Since 2011, the UK has spent at least £12.63bn on 490 climate-related projects in developing countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
A new investigation by Carbon Brief reveals exactly how much of the UK’s foreign-aid budget is being used – and how – to help nations in the global south to cut emissions and better prepare for rising temperatures.
Freedom-of-information (FOI) requests submitted to the UK government have yielded new, detailed information about more than a decade of foreign-aid spending on climate change.
This comes at a time of intense scrutiny for the UK’s climate-finance spending, which it is legally bound to deliver under the terms of the Paris Agreement.
The government has slashed its aid budget and, as Carbon Brief’s analysis reveals, fallen behind on its pledge to spend £11.6bn on climate finance between 2021 and 2026.
Key findings from Carbon Brief’s analysis include:
- Annual climate finance spending has more than tripled from £392.5m in 2011/12 to nearly £1.40bn in 2022/23.
- Ethiopia has received the most single-country funding overall since 2011, a total of £377.5m. Kenya, Bangladesh and Uganda were also major recipients.
- Combined with government-reported public and private finance “mobilised” by UK funds, the UK’s total climate-finance contribution reached £26.49bn by 2023.
- Around 80% of climate funds go to projects targeting “developing countries” in general or regional funds, which are often run by large multilateral institutions.
In this analysis, Carbon Brief walks through the key findings and trends that emerge from this 12-year dataset.
- Carbon Brief’s FOI and project database
- How much climate finance has the UK spent?
- Where is UK climate finance being spent?
- What results has this climate finance produced?
- Methodology
Carbon Brief’s FOI and project database
Developed countries, such as the UK, have committed to providing “climate finance” to developing countries to help them cut emissions and prepare for a warming world.
In practice, this money is generally drawn from countries’ foreign-aid budgets. In the UK, this kind of aid is termed International Climate Finance (ICF).
The nation has been supporting ICF projects since 2011 and, throughout this period, it has funded everything from providing households in Nepal with solar power to ensuring flood-stricken communities in Malawi have enough to eat.
Climate finance is a highly politicised issue and developed countries are under intense pressure to deliver the money they have promised repeatedly to developing countries – and to spend it in ways that are “efficient” and achieve the greatest impact.
Specifically, they have a still-outstanding pledge to raise $100bn annually by 2020 and now must decide on a more ambitious goal by 2024. There are also questions around whether rich countries, including the UK, are paying their “fair share” based on their historic responsibility for climate change.
Over the past decade, the UK has been the world’s fifth-largest national provider of climate finance after – in descending order – Japan, Germany, France and the US, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Carbon Brief carried out an earlier FOI request in 2017, obtaining information about all the climate finance projects the UK had funded since 2011, the year when ICF began. The findings were mapped and presented in full.
The UK government provides a catalogue of its foreign-aid projects on the Development Tracker website. However, while this service allows users to search for projects with an ICF component, it does not provide the breakdown or percentage of how much of each budget is solely allocated for ICF.
The government has also been submitting detailed information about how much funding from its foreign-aid projects is “climate-specific” to the UN. But these reports contain less information than Development Tracker and only go as far as 2020.
Given this, Carbon Brief has successfully repeated its earlier FOI, this time for the financial years 2017/18 to 2022/23. The government provided this data to Carbon Brief in May 2023.
The resulting data has now been combined with the original dataset, plus data extracted from Development Tracker project pages, to produce a new interactive table detailing every project that includes ICF spending between the financial years 2011/12 and 2022/23 – and the amount of funding that is climate-specific for each one. This can be viewed below.
The total includes £12.63bn of climate finance spent across 490 projects over this 11-year period.
Many ICF projects overseen by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and its predecessor the Department for International Development (DFID) are only partly related to climate change, meaning they may also cover other issues, such as education and healthcare. For these projects, only the climate-relevant proportion of spending – as determined by the FCDO – is included in Carbon Brief’s database.
Virtually all of the money included in this table is straightforward ICF. However, in their FOI responses, government departments also provided some additional funds that are counted towards their climate-finance totals.
These include “R&I [research and innovation] funds” – namely the Newton Fund and the Global Challenges Research Fund – which support scientific research in developing countries. Between 2018 and 2023, £117.5m from these funds was used as climate finance. (These funds cover a range of projects but have been grouped together here under one project name.)
While these funds were not initially counted towards the UK’s climate-finance goals, budgetary pressure over the years has led to climate-related projects from these schemes being used to make up ICF totals. The reverse has also happened when climate-related R&I projects were in danger of losing funding.
Another notable outlier is funding for “COP costs”. The government counts £99m that it spent hosting the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021 towards its goals.
(A read-only Google Sheet with the full dataset can be viewed here. For more information about this data, see the Methodology section at the end of the article.)
How much climate finance has the UK spent?
The UK has more than tripled its annual climate-finance spending from £392.5m in 2011/12 to nearly £1.40bn in 2022/23.
In total, it has spent £12.63bn of development aid on ICF programmes across this period. This amounts to around 8% of total foreign-aid spending.
However, ICF funding has dropped over the past two years from a peak of £1.56bn in 2020/21, despite a 2019 government target to significantly scale up climate finance to £11.6bn over five years out to 2025/26. (For more on this dip in climate finance, see Carbon Brief’s separate analysis.)
