Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement will rise around 1.1% in 2025, reaching a record 38.1bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to the latest figures from the Global Carbon Project.
However, falling land-use emissions means that global CO2 emissions in 2025 will remain relatively unchanged compared to 2024 levels.
The 20th edition of the annual Global Carbon Budget report, published today, also finds that the land carbon sink – the portion of human-caused CO2 emissions absorbed by plants and soils – appears to have recovered to its pre-El Niño strength after two unusually weak years.
However, research published alongside the report by the same team also suggests that climate change has caused a long-term decline in land and ocean carbon sinks, with sinks being about 15% weaker over the past decade than they would have been without climate impacts.
The study, published in Nature, finds that the decline of carbon sinks has contributed about 8% to the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration since 1960.
The 2025 Global Carbon Budget report also estimates that:
- Emissions in China and India are projected to grow much less in 2025 compared to the past decade, while emissions in the US and EU are projected to grow this year after years of decline.
- Global CO2 emissions from land-use change are expected to decrease by nearly 10% in 2025, driven by reductions in deforestation and forest degradation in South America.
- Total CO2 emissions – fossil and land use – have grown more slowly over the past decade (0.3% per year on average) compared to the previous decade (1.9% per year).
- The remaining carbon budget to limit global warming to 1.5C is virtually exhausted and is equivalent to only four years of current emissions. Carbon budgets to limit warming to 1.7C and 2C would similarly be used up in 12 and 25 years, respectively.
- The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is set to reach 425.7 parts per million (ppm) in 2025, 2.3ppm above 2023 and 52% above pre-industrial levels.
(For detailed coverage of previous editions of the report, see Carbon Brief’s coverage for 2024, 2023 and 2022.)
Global emissions remain flat
The Global Carbon Budget (GCB) finds that total global CO2 emissions in 2025 – including those from fossil fuels and land use – are projected to remain approximately flat at 42.2GtCO2, falling by a negligible -0.04% compared to last year.
This means 2025 is effectively tied with 2024 as the highest global CO2 emissions on record.
Flat total CO2 emissions in 2025 reflect a combination of continued rising emissions from fossil fuel and industry and declining emissions from land-use change. Fossil CO2 emissions rose 1.1% to 38.1GtCO2, while land-use emissions declined by -9.8% to 4.1GtCO2 (albeit with large uncertainties).
The figure below shows the 2025 global CO2 emissions update (red solid line) alongside 2024 (dark blue dotted), 2023 (mid blue dotted) 2022 (light blue dotted), 2021 (light grey dotted) and 2020 (dark grey dotted). The shaded area indicates the uncertainty around the new 2025 budget.
(Each year, the GCB is updated to include the latest data as well as improvements to modelling sources and sinks, resulting in some year-to-year revisions to the historical record.)
The 2025 figures are notably higher than those in the prior five GCB reports, reflecting an upward revision in historical land-use emissions. (This is discussed in more detail in the land-use emissions section below.)
Total global CO2 emissions have notably flattened in the past decade (2014-25), growing at only 0.3% per year compared to the 1.9% rate of growth during the prior decade (2004-13) and the longer-term average growth rate of 1.6% over 1959-2014.
This apparent flattening is due to declining land-use emissions compensating for continued – but slow – increases in fossil CO2 emissions. Fossil emissions grew around 0.2GtCO2 per year over the past decade, while land-use emissions decreased by a comparable amount.
However, despite the emissions plateau, there is still no sign of the rapid and deep decrease in CO2 emissions needed to reach net-zero and stabilise global temperatures in-line with the Paris Agreement temperature goal.
If global emissions remain at current levels, the remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5C (with a 50% chance) will be rapidly exhausted.
(The carbon budget is the total amount of CO2 that scientists estimate can be emitted if warming is to be kept below a particular temperature threshold. Earlier this year, the Indicators of Global Climate Change report estimated the remaining carbon budget had declined by three-quarters between the start of 2020 and the start of 2025.)
With human-caused global warming sitting at around 1.36C above pre-industrial levels in 2024, the remaining budget for 1.5C is 170GtCO2, equivalent to four years of current emissions.
The GCB report finds that the remaining carbon budgets to limit warming to 1.7C and 2C have been reduced to 525GtCO2 (12 years at current emissions levels) and 1,055GtCO2 (25 years), respectively.
Global fossil CO2 emissions also grew more slowly in the past decade (0.8% per year) compared to the previous decade (2.1%). This was driven by the continued decarbonisation of energy systems – including a shift from burning coal to gas and replacing fossil fuels with renewables – as well as slightly weaker global economic growth during the past decade.
The figure below breaks down global emissions (dark blue line) in the 2025 budget into fossil (mid blue) and land-use (light blue) components. Fossil CO2 emissions represent the bulk of total global emissions in recent years, accounting for approximately 90% of emissions in 2025 (compared to 10% for land use). This represents a large change from the first half of the 20th century, when land-use emissions were approximately the same as fossil emissions.
Global fossil emissions include CO2 emitted from burning coal, oil and gas, as well as the production of cement. However, to determine total fossil emissions, the Global Carbon Budget also subtracts the cement carbonation sink – CO2 slowly absorbed by cement once it is exposed to the air – from fossil emissions.
Global emissions can also be expressed on a per-capita basis, as shown in the figure below.
While it is ultimately total global emissions that matter for the Earth’s climate – and a global per-capita figure glosses over a lot of variation among, and within, countries – it is noteworthy that global per-capita fossil emissions peaked in 2012 and have been slightly declining in the years since.
Land-use emissions continue downward trend
Global land-use emissions stem from deforestation, forest degradation, loss of peatlands and harvesting trees for wood. They averaged around 5.0GtCO2 over the past decade (2015-24) and the Global Carbon Budget provides an initial projection for 2025 of 4.1GtCO2.
This represents a 0.5GtCO2 decrease in land-use emissions relative to 2024. The GCB report suggests that this was largely driven by a combination of reductions in deforestation and forest degradation in South America and by the end of the dry 2023-24 El Niño conditions.
Overall, land-use emissions have decreased by around 32% compared to their average in the 2000s, with a particularly large drop in the past decade. This decline is statistically significant and is due both to decreasing deforestation and increasing levels of reforestation and afforestation globally.
Three countries – Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) – collectively contribute approximately 57% of the global land-use emissions. In the past, China has been a meaningful contributor to land-use emissions, but in recent years its land-use emissions have turned net-negative as more trees have been planted than cut down.
The figure below shows changes in emissions over time in these countries, as well as land-use emissions in the rest of the world (grey).
Historical land-use emissions have been revised upward in the 2025 GCB report compared to prior estimates. This reflects a combination of two factors:
- The discontinuation of one of the four bookkeeping models that GCB has historically relied on for land-use emissions estimates. This model tended to show lower land-use emissions than the others.
- The inclusion of the impacts from CO2 fertilisation on global biomass densities. Because forests have higher biomass densities now than in the past, due to increasing CO2, this tends to increase the estimate of land-use emissions for recent years.
Fossil-fuel CO2 hits record highs
Global emissions of fossil CO2 – including coal, oil, gas and cement – increased by around 1.1% in 2025, relative to 2024, with an uncertainty range of 0.2-2.2%. This represents a new record high and surpasses the prior record set in 2024.
The figure below shows global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, divided into emissions from major emitting countries including China (dark blue shading), the US (mid blue), the EU (light blue), India (light blue) and the remainder of the world (grey).
China represents 32% of global CO2 emissions today. Its 2025 emissions are projected to increase by a relatively small 0.4% (with an uncertainty range of -0.9% to 2%), driven by a small rise in emissions from coal (0.3%), a modest rise in gas (1.3%) and a larger rise in oil (2.1%).
Given the uncertainty range, a decrease in Chinese emissions is also a possibility, but this will not be confirmed until the full 2025 data is available.
Similarly, recent analysis for Carbon Brief found that China’s emissions were “finely balanced between a small fall or rise” in 2025. However, it said that a drop in the full-year total became more likely after a 3% decline in September. (The Global Carbon Project estimates are based on data covering January through to August, which point towards a small rise in 2025.)
Whether China’s emissions see small rise or fall in 2025, the outcome will be due to moderate growth in energy consumption combined with an extraordinary growth in renewable power generation. This would represent the second year in a row where Chinese emissions growth was well below the average rate over the past decade.
The US represents 13% of global emissions and emissions in 2025 are projected to increase by 1.9% (-0.2 to +4.1%) compared with 2024. This marks a reversal from recent trends in declining CO2 emissions.
The projected growth of emissions in the US is likely driven by a combination of three factors: a colder start to the year after a mild 2024, which led to greater heating requirements, higher gas prices, which led to more coal being used in power generation, as well as an increase in total demand for electricity.
US emissions from coal are expected to increase by a substantial 7.5% in 2025, emissions from both oil and gas by a more modest 1.1% and emissions from cement to fall by -8.0%.
While policies enacted by the current US administration may increase CO2 emissions going forward, their impact on national emissions levels in 2025 were likely relatively modest compared to other factors.
India represents 8% of global emissions. In 2025, its emissions are projected to increase by 1.4% (-0.3% to +3.1%) on 2024 levels, significantly below recent trends.
An early monsoon with the highest-ever May rainfall substantially reduced cooling requirements in May and June, the hottest months of the year. Strong growth or renewables – particularly solar – has also helped limit the growth of Indian emissions.
Indian emissions from coal are expected to grow 1.7%, with oil growing 0.1%, gas shrinking by -6.4% and cement growing by 9.9%.
The EU represents 6% of global emissions. Its emissions are projected to increase by 0.4% in 2025, with an uncertainty range of -2.1 to +2.8%. This represents a divergence from a past decline in emissions (albeit with large uncertainties).
EU emissions from coal are expected to decline by -0.3%, whereas emissions from oil and gas are projected to increase by 0.6% and 0.9%, respectively. Cement emissions are expected to fall by -4.1%.
The increase in EU emissions is in part from weather-related low hydropower and wind generation which – despite increases in solar – have led to an increase in electricity generation from gas. In addition, a relatively cold February led to increased use of natural gas for space heating.
International aviation and shipping (included in the “rest of world” in the chart above) are responsible for 3% of global emissions. They are projected to increase by 6.8% for aviation, but remain flat for international shipping. This year will be the first time that aviation emissions have exceeded pre-Covid levels.
The rest of the world (excluding aviation) represents 38% of global emissions. Emissions are expected to grow by 1.1% in 2025 (ranging from -1.1% to +3.3%), with increases in emissions from coal (1%), oil (0.5%), gas (1.8%) and cement (2.4%).
The total emissions for each year over 2022-25, as well as the countries and regions that were responsible for the changes in absolute emissions, are shown in the figure below.
Annual emissions for 2022, 2023, 2024 and estimates for 2025 are shown by the black bars. The smaller bars show the change in emissions between each set of years, broken down by country or region – the US (dark blue), EU (mid blue), China (light blue), India (pale blue) and the rest of the world (grey). Negative values show reductions in emissions, while positive values reflect emission increases.
The US represented a large part of the rise in global fossil-fuel emissions in 2025. US emissions increases over 2024-25 contributed about 40% of the total global increase – more than the EU, China and India contributions combined.
The Global Carbon Project notes that emissions have declined over the past decade (2015-24) in 35 nations, which collectively account for 27% of global emissions. This is up from 18 countries during the prior decade (2005-14).
The decrease in emissions in those countries comes despite continued domestic economic growth and represents a long-term “decoupling” of CO2 emissions and the economy.
The carbon intensity of energy has consistently decreased over the past decade in China, the US, the EU – and, to a lesser extent, globally.
However, peaking CO2 emissions requires that the rate of decarbonisation exceeds the growth in energy demand. This has happened in some regions, including the US and EU, but not yet globally.
Modest growth in emissions from coal, oil, gas and cement
Global fossil-fuel emissions primarily result from the combustion of coal, oil and gas.
In 2025, coal is responsible for more emissions than any other fossil fuel, representing approximately 42% of global fossil-fuel CO2 emissions. Oil is the second largest contributor at 33% of fossil CO2, while gas comes in at 21%.
The production of cement is responsible for around 3.8% of global emissions, but this is reduced to 1.9% once the carbonation sink – the drawdown of atmospheric CO2 by concrete – is taken into account.
These percentages reflect both the amount of each fossil fuel consumed globally, but also differences in CO2 intensities. Coal results in the most CO2 emitted per unit of heat or energy produced, followed by oil and gas.
The figure below shows global CO2 emissions from different fuels over time, covering coal (dark blue), oil (mid blue) and gas (light blue), as well as cement production (pale blue) and other sources (grey).
While coal emissions increased rapidly in the mid-2000s, they have largely flattened since 2013. However, coal use increased significantly in 2021 and then more modestly in the subsequent four years.
Global emissions from coal increased by 0.8% in 2025 compared to 2024, while oil emissions increased 1.0% and gas emissions increased by 1.3%.
Despite setting a new record this year, global coal use is only 6% above 2013 levels – a full 13 years ago. By contrast, during the 2000s, global coal use grew at a rate of around 4% every single year.
The figure below shows the total emissions for each year over 2022-25 (black bars), as well as the absolute change in emissions for each fuel between years.
Global oil emissions were suppressed for a few years after the 2020, but rebounded to pre-pandemic levels as of 2024 and have continued to grow in 2025.
This reflects that, despite falling sales of internal combustion engine vehicles, not enough electric vehicles (EVs) have yet been sold to result in peak oil demand.
The global carbon budget
Every year, the Global Carbon Project provides an estimate of the overall “global carbon budget”. This is based on estimates of the release of CO2 through human activity and its uptake by the oceans and land, with the remainder adding to atmospheric concentrations of the gas.
(This differs from the commonly used term “remaining carbon budget”, which refers to the amount of CO2 that can be released while keeping warming below global limits of 1.5 or 2C.)
The most recent budget, including estimated values for 2025, is shown in the figure below.
Values above zero represent sources of CO2 – from fossil fuels and industry (dark blue shading) and land use (mid blue) – while values below zero represent carbon sinks that remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Any CO2 emissions that are not absorbed by the oceans (light grey) or land vegetation (mid grey) accumulate in the atmosphere (dark grey). In addition, a dashed black line is shown to represent the expected sum of sinks based on estimated emissions.
Over the past decade (2015-24), the world’s oceans have taken up approximately 29% of total human-caused emissions, or around 11.8GtCO2 per year.
The ocean CO2 sink has been relatively flat since 2014 after growing rapidly over the prior decades, reflecting the flattening of global emissions during that period.
This estimate for carbon sinks has been revised up from 26% in prior versions of the GCB, reflecting a major update to carbon budgets driven by new data and modelling of carbon sink behavior.
The land sink takes up around 21% of global emissions, or 8.7GtCO2 per year on average over the past decade – discussed in more detail in the section below. This is down from 29% in prior budgets.
The atmosphere continues to accumulate the bulk of human-caused CO2 emissions, with about 49% going into the atmosphere on average over the past decade – a rate of 20.4GtCO2 per year.
The growth rate of atmospheric CO2 in 2025 is expected to be around 2.3ppm, which is a bit below the decadal average rate of 2.6ppm over the past decade (2015-24). This is well below the record-setting rise of 3.7ppm in 2024, which was primarily driven by the effect of the 2023-24 El Niño conditions weakening the land sink.
Atmospheric CO2 concentrations are set to reach an annual average of 425.7ppm in 2025, representing an increase of 52% above pre-industrial levels of 280ppm.
There remains an unusual imbalance in the carbon budget in 2024, where the sum of the sinks is notably larger than estimated emissions. This can be seen in the figure above, where the dashed line is below the shaded area.
Budget imbalances are not unprecedented – there are large uncertainties in both emissions data and sink estimates. But the rise in the amount of CO2 accumulating in the atmosphere in 2024 is larger than would be expected based on emissions.
There are a number of potential explanations for this 2024 imbalance. The land cover data for 2024 is not yet complete and it is possible that some fire emissions data might be missing from the record. This might result in either higher land-use emissions or lower land sinks than currently estimated.
Alternatively, it could be due to the CO2 growth rate – captured by surface stations managed by the US National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) – being slightly high. CO2 records for 2024 from these stations are higher than those obtained from satellite-based sensors, though it remains unclear which provides the most accurate measurement.
A declining, but not collapsing, land sink
After an usually weak land carbon sink in 2023, there were a number of media articles about its potential collapse.
For example, in October 2024, the Guardian wrote that “the sudden collapse of carbon sinks was not factored into climate models – and could rapidly accelerate global heating”.
The truth is a bit more complicated. While the impending collapse of the land carbon sink has been greatly exaggerated, there is growing evidence of a long-term weakening of both the land and ocean carbon sinks due to human activity.
And while the land sink has recovered to its pre-El Niño strength in 2025, aided by relatively low global fire CO2 emissions, it will continue to gradually weaken as global temperatures rise. This is not unexpected – scientists have long foreseen a weaker carbon sink in a warmer world.
A weaker land sink will contribute to higher global temperatures in the future as more CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels and land use change will accumulate in the atmosphere.
The figure below shows the percentage of human emissions absorbed by the land sink in every year since 1959, with a recovery upwards in 2025 after two relatively low years.
In a study published in Nature alongside the release of the 2025 Global Carbon Budget, the same team of researchers provide a detailed estimate of exactly how the land and ocean sinks have changed as a result of human activity.
The research finds that the land and ocean sinks are 25% smaller and 7% smaller, respectively, than they would have been without the effects of climate change over 2015-24.
This amounts to a nearly 20% reduction in the efficacy of current global carbon sinks – that is, both the land and ocean – and a 15% reduction compared to how large they would be without the effects of climate change.
The figure below, from the new paper, shows the impact of climate change on the ocean sink (blue), the land sink (green) and atmospheric CO2 concentrations (grey) since 1960.
The weakening of carbon sinks due to human activity has led to an increase of atmospheric CO2 of more than 8ppm since 1960. The combined effects of climate change and deforestation have turned tropical forests in south-east Asia and in large parts of South America from CO2 sinks to sources.
And these sinks will likely continue to weaken as long as atmospheric CO2 concentrations continue to rise and the world continues to warm. There are a wide range of estimates of carbon cycle feedbacks among climate models, but a large carbon cycle feedback could result in a few tenths of a degree of future warming.
The post Analysis: Fossil-fuel CO2 emissions to set new record in 2025, as land sink ‘recovers’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Fossil-fuel CO2 emissions to set new record in 2025, as land sink ‘recovers’
Indigenous leaders from across the Amazon have warned that stopping the expansion of oil drilling into their territories will be a crucial test for a growing international coalition committed to transitioning away from fossil fuels.
As 60 countries discussed at a landmark conference in Santa Marta, Colombia, pathways to end the world’s reliance on fossil fuels, Indigenous groups said the process risks losing credibility if governments continue opening new oil frontiers in the Amazon.
Their central demand was the establishment of fossil fuel “exclusion zones” across Indigenous territories and biodiverse areas of the rainforest, permanently barring new oil and gas expansion in one of the world’s most critical ecosystems. Indigenous representatives proposed establishing protected “Life Zones”, which they said would provide legal safeguards against governments and companies seeking to expand extraction into their lands.
But Indigenous delegates left the conference frustrated as the final synthesis report drafted by co-chairs Colombia and the Netherlands failed to include the proposal.
In a statement at the end of the conference, Patricia Suárez, from the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon (OPIAC), said formally declaring Indigenous territories – especially those inhabited by peoples in voluntary isolation – as exclusion zones for extractive industries was “an urgent measure”.
“If the heart of the conference does not begin there, it risks remaining a set of good intentions that fails to respond to either science or our Indigenous knowledge systems,” she added.
Pushing for a new oil frontier
Campaigners say the pressure on the Amazon is intensifying just as scientists warn the rainforest is nearing irreversible collapse. Around 20% of all newly identified global oil reserves between 2022 and 2024 were discovered in the Amazon basin, fuelling renewed interest from governments and companies seeking to develop the region as the world’s next major oil frontier.
Ecuador has moved ahead with the auction of new oil blocks in the rainforest, while the country’s right-wing president Daniel Noboa has promoted the region as a “new oil-producing horizon” and backed efforts to expand fracking with support from Chinese companies.
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In Santa Marta, a coalition of seven Indigenous nations from Ecuador issued a declaration condemning the government, which did not participate in the conference.
“While the world talks about energy transition, our government is pushing for more oil in the Amazon,” said Marcelo Mayancha, president of the Shiwiar nation. “Throughout history, we have always defended our land. That is our home. We will forever defend our territory.”
Indigenous groups also warned that Peru – another South American nation absent from the conference – plans to auction new oil blocks in the Yavarí-Tapiche Territorial Corridor, a highly sensitive region along the Brazilian border that contains the world’s largest known concentration of Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation.
COP30 host under scrutiny
Indigenous leaders also criticised Brazil, arguing that despite its international climate leadership, the country is simultaneously advancing major new oil projects in the Amazon region.
Luene Karipuna, delegate from Brazil’s coalition of Amazon peoples (COIAB), said the oil push threatens the stability of the rainforest. Not far from her home, in the northern state of Amapá, state-run oil giant Petrobras is currently exploring for new offshore oil reserves off the mouth of the Amazon river.
Brazil participated in the Santa Marta conference and was among the countries that first pushed for discussions on transitioning away from fossil fuels at COP negotiations. Yet the country is also planning one of the largest expansions in oil production in the world, according to last year’s Production Gap report.
Veteran Brazilian climate scientist Carlos Nobre told Climate Home that the country’s participation at the Santa Marta conference contrasted with its oil and gas production targets. “It does not make any sense for Brazil to continue with any new oil exploration,” he said, and noted that science is clear that no new fossil fuels should be developed to avoid crossing dangerous climate tipping points.
He added that the Brazilian government faces pressures from economic sectors, since Petrobras is one of the countries top exporting companies. “They look only at the economic value of exporting fossil fuels. Brazil has to change.”
The COP30 host also promised to draft a voluntary proposal for a global roadmap away from fossil fuels, which is expected to be published before this year’s COP31 summit.
“In Brazil, that advance has caused so many problems because it overlaps with Indigenous territories. Companies tell us there won’t be an impact, but we see an impact,” Karipuna said. “We feel the Brazilian government has auctioned our land without dialogue.”
For Karipuna and other Indigenous leaders, establishing exclusion zones across the Amazon is no longer just a regional demand, but a prerequisite to prevent the collapse of the rainforest.
“That’s the first step for an energy transition that places Indigenous peoples at the centre,” she added.
The post Indigenous groups warn Amazon oil expansion tests fossil fuel phase-out coalition appeared first on Climate Home News.
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2026/05/08/indigenous-amazon-oil-expansion-fossil-fuel-phase-out-coalition-santa-marta/
African leaders have intensified calls for governments to stop exporting raw minerals and step up efforts to align their policies, share infrastructure and coordinate investment to add value to their resources and bring economic prosperity to the continent.
In a speech to the inaugural Kenya Mining Investment Conference & Expo in Nairobi this week, Kenyan President William Ruto became the latest African leader to confirm the country will end exports of raw mineral ore. The East African nation has deposits of gold, iron ore and copper and recently launched a tender for global investors to develop a deposit of rare earths, which are used in EV motors and wind turbines, valued at $62 billion.
Kenya is among more than a dozen African nations that have either banned or imposed export curbs on their mineral resources as they seek to process minerals domestically to boost revenues, create jobs and capture a slice of the industries that are producing high-value clean tech for the energy transition.
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“For too long we have extracted and exported raw materials at the bottom of the value chain, while others have processed, refined, manufactured and captured the greater share of economic value,” Ruto told African ministers and stakeholders gathered at the mining investment conference in Nairobi.
As a result, Africa currently captures less than 1% of the value generated from global clean energy technologies, he said. To address this, Kenya, in collaboration with other African nations, “will process our minerals here in the continent, we will refine them here and we will manufacture them here”, he added.
Mineral export restrictions on the rise
Africa is a major supplier of minerals needed for the global energy transition. The continent holds an estimated 30% of the world’s critical mineral reserves, including lithium, cobalt and copper. The Democratic Republic of Congo produces roughly 70% of global cobalt, a key ingredient in lithium-ion batteries, while countries such as Guinea dominate bauxite production, and Mozambique and Tanzania hold significant graphite deposits.
But African governments have struggled to attract the investment needed to turn their vast mineral wealth into a green industrial powerhouse. Recently Burundi, Malawi, Nigeria and Zimbabwe are among those that have resorted to banning the export of unrefined minerals to incentivise foreign companies to invest in value addition locally.
Outdated geological data limits Africa’s push to benefit from its mineral wealth
This week, Zimbabwe exported its first shipments of lithium sulphate, an intermediate form of processed lithium that can be further refined into battery-grade material, from a mine and processing plant operated by Chinese company Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt.
After freezing all exports of lithium concentrate – the first stage of processing – earlier this year, the government introduced export quotas and will ban all exports from January 2027.
Export restrictions on critical raw materials have grown more than five-fold since 2009, found a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published this week. In 2024, a more diverse group of countries, including many resource-rich developing economies in Africa and Asia, introduced restrictions, including Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Angola.
This is “a structural shift in the wrong direction,” Mathias Cormann, the OECD’s secretary-general, told the organisations’ Critical Minerals Forum in Istanbul, Turkey, this week.
“We understand the motivations: building local industries, managing environmental impacts, capturing greater value domestically. But our research is quite clear. Export restrictions distort investment, reduce volumes and undermine supply security often while delivering limited gains in value added,” he said.
In-country barriers to success
Thomas Scurfield, Africa senior economic analyst at the Natural Resource Governance Institute, told Climate Home News that export restrictions “can look like a promising route to local value addition” for cash-strapped African mineral producers but have “rarely worked” unless countries already have reliable energy, infrastructure and competitive costs for processing.
“Without those conditions, bans may simply push companies to scale back mining rather than scale up processing,” he said.
Alaka Lugonzo, partnerships lead for Africa at Global Witness, identified gaps in practical skills and infrastructure as other major barriers. “You need engineers, geologists, marketers,” Lugonzo said, warning that graduates are increasingly unable to match the pace of industry change.
On infrastructure, she said that plentiful and stable energy supplies are vital and while Kenya has relatively robust road networks, they are insufficient for industrial-scale operations.
“Meaningful value addition and real industrialisation requires heavy machinery… and you will need better infrastructure,” she said, highlighting persistent last-mile challenges in mining regions where “there’s no railway, there’s no electricity, there’s no water”.
Export capacity is another concern, she said, particularly whether existing port systems could handle increased volumes of processed minerals.
Regional approach recommended
Scurfield said that through regional cooperation – including pooling supplies, specialising across different stages of refining and manufacturing, and building larger regional markets – “African countries could overcome many domestic constraints that make going alone difficult”.
That’s what close to 20 African governments are working to deliver as part of the Africa Minerals Strategy Group, which was set up by African ministers and is dedicated to foster cooperation among African nations to build mineral value chains and better benefit from the energy transition.
Africa urged to unite on minerals as US strikes bilateral deals
Nigerian Minister of Solid Minerals Dele Alake, who chairs the group, said “true collaboration” between countries, including aligning mining policies, sharing infrastructure, coordinating investment strategies and promoting trade across the continent, will create the conditions for long-term investments that could turn Africa into “a formidable and competitive force within the global mineral supply chain”.
“The time has come for Africa to redefine its place within the global mineral economy and that transformation must begin with regional integration and regional cooperation,” he told the mining investment conference in Nairobi.
Lugonzo of Global Witness agreed, saying that value-addition would benefit from adopting a continental perspective. “Why should Kenya build another smelter when we can export our gold to Tanzania for smelting, and then we use the pipeline through Uganda to take it to the port and we export it?” she asked.
To facilitate that, there is a need to operationalise the Africa Free Trade Continental Agreement (AFTCA), she added. “That agreement is the only way Africa is going to move from point A to point B.”
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https://www.climatechangenews.com/2026/04/30/kenya-seeks-regional-coordination-to-build-african-mineral-value-chains/
The future of the global shipping industry – and its 3% share of global emissions – will be decided in three weeks of talks in the third quarter of this year, after a decision taken in London on Friday.
At the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) headquarters this week, governments largely failed to substantively negotiate a controversial set of measures to penalise polluting ships and reward vessels running on clean fuels known as the Net-Zero Framework. The green shipping plan has been aggressively opposed by fossil fuel-producing nations, in particular by the US and Saudi Arabia.
This week, countries delivered statements outlining their views on the measures in a session that ran from Wednesday into Thursday. Then, late on Friday afternoon, they discussed when to negotiate these measures and what proposals they should discuss.
After a lengthy debate, which the talks’ chair Harry Conway joked was confusing, governments agreed to hold a week of behind-closed-door talks from 1 September to 4 September and from 23 November to 27 November.
Following these meetings, which are intended to negotiate disagreements on the NZF and rival watered-down measures proposed by the US and its allies, there will be public talks from November 30 to December 4.
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Last October, talks intended to adopt the NZF provisionally agreed in April 2025 were derailed by the US and Saudi Arabia, who successfully persuaded a majority of countries to vote to postpone the talks by a year.
Those talks, known as an extraordinary session, are now scheduled to resume on Friday December 4 unless governments decide otherwise in the preceding weeks. While this Friday session will be in the same building with the same participants as the rest of the week’s talks, calling it the extraordinary session is significant as it means the NZF can be voted on.
Em Fenton, senior director of climate diplomacy at Opportunity Green said that the NZF “has survived but survival is not a victory” and called for it to be adopted later this year “in a way that maintains urgency and ambition, and delivers justice and equity for countries on the frontlines of climate impacts”.
NZF’s supporters
The NZF would penalise the owners of particularly polluting ships and use the revenues to fund cleaner fuels, support affected workers and help developing countries manage the transition.
Many governments – particularly in Europe, the Pacific and some Latin American and African nations – spoke in favour of it this week.
South Africa said the fund it would create is “the key enabler of a just transition” and its removal would take away predictable revenues from African countries. Vanuatu said that “we are not here to sink the ship but to man it”.
Australia’s representative called it a “carefully balanced compromise”, as it was provisionally agreed by a large majority after years of negotiations, and warned that failing to adopt it would harm the shipping industry by failing to provide certainty.
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Canada’s negotiator said that if it was weakened to appease its critics like the US and Saudi Arabia, this would disappoint those who think it is too weak already like the Pacific islands.
A large group of mainly big developing countries like Nigeria and Indonesia did not rule out supporting the framework but called for adjustments to help developing countries deal with the changes. Nigeria called for developing countries to be given more time to implement the measures, a minimum share of the fund’s revenues and discounts for ships bringing them food and energy.
According to analysis from the University of College London’s Energy Institute, the countries speaking in support of the NZF include five countries which voted with the US to postpone talks in October and a further ten countries which did not take a clear position at that time. Most governments support the NZF as the basis for further talks, the institute said.
Opposition remains
But a small group of mainly oil-producing nations said they are opposed to any financial penalties for particularly polluting ships.
They support a proposal submitted by Liberia, Argentina and Panama which has proposed weakening emission targets and ditching any funding mechanism for the framework involving “direct revenue collection and disbursement”.
Argentina argued that the NZF would harm countries which are far from their export markets and said concerns over that cannot be solved “by magic with guidelines”. They added that, as a result, the NZF itself needs to be fundamentally re-negotiated.
The UCL Energy Institute said that just 24 countries – less than a quarter of those who spoke – said they supported Argentina’s proposal.
While this week’s talks did not see the kind of US threats reported in October, their delegation did leave personalised flyers on every delegate’s desk which were described by academics, negotiators and climate campaigners as misleading.
One witness told Climate Home News that junior US delegates arrived early on Wednesday and placed flyers behind governments’ name plates warning each country of the costs they would incur if the NZF is adopted.
The figures on a selection of leaflets seen by Climate Home News ranged from $100 million for Panama to $3.5 billion for the Netherlands. “They are trying to scare countries away from supporting climate action with one-sided information”, one negotiator told Climate Home News.
They added that the calculations, by the US State Department’s Office of the Chief Economist, ignore the fact that the money raised would be shared to help poorer countries’ transition as well as ignoring the economic costs of failing to address climate change.
Tristan Smith, an academic representing the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology, told the meeting that the calculations were “opaque” and flawed as they overstate the contribution of fuel cost to trade costs.
A US State Department Spokesperson said in a statement that they “firmly stand behind our estimates” which were shared “in good faith” and to “provide an additional tool to policymakers as they contemplate the true economic burden over the NZF”.
The post Key green shipping talks to be held in late 2026 appeared first on Climate Home News.
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2026/05/01/key-green-shipping-talks-to-be-held-in-late-2026/
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