The new head of the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) faces a formidable task: raise urgent funding to get the organisation back on track following damaging revelations about its former management, just as tight budgets prompt many donors to rethink their climate spending.
Rindra Rabarinirinarison, who served as Madagascar’s economy and finance minister from 2021-2025, said the change of leadership at the Rotterdam-based GCA was “an opportunity to reset things”, pledging to repair the centre’s reputation after its founding CEO left under a cloud.
“I plan to strengthen partnerships and rebuild this trust. Why? Because people only give you money if they trust you – and they only trust you if they know you well,” she told Climate Home News in her first interview since taking over at the GCA’s floating office in the Netherlands this month.
During her first weeks in the job, she plans “to meet with all our partners to correct the communication challenges that have emerged” – a reference to the revelations about the centre’s workplace culture that emerged in a series of investigative articles published by Dutch broadcaster NOS last year.
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When the GCA was launched to considerable fanfare in 2018, climate adaptation was largely neglected by politicians, development banks and investors, who were more focused on efforts to cut planet-heating emissions than on helping people cope with their effects. The GCA’s plan, together with the high-powered Global Commission on Adaptation which it co-hosted, was to correct that imbalance.
Former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who served as founding chair of the GCA and is now its emeritus chair, said back then that the commission, of which he was a member, would “play a vital role in elevating the political importance of adaptation, and also in making the case that greater resilience is achievable”.
Today, most experts agree that adaptation – and the increasingly urgent need to invest in it – have won far more prominence on the international agenda, even if dollars have yet to flow on the scale required.
Richard Klein, director of science and innovation at the GCA between September 2018 and December 2019, said the centre had helped propel that progress, alongside other organisations like the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank.
But Klein, now an independent adaptation expert, told Climate Home News the GCA had squandered the opportunity to generate innovative research and had become “a mid-sized consultancy … that lives way beyond its means”.
“High-pressure” environment
The reporting by NOS portrayed a toxic workplace culture in which staff were expected to put furthering the high-profile advocacy of the GCA’s dynamic ex-boss Patrick Verkooijen ahead of their research to help vulnerable communities adapt to worsening extreme weather and rising seas.
Verkooijen recently stepped down from the GCA after two four-year terms during which he was appointed as chancellor of the University of Nairobi, where the centre planned to set up a dual headquarters.
Asked about the criticism of his leadership, Verkooijen said the GCA had been created as a startup organisation at a time when there was “a very great sense of urgency that adaptation needed to be scaled up – all leading to a huge amount of pressure for delivery”.
“I believe managers and staff did their best, though certainly not every system was perfect – there could be tense and high-pressure moments,” he told Climate Home News in emailed responses.
Conversations with ex-GCA employees, as well as an unpublished editorial authored by several former staffers and shared with Climate Home News, supported the NOS reports about an atmosphere of conflict in which operations were focused on advancing Verkooijen’s efforts to promote adaptation and the centre’s work to leaders, especially in Africa.
“It was painful, how, in the end, just everything was about visibility around him,” Klein said.
Verkooijen said that while he would not discount employees’ personal experiences, the GCA had not received official complaints about its leadership and “did not recognise the environment as it was characterised in media”. The GCA has invested in building up staff systems and safeguards, especially in the last three years, he added.
“Significant” downsizing underway
Rabarinirinarison takes over as the organisation faces tough decisions about its size and capacity going forward. It is being forced to downsize from 60-plus employees because of financial uncertainty following an end to funding from the British government and a question-mark over whether other countries – including the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway – will renew their support.
Other key funders, including France and the Gates Foundation, have agreed to provide continued backing, the GCA said. It denied a report by NOS that it is facing imminent bankruptcy, which Climate Home News understands was based on a confidential internal document outlining a range of scenarios in line with different funding outcomes.
Rabarinirinarison said she could not comment on potential layoffs, which are being discussed as part of a “significant resizing to adjust the head count with the contracted resources available to us”.
But she conceded that the centre’s current financial situation is “very serious right now”. Funding from the Dutch government – which was instrumental in setting up the GCA – is due to run out in May, and earlier efforts to win a new commitment must now be revived after a minority centrist government took office in February. Prime Minister Rob Jetten is a former climate minister and supports the clean energy transition.
“We are hopeful the new government’s approaches to our work will be favourable – and this is the advantages to have a new management, new face, new hope and new explanations,” said Rabarinirinarison, adding that the Netherlands will be her first port of call, followed by other key partners that have backed the GCA up to now.
She is also planning to seek potential new sources of funding in the Middle East and Asia, where the GCA has offices in Bangladesh and China.
The centre’s work so far has been heavily focused on supporting large adaptation projects carried out by the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the World Bank across Africa, to which it has provided consulting services and technical advice.
Flagship Africa investment programme
The GCA threw its weight behind the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program (AAAP), which launched its second phase last September at the Africa Climate Summit in Ethiopia and the United Nations General Assembly.
The AAAP investment initiative for climate adaptation on the continent began in 2021 and was implemented through a partnership involving the African Union Commission, the AfDB and the GCA.
According to the GCA’s website, its first phase embedded “climate adaptation solutions” into more than $20 billion of development investments across some 40 African nations.
Global South’s climate adaptation bill to top $300 billion a year by 2035: UN
An article by NOS, published last October, accused the centre of misleading donors by overstating its role in the AAAP and other projects, saying documentation examined by NOS did not back up the extent of GCA’s claimed contributions to the work.
The GCA, for its part, put out a statement rejecting the NOS findings, which it said “provide an inaccurate representation of the Center’s work and achievements, as well as our relationships with partners”.
A GCA spokesperson told Climate Home News that, after sharing information with NOS and requesting corrections from the outlet which were not made, it recently filed a complaint about the coverage with the Dutch ombudsman.
In emailed comments, Verkooijen defended the achievements of the centre under his stewardship, saying it had made a “substantial contribution” to developing knowledge including through its co-management of the Global Commission on Adaptation and its “State and Trends on Adaptation series” of reports. He said that, at the advocacy level, GCA had made “clear-cut contributions to elevating the level of political priority for adaptation” and had participated in embedding climate considerations into around 100 large development projects delivered by international financial institutions.
In most cases, he wrote, “these projects … would not have factored in climate risks and adaptation without the GCA’s contribution – or not to the same degree”.
Pitching adaptation as a “driver for growth”
In the future, Rabarinirinarison thinks the GCA can continue to act as a “solutions broker” on adaptation, while facilitating access to international climate finance for Global South governments and communities which have limited capacity to develop bankable adaptation projects and navigate complex processes.
The GCA can use its expertise to help countries understand the significant risks of failing to protect their economies from extreme weather and serve as a strong proponent of adaptation as a “driver for growth”, she said.
The centre still has “room to grow”, she added, by delivering more “technical expertise reports” and “technical advocacy”, ensuring that adaptation is “effectively included in large-scale financial institutional lending” and bridging the gap between discussions and implementation at scale.
Climate adaptation can’t be just for the rich, COP30 president says
Some in the sector question the need for a Global North-based organisation to be doing such work for the benefit of Global South countries, despite its shift to African leadership. The GCA board also has a new chair, with Mauritius President Ameenah Gurib-Fakim this month taking over the role from Senegal’s former leader, Macky Sall, who is bidding to become the next UN chief.
Finding a USP in a maturing sector
Sander Chan, who was a senior researcher at the GCA from 2020 to 2022, criticised the organisation for focusing too heavily on building the business case for adaptation, mobilising money and seeking private-sector involvement, while doing too little to include or strengthen the perspectives and voices of local and Indigenous communities.
The centre has, however, developed a training and advocacy network for some 35,000 youth supporters of adaptation across the Global South, as well as hosting an online platform for locally led adaptation intended to showcase and connect community groups and practitioners.
Klein and Chan, now an associate professor at Radboud University in the Netherlands, also questioned the value added by the centre beyond its awareness-raising and brokering roles, which they argue are now less important and can be fulfilled by other better-established institutions.
Klein said it will be tough for the GCA’s new leadership to develop a unique selling point unless it goes beyond its current activities, given that more organisations today are offering similar services and looking for a larger share of the pie.
“I think it’s more than just a matter of rebuilding trust in how [the centre] used to operate,” he said. “It’s also: is there still a need for what they’re doing?”
Rabarinirinarison’s strategy, if the GCA can procure funding to get itself back on course, is to expand its work and knowledge base to pitch adaptation as key to economic growth and “selling this product as our main asset”.
“I do believe that GCA is able to perform essential services, and its partners are able to notice its value and continue to support us if we communicate well,” she said.
The post Can new CEO steer Global Center on Adaptation back on course? appeared first on Climate Home News.
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2026/03/25/can-new-ceo-steer-global-center-on-adaptation-back-on-course/
An exceptional El Niño is building. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says it has intensified to very strong levels and is likely to last at least through February 2027. If its current trajectory holds, it could become stronger than anything seen since WMO monitoring began four decades ago.
That is bad news for agriculture. El Niño – a naturally occurring weather phenomenon – can scramble rainfall patterns across the world, bringing drought to some regions and floods to others. And this time it is unfolding against the backdrop of a significantly hotter climate, with farmers already contending with unreliable growing seasons, extreme heat and less predictable rainfall because of global warming.
El Niño expected to bring next record-hot year as soon as 2027
We are seeing the consequences already. In Sri Lanka, drought linked to El Niño has dried wells and reservoirs and cut into crops and farmer incomes. Indonesia is experiencing its worst wildfire season in 11 years, with prolonged drought and extreme heat exacerbated by El Niño. And in Peru, authorities are preparing for the opposite extreme: intense rains, flooding and landslides which the national civil-defence agency says could affect around 1.2 million people.
These impacts will multiply as El Niño intensifies.
And yet, just as the risks to food production are rising, the money available to help farmers withstand them is shrinking.
10% funding decline in 2024
A forthcoming analysis from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) shows that climate-related development finance for agrifood systems is moving in the wrong direction. In 2024, the latest year for which data is available, it fell by 10 percent compared with a 2 percent overall decline. The sectors that put food on our tables — crops, livestock, forestry and fisheries — received just 5 percent.
Yet this is precisely the moment when climate investment in agriculture needs to grow, not shrink. It can help communities adapt, build resilience and protect food security, while unlocking larger flows of public and private finance. Agriculture feeds us, supports the livelihoods of well over a billion people, and is often the first sector hit by drought, floods and extreme heat. Cutting that investment now is a false economy.
One failed harvest can plant the seed for the next crisis, forcing farmers to eat the seed they have saved for planting, sell livestock or tools, or take on debt. It can also deepen food insecurity, disrupt supply chains and drive up prices, showing up months later in supermarket aisles far away.
The Central American Dry Corridor, stretching through much of the region, shows both how exposed farmers are, and what investment can do. Based on an analysis of 41 years of satellite observations, FAO finds that some crop and pasture areas there face more than a 50 percent chance of agricultural drought over the coming months.
About half of Central America’s 1.9 million producers of maize, beans and other basic grains live in the Dry Corridor. Many grow food both for sale and for their own families. When a harvest fails, they lose both income and dinner.
El Salvador project conserves water and soil
In El Salvador, which lies within the Dry Corridor, more than 50,000 farmers have adopted practices to better withstand drought and increasingly unreliable rainfall through RECLIMA, a project financed by the Green Climate Fund and implemented by FAO in partnership with the government of El Salvador. It has substantial national co-financing, including from the country’s Environmental Investment Fund.
El Niño can intensify El Salvador’s annual mid-season dry spell, known as the canícula, turning it into a longer, harsher drought just as maize needs water most.
For María Cristina Corvera de López, a second-generation farmer in rural Nahualapa, adapting means changing how every drop of rain is captured and used. She plants trees alongside her crops to provide shade and minimise evaporation and uses simple irrigation channels and a homemade drip system to conserve water. Instead of burning stalks, leaves and husks after harvest, as generations before her did, she turns them into mulch to hold moisture in the soil.
“The effects of climate change are a constant challenge,” she says. But the new techniques have made her farm more resilient to El Niño as well. Where she once harvested about 50 bags of maize per acre, she now gets around 80, even during droughts. It’s enough to feed her family and sell the surplus.
Managing risk now cuts future costs
Together, these adaptations can mean the difference between losing a crop and getting through a dry season with enough food, seed and income to plant again. They are also the result of climate finance invested before disaster strikes.
RECLIMA shows what that kind of adaptation investment can buy. Adaptation accounted for 45 percent of climate-related development finance to agrifood systems in 2024, and multilateral development banks are directing more agricultural finance towards resilience. That shift reflects a growing recognition that adaptation is a form of risk management, not just a development cost.
We need much more of it. The same investments that help farmers withstand El Niño also enable them to adapt to a hotter, more unpredictable future. Cutting investment in the people who produce our food just as climate risks intensify does not save money. It simply pushes a much larger bill into the next harvest, the next food crisis, and the next El Niño.
The post As El Niño intensifies, we should be investing more in the world’s farmers appeared first on Climate Home News.
As El Niño intensifies, we should be investing more in the world’s farmers
An area of Amazon forest roughly the size of the US state of New Jersey has remained standing due to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s leadership of Brazil, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Lula beat Jair Bolsonaro in the 2022 election to become president of the nation that is home to nearly 60% of the Amazon rainforest.
Forest loss surged during Bolsonaro’s far-right presidency and dropped sharply under the left-wing Lula, with Amazon deforestation likely to hit its lowest level on record this year.
Now, as another presidential election approaches, Lula is facing off against Bolsonaro’s son, Flávio Bolsonaro, whose “anti-environmental” policies are similar to his father’s.
Carbon Brief’s analysis suggests that at least 20,000 square kilometres (km2) of deforestation has been avoided since Lula took office and prioritised Amazon protection.
The analysis is based on modelling by an international research team of an alternative scenario in which Brazil’s flagship forest code legislation was not enforced – a proxy for Jair Bolsonaro’s leadership.
Experts tell Carbon Brief that this estimate is likely “conservative” and that actual deforestation under Bolsonaro could have been “much higher”.
With Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro tied in the polls, the upcoming election is expected to significantly shape the level of environmental action in the world’s fourth-largest emitter, whose emissions are largely driven by deforestation.
‘Brazil is back’
When Jair Bolsonaro was president of Brazil between 2019 and 2022, he championed the nation’s powerful agribusiness sector and oversaw an unprecedented increase in Amazon deforestation.
Bolsonaro weakened regulations, slashed federal agency budgets and empowered illegal activities in the Amazon, while attacking Indigenous and environmental groups.
This meant that the forest code – Brazil’s flagship legislation that requires landowners to preserve and restore forest on their property – was not properly enforced.
After Lula’s presidential victory in 2022, he promised to target “zero deforestation” by 2030, telling the COP27 UN climate summit that “Brazil is back”.
Lula rolled back Bolsonaro’s wave of deregulation and reinstated a deforestation “action plan”. Led by celebrated environmentalist Marina Silva, the environment ministry scaled up enforcement and policing activities in the Amazon.
As a result, annual deforestation in the Amazon has more than halved from 11,594km2 per year in 2022 to 5,731km2 in 2025.
Data from August 2025 to July 2026 – the timespan used in government records – is yet to be released, but preliminary satellite alerts put the deforestation figure at 2,874km2.
While the final figure is likely to be higher, experts still think Amazon deforestation in 2026 could hit its lowest level since records began in 1988.
New Jersey-sized forest
Compared to a scenario in which Bolsonaro won in 2022, Carbon Brief analysis suggests that at least 20,000km2 of Amazon forest remains standing today due to Lula’s leadership.
This area – roughly the size of Wales, Belize, Slovenia or the US state of New Jersey – is indicated by the grey area in the chart below.
This analysis is based on a 2023 study on the role of nature-based solutions in Brazil’s pathway to net-zero emissions. This was a refined update of a 2018 study that used the same GLOBIOM-Brazil model, from researchers at the University of Oxford, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE).
It is based on a comparison of forest code implementation with a “baseline” scenario in which the code is not enforced, reflecting the kind of weak governance seen under the Bolsonaro administration. (See Carbon Brief’s 2022 article for more details of this modelling.)
Dr Aline Soterroni, a University of Oxford researcher who led the 2023 analysis, tells Carbon Brief that the reversal seen under Lula “shows how quickly deforestation can respond to political will”.
However, she stresses that the modelling of the “no forest code” scenario is “relatively conservative”, with deforestation remaining high but not rising.
Deforestation in this scenario – used here as a proxy for a Bolsonaro election win – is tempered by slower demand growth for Brazilian beef and soy, says Soterroni. She notes that the scenario also does not capture the potential for illegal forest clearing in response to weak governance.
Indeed, some experts anticipated in 2022 that a Bolsonaro victory would send deforestation rates rising to near-record levels.
Claudio Angelo, international policy coordinator at Brazil’s Climate Observatory, tells Carbon Brief that if Bolsonaro had won in 2022, “we have reason to believe [this would have resulted] in much higher rates than during his first term”.
Angelo says the “political signal” would likely have driven an “explosion of wildcat mining” and illegal deforestation in the Amazon. He also points to efforts – including by Flávio Bolsonaro – to formally dismantle the forest code in the Brazilian congress, during Jair Bolsonaro’s first term.
Soterroni notes that deforestation rates did not immediately drop following Lula’s election, as suggested by modelling of a full “forest code compliance” scenario. She says this reflects the “gradual and imperfect process” of restoring and enforcing the law.
Nevertheless, she tells Carbon Brief:
“The key message from our modelling is the contrast between these trajectories: weak environmental governance keeps deforestation substantially higher than full implementation of the forest code. That message remains relevant today.”
Election significance
With Jair Bolsonaro in prison for plotting a coup after losing the 2022 election, his son Flávio Bolsonaro, a senator for Rio de Janeiro, is standing against Lula in the upcoming contest for president.
There are 13 candidates, but Flávio Bolsonaro and Lula are by far the frontrunners and are currently neck-and-neck in opinion polls.
If Lula wins, experts say he is likely to continue with the “zero deforestation by 2030” agenda that has already had a pronounced impact on forest loss.
As the chart below shows, periods when Amazon deforestation fell in recent history all occurred during Lula’s three terms as president.
In contrast, experts say Flávio Bolsonaro, a climate sceptic who has indicated he will continue his father’s political agenda and favour agribusiness and mining, will likely drive a surge in deforestation. Angelo tells Carbon Brief:
“At the risk of sounding alarmist, I’ve been saying that Lula’s re-election is the only thing standing between us and a wide destruction of the Amazon.”
A Bolsonaro win would be a “tremendous disaster”, says Dr Patricia Pinho, deputy science director at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, adding:
“I don’t think we can afford four years of increasing deforestation [and] violence against Indigenous peoples.”
Dr David Lapola, an ecologist focused on Amazon research at the University of Campinas in Brazil, says he believes deforestation “would certainly rise” and Brazil’s climate and deforestation goals “would be thrown in the trash bin”. He tells Carbon Brief:
“The Bolsonaro administration in the 2019-2022 period showed that the deconstruction of environmental policies and institutes can be done very, very quickly.
“In a matter of a few months, they can destroy what has been constructed over decades of environmental policy and activism in Brazil.”
‘Greenest’ policies
Lula has the “greenest” policy proposals of Brazil’s six top-polling presidential candidates, according to analysis by the Climate Observatory.
The analysis identifies 16 “positive and detailed” environmental commitments in Lula’s proposals, including reaffirming his “zero deforestation by 2030” goal.
Flávio Bolsonaro, on the other hand, has one positive environmental commitment and seven “clearly anti-environmental” proposals.
The right-wing politician has committed to zero “illegal” deforestation by 2029. However, he has also previously led an attempt to change the forest code, opening up large tracts of previously out-of-bounds forest for legal clearance by extractive industries.
Given this, Angelo tells Carbon Brief that he is sceptical about the 2029 pledge.
“The only way you can trust him on this is to think that he is going to revoke the forest code and make all illegal deforestation legal.”
Lula is also the only major candidate to list a clear target for cutting national emissions, sticking with Brazil’s existing goal to cut emissions by 59-67% by 2035, compared to 2005 levels.
Overall, the Climate Observatory notes that climate change and environmental issues “are off the radar for most candidates”, who are instead focusing on the economy and security issues.
Pinho adds that deforestation and the Amazon have not been at the “forefront” of this election, compared to 2022.