Three government departments have been responsible for the UK’s climate-finance projects, although they have shifted titles and responsibilities several times over the past decade.
The majority of projects – 65% of the total funding across 417 projects – have been handled by DFID and, since September 2020, FCDO, which replaced it when the department was rolled into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
The second largest portion – 32% of total funding across 46 projects – has been overseen by the energy department, which has been known as the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and, since February 2023, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ).
The remaining 3% has been handled by the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) across 27 projects. (Unlike the other departments, which released “provisional” data for 2022/23 to Carbon Brief, Defra declined to share data for this year.)
Where is UK climate finance being spent?
The map below shows where the UK has directed single-country funds since 2011 and the total spending in these nations across the 11-year period.
Countries in shades of blue have received climate finance from the UK and those in orange would be eligible to receive it, but have not. (Those in grey are not eligible to receive aid.)
Many factors contribute to which countries receive ICF funds from the UK, including vulnerability to climate change, regional expertise and diplomatic ties.
“It is aid money that is subject to the whim of the donor, who will naturally be funding what is aligned to its national interest – some would argue rightly so,” Faten Aggad, a climate diplomacy expert and adjunct professor at the University of Cape Town tells Carbon Brief.
Of the 37 nations and territories that have received single-country funds, 17 are members of the Commonwealth – a group primarily made up of former British Empire colonies. A further two recipients, St Helena and Montserrat, remain British overseas territories.
Eighteen of the recipients are “least developed countries” (LDCs) – a UN grouping of 46 predominantly African states that are entitled to preferential access to aid. Only three recipients are independent small-island territories – Dominica, Haiti and Fiji.
Ethiopia is, by far, the biggest recipient of single-country funds, with £377.5m in total.
Most of this money has been provided through two sizable programmes aimed at increasing the Ethiopian government’s resilience to humanitarian shocks and increasing food security.
Case study: Productive Safety Net Programme
Location: Ethiopia
ICF spend: £190.8m between 2015/16 and 2019/2020
A social safety net programme – one of the largest in Africa – launched by the Ethiopian government and a group of donors in 2005 to help food-insecure households. It involved handing out food and cash either in exchange for labour on public works projects or unconditionally, for those who cannot work. The UK classed part of its contribution as climate finance because the public works being built include climate-proofing local infrastructure and the rehabilitation of habitats such as shrubland, which it says will absorb carbon dioxide (CO2). Boosting people’s food security also helped to “build resilience to climate shocks”. Money has been provided both directly to the Ethiopian Ministry of Finance and Economic Cooperation and to the World Bank, which also supports the project.
Several major recipients are emerging economies, which often have high emissions and are relatively wealthy.
According to the UK’s Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI), these funds are often provided as loans, with the aim of attracting private investment and potentially creating opportunities for UK firms.
India has seen a dramatic increase in single-country funding. Carbon Brief’s previous analysis in 2017 showed that the UK had spent a total of £5m of ICF there, but now, largely thanks to a new , the total has risen to £144.8m.
Clare Shakya, a climate finance expert at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), tells Carbon Brief:
“The UK’s development finance has traditionally been focused on those countries that most need support from among Britain’s ex-colonies, such as Bangladesh, Uganda and Kenya, and those which hold a strategic interest for the UK, such as Ethiopia, India or Nepal. The current government has been expanding the countries that it partners with on development, largely on the basis of strategic interest.”
As the chart below shows, only £2.55bn has been handed out as direct, single-country funds. The remainder is spent either through regional funds or even more broadly on “developing countries” in general.
Case study: Supporting structural reform in the Indian power sector
Location: India
ICF spend: £13.1m between 2017/18 and 2022/23
This project aims to improve the reliability of electricity supply in India through power-sector reform. It worked alongside a decentralised renewables programme also funded by the UK. In line with the government’s approach to providing aid to India, this project aimed to assist through “world-class” expertise, “not through traditional grant support”. The consultancy KPMGwas hired to provide “technical assistance” to the Indian Ministry of Power and other agencies. Other organisations are also brought into the project. The Shell Foundation – a charitable initiative of the oil company – was hired to promote the employment of women in the energy sector. The Behavioural Insights Team, originally set up by the UK government and dubbed “the nudge unit”, was also employed to apply behavioural insights to the Indian power sector and “influence customer behaviour”.
This is because most ICF is channelled through multilateral development banks, large consultancies and other organisations that ultimately decide how the money will be spent, although often with oversight from the UK and other contributors. (See: Who is the UK paying to run these projects?)
What results has this climate finance produced?
Each year, the UK government publishes a report laying out the impact its climate finance has had and its progress towards a selection of key performance indicators (KPIs). This includes the additional finance that its ICF funds has “mobilised”.
“Mobilised” refers to money from private sources – such as banks and companies – or from external public sources – such as UN bodies, development banks and the governments of recipient countries – which has been spent on climate action due to initial investment using ICF aid money.
These figures are important, not least because the annual $100bn (£80bn) goal that developed countries have promised to meet includes “mobilising” such additional sources.
The chart below shows how, according to the government’s reporting on its KPIs, these climate-finance sources have grown between 2014 and 2023. Combined with ICF spending, they bring the UK’s cumulative total to £26.49bn by 2023. (The government notes that only 297 projects have reported this additional impact, so the real total could be larger.)
Case study: UK Caribbean Infrastructure Fund
Location: Caribbean
ICF spend: £69.5m between 2016/17 and 2022/23
As part of a “major re-engagement between the UK and the Caribbean” in 2015, this fund was launched to build “climate-resilient” infrastructure in eight Commonwealth Caribbean nations and Montserrat, a UK overseas territory. It was given a boost in 2018 to support reconstruction in Dominica and Antigua and Barbuda, after hurricanes Irma and Maria tore through the region.The fund is run largely by the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), a multilateral institution based in Barbados, with small team of UK government staff to support its delivery.
Beyond additional financing, the government also has a range of additional KPIs. The most recent report on their progress includes cumulative data up to 2022/23.
The table below shows progress on these indicators between 2014/15 and 2022/23.
Among other things, the government states that its ICF spending has “supported” nearly 102 million people to deal with the impacts of climate change and “reduced or avoided” 87m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e).
As of 2023, the UK has doubled its list of KPIs to include new metrics such as the number of social institutions with improved access to clean energy and area of deforestation avoided.
Methodology
This analysis is based on a full dataset of ongoing and closed ICF projects, between 2011/12 and 2022/23, that Carbon Brief has assembled using FOI data and data extracted from government web pages.
The government’s Development Tracker website provides information on all of the development aid projects that the UK has spent money on, divided up among the departments that administer them. It includes data on the total budget of each project, but it does not include the breakdown of how much money in each budget is specifically set aside to address climate change.
Similarly, while the UK’s submissions to the UN include data on “climate-specific” finance, it does not consistently include sufficient information to identify all of the projects and only go as far as 2020.
To obtain this data, Carbon Brief sent FOI requests on 17 March 2023 to the three government departments responsible for ICF projects – FCDO, Defra and DESNZ. These requests asked for project-level annual ICF spend for the period 2017/18 to 2022/23 and the project ID code for each project.
The data was provided by all three departments towards the end of May. FCDO and DESNZ provided figures for 2022/23, noting that they are “provisional”. Defra, which accounts for only around 3% of total ICF spend, declined to provide these figures as it said the department was “yet to finalise” them.
This was then combined with annual ICF data for the period 2011/12 to 2016/17, which Carbon Brief had obtained in 2017 with another FOI request. This was achieved using the project codes to match up projects that had continued across these two periods. Further information, such as project names, descriptions and start/end dates, was then added using data scraped from ICF-tagged Development Tracker pages in June 2023 – again using project codes to match up projects. Data was extracted by Carbon Brief’s Tom Prater using Import.io and Octoparse.
The dataset can be viewed in this read-only Google Sheet, which includes an annual breakdown of spending. There are a few points to consider when exploring this data:
- A handful of projects had changed names, changed project IDs or moved to different departments. Carbon Brief matched up these projects with the correct details as far as possible, checking on specific details with the relevant departments.
- There remain 16 projects where no Development Tracker pages could be identified and, therefore, some information is missing (four of these include work in Afghanistan, so might have been removed for security reasons). This does not include COP26 costs and R&I funds, which do not have Development Tracker pages.
- For 10 of those projects, amounting to £13.27m in funds, a project location could not be identified and this will have a small effect on the country analysis. “COP costs”, which amount to £99m, also do not have a location.
- Some lines show negative spending. This can occur for several reasons, including a case where an investment funded through ICF has brought in returns, or if ICF spend has been incorrectly recorded and corrected, following quality assurance.
- The total number of ICF projects is higher than the number recorded on the government’s Development Tracker website, due to the FOI responses including a more comprehensive list of projects.
There are also issues with a number of Development Tracker pages, with many showing incorrect details at the time of publication and some of the links to project pages breaking.
This would not impact the ICF totals quoted in the article, which are derived from FOI requests, but may result in discrepancies when comparing the data included in the interactive table with project pages. The government has confirmed to Carbon Brief that it is aware of these issues.
The post Analysis: How the UK has spent its foreign aid on climate change since 2011 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: How the UK has spent its foreign aid on climate change since 2011
The European Commission has rejected requests by green groups to review the status of 16 controversial projects it has designated as “strategic” to shore up the bloc’s supply of critical minerals needed for the energy transition, despite environmental concerns.
Campaigners accused the European Union’s executive arm of being more interested in labelling projects as “strategic” to accelerate their development than ensuring they meet its environmental standards.
Legal experts told Climate Home News that despite the EU’s rhetoric on developing sustainable mining standards, it will be very difficult for local communities and NGOs to use the judicial system to enforce compliance with environmental safeguards.
Earlier this year, the European Commission labelled 47 mineral extraction, processing and recycling projects within EU member states as “strategic“, granting them preferential treatment for gaining permits and easier access to EU funding.
-
Europe’s lithium rush leaves mineral-rich communities in the dark
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COP30 draft text includes energy transition minerals in UN climate first
A draft negotiating text on defining principles for a just transition to clean energy systems recognises the social and environmental risks associated with mining critical minerals
Spanning from the north of Sweden to Portugal and southern Spain, these projects are due to help the EU reach targets for sourcing more of the minerals it needs for clean energy and digital technologies within its own borders in an environmentally friendly way, while reducing its dependence on imports from China.
However, NGOs and local communities have accused the European Commission of a lack of transparency and of failing to engage civil society over the selection of these projects, most of which are in the early stages of development and are yet to obtain the necessary permits or conduct detailed environmental impact assessments.
Civil society groups challenged the decision to include around a third of projects on the strategic list, arguing that the commission had not properly assessed their sustainability. They also cited risks of social and environmental harm and human rights violations.
EU: Environmental compliance lies with member states
In total, 11 requests for review covering 16 of the projects planned within the EU were filed under the Aarhus Regulation, which gives NGOs the right to ask the European Commission to review administrative decisions if they are considered to violate the bloc’s environmental law.
In a single response shared with green groups this week, and seen by Climate Home News, the commission found that the requests to review the projects’ status were “unfounded”.
“A thorough assessment confirmed that all points raised by the NGOs had already been properly addressed during the selection process. All the projects concerned therefore retain their status as strategic projects,” a European Commission spokesperson told Climate Home News. They did not respond to detailed questions about their assessment.
Under the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act, which was adopted last year, the commission can designate mineral projects as strategic if they meet a shortlist of criteria, including that the project “would be implemented sustainably” and monitor, prevent and minimise environmental and adverse social impacts.
The strategic status can be revoked if projects no longer meet the criteria.
However, the commission said it was not its job to carry out a full and detailed assessment of whether the projects fully comply with EU environmental laws, adding that it is only required to make an “overall assessment”.
Rather, it argued, member states have the responsibility to ensure the projects fully comply with EU environmental standards including impacts on biodiversity and ground water as well as waste management.
The commission also refused to examine the social impacts of the projects on community livelihoods, health and human rights – which could arise from environmental degradation – arguing that this was outside the scope of the review mechanism under the Aarhus Regulation.
Campaigners have strongly criticised the response.
“Cosmetic”sustainability criteria
Ilze Tralmaka, a lawyer at Client Earth, told Climate Home News the commission’s decision showed that the designation of mineral projects as “strategic” doesn’t make them safe or sustainable, despite creating a legal presumption that they serve the public interest and protect public health and safety.
“While on paper, there is mention of sustainability, in practice, it’s almost cosmetic,” she said. “It seems the environmental standards are just briefly looked at and that the policy of declaring these projects as strategic is more important than real engagement with the sustainability criteria.”
Client Earth argues that while securing supplies of minerals for the energy transition is a legitimate goal, the status of strategic project is being “misused” to fast-track questionable mining projects.
Tralmaka said the European Commission should engage where there are “unanswered questions, or if there is credible information about these projects being potentially unsafe”.
Client Earth was part of a group of NGOs that challenged the decision to designate the Barroso lithium project in Portugal as a strategic project.
“Textbook example of how not to do a green transition”
London-listed Savannah Resources is planning to dig four open pit mines in the northern Barroso region to extract lithium from Europe’s largest known deposit. The company says it will extract enough lithium every year to produce around half a million batteries for electric vehicles.
However, local groups have staunchly opposed the mining project, citing concerns over waste management and water use as well as the impact of the mine on traditional agriculture in the area.
Earlier this year, a UN committee found that Portugal had failed to respect citizens’ rights to information and public participation in the case of the Barroso project. Portuguese authorities denied the breach.
Efforts to green lithium extraction face scrutiny over water use
The commission said it was satisfied with the project’s overall sustainability credentials and that campaign groups should take a case to their national court if they are concerned about the legality of any project.
“This decision shows that the EU is willing to trade rural lives and irreplaceable landscapes for a political headline,” said Nik Völker of MiningWatch Portugal. “The truth is, the Mina do Barroso mine offers minimal benefits and enormous risks: a textbook example of how not to do a green transition.”
Savannah Resources did not respond to a request for comment.
“Murky” standards make legal challenge hard
Simon Simanovski, a business and human rights attorney with German law firm Günther Rechtsanwälte, has advised dozens of communities affected by projects designated as “strategic” under the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act over the past year.
For him, the commission’s response creates a disconnect between its role as a decision-making body and the responsibility for enforcing the bloc’s environmental laws, by pushing it to member states. That, he said, creates “murky standards”.
This, he added, will make it “really difficult” to challenge inadequate environmental safeguards through the courts. “It means that there is no effective judicial protection… and that the projects will happen,” he told Climate Home News.
However, Simanovski still expects some campaign groups to try filing a case before the general court of the European Court of Justice to challenge the European Commission’s response and ask it to review its assessment of the projects.
Simanovski represents communities in Serbia that are also challenging the “strategic” designation of the Jadar lithium mine – one of an additional 13 “strategic projects” located outside EU countries – which has seen massive local opposition.
The commission is expected to respond to requests to review those external strategic projects in January.
The post EU refuses to review “strategic” mineral projects for energy transition appeared first on Climate Home News.
EU refuses to review “strategic” mineral projects for energy transition
Climate Change
DeBriefed 28 November 2025: COP30’s ‘frustrating’ end; Asia floods; UK ‘emergency’ climate event
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
‘Lukewarm’ end to COP30
BYE BELÉM: The COP30 climate talks in Belém ended last weekend with countries agreeing on a goal to “triple” adaptation finance by 2035 and efforts to “strengthen” climate plans, Climate Home News reported. The final deal “fell short on the global transition away from oil, gas and coal”, the outlet said, as Brazil announced that it would bring forward voluntary roadmaps to phase out fossil fuels and deforestation, before the next COP. It was a “frustrating end” for more than 80 countries who wanted a roadmap away from fossil fuels to be part of the formal COP agreement, BBC News said.
WHAT HAPPENED?: Carbon Brief published its in-depth analysis of all the key outcomes from COP30, spanning everything from negotiations on adaptation, just transition, gender and “Article 6” carbon trading through to a round-up of pledges on various issues. Another Carbon Brief article summed up outcomes around food, forests, land and nature. Also, Carbon Brief journalists discussed the COP in a webinar held earlier this week.
ART OF THE DEAL: The “compromise” COP30 deal – known as the “global mutirão” – “exposed deep rifts over how future climate action should be pursued”, Reuters noted. The “last-ditch” agreement was reached after fossil-fuel wording negotiations between the EU and Saudi Arabia, according to the Guardian. Meanwhile, Carbon Brief revealed the “informal” list of 84 countries said to have “opposed” the inclusion of a fossil-fuel roadmap in the mutirão decision, but analysis of the list exposed contradictions and likely errors.
UNITY, SCIENCE, SENSE: The final agreement received “lukewarm praise”, said the Associated Press. Palau ambassador Ilana Seid, who chaired the coalition of small-island nations, told the newswire: “Given the circumstances of geopolitics today, we’re actually quite pleased…The alternative is that we don’t get a decision and that would have been [worse].” UN climate chief Simon Stiell said that amid “denial, division and geopolitics”, countries “chose unity, science and economic common sense”, reported the Press Trust of India.
Around the world
- Floods and landslides killed more than 200 people in Thailand and Indonesia this week, reported Bloomberg. At least 90 people also died in recent floods in Vietnam, said Al Jazeera.
- New measures to cut energy bills and a “pay-per-mile” electric-vehicle levy were among the announcements in the UK’s budget, said Carbon Brief.
- The Group of 20 (G20) leaders signed off on a declaration “addressing the climate crisis” and other issues, reported Reuters, which had no input from the US who boycotted last week’s G20 summit in South Africa.
- Canadian prime minister Mark Carney signed a deal with the province of Alberta “centred on plans for a new heavy oil pipeline”, said the Guardian, adding that Canadian culture minister and former environment minister, Steven Guilbeault, resigned from cabinet over the deal.
- Greenpeace analysis, covered by Reuters, found that permits for new coal plants in China are “on track to fall to a four-year low” in 2025.
27
The number of hours that COP30 talks went over schedule before ending in Belém last Saturday, making it the 11th-longest UN climate summit on record, according to analysis by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- The risk of night-time deaths during heatwaves increased “significantly” over 2005-15 in sub-Saharan Africa | Science Advances
- Almost half of climate journalists surveyed showed “moderate to severe” symptoms of anxiety | Traumatology
- Lakes experienced “more severe” heatwaves than those in the atmosphere over the past two decades | 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
The key COP30 agreement – termed the “global mutirão” – contained 69 inactive verbs, which require no action from countries, compared to 32 active ones. “Recognises”, “recalls” and “acknowledges” were used far more often than more active verbs, such as “decides”, “calls” and “requests”, showed Carbon Brief analysis.
Spotlight
Nine warnings from a UK climate and nature ‘emergency’ briefing
This week, Carbon Brief’s Orla Dwyer reports from an event where experts and campaigners sounded the alarm bell on climate change and nature loss.
Naturalist and broadcaster Chris Packham urged attendees at a climate and nature “emergency briefing” in London yesterday to “listen to the science” on climate change amid a “dangerous wave of misinformation and lies”.
The “first-of-its-kind” event heard from nine experts on the links between climate change, nature loss, health, food production, economics and national security.
Event host, Prof Mike Berners-Lee from Lancaster University, called for a “World War II level of leadership” to tackle the interconnected crises.
Hundreds of people showed up, including Green Party, Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs, leader of the Greens Zack Polanski, musician Brian Eno and actress Olivia Williams.
Here is a snapshot of what the nine speakers said in their short, but stark, presentations.
Prof Kevin Anderson, professor of energy at University of Manchester
Anderson focused on the risks of a warmer world and the sliver of emissions left in the global carbon budget, noting:
“We have to eliminate fossil fuels or temperatures will just keep going up.”
He urged a “Marshall-style” plan – referencing the 1948 post-war US plan to rebuild Europe – to ramp up actions on retrofitting, public transport and electrification.
Prof Nathalie Seddon, professor of biodiversity at University of Oxford
Nature is not a “nice to have”, but rather “critical national infrastructure”, Seddon told attendees. She called for the “need to create an economy that values nature”.
Prof Paul Behrens, British Academy global professor at University of Oxford
Behrens discussed the food security risks from climate change. Impacts such as poor harvests and food price inflation are “barely acknowledge[d]” in agricultural policy, he said.
He also emphasised the “unsustainable” land use of animal agriculture, which “occupies around 85% of total agricultural land” in the UK.
Prof Tim Lenton, chair in climate change and Earth system science at Exeter University
Lenton outlined the “plenty” of evidence that parts of the Earth system are hurtling towards climate tipping points that could push them irreversibly into a new state.
He discussed the possibility of the shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which he said could cause -20C winters in London. He also noted positive tipping points, such as momentum that led the UK to stop burning coal for electricity last year.
Prof Hayley Fowler, professor of climate change impacts at Newcastle University
One in four properties in England could be at risk of flooding by 2050, Fowler said, and winters are getting wetter.
She discussed extreme weather risks and listed the impacts of floods in recent years in Germany, Spain and Libya, adding:
“These events are not warnings of what might happen in the future. They’re actually examples of what is happening right now.”
Angela Francis, director of policy solutions at WWF-UK
Francis factchecked several claims made against climate action, such as the high cost of achieving net-zero.
She noted that the estimated cost for the UK to achieve net-zero is about £4bn per year, which is less than 0.2% of GDP.
Lieutenant general Richard Nugee, climate and security advisor
Discussing the risks climate change poses to national security, Nugee said:
“Climate change can be thought of as a threat multiplier, making existing threats worse or more frequent and introducing new threats. Climate shocks fuel global instability.”
Tessa Khan, environmental lawyer and executive director of Uplift
Khan said the rising cost of energy in the UK is “turning into a significant political risk for the energy transition”.
She discussed the cost of fossil-fuel dependency and the fact that these fuels cost money to burn, but renewable “input[s], sun or wind [are] free forever”.
Prof Hugh Montgomery, professor of intensive care medicine at University College London
Montgomery discussed the health and economic benefits of climate actions, such as eating less meat and using more public transport, noting:
“The climate emergency is a health emergency – and it’s about time we started treating it as one.”
Watch, read, listen
WATER WORRIES: ABC News spoke to three Iranian women about the impacts of Tehran’s water crisis amid the “worst drought in 60 years”.
CLIMATE EFFORT: The BBC’s Climate Question podcast looked at the main outcomes from COP30 and discussed the “future of climate action” with a team of panelists.
CRIMINAL BEHAVIOUR:New Scientist interviewed criminal psychologist Julia Shaw about the psychology behind environmental crimes.
Coming up
- 24 November-5 December: COP20 on international trade in endangered species of wild fauna and flora, Samarkand, Uzbekistan
- 29-30 November: First part of global youth environment assembly, Nairobi, Kenya
- 3-4 December: Second round of Egyptian parliamentary elections
- 5 December: World soil day, global
Pick of the jobs
- Aldersgate Group, head of policy | Salary: £56,650-£66,950 per year. Location: London
- Ofgem, climate resilience expert | Salary: £61,446-£86,547. Location: Cardiff, Glasgow or London
- Green Climate Fund, integrity risk management lead | Salary: $171,200. Location: Incheon, South Korea
- Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust, project manager – seabird recovery | Salary: Up to £45,000 per year. Location: Isles of Scilly, UK
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The post DeBriefed 28 November 2025: COP30’s ‘frustrating’ end; Asia floods; UK ‘emergency’ climate event appeared first on Carbon Brief.
DeBriefed 28 November 2025: COP30’s ‘frustrating’ end; Asia floods; UK ‘emergency’ climate event
Climate Change
Revealed: Leak casts doubt on COP30’s ‘informal list’ of fossil-fuel roadmap opponents
A confused – and, at times, contradictory – story has emerged about precisely which countries and negotiating blocs were opposed to a much-discussed “roadmap” deal at COP30 on “transitioning away from fossil fuels”.
Carbon Brief has obtained a leaked copy of the 84-strong “informal list” of countries that, as a group, were characterised across multiple media reports as “blocking” the roadmap’s inclusion in the final “mutirão” deal across the second week of negotiations at the UN climate summit in Belém.
During the fraught closing hours of the summit, Carbon Brief understands that the Brazilian presidency told negotiators in a closed meeting that there was no prospect of reaching consensus on the roadmap’s inclusion, because there were “80 for and 80 against”.
However, Carbon Brief’s analysis of the list – which was drawn up informally by the presidency – shows that it contains a variety of contradictions and likely errors.
Among the issues identified by Carbon Brief is the fact that 14 countries are listed as both supporting and opposing the idea of including a fossil-fuel roadmap in the COP30 outcome.
In addition, the list of those said to have opposed a roadmap includes all 42 of the members of a negotiating group present in Belém – the least-developed countries (LDCs) – that has explicitly told Carbon Brief it did not oppose the idea.
Moreover, one particularly notable entry on the list, Turkey – which is co-president of COP31 – tells Carbon Brief that its inclusion is “wrong”.
Negotiating blocs
COP28, held in Dubai in 2023, had finalised the first “global stocktake”, which called on all countries to contribute to global efforts, including a “transition away from fossil fuels”.
Since then, negotiations on how to take this forward have faltered, including at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, where countries were unable to agree to include this fossil-fuel transition as part of existing or new processes under the UN climate regime.
Ahead of the start of COP30, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made a surprise call for “roadmaps” on fossil-fuel transition and deforestation.
While this idea was not on the official agenda for COP30, it had been under development for months ahead of the summit – and it became a key point of discussion in Belém.
Ultimately, however, it did not become part of the formal COP30 outcome, with the Brazilian presidency instead launching a process to draw up roadmaps under its own initiative.
This is because the COP makes decisions by consensus. The COP30 presidency insisted that there was no prospect of consensus being reached on a fossil-fuel roadmap, telling closed-door negotiations that there were “80 for and 80 against”.
The list of countries supporting a roadmap as part of the COP30 outcome was obtained by Carbon Brief during the talks. Until now, however, the list of those opposed to the idea had not been revealed.
Carbon Brief understands that this second list was drawn up informally by the Brazilian presidency after a meeting attended by representatives of around 50 nations. It was then filled out to the final total of 84 countries, based on membership of negotiating alliances.
The bulk of the list of countries opposing a roadmap – some 39 nations – is made up of two negotiating blocs that opposed the proposal for divergent reasons (see below). Some countries within these blocs also held different positions on why – or even whether – they opposed the roadmap being included in the COP30 deal.
These blocs are the 22-strong Arab group – chaired in Belém by Saudi Arabia – and the 25 members of the “like-minded developing countries” (LMDCs), chaired by India.
For decades within the UN climate negotiations, countries have sat within at least one negotiating bloc rather than act in isolation. At COP30, the UN says there were 16 “active groups”. (Since its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has not sat within any group.)
The inclusion on the “informal list” (shown in full below) of both the LMDCs and Arab group is accurate, as confirmed by the reporting of the International Institute for Sustainable Development’s Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB), which is the only organisation authorised to summarise what has happened in UN negotiations that are otherwise closed to the media.
Throughout the fortnight of the talks, both the LMDCs and Arab group were consistent – at times together – in their resistance to proscriptive wording and commitments within any part of the COP30 deal around transitioning away from fossil fuels.
But the reasons provided were nuanced and varied and cannot be characterised as meaning both blocs simply did not wish to undertake the transition – in fact, all countries under the Paris Agreement had already agreed to this in Dubai two years ago at COP28.
However, further analysis by Carbon Brief of the list shows that it also – mistakenly – includes all of the members of the LDCs, bar Afghanistan and Myanmar, which were not present at the talks. In total, the LDCs represented 42 nations in Belém, ranging from Bangladesh and Benin through to Tuvalu and Tanzania.
Some of the LDC nations had publicly backed a fossil-fuel roadmap.
‘Not correct’
Manjeet Dhakal, lead adviser to the LDC chair, tells Carbon Brief that it is “not correct” that the LDCs, as a bloc, opposed a fossil-fuel roadmap during the COP30 negotiations.
He says that the group’s expectations, made public before COP, clearly identified transitioning away from fossil fuels as an “urgent action” to keep the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C goal “within reach”. He adds:
“The LDC group has never blocked a fossil-fuel roadmap. [In fact], a few LDCs, including Nepal, have supported the idea.”
Dhakal’s statement highlights a further confusing feature of the informal list – 14 countries appear on both of the lists of supporters and opposers. This is possible because many countries sit within two or more negotiating blocs at UN climate talks.
For example, Kiribati, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu are members of both the “alliance of small island states” (AOSIS) and the LDCs.
As is the case with the “informal list” of opposers, the list of supporters (which was obtained by Carbon Brief during the talks) is primarily made up of negotiating alliances.
Specifically, it includes AOSIS, the “environmental integrity group” (EIG), the “independent association of Latin America and the Caribbean” (AILAC) and the European Union (EU).
In alphabetical order, the 14 countries on both lists are: Bahrain; Bulgaria; Comoros; Cuba; Czech Republic; Guinea-Bissau; Haiti; Hungary; Kiribati; Nepal; Sierra Leone; Solomon Islands; Timor-Leste; and Tuvalu.
This obvious anomaly acts to highlight the mistaken inclusion of the LDCs on the informal list of opposers.
The list includes 37 of the 54 nations within the Africa group, which was chaired by Tanzania in Belém.
But this also appears to be a function of the mistaken inclusion of the LDCs in the list, many of which sit within both blocs.
Confusion
An overview of the talks published by the Guardian this week reported:
“Though [Brazil’s COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago] told the Guardian [on 19 November] that the divide over the [roadmap] issue could be bridged, [he] kept insisting 80 countries were against the plan, though these figures were never substantiated. One negotiator told the Guardian: ‘We don’t understand where that number comes from.’
“A clue came when Richard Muyungi, the Tanzanian climate envoy who chairs the African group, told a closed meeting that all its 54 members aligned with the 22-member Arab Group on the issue. But several African countries told the Guardian this was not true and that they supported the phaseout – and Tanzania has a deal with Saudi Arabia to exploit its gas reserves.”
Adding to the confusion, the Guardian also said two of the most powerful members of the LMDCs were not opposed to a roadmap, reporting: “China, having demurred on the issue, indicated it would not stand in the way [of a roadmap]; India also did not object.”
Writing for Climate Home News, ActionAid USA’s Brandon Wu said:
“Between rich country intransigence and undemocratic processes, it’s understandable – and justifiable – that many developing countries, including most of the Africa group, are uncomfortable with the fossil-fuel roadmap being pushed for at COP30. It doesn’t mean they are all ‘blockers’ or want the world to burn, and characterising them as such is irresponsible.
“The core package of just transition, public finance – including for adaptation and loss and damage – and phasing out fossil fuels and deforestation is exactly that: a package. The latter simply will not happen, politically or practically, without the former.”
Carbon Brief understands that Nigeria was a vocal opponent of the roadmap’s inclusion in the mutirão deal during the final hours of the closed-door negotiations, but that does not equate to it opposing a transition away from fossil fuels. This is substantiated by the ENB summary:
“During the…closing plenary…Nigeria stressed that the transition away from fossil fuels should be conducted in a nationally determined way, respecting [common, but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities].”
