The year 2025 saw the return to power of Donald Trump, a jewellery heist at the Louvre museum in Paris and an engagement that “broke the internet”.
Amid the biggest stories of the year, climate change research continued to feature prominently in news and social media feeds.
Using data from Altmetric, which scores research papers according to the attention they receive online, Carbon Brief has compiled its annual list of the 25 most talked-about climate-related studies of the past year.
The top 10 – shown in the infographic above and list below – include research into declining butterflies, heat-related deaths, sugar intake and the massive loss of ice from the world’s glaciers:
- Indicators of Global Climate Change 2024: annual update of key indicators of the state of the climate system and human influence
- Rapid butterfly declines across the US during the 21st century
- Global warming has accelerated: Are the UN and the public well informed?
- Community estimate of global glacier mass changes from 2000 to 2023
- The EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy, sustainable and just food systems
- Carbon majors and the scientific case for climate liability
- Estimating future heat-related and cold-related mortality under climate change, demographic and adaptation scenarios in 854 European cities
- Systematic attribution of heatwaves to the emissions of carbon majors
- Ambient outdoor heat and accelerated epigenetic aging among older adults in the US
- Rising temperatures increase added sugar intake disproportionately in disadvantaged groups in the US
Later in this article, Carbon Brief looks at the rest of the top 25 and provides analysis of the most featured journals, as well as the gender diversity and country of origin of authors.
New for this year is the inclusion of Altmetric’s new “sentiment analysis”, which scores how positive or negative a paper’s social media attention has been.
(For Carbon Brief’s previous Altmetric articles, see the links for 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016 and 2015.)
Global indicators
The top-scoring climate paper of 2025, ranking 24th of any research paper on any topic, is the annual update of the “Indicators of Global Climate Change” (IGCC) report.
The report was established in 2023 to help fill the gap in climate information between assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which can take up to seven years to complete. It includes the latest data on global temperatures, the remaining carbon budget, greenhouse gas emissions and – for the first time – sea level rise.
The paper, published in Earth System Science Data, has an Altmetric score of 4,099. This makes it the lowest top-scoring climate paper in Carbon Brief’s list since 2017.
(An Altmetric score combines the mentions that published peer-reviewed research has received from online news articles, blogs, Wikipedia and on social media platforms such as Facebook, Reddit, Twitter and Bluesky. See an earlier Carbon Brief article for more on how Altmetric’s scoring system works.)
Previous editions of the IGCC have also appeared in Carbon Brief’s list – the 2024 and 2023 iterations ranked 17th and 18th, respectively.
This year’s paper was mentioned 556 times in online news stories, including in the Associated Press, Guardian, Independent, Hill and BBC News.
Many outlets led their coverage with the study’s findings on the global “carbon budget”. This warned that the remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5C will be exhausted in just three years if global emissions continue at their current rate.
In a Carbon Brief guest post about the study, authors Prof Piers Forster and Dr Debbie Rosen from the University of Leeds wrote:
“It is also now inevitable that global temperatures will reach 1.5C of long-term warming in the next few years unless society takes drastic, transformative action…Every year of delay brings reaching 1.5C – or even higher temperatures – closer.”
Forster, who was awarded a CBE in the 2026 new year honours list, tells Carbon Brief that media coverage of the study was “great” at “putting recent extreme weather in the context of rapid long-term rates of global warming”.
However, he adds:
“Climate stories are not getting the coverage they deserve or need at the moment so the community needs to get all the help we can for getting clear consistent messages out there.”
The paper was tweeted more than 300 times and posted on Bluesky more than 950 times. It also appeared in 22 blogs.
Using AI, Altmetric now analyses the “sentiment” of this social media attention. As the summary figure below shows, the posts about this paper were largely positive, with an approximate 3:1 split of positive and negative attention.
Butterfly decline
With an Altmetric score of 3,828, the second-highest scoring climate paper warns of “widespread” declines in butterfly numbers across the US since the turn of the century.
The paper, titled “Rapid butterfly declines across the US during the 21st century” and published in Science, identifies a 22% fall in butterfly numbers across more than 500 species between 2000 and 2020.
(There is a higher-scoring paper, “The 2025 state of the climate report: a planet on the brink”, in the journal BioScience, but it is a “special report” and was not formally peer reviewed.)
The scale of the decline suggests “multiple and broadly acting threats, including habitat loss, climate change and pesticide use”, the paper says. The authors find that “species generally had stronger declines in more southerly parts of their ranges”, with some of the most negative trends in the driest and “most rapidly warming” US states.
The research was covered in 560 news articles, including the New York Times, Guardian, Associated Press, NPR, El País and BBC News. Much of the news coverage led with the 22% decline figure.
The paper was also mentioned in 13 blogs, more than 750 Bluesky posts and more than 600 tweets.
The sentiment analysis reveals that social media posts about the paper were largely negative. However, closer inspection reveals that this negativity is predominantly towards the findings of the paper, not the research itself.
For example, a Bluesky post on the “distressing” findings by one of the study’s authors is designated as “neutral negative” by Altmetric’s AI analysis.
In a response to a query from Carbon Brief, Altmetric explains that the “goal is to measure how people feel about the research paper itself, not the topic it discusses”. However, in some cases the line can be “blurred” as the AI “sometimes struggles to separate the subject matter from the critique”. The organisation adds that it is “continuously working on improving our models to better distinguish between the post’s content and the research output”.
On the attention that the paper received, lead author Dr Collin Edwards of Washington State University in Vancouver says that “first and foremost, people care about butterflies and our results are broad-reaching, unequivocal and, unfortunately, very concerning”.
Edwards tells Carbon Brief he hopes the clarity of the writing made the paper accessible to readers, noting that he and his co-authors “sweat[ed] over every word”.
The resulting news coverage “accurately captured the science”, Edwards says:
“Much as I wish our results were less consistently grim, the consistency and simplicity of our findings mean that even if a news story only provides the highest level summary, it isn’t misleading readers by skipping some key caveat or nuance that changes the interpretation.”
Warming ‘acceleration’
In third place in Carbon Brief’s list for 2025 is the latest scientific paper from veteran climatologist Dr James Hansen, former director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and now adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Earth Institute.
The paper, titled “Global warming has accelerated: Are the UN and the public well-informed?” was published in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development. It generated an Altmetric score of 3,474.
The study estimates that the record-high global temperatures in the last few years were caused by a combination of El Niño and a reduction in air pollution from international shipping.
The findings suggest that the cooling effect of aerosols – tiny, light‑scattering particles produced mainly by burning fossil fuels – has masked more of the warming driven by greenhouse gases than previously estimated by the IPCC.
As efforts to tackle air pollution continue to reduce aerosol emissions, warming will accelerate further – reaching 2C by 2045, according to the research.
The paper was covered by almost 400 news stories – driven, in part, by Hansen’s comments in a press briefing that the Paris Agreement’s 2C warming limit was already “dead”.
Hansen’s analysis received a sceptical response from some scientists. For example, Dr Valerie Masson-Delmotte, an IPCC co-chair for its most recent assessment report on climate science, told Agence France-Presse the research “is not published in a climate science journal and it formulates a certain number of hypotheses that are not consistent with all the available observations”.
In addition, other estimates, including by Carbon Brief, suggest new shipping regulations have made a smaller contribution to warming than estimated by Hansen.
Hansen tells Carbon Brief that the paper “did ok” in terms of media coverage, although notes “it’s on [scientists] to do a better job of making clear what the core issues are in the physics of climate change”.
With more than 1,000 tweets, the paper scored highest in the top 25 for posts on Twitter. It was also mentioned in more than 800 Bluesky posts and on 27 blogs.
The sentiment analysis suggests that these posts were largely positive, with just a small percentage of negative comments.
Making the top 10
Ranking fourth in Carbon Brief’s analysis is a Nature paper calculating changes in global glacier mass over 2000-23. The study finds glaciers worldwide lost 273bn tonnes of ice annually over that time – with losses increasing by 36% between 2000-11 and 2012-23.
The study has an Altmetric score of 3,199. It received more news coverage than any other paper in this year’s top 25, amassing 1,187 mentions. with outlets including the Guardian, Associated Press and Economic Times.
At number five, with an Altmetric score of 2,860, is the EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy, sustainable and just food systems.
Carbon Brief’s coverage of the report highlights that “a global shift towards ‘healthier’ diets could cut non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions, such as methane, from agriculture by 15% by 2050”. It adds:
“The findings build on the widely cited 2019 report from the EAT-Lancet Commission – a group of leading experts in nutrition, climate, economics, health, social sciences and agriculture from around the world.”
Also making the top 10 – ranking sixth and eighth – are a pair of papers published in Nature, which both link extreme heat to the emissions of specific “carbon majors” – large producers of fossil fuels, such as ExxonMobil, Shell and Saudi Aramco,.
The first is a perspective, titled “Carbon majors and the scientific case for climate liability”, published in April. It begins:
“Will it ever be possible to sue anyone for damaging the climate? Twenty years after this question was first posed, we argue that the scientific case for climate liability is closed. Here we detail the scientific and legal implications of an ‘end-to-end’ attribution that links fossil fuel producers to specific damages from warming.”
The authors find “trillions (of US$) in economic losses attributable to the extreme heat caused by emissions from individual companies”.
The paper was mentioned 1,329 times on Bluesky – the highest in this year’s top 25. It was also mentioned in around 270 news stories.
Published four months later, the second paper uses extreme event attribution to assess the impact of climate change on more than 200 heatwaves recorded since the year 2000.
The authors find one-quarter of the heatwaves would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused global warming. They add that the heatwaves were, on average, 1.7C hotter due to climate change, with half of this increase due to emissions stemming from the operations and production of carbon majors.
This study was mentioned in almost 300 news stories – including by Carbon Brief – as well as 222 tweets and 823 posts on Bluesky.
In seventh place is a Nature Medicine study, which quantifies how heat-related and cold-related deaths will change over the coming century as the climate warms.
A related research briefing explains the main findings of the paper:
“Heat-related deaths are estimated to increase more rapidly than cold-related deaths are estimated to decrease under future climate change scenarios across European cities. An unrealistic degree of adaptation to heat would be required to revert this trend, indicating the need for strong policies to reduce greenhouse gases emissions.”
The paper was mentioned 345 times in the news, including in the Financial Times, New Scientist, Guardian and Bloomberg.
The paper in ninth place also analyses the health impacts of extreme heat. The study, published in Science Advances, finds that extreme heat can speed up biological ageing in older people.
Rounding out the top 10 is a Nature Climate Change study, titled “Rising temperatures increase added sugar intake disproportionately in disadvantaged groups in the US”.
The study finds that at higher temperatures, people in the US consume more sugar – mainly due to “higher consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and frozen desserts”. The authors project that warming of 5C would drive additional sugar consumption of around 3 grams per day, “with vulnerable groups at an even higher risk”.
Elsewhere in the top 25
The rest of the top 25 includes a wide range of research, from “glacier extinction” and wildfires to Amazon drought and penguin guano.
In 13th place is a Nature Climate Change study that finds the wealthiest 10% of people – defined as those who earn at least €42,980 (£36,605) per year – contributed seven times more to the rise in monthly heat extremes around the world than the global average.
The authors also explore country-level emissions, finding that the wealthiest 10% in the US produced the emissions that caused a doubling in heat extremes across “vulnerable regions” globally.
(See Carbon Brief’s coverage of the paper for more details.)
In 15th place is the annual Lancet Countdown on health and climate change – a lengthy report with more than 120 authors.
The study warns that “climate change is increasingly destabilising the planetary systems and environmental conditions on which human life depends”.
This annual analysis from the Lancet often features in Carbon Brief’s top 25 analysis. After three years in the Carbon Brief’s top 10 over 2020-23, the report landed in 20th place in 2023 and missed out on a spot in the top 25 altogether in 2024.
In 16th place is a Science Advances study, titled “Increasing rat numbers in cities are linked to climate warming, urbanisation and human population”. The study uses public complaint and inspection data from 16 cities around the world to estimate changes in rat populations.
It finds that “warming temperatures and more people living in cities may be expanding the seasonal activity periods and food availability for urban rats”.
The study received 320 new mentions, including in the Washington Post, New Scientist and National Geographic.
In 21st place is a Nature Climate Change paper, titled “Peak glacier extinction in the mid-21st century”. The study authors “project a sharp rise in the number of glaciers disappearing worldwide, peaking between 2041 and 2055 with up to ~4,000 glaciers vanishing annually”.
Completing the top 25 is a Nature study on the “prudent planetary limit for geological carbon storage” – where captured CO2 is injected deep underground, where it can stay trapped for thousands of years.
In a Carbon Brief guest post, study authors Dr Matthew Gidden and Prof Joeri Rogelj explain that carbon dioxide removal will only be effective at limiting global temperature rise if captured CO2 is injected “deep underground, where it can stay trapped for thousands of years”.
The guest post warns that “geological carbon storage is not limitless”. It states that “if all available safe carbon storage capacity were used for CO2 removal, this would contribute to only a 0.7C reduction in global warming”.
Top journals
The journal Nature dominates Carbon Brief’s top 25, with seven papers featured.
Many other journals in the Springer Nature stable also feature, including Nature Climate Change (three), Communications Earth & Environment (two), as well as Nature Ecology & Evolution, Nature Medicine and Nature Reviews Earth & Environment (one each).
Also appearing more than once in the top 25 are Science Advances (three), Science (two) and the Lancet (two).
This is shown in the graphic below.
All the final scores for 2025 can be found in this spreadsheet.
Diversity in the top 25
The top 25 climate papers of 2025 cover a huge range of topics and scope. However, analysis of their authors reveals a distinct lack of diversity.
In total, the top 25 includes more than 650 authors – the highest number since Carbon Brief began this analysis in 2022.
This is largely due to a few publications with an exceptionally high number of authors. For example, the 2025 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change has almost 130 authors alone, accounting for almost one-fifth of authors in this analysis.
Carbon Brief recorded the gender and country of affiliation for each of these authors. (The methodology used was developed by Carbon Brief for analysis presented in a special 2021 series on climate justice.)
The analysis reveals that 88% of the authors of the climate papers most featured in the media in 2025 are from institutions in the global north.
Carbon Brief defines the global north as North America, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. It defines the global south as Asia (excluding Japan), Africa, Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand), Latin America and the Caribbean.
The analysis shows that 53% of authors are from European institutions, while only 1% of authors are from institutions in Africa.
Further data analysis shows that there are also inequalities within continents. The map below shows the percentage of authors from each country, where dark blue indicates a higher percentage. Countries that are not represented by any authors in the analysis are shown in grey.
The top-ranking countries on this map are the US and the UK, which account for 26% and 16% of the authors, respectively.
Carbon Brief also analysed the gender of the authors.
Only one-third of authors from the top 25 climate papers of 2025 are women and only five of the 25 papers list a woman as lead author.
The plot below shows the number of authors from each continent, separated into men (dark blue) and women (light blue).
The full spreadsheet showing the results of this data analysis can be found here. For more on the biases in climate publishing, see Carbon Brief’s article on the lack of diversity in climate-science research.
The post Analysis: The climate papers most featured in the media in 2025 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: The climate papers most featured in the media in 2025
All answers will need to be submitted via the Google form by the end of the half-time break
The post Carbon Brief Quiz 2026: Picture Round 1 and 2 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Rudecindo Espíndola’s family has been growing corn, figs and other crops for generations in the Soncor Valley in northern Chile, an oasis of green orchards in one of the driest places on Earth – the Atacama desert.
Perched nearly 2,500 metres above sea level, his village, Toconao, means “lost corner” in the Kunza language of the Indigenous people who have lived and farmed the land in this remote spot for millennia.
“Our deep connection to this place is based on what we have inherited from our ancestors: our culture, our language,” said Espíndola, a member of a local research team that found evidence that people have inhabited the desert for more than 12,000 years.
This distant outpost is at the heart of the global rush for lithium, a silvery-white metal used to make batteries for electric vehicles (EV) and renewable energy storage that are vital to the world’s clean energy transition. The Atacama salt flat is home to about 25% of the world’s known lithium reserves, turning Chile into the world’s second-largest lithium producer after Australia.
For decades, the Atacama’s Indigenous Lickanantay people have protested against the expansion of the lithium industry, warning that the large evaporation ponds used to extract lithium from the brine beneath the salt flats are depleting scarce and sacred water supplies and destroying fragile desert ecosystems.
Espíndola joined the protests, fearing that competition for water could pose an existential threat to his community.
But last year, he was among dozens of Indigenous representatives who sat across the table from executives representing two Chilean mining giants to hammer out a governance model that gives Indigenous communities living close to lithium sites a bigger say over operations, and a greater share of the economic benefits.
A pioneering deal
The agreement is part of a landmark deal between state-owned copper miner Codelco and lithium producer the Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile (SQM) to extract lithium from the salt flats until 2060 through a joint venture called NovaAndino Litio.
The governance model that promises people living in Toconao and other villages around the salt flats millions of dollars in benefits and greater environmental oversight is the first of its kind in mineral-rich Chile, and has been hailed by industry experts as the start of a potential model for more responsible mining for energy transition metals.
NovaAndino told Climate Home News the negotiations with local communities represented an “unprecedented process that has allowed us to incorporate the territory’s vision early in the project’s design” and creates “a system of permanent engagement” with local communities.
The company added it will contribute to sustainable development in the area and help “the safeguarding of [the Lickanantay people’s] culture and environmental values”.
-
West Africa’s first lithium mine awaits go-ahead as Ghana seeks better deal
Ghana wants to benefit from the scramble for lithium but its reliance on mining firms for revenue and expertise weakens its ability to negotiate preferential terms, experts say -
Campaigners sue Chilean government over copper mining pollution
The case comes after Climate Home News revealed that uncontrolled air pollution has put people’s health at risk in Chile’s copper mining heartland -
Argentina’s pioneering glacier law on the line as Milei bets on copper rush
President Javier Milei wants Congress to relax groundbreaking glacier protection legislation to boost mining, but opponents say the environmental risks are too great
For mining companies, such agreements could help reduce social conflicts and protests, which have delayed and stalled extraction in other parts of South America’s lithium-rich region, known as the lithium triangle.
“Argentina and Bolivia could learn a lot from what we’re doing [here],” said Rodrigo Guerrero, a researcher at the Santiago-based Espacio Público think-tank, adding that adopting participatory frameworks early on could prevent them from “going through the entire cycle of disputes” that Chile has experienced.
Justice at last?
As part of the governance deal, NovaAndino has pledged to adopt technologies that will reduce water use and mitigate the environmental impacts of lithium extraction.
It has also committed to hold more than 100 annual meetings with community representatives to build a “good faith” relationship, and an Indigenous Advisory Council will meet twice a year with the company’s sustainability committee to discuss its environmental strategy, company sources said. The meetings are due to begin next month.
To oversee the agreement’s implementation, an assembly – composed of representatives from all 25 signatory communities – will track the project’s progress. In addition, NovaAndino will hold one-on-one meetings with each community to address issues such as the hiring of local people and the protection of Indigenous employees.
Espíndola said the deal, while far from perfect, was an important step forward.
“Previously, Indigenous participation was ambiguous. Now we talk about participation at [every] hierarchical level of this process, a very strong empowerment for Indigenous communities,” said Espíndola, adding that it did not give local communities everything they had asked for. For instance, they will not hold veto power over NovaAndino’s decisions or have a formal shareholder role.
But after years of conflict with mining companies, a form of “participatory justice is being done”, he said.
Not everyone is convinced that the accord, pushed by Chile’s former leftist government, marks progress, however.
“Not in our name”
The negotiations have caused deep divisions among the Lickanantay, some of whom say greater engagement with mining companies will not stop irreparable damage to the salt flats on which their traditional way of life depends. Others fear the promise of more money will further erode community bonds.
In January 2024, Indigenous communities from five villages closest to the mining operations, including Toconao, blocked the main access roads to the lithium extraction sites. They said the Council of Atacameño Peoples, which represents 18 Lickanantay communities and was leading discussions with the company, no longer spoke for them.
Official transcripts of consultations on the extension of the lithium contracts and how to share the promised benefits reveal deep divisions. Tensions peaked when communities around the mining operations clashed over how to distribute the multimillion-dollar windfall, with villages closest to the mining sites demanding the largest share.
Eventually, separate deals establishing a new governance framework over mining activities were reached between Codelco and SQM with 25 local communities, including a specific agreement for the five villages closest to the extraction sites.
The division caused by the separate deal for the five villages “will cause historic damage” to the unity of the Atacama desert’s Indigenous peoples, said Hugo Flores, president of the Council of Atacameño Associations, a separate group representing farmers, herders and local workers who oppose the mining expansion.
Sonia Ramos, 83, a renowned Lickanantay healer and well-known anti-mining activist, lamented the fracturing of social bonds over money, and for the sake of meeting government objectives.
“There is fragmentation among the communities themselves. Everything has transformed into disequilibrium,” said the 83-year-old.
“[NovaAndino] supposedly has economic significance for the country, but for us, it is the opposite,” she said.
The company told Climate Home News it has “acted consistently” to promote “transparent, voluntary, and good-faith dialogue with the communities in the territory, recognising their diversity and autonomy, and always respecting their timelines and forms of participation”.
A one-off deal or a model for others?
The NovaAndino joint venture is a pillar of Chile’s strategy to double lithium production by 2031 and consolidate the copper-producing nation’s role in the clean energy transition as demand for battery minerals accelerates.
Chile’s new far-right president, José Antonio Kast, who was sworn in last week, promised to respect the lithium contracts signed by his predecessor’s administration – including the governance model.
Still, some experts say the splits over the new model highlight the need for legislation that mandates direct engagement and minimum community benefits for all large mining projects.
“In the past, this has lent itself to clientelism, communities who negotiate best or arrive first get the better deal,” said Pedro Zapata, a programme officer in Chile for the Natural Resource Governance Institute.
“This can be to the detriment of other communities with less strength. We cannot have first- and second-class citizens subject to the same industry,” he added.
The government is already negotiating two more public-private partnerships to extract lithium with mining giant Rio Tinto, which it said would include a framework to engage with Indigenous communities and share some of the revenues. The details will need to be negotiated between local people, the government and the company.
Sharing the benefits of mining
Under the deal in the Atacama, NovaAndino will run SQM’s current lithium concessions until they expire in 2030 before seeking new permits to expand mining in the region under a vast project known as “Salar Futuro” – a process which will require further mandatory consultations with communities.
Besides the participatory mechanism, the new agreement promises more money than ever before for salt flat communities.
Depending on the global price of lithium and their proximity to the mining operations, Indigenous communities could collectively receive roughly $30 million annually in funding – about double what SQM currently disburses under existing contracts.
When taking into account the company’s payments to local and regional authorities, contributions could reach $150 million annually, according to the government.
To access these resources, each community will need to submit a pipeline of projects they would like funding for under a complex arrangement that includes five separate financial streams:
- A general investment fund will distribute funding based on each village’s size and proximity to the mining sites
- A development fund will support projects specifically in the five communities closest to the extraction sites
- Contributions to farmers and livestock associations
- Contributions to local governments
- A groundbreaking “intergenerational fund” held in trust for the Lickanantay until 2060
For many isolated communities in the Atacama desert, financial contributions from mining firms have funded essential public services, such as healthcare and facilities like football pitches and swimming pools.
In the past, communities have used some of the benefits they received from mining to build their own environmental monitoring units, hiring teams of hydrogeologists and lawyers to scrutinise miners’ activities.
Espíndola said the new model could pave the way for more ambitious development projects such as water treatment plants and community solar energy projects.
Competition for water
The depletion of water resources is one of local people’s biggest environmental concerns.
To extract lithium from the salt flats, miners pump lithium-rich brine accumulated over millions of years in underground reservoirs into gigantic pools, where the water is left to evaporate under the sun and leaves behind lithium carbonate.
One study has shown that the practice is causing the salt flat to sink by up to two centimetres a year. SQM recently said its current operations consume approximately 11,500 to 12,500 litres of industrial freshwater for every metric ton of lithium produced.
NovaAndino has committed to significantly reduce the company’s water use by returning at least 30% of the water it extracts from the brine and eliminating the use of all freshwater in its operations within five years of obtaining an environmental permit.
-
Bolivia’s shift to the right renews ambition to mine vast lithium reserves
The election of a centre-right president after 20 years of socialist rule could open up the nation’s lithium reserves to foreign investment – the US is paying attention -
‘The state doesn’t want to know’: Doctors raise alarm on children’s health crisis in Chile’s copper heartland
Autism and cancer cases are soaring in Chile linked to pollution from copper mining critical for the energy transition, doctors say -
Lithium tug of war: the US-China rivalry for Argentina’s white gold
As global competition hots up to secure lithium supplies for batteries, China is boosting its investments in Argentina while the US courts President Javier Milei
Cristina Dorador, a microbiologist at the University of Antofagasta, told Climate Home News that reinjecting the water underground is untested at a large scale and could impact the chemical composition of the salt flats.
Continuing to extract lithium from the flats until 2060 could be the “final blow” for this fragile ecosystem, she said.
Asked to comment on such concerns, NovaAndino said any new technology will be “subject to the highest regulatory standards”, and pledged to ensure transparency through “an updated monitoring system with the participation of Indigenous communities”.
High price for hard-won gains
For the five communities living on the doorstep of the lithium pools, one of the biggest gains is being granted physical access to the mining sites to monitor the lithium extraction and its impact on the salt flats.
That is a first and will strengthen communities’ ability to call out environmental harms, said Sergio Cubillos, the community president of Peine, the village closest to the evaporation ponds. It could also give them the means to seek remediation through the courts if necessary, Espíndola said.
Gaining such rights represents long-overdue progress, Cubillos said, but it has come at a high price for the Lickanantay people.
“Communities receiving money today is what has ultimately led to this division, because we haven’t been able to figure out what we want, how we want it, and how we envision our future as a people,” he said.
Main image: A truck loads concentrated brine at SQM’s lithium mine at the Atacama salt flat in Chile (Photo: REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado)
The post Landmark deal to share Chile’s lithium windfall fractures Indigenous communities appeared first on Climate Home News.
Landmark deal to share Chile’s lithium windfall fractures Indigenous communities
Diplomats will hold a series of informal meetings this year in a bid to revive stalled talks over a global treaty to curb plastic pollution, before aiming to reconvene for the next round of official negotiations at the end of 2026 or early 2027.
Hoping to find a long-awaited breakthrough in the deeply divided UN process, the chair of the talks, Chilean ambassador Julio Cordano, released a roadmap on Monday to inject momentum into the discussions after negotiations collapsed at a chaotic session in Geneva last August.
Cordano wrote in a letter that countries would meet in Nairobi from June 30 to July 3 for informal discussions to review all the components of the negotiations, including thorny issues such as efforts to limit soaring plastic production.
-
Deep divisions persist as plastics treaty talks restart at informal meeting
The US hits out at EU and Pacific island states over efforts to reduce soaring plastic production, highlighting the challenges ahead for troubled negotiations -
Why we couldn’t agree on a plastics treaty in Geneva – and what might happen next
Switzerland’s lead negotiator at INC-5.2 reflects on why the talks didn’t succeed – and the options now for getting an effective agreement
The gathering should result in the drafting of a new document laying the foundations of a future treaty text with options on elements with divergent views, but “no surprises” such as new ideas or compromise proposals. This plan aims to address the fact that countries left Geneva without a draft text to work on – something Cordano called a “significant limitation” in his letter.
“Predictable pathway”
The meeting in the Kenyan capital will follow a series of virtual consultations every four to six weeks, where heads of country delegations will exchange views on specific topics. A second in-person meeting aimed at finding solutions might take place in early October, depending on the availability of funding.
Cordano said the roadmap should offer “a predictable pathway” in the lead-up to the next formal negotiating session, which is expected to take place over 10 days at the end of 2026 or early 2027. A host country has yet to be selected, but Climate Home News understands that Brazil, Azerbaijan or Kenya – the home of the UN Environment Programme – have been put forward as options.
Countries have twice failed to agree on a global plastics treaty at what were meant to be final rounds of negotiations in December 2024 and August 2025.
Divisions on plastic production
One of the most divisive elements of the discussions remains what the pact should do about plastic production, which, according to the UN, is set to triple by 2060 without intervention.
A majority, which includes most European, Latin American, African and Pacific island nations, wants to limit the manufacturing of plastic to “sustainable levels”. But large fossil fuel and petrochemical producers, led by Saudi Arabia, the United States, Russia and India, say the treaty should only focus on managing plastic waste.
As nearly all plastic is made from planet-heating oil, gas and coal, the sector’s trajectory will have a significant impact on global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Countries still far apart
After an eight-month hiatus, informal discussions restarted in early March at an informal meeting of about 20 countries hosted by Japan.
A participant told Climate Home News that, while the gathering had been helpful to test ideas, progress remained “challenging”, with national stances largely unchanged.
The source added that countries would need to achieve a significant shift in positions in the coming months to make reconvening formal negotiations worthwhile.
Deep divisions persist as plastics treaty talks restart at informal meeting
Jacob Kean-Hammerson, global plastics policy lead at Greenpeace USA, said the new roadmap offers an opportunity for countries to “defend and protect the most critical provisions on the table”.
He said that the document expected after the Nairobi meeting “must include and revisit proposals backed by a large number of countries, especially on plastic production, that have previously been disregarded”.
“These measures are essential to addressing the crisis at its source and must be reinstated as a key part of the negotiations,” he added.
The post Roadmap launched to restart deadlocked UN plastics treaty talks appeared first on Climate Home News.
Roadmap launched to restart deadlocked UN plastics treaty talks
-
Greenhouse Gases7 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Climate Change7 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change Videos2 years ago
The toxic gas flares fuelling Nigeria’s climate change – BBC News
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits
-
Renewable Energy2 years ago
GAF Energy Completes Construction of Second Manufacturing Facility