From Berlin and Paris, to Brussels and Bucharest, European farmers have driven their tractors to the streets in protest over recent weeks.
According to reports, these agricultural protesters from across the European Union have a series of concerns, including competition from cheaper imports, rising costs of energy and fertiliser, and environmental rules.
Farmers’ groups in countries including Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Poland and Romania have all been protesting over the past couple of months.
The UK’s Sunday Telegraph has tried to frame the protests as a “net-zero revolt” with several other media outlets saying the farmers have been rallying against climate or “green” rules.
Carbon Brief has analysed the key demands from farmer groups in seven countries to determine how they are related to greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, biodiversity or conservation.
The findings show that many of the issues farmers are raising are directly and indirectly related to these issues. But some are not related at all. Several are based on policy measures that have not yet taken effect, such as the EU’s nature restoration law and a South American trade agreement.
Why farmers are protesting
The issues EU farmers are raising centre around “falling sale prices, rising costs, heavy regulation, powerful and domineering retailers, debt, climate change and cheap foreign imports”, the Guardian reported.
Carbon Brief has gathered a range of specific concerns based on media reports and farmer union statements across seven EU countries.
Each one is classified around whether the concern is related to climate change and/or greenhouse gas emissions (green), biodiversity and/or conservation (yellow), or not related to either set of issues (red).
Note, this table is not exhaustive.
These issues relate to climate change and biodiversity in different ways.
In some countries, protesters are calling for more action on climate adaptation, particularly in Greece where farmers are asking for measures to prevent farmland being damaged by flooding and other extreme weather.
In other cases, farmers are calling for fuel subsidies to continue and for fertiliser and pesticide restrictions to be reconsidered.
The EU’s “farm to fork” strategy – the bloc’s broad sustainable food initiative – focuses on cutting both pesticides and fertilisers in the years ahead to optimise their use and reduce harm (read Carbon Brief’s Q&A on fertilisers and climate change).
Last November, politicians voted against the EU’s proposed pesticide regulation which aimed to halve the use and risk of chemical pesticides by the end of this decade. This “buried the bill for good”, the Associated Press noted. Any new proposal “would need to start from scratch” after the European parliament elections in June.
The EU said these rules would have “translate[d] our commitment to halt biodiversity loss in Europe into action”, highlighting the health risks and water quality issues associated with pesticide use.
European legislators are working to finalise a number of other climate and biodiversity rules this year ahead of the June elections.
How the protests have developed
In December, the German government announced plans to reduce subsidies and spending in an effort to fill a €17bn gap in the country’s 2024 budget.
The measures included cutting some agricultural subsidies and tax breaks, leading to an outburst of farmer protests (as covered in Carbon Brief’s Cropped newsletter).
In the weeks since then, other farmer groups across the EU have been taking to the streets with their own concerns.
Germany
The German government eased its budget cut plans in January by “giving up a proposal to scrap a car tax exemption for farming vehicles” and phasing-out agricultural diesel subsidies instead of outright removing them, the Associated Press reported.
German farmers continued to protest, calling for the subsidies to remain fully in place. The Financial Times said the subsidy issues were the “immediate trigger” for the protests, but German farmer Frank Schmidt told the outlet that he and others were already “at the end of our tether”.
The protests “tapped into wider discontent with Germany’s government”, the Associated Press said, with farmers raising similar concerns around requirements and cheap imported food.
Around 30,000 protestors and thousands of tractors brought Berlin’s city centre “to a standstill” in mid-January as the demonstrations continued, the Guardian said.
France
The protests in France also began partly over plans to reduce agricultural fuel subsidies, which the government rolled back at the end of January (but not before farmers in Dijon sprayed manure on a local government building).
Protests escalated last week as hundreds of tractors blocked off major roads into the country’s capital in what was called the “siege of Paris” by many media outlets, including BBC News.
President Emmanuel Macron was “scrambling to end an escalating political and social crisis”, the Times said. (Read last week’s edition of Carbon Brief’s Cropped newsletter for more details on the French protests.)
On 1 February, the country’s main farmer unions called for an end to the protests after “securing promises of government assistance” on issues around finance and regulations, according to Al Jazeera.
These included a government decision to suspend efforts to halve the use of pesticides by the end of this decade, the Daily Telegraph reported, which environmentalists described as a “major step backwards”. The newspaper said:
“Studies indicate the population of farmland birds has fallen by 30% in France over the past 30 years, with pesticides blamed as the primary cause for their demise.”
Belgium
Belgian farmers blocked roads in and out of Brussels last week, the Brussels Times reported, before the city was taken over by a wider protest on 1 February. Hundreds of “angry farmers” gathered outside the European parliament building, starting fires and throwing eggs in protest against “taxes, rising costs and cheap imports”, Sky News said.
EU farmers “won their first concession from Brussels” last week, the Guardian reported, after the commission proposed to delay rules for farmers to “set aside land to encourage biodiversity and soil health”.
This will offer “additional flexibility to farmers at a time when they are dealing with multiple challenges”, commission president Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement.
Farmers in Belgium and France are also concerned about competition from trade deals between the EU and other countries.
This includes the EU-Mercosur trade deal, which intends to boost trade between the EU and Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. Many EU farmers believe that it will lead to unfair competition.
Most negotiations were finalised for the deal in 2019, but the final talks were paused “due to the positions of [former] Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on deforestation”, Euractiv reported. (An edition of Carbon Brief’s Cropped newsletter covered this in more detail last year.)
Since Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took over office last year, the deal has gotten closer to completion despite continued opposition from countries including France and Ireland.
Talks are ongoing and the EU “continues to fulfil its objective of achieving an agreement that respects our sustainability goals and respects our sensitivities, particularly in agriculture”, a European commission spokesperson told Reuters last week.
Greece
At the ongoing protests in Greece, farmers raised concerns about accessing more reimbursement for lost crops due to “natural disasters and disease”, eKathimerini reported. Greece was badly impacted by wildfires last summer.
The government has said it will help farmers with energy costs and promised a “one-year extension of a tax rebate for agricultural diesel”, Reuters reported.
Romania
Romanian farmers and truck drivers cited a number of different concerns, many of which related to climate change or biodiversity in different ways.
A major issue for Romanian farmers and other eastern European countries is controlling Ukrainian grain imports. Farmers in countries surrounding Ukraine have been arguing for months that they “can’t compete” with the price of these imports.
Some in Romania also took issue with “disruptions caused by Ukrainian grain imports”, Politico said, noting that “Russia's blockade of Ukraine's Black Sea ports has made Romania a key transit hub for Ukrainian grain.”
In response to the protests, the Romanian government announced extra farmer funding and fuel subsidies on 26 January, according to Radio Romania International.
Last week, the European Commission proposed extending its free trade deal with Ukraine until June 2025, but with a new measure to prevent too many Ukrainian agricultural products being sold in EU states, Euronews reported.
Other EU countries
Farmer protests remain ongoing in Lithuania and Poland over similar concerns, many of which are outlined in the above interactive table.
In Ireland, protests began on 1 February in “solidarity” with other farmers, RTÉ reported. The president of the Irish Farmers Association, Francie Gorman, said there is “mounting frustration about the impact of EU policy”.
Elsewhere, France24 reported that more than 300 vehicles gathered in protest near Milan, Italy last week. Meanwhile, a small group of farmers protested in Portugal on 1 February, Reuters reported.
Farmers in Spain are preparing to take to the streets later this month. Similar plans are underway in Slovakia, where separate protests are ongoing against plans to close the country’s special prosecutor’s office.
Far right taking note
This year will see major elections across the globe.
EU citizens will elect new members of the European parliament in June and recent polling has suggested that there could be a “sharp turn to the right” in the results, Deutsche Welle reported.
As these protests continue, Politico said that right-wing parties in several European countries – such as France, Italy, the Netherlands and Germany – are “piggybacking on farmers’ noisy outrage”.
Dr Gilles Ivaldi, a politics researcher at Sciences Po who has examined the far right in Europe, says that right-wing groups may use the farmer protests to “boost their electoral support”. He tells Carbon Brief:
“What we see, particularly in France, is that the far right is seeking to capitalise on public discontent with the impact of the green transition, not only among farmers but also in social groups affected most by the economic cost of environmental policies.”
He says that in France’s case, the far right is “clearly trying to instrumentalise” the farmer protests to “mobilise against the government and the EU”. Sky News reported that the protests “are being seized upon by various groups”, including Marine Le Pen’s right-wing Rassemblement National party.
But Ivaldi notes that the far right’s EU election focus will mostly remain on topics such as immigration, the economy, the future of the EU and the bloc’s Green Deal. The “main factors” behind a potential right-wing surge will not come from agriculture alone. He adds:
“Far-right parties are currently capitalising on the economic crisis and rise in prices, on the immigration issue, particularly growing concerns about the massive influx of refugees in Germany and, more broadly, the many anxieties caused by the war in Ukraine and geopolitical instability.”
The post Analysis: How do the EU farmer protests relate to climate change? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: How do the EU farmer protests relate to climate change?
Countries are still debating whether to mine the seafloor for minerals, but exploratory efforts have already begun.
As demand for critical minerals surges around the world, countries are debating whether to mine the untapped deep-sea reserves of cobalt, copper and manganese, miles below the surface. But a growing body of research shows that these activities could have profound consequences for ocean ecosystems, and the industries and communities that rely on them.
Climate Change
IEA: Slow transition away from fossil fuels would cost over a million energy sector jobs
A slower shift to clean energy could leave the world with 1.3 million fewer energy sector jobs by 2035 compared with a scenario in which governments fully implement their green policies, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has found.
In its annual World Energy Employment report, the Paris-based watchdog said on Friday that the Current Policies Scenario (CPS), which it reintroduced under pressure from the Trump administration, has “more muted” employment growth than the Stated Policies Scenario.
The CPS sees oil and gas demand continuing to rise until at least 2050 – a scenario that the IEA described as “cautious” and “anchored in enacted laws and measures” and was widely criticised by clean energy experts.
A fast energy transition would spur investment in construction, creating more jobs across the sector. New roles for electricians, building insulators, solar panel and energy-efficient lightbulb installers, and transition mineral miners would more than offset job losses in coal mines, power plants and oil and gas fields, the report found.
-
Plans to turn Europe’s biggest coal mine into a leisure lake prove divisive
Transition experts say repurposing Poland’s Bełchatów mine and power plant for renewables not recreation could bring more jobs, revenue and electricity -
Scottish oil-town plan for green jobs sparks climate campers’ anger over local park
The oil and gas industry aims to bring clean jobs to Aberdeen, but it involves paving over part of a much-loved park, igniting a debate on just transition
Anabella Rosemberg, Just Transition lead at Climate Action Network International, lamented that the clean energy sector is “being undermined at a time when employment creation is of utmost priority”.
“Climate ambition and decent job creation must go hand in hand – but as the recent conversations at COP30 showed, there is a need for both the right targets and just transition strategies to make it happen,” she added.
A more ambitious Net Zero Emissions scenario, aligned with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C, would see roughly ten million more energy jobs created than under the CPS, report author Daniel Wetzel told Climate Home News at a press conference.
Bottleneck warnings
The IEA warned that governments must act to train workers for these roles or risk facing shortages of electricians, welders, and grid specialists – a gap that could slow the energy transition and drive up wages and energy costs.
IEA head Fatih Birol highlighted a particular shortage of qualified workers in the nuclear industry, warning that the problem could worsen as the sector’s workforce continues to age. “I hear nuclear is making a comeback, but the interest in the nuclear sector for the jobs is rather weak,” he said.
Laura Cozzi, IEA’s Director of Sustainability, Technology and Outlooks, warned of a shortage of skilled workers in electricity grids. “That is one of the key ingredients why we are not seeing grids ramp up as [they] should,” she said. Over 60 governments pledged at COP29 to improve and expand their grids to enable clean electricity to flow to where it is needed.
-
Migrant workers building Saudi Arabia’s green future face exploitation, report finds
Heat stroke, long hours and punishment for taking breaks – low-paid foreign workers compare jobs on Saudi renewable energy projects to a prison sentence -
Self-taught mechanics give second life to Jordan’s glut of spent EV batteries
As EV sales boom in Jordan, a lack of formal infrastructure for dealing with end-of-life batteries is leading to some innovative solutions
Bert De Wel, Global Coordinator for Climate Policy at the International Trade Union Confederation, celebrated that the energy transition is creating jobs but added that they should be good jobs with decent pay, conditions and union rights. Decent work would attract skilled workers, he added.
The report found that wages in the oil and gas industry have generally risen faster over the past year than in the solar – and especially the wind – sectors. It noted that the oil and gas industry has a “historical tendency to offer highly competitive wages to attract and retain top talent”.
At the COP30 climate summit, governments agreed to set up the Belém Action Mechanism to try and make the energy transition fairer to groups such as workers in the energy industry. It will give trade unions a formal role in shaping just transition policies, for what the ITUC says is the first time.
ITUC General Secretary Luc Triangle called it a “decisive win for the union movement and working people across the world, in all sectors but especially those in transition industries.”
The post IEA: Slow transition away from fossil fuels would cost over a million energy sector jobs appeared first on Climate Home News.
IEA: Slow transition away from fossil fuels would cost over a million energy sector jobs
Climate Change
DeBriefed 5 December: Deadly Asia floods; Adaptation finance target examined; Global south IPCC scientists speak out
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Deadly floods in Asia
MOUNTING DEVASTATION: The Associated Press reported that the death toll from catastrophic floods in south-east Asia had reached 1,500, with Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand most affected and hundreds still missing. The newswire said “thousands” more face “severe” food and clean-water shortages. Heavy rains and thunderstorms are expected this weekend, it added, with “saturated soil and swollen rivers leaving communities on edge”. Earlier in the week, Bloomberg said the floods had caused “at least $20bn in losses”.
CLIMATE CHANGE LINKS: A number of outlets have investigated the links between the floods and human-caused climate change. Agence France-Presse explained that climate change was “producing more intense rain events because a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture and warmer oceans can turbocharge storms”. Meanwhile, environmental groups told the Associated Press the situation had been exacerbated by “decades of deforestation”, which had “stripped away natural defenses that once absorbed rainfall and stabilised soil”.
‘NEW NORMAL’: The Associated Press quoted Malaysian researcher Dr Jemilah Mahmood saying: “South-east Asia should brace for a likely continuation and potential worsening of extreme weather in 2026 and for many years.” Al Jazeera reported that the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies had called for “stronger legal and policy frameworks to protect people in disasters”. The organisation’s Asia-Pacific director said the floods were a “stark reminder that climate-driven disasters are becoming the new normal”, the outlet said.
Around the world
- REVOKED: The UK and Netherlands withdrew $2.2bn of financial backing from a controversial liquified natural gas (LNG) project in Mozambique, Reuters reported. The Guardian noted that TotalEnergies’ “giant” project stood accused of “fuelling the climate crisis and deadly terror attacks”.
- REVERSED: US president Donald Trump announced plans to “significantly weaken” Biden-era fuel efficiency requirements for cars, the New York Times said.
- RESTRICTED: EU leaders agreed to ban the import of Russian gas from autumn 2027, the Financial Times reported. Meanwhile, Reuters said it is “likely” the European Commission will delay announcing a plan on auto sector climate targets next week, following pressure to “weaken” a 2035 cut-off for combustion engines.
- RETRACTED: An influential Nature study that looked at the economic consequences of climate change has been withdrawn after “criticism from peers”, according to Bloomberg. [The research came second in Carbon Brief’s ranking of the climate papers most covered by the media in 2024.]
- REBUKED: The federal government of Canada faced a backlash over an oil pipeline deal struck last week with the province of Alberta. CBC News noted that First Nations chiefs voted “unanimously” to demand the withdrawal of the deal and Canada’s National Observer quoted author Naomi Klein as saying that the prime minister was “completely trashing Canada’s climate commitments”.
- RESCHEDULED: The Indonesian government has cancelled plans to close a coal plant seven years early, Bloomberg reported. Meanwhile, Bloomberg separately reported that India is mulling an “unprecedented increase” in coal-power capacity that could see plants built “until at least 2047”.
$518 billion a year
The projected coastal flood damages for the Asia-Pacific region by 2100 if current policies continue, according to a Scientific Reports study covered this week by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- More than 100 “climate-sensitive rivers” worldwide are experiencing “large and severe changes in streamflow volume and timing” | Environmental Research Letters
- Africa’s forests have switched from a carbon sink into a source | Scientific Reports
- Increasing urbanisation can “substantially intensify warming”, contributing up to 0.44C of additional temperature rise per year through 2060 | Communications Earth & Environment
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
A new target for developed nations to triple adaptation finance by 2035, agreed at the COP30 climate summit, would not cover more than a third of developing countries’ estimated needs, Carbon Brief analysis showed. The chart above compares a straight line to meeting the adaptation finance target (blue), alongside an estimate of countries’ adaptation needs (grey), which was calculated using figures from the latest UN Environmental Programme adaptation gap report, based on countries’ UN climate plans (called “nationally determined contributions” or NDCs) and national adaptation plans (NAPs).
Spotlight
Inclusivity at the IPCC
This week, Carbon Brief speaks to an IPCC lead author researching ways to improve the experience of global south scientists taking part in producing the UN climate body’s assessments.
Hundreds of climate scientists from around the world met in Paris this week to start work on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) newest set of climate reports.
The IPCC is the UN body responsible for producing the world’s most authoritative climate science reports. Hundreds of scientists from across the globe contribute to each “assessment cycle”, which sees researchers aim to condense all published climate science over several years into three “working group” reports.
The reports inform the decisions of governments – including at UN climate talks – as well as the public understanding of climate change.
The experts gathering in Paris are the most diverse group ever convened by the IPCC.
Earlier this year, Carbon Brief analysis found that – for the first time in an IPCC cycle – citizens of the global south make up 50% of authors of the three working group reports. The IPCC has celebrated this milestone, with IPCC chair Prof Jim Skea touting the seventh assessment report’s (AR7’s) “increased diversity” in August.
But some IPCC scientists have cautioned that the growing involvement of global south scientists does not translate into an inclusive process.
“What happens behind closed doors in these meeting rooms doesn’t necessarily mirror what the diversity numbers say,” Dr Shobha Maharaj, a Trinidadian climate scientist who is a coordinating lead author for working group two (WG2) of AR7, told Carbon Brief.
Global south perspective
Motivated by conversations with colleagues and her own “uncomfortable” experience working on the small-islands chapter of the sixth assessment cycle (AR6) WG2 report, Maharaj – an adjunct professor at the University of Fiji – reached out to dozens of fellow contributors to understand their experience.
The exercise, she said, revealed a “dominance of thinking and opinions from global north scientists, whereas the global south scientists – the scientists who were people of colour – were generally suppressed”.
The perspectives of scientists who took part in the survey and future recommendations for the IPCC are set out in a peer-reviewed essay – co-authored by 20 researchers – slated for publication in the journal PLOS Climate. (Maharaj also presented the findings to the IPCC in September.)
The draft version of the essay notes that global south scientists working on WG2 in AR6 said they confronted a number of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) issues, including “skewed” author selection, “unequal” power dynamics and a “lack of respect and trust”. The researchers also pointed to logistical constraints faced by global south authors, such as visa issues and limited access to journals.
The anonymous quotations from more than 30 scientists included in the essay, Maharaj said, are “clear data points” that she believes can advance a discussion about how to make academia more inclusive.
“The literature is full of the problems that people of colour or global south authors have in academia, but what you don’t find very often is quotations – especially from climate scientists,” she said. “We tend to be quite a conservative bunch.”
Road to ‘improvement’
Among the recommendations set out in the essay are for DEI training, the appointment of a “diversity and inclusion ombudsman” and for updated codes of conduct.
Marharaj said that these “tactical measures” need to occur alongside “transformative approaches” that help “address value systems, dismantle power structures [and] change the rules of participation”.
With drafting of the AR7 reports now underway, Maharaj said she is “hopeful” the new cycle can be an improvement on the last, pointing to a number of “welcome” steps from the IPCC.
This includes holding the first-ever expert meeting on DEI this autumn, new mechanisms where authors can flag concerns and the recruitment of a “science and capacity officer” to support WG2 authors.
The hope, Maharaj explained, is to enhance – not undermine – climate science.
“The idea here was to move forward and to improve the IPCC, rather than attack it,” she said. “Because we all love the science – and we really value what the IPCC brings to the world.”
Watch, read, listen
BROKEN PROMISES: Climate Home News spoke to communities in Nigeria let down by the government’s failure to clean up oil spills by foreign companies.
‘WHEN A ROAD GOES WRONG’: Inside Climate News looked at how a new road from Brazil’s western Amazon to Peru has become a “conduit for rampant deforestation and illegal gold mining”.
SHADOWY COURTS: In the Guardian, George Monbiot lamented the rise of investor-state dispute settlements, which he described as “undemocratic offshore tribunals” that are already having a “chilling effect” on countries’ climate ambitions.
Coming up
- 1-12 December: UN Environment Assembly 7, Nairobi, Kenya
- 7 December: Hong Kong legislative elections
- 11 December: Falkland Islands legislative assembly elections
Pick of the jobs
- Greenpeace International, engagement manager – climate and energy | Salary: Unknown. Location: Various
- The Energy, newsletter editor | Salary: Unknown. Location: Australia (remote)
- University of Groningen, PhD position in motivating people to contribute to societal transitions | Salary: €3,059-€3,881 per month. Location: Groningen, the Netherlands
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 5 December: Deadly Asia floods; Adaptation finance target examined; Global south IPCC scientists speak out appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Revised Vaccination Regimen
A New Tool Could Help Track Deep-Sea Mining Activity
Our Fix Our Forests advocacy in 2025
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
Spanish-language misinformation on renewable energy spreads online, report shows
-
Climate Change4 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases4 months ago
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
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years 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 Change Videos2 years ago
The toxic gas flares fuelling Nigeria’s climate change – BBC News
-
Climate Change2 years 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”
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Why airlines are perfect targets for anti-greenwashing legal action