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China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
China’s CO2 emissions down
STRUCTURAL DECLINE: China’s clean power generation growth has, for the “first time”, been the driver of a fall in the nation’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions levels, new analysis for Carbon Brief found. CO2 emissions were down 1.6% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2025 and have fallen 1% over the last 12 months, it added, driven by decreasing power sector emissions – all despite rapid electricity demand growth. This could mark a “potentially significant turning point” in China’s emissions trajectory, the analysis said.
BOOMING INDUSTRIES: China’s clean-energy sectors have been “developing rapidly”, China’s tax bureau said, with the sectors’ sales revenue growing 13.6% year-on-year – “11.5 percentage points higher than the national average”, according to industry news outlet China Energy News. Analysis by the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies noted “production of the ‘three new’ industries was strong” in the first quarter of 2025. More than 3m workers were employed in the “ecological and environmental protection sector” in China in 2024, Chinese financial news outlet Yicai said. Meanwhile, Chinese finance news outlet Caixin reported on Shandong and Guangdong becoming the first two provinces in China to issue “market-based pricing rules for wind and solar power”, in a policy push that is expected to create short-term uncertainty for clean-energy industries.
COAL ASSETS: China’s fossil fuel sector emitted “nearly 25m tonnes of methane” in 2024 – the vast majority of which came from coal mines, including abandoned mines, a new report by the International Energy Agency said. It added that fossil-fuel methane emissions in China are set to fall by nearly 15% by 2030 and by around 30% by 2035. Elsewhere, carbon offsetting company Verra has developed a new methodology that could “channel more private capital toward the early phase out of coal-fired power plants” in Asia, Bloomberg said. However, Yan Qin, principal analyst at ClearBlue Markets, told Carbon Brief that Chinese stakeholders are “unlikely” to use the credits as they are not recognised in China’s voluntary carbon market. The state-run newspaper China Daily reported that China developed a “deep-sea vault” for greenhouse gases in the South China Sea, designed to store 1.5m tonnes of CO2 annually.
Drought hit China’s breadbasket
DROUGHT: Severe drought has hit several provinces across China, including Henan, Jiangsu and Shaanxi, with high temperatures and low rainfall “affecting local farming and water resources”, Yicai reported. Bloomberg noted that the “hot and dry weather is threatening wheat production, potentially disrupting output”. One trading firm has trimmed its forecast of China’s wheat production for 2025, Reuters reported. Upcoming summer monsoonal rains, known as meiyu (梅雨), “could help ease concerns over crop development”, Bloomberg said, although it added that global warming appeared to be driving “wild swings” in rainfall patterns during the season.
PESTS: A new study from Peking University, covered by the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP), found that migratory pests from southeast Asia are “partially driving rice yield losses in southern China”. The researchers added that “continued global warming” will likely increase how often issues with crop pests arise, “posing a major obstacle to stabilising food production”. China has released a plan for disaster prevention during 2025’s flood season in order to ensure a “bumper harvest”, which includes measures to prevent damage from floods, drought, heat, typhoons and pests, the state-run newspaper China Daily said.
POLLEN: Meanwhile, Beijing’s forestation drive has led to a rise in cases of hay fever, Bloomberg reported, noting that trees commonly used in the programme, such as “willows and poplar trees”, have high pollen output. It added that, according to environmental experts, China “didn’t have a better choice of plants when it started the forestation campaign” – quoting one saying that the country’s goal was to “get green first, and then to consider other things”.
Global south policymakers in Beijing
RENEWABLES TO AFRICA: New research by UK-based thinktank ODI Global has found that solar and wind power projects accounted for 59% of China’s energy investments in Africa in 2024, SCMP said. South African policymakers travelled to China to discuss “large-scale renewable energy”, “clean coal” and “grid management” with Chinese counterparts and industry representatives, according to the Communist party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily. Elsewhere, Nigeria “recently floated, and then quickly walked back, a proposed ban on imported solar panels” as the country tries to develop its own local solar industry, the China Global South Project reported.
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MONEY TO CELAC: Meanwhile, representatives of Latin American and Caribbean countries travelled to Beijing for a forum hosted by China, in which President Xi Jinping pledged to provide “66bn yuan ($9bn) in credit” and expand cooperation in “clean energy” with the region, SCMP reported. The “Beijing declaration” issued after the forum emphasised the need for “all parties to consider acceding to international instruments on climate change…and avoiding the creation of new trade barriers”.
LULA TO CHINA: Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was also in China on a state visit, the New York Times said, noting that Lula was seeking “gains in new technologies, including…green energy”. His visit culminated in Chinese companies announcing $5bn in investments in Brazil, Brazilian newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported, including in “sustainable aviation fuel”, “electric and hybrid cars” and other energy-related projects. A joint statement issued by the two countries stated that they will “deepen cooperation” on the energy transition and stated China will “send a high-level delegation” to COP30.
XI TO RUSSIA: Earlier, Xi made a state visit to Russia, during which Chinese and Russian policymakers discussed “Chinese companies’ involvement in Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects”, Reuters reported. A joint statement, published by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, pledged to implement projects “in the fields of oil, gas, LNG, civilian nuclear energy, coal, electricity [and] renewable energy”. State broadcaster CGTN called the China-Russia east-route gas pipeline, which began operating last December, a “landmark” in energy cooperation “benefiting about 450m people along its route”. Oleg Deripaska, chairman of the ecological committee of the China-Russia Friendship Committee for Peace and Development, told the People’s Daily: “Russia can learn from China’s experience of supply-side structural reforms to promote the creation of a mature green energy market.”
Captured
China currently has 161m tonnes (Mt) per year of electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmaking capacity and is building another 55Mt, according to a new data analysis tool developed by energy thinktank Global Energy Monitor. However, it noted, China “exhibits substantial gaps in data availability”, with feedstock information available for less than 8% of its EAF capacity.
Spotlight
What China’s coal country thinks about climate change
A new survey of Shanxi residents, exploring attitudes to climate change and “just transition”, offers a rare insight into the views of Chinese people on the frontline of the energy transition in the country’s largest coal-producing province.
In this issue, Carbon Brief interviews Tom Wang, one of the organisers of the survey, about its key findings. Wang is executive director of People of Asia for Climate Solutions, a climate advocacy group.
This interview was edited for length and clarity. A full version is available on Carbon Brief’s website.
Carbon Brief: Why did you want to conduct this survey?
Tom Wang: I’m from Shanxi province. I grew up thinking that coal was a necessary part of life. But I also lost quite a lot of people in my family to coal-mine accidents or air pollution.
Shanxi province is the world’s largest coal producer. [Note: The province’s coal output reached 1.3bn tonnes in 2024.] We contribute around one-third of [China’s] coal. Millions of people rely on coal-related jobs.
[But China’s climate policies mean] Shanxi cannot depend on the coal economy. Shanxi province’s own policies have also covered the energy transition. These policies [are not] being translated into something more tangible to people’s lives. People are not prepared.
That is why we wanted to do this survey. We ask two simple questions: do you know about and support the energy transition – and are you prepared?
CB: What do people in Shanxi think about the energy transition, climate change and climate policy?
TW: When it comes to climate change, awareness levels are very different between different demographic groups. For example, government workers and people with higher income or education levels know about climate change.
Some could identify things happening around them, such as warmer temperatures every year, longer drought periods and not having any snow last winter. Some even mentioned extreme weather, including heatwaves and a week-long rainstorm that ruined a lot of Shanxi’s ancient temples.
However, the most vulnerable communities, by which I basically mean the coal community, don’t really know about climate change. They know about [climate] buzzwords, but they don’t really understand them.
CB: Why is that?
TW: Most state-owned media talk a lot about climate change. However, they do not explain what that means for people’s everyday lives.
When we explain the energy transition means we are going to use less coal, they can understand…and feel the impact on their lives quite sharply.
CB: The survey also asked people what they would like to see prioritised in a just transition away from coal. What did respondents say was important to them?
TW: We all know JET-P, the Just Energy Transition Partnership. However, in Shanxi province, what we really need is the JET-B, a Just Energy Transition Brotherhood.
Rich provinces in China relied heavily on Shanxi’s coal to develop their economies. [The JET-B calls on them to] support Shanxi with its energy transition. Many [respondents] agreed with this!
Also, the people of Shanxi are actually willing to change or improve their own skill-sets. They know how dangerous it is to work in the coal industry. There is a high awareness of the lack of a future for the coal industry among respondents. People are quite happy to move on, if they are provided with good training and strong support to help that transition go smoothly.
CB: According to the survey, just over a quarter of Shanxi’s young people felt they did not have the skills they needed for a clean-energy economy. Around half were worried about the closure of coal mines and coal-power plants. What can be done to address their concerns?
TW: In Shanxi province we have universities that are dedicated to the coal industry. We have spent so much energy and resources on preparing our young people for the coal industry, instead of preparing them for the transition away from coal.
Young people don’t know how to prepare for the energy transition. And then there’s the current job market. Shanxi’s economy is so weak – in 2024, our province had the lowest economic growth rate in China.
Shanxi is not very good at setting up new industries. We have all of this potential but we are not really translating it into jobs. That’s why the young generation doesn’t feel confident.
CB: What lessons should be taken away from the survey?
TW: We need to prepare…the coal community and the young generation today. We cannot afford to wait any longer. We need to tangibly start to train people and raise new sectors.
Communications are also critical. We need to inspire people. Young people and the coal community are feeling lost.
We need to highlight that all these [possibilities] are out there. That’s what I would like our policymakers, investors and NGOs to tell people. And richer provinces should step up and say: “Now it’s time for us to help you.”
Watch, read, listen
CLIMATE SCIENCE: The Science and Technology Daily interviewed Prof Liu Congqiang, founding dean of the School of Geosystem Science of Tianjin University, on how the earth systems discipline emerged in China and how it contributes to researching climate change.
NEW STRATEGIES: The Diplomat examined how ambitious climate diplomacy can be sustained without high-level climate cooperation between the US and China.
CLIMATE LEADER: Global Solutions published an article by Henry Huiyao Wang, founder and president of the influential thinktank Center for China and Globalization, on how China can “leverage” its energy transition successes to advance “global climate mitigation”.
ELECTROSTATE: The Financial Times explored how China’s growing electrification helps it overcome a number of geopolitical, security and supply chain “vulnerabilit[ies]”.
New science
Nature Food
China’s agricultural machinery emissions have increased nearly sevenfold since 1985, new research has shown, adding that if they continue to grow they could “hinder” the country’s ability to reach its carbon-neutrality targets. The study, covered by Carbon Brief, used data from the China “statistical yearbook” to calculate the emissions of four types of farm equipment. Prof Zhangcai Qin, a professor at Sun Yat-sen University who was not involved in the new study, told Carbon Brief that disaggregating the emissions of agricultural machinery from food systems more broadly “allow[s] policymakers to design targeted interventions without compromising agricultural productivity”.
Communications Earth & Environment
A new study found that China’s “young natural forests” currently store more above-ground carbon than comparable “young planted forests” – mainly due to differences in tree density. The authors mapped the “aboveground carbon accumulation rates” for China’s young “natural” and “planted” forests in 2020. They found that planted forests sequester carbon more quickly than natural forests. However, they projected that by 2060, natural forests will still hold more above-ground carbon than planted forests.
A new study used machine learning to calculate a possible carbon emissions trajectory for China through to 2030. It mapped China’s carbon
China Briefing is compiled by Wanyuan Song and Anika Patel. It is edited by Wanyuan Song and Dr Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to china@carbonbrief.org
The post China Briefing 15 May 2025: CO2 emissions fall; Drought affects food production; Climate diplomacy at CELAC appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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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