Nearly a tenth of global climate finance could be under threat as US president Donald Trump’s aid cuts risk wiping out huge swathes of spending overseas, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Last year, the US announced that it had increased its climate aid for developing countries roughly seven-fold over the course of Joe Biden’s presidency, reaching $11bn per year.
This likely amounts to more than 8% of all international climate finance in 2024.
However, any progress in US climate finance has been thrown into disarray by the new administration.
Trump has halted US foreign aid and threatened to cancel virtually all US Agency for International Development (USAid) projects, with climate funds identified as a prime target.
USAid has provided around a third of US climate finance in recent years, reaching nearly $3bn in 2023, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Another $4bn of US funding for the UN Green Climate Fund (GCF) has also been cancelled by the president’s administration.
One expert tells Carbon Brief that more climate funds will likely end up on the “cutting block”.
Another warns of an “enormous gulf” to meeting the new global $300bn climate-finance goal nations agreed last year, if the US stops reporting – let alone providing – any official climate finance.
Carbon Brief’s analysis draws together available data to explain how the Trump administration’s cuts endanger global efforts to help developing countries tackle climate change.
- How much did climate finance increase under Biden?
- What are the climate impacts of cutting USAid?
- Are other sources of climate finance at risk?
- Methodology
How much did climate finance increase under Biden?
The US is by far the world’s largest economy and biggest historical emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2).
This means that, while it is the fourth-biggest national provider of international climate finance, its overall share is low relative to the nation’s wealth and responsibility for climate change. As a result, the US has long been seen as a laggard in this area.
The US provides 0.24% of its gross national income (GNI) as aid for developing countries, which includes some climate funding. This is the same share as the Czech Republic, a nation with a per-capita GNI three times smaller.
US climate-finance contributions stalled during Trump’s first four-year term as president, when other developed countries were ramping up to meet their target of providing and mobilising $100bn a year for developing countries by 2020.
A shift in focus came when Biden became president in 2021. He established an international climate finance plan to scale up US efforts, in line with US obligations under the Paris Agreement.
Biden also announced that the US would reach $11.4bn in annual climate finance by 2024.
This goal was achieved, according to “preliminary estimates” announced by the US during the COP29 climate summit at the end of 2024. These estimates, which are unlikely to be confirmed by the new administration, are shown in the chart below.
The figures are based predominantly on “bilateral” climate finance reported to the UN. They also include US finance distributed via multilateral climate funds, such as the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the GCF.
Bilateral climate finance largely comes from aid programmes with climate benefits, such as supporting a geothermal project in the Philippines, investing in “climate-smart” agriculture in Bangladesh, or improving water security in Niger.
The US significantly increased its contribution towards climate finance during the Biden administration. Ramping up relevant US aid projects and multilateral funding helped developed countries to hit the $100bn climate-finance target – albeit two years late in 2022.
The $11bn reported by the US in 2024 would be the equivalent of 21% of all bilateral and multilateral climate fund inputs that year – up from around 4% under the previous Trump presidency. These funds are shown by the blue bars in the figure below.
(Estimates for 2023 and 2024 assume a steady rise in climate finance from sources beyond the US, as official figures beyond then have not been released. See Methodology for more information.)
Even when considering other sources of international climate finance – specifically multilateral development banks (MDBs) and “mobilised” private finance shown in grey in the figure below – the US has contributed a sizable share in recent years.
After lingering around 2% during the last Trump administration, the US share of total climate finance roughly quadrupled to more than 8% in 2024, Carbon Brief analysis suggests.
It is also worth noting that the US, as the biggest shareholder at the World Bank and a major shareholder at other MDBs, can be linked to a large portion of their finance. This contribution is not factored into official US reporting, so it has not been included in this analysis.
Even accounting for MDB contributions, US climate finance spending is still far lower than its “fair share”, based on its historical responsibility for climate change and ability to pay. Some analysts have put the US fair share as high as 40-50% of climate finance overall.
What are the climate impacts of cutting USAid?
Upon taking office for the second time in January 2025, Trump immediately took aim at international aid spending and climate action with a flurry of executive orders.
One order announced plans to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement and criticised such treaties for “steer[ing] American taxpayer dollars to countries that do not require, or merit, financial assistance”. It also “revoked and rescinded” Biden’s international climate finance plan.
In another executive order, Trump announced a “pause” on US foreign aid “for assessment of programmatic efficiencies and consistency with US foreign policy”.
USAid handles 60% of US foreign aid – more than $43bn in 2023 – while the State Department oversees most of the remainder. Trump says he wants to “close [USAid] down” and his advisor Elon Musk has called it a “criminal organisation”.
Source: Truth Social.
Trump requires the approval of Congress to repurpose USAid funds or, indeed, abolish the agency. His administration’s actions have, therefore, been described as “illegal” and “unconstitutional” by senior Democrats and aid workers.
Yet, despite lawsuits and court orders instructing the administration to lift the pause, it has since stated its intention to eliminate more than 90% of USAid contracts and, more widely, $60bn of US foreign aid.
This would have major implications for US climate finance.
News outlets have reported on the climate-related programmes at risk, sometimes stating that USAid has funded half a billion dollars of climate programmes annually in recent years.
This figure, while based on USAid’s own reporting of its clean energy, climate adaptation and nature projects, is a significant underestimate of its total climate-finance contributions.
Carbon Brief analysis suggests that USAid contributed $2.8bn of climate finance in 2023, the latest year for which data is available. Other US departments with aid contributions in the OECD database contributed smaller sums, bringing total climate spending up to $2.9bn.
This equates to around a third of US climate finance that year. If a similar share from these departments was counted as climate finance in 2024, it would amount to nearly $4bn, Carbon Brief finds.
(These are estimates based on “climate-related” aid data reported to the OECD. See Methodology for more details.)
Climate-finance experts tell Carbon Brief that these higher figures align with the fact that many aid projects targeting other issues, such as agriculture, have climate components.
Dr Ed Carr, a centre director at Stockholm Environment Institute US who has previously worked at USAid, tells Carbon Brief:
“The way that the Biden administration was doing stuff and the way that [former president Barack] Obama before was doing stuff, [was to] start to weave a degree of climate sensitivity into everything…So, basically, a huge percentage of programmes [are] working on some aspect of climate.”
Unlike many forms of climate finance, USAid projects include lots of grant-based funding, which many developing countries view as preferable to loans and better suited to supporting climate adaptation.
Relevant projects backed by USAid in recent years include support for a food-security programme in Ethiopia, upgrading a dam in Pakistan and protecting water supplies in Peru.
The Trump administration has made it clear that “climate” is one of the issues that it is scrutinising as it assesses aid projects for consistency with what it defines as US interests. A survey sent to grant recipients several weeks after the initial executive order asks:
“Can you confirm this is not a climate or ‘environmental justice’ project or include such elements?”
Are other sources of climate finance at risk?
The remaining billions in climate finance are handled by more than a dozen organisations, distributing grants, loans, development finance and export credits.
Around $1.2bn of US climate finance in 2022 was paid into international funds, including the GEF. This amounts to a fifth of the total US climate finance that year.
The Biden administration did not release a breakdown of how much money went to these funds in 2023 and 2024. However, in 2023 the country paid out $1bn for the GCF alone.
Such funding is also at risk as the new administration pulls away from what the White House calls “international agreements and initiatives that do not reflect our country’s values”. Notably, the US has now cancelled $4bn in funds previously committed to the GCF.
(Biden and Obama pledged $3bn each to the fund. However, neither of them ever delivered more than $1bn of their pledge, leaving $4bn outstanding.)
As the chart below shows, this means the US contribution to the GCF is now lower than that of Sweden – a country with an economy 50 times smaller.
The GCF is not the only specific fund that has been targeted. The US formally ended its involvement in the UN loss and damage fund, which it pledged $17.6m towards in 2023. It has also withdrawn from the Just Energy Transition Partnership initiative, which included at least $56m in grants to help South Africa transition away from coal power.
Another Trump executive order announced a review of “international intergovernmental organisation” membership, including MDBs.
There is an assumption that the US will not give up its considerable power in these banks. However, Trump supporters, including those behind the influential Project 2025, have laid out plans for withdrawing the US from the World Bank.
A large chunk of the remaining US climate finance in recent years has come from the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), which committed more than $3.7bn in climate finance in 2024 and a similar amount in 2023. This included loans for a wind power project in Mozambique and a railway to carry critical minerals through Angola.
DFC is a development finance institution that invests in private enterprises and was set up under the first Trump administration. It has so far been insulated from US aid cuts and there has been speculation that it may now play a larger role in US foreign policy.
Leaning more heavily on DFC, as well as the US Export-Import Bank (EXIM), would not be suitable for climate finance, Ritu Bharadwaj, a climate-finance principal researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), tells Carbon Brief:
“If these mechanisms remain intact while grant-based finance is gutted, it signals a shift away from public, needs-based funding toward finance that prioritises US commercial and strategic interests. In other words, what little climate finance remains will likely benefit US corporations first, rather than frontline communities.”
Additionally, even if such organisations are favoured by the new administration, this does not mean their climate projects will be protected. Benjamin Black, Trump’s nominee to lead DFC, wrote a blog post about the corporation in January, stating:
“The Biden administration’s emphasis on virtue-signaling – such as dedicating 40% of [DFC’s] recent commitments to green projects – raises serious concerns.”
Carr tells Carbon Brief that more US climate spending could still end up on the “cutting block”:
“From what we’ve seen so far, it looks to me like they are going to try and root out everything that they see as clearly related to climate.”
He caveats this by noting that some of the money the Biden administration would have counted as climate finance may continue, but not be defined as such.
This highlights the importance of accounting when assessing climate finance. Different governments around the world report different things as climate finance, depending on their priorities and political leanings.
For example, during the last Trump presidency, the US stopped reporting on climate finance to the UN. When calculating progress towards the $100bn goal during this period, the OECD had to estimate US figures based on “provisional data” or averages from previous years.
The Biden administration retrospectively reported the missing data from the Trump years in 2021, resulting in the OECD scaling down a previous estimate.
Clemence Landers, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD) who previously worked at the US Treasury, tells Carbon Brief that a “very educated guess [is] that there will be no reporting from the US” in the coming years.
The US government website tracking aid has not been updated since December.
If climate finance is not recorded, this could hamper its inclusion in the annual $100bn goal, which lasts until 2025, as well as the $300bn goal that countries agreed on last year at COP29 to replace it, as Landers notes:
“That does leave an enormous gulf in terms of the new global climate-finance target.”
Methodology
Climate-finance reporting practices mean that official data can be difficult to analyse in detail.
In this article, annual US climate-finance figures for the period 2015-2022 are based on those reported by the US government to the UN in biennial reports (BRs) and, for the years 2021 and 2022, its first biennial transparency report (BTR).
These can be considered “official” climate-finance figures. They align with the figures that the US federal government has released and are the ones used to inform the OECD’s assessments of developed countries’ progress towards the $100bn annual target.
The figures only include bilateral climate finance and inputs into multilateral climate funds. MDB shares and private finance mobilised are not covered. Again, this aligns with the “climate-finance” totals quoted in progress reports by the Biden administration.
The climate-finance totals for 2023 and 2024 are based on releases from the US Department of State during the Biden administration. These figures are for the US financial year (FY), which runs from 1 October to 30 September. However, the FY figures are the same as the calendar year numbers reported to the UN for 2021 and 2022, so Carbon Brief assumes the same is true for 2023 and 2024.
Due to the significant time lag in official reporting to the UN, the figures underpinning these totals are not due to be released until 2026. (The previous Trump administration did not report them at all and it is unlikely that the current one will either, now that the US has announced its departure from the Paris Agreement.)
Given this time lag, estimates for total international climate finance in 2023 and 2024 are derived from a joint analysis by the thinktanks Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), ODI, Germanwatch and ECCO. This calculated likely totals in 2030, based on existing pledges and planned reforms. Carbon Brief assumes a steady trajectory to the overall $197bn estimated under the thinktanks’ “business-as-usual” scenario, with bilateral finance, specifically, reaching $50bn by 2025.
Climate-finance figures reported to the UN by the US do not include details of the government departments and agencies responsible, making it difficult to determine the share overseen by USAid. The Biden administration also did not report the breakdown between agencies.
This data is reported to the OECD Creditor Reporting System (CRS), which contains figures up to 2023. However, the information in the CRS is not “official” climate finance, but rather “climate-related development finance”, identified as such using Rio Markers. Most countries apply simple coefficients to convert the figures they report to the CRS into their climate-finance submissions to the UN, but the US calculates its climate-finance submissions separately.
Nevertheless, to obtain approximate figures, Carbon Brief has assumed that 100% of CRS projects marked as “principal” climate projects and 50% of the projects marked as “significant”, are climate finance. This aligns with a methodology used by other organisations, such as Oxfam, as well as other nations, including Germany, Japan and Denmark.
However, it is only a rough estimate. Experts that Carbon Brief consulted stressed the uncertainties of climate finance reporting and said the numbers could be higher or lower.
The post Analysis: Nearly a tenth of global climate finance threatened by Trump aid cuts appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Nearly a tenth of global climate finance threatened by Trump aid cuts
Greenhouse Gases
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
The Lincolnshire constituency held by Richard Tice, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of the hard-right Reform party, has been pledged at least £55m in government funding for flood defences since 2024.
This investment in Boston and Skegness is the second-largest sum for a single constituency from a £1.4bn flood-defence fund for England, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
Flooding is becoming more likely and more extreme in the UK due to climate change.
Yet, for years, governments have failed to spend enough on flood defences to protect people, properties and infrastructure.
The £1.4bn fund is part of the current Labour government’s wider pledge to invest a “record” £7.9bn over a decade on protecting hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses from flooding.
As MP for one of England’s most flood-prone regions, Tice has called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
He is also one of Reform’s most vocal opponents of climate action and what he calls “net stupid zero”. He denies the scientific consensus on climate change and has claimed, falsely and without evidence, that scientists are “lying”.
Flood defences
Last year, the government said it would invest £2.65bn on flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) schemes in England between April 2024 and March 2026.
This money was intended to protect 66,500 properties from flooding. It is part of a decade-long Labour government plan to spend more than £7.9bn on flood defences.
There has been a consistent shortfall in maintaining England’s flood defences, with the Environment Agency expecting to protect fewer properties by 2027 than it had initially planned.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has attributed this to rising costs, backlogs from previous governments and a lack of capacity. It also points to the strain from “more frequent and severe” weather events, such as storms in recent years that have been amplified by climate change.
However, the CCC also said last year that, if the 2024-26 spending programme is delivered, it would be “slightly closer to the track” of the Environment Agency targets out to 2027.
The government has released constituency-level data on which schemes in England it plans to fund, covering £1.4bn of the 2024-26 investment. The other half of the FCERM spending covers additional measures, from repairing existing defences to advising local authorities.
The map below shows the distribution of spending on FCERM schemes in England over the past two years, highlighting the constituency of Richard Tice.
By far the largest sum of money – £85.6m in total – has been committed to a tidal barrier and various other defences in the Somerset constituency of Bridgwater, the seat of Conservative MP Ashley Fox.
Over the first months of 2026, the south-west region has faced significant flooding and Fox has called for more support from the government, citing “climate patterns shifting and rainfall intensifying”.
He has also backed his party’s position that “the 2050 net-zero target is impossible” and called for more fossil-fuel extraction in the North Sea.
Tice’s east-coast constituency of Boston and Skegness, which is highly vulnerable to flooding from both rivers and the sea, is set to receive £55m. Among the supported projects are beach defences from Saltfleet to Gibraltar Point and upgrades to pumping stations.
Overall, Boston and Skegness has the second-largest portion of flood-defence funding, as the chart below shows. Constituencies with Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs occupied the other top positions.
Overall, despite Labour MPs occupying 347 out of England’s 543 constituencies – nearly two-thirds of the total – more than half of the flood-defence funding was distributed to constituencies with non-Labour MPs. This reflects the flood risk in coastal and rural areas that are not traditional Labour strongholds.
Reform funding
While Reform has just eight MPs, representing 1% of the population, its constituencies have been assigned 4% of the flood-defence funding for England.
Nearly all of this money was for Tice’s constituency, although party leader Nigel Farage’s coastal Clacton seat in Kent received £2m.
Reform UK is committed to “scrapping net-zero” and its leadership has expressed firmly climate-sceptic views.
Much has been made of the disconnect between the party’s climate policies and the threat climate change poses to its voters. Various analyses have shown the flood risk in Reform-dominated areas, particularly Lincolnshire.
Tice has rejected climate science, advocated for fossil-fuel production and criticised Environment Agency flood-defence activities. Yet, he has also called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
This may reflect Tice’s broader approach to climate change. In a 2024 interview with LBC, he said:
“Where you’ve got concerns about sea level defences and sea level rise, guess what? A bit of steel, a bit of cement, some aggregate…and you build some concrete sea level defences. That’s how you deal with rising sea levels.”
While climate adaptation is viewed as vital in a warming world, there are limits on how much societies can adapt and adaptation costs will continue to increase as emissions rise.
The post Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
Greenhouse Gases
Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter.
Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Food inflation on the rise
DELUGE STRIKES FOOD: Extreme rainfall and flooding across the Mediterranean and north Africa has “battered the winter growing regions that feed Europe…threatening food price rises”, reported the Financial Times. Western France has “endured more than 36 days of continuous rain”, while farmers’ associations in Spain’s Andalusia estimate that “20% of all production has been lost”, it added. Policy expert David Barmes told the paper that the “latest storms were part of a wider pattern of climate shocks feeding into food price inflation”.
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NO BEEF: The UK’s beef farmers, meanwhile, “face a double blow” from climate change as “relentless rain forces them to keep cows indoors”, while last summer’s drought hit hay supplies, said another Financial Times article. At the same time, indoor growers in south England described a 60% increase in electricity standing charges as a “ticking timebomb” that could “force them to raise their prices or stop production, which will further fuel food price inflation”, wrote the Guardian.
‘TINDERBOX’ AND TARIFFS: A study, covered by the Guardian, warned that major extreme weather and other “shocks” could “spark social unrest and even food riots in the UK”. Experts cited “chronic” vulnerabilities, including climate change, low incomes, poor farming policy and “fragile” supply chains that have made the UK’s food system a “tinderbox”. A New York Times explainer noted that while trade could once guard against food supply shocks, barriers such as tariffs and export controls – which are being “increasingly” used by politicians – “can shut off that safety valve”.
El Niño looms
NEW ENSO INDEX: Researchers have developed a new index for calculating El Niño, the large-scale climate pattern that influences global weather and causes “billions in damages by bringing floods to some regions and drought to others”, reported CNN. It added that climate change is making it more difficult for scientists to observe El Niño patterns by warming up the entire ocean. The outlet said that with the new metric, “scientists can now see it earlier and our long-range weather forecasts will be improved for it.”
WARMING WARNING: Meanwhile, the US Climate Prediction Center announced that there is a 60% chance of the current La Niña conditions shifting towards a neutral state over the next few months, with an El Niño likely to follow in late spring, according to Reuters. The Vibes, a Malaysian news outlet, quoted a climate scientist saying: “If the El Niño does materialise, it could possibly push 2026 or 2027 as the warmest year on record, replacing 2024.”
CROP IMPACTS: Reuters noted that neutral conditions lead to “more stable weather and potentially better crop yields”. However, the newswire added, an El Niño state would mean “worsening drought conditions and issues for the next growing season” to Australia. El Niño also “typically brings a poor south-west monsoon to India, including droughts”, reported the Hindu’s Business Line. A 2024 guest post for Carbon Brief explained that El Niño is linked to crop failure in south-eastern Africa and south-east Asia.
News and views
- DAM-AG-ES: Several South Korean farmers filed a lawsuit against the country’s state-owned utility company, “seek[ing] financial compensation for climate-related agricultural damages”, reported United Press International. Meanwhile, a national climate change assessment for the Philippines found that the country “lost up to $219bn in agricultural damages from typhoons, floods and droughts” over 2000-10, according to Eco-Business.
- SCORCHED GRASS: South Africa’s Western Cape province is experiencing “one of the worst droughts in living memory”, which is “scorching grass and killing livestock”, said Reuters. The newswire wrote: “In 2015, a drought almost dried up the taps in the city; farmers say this one has been even more brutal than a decade ago.”
- NOUVELLE VEG: New guidelines published under France’s national food, nutrition and climate strategy “urged” citizens to “limit” their meat consumption, reported Euronews. The delayed strategy comes a month after the US government “upended decades of recommendations by touting consumption of red meat and full-fat dairy”, it noted.
- COURTING DISASTER: India’s top green court accepted the findings of a committee that “found no flaws” in greenlighting the Great Nicobar project that “will lead to the felling of a million trees” and translocating corals, reported Mongabay. The court found “no good ground to interfere”, despite “threats to a globally unique biodiversity hotspot” and Indigenous tribes at risk of displacement by the project, wrote Frontline.
- FISH FALLING: A new study found that fish biomass is “falling by 7.2% from as little as 0.1C of warming per decade”, noted the Guardian. While experts also pointed to the role of overfishing in marine life loss, marine ecologist and study lead author Dr Shahar Chaikin told the outlet: “Our research proves exactly what that biological cost [of warming] looks like underwater.”
- TOO HOT FOR COFFEE: According to new analysis by Climate Central, countries where coffee beans are grown “are becoming too hot to cultivate them”, reported the Guardian. The world’s top five coffee-growing countries faced “57 additional days of coffee-harming heat” annually because of climate change, it added.
Spotlight
Nature talks inch forward
This week, Carbon Brief covers the latest round of negotiations under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which occurred in Rome over 16-19 February.
The penultimate set of biodiversity negotiations before October’s Conference of the Parties ended in Rome last week, leaving plenty of unfinished business.
The CBD’s subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) met in the Italian capital for four days to discuss a range of issues, including biodiversity finance and reviewing progress towards the nature targets agreed under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
However, many of the major sticking points – particularly around finance – will have to wait until later this summer, leaving some observers worried about the capacity for delegates to get through a packed agenda at COP17.
The SBI, along with the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA) will both meet in Nairobi, Kenya, later this summer for a final round of talks before COP17 kicks off in Yerevan, Armenia, on 19 October.
Money talks
Finance for nature has long been a sticking point at negotiations under the CBD.
Discussions on a new fund for biodiversity derailed biodiversity talks in Cali, Colombia, in autumn 2024, requiring resumed talks a few months later.
Despite this, finance was barely on the agenda at the SBI meetings in Rome. Delegates discussed three studies on the relationship between debt sustainability and implementation of nature plans, but the more substantive talks are set to take place at the next SBI meeting in Nairobi.
Several parties “highlighted concerns with the imbalance of work” on finance between these SBI talks and the next ones, reported Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB).
Lim Li Ching, senior researcher at Third World Network, noted that tensions around finance permeated every aspect of the talks. She told Carbon Brief:
“If you’re talking about the gender plan of action – if there’s little or no financial resources provided to actually put it into practice and implement it, then it’s [just] paper, right? Same with the reporting requirements and obligations.”
Monitoring and reporting
Closely linked to the issue of finance is the obligations of parties to report on their progress towards the goals and targets of the GBF.
Parties do so through the submission of national reports.
Several parties at the talks pointed to a lack of timely funding for driving delays in their reporting, according to ENB.
A note released by the CBD Secretariat in December said that no parties had submitted their national reports yet; by the time of the SBI meetings, only the EU had. It further noted that just 58 parties had submitted their national biodiversity plans, which were initially meant to be published by COP16, in October 2024.
Linda Krueger, director of biodiversity and infrastructure policy at the environmental not-for-profit Nature Conservancy, told Carbon Brief that despite the sparse submissions, parties are “very focused on the national report preparation”. She added:
“Everybody wants to be able to show that we’re on the path and that there still is a pathway to getting to 2030 that’s positive and largely in the right direction.”
Watch, read, listen
NET LOSS: Nigeria’s marine life is being “threatened” by “ghost gear” – nets and other fishing equipment discarded in the ocean – said Dialogue Earth.
COMEBACK CAUSALITY: A Vox long-read looked at whether Costa Rica’s “payments for ecosystem services” programme helped the country turn a corner on deforestation.
HOMEGROWN GOALS: A Straits Times podcast discussed whether import-dependent Singapore can afford to shelve its goal to produce 30% of its food locally by 2030.
‘RUSTING’ RIVERS: The Financial Times took a closer look at a “strange new force blighting the [Arctic] landscape”: rivers turning rust-orange due to global warming.
New science
- Lakes in the Congo Basin’s peatlands are releasing carbon that is thousands of years old | Nature Geoscience
- Natural non-forest ecosystems – such as grasslands and marshlands – were converted for agriculture at four times the rate of land with tree cover between 2005 and 2020 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Around one-quarter of global tree-cover loss over 2001-22 was driven by cropland expansion, pastures and forest plantations for commodity production | Nature Food
In the diary
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean | Brasília
- 5 March: Nepal general elections
- 9-20 March: First part of the thirty-first session of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) | Kingston, Jamaica
Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz.
Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org
The post Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate
Rising temperatures across France since the mid-1970s is putting Tour de France competitors at “high risk”, according to new research.
The study, published in Scientific Reports, uses 50 years of climate data to calculate the potential heat stress that athletes have been exposed to across a dozen different locations during the world-famous cycling race.
The researchers find that both the severity and frequency of high-heat-stress events have increased across France over recent decades.
But, despite record-setting heatwaves in France, the heat-stress threshold for safe competition has rarely been breached in any particular city on the day the Tour passed through.
(This threshold was set out by cycling’s international governing body in 2024.)
However, the researchers add it is “only a question of time” until this occurs as average temperatures in France continue to rise.
The lead author of the study tells Carbon Brief that, while the race organisers have been fortunate to avoid major heat stress on race days so far, it will be “harder and harder to be lucky” as extreme heat becomes more common.
‘Iconic’
The Tour de France is one of the world’s most storied cycling races and the oldest of Europe’s three major multi-week cycling competitions, or Grand Tours.
Riders cover around 3,500 kilometres (km) of distance and gain up to nearly 55km of altitude over 21 stages, with only two or three rest days throughout the gruelling race.
The researchers selected the Tour de France because it is the “iconic bike race. It is the bike race of bike races,” says Dr Ivana Cvijanovic, a climate scientist at the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development, who led the new work.
Heat has become a growing problem for the competition in recent years.
In 2022, Alexis Vuillermoz, a French competitor, collapsed at the finish line of the Tour’s ninth stage, leaving in an ambulance and subsequently pulling out of the race entirely.
Two years later, British cyclist Sir Mark Cavendish vomited on his bike during the first stage of the race after struggling with the 36C heat.
The Tour also makes a good case study because it is almost entirely held during the month of July and, while the route itself changes, there are many cities and stages that are repeated from year to year, Cvijanovic adds.
‘Have to be lucky’
The study focuses on the 50-year span between 1974 and 2023.
The researchers select six locations across the country that have commonly hosted the Tour, from the mountain pass of Col du Tourmalet, in the French Pyrenees, to the city of Paris – where the race finishes, along the Champs-Élysées.
These sites represent a broad range of climatic zones: Alpe d’ Huez, Bourdeaux, Col du Tourmalet, Nîmes, Paris and Toulouse.
For each location, they use meteorological reanalysis data from ERA5 and radiant temperature data from ERA5-HEAT to calculate the “wet-bulb globe temperature” (WBGT) for multiple times of day across the month of July each year.
WBGT is a heat-stress index that takes into account temperature, humidity, wind speed and direct sunlight.
Although there is “no exact scientific consensus” on the best heat-stress index to use, WBGT is “one of the rare indicators that has been originally developed based on the actual human response to heat”, Cvijanovic explains.
It is also the one that the International Cycling Union (UCI) – the world governing body for sport cycling – uses to assess risk. A WBGT of 28C or higher is classified as “high risk” by the group.
WBGT is the “gold standard” for assessing heat stress, says Dr Jessica Murfree, director of the ACCESS Research Laboratory and assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Murfree, who was not involved in the new study, adds that the researchers are “doing the right things by conducting their science in alignment with the business practices that are already happening”.
The researchers find that across the 50-year time period, WBGT has been increasing across the entire country – albeit, at different rates. In the north-west of the country, WBGT has increased at an average rate of 0.1C per decade, while in the southern and eastern parts of the country, it has increased by more than 0.5C per decade.
The maps below show the maximum July WBGT for each decade of the analysis (rows) and for hourly increments of the late afternoon (columns). Lower temperatures are shown in lighter greens and yellows, while higher temperatures are shown in darker reds and purples.
Six Tour de France locations analysed in the study are shown as triangles on the maps (clockwise from top): Paris, Alpe d’ Huez, Nîmes, Toulouse, Col du Tourmalet and Bordeaux.
The maps show that the maximum WBGT temperature in the afternoon has surpassed 28C over almost the entire country in the last decade. The notable exceptions to this are the mountainous regions of the Alps and the Pyrenees.
The researchers also find that most of the country has crossed the 28C WBGT threshold – which they describe as “dangerous heat levels” – on at least one July day over the past decade. However, by looking at the WBGT on the day the Tour passed through any of these six locations, they find that the threshold has rarely been breached during the race itself.
For example, the research notes that, since 1974, Paris has seen a WBGT of 28C five times at 3pm in July – but that these events have “so far” not coincided with the cycling race.
The study states that it is “fortunate” that the Tour has so far avoided the worst of the heat-stress.
Cvijanovic says the organisers and competitors have been “lucky” to date. She adds:
“It has worked really well for them so far. But as the frequency of these [extreme heat] events is increasing, it will be harder and harder to be lucky.”
Dr Madeleine Orr, an assistant professor of sport ecology at the University of Toronto who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief that the paper was “really well done”, noting that its “methods are good [and its] approach was sound”. She adds:
“[The Tour has] had athletes complain about [the heat]. They’ve had athletes collapse – and still those aren’t the worst conditions. I think that that says a lot about what we consider safe. They’ve still been lucky to not see what unsafe looks like, despite [the heat] having already had impacts.”
Heat safety protocols
In 2024, the UCI set out its first-ever high temperature protocol – a set of guidelines for race organisers to assess athletes’ risk of heat stress.
The assessment places the potential risk into one of five categories based on the WBGT, ranging from very low to high risk.
The protocol then sets out suggested actions to take in the event of extreme heat, ranging from having athletes complete their warm-ups using ice vests and cold towels to increasing the number of support vehicles providing water and ice.
If the WBGT climbs above the 28C mark, the protocol suggests that organisers modify the start time of the stage, adapt the course to remove particularly hazardous sections – or even cancel the race entirely.
However, Orr notes that many other parts of the race, such as spectator comfort and equipment functioning, may have lower temperatures thresholds that are not accounted for in the protocol, but should also be considered.
Murfree points out that the study’s findings – and the heat protocol itself – are “really focused on adaptation, rather than mitigation”. While this is “to be expected”, she tells Carbon Brief:
“Moving to earlier start times or adjusting the route specifically to avoid these locations that score higher in heat stress doesn’t stop the heat stress. These aren’t climate preventative measures. That, I think, would be a much more difficult conversation to have in the research because of the Tour de France’s intimate relationship with fossil-fuel companies.”
The post Dangerous heat for Tour de France riders only a ‘question of time’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Dangerous heat for Tour de France riders only a ‘question of time’
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