Published

8 months ago

April 3, 2025

Alice Rush

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China Briefing.

China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.

Key developments

Steel, aluminium and cement on notice

ETS EXPANSION: China will expand its emissions trading system (ETS) to include the steel, cement and aluminium industries, which will “require an additional 1,500 firms to purchase credits to cover their emissions”, Reuters reported. (The Ministry of Ecology and Environment proposed the expansion in a draft policy last year. Read Carbon Brief’s in-depth Q&A on the ETS.) The newswire added that the system would now cover 8bn tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), or “more than 60% of China’s total emissions”, up from 40% currently. The expansion demonstrates a “strong political will [in China] to achieve the country’s ‘dual-carbon’ goals” despite a tense geopolitical climate and domestic “economic pressures”, the Shanghai-based news outlet Sixth Tone quoted Shen Xinyi, researcher at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), as saying. Finance news outlet Yicai said the expansion will “intensify the [steel] sector’s fragmentation and force outdated production capacity to shut”, but in the long term would encourage “technological innovation and investment” in the “green transition”.

‘CLEAN’ ALUMINIUM: Aluminium producers are expected to increase their use of “clean energy” to 30% of their total energy use by 2027 according to a new industry development plan, energy news outlet International Energy Net reported, adding that China also aims to “raise output of recycled aluminium to more than 15m tonnes”. (This would more than double its 2020 output. China’s production of “primary” aluminium made from metal ore is around 44m tonnes per year.) The plan also urges aluminium producers to “participate in renewables projects, such as solar, wind, hydrogen and energy storage”, as well as “engage in green electricity trading, purchase green electricity certificates (GECs)…and [invest] in clean-power projects to increase clean energy use”, according to industry news outlet BJX News. Bloomberg said that the directive – which “mirrors similar guidance…given to copper smelters” – also tightens rules for building new aluminium plants in a “bid to tackle overcapacity”.

GRID INVESTMENT: Meanwhile, investments in China’s electricity grid “jumped by about 33% in the first two months” of 2025 to around 44bn yuan ($6bn), Bloomberg reported, although it noted this was “still below the pace needed” to meet China’s 2025 spending target of 650bn yuan ($89bn). Separately, China has launched 30 projects in nine cities to pilot the use of electric vehicle batteries in supporting the grid, Reuters reported. Elsewhere, China’s finance ministry pledged to provide more financial support in 2025 for meeting China’s climate goals and the promotion of renewable energy and the low-carbon transition of “key industries”, BJX News reported.

Low-carbon leadership

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‘COMMANDING HEIGHTS’: China must “aim for the commanding heights of future science, technology and industrial development” in “new energy” and other technological “frontiers”, Chinese president Xi Jinping said in a speech published by Qiushi, the country’s top ideological journal. The speech focused on key tasks for building China’s strength in science and technology, noting: “Green [and] low-carbon technologies have contributed significantly to…a beautiful China.” Xi also raised the importance of “international” cooperation, such as for “jointly respond[ing] to global challenges such as climate change…[and] energy security”.

ASIA’S DAVOS: Meanwhile, China’s climate envoy Liu Zhenmin said at the 2025 Boao forum – an event also known as Asia’s Davos – that the “political will of member nations, market forces and technology” meant that the global energy transition is “irreversible”, Bloomberg reported. State broadcaster CGTN quoted Liu saying at the event, held in Hainan province last week, that one key “challenge” would be delivering the $300bn climate-finance goal agreed at COP29. It quoted him adding: “We need to continue to push developed country parties to undertake their responsibility for this payment.” Liu also said a “friendly trade environment and a favorable market environment” is needed for low-carbon technologies to “flow freely” around the world, the Communist party-affiliated People’s Daily reported. Executive vice-premier Ding Xuexiang called on countries to “firmly oppose trade and investment protectionism” in his keynote speech at the event, Bloomberg said. (Ding is China’s “top decision-maker” on climate policy.)

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TÊTE-À-TÊTE: Elsewhere, China and France “issued a joint statement on climate change…marking the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement”, the state-run newspaper China Daily said, in which the nations “reaffirmed their shared commitment to enhancing international cooperation to address climate challenges”. CGTN published the full text of the statement, in which China and France pledged “enhanced communication about their respective upcoming new ambitious [nationally determined contributions] which will cover all economic areas and greenhouse gases, and be aligned with the Paris Agreement goals”. The statement also pledged “continuous efforts to transition away from fossil fuels”. The two countries separately agreed to cooperate on “nuclear energy”, “connected vehicles” and “green hydrogen”, the Singapore-based Straits Times said.

GREEN FINANCE: China has launched a 6bn yuan ($825m) green sovereign bond on the London Stock Exchange in “what is expected to be the first in a series of sales that will expand its footprint in the market”, Reuters reported. Bloomberg said it “highlight[ed China’s] ambitions to bolster its environmental credentials to investors”. (The plan to issue the bond was first announced during Rachel Reeves’ visit to Beijing in January).

Record trade tensions

‘LIBERATION DAY’: The US imposed a new total tariff rate of at least 54% on goods from China, in a move that could encourage China to “branch out and find new markets for its clean-energy technology, accelerating their adoption”, the Scientific American said. (Chinese exports of clean-energy technologies to the US were already low due to existing tariffs.) Politico reported that, as “a lot of” the basic materials for electric vehicle (EV) batteries are sourced from China, US EV manufacturers will be “hit” by the tariffs. Ahead of the announcement, a report on “foreign trade barriers” from the US government dedicated almost 50 of its 400-pages to China, criticising China’s aim to “dominat[e]” industries such as “new energy vehicles”, the New York Times reported. China “firmly opposes” the tariffs, Reuters quoted China’s commerce ministry as saying. (Read Carbon Brief’s article for expert views on the climate impacts of Trump’s tariffs)

EU-CHINA TALKS: China and the EU confirmed that they “agreed to restart talks on minimum [import] price[s]” for Chinese EVs “as soon as possible”, according to Reuters. While Chinese battery EV exports to the EU have “slowed” due to EU tariffs, China’s “exports of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles” – which are not subject to tariffs – “surged” in January and February 2025, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post said. Reuters said China “has not shipped any antimony”, a critical mineral used in solar-panel manufacturing, to the EU since it was placed under export controls in October. Meanwhile, Japan placed a 95% anti-dumping duty on imports of Chinese graphite electrodes, which are used in technologies such as electric arc furnace steelmaking and lithium-ion batteries, another Reuters article reported.

TRADE INVESTIGATIONS: China was the subject of a “record number of trade investigations by [World Trade Organization] members last year”, triggered by a boom in exports, the Financial Times reported. It said the 198 trade investigations in 2024 “alleging dumping or illegal subsidies” was double the previous year’s total.

Pricing reform

HIGH-LEVEL OPINIONS: The top offices of the Chinese Communist Party and State Council issued joint opinions on the need to improve pricing mechanisms, which reiterated calls for “market-oriented reform of prices” for energy, reform of feed-in tariffs – which have been used to set prices for coal and renewables – and improving power purchasing systems, Xinhua reported. The document also called for the establishment of “sound” pricing mechanisms for gas, energy storage and other energy flexibility providers, which could indicate plans for “further rolling out capacity mechanisms” to cover further power generation sources in addition to coal, wrote Yan Qin, principal analyst at ClearBlue Markets, on LinkedIn.

OPTIMISING RESOURCES: A representative of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planner, told business newspaper Daily Economic News that improved pricing mechanisms are the foundation of a better market-oriented economy. The outlet also quoted Lin Weibin, director of the energy policy research office of the China Energy Research Society, saying that an important element of improving pricing mechanisms is to “accelerate the construction of the electricity spot market, and promote the construction of a unified national electricity market”. The opinions are a “powerful impetus” to develop systems that make the use of “energy resources” more efficient and optimise China’s energy structure, Xinhua quoted Deng Yusong, a researcher at the government-backed thinktank Development Research Center of the State Council, as saying.

Spotlight

Guest post: China’s surging solar exports to the global south

China’s exports of solar panels to the global south have doubled in the past two years, overtaking global-north sales for the first time since 2018, says a recent Carbon Brief guest post.

The guest post is by Dave Jones and Libby Copsey, respectively global insights programme director and data developer at thinktank Ember. Ember’s China solar PV export explorer tracks shipments to more than 200 countries, showing that global south countries, such as Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and India, were among the top importers of Chinese solar panels in 2024.

In this issue, Carbon Brief highlights the key findings of the guest post. The full article is available on Carbon Brief’s website.

Top importers

China’s solar panel exports rose by 10% in 2024, with imports by global-south countries rising by 32% and those to the global north falling by 6%, according to Ember’s data.

Global-south imports more than doubled from 60 gigawatts (GW) in 2022 to 126GW in 2024. That surpassed global-north imports, which were only 12% more in 2024 than in 2022, as shown on the chart below.

