Speaking at COP29 in Azerbaijan about the impact of climate change on Africa, the executives of Afreximbank promised to double-down on their commitment to a just energy transition on the continent. But, four months later, the multilateral lender has confirmed its support for a controversial pipeline that would carry crude oil from Uganda to the Tanzanian coast for export overseas.
It was announced this week that the African Export-Import Bank – whose main shareholders are African governments – would be part of a syndicate of financial institutions committing a first tranche of external financing to the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) project, which is majority-controlled by French energy giant TotalEnergies.
Other lenders include South Africa’s Standard Bank, Uganda’s Stanbic Bank and KBC Bank, and Saudi Arabia’s Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector, according to a statement published by EACOP’s developer, which called the financing deal “a significant milestone”.
The loan is in the range of $1 billion, with two further tranches expected, according to the government-owned Ugandan newspaper New Vision. Afreximbank earlier indicated it would provide $200 million to the project.
Samuel Okulony, CEO of the Environment Governance Institute, a Ugandan NGO, told Climate Home that Afreximbank’s actions are in direct contradiction of their “empty words” on climate change.
“Afreximbank is funding the destruction of our own people, while at the same time speaking about energy transition and a commitment to a cleaner future. It is a big disappointment,” he said.
Afreximbank did not respond to Climate Home’s request for comment.
Oil pipeline faces strong opposition
The 1,443-km pipeline would carry crude oil extracted from oilfields under development near Lake Albert in Uganda to Tanga port in Tanzania for onward export to international markets. The long-delayed project has been the target of protests and lawsuits from campaigners that accuse the project developers of displacing communities, damaging the environment and fuelling the climate crisis.
A coalition of regional civil society groups said on Thursday it is a “shame” that the EACOP developer would announce financing for the project on a day many Ugandans had come face-to-face with the dire impacts of global warming. This stark reality was evident on the front page of the state-owned New Vision newspaper, which published the EACOP announcement just above a picture of the deadly floods that hit the capital Kampala this week.
The coalition said it is considering “legal and other actions” against financial institutions that “continue to prioritise profits over the lives and wellbeing of East Africans. Campaigners said the project has already displaced thousands of people and stands to harm plants and animals, while also threatening livelihoods in the farming and tourism sectors.
‘Desperate’ search for funders
The construction of the pipeline is a key element in Uganda’s push to become an oil producer, which the government says would propel the country’s economic growth.
The East African nation has been looking to exploit its natural resources for nearly two decades since oil reserves were discovered in the Albertine Rift Basin near the Democratic Republic of Congo. But development stalled as the plans faced local opposition and the project struggled to attract external financing.
Several Western banks, including BNP Paribas, Société Générale, Barclays and Standard Chartered, have publicly stated their intention not to pour money into the project.
Ugandan energy minister Ruth Nankabirwa, who has blamed activists for the project’s setbacks, said last September that at least seven European banks had committed, in private, to finance the project, the Financial Times reported – but no official announcement has materialised since then.
Where East African oil pipeline meets sea, displaced farmers bemoan “bad deal” on compensation
Afreximbank, Standard Bank, Stanbic Bank and Islamic Development Bank had all indicated their willingness to fund the pipeline construction in the past, while KCB Bank of Uganda is only being linked with the project now.
Okulony said Wednesday’s announcement amounted to a “desperate move” from the EACOP developer to demonstrate progress and drum up additional interest from investors in the project.
He added that regional African banks are becoming lenders of last resort for the oil industry in the continent, “covering up a gap” left by the accelerating withdrawal of Western lenders.
Oil investments clash with climate pledge
Afrieximbank – whose main shareholders are the Egyptian and Nigerian governments – is a major backer of fossil fuel developments in Africa.
The lender’s exposure to the oil and gas sector increased in 2024, making up over a fifth of its total loans. It has bankrolled the expansion of oil production in Nigeria and the Republic of Congo, and last month it announced the intention to set up a $1-billion financing facility for the fast-growing oil industry in Guyana.
The investments contrast with Afrieximbank’s public attempts to bolster its climate credentials.
At the COP29 climate summit, the lender said it would advocate for policies and investments that accelerate Africa’s energy transition and called for a scale-up in climate finance. Its president, Nigerian economist Benedict Oramah, stressed that the devastating impacts of climate change on the continent would probably intensify in the next decade.
“We are at the point where taking action does not only suggest good environmental stewardship,” he said, “but must also be seen as a sound economic policy, considering that the cost of immediate and decisive action is far less than the cost of inaction and delayed efforts.”
Similarly, another backer of the Ugandan project, Standard Bank, wrote in its climate policy that it supports the Paris Agreement in transitioning Africa to a lower-carbon economy and aims for net zero emissions from its portfolio by 2050.
‘Assault’ on the planet
The STOPEacop coalition said the decision to fund a fossil fuel infrastructure project “is not just “irresponsible” but also an “active assault” on the planet and people. The banks supporting the project have marked themselves as “enemies of the people” which enable “climate chaos, environmental destruction” and support international profiteers at the expense of local communities, its statement added.
The project developer still needs to raise the majority of the funding for the pipeline construction, which has an expected price tag of $5 billion.
Okulony said EACOP is trying to attract interest from Islamic financial institutions, especially in Oman.
Ryan Brightwell, deputy director at campaigning group BankTrack, told Climate Home that EACOP has tried since 2018 to secure financing for the project, and the fact that it has now only finalised one tranche “only goes to show the extent of their troubles”.
The post African banks back oil export pipeline despite climate commitments appeared first on Climate Home News.
African banks back oil export pipeline despite climate commitments
Colombia wants countries to discuss options for a global agreement to ensure that the extraction, processing and recycling of minerals – including those needed for the clean energy transition – don’t harm the environment and human wellbeing.
The mineral-rich nation is proposing to create an expert group to “identify options for international instruments, including global and legally-binding instruments, for coordinated global action on the environmentally sound management of minerals and metals through [their] full lifecyle”.
Colombia hopes this will eventually lead to an agreement on the need for an international treaty to define mandatory rules and standards that would make mineral value chains more transparent and accountable.
The proposal was set out in a draft resolution submitted to the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) earlier this week and seen by Climate Home News. UNEA, which is constituted of all UN member states, is the world’s top decision-making body for matters relating to the environment. The assembly’s seventh session will meet in Kenya in December to vote on countries’ proposals.
-
Milei’s budget cuts fuel deforestation fears in Argentina’s Chaco
President Javier Milei has slashed environmental spending since his 2023 election, putting forest defenders on alert in Gran Chaco, South America’s second-largest forest biome -
Why ethics must be at the heart of global climate action
If science shows us the urgency for climate action, then ethics must show us the way to rebuild momentum writes WWF climate & energy lead Manuel Pulgar-Vidal
Soaring demand for the minerals used to manufacture clean energy technologies and electric vehicles, as well as in the digital, construction and defence industries have led to growing environmental destruction, human rights violations and social conflict.
Colombia argues there is an “urgent need” to strengthen global cooperation and governance to reduce the risks to people and the planet.
Options for a global minerals agreement
The proposal is among a flurry of initiatives to strength global mineral governance at a time when booming demand is putting pressure on new mining projects.
Colombia, which produces emeralds, gold, platinum and silver for exports, first proposed the idea for a binding international agreement on minerals traceability and accountability on the sidelines of the UN biodiversity talks it hosted in October 2024.
Since then, the South American nation has been quietly trying to drum up support for the idea, especially among African and European nations.
Its draft resolution to UNEA7 contains very few details, leaving it open for countries to discuss what kind of global instrument would be best suited to make mineral supply chains more transparent and sustainable.
Does the world need a global treaty on energy transition minerals?
Colombia says it wants the expert group to build on other UN initiatives, including a UN Panel on Critical Energy Transition Minerals, which set out seven principles to ensure the mining, processing and recycling of energy transition minerals are done responsibly and benefit everyone.
The group would include technical experts and representatives from international and regional conventions, major country groupings as well as relevant stakeholders.
It would examine the feasibility and effectiveness of different options for a global agreement, consider their costs and identify measures to support countries to implement what is agreed.
The resolution also calls for one or two meetings for member states to discuss the idea before the UNEA8 session planned in late 2027, when countries would decide on a way forward.
No time to lose for treaty negotiations
Colombia’s efforts to advance global talks on mineral supply chains have been welcomed by resource experts and campaigners. But not everyone agrees on the best strategy to move the discussion forward at a time when multilateralism is coming under attack.
Johanna Sydow, a resource policy expert who heads the international environmental policy division of the Heinrich-Böll Foundation, said she had hoped that the resolution would explicitly call for negotiations to begin on an international minerals treaty.
“Treaty negotiations take a long time. If you don’t even start with it now, it will take even longer. I don’t see how in two or three years it will be easier to come to an agreement,” she told Climate Home.
-
The company tracking energy transition minerals back to the mines
Australian firm Source Certain traces minerals back to the exact point where they were extracted from the Earth – a technique that could help make cleantech supply chains more accountable -
The ICJ climate ruling has major implications for the loss and damage fund
As the fund struggles with lack of money and bureaucratic barriers, its board must align its actions with the landmark court decision -
Major financiers neglect energy transition risks from mining as demand booms
Financial institutions are lacking safeguards to prevent harms caused by mining the resources needed for the energy transition, analysis of the sector’s financing finds
Despite the geopolitical challenges, “we need joint rules to prevent a huge race to the bottom for [mineral] standards”. That could start with a group of countries coming together and starting to enforce joint standards for mining, processing and recycling minerals, she said.
But any meaningful global agreement on mineral supply chains would require backing from China, the world’s largest processor of minerals, which dominates most of the supply chains. And with Colombia heading for an election in May, it will need all the support it can get to move its proposal forward.
‘Voluntary initiative won’t cut it’
Juliana Peña Niño, Colombia country manager at the Natural Resource Governance Institute, is more optimistic. “Colombia’s leadership towards fairer mineral value chains is a welcome step,” she told Climate Home News.
“At UNEA7, we need an ambitious debate that gives the proposed expert group a clear mandate to advance concrete next steps — not delay decisions — and that puts the voices of those most affected at the centre. One thing is clear: the path forward must ultimately deliver a binding instrument, as yet another voluntary initiative simply won’t cut it,” she said.
More than 50 civil society groups spanning Latin America, Africa and Europe previously described Colombia’s work on the issue as “a chance to build a new global paradigm rooted in environmental integrity, human rights, Indigenous Peoples’ rights, justice and equity”.
“As the energy transition and digitalisation drive demand for minerals, we cannot afford to repeat old extractive models built on asymmetry – we must redefine them,” they wrote in a statement.
Main image: The UN Environment Assembly is hosted in Nairobi, Kenya. (Natalia Mroz/ UN Environment)
The post Colombia proposes expert group to advance talks on minerals agreement appeared first on Climate Home News.
Colombia proposes expert group to advance talks on minerals agreement
If you’re young, pregnant and Latina, chances are you live near agricultural fields sprayed with higher levels of brain-damaging organophosphate pesticides.
A baby in the womb has few defenses against industrial petrochemicals designed to kill.
California Sanctions Stark Disparities in Pesticide Exposure During Pregnancy
Climate Change
DeBriefed 3 October 2025: UK political gap on climate widens; Fossil-fuelled Typhoon Ragasa; ‘Overshoot’ unknowns
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Shattered climate consensus
FRACKING BAN: UK energy secretary Ed Miliband has announced that the government will bring forward its plans to permanently ban fracking, in a move designed to counter a promise from the hard-right Reform party to restart efforts to introduce the practice, the Guardian said. In the same speech, Miliband said Reform’s plans to scrap clean-energy projects would “betray” young people and future generations, the Press Association reported.
ACT AXE?: Meanwhile, Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservatives, pledged to scrap the 2008 Climate Change Act if elected, Bloomberg reported. It noted that the legislation was passed with cross-party support and strengthened by the Conservatives.
‘INSANE’: Badenoch faced a backlash from senior Tory figures, including ex-prime minister Theresa May, who called her pledge a “catastrophic mistake”, said the Financial Times. The newspaper added that the Conservatives were “trailing third in opinion polls”. A wide range of climate scientists also condemned the idea, describing it as “insane”, an “insult” and a “serious regression”.
Around the world
- CLIMATE CRACKDOWN: The US Department of Energy has told employees in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy to avoid using the term “climate change”, according to the Guardian.
- FOREST DELAY: Plans for Brazil’s COP30 flagship initiative, the tropical forests forever fund, are “suffer[ing] delays” as officials remain split on key details, Bloomberg said.
- COP MAY BE ‘SPLIT’: Australia could “split” the hosting of the COP31 climate summit in 2026 under a potential compromise with Turkey, reported the Guardian.
- DIVINE INTERVENTION: Pope Leo XIV has criticised those who minimise the “increasingly evident” impact of global warming in his first major climate speech, BBC News reported.
€44.5 billion
The cost of extreme weather and climate change in the EU in the last four years – two-and-a-half times higher than in the decade to 2019, according to a European Environment Agency report covered by the Financial Times.
Latest climate research
- Fossil-fuelled climate change caused around 36% of Typhoon Ragasa’s direct damage to homes and properties in southern China, according to a rapid impact attribution study | Imperial Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment
- Some 86% of the global population are concerned about climate change, according to a survey of 280,000 people in 142 countries and regions | Climate Policy
- A global shift towards a “planetary health diet” could slash emissions and save tens of thousands of lives each day | EAT-Lancet Commission 2025 report
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Clean energy has met 100% of Great Britain’s electricity demand for a record 87 hours this year so far, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. This is up from just 2.5 hours in 2021 and 64.5 hours in all of 2024. The longest stretch of time where 100% of electricity demand was met by clean energy stands at 15 hours, from midnight on 25 May 2025 through to 3pm on 26 May, according to the analysis.
Spotlight
‘Overshoot’ unknowns
As the chances of limiting global warming to 1.5C dwindle, there is increasing focus on the prospects for “overshooting” the Paris Agreement target and then bringing temperatures back down by removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
At the first-ever Overshoot Conference in Laxenburg, Austria, Carbon Brief asks experts about the key unknowns around warming “overshoot”.
Sir Prof Jim Skea
Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and emeritus professor at Imperial College London’s Centre for Environmental Policy
So there are huge knowledge gaps around overshoot and carbon dioxide removal (CDR). As it’s very clear from the themes of this conference, we don’t altogether understand how the Earth would react in taking CO2 out of the atmosphere.
We don’t understand the nature of the irreversibilities and we don’t understand the effectiveness of CDR techniques, which might themselves be influenced by the level of global warming, plus all the equity and sustainability issues surrounding using CDR techniques.
Prof Kristie Ebi
Professor at the University of Washington’s Center for Health and the Global Environment
There are all kinds of questions about adaptation and how to approach effective adaptation. At the moment, adaptation is primarily assuming a continual increase in global mean surface temperature. If there is going to be a peak – and of course, we don’t know what that peak is – then how do you start planning? Do you change your planning?
There are places, for instance when thinking about hard infrastructure, [where overshoot] may result in a change in your plan – because as you come down the backside, maybe the need would be less. For example, when building a bridge taller. And when implementing early warning systems, how do you take into account that there will be a peak and ultimately a decline? There is almost no work in that. I would say that’s one of the critical unknowns.
Dr James Fletcher
Former minister for public service, sustainable development, energy, science and technology for Saint Lucia and negotiator at COP21 in Paris.
The key unknown is where we’re going to land. At what point will we peak [temperatures] before we start going down and how long will we stay in that overshoot period? That is a scary thing. Yes, there will be overshoot, but at what point will that overshoot peak? Are we peaking at 1.6C, 1.7C, 2.1C?
All of these are scary scenarios for small island developing states – anything above 1.5C is scary. Every fraction of a degree matters to us. Where we peak is very important and how long we stay in this overshoot period is equally important. That’s when you start getting into very serious, irreversible impacts and tipping points.
Prof Oliver Geden
Senior fellow and head of the climate policy and politics research cluster at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs and vice-chair of IPCC Working Group III
[A key unknown] is whether countries are really willing to commit to net-negative trajectories. We are assuming, in science, global pathways going net-negative, with hardly any country saying they want to go there. So maybe it is just an academic thought experiment. So we don’t know yet if [overshoot] is even relevant. It is relevant in the sense that if we do, [the] 1.5C [target] stays on the table. But I think the next phase needs to be that countries – or the UNFCCC as a whole – needs to decide what they want to do.
Prof Lavanya Rajamani
Professor of international environmental law at the University of Oxford
I think there are several scientific unknowns, but I would like to focus on the governance unknowns with respect to overshoot. To me, a key governance unknown is the extent to which our current legal and regulatory architecture – across levels of governance, so domestic, regional and international – will actually be responsive to the needs of an overshoot world and the consequences of actually not having regulatory and governance architectures in place to address overshoot.
Watch, read, listen
FUTURE GAZING: The Financial Times examined a “future where China wins the green race”.
‘JUNK CREDITS’: Climate Home News reported on a “forest carbon megaproject” in Zimbabwe that has allegedly “generated millions of junk credits”.
‘SINK OR SWIM’: An extract from a new book on how the world needs to adapt to climate change, by Dr Susannah Fisher, featured in Backchannel.
Coming up
- 7 October: International Energy Agency (IEA) renewables 2025 report launch
- 8-10 October: World summit of Indigenous peoples and nature, Abu Dhabi, UAE
- 9-15 October: International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) 2025 congress, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Pick of the jobs
- UK government foreign, commonwealth and development office, senior climate policy adviser | Salary: CA$93,207. Location: Calgary, Canada
- Wellcome Trust, senior research manager, climate and health | Salary: £64,800. Location: London
- Bloomberg, product manager – climate, nature and sustainability regulations | Salary: Unknown. Location: London
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 3 October 2025: UK political gap on climate widens; Fossil-fuelled Typhoon Ragasa; ‘Overshoot’ unknowns appeared first on Carbon Brief.
New Jersey’s Electricity Rate Crisis Is A Perfect Storm for Wind Energy
Chopin — Music that Inspires
Doing What’s “Right” Is More Controversial than it Seems
Spanish-language misinformation on renewable energy spreads online, report shows
The toxic gas flares fuelling Nigeria’s climate change – BBC News
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Spanish-language misinformation on renewable energy spreads online, report shows
-
Climate Change Videos2 years ago
The toxic gas flares fuelling Nigeria’s climate change – BBC News
-
Climate Change2 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases1 year ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change1 year ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Greenhouse Gases2 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Carbon Footprint1 year agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits
-
Renewable Energy3 months ago
US Grid Strain, Possible Allete Sale