Ashley Fox.
Over the first months of 2026, the south-west region has faced significant flooding and Fox has called for more support from the government, citing “climate patterns shifting and rainfall intensifying”.
He has also backed his party’s position that “the 2050 net-zero target is impossible” and called for more fossil-fuel extraction in the North Sea.
Tice’s east-coast constituency of Boston and Skegness, which is highly vulnerable to flooding from both rivers and the sea, is set to receive £55m. Among the supported projects are beach defences from Saltfleet to Gibraltar Point and upgrades to pumping stations.
Overall, Boston and Skegness has the second-largest portion of flood-defence funding, as the chart below shows. Constituencies with Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs occupied the other top positions.
Overall, despite Labour MPs occupying 347 out of England’s 543 constituencies – nearly two-thirds of the total – more than half of the flood-defence funding was distributed to constituencies with non-Labour MPs. This reflects the flood risk in coastal and rural areas that are not traditional Labour strongholds.
Reform funding
While Reform has just eight MPs, representing 1% of the population, its constituencies have been assigned 4% of the flood-defence funding for England.
Nearly all of this money was for Tice’s constituency, although party leader Nigel Farage’s coastal Clacton seat in Kent received £2m.
Reform UK is committed to “scrapping net-zero” and its leadership has expressed firmly climate-sceptic views.
Much has been made of the disconnect between the party’s climate policies and the threat climate change poses to its voters. Various analyses have shown the flood risk in Reform-dominated areas, particularly Lincolnshire.
Tice has rejected climate science, advocated for fossil-fuel production and criticised Environment Agency flood-defence activities. Yet, he has also called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
This may reflect Tice’s broader approach to climate change. In a 2024 interview with LBC, he said:
“Where you’ve got concerns about sea level defences and sea level rise, guess what? A bit of steel, a bit of cement, some aggregate…and you build some concrete sea level defences. That’s how you deal with rising sea levels.”
While climate adaptation is viewed as vital in a warming world, there are limits on how much societies can adapt and adaptation costs will continue to increase as emissions rise.
The post Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
Greenhouse Gases
Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate
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
Food inflation on the rise
DELUGE STRIKES FOOD: Extreme rainfall and flooding across the Mediterranean and north Africa has “battered the winter growing regions that feed Europe…threatening food price rises”, reported the Financial Times. Western France has “endured more than 36 days of continuous rain”, while farmers’ associations in Spain’s Andalusia estimate that “20% of all production has been lost”, it added. Policy expert David Barmes told the paper that the “latest storms were part of a wider pattern of climate shocks feeding into food price inflation”.
-
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.
NO BEEF: The UK’s beef farmers, meanwhile, “face a double blow” from climate change as “relentless rain forces them to keep cows indoors”, while last summer’s drought hit hay supplies, said another Financial Times article. At the same time, indoor growers in south England described a 60% increase in electricity standing charges as a “ticking timebomb” that could “force them to raise their prices or stop production, which will further fuel food price inflation”, wrote the Guardian.
‘TINDERBOX’ AND TARIFFS: A study, covered by the Guardian, warned that major extreme weather and other “shocks” could “spark social unrest and even food riots in the UK”. Experts cited “chronic” vulnerabilities, including climate change, low incomes, poor farming policy and “fragile” supply chains that have made the UK’s food system a “tinderbox”. A New York Times explainer noted that while trade could once guard against food supply shocks, barriers such as tariffs and export controls – which are being “increasingly” used by politicians – “can shut off that safety valve”.
El Niño looms
NEW ENSO INDEX: Researchers have developed a new index for calculating El Niño, the large-scale climate pattern that influences global weather and causes “billions in damages by bringing floods to some regions and drought to others”, reported CNN. It added that climate change is making it more difficult for scientists to observe El Niño patterns by warming up the entire ocean. The outlet said that with the new metric, “scientists can now see it earlier and our long-range weather forecasts will be improved for it.”
WARMING WARNING: Meanwhile, the US Climate Prediction Center announced that there is a 60% chance of the current La Niña conditions shifting towards a neutral state over the next few months, with an El Niño likely to follow in late spring, according to Reuters. The Vibes, a Malaysian news outlet, quoted a climate scientist saying: “If the El Niño does materialise, it could possibly push 2026 or 2027 as the warmest year on record, replacing 2024.”
CROP IMPACTS: Reuters noted that neutral conditions lead to “more stable weather and potentially better crop yields”. However, the newswire added, an El Niño state would mean “worsening drought conditions and issues for the next growing season” to Australia. El Niño also “typically brings a poor south-west monsoon to India, including droughts”, reported the Hindu’s Business Line. A 2024 guest post for Carbon Brief explained that El Niño is linked to crop failure in south-eastern Africa and south-east Asia.
News and views
- DAM-AG-ES: Several South Korean farmers filed a lawsuit against the country’s state-owned utility company, “seek[ing] financial compensation for climate-related agricultural damages”, reported United Press International. Meanwhile, a national climate change assessment for the Philippines found that the country “lost up to $219bn in agricultural damages from typhoons, floods and droughts” over 2000-10, according to Eco-Business.
- SCORCHED GRASS: South Africa’s Western Cape province is experiencing “one of the worst droughts in living memory”, which is “scorching grass and killing livestock”, said Reuters. The newswire wrote: “In 2015, a drought almost dried up the taps in the city; farmers say this one has been even more brutal than a decade ago.”
- NOUVELLE VEG: New guidelines published under France’s national food, nutrition and climate strategy “urged” citizens to “limit” their meat consumption, reported Euronews. The delayed strategy comes a month after the US government “upended decades of recommendations by touting consumption of red meat and full-fat dairy”, it noted.
- COURTING DISASTER: India’s top green court accepted the findings of a committee that “found no flaws” in greenlighting the Great Nicobar project that “will lead to the felling of a million trees” and translocating corals, reported Mongabay. The court found “no good ground to interfere”, despite “threats to a globally unique biodiversity hotspot” and Indigenous tribes at risk of displacement by the project, wrote Frontline.
- FISH FALLING: A new study found that fish biomass is “falling by 7.2% from as little as 0.1C of warming per decade”, noted the Guardian. While experts also pointed to the role of overfishing in marine life loss, marine ecologist and study lead author Dr Shahar Chaikin told the outlet: “Our research proves exactly what that biological cost [of warming] looks like underwater.”
- TOO HOT FOR COFFEE: According to new analysis by Climate Central, countries where coffee beans are grown “are becoming too hot to cultivate them”, reported the Guardian. The world’s top five coffee-growing countries faced “57 additional days of coffee-harming heat” annually because of climate change, it added.
Spotlight
Nature talks inch forward
This week, Carbon Brief covers the latest round of negotiations under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which occurred in Rome over 16-19 February.
The penultimate set of biodiversity negotiations before October’s Conference of the Parties ended in Rome last week, leaving plenty of unfinished business.
The CBD’s subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) met in the Italian capital for four days to discuss a range of issues, including biodiversity finance and reviewing progress towards the nature targets agreed under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
However, many of the major sticking points – particularly around finance – will have to wait until later this summer, leaving some observers worried about the capacity for delegates to get through a packed agenda at COP17.
The SBI, along with the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA) will both meet in Nairobi, Kenya, later this summer for a final round of talks before COP17 kicks off in Yerevan, Armenia, on 19 October.
Money talks
Finance for nature has long been a sticking point at negotiations under the CBD.
Discussions on a new fund for biodiversity derailed biodiversity talks in Cali, Colombia, in autumn 2024, requiring resumed talks a few months later.
Despite this, finance was barely on the agenda at the SBI meetings in Rome. Delegates discussed three studies on the relationship between debt sustainability and implementation of nature plans, but the more substantive talks are set to take place at the next SBI meeting in Nairobi.
Several parties “highlighted concerns with the imbalance of work” on finance between these SBI talks and the next ones, reported Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB).
Lim Li Ching, senior researcher at Third World Network, noted that tensions around finance permeated every aspect of the talks. She told Carbon Brief:
“If you’re talking about the gender plan of action – if there’s little or no financial resources provided to actually put it into practice and implement it, then it’s [just] paper, right? Same with the reporting requirements and obligations.”
Monitoring and reporting
Closely linked to the issue of finance is the obligations of parties to report on their progress towards the goals and targets of the GBF.
Parties do so through the submission of national reports.
Several parties at the talks pointed to a lack of timely funding for driving delays in their reporting, according to ENB.
A note released by the CBD Secretariat in December said that no parties had submitted their national reports yet; by the time of the SBI meetings, only the EU had. It further noted that just 58 parties had submitted their national biodiversity plans, which were initially meant to be published by COP16, in October 2024.
Linda Krueger, director of biodiversity and infrastructure policy at the environmental not-for-profit Nature Conservancy, told Carbon Brief that despite the sparse submissions, parties are “very focused on the national report preparation”. She added:
“Everybody wants to be able to show that we’re on the path and that there still is a pathway to getting to 2030 that’s positive and largely in the right direction.”
Watch, read, listen
NET LOSS: Nigeria’s marine life is being “threatened” by “ghost gear” – nets and other fishing equipment discarded in the ocean – said Dialogue Earth.
COMEBACK CAUSALITY: A Vox long-read looked at whether Costa Rica’s “payments for ecosystem services” programme helped the country turn a corner on deforestation.
HOMEGROWN GOALS: A Straits Times podcast discussed whether import-dependent Singapore can afford to shelve its goal to produce 30% of its food locally by 2030.
‘RUSTING’ RIVERS: The Financial Times took a closer look at a “strange new force blighting the [Arctic] landscape”: rivers turning rust-orange due to global warming.
New science
- Lakes in the Congo Basin’s peatlands are releasing carbon that is thousands of years old | Nature Geoscience
- Natural non-forest ecosystems – such as grasslands and marshlands – were converted for agriculture at four times the rate of land with tree cover between 2005 and 2020 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Around one-quarter of global tree-cover loss over 2001-22 was driven by cropland expansion, pastures and forest plantations for commodity production | Nature Food
In the diary
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean | Brasília
- 5 March: Nepal general elections
- 9-20 March: First part of the thirty-first session of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) | Kingston, Jamaica
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 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate
-
Greenhouse Gases7 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Climate Change7 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
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
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
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
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits