In an extraordinary year for the Earth’s climate – which is now virtually certain to be hottest on record – global warming has combined with the El Niño weather phenomenon and other factors to cause “crazy” weather across the globe, including in Africa.
The continent has faced a run of deadly and, in many cases, unprecedented extreme weather events this year.
By far the most lethal was Libya’s “medicane”-fuelled floods, which killed more than 11,300 people in September.
But while Libya’s floods made global headlines, many other deadly extreme events in Africa failed to make international news.
Carbon Brief has combined disaster data, humanitarian reports and local news stories to create a more complete picture of the scale of extreme weather impacts in Africa in 2023 to date.
The investigation shows that at least 15,700 people have so far been killed in extreme weather disasters in Africa in 2023. A further 34 million people have been affected by extremes.
It also shows that:
- More than 3,000 people were killed in flash floods in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda in May. Scientists were unable to assess the role of climate change in the disaster because of a lack of functioning weather stations recording data in the region.
- At least 860 people were killed in floods and mudslides in February during Tropical Cyclone Freddy, the longest lasting cyclone on record affecting Madagascar, Mozambique, Mauritius, Malawi, Réunion and Zimbabwe.
- More than 29 million people continue to face unrelenting drought conditions across Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti, Mauritania and Niger.
- Southern African countries have sweltered in a months-long winter heatwave, leaving many facing summer-like conditions for a continuous year.
Carbon Brief also spoke to scientists about how these events could be linked to climate change and other factors, including high vulnerability and a lack of preparedness – and why so many of Africa’s extreme weather events go unrecorded and unreported.
In addition, Carbon Brief analysis shows that Africa has the lowest density of weather stations out of any continent – making it difficult to know the extent to which extreme weather is happening and how it might be shifting because of climate change. A climate scientist from Kenya describes this as “extremely worrying”.
She adds that the toll of extreme weather on Africa’s people in 2023 is a stark reminder of why the developed world must take responsibility for the “loss and damage” caused by climate change.
- Extremes mapped
- Floods
- Cyclones
- Heatwaves
- Wildfires
- Drought and famine
- Why do African extremes go unreported?
Extremes mapped
Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents in the world to climate change, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Seven of the 10 countries most vulnerable to climate disasters are in Africa, according to an analysis from the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and the World Resources Institute (WRI).
According to this analysis, the countries most vulnerable to climate disasters are those that have low “climate readiness” – measured by examining the threats that climate change poses to a country and that country’s ability to protect its citizens – and high levels of “fragility” – the likelihood that a country will experience societal collapse in the event of a disaster.
The threats posed by climate change are rising with greenhouse gas emissions, of which Africa is responsible for just 2-3%.
In 2023, every part of the continent was affected by extreme weather disasters, ranging from catastrophic flooding in Libya to intense heat in Malawi.
To study these events, Carbon Brief has combined UN humanitarian reports and local news stories with data from the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT), which was launched in 1988 by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) in Belgium.
The map below shows extreme weather disasters affecting Africa in 2023 to date, according to the EM-DAT database and further analysis by Carbon Brief. On the map, the size of the circles correspond to the number of people affected by the event, while a colour key indicates the event type.
For an extreme event to be featured on the EM-DAT database, it must fulfil one of the following criteria:
- 10 or more people killed.
- 100 or more people affected.
- The declaration of a state of emergency.
- A call for international assistance.
(It is worth noting that the EM-DAT is the largest disaster database available, but is still not exhaustive, particularly for African nations.)
Carbon Brief’s analysis of EM-DAT data, humanitarian reports and local news reports shows that at least 15,700 people have been killed in extreme weather disasters in Africa in 2023 to date.
This is a major jump from the 4,000 people killed by extreme weather disasters in 2022 – but it is worth noting the vast majority of deaths (11,300) occurred during Libya’s record floods.
The analysis also shows that at least 34 million people were affected by extreme weather disasters in 2023. This compares to 19 million people in 2022.
Overall, weather events in Africa this year fit into a global picture of record and, in some cases, uncharted extremes, climate scientists tell Carbon Brief.
The reasons why 2023 has seen such extreme heat and unusual weather events are still being debated by scientists. However, known contributors include the 1.3C of temperature rise already caused by humans and El Niño, a natural phenomenon that tends to drive up global temperatures and affect weather in many parts of the world, including Africa.
Dr Izidine Pinto, a climate scientist from Mozambique currently working at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, tells Carbon Brief:
“This year is very unusual worldwide. In Africa, almost every month, there were record monthly temperatures. And we know that El Niño is associated with below average rainfall in many parts of Africa, especially in southern Africa.”
Some of the weather events in Africa this year have left scientists scratching their heads, adds Dr Joyce Kimutai, a climate scientist from Kenya currently working at the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London. She tells Carbon Brief:
“Climate change is really disrupting the climate system. To me, I think it’s challenging, it’s difficult and it’s also dangerous in a way because as climate scientists we don’t know exactly what’s happening. Every time we think we’ve understood the system, things keep changing. So we would think that we can inform the public about the risks that they can anticipate and how they need to prepare, but then the system is also playing games with us.”
Kimutai adds that the toll of extreme weather events on African lives in 2023 is a stark example of “loss and damage” – a term to describe how climate change is already harming people, especially the world’s most vulnerable. She says:
“We are not on track to limiting warming to 1.5C. That means we will continue to experience these extreme events and that is going to cause more damage to communities. At the same time, people in these countries will have to continually dig deeper into their pockets to deal with these recurring events. What that means is the loss and damages that we know will continue to grow.”
Loss and damage is expected to be a major talking point at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai starting in late November, after a historic fund for such damages was agreed at COP27 in Egypt.
Floods
Floods affected every corner of the African continent in 2023.
Carbon Brief analysis shows at least 23 flood disasters occurred, with countries affected including Angola, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Guinea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Libya, Mauritania, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
By far the most deadly were Libya’s floods. In September, a highly unusual cyclone called Storm Daniel dropped a torrent of rainfall over the coast of Libya.
The water quickly overwhelmed two old and damaged dams in the coastal city of Derna, resulting in tsunami-like waves that swept people and houses out to sea. The disaster killed more than 11,300 people.
A rapid analysis released in the storm’s wake found the extreme rainfall was made up to 50 times more likely and 50% more intense by climate change.
Storm Daniel was a “medicane”, the name given to a storm originating in the Mediterranean Sea that has the physical features of a hurricane.
Scientists told Carbon Brief that medicanes are currently rare, but there is evidence that they are becoming more intense because of climate change.
One reason for this is when sea surface temperatures are extremely high, it allows storms to gather up more “fuel” as they travel over the ocean – making them stronger when they eventually make landfall.
We have a #medicane in the making. Storm #Daniel in the Mediterranean now has tropical characteristics heading south and will make landfall tonight near Benghazi, Libya. The dark shades of purple are winds 50 mph+ pic.twitter.com/3J3ZTnCEDU
— Jeff Berardelli (@WeatherProf) September 9, 2023
As well as climate change, the disaster in Libya was worsened by other factors, such as the age of the dams that became overwhelmed with water and an incoherent system for warning the public of the dangers posed by the storms, experts told Carbon Brief.
Another deadly flood to strike Africa in 2023 took place in May, when severe flooding around Lake Kivu devastated communities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda.
According to Carbon Brief analysis, these flash floods killed 2,970 people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 131 people in Rwanda.
Many families living in the region had escaped conflict and were living in temporary accommodation, leaving them extremely vulnerable.
Kimutai led a team of scientists who tried to understand how climate change influenced the likelihood and severity of these floods.
However, the researchers were unable to carry out their analysis because they were not able to find reliable rainfall data from weather stations in the region, she explains:
“From the DRC side, we couldn’t find any observational data to use. There have been issues with conflict for a long time and when a country’s at war, almost everything is dysfunctional. What you find with instability is that government employees are not likely to be able to constantly man weather stations and ensure their day-to-day running.”
She adds that the researchers also tried to use satellite information in the place of weather station data. However, data obtained from different satellites did not match up, making it impossible to tell exactly how much rainfall fell during the deadly flash floods.
More on the impact of low weather station coverage in Africa is included in: Why do African extremes go ‘unreported’?
Cyclones
Southern Africa was on the receiving end of a record-breaking – and highly unusual – storm this year called Tropical Cyclone Freddy.
Tropical Cyclone Freddy began as a disturbance near Australia in February and crossed the entire Indian Ocean to make landfall on Madagascar.
The storm then crossed the Mozambican channel to hit Mozambique and surrounding countries. It then returned to the Mozambican channel for several days, before striking Mozambique for a second time. It then proceeded inland towards Malawi.
Overall, the storm persisted for 34 days – making it the longest-lasting tropical cyclone on record. (This record is awaiting verification from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).)
It also covered a distance exceeding 8,000km. Pinto, who is originally from Mozambique, tells Carbon Brief:
“It made landfall in Mozambique twice, which is very unusual for a tropical cyclone in my living experience. I have never seen a tropical cyclone make landfall and then go back to the ocean before returning again. And this one travelled northwards, which is also unusual because tropical cyclones usually travel from north to south.”
The remarkable path of Tropical Cyclone Freddy is outlined in the diagram below, which was produced by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
(The diagram also uses blue shading to show what areas experienced the most flooding and bubbles indicating where the most people were affected.)
According to Carbon Brief analysis, at least 860 people were killed in floods and landslides associated with the storm across Madagascar, Mozambique, Mauritius, Malawi, Réunion and Zimbabwe.
The storm also destroyed 408,000 houses and 6,600 square kilometres (km2) of cropland across Malawi, Mozambique and Madagascar, according to OCHA. Floodwaters from the storm also assisted several outbreaks of the deadly waterborne disease cholera (indicated with hazard signs on the diagram above).
There has been no analysis into the role of climate change in intensifying Tropical Cyclone Freddy.
However, according to Pinto – who, along with Kimutai, works to analyse the role of climate change in Africa’s extremes with the World Weather Attribution group of scientists – it can be assumed that warming did have an impact on the storm. He explains:
“We did not do a study because previously we’ve done two studies on Tropical Cyclone Batsirai and storm Ana [which affected southern Africa in 2022], and we found that climate change played a role in the amount of rainfall caused by these two tropical cyclones. If we analysed Tropical Cyclone Freddy we would probably find the same answer.”
He adds that the latest findings from the world’s authority on climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), show that eastern southern Africa is likely to see an increase in average tropical cyclone wind speeds and rainfall, as well as a higher proportion of category 4 and 5 (the most severe) storms, as climate change worsens.
“From the scientific literature, it is clear that climate change played a role,” he says.
Heatwaves
Many parts of Africa faced extreme heat this year.
The north of the continent saw record temperatures during an extreme summer heatwave that affected each of Earth’s seven continents in July.
During this heatwave, Algeria hit 48C, while Morocco faced 47.5C heat.
Adrar in Algeria also experienced Africa’s hottest night on record in July, when night-time temperatures did not fall below 39.6C.
Al Jazeera reported that the extreme temperatures particularly affected migrant workers in Tunisia, who typically sleep rough in tents in the nation’s capital, Tunis.
All Africa reported that 47C heat had a “profound impact” on humans and livestock in Niger.
An analysis by the World Weather Attribution team found that the heat observed across the northern hemisphere in July would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change.
The south of the continent, meanwhile, endured prolonged high temperatures in what were meant to be the winter months.
In August, the Washington Post reported that Southern Africa was in “the midst of a major heatwave” delivering temperatures close to 40C to Botswana, South Africa, Namibia and Mozambique.
In October, the Guardian reported that Malawi was experiencing temperatures 20C above the seasonal average. (Malawi’s cool season typically runs from May to October.)
The prolonged winter heat meant that many southern African countries effectively faced a 12-month long summer, Kimutai says:
“We witnessed for the first time a winter heatwave in southern Africa. People say it didn’t get cold at all this time. It was just like one long back-to-back summer.”
Despite these record events, the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) did not register any heatwave disasters in Africa this year (see map above). More explanation of why Africa’s heatwaves often go untracked is included in: Why do African extremes go ‘unreported’?
Wildfires
The extreme heat in northern Africa this year fuelled deadly wildfires.
Reuters reported that wildfires swept across Algeria in July, requiring a response from 8,000 firefighters. The flames killed 34 people, including 10 soldiers.
The newswire added that blazes also ripped across Tunisia, forcing hundreds of households to flee.
Drought and famine
Numerous African countries continued to be gripped by severe drought this year. Many of these droughts have spanned several years.
According to Carbon Brief analysis, more than 29 million people faced unrelenting drought conditions across countries including Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mauritania, Niger and Somalia in 2023.
According to a report from the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in July, drought in the Horn of Africa has left more than 23 million people facing food insecurity and more than five million children facing acute malnutrition.
The report says:
“The drought affected livestock body conditions and decimated herds, which, in turn, curbed livestock production. Successive below-average harvests, coupled with high production and transport costs, reduced local agricultural produce. All this led to food price spikes that still persist, which reduced household purchasing power and access to nutrient-rich foods.”
An analysis released by the World Weather Attribution service in April found that persistent drought in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia “would not have [happened] at all” without human-caused climate change.
A “conservative estimate” from the scientists said that the drought conditions seen in the Horn of Africa over 2020-22 were made at least 100 times more likely by climate change.
In July, the WFP said the impacts of drought conditions in this period are “likely to persist for a long time” despite some improvements in rains in recent months.
Reacting to the analysis in April, Mohamed Adow, director of the Power Shift Africa thinktank in Kenya, said the findings reinforce why climate change is “the world’s biggest and gravest injustice issue”. He told Carbon Brief:
“As someone from East Africa it’s painful to see the impact of climate change wreaking so much suffering on people that have done nothing to cause this.”
Why do African extremes go unreported?
African activists, scientists and policymakers have warned for years that African extreme weather events often go “unreported” when compared to those in North America and Europe.
Understanding the extent to which African extreme weather events are unreported is complicated.
One way to do this is to consider all the ways that extreme weather events are recorded and reported.
Primarily, extreme heat, rainfall and wind speeds – the ingredients of most extreme weather events – are monitored by weather stations.
Carbon Brief’s analysis of WMO weather stations reveals that Africa has the lowest density of operational stations out of any continent.
Pinto tells Carbon Brief that a lack of weather stations in Africa has limited the tracking of extreme weather events for decades:
“The low density of weather stations is something that limits research and also monitoring of extreme events.”
Without adequate data from weather stations, scientists are not only struggling to track when extreme weather events happen, but they are also left without the historical records needed to understand how events have shifted over time because of climate change, he says.
Kimutai – who was prevented from assessing the role of climate change in deadly floods in the DRC this year by a lack of weather station data – tells Carbon Brief that the lack of weather station data from Africa is “extremely worrying”:
“The reason why I’m extremely worried is because we’ve seen the planet continuing to warm with increasing magnitudes of extreme events – this means the continent is likely to be battered more by these extremes. Without observations, we have a minimal understanding of the climate system so we can’t anticipate how the risks are changing. This means that we can’t adequately prepare.”
As well as having the lowest density of meteorological weather stations, the African continent also has by far the fewest radar weather stations. These kind of stations are needed to warn people about upcoming rainfall, Pinto says:
“If you have a radar, you can see rain coming into the region – and then you can tell people that rain is coming and you can plan. In many parts of Africa, that’s not available because radars are very expensive.”
Even when weather data is recorded, there are other ways that extreme weather disasters can be missed.
In Africa, the most potent example of this occurs with heatwaves.
Human-caused climate change has led to an increase in the intensity and frequency of heatwaves in every region of the world, according to the IPCC.
However, according to the EM-DAT database (see map above), there were no recorded heatwave disasters anywhere in Africa this year. (In fact, EM-DAT lists no more than two heatwaves in sub-Saharan Africa since the beginning of the 20th century.)
This is despite the fact that many parts of Africa did experience record-breaking heat in 2023 (see: Heatwaves). So, why did these events go unrecorded in the EM-DAT database?
The reason is that, for EM-DAT to record a “disaster”, it requires there to be some record of an impact on people.
In Africa, the impacts of extreme heat on people are not routinely recorded as they are in other continents. For example, there are few reliable records of how heatwaves drive up hospital admissions or lead to cropland being destroyed in Africa, Pinto says:
“Some people call heatwaves the ‘silent killer’ because we can’t see the impacts. It is easy to see flooding and people drowning and to record their deaths. But when it’s a heatwave and we don’t see the impact with our eyes, it’s difficult to record.
“So, if a heatwave happens in, say, October and kills 10 people. We don’t know what caused the death of those people. Probably, it was the increase in temperature, which caused them to go to the hospital and suffer heart failures or strokes, but the people responsible for recording the deaths do not make the association with high temperatures.”
Even when observational data and the impacts on people are recorded for an extreme weather event in Africa, there is a good chance that people living outside of the region or country affected will never hear about it.
This is because there is generally less media reporting on African extreme weather events when compared to events in North America or Europe. (Libya’s deadly floods in September were a noticeable exception to this.)
Understanding the reasons behind this are extremely complex.
One survey of 38 African editors by the nonprofit Africa No Filter in 2021 found that shrinking newsrooms and lack of funds prevented deeper reporting and the positioning of correspondents across multiple countries.
Western media has been criticised by young climate activists for giving more priority to extreme weather events in the global north than in Africa.
The post Analysis: Africa’s extreme weather has killed at least 15,000 people in 2023 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Africa’s extreme weather has killed at least 15,000 people in 2023
An exceptional El Niño is building. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says it has intensified to very strong levels and is likely to last at least through February 2027. If its current trajectory holds, it could become stronger than anything seen since WMO monitoring began four decades ago.
That is bad news for agriculture. El Niño – a naturally occurring weather phenomenon – can scramble rainfall patterns across the world, bringing drought to some regions and floods to others. And this time it is unfolding against the backdrop of a significantly hotter climate, with farmers already contending with unreliable growing seasons, extreme heat and less predictable rainfall because of global warming.
El Niño expected to bring next record-hot year as soon as 2027
We are seeing the consequences already. In Sri Lanka, drought linked to El Niño has dried wells and reservoirs and cut into crops and farmer incomes. Indonesia is experiencing its worst wildfire season in 11 years, with prolonged drought and extreme heat exacerbated by El Niño. And in Peru, authorities are preparing for the opposite extreme: intense rains, flooding and landslides which the national civil-defence agency says could affect around 1.2 million people.
These impacts will multiply as El Niño intensifies.
And yet, just as the risks to food production are rising, the money available to help farmers withstand them is shrinking.
10% funding decline in 2024
A forthcoming analysis from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) shows that climate-related development finance for agrifood systems is moving in the wrong direction. In 2024, the latest year for which data is available, it fell by 10 percent compared with a 2 percent overall decline. The sectors that put food on our tables — crops, livestock, forestry and fisheries — received just 5 percent.
Yet this is precisely the moment when climate investment in agriculture needs to grow, not shrink. It can help communities adapt, build resilience and protect food security, while unlocking larger flows of public and private finance. Agriculture feeds us, supports the livelihoods of well over a billion people, and is often the first sector hit by drought, floods and extreme heat. Cutting that investment now is a false economy.
One failed harvest can plant the seed for the next crisis, forcing farmers to eat the seed they have saved for planting, sell livestock or tools, or take on debt. It can also deepen food insecurity, disrupt supply chains and drive up prices, showing up months later in supermarket aisles far away.
The Central American Dry Corridor, stretching through much of the region, shows both how exposed farmers are, and what investment can do. Based on an analysis of 41 years of satellite observations, FAO finds that some crop and pasture areas there face more than a 50 percent chance of agricultural drought over the coming months.
About half of Central America’s 1.9 million producers of maize, beans and other basic grains live in the Dry Corridor. Many grow food both for sale and for their own families. When a harvest fails, they lose both income and dinner.
El Salvador project conserves water and soil
In El Salvador, which lies within the Dry Corridor, more than 50,000 farmers have adopted practices to better withstand drought and increasingly unreliable rainfall through RECLIMA, a project financed by the Green Climate Fund and implemented by FAO in partnership with the government of El Salvador. It has substantial national co-financing, including from the country’s Environmental Investment Fund.
El Niño can intensify El Salvador’s annual mid-season dry spell, known as the canícula, turning it into a longer, harsher drought just as maize needs water most.
For María Cristina Corvera de López, a second-generation farmer in rural Nahualapa, adapting means changing how every drop of rain is captured and used. She plants trees alongside her crops to provide shade and minimise evaporation and uses simple irrigation channels and a homemade drip system to conserve water. Instead of burning stalks, leaves and husks after harvest, as generations before her did, she turns them into mulch to hold moisture in the soil.
“The effects of climate change are a constant challenge,” she says. But the new techniques have made her farm more resilient to El Niño as well. Where she once harvested about 50 bags of maize per acre, she now gets around 80, even during droughts. It’s enough to feed her family and sell the surplus.
Managing risk now cuts future costs
Together, these adaptations can mean the difference between losing a crop and getting through a dry season with enough food, seed and income to plant again. They are also the result of climate finance invested before disaster strikes.
RECLIMA shows what that kind of adaptation investment can buy. Adaptation accounted for 45 percent of climate-related development finance to agrifood systems in 2024, and multilateral development banks are directing more agricultural finance towards resilience. That shift reflects a growing recognition that adaptation is a form of risk management, not just a development cost.
We need much more of it. The same investments that help farmers withstand El Niño also enable them to adapt to a hotter, more unpredictable future. Cutting investment in the people who produce our food just as climate risks intensify does not save money. It simply pushes a much larger bill into the next harvest, the next food crisis, and the next El Niño.
The post As El Niño intensifies, we should be investing more in the world’s farmers appeared first on Climate Home News.
As El Niño intensifies, we should be investing more in the world’s farmers
An area of Amazon forest roughly the size of the US state of New Jersey has remained standing due to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s leadership of Brazil, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Lula beat Jair Bolsonaro in the 2022 election to become president of the nation that is home to nearly 60% of the Amazon rainforest.
Forest loss surged during Bolsonaro’s far-right presidency and dropped sharply under the left-wing Lula, with Amazon deforestation likely to hit its lowest level on record this year.
Now, as another presidential election approaches, Lula is facing off against Bolsonaro’s son, Flávio Bolsonaro, whose “anti-environmental” policies are similar to his father’s.
Carbon Brief’s analysis suggests that at least 20,000 square kilometres (km2) of deforestation has been avoided since Lula took office and prioritised Amazon protection.
The analysis is based on modelling by an international research team of an alternative scenario in which Brazil’s flagship forest code legislation was not enforced – a proxy for Jair Bolsonaro’s leadership.
Experts tell Carbon Brief that this estimate is likely “conservative” and that actual deforestation under Bolsonaro could have been “much higher”.
With Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro tied in the polls, the upcoming election is expected to significantly shape the level of environmental action in the world’s fourth-largest emitter, whose emissions are largely driven by deforestation.
‘Brazil is back’
When Jair Bolsonaro was president of Brazil between 2019 and 2022, he championed the nation’s powerful agribusiness sector and oversaw an unprecedented increase in Amazon deforestation.
Bolsonaro weakened regulations, slashed federal agency budgets and empowered illegal activities in the Amazon, while attacking Indigenous and environmental groups.
This meant that the forest code – Brazil’s flagship legislation that requires landowners to preserve and restore forest on their property – was not properly enforced.
After Lula’s presidential victory in 2022, he promised to target “zero deforestation” by 2030, telling the COP27 UN climate summit that “Brazil is back”.
Lula rolled back Bolsonaro’s wave of deregulation and reinstated a deforestation “action plan”. Led by celebrated environmentalist Marina Silva, the environment ministry scaled up enforcement and policing activities in the Amazon.
As a result, annual deforestation in the Amazon has more than halved from 11,594km2 per year in 2022 to 5,731km2 in 2025.
Data from August 2025 to July 2026 – the timespan used in government records – is yet to be released, but preliminary satellite alerts put the deforestation figure at 2,874km2.
While the final figure is likely to be higher, experts still think Amazon deforestation in 2026 could hit its lowest level since records began in 1988.
New Jersey-sized forest
Compared to a scenario in which Bolsonaro won in 2022, Carbon Brief analysis suggests that at least 20,000km2 of Amazon forest remains standing today due to Lula’s leadership.
This area – roughly the size of Wales, Belize, Slovenia or the US state of New Jersey – is indicated by the grey area in the chart below.
This analysis is based on a 2023 study on the role of nature-based solutions in Brazil’s pathway to net-zero emissions. This was a refined update of a 2018 study that used the same GLOBIOM-Brazil model, from researchers at the University of Oxford, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE).
It is based on a comparison of forest code implementation with a “baseline” scenario in which the code is not enforced, reflecting the kind of weak governance seen under the Bolsonaro administration. (See Carbon Brief’s 2022 article for more details of this modelling.)
Dr Aline Soterroni, a University of Oxford researcher who led the 2023 analysis, tells Carbon Brief that the reversal seen under Lula “shows how quickly deforestation can respond to political will”.
However, she stresses that the modelling of the “no forest code” scenario is “relatively conservative”, with deforestation remaining high but not rising.
Deforestation in this scenario – used here as a proxy for a Bolsonaro election win – is tempered by slower demand growth for Brazilian beef and soy, says Soterroni. She notes that the scenario also does not capture the potential for illegal forest clearing in response to weak governance.
Indeed, some experts anticipated in 2022 that a Bolsonaro victory would send deforestation rates rising to near-record levels.
Claudio Angelo, international policy coordinator at Brazil’s Climate Observatory, tells Carbon Brief that if Bolsonaro had won in 2022, “we have reason to believe [this would have resulted] in much higher rates than during his first term”.
Angelo says the “political signal” would likely have driven an “explosion of wildcat mining” and illegal deforestation in the Amazon. He also points to efforts – including by Flávio Bolsonaro – to formally dismantle the forest code in the Brazilian congress, during Jair Bolsonaro’s first term.
Soterroni notes that deforestation rates did not immediately drop following Lula’s election, as suggested by modelling of a full “forest code compliance” scenario. She says this reflects the “gradual and imperfect process” of restoring and enforcing the law.
Nevertheless, she tells Carbon Brief:
“The key message from our modelling is the contrast between these trajectories: weak environmental governance keeps deforestation substantially higher than full implementation of the forest code. That message remains relevant today.”
Election significance
With Jair Bolsonaro in prison for plotting a coup after losing the 2022 election, his son Flávio Bolsonaro, a senator for Rio de Janeiro, is standing against Lula in the upcoming contest for president.
There are 13 candidates, but Flávio Bolsonaro and Lula are by far the frontrunners and are currently neck-and-neck in opinion polls.
If Lula wins, experts say he is likely to continue with the “zero deforestation by 2030” agenda that has already had a pronounced impact on forest loss.
As the chart below shows, periods when Amazon deforestation fell in recent history all occurred during Lula’s three terms as president.
In contrast, experts say Flávio Bolsonaro, a climate sceptic who has indicated he will continue his father’s political agenda and favour agribusiness and mining, will likely drive a surge in deforestation. Angelo tells Carbon Brief:
“At the risk of sounding alarmist, I’ve been saying that Lula’s re-election is the only thing standing between us and a wide destruction of the Amazon.”
A Bolsonaro win would be a “tremendous disaster”, says Dr Patricia Pinho, deputy science director at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, adding:
“I don’t think we can afford four years of increasing deforestation [and] violence against Indigenous peoples.”
Dr David Lapola, an ecologist focused on Amazon research at the University of Campinas in Brazil, says he believes deforestation “would certainly rise” and Brazil’s climate and deforestation goals “would be thrown in the trash bin”. He tells Carbon Brief:
“The Bolsonaro administration in the 2019-2022 period showed that the deconstruction of environmental policies and institutes can be done very, very quickly.
“In a matter of a few months, they can destroy what has been constructed over decades of environmental policy and activism in Brazil.”
‘Greenest’ policies
Lula has the “greenest” policy proposals of Brazil’s six top-polling presidential candidates, according to analysis by the Climate Observatory.
The analysis identifies 16 “positive and detailed” environmental commitments in Lula’s proposals, including reaffirming his “zero deforestation by 2030” goal.
Flávio Bolsonaro, on the other hand, has one positive environmental commitment and seven “clearly anti-environmental” proposals.
The right-wing politician has committed to zero “illegal” deforestation by 2029. However, he has also previously led an attempt to change the forest code, opening up large tracts of previously out-of-bounds forest for legal clearance by extractive industries.
Given this, Angelo tells Carbon Brief that he is sceptical about the 2029 pledge.
“The only way you can trust him on this is to think that he is going to revoke the forest code and make all illegal deforestation legal.”
Lula is also the only major candidate to list a clear target for cutting national emissions, sticking with Brazil’s existing goal to cut emissions by 59-67% by 2035, compared to 2005 levels.
Overall, the Climate Observatory notes that climate change and environmental issues “are off the radar for most candidates”, who are instead focusing on the economy and security issues.
Pinho adds that deforestation and the Amazon have not been at the “forefront” of this election, compared to 2022.
If Bolsonaro wins, up to 95% of the Amazon would fall under the leadership of right-wing national governments – including those in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru – reported Mongabay. It noted that presidents in all these nations “explicitly favour agribusiness and mining over environmental conservation”.
If no candidate receives a majority of votes in the first round of Brazil’s election on 4 October, a runoff will take place on 25 October, as has happened at every presidential election since 1998.
Soy moratorium and Brazilian congress
Other factors will also play a role in future deforestation in Brazil, regardless of the next president.
One is the effective end of the Amazon soy moratorium. This is a voluntary agreement signed by companies committing to not buy soya beans grown on land in the Brazilian Amazon that was deforested after 2008.
Conservation organisation WWF’s international director general, Kirsten Schuijt, previously described it as the “most impactful voluntary supply chain policy ever implemented”.
However, major grain traders withdrew from the agreement earlier this year, effectively bringing it to an end. Pinho describes this move as a “huge destruction” of Brazil’s environmental protections.
Research shows the moratorium prevented around 18,000km2 of deforestation in its first decade of operation from 2005-16.
In contrast, a 2026 study estimated that the end of the moratorium could result in 14,000km2 of additional deforestation in the Amazon by 2036.
Alongside choosing a new president on 4 October, Brazilian voters will elect state governors and members of congress, which will also factor into future environmental impacts.
Right-leaning parties, including the far-right Liberal Party linked to the Bolsonaros, currently hold half the seats of the two chambers of congress.
This has led to conflict between lawmakers and Lula. For example, in 2025, congress bypassed Lula’s veto of several aspects of a controversial piece of legislation dubbed the “devastation bill”.
Pinho says that the potential for a right-wing congress and president would be “devastating for the environmental and climate agenda”.
Lapola notes that a Flávio Bolsonaro presidency “would consolidate the view in Brazil that environmental protection is solely a matter of political preference, and not a crucial need of all people”. He adds:
“Land pillage, destruction of precious biodiversity and scorning of Indigenous peoples simply cannot be a nation’s project in the 21st century. We have got to be smarter than that, for sure.”
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The post Analysis: Lula presidency saved at least 20,000km2 of Brazilian Amazon since 2022 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Lula presidency saved at least 20,000km2 of Brazilian Amazon since 2022
This letter is a bit more direct and longer than most of those which I write, but I hope you will be okay with that, because the times seem to call for being plain.
A few weeks ago I got a text message from an old and dear friend —let’s call her Hannah.
I have enough shared life with Hannah that, whenever we talk, the conversation always feels current and effortless, despite gaps of months or even years.
Hannah has been talking with her son — we’ll call him Neil — who is a teenager and doing well in school, but wildly worried about the state of the world, including the imminent trajectory of global warming. Hannah and I don’t text each other other very often, but on this occasion she’s reached out with something visceral:
Neil has challenged me to point him to something hopeful, if I can find it. He says so far no one is showing any will to uphold the Paris Agreement. I am checking in to see how you still manage to have real hope.*
Then, just a few days later, the United Nations Environment Programme Limiting Overshoot report landed, containing the principal finding that it is likely the global temperature will soon exceed 1.5°C.
After that news, and the real time devastation in Nepal, and in the context of the broader state of the world, I found myself having multiple conversations with friends and colleagues about the structure of hope. I want to openly share that after a few of these exchanges, I metaphorically closed the blinds, and wondered how to feel, and what to do, because there is no avoiding the dreadfulness of the news, and what it means for the suffering of people and life on Earth.
But if you are fortunate enough to have time, space and security to do so, then after the darkness, you open the shutters and once again there is light. This is the structure of my innermost resolve.
* * *
Our lives — those of us living on our magnificent earth now — have the greatest possible purpose.
There is virtually no problem that we endlessly clever and creative, human beings cannot solve, when we work together.
And we are not just intelligent and ingenious; we are inherently social, nurturing and brave; capable of the deepest enduring love.
Each of the roughly 12,000 generations of humanity so far has made life possible for those who have followed, through acts of devotion.
Babies have been held and fed. Water and food have been found and shared. Shelter has been built. For 12,000 generations we have held the hands of our children.
Every single one of us was once carried in the arms of another, unable to walk ourselves. It is our thoughtfulness, kindness and care that have seen us through as a species. Sometimes this has been in the most exigent of circumstances, when enough of our ancestors did not give in, faced incredibly difficult things, to somehow make it through.
And so it comes to this. To what we now must do. We must do as 12,000 generations of people did for us.
The struggle to keep global warming to under 1.5 degrees may be over. The battle of return—to get our planet back to safe temperatures at emergency speed and scale — is just beginning. Upon this struggle depends the future of all we care about, and that of all life on Earth. The prospects of the next 12,000 generations are conditioned by our efforts now.
Our work now is to keep the overshoot as low as we can, make it as brief as possible, and do everything within our power to alleviate other pressures on nature. It is to take care of humanity — of one another — in the face of mounting climate and ecological damage. And by these efforts, create the conditions for future flourishing. Every fraction of every degree matters.
What must now be done is hard, much tougher than should have been necessary, because of the vested interests in coal, oil and gas and deforestation, and the failures of decision makers. And while renewable energy has surged, making the case for change much simpler, on the other side of the ledger there’s the reactionary and gangsterist turn of politics and the multiplier effects of wars and mass violence, with the existential destabilisation of big tech looming over all.
There is no sugarcoating the scale of difficulty. But what is necessary remains within our collective power. We must never, for one second, say that returning our planet to flourishing is impossible — many of the obvious solutions already exist; but even where transformation relies on reforms, technologies or capabilities that might sound fanciful, or historical changes that are unprecedented, this can be no barrier to our conviction. After all, much of what we take for granted today as ordinary features of social life, would have been considered impossible by every single generation before us.
The world has not been destroyed by nuclear war; we solved the growing hole in the ozone layer; Antarctica was kept sacrosanct from exploitation. Humanity has collectively triumphed before, and can do so again.
We can find the necessary social and political will to do what is needed because these are endlessly renewable resources. The necessary financial capital exists. Apart from the fossil fuel industry, the greatest barrier we face is to mistakenly concede that what lies before us is insurmountable. It is not.
We must avoid the siren song of fatalism. Because. It. Is. Never. Too. Late.
None of which is to be insensitive to the horrors already unleashed — the deadly and grotesque harm to people, places and species that cannot be undone; or to be blind to the impacts that are coming. But where we have the power to act, we also have the responsibility — and the extraordinary privilege — to do what must be done.
Although she is wounded, our planet is still alive and beautiful beyond all of our comprehension. Hundreds of billions of creatures live and thrive still upon this earth. Nothing has happened until it has happened, and life fights for life. Every beetle, every tree, all the fish in the ocean, the smallest of the geothermal shrimps, the greatest of the whales and the mightiest of the birds — all demand life every second of their existence, so that their species too may have future generations.
No individual has to know how to solve this alone. Indeed, finding some detachment and humility is essential to concentrate on the role that each of us can play.
Hope is not merely a mindset or a story we tell ourselves. Collective power is not abstract; it is what we do, together, applying ourselves to the practical mechanics of change and contestation within society, by being part of the organisations and networks of people that are dedicated to effective strategies. It is why I am so committed to Greenpeace.
Working from without and within, there are opportunities to make rapid change within institutions, governments, businesses and communities to create the social, economic and political momentum for emissions reduction at speed and scale, reminding ourselves always of what remains possible, even if it hasn’t happened yet.
We can return the planet to safer temperatures. We can put technologies back in the service of people and life. We can return to the assumptions that seemed so obvious just one generation ago — that it is both possible, and our obligation, to build a better future for all people, and for life on Earth.
I did write back to Hannah and Neil, to say honestly to a treasured friend and her son, that yes, as a matter of faith, conviction, evidence and strategy, absolutely there is real hope. And this is a pledge not just to Neil and his generation, but to the next 12,000.
Together, we have the power. Together, we cross this bridge through the dark. To secure an Earth capable of nurturing life in all of its magnificent diversity.
We did not choose to carry this historic responsibility, but here we are. And it is so lucky that we are here.
I wouldn’t choose any other time to be here, alive on Earth, with you.
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