If Bolsonaro wins, up to 95% of the Amazon would fall under the leadership of right-wing national governments – including those in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru – reported Mongabay. It noted that presidents in all these nations “explicitly favour agribusiness and mining over environmental conservation”.
If no candidate receives a majority of votes in the first round of Brazil’s election on 4 October, a runoff will take place on 25 October, as has happened at every presidential election since 1998.
Soy moratorium and Brazilian congress
Other factors will also play a role in future deforestation in Brazil, regardless of the next president.
One is the effective end of the Amazon soy moratorium. This is a voluntary agreement signed by companies committing to not buy soya beans grown on land in the Brazilian Amazon that was deforested after 2008.
Conservation organisation WWF’s international director general, Kirsten Schuijt, previously described it as the “most impactful voluntary supply chain policy ever implemented”.
However, major grain traders withdrew from the agreement earlier this year, effectively bringing it to an end. Pinho describes this move as a “huge destruction” of Brazil’s environmental protections.
Research shows the moratorium prevented around 18,000km2 of deforestation in its first decade of operation from 2005-16.
In contrast, a 2026 study estimated that the end of the moratorium could result in 14,000km2 of additional deforestation in the Amazon by 2036.
Alongside choosing a new president on 4 October, Brazilian voters will elect state governors and members of congress, which will also factor into future environmental impacts.
Right-leaning parties, including the far-right Liberal Party linked to the Bolsonaros, currently hold half the seats of the two chambers of congress.
This has led to conflict between lawmakers and Lula. For example, in 2025, congress bypassed Lula’s veto of several aspects of a controversial piece of legislation dubbed the “devastation bill”.
Pinho says that the potential for a right-wing congress and president would be “devastating for the environmental and climate agenda”.
Lapola notes that a Flávio Bolsonaro presidency “would consolidate the view in Brazil that environmental protection is solely a matter of political preference, and not a crucial need of all people”. He adds:
“Land pillage, destruction of precious biodiversity and scorning of Indigenous peoples simply cannot be a nation’s project in the 21st century. We have got to be smarter than that, for sure.”
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Guest post: How Caribbean states are shaping climate legislation
The post Analysis: Lula presidency saved at least 20,000km2 of Brazilian Amazon since 2022 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Lula presidency saved at least 20,000km2 of Brazilian Amazon since 2022
This letter is a bit more direct and longer than most of those which I write, but I hope you will be okay with that, because the times seem to call for being plain.
A few weeks ago I got a text message from an old and dear friend —let’s call her Hannah.
I have enough shared life with Hannah that, whenever we talk, the conversation always feels current and effortless, despite gaps of months or even years.
Hannah has been talking with her son — we’ll call him Neil — who is a teenager and doing well in school, but wildly worried about the state of the world, including the imminent trajectory of global warming. Hannah and I don’t text each other other very often, but on this occasion she’s reached out with something visceral:
Neil has challenged me to point him to something hopeful, if I can find it. He says so far no one is showing any will to uphold the Paris Agreement. I am checking in to see how you still manage to have real hope.*
Then, just a few days later, the United Nations Environment Programme Limiting Overshoot report landed, containing the principal finding that it is likely the global temperature will soon exceed 1.5°C.
After that news, and the real time devastation in Nepal, and in the context of the broader state of the world, I found myself having multiple conversations with friends and colleagues about the structure of hope. I want to openly share that after a few of these exchanges, I metaphorically closed the blinds, and wondered how to feel, and what to do, because there is no avoiding the dreadfulness of the news, and what it means for the suffering of people and life on Earth.
But if you are fortunate enough to have time, space and security to do so, then after the darkness, you open the shutters and once again there is light. This is the structure of my innermost resolve.
* * *
Our lives — those of us living on our magnificent earth now — have the greatest possible purpose.
There is virtually no problem that we endlessly clever and creative, human beings cannot solve, when we work together.
And we are not just intelligent and ingenious; we are inherently social, nurturing and brave; capable of the deepest enduring love.
Each of the roughly 12,000 generations of humanity so far has made life possible for those who have followed, through acts of devotion.
Babies have been held and fed. Water and food have been found and shared. Shelter has been built. For 12,000 generations we have held the hands of our children.
Every single one of us was once carried in the arms of another, unable to walk ourselves. It is our thoughtfulness, kindness and care that have seen us through as a species. Sometimes this has been in the most exigent of circumstances, when enough of our ancestors did not give in, faced incredibly difficult things, to somehow make it through.
And so it comes to this. To what we now must do. We must do as 12,000 generations of people did for us.
The struggle to keep global warming to under 1.5 degrees may be over. The battle of return—to get our planet back to safe temperatures at emergency speed and scale — is just beginning. Upon this struggle depends the future of all we care about, and that of all life on Earth. The prospects of the next 12,000 generations are conditioned by our efforts now.
Our work now is to keep the overshoot as low as we can, make it as brief as possible, and do everything within our power to alleviate other pressures on nature. It is to take care of humanity — of one another — in the face of mounting climate and ecological damage. And by these efforts, create the conditions for future flourishing. Every fraction of every degree matters.
What must now be done is hard, much tougher than should have been necessary, because of the vested interests in coal, oil and gas and deforestation, and the failures of decision makers. And while renewable energy has surged, making the case for change much simpler, on the other side of the ledger there’s the reactionary and gangsterist turn of politics and the multiplier effects of wars and mass violence, with the existential destabilisation of big tech looming over all.
There is no sugarcoating the scale of difficulty. But what is necessary remains within our collective power. We must never, for one second, say that returning our planet to flourishing is impossible — many of the obvious solutions already exist; but even where transformation relies on reforms, technologies or capabilities that might sound fanciful, or historical changes that are unprecedented, this can be no barrier to our conviction. After all, much of what we take for granted today as ordinary features of social life, would have been considered impossible by every single generation before us.
The world has not been destroyed by nuclear war; we solved the growing hole in the ozone layer; Antarctica was kept sacrosanct from exploitation. Humanity has collectively triumphed before, and can do so again.
We can find the necessary social and political will to do what is needed because these are endlessly renewable resources. The necessary financial capital exists. Apart from the fossil fuel industry, the greatest barrier we face is to mistakenly concede that what lies before us is insurmountable. It is not.
We must avoid the siren song of fatalism. Because. It. Is. Never. Too. Late.
None of which is to be insensitive to the horrors already unleashed — the deadly and grotesque harm to people, places and species that cannot be undone; or to be blind to the impacts that are coming. But where we have the power to act, we also have the responsibility — and the extraordinary privilege — to do what must be done.
Although she is wounded, our planet is still alive and beautiful beyond all of our comprehension. Hundreds of billions of creatures live and thrive still upon this earth. Nothing has happened until it has happened, and life fights for life. Every beetle, every tree, all the fish in the ocean, the smallest of the geothermal shrimps, the greatest of the whales and the mightiest of the birds — all demand life every second of their existence, so that their species too may have future generations.
No individual has to know how to solve this alone. Indeed, finding some detachment and humility is essential to concentrate on the role that each of us can play.
Hope is not merely a mindset or a story we tell ourselves. Collective power is not abstract; it is what we do, together, applying ourselves to the practical mechanics of change and contestation within society, by being part of the organisations and networks of people that are dedicated to effective strategies. It is why I am so committed to Greenpeace.
Working from without and within, there are opportunities to make rapid change within institutions, governments, businesses and communities to create the social, economic and political momentum for emissions reduction at speed and scale, reminding ourselves always of what remains possible, even if it hasn’t happened yet.
We can return the planet to safer temperatures. We can put technologies back in the service of people and life. We can return to the assumptions that seemed so obvious just one generation ago — that it is both possible, and our obligation, to build a better future for all people, and for life on Earth.
I did write back to Hannah and Neil, to say honestly to a treasured friend and her son, that yes, as a matter of faith, conviction, evidence and strategy, absolutely there is real hope. And this is a pledge not just to Neil and his generation, but to the next 12,000.
Together, we have the power. Together, we cross this bridge through the dark. To secure an Earth capable of nurturing life in all of its magnificent diversity.
We did not choose to carry this historic responsibility, but here we are. And it is so lucky that we are here.
I wouldn’t choose any other time to be here, alive on Earth, with you.
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