Published

2 months ago

September 23, 2025

Alice Rush

Fungi are learning to adapt to climate change, posing a major threat to human health.

Fungal infections range from minor conditions, such as athlete’s foot, to life-threatening respiratory diseases and bloodstream infections.

Fungi are known for their ability to adjust to – and thrive in – new and changing environments.

Now, they are learning to adapt to the rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns and extreme weather events that characterise a warming planet.

This is increasing their ability to colonise and cause disease in the human body.

However, there is a severe lack of diagnostics, treatments and vaccines available for fungal infections – and fungal resistance to existing drugs is on the rise.

An increase in fungal infections driven by climate change could also have devastating consequences for agriculture, damaging crops and threatening food security.

New fungal pathogens

Fungi are one of five “kingdoms” of life on Earth – putting them in a distinct category separate from animals or plants.

There are millions of fungal species – from saccharomyces cerevisiae, or baker’s yeast, to penicillium chrysogenum, which is the source of the antibiotic penicillin.

Fungal infections can be transmitted to humans through direct contact in the environment, with contaminated surfaces or via infected individuals.

Historically, most fungi do not cause disease in humans, meaning they are not “pathogenic”.

This is because – unlike viruses and bacteria – most fungi cannot survive or spread in body temperatures of 37C.

But, as global temperatures rise, some fungi are adapting to survive in hotter environments, including the human body.

(How fungi adapt to their environments is still not fully understood. However, their large genomes and diverse metabolic pathways – the chemical reactions which allow organisms to function – are thought to play a key role in their ability to survive and grow in a wide range of conditions.)

An example of this is candida auris, a fungal infection that emerged simultaneously on three continents in the late 2000s. The fungus mostly infects people with weakened immune systems and is a real concern as it can cause bloodstream infections. It is a serious problem in intensive care units, where the fungus sticks to medical equipment and grows rapidly.

Many infection, prevention and control measures are unable to get rid of it. Candida auris is already resistant to several antifungal drugs, making it very challenging to treat. One study in Oman, for example, recorded a fatality rate over more than 50%.

Due to lack of surveillance and routine monitoring, we do not know exactly how many people are impacted by candida auris infections.

To address this, the World Health Organization Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System (WHO-GLASS) – a programme that provides a standardised approach to collect and analyse data for antimicrobial resistance surveillance – has included a protocol for candida auris.

Candida auris is one of four fungal species identified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a “critical” threat to public health, alongside aspergillus fumigatus, candida albicans and cryptococcus neoformans.

Scientists have pointed to the likelihood that the emergence of candida auris is being driven by rising temperatures caused by climate change.

A 2022 study noted that higher temperatures driven by human-caused climate change may have added “selective pressure” on candida auris – leading to the spread of strains “adapted to salinity and higher temperatures – similar to the conditions found in the human body”.

The emergence of candida auris is just one example of how climate change is exacerbating fungal infection.

A study currently undergoing peer review suggests that – without effective strategies to tackle climate change – the aspergillus family could expand its reach to more northerly swathes of Europe, Asia and the Americas, exposing more people to life-threatening respiratory infections as temperatures rise.

Aspergillus infections can cause permanent damage to lungs and lead to serious illness in individuals with existing respiratory conditions or weakened immune systems.

Extreme weather

Rising temperatures are not the only cause of rising fungal infections linked to climate change.

Changing rainfall patterns, increasing humidity and worsening extreme weather events are also driving fungal pathogens to new areas.

Heavy rainfall, flooding and humidity leads to increased moisture in homes, increasing the growth of indoor mould. Mould – which encompasses a diverse group of fungal species – can cause substantial health impacts when inhaled for those with underlying health conditions, such as asthma.

Meanwhile, extreme weather events, such as wildfires and floods, transport fungal pathogens to new regions by spreading spores far beyond where they would typically be found. This increases the threat fungi pose to both human health and agriculture.

For instance, the fungus coccidioides, which is found in soils in the south-western US and parts of central and South America, causes valley fever – a lung infection which can be fatal to humans and animals.

Outbreaks occur when extreme events, such as wildfires, disturb large amounts of soil and spread fungal spores into the air. These enter the human body when inhaled. Cases are often unreported, but it is estimated that the fungi causes around 206,000-360,000 cases per year in the US.

The fungus thrives in a hot and dry climate. Coccidioides is now being seen in regions that would not normally support its growth, as the climate heats up.

A 2019 study used climate models to project that the range of valley fever could expand into more northerly US states such as Idaho, Wyoming and Nebraska. It also estimates that, by 2100, cases across the US could rise by approximately 50% as more regions develop climates suitable for transmission.

Threatening food security

Fungal pathogens also threaten human health indirectly by damaging harvests and causing a range of plant diseases, including blights, root rot and mildew.

Blight tomato disease. Credit: Botany vision / Alamy Stock Photo

Fungi are a key part of soil ecosystems, but plant pathogenic fungi can cause growers to lose between 10-23% of their crops every year – and a further 10-20% after they are harvested, as food that is incorrectly stored goes mouldy at different points of the supply chain.

Rising temperatures can spread and introduce more pathogens to an area, which can reduce harvests and, in some cases, wipe out entire crop families. This could result in food insecurity globally and economic instability in regions that rely on agricultural exports.

Modern agriculture’s reliance on growing genetically uniform crops, known as monocultures, puts the global food system at increased risk of fungal disease, as pathogens learn how to colonise crops.

Developments in the global banana market are a prominent example of the threat posed by fungus to crops. In the 1950s, the Gros Michel banana – once the main export variety of banana – was wiped out by a disease caused by the fungus fusarium oxysporum.

Now, the banana variety that was grown and exported in its place – the Cavendish banana – is under threat by a new strain of fusarium. This poses a major threat to the global banana trade, given that the Cavendish banana accounts for 47% of banana production and virtually all bananas supplied to the US and Europe.

In another example, the fusarium graminearum fungus, which flourishes in wet conditions and warm temperatures, causes a disease that is thought to cause wheat and barley yield losses amounting to more than $1bn every year.

Rising antifungal resistance

The spread of fungal infections caused by climate change is particularly concerning given the lack of available treatment options, as well as limited awareness among the public and healthcare professionals.

Most healthcare professionals receive little training around how to identify fungal infections, leading to delayed diagnosis and treatment. In the developing world, fungal infections can be deadly because both awareness and access to diagnostic tests are lacking.

There are just four types of antifungal drugs and no approved fungal vaccines.

Antifungal treatments are harder to develop than antibiotics because fungi are more biologically similar to humans than plants – making them difficult to kill without harming human cells.

Meanwhile, resistance to the antifungal drugs that are available is growing.

The fungicides used to kill fungi in agriculture often share “modes of action” with medical antifungals. The overuse of these fungicides has led to fungi in the environment building up their resistance – creating hardier fungi that are more difficult to treat in clinical settings.

As climate change puts additional stress on the food system, the risks and benefits of using fungicides to ensure food security need to be balanced with safeguarding the effectiveness of antifungal drugs.

However, there is limited communication between agricultural and medical sectors around how to juggle these priorities.

And yet – despite all these challenges – fungal infections receive a fraction of the funding and attention that bacterial or viral diseases do.

Fungi that tackle climate change

Fungi have historically been an asset in medical research – most notably the discovery of the drug penicillin. They could also prove valuable in the fight against climate change.

Some fungi are used to suppress populations of pests or pathogens in agriculture. This method – known as natural biocontrol – uses fungi, or other forms of naturally occurring organisms – such as bacteria, insects or viruses – as a replacement for chemical pesticides.

Natural biocontrol is seen as a more environmentally friendly method for treating crops than manmade chemicals because the organisms break down naturally in the environment and do not leave toxic residues in the soil.

Meanwhile, researchers have also found that mycorrhizal fungi – which grow in association with plant roots – store roughly 13bn tonnes of carbon (GtC) – equivalent to 36% of annual global fossil fuel emissions. The fungus does this by absorbing carbon from plants and locking it in their underground networks and soil, where it stays stable for long periods.

There are groups looking at how the mycorrhizal fungi could be harnessed to help deliver decarbonisation – similar to tree planting.

However, more research is needed to better understand the valuable properties of fungi, including how they could be part of “nature-based solutions” to help tackle climate change.

Discovering the unknown

There is still a lot that remains unknown about fungi. Scientists estimate that less than 10% of all species have been identified globally.

Fungi are essential to healthy ecosystems. They recycle nutrients by breaking down organic matter and play a critical role in the carbon cycle.

But climate change is disrupting this balance. Rising temperatures and environmental shifts threaten to wipe out some fungal species before they’re even discovered, while enabling others to thrive in new – and often harmful – ways.

These changes signal deep trouble for the natural world.

It is, therefore, critical that more scientific attention is paid to the risks and opportunities of fungi as they learn to adapt to a warmer climate.

The post Guest post: Fungal infections are adapting to climate change – and threatening public health appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Guest post: Fungal infections are adapting to climate change – and threatening public health

Greenhouse Gases

DeBriefed 21 November 2025: [COP30 DeBriefed] ‘Mutirão’ text latest; ‘Roadmaps’ explained; COP finish times plotted

Published

2 days ago

November 21, 2025

Alice Rush

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

This week

Key ‘mutirão’ text emerges

‘MUTIRÃO’ 2.0: After many late nights, but little progress – and a dramatic fire at the COP30 venue – the much-awaited second draft of the summit’s key agreement, called the “mutirão” text, finally dropped this morning. The new mutirão text “calls for efforts to triple adaptation finance” by 2030 and would launch a presidency-led “Belém mission to 1.5C” alongside a voluntary “implementation accelerator”, as well as a series of “dialogues” on trade. It “decides to establish” a two-year work programme on climate finance, including on a key section of the Paris Agreement called Article 9.1, but has a footnote saying this will not “prejudge” how the climate finance goal agreed last year is met.

COP30 Insider Pass

A two-week, all-access package designed for those who need much more than headlines.

ROADMAPS TO NOWHERE: The latest draft does not refer to the idea of a “fossil-fuel roadmap”, which is not on the COP30 agenda, but has been pushed by Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and a group of parties (see below). A letter to the presidency, seen by Carbon Brief and reportedly backed by at least 29 countries, including Colombia, Germany, Palau, Mexico and the UK, says: “We cannot support an outcome that does not include a roadmap [on fossil fuels].” It also flags the lack of a roadmap on deforestation. The letter asks for a revised text.

PLENARY WHEN: The latest draft of the mutirão text is unlikely to be the last. There is also a set of draft decisions that have not been fully resolved. For instance, this morning, the Brazilian COP presidency floated a draft decision on what it is calling the “Belém gender action plan”, with three brackets versus the 496 brackets in the previous version. At a short, informal stocktaking plenary, COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago invited countries to react to the drafts in a “mutirão” meeting, namely, in the “spirit of cooperation”. But expect all timings to be flexible, as they work to iron out differences in closed-door meetings.

Adaptation COP

TRIPLING TARGET: A new text for the global goal on adaptation dropped alongside the mutirão text this morning, after days of tense negotiations. Crucially, it includes the adoption of some of the indicators, which will be used to track countries’ progress on adaptation. Last week, the African Group and others called for the indicators not to be adopted at COP30 – one of the key expectations ahead of the summit – and, instead, a two-year work programme to further refine them due to concerns around adaptation finance.

INDICATORS: The latest text adopts an annex of 59 of the potential 100 indicators, emphasises that they “do not create new financial obligations or commitments” and decides to establish a two-year “Belém-Addis vision” on adaptation to further refine the indicators. The only remaining bracket within the text is to allow for the addition of the final adaptation finance target from the mutirão – which, currently, “calls for efforts to triple adaptation finance compared to 2025 levels by 2030”.

WHAM BAM: The latest text for another key negotiating stream on the “just transition work programme” (JTWP) “decides to develop a just transition mechanism”. This has been a point of particular contention within negotiations. Civil society developed the concept of the Belém Action Mechanism (BAM) over the past year and the G77 and China, a large group of global-south nations, tabled it within the JTWP in the first week. However, there was pushback from the EU, UK and others, with the former instead proposing an “action plan” as an alternative.

CRITICAL MINERALS: While landing on the inclusion of a mechanism is being welcomed by civil society and others, the latest text removes the reference to critical minerals included in its predecessor. If included, it would be the first time a reference to “critical minerals” is adopted in the JTWP.

Around the COP

Turkey will host COP31, while Australia will take on the presidency and lead the negotiations, under a compromise deal reached between the two nations on Thursday, Reuters reported.
Brazil set out a plan before COP30 to reform the “action agenda” – which includes 117 “plans to accelerate solutions” outside of the negotiations, covering everything from fossil-fuel phaseout to “sustainable diets for all”. On Wednesday, the presidency rounded off a series of events that have been used to promote this vision.
China called for the creation of a “practical roadmap” for delivering climate finance by developed countries, which delegation head Li Gao said would help “prevent further erosion of trust between developed and developing countries”.
An estimated 70,000 people marched in 32C heat in Belém on Saturday, marking the largest COP protest since COP26 in Glasgow.

52

The number of COP30 agenda items that had been agreed by the time DeBriefed was sent to readers.

51

The number of COP30 agenda items not yet agreed.

Latest climate research

A five-year drought in Iran and around the Euphrates and Tigris basins “would have been very rare” without human-caused climate change | World Weather Attribution
Integrating nature-based solutions into urban planning could reduce daytime temperatures by 2C during hot periods | Nature Cities
Warming of the “deep Greenland basin” has exerted “obvious impacts” on the deep waters of the Arctic Ocean | Science Advances

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

Captured

This week saw the Brazilian presidency pledge to conclude some of the most controversial issues at COP30 a whole two days early. In the end, no early deal materialised. As the event approaches its official end time later today, with none of the major negotiations finished, this chart serves to remind that COPs have not finished on time for more than two decades.

Spotlight

‘Roadmaps’ explained

This week, Carbon Brief explains the push for new “roadmaps” away from fossil fuels and deforestation at COP30.

Speaking during the world leaders summit in Belém ahead of COP30, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said that the world “need[s] roadmaps to justly and strategically reverse deforestation [and] overcome dependence on fossil fuels”.

His words appeared to spark a movement of countries to call for new roadmaps away from fossil fuels and deforestation to feature as key outcomes of this COP – despite not being on the official agenda for the negotiations.

While momentum for each roadmap has grown, they were referenced only as an option in the first version of COP30’s key text, called the “global mutirão” – and in the second version the reference to roadmaps has disappeared entirely.

Below, Carbon Brief explains the origins of each roadmap, how support for them has grown and how they might feature in COP’s final outcome.

Fossil-fuel roadmap

Most people cite Lula’s pre-COP speech as the start of the movement for a fossil-fuel roadmap.

However, an observer close to the process told Carbon Brief that the COP30 presidency had, in fact, been consulting on the possibility of a roadmap months earlier – drawing help from the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, a small group of nations who have pledged to phase out all fossil fuels.

While Brazil was the first country to support the fossil-fuel roadmap, it was joined in the first few days of COP by eight Latin American countries that form the Alliance of Latin America and the Caribbean (AILAC) and by the Environmental Integrity Group (EIG), which includes Mexico, Liechtenstein, Monaco, South Korea, Switzerland and Georgia.

The call for a roadmap was also backed by the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), a group of 39 small low-lying island nations.

As momentum grew, the first global mutirão text appeared on Wednesday 19 November. Paragraph 35 of the text listed three options for where a reference to a fossil-fuel roadmap map might be incorporated, including one option for “no text”.

Later that day, ministers and climate envoys from more than 20 countries united for a packed-out press conference, where they called the current reference to the fossil-fuel roadmap “weak”, adding that it must be “strengthened and adopted”.

At the sidelines of the conference, UK climate envoy Rachel Kyte told journalists that around 80 countries now backed the call for a roadmap. (Carbon Brief obtained the list of 82 countries that have expressed their support.)

However, COP30 CEO Ana Toni told a press conference later that day that a “great majority” of country groups they had consulted saw a fossil-fuel roadmap as a “red line”.

In an interview with Carbon Brief, Dr Osama Faqeeha, deputy environment minister for Saudi Arabia, refused to be drawn on whether a fossil-fuel roadmap was a red line, but said:

“I think the issue is the emissions, it’s not the fuel. And our position is that we have to cut emissions regardless.”

The next day, the EU officially threw its weight behind the call for a fossil-fuel roadmap, after initial delay caused by hesitation to join the movement from Italy and Poland, Climate Home News reported.

The EU circulated its own proposal for how a fossil-fuel roadmap could be referenced in the global mutirão text, the publication added.

However, the latest version of the global mutirão text, released today, does not reference a roadmap at all. It has already sparked condemnation from a range of countries and observers.

It is expected that at least one more iteration of the text will emerge before the COP30 presidency attempts to find agreement, which could see a reference to the roadmap reappear.

Deforestation roadmap

While Lula called for roadmaps away from both fossil fuels and deforestation, the latter has received less attention, with one observer joking to Carbon Brief it had become the “sad forgotten cousin”.

A roadmap away from deforestation was originally only backed by Brazil, the EIG and AILAC.

However, the EU became a relatively early backer – announcing its support for a deforestation roadmap before a fossil-fuel roadmap.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo – one of the world’s “megadiverse” nations and one of the countries responsible for the Congo rainforest – has also announced its support. (See Carbon Brief’s list of supporters.)

As with the fossil-fuel roadmap, a reference to a deforestation roadmap appeared in the first iteration of the mutirão text, but has disappeared from the second. It may – or may not – appear in another version of the text before COP30’s finale.

Watch, read, listen

FOREST TALES: In a new video series from Earthday.org and the Pulitzer Centre, three investigative journalists discussed their reporting on deforestation in Brazil and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

AI IMPACTS: Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, spoke to BBC News about the climate impacts of AI, among other topics.

MISSING DATA: Columnist George Monbiot wrote in the Guardian about the “vast black hole” of climate data in some parts of the world – which he says is a “gift” to climate deniers.

Coming up

22-23 November: G20 summit, Johannesburg, South Africa
24 November-5 December: 20th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), Samarkand, Uzbekistan
24-29 November: 11th session of the governing body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, Lima, Peru

Pick of the jobs

Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, chief press officer | Salary: £60,620-£67,565. Location: London
World Bank Group, climate change specialist | Salary: Unknown. Location: New Delhi, India
University of Buffalo, Center for Climate Change and Health Equity, postdoctoral associate | Salary: $50,000-$55,000. Location: Buffalo, New York
University of Oxford, Queens College, junior fellow in climate change research | Salary: £37,694. Location: Oxford, UK

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 21 November 2025: [COP30 DeBriefed] ‘Mutirão’ text latest; ‘Roadmaps’ explained; COP finish times plotted appeared first on Carbon Brief.

DeBriefed 21 November 2025: [COP30 DeBriefed] ‘Mutirão’ text latest; ‘Roadmaps’ explained; COP finish times plotted

Greenhouse Gases

Cropped 19 November 2025: COP30 edition

Published

4 days ago

November 19, 2025

Alice Rush

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

COP30 nears its end

COP TALK: The COP30 climate summit is entering its final days in Belém – and food, forests and land have all featured across the two weeks of talks. The formal agriculture negotiations track at climate COPs is the Sharm-el-Sheikh joint work on climate action for agriculture and food security (SWJA). Talks, however, came to an abrupt halt last Thursday evening, with countries agreeing to continue discussions on a draft text – with elements ranging from agroecology to precision agriculture – in Bonn next year.

DEFORESTATION ROADMAP: WWF and Greenpeace called for a roadmap at COP30 to end deforestation. There has been a lot of chatter about roadmaps in Belém, with more than 80 countries backing calls for a roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels, the Guardian said. Kirsten Schuijt from WWF told a press conference that a similar plan on ending deforestation should include “real actions and ambition to bend the curve on forest loss”. Writing for Backchannel, Colombia’s environment minister Irene Vélez-Torres said: “We need to see the global north come behind a roadmap – and quickly”. (Carbon Brief’s Daisy Dunne has started tracking the countries in favour, such as Colombia.)

CARBON MARKETS: Elsewhere at the talks, nature-based solutions featured in an early draft text of carbon market negotiations. (Carbon Brief’s Aruna Chandrasekhar took a closer look at some of these references.) In addition, the Brazilian presidency launched a global coalition of “compliance carbon markets” on 7 November, which was endorsed by 18 countries.

BIG AG IN BELÉM: More than 300 industrial agriculture lobbyists attended COP30, according to an investigation by DeSmog and the Guardian. This is a 14% increase on last year, DeSmog reported, and larger than Canada’s entire delegation. One in four agricultural lobbyists attended the talks as part of an official country delegation, the outlet noted. Elsewhere, Unearthed found that the sustainable agriculture pavilion at COP30 was “sponsored by agribiz interests linked to deforestation and anti-conservation lobbying”. Brazilian outlet Agência Pública reported that Brazil placed the “billionaire brothers” who own JBS, the world’s largest beef producer, on a “VIP list” at the summit.

TRACKING PROGRESS: A UN report found that while progress has been made towards a global pledge to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030, emissions of the potent greenhouse gas continue to rise. The report said agricultural methane is projected to increase by 4-8% by 2030, but could instead reduce by 8% with methane-reduction measures. Elsewhere, a report covered by Down to Earth found that countries need more than 1bn hectares of land, “an area larger than Australia”, to meet carbon removal pledges.

Indigenous presence in Belém

QUESTIONED PARTICIPATION: Ahead of COP30, Brazil’s presidency had expected the arrival of 3,000 Indigenous peoples in Belém. Indigenous peoples from the Amazon were at COP30 “in greater numbers than ever before”, with 900 representatives granted access to the negotiations, the New York Times reported. However, only four people from Brazil’s afro-descendant Quilombolas communities held such accreditation, Climate Home News and InfoAmazonia reported. A boat journey that took 62 Indigenous representatives across the Amazon river to attend the COP30 was covered by Folha de São Paulo, Reuters and El País.

VARIED DEMANDS: Indigenous leaders arrived in Belém with a variety of demands, including the inclusion of their land rights within countries’ climate plans, the New York Times added. It wrote that land demarcation “would provide legal protection against incursion by loggers, farmers, miners and ranchers”. Half of the group that sailed across the Amazon river were youths that brought demands from Amazon peoples to the climate summit, El País reported. A small Indigenous group from Cambodia attended COP30 to combat climate disinformation and call for ensuring Indigenous rights in forest projects, Kiri Post reported.

FROM BLOCKADES TO THE STREETS: During the first week of COP30, Indigenous protesters blocked the entrance of the conference and clashed with police officers when demanding climate action and forest protection, Reuters reported. Tens of thousands of protesters, including Indigenous peoples, took to the streets of Belém on Saturday to demand climate justice and hold a funeral for fossil fuels, Mongabay and the Guardian reported.

News and views

AGRI DISASTERS: Disasters have driven $3.26tn in agricultural losses worldwide over the past 33 years, amounting to around 4% of global agricultural GDP, according to a new report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. The report assessed how disasters – including droughts, floods, pests and marine heatwaves – are disrupting food production, livelihoods and nutrition. It found that Asia saw nearly half of global losses, while Africa recorded the highest proportional impacts, losing 7.4% of its agricultural GDP.

WATER ‘CATASTROPHE’: Iran is facing “nationwide catastrophe” due to “worsening droughts, record-low rainfall and decades of mismanaged water resources”, Newsweek reported. According to Al Jazeera, the country is facing its sixth consecutive drought year, following high summertime temperatures. The outlet added: “Iran spends 90% of its water on low-yield agriculture in a pursuit of self-sufficiency that exacerbates drought.” BBC News reported that authorities in the country have “sprayed clouds” with salts to “induce rain, in an attempt to combat” the worsening drought.

TRUMP THREAT: The Trump administration will allow oil and gas drilling in Alaska’s North Slope – home to “some of the most important wildlife habitat in the Arctic” – the New York Times reported. The announcement reverses a decision made during the Biden administration to restrict development in half of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, the newspaper said. Separately, Reuters reported that the US Department of Agriculture directed its staff to identify grants for termination at the start of Trump’s second administration by searching for “words and phrases related to diversity and climate change”.

FIELDS FLATTENED: Thousands of acres of sugarcane plantations in the Philippines’ Visayas islands were destroyed by Typhoon Tino earlier this month, the Philippine Star reported. Damages to the country’s sugar industry have been estimated at 1.2bn Philippine dollars (£15.5m), it added. Sugar regulator administrator Pablo Luis Azcona told the Manila Times: “We have seen entire fields decimated by Tino, especially in the fourth and fifth districts of Negros Occidental, where harvestable canes were flattened and flooded. We can only hope that these fields will be able to recover.”

FARMS AND TREES: EU countries and the European parliament have provisionally agreed on an “overhaul” of farming subsidies, Reuters reported. The changes would “exempt smaller farmers from baseline requirements tying their subsidies to efforts to protect the environment” and increase their potential payments, the newswire said. Campaigners told Reuters that these changes would make farmers more vulnerable to climate change. Elsewhere, Bloomberg said EU countries are “pushing for a one-year delay” of the bloc’s planned anti-deforestation law – “seeking more time to comply” with the law compared to different proposed changes from the European Commission.

ANOTHER FUND: Brazil is mulling over the creation of a new fund for preserving different biomes, such as the Cerrado, inspired by the Amazon Fund, Folha de São Paulo reported. Discussions are underway between Brazil’s president and the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES), according to the newspaper. Separately, the Washington Post reported on how Brazil’s efforts to position itself as a climate leader at COP30 has been undermined by Lula’s approval of new oil drilling in the Amazon and elimination of environmental permits.

Spotlight

Key COP30 pledges

This week, Carbon Brief outlines four of the biggest COP30 initiatives for food, land and forests.

Tropical Forest Forever Facility

Brazil’s tropical forest fund – arguably the biggest forest announcement from this year’s climate talks – was hailed by WWF and others as a “gamechanger” upon its launch almost two weeks ago. Since then, the fund has raised $5.5bn – far below even Brazil’s reduced target of $10bn by next year.

Norway, Brazil, Indonesia, Portugal, France and the Netherlands have all committed to pay into the fund, while Germany has said it will announce its contribution soon. The UK and China, on the other hand, do not plan to pay in.

Intergovernmental Land Tenure Commitment

This new “landmark” commitment aimed to “recognise and strengthen” the land rights on 160m hectares of Indigenous peoples and local community land by 2030, according to the Forest & Climate Leaders’ Partnership.

It has been backed by 14 countries, including Brazil, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia and the UK.

Relatedly, $1.8bn has been pledged from public and private funding to help secure land rights for Indigenous peoples, local communities and Afro-descendent communities in forests and other ecosystems.

Belém Declaration on Hunger, Poverty and People-Centered Climate Action

Signatories of this declaration committed to a number of actions aiming to address the “unequal distribution of climate impacts”, including expanding social protection systems and supporting climate adaptation for small farmers.

It was adopted by 43 countries and the EU. A German minister described it as a “pioneering step in linking climate action, social protection and food security”.

Belém 4X

This initiative aimed to gather high-level support to quadruple the production and use of “sustainable fuels”, such as hydrogen and biofuels, by 2035.

It was launched by Brazil and has been backed by 23 countries so far, including Canada, Italy, Japan and the Netherlands.

However, the pledge has been “rejected” by some NGOs, including Climate Action Network and Greenpeace, who criticised the environmental impact of biofuels.

Watch, read, listen

FOOD CHAT: Bite the Talk, a podcast by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, explored the “critical intersection of climate change and nutrition”.

TRUE SAVIOURS: On Instagram, the Washington Post published a list of 50 plant and animal species that “have enriched and even saved human lives”.

NO MORE WASTE: A comment piece by the founder of London’s Community Kitchen in the Independent addressed the relevance of food waste to the climate agenda.

FOREST FRENZY: The Financial Times spoke to Amazon climate scientist Prof Carlos Nobre about tipping points and his “zeal for saving the rainforest”.

New science

Floods led to a 4.3% global reduction in annual rice yield over 1980-2015, with crop losses accelerating after the year 2000 – “coinciding with a climate change-induced uptick in the frequency and severity” of floods | Science Advances
Loss of African montane forests led to local “microclimate” warming of 2.0-5.6C over 2003-22, diminishing the “temperature-buffering capacity” of the forests | Communications Earth & Environment
“Prolonged” drought is linked to an increase in conflict between humans and wildlife – especially carnivores | Science Advances

In the diary

10-21 November: COP30 UN climate summit | Belém, Brazil
22-23 November: G20 leaders’ summit | Johannesburg, South Africa
24-29 November: 11th session of the governing body of the international treaty on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture | Lima, Peru
1-5 December: XIX World Water Congress | Marrakech, Morocco

Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz. Ayesha Tandon also contributed to this issue. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org

The post Cropped 19 November 2025: COP30 edition appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Cropped 19 November 2025: COP30 edition

Greenhouse Gases

COP30: Carbon Brief’s second ‘ask us anything’ webinar

Published

6 days ago

November 17, 2025

Alice Rush

As COP30 reaches its midway point in the Brazilian city of Belém, Carbon Brief has hosted its second “ask us anything” webinar to exclusively answer questions submitted by holders of the Insider Pass.

The webinar kicked off with an overview of where the negotiations are on Day 8, plus what it was like to be among the 70,000-strong “people’s march” on Saturday.

At present, there are 44 agreed texts at COP30, with many negotiating streams remaining highly contested, as shown by Carbon Brief’s live text tracker.

Topics discussed during the webinar included the potential of a “cover text” at COP30, plus updates on negotiations such as the global goal on adaptation and the just-transition work programme.

Journalists also answered questions on the potential for a “fossil-fuel phaseout roadmap”, the impact of finance – including the Baku to Belém roadmap, which was released the week before COP30 – and Article 6.

The webinar was moderated by Carbon Brief’s director and editor, Leo Hickman, and featured six of our journalists – half of them on the ground in Belém – covering all elements of the summit: