Rich Wilson is CEO of the Iswe Foundation and co-founder of the Global Citizens’ Assembly.
The numbers are stark. According to the 2026 Global Report on Food Crises, 266 million people across 47 countries experienced high levels of acute food insecurity last year, nearly double the figure recorded a decade ago.
Meanwhile, disruptions to oil, gas and fertiliser flows through the Strait of Hormuz drove a 46% month-on-month spike in urea prices early this year, sending agricultural price indices up 8% and raising the spectre of a global affordability crisis.
This is not a blip. It is a new baseline. The EAT-Lancet Commission concluded that food systems now account for roughly 30% of total greenhouse gas emissions and are the largest single contributor to the climate crisis. The science has been clear for years.
Now some of the solutions to the problem are becoming socially acceptable too.
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Earlier this year, people from more than 60 countries and territories, selected not by vested interest, but by lottery, spent seven weeks examining the evidence on food and climate for the latest Global Citizens’ Assembly. They heard from scientists, farmers and industry. They worked through 42 hours of structured deliberation, engaging with some difficult trade-offs.
They were not asked to endorse a predetermined conclusion. They were asked an open question: what changes, if any, should we make to how we grow, share and eat food, so that everyone has enough to nourish themselves while tackling the causes and impacts of climate change?
Phase down industrial animal farming
Their answer was unambiguous. They voted to protect forests. They voted to phase down industrial animal food production. They voted for supply chain reform and corporate accountability, explicitly rejecting the idea that the burden of change should fall on individual consumers. All 22 of their Calls to Action passed with over 85% support, a super-majority of randomly selected people from every region of the world, in agreement.
Consider what the assembly was actually being asked to decide. Industrial animal food production is the primary driver of tropical deforestation. Protecting more land as forest and ecosystem means less land available for the expansion of industrial production. That is a real trade-off, with real consequences for real livelihoods. Politicians have spent years avoiding it.
These randomly selected people looked at the evidence, deliberated across time zones and cultures, and chose the forests, with 64% in strong support and a further 20% in favour. People from livestock farming communities voted for change. Not because they were told to. Because deliberation led them there.
We estimate there have now been more than 7,000 citizen participation initiatives worldwide in the last decade. They have been organised because, as our 2025 report: People in the Lead demonstrated, people are now consistently and significantly ahead of politicians on issues ranging from climate to AI governance.
The people know best
What the research consistently shows is that ordinary people, given proper evidence and time, produce recommendations that are more effective and more aligned with public values than what emerges from elected legislatures. The gap in global governance is no longer primarily between science and the public. It is between citizens and their political leaders.
That gap matters for more than procedural reasons. When policy treats people as passive recipients rather than active participants, it leaves out the very actors whose behaviour, trust and consent the transition depends on. Institutions that speak only to other institutions, and negotiate only with state actors and industry lobbies, are missing out on the trust and energy of the people they are supposed to serve.
Governments, left to their own devices, are not moving fast enough to prove that argument wrong. At COP30 in Belém last November, countries failed to agree on a fossil fuel phaseout roadmap, and even full implementation of every submitted national climate plan still leaves the world on course for 2.3 to 2.8C of warming.
Citizens’ track at COP
But the Brazilian presidency grasped something important. Among the conference’s more significant outcomes was the formal launch of a Citizens’ Track within the UNFCCC process, a mechanism for connecting the global participation field to intergovernmental climate negotiations. Türkiye and Australia, who together hold the COP31 presidency in Antalya this November, now have the opportunity to strengthen and institutionalise what Brazil began.
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The question before us is no longer whether citizens can contribute to solving these problems. Across the world, in local food networks, in community assemblies and in participatory planning processes, they already are, quietly generating more ambitious and more legitimate solutions than those emerging from formal diplomatic channels.
What is required now is the political courage to connect people to power. Not to consult citizens and file the results. Not to invite them to observe while the real decisions are made elsewhere. But to recognise the public as partners in perhaps the most consequential governance challenge of our time.
The post As food shocks spread, citizens are showing more leadership than governments appeared first on Climate Home News.
As food shocks spread, citizens are showing more leadership than governments
An upcoming UK government consultation on weakening targets for electric vehicles (EVs) could cost consumers as much as £3bn a year by 2030, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
It could require the UK to import an extra 17m barrels of oil in 2030, raising expected net imports by 8%, as well as adding 2.5% to national emissions that year, the analysis shows.
After years of fierce lobbying by parts of the car industry – and despite the significant savings on offer for EV drivers – media reports suggest that EV targets could be “watered down”.
Under current rules, battery EVs – BEVs, those which run only on electricity – must make up a rising share of new car sales in the UK.
This policy, known as the “zero-emission vehicles” (ZEV) mandate, was introduced by the previous Conservative government and sets a goal for 33% BEV sales in 2026, rising to 80% in 2030.
(Carmakers are able to use “flexibilities” to help meet their targets, which reduces the effective target under the ZEV mandate to an estimated 25% of sales in 2026.)
Now, the government under new Labour prime minister Andy Burnham is reported to be considering a cut in the BEV target for 2030 to just 50% of new car sales, alongside options for 60% or 70%.
Carbon Brief understands that a consultation on weakening the ZEV mandate is being reviewed by the prime minister’s office in Number 10, ahead of being formally released.
If the mandate is weakened to 50% by 2030 – and if carmakers make more use of “flexibilities” – there could be up to 3m fewer BEVs on UK roads by 2030, according to the NGO T&E.
Previous Carbon Brief analysis found that BEVs are around £1,100 cheaper to run per year than a petrol car, thanks to far lower fuel costs.
Overall, BEVs are more than £1,000 per year cheaper to own than either petrol cars or plug-in hybrids (PHEVs, which can run on petrol or electricity).
This is according to analysis of the “total cost of ownership” by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), including purchase price, fuel costs, insurance and proposed pay-per-mile charges.
In total, Carbon Brief analysis shows that UK drivers could be hit with an extra £3bn in annual ownership costs by 2030, if the ZEV mandate is weakened, as shown below.
A weaker ZEV mandate could “put billions of pounds of committed investments at risk”, reports BusinessGreen, including in the EV charging network and battery supply chains.
Industry group Energy UK says that the mandate is “working in the way it was designed to work” and that it is the “single biggest driver of emissions reductions” in government climate plans.
However, Carbon Brief analysis shows that a weaker ZEV mandate could result in an extra 7.4m tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions (MtCO2) in 2030. This would add the equivalent of 2.5% to national emissions in 2030, under the UK’s international climate goal for that year.
In addition, a weaker ZEV mandate could result in the UK needing to import an extra 17m barrels of oil in 2030, equivalent to 8% of projected net imports that year.
Energy UK says that shifting to EVs will help to reduce household energy bills “for everyone”. This is not only through direct cost-of-ownership savings for EV drivers, but also by spreading the costs of upgrading the electricity system across a wider user base.
Car industry group the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders claims that its members are spending “blilions…on discounts, finance incentives and marketing support” and that “natural” EV demand is below the level required to meet the current ZEV mandate. Its claims are disputed.
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The post Analysis: Weaker EV targets could cost UK consumers £3bn a year by 2030 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Weaker EV targets could cost UK consumers £3bn a year by 2030
A new draft text to revive deadlocked UN plastics treaty talks does not include specific measures on managing runaway plastic production, a growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, drawing criticism from some countries and campaigners that ambition for the global pact is shrinking.
After diplomats met in Nairobi early in July for the first time since negotiations fell apart a year ago, Chilean ambassador Julio Cordano, who is chairing the talks, released a first document last weekend, setting out elements of a possible treaty to tackle plastic pollution.
Cordano stressed this is an “informal reference document” rather than a negotiated text. But its structure is similar to a draft treaty and closely resembles the previous version rejected by governments during the last round of formal negotiations in Geneva.
The new text recognises the world’s “unsustainable” levels of plastic production and consumption, both of which are projected to nearly triple by 2060. But it contains no measures to stem that growth, critics say, pointing to what they see as a broader weakening of ambition.
They argue the document is increasingly aligned with the demands of fossil fuel-producing countries, including Gulf states, the US and Russia, which have pushed for the treaty to focus on managing plastic waste rather than limiting production.
“When you leave the countries that have the most vested interests in delaying meaningful action to shape the agenda, you end up with a text that does nothing to end plastic pollution,” said David Azoulay, environmental health programme director at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL).
France disappointed with production omission
“We’ve gone backwards rather than forwards,” Christina Dixon, a campaigner at the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), told Climate Home News. “A text that was rejected by the majority of countries in Geneva as being too weak and not ambitious enough has been repackaged one year later with some key elements removed and put out as a kind of sign of progress.”
A French diplomatic source told Climate Home News it was “disappointing” that the text lacked any concrete provisions on tackling “unsustainable” levels of plastics production and consumption. That is despite a majority of countries repeatedly advocating for curbs and scientists saying the world cannot put an end to plastic pollution without tackling the issue at source, they added.
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Governments across Europe, Latin America, Africa and the Pacific islands have previously called for efforts to limit the manufacturing of plastics to “sustainable levels”, but their efforts have been frustrated by strong and persistent opposition from a small group of fossil fuel producers, who see plastics as a growing market for oil and gas.
Weakening of production ambition
Cordano told Climate Home News that the “concept” of sustainable production is still reflected in different parts of the new document.
But measures aimed at achieving that objective have progressively weakened over time. Initial versions of the draft treaty, dating back to 2024, included a standalone article with the option of setting a global target to reduce the production and consumption of primary plastics.
That disappeared from successive drafts published in Geneva last year. The last version nevertheless said data on plastic production could be considered in future assessments of whether the treaty was meeting its objectives. Observers saw this as an important provision that could have strengthened the pact over time and potentially kept the door open for a global production target.
The new text only mentions “sustainable production” in the preamble and includes an article saying that countries could improve the design of plastic products in order to contribute to “sustainable production”.
“There’s a war of attrition element,” said Dennis Clare, a negotiator for the Pacific island nation of Micronesia. “The countries that want to do less are dragging out discussions and gradually pressuring the more ambitious to compromise towards a lower common denominator.”
Little space for thorny discussions
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. After being selected as the new chair earlier this year, Cordano has been working to steer the process back on track through a series of informal meetings, hoping diplomats can find common ground ahead of the next formal negotiations scheduled for early 2027.
But he has been criticised for sidelining discussions on some of the thorniest issues. Cordano kept plastic production off the official agenda for the Nairobi meeting a few weeks ago. He said beforehand that countries could bring any issue to the table, but production did not feature in the summary of discussions subsequently published by the chair.
Clare said discussions on fundamental elements of the treaty, including production, had been “constrained” and that there was little space for them in Nairobi.
Cordano told Climate Home News the Nairobi talks had provided space both for “reaffirming positions and expressing new ideas”, adding that countries “remain free to raise all issues they consider important”.
Informal talks between negotiators are held behind closed doors and neither the media nor external observers can take part.
Campaigners have accused the chair of making political calculations to reach an agreement at any cost. “He has clearly identified that the only way to achieve an agreement by consensus is to do away with the more complex elements of the treaty like those that deal with sustainable production and consumption of plastics,” the EIA’s Dixon said.
Cordano said he continues to be guided by countries as “they develop their own exchanges and continue working towards possible landing zones”.
Push for more ambition
Governments will debate the new text at another meeting of chief negotiators in Bangkok, Thailand, at the end of September, and a new version of the document is expected after that meeting.
The French diplomatic source said the current text should not be viewed as “an end-product”, but as a starting point that “can and should be improved”.
France, together with the EU and members of the High Ambition Coalition (HAC), will continue pushing for stronger provisions, including measures to address plastic production, the source said.
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The HAC group includes over 70 countries, primarily from across Europe, Latin America, Africa and the Pacific.
Micronesian negotiator Clare said countries on the frontline of the plastics crisis may decide to reject a really weak treaty that puts the burden on them to clean up somebody else’s waste, while producers can keep churning out plastics unrestrained.
“If the treaty does not include essential elements of the solution, even an initial, apparent diplomatic success – an agreement – can come to be seen over time as an environmental failure,” Clare warned.
The post “We’ve gone backwards” – new plastics treaty text dims hopes for production curbs appeared first on Climate Home News.
“We’ve gone backwards” – new plastics treaty text dims hopes for production curbs
Layers of red dust coat South Africa’s Saldanha Bay, a legacy of the one billion-plus tonnes of iron ore exported from what was once a quiet coastal fishing town in the 1970s. Now the government wants to turn this area into the “oil and gas hub of South Africa”, but opposition from local communities and civil society could force a change of plan.
Since 2014 South Africa has developed a strategy for taking “full advantage” of its marine resources, known as Operation Phakisa. It has resulted in the mapping of more than 95% of the country’s nearly 3,000-kilometre coastline for offshore oil and gas exploration.
The plan seeks to “drill 30 exploration wells in 10 years”, which it estimates could lead to the production of an average of 370,000 barrels of oil and gas per day over 20 years, with Saldanha Bay earmarked as a key logistics hub. It also aims to develop other marine sectors like aquaculture, maritime transport and ocean tourism.
However, two major court cases against the government and oil giants Shell and TotalEnergies have challenged those plans, as coastal residents, allied with national civil society groups, have pushed back against oil concessions held by the multinationals, arguing they were not consulted, and that towns like Saldanha Bay could face social and environmental harms from the fossil fuel extraction.
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Melissa Groenink-Groves, programme manager at legal nonprofit Natural Justice, said the cases in South Africa could set a precedent for the whole region. “When communities win in the courts, the successes serve as inspiration for other communities to advocate [for] their rights in their own contexts,” she explained.
She added that the legal challenges to Operation Phakisa also develop climate litigation in the African context, and could impact how environmental impact assessments are conducted going forward.
Globally, as the oil and gas industry sets its sights on the ocean, with over 85% of new discoveries in 2024 made offshore, scientists and activists warn it could threaten marine life and coastal communities, and weaken the ocean’s ability to trap excess heat from the atmosphere, fuelling planetary warming further.
Taking oil companies to court
About 300 kilometres north of Saldanha Bay, the Aukotowa Fisheries Cooperative, backed by nonprofits The Green Connection and Natural Justice, has taken TotalEnergies to court over its plans to drill for oil and gas in a 30,000-square-kilometre block off South Africa’s west coast.
The oil exploration block is in a biodiverse marine area bordering Namibia and South Africa known as the Orange Basin, which is a “highly relevant” sanctuary for endangered species, according to Nelson Mandela University’s Institute for Coastal and Marine Research.
Among other grievances, the cooperative maintains that the company’s environmental impact assessment was flawed, failing to consider the project’s contribution to climate change, and that the government “placed the profits of a multinational corporation above the livelihoods of vulnerable coastal communities”. The Western Cape High Court concluded hearings in late March and is expected to deliver a ruling later this year.
Walter Steenkamp, chairperson of the Aukotowa Cooperative, is concerned that the oil and gas drilling will lead to increased inequality, asking “for whom is the development? Definitely not for us.”
In a written statement, TotalEnergies told Climate Home News that it “is a responsible operator fully committed to complying with all applicable South African legislation”.
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Communities and climate impacts at stake
On the other side of the country, along South Africa’s eastern coastline, community-based nonprofit Sustaining the Wild Coast and partner organisations challenged Shell and Impact Africa’s exploration permit, arguing that the firms had failed to consult impacted communities – a legal requirement under South African law.
Co-plaintiff Sinegugu Zukulu also said in 2022 that “oil and gas will lead to more emissions, and in the face of climate change, this is wholly irresponsible”.
Following two rulings against the companies by lower courts, the case is now before South Africa’s highest Constitutional Court, which has reserved judgment since September 2025. A ruling against the companies would be final, effectively ending the exploration permit.
Legal expert Groenink-Groves said oil exploration applications under Operation Phakisa have been “granted largely without properly assessing the devastating impact an oil spill could have on small-scale fishers, the risks of drilling in ultra-deep waters, [and] without accounting for climate change impacts associated with oil and gas exploitation”.
She added that exploration applications have often failed to consider coastal management laws and in some cases, cross-border and regional environmental risks.
Shell and South Africa’s Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources did not respond to written requests for comment.
South Africa’s offshore oil ambitions
Fishers around South Africa, many of whom have for generations relied on marine resources for survival, say the country’s offshore oil and gas push is sacrificing their livelihoods for profit.
“Why do they want to destroy our heritage? We can’t afford to say yes to oil and gas because the ocean is our source of life,” said Carmelita Mostert, a member of advocacy group Coastal Links and third-generation Saldanha Bay fisher.
Yet with unemployment above 30%, alongside high levels of poverty and wealth inequality, the government sees Operation Phakisa as a vehicle for socioeconomic development.
South Africa’s Minister of Mineral and Petroleum Resources Gwede Mantashe has described the court cases as “anti-development”, and claimed that the environmental organisations are funded by the CIA.
Sifiso Dladla, a campaigner with human rights organisation groundWork, argued that the close relationship between the government and the fossil fuel industry – including its 3% contribution to gross tax revenue – limits the potential success of movements pushing for an inclusive energy system. Politicians “need money to win elections. Mining companies need the government to protect them,” he said.
Patrick Bond, a political economist and sociology professor at the University of Johannesburg, said Operation Phakisa only makes economic sense if its social and environmental harms are ignored, adding that “if a genuine social cost of carbon analysis were done in any African fossil fuel project, there would be few – if any – able to justify the projects economically”.
At a global scale, Bond said oil multinationals have the financial backing of European governments – including France’s $2.8 billion stake in TotalEnergies – which can help make local resistance more effective where it has international allies to amplify the messages.
For Saldanha Bay fisher Mostert, the fight is about protecting the livelihoods of coastal communities. “It is my hope that we can stand strong and protest,” she said. “If oil and gas is not allowed, our lives will be much easier and better – but if oil and gas goes ahead we will be in absolute agony.”
The post South Africa’s offshore oil push meets grassroots resistance in court appeared first on Climate Home News.
South Africa’s offshore oil push meets grassroots resistance in court
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