The “informal list” of opposers also includes three EU members – Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
The EU – led politically at the talks by climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, but formally chaired by Denmark – was reportedly at the heart of efforts to land a deal that explicitly included a “roadmap” for transitioning away from fossil fuels.
Carbon Brief understands that, as part of the “informal intelligence gathering” used to compile the list, pre-existing positions on climate actions by nations were factored in rather than only counting positions expressed at Belém. For example, Hungary and the Czech Republic were reported to have been among those resisting the last-minute “hard-fought deal” by the EU on its 2040 climate target and latest Paris Agreement climate pledge.
(Note that EU members Poland and Italy did not join the list of countries supporting a fossil-fuel roadmap at COP30.)
The remaining individual nations on the informal list either have economies that are heavily dependent on fossil-fuel production (for example, Russia and Brunei Darussalam), or are, like the US, currently led by right-leaning governments resistant to climate action (for example, Argentina).
Turkey is a notable inclusion on the list because it was agreed in Belém that it will host next year’s COP31 in Antalya, but with Australia leading the negotiation process. In contrast, Australia is on the 85-strong list of roadmap supporters.
However, a spokesperson for Turkey’s delegation in Belem has told Carbon Brief that it did not oppose the roadmap at COP30 and its inclusion on the list is “wrong”.
Media characterisations
Some media reporting of the roadmap “blockers” sought to identify the key proponents.
For example, the Sunday Times said “the ‘axis of obstruction’ – Saudi Arabia, Russia and China – blocked the Belém roadmap”.
Agence France-Presse highlighted the views of a French minister who said: “Who are the biggest blockers? We all know them. They are the oil-producing countries, of course. Russia, India, Saudi Arabia. But they are joined by many emerging countries.”
Reuters quoted Vanuatu’s climate minister alleging that “Saudi Arabia was one of those opposed”.
The Financial Times said “a final agreement [was] blocked again and again by countries led by Saudi Arabia and Russia”.
Bloomberg said the roadmap faced “stiff opposition from Arab states and Russia”.
Media coverage in India and China has pushed back at the widespread portrayals of what many other outlets had described as the “blockers” of a fossil-fuel roadmap.
The Indian Express reported:
“India said it was not opposed to the mention of a fossil-fuel phaseout plan in the package, but it must be ensured that countries are not called to adhere to a uniform pathway for it.”
Separately, speaking on behalf of the LMDCs during the closing plenary at COP30, India had said: “Adaptation is a priority. Our regime is not mitigation centric.”
China Daily, a state-run newspaper that often reflects the government’s official policy positions, published a comment article this week stating:
“Over 80 countries insisted that the final deal must include a concrete plan to act on the previous commitment to move beyond coal, oil, and natural gas adopted at COP28…But many delegates from the global south disagreed, citing concerns about likely sudden economic contraction and heightened social instability. The summit thus ended without any agreement on this roadmap.
“Now that the conference is over, and emotions are no longer running high, all parties should look objectively at the potential solution proposed by China, which some international media outlets wrongly painted as an opponent to the roadmap.
“Addressing an event on the sidelines of the summit, Xia Yingxian, deputy head of China’s delegation to COP30, said the narrative on transitioning away from fossil fuels would find greater acceptance if it were framed differently, focusing more on the adoption of renewable energy sources.”
Speaking to Carbon Brief at COP30, Dr Osama Faqeeha, Saudi Arabia’s deputy environment minister, refused to be drawn on whether a fossil-fuel roadmap was a red line for his nation, but said:
“I think the issue is the emissions, it’s not the fuel. And our position is that we have to cut emissions regardless.”
Neither the Arab group nor the LMDCs responded to Carbon Brief’s invitation to comment on their inclusion on the list.
The Brazilian COP30 presidency did not respond at the time of publication.
While the fossil-fuel roadmap was not part of the formal COP30 outcome, the Brazilian presidency announced in the closing plenary that it would take the idea forward under its own initiative, drawing on an international conference hosted in Colombia next year.
Corrêa do Lago told the closing plenary:
“We know some of you had greater ambitions for some of the issues at hand…As president Lula said at the opening of this COP, we need roadmaps so that humanity, in a just and planned manner, can overcome its dependence on fossil fuels, halt and reverse deforestation and mobilise resources for these purposes.
“I, as president of COP30, will therefore create two roadmaps, one on halting and reverting deforestation, another to transitioning away from fossil fuels in a just, orderly and equitable manner. They will be led by science and they will be inclusive with the spirit of the mutirão.
“We will convene high level dialogues, gathering key international organisations, governments from both producing and consuming countries, industry workers, scholars, civil society and will report back to the COP. We will also benefit from the first international conference for the phase-out of fossil fuels, scheduled to take place in April in Colombia.”
Fossil-fuel roadmap
‘Supporters’
Both ‘supporter’ and ‘opposer’
‘Opposers’
Additional reporting by Daisy Dunne.
The post Revealed: Leak casts doubt on COP30’s ‘informal list’ of fossil-fuel roadmap opponents appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Revealed: Leak casts doubt on COP30’s ‘informal list’ of fossil-fuel roadmap opponents
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