Published

5 months ago

October 2, 2025

Alice Rush

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

China’s first-ever pledge to cut emissions

NEW CLIMATE TARGETS: In a video address to the UN last week, China’s president Xi Jinping personally pledged to cut his nation’s economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions to 7-10% below peak levels by 2035, while “striving to do better”, reported state broadcaster CCTV. Sky News called it a “landmark moment”, saying that this marked the first time China “made a commitment to cut its greenhouse gas emissions”. The announced target, along with other commitments such as expanding wind and solar power capacity to more than six times 2020 levels, will be included in China’s 2035 “nationally determined contribution” (NDC) under the Paris Agreement, which has not yet been submitted, reported BBC News. Carbon Brief published a detailed analysis of the announcement and hosted a webinar with climate policy experts to discuss their assessments. More details of the webinar can be found below.

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AMBITION CRITICISM: In an article for Just Security, Sue Biniaz, former US principal deputy special envoy for climate, wrote that “at and around the UN event, the chatter regarding the announcement was generally negative”, adding that the announced target was “even lower than expected”. EU climate chief Wopke Hoekstra described China’s new climate pledge as falling “well short of what we believe is both achievable and necessary”, reported Reuters. In response, China accused the EU of “being slow to act on its own climate targets”, according to another Reuters report. The outlet said that Hoekstra’s “criticism of China’s new climate pledges shows ‘double standards and selective blindness’, China’s foreign ministry said on Friday”.

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MEDIA REACTION: Media outlets including the Guardian and the Times raised questions about the ambition of the target. Similarly, Bloomberg said it was “seen as too modest to put the nation on a path to net-zero and galvanise global climate action”. An editorial in state-run newspaper China Daily, however, called the target a “milestone in the nation’s long-term road map toward green, low-carbon development”. Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, wrote in a comment for the New York Times that China’s targets “may seem tepid”, but “beneath them is a bold wager: that steady action, powered by industrial strength and vision shielded from political volatility, will ultimately do more to contribute to the global climate effort than lofty, fickle promises ever could”.

Electricity demand growth slowed

PRESSURE DROP: The rate of growth in China’s electricity demand slowed in August, with “cooler” weather helping to “take some pressure off the grid”, reported Bloomberg, citing official data. The outlet added that electricity consumption rose 5% in August, compared with 8.6% in July and 5.4% in June. Still, China’s electricity demand in both July and August exceeded 1,000 terawatt hours – the first time this happened globally, said Chinese finance media outlet Cailianpress. According to a report by the China Electricity Council, China’s “electrification rate” has already surpassed that of “major developed economies in Europe and the US”, wrote China Energy Net.

MARKET PRICE: Two coastal provinces, Guangdong and Shandong, have used China’s new market-based pricing system for renewables to “steer clean-energy investment to the areas that suit them best, reported Bloomberg. According to the outlet, Guangdong, which is “surrounded by relatively shallow waters”, offered “generous rates to offshore wind”. In Shandong, the pricing system was used to “correct course and reduce a glut of solar power that has built up over the years”, added the outlet.

Steel to face new controls

CAPACITY CURBS: China has released a work plan for 2025-26 to “ban new steel capacity and reduce production, in the latest move to help balance supply and demand”, reported Bloomberg. The plan came after Beijing promised to cut steel output at the Two Sessions in March, according to the outlet. It also called for “significantly enhancing green, low-carbon and digital development levels” of the country’s steel sector, according to the industry news outlet BJX News. Financial media outlet Caixin said “more than 80% of China’s crude steel production capacity has completed ultra-low-emission retrofits, according to the China Iron and Steel Association”.

ETS EXPANSION: Meanwhile, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment issued draft allowance plans for the steel, cement and aluminium sectors for 2024 and 2025 in its national emissions trading scheme (ETS), reported Cailian Press. (The ETS was expanded to these sectors from 2024 in a draft policy, published late last year and covered by Carbon Brief. The expansion, which means that the ETS covers 60% of China’s emissions, rather than 40% previously, was confirmed in March.) Meanwhile, a report published by the State Council said that a total of 189m tonnes of carbon dioxide was traded on the ETS in 2024, according to Xinhua.

Typhoon Ragasa

DAMAGES IN ASIA: Nearly two million people in southern China had to be “relocated” after Typhoon Ragasa made landfall in Guangdong province last Wednesday, reported state news agency Xinhua. BBC News described the typhoon as the “world’s strongest storm this year” and said “a month’s worth of rain” was expected in the city of Zhuhai in one day. In the wider Asia-Pacific region, dozens of people were killed, while flights as well as businesses were also strongly affected, said the Financial Times.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Ragasa was intensified by “unusually hot oceans”, which can be linked to climate change, according to “preliminary studies” covered by the Hong Kong Free Press. “Rapid attribution” analysis by the French research group ClimaMeter concluded that cyclones such as Ragasa are around 10% wetter than they would have been in the past, added the outlet. Benjamin Horton, dean of the school of energy and environment at City University of Hong Kong, also linked Ragasa to climate change, saying extreme weather events “should not be happening at such regularity, so late in the season, of such intensity, of such high winds and of such big storm surges”, according to the SCMP.

40%

The share of China’s total solar capacity in 2024 made up by distributed photovoltaics – typically installed on rooftops – according to a report from the International Energy Agency, which said the share was up from 30% four years earlier. The report added that the “stock of electric cars grew by more than 650% over the same period”.

Spotlight

Experts: What China’s new climate pledge means for the world

Last week, president Xi Jinping announced several new pledges that will be included in China’s upcoming 2035 nationally determined contribution (NDC).

Carbon Brief held a webinar with several experts on what the new announcement means for China’s climate trajectory and the global energy transition. Below are the highlights of their answers. A recording of the webinar is available on the Carbon Brief website.

Ryna Cui, associate director and associate research professor at the University of Maryland Center for Global Sustainability

Our assessment of a plausible high ambition pathway for China [showed it] delivering a 27-31% reduction in total greenhouse gas emissions by 2035…In addition, we also model[led] a current policy pathway for China, which…also achieve[d] a 10-14% reduction…Both scenarios suggest a larger reduction compared to the 7-10% overall emission reduction target.

…

Under our current policy scenario for 2035, wind and solar total installed capacity is over 4,000 gigawatt (GW). It is over 4,700 gigawatt under a high ambition [scenario]. [The target announced by Xi is for 3,600GW by 2035.]

…

The non-fossil share of total primary energy…is 40% [under current policies] and 48% [under high ambition], compared to the 30% target announced [by Xi].

Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst and co-founder at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air

At [China’s] rate of clean-energy growth, there is no more space for…coal, in general, to grow. So if you were to announce targets of 20-30% reduction in carbon dioxide, then you have to recognise that there’s going to be a major downsizing of the coal industry.

That seems to be a decision that China’s leadership is still postponing. Are you going to put reins on this clean-energy boom, or are you going to accept that the coal industry has to start downsizing in a big way?

…

These targets really, to me, show that the leadership was not prepared to resolve that conflict and say that coal is the one that has to give.

Anika Patel, China analyst at Carbon Brief

[In terms of what’s next,] one of the big signals…is COP30. What else will be announced that could signal China’s relative level of climate ambition?

Will there be quantitative targets placed on things like climate finance?…Will there be more announcements around south-south cooperation? What will China’s signaling on fossil fuels – especially coal – in the final COP30 outcome be?

…

At the same time, we’ve got the 15th five-year plan coming up…We’re expecting a new set of overarching targets for 2026-2030, and traditionally there have always been a couple of climate targets [among the plan’s headline targets]. From that, we can expect to start seeing signals about what the level of climate ambition for the next five years will be.

Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute

There has been a very strong alignment now in the Chinese system between its decarbonisation goals and its economic development agenda…I think that strong alignment is what will propel the country to cut more carbon over time.

I also think that when you begin to realise [that]…you will then begin to realise it is not necessarily just the [state-level] EU-China climate relationship…[or] COPs that we should pay attention to. New actors are emerging.

We need to pay attention to BYD [and] CATL. We need to pay attention to [low-carbon commercial and investment activity in] Brazil…[and] Indonesia. Those factors and actors, over the next ten years or so, will begin to drive carbon-emission reduction in a more significant and meaningful way than countries’ NDCs.

Watch, read, listen

‘NEW ENERGY’: A comment on the “high-quality development” of China’s “new energy” sector was published by the Communist party’s Study Times – an official newspaper edited by the central school of the Chinese Communist party – under the byline of Wang Hongzhi, head of the National Energy Administration.

HIGH-LEVEL COMMENT: The Communist party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily published an article under the byline Zhong Caiwen, used to indicate party leaders’ views on economic affairs, saying “green development is the defining feature of China’s high-quality economic growth”.

EXTREME WEATHER: Chinese media outlet 21st Century Business Herald conducted an interview with Xu Xiaofeng, former deputy director of the China Meteorological Administration and president of the China Meteorological Service Association, who talked about the “high intensity of extreme weather events” under climate change.
CARBON MARKETS: Ma Aimin, former deputy director of the National Centre for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation, told Jiemian that China’s carbon market (ETS) needed to enhance its “trading activity” and that the next two years will be a “critical period” for voluntary carbon trading (CCERs).

New science

Development policy affects coastal flood exposure in China more than sea-level rise

Nature Climate Change

Exposure to coastal flooding in China over the 21st century will depend more on “policy decisions” than the rate of sea-level rise, according to new research. The authors combined simulations of population and land use changes with flood models that incorporate factors such as sea level rise and storm surges. They said their paper offers a “more nuanced understanding of coastal risks” than other existing assessments.

Spatiotemporal patterns and drivers of wildfire CO2 emissions in China from 2001 to 2022

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

Annual CO2 emissions from forest and shrub fires in China decreased over 2001-22, but increased for cropland fires, a new study found. The analysis noted that the upward trend in cropland fire emissions is primarily in the country’s north-east and is “closely linked to region-specific straw-burning policies”. The researchers found that emissions from grassland fires remained relatively stable over the two decades assessed.

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 2 October 2025: China’s new pledge; electricity demand slows; steel overcapacity appeared first on Carbon Brief.

China Briefing 2 October 2025: China’s new pledge; electricity demand slows; steel overcapacity

Greenhouse Gases

DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?

Published

1 day ago

February 27, 2026

Alice Rush

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.

DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?

Greenhouse Gases

Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding

Published

1 day ago

February 27, 2026

Alice Rush

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.

Map of England showing that Richard Tice's Boston and Skegness constituency is set to receive at least £55m for flood defences between 2024 and 2026 — Flood-defence spending on new and replacement schemes in England in 2024-25 and 2025-26. The government notes that, as Environment Agency accounts have not been finalised and approved, the investment data is “provisional and subject to change”. Some schemes cover multiple constituencies and are not included on the map. Source: Environment Agency FCERM data.

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.

Chart showing that Conservative, Reform and Liberal Democrat constituencies are the top recipients of flood defence spending — Top 10 English constituencies by FCERM funding in 2024-25 and 2025-26. Source: Environment Agency FCERM data.

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

Published

3 days ago

February 25, 2026

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

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