Annual solar panel exports from China, GW, to the global south (red) and the global north (blue). Categorisation as “global south” or “global north” from UNCTAD. Source: Ember.

The Netherlands was the biggest importer in 2024 and has been every year since 2019, as a result of Rotterdam serving as an import hub for much of continental Europe. The next four places were all global-south countries.

Brazil was in second place, importing more than 20GW for the second year in a row. However, the imposition of import taxes by the government, the refusal of electricity distributors to connect new solar systems and solar “curtailment” are all causing headwinds in 2025.

Pakistan and Saudi Arabia jumped to third and fourth, respectively. These two countries have had almost identical imports of Chinese solar panels for the past two years. They stood at 8GW in 2023 and then more than doubled to 17GW in 2024, the export explorer shows.

However, Pakistan has mainly imported panels for small-scale “distributed” installations. In contrast, Saudi Arabia’s import growth has been driven almost entirely by desert solar parks, complete with some battery storage and paid for by international energy companies.

India was in fifth place in 2024. Its module imports remained similar to those in 2023, but its installations rose to a record high, enabled by a step up in new domestic solar panel manufacturing capacity.

In January 2025, that helped India hit 100GW of solar installed, according to government figures. India is partly relying on Chinese imports, whilst simultaneously scaling up its own manufacturing industry.

New markets

There were 15 countries that saw a large uptick in imports of Chinese solar panels towards the end of 2024.

In particular, there were large increases in Nigeria, Algeria and Iraq, where there is clear evidence that demand for panels is growing.

Nigeria’s growth was driven by blackouts in 2024 and the removal of fuel subsidies, Iraq is constructing its first large solar plant, while Algeria has a plan for 3GW of solar projects.

For a cluster of a further 12 countries, which includes many small African and Latin American countries, it is less clear if the recent uptick in solar panel imports is a structural change that will continue into 2025 and beyond.

There are large incentives for China’s solar manufacturing companies to meet year-end targets, so it is possible that containers of solar panels were sold to these countries at discounted rates to help meet these goals.

The recent spike in imports are nevertheless quite large in the context of the small electricity systems of many of these countries. As such, these solar panels would provide a relatively meaningful increase in renewable electricity generation if they go on to be installed.

Reducing reliance

China itself – the biggest of all the global-south solar markets – installed more solar panels than it exported for the second year in a row.

It installed 333GW of solar capacity domestically in 2024, some 38% more than the 242GW of solar panels that it exported.

Solar exports rose by 10% year-on-year, which was a significant slowdown from the rate of growth seen in recent years. However, solar installations outside of China grew by 30%.

This demonstrates a step-up in ambitions to reduce reliance on Chinese solar panel imports by a number of countries around the world.

Watch, read, listen

SHIFTING MINDSETS: Business news outlet Jiemian interviewed the owner of a struggling clean-energy technology distributor in Germany about the challenges of importing Chinese energy products to the EU.

PATIENT CAPITAL?: New Security Beat explored how China is using “resource-backed loans” as part of its overseas development finance strategy, recouping loan payments in the form of oil, minerals and other national resources.

NO MORE BF-BOF: A new report by consultancy Global Efficiency Intelligence examined how China can increase uptake of electric arc furnaces in its carbon-intensive steel industry.

PLOTTING THE FUTURE: Kaare Sandholt, chief international advisor at the Energy Research Institute, spoke with Environment China about the thinktank’s modelling of China’s energy transition, which he recently wrote about for Carbon Brief.

26%

The amount by which China’s glacier area has shrunk since 1960, due to rapid global warming, Reuters reported. The newswire added that 7,000 small glaciers have disappeared completely in China during this period.

New science

Unpacking China’s climate policy mixes shows a disconnect between policy density and intensity in the post-Paris era

npj Climate Action

A new study analysing China’s climate policy found that a higher “density”, or number, of climate policies “does not equate to stronger [climate] action”. The authors created a dataset of 358 climate-related policies adopted by China’s central government from 2016-22. They found “significant variation” in how much different sectors were aligned with China’s most recent nationally determined contribution (NDC) – especially among high-emitting sectors.

Expanding the emissions trading system coverage can increase the cost competitiveness of low-carbon ammonia in China

Communications Earth & Environment

An emissions trading system (ETS) is needed in order for ammonia produced with renewable energy – known as “renewable ammonia” – to achieve “cost parity” with conventional ammonia before 2040, according to new research. The authors used models to project the economic and carbon costs of seven ammonia production technologies, evaluating the impact of China’s ETS on the levelised cost of ammonia over 2018-60. Expanding the ETS to cover the lifecycle of ammonia production could allow “renewable ammonia” to achieve cost parity 6-37 years sooner than if the system was not implemented, it added.

China’s carbon sinks from land-use change underestimated

Nature Climate Change

A new study found that China’s carbon sinks resulting from land-use change over the past four decades have been underestimated. The study analysed carbon fluxes linked to land-use change between 1981-2020, using independent models and a new dataset integrating remote sensing with China’s national forest inventory. It added that, over the past 40 years, China’s net carbon flux from land-use change removed 7.3bn tonnes of CO2, with the annual average sink since 2001 totalling 0.5bn tonnes of CO2.

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 3 April 2025: Solar exports; Carbon market expansion; Leaders’ climate commitments appeared first on Carbon Brief.

China Briefing 3 April 2025: Solar exports; Carbon market expansion; Leaders’ climate commitments

Greenhouse Gases

DeBriefed 21 November 2025: [COP30 DeBriefed] ‘Mutirão’ text latest; ‘Roadmaps’ explained; COP finish times plotted

Published

2 days ago

November 21, 2025

Alice Rush

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

This week

Key ‘mutirão’ text emerges

‘MUTIRÃO’ 2.0: After many late nights, but little progress – and a dramatic fire at the COP30 venue – the much-awaited second draft of the summit’s key agreement, called the “mutirão” text, finally dropped this morning. The new mutirão text “calls for efforts to triple adaptation finance” by 2030 and would launch a presidency-led “Belém mission to 1.5C” alongside a voluntary “implementation accelerator”, as well as a series of “dialogues” on trade. It “decides to establish” a two-year work programme on climate finance, including on a key section of the Paris Agreement called Article 9.1, but has a footnote saying this will not “prejudge” how the climate finance goal agreed last year is met.

COP30 Insider Pass

A two-week, all-access package designed for those who need much more than headlines.

ROADMAPS TO NOWHERE: The latest draft does not refer to the idea of a “fossil-fuel roadmap”, which is not on the COP30 agenda, but has been pushed by Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and a group of parties (see below). A letter to the presidency, seen by Carbon Brief and reportedly backed by at least 29 countries, including Colombia, Germany, Palau, Mexico and the UK, says: “We cannot support an outcome that does not include a roadmap [on fossil fuels].” It also flags the lack of a roadmap on deforestation. The letter asks for a revised text.

PLENARY WHEN: The latest draft of the mutirão text is unlikely to be the last. There is also a set of draft decisions that have not been fully resolved. For instance, this morning, the Brazilian COP presidency floated a draft decision on what it is calling the “Belém gender action plan”, with three brackets versus the 496 brackets in the previous version. At a short, informal stocktaking plenary, COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago invited countries to react to the drafts in a “mutirão” meeting, namely, in the “spirit of cooperation”. But expect all timings to be flexible, as they work to iron out differences in closed-door meetings.

Adaptation COP

TRIPLING TARGET: A new text for the global goal on adaptation dropped alongside the mutirão text this morning, after days of tense negotiations. Crucially, it includes the adoption of some of the indicators, which will be used to track countries’ progress on adaptation. Last week, the African Group and others called for the indicators not to be adopted at COP30 – one of the key expectations ahead of the summit – and, instead, a two-year work programme to further refine them due to concerns around adaptation finance.

INDICATORS: The latest text adopts an annex of 59 of the potential 100 indicators, emphasises that they “do not create new financial obligations or commitments” and decides to establish a two-year “Belém-Addis vision” on adaptation to further refine the indicators. The only remaining bracket within the text is to allow for the addition of the final adaptation finance target from the mutirão – which, currently, “calls for efforts to triple adaptation finance compared to 2025 levels by 2030”.

WHAM BAM: The latest text for another key negotiating stream on the “just transition work programme” (JTWP) “decides to develop a just transition mechanism”. This has been a point of particular contention within negotiations. Civil society developed the concept of the Belém Action Mechanism (BAM) over the past year and the G77 and China, a large group of global-south nations, tabled it within the JTWP in the first week. However, there was pushback from the EU, UK and others, with the former instead proposing an “action plan” as an alternative.

CRITICAL MINERALS: While landing on the inclusion of a mechanism is being welcomed by civil society and others, the latest text removes the reference to critical minerals included in its predecessor. If included, it would be the first time a reference to “critical minerals” is adopted in the JTWP.

Around the COP

Turkey will host COP31, while Australia will take on the presidency and lead the negotiations, under a compromise deal reached between the two nations on Thursday, Reuters reported.
Brazil set out a plan before COP30 to reform the “action agenda” – which includes 117 “plans to accelerate solutions” outside of the negotiations, covering everything from fossil-fuel phaseout to “sustainable diets for all”. On Wednesday, the presidency rounded off a series of events that have been used to promote this vision.
China called for the creation of a “practical roadmap” for delivering climate finance by developed countries, which delegation head Li Gao said would help “prevent further erosion of trust between developed and developing countries”.
An estimated 70,000 people marched in 32C heat in Belém on Saturday, marking the largest COP protest since COP26 in Glasgow.

52

The number of COP30 agenda items that had been agreed by the time DeBriefed was sent to readers.

51

The number of COP30 agenda items not yet agreed.

Latest climate research

A five-year drought in Iran and around the Euphrates and Tigris basins “would have been very rare” without human-caused climate change | World Weather Attribution
Integrating nature-based solutions into urban planning could reduce daytime temperatures by 2C during hot periods | Nature Cities
Warming of the “deep Greenland basin” has exerted “obvious impacts” on the deep waters of the Arctic Ocean | Science Advances

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

Captured

This week saw the Brazilian presidency pledge to conclude some of the most controversial issues at COP30 a whole two days early. In the end, no early deal materialised. As the event approaches its official end time later today, with none of the major negotiations finished, this chart serves to remind that COPs have not finished on time for more than two decades.

Spotlight

‘Roadmaps’ explained

This week, Carbon Brief explains the push for new “roadmaps” away from fossil fuels and deforestation at COP30.

Speaking during the world leaders summit in Belém ahead of COP30, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said that the world “need[s] roadmaps to justly and strategically reverse deforestation [and] overcome dependence on fossil fuels”.

His words appeared to spark a movement of countries to call for new roadmaps away from fossil fuels and deforestation to feature as key outcomes of this COP – despite not being on the official agenda for the negotiations.

While momentum for each roadmap has grown, they were referenced only as an option in the first version of COP30’s key text, called the “global mutirão” – and in the second version the reference to roadmaps has disappeared entirely.

Below, Carbon Brief explains the origins of each roadmap, how support for them has grown and how they might feature in COP’s final outcome.

Fossil-fuel roadmap

Most people cite Lula’s pre-COP speech as the start of the movement for a fossil-fuel roadmap.

However, an observer close to the process told Carbon Brief that the COP30 presidency had, in fact, been consulting on the possibility of a roadmap months earlier – drawing help from the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, a small group of nations who have pledged to phase out all fossil fuels.

While Brazil was the first country to support the fossil-fuel roadmap, it was joined in the first few days of COP by eight Latin American countries that form the Alliance of Latin America and the Caribbean (AILAC) and by the Environmental Integrity Group (EIG), which includes Mexico, Liechtenstein, Monaco, South Korea, Switzerland and Georgia.

The call for a roadmap was also backed by the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), a group of 39 small low-lying island nations.

As momentum grew, the first global mutirão text appeared on Wednesday 19 November. Paragraph 35 of the text listed three options for where a reference to a fossil-fuel roadmap map might be incorporated, including one option for “no text”.

Later that day, ministers and climate envoys from more than 20 countries united for a packed-out press conference, where they called the current reference to the fossil-fuel roadmap “weak”, adding that it must be “strengthened and adopted”.

At the sidelines of the conference, UK climate envoy Rachel Kyte told journalists that around 80 countries now backed the call for a roadmap. (Carbon Brief obtained the list of 82 countries that have expressed their support.)

However, COP30 CEO Ana Toni told a press conference later that day that a “great majority” of country groups they had consulted saw a fossil-fuel roadmap as a “red line”.

In an interview with Carbon Brief, Dr Osama Faqeeha, deputy environment minister for Saudi Arabia, refused to be drawn on whether a fossil-fuel roadmap was a red line, but said:

“I think the issue is the emissions, it’s not the fuel. And our position is that we have to cut emissions regardless.”

The next day, the EU officially threw its weight behind the call for a fossil-fuel roadmap, after initial delay caused by hesitation to join the movement from Italy and Poland, Climate Home News reported.

The EU circulated its own proposal for how a fossil-fuel roadmap could be referenced in the global mutirão text, the publication added.

However, the latest version of the global mutirão text, released today, does not reference a roadmap at all. It has already sparked condemnation from a range of countries and observers.

It is expected that at least one more iteration of the text will emerge before the COP30 presidency attempts to find agreement, which could see a reference to the roadmap reappear.

Deforestation roadmap

While Lula called for roadmaps away from both fossil fuels and deforestation, the latter has received less attention, with one observer joking to Carbon Brief it had become the “sad forgotten cousin”.

A roadmap away from deforestation was originally only backed by Brazil, the EIG and AILAC.

However, the EU became a relatively early backer – announcing its support for a deforestation roadmap before a fossil-fuel roadmap.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo – one of the world’s “megadiverse” nations and one of the countries responsible for the Congo rainforest – has also announced its support. (See Carbon Brief’s list of supporters.)

As with the fossil-fuel roadmap, a reference to a deforestation roadmap appeared in the first iteration of the mutirão text, but has disappeared from the second. It may – or may not – appear in another version of the text before COP30’s finale.

Watch, read, listen

FOREST TALES: In a new video series from Earthday.org and the Pulitzer Centre, three investigative journalists discussed their reporting on deforestation in Brazil and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

AI IMPACTS: Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, spoke to BBC News about the climate impacts of AI, among other topics.

MISSING DATA: Columnist George Monbiot wrote in the Guardian about the “vast black hole” of climate data in some parts of the world – which he says is a “gift” to climate deniers.

Coming up

22-23 November: G20 summit, Johannesburg, South Africa
24 November-5 December: 20th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), Samarkand, Uzbekistan
24-29 November: 11th session of the governing body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, Lima, Peru

Pick of the jobs

Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, chief press officer | Salary: £60,620-£67,565. Location: London
World Bank Group, climate change specialist | Salary: Unknown. Location: New Delhi, India
University of Buffalo, Center for Climate Change and Health Equity, postdoctoral associate | Salary: $50,000-$55,000. Location: Buffalo, New York
University of Oxford, Queens College, junior fellow in climate change research | Salary: £37,694. Location: Oxford, UK

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 21 November 2025: [COP30 DeBriefed] ‘Mutirão’ text latest; ‘Roadmaps’ explained; COP finish times plotted appeared first on Carbon Brief.

DeBriefed 21 November 2025: [COP30 DeBriefed] ‘Mutirão’ text latest; ‘Roadmaps’ explained; COP finish times plotted

Greenhouse Gases

Cropped 19 November 2025: COP30 edition

Published

4 days ago

November 19, 2025

Alice Rush

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

COP30 nears its end

COP TALK: The COP30 climate summit is entering its final days in Belém – and food, forests and land have all featured across the two weeks of talks. The formal agriculture negotiations track at climate COPs is the Sharm-el-Sheikh joint work on climate action for agriculture and food security (SWJA). Talks, however, came to an abrupt halt last Thursday evening, with countries agreeing to continue discussions on a draft text – with elements ranging from agroecology to precision agriculture – in Bonn next year.

DEFORESTATION ROADMAP: WWF and Greenpeace called for a roadmap at COP30 to end deforestation. There has been a lot of chatter about roadmaps in Belém, with more than 80 countries backing calls for a roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels, the Guardian said. Kirsten Schuijt from WWF told a press conference that a similar plan on ending deforestation should include “real actions and ambition to bend the curve on forest loss”. Writing for Backchannel, Colombia’s environment minister Irene Vélez-Torres said: “We need to see the global north come behind a roadmap – and quickly”. (Carbon Brief’s Daisy Dunne has started tracking the countries in favour, such as Colombia.)

CARBON MARKETS: Elsewhere at the talks, nature-based solutions featured in an early draft text of carbon market negotiations. (Carbon Brief’s Aruna Chandrasekhar took a closer look at some of these references.) In addition, the Brazilian presidency launched a global coalition of “compliance carbon markets” on 7 November, which was endorsed by 18 countries.

BIG AG IN BELÉM: More than 300 industrial agriculture lobbyists attended COP30, according to an investigation by DeSmog and the Guardian. This is a 14% increase on last year, DeSmog reported, and larger than Canada’s entire delegation. One in four agricultural lobbyists attended the talks as part of an official country delegation, the outlet noted. Elsewhere, Unearthed found that the sustainable agriculture pavilion at COP30 was “sponsored by agribiz interests linked to deforestation and anti-conservation lobbying”. Brazilian outlet Agência Pública reported that Brazil placed the “billionaire brothers” who own JBS, the world’s largest beef producer, on a “VIP list” at the summit.

TRACKING PROGRESS: A UN report found that while progress has been made towards a global pledge to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030, emissions of the potent greenhouse gas continue to rise. The report said agricultural methane is projected to increase by 4-8% by 2030, but could instead reduce by 8% with methane-reduction measures. Elsewhere, a report covered by Down to Earth found that countries need more than 1bn hectares of land, “an area larger than Australia”, to meet carbon removal pledges.

Indigenous presence in Belém

QUESTIONED PARTICIPATION: Ahead of COP30, Brazil’s presidency had expected the arrival of 3,000 Indigenous peoples in Belém. Indigenous peoples from the Amazon were at COP30 “in greater numbers than ever before”, with 900 representatives granted access to the negotiations, the New York Times reported. However, only four people from Brazil’s afro-descendant Quilombolas communities held such accreditation, Climate Home News and InfoAmazonia reported. A boat journey that took 62 Indigenous representatives across the Amazon river to attend the COP30 was covered by Folha de São Paulo, Reuters and El País.

VARIED DEMANDS: Indigenous leaders arrived in Belém with a variety of demands, including the inclusion of their land rights within countries’ climate plans, the New York Times added. It wrote that land demarcation “would provide legal protection against incursion by loggers, farmers, miners and ranchers”. Half of the group that sailed across the Amazon river were youths that brought demands from Amazon peoples to the climate summit, El País reported. A small Indigenous group from Cambodia attended COP30 to combat climate disinformation and call for ensuring Indigenous rights in forest projects, Kiri Post reported.

FROM BLOCKADES TO THE STREETS: During the first week of COP30, Indigenous protesters blocked the entrance of the conference and clashed with police officers when demanding climate action and forest protection, Reuters reported. Tens of thousands of protesters, including Indigenous peoples, took to the streets of Belém on Saturday to demand climate justice and hold a funeral for fossil fuels, Mongabay and the Guardian reported.

News and views

AGRI DISASTERS: Disasters have driven $3.26tn in agricultural losses worldwide over the past 33 years, amounting to around 4% of global agricultural GDP, according to a new report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. The report assessed how disasters – including droughts, floods, pests and marine heatwaves – are disrupting food production, livelihoods and nutrition. It found that Asia saw nearly half of global losses, while Africa recorded the highest proportional impacts, losing 7.4% of its agricultural GDP.

WATER ‘CATASTROPHE’: Iran is facing “nationwide catastrophe” due to “worsening droughts, record-low rainfall and decades of mismanaged water resources”, Newsweek reported. According to Al Jazeera, the country is facing its sixth consecutive drought year, following high summertime temperatures. The outlet added: “Iran spends 90% of its water on low-yield agriculture in a pursuit of self-sufficiency that exacerbates drought.” BBC News reported that authorities in the country have “sprayed clouds” with salts to “induce rain, in an attempt to combat” the worsening drought.

TRUMP THREAT: The Trump administration will allow oil and gas drilling in Alaska’s North Slope – home to “some of the most important wildlife habitat in the Arctic” – the New York Times reported. The announcement reverses a decision made during the Biden administration to restrict development in half of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, the newspaper said. Separately, Reuters reported that the US Department of Agriculture directed its staff to identify grants for termination at the start of Trump’s second administration by searching for “words and phrases related to diversity and climate change”.

FIELDS FLATTENED: Thousands of acres of sugarcane plantations in the Philippines’ Visayas islands were destroyed by Typhoon Tino earlier this month, the Philippine Star reported. Damages to the country’s sugar industry have been estimated at 1.2bn Philippine dollars (£15.5m), it added. Sugar regulator administrator Pablo Luis Azcona told the Manila Times: “We have seen entire fields decimated by Tino, especially in the fourth and fifth districts of Negros Occidental, where harvestable canes were flattened and flooded. We can only hope that these fields will be able to recover.”

FARMS AND TREES: EU countries and the European parliament have provisionally agreed on an “overhaul” of farming subsidies, Reuters reported. The changes would “exempt smaller farmers from baseline requirements tying their subsidies to efforts to protect the environment” and increase their potential payments, the newswire said. Campaigners told Reuters that these changes would make farmers more vulnerable to climate change. Elsewhere, Bloomberg said EU countries are “pushing for a one-year delay” of the bloc’s planned anti-deforestation law – “seeking more time to comply” with the law compared to different proposed changes from the European Commission.

ANOTHER FUND: Brazil is mulling over the creation of a new fund for preserving different biomes, such as the Cerrado, inspired by the Amazon Fund, Folha de São Paulo reported. Discussions are underway between Brazil’s president and the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES), according to the newspaper. Separately, the Washington Post reported on how Brazil’s efforts to position itself as a climate leader at COP30 has been undermined by Lula’s approval of new oil drilling in the Amazon and elimination of environmental permits.

Spotlight

Key COP30 pledges

This week, Carbon Brief outlines four of the biggest COP30 initiatives for food, land and forests.

Tropical Forest Forever Facility

Brazil’s tropical forest fund – arguably the biggest forest announcement from this year’s climate talks – was hailed by WWF and others as a “gamechanger” upon its launch almost two weeks ago. Since then, the fund has raised $5.5bn – far below even Brazil’s reduced target of $10bn by next year.

Norway, Brazil, Indonesia, Portugal, France and the Netherlands have all committed to pay into the fund, while Germany has said it will announce its contribution soon. The UK and China, on the other hand, do not plan to pay in.

Intergovernmental Land Tenure Commitment

This new “landmark” commitment aimed to “recognise and strengthen” the land rights on 160m hectares of Indigenous peoples and local community land by 2030, according to the Forest & Climate Leaders’ Partnership.

It has been backed by 14 countries, including Brazil, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia and the UK.

Relatedly, $1.8bn has been pledged from public and private funding to help secure land rights for Indigenous peoples, local communities and Afro-descendent communities in forests and other ecosystems.

Belém Declaration on Hunger, Poverty and People-Centered Climate Action

Signatories of this declaration committed to a number of actions aiming to address the “unequal distribution of climate impacts”, including expanding social protection systems and supporting climate adaptation for small farmers.

It was adopted by 43 countries and the EU. A German minister described it as a “pioneering step in linking climate action, social protection and food security”.

Belém 4X

This initiative aimed to gather high-level support to quadruple the production and use of “sustainable fuels”, such as hydrogen and biofuels, by 2035.

It was launched by Brazil and has been backed by 23 countries so far, including Canada, Italy, Japan and the Netherlands.

However, the pledge has been “rejected” by some NGOs, including Climate Action Network and Greenpeace, who criticised the environmental impact of biofuels.

Watch, read, listen

FOOD CHAT: Bite the Talk, a podcast by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, explored the “critical intersection of climate change and nutrition”.

TRUE SAVIOURS: On Instagram, the Washington Post published a list of 50 plant and animal species that “have enriched and even saved human lives”.

NO MORE WASTE: A comment piece by the founder of London’s Community Kitchen in the Independent addressed the relevance of food waste to the climate agenda.

FOREST FRENZY: The Financial Times spoke to Amazon climate scientist Prof Carlos Nobre about tipping points and his “zeal for saving the rainforest”.

New science

Floods led to a 4.3% global reduction in annual rice yield over 1980-2015, with crop losses accelerating after the year 2000 – “coinciding with a climate change-induced uptick in the frequency and severity” of floods | Science Advances
Loss of African montane forests led to local “microclimate” warming of 2.0-5.6C over 2003-22, diminishing the “temperature-buffering capacity” of the forests | Communications Earth & Environment
“Prolonged” drought is linked to an increase in conflict between humans and wildlife – especially carnivores | Science Advances

In the diary

10-21 November: COP30 UN climate summit | Belém, Brazil
22-23 November: G20 leaders’ summit | Johannesburg, South Africa
24-29 November: 11th session of the governing body of the international treaty on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture | Lima, Peru
1-5 December: XIX World Water Congress | Marrakech, Morocco

Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz. Ayesha Tandon also contributed to this issue. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org

The post Cropped 19 November 2025: COP30 edition appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Cropped 19 November 2025: COP30 edition

Greenhouse Gases

COP30: Carbon Brief’s second ‘ask us anything’ webinar

Published

6 days ago

November 17, 2025

Alice Rush

As COP30 reaches its midway point in the Brazilian city of Belém, Carbon Brief has hosted its second “ask us anything” webinar to exclusively answer questions submitted by holders of the Insider Pass.

The webinar kicked off with an overview of where the negotiations are on Day 8, plus what it was like to be among the 70,000-strong “people’s march” on Saturday.

At present, there are 44 agreed texts at COP30, with many negotiating streams remaining highly contested, as shown by Carbon Brief’s live text tracker.

Topics discussed during the webinar included the potential of a “cover text” at COP30, plus updates on negotiations such as the global goal on adaptation and the just-transition work programme.

Journalists also answered questions on the potential for a “fossil-fuel phaseout roadmap”, the impact of finance – including the Baku to Belém roadmap, which was released the week before COP30 – and Article 6.

The webinar was moderated by Carbon Brief’s director and editor, Leo Hickman, and featured six of our journalists – half of them on the ground in Belém – covering all elements of the summit: