On a sultry afternoon in Tomé-Açu, the agricultural heart of northern Brazil, farmer Zé Maria Pantoja strolls beneath the canopy of his 50 hectares of forested land. Tall açaí palms and hulking Brazil nut trees tower overhead, while cacao and cupuaçu bushes crowd the leaf-strewn ground below; the air thick with the scent of tropical growth and alive with bird chatter.
Three decades ago, this plot in the Amazon Basin state of Pará was a failing pepper monoculture owned by Zé Maria’s father. When Zé Maria proposed replanting it as a diverse forest of crops, his father balked. “Pepper had to be pepper, cacao was cacao… It would never work to plant them together,” Zé Maria recalls.
Today, that once-barren land is a technicolour abundance of cacao pods, açaí berries, Brazil nuts, passion fruit and cassava. Instead of a single annual pepper harvest, Zé Maria brings in different crops year-round – a shift he says has doubled production and income, reshaping his family’s prospects. Even his father has come around: “Today everything is fine. He agrees with it, and I know he is happy about it,” Zé Maria says.
Zé Maria has built what is known as an “agroforestry” system – integrating diverse trees and crops on the same land. It is approach rooted in Indigenous farming knowledge and practised in different forms around the world for millennia.
By blurring the line between farm and forest, agroforestry can store carbon, rebuild soils and habitat, and diversify farm incomes – making it a compelling route to decarbonise agriculture without hollowing out rural communities.
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How Belém launched the Just Transition mechanism
COP30’s headline win – the creation of the first global Just Transition mechanism – did not materialise overnight. Born out of years of work, it flourished during two weeks of civil society alignment in one of the few negotiating tracks that gained momentum
In recent years, Zé Maria has partnered with Belterra, a Brazilian agroforestry enterprise set up in 2019. Belterra has provided technical support and seedlings to help farmers expand and connected them to markets – helping to prove that a family farm in the Amazon can be both profitable and ecologically sustainable. In 2023, Belterra was selected as an Earthshot Prize finalist for its approach.
Across the tropics, where deforestation and land degradation drive a large share of emissions, agroforestry is being touted as a rare climate solution that can also be a livelihood strategy – as long as it is built with the people who farm the land. According to Marcelo Ferronato, president of Brazilian environmental NGO Ecoporé, “agroforestry is the best option the world has to support climate, the environment and farmers all at once.”
The problem: A broken rural model
Brazil’s rural development has long been driven by clearing forest for cattle and commodity crops – a frontier model that rewarded extraction and land concentration. In the Amazon Basin, official policy encouraged settlers to convert “unproductive” forest into ranches and farms.
The result has been vast forest loss. Over the past half-century, more than 700,000 km² of Amazon rainforest has been deforested, with a further 6% heavily degraded. Scientists warn the Amazon may tip into irreversible die-back if it loses around 20% of its forest cover; estimates put losses already near 17%. Around 63% of Brazil’s roughly 160 million hectares of pasture, meanwhile, are degraded – an area roughly the size of Egypt left infertile and overrun with weeds.
The social dynamics are equally corrosive. Brazil has one of the most unequal land distributions on Earth: just 2.8% of landowners control over 56% of arable land, while the poorest 50% of small farms own only 2.5%. With weak land registries, opportunists can grab land by clear-cutting it; local leaders who resist have faced threats, violence and even murder.
Brazil is an extreme case, but not a unique one. Across the tropics, commodity monocultures and extensive cattle systems are major drivers of deforestation, while degraded farmland spreads as soils are mined and abandoned. Globally, agriculture – livestock and crops – has devoured roughly 50% of habitable land and left over one billion hectares of fields degraded.
Agroforestry – an ancient solution with modern science
Agroforestry – often categorised as ‘regenerative agriculture’ – mixes woody perennials with crops or livestock in designs intended to imitate natural ecosystems. By replacing monocultures with polycultures, agroforests can restore soil health, conserve water and support biodiversity – while keeping land in production.
Integrating trees into farms also turns fields into carbon sinks. The UN climate body estimates that, if scaled up to its potential globally, agroforestry could sequester 1.8–4.1 gigatonnes of CO₂ every year – roughly 4-10% of annual global emissions.
And agroforestry can also boost livelihoods. Trial sites in Zambia integrating Faidherbia albida trees yielded 88–190% more maize than sites without trees, while diversified harvests can spread risk and create multiple income streams.
Belterra’s model: Business meets regeneration
A former environmental official in Pará, Valmir Ortega left government in 2019 to set up Belterra. He established a private company, Belterra Agroflorestas, alongside a sister non-profit, the Belterra Institute. The company focuses on projects that can return revenue; the institute works with smaller subsistence farmers, including Indigenous and Quilombola communities, who are too small to make any discernible margins.
Belterra Agroflorestas works through two basic arrangements: smallholder partnerships and landowner leases. In smallholder partnerships, farmers contribute land and labour (and sometimes co-investment), while Belterra provides capital and knowhow – seedlings, inputs, training and market access – under a revenue-sharing agreement. Belterra’s agronomists help the farmer design a crop mix so the system can start paying back quickly (often with fast-growing staples such as cassava and banana) while longer-term crops like cacao, açaí and timber establish.
In the landowner leasing model, Belterra partners with owners of degraded pasture that has become unprofitable. Belterra rents the land, establishes an agroforest, and returns it after a defined period (often 10–20 years), earning revenue from the produce in the meantime.
Deep in the Amazon, forest protection cash must vie with glitter of illegal gold
But establishing agroforests isn’t cheap: Belterra estimates upfront investment of around US$10,000 per hectare over the first three years. To finance this, it uses blended capital – philanthropic and public funding to absorb early risk, and longer-term private finance to support scale.
Belterra says projects can become cash-positive after around three years once early yielding crops begin producing. It also models that a mature agroforest can generate roughly US$7,000–$20,000 per hectare a year in gross harvest revenue at year 10. By contrast, a small producer who raises cattle might earn only 1,000 to 2,000 reais (US$185-$371) per hectare per year, Ferronato notes.
The catch is time. Trees take years to bear, and agroforestry can face a long delay before the main returns arrive. Belterra tries to bridge that gap by frontloading support and intercropping fast-growing food crops early. “The farmer needs food and income in year one,” Ortega says.
Belterra also sells carbon credits as an additional revenue stream. Belterra estimates that each hectare will sequester 250–300 tonnes of carbon over a 25 to 30-year cycle – which it aggregates and certifies for sale, helping repay investors and reward farmers. Overall Belterra’s existing projects will sequester 500,000-600,000 tonnes of carbon.
Scaling with corporates: the supply chain shift
Belterra isn’t only working from the bottom up. Large companies are increasingly looking to integrate agroforestry into supply chains and climate strategies – bringing capital, procurement and, potentially, scale.
It has worked with agribusiness behemoth Cargill and Brazil’s cosmetics brand Natura on agroforestry approaches linked to supply-chain emissions, and with other buyers seeking ‘insetting’ – cutting emissions within their own sourcing rather than purchasing offsets from external projects.
But Belterra’s most high-profile tie-up is a 2023 agreement with US e-commerce giant Amazon, which committed 90 million reais (US$18m) to fund agroforestry in Pará. The initial three-year pilot aims to restore 3,000 hectares of degraded land by planting native trees alongside cash crops such as cacao, working with around 1,000 producers. Amazon says it expects to claim around 750,000 tonnes of carbon credits over 30 years, certified under Verra’s ABACUS standard.
“Agroforestry is right at the top of our list of scalable, catalytic climate solutions,” says Jamey Mulligan, Amazon’s head of carbon neutralisation science and strategy. “It’s a nascent space that needs nurturing, like the solar industry pre-2008.”
In the Acará municipality of Pará, that partnership shows up as the Carbon Sequestration Producers Association: 16 farming families managing their own agroforestry plots across a now-verdant mix of açaí, cacao, andiroba and more. The association aggregates dispersed agroforests so smallholders can access carbon finance collectively – without surrendering land, autonomy or crop choices. For Amazon it offers scale and traceability; for farmers it offers bargaining power and a bridge through the years before trees mature.
If the deals work, corporates can supply finance and reliable demand, while farmers get training, stable markets and a viable alternative to cattle or soy on degraded land. The risk, critics warn, is that agroforestry becomes a green fig leaf – which is why who controls the land and the terms of trade matters.
A just transition grown from the ground
There is vast potential in scaling up agroforestry across the world. In Brazil, for example, the size of the agroforestry market is predicted to roughly double to $9.7 billion by 2032.
Globally, there are currently around 1.2 billion people practicing some form of agroforestry on roughly 1 billion hectares of land – from shade-grown coffee in Asia to alley-cropping in Africa. “We did a survey and found agroforestry systems in 83 countries, comprising over 1,000 tree species and roughly 300 crops,” says Susan Cook-Patton, lead reforestation scientist for The Nature Conservancy (TNC). “There’s a lot of agroforestry out there and a lot of potential to expand.”
Agroforestry’s promise goes beyond crops and carbon. Done well, it can bridge decarbonisation, biodiversity and livelihoods – but it only becomes part of a just transition if it strengthens, rather than erodes, the rights and incomes of the people on the ground, experts say.
For Zé Maria, the approach has worked well. His abundant agroforest now earns enough to send his daughter to college and buy a small apartment in the city – opportunities his parents could hardly imagine.
His success has inspired neighbours to adopt similar methods, and he credits those who taught him. They say it’s a two-way process.
Emanuel Oliveira, agricultural consultant for Belterra – which has partnered with Zé Maria for three years now – smiles as he describes the farmer’s influence. “We’ve learned so much from him; he’s like a professor to me,” says Oliveira. “We pass on the lessons to other farmers, and we often bring them here to learn directly from him.”
This is an abridged version of original reporting by Oliver Gordon for JUST Stories – a global project from the Institute for Human Rights and Business dedicated to finding and telling stories of people working together to advance just transitions.
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Antarctic sea ice has recorded its third-smallest winter peak extent since satellite records began 48 years ago, new data reveals.
Provisional data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) shows that Antarctic sea ice hit its annual winter peak on 14 September, with an extent of 17.59m square kilometres (km2).
The organisation notes that the data is still preliminary, adding that “large fluctuations in extent are typical of Antarctic sea ice near the seasonal maximum”.
One expert tells Carbon Brief that it is “concerning to see these low values persisting”, but says that scientists need more time to determine whether this represents a “structural shift” in Antarctic sea ice extent.
Meanwhile, at the Earth’s other pole, Arctic sea ice reached its annual minimum on 12 September, ranking as the joint-10th lowest in the satellite record.
The NSIDC notes that the last 20 years have seen the lowest 20 Arctic sea ice extents in the satellite record.
Antarctic peak
Dr Lettie Roach, a polar climate scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, tells Carbon Brief that this year’s Antarctic sea ice maximum was “well below average for the season”. She warns that, “after several decades of stable or increasing winter Antarctic sea ice conditions, it is concerning to see these low values persisting”.
She adds:
“Compared with the Arctic, it’s less clear how recent changes in Antarctic sea ice are attributable to human-caused warming vs natural variability. We need more years of observations to better understand whether this is truly a structural shift.”
Dr Clare Eayrs, a postdoctoral researcher at the Korea Polar Research Institute (KOPRI), tells Carbon Brief that, since recording a “near-average February minimum” extent, Antarctic sea ice has “returned to unusually low winter coverage”.
She notes that Antarctic sea ice extent in July and August this year were the fifth and fourth lowest on record, respectively, adding that “all five of the lowest July extents have occurred since 2022 and all four of the lowest August extents since 2023”.
The chart below shows Antarctic sea ice extent in 2025 (dark blue) and 2026 (red) so far. For comparison, the chart shows decadal averages (dotted lines) as well as 2023 (mid blue), the year of the smallest winter sea-ice maximum on record.
Eayrs tells Carbon Brief that the regional pattern of Antarctic sea ice cover “changed substantially during the growth season”.
For example, she says that “in April, the Bellingshausen Sea remained almost entirely ice-free, while the neighbouring Amundsen Sea had more ice than usual”.
However, by late August, changes in atmospheric pressure and wind meant that “the Bellingshausen deficit had largely recovered, while ice was unusually scarce in the Amundsen Sea and across much of East Antarctica”.
Arctic minimum
Meanwhile, the Arctic recorded its minimum summer sea ice extent on 12 September. At 4.60m km2, this year ties with 2025, 2010 and 2008 as the 10th-lowest sea ice extent on record.
The chart below shows Arctic sea ice extent in 2025 (dark blue) and 2026 (red) so far. For comparison, the chart shows decadal averages (dotted lines) as well as 2012 (mid blue), the year of the smallest summer sea-ice minimum on record.
Roach tells Carbon Brief that although this minimum is not “record setting”, it is still “lower than any sea ice minimum before 2007”. She adds:
“Human-caused climate change has reduced Arctic sea ice cover and thickness, so the region is fundamentally different compared to a few decades ago.”
Scientists have been tracking Arctic sea ice thickness using a reanalysis produced called the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) since 1979.
In March 2026, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) terminated a global dataset of air pressure that scientists relied upon to produce PIOMAS, forcing both datasets to stop publishing updates.
The PIOMAS website says it will take “considerable effort and time” to find alternative data to use in their reanalysis. It adds that “we don’t yet have a good sense if that’s possible with available funds and if so, when we will be able to resume production of a new PIOMAS timeseries”.
Roach also notes that August saw record-breaking heat sweep across much of the world, explaining that high temperatures “extended into Arctic coastal regions, close to regions with substantial sea ice loss – particularly the Barents-Kara and East Siberian seas”.
Dr Zack Labe, a scientist at Climate Central, tells Carbon Brief that the absence of a new record does not mean that ice cover is becoming more “resilient”. He says:
“Local weather patterns across the Arctic play a really important role in year-to-year sea-ice extent, even as the long-term trend is clearly downward.”
Labe tells Carbon Brief that weather in the Arctic this summer was “influenced mainly by lower pressure toward the central Arctic, which brought cloudier and cooler conditions that limited surface melt and delayed the start of the melt season”.
He explains that this “was most obvious across parts of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, where the melt season didn’t really kick off until after early July, which was more than two weeks later than normal”.
In contrast, he says, the Atlantic side of the Arctic “had a much more extreme summer”, with sea ice in the Barents Sea recording its “earliest melt-out on record”.
This was partly due to “unusually warm air and ocean temperatures”, Labe says. He notes, for example, that parts of western Siberia saw unusually persistent temperatures more than 5C above the 1981-2010 average for much of the summer, which extended out over the Kara Sea and contributed to substantial ice melt in this area”.
Labe tells Carbon Brief that, going forward, scientists need “more data and observations of other sea-ice metrics, like ice thickness, which may give us better insight into the overall condition of the ice pack, especially during years like 2026 when it is very fragmented”.
(In March 2026, Arctic sea ice reached its peak extent for this winter, clocking in as the joint-smallest in a satellite record going back almost half a century.)
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The post ‘Concerning’ low sea ice persists as Antarctic hits third-lowest winter peak appeared first on Carbon Brief.
‘Concerning’ low sea ice persists as Antarctic hits third-lowest winter peak
Participants at COP31 in Antalya will have a “duty” not to interfere in Türkiye’s internal affairs under the country’s hosting deal with the UN, reviving a clause dropped for last year’s climate summit in Brazil that human rights groups warn could put activists at risk.
Türkiye has faced growing criticism from human rights groups over the jailing of opposition figures, journalists and activists and imposed a blanket protest ban around July’s summit of the NATO military alliance in Ankara.
The contested provision is included in the binding agreement between the UN climate secretariat and the Turkish government that sets out responsibilities over logistical arrangements and details participants’ rights and obligations.
The document, signed in June but only made public on Wednesday, gives accredited COP31 attendees immunity from legal action over what they say, write or do in connection with the conference. Climate Home News understands that this safeguard can be applied to what takes place both inside and, in certain circumstances, outside of the UN-controlled COP “Blue Zone”. For the first time, this protection explicitly continues after the summit ends.
But participants enjoying these “privileges and immunities” also have a duty to respect Türkiye’s laws and regulations and not to interfere in its internal affairs, the agreement states. Rights groups fear its wide-ranging formulation could be used to discourage criticism of the host government.
Climate Home News understands that whether an action is covered by the immunity or infringes on the host’s internal affairs would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, with close coordination between the country’s authorities and the UN climate change body.
A separate provision states that immunity shall be waived where the UN believes it would “impede the course of justice”.
‘Chilling effect’
Those same provisions featured in the host country agreements for COP28 in the United Arab Emirates and COP29 in Azerbaijan, both regarded as authoritarian regimes, before being dropped for COP30 in Brazil.
Ann Harrison, climate justice policy advisor at Amnesty International, said it is “extremely disappointing” that the COP31 agreement re-introduced clauses that could “hinder the ability of human rights defenders and civil society organisations to conduct their work safely”.
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She added the provisions could have a “wider chilling effect” on rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, given concerns over the human rights situation in Türkiye, including laws that “have shrunk civic space” and their “abusive” implementation by authorities.
The UN climate change body declined to comment.
Rights groups have documented blanket protest bans, unlawful use of force by the police and prosecutions of journalists, human rights defenders and lawyers across Türkiye in the last year.
Arrests and protest bans
Last July, environmental activist Esra Işık was sentenced to more than two years for “resisting” a public official over what Amnesty International described as a peaceful protest against an urgent expropriation order linked to the expansion of coal mining in south-western Türkiye. She is appealing the conviction.
Ahead of a summit of the NATO alliance in the capital Ankara in July, authorities put in place a 13-day blanket ban on demonstrations, citing “national security”, and arrested over 200 people. Human Rights Watch said the crackdown showed Türkiye’s “ruthless intolerance of freedom of speech and assembly”.
Earlier this month, Turkish police detained dozens of people as part of what rights groups described as the government’s widening crackdown on LGBTQ+ activists and venues.
Questioned by media as to how he would guarantee the right to protest at COP31, Kurum said earlier in September that his team would “try to meet” any request they receive from civil society and give them “a free space to express themselves”.
“Don’t worry, thinking you will not be able to voice your opinions or really share your thoughts,” he said in an attempt to reassure campaigners, adding that he had put former deputy environment minister Mehmet Birpinar in charge of liaising with civil society.
Civic space needed
Camilla Pollera, human rights and climate change campaigner at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), said meaningful participation at COP31 is fundamental to the legitimacy of climate action.
“At a climate summit, civil society participation necessarily includes being present, speaking out, scrutinising governments’ decisions and climate policies, and advocating for communities most vulnerable to climate change,” she added.
At last year’s COP30 summit, thousands of Indigenous people and climate activists peacefully marched through the Amazonian city of Belém in the first major demonstration outside the UN venue in four years. Smaller-scale demonstrations were largely confined to the “Blue Zone” at COP27 in Egypt, COP28 in the UAE and COP29 in Azerbaijan.
In two other separate incidents in Belém, members of the Munduruku tribe blocked access to the conference centre for hours, demanding an end to development projects in their ancestral land, and protesters stormed through the venue clashing with UN security officials.
The COP31 hosting agreement keeps some of the safeguards previously hailed by civil society groups. The government and the UN secretariat commit to upholding “the fundamental human rights” of all participants in the agreement’s preamble.
Under the deal, Türkiye also needs to ensure that security personnel follow “the highest ethical and professional standards and are expected to behave with integrity and respect”.
The post COP31 attendees told not to interfere in Türkiye’s “internal affairs” appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP31 attendees told not to interfere in Türkiye’s “internal affairs”
As rising seas submerge growing swathes of land, countries that lose territory should still keep their national boundaries, sovereign rights and UN membership, according to a political declaration adopted at the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday.
The declaration, which was championed by climate-vulnerable small island states, affirms “the presumption in favour of continued statehood” in the face of sea level rise fuelled by climate change, and urges countries to work together to assist communities affected by encroaching oceans.
Speaking at a high-level UN meeting to address the existential threats posed by sea level rise, Cabo Verde’s Prime Minister Francisco Carvalho, one of the initiative’s co-facilitators along with Australia, said the adoption of the text by consensus sends “a message of hope”.
“This declaration has a very special meaning. For us, sea level rise is neither a distant threat nor a theoretical concern,” he said, adding that rising seas put at risk key infrastructure, water resources and economic growth in small island states.
In the Pacific, sea levels have risen at twice the global rate, dramatically increasing coastal flooding events from two to 20 a year in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and from zero to 102 events per year in American Samoa, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Surangel Whipps Jr., president of the Pacific island of Palau, said the summit in New York represents a “moment of international solidarity”, and highlighted that small island states will remain permanent members of the UN.
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Declaration recognises statehood
An advisory opinion by the world’s top maritime court, the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), first upheld in 2024 that countries do not have to shrink their maritime borders even if they lose land territory due to sea level rise. This was reiterated by the International Court of Justice in last year’s landmark ruling on the climate obligations of states.
The new declaration endorsed by all governments at the UN General Assembly stresses that sea level rise “is not a distant scenario but a real and lived experience for many”, and notes that international law must be implemented in global responses to rising seas.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the “milestone must now be translated into action”, adding that the declaration should encourage an “ongoing dialogue” at the “highest possible level” leading to practical outcomes. Pacific islands have proposed an international treaty on sea level rise that would provide more legal certainty.
“Those on the frontlines must be front and centre on every decision. We cannot allow countries and cultures to vanish beneath the waves,” he said. “The SOS has gone out. The world must answer.”
At regional summit, Pacific islands ask for COP31 support for clean energy and finance
Goodwin Friday, prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, said measures to protect vulnerable states will require adequate finance. “Investing in resilience now is more cost-effective than paying the far greater price for loss and damage later,” he added.
Championed by Australia’s COP31 co-presidency, Pacific islands have sought to put adaptation to sea level rise and ocean conservation at the top of the political agenda by inviting world leaders to attend the pre-COP31 summit co-hosted by Fiji and Tuvalu in October.
Tuvalu will also host the second global fossil fuel phase-out summit in April 2027, after around 60 governments met this year in Santa Marta, Colombia, to discuss ending their dependence on coal, oil and gas.
“Our coastlines, our reefs and our communities are living with the consequences of fossil fuel dependence every day, and our people have earned the right to help shape the way forward,” Lynda Tabuya, Fiji’s climate minister, said in a statement announcing details of the conference.
Ocean monitoring gets a boost in New York
Amid record-breaking marine heat and seas rising at unprecedented speed, governments in New York announced new commitments to protect the world’s ocean, as efforts to bolster marine ecosystems and coastal communities rise up the political agenda.
On Wednesday, the EU and Canada announced more funding for a new Europe-led ocean monitoring system called OceanEye, launched in the aftermath of a failed attempt by the Trump administration to dismantle the largest existing network of deep-sea observatories.
During an event at UN headquarters in New York, EU President Ursula von der Leyen and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced around $163 million in new funding for the initiative, with the EU pledging €92 million ($105m) on top of existing seed funding and Canada pledging C$82 million (US$58m) over five years.
According to an EU statement, while OceanEye will collaborate with the Global Ocean Observing System, that network “remains vulnerable to financial shortfalls and geopolitical disruptions”. A group of 30 countries from Europe, Africa and the Americas joined an international initiative in support of OceanEye, including large coastal nations like Brazil, Namibia and Mexico.
Von der Leyen said OceanEye “can make us the leading ocean data provider in a matter of years”, including by launching new satellites and installing new observatories in the deep ocean. “From outer space to the deepest ocean, our funding helps us keep watch beneath the waves,” she added.
Carney said the initiative would help protect Canada’s Arctic region with real-time monitoring operating year-round. “We can’t protect what we can’t see,” he said, also highlighting that Canada had expanded conservation of its ocean territory from 1% a decade ago to 15% now.
In New York, a group of 19 countries said they are either developing or implementing plans to sustainably manage all of their ocean territory, with 12 new nations joining the initiative. In a joint communiqué, they called on more countries to sign up ahead of COP31.
Warnings of El Niño-fuelled extreme heat
Scientists and world leaders have raised the alarm over this year’s record-breaking marine temperatures, which have persisted above historical peaks for more than 100 days as the naturally occurring El Niño phenomenon intensifies in the Pacific.
Extreme ocean heat could become a threat to coastal ecosystems and communities, experts fear. Water temperatures 1.5C above normal levels have also rapidly fuelled a strong hurricane in the Pacific in recent days.
Despite scientific calls for additional ocean conservation efforts, a report launched this week in New York warned that efforts to protect ocean ecosystems are lagging behind, with only 10% of the global ocean covered by conservation areas and just 3.5% designated as “effectively protected”.
The post Threatened by rising seas, small islands secure right to keep their statehood appeared first on Climate Home News.
Threatened by rising seas, small islands secure right to keep their statehood
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