On 28 April, Canadians will go to the polls to vote for the next prime minister.
The election comes after Justin Trudeau stepped down as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada in January following nine years leading the party as prime minister.
Trudeau cited “internal battles” within the party for the decision, and stated that Canada “deserves a real choice in the next election”.
His successor Mark Carney – the former governor of the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada – called for a snap election on 23 March, just a week after being elected Liberal party leader and, thus, becoming prime minister.
Carney is facing a stiff challenge from Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, whose party was leading in the national polls from 2023 till the beginning of 2025.
However, the campaigning has occurred under the shadow of US president Donald Trump’s tariffs, with 25% taxes placed on Canada’s steel, aluminium and vehicles exports.
The US president’s tariffs and calls to make Canada the “51st state” have contributed to a late surge of support for the Liberals, according to multiple polls.
Carbon Brief analysis finds that a Conservative victory over the Liberals could lead to nearly 800m extra tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade.
In the interactive grid below, Carbon Brief tracks the commitments made by major political parties in their latest election manifestos. The grid covers a range of issues connected to nature, energy and climate change.
The parties covered are:
- The Liberal Party of Canada, the centrist party which has been in power since 2015.
- The Conservative Party of Canada, the right-leaning party which has traditionally been the other dominant party in the nation’s politics.
- The New Democratic Party (NDP), a left-leaning social-democrat party, which won more than 17% of the popular vote in the last election and 24 seats (out of a total of 338).
- The Bloc Québécois, a nationalist, centre-left party that advocates for Quebec sovereignty. In 2021, it won the popular vote in 32 of Quebec’s 78 electoral districts.
- The Green Party of Canada, a left-leaning, environment-focused party which currently has two sitting MPs.
Each entry in the grid represents a direct quote from one or more of these documents. The grid will be updated as each party publishes their manifesto.
Net-zero and climate framing
Climate and energy issues have dropped down the election agenda in Canada.
In a poll of 2,000 adults in late March, just 5% of Canadians said that climate issues would most influence their vote.
More than a third cited the “cost of living” as the top issue influencing their vote, while 19% chose Trump’s impact on Canada. Other key issues singled out by respondents were healthcare, housing, jobs, taxes and government spending.
Trump’s election and subsequent tariff announcements have had a dramatic effect on polling ahead of the election, as seen below which highlights the extreme change in probability of each party winning enough seats to form the next government.
Nevertheless, despite slipping down the priority list for many voters, there are a number of climate and energy issues on the ballot, including the future of the oil and gas industry, electricity grid infrastructure, wildfire protection and the rollout of electric vehicles and “green home” retrofits
In the last general election, held in 2021, all major parties committed to pursuing the 2050 net-zero target, signed into law that year by the ruling Liberal party.
Four years later, that consensus appears to be under strain.
Conservative leader Poilievre has distanced himself from Canada’s net-zero target at rallies, telling supporters the Liberals’ “radical net-zero environmental extremism” has driven investment away from Canada. He has also said that the “radical net-zero movement” means “net-zero growth, net-zero jobs, net-zero paycheque”.
As part of plans to make Canada a “leading energy superpower”, Carney has said his party will “aggressively develop projects that are in the national interest” guided by three objectives: energy security; trade diversification; and long-term competitiveness. In a TV debate, he said he will support production of “low-risk” and “low-emission” oil.
The Liberals have said they will support the construction of an “east-west” electricity grid, which could carry electricity from the hydropower-rich provinces of Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia to provinces reliant on fossil fuels for electricity generation.
(This is no small feat as electricity falls under provincial jurisdiction and regional systems vary widely. Some provinces have a fully deregulated electricity market, whereas, in others, electricity is produced and sold by “crown corporations” owned by the provincial government.)
The US’ trade war on Canada has also reignited debates around fossil-fuel pipelines, amid widely reported polling which suggests an uptick in support for new oil-and-gas transportation projects.
(Supporters claim pipelines can reduce the oil-and-gas sector’s reliance on the US, by opening up new export opportunities from eastern ports and reducing the flow of oil which travels from western to eastern Canada via pipelines in the US).
Carney has said the Liberals are open to new oil-and-gas pipelines – but only with the support of the provinces and First Nations.
The Conservatives have said they will support pipelines that would transport oil and gas to eastern Canada. (Previous attempts to get west-east pipelines off the ground – including the Energy East crude oil project and the LNG Quebec scheme – have failed amid fierce opposition focused on economic and environmental concerns.)
To fast-track approval of oil-and-gas production and pipelines, Poilievre has said he will repeal a key federal environmental assessment law – bill C-69.
The NDP opposes the Energy East and LNG Quebec projects specifically, but has said it will not rule out pipelines altogether. However, the left-leaning party has said an east-west electricity grid is its “first priority” for growing the energy market.
The Greens, the NDP and Bloc Québécois have pledged to eliminate tax breaks for oil-and-gas companies and redirect funds towards efforts to tackle or adapt to climate change.
Specifically, the Greens say they would invest freed-up funds in clean energy, the NDP on energy-saving retrofits in homes and the Bloc Québécois on climate adaptation measures.
The Liberals have committed to reinstating a zero-emission vehicle subsidy programme paused earlier this year.
Parties have also put forward plans to boost the country’s preparedness to climate change and, in particular, to wildfires. The Liberals have pledged investment, additional training and modern firefighting equipment for the national parks service’s wildfire response teams.
The Greens, on the other hand, are advocating for the launch of a national civil defence corps – a civilian-led national service dedicated to building Canada’s resilience and preparedness for emergencies.
Trade and tariffs
US president Trump’s tariffs and the ensuing trade war have “dominated” the messaging within the campaigns and “transformed the dynamics of the race”.
On 1 February, Trump signed an executive order imposing 25% tariffs on nearly all goods from Canada and Mexico, claiming this was in response to fentanyl smuggling and illegal immigration.
Following this, there have been months of back-and-forth on the tariffs and their levels, with numerous pauses and steps by Canada to retaliate. This included a threat to place a 10% tariff on oil-and-gas exports to the US.
This includes then-prime minister Trudeau announcing tariffs of 25% on C$155bn of US goods, a move welcomed by government-funded policy research organisation the Canadian Climate Institute. In a statement, the institute’s president Rick Smith said:
“The Canadian Climate Institute is in full support of efforts taken by the federal and provincial governments to retaliate against the unprovoked and illegal tariffs imposed by the United States on Canada.”
In March, Trump suspended many of the tariffs, but imposed 25% on steel and aluminium.
Following this, Ontario announced its own tariffs, including a 25% surcharge on electricity exported to Michigan, Minnesota and New York.
Trump dubbed this an “abusive threat from Canada”, threatening to double tariffs on the country’s steel and aluminium. Ultimately, both sides backed down.
There is an asymmetry in economic dependence between the two countries that leaves Canada particularly exposed to the trade war.
In 2023, nearly 77% of Canada’s overall exports were to the US, of which energy products and vehicles were the largest categories, representing 40%. The US accounted for 97% of Canada’s C$124bn of oil exports that year, as well as 45% of its gas, according to government figures.
Meanwhile, Canada only accounts for 14% of US goods exports, ensuring “Canada suffers disproportionately in economic confrontations”, notes Forbes.
Speaking at the beginning of April, Carney said that the tariffs on Canada would “directly affect millions”.
The effect of the tariffs will particularly hit those in the automotive industry. A recent article in Bloomberg suggested that the tariffs threaten to “throw a wrench into the prospects for decarbonising both economies”.
It highlights that Canada is a “world leader” in lower-carbon aluminium and has been building up its electric vehicle (EV) sector. As such, the impact of 25% tariffs on the automotive sector could hamper the transition to EVs.
Additionally, the renewable-energy sector is particularly reliant on cross-border supply chains, leaving it vulnerable to the disruption created by the tariffs and ensuing trade war.
All of the major parties have responded within their campaigns. The Liberal party is planning to match the 25% tariffs on vehicles, along with investing C$5bn into a “trade diversification corridor fund”.
The Conservatives, meanwhile, have said they will not remove the counter tariffs until the US removes all of its tariffs on Canada. They would put almost all of the collected tariffs into tax relief for the workers hit by them.
Elsewhere, the NDP is in favour of the retaliatory tariffs and has threatened to impose a 100% tariff on Tesla products, if Trump moves to apply a tariff to all Canadian goods. Bloc Québécois has called for a pandemic-style wage subsidy to support workers impacted by the tariffs.
The Green party would work with other democracies to pursue joint retaliatory economic measures.
Canada’s carbon tax
An early point of contention within the Canadian election has been the so-called “carbon tax”.
The “pan-Canadian climate framework” was brought in in 2018 and is modelled on the “groundbreaking” carbon-pricing system introduced in British Columbia in 2008.
It places a surcharge on carbon-based fuels and other sources of greenhouse gas emissions. The system has two parts, one for consumers and one for industry, with different rates applied to either.
A key element of the carbon tax is that it is revenue-neutral, with the government paying back any money raised to the taxpayer in the form of rebates.
Despite the criticism levied against it, between 60-70% of non-Conservative leaning voters continue to support the concept of carbon pricing, according to a poll in February.
The carbon tax has previously been “heralded as a cornerstone of the country’s strategy to tackle climate change”, but, amid the cost-of-living crisis, in recent years it has increasingly come under fire.
Throughout 2024, Poilievre sought to position the tax as a key point of difference between his party and the Liberals, arguing that Trudeau must “call a ‘carbon-tax’ election”.
In a statement made in March, Poilievre argued that the tax would combine with the tariffs imposed by the US government, leaving “Trump grinning from ear to ear”. He added:
“We will take the carbon tax off your gas, heat and food. But we will also axe the tax on Canadian steel, aluminum, natural gas, food production, concrete and all other industries. We will be strong, self-reliant and sovereign, standing on our own feet and standing up to the Americans.”
Following Carney’s election as Liberal party leader, one of his first actions was to cut the carbon tax rate to zero for consumers, effectively ending it.
Speaking on his first day in office, Carney said:
“This will make a difference to hard-pressed Canadians, but it is part of a much bigger set of measures that this government is taking to ensure that we fight against climate change, that our companies are competitive and the country moves forward.”
The industrial carbon tax still stands, however, and has drawn increasing focus within the election campaigns.
In March, Poilievre pledged to “completely eliminate the carbon tax” while speaking from a steel mill in eastern Ontario.
(The steel mill had received more than C$3.5m from the carbon-tax scheme, helping it to replace its old gas furnace and consequently reducing its emissions by 17%.)
Carney has promised to bolster the industrial carbon tax, noting that it will be necessary for trade with Europe and other countries in the future.
The NDP has said it will keep the industrial carbon price. Bloc Québécois did not comment on the federal carbon tax explicitly, but has said it will “advocate for carbon pricing across Canada”.
Analysis from the Canadian Climate Institute found that “large-emitter trading systems” – a group which includes the industrial carbon tax, as well as Quebec’s cap-and-trade emissions pricing system – are on track to be the single biggest driver of cuts to Canada’s emissions by 2030, contributing 20-48% of anticipated reductions.
The post Canada election 2025: What the manifestos say on nature, energy and climate appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Canada election 2025: What the manifestos say on nature, energy and climate
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Absolute State of the Union
‘DRILL, BABY’: US president Donald Trump “doubled down on his ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda” in his State of the Union (SOTU) address, said the Los Angeles Times. He “tout[ed] his support of the fossil-fuel industry and renew[ed] his focus on electricity affordability”, reported the Financial Times. Trump also attacked the “green new scam”, noted Carbon Brief’s SOTU tracker.
COAL REPRIEVE: Earlier in the week, the Trump administration had watered down limits on mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, reported the Financial Times. It remains “unclear” if this will be enough to prevent the decline of coal power, said Bloomberg, in the face of lower-cost gas and renewables. Reuters noted that US coal plants are “ageing”.
OIL STAY: The US Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments brought by the oil industry in a “major lawsuit”, reported the New York Times. The newspaper said the firms are attempting to head off dozens of other lawsuits at state level, relating to their role in global warming.
SHIP-SHILLING: The Trump administration is working to “kill” a global carbon levy on shipping “permanently”, reported Politico, after succeeding in delaying the measure late last year. The Guardian said US “bullying” could be “paying off”, after Panama signalled it was reversing its support for the levy in a proposal submitted to the UN shipping body.
Around the world
- RARE EARTHS: The governments of Brazil and India signed a deal on rare earths, said the Times of India, as well as agreeing to collaborate on renewable energy.
- HEAT ROLLBACK: German homes will be allowed to continue installing gas and oil heating, under watered-down government plans covered by Clean Energy Wire.
- BRAZIL FLOODS: At least 53 people died in floods in the state of Minas Gerais, after some areas saw 170mm of rain in a few hours, reported CNN Brasil.
- ITALY’S ATTACK: Italy is calling for the EU to “suspend” its emissions trading system (ETS) ahead of a review later this year, said Politico.
- COOKSTOVE CREDITS: The first-ever carbon credits under the Paris Agreement have been issued to a cookstove project in Myanmar, said Climate Home News.
- SAUDI SOLAR: Turkey has signed a “major” solar deal that will see Saudi firm ACWA building 2 gigawatts in the country, according to Agence France-Presse.
$467 billion
The profits made by five major oil firms since prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago, according to a report by Global Witness covered by BusinessGreen.
Latest climate research
- Claims about the “fingerprint” of human-caused climate change, made in a recent US Department of Energy report, are “factually incorrect” | AGU Advances
- Large lakes in the Congo Basin are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from “immense ancient stores” | Nature Geoscience
- Shared Socioeconomic Pathways – scenarios used regularly in climate modelling – underrepresent “narratives explicitly centring on democratic principles such as participation, accountability and justice” | npj Climate Action
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
The constituency of Richard Tice MP, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of Reform UK, is the second-largest recipient of flood defence spending in England, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Overall, the funding is disproportionately targeted at coastal and urban areas, many of which have Conservative or Liberal Democrat MPs.
Spotlight
Is there really a UK ‘greenlash’?
This week, after a historic Green Party byelection win, Carbon Brief looks at whether there really is a “greenlash” against climate policy in the UK.
Over the past year, the UK’s political consensus on climate change has been shattered.
Yet despite a sharp turn against climate action among right-wing politicians and right-leaning media outlets, UK public support for climate action remains strong.
Prof Federica Genovese, who studies climate politics at the University of Oxford, told Carbon Brief:
“The current ‘war’ on green policy is mostly driven by media and political elites, not by the public.”
Indeed, there is still a greater than two-to-one majority among the UK public in favour of the country’s legally binding target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, as shown below.
Steve Akehurst, director of public-opinion research initiative Persuasion UK, also noted the growing divide between the public and “elites”. He told Carbon Brief:
“The biggest movement is, without doubt, in media and elite opinion. There is a bit more polarisation and opposition [to climate action] among voters, but it’s typically no more than 20-25% and mostly confined within core Reform voters.”
Conservative gear shift
For decades, the UK had enjoyed strong, cross-party political support for climate action.
Lord Deben, the Conservative peer and former chair of the Climate Change Committee, told Carbon Brief that the UK’s landmark 2008 Climate Change Act had been born of this cross-party consensus, saying “all parties supported it”.
Since their landslide loss at the 2024 election, however, the Conservatives have turned against the UK’s target of net-zero emissions by 2050, which they legislated for in 2019.
Curiously, while opposition to net-zero has surged among Conservative MPs, there is majority support for the target among those that plan to vote for the party, as shown below.
Dr Adam Corner, advisor to the Climate Barometer initiative that tracks public opinion on climate change, told Carbon Brief that those who currently plan to vote Reform are the only segment who “tend to be more opposed to net-zero goals”. He said:
“Despite the rise in hostile media coverage and the collapse of the political consensus, we find that public support for the net-zero by 2050 target is plateauing – not plummeting.”
Reform, which rejects the scientific evidence on global warming and campaigns against net-zero, has been leading the polls for a year. (However, it was comfortably beaten by the Greens in yesterday’s Gorton and Denton byelection.)
Corner acknowledged that “some of the anti-net zero noise…[is] showing up in our data”, adding:
“We see rising concerns about the near-term costs of policies and an uptick in people [falsely] attributing high energy bills to climate initiatives.”
But Akehurst said that, rather than a big fall in public support, there had been a drop in the “salience” of climate action:
“So many other issues [are] competing for their attention.”
UK newspapers published more editorials opposing climate action than supporting it for the first time on record in 2025, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Global ‘greenlash’?
All of this sits against a challenging global backdrop, in which US president Donald Trump has been repeating climate-sceptic talking points and rolling back related policy.
At the same time, prominent figures have been calling for a change in climate strategy, sold variously as a “reset”, a “pivot”, as “realism”, or as “pragmatism”.
Genovese said that “far-right leaders have succeeded in the past 10 years in capturing net-zero as a poster child of things they are ‘fighting against’”.
She added that “much of this is fodder for conservative media and this whole ecosystem is essentially driving what we call the ‘greenlash’”.
Corner said the “disconnect” between elite views and the wider public “can create problems” – for example, “MPs consistently underestimate support for renewables”. He added:
“There is clearly a risk that the public starts to disengage too, if not enough positive voices are countering the negative ones.”
Watch, read, listen
TRUMP’S ‘PETROSTATE’: The US is becoming a “petrostate” that will be “sicker and poorer”, wrote Financial Times associate editor Rana Forohaar.
RHETORIC VS REALITY: Despite a “political mood [that] has darkened”, there is “more green stuff being installed than ever”, said New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells.
CHINA’S ‘REVOLUTION’: The BBC’s Climate Question podcast reported from China on the “green energy revolution” taking place in the country.
Coming up
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean, Brasília
- 3 March: UK spring statement
- 4-11 March: China’s “two sessions”
- 5 March: Nepal elections
Pick of the jobs
- The Guardian, senior reporter, climate justice | Salary: $123,000-$135,000. Location: New York or Washington DC
- China-Global South Project, non-resident fellow, climate change | Salary: Up to $1,000 a month. Location: Remote
- University of East Anglia, PhD in mobilising community-based climate action through co-designed sports and wellbeing interventions | Salary: Stipend (unknown amount). Location: Norwich, UK
- TABLE and the University of São Paulo, Brazil, postdoctoral researcher in food system narratives | Salary: Unknown. Location: Pirassununga, Brazil
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Greenhouse Gases
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
The Lincolnshire constituency held by Richard Tice, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of the hard-right Reform party, has been pledged at least £55m in government funding for flood defences since 2024.
This investment in Boston and Skegness is the second-largest sum for a single constituency from a £1.4bn flood-defence fund for England, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
Flooding is becoming more likely and more extreme in the UK due to climate change.
Yet, for years, governments have failed to spend enough on flood defences to protect people, properties and infrastructure.
The £1.4bn fund is part of the current Labour government’s wider pledge to invest a “record” £7.9bn over a decade on protecting hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses from flooding.
As MP for one of England’s most flood-prone regions, Tice has called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
He is also one of Reform’s most vocal opponents of climate action and what he calls “net stupid zero”. He denies the scientific consensus on climate change and has claimed, falsely and without evidence, that scientists are “lying”.
Flood defences
Last year, the government said it would invest £2.65bn on flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) schemes in England between April 2024 and March 2026.
This money was intended to protect 66,500 properties from flooding. It is part of a decade-long Labour government plan to spend more than £7.9bn on flood defences.
There has been a consistent shortfall in maintaining England’s flood defences, with the Environment Agency expecting to protect fewer properties by 2027 than it had initially planned.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has attributed this to rising costs, backlogs from previous governments and a lack of capacity. It also points to the strain from “more frequent and severe” weather events, such as storms in recent years that have been amplified by climate change.
However, the CCC also said last year that, if the 2024-26 spending programme is delivered, it would be “slightly closer to the track” of the Environment Agency targets out to 2027.
The government has released constituency-level data on which schemes in England it plans to fund, covering £1.4bn of the 2024-26 investment. The other half of the FCERM spending covers additional measures, from repairing existing defences to advising local authorities.
The map below shows the distribution of spending on FCERM schemes in England over the past two years, highlighting the constituency of Richard Tice.
By far the largest sum of money – £85.6m in total – has been committed to a tidal barrier and various other defences in the Somerset constituency of Bridgwater, the seat of Conservative MP Ashley Fox.
Over the first months of 2026, the south-west region has faced significant flooding and Fox has called for more support from the government, citing “climate patterns shifting and rainfall intensifying”.
He has also backed his party’s position that “the 2050 net-zero target is impossible” and called for more fossil-fuel extraction in the North Sea.
Tice’s east-coast constituency of Boston and Skegness, which is highly vulnerable to flooding from both rivers and the sea, is set to receive £55m. Among the supported projects are beach defences from Saltfleet to Gibraltar Point and upgrades to pumping stations.
Overall, Boston and Skegness has the second-largest portion of flood-defence funding, as the chart below shows. Constituencies with Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs occupied the other top positions.
Overall, despite Labour MPs occupying 347 out of England’s 543 constituencies – nearly two-thirds of the total – more than half of the flood-defence funding was distributed to constituencies with non-Labour MPs. This reflects the flood risk in coastal and rural areas that are not traditional Labour strongholds.
Reform funding
While Reform has just eight MPs, representing 1% of the population, its constituencies have been assigned 4% of the flood-defence funding for England.
Nearly all of this money was for Tice’s constituency, although party leader Nigel Farage’s coastal Clacton seat in Kent received £2m.
Reform UK is committed to “scrapping net-zero” and its leadership has expressed firmly climate-sceptic views.
Much has been made of the disconnect between the party’s climate policies and the threat climate change poses to its voters. Various analyses have shown the flood risk in Reform-dominated areas, particularly Lincolnshire.
Tice has rejected climate science, advocated for fossil-fuel production and criticised Environment Agency flood-defence activities. Yet, he has also called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
This may reflect Tice’s broader approach to climate change. In a 2024 interview with LBC, he said:
“Where you’ve got concerns about sea level defences and sea level rise, guess what? A bit of steel, a bit of cement, some aggregate…and you build some concrete sea level defences. That’s how you deal with rising sea levels.”
While climate adaptation is viewed as vital in a warming world, there are limits on how much societies can adapt and adaptation costs will continue to increase as emissions rise.
The post Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
Greenhouse Gases
Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter.
Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Food inflation on the rise
DELUGE STRIKES FOOD: Extreme rainfall and flooding across the Mediterranean and north Africa has “battered the winter growing regions that feed Europe…threatening food price rises”, reported the Financial Times. Western France has “endured more than 36 days of continuous rain”, while farmers’ associations in Spain’s Andalusia estimate that “20% of all production has been lost”, it added. Policy expert David Barmes told the paper that the “latest storms were part of a wider pattern of climate shocks feeding into food price inflation”.
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NO BEEF: The UK’s beef farmers, meanwhile, “face a double blow” from climate change as “relentless rain forces them to keep cows indoors”, while last summer’s drought hit hay supplies, said another Financial Times article. At the same time, indoor growers in south England described a 60% increase in electricity standing charges as a “ticking timebomb” that could “force them to raise their prices or stop production, which will further fuel food price inflation”, wrote the Guardian.
‘TINDERBOX’ AND TARIFFS: A study, covered by the Guardian, warned that major extreme weather and other “shocks” could “spark social unrest and even food riots in the UK”. Experts cited “chronic” vulnerabilities, including climate change, low incomes, poor farming policy and “fragile” supply chains that have made the UK’s food system a “tinderbox”. A New York Times explainer noted that while trade could once guard against food supply shocks, barriers such as tariffs and export controls – which are being “increasingly” used by politicians – “can shut off that safety valve”.
El Niño looms
NEW ENSO INDEX: Researchers have developed a new index for calculating El Niño, the large-scale climate pattern that influences global weather and causes “billions in damages by bringing floods to some regions and drought to others”, reported CNN. It added that climate change is making it more difficult for scientists to observe El Niño patterns by warming up the entire ocean. The outlet said that with the new metric, “scientists can now see it earlier and our long-range weather forecasts will be improved for it.”
WARMING WARNING: Meanwhile, the US Climate Prediction Center announced that there is a 60% chance of the current La Niña conditions shifting towards a neutral state over the next few months, with an El Niño likely to follow in late spring, according to Reuters. The Vibes, a Malaysian news outlet, quoted a climate scientist saying: “If the El Niño does materialise, it could possibly push 2026 or 2027 as the warmest year on record, replacing 2024.”
CROP IMPACTS: Reuters noted that neutral conditions lead to “more stable weather and potentially better crop yields”. However, the newswire added, an El Niño state would mean “worsening drought conditions and issues for the next growing season” to Australia. El Niño also “typically brings a poor south-west monsoon to India, including droughts”, reported the Hindu’s Business Line. A 2024 guest post for Carbon Brief explained that El Niño is linked to crop failure in south-eastern Africa and south-east Asia.
News and views
- DAM-AG-ES: Several South Korean farmers filed a lawsuit against the country’s state-owned utility company, “seek[ing] financial compensation for climate-related agricultural damages”, reported United Press International. Meanwhile, a national climate change assessment for the Philippines found that the country “lost up to $219bn in agricultural damages from typhoons, floods and droughts” over 2000-10, according to Eco-Business.
- SCORCHED GRASS: South Africa’s Western Cape province is experiencing “one of the worst droughts in living memory”, which is “scorching grass and killing livestock”, said Reuters. The newswire wrote: “In 2015, a drought almost dried up the taps in the city; farmers say this one has been even more brutal than a decade ago.”
- NOUVELLE VEG: New guidelines published under France’s national food, nutrition and climate strategy “urged” citizens to “limit” their meat consumption, reported Euronews. The delayed strategy comes a month after the US government “upended decades of recommendations by touting consumption of red meat and full-fat dairy”, it noted.
- COURTING DISASTER: India’s top green court accepted the findings of a committee that “found no flaws” in greenlighting the Great Nicobar project that “will lead to the felling of a million trees” and translocating corals, reported Mongabay. The court found “no good ground to interfere”, despite “threats to a globally unique biodiversity hotspot” and Indigenous tribes at risk of displacement by the project, wrote Frontline.
- FISH FALLING: A new study found that fish biomass is “falling by 7.2% from as little as 0.1C of warming per decade”, noted the Guardian. While experts also pointed to the role of overfishing in marine life loss, marine ecologist and study lead author Dr Shahar Chaikin told the outlet: “Our research proves exactly what that biological cost [of warming] looks like underwater.”
- TOO HOT FOR COFFEE: According to new analysis by Climate Central, countries where coffee beans are grown “are becoming too hot to cultivate them”, reported the Guardian. The world’s top five coffee-growing countries faced “57 additional days of coffee-harming heat” annually because of climate change, it added.
Spotlight
Nature talks inch forward
This week, Carbon Brief covers the latest round of negotiations under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which occurred in Rome over 16-19 February.
The penultimate set of biodiversity negotiations before October’s Conference of the Parties ended in Rome last week, leaving plenty of unfinished business.
The CBD’s subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) met in the Italian capital for four days to discuss a range of issues, including biodiversity finance and reviewing progress towards the nature targets agreed under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
However, many of the major sticking points – particularly around finance – will have to wait until later this summer, leaving some observers worried about the capacity for delegates to get through a packed agenda at COP17.
The SBI, along with the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA) will both meet in Nairobi, Kenya, later this summer for a final round of talks before COP17 kicks off in Yerevan, Armenia, on 19 October.
Money talks
Finance for nature has long been a sticking point at negotiations under the CBD.
Discussions on a new fund for biodiversity derailed biodiversity talks in Cali, Colombia, in autumn 2024, requiring resumed talks a few months later.
Despite this, finance was barely on the agenda at the SBI meetings in Rome. Delegates discussed three studies on the relationship between debt sustainability and implementation of nature plans, but the more substantive talks are set to take place at the next SBI meeting in Nairobi.
Several parties “highlighted concerns with the imbalance of work” on finance between these SBI talks and the next ones, reported Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB).
Lim Li Ching, senior researcher at Third World Network, noted that tensions around finance permeated every aspect of the talks. She told Carbon Brief:
“If you’re talking about the gender plan of action – if there’s little or no financial resources provided to actually put it into practice and implement it, then it’s [just] paper, right? Same with the reporting requirements and obligations.”
Monitoring and reporting
Closely linked to the issue of finance is the obligations of parties to report on their progress towards the goals and targets of the GBF.
Parties do so through the submission of national reports.
Several parties at the talks pointed to a lack of timely funding for driving delays in their reporting, according to ENB.
A note released by the CBD Secretariat in December said that no parties had submitted their national reports yet; by the time of the SBI meetings, only the EU had. It further noted that just 58 parties had submitted their national biodiversity plans, which were initially meant to be published by COP16, in October 2024.
Linda Krueger, director of biodiversity and infrastructure policy at the environmental not-for-profit Nature Conservancy, told Carbon Brief that despite the sparse submissions, parties are “very focused on the national report preparation”. She added:
“Everybody wants to be able to show that we’re on the path and that there still is a pathway to getting to 2030 that’s positive and largely in the right direction.”
Watch, read, listen
NET LOSS: Nigeria’s marine life is being “threatened” by “ghost gear” – nets and other fishing equipment discarded in the ocean – said Dialogue Earth.
COMEBACK CAUSALITY: A Vox long-read looked at whether Costa Rica’s “payments for ecosystem services” programme helped the country turn a corner on deforestation.
HOMEGROWN GOALS: A Straits Times podcast discussed whether import-dependent Singapore can afford to shelve its goal to produce 30% of its food locally by 2030.
‘RUSTING’ RIVERS: The Financial Times took a closer look at a “strange new force blighting the [Arctic] landscape”: rivers turning rust-orange due to global warming.
New science
- Lakes in the Congo Basin’s peatlands are releasing carbon that is thousands of years old | Nature Geoscience
- Natural non-forest ecosystems – such as grasslands and marshlands – were converted for agriculture at four times the rate of land with tree cover between 2005 and 2020 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Around one-quarter of global tree-cover loss over 2001-22 was driven by cropland expansion, pastures and forest plantations for commodity production | Nature Food
In the diary
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean | Brasília
- 5 March: Nepal general elections
- 9-20 March: First part of the thirty-first session of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) | Kingston, Jamaica
Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz.
Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org
The post Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